How to get rid of Thumbs.db file

Posted on by
Reply

If you’re a Windows XP user, you might have seen Thumbs.db file in some folders. It is a hidden file.

What is Thumbs.db file?

Thumbs.db is a file used by versions of Microsoft Windows that stores a cache for Windows Explorer’s thumbnail view. Thumbs.db is saved in each directory that contains pictures or photos.

In which Windows versions you can find it?

You can find it in Windows XP Pro and Home. I’m not sure about Windows 9x (Who would’ve used it anyway nowadays?)

In Windows Vista, Microsoft replaced thumbs.db files with a centralized thumbnail database thumbcache_xxxx.db located in Users[user name]AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsExplorer.

How much space could it take?

You may not believe it, but it could take a few hundred MBs.

How can you get rid of it?

  • Go to Start –>> Control Panel –>> Folder Options
  • Go to the View tab
  • Remove the check box from Do not cache thumbnails
  • Click the Ok

What is the advantages and disadvantages of removing it?

  • Advantages are that you can save a few hundreds of your hard disk space and you’ll never see those annoying little hidden file here and there.
  • Disadvantage is that if you browse a folder that contains many image files with moderate file size, it will take a long time for that folder to load because the thumbnail images have not been cached in Thumbs.db.

So next time if you see one of your friends is wondering about thumbs.db file, you can easily bossy him/her with enough confident.

Source : Wikipedia

How to open docx files without Office 2007

Posted on by
1


Microsoft has introduced a new file format called the Microsoft Open Office XML Format (.docx) with their latest office suite, Office 2007.

But most people are still using Office 2003. The big problem is that this new format is incompatible with older Microsoft Office versions or any other Office alternatives such as Open Office or Lotus, StarOffice, NeoOffice. Before anyone blame Microsoft, they have already created a program called Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. After you’ve downloaded this program, you can easily convert new Office format such as .docx to old Office format .doc and vice versa.

Or if you don’t want to install any program, you can try .docx online converter. Hope this advice help your incompatibility headache.

How to find MAC addresses for your wireless card

Posted on by
Reply

One of my friend ask me how to find MAC address for his notebook wireless card. I asked him why he want to do that and he told me it’s just a new policy at his office.

Having never think of that before, I just go to command prompt and fire a series of command what I think would be relevant. After a few tries, I’ve found out that ipconfig /all would solve this question. It is quite amazing that how ipconfig could show all the related infos about your all networking adapters.

Well, this is just a small and quick tip. But this would come very handy when you need it.

Do not rely too much on TinyURL

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve noticed that many webmasters become very obsessed with Tinyurl.com services. Of course, I can’t deny that tinyurl indeed provide very useful service for all of us. But there are many alternatives available too.

Why shouldn’t you rely on TinyURL?

Do you know that if you solely rely only on TinyURL.com for URL shortening services, if it faces technical difficulties, then all your links could become broken. If you google for tinyurl.com reported outrage, you can find it happened already.

Shouldn’t you use URL shortening services at all?

Of course not. URL shortening services help us a lot. Making our life a lot easier by not having to post longer url. Also keep our affiliate links save from danger hand. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use URL shortening services, but I’m suggesting that if you use URL shortening services, don’t use tinyurl.com for all your links. Try to make balanace with many alternatives out there.

Where are the alternatives?

Here are my favourites. You can google for many more.

I have no reason to be against Tinyurl.com. I am just giving you all to avoid disaster. Better safe than sorry!!

Notebook going to revolve?

Posted on by
Reply

We are living in a world that is constantly revolving, aren’t we? Your iphone might worth $599 when you buy and only after three months the same iphone worth only $399?

Yeah, technology evolution is very fast. Now for the notebook (laptop) world, there are many new ideas popping up every day. How do you feel about dual-screen notebook? Huh? That would be like a real book-a-like.

Wondering where is the keyboard or mouse? There are not there anymore. That’s revolving indeed. When you want to type, the other screen will show you virtual keyboard and touchpad. As with all new ideas, we’ll have to wait and see whether this could turn into reality or not.

Reference : gadgets-reviews

How to create physical IDE disk in VMware

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, I’ve tried to install Windows XP in VMware 6.0. I’ve tried to use physical hard disk in VMware. But every time I create, VMware won’t let me choose the option of IDE or SCSI. Instead, it only let me select in SCSI whether I want Bus logic or LSI logic.

