If you’ve lost your CD Key for your current Windows installation you can get it back pretty easily. There is a program called RockXP that scans the computer for your product key and gets it out so that you can easily reinstall Windows. This is particularly handy when the computer you bought doesn’t come with the standard Windows reinstall disk, you can throw out the reinstall disk that came with your computer since it’s loaded with junk anyway and download a plain old Windows CD off the internet somewhere and use your legal product key to reinstall windows.
The program will also retrieve system passwords if you’ve forgotten them and product keys for Microsoft Office. On one computer the anti-virus software thought the application was a virus but on all of the other computers I have run it on there hasn’t been a problem. The anti-virus software that showed the false positive was Symantec’s anti-virus.
It’s all well and good when we post an article about building a great $500 gaming computer, but what if you don’t know how to put it all together? Well thanks to the power of the internet you can watch the video below and it will help guide you through putting one together. It really is pretty easy to put a computer together and most parts only fit in one slot and face one direction. You can mess up but it takes more effort to put something in wrong than you might think.
If you have a file that Windows won’t let you delete because it is in use then you’re in luck! There’s an easy solution, it’s called Process Explorer. It will show you which files are being used by which application. Process Explorer will allow you to end the entire application or just the portion of the application using that file.
The most handy feature is the ability to search for the file name you’re looking for. You won’t have to worry about looking through all of the applications running on your computer, just search for what you need. Once you find the item you are looking for you simply right click and select Kill Process. If you select Kill Process Tree that will kill everything running under the application you are killing. It can also provide you a lot more system information than the regular Task Manager can provide. Which could be useful if you wanted to figure out what is eating up all of your systems memory or processing power.
This month they are giving away free rentals on Sundays at Walmart based kiosks. Find a kiosk near you.
Every Sunday, get a free Redbox DVD rental by using the codes below at any Walmart with a Redbox kiosk.
Week 1 – 11moms4uS good Sunday 12/7 only
Week 2 – 11moms4uA good Sunday 12/14 only
Week 3 – 11moms4uN good Sunday 12/21 only
Week 4 – 11moms4uT good Sunday 12/28 only
Week 5 – 11moms4uA good Sunday 1/4 only
Around the middle of November Microsoft released an update to the 360 that made it a whole lot easier to stream movies to your Xbox from your computer. There are just a few simple steps and you will be able to stream movies of all different file types.
1. Turn on your Xbox 360 and either have it connected to your wireless network via an Ethernet wire, or via a wireless connection (requires the Xbox 360 Wireless Adaptor to connect wirelessly)
2. Turn on to your pc where you have all your media.
3. Check to see if you have Microsoft Windows Media Player 11, you can check this by opening Windows Media Player right clicking > Help > About Windows Media Player
If you don’t have version 11, you can go to http://update.microsoft.com using Internet Explorer and download the latest version.
4. Once you have the latest version, go back to Windows Media Player, and right click the now playing button and choose ‘more options’.
5. You will be prompted with an Options window, select the Library tab
6. Click the button that says ‘configure sharing’.
7. A Media Sharing window will pop up, click the check box that says ‘share my media’, then a little box will pop up listing devices and computers in your network. Click on your Xbox 360.
8. Once you’ve done this, click the OK button, you will be taken back to the previous window under the library tab.
9. Click the Monitor Folders button, choose the folders to monitor then click OK. The computer will take a few minutes to find all your media.
10. Next, go to your Xbox360 and on the Dashboard (the new one released Nov 18,2008) go to My Xbox, then select whichever type of media you want to stream. To do Video go to Video Library.
11. You will then be prompted to ‘Select Source’. At the bottom of the options below ‘Downloaded Videos, Current Disc and Portable Device’ you should see the name of the computer you just set up.
12. Select it, and wait a second and choose the video you want to watch!
It is that simple, I used it to watch the newest episode of The IT Crowd (a clip from an episode of the show below in case you haven’t seen it).
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