Want to follow a detailed example of what happens when Windows starts?

In this article you will find the following detail about Windows startup:

• Descriptions of the major components.
• Detailed sequences of activities for each process.
• Example registry keys and values.

Microsoft just updated the Windows 7 system utility Disk Cleanup. It can now remove the old system update files that accumulate in the hidden system folder WinSXS. These files can take up a lot of space. For example, I just removed 4 GB worth.

The new version of Disk Cleanup is part of today’s (8 October, 2013) monthly Windows update and is described at this Microsoft page . Here is a review of how to use the Disk Cleanup utility:

Introduction

Email spam pertains to unsolicited commercial messages sent in bulk by people you don't know, such as those in marketing, advertising, really any one with a direct monetary gain to be had by sending spam.

The aim of a spam filter is to reduce the appearance of junk and spam emails. This makes the inbox cleaner and thus, it is easier to check email. The productivity time savings with the addition of spam filters is significant.

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Introduction

The best free hard drive erasers rated with their strengths and weaknesses for your computing devices.

Introduction

As I reviewed this category, I discovered there were a lot of free calculator programs available. Some are financial calculators, some are scientific calculators, and some are mixed use or what I called multi-purpose calculators.

Trying to pick the best free calculator that fits everyone is not an easy task. Check out below the rated calculators, each of which having its own specific purposes and functionality.

Introduction

An On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) is a virtual keyboard that is displayed on the computer screen and used as an alternative to a physical keyboard.

Besides using an OSK for accessibility recommended in Best Free Onscreen Keyboard for Accessibility, you may use an OSK to enhance your security and protect against malicious software. Security OSKs are useful for the following:

Introduction

Introduction

A color picker allows you to identify the color codes of any color present on your screen. This information can be helpful when editing an image, programming, writing HTML language or setting up a web page, etc.

There are many free color pickers to choose from. This review picks out a select few, based on the following features:

Transfer text and files between PCs and mobile devices easily at fast speed across Windows, Android, iOS, BlackBerry, OS X and Linux.

Sometimes you want to disconnect a USB drive or a flash memory card but Windows says it can’t be removed because it’s busy. Or maybe you just don’t like the “Safely Remove Hardware” function that sits in the notification area. If you are looking for a better way, you might try an open source alternative that will let you quickly and safely disconnect USB drives, even in some cases where Windows says you can't.

Introduction

Most cloud storage services claim they "take every precaution" to keep your data secure. For example, most use encryption to make sure your files are secure in transit. They "have internal policies and controls" to ensure that employees don't access your files. But things do go horribly wrong.

Introduction

Encryption is a process of encoding information so that it cannot be accessed by others unless they have the key needed to decode it. Encryption is usually used to protect highly sensitive documents, but it's also a good way to stop people from looking at your personal stuff.

A better tool to communicate and collaborate on a project for a team.

The Mummy released in June 2017 is an action-adventure film directed by Alex Kurtzman and stars top-billed cast including Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella and Annabelle Wallis.

Introduction

As I reviewed this category, I discovered there were a lot of free calculator programs available. Some are financial calculators, some are scientific calculators, and some are mixed use or what I called multi-purpose calculators.

Trying to pick the best free calculator that fits everyone is not an easy task. Check out below the rated calculators, each of which having its own specific purposes and functionality.

Introduction

A picture is worth a thousand words. If this is true for an ordinary static picture then what about a picture that contains motion or animation? An animation has far greater impact than an ordinary picture. It offers many more possibilities to creators/artists, enabling them to convey greater meaning to users. An animated format can also hold a lot more content which is almost impossible for a normal static image.

Introduction

Everybody seems to have their own concept of what a PIM (Personal Information Manager) is. It may help to define the scope of "Best Free PIM" at the outset to avoid confusion. I will stay within the following scope when selecting products to include here.

Introduction

This is a listing of 913 sites that legally offer free books (eBooks) for download or for online viewing. You can easily check out this listing in alphabetical order via the Index on this page.

The internet provides a great learning environment, and lots of sites offer collections of free videos that you can watch in order to teach yourself about various subjects.  One excellent example, which has been mentioned a couple of times recently in our forums, is the Khan Academy.  It hosts over 2000 short videos, instantly available for you to watch online within your browser for free. 

I was recently lucky enough to attend a TEDx conference in the UK.  TED is an internationally recognised conference phenomenon which holds events all around the world.  TEDx is an extension of that, involving additional events that are independently organised but still under the TED banner.

Last month I brought you details of Microsoft Mathematics, a free program for anyone who's trying to study or teach maths.  Almost 21,000 of you clicked on the link to my story, making it one of the most popular Hot Find items ever.

So, if you liked that one, here's another program which is aimed at the same type of people.  IE, those studying maths, or trying to help schoolkids who are.

Get this magic cube for free. It looks realistic in your hand with 3D graphics and smooth animations.

Play this classic card game Hearts for free in Windows 10 on your PC and mobile devices.

Try out this fascinating game of Go for free on Android, iPhone and iPad, and Windows.

GIZMO'S FREEWARE GAMING AWARDS 2015 

There are tons of games available at Google Play Store and with each passing day the list just keeps growing. The task to find a good game isn't that easy so I've compiled a list of 5 must play Android games that came out in 2014 which I found great. If you think I've missed something that was special to you, do post it in the Comments section and don't forget to Rate this article. 

