Have you noticed your hard drive has been slowly filling up? If you’ve had your machine for a while, a lot of extra “stuff” can build up over time. Whether it’s temporary files from your browser, old music files in your iTunes library, or something else, it can be tricky to hunt down and delete junk files.

Fortunately, this is help for your bogged-down drive. WinDirStat, one of the least appealingly named pieces of freeware out there, is also one of the most useful. The program rapidly indexes your entire hard drive, creates a visual map of every file, and helps you delete the stuff you don’t need.

Back in January I treated myself to a new laptop, a mobile workstation. Compared to my old laptop, the new machine was operating at the speed of light. However, with all the software that came and went over the months, and despite regular system maintenance, some minor but annoying bugs had crept in along with the performance slowly declining. At some point reinstalling your machine simply is inevitable. Although my system was not at that point yet, I decided it was time to clear the battlefield last weekend.

We all know how difficult it can be to keep your online accounts safe and how hackers are always trying to break into accounts with dictionary attacks. This is why you should never use short simple passwords that you can find in a dictionary such as your name, the name of your partner, child, dog, whatever. You might think that having PASSWORD as your password is hilarious but it isn’t hilarious when you’re locked out of your online banking account.

No one desktop is like the other. Some people tend to clutter their desktops rigorously, others prefer clear open space, and yet others enjoy it neat and nicely decorated. While my “hardware” desk tends to be somewhat cluttered and requires a thorough cleaning now and then, I belong to the last group when it comes to desktops. With no icons disfiguring my beautiful wallpapers, I’m a sucker for easy to access additional space for holding shortcuts and the like.

KlipFolio is a desktop dashboard for news, blogs, photos, the local weather and a lot more.

It’s one of these addictive little tools that I just can’t stop playing around with, and I have been using it for over two years.

KlipFolio sits on your desktop. It can float freely or dock to either side and work as a sidebar. It can be as large or small, as flashy or unobtrusive as you want it to be. It’s fully customizable. That’s its beauty.

Is it just me or do you hate Windows Explorer too?

I have used file managers in the past but have given them up for the ease and simplicity of integrating and using StExBar. Its functionality is ridiculously simple. StExBar gives my Windows Explorer a helping hand at getting things done quicker. It adds a tool bar to your Windows Explorer with common tasks.

This seems like such an obvious maneuver - even Microsoft should have picked it up and ran with it. Since the author just updated the application I decided to share it with you all at Make Use Of. If you use something similar or better, don’t be shy - let us know in the comments!

If you are the type of person who likes to try out lots of new applications or if you just like to click ‘next, next, next’ while installing software, chances are that you may have some bloatware and possibly messed up your right click context menus.

Well if that is the case or you simply want to play along and customize the right click menus then you need mmm…. mmm..

Download it and we will see how you can use it. What’s “IT” ? Oh….sorry in case you are wondering about the software I am talking about (but I already mentioned its name (twice!)) its “Mmm”. Download it here.

KallOut is a very simple, yet very functional, Windows program. For highlighted text in many programs (including Firefox, Adobe Acrobat, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office and Notepad) it puts a small icon next to the highlighted words, which looks like this . When you hover your mouse over that icon, it gives you a menu to look up the selected text in many popular services like Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, eBay and many more.

Also with the BestGuess™ feature, KallOut even analyzes the content you’ve selected and suggests the most relevant places to search for that phrase.

We all know how important software updates are, the importance magnifies even more when the operating system needs updates. Some of the updates might even be critical and eventually end up saving the day or ruining it if you don’t keep your system updated.

Here are 5 ways you can use to update your Windows operating system.

However you will ask “why not do it the usual way I’ve been doing it in the past?”

The answer is that these alternative ways are specially useful for:

Windows Explorer does do its job, but there is a lot left to be desired. Xplorer2 Lite gives you a more powerful alternative that makes browsing those folders quick and easy. Xplorer2 Lite is the free version of Xplorer2, but don’t let that worry you. The free version has a good feature set that still makes it a great option as your alternative to Windows Explorer.

Integration

Xplorer2 Lite isn’t a full replacement for Windows Explorer. What I mean by this is that if you click on a folder after Xplorer2 Lite is installed, it will still open with Windows Explorer. However, right clicking on a folder now gives you the option to open the folder in Xplorer2 Lite. This is a minor inconvenience, but it’s worth it. You’ll see.

