Archive for category Experiments
Remove windows messenger from windows xp
Posted by pratik in Experiments, Windows on April 21, 2009
Close Windows Messenger if its open, or active in your System Tray.
Click Start, Run and enter the following command:
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove
Note: This will prevent a long delay when opening Outlook Express if you have the Contacts pane enabled.
To prevent this, click Start, Run and enter REGEDIT Go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express
Right click in the right pane and select New, Dword value. Give it the name Hide Messenger Double click this new entry and set the value to 2.
Removing thumbs.db file from Windows xp
Posted by pratik in Experiments, Windows on April 8, 2009
I’m sure everyone using Windows XP has seen a small file in some directories called thumbs.db. This file is a cache of the thumbnail pictures in a directory. It speeds up the showing of thumbnails when you are viewing a folder in Thumbnail view.
The only drawback of the thumbs.db file is that it takes up disk space. Although this space is very small in most cases, if you have a lot of thumbs.db files littering your hard drive you may be able to save some valuable space by removing them. Follow the steps below to turn off the creation of this file and delete the thumbs.db files that are on your hard drive.
To turn this feature off, do the following:
1) Open My Computer
2) Click on Tools
3) Click on Folder Options
4) Click on the View Tab
5) Place a check in the option “Do not cache thumbnails”
6) Click Ok
7) Close My Computer
Now follow the next steps to remove the thumbs.db files from your hard drive
1) Click on Start
2) Click on Search
3) Click on All Files and Folders
4) Type the following in the section called “all or part of the file name” thumbs.db
5) In the Look in box, make sure Local Hard Drives is chosen
6) Click Search
7) A long list of thumbs.db files should appear, click on Edit, Select All
Click on File, and choose Delete
9) Close the Search Results window
Although this tip isn’t for everyone, if you are low on disk space and dont use the Thumbnail view to show your files, this may save you some valuable disk space.
Original Article: http://www.pchell.com/support/thumbsdb.shtml
Sites for downloading torrents
Posted by pratik in Experiments, Random on August 2, 2008
Ok, once you have finalized on torrent client, you need to find sites to download torrents from. For speed, sites with Registrations are recommended, but in case you have anything less than 512 kbps connection, speed should not be your major concern! :p
Below is a list of sites which are good for locating your favorite movies, software’s, songs via torrents.
Always remember the more the Seeders, the better the chances of your torrent not getting stuck midway! Always go for torrents which have seeders and always see how many times the download has been successfully completed. Many sites even give you the option of checking the tracker status, so that is the best way to check if the torrent you want to download is still available online or not. Always avoid downloading files from unknown sites. This is the best way to avoid uninvited viruses/trojans/spywares on your computer!
The list of sites is as follows (Some of them might no longer work as this is an old article):
http://www.bitsoup.org
http://www.bitenova.org
http://www.torrentreactor.to
http://www.piratebay.org
http://www.torrentspy.com
http://www.btjunkie.org
http://www.litebay.org
http://www.bi-torrent.com
http://www.bittorentportal.com
http://www.mininova.org
http://www.araiditracker.com
http://www.torrentbytes.net
http://www.filelist.org
http://www.empornium.us
http://www.torrentit.com
http://www.torrenttyphoon.com
http://www.torrentz.com
http://www.demonoid.com
Apart from this you can always use Google, just enter the movie, album followed by torrent and voila you should get proper results to the torrent atleast in 90% of the searches. This list keeps on changing regularly, since sites keep going down regularly due to legal issues. You can check for new torrent sites on threads like http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/1/174585
http://torrentfreak.com/top-15-torrent-sites/
http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/peersharing/a/torrent_search.htm
There are many more you can search on the net