The Heat Web » Windows XP

Snippy – Portable Screen Capture Tool For Windows XP

Christian — Wed, 26 May 2010 04:29:25 +0000

Windows Vista and 7 has a very cool screen capture program called Snipping Tool that lets you take screenshots of anything on your desktop, like a picture or a section of webpage. You can snip a whole window, a rectangular section of the screen, or draw a freehand outline with your mouse or tablet pen (or your finger, if you’re using a PC with a touch screen). However, if you’re still using Windows XP like me, don’t be sad because there is Snippy, a cool portable screen capture tool for Windows XP.

Snippy doesn’t require any installation that’s why it’s called “portable”. You just have to download it, open the program and click the Snippy icon in the notification area. Your mouse cursor will change to a pen and you can now start to mark an area of the screen. That’s it!

You can use Snippy to take screenshots of anything on your desktop and just like Snipping Tool, you can snip a rectangular section or draw a freehand outline like this one:

Your screenshot will automatically be copied to the clipboard and you can paste it in other applications like MS Word, etc. You can also save the cut-out as an image by right-clicking on the Snippy icon and click Save As.

If you want to select a rectangular area, just hold down the Shift key while dragging. You can also customize the look of your cut-out images like the color of the border, etc. by right-clicking on the Snippy icon and click Settings. You can also change the hotkey for activating the capture mode; the default it F11.

Snippy is a very small program; just 84 KB. If you use “PrintScreen” a lot, this portable tool will make your life a lot easier!

Download Snippy

* It works with Windows XP and older versions of Windows with GDI+ installed.

Also see:

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Permalink | Post tags: portable, screen capture tool, screenshot, Windows XP

How To Speed Up And Optimize Windows XP For Better Performance

Christian — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 04:04:49 +0000

Are you tired of using your very slow PC? You already tried different ways to speed it up yet nothing worked?

On my previous posts, I already showed you the different ways to speed up and optimize your Windows XP and here’s the compilation of those steps:

1. Disable Extra Startup Programs

There are certain programs that Window will start every time you boot up your system, and during the startup stage, they’re all competing for a slice of your CPU speed. Extra or unwanted items in the startup list will definitely increase your startup time.

2. Download A Good Anti-Virus

Are you worried that your PC may not be fully protected by your anti-virus? Do you spend a lot of money for an anti-virus that you thought will protect your PC from any viruses or spyware?
We know that every PC needs a good anti-virus to prevent viruses, spyware, and other malicious software from attacking it.

3. Detect, Destroy, And Prevent Malware

Malware is really scary once it enters our PC. Even some of the most popular and expensive Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware can’t detect and remove this. And do you know that by just visiting some websites, your PC can already get infected by Malware.

4. Defrag Your PC

Is your computer running slow? Do you know that there are many ways to speed up your PC again and one of the easiest ways is to defrag your computer.

Defrag your PC using Smart Defrag or Auslogics Disk Defrag Screen Saver

5. Optimize Display Settings

Windows XP looks really cool but displaying all the visual items is not recommended and it just waste system resources. By turning off other display settings, it can really increase the performance of your PC.

6. Speed Up File Browsing

You may be experiencing a slight delay when you’re opening “My Computer” or “My Documents” to browse folders. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers every time you open Windows Explorer. And what we have to do now is to fix this to increase browsing speed significantly!

7. Remove Unused Programs Completely

One of the most effective ways of speeding up your PC is to uninstall all the unnecessary or unused programs on your computer. Windows has a built in uninstaller called “Add or Remove Programs” that you can find in Control Panel. But actually, there is a better way to remove/uninstall those unnecessary programs on your PC.

8. Fix And Clean Your Windows System Registry

System Registry is one of the most sensitive and important part of a Windows-based computer system. The registry is a system-defined database used by the Windows operating system to store configuration information. Most Windows applications write data to the registry during installation, and system components store and retrieve configuration data through the registry.

9. Run Disk Cleanup

If you surf the web a lot, your temporary internet files folder can become quite large, causing your web browser to slow down or malfunction. To prevent this from happening, you have to run disk cleanup at least once a month.

10. Disable File Indexing

© 2010, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: better performance, error-free, speed up, startup programs, windows secrets, Windows XP

How To Enable Direct Memory Access (DMA)

Christian — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 02:32:57 +0000

What is the advantage when we enable DMA on our Windows PC?

DMA (also referred to as bus mastering) is a technique that some components and devices use to transfer data directly to and from memory without passing through the Central Processing Unit (CPU). DMA reduces CPU overhead by providing a mechanism for data transfers that do not require monitoring by the CPU. The number associated with DMA indicates the direct memory access channel that the component or device uses to transfer data to and from memory.

Without DMA, the CPU is typically fully occupied for the entire duration of the read or write operation, and is thus unavailable to perform other work.

Source: Microsoft and Wikipedia

How to enable Direct Access Memory Access:

1. Open My Computer, right-click and click Properties.

2. Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button.

3. Double-click IDE/ATAPI controllers and double-click on the Primary IDE Channel.

4. Click on the Advanced Settings tab; the tab may or may not be available for each option. It is only available in Primary and Secondary Channels.

