Tag: Utilities

How To Easily Save Or Print A Directory’s Contents [Windows]

by
Inf

It may happen that you need a directory listing, that is a list of all the files in a folder. Unfortunately, there is no direct way to do this simple task in Windows.

Say you need to send a list of all the files found in a directory to a friend. You could take a screen-capture of the folder and send it to them. What if there are lots of files? You’d have multiple screen-captures and files will repeat in various captures. Not very elegant. So I’ll show you 3 methods to get a list of all files from a directory and save it as a text file.

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4 Innovative Tricks To Save Printer Ink

by
Inf

First post of 2011! Yay! So I thought I’d start with something that can help protect the environment and at the same time, save you some cash. Quite a good idea, no?

So as the title says, we’re going to try to have your printer drink less ink, and hence reduce the amount of money you invest feeding it. You should know that I tried and am still using those measures for a laser printer, but I believe that what works for toner should work pretty much the same for liquid ink. I have no idea about how dot-matrix printers will react, so don’t ask.

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10 Tips on how to Speed Up your Computer for Free

by
Inf

I’ve never heard anybody say: “This computer is too fast! I wish it was slower”. We all wish our computers performed faster, that it booted faster to allow us to get down to gaming working in a shorter lapse of time. The thing is, computers tend to get slower after some time. Windows XP was particularly vulnerable to this. Just after installing, XP booted in around 30 seconds. A few years later, it seems it takes ages to boot. Windows 7 holds its ground better in this area.

Leaving chatter and nostalgia apart, let’s see how I can get that machine of yours performing faster, while saving you some money. I’ll assume you are on Windows Vista / 7. Especially Vista. Yes, you resource-hogging Vista.

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Mount ISO Images In One Click Using WinCDEmu

by
Inf

Do you often have to mount ISO images? If you don’t know what ISO images are, they are simply images, or copies, of the filesystem of optical disks such as DVDs. You can think of them as “zip” files containing whatever there was on the disk.

Now before you can use an ISO file, you have to do something called “mounting” the ISO file. Mounting means to make a separate filesystem part of the current filesystem used by your Operating System. It’s like you’re taking a branch, and sticking it to the side of a tree. Then by climbing the tree, you can reach your new branch and its leaves, correct?

For ISO images, this “mounting” process is done by making the ISO file be represented as a virtual drive in Windows. All this to say, you’ll just get an additional “DVD” drive in your My Computer if you mount an ISO file.

There are various tools out there to do this mounting job. The most famous ones are probably Daemon Tools and Magic ISO. Maybe even Ultra ISO.

But, I tend to like minimum effort. I tried getting Daemon Tools to give me mounting options when I right-click on an ISO file without much success. The others are either too complex or not free.

If you want a dead-simple solution, try WinCDEmu. Despite its name, it does work with DVDs huh. And even Bluray I guess, but I haven’t tested those. I’m not lucky enough to be the owner of a BR drive… yet!

So WinCDEmu is an open-sourced application that works by installing a sort of virtual driver, along with its virtual bus and drives. Nothing for you to worry about, since it’s all done automatically. But you’ll need to have appropriate permissions (being Admin, for e.g.) to grant the permission to install the driver. And it’s a signed driver at that!

The process is just a Next-Next-Next process until it’s done. And? That’s it.

You’ll be presented with that window to customize settings. Nothing much to do.

To get it working? Double-click on your ISO image. A new “DVD” drive will be created in My Computer. You can then access the ISO contents as if they were a normal disk.

To unmount the ISO image, just right-click the virtual drive and select Eject.

Simple huh?

Also, WinCDEmu supports a variety of other disk image formats, such as ISO, CUE, NRG and IMG to name a few.

Just to mention that WinCDEmu didn’t associate with the CUE, NRG, IMG and other file formats on my machine, just ISO. If that’s the case, just right-click the image file, then select Open With – WinCDEmu Mounter. You can also change file associations in Windows to point the WinCDEmu Mounter—to have the double-click mounting functionality—like this on Windows Vista/7. For XP just Google.

