How to Install Windows XP

 Many of us think setting up operating system in our domestic PCs is a big deal. A good number are still not aware of fixing silly troubles occur in our machines. Here is where professional troubleshooters make advantage by looting the ignorant group. In my city itself a professional repairman charges 300 to 500 bucks for fixing virus related troubles or Operating system installation. Non technical users have no choice other than depending them. But the interesting part is they do too little work that any high school kid can.  

So here is a tip bag for setting up windows XP in your computer. Reinstalling an operating system can improve system performance - as windows gets slower as it get aged in a system due to logging of files - and remove virus effects caused to previous OS. But a serious inconvenience is loss of data in primary partition and all the accessory soft wares need to be installed again.

So once we decide to reinstall Windows XP there are some points to keep in mind

1. Obviously should have set up CD  of Windows XP (Bootable preferred) with License key
2. Should have set up CDs of Motherboard Drivers (Display, Audio, AGP, PCI, LAN) and other drivers of peripheral devices like printer, modem etc.
3. Setup CDs of all accessory soft wares you need
4. Back up necessary data in primary partition (C drive) including my documents.

Now we are ready to install Windows XP

It’s recommended that we start set up using a bootable disk. For that the disk should be in drive during POST (the starting up stage before logging to windows). Usually systems search for boot records in CD before booting from hard disk and ask you whether to boot from CD. If it doesn’t happen we need to interrupt booting and should enter BIOS setup. To enter BIOS setup there are hotkeys to be pressed during POST which differ with different BIOS (for eg: del for intel, F2 for As rock refer to motherboard manual) Inside change the boot priority and mark it disabled for hard disks and CD Drive as 1^st priority also put no for ‘search other boot  devises’ . This causes your hard disk will not boot. Now when we restart, system will boot from CD and Windows Setup launches.

 After some system analysis and loading of files Setup asks you to select between choices. Choose new installation by pressing the key indicated. Don't select repair old version. And then accept licence agreement

Now u need to select where to install Windows, select the drive where your old windows is installed (C Drive). The setup will warn u that choosing drive containing a OS already isn’t stable, never mind continue to install in the same drive because the next step tell options to format the existing OS. Select ‘Format the selected partition using NTFS file system ’ Confirm to format, 

Set up will format the existing operating system in the C drive. 

In next step set up copies files to a temporary folder and then restarts the system.

Now if the Set was Booted automatically in beginning don’t give yes for booting from CD let system to boot from hard disk because the rest part of set up is from hard disk, For users who have interrupted BIOS and booted the CD have to Enter again to BIOS setup and revert all changes we made earlier and then restart again. 

After the setup launches in GUI based portion it’s pretty easier from here on. While installing, setup pauses a couple of times for you to select options. 

1. Click Customize to change regional settings, if necessary.

2. Type your name and organization. 

3. Type the product key. 

4. Type the computer name and a password for the local Administrator account. 

5. Select the date, time, and time zone settings.

Setup will now install the networking components After a few seconds you will receive the Networking Settings window

6. Select Custom settings and click Next

7. Make sure the 4 options are tick marked

8. Workgroup or Domain

If you're a stand-alone computer, or if you don't know what to enter, or if you don't have the sufficient rights to join a domain - leave the default entry selected and press Next.

Next the setup process will finish copying files and configuring the setup. You do not need to do anything.

After the copying and configuring phase is finished, if XP finds that you have a badly configured screen resolution it will advise you to change it and ask you if you see the new settings right.A Welcome screen is the first thing you see. The computer checks your Internet connectivity and you will be asked to register your copy of XP. Skip those steps

XP will ask you for the default username that will log onto this computer. You can enter as many as 5 users, but you can create more after the installation is finished.

That's it ! u reached your new Desktop of your Fresh XP.

The complete process will complete in less than a hour (don’t mind the time remaining shown in setup window) These steps complete installing windows operating system, but more effort seeking task waits. First thing you have to install now is the Drivers, put the Motherboard CD and install all drivers and then drivers for other hardware components. After installing Drivers your computer is ready to use. But to make it more resourceful the accessory softwares has to be installed

Installing Windows is that simple that you wont even need a ‘paid professional’ to work with and learning to do it our self can avoid being looted.

