Archives March 2017

At one point or another, this happens to every computer user in the world: You install Silverlight, find out that you don’t like it, or need it, or that its plain useless for the task you wanted to use it for and you want to uninstall Silverlight. So you open up the Windows Add/Remove tool, click the button to uninstall Silverlight… and find out that you cannot uninstall the program. In this article I will try to explain how to force uninstall Silverlight, that you cannot uninstall using the Windows Add/Remove tool. Before that, however, I will try to explain what happens during installation.

What you need to know to uninstall a program manually

There are several things that happen during the installation of a program.

First, of course, is the copying of files to the specified program folder (which is usually somewhere inside the Program Files folder). Also some files such as shared libraries (.dll files) can be copied into a folder inside Program Files called Common Files and some files such as drivers or shared libraries (again) are copied into the ‘WINDOWSSystem32′ and ‘WINDOWSSystem32drivers’ folders.

After that the installer makes some changes inside the windows registry. The windows registry is a unified place where all the settings for programs and for windows itself are stored. The installer can make changes inside the registry for several reasons. For example if a shared library needs to be registered. Or if certain types of files need to be associated with the program being installed, so that the user could open them (e.g. if you install Microsoft Word, then you will be able to open Microsoft Word documents). After this is done, a key is added to the windows registry in a place where the Windows Add/Remove tool looks for installed programs. During the installation all these operations are logged in a special file (e.g. setup.log), and the installation program usually puts that file inside the application’s folder along with the uninstaller. When a user tries to remove Silverlight through the Add/Remove tool, windows looks for the registered uninstaller inside the registry, and executes it. The uninstaller goes through the log file and undoes all the changes done during installation. That is, it deletes all the files that have been copied, all the registry keys the installer created etc.

However, if there is no log file, or if there is no record of the changes made to the registry the uninstaller might fail to uninstall Silverlight, and it will stay there untill it is removed by other means.

So if Silverlight won’t uninstall, how do you perform a force uninstall?

Well, if you know how to work with the windows registry, you probably can perform a manual force uninstall.

Before I go into detail about how to do this manually, I’d like to say that this is pretty advanced stuff, and if you’re not a power user, then perhaps you should consider using specialized software such as the The Best Uninstall Tool which allows you to do this in just a few clicks.

If you are a power user, then let’s continue. First, let’s see how to remove the program from the list of installed programs. To do that you need to open the registry browser:

1. Click Start and choose Run in the menu (If you’re using Windows Vista then press Win+R on your keyboard).
2. Type regedit and hit Enter.
3. On the left side is the registry settings tree, use it to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall
4. Inside that key you’ll find a lot of keys that belong to different programs. Some are named after the program’s name, others as a mix of numbers and letters that makes no sense. Look through each of them until you find one that has the key DisplayName (on the right) with your program’s name in it.
5. Notice the key UninstallString – this key points to the uninstall program, and the log file usually resides in the same folder as that program.
6. If you delete the key in which you’ve found the DisplayName key with the value equal to your program’s name, then your program won’t appear on the Add/Remove programs list.

Some programs create new entries in the registry to store their configuration options, these entries can usually be found in the HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftware or in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE – look for the program name or the name of the company that made the software. Don’t delete Microsoft though – that contains Windows settings as well.

Next we have to find all the files that have been copied. Open the folder in which the uninstall program should be, and look for files which are named uninstal.log or setup.log or something similar. The list of files that have been installed is inside this file, you can open it in your notepad and find all of the files that have been copied onto your system. Delete the files and you’ll get rid of the program almost fully.

Again, I’d like to stress that if you’re new to the windows registry and all of this stuff, and if you don’t feel like experimenting with your computer, then, again, please consider using either the Best Uninstall Tool or similar software to force uninstall Silverlight, I do not want to be responsible for breaking your computer.

Source by Molly Smith

Built to be fast out of the box, it is still possible to speed up Windows 7. In this article, we’ll go through a few tips to squeeze every bit of speed out of Windows 7.

1. If you’re not too interested in eye-candy, you may want to consider disabling the Aero theme. While it gives Windows 7 a modern and spiffy look, it is also very hungry on the system resources. If you want to disable Aero, right-click on the Desktop, click “Personalize” and then select the “Window Color” tab. Then uncheck “Enable Transparency” and then click on “Open classic appearance properties for more color options”. You can then choose the Standard Windows 7 theme, or another basic theme instead of Aero. You should notice an increase in performance after that, especially if your computer isn’t very powerful.