  • Head to Control Panel – Default Programs – Associate a File Type or Protocol with a Program.
  • Locate your File Type e.g. NRG
  • Select it then click the Change Program on the top right corner.
  • Select WinCDEmu. Done

That’s it. Go download WinCDEmu and give it a try. A portable, but beta version, is also available. And if you know some application that can beat WinCDEmu in simplicity for this task, do share! Thanks for reading 😀

7 Utilities to Enhance your File Copying tasks

by
Inf

Let’s face it: Windows’ file copying functionalities haven’t improved much over the years. More details can be seen on the dialog, and the progress bar is prettier, but that’s basically it. There have not been any new functions added since… uh since forever? I have proof!

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Remote Control a computer with TeamViewer

by
Inf

Has it ever happened to you that someone requests some help with a problem regarding their computer? You will then usually try to provide assistance over the phone. However hard you try to explain, some problems are just not resolvable on phone. At that time, you wish you had just gone and meet the person. But if the person is in another country, you have a problem. Or maybe you are abroad or at a friend’s place, and want to check how your downloads are going, or do something on your machine?

In those situations, you want to “remote control” your computer.

There are a number of software that allow to do this, starting with Windows’ Remote Desktop Connection. It works well when using windows machines over local networking. However, when you take it through the Internet, it’s slow. There is also the problem of cross-platform compatibility. What if you want to help someone running Windows while you’re on Linux? For those situations, you may want a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) software. Basically, a VNC software comes in the form of two software pieces: the server and the client. You install the server on the PC you want to control, and you connect the client (viewer) to it. The problem with VNC is that it is not beginner-friendly since it requires some configuration, and the server-client concept may not be appealing to all. Also, without some tweaking, VNC can be really slow.

If you want a really simple, cross-platform and free solution, you will want TeamViewer.

TeamViewer comes as a single package, which acts as both server and client. It is also portable, in that it can run without installation (tested on Windows only).

So how do you use it? Just download the setup file (or package), choose to install or run it directly, and you’re basically done.

Now, you’ll be presented with this screen:

Two important things are shown in that screen: An ID and a password, which are unique for your machine. Password is sessional: it changes.

To connect to a person, ask them their ID and password. Put it in the box on the right, and choose what type of connection you want. As you see, you can provide “Remote Support” which will allow you to take control of their machine, “Presentation” which is like a “view-only” mode for presentations, with minimal display elements, “File Transfer”, which allows direct transfer of files between two computers, without having to upload the file first, and “VPN”, which is as if your two computers are connected to the same local network. This mode is great for LAN gaming over Internet. However, if you want only that feature, there are better software out there, like Hamachi or Tunngle.

When you click “Connect to partner”, you’ll have to put their password. And that’s it. If you chose Remote Support, you’ll have their desktop in front of you. You can now execute commands etc, as if you were working on your own machine.

TeamViewer works across Firewalls, NAT etc, so you don’t have to configure anything if your partner or yourself have those in place.

In my opinion, that is the simplest remote controlling a computer can be, so if you want to do that, give TeamViewer a try.

3 Utilities to Schedule System Shutdown

by
Inf

So, a friend of mine wanted to know if she could shutdown her PC automatically at a certain time. Or after a certain period of time. Well it’s possible. And I’m going to show you 3 utilities to do it, and how to do it from within your OS too, in case you don’t want to download. There are a LOT of shutdown utilities out there, but those below, I have used personally.

1. Shutter

Shutter

Shutter is my favourite shutdown utility due to its simplicity, but also because it comes from the author of the great ReNamer that I have already covered on Geekscribes previously.

