The Four-eyed Journal » Windows

Search for Files and Folders Using Search Everything - It's fast, light and simply works

jhay — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 11:52:05 +0000

One of the neat things I like about Windows Vista is the built-in ‘Search’ function which is better than the one found in XP. Of course most hard-core geeks hate it because it’s slow, hogs system resources and sometimes, simply because it’s made by Microsoft.

So there are dozens of third-party apps that does a better job of helping you dig up any file or folder you’ve stored somewhere in your PC.

I’ve tried a couple, but while they were indeed more powerful than Vista’s own Search function, I stopped using them in less than a month because they were either too clunky and hogged system resources or they started to bog down as the number of files in my hard drive increased over time.

Luckily, I found Everything. It’s a free search app that does exactly what its name says it does, it searches for everything. Specifically, it searches for any matching filename or folder to your query.

Everything searches for files and folders real quick

Start it up and immediately it displays every file name it finds on your computer. Entering a few key words that form part of the file or folder’s name you’re looking for and it immediately finds it.

It may not give a preview or a quick peek into a possibly matching file or folder, but it shows you it’s complete file location for you to swoop in and have a look for yourself.

Plus it’s lightweight, doesn’t slow down my machine when it’s searching for files or updating its index of the file system. One drawback I’ve experienced is it crashes more often each time I right-click on a file or folder that I wanted to open directly from its search results window. But the blame is on bonanza of items and hooks included in my right-click menu instead of on Everything.

Despite this minor flaw, I’ve been using it for over a month now. Download it for free and I’m sure you’d be impressed by it too.

Understand BSoD on your PC with BlueScreen View

jhay — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:21:57 +0000

Windows 7 is just a few months away from full release and so many Windows users, particularly those fed up with Vista and still holding on to their XPs are quite excited because finally, some form of relief is on its way.

However, Windows 7 is still a Windows OS so crashes, bugs and the dreaded BSoD or “blue screen of death” would still be part of the Windows experience. However, we no longer dread the BSoD so much now as we did many years ago.

Over the years, we have become brave enough to face the BSoD with the hope of using its cryptic message to troubleshoot what has caused Windows to shoot its own foot and crash. All because of the growing number of tools and techniques to decipher the BSoD’s message.

One such handy application is this week’s tool of the week: BlueScreen View. It’s a free stand-alone application, which doesn’t need to be installed for it be used, takes all of your minidump files created when your system crashes and displays all the information about each crash in tabular form.

Understand BSoD with BlueScreen View

For each crash, BlueScreenView displays the minidump filename, the date/time of the crash, the basic crash information displayed in the blue screen (Bug Check Code and 4 parameters), and the details of the driver or module that possibly caused the crash (filename, product name, file description, and file version).

BlueScreenView Features

Automatically scans your current minidump folder and displays the list of all crash dumps, including crash dump date/time and crash details.
Allows you to view a blue screen which is very similar to the one that Windows displayed during the crash.
BlueScreenView enumerates the memory addresses inside the stack of the crash, and find all drivers/modules that might be involved in the crash.
BlueScreenView also allows you to work with another instance of Windows, simply by choosing the right minidump folder (In Advanced Options).
BlueScreenView automatically locate the drivers appeared in the crash dump, and extract their version resource information, including product name, file version, company, and file description.

System Requirements

BlueScreenView works with Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, as long as Windows is configured to save minidump files during BSOD crashes.
Currently, BlueScreenView can only read minidump files of 32-bit systems, but it cannot read the dump files created by x64 systems. It’s possible that x64 support will be added in future versions.

Give BlueScreen View a download and be more confident in troubleshooting the BSoD on your PC. The coolest thing about this app, is it’s free.

Apple strikes back: PCs give up Megan to a Mac

jhay — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:26:16 +0000

Those Microsoft ads about Megan opting for Windows-powered laptop instead of a Mac certainly brought the ad wars between Windows users and Mac fanboys to a new level.

Now, Apple hits back at the same ad using age-old criticisms about PCs and using Megan herself.

“I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person“

The ad completely ignores the price difference argument which was one of the certain points of the earlier “Laptop hunters” ads by Microsoft. And now that Macs are becoming vulnerable to hacks, attacks, worms and viruses, people are starting to really question why Macs are priced so stiff as to compared to PCs.

Maybe Apple should start to do some serious soul-searching on this or perhaps Megan should try Ubuntu? ^_^

Microsoft is a dinosaur, the future is Chrome

jhay — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:53:48 +0000

Still unable to blog regularly due to a stressful weekend and week opener, more on this tomorrow, but I’d like to share a few links and scribbles on why Microsoft is stuck in the Jurassic age – so to speak.