Hope this article was resourceful,  post queries as comments if any  

VLC - The Perfect Media Player

VLC is one of the smartest and the best available free media player. The first time i used VLC is for it's interesting feature of 'wallpaper video playback' as i saw my friend plays movie while he works with desktop items. VLC Media Player is an open-source and cross-platform media player which is by now in its 1.0.5 version and brings a new interface for both Windows and Free Platform, several enhancements in performance and stability, as well as enhanced support for new formats, and a better support for those which it already supported. It is extremely useful, from playing any media files to watching our favorite DVDs and it doesn't matter if files are stored on a  removable device or in our hard drive,VLC Media Player plays almost any format of audio and video. Surely this ability is the reason why over 50 million users downloaded it. Anyway, with VLC our satisfaction is guaranteed. Let's go through its features and capabilities.


Much more than basic playback features the program has been specializing more enhancement in media handling . This is clearly shown by the possibilities for adding subtitles and handle multiple audio tracks attached to a movie. This feature is indispensable when it comes to DVD playing. It can also handle DVD menus and chapters.VLC Media Player offers an endless list of features, including support for different audio and video formats. Its compatibility with all types of media files is based on the fact that VLC doesn't depends on codecs installed in the system while it brings its own set. Moreover, this versatile media player can also play ripped DVDs, stream media from the web or network, amazingly it is also able to help us fix our files if video and audio are desynchronized. 

VLC media player is available for free and is one reason which makes it popular and happening, the quality the media player, What VLC provides is really ace and even Real player doesn’t give such outstanding buffering of video and images. Besides being free, VideoLAN VLC Media Player has multilingual support, including more than 40 languages where we can change the interface language any time we want even if we have selected a determinate one during setup.

Among the new features, you’ll find the following:

• Instantaneous pausing
• Frame by frame playback
• Finer playback speed control
• New and fixed audio and video decoders
• On-the-fly recording for all media
• Timeshift for most media
• On the fly zip file decompression and browsing
• Support for DVB-S and ATSC cards on Windows
• Experimental Blu-Ray disc and AVCHD folder support
• New Blu-Ray Linear PCM decoder
• Customizable interface controls
• Global Hotkeys on Windows and Linux
• Controllable by multimedia keys on modern Apple keyboards (OS X only)
• Several new and improved decoders, demuxers, encoders, and other codec-related goodies

VLC's major highlight is the smooth support for over 100s of formats which includes 
Container formats


3GP, ASF, AVI, FLV, Matroska, Musical Instrument Digital Interface (.mid/.midi),QuickTime, MP4, Ogg, OGM, WAV, MPEG-2 (ES, PS, TS, PVA, MP3), AIFF, Raw audio, Raw DV, MXF, VOB.


Video formats


Cinepak, Dirac, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HuffYUV, Indeo 3, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, RealVideo 3&4, Sorenson (thus enabling direct playback of the modified Sorenson H.263 encoded videos downloaded from YouTube), Theora, VC-1, VP5, VP6, WMV.
Subtitles
DVD, SVCD, DVB, OGM, SubStation Alpha, SubRip, Advanced SubStation Alpha, MPEG-4 Timed Text, Text file, Vobsub, MPL2, Teletext.


Audio formats


AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR, DTS, DV Audio, XM, FLAC, MACE, Mod, MP3, PLS, QDM2/QDMC, RealAudio, Speex, Screamtracker 3/S3M, TTA, Vorbis, WavPack, WMA (WMA 1/2, WMA 3 partially)

In short, with the new interface, VLC has become more "usable", and improvements in performance are notable. Maybe VLC Media Player is not the only nor the best free media player, but one thing I can tell for sure, when it comes to performance issues with some heavy videos, you might want to give it a try. 

