registry

XP Quick Fix Plus Repairs Common Windows XP Errors

9:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows XP: If your Windows XP installation is acting up, sometimes a fix is as simple as tweaking a registry key. Rather than muck about in your registry looking for it, use XP Quick Fix Plus to patch things up. More »

ServicesEditor Makes Resetting, Tweaking Windows Services Simple

3:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows: Whether you need to reset the Windows Services configuration back to stock after your over-zealous friend started modifying his computer or you’d like to make a pre-configured registry file for that friend, ServicesEditor makes configuration tweaking easy. More »

Get Acrobat Reader To Work With 64-Bit Windows

10:30AM Angus Kidman | Acrobat Reader can often be a source of annoyance, and one challenge is getting it to work on 64-bit systems — but you can get the job done with a simple registry fix. More »

LicenseCrawler Retrieves Licence Keys For Backup

11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows: LicenseCrawler is a portable and free tool for retrieving serial numbers and product keys from your computer. A simple scan with LicenseCrawler ensures you’ll never be left trying to reinstall software without the proper key. More »

Disable Recent Documents History In Windows 7

10:30AM Angus Kidman | Don’t want anyone seeing what you’ve recently accessed on your Windows 7 PC? Reader Marz offers a handy registry hack to get rid of the document history. More »

Add Open File Location To The XP Context Menu

4:00AM The How-To Geek | The Tweaking with Vishal web site writes up a quick but useful registry hack that adds an “Open File Location” item to the context menu, just like Windows 7 or Vista has already. More »

Add Recycle Bin And More To My Computer

2:00AM The How-To Geek | The Tweaking with Vishal web site writes up a quick registry hack that adds Recycle Bin, Network Connections, Admin Tools or even Search to your My Computer window. More »

Make Excel Open Spreadsheets In A Separate Window

4:00AM The How-To Geek | If you spend a large part of your day dealing with boring, TPS-like reports, you’ve probably noticed that Excel 2007 won’t let you put spreadsheets side-by-side on your multi-monitor desktop. Luckily, there’s a fix for that. More »

Has iTunes 8.1 Wrecked Your Burner? Here’s A Possible Fix

4:30PM Angus Kidman | When Apple rolled out iTunes 8.1 a fortnight ago, we noted right off the bat that some early adopters were experiencing issues with using the Genius feature. Now there seems to be a more worrying bug for Windows users. On some machines, iTunes 8.1 is no longer able to burn to otherwise functional drives, and in some cases can’t even read discs from that drive. A long support thread on Apple’s own site identifies one potential fix via a registry edit to disable device filters, although many of the users on the thread are reporting that it hasn’t helped either. But if iTunes has gone haywire on your drive, it’s probably worth following the suggested steps to see if that maes any difference. If you have any other wisdom to impart on this problem, share in the comments below. (Me, I’m unimpressed that merely checking the ‘About’ dialogue in 8.1 crashed my copy of iTunes, but then I’ve always thought it was way too buggy for something with that much market share.) More »

SpyMe Tools Tracks Changes To Your Windows Registry

5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows only: If you like to keep a close eye on what changes new software installations make to your system, SpyMe Tools provides step-by-step snapshots of your registry and shows you what’s changed. The in-depth review of your system registry that SpyMe Tools provides may be overkill for some people, but if you need to track changes or troubleshoot problems after certain installations, it can be invaluable. It’s simple to use: after you install the program, you run a system sweep with SpyMe Tools and save the results. After installing new applications or making system changes, you can compare the previous system state to the current one, and SpyMe Tools will show you all the changes. In addition to doing a before and after comparison of system snapshots, you can even run it in real time while installing software to see the changes as they happen. If you’re interested in a more automated solution, check out previously reviewed Revo Uninstaller, a thorough application remover that our commenters frequently compare just about every system tool to (and that’s why we love you). SpyMe Tools is freeware, Windows only. SpyMe Tools [via gHacks] More »