Black Box Repack - 5000+ fans celebration giveaway

Click Black Box Repack - 5000+ fans celebration giveaway For getting the reward

Black Box Repack - 5000+ fans celebration giveaway

Click Black Box Repack - 5000+ fans celebration giveaway For getting the reward

Rules
Giveaway begins at 12:01am on: 04/01/2012 and ends at 12:01am on: 05/31/2012.All times are EST.
Winner will be picked up by our Robot R2D2. Results powered by Random.org
Winner(s) will be contacted by email 48 hours after the giveaway ends.
BitGamer invite – Winner will be announced on April 15, 2012.
Battlefield 3 – Winner will be announced on April 30, 2012.
Diablo III – Winner will be announced on May 15, 2012.
Max Payne 3 – Winner will be announced on May 30, 2012.
Platform: PC ONLY
Users violating or found cheating will be banned instantly.
Making multiple accounts will lead to ban.
Spamming will lead to ban.
This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook/Twitter. We hereby release Facebook/Twitter of any liability.
This is for the fans of Black Box Repack who showed their continuous support for years.
THIS IS FOR YOU!
Sponsored by :I am AWESOME:
Powered by: Black Box Repack

Show Start Menu Items in Expanded View in Windows 7

Rather than opening Control Panel or other locations from the Start Menu and hunting for what you need, you might find it easier to access them in expanded view from the Start Menu. Here we’ll show you a quick tip to get it done.
Expanded View
In this example we’ll show you the steps for Control Panel but this will work with the other items on the Start Menu as well.
To show Control Panel items in Expanded View in Windows 7 right-click the taskbar and select Properties.

Click the Start Menu tab then the Customize button.

From the list under Control Panel select Display as a menu then click OK.

That’s it! Now when you hover the mouse pointer over Control Panel on the Start Menu, all of the items are displayed as a list in expanded view.

Maybe you want to show your pictures in expanded view…just follow the same steps as above by selecting Display as a menu.

Or here is an example of Games in expanded view from the Start Menu.

This will work with Computer, Control Panel, Documents, Downloads, Games, Music, Personal folder, Pictures, Recorded TV, and Videos from the Start Menu. If you’re looking for an easier way to access some of the items on the Start Menu, this tip should help you out.

Set Default Programs in Windows 7 and Vista

If you’ve ever installed a program and suddenly found certain file types opening with it instead of what you had before, it can be confusing and annoying. Today we take a look at how you can control which applications are opening certain file types on you computer.
The Problem
You’re finally figuring out Windows 7 and listening to your favorite songs on Windows Media Player and everything is great. You then decide to install iTunes because you just got an iPod as a gift. After installation, you realize the icons in your music folder look different and they’re opening with iTunes by default instead of WMP…what happened?
While you were installing iTunes you may not have noticed that it installs itself as the default player for all audio files unless you uncheck the option. This situation can happen a lot with all different programs and file types. Using the Set Default Programs feature in Windows 7 and Vista you can gain control over which applications are associated with each file type.

Set Default Programs
To access the Set Default Programs feature, click on Start  and click Default Programs.

Click on Set your default programs.

Go through each program  and decide if you want to set it up for the default program to open all of the file types it’s capable of opening.

Or you can choose which file types to associate each program with. Like in this example we’re selecting Foobar2000 as the default programs for just certain types of audio files while VLC and WMP open others.

You can also go in and associate file types with different programs, like in this example VLC is opening WMV files and we want to change it to Windows Media Player. You can highlight the file type and click the Change program button or simply double click on it.

Select a program from the list under Recommended or Other Programs or you can browse to the location of a specific app if it’s not listed. Notice the Always use the selected program to open this kind of file box is checked and grayed out because we’re going through the Set Default Programs to get to the Open with screen. Windows assumes changes are permanent because of the route we took to get here and grays it out.

If you right-click on a file and go to Open with by way of the context menu…

The box is not grayed out and you can decide if it will always open that type of program or not.

In Set Default Programs you can also change AutoPlay settings for when you insert media or devices like a flash drive. For example you can set DVDs to always open in Media Player and music CDs to ask you every time. You can also turn it off by unchecking Use AutoPlay for all media and devices.

If you have it set to ask you when you put in say a DVD…AutoPlay opens and you can choose what to open it with. You can also access the above setting by clicking View more AutoPlay options in Control Panel.

Another cool utility for controlling file associations is Default Programs Editor which we previously covered. This will give you all of the options we just took a look at and a lot more.

