Sometime back we received a problem in which a reader reported the following problem  

“Windows Explorer hangs when I right click on the drive in my computer”

This problem occurs could occur when when some new program gets added which could not instantiate itself. This problem could also arise due to bad context menu handler.

Following are some other problems that could be caused due to the poorly coded or bad context menu handler.

• There may be a huge delay when you right click on a folder or drive
• Right click item show slowly
• When you select properties in right click nothing happens

Let’s see how can you fix all these issues related with the right click menu

Fix:

In order to fix all these troubles associated with right click menu with a simple free utility called ShellExView by NirSoft.

What is ShellExView ? 

The ShellExView utility displays the details of shell extensions installed on your computer, and allows you to easily disable and enable each shell extension on your right click menu.

ShellExView can be used for solving context-menu problems in Explorer environment

Always Launch ShellExView as administrator when running under Windows Vista.

In order to solve the problem disable the non-microsoft context menu from the list one by one and then check if it solves the problem. If disabling does not solve the problem, undo the disabled item and try disabling another non-microsoft item from the list.

We hope this will help to fix the trouble, if it does not please leave a comment at the end of this post.    

[ Download ShellExView ]

It happens sometimes when some malware change your files’s or folder attribute to system/hidden so that you can’t access them.

When you try to change the attributes of your files back to normal to access them but when you try to change the attributes they seem to be grayed out.

Today we are going to discuss a free tool called isReset that is designed to deal specially with this type of computer trouble and remove the left over virus infections.

Let see some features and how to use this tool.

Fix:

What is isReset?

isReset resets your system/hidden files/folders so you can view/access them normally.

How To Use ?

Simply drag & drop your files/folders into the cross sign and then click RESET.

Please Note:

1. As this tool is a security software that deals with file system, windows registry and some system running process, so it MUST be given all the admin rights it require to do its job. So make sure you are running a administrator account on windows before using this tool.

2. We would also recommend to disable other security solutions like anti virus , Firewall and other monitoring tools.

[ Download isReset ]

Trouble:

We have been writing about different computer problems for a long time, we were writing about some specific computer problem which readers submit to us.

But from now on as an additional initiative we will be writing some reviews about different virus removal tools which could be useful for the readers.

Also we will also be writing about various other tutorials which would help you fix various other types of trouble on windows.

Picture Credit [ Softpedia ]

Today we have selected the FREE Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool from most famous Award winning antivirus solution provider, Kaspersky Lab.

Let’s see how good is this virus removal tool from Kaspersky

Fix:

 

What is Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool?

This kaspersky virus removal tool that is periodically updated by Kaspersky team. It is an effective virus scanner and detection software.

It will scan your entire hard drive and will remove all the virus detected or it will at least send the virus and trojans found to quarantine folder.

The automatic scan of Kaspersky Virus Removal tool allows you to scan following areas

• System Memory
• Startup Objects
• Boot Sector
• Documents
• Mail Databases
• Each Drive 

Latest version of this virus removal tool will help you detect almost all the viruses till date and remove them from your computer. We have tested the tool it is spyware, adware and malware free.

Note: Use the latest version from the internet whenever available. This will ensure that it will detect even the most latest kind of virus, spyware and malware infections.

For receiving all such virus removal tips and tools by email click here

[ Download Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool ]

Is your fixed SATA drive or C drive shown in tray in the list of Safely remove USB Mass storage device in Windows ? For many of our readers using Nvidia motherboard the answer is yes !

We have received many mails from our readers regarding this problem. This kind of problem is seen after a windows updated few weeks back which had updated for optional Nvidia drivers. After this driver update many users have seen the fixed SATA drive as removable drive.

Why is my SATA drive in list of removable drives?

Nvidia motherboards / chip-sets  driver software has been enhanced to support some enhanced RAID technologies. Thus as a feature of it, the drives interprets all the SATA drives as hot-swappable drive. That is why you see fixed SATA drive in removable media list.

Lets see how you can fix this issue.

Fix:

Before we talk of the fix, the important question is:

How dangerous is it to have your fixed drive in removable drives?

Well truly speaking, not very dangerous, because when you try to remove a drive which has windows installed on it, the windows will show an error saying that "The Device Generic volume cannot be stopped right now" . This means that the media will not be released as it is in use by windows. So even if you accidentally click on Safely remove C:, the windows will not let you do that, thus there is no harm.

How to fix this issue?

The simplest fix is to revert the Nvidia Driver recently installed on the computer with the windows update. You can also do a system restore to a previous date when this problem was not there.

Even if you are not able to remove it successfully from the removable list, you can safely live with it there no problem being a removable drive.

We receive around 60 percent of the problems related to the troubles caused due to virus infection. These days virus spread so easily through the pen drives and other portable drives, it has become very difficult for a normal person to protect his/her computer system.

Most common problems which are generally caused by the virus which spread through USB pen drives are:

1. Task Manager disabled problem in windows xp
2. Folder options disabled by Virus / Trojan
3. Registry editing has been disabled by your administrator

Another most common problem faced due to virus infection is when certain types of virus like rontokbro or brontok, disable command prompt, we have also covered the removal of brontok virus.

There are also cases when the user reported that their computer restart when they try to launch command prompt, or command prompt blinks for a second and nothing happens. 

Let’s see how can you enable your command prompt again when it is disabled by a virus.

Fix: 

There has been two most successful methods with which you can enable your disabled command prompt.

Method 1:

The simplest method to get your command prompt back is to add a registry key , but you should be having registry editing is enabled.   

1. Open Start >> Run and type the following command ( or just copy it )   

REG add HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System /v DisableCMD /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

 

2. Copy the above command and press Enter.

This will solve your trouble and your command prompt will be enabled.