Download VLC Media Player 1.0.5 Free

Start Up Optimizer : Improve Booting Speed

Ever felt your system keeps down itself down in perfomence from time to time ? First two weeks when you brought it fresh it ran like a charm: smooth, fast, no errors. But as time passes by, it begins to slow down, booting nd shutting down takes forever. The causes are diverse, but one of them is the accumulation of startup items. And this aspect should not be neglected, especially if you bought your system with everything installed on it. The retailers often install their own softwares and, for marketing purposes, they install a myriad of applications you seldom use and most of them load at startup. These elements that deploy in the background once Windows is loaded often affect the performance of your computer.One way out of this is to build your own computer by assembling hardware components. However, its un practical unless you hav a profesional taste. So a niftier solution must be sought. This is not difficult and all you need to do is find a good startup manager to help you eliminate all the processes eating computer resources for nothing.

Startup Optimizer is a free solution in this sense, designed to reveal to you the programs and processes that load with your operating system and lead to an overall slowdown of your computer.The developer gave it a very user-friendly, intuitive interface that will give any user the much desired ease of use. Cyberlion Startup Optimizer will inspect programs loading at Windows startup and keeps your PC running faster, cleaner, and error-free. With a software database, Startup Optimizer provides useful information for known programs. You can remove harmful programs like spyware, virus, diallers, make your system healthier and maintain a higher degree of privacy. Startup Optimizer removes junk and obsolete programs, frees up RAM and increases your system performance. Startup optimizer allows to add, remove and edit list of startup programs efficiently, backup and restore them.
In the startup items window (the middle section of the application screen) there are the items loading with Windows. Here, you can see what exactly is slowing the boot or preventing the computer to shut down faster. Clicking on the items brings up the "Program Detail" window showing the name of the program (executable, in fact), the rating, its location on your computer and in the registry, as well as the peak memory usage. To make the identification easier, Startup Optimizer provides a quick link to Google search engine.

Of course, there are specialized websites presenting details about a certain process, but Startup Optimizer simply does not include any of them. A ProcessLibrary link would have been a much better aid for the matter. A very handy function of the application is "Backup". It allows the user to save different startup configurations and load them at any time. This way, you can load up different configurations and use them when you feel like dumping some startup items. You can create as many backups as you want and add as many items as you want in the list as the software will not object to it at all.

Features:
1. Checks for viruses, spyware, diallers in Windows startup configurations
2. Provide security rating and consultative information on the startup programs
3. More than 12000 known programs in our knowledge database
4. Add / delete / edit software entries from Windows startup list
5. Enable / disable programs to start at Windows startup
6. Automatically / manually backup startup configurations (which you can use later)
7. Restore startup configurations
8. Launch selected program
9. Kill a running software process
10. Checks for 'invalid' software file at system startup

The license of this windows utility software is Freeware and it'll get the job done and present the startup items and their place of residence (both command path in the Registry and their location on the hard disk).

Download Startup Optimizer 1.6 (1.09 MB)

How's Your CPU doing ?

Computers are a very useful tool in our life. Everything is automated nowadays. Due to them we are now working faster, better and innovations are streaming. There is an application of softwares for every field of activity. , so the software is actually doing all the hard work, some of you would say. But what about the hardware that keeps the software  alive ? Have you thought about that?It is actually the hardware components that make our work easier.Try working on the latest PhotoShop edition on a 950MHz CPU and you will understand perfectly what I am talking about.


The software  going to present in the next lines is an application that displays in-depth information about the goings on and goings on of your machine. CPU-Z is a free of charge program produced by CPUID that will provide you comprehensive info about important components on your computer. Although the software is called CPU-Z misleading us into thinking that it is strictly processor monitoring tool, the interface is equipped with five tabs, out of which only the first two are CPU related. The rest of them display characteristics of the mainboard and memory. CPU-Z as an invaluable tool that is must have for most anyone that owns a computer. CPU-Z can tell you quite a bit about your computer and not just information about your CPU as the name suggest, you can learn about your memory and motherboard as well. It also features a validation for overclockers out there, so if you’ve got a nice overclock that you’re proud of it can be officially validated so everyone knows you’re not faking it. One of the best features of CPU-Z is that it’s free