First up, the great Mike Abundo becomes bluntly honest is saying that the second Microsoft Ad featuring Jerry Seinfeld and company founder Bill Gates are nothing but “lies”

First, Gates claims he’s “connected over a billion people.” Nonsense. Gates was famously late to the Internet.
Second, Seinfeld claims Gates will make possible an “amoeba with a blog.” Ha! The world’s most popular blogging platforms don’t even come from Microsoft.

I followed the link he shared and Time does drive home the point:

Bill Gates: PC Genius, Internet Fool

Bill Gates, who for years was the richest man in the world, is also one of the smartest. But even he couldn’t figure out how to beat the Internet — how to transition his grand old monopoly software company, Microsoft, into a business that thrives on the Net. And so he begins his retirement today from Microsoft as the PC era’s biggest winner, and the Web era’s most spectacular casualty.

The article’s conclusion, that either Microsoft reboots itself or perish is expanded upon by this related article from the New York Times which puts forward the notion that Windows needs to get a serious breather and shakedown:

A MONOLITHIC operating system like Windows perpetuates an obsolete design. We don’t need to load up our machines with bloated layers we won’t use. We need what Mr. Silver and Mr. MacDonald speak of as a “just enough” operating system. Additional functionality, appropriate to a given task, can be loaded as needed.

But perhaps, it is already too late for Microsoft and Windows because Google is here and it has unleashed what could be called the final piece of its plan to totally overthrow Microsoft from its dominance of how we use computers and the Internet.

Newsweek spells it out perfectly: The Cloud’s Chrome Lining

“There’s been a lot of renewal of interest in browsers in the last 18 months or so,” says Mike Wolf, director of ABI Research. And indeed, Chrome isn’t your average browser.

Google already offers a suite of software applications online–in the cloud–for free: You can check your Gmail, type up a memo on Google docs, manage your photos with Picasa, read all your favorite sites with Google Reader, and store it all on Google’s servers–allowing you to access it from any computer. Google Chrome takes all those applications and serves them up in one neat package–almost exactly like (watch out, Redmond) an online operating system. “Chrome’s a further reflection of the fact that the nature of the Web is changing from a place where we go to read pages of information, to where we go to run software applications,” says Nicholas Carr, author of “The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google.”

Perhaps it’s still too early to say anything conclusive. But at the way things are going at present, Microsoft really needs to do a lot of serious soul-searching if it wants to stay on top or the new ads are only stating the obvious that like Jerry Seinfeld, Microsoft has now become but a living memory of the glory days of the 80′s and 90′s.

Hands-on with Windows Live Writer

jhay — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:19:19 +0000

Ever since I’ve switched to Windows Vista, I’ve been curious as to how blogging would be like if I were to try Windows Live Writer. This desktop app that will allow me to blog without ever logging in and using this blog’s dashboard.

So, after having enough rest from a grueling weekend, I’m writing this post using Live Writer. So far, so good. Everything seems to be working well, the interface is nice and comfortable. Though I will need to take some time to get used to this environment as I’ve never really used the WYSIWYG interface or visual editor of WordPress.

The immediate problems I see with writing posts with Live Writer is that I’m unable to tag my blog posts using WordPress’ native tagging system and insert images using the Lightbox plugin for that added ‘oomph’ to it. Then again there could be some workaround to this somewhere in the interwubs or I’ll just write my blog posts offline and then save the drafts to the blog and then edit it online before hitting the good ‘ol publish button.

Writer spice-ups

I’ve heard that there are plugins for Writer that will allow me to add more elements that would enhance my blog posts, will be spending the rest of the week looking into those as well as reviews by other bloggers about those plugins and Writer itself.

What I’m really curious is how to add tables to a blog post. I’m too lazy right now to look it up on Google or Cuil, whichever search engine captures my fancy, but it’s a feature here in Writer so I might as well give it a try.

This is a table	on my blog
if it works	woot!

Hope that doesn’t break my blog or anything. Next up would be to put in some neat photos and I really hope it will work well with the custom image tags I’ve incorporated into the CSS file of this theme. If not, I’ll just insert such photos on line thus allowing me to add the light box effect to it.

Tags and more tags

Aha! So there’s a tagging plugin in Writer, but it doesn’t support WordPress’ own tagging system and so lo and behold, the return of Technorati tags on my blog. Well for this test post only, that is.

So what else could Writer offer or allow me to do? I guess that’s all for now. I’ll just publish this post so to break my blogging hiatus and to jump start my blogging cycle for the good of us all.

Technorati Tags: Writer,Windows,Vista,Live,blogging,WordPress