It’s been nearly two years since Windows Vista was released to the masses back in November of 2007. Throughout this somewhat painful couple of years Microsoft managed to turn around just about all of the major issues facing the new operating system (compatibility, performance and bugginess) and they’ve even, believe it or not, had considerable commercial success.

If you have only very recently upgraded or bought a new computer then hopefully this list of essential downloads will be useful for you.

These are not suggested replacement applications, these are downloads to enhance and complement what already comes with Windows Vista.

Slow, cluttered up, lots of dangling shortcuts, invalid registry entries, long startup times, these are all common problems for Windows users. Keeping track of everything and performing maintenance tasks can get cumbersome sometimes but not if you use “Glary Utilities”.

Glary Utilities presents you with a bundle of tools to take care of these common problems and makes system maintenance a breeze! It’s an approx 6MB file which you can download from here. Install and fire it up and you get a host of utilities that help you take care of the most common problems.

Windows Vista has been out for quite a bit and although there has been much dispute on whether or not XP is better, it’s safe to say that there are tons of users who are using Vista, whether they want to or not.

One of the problems I had when I was buying Windows Vista was what version to get. There was Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, Ultimate and a lot of others most people never heard about. Although I wanted all the awesome tools in Windows Vista Ultimate, I was stuck with Home Premium because I didn’t want to shell out the extra cash.

Last week we did a poll on Top 5 Firefox shortcuts. It turned out great, after 550 + votes we had our top 5 shortcuts.

The cool part about running such a poll was that it especially helped those users who had never used shorcuts before. Instead of randomly jumping at the long list of shotcuts ,they could see what are the top recommended ones and start with them instead.

Today we are extending the top shortcuts idea to Windows. This time, tell us about your favorite Windows shortcuts. So please vote on your top Windows shortcuts below.

Windows Task Manager is a bit of a tease. Sure it provides you with some usable information, but it falls far short of providing you with the information that you really need. It is most commonly used to display information on all processes running on your computer, as well as advising you of the CPU and memory usage stats for a given process. Additional selective information on running applications, performance, local area connection and on users is also available.

Most importantly, from within Task Manager you have the option of selectively killing processes. But how do you determine which processes are safe to kill based on the limited information Task Manager provides?

Today we will be taking a look at nCleaner. It is a free Windows system cleaning application. This app will let you clean your system, applications, free more disk space, boost your system’s speed and get more stability and privacy protection. All for the low, low price of free…

Who could say no to all of that?

Plus in case you’re wondering how this differs from apps such as CCleaner, read on for a full list of what Ncleaner will do for you….

* The Windows shortcut document also includes shortcuts for Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook.

I have been looking for something like Revo Uninstaller for years. If you’ve ever used “Add or Remove Programs” on Windows, you know that it’s slow, uninformative, and sometimes not very good at its sole function: uninstalling things. Revo Uninstaller aims to correct those design flaws by being conversely fast, helpful and very effective at uninstalling just about anything you can throw at it.

The interface centers around the main uninstaller which is very easy to use. You can view your installed programs as either large icons or in a detailed list view. I prefer the list view because it lets you sort by name, size, installation date or company. Revo Uninstaller also displays the version number and the product’s website, if applicable.

Windows interfaces have evolved steadily with time. Windows XP was a step forward in interfaces over previous versions and so is Windows Vista over Windows XP.
The thing with the Windows interface is that it looks pretty for some time then we get tired of it. This is not the case with Compiz Desktop Effects and the themes in Linux. There are so many options that one can always find something new and worth changing to for some time.

The following apps lets you overhaul your Windows interface and add some eye candy and usability enhancements at the same time. You wont need pliers and screwdrivers - promise!

While you’re busy editing your images with Photoshop, Gimp, or a photo-manager like Picasa, what kind of image viewer are you using? Most of the time when you are viewing an image you aren’t using an editor, especially bulky ones like those listed above. You’re using a lightweight program that primarily lets you view, zoom, flip, and save. Microsoft pre-installs Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, but like most pre-installed Windows apps, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Your friendly neighborhood admin is back again with another Windows tool to help you tame your computer.

I shared with you my favorite application for tweaking the Windows Registry (safely) with WinSecret and how to use SteadyState to keep your machine the way you like it even after letting others mess around on it. Now how about we look into what your machine does when it starts up?

