One of our readers Jamie wrote to us :

As a free user, how should I proceed if RapidShare claims that I am already downloading a file when in fact I am not and have not done so for sometime before the attempt?

This is quite a common problem especially when you use a network where many users are sharing a common LAN or wireless network in places like colleges and offices.

This kind of problem is faced by free users of Rapidshare or Megaupload. This usually happens because the file sharing websites like Rapidshare or Megaupload will monitor the IP address of the computers downloading the content. When you are in a shared network environment, then the external IP address can be same for multiple computers because of NAT etc.

Fix:

Solution for ADSL Users With Dynamic IP Address

If you use a router from service providers which assigns you a dynamic IP address every time you connect your device to the Internet, then you can solve this problem in most simple way. In India, MTNL , AIRTEL, TATA , VSNL and BSNL are the main service providers who provide such service. In that case, simply power off the ADSL router and Power it on back again. This will disconnect you from Internet for a while and then will connect you back using the ADSL but will assign a new IP address and you can now download the content from Rapidshare and Megaupload or other such websites. You might also have to close your Internet Explorer or Firefox along with it to clear the scripts or cookies maintained by such websites to maintain a session.

Note: Some service providers provide a static IP, this technique will not work on such cases.

Rapidshare Addon For Mozilla Firefox

Rapidshare @ Office

There is a popular Add-On for Mozilla Firefox called rapidshare @ office which will allow users to automate the process of rapidshare download. You can Intsall this firefox add-on from rapidshare @ office page.

FoxyProxy

There is another add-on for Mozilla Firefox which will change your IP using proxies. FoxyProxy is one such popular add on for firefox proxy settings. You can use this add on to set your external IP to another IP using proxy servers. You can download and install FoxyProxy here.

Solution for Shared LAN or Wifi Users

If you use office / college or any other shared network, then you can follow the below steps to get a new IP address.

1. Go to Start > Run

2. Type command and press enter, this will open a command prompt. On this prompt, type the following commands one by one in the order mentioned below and press enter after each line.

ipconfig /flushdns

ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew

Note : This method may not work when NAT (network address translation) is hiding the IP of your computer from the websites and rapidshare may still give an “already downloading” error.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

These days spammers and hackers have started troubling people by sending malicious links which redirect the users to a potential harmful site which might spread some virus or you could be redirect to a malware sites. This has happened with some of our readers when they clicked some suspicious links through messenger offline messages, twitter public timeline etc.

Short URL services which are spreading these days actually started becoming a free tool for these spammers to hide the potential harmful link by converting into a short URL. However there are various methods which can used to check before whether these links are potentially safe to click, lets discuss them one by one.

Fix:

Following are some methods discussed.

Method 1: Scan Suspicious Links With AVG Link Scanner

AVG Link Scanner is free utility from same company which distribute popular free antivirus AVG Antivirus FREE Edition. This program lets you scan any link and will tell you whether that link is safe to be clicked.

[ Click The Image Above To Enlarge ]

It will also install a firefox addon which keeps a watch over all the links you click and link shown in the google search results and will display a green colored arrow if the link is safe to be clicked.

[ Click The Image Above To Enlarge ]

Method 2: Decode The Actual Link Hidden In Short URL

Another way to avoid clicking dangerous links is to decode the actual link hidden in short URLs, for this you can use free services like Untiny.com and trueurl.net. Using these services you can see the link encoded in short link before opening the link in browser.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

One of our reader named Rahul asked us via mail, that he had just downloaded and installed the new Google chrome 3 and now he wants to know that how can he install new themes in Google chrome 3 to change its look and feel.

Google Chrome 3 has been recently released by Google and it supports themes, by default Google chrome team has already released some new themes for Google chrome which you can start using to make Google chrome looks.