New and popular, 2048, yes that’s the name of the puzzle, is one of the enjoyable games to pick up and play whenever you have time off from work or some spare time to kill off.

Create, save, search and share animated GIF images on social channels with this free app and online service.

A Real World Test

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Introduction

Introduction

A color picker allows you to identify the color codes of any color present on your screen. This information can be helpful when editing an image, programming, writing HTML language or setting up a web page, etc.

There are many free color pickers to choose from. This review picks out a select few, based on the following features:

Google's native messaging app Messages now comes with chat features on supported carriers.

A free, clean and simple content reader for average and power users to subscribe to and read news feeds, and view any web articles you saved.

What is RSS?

RSS is an Internet protocol — a standardized way to publish frequently updated content to the Web. RSS makes it easy for originators to make their content quickly and broadly available. Many devices, including tablets, smartphones and PCs can easily access this content. RSS is short for "Really Simple Syndication", but don't worry about that phrase. It's just a dumb name for a beautiful idea.

VPNs and How we Reviewed Them

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have become an indispensable tool for many internet users in order to:

Search millions of subtitles for your movies and videos and get them for free. 

A free and excellent player for YouTube music in a pop-up floating window on your mobile devices.

I mentioned TubeMate YouTube Downloader before and it was one of the

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Introduction

Introduction

It's a hard fact that All new Yahoo! mail sucks. This may be just personal but Yahoo gave me tough times with server errors on numerous occasions. For me GMail edges out Yahoo! Mail because of its speed and spam blocking. Yahoo! has too much spam, including IM span. Also POP access and disposable addresses require paid account. I'm afraid a day might come in the future when Yahoo won't allow access to your account even if you enter the correct ID and password. Once my Yahoo mail got hacked, I had enough with it.

Introduction

Introduction

Bittorrent has become one of the major download formats. With good reason too: it's fast, equitable and efficient. For the downloader, bittorrent offers an uncorrupted copy of the original with the option to stop the download at any time and re-start from where the download left off, very useful for those on shaky internet connections.

Introduction

Traceroute programs are used to identify the Internet path and time taken for communications between your PC and a remote Internet server. Technicians typically use them to identify network performance problems but end users sometimes employ them to help identify the location of a remote website and the path taken in between.

Rated Products

Introduction

If you ever accidentally open an exe program file in a text editor such as Notepad, you will be confronted with a mass of unintelligible garbage on your screen. Worse still if you write the exe file back to disk, the program file would almost certainly be corrupted and would not work.

I can remember back when I was young how alien a couple of lines of code that were published in a kid's magazine looked to me.  Some twenty years later (or should I better say a year ago), I decided that I should teach myself how to create some small and usable programs. Sad to say, I lost interest shortly after.

Introduction

A color picker allows you to identify the color codes of any color present on your screen. This information can be helpful when editing an image, programming, writing HTML language or setting up a web page, etc.

There are many free color pickers to choose from. This review picks out a select few, based on the following features:

Introduction

Programming editors, also known as source code editors, are text editors that are specifically designed for programmers or developers for writing the source code of an application or a program.

Introduction

Genealogy software provides a method for recording the subjects of our research, e.g. their names, relationships, and events of their lives. Evidence (citations and sources) should be recorded to support the conclusions reached. They also print the reports and charts to show off the results of our labor.

Introduction

Once you use Gizmo's to find the best freeware for your purposes, you need to download it from somewhere. Generally, I recommend that you use the software developer's site but that is not always possible. In that case, you have to go to one of the many repositories of freeware to be found on the web.

Introduction

This article compares audio software that enrich the music experience or enhance everyday listening, and provide impressive music centric features. The best MP3 and audio player ought to quench our passion for music, such as by inspiring us to rip or download music, organize our music libraries, learn more about our favorite artists or music, or just listen to music.

These are best free digital photo organizers that we found and were impressed enough to warrant recommendation.

Introduction

Almost everyone who cares about security runs some kind of basic antivirus protection. Traditional antivirus protection works great for most users but no software is perfect. We live in a world full of security holes and bugs where patches and updates try to come to the rescue at the end of the day.

A secure and reliable password manager to remember all your passwords across multiple devices for free.

Introduction

Want to follow a detailed example of what happens when Windows starts?

In this article you will find the following detail about Windows startup:

• Descriptions of the major components.
• Detailed sequences of activities for each process.
• Example registry keys and values.

In early 2012 I wrote this short article describing the impact of registry cleaning on Windows XP performance. I never published it because I was primarily settling the question for my own satisfaction. Secondly, I shelved it when I started working on a longer article that provides more detail on the scenarios. I never finished that other article so now I'm publishing this shorter article because it will still be useful to the many Windows XP users.

Introduction

The freeware utility AIDA32 was for a long time the best system information / inventorying tool ever, regardless of price. It documented just about every aspect of your hardware and software configuration as well as checking networks and providing memory benchmarks.

Introduction

If you aren't aware of the condition of your hard drives, you may not be able to save your valuable data before it's too late. Not all hard drive crashes are random, so you may have time to backup your data before it fails completely.

Want to follow a detailed example of what happens when Windows starts?

In this article you will find the following detail about Windows startup:

• Descriptions of the major components.
• Detailed sequences of activities for each process.
• Example registry keys and values.

In early 2012 I wrote this short article describing the impact of registry cleaning on Windows XP performance. I never published it because I was primarily settling the question for my own satisfaction