AutoRuns a SysInternals tool that has been converted into a Microsoft Windows utility is a much more powerful alternative to Microsoft’s built-in MSConfig tool (seen below). Both of these tools shows you what starts up with Windows and allows you to change it. AutoRuns just has a lot more options to help you out than its Microsoft predecessor.

Microsoft is offering their users a piece of free magic software, called SteadyState. We have all been there late at night and our virtual guard is down. Maybe you hopped on an unsecured network and decided to browse some hardcore porn sites bit torrent trackers um er let’s just say some not so reputable sites. Either way you have exposed your machine to a potentially bad neighborhood and if your protection on your machine isn’t up to snuff then who knows what could have happened already!

I’m a pretty careful guy so I tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to protecting my home machine from the ever increasing malware infestations we seem to be subjected to while surfing, downloading and uploading on the internet. Some might even consider it overkill.

Currently my home system is running the following freeware: Zone Alarm (3′rd most popular firewall among MakeUseOf readers), WinPatrol (system monitor), Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus, ThreatFire 3 (blocks zero-day attacks heuristically), SnoopFree Privacy Shield (anti-keylogger) and Spyware Terminator (spyware protection/removal). This is my minimum safety configuration; depending on circumstances, in addition, I will also use Sandboxie (a free sand box application).

These days, hiding or locking a folder or file is probably something you will need if you use a computer that others use too.

A previous post has been written on this topic here but I have found a few other methods of doing such a thing, excluding download programs that can be easily accessible to others.

Here are five other methods:

Windows

Method 1 (the easy one)

1. Click “Start”, “Run,” and then type cmd. When the command prompt opens type “CD C:\Test” (replace “Test” with the name of the folder you want to hide.)

2. Now type “attrib file +s +h” and replace “file” with the name of the actual file name you would like to hide.

What is your nastiest experience with viruses and/or other malware? The other day just before presentations my friend came to me with his laptop and showed me the havoc that had reigned on it! He had burnt some discs for others, using data from their USB drive and in the process got infected. Now he was unable to run Powerpoint, nor was he able to scan with the anti-virus as it won’t start a scan due to the infections (see the irony). Just the splash screens and boom - nothing seemed to run.

It’s time for another poll. Today we want to ask you about disk defrag tools. What program do you use to defragment your hard drive?

Anyone who’s owned a Windows PC for a long time will probably agree that eventually you have to defrag the hard drive. As you move files around and keep installing new programs your disk gets fragmented. Fragmented files take longer to run and results in slower performance. So if you want to keep the hard drive at its peak performance, make sure to defragment your computer once in a while.

There are thousands and thousands of applications available for Linux, and even more being developed as you read this. As much as I love Linux and Open Source, sometimes you happen to love a Windows application so much that you wonder if only this was available on Linux I would completely switch. It has happened to me in the past when I would switch over into Windows to play Counter Strike and Half Life and some people also wanted Photoshop on Linux because the GIMP requires some adjusting to on the interface.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article in which I described some of the features I particularly liked about Vista. However in the comments Justin and anob pointed out that a couple of the features I had mentioned were not actually Vista specific.

I decided it was time to teach myself how to really use one of Vista’s best new features… Windows Search.

Yeah, I know… wow, exciting stuff. It’s not something I used to care about either. I remember whenever I heard Microsoft banging on about the gee-whiz search capabilities of Vista I really didn’t care as I was stuck in Win32/XP style navigation; of menus and forms and tabs. Why would I be interested in changing what was already working for me?

If you have spent anytime at all customizing your Windows machine to act and function exactly as you want it to then you have definitely come across registry entries. They are all over the net. Ranging from simple changes to exotic or wacky mods. Every single one of them is preceded by a warning that normally looks something like this:

Changes made to the Windows registry happen immediately, and no backup is automatically made. Do not edit the Windows registry unless you are confident about doing so.

Microsoft have issued the following warning with respect to the Registry Editor:

Summer starts today. It’s the longest day of the year and it’s not too late for some last minute spring cleaning. Of course keeping your system clear of junk is always a good idea. However, here’s a quick six step guide to unclutter your system, increase its performance and speed it up.

The image to the left was graciously provided by Roma Flowers via stock.xchng.

1. Unclutter

Remove excess software through >start >control panel >software. If something won’t uninstall because it was never installed properly in the first place, try Microsoft’s Windows Installer CleanUp Utility.