What if you are working on something personal or confidential on your computer screen and somebody comes to you. It might be your boss or some person or a friend. You might not want them to see what you are watching or working on.

Most of us use convenient Windows key + D or Windows Key + M to hide the running windows, but they get minimized to task bar and if someone has come to use your computer, he or she still might open it by clicking on the software in the task bar.

In this article, I will review a freeware tool called “Windows Running Applications Protector” which can hide any running windows application and the application will not even appear in the Windows Task Bar.

Fix:

Windows Running Applications Protector is a freeware tool which gives and easy to use solution to protect your applications from being seen or used by others.

Using this tool, you can select the applications to hide and also set a hotkey to hide the applications. So if an unwanted person comes near your computer screen, just press the hotkey combination and all the tasks that you set will get hidden.

You can use this app in Normal mode, Tray Mode and Stealth mode where you can set a password to protect the applications.

This is a wonderful tool for you if you want to protect confidential company information on screen or some client proposal, or something personal etc. from being seen by anyone who walks around to peep into your computer screen.

Download WinRAP

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But don’t lose hope as you can try some methods given below to recover your data from your excel.

Method 1:

Open the recovered copy of the excel file.

1. Open Start >> All programs >> Microsoft Office >> Microsoft Office Tools and click “Microsoft Office Application Recovery”

2. In application list click Microsoft Excel , click recover application.

Note: Don’t click End Application, otherwise recent changes to your workbook will be lost.

3. Open Microsoft Excel , the excel workbook you want to recover will be listed Document Recovery task pane.

4. To open or save your workbook, click the arrow on the right of the workbook in the task pane.

Method 2:

Use “Open and Repair” command

1. Start Microsoft Excel.

2. On the File menu, click Open.

3. In the Open dialog box, select the damaged excel file, Click the arrow on the Open button, and then click Open and Repair. Click the image below to enlarge.

4. When prompted click Repair to try to recover your most recent changes.

5. If you receive the following error message, click Yes.

The document file name caused a serious error the last time it was opened. Would you like to continue opening it?

6. Save your recovered workbook, that’s it done!

Method 3:

Save the file in HTML format

This method is useful when you are not able to save the files as .xls file, see the steps below:

1. In Microsoft Excel the File menu, click Save as Web Page.

2. Under Save, click Entire Workbook, and then click Save.

3. Close the file and open the file again in Excel.

5. On the File menu, click Save As.

6. In the Save as type list, click Microsoft Excel Workbook.

7. Change the name of the file to create a new copy without replacing the original.

Method 4:

Through Recovery Toolbox tool

Last but not the least if none of the above methods works, you can try this software called RECOVERY TOOLBOX FOR EXCEL 1.1.5 which is free to try.

Some Features:

Recover style of table
- Recover number formats (except colors, used in a number format)
- Recover fonts
- Recover worksheets
- Recover columns width and rows height
- Recover cell data of workbook

and so on.

Download RECOVERY TOOLBOX FOR EXCEL 1.1.5

We hope at least one of the above methods will work for you.

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One of our readers reported that when he starts his computer, he gets a message like “Verifying DMI pool, Booting from CD and then there is an error like Non-System Disk or Disk error Replace and press any key when ready”

One of the messages shown in this type of problem is given in the image above some other messages are like DISK BOOT FAILURE, NTLDR is missing etc.

There can be several reasons for this kind of error, like :

• Non-bootable floppy or CD present in drive
• Corrupt boot-loader
• Faulty Hard disk drive

Let us see the fix for each of these.

Fix:

1. First of all, check floppy drive and CD / DVD drive, there should be no disk drive inside it when you are starting your computer. This is most common type of reason for such kind of problems.

2. If there is still problem even after removing all CDs / DVDs and Floppies , it is possible that boot-loader has got corrupt. In such case you need to repair the boot-loader.

• For Windows XP, you can use a bootable Windows XP setup CD, boot the computer with bootable CD and run Recovery setup by pressing R key. This will boot the computer in recovery mode. You will see command prompt, on this prompt type “fixmbr” without quotes and press y to confirm , now press enter.This will fix the Master Boot Record.
• For repairing Windows Vista Boot-loader refer this post.

