If you are frequently using XP System Configuration Utility (Msconfig.exe) and if you updated your Windows XP with Service Pack 3,you may surprised to see that it had suddenly sprouted another tab,entitled Tools.
This provides shortcuts to all sorts of commands that sometimes take a lot of rummaging
through the Start Menu or obscure buttons in remote dialogues. Among those on offer are the System Information tool, the Event Viewer, and Network Diagnostics. Other items here, such as System Properties and the Command Prompt, are more accessible, but it’s useful to have the mall in one place.
If it doesn’t appear to be available via Windows Update, it is available for download separately. You can download it from here. The same page also shows you how to customize the list of tools.
XPSyspad is a a third-party toolbox, which provides access to administrative and system tools, Control Panel items and special folders. It is a Windows system monitoring utility that allows easy access to Windows system information and Windows system utilities, such as the individual control panel applets, as well as putting the “hidden” applications in Windows at your fingertips. XP Syspad also recovers lost Windows & MS-Office product keys.
With XP SysPad, you can easily access hundreds of Windows operating system utilities and system monitoring information. For convenience, it also can minimize itself to the system tray. XP SysPad has well over 250 functions in all.
Its absolutely FREE tool and also a portable one so you don't need to install it. Just download and run the file. You can carry it on your USB drives. Its a great troubleshooting tool. It also supports Windows Vista and 7.
XP Syspad | Freeware | 731KB
CrashPlan is the ultimate backup solution for your home or business. Files are automatically compressed, encrypted, and transmitted to your designated backup destinations. Easily back up your laptop to a desktop, the office server off-site, or 
a remote employee's laptop to HQ. By using your own backup destinations you avoid monthly fees, enjoy greater security, and can recover from data loss much faster.The backup process runs effortlessly in the background over a high-speed network. CrashPlan runs on Mac, Windows, Linux.
It's free to back up personal files to your own local and offsite destinations.
Download| 29.2MB | Freeware |
Homepage |OS: Windows 2K / XP / 2003 / Vista
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Your Cleaner is a free system optimization and cleaning tool. It removes space-wasting temporary files and other unnecessary disk cluttering files from your computer .Bu using Your Cleaner Windows to work faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.It contains a registry cleaner that will fix all your register problems. The program has the convenient and clear interface and has additional functions which does its usage simply and easily.It also includes free duplicate file finder and autorun manager.
It performs detailed cleaning of traces of your online activities -
- Internet Cache
- Cookies
- Internet History
- Download History
- Autocomplete Form
- Saved Passwords
- Typed URLs of all most popular browsers :
IE, 
Chrome, 
Opera, 
Firefox, 
Netscape , 
Safari.
OS:Windows Vista, Windows XP|Freeware|586KB|
Download
Microsoft Corp on Wednesday unveiled its Hohm website designed to help residential power consumers save money and reduce their environmental impact by conserving energy. With Microsoft Hohm you can better understand your home energy usage, get 
recommendations to conserve energy and start saving.Hohm uses complicated algorithms to analyze information provided by consumers and participating utilities to help them better understand their power usage, get recommendations and save money. Those recommendations can include replacement of a thermostat, purchase of a new refrigerator and, maybe in the future, the installation of solar panels on the roof.
Most of us find ourselves working on at least 2 PCs in the course of our personal or professional lives.Nothing can be worse than showing up at the office when you realising that you may left the most recent copy of an important presentation or a file at home.So you need synchronization software to keep important files up to date on all your computers,
File synchronization,is the process of making sure that files in two or more locations are updated through certain rules. Whenever changes are made, or at specified points, the computers communicate and share any changes that have been made to the directory or files.
Windows Live Sync is a free service designed to help you synchronize files across all the computers you use, share files and photos with friends and colleagues, and remotely access your files from any other computer connected to the Internet.This is a simple service to use and you don’t need to create yet another email ID with Hotmail/MSN in order to use it.You can use existing email to register with the service or use your MSN/Hotmail Live ID.