This should help you get started in deciding what programs you want to feature with different file types. In this tutorial we focused on music and movie files, but it works the same for any file type.

How To Edit Your Hosts File

On occasion you will need to edit the hosts file on your machine. Sometimes because of an attack or prank, and others so that you can simply and freely control access to websites and network traffic.
hosts files have been in use since ARPANET. They were used to resolve hosts names before DNS. hosts files would be massive documents used to aide the network name resolution.
Microsoft kept the hosts file alive in Windows networking which is why it varies very little whether used in Windows, OS X or Linux. The syntax stays mostly the same across all platforms. Most hosts files will have several entries for loopback. We can use that for the basic example for the typical syntax.
The first part will be the location to redirect the address to, the second part will be the address that you will want to redirect, and the third part is the comment. They can be separated by a space, but for ease of reading are typically separated by one or two tabs.

127.0.0.1 localhosts #loopback

Now let’s look at accessing the hosts files in the different operating systems…

Windows 7

To access the hosts file in Windows 7 you can use the following command in the Run Line to open notepad and the file.

notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Once notepad is open you can edit the file. In this example we will block Facebook. To do this just enter in the following after the # mark.

0.0.0.0    www.facebook.com

Now that you have edited your Hosts file make sure to save it.

Now notice if we try to access Facebook in IE we can’t get to the page.

We also were not able to get to it in Google Chrome… (check notes at the end). Also for more info on editing your Hosts file, check out The Geek’s article on how to create a shortcut to quickly edit your Hosts file.

Ubuntu

In Ubuntu 10.04 and most Linux distro’s you can edit the hosts file directly in the terminal. You can use your favorite editor or even open your favorite GUI text editor. For this example we will use VIM. Like Windows 7, Ubuntu’s hosts file is located in the /etc/ folder, though here it is in the root of the drive. In order to edit the file you will need to open it as root which is why we use sudo here.

Now that it is open we can edit it to redirect Facebook into nothing. You will notice that with Ubuntu there is also a section for IP6. For most needs you will only need to edit it the top section and ignore the IP6.

Now we can save the file and try to go to Facebook.com. Just like in windows we will see that we are now redirected to a site that does not exist.

Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6)

In Snow Leopard, accessing the hosts file is very similar to Ubuntu. Begin in terminal and use your favorite editor, even is you wish to call a GUI text editor, it is easier to do so from terminal.

The file will look a bit more like Windows, only with a little less explanation. Again we are going to redirect Facebook.

This time it seems that 0.0.0.0 is a loopback and will direct you to the computers Apache test page.

Notes

There are some things to note from this walkthrough that we did notice. When tested it, Chrome did not use the hosts file in any operating system but we were able to block Facebook in Chrome by adding www.facebook.com. Also, make sure to place and extra line after the last entry for the section.
This should get you started in understanding the Hosts file and how it can help protect your computer. You can use it to block sites that you don’t want a PC to be able to access. If you have more suggestions for any of the operating systems we coved, then leave a comment and let us know!
Create a Shortcut to Quickly Edit Your Hosts File in Windows

Add a New User Account in Windows 7

If you’re a home user who skipped the Windows Vista release and are moving from XP to Windows 7, one thing you might want to do is create new user accounts for other members of the household. Since the interface is laid out quite differently than XP, we will take a look at user accounts in the new OS.
Several aspects of the user interface have changed from XP to Vista and Windows 7. If your computer is shared by the rest of your family, it is nice to be able to give each person their own account. However, you probably don’t want to give the same functionality to each of them. Let’s take a look at how to add a new user account, an overview of each account type, and assigning the type to each user. 
Add New User
To add a new user open Control Panel and under User Accounts and Family Safety click on Add or remove user accounts.

Now click on Create a new account.

Just type in the name of the user and select the type of account. Your best bet is to make them a Standard User so they cannot make changes to system settings, delete other users important files, or change security settings.

Now when you reboot the PC you will see the new users you created at the log in screen.

Of course a user who’s account is password protected will need to log in to start their session.

Standard users won’t be able to make any important system changes without the admin password.

As Administrator you can make additional changes to the account like changing or creating user passwords.

Types of User Accounts
There are three types of user accounts and each provides the user with different levels of control over the computer.

• Administrator – The Admin account have complete control over the computer and its settings.
• Standard – Standard users can use most of the capabilities on the machine. They cannot install software, delete system files, or change settings. If you’re working in a Standard account and need to make system changes, the administrator password will be needed. 
• Guest – Let’s a user have temporary access to the computer. They cannot install software, make any changes, or create a password. This is a good choice for someone to use to check their email quick or type out a document.

