Experiencing endless reboots since you installed Windows Service Pack or SP3? To break the chain, you may first need to halt the automatic restarts. Press the F8 key when you see the black Windows XP screen and then select “Disable automatic restart on system failure” Now, try to get into Safe Mode by pressing F8 at the next reboot. You may need to press F8 repeatedly. Once in Safe Mode, follow the steps Microsoft lists in this support document to disable the intelppm.sys driver if you suspect that’s the problem. [Read more] [Read more]

Yep, i know some of you are excited to get your grubby paws on the latest Service Pack (SP3) for Windows XP but you might want to hold off for a moment before you read these: [Read more] [Read more]

Here’s how to disable that annoying Insert key: Go to Start-> Run and type in “regedit” . This step opens up the regitry for us tp add a registry key to disable the key. If youre not sure about editing your registry, get this file instead. In “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout”, create a REG_BINARY key called “Scancode Map”, and add the following values: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 52 E0 00 00 00 00 Reboot the computer for the tweak to take effect. Source [Read more]

Have you been having problems when removing USB Devices? A missing “Safely Remove hardware” button perhaps? then here’s the solution. Right-click Start, select Properties, choose the Taskbar tab, click Customize, scroll to Safely Remove Hardware, and make the behavior Always Show. Alternatively you can keep the icon hidden (and your Systray uncluttered) and force it to appear when you need it by creating a desktop shortcut. Right-click your desktop, choose New, Shortcut, insert the line C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll in the ‘Type the location of the item:’ field, and click Next. Rename the shortcut USB Remove. [Read more] [Read more]

You may be surprised at how much protection you can get for your PC at practically no cost. As they say: The best things in Life are free. Sure, complete and full security suites are still encouraged but for true value, you cant beat some of these products especially for the everyday user. The latest versions of the popular free antivirus products from avast! and AVG both now include spyware protection as well, and they’re quite effective. ThreatFire 3.5, from PC Tools, eliminates malware by monitoring its behavior: It doesn’t need any advance knowledge to stop a threat from harming your computer. [Read more] [Read more]