2. Reduce the number of visual effects. By disabling some of the visual effects, you can squeeze a bit more speed out of Windows 7. Begin by doing a right-click on “Computer”, then select “Properties”. You will see “Advanced System Settings”. Click on it and the you will see the “System Properties” window. Under the “Advanced” tab, go to “Performance” and then “Settings”. Click “Custom” and you can unselect all the options that you don’t want. After that, click “OK” and restart your computer.

3. Disable the Windows 7 sidebar. Right-click the sidebar and click on “Properties”. Uncheck the box that says “Start sidebar when Windows Starts”.

4. Remove startup items and help Windows start faster. From the Start menu, key in “msconfig” in the “Run” option and the System Configuration Utility will open. Go to the “Startup” tab and unselect the items there that you don’t need.

5. Optimize your Windows registry. The Windows registry is the heart of the operating system. By optimizing it and removing errors from it, the operating system will run better and faster. Use a good registry cleaner software to automatically scan the registry and optimize it.

Source by Jason Webber

The following tutorial shows you how to extract still images from dvd videos and save them as jpeg, png and even pdf formats.

Assuming you have a DVD disk, you want to extract still frame images from it.

Let’s take the Iron ManTM trailer for example.

1. Open vob video file from dvd disk by clicking the FILE -> OPEN or the OPEN button directly,

2. You’ll see 7 thumbnails on the bottom of the main window of IM Video Image Capture,

3. In most cases, you can click on the thumbnail to select to the frame, But if you want to be more accurate about location, you can drag the slider directly to the frame. In addition, you can also click the STEP ONE FRAME button or just move frames with the keyboard direction keys,

4, Create a new category for the video, or use an existing one,

5, Seek your favorite frame and click the CAPTURE button to capture it,

6, Click the OK button to save captured frame into built-in image library,

7, Now you can find it in the image library,

8, Right-click on the image and select SAVE menu item to save the frame as bmp, jpeg or png images,

9, You can also export the frame as PDF, or windows wallpaper directly, or even you can export the whole category to an online album.

Thanks for your watching!

Source by Ken Thomas

How do you choose a colocation data center in South Florida, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach? First you have to know what colocation – also called colo – is, of course. According to a colocation company which is itself based in South Florida, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach, a collocation data center is what is known as a carrier hotel which provides network, server and storage facilities, as well as interconnection with other telecommunications service providers and network service providers in a simplified process and at lower cost. These are often provided by network access point facilities such as NAP of the Americas.

Colocation companies usually also provide broadband internet access, VoIP, internet network security, managed dedicated colocation hosting, dedicated virtual servers, private networks, data storage and data backup, among other services. They provide companies with the ability to allow load balancing, mirroring and growth which may be difficult to do when a company is using a server that is in-house. Providing such business applications accessed online through the internet with data and software stored on virtual servers in a remote location is also known as cloud computing.

If the clients do not have server equipment of their own, they can lease dedicated virtual servers for a year, renewable, from colocation companies. They may also choose to rent dedicated virtual servers on a monthly basis. This way, they can be flexible and can upsize or downsize the server capacity they are renting, as necessary. Leasing requires minimal cash outlay for setting up as opposed to making an expensive business server purchase.  

When leasing dedicated virtual servers, you can choose from unmanaged servers or managed servers. The advantage of leasing unmanaged servers is that the client has full control over all elements of the leased server functions. This includes the server’s operating system, its applications and all web content. On the other hand, it may be more convenient for a client to pay an additional service fee for professional technical assistance in server management.

With dedicated virtual servers clients can, in turn, offer dedicated hosting or managed hosting services since they do not share the server with other companies. They can host multiple websites, as well, and even sell such services. They can get enough disk space and power from their leased server and pass on the competitive pricing to their own clientele.

If the client has its own server equipment complete with the corresponding duly licensed software, it can house its servers in a reliable colocation data center facility. The advantage is that such facilities are state-of-the-art, with environment controls that are carrier class, redundant uninterrupted power supply, and an uptime guarantee of 99.9% founded on a Tier 1 Internet foundation. They also have round the clock maximum security protection. Colocation data centers lease rack space for the client’s servers and provide power, internet access and complementary services such as backup and storage, tape rotation, firewall protection and others. The range of services is flexible and scalable depending on the needs and budget of the client.

Clients who own their server equipment have the option of installing and maintaining their servers by themselves in the collocation data center whenever they need to, or sending all their equipment to the collocation data center to be installed and maintained professionally by technicians of the service provider.