Basically, you just choose the event that triggers the action. Events can be: countdown, at a specific time,  a period of low CPU usage, a process stops, battery low, among others. After that, you just set the action to do: sleep or shutdown the computer, mute volume, lock the computer, among others. Then just click Start. I don’t like that “Start” button. In my opinion, it should have been “Schedule”. If you want the action to take place immediately, just click “Now”. Shutter also offers an extensive set of options, like showing a message before an action takes place.

Shutter also includes a Web Interface if you want to do “Now” actions, or run commands remotely. This is a really great feature for those of you with a download/torrent box. Note, this can be a security problem, so be sure to set a good username and password when configuring the web server in Options.

Shutter comes in Installer and Portable formats.

2. PowerOff

PowerOff

PowerOff takes another approach at events and actions. It puts everything on the main window. So you just select your action on the left. On the right, set options, like whether you want a warning before the action executes, or whether to force-close applications. Then set the time. Either immediate, or schedule it to execute at a specific time.

There are extensive scheduling options, like at a time, on a fixed day, or a daily schedule, on a weekly schedule, on a day of month, or after a time period elapses. One thing I’d like is the “After” option to allow me to set minutes, hours etc, instead of just seconds.

PowerOff also includes remote-control features, like Shutter. Interestingly, you can have the command execute on a remote computer, if the latter supports it. I haven’t tested that feature though.

PowerOff is portable, and comes with the source code, if ever you want to mess around with it. It’s coded in C/C++ language.

3. Amp WinOff

Amp WinOFf

Amp WinOff, as you can see from the screenshot above, offers extensive options. You can set the actions to execute at a specific time (1st frame, top-right), or use a countdown (bottom-left frame), or when according to CPU load (top-right frame). You then set which action to take. It’s called “Shutdown mode” in Amp WinOff. You can even schedule days in advance.

While the program offers a many options and is very customizable, I don’t like the terminology used. Why is there a “Use the current time + 1 minute” and then a countdown feature? Also, I doubt “Lock Computer” is a “Shutdown Mode”. Anyway, those don’t really matter once you get familiar with the program. Now, the second thing that is annoying with Amp WinOff is that the website has been down for a while now, and I can’t find a mirror that’s still alive. The shot you’re seeing above is not from the latest version.

If you can find the utility somewhere, good.

4. Directly from your OS

Linux:

Yes, you can execute a sheduled shutdown right from your OS. Let’s start with Linux first. It should work on most major distros, but I only tested on Ubuntu.

Fire up your Terminal/Konsole or whatever it’s called in your distro.

Then the command structure is as this:

shutdown [- shutdown parameters] [ time parameter] [ optional message ]

shutdown parameters: r = reboot, h = halt, c = cancel shutdown (time parameter is then not required)

Some examples:

shutdown -r now    <-- Reboot immediately
shutdown -h 19:00  <-- Shutdown (Halt) the system at 19h
shutdown -h +5 "System will shutdown"   <-- Shutdown the system in 5 mins from now, and tell users why.

Quite easy huh? Just note that while a shutdown is scheduled, new users won’t be allowed to login 5 minutes before the shutdown sequence is initiated, i.e. only 5 mins left before shutdown. This is to be considered for multi-user environments.

Windows:

The command is similar to that of Linux, but different syntax and parameter names. Just open a command prompt (type cmd in the search box in Vista/Win7, or Winkey+R, then type cmd, or directly type the commands below in the search box in Win7)

shutdown [- shutdown parameters] [-t xx in seconds] [-c reason]
shutdown parameters: r = reboot, s = shutdown, a = abort shutdown

Some examples:

shutdown -r       <-- Reboots computer immediately
shutdown -s       <-- Shutdown computer immediately
shutdown -r -t 60 <-- Restart computer in 60 seconds
shutdown -s -t 3600 -c "Computer shutting down" <-- Shutdown in one hour (3600 seconds), and tell user why

You should get a confirmation that the command has been accepted. (E.g. Keys icon in the notification area with a message).

That’s it for this post. If you know other methods for scheduling a system shutdown, or maybe to get your favorite utility listed here, drop us a comment. Thanks!