Here is how you can install new themes in Google chrome 3

Fix:

Follow the procedure below to get new themes for Google chrome 3

1. Firstly Download Google Chrome 3 [ skip this step if you have it installed already ]

2. Run Google Chrome and Go to Google chrome options as shown in the image below

3. Now click the Tab named Personal Stuff and at the bottom of the this windows you will see the button named Get Themes

4. click this button Get Themes, this will open up all the official Google chrome themes in a new tab, where you can select any theme and click Apply

The Direct URL to the Official Google Chrome Themes page is https://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/en/themes/index.html 

[ you can also open the above link in Google chrome alternatively to install new themes ]

Revert To Default Google Chrome Theme

You can revert to the default Google chrome theme by following the step 2 and 3 written above  and click the button saying Reset To Default Theme

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

These days many windows users have started using Internet Explorer 8 as it is much more faster, secure and easy to use. But some people like web designers, software engineers and other layman people need to run different versions of internet explorer to test their software and other browser related products on different versions of internet explorer as a part of testing process.

Here is how you can run different version of IE by installing Internet Explorer Collection which is a web browser based on the Trident render engine, which does not follow the W3C Web Standards. It contains multiple standalone versions of IE, which can be used at the same time.

Fix:

Internet Explorer Collection is a simple  utility which solves this problem by providing all the standalone versions of Internet Explorer released till date, you can choose to install which versions of internet explorer to install as per your requirement. [ as shown in the image below ]

Download Internet Explorer Collections Combined Installer

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

Many of my friends ask me this simple question sometimes here in India, when ever they type google.com in their browsers they always get redirected to the google.co.in or their country specific google website.

Normally they used to ask me what is difference in between google.com and google.co.in, and does this affect the searches they make on google and the search results which appear.

Here is how you can either stop google from redirecting to google country domain or navigate to google.com simply from your google country domain

Fix:

Google.co.in in the google’s Indian web site where as google.com is the US website, so you are being redirected to your country google domain so as to filter your search results and provide you better results more faster by accessing the data centers located in your country or as near possible.

But this difference will be negligible till when you are searching something on google which is not country dependent, still if you don’t want google.com to redirect then type www.google.com/ncr in your browser address bar – ncr stands for No Country Redirect. You can save the above address as bookmark in your browser to open google.com always

Another way is to let google.com redirect to your country google domain and then click the link at the google page for your country which says Go to Google.com [ as shown in the image above ]

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

When you install a new Web Browser like Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer or Safari, it tries to set itself as the default Internet browser. One of our readers installed Mozilla Firefox and set it as default browser. Now he wants to use Internet Explorer as his default Internet browser. The problem can be just reverse of it, with someone trying to use Mozilla Firefox as his default browser, while IE is set as default Internet Browser.

In this article we will share you a simple way of swathing your default Internet Browser between Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome because these are the three most commonly used Web Browsers.

Fix:

You can select any of these three to make them your default web browser. After this, any Internet link you click on your computer will open in the browser you set as default browser.

Make Internet Explorer Your Default Browser

1. Open Internet Explorer

2. Go to Tools > Options > Programs

3. Click on Make Default Button Below and Make IE your Default Browser

Make Mozilla Firefox Your Default Browser

1. Open Mozilla Firefox

2. Go to Tools > Options > Advanced

3. Click on Check Now button on this screen to make Mozilla Firefox your default browser

Make Google Chrome Your Default Browser

1. Open Google Chrome

2. Click on the Tool icon at the top right corner of Chrome and Click on Options

3. Click on the button on this screen which says “Make Google Chrome My Default Browser”

Hope you find this article easy and useful. Please leave your comments and suggestion.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

This problem is quite common when people are not able to save some particular web pages in internet explorer. The following error message pops up while saving some of the pages in the internet explorer or When you attempt to save a Web page using the Web Page, complete (*.htm;*.html) or Web Archive, single file (*.mht) options in Internet Explorer.

Error Saving Web Page.

This Web page could not be saved.

Read on further to know the resolution of this problem

Fix:

Reason 1:

This type of problem can occur normally when you may attempt to save a page created using excel 2000 or excel 2003 which normally contains code that Internet Explorer cannot save in the selected format.

