Articles

I’ve seen programs in the past that were able to check the SMART status of a hard disk drive but it wasn’t easy for me to find. Also, I think I had to boot into the CD in order to check on it. What is your preferred method for getting this data to hopefully preempt […]

In Linux, we can go to the user home by entering the tilde (~) character after cd: cd ~ How to do the same in Windows? Each time, I need to type: cd C:Document and Settingsfreewind That’s too boring. Solution: cd /d “%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%” would do it — but I ‘m not sure if you consider

What lifetime can be expected of the typical hard disk? Or are there big differences between different types? And does it make a difference if it is used heavily instead of never being connected to system (for example serving as a backup medium)? Solution: What lifetime can be expected of the typical hard disk? The

What is the relationship between Unix, Linux, Ubuntu, and Debian?   I suspect they are all Operating Systems that are based upon one another – similar to how Windows is based on DOS. Is my suspicion correct? Do these operating systems have the same type of relationship with each other as Windows has with DOS?

I’m looking for a Windows program/script/command line function that works like Linux’s watch program. watch periodically calls another program/whatever and shows the result, which is great for refreshing an output file or similar every second: watch cat my-output.txt or, more powerfully: watch grep “fail” my-output.txt I’ve looked for it in cygwin’s library, but it doesn’t

I was double checking my notes for ‘Virtual Memory’ and the definition in my text book is:   Process of allocating a section of secondary storage to act as part of the main memory Where as Wikipedia says:   Virtual memory is a computer system technique which gives an application program the impression that it

We all know that Vista and Windows 7 doesn’t let you specify custom extensions or customize them to your liking. What program do you use to edit file associations in Vista and Windows 7? EDIT: Just to be more clear, I’m looking for a program which lets you: Create new extensions (I am aware of

I have a laptop with a USB to VGA adapter which allows me to add a third monitor to my laptop (the second monitor uses the onboard slot). It worked fine on Windows Vista – you could go into Windows’ display settings and Windows would recognize the third monitor and let you drag it around

Can anyone recommend a cheap/free utility that can do this without very much effort? My preference is that it would be really easy. Boot into Windows Pick drive to move Pick target drive It copies everything over, and reboots to the correct partition. Solution: DriveImage XML DriveImage XML will do the job.  It runs from

I’m trying to improve the boot time and general performance of a Windows XP machine and figure the massive collection of services that Windows automatically starts have to have an impact. Are there any services that I can safely disable? If so what are they? Obviously the services are there for a reason, so when