Speed up your boot time, hot tip #2

Here is the second and more powerful boot time reducer for Windows. I have added a warning to the first tip to reduce boot time. Please see that too.

As I said in the previous tip there is a powerful startup service selector in msconfig under Windows. What you have to do is go to Start»Run and type "MSCONFIG" , the Microsoft System Configuration Utility will pop up. Now select the "STARTUP" tab. Here what you see is all the programs that will automatically be started when Windows starts and if the unnecessary ones are there your start up time is gonna increase a lot. So remove the unwanted programs, press Apply and Reeboot.

Unchecking the programs is where you need to be cautious because you must be sure that you don't remove your systems sound driver, Graphics driver or other important programs. Here almost all of the services can be removed actually. But if there are some programs provided by your graphucs card, Sound card or your Laptop provider like DELL please make sure it won't affect your systems working. See this Image You can easily figure out the other removed ones alos by either looking at the name or the path. But here what stays checked is important. "igfxtray" can be removed (the tray icon for intel garphic accelerator - present only for intel boards with onboard graphics enabled) "igfxpers.exe" is graphics driver..

I have found that some programs are commonly present on most systems which can be removed from startup safely, they are

hkcmd : intel hot key manager (it can be removed but Windows Hot Keys won't work)
realsched : Real player's memory resident service (some crap)
ctfmon : monitors the active windows and provides text input service support for speech recognition, handwriting recognition, keyboard, translation, and other alternative user input technologies
Yahoo***, Google***, Nero***, Acro*** are all tray icons which can be removed

So if you got some doubt about something here please feel free to contact me : 'ajithonly' is my gmail email (use the @gmail.com also).Read the first tip to make your system faster. Also know the unknown reason for sudden system slowdown.

External Links : None

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What's all the fuzz about invalid xhtml pages.

All of the authors of blogs as well as web pags will love to see their page to be of valid 'whatever language you used" like html, xhtml, css etc. And the following is the mainly used tool to check whether you page is valid or not is the W3Schools validator tool. But many of us (mainy Blogger users) have also found that however hard we try we can't get the page without errors if the strict check is enabled, Why?

1. For Blogspot : If you know your page well and look at the errors shown you will come to the sad conclusion that you wil NEVER be able to make your page valid..It's because even if write your posts and template in valid xhtml the Blogger parts - Navbar, iFrames and attributes used with them. We can do nothing about them, but still many of the attributes used by us in template as well as posts are invalid if we use xhtml strict. So read the following suggestions.

2. For all : If you are a blogger or a webpage developer there can be errors in your document. Ofcourse if you are only starting you may not be able to resolve many of this. So following are the main errors and the suggestions to rectify them.

<img>

Empty tags are not allowed in XHTML. so you need to use <br /> for <br>, <hr /> for <hr>, <img /> for <img>

width=..,height=..,

It is always better to use <style="width:xx px; ..."> The usage is as follows
<img src="PATH" width="xx" border="mm">>. for this try using <img src="PATH" style="border: toppx rightpx bottompx leftpx; margin: toppx rightpx bottompx leftpx; width:xxpx;" alt="Alternate text" /> (you can use negetive numbers for margin border etc.. and alos px can be changed to cm centimeter, in inch etc..)

alt="TEXT"

Never forget to put alternate text, the text shown in image disabled browsers. (always use some text that best describes you image)

<sctipt language="JavaScript">

Use <script type="text/javascript(VBscript)">

<style>

be sure you use <style type="text/css">

<u>

This tag for underlining can't be usd (it works still) use <font style="text-decoration:underline;">

Most common errors - from W3Schools site

not using </li> or other closing tags, usage of empty tags like <br>, not using alt in images etc...

So check your web page for errors and go care fully through the result page so that next time you edit your page the error wont repeat.

External Links : XHtml How to

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Speed up your boot time, hot tip #1

We all would like to have a blazing fast computer but each time we buy a new one the next day a faster system appears. So what we can do is to make little tweaks and hacks so that the system boots faster. Here Ill be discussing some tips that can be done by all. Some of you may already know it but some may not.

The first tip is a Windows only tip. This is a simple one and as this is the starting the tip is also a small one (better ones will soon follow). this will make small improvement in boot up time

Tips :

1 . Take Microsoft System Configuration Utility by typing "msconfig" in the RUN dialogs (Start»Run).
Select BOOT.ini tab from General,SYSTEM.INI,WIN.INI,Services and Startup tabs. There will be a check box NOGUIBOOT enable that. You have disabled the Windows Splash Screen (an animated loading indicator with the windows logo on black background that appears just before the welcome screen) that appears every time you boot. This will improve the boot up time a little bit.
2 . Goto Start»All Programs»Startup and delete all the programs that you don't want at start up. (A powerful function is provided by msconfig but ill deal with in detail later.)

So try this out today itself and tell me if you have any suggestions or doubts...

Warning
Enabling NOGUIBOOT will make the boot-time messages not to be shown. This means if an ERROR checking has been scheduled you will not see the dialogue that says "An error check has been scheduled press any key to cancel it:" also if you use third party tools to format your harddrive during boot time there can be a problem.

You may also like to read the 2nd post on Speeding up your System. Also know the unknown reason for Sudden System Slowdown

External Links : None

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Darkness is better than light..

For the last 3 days I have never been on the net, I haven't commented on my regular blogs nor have I added a new post to my blog.. Well this is not because I was lazy but because the electricity board was. I was deprived of 'power' for two days nearly and so I was not able to come online..

I have a habit of connecting to the net after 10 PM whe I am at Home. So last Friday after the Good Friday service at church I was in a lazy mood, after having my dinner my parents went to bed, I had noting else to do so I decided to login. But only after an hour the power was out and I was wondering because there was no rain or strong winds.. Anyways I decided to got to bed and logon next morning.

The real shock came when my father called the electricity board guys and they told there was some fault in 11 KV line, so it was expected that power would be resumed only afternoon. I decided to clean the computer and made it like a scramble then left it there and went to a friends place and returned only at evening and the power was back. But my relief was short lived as soon there was strong winds and heavy rain.

It is a common thing here that if there is rain there will be a power outage. This is because there are many trees in this part and so tree branches falling on power cables are common. Well it happened again and the power was out. There was some other thing more interesting now. It was the large no of lightning. So on Sunday the 'electric' guys came and found out that one of the porcelain insulator used on the electric post was broken and so told us that they had none with them and needed to pick up one from their office..damn it. For the luck I had we had one of them at our house (an old one left by previous workers). So they soon resumed power but now it was time for me to return to college (hostel) that the whole lot happened on my weekend and this is what caused me not to post a single post this weekend. But as I told you I have taken photods of cleaning and opening the computer which will be here soon..

External Links : About Me: Ajith K Punnoose

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