Sometimes when you put in a music CD or a thumb drive Windows will pop up a Autoplay dialogue that is full of entries for programs which you may not use or may not even have installed. To clean them up you will need to install a free program from Microsoft called TweakUI [http://www.download.com/Tweak-UI/3000-2341_4-10002117.html?hhTest=1].

1.Run this program

2. Click the plus sign next to “My Computer”

3. Click the plus sign next to “AutoPlay”

4. Select “Handlers”

5. You’ll see a “Delete” button, but it doesn’t seem to work; instead, click the listing you want to get rid of and click the “Edit” button.

6. Uncheck all the drives listed under the “Supported Media” category.

7. Click the “Ok” button to save your changes and close TweakUI, and you should see your simplified AutoPlay dislogue the next time you pop in a CD or thumb drive.

TweakUI, however, doesn’t run in Windows Vista.

Option A
1. Click My Computer

2. Select the CD drive

3. Right click on the drive and select Properties

4. Select the Autoplay tab

5. At the drop-down windows, click on the down arrow to select
the type of file/content you want to control such as ‘Music Files,
Pictures, Video files, etc.

6. Select ‘Select an action to perform’

7. Select the option from the menu

8. Click Apply

9. Click OK

If you surf the internet frequently you may want to consider using a so-called Password Manager as few of us these days can keep track of the multiple passwords we have created when joining various social networking sites, forums, email account and what have you.

Password Managers are programs that provide secure access codes and store them in encrypted form on a computer. You then just copies the given password into your web browser’s input field. The password manager itself is then protected by a hard-to-crack access code.

A secure password. It should be at least eight characters long, includes both capital and lower-case letters, special characters and numbers. Also, nonsensical combinations are always better than real words.

By using Strong Password Generator (downloadable at http://strongpasswordgenerator.com), you can create hard-to-crack passwords ranging from 5 to 21 characters with just one click of a button. And in addition to that, it also provides you with a mnemonic feature to help you in remembering the given password.

1. Start

2. Control Panel

3. Power Options

4. Advance tab

5. Under “Power buttons” section:
    “When I close the lid of my portable computer”, select “Do nothing”

What is hibernate? Hibernate is a special way of shutting down your computer in which its current state is saved to the hard disk before powering off. Later when the computer ‘wakes up’ from hibernation it will restore to the same state it was in when hibernation was invoked thereby saving you time and the trouble of having to open up the same documents/programs again.

To enable hibernate feature:

1. Go to Start > (Settings >) Control Panel

2.  Double click on “Power Options’

3. Select the ‘Hibernate’ tab

(Note: If the Hibernate tab is not shown, it means your computer does not support hibernation.)

4. Select ‘Enable hibernation’

5. Click ‘Apply’ and you are done.