Solution:

1. You can either save this web page in excel by opening it through the Microsoft excel installed on your computer.

2. Or you can open it in a different browser like Firefox or Google Chrome which might help you to save that page.

Reason 2:

You might have selected to save the page as a single web archive – a single file format and might not have the enough space to save the file.

Solution:

Select another location to save the file where you have enough space to save the file.

Note:

If none of the resolutions given above helped you then it might be the security and some JavaScript’s that might be blocking you to save that page in your browser. Some of the pages like invoice receipts which are meant to be  printed with the print button. You can Install PDF Printer for the same. Using this tool, your web page will be saved as a PDF file.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

We got some mails and comments from readers saying that they do not see any call tab or button on latest yahoo messenger 9 installed. This can happen may be due to some download errors or the setup you have downloaded from somewhere else where the installer may not have that feature. Previously we have written about how to solve yahoo messenger voice chat problem.

This can happen when yahoo messenger software failed to fully load, it could happen when you may have tried to download without clearing out your browser cache. If you have "Speedbit video accelerator" installed then it might conflict with yahoo messenger. The missing telephone icon and the missing Yahoo chat are not uncommon this issues are being recognized by yahoo messenger 9.

In order to solve this issue either you will need to uninstall and degrade to older version of yahoo messenger 8.1 or need to download another setup of yahoo messenger 9, but make sure that you first uninstall the yahoo messenger 9 on your computer, read on further to know more.

Fix:

Before applying any of the method to fix this problem with yahoo messenger, please make sure that you uninstall the yahoo messenger.

Method 1: Download Another Yahoo Messenger 9 Full Installer or Download Yahoo Messenger 9 From this alternative link

Downloading another version of yahoo messenger can work anytime as there might be some issue with the build number or the yahoo messenger you have it installed.

Method 2: Download Yahoo Messenger 8 Which Has the Call button

If the problem of missing call button does not get solved with any version of yahoo messenger 9 then you can download yahoo messenger 8 full setup from this page.

At least one the above method will work for you, if they does not solve your problem let us know through comments.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

It happens with many people that suddenly notice their internet connection speed becomes very slow and unresponsive after some virus infection on their computer, some times it may be caused due to some spyware or malware infection also.

One of my friends faced a  related issue when after a virus infection the Ethernet adapter on his computer was shown as un detected device in Device Manager. For any one who does not have any technical knowledge would really found this situation helpless when internet connections got malfunction due to some virus, malware, spyware

There is a FREE utility which comes to rescue in this situation named Internet Connection Repair which can help you fix your internet connection slowness or malfunction.

Fix:

Internet Connection Repair lets you fix the fix the following issues

1. Diagnose and fix the most common internet connection issues

2. Fix all the connectivity problems caused due to spyware, adware and other network problems

3. It also repairs the registry and Winsock settings for XP and Vista

Overall this is the best free utility which lets you fix the most common issues related to faulty internet connection on your computer.

Download Internet Connection Repair 

Read Also: Slow Internet connection? Fix it up with simple tweaks  

[ Via BlogsDNA ]

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

Recently, we received a question from one of our reader Rajesh who has a small but important question says

I want know how can I get to know Whether a Website is safe to open on my computer?

These days with the there are large number of website emerging out which may harm your computer just if you open them in your browser. These websites may contain following type of infections

• viruses
• drive by downloads
• malicious pop up downloads
• worms
• Suspicious Applications
• Suspicious Browser Changes
• Security Risks
• Adware
• Trojans
• Phishing attacks
• Spyware
• Backdoors
• Remote Access softwares
• Information stealers
• Dialers
• Downloader’s

Let’s see how can you know about whether a website is safe to open on your computer

Fix:

Norton Safe Web is one such free web service which lets you check whether a web site is safe to open and browse in the browser of your computer.

This is a FREE web service by Norton which allows you check the status any website on internet, they will also rate the website on the basis of the community reviews by other people.

Checking the status of any website is quite simple as you just need to enter the URL of the website you want to test in the following format.

For Example www.troublefixers.com

Visit Norton Safe Web

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.