3. If it still does not work, then it is possible that your computer’s hard disk drive has gone faulty. Sometimes this kind of problem is also faced due to over-heating of drive.

There may also be a problem in System power supply ports, as we have experienced sometimes ourselves. Check these things and get the disk checked on some other computer, or show it to your computer vendor/ technician.

Hope this information given will help you fix the trouble.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2010 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

One of our readers Vimal reported us a problem saying: "windows not genuine , this comes when I start my Windows XP".

This is one of the most common problem which is faced by lot of windows users these days as they don’t have the legit copy of windows XP.

This message as shown in the image above appears every time the user logged in windows, with a timer of some seconds before the Resolve Later button got enabled, all this delayed the entire windows logon process.

Let’s see how can we resolve this issue

Fix:

The most simplest way now a days is by using Remove WGA Notification tool, which runs silently and check it the WGA notification tool is already active on your system.

What is Remove WGA ?

A small utility that enables you to remove the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications tool, which is calling home and connect to MS servers every time you boot.

Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications is very much different than Windows Genuine Advantage Validation.

NOTE: Remove WGA will only removes the notification part, phoning home, and does not touch the Validation part.

If you are looking for Windows 7 Upgrade from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 RTM, please refer this tutorial – Upgrade From Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 RTM
 

Download Remove WGA

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I have been using my portable hard disk drive for more than an year now. Its a laptop hard-disk of 2.5 inches, 80GB capacity with a USB 2.0 casing. By now the drive has become nearly full, there is little free space.

Three days back, I got a warning saying

“Windows delayed write failed -  Windows was unable to save all the data for the file M:\$Mft. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this data elsewhere.”

For a moment I thought that disk is going faulty, but with some hit and trial, I got it fixed.

Let me share the solution with you.

Fix:

This kind of problem is observed when the drive is almost full and there is some problem being faced by the disk in maintaining the file allocation table. This problem can be fixed in some easy steps:

1. Delete some un-necessary stuff from your drive and make at-least 5% of the total disk space as free space. See this post in case you need more details.

2. Open My Computer, right click on the USB drive, click on properties.

3. Go to Tools > Error-checking and select option to check now as shown in the image below.

4. This will show a window like the one below. Check the check-boxes to Automatically fix the file system and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors. Click Start.

NOTE: If you are not able to run this scan, disconnect the drive and try again. If the USB malfunction error is received, see this post for solving it.

This scan may take a few minutes to a few hours depending on the disk size and type of file system. Keep patience and let it complete properly. Once this is done, re-start your computer.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2010 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

One of our readers Jaime reported a problem regarding the windows update, he says

“How do I delete already downloaded but not yet installed Windows update file?”

As stated in the statement above user has downloaded windows update files through windows update but because of some reason he does not want to install those windows update. But windows automatic update service keeps trying to install the update.

Let’s see how can we delete the downloaded windows update files

Fix:

You can easily delete windows update files. For this you need to stop windows update services running in background.

Follow the procedure given below:

1. Open Start >> Run or press window key + r

2. Type “services.msc” (without quotes) and Click OK , this will open services window.

3. Right click on Automatic Updates Service and select Stop.

4. After the service is stopped, press window key + r

5. Type “%windir%\SoftwareDistribution” (without quotes) and press enter.

6. Open the Download folder and delete all contents of the Download folder.

7. Close the window, press Window Key + r ( or Open Start >> Run )

8. Type “services.msc” (without quotes) and Click OK

9. Right click on Automatic Updates Service and select Start.

10. That’s it Done

We hope the above procedure will help to fix the trouble, if it does not let us know through comments.

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One of our readers, Anup submitted a problem “I have Windows XP.whenever I execute any video file(song/movie) after setting STAND BY,TURN OFF MONITOR etc. to NEVER in power options, they get restored to default values and if not checked again,the system goes to stand by after some time.”

I can imagine how it would feel when one starts enjoying a movie on computer and it goes into standby for no good reason.