- You can synchronize folders on external hard drives with Sync. If you disconnect a hard drive that contains a synchronized folder, you must re-connect to the synchronized folder when the hard drive is re-connected.
- You can synchronize up to 20 folders containing up to 20,000 files each. Files can't be larger than 4 gigabytes (GB).
- Sync doesn't work with mapped network drives.
- If Sync detects multiple versions of the same file, both versions of the file will be saved in the folder. The files will be renamed, appending the computer and user name of the person who created or changed the file. To consolidate the files, you must merge the versions by opening each of the files and consolidating the information.
- You can set the folder to synchronize on demand instead of automatically. When a folder is set to synchronize on demand, it synchronizes only the files you click
Live Mesh –another Microsoft web offering and apart from syncing files it also merges with them with the cloud.So instead of synchronizing files between PCs directly, you create folders in the ‘Mesh’, and then have your PCs connect to those folders to execute a sync.Also you need to download the application.
Your mesh includes any devices that you add, and the folders you choose to sync and share It will integrate into your Windows Explorer and give you a new option in the right-click menu to add any file or folder to mesh
- Your devices work together
- Your data and applications available from anywhere
- The people you need to connect with just a few clicks away for sharing and collaborating
- The information you need to stay up-to-date and always be available
PureSync is a user-friendly free file syncing and backup application.You can create a profile to sync folders, back up folders, or create a profile for your digital camera.
The program offers a step-by-step wizard to configure your backup and synchronization tasks and set advanced options like file exclusions, conflicts management, compare options and more. You can choose to run the backups manually as needed or automatically on a regular schedule.
Os:Win98,WinME,Windows2000,WinXP,Windows Vista|
Download |4.15MB
Allway Sync is a simple directory synchronization tool that allows you to keep files in two folders synchronized. The folders can be on the local drive, network machine or removable drive, and the differences are shown before the synchronization takes place. You also have the option to exclude selected files or changes the default sync direction.
OS:98/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista|Freeware|5.9MB| 
Download |
Homepage
SugarSync .Once you register and install this powerful tool, your SugarSync account will
be created and your computer added to it.After this it will ask you to specify the folders that you want to sync.SugarSync is configures to display the status of files and folders directly in Windows Explorer via an icon overlay.The folders you select will be backed up to the SugaSync server from where they will be available for remote access through any browser.
SugarSync also has a strong mobile component. Not only can you view your synced files on your smartphone, but there's a mobile app that hooks into your phone's camera and will automatically upload new pictures to a directory on your PCs.
Dropbox lets you sync files online as well as across computers and like some of the 
otherr solutions , it even has a web interface.It has also support for the Linux world.The service lets you sync seamlessly between Mac,Windows and Linux,none of the other featured services offer this.Dropbox maintains a good balance between ease of use and availability of advanced features. It automatically backup a subset of your files, and to access them when traveling.
Dropbox uses almost no interface and yet it is east to use.Clicking on the system tray icon opens the Dropbox folder.Right clicking on the files and folders brings up individual manipulation options.The free version lets you sync up to 2GB of data.
Download |14MB |
Homepage | Freeware
Syncplicity is similsr to Dropbox but has a few cloud-interfacing features in addition to the
standard synchronization.It has the added functionality of bring able to integrate with Google Docs ,Zoho online Word Processor and Scribd online Document Viewer.In addition to this it can also sync photos from your native folders into Facebook albums.It is ideally suited to those who depend heavily on cloud-based services such as GoogleDocs.
Syncplicity synchronizes your files automatically whenever you change a file.It's basic service, with 2GB of storage and syncing between 2 computers, is available for free.
There are other similar synchronization and backup solutions available such as
1. 
3. 
GoodSync
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Sometimes you wanted to open the Group Policy editor for some work, you may getting an Access is Denied Error.Other commands like services.msc, devmgmt.msc, compmgmt.msc,lusrmgr.msc etc may also not work.
First scan your computer for any Virus or Spyware/Malware infection.Ensure that you are logon as Administrator .Now try the following to solve this error.