Colocation data centers that offer the lowest prices but do not give an uptime guarantee for your server will not save you money. In fact, you will be putting your entire business at risk if you choose such false economizing options. Any downtime means loss of client trust in your company and you cannot afford this. In choosing a colocation data center in South Florida, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach you should, therefore, choose one with the best uptime guarantee complemented by the finest software, the best operating system and expert technical support.

Source by The Internet Adventure

Are you looking for a way to get the most out of Craigslist.org?  If so, you may find yourself examining Craigslist search tools.  These tools eliminate the issues that many buyers face, including the inability to search multiple categories and locations at once.

If you like the sound of searching multiple cities, entire states, or nationwide Craigslist listings at once, you may want to buy a Craigslist search tool.  Although affordable, it is still money.  That is why you shouldn’t buy a desktop search tool without trying it first.  Why is it so important to try before you buy?

You can see for yourself what all the fuss is about.  Craigslist search tools are relatively new and already generating a lot of buzz.  Consumers love the ability to find the best deals quickly and with ease.  Unfortunately, not all products live up to the hype created.  Don’t later find yourself disappointed.  Before buying a Craigslist.org search tool, try it for yourself. 

You can test all the features yourself.  Not only do you want to ensure that available features really are available, but you want to make sure they work well.  Common features include the ability to set a price range, view Craigslist postings right from the program, respond to sellers, sort your list, and more.  Don’t just read about these great features, but test them out yourself.

You can ensure that your money is wisely spent.  As mentioned above, Craigslist search tools are relatively affordable.  Still, you want to ensure you get a good deal, which is a quality product for an affordable price.  The best way to do this is to make use of free trials.  If you like what you see, buy the program.

With a no-risk free trial, you have nothing to lose by trying a Craigslist search tool for free.  So what are you waiting for?  See just how much your Craigslist searches can be improved with a desktop application.

Source by Adnan Masood

We have all been there. You are minding your own business, browsing around on your computer. Suddenly your computer freezes up. The Windows blue screen (aka blue screen of death or BSOD) brings up a list of blue screen errors and your computer crashes. Because this happens at random times, it can be pain when your computer restarts and whatever you were doing was not saved.

Now there are a few things that can cause blue screen errors. If you had been running ten different programs at once then that could be a cause. Your computer’s RAM can only handle so many programs running at once. But if the blue screen errors happen semi-frequently even when your are not running a ton of programs, then there is probably a problem in your Windows registry.

The Windows registry is the most important folder in your computer. It contains sensitive information that runs all software and hardware. And unfortunately the directory cannot clean itself and is very often filled with useless and corruptible information.

This is where registry repair software comes in. The first time you use registry cleaner software you may be shocked by all the fatal errors in your registry you had no idea about. I know I was the first time.

If you clean up registry errors you can significantly reduce the blue screen errors. Don’t let the windows blue screen of death ruin your computer’s performance. With a simple free scan below you can fix registry problems and get rid of those blue screen errors for good. Give it a try!

Source by Jim Marshall

It is also marked that in the last few years, graph of IT Outsourcing is on the rising way. Now IT Companies are sending work overseas to the countries like India and China to develop even smaller business applications. These countries possess most of the share for Software Outsourcing services. Along with these two countries other destinations like Russia, Philippines and many more are also emerging as a service provider for Offshore Development.

Software Outsourcing is concerned

Software Outsourcing to these destinations take place because the labor cost in such destinations is very low. IT Companies from the house of America and Australia are finding these destinations the most suitable for the development purposes. Though, Offshore Software Development might create some threats in the mind of the localized people from these countries. But at the end of the day IT Companies are finding this way of business the most convenient for many reasons apart from the cost benefit. As far as Software Outsourcing is concerned, fear is a reasonable enough response in the mind of these people, but not an effective survival tactic as the companies are now more and more evolving for such IT Outsourcing services. Though, these people thing that IT must take some different route than moving beyond the territory.

Keeping IT services inside the territory for these countries has been impossible as they are finding lots of benefits by shifting the jobs to the lower cost destinations with compared to their local development teams and companies. Along with Software Services, BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) in telecommunication sector and other sector is also on the boom in the current market scenario. By these processes IT companies can expand their business beyond the local territory without real investment. Flexibility and cost are the two most important factors that lead the IT Companies to move their jobs to the overseas destinations. You don’t have to put real efforts to expand your market by this way of the business process.

