PC Fast Fix

The Mozilla Firefox 3 release date has been announced for tuesday June 17.

It has been over 34 months in development with contributions from thousands of users and developers.

Firefox Download Day

Firefox is also hoping to set the record for the most software downloads in a 24 hour period – this is known as Firefox Download Day. So if you want to help make history, then you can get involved now. All you have to do is download Firefox 3, which is going to be pretty cool anyway.

Click here to visit Firefox 3 Download Day

Tags: Internet Browsers, Tech News, Uncategorized, Windows by admin
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The latest version (4.5) of Windows Installer has just been released on June 2. You can now download the latest version from here.

The Microsoft® Windows® Installer (MSI) is the application installation and configuration service for Windows. These are some of the new features you will find in 4.5:

Multiple Package Transaction: In a multiple package transaction, you can create a single transaction from multiple packages. In a multiple package transaction, a chainer is used to dynamically include packages in the transaction. If any of the packages do not install as expected, you can roll back the installation.

Embedded UI Handler: You can embed a custom user interface (UI) handler in the Windows Installer package. This makes a custom UI easier to integrate. You can also invoke an embedded UI handler from the Add or Remove item in Control Panel. Or, you can invoke an embedded UI handler during a Windows Installer repair process.

Embedded Chainer: You can use the embedded chainer to add packages to a multiple package transaction. You can use an embedded chainer to enable installation events across multiple packages. For example, you can enable the install-on-demand events, the repair events, and the uninstall events across multiple packages.

Update Supersedence Resiliency: This feature enables you to correct for changes in the FeatureComponent table during supersedence.

Shared Component Patching Resiliency During Uninstall: This feature makes sure that the most recent version of a component is available to all the products.

Custom Action Execution On Update Uninstall: This feature enables an update to add or change a custom action so that the custom action is called when an update is uninstalled.

Tags: Tech News, Uncategorized, Windows by admin
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Here are a few more quick little tweaks that will help to speed up Windows XP. Don’t forget to read the tips in Speed up Windows XP Part 1 and Speed Up Windows XP Part 2.

OK, lets get started:

Speed Up Folder Browsing.

This one can get really annoying. You click on a folder and there is a delay before seeing the contents. Windows XP automatically tries to find network files and printers, hence the delay. To switch this off:

1) From Windows Explorer or My Computer, click on Tools -> Folder Options
2) Click on the “View” tab
3) Uncheck the box – “Automatically search for network folders and printers”. Click OK. Done!!

Disable Indexing

Windows Indexing service is used to make searching faster and easier. Windows runs a program that indexes folders and files and then uses this index to deliver faster search results. However, the indexing process can chew up a lot of RAM and slow things down quite considerably. Depending on how often you use Windows search, turning this feature off will most likely be beneficial.

1) Go to the Windows XP control panel. Click Start -> Control Panel
2) Open “Add or Remove Programs”
3) Click on “Add/Remove Windows Components” from the left menu
4) Uncheck the “Indexing Service”, then click “Next”, then click “Finish”

Optimize Your Display

Windows XP display options are not as resource intensive as Vista, but you can still improve performance with a few display tweaks. If you really are lacking performance in XP, then try turning off some of these settings to see if things improve.

1) Go to Windows XP control panel. Click Start -> Control Panel
2) Open “System”
3) Click on the “Advanced” tab
4) Click on the “Settings” button under the “Performance” heading
5) In the “Visual Effects” tab you can try turning off certain options. You can click the option “Adjust for best performance”. You can also choose your own custom options. This may take a bit of trial and error, but try it out for some performance gains.

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Speed Up Windows XP with our free scan and repair tool. Click here to download

Tags: PC Speedup, Windows by admin
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Are Windows Media Player errors slowing down your PC performance?

Over time it is common for users to experience problems with Windows Media Player. Errors can be specific or they might be increased slowness, frequent crashes, freezes and blue screen problems.

As your computer becomes cluttered and the Windows Registry fills up, it is common to experience a variety of the problems listed above. The fastest and easiest way to fix these problems is by keeping your registry clean and uncluttered. This means removing corrupt entries, deleting invalid entries and fixing existing entries.

The problem is that the Windows Registry is very difficult to edit and should only be touched by an expert. Luckily there are some great programs out there that will clean your PC registry and fix the majority of errors.

You can try a free scan here. It will detect any current PC errors and registry problems on your PC.

Tags: Computer Security, PC Error Repair, PC Optimization, Windows by admin
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Microsoft has released the Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless.

This software update is intended to improve wireless support in Vista and includes the following components:

• Bluetooth version 2.1 support
• Unified Pairing user interface
• Windows Connect Now updates

Some or all of these features may not work depending on your current hardware configuration. You will also need Vista SP1 installed.

To find out more about the Vista Feature Pack for Wireless – click here

Tags: Windows, Windows Vista by admin
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A campaign was recently launched to petition for Windows XP to continue being sold on new computers after June 30 (the announced deadline).

Well so far there is around 115,000 supporters for XP to stick around and I am pretty sure this number will grow quite a lot.

The main concerns are that Vista is a resource hog that needs a ton of hardware to run just at normal speed and with the default features. There has also been many frustrations about the lack of drivers for various devices and peripherals.

If you want to save XP, you can visit the site here: Save XP

In the meantime you can run our free scan to fix your PC errors in Vista and XP.

Tags: Uncategorized, Windows by admin
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Personally I am trying to avoid the upgrade to Vista for as long as possible, but here is some quick info on the speed comparisons of XP and Vista.

With all the tests we have run in the office, Vista has not shown any improvement over XP performance.  The first problem is that Vista requires more powerful hardware. So by the time you upgrade your hardware and install Vista, you will have a system that ran as fast as your old hardware with XP…Doesn’t seem all that great, especially since we haven’t seen any groundbreaking improvements in Vista that warrant the need to upgrade.

However, if you run Vista on decent hardware, it is better than XP at multi tasking on dual-core PCs. You will also need decent RAM and graphics processing capabilities if you want to keep Aero switched on.

Overall, the majority of users will probably find much more enjoyment in using Windows XP on decent hardware.  In our office space, we are upgrading all of our hardware and just opting for no OS, and then happily throwing on XP.  The performance is pretty damn good.

Tags: PC Optimization, PC Speedup, Windows by admin
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OK, so with the release of Vista SP1 we can expect some improvements to security, performance and hopefully increased reliability.

Well unfortunately, SP1 is also known to break various programs that you may have installed on your system. This probably comes as no surprise and is always a good reason to hold off on updating too early.

For those of you that may have already updated to Vista SP1, or if you are thinking about updating, we have provided the link below which gives details on all the programs broken by SP1.

Programs affected by Vista SP1

If you have seen any other programs breaking or acting funny under SP1, please let us know.

Tags: PC Error Repair, Windows by admin
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