PCMag’s Top 101 Web Sites – Fall 2005.

If you love these sites or just want to hold onto all of them so you can check them out later, we’ve got good news. We’ve created a downloadable favorites installer containing all the links in all the categories. Download and unzip the file, follow the setup instructions, and you’re all set.

Source…

CNET’s Blog 100.

With more than 14 million blogs in existence and another 80,000 being created each day, how is a person supposed to find the ones worth reading?

That is the question CNET News.com is attempting to answer with their first Blog 100 list.

Useful Tech Support Sites.

Windows Process Libraries

Ever wondered what all those process are that you see in the Task Manager’s Processes tab. These process libraries are like a dictionary for processes where you can look up a process and get details on it

ProcessLibrary.com
Security Task Manager
WinTasks Process Library

Tech Support Forums

Get free technical support through these discussion forums. For most forums, you don’t have to register to read the postings, but it’s required if you want to post.

Annoyances.org
HelpOnThe.Net
Mark’s PC Help Forum
Suggest A Fix
PC Pitstop
Tech Support Alert
Computer Gripes

File Extensions

Almost every file format in the world
FILExt
WhatIs

Urban Legends and Myth Busters

Snopes
Vmyths.com

Geeky Terms and Definitions

Acronym Finder
CompInfo Directory
ComputerUser.com High Tech Dictionary
FOLDOC
Glossarist
Microsoft Glossary
NetLingo.com
TechEncyclopedia
Webopedia
WhatIs.com
Wikipedia

Viewing Hidden Devices in Windows Device Manager

Device Manager displays all devices installed in the system The devices shown in Device Manager represent the computer’s hardware configuration information. The Device Manager display is recreated each time the computer is started, or whenever a dynamic change to the computer configuration occurs, such as addition of a new device while the system is running. You can use Device Manager to enable or disable devices, troubleshoot devices, update drivers, use driver rollback, and change resources such as interrupt requests (IRQs) assigned to devices.

Two types of devices are hidden by default in Device Manager. Non–Plug and Play drivers, printers, and other classes of devices that are not typically useful in configuring or troubleshooting hardware issues are hidden. Also hidden are devices that were previously attached but are not connected to the computer at the present time, also known as non-present devices. Typically you will not need to view hidden devices unless you need to configure or troubleshoot hardware. Each category of hidden device requires a different procedure for Device Manager to display the devices in that category

To view currently attached non–Plug and Play drivers, printers, and other devices

In Device Manager, on the View menu, select Show hidden devices.

The following procedure shows non-present devices for this instance of Device Manager only.

To view a list of previously attached (non-present) devices

1. At the command prompt type: Devmgmt.msc set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
2. In Device Manager, on the View menu, select Show hidden devices.

The following procedure sets the option in Device Manager to show non-present devices whenever Device Manager is run.

To set Device Manager to always show previously attached (non-present) devices

To view the list of non-present devices Device Manager, you must select Show hidden devices in Device Manager, as described earlier.

1. In Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. Click Environment Variables. The Environment Variables dialog box contains two sections, User variables and System variables. The changes made by adding a variable in the User variables section apply only to a specific user. If another user logs on to this computer, this variable will not be set for them. If you want this variable to apply to all users that log on to this computer, add it to System variables instead.
4. In the User variables or System variables dialog box, click New.
5. In the New User Variable or New System Variable dialog box, in Variable Name, type the following (including the underscores):DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES
6. In Variable Value, enter 1.
7. Click OK, and then in the Environment Variables dialog box, click OK to apply this change.

Source…

How to make Adobe Reader 7.0 load faster.

For detailed steps on how to make Adobe Reader 7.0 load faster, click here…

If the steps above seem like too much work, then get PDF SpeedUp, a free PDF Tweak.

Fake XP SP 3 Available.

According to a posting by a Microsoft representative in one of the company’s support newsgroups, a “Windows XP SP3 Hotfix Preview Pack (unofficial)” is a fake, not made by Microsoft, and worth avoiding.

Using Ping to determine what IP Addresses are in use in the LAN.

In a LAN with both DHCP and statically assigned IP addresses, to determine, using Ping, what IP Addresses are in use, ping xxx.xxx.xxx.255 where xxx represents the network id e.g. 192.168.0.255. Then arp -a to list live ip addresses on your subnet. Compare to dhcp scope and you have your list of static ip addresses in use.