Proper Shut Down Of Your Computer

Imagine my horror the other day when I saw an otherwise sharp friend of mine shut down his laptop by holding down the power button until the system turned off.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" I cried. "Why'd you do that?"

"What? I was just turning off my PC," he replied innocently.

Sometimes I forget that some of the stuff I take for granted isn't common knowledge. So in case you've been committing this same heinous shutdown crime, allow me to enlighten you.

Microsoft Fix It for Win XP and Vista

Microsoft's Fix It software, which tries to automatically figure out what's wrong with your computer, is now available for Windows XP and Vista.

The software is in beta, and can run diagnostics for 300 common problems with Windows. When you run Fix It, you'll see a list of things to examine, such as display quality, performance, and incoming connections. Clicking the "run" button next to each item launches an automatic troubleshooter. Each one only takes a minute or two.

Steps to Recover from Mcafee Update Bug

Someone's going to look for another job at McAfee for deploying the buggy definition file that detected "False Positive" signatures of the W32/Wecorl.a virus. It reportedly affected millions of computers worldwide. Fortunately, McAfee provided instructions to correct the problem...

How To Save a Webpage

You've got a number of options here.

The first is to do just that: Save the page and its image files. And the current versions of most browsers make this very simple.

In either Firefox or Chrome, press CTRL-S to bring up the Save As dialog box. In the 'Save as type' field, select Web Page Complete, and save the file to your desired location.

Discontinued Support for Windows XP

XP will probably be safe for a long time after Microsoft stops issuing security updates.

First of all, it will have had more than 12 years of updates and security patches by then. That will almost certainly make it more secure and stable than whatever version of Windows is the current new thing.

And remember that malware changes faster than operating systems. The threats you'll have to worry about in 2014 (when Microsoft discontinues support) won't be written to take advantage of holes in an outdated, obsolete operating system that few people are still using.

Windows Aero Snap Shortcuts

Did you know you can use Windows 7's cool Aero Snap feature to simplify file management? Just open two instances of Windows Explorer, then place them side by side by dragging the windows to opposite edges of the screen. Even better, you can use keyboard shortcuts to do this. Instead of dragging each window to a screen edge, waiting for it to half-maximize, letting go the mouse button, and repeating with the other window, all you need is the Windows key.

Tap Windows-Left Arrow to snap any selected window to the left side of the screen. Naturally, tapping Windows-Right Arrow snaps the selected window to the right side. (This comes in especially handy if you use multiple monitors, as you can't drag a window to the right edge of your lefthand screen or the left edge of your righthand screen.)

While we're on the subject, Windows-Up Arrow maximizes the selected window, while Windows-Down Arrow returns it to its previous location and size.