Note: Method 1 may not work when your system is severely infected by a virus and even the registry editing is disabled due to which you are not able to run the above command from run prompt.

Method 2:

It involves a tool called RRT - Remove Restrictions Tool by sergiwa which can enable the disabled command prompt by virus.

It also helps in removing other restrictions which are also caused due to virus infection listed below.

• Disable Folder Options
• Disable Registry Tools
• Disable Ctrl+Alt+Del
• Disable Show hidden files & folders come with hidden attribute set to true!
• Disable Run Command

Other than it also includes fixes for the removing 38 restrictions that are caused by different types of viruses.

Note: Make sure you boot in to Safe Mode to use Remove Restrictions Tool (RRT). Just click on the buttons and it’ll do it’s job.

The limited version is RRT tool is for FREE for personal use only. If you would like to use the application in a business environment you are required to license the application.    

We hope at least one of method given above will help to fix the trouble.

[ Download RRT ]

There can be viruses or key loggers or some malicious softwares in your computer which might be connecting to Internet in background secretly. There are also many softwares which use Internet without asking for your permission.

So the big question is:

How to check which application or software is using the Internet connection?

The answer is that there are more than one ways of doing it, lets see the methods one by one.

Fix:

Using TCP-View Utility:

To see what applications are connected to the Internet or what applications are using Internet, you can use a small utility by Microsoft Sysinternals called TCPView. This is a small and handy utility which you can download here and run.

When you run the utility it will display all the applications which are connected to Internet. See the image below (Click to enlarge):

Connections which change state from one update to the next are highlighted in yellow; those that are deleted are shown in red, and new endpoints are shown in green.

And don’t worry about SVCHOST.EXE, this is a windows task which keeps running in background and will be displayed in this list several times.

This will give you an idea of what processes are using Internet connection. If you find anything suspicious, search that file and delete it if you think that its something that you have never installed something like that.

Geeky way:

Also there is a geeky way of doing this without using the TCPView Utility,for that open the command prompt and type the following command and it will display all the applications connected to Internet, it will refresh the list every two seconds.

netstat -b 2

Have a safe and secure Internet Surfing!

Yesterday one of my colleague asked me how can he take a print out of a Microsoft Power Point Slide with notes as well.

He was facing this problem when he was trying to print one his power point presentation on paper but not able see the notes with each of the power point slide.

Let’s see how can we fix this trouble.

Fix:

Well the answer to above mentioned trouble is quite simple, you just have to select a option in the print dialog box ( shown in the image below ).

So you need to select Notes Pages in the section Print what as highlighted in the image above. We hope like this small fix to a general common problem.

Many a times when the windows boot, the tray icons like volume control icon, network status icon, safely remove hardware icon etc. which should be visible in the tray are not visible properly.

In such a case, many a times you will find volume control missing, or you will find Safely remove hardware icon missing, or any other useful tray icon which you frequently use.

Why are tray icons not loaded properly?

At the time when windows is booting, there are many processes which are simultaneously being launched. All these are running in parallel waiting for the CPU turn. Some times when the CPU is busy with some processes, windows misses to properly load the icons.

Lets see how to fix this issue.

Fix:

The fix is simple, whenever you find that the tray icons are not properly loaded, you can restart explorer task. This will freshly build all the tray, task-bar and desktop icons.

To restart the windows explorer, we have made a small windows-batch file which you can download from here.

Just download and save this file on your computer. Double-click on this file and it will re-start the windows explorer for you. After this, all the tray icons will be loaded properly.

For those who like to do it manually, open the command prompt and type the following two commands one by one:

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

explorer.exe

We hope you find this handy and useful.

Trouble:

These type of error messages comes when Windows XP system that does not start because of corruption in windows registry.

Most of the windows users who face this type of problems could not start windows, see the error messages like some mentioned below:

Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SOFTWARE

Let’s see how can we fix this computer trouble

Fix:

This type of error usually occurs when some of the system files got corrupted, due to which windows does boot.

You need to repair windows using the windows XP setup cd using the windows recovery console, Boot using Windows Setup CD and enter into “Recovery Console” by pressing “R“. Enter the administrator username and password.

Note: If you are not sure about the administrator password don’t type anything and press Enter.

After entering the correct username and password for the admin account you will see command prompt

Enter the following command at the command prompt.

“copy %windir%\Repair\system %windir%\System32\Config” and press Enter

Try restarting your windows to check if the problem is solved and If the above does not work, then again boot into “Recovery Console” and give following commands: (one by one)

fixmbr
bootcfg /scan
bootcfg /rebuild
fixboot

We hope the solutions provided above will help you fix the trouble, if it does not let us know through comments.

This is one of the most common problems experienced by people, as many readers reported this problem in a different way.

• Notepad opens at windows startup
• My documents opens at windows startup
• My computer startup at windows

Some of the readers also reported that it happens after installing some applications, some of them says that this windows activity started occurring after some virus infection

Let see how this computer trouble actually occurs and how can you fix it

Fix:

This problem occurs when some programs modifies the Userinit registry key, or if there is a registry change in the Userinit value.

So need to repair windows registry key to solve this problem, change the Userinit registry key value to fix this trouble.

Follow the procedure given below to stop opening of my computer, my documents or notepad at windows startup.

1. Open Start menu >> Run or press window + r , this will open the run prompt

2. Type “regedit” ( without quotes ) and press Enter , this will open registry editor

3. Now, navigate to the following registry key in registry editor

HKEY_ LOCAL_ MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Win­dows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

4. Double click the Userinit registry key and set the value C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.e­xe, ( The comma at the end of the value should also be there ).

5. Exit registry and restart your computer to see the change into effect

We hope the fix given will help to fix the trouble