APEX News - April 2010
Disclaimer: Software and tools listed (with the exclusion of items marked tested) have not been tested thoroughly and APEX cannot be held responsible for any damage to your computer or for the performance of the programs and we are unable to guarantee that any external resources we mention in our newsletters will remain available online or are virus free. We recommend you ensure you have competent virus checking software installed on your computer.
TIPS OF THE MONTH . . .
Re-Activating Windows XP Upon Reinstallation
The time may come that you'll need to reinstall your Windows XP. It could happen. Maybe you'll add a new motherboard or hard drive. Maybe you'll get constant errors and problems that just won't go away. Or perhaps you're a neat freak who wants to rid yourself of clutter and start fresh with a clean operating system. If you do reinstall Windows XP, then you'll need to re-activate it too - that is, unless you keep this tip handy! The first time you activated XP it created a file called “wpa.dbl” that lives in the Windows\system32 folder. By creating a backup of this file on disk, you can simply put it back into the folder after reinstalling XP and avoid the whole re-activation hassle. Here's how you do it . . .
Right-click and choose “Send To” either your Floppy Drive (make sure you have a disk or have your CD-R/RW or memory Stick ready.) When you reinstall Windows XP you'll come to the activation screen - decline to activate and let the install finish. Restart your computer in Safe Mode (keep hitting F8 at start-up then when the Advanced Boot Options menu appears arrow down to Safe Mode.) Find your way back to the Windows\system32 folder. It's a good idea to rename the “wpa.dbl” file you're replacing just in case you run into problems so call it something like “wpa_dbl.old” - XP is up and running again. Note: Your wpa.dbl file might not work on another computer.
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Ctrl+Tab Preview Windows in Firefox 3.6
Any tip you read about shortcuts for Mozilla Firefox is sure to mention that you can easily switch between open tabs by pressing Ctrl+Tab on your keyboard. The resulting action is just a quick flip from tab to tab, which can be quite useful. Lets spice it up a bit.
Open Mozilla Firefox and in the address bar type about:config. Youcan just skip through the warning that comes up. Once on the Firefox config page, scroll down until you see the entry: browser.ctrlTab.previews. Change the value to “True” and restart Firefox. Now when you have multiple tabs open and you use the Ctrl+Tab shortcut you'll see little windows with a preview of the tab!
Multi-tab browsing in Firefox makes managing multiple web pages a breeze! Remember how Ctrl+T opens a new tab? Well, what about Ctrl+Page Up and Ctrl+Page Down to switch between those tabs? Want to navigate between tabs even faster? Check these out:
| Ctrl+1: Switch to the first tab. |
Ctrl+2: Switch to the second tab. |
Ctrl+3: Switch to the third tab. |
| Ctrl+4: Switch to the fourth tab. |
Ctrl+5: Switch to the fifth tab. |
Ctrl+6: Switch to the sixth tab. |
| Ctrl+7: Switch to the seventh tab. |
Ctrl+8: Switch to the eighth tab. |
Ctrl+9: Switch to the last tab. |
Even if you've got a ridiculous amount of tabs open, Ctrl+9 will always go to the farthest tab on the right.
But what about Ctrl+0? Because you can switch the size of the font with Ctrl+= or Ctrl+- there needs to be a way to set it all back to defaults and that's where Ctrl+0 comes in - use it to put the text in Firefox back to normal.
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FREEBIES FOR THE MONTH . . .
ArsClip 3.1.3. This utility is a free, powerful, customizable clipboard extender. It stores text strings, pictures, filenames for easy reuse, and basically does everything for cut-and-paste that Windows' own clipboard should do but doesn't. Get a copy today.
Autoruns for Windows v9.57. Reveals every single program and process that launches automatically on your computer. It's especially useful for detecting malware, since almost every malicious program needs some way to launch automatically. Do be careful disabling startup items; you could destabilize Windows. Download from here!
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ImgBurn v2.5.0.0. ImgBurn is one of the most powerful disc-burning and disk-image creating programs around, and if you don't want to delve into all its gory details, you can use it's EZ-mode for care-free operation. Visit to download.
Iometer. If you can wade through the 80 plus paged User Guide you can end up an expert at using this sophisticated I/O performance meter. Visit SourceForge to download.
Meraki WiFi Stumbler. A lightweight tool to troubleshoot wireless networking performance issues. It's Browser-based with no software to install and works on both PCs and Macs. It also quickly discovers nearby access points. Access Stumbler - go to 'Try It Out' lower left on page - run application when requested.
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Thanks to
JoeJoe's Freeware Utilities.
Microsoft Corporation.
ImgBurn.
Iometer.
Meraki Tools.
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