5. Set the Transfer Mode to “DMA if Available” both for Device 1 and 0 and click OK.

6. Perform the same operation for other items in the list, if applicable.

© 2010, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: direct memory access, How-To, speed up, Windows XP

Iconize Taskbar In Windows XP And Vista Like In Windows Seven

Christian — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:55:29 +0000

Windows Seven is probably the hottest OS today. It looks awesome especially its taskbar! Windows Seven’s taskbar is not just the normal one that we can see in Windows XP and Vista. Many people call it the “Superbar” because of its fresh new look and awesome features! The “Superbar” has taken the Windows taskbar to the next level since its launch in Windows 95.

One of the new features of the Superbar is it uses large icons instead of showing text in application buttons. Previous Windows versions used to show icon as well as text in all application’s taskbar buttons.

This is how the Superbar looks like:

It’s cool right? Well if you are still using Windows XP or Vista, there’s a free utility that can “iconize” your taskbar like in Windows Seven.

Taskbar Iconizer is a small portable tool which uses the same registry trick to provide iconize taskbar feature in Windows XP and Vista. You just need to download the file, run it and it will show this window:

Simply click on the right-side image which shows Windows 7 Type “Iconized” and you’re done! You just need to log off or restart the system for it to take effect.

To restore the default settings, simply click on the left-side image.

Download Taskbar Iconizer

© 2009, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: application buttons, free utility, new features, superbar, taskbar iconizer, Windows Seven, windows vista, Windows XP

Disable File Indexing

Christian — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:58:17 +0000

Indexing Services is just a small program that uses large amounts of memory and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. Why? So that the next time you do a search on your PC, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don’t search your computer often, this system service is completely unnecessary.

How to disable file indexing:

1. Go to Start and click Control Panel.

2. Double-click Add or Remove Programs and click the Add/Remove Windows Components icon on the left side of the window. This may take a few seconds to load so please be patient.

3. Look for “Indexing Service” component in the list.

4. Uncheck the Indexing Services.

5. Click Next then click Finish.

You’re done!

© 2009, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: disable file indexing, How-To, indexing services, large memory, service component, speed up, system service, unnecessary, Windows components, Windows XP

Run Disk Cleanup

Christian — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:25:59 +0000

Both Windows and application programs tend to leave temporary files on your hard drive, taking up space. Like in my case, I have McAfee Anti-virus installed on my PC and it always leaves a lot of temporary files when it is updating. A hard drive that is close to being “full” can cause Windows to slow down or interfere with efficient disk access and virtual memory operations.

How to run disk cleanup:

1. Go to My Computer.

2. Right-click on Local Disk (C:) and click Properties.

3. Click the Disk Cleanup button.

4. Disk Cleanup window will popup, calculating how much space you’ll be able to free on (C:). Wait for it to finish.

5. Check Temporary Internet Files and Recycle Bin. Click OK, then click Yes.

6. Wait for Disk Cleanup to finish cleaning your Temporary Internet Files and Recycle Bin.

© 2009, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: application programs, disk clean up, hard drive, How-To, run, speed up, taking up space, temporary files, temporary internet files, virtual memory, Windows XP

Speed-Up File Browsing

Christian — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:32:44 +0000

Just follow these very simple steps:

1. Double-click on My Computer.

2. Click the Tools menu and select the Folder Options.

3. Click on the View tab.

4. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box.

5. Click Apply then click OK.

6. Reboot your PC.

© 2009, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: folder options, How-To, my computer, network files and printers, speed up file browsing, speed up pc, windows secrets, Windows XP

Optimize Display Settings

Christian — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:03:27 +0000

To optimize the display settings of your Windows XP, just follow these very simple steps:

1. Click the Start button and select Control Panel

2. Double click the System icon

3. Click the Advanced tab.

4. In the Performance box, click Settings

5. Leave only the following checked:

a. Show shadows under menus

b. Show shadows under mouse pointers

c. Show translucent selection triangle

d. Use drop shadows for icon labels on desktop

e. Use visual styles on windows and buttons

f. Smooth edges of screen fonts

6. Finally, click Apply and OK

© 2009, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: display settings, optimize, smooth edges, speed up, system resources, Windows XP

Disable Extra Startup Programs

Christian — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:22:20 +0000

If you’re not sure about a certain item, no problem! You can search it on Google and check if it’s important. By disabling extra startup programs, it will speed up your startup by up to 250%!

So here’s what you have to do:

1. Click the Start button –> Run

2. Type “msconfig”, without “ “ (quotations)

3. Hit Enter key or click the OK button

4. System Configuration Utility window will show up

5. Click the Startup tab

6. In the startup tab, you will see several boxes and some of them are selected (checked). Here’s what you have to do, just uncheck those extra items (items that are not important). If you are running an anti-virus, it’s not recommended to uncheck it.

7. When you’re done, just click OK and you’ll be prompted to restart your PC to apply the changes you made.

8. After restarting your PC, a dialogue box will be displayed. Just check the box if you don’t want to see that dialogue box to appear again when your PC reboots.

Note: You can always re-enable an item in the startup list by opening the System Configuration Utility.

© 2009, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: cpu speed, disable startup programs, msconfig, speed up, startup list, startup programs, system configuration utility, unwanted items, Windows XP