Here is an example of what a user with a Standard account would see if they tried to monkey around with something they shouldn’t be.

The Guest user account it off by default but you just need to go in and turn it on.

The only changes available to the Guest account are changing the picture and turning it on or off.

User Account Tips
If you’re the administrator and installing software, remember to select if you want it available for all users or only yourself.

Keep in mind that if you shut down the machine while another person is logged in, they might lose all any data they have not yet saved. Even though you get a confirmation screen, it might be worth mentioning to other users so they are aware of it, especially in a busy household.

These basic tips should help create and configure user accounts so each member of the household has their own account when working on the computer.

Backup/Copy Files that are "In Use" or "Locked" in Windows (Command Line)

If you’ve ever tried to copy a file that is locked by another application, you’ve probably seen an error message similar to “The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file”. So how do you copy it anyway?

Since XP, Windows has supported a technology called Volume Shadow Copy, which is used to power the previous versions feature in Vista as well as System Restore and backups. What it does is take a temporary snapshot of the file or drive, and then allow an application to read from the snapshot even while other applications are accessing or modifying the file.
What we can do is use a command line utility called HoboCopy that utilizes this service to copy the file.
Understanding the Prerequisites
HoboCopy and most other backup utilities make use of two services in Windows, and you’ll need to verify that these services are not disabled:

• Volume Shadow Copy
• Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider

They can be left as Manual startup, so they don’t need to be running all the time. Hobocopy will start the two services automatically when needed, and the Volume Shadow Copy service will be turned back off after it’s done.
Using HoboCopy to Backup/Copy a Single File
The syntax is a little weird, because HoboCopy is really meant to be used for backing up an entire set of folders. We can use it to backup a single file by passing in the filename argument at the end.
Note: on Windows Vista you will need to launch an Administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking on the Command prompt in the start menu and choosing Run as Administrator.
Syntax:

hobocopy c:\directoryname\ d:\backupdirectory\ <filename>

For example, I want to backup my c:\users\geek\mail\outlook.pst file to d:\backups\outlook.pst. Here’s the syntax that I’d use:

C:\> hobocopy c:\users\geek\mail\ d:\backups\ Outlook.pst
HoboCopy (c) 2006 Wangdera Corporation. hobocopy@wangdera.com
Starting a full copy from c:\users\geek\mail to d:\backups\
Copied directory
Backup successfully completed.
Backup started at 2008-03-09 01:57:28, completed at 2008-03-09 01:58:39.
1 files (606.45 MB, 1 directories) copied, 7 files skipped

Using HoboCopy to Backup an Entire Directory
A much more useful task would be to backup my entire User folder, probably to an external hard drive for safekeeping. For this, we’ll want to add a couple of command-line arguments.

/full	Copy all files
/skipdenied	Ignore any access denied messages because of permission errors.
/r	Copy recursively
/y	Don’t prompt, just copy everything

Syntax:

hobocopy /full /skipdenied /y /r c:\directoryname\ d:\backupdirectory\

Let’s go with the same example, I want to backup my entire user directory to d:\backups\, so I’d use this command:

hobocopy /full /skipdenied /y /r c:\users\geek\ d:\backups\

This command will likely take a very long time to complete, so you might want to take a nap or something. At the end you should have a nearly perfect copy of the directory… if there are any permission errors you’ll be alerted to files that didn’t copy. Realistically any files in your user directory shouldn’t have this problem.
Using HoboCopy to Incrementally Backup a Drive
Hobocopy also supports backing up files incrementally, so it will only copy the files that have changed since the last backup. This works similarly to utilities like rsync, except hobocopy stores the last backup date in a file that you need to specify on the command line.

/statefile=filename	This flag specifies the file that contains the last backup information.
/incremental	Only copy files that have changed since the last full copy.

Syntax:

hobocopy /incremental /statefile=filename /y /r c:\directoryname\ d:\backupdirectory\

Example:

hobocopy /incremental /statefile=d:\lastbackup.dat /y /r c:\users\geek\ d:\backups\

The first time that you run this command you will need to use /full instead of /incremental, or else you will get an error because the state file hasn’t been created yet. After that you can run the incremental backup with the /incremental switch.
This would be an excellent way to automatically backup a set of folders as part of a scheduled task.
Download HoboCopy from sourceforge.net