Now that Windows 7 is being sold on PC’s, time to explore what the best utilities are to keep your Windows machine in shape.

Check out this article I wrote outlining the Best Windows 7 Utilities.

How to view hidden disconnected devices in the device manager on Vista?

In case you ever need to uninstall a device that is no longer connected to your Windows Vista machine, here is how you enable viewing of these devices in the device manager:
Go to Control Panel
System
Advanced System Settings
Environment Variables
New ( user variables if just for you or system variables for all users of your computer )
In the Variable Name box type devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices and in the Variable Value type 1.
Then you need to OK it twice.

Now return to the Device Manager, click on view, and show hidden devices.
The Hidden/Disconnected devices will now be displayed in gray. Have fun right clicking and uninstalling.

Have Windows XP or earlier? Try this:
Go to c:\windows\system32, find cmd.exe, right click and choose “run as administrator”
In the command window which opens, type:
Set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 (press enter)
Devmgmt.msc (press enter)
In the device manager window which opens click View=>show hidden devices.

Recently I was upgrading my computer and when restarting it took longer than usual I had a short panic attack that I may have corrupted my hard drive and lost everything on it (you know photos, papers, that nasty email I saved from my ex-bff…).  What was worse is that I realized that I hadn’t backed up my data in over 2 years!  My computer ended up booting up just fine but this quick scare was enough to get me to look into the best ways to back up my data.  Here is what I’ve found:

• There are two types of backups, File backups (backing up folders and files) and Full image backups (backs up your entire computer’s “image” meaning you can restore your computer exactly to the way it is now, settings and all).
• You can use the built-in windows backup utility for this (here is another guide for that)
• You can also use various software suites to do your backups (like syncback) and here are a few guides for that: guide 1, backup software guide 2. 

You can store your backups on DVD’s or an external hard drive.  I will be doing a little of each.

When I first started hosting my own blog I was a little weary about upgrading Wordpress.   I wasn’t sure why I should be doing it and manually upgrading it was just a pain.  I was worried that I’d accidentally miscopy files, or delete files, and screw up my entire infrastructure.  Now, I know upgrading is vital…

• Why?  Security Patches! As hackers find security holes, wordpress releases patches to close these vulnerabilities.  The last thing you want is a hacker taking over your website causing you to lose control, goodwill, and advertisers.  Secondly, wordpress is also releasing new features to make your life easier…  Who doesn’t want to make their life easier?
• How?  Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plugin!  This plugin allows for one click easy upgrading of your wordpress engine.  With this you pretty much have o excuse to not upgrade, it even provides options to backup parts of your blog in case something goes wrong.  Just as a quick note, I usually disable the plugin when I’m not actively upgrading (no need to have it running). 

Happy Upgrading.

I wrote about this a long time ago, when Vista was first being sold pre-installed on computers, but most users still did not have the pleasure of using it. In all I have nothing against Vista. At first I thought it was awful. I thought it was totally lame having stupid pop-ups asking for my permission every time I tried to run a program.

Once I disabled the annoying UAC pop-ups, Vista really became an enjoyable robust OS. If you are using Vista and are so far unhappy, I highly suggest you follow my instructions here to turn off UAC and you may feel differently.

How to turn off Vista UAC pop-ups

I am not the quickest on updating my wordpress usually.  It takes me a week or two, between law school and work its a little hard to dedicate the time to upgrading when I am terrified I am break something.  In the meantime, while I am lagging behind updates, its important to make sure that hackers have not been exploiting security holes patched by the next upgrade.  The best way I’ve found to monitor this is by using a great simple plugin called “wordpress exploit scanner.”  You can get it here, just put it into your plugins folder, go to plugins off your dashboard, and run it.  Just a quick note, it will pick up the names of exploits in the plugin file when you run it, so don’t get scared when things come up, just follow the file path and see if its from the plugin, or your blog.

Good luck, hope your blog is safe.

I usually take my breaks from work and school as a good time to run maintenance on my PC’s.  I don’t have time during the year to get to it, so I try to get everything done at once when I do have time.

My favorite utilities are CCleaner and Defraggler.  Both are freeware, clean – no viruses, spam, nothing.  They are both made by the same company and both provide the same excellent results.

CCleaner cleans out all the “junk” files on your PC – this would include temp files, and things of that nature.  I modify the settings not to dump my Firefox cache or history since I like having everything filled in for me.  It is really easy to use and great to clean up a few hundred MB’s.  You can also use it to turn off things that run and startup, uninstall programs, and clean up your registry – all of which will optimize your machine.

Defraggler is a fast efficient Defragmenting program.  It basically reorganizes your harddrive so that the files are not stored in a fragmented way.  This makes your machine run smoother and faster since programs can access files without jumping around on your drive.  I generally run this after I run CCleaner.

Let me know if you know of any other good optimization utilities!  I used to use TuneUp Utilities, but I just don’t have the budget to pay for optimization software anymore… especially when there is great free software out there.