Source by Rajput Jitendra

Introduction

Looking to buy a brand new Windows 7 PC but don’t want to spend days copying files and reinstalling all your beloved applications with your custom settings? A new PC Migration suite – Zinstall XP7 – claims to provide a “breakthrough solution” – “fly” you from XP to 7 “business class”.

Migration is a term generally used to describe the act of moving applications, settings, files, etc. from an old Operating System (or computer) to a new one. It usually involves at least 3 steps:

• Going over your system looking for installed applications and their settings and data, windows settings, important files, and anything else one might miss when it’s no longer there.
• Backing up all the above to some temporary storage – such as a Removable Drive or a number of DVDs, depending on the amount of data. This may include copying all your favorite music and movies, your documents, exporting your Outlook’s PST files, browser favorites and more.
• Restoring everything to the new system. This can be as easy as copying some documents, or as difficult as tracking down the installer and license info for some legacy application you bought a while ago…

Migration is, without a question, a daunting, tedious and time consuming task for most of us. This is true when moving to a new computer with the same OS, and even more so when one wishes to migrate from Windows XP to a brand new Windows 7.

Every time Microsoft launches a new OS, the problem of PC Migration emerges – and crowds of PC users start crying for help in hopes someone will hear them. Windows 7 is, of course, no different – especially since the majority of users still run Windows XP and Microsoft refrained from providing an upgrade path from XP to Win7. Moreover, a lot of incompatibilities between XP and 7 make this task almost “mission impossible”.

There is always the possibility to start anew on the new computer and only copy a handful of really important files, but this option is often not acceptable for those who use their PC for more than browsing the web, watching some videos and sending an occasional email.

Wouldn’t it be great if an automatic tool existed that could just solve this problem once and for all?

Zinstall XP7 vs. Windows Easy Transfer vs. Laplink PCMover

Let’s see how Zinstall XP7 measures against two common alternatives – the free and built-in Windows 7 Easy Transfer, and Laplink’s veteran PCMover.
First, a dry comparison sheet:

So what do we get from all this?

Windows Easy Transfer, being free, provides a good bang for the buck – It will move the “My Documents” folder, Internet Explorer Favorites, some windows settings and any other folders a user might select manually to be transferred. No applications will be transferred, just the data.

PCMover makes a courageous attempt to migrate all the user applications as well as the user files. The results, supported by several forums and blogs, are mixed: some users report it successfully migrated most of their applications, while many others complain that some applications failed to migrate or worse – were migrated in such a way that they fail to run and are very difficult to remove.  Some notable examples of such disasters include Microsoft Outlook, Adobe products, several components of Norton Security Suite and McAfee Antivirus/Firewall. This is not a surprise, since there really is no way to know for sure where an application installed all of its components, not to mention the wide variety of application add-ons.

Moreover, many applications built for Windows XP wouldn’t work at all on Windows 7 by any means because of inherent incompatibility.

Zinstall XP7 approaches the migration challenge in a completely different way – it takes the entire, all-inclusive old Windows XP System and encapsulates it, in its whole, into a special isolated container on Windows 7, together with an application that is able to run a sort of a Virtual Machine with the Old Windows XP.

The end result is fairly surprising.

From the user experience point of view, the result is quite similar to having a PC with a “dual boot” configuration of Windows XP and Windows 7. There is just one “slight” difference: you can switch between XP and 7 instantaneously with a click on the tray icon, without being annoyed by constantly having to reboot your PC.

What I like most about this concept is that you basically get a solid guarantee that nothing is left behind – and all the stuff from your old Windows XP is with you and working.

Interested to see how it all looks?  Read on.

Test Setup

In order to give Zinstall XP7 a test ride, I used my 6 year old Athlon XP 1700+ based Windows XP as a guinea pig. The new computer is well-rounded Intel Core 2 Duo 7300 with Windows 7 installed.

The Migration Process

In order to do a migration I got a Zinstall XP7 license from Zinstall’s website (www.zinstall.com). It‘s worth noting that Zinstall promise that they will only charge you if you are satisfied with the migration result. In any case, after the purchase, I received an email with the license info and some basic instructions, which I started following right away.

I tried migrating Windows XP to Windows 7 in the most complicated scenario – an XP is installed on the old computer and the new one equipped with a pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium.

I connected the old and new computers with a network cable and started Zinstall on the old computer.  It prompted me to enter the serial number and email. After that, it tried doing an “online activation” which couldn’t have possibly worked, since I disconnected the computer from the internet in order to connect it to the new computer. So, instead, Zinstall proposed to do a web activation – i.e. go to a page on zinstall.com, enter an activation id on a computer that IS connected to the internet and receive a confirmation id in return, to be entered into Zinstall running on the old computer. At this stage I decided to just connect both the old and new computer to our DSL router and start over.

