Posts Tagged ‘Windows’

Keep Pidgin Always on Top

For Windows - Keep Pidgin’s buddy list “always on top” of other windows for easy access to instant messaging without the hassle of switching windows. First, head to Tools → Plugins in the buddy list.

Scroll to the bottom, make sure Windows Pidgin Options is checked, then click it and Configure Plugin.

Next to Keep Buddy List window on top, click the menu and select Always. Hit Close to both windows and Pidgin should now remain on top of your other windows.

Sound Notification on Hitting *lock

Windows stows away a setting that enables a beep whenever one of the lock keys are hit (Caps Lock, Scoll Lock, and Num Lock). For those of you who need extra notification when you accidentally hit the Capslock button, we’ll show you the quick Control Panel setting.

Open Control Panel, enter Accessibility Options, and check the box that says Use ToggleKeys. Hit OK and you now have auditory notification when you hit a “toggle key.”

Disable the Sleep Button Function

New keyboards now often come with a sleep button, which can sometimes be in an easy to hit location (e.g. near Esc key). Luckily, the Control Panel provides an easy way to change the function.

Head over to the Control Panel, hit Power Options, and click on the Advanced Tab. Under When I press the sleep button on my computer, select from a number of choices. I picked “ask me what to do.”

Demo Software in a Sandbox

Sandboxie, a free application, creates a virtual layer on your computer where you can run and install various software applications without actual changes to your true hard disk.

Simply, Sandboxie forces applications to write to the layer instead of the hard disk, and is able to wipe everything clean afterwards, perfect for demoing software. In this post we’ll be explaining the very basic usage of Sandboxie so you can run and install programs into a layer (sandbox). Download and install from here. (more…)

Disable Windows XP’s Startup and Shutdown Sounds

We’re going to show you how to easily disable Windows XP’s startup and shut down sounds, and optionally, any other sounds that Windows makes when you perform an action. You can also use these settings to change the sounds associated with start up and shut down.

Head over to Control Panel, head over to Sounds and Audio Devices, and hit the Sounds tab. Scroll down to either Start Windows or Exit Windows and select [None] from the option menu. That’s it!

Deploy a Local Web Server on Windows

In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to quickly deploy a local WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP) server in a few minutes using XAMPP. Using a local webserver, you can install PHP web applications on your local computer (such as a personal wiki, chat, forum, etc).

For this tutorial, we’ll be showing you how to setup XAMPP using the self extracting 7-Zip file. (more…)

Quick Screenshots with Faststone Capture

For Windows, Faststone Capture 5.3 is a free (for noncommercial use) lightweight application allowing you to take screenshots (pictures) of your desktop.

It allows you to easily take a picture of the current window, the selected window/object, a rectangular region, a freehand region, full screen, and scrolling regions (like a webpage in a web browser). It’ll allow you to save or annotate the image in the same dialog, eliminating the need for pasting into Paint. Other features include a magnifier and a screen color picker.

Download it here.

Sync Host and Guest Folders in VirtualBox

As a follow up to our seamless Ubuntu in Windows tutorials, we’re going to show you how to sync a Windows (host) folder to a folder in the Ubuntu (guest). You’ll need to have guest additions installed on the guest OS for this one.

For this tutorial we’ll be syncing the H: drive on Windows (yours will probably be C:) with /home/jason/windows in Ubuntu. (more…)

Free Windows Software Alternatives

I’ve guest blogged at Quick Online Tips, a technology blog which posts about blogging tips, Web 2.0, and computer software. You can read the article over here. It lists free software replacements for Windows built in software, such as Movie Maker and Notepad.

Since this is a mainly empty post, I’d also like to ask readers for any feedback or requests. I’d appreciate any feedback in the comments section of this post below.

Get Rid of Arrows on Shortcuts

Using TweakUI, you can get rid of the little arrow icons on your shortcuts:

We’ll assume you have TweakUI installed. Head to Explorer and click Shortcut. Pick an option (for the purposes of this tutorial we chose None) and hit OK.