This trouble occurs when there is a power scheme in use that causes computer to standby after a certain interval if there is no activity through keyboard or mouse. This can be fixed with help of changing power scheme in Control Panel > Power Options.

But problem here is that Anup can not change the power scheme to prevent that, it gets restored back to normal.

Fix:

After having a close look into how it works internally, I could figure out a fix to this problem through a registry tweak.

Lets go step by step:

1. Go to Start > Run , type regedit and press enter. This will open registry editor.

2. Navigate to the Key ” HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\PowerCfg “

3. There you will see two registry keys, one named Default and another named CurrentPowerPolicy as shown in image below.

4. If there are more than these two keys, delete them. Now double Click on the key CurrentPowerPolicy and set its value to 2 if you want your computer to be always on.

Done.

Hope this will Fix your trouble!

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One of our reader Selva reported a problem saying: “My computer affected by focus changing. It automatically changes the focus within a particular time interval.“

It could happen if some of the registry keys in windows related to the focus setting of windows gets altered by virus or any other program.

Let’s see how can we fix this trouble.

Fix:

Follow the steps below:

1. Open Start >> Run and type “regedit” (without quotes)

2. Navigate to the following path:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]

3. Right Click on the empty space and create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value named ‘ForegroundLockTimeout’, set or modify the value to 0. (this value will cause the application to take the focus instantly.)

4. That’s it Done, exit registry and restart windows for changes to come into effect.

TIP: You can also set the registry keys to auto focus for a windows where you drag your mouse. Follow the procedure below

1. Open Registry Edit as explained above, Navigate to the following path in the registry:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Mouse/ActiveWindowTracking]

2. Set the value to 1

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2010 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

One of our readers Suhaneh, submitted a trouble “USB Device Malfunction Error message coming even no USB device connected to system“.

This kind of trouble really sounded very strange. It gave me a very interesting topic to research upon. What I found as a solution was even more strange than the problem. On searching the causes for such errors I came across about problems when people are using their USB devices and they work well. Other moment the USB device will stop working and will give error:

“USB DEVICE MALFUNCTIONED”

There are several hardware, software, and drivers related reasons for behind this problem.

Let us look into the details one by one.

Fix:

There can be more than one reasons for such things happening. Lets see one by one:

1. Really Crazy Sounding Fix : When I tell you this fix, you may think that I have gone crazy writing technical articles, but keep reading for the logic behind it. the solution is

” Turn off your computer, un-plug the power cord (or battery for a laptop) of your computer for about 30 minutes, plug the power cables back, restart the computer and the problem will be fixed “

Now the logic behind it : This is supposed to be a software as well as hardware problem. Windows keeps a table or cache of USB devices that were ever connected to it. This information is stored on some chip level memory on motherboard. When some entry goes wrong, or some stray behavior is there, it remains and is not flushed even on shutting down the computer. Removing the power altogether will cause the charges on mother-board to discharge completely and the entries are freshly created when you re-start next time. Thanks NT Compatible forum for this really interesting thread about this problem.

If this does not solve your problem, there may be problem due to reason 2 and/or 3 as mentioned below.

2. Missing or incompatible drivers : Make sure that you have motherboard chipset drivers installed and also the USB device’s drivers which you want to use.

3. Selective Suspend feature of USB : This feature will allow windows to control USB device power as needed. This setting also causes problem some times. See the fix by Microsoft Support here.

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Today we have come up with a small trouble which one of my friend faced when she tried recovering the some deleted files from recycle bin.

Problem Statement:

She deleted around 15 files from the original location and then overwritten that folder location with some new 15 files with same names. Now she wants to recover those 15 files from the recycle bin but she doesn’t get the option of recovering those files to a different location.

Let’s see how can we fix this trouble.

Fix:

If you want to restore all of the files from the Recycle Bin, select them all right click and restore all.

Restoring Files or folders to a different location.

1) First select all the files to be restored and press ctrl+x

2) Locate the folder where you want the files and press ctrl+v

That’s it simple and easy trouble fixed

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