This time everything went smoothly – the old computer remembered the license info and Zinstall launched, asking us whether we are currently on the old or the new computer:

So we chose “Old computer”.

Next, Zinstall asked us to run it on the new computer as well:

So, we ran Zinstall on our Win7, chose “New Computer” and got the main screen:

As you can see, Zinstall correctly identified the old computer, so I pressed the big “Go” button.

The “Zinstall Migration Progress” dialog appeared and the migration started up.

I had 65 GB of data to copy, so I opened up a calculator and tried to estimate how long a coffee break I can take while the migration is running. Some simple math showed that copying 65GB over a 100MBit network in full capacity should take about an hour and a half. So I set my stopper and the PCs alone. About an hour later I came back to see that there are just 15 minutes left, and indeed – 10 minutes later the migration completed successfully.

Total time of migration: 1 hour 17 minutes.

This raised my suspicion. How could it possibly copy 65GB at better than channel capacity?!

So I decided to contact Zinstall support and ask them just that. The reply was quick to follow:

“Dear Richard,

The phenomenon you described is completely normal.

When Zinstall performs a migration over a slow network connection, it compresses the data before transmitting it over the network, which can result in an effective migration speed that is higher than channel capacity.

Best Regards,
Zinstall Support Team”

So, the migration completed successfully. The next question is, obviously, what did we get?

Migration Results

The migration had little visible effect on our test Windows 7 – a Zinstall icon appeared on the desktop, and also in the system tray. Right click on the tray icon and a menu appeared:

A click on “Switch to Old Desktop” made the old Windows XP to appear instead of Windows 7! My first thought was – “Hey, those guys are fooling me! They’re just doing some sort of a Remote Desktop connection to the old Windows XP”. My second thought was – “But I’ve already powered off the old computer”. And, not surprisingly, Zinstall’s tray icon was present on the Windows XP desktop as well, so I used it to switch back to the Win7 desktop.

Next, it was time to check that all the apps and files were indeed there. Double-click, and I’m in Windows XP again. Go to Start menu and it looks just like the original XP – three columns full of too many programs. I ran Word & Outlook from the start menu (Outlook showed up with all my mail in the inbox), double-clicked a PDF from the desktop (Adobe reader popped up), started Winamp from the quick launch menu, and finally entered www.google.com in Start->Run to have it opened using the default Firefox 3.5 in a colorful tab.

A more thorough examination showed that drive C: had 15GB of free space and that an extra network drive Z: was added that contained a folder named “C” which itself pointed to Win7’s C: drive.
At this stage I also noticed that Norton started a scheduled system scan.

In short – I had my good old Windows XP right in front of me.

Performance wise – I didn’t feel a difference on Win7 whether the “Zinstalled” Windows XP was running or not, but a more thorough benchmark is surely in order. According to Task Manager – Zinstall runs a couple of processes in the background that take up to 90MB of RAM when the old Windows XP is being used, and their CPU usage varies, depending on the workload of the Windows XP.

I also tried some of the more esoteric features – copy pasted some text from XP’s Word 2003 into a newly opened Wordpad on Win7, saved it to an RTF file on the desktop and copied the file to “My Documents” on XP. Switch back to Win7, right click on Zinstall and “Show Old Desktop files” opened Windows Explorer on a folder containing a subfolder “C” which pointed to the old OS, so I used it to find the aforementioned RTF file inside “Documents and Settings” and copy it back to Win7.

I must say that the concept of having the old and new desktops at the same time seemed confusing when I first read about it in on Zinstall’s web site, but after getting directly acquainted with it – it was very intuitive thanks to the clear distinction between the “Old” and “New” environments.

Conclusion

In the dark and miserable world of PC Migration – Zinstall is a ray of hope shining bright above the rest.

It is extremely easy to use – all we had to do, literally, was to run Zinstall and press the big “GO” button. The end result is no less than stunning – you boot into your new Windows 7… click! You’re on your old Windows XP with all your apps, settings, files and what not… click! You’re back on your new Windows 7.

And the cherry on top – you can share files and use copy-paste between the old and new systems.

The only entry in the cons column is the price of the software. $89 is not cheap, but from my experience – Zinstall is worth every penny.

Zinstall’s website: http://www.zinstall.com

Source by Richard Foreman