One of the more annoying features of Windows Vista was UAC (User Account Control) popping up and asking permission for about everything.  Now in Windows 7 it is a lot more manageable and today we take a look at how to manage it or completely disable it too.

The purpose of UAC is to inform you when a program makes changes that require administrator permissions.  It is a security feature that will block malicious software from making key system changes without your permission. 

Facebook definitely allows you to easily communicate with others, but if you’re not careful, certain information you would like to remain private can be exposed. Here we take a look at locking down your profile, and how to avoid other annoyances.

Privatize Your Profile

One of the best feature changes in Windows 7 is the greatly improved User Account Control system, with a slider to easily control how much the security feature annoys you. But what if you want to really disable UAC entirely?

Update: After doing some more testing, I’ve realized that dragging the slider to the bottom will set the same registry key. So while setting the registry key will disable UAC, so will dragging the slider to the bottom. The trick is that you need to reboot afterwards!

I’ve never found the recycle bin on the desktop very useful, so I almost always disable it as one of the first things that I do. Windows 7 or Vista has an even simpler way to hide the icon than XP does, but why couldn’t they have disabled it by default?

Just right-click on the icon and select delete from the menu. It’s as simple as that.

If you’ve removed your recycle bin icon, or you previously added the some of the “special” icons like Computer, User or Control Panel to the desktop and they are now missing, you might want to know how to add them back.

Go to Control Panel \ Personalize (or right-click on the desktop and select Personalize), and then choose the link for “Change Desktop Icons” on the left-hand side.

For Windows users it’s probably all too familiar seeing the Blue Screen of Death, especially in XP. Today we take a look at BlueScreenView which is a free utility to display and interpret the data located in the mini dump files after the BSOD occurs.

Blue Screen of Death

First we showed you how easily your computer can become infected with spyware, crapware, and other unwanted software—and today we’ll show you how to clean your system with Spybot Search & Destroy.

Important Parts of the Installation

As you are installing Spybot Search & Destroy, there are two windows that you should pay special attention to.

Have you ever wondered how malware, spyware, scareware, crapware, or other undesirable software might get on a computer? First we’ll illustrate how easily your system can be infected, and then we’ll show you how to clean it up.

Our example system, running Windows 7, was set up from a worst case scenario point of view: Someone who was only interested in quickly getting to all the “fun stuff” on the internet with absolutely no concern for personal or computer security.

Freshly Installed – Pre Malware

Did you know that you can install Windows 7 without any license key and use it for 30 days? What you might not know is that you can also extend that trial mode to 120 days, without requiring a key.

The basic way this works is that at the end of the 30 days, you’ll need to run a small command and reboot your computer, at which point you’ll have 30 more days, up to a maximum of 120 days. This trick should work regardless of where you got your copy of Windows 7 from.

Extending the Trial By 30 Days

If you are running a dual-boot setup with more than one Windows operating system, It’s pretty easy to configure the default boot operating system with the GUI interface. Note that if you are using Windows 7 or Vista as one of the operating systems, you will need to make this change from 7/Vista, not XP.

First, you’ll need to right click on Computer and select Properties: