More often than not, people just don’t have the patience to read the error messages. Sometimes my friends or co-worker call me for troubleshooting. First thing that I ask them is whether they saw any error message and most of the time their reply is ‘Yes, some kind of message popped up but I didn’t read it.’

‘Knowing the problem is half the battle won.’ This applies to everything in life and so to, to computers. Whenever you come across any error message, read it first and see if it makes sense to you.  Once you understand the problem, you may be able to find a solution yourself. But if you don’t understand the message or you don’t have a clue as to how to solve it, then the simplest way out is to type out the exact message into Google.

That’s what I usually do. And I find that I get better results if I enclose the message within double quotes. But it is important that if you use double-quotes, you must make sure that  you type the message exactly as it appears, including the commas, apostrophe  and little things like that. Most of the time, the search engine would lead you to one or more pages that tell what the error message means and how to get rid of it.

Typing out the message is both time consuming  and also prone to typos, besides the trouble you may have to take to switch between your browser and the message windows, in case the window is hidden.
Copying the error message and pasting it in Google is the best way to ensure that you are searching for the exact message. But unfortunately, most of these messages cannot be selected or copied in the normal way. This is where Grabtxt can come in useful.

Grabtxt is a tiny tool created by Misbah that lets you copy text from message windows.  Using it is pretty easy. It is a single exe file and so there is no installation required. You can just run the file and start using it.

What you see above is definitely not an error message. It is just to demonstrate how grabtxt works.

When you encounter an message window, just click on the large X button in Grabtxt and drag the mouse cursor over the error message. The text message appears on Grabtxt. You can then select the text and just press either the Google button or the Live.com button to search in the respective search engines. I would suggest that before you select the text, type in the double-quotes at the beginning and end of the message.

So, the next time you see an error message, don’t panic. With a little effort, you may be able to troubleshoot yourself.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Anyone who has a computer has time saved information that they may consider important; and if it is lost then they would have a hard time getting it back.

You might say, ‘Oh, I don’t need to worry, I always have all my important data backed up on a CD’. But you can never be 100% sure that the CD would be readable when you actually need it. And there is always a possibility of losing your data before you take a backup.

Ultimately, it boils down to one thing. You need to be able to recover lost data if and when the situation demands.

Enter Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a complete data recovery solution that helps you to search, locate and recover your lost, missing, inaccessible or deleted data. This non-destructive and read-only utility helps you to recover your data lost due to accidental format, virus problems, software malfunction, file/directory deletion, unexpected shutdown, or even sabotage.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery  has a very simple and intuitive interface.  With the software’s fully automated wizard using it is a breeze. The interface includes Find File, File Mask and File Filter options to help you search, view and recover any specific file type.

The recovery of your data involves three simple steps.

1. Evaluate - Phoenix identifies the device, locates all partition on the inaccessible drive and list them.
2. Analyze - It examines the remains of file structure (boot sector, FAT copies or MFT and root directory) and the data area of the inaccessible drive and works the best path out to recover your files and directories.
3. Recover - All recoverable files and folders are presented in a tree structure. You can select your data files and directories and move the data to a safe location.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery can help you recover lost data in most situations. Here is a short list of what the software can do for you.

• Recover deleted files after recycle bin has been emptied or use of Shift+Delete key
• Recover missing and lost logical drives (volumes)
• Recover formatted hard drives (even after reinstalling operating system)
• Recover re-partitioned hard drives (even after file system has been changed)
• Recover lost files and folders

Stellar Phoenix recovers data from Windows Vista partitions and also supports partition recovery from Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98 and older operating system hard drives. It recognizes & recovers more than 300 file types including documents, spreadsheets, web content & images.

You can download the demo software from http://www.stellarinfo.com/spwdr.exe

Learn more about Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery.

Hold down the Ctrl + Alt keys and press any of the arrow keys. The screen will re-orient to match the arrow key that you pressed as shown in the image below.

A few practical uses I can think of for using this trick is: change the orientation from landscape to portrait while using a Tablet PC or, if you want to see an image in a different orientation but can’t change the orientation in the application. Maybe you can think of other ways of using it.

You could also use this trick to just play a prank on your unsuspecting co-worker by changing the orientation on his/her computer. Of course the prank would work only if he is not already aware of this trick.

Update: I am told that this hotkey works equally well in Windows Vista. But I have not been able to confirm it since I don’t use Vista.  If any of the readers can confirm it or otherwise in the commetns, it would be great.

Visit keyxl.com

Changing the color of icons is easy with Rainbow Folders. Just right click on an icon an select ‘Rainbow Folders’. You can then select any color for the icon.

You can even select more than one folder at a time and change the colors of all the selected folders simultaneously. So, for example, you could mark your favorite folders with green color, your work folder with blue, your personal folders with red etc. This definitely makes navigation quicker and helps you to easily find the folder you want. You can also choose from three icon styles: Classical(9x), Typical(XP) and Modern(Vista).

The colorized folders are visible in every Explorer window, every open/save dialog and in every folder selection tree as seen in many programs. You can even add a custom tool tip to the folders.

Download Rainbow Folder

But if you have this tiny free utility called One Click App Killer, you could kill frozen programs with a single click. That’s assuming you don’t count the double click needed to run the program first. Upon double-clicking on the program icon, your mouse pointer changes into a bull’s eye. Now, click anywhere on the frozen application’s interface to quickly eliminate it from your screen and memory. That’s it.

But do note that a wrong click and you could end up killing the wrong program. Though rare, clicking outside the frozen program’s interface could close Windows itself.

Download One Click App Killer.

Karen’s Directory Printer is a free utility that can help you do the above and more.

Karen’s Directory Printer can print the names of every file in a folder or drive. It can also print a file or sub-folder’s size, date of creation, date of last modification, date of last access, attributes (read-only, system, hidden, compressed, etc.) and more. You can select what other information about the file should be included in the print.

With the File Filter option, instead of printing all the files in a location, you can choose to print a particular type of file, like say images, audio files, document files etc. You can create new filters and specify which file extensions should be included in the filter. You can even edit the existing filter.

Karen’s Directory Printer even lets you save the list to a file instead of printing it. This is quite useful if you don’t have a printer installed or if you want to email the list to someone.

Here is how it works. Just press down on the wheel, like kind of clicking with the wheel. You will see a two directional or four directional arrow (depending on the type of scrolling possible in the current application) appear at the point where you clicked indicating that you are in the scrolling mode. Now, to scroll, just move your mouse in the direction you want to scroll: Up, Down, Left or Right.  The farther you move away from point where you clicked the scroll-wheel, the faster the scroll speed. It is really much more convenient than constantly rolling the wheel.

To stop scrolling, move the mouse back to the original position where you clicked. One unique possibility of this method is that you can even scroll diagonally, if the view in the application you are working on, needs both vertical and horizontal scrolling. To come out of the scrolling mode, just left-click your mouse.

This trick works in most applications including almost all web browsers. So stop scrolling and start power- scrolling.

Lupo PenSuite is one such utility.

Lupo PenSuite is a portable collection of over 185 applications and tools. All the applications have been neatly categorized and can be started through the bundled ASuite application launcher.

You don’t need to actually install Lupo PenSuite. Just download the setup file and either extract it directly on your portable drive or extract it on first your desktop and copy the extracted folder to the portable drive. First, spend some time and check out what applications are included. Unless you know what’s included you can’t take full advantage of them.

Lupo PenSuite is available in two version, Full and Lite. While the Full version has around 185 applications and needs 290 MB of space, the Lite version has much fewer applications and needs just 40MB. I would strongly suggest that you go for the full version. You may not be using all the applications everyday, but with the full suite of the applications in your pocket, you feel like you are fully armed.

Apart from the included applications, you can add more applications to the suite from here or any other portable application you want.

And best of all Lupo Pensuite is completely Free.

Download Lupo Pensuite

Characters like ®, © etc are called special characters. In Windows, each special character is associated with a 4 digit numeric number, which when entered while holding down the ALT key will display the character. For example, the code for the character ® is 0174. So to enter ®, hold down the Alt key and press the numbers 0174. Do remember that the 4 digit number must be entered using your numeric 10 key pad on your keyboard! Similarly to enter the copyright symbol, © the code is Alt+0169.

That’s all fine. But how are you supposed to remember the code for all the special character? The answer is, you don’t need to. If you do know the 4 digit code you can directly enter the code. But if you don’t, then you could use a tool called the Character Map. The Character Map utility is free on all Windows machines and can be used to copy and paste special characters, accented letters and other foreign language characters characters into any Windows application. It is similar to the Insert Symbol tool found in some Windows applications such as Microsoft Word.

To access Character Map, go to Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Character Map. A quicker way is to open Start>Run (or Windows Key+R), type charmap and hit Enter.

Once the Character Map utility opens, double-click on any character you wish to insert, and click the Select button to make it appear in the Characters to Copy field. You can Select more than one character at this time. Highlight one or more of the characters in the Characters to Copy you wish to insert and click the Copy button. You can now paste the character in any other application. Notice that when you click on a special character in the Character Map, the 4 digit Alt code is also displayed on the bottom right. If you think you would be using a particular character frequently, you could do well to try remember the code for the character so that you can quickly use it in combination with the Alt key.