Interface


CPU-Z have a user friendly simple interface having 5 tabs. In the main window you can learn quite a bit about your CPU, the Technology,  Voltage, Family, Stepping, Model, Speeds, and the Cache sizes, along with other basic information. The next tab is Cache, which tells you a bit more information about the cache of your CPU.The next tab is Mainboard, which tells you information about your motherboard like model, chipset, BIOS and Graphic Interface.The fourth tab is memory, and you could combine both the 4th and 5th tabs as they contain information about your memory. The Memory tab though gives you the type of ram you have, size, and it tells you the speed along with the settings as well that you have your ram set at. The memory tab is very useful in checking to see if your memory is running at it’s rated speeds.The SPD tab goes into a bit more detail about your memory, telling your manufacturer and model numbers along with what speeds your ram is meant to run at. One note though is that not all memory will show all of the information, it depends on the memory if it will display it or not. If you’ve got more than one stick of memory in your computer, there’s a drop down box on the left side so you can view each stick separately.

Here's a list with the supported processors: Intel's latest i486,  Pentium, Pentium MMX, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Celeron (P2/P3/P4/PM), Pentium!!!, Pentium !!!-M, Pentium 4, Pentium 4-M, Pentium M, Xeon (P2/P3/P4), Pentium D, Pentium XE, Core Solo, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Extreme; For AMD there are the Am5x86, K5, K6, K6-2, K6-III, K6-2+, K6-III+, Athlon (4, XP, MP), Duron, Sempron (K7/K8), Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2, Turion, Opteron, Athlon FX. Transmeta's Cruso  TM3200, TM5400, TM5500, TM5600, TM5800 are also supported by the application, as well as VIA's C3 (Samuel, Samuel2, Ezra, Ezra-T, Nehemiah), C7 and C7-M. If you want to test it on older CPU's, you can try it on Cyrix's M1, M2

The Good part
1. Provides in-depth information of your computer hardware : CPU-Z provides in-depth information about your computer’s hardware. Information about motherboard, processor, memory, Cache information etc. You can notice in the screen shots below that how much information it has provided to us.


2. Fast and small in size : CPU-Z is a very small utility and is under 500 kb only. It loads up pretty quickly and collects the information and displays it to you. It just takes about 5 MB of the computer’s memory.


And the Bad 
1. May not show the correct information : CPU-Z may not show you the correct information because if it is not updated then it may not have the information about your latest computer’s hardware. With my personel experience i found information about my memory. I used 2 RAM cards of 256 and 128 MB each but CPU-Z reads the second as 256 MB and a total of 512 where i still have 384 MB perfomance.


I liked the software and the fact that it is free is more appealing. I think that more users should have it on their computers, computer lovers will discover a lot about their PCs. For them, CPU-Z is a must.


Download CPU-Z Free (2.63 MB)

ORBIT DOWNLOADER - Must have for Download Addicts. . .

Still waiting for an effective Downloader for media files you watch in youtube and online music sites where you can just listen to those ? Then Orbit is the rigt choice for what you are looking for.
Orbit Downloader 3.0.0.3 is a Download Manager product from orbitdownloader.com.Orbit can download a wide variety of rich media. It supports HTTP/FTP/HTTPS/RTSP/MMS/RTMP protocols and is thus able to extract streaming audio, video, flash files and lots of other embedded items from a site. Speed is the keyword when it comes to computers and Internet. Orbit downloads at a decent speed using p2p and multi-source downloading technology. Also it has pretty low CPU usage and the installation too is quite light thus making it least taxing for your system. It accelerates downloads by utilizing multiple connection streams and offers download management with custom categories as well as pause and resume of downloads. The software also provides an easy way to download video clips from YouTube (and other video sites). Orbit integrates well with all browsers and allows to download the media from your browser window itself. I found the Grab++ tool an amazing feature of Orbit downloader. It detects every downloadable media on an open website and lists them with details. One can select the items to download with the help of checkboxes present alongside.

Why use Orbit Downloader?