1.Download and install Microsoft Management Console from Microsoft
2.Registry Editing
Start> Run>Type ‘regedit’ .Navigate to to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.msc and delete the registry entry on the right side.
In Run box type ‘gpedit.msc’.It will open an”openwith’ dialog.Browse and select mmc.exe file from C:\Windows\system32
Check ’Always use the selected program to open this kind of file ‘
Now all .msc extensions will now open.
A simple way to disable any virus,worm or trojan from entering your USB drive, is to create a folder by the name of ‘autorun.inf’.Once this is done, right click on the folder ,navigate to properties ,hide the folder as well as write protect it.This works as well with a text file of the same.This ensures that even if a virus,trojan or worm does get into the USB drive.It does not being to operate as soon as the drive is connected to my computer.
Microsoft has officially unveiled its long-awaited Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware software - Microsoft Security Essentials today.The public beta will be limited to 75,000 downloads, Microsoft says, and the targets are global. The initial beta release is limited to the United States, Israel and Brazil. Next month, the beta will open up for users in China.
The new app, which will replace Windows Live OneCare, aims to cover the basic security needs of home users, and its easy-to-use interface appears to be taking the right approach to the task.
If your Windows is a licensed version (Windows XP (Service Pack 2 or above), Windows Vista, or Windows 7) you’ll be able to download and install the software at no additional charge.
Once your Windows has been validated, Security Essentials will now get ready to be installed.After installation, you will be redirected to automatic virus & spyware definition updates.
There are three options to perform a System Scan -Quick, Full, or Custom.Microsoft Security Essentials adds antivirus protection—both real-time protection and on-demand scanning—to the mix
Check here to download :Softpedia
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Are you surrounded by nosy people who constantly peer into your computer?You can now double your chances being discrete by downloading an add-on .It is called TabRenamizer and works on Firefox.All you have to do is follow some simple renaming techniques to rename your tabs to whatever name you feel safe.You can also use this to rename your tabs for easier referencing ,especially when you have later bookmark these tabs.
- Visit here
- Click ‘Add to Firefox’ and then ‘Install Now’ on the dialog box that appears .You will have restart Firefox for changes to take effect.
- On restarting the browser ,open multiple tabs to check the functionality of the add-on.
- Right-click the name of the tab and click ‘Rename this tab’ or just press [F2]
- You will see a dialog box that displays the ‘Current tab’ along with the text box below it.Enter new name of the tab in this field and click ‘OK’
Most users end up holding their head in frustration when the need to grab a screenshot arises,especially in case of web pages.The process involves several steps and requires more than just one application.The common method of grabbing screenshot is to press the [Print Scrn] button on the keyboard and open an image editing software like MS Paint or IrfanView and pasting it.Later processing involves cropping the unwanted region from the image using image enhancing tools.This process gets even lengthier when one needs to capture an entire page.Since monitors do not support astronomical resolutions,it isn’t always possible to capture an entire page .Instead users have to take snapshots of different parts of the page and then stitch these images together to get a comprehensive view of the entire page.Firefox has a helpful add-on that can minimize your problems by quite measure.It’s called ‘Screengrab’.
Follow these steps below to download and install the application.
- Visit here to install
Screengrab
- Click ‘Add to Firefox’.You will need to restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.
- On restarting you will notice the Screengrab logo on the status bar of the browser
- Click’Tools | Add-ons’
- Select the format in which you would like to save the web page as.
- Click ‘OK’ for the changes to take effect..Now you hav configures settings, it is time to see how the application works.
- Open the webpage that you want to save as an image.
- Click the Screengrab icon ,present on the status bar of the page.
- You will come across the options.’Save and Copy’;while former directly saves the web page as an image; the latter just copies it onto your clipboard.
- Under each of these, you have 4 different options
Complete Page/Frame- Saves the entire page irrespective of the dimensions and page size.Visible portion –Saves only the portion of the site that can be seen on your browser.Selection-Requires you to select the boundary of the region that have to be saved.