So I googled around and found out that I’ve to edit VMware hard disk configuration file manually as follows.

ddb.adapterType = “ide”
ddb.geometry.sectors = “63″
ddb.geometry.heads = “16″
ddb.geometry.cylinders = “16383″

And I delete these lines in VMware config file .vmx.

scsi0.present = “TRUE”
scsi0.virtualDev = “lsilogic”
scsi0:1.present = “TRUE”
scsi0:1.fileName = “disk-2.vmdk”
scsi0:1.deviceType = “rawDisk”

Your config file might not look exactly as mine. But you know what to look and how to change. Any question? You can contact me via contact form or leave a comment.

Reference : VMware forum

5 things people love about Windows

Posted on by
Reply

Most of my visitors (90-95%) are Windows users. So I discussed with some of them about why they use Windows and what they love about it. Here is most common points.


Application Support
Don’t get me wrong, the competitors have some cool software suites, but if there is a program out there, then there is a good chance it was made for XP, or has a version available for Windows.


Gaming
Hands down, XP is a gaming machine. Gaming companies always make an XP version, and very few port their game over to the competitor’s operating system. Virtually, there are no games available only to competitor’s operating system, not to Windows. It’s always the other way around.


Customizations
Sure prepackaged computers may be great for novice users . But what if you want to build your own? Windows makes it extremely easy. You can just go into any computer shops, buy any hardware components you want without having to worry about whether there’s a driver available or not.


Familarity
Like it or not, most companies/corporations use Windows. So if you are a PC users, you must be able to use Windows. That made most of us familiar with Windows. Microsoft marketing teams are really genius too. Instead of bashing competitors’ OS, they offered great discount to high schools and University. After all those kids have graduated, what would they get used to? Huh, see?


Free help from friends or family
When your computer faces some problem or you want to tweak a bit, it is easier to find Windows expert among friends or family. It would be very difficult to find people who are expert in other OSes.

If I have to write it down all, the list would go on and on. So let me stop here.

Workaround to download Vista Beta SP1 directly from Microsoft

Posted on by
Reply

The Vista SP1 is thought to be launched in the first quarter of 2008.

However, Microsoft released beta versions of Vista SP1 to their chosen 12,000 beta testers. As always, even though it is possible to close the lid of the bottle, it is impossible to shut the mouth. That’s being said, the Beta Build 6001.16659 of the service pack has been leaked to peer-to-peer file sharing networks. You might be able to grab it from your favorite torrent site. But some of you might be afraid to download such an important pack from other sites than Microsoft.

Don’t worry! Now there’s a workaround available (Thanks to ghacks.net)

  • Download This zip file and unpack it to your system.
  • Run SP1Beta_Hack.cmd with administrator privileges and Windows Updates afterwards. You should see KB935509. Download it and restart your computer.
  • Run Windows Updates again, you should see KB937287. Download and restart your computer again.
  • Run Windows Updates again (Yeah! it’s quite a lot!). Download KB938371, restart your computer again (I know, I know, it’s a lot of restart).
  • Finally, visit Windows Updates again and you should see the Service Pack 1 Beta for Microsoft Windows Vista available for download.

If evaluation message annoys you, follow the steps below:

  • Run watermark_fix.reg first
  • Rename user32.dll.mui to user32.dll.mui.old in C:WindowsSystem32en-US
  • copy user32.dll.mui from the archive to that location
  • Restart your computer

With no official reaction from Microsoft about this workarounds, a lot of debate is going on in the blogosphere whether this method is legal or not. Judge yourself whether it is legal or not. Remember this is beta version to limited 12,000 testers only. So that it is very high probability that it would be buggy. My advice to you is that wait for official release of Vista SP1.

Blogger comments subscribe

Posted on by
Reply

You love some blog post on blogger platform and you’ve just commented it, but what if you forgot the url of that blog? You should subscribe to the comments of that post to receive followups from other users or the blog authors.

Now blogger.com have just introduced this very useful feature. They announced it on blogger buzz.
blogger-comments email

Even though I love this feature, I’m still eagerly waiting for Google to introduce us to be able to schedule blog posts, just like many of wordpress users normally do.