* Download Rich Media: Streaming Media, RTMP, Social Music & Video
Orbit Downloader supports HTTP/FTP/HTTPS/RTSP/MMS/RTMP protocols and provides a total solution to download rich media. So Orbit Downloader can be used as YouTube downloader to download YouTube more simply and easily. Additionally, you can download music and video from social music/video websites like YouTube.


* Great Speed: Up to The Fastest Download Manager
Orbit Downloader is based on p2p and multi-source downloading technology. More Efficient mirrors selection algorithm and faster download sources which allows you to download files up to 500% faster than before. Maximum possible download speed, up to the fastest download manager!


* Super Light: Micro-sized and Resource-friendly
Orbit Downloader is written with efficiency in mind, it typically uses less than 3MB of memory and 3% of cpu when downloading. Additionally, the installation package is less than 2MB.


* Support RapidShare
Orbit Downloader supports most of the file-sharing service websites, including megaupload, badongo, sendspace,  uploading, filefront, 4shared, turboupload, depositfiles, filefactory, and more.


* Easy to Use
Orbit Downloader has a simple and clear user interface. It is easy-to-use and configure for both newbies and experts.


* Free and Safe
100% free and no registration required. No adware!!! No spyware!!!

Orbit Downloader Main Features


Orbit Downloader, leader of download manager revolution, is devoted to new generation web (web2.0) downloading, such as video/music/files from Myspace, YouTube, Imeem, Pandora, Rapidshare. And to make general downloading easier and faster.


1. Download social music, social video and streaming media
2. Extreme download acceleration.
3. Super Light: micro-sized and resource-friendly
4. Support RapidShare download.
5. Support IE, Firefox, Maxthon,
6. Support Metalink download.
7. Support HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, MMS, RTSP and RTMP protocols.
8. Support Proxy server configuration.
9. Support download pasue and resume.
10.General download management.


 Orbit Downloader does not contain any adware or spyware the latest version is 3.0.3
The license of this internet software is Freeware, you can free download and free use this download manager software.


Download Orbit Downloader 3.0.3 (2.45 MB)

TeraCopy - Copy your files with ease of hand

File copying or moving from one location to another is such a trivial activity that nobody talks about it. You just do it and that is it. Of course that sometimes we spend more time waiting for a large file to copy, but is there anything we can do about it? Generally, no, there is nothing we can do except wait.

File managers come with their own file copying system that sometimes really counts in the process. But most of us are using Windows Explorer it takes a while for Explorer to calculate the size of the file you want to copy, be it one of only a couple of KB. Tera Copy is designed to increase file copying and moving speeds.The interface is as simple as it gets and you'll have no trouble handling the application with ease. It's been used in dozens of systems and never had a stability problem .Tera Copy's expanded mode allows you to change the buffer size for a faster operation and also gives you information about the handled files. 


The first issue I bumped into while using the application was adding the files to be copied and moved. It proved that it was just a simple matter of drag and drop. You can add more files to copy to different locations while a copy process is going on, Tera copy will wait list the  files you add and finishes the job where Windows copier mess the work with two copier at same time forcing us to wait indefenitly. Its simple interface also tells the status of file being copied including size and percentage copied so far and the most intesting feature is that you can pause and resume while you copy.   For example if you are copying multi gigabyte files from a DVD and system encounters reading error, Tera copy notifies the error and tries to overcome that about ten tries in the time u can also pause the process and eject the disc from drive and insert it back to resume after a while.


Copying and moving files and folders from one location to another is all about speed and this is exactly what Tera Copy promises. To test the application's speed I checked  with what it had to offer. The result was satisfying: 3'49'' for copying a file of over 4GB from one location to another, on the same hard disk

So by using teracopy over your windows copier you are provided with features including

* Copy files faster. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives.
* Pause and resume file transfers. Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click.
* Error recovery. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer.
* Interactive file list. TeraCopy shows failed file transfers and lets you fix the problem and recopy only problem files.
* Shell integration. TeraCopy can totally replace Explorer copy and move functions, allowing you work with files as usual.
* Full Unicode support.

The final conclusions show that Tera Copy is a lot faster than Windows Explorer on XP

Download Teracopy 2.12 Free (1.74MB)