PC Hints and Tips

You can use special codes in MySpace to make your profile look really cool. Everyone will wonder how you did it. Go to edit your profile and, in your About Me box, try these codes (including the semi-colon): † ♥ ♠ ← → ® ¼ ½ ©. There are many more and there’s a list at http://xurl.jp/q5o

Not everybody finds the Windows key useful. If you keep hitting it by accident and getting pop-up menus, boxes and actions when you don’t want them, you can disable it. It’s a Registry hack but it’s not difficult to carry out.

Click Start in Vista or Start, Run in XP and enter ‘regedit’ (without the quotes) to start the Registry Editor. Find the following folder on the left: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrenctVersion\Policies\Explorer. Right-click the empty space on the right and select New, ‘DWORD value’. Enter NoWinKeys, double-click it and enter 1 for the value. Quit the Registry Editor and restart Windows for it to take effect. If you ever want your Windows key back again, return to the value you created in the Registry, right-click it and select Delete.

The Windows Error-Checking tool (Chkdsk) can identify and fix potential problems with your hard disk. Run it every few weeks or once a month if everything seems to be performing fine. It’s also worth running Chkdsk straight after every crash or hard-disk reset.

To access the tool, open My Computer (Computer in Vista), right-click your system drive and select Properties. Go to the Tools tab, click the Check Now button and add ticks to ‘Automatically fix file system errors’ and ‘Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.’ You’ll probably have to restart Windows before Chkdsk can begin checking the drive.

Sometimes you want to choose an album and listen to it from start to finish, but sometimes you just want to listen to a variety of tracks. iTunes’ Party Shuffle is a great way to listen to music and it picks a random selection of tracks it thinks you will like. You can also customise it. Go to Edit, Preferences and select the Playback tab, Drag the Smart Shuffle slider to the left or right according to your preferences. You can choose to shuffle songs, albums or groupings too.

The Vista edition of IE7 includes a feature that is designed to prevent children from accessing websites they shouldn’t. To set it up, go to Tools, Internet Options, then select the Content tab and click Parental Controls. This option isn’t available in the XP version, unfortunately.

The free version of this tweaking tool for Vista only gives you access to some of the program’s features - you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro version to unlock them all. The available functions are split between four tabs. Tools offers system information, a Registry cleaner and a disk defragmenter. System conatins a recentitems cleaner, and system, file, network and security tools. Optimization focuses on your computer’s memory/cache and services, while Customizations covers the Start Menu, Taskbar and Media Player.

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Whichever social networking you are using, it’s important to be careful about the type of personal information you make publicy availble, especially as your profile my appear in search engine results. Avoid adding contact details such as your address, phone number and email to your profile, and don’t post any potentially incriminating photos on your page.

Make sure you keep the content of your website relevant and up-to-date because it will help to get optimum indexing for your pages on search engines. Google will index pages more frequently when they are updated on a regular basis, which means a higher profile in its search engine. Of course, regularly offering new content is also great way to keep visitors returning.

When choosing a domain name, try to think of one that won’t get confused with another site and make it as simple as possible. If a visitor to your website is unable to remember your domain name, they are unlikely to visit again, so avoid niggly complications like hyphens.

In Windows XP, you can rename multiple files simultaneously. Select all the revelant files, then right-click and select Rename. Type in your chosen title and they will be all renamed according to what you entered, with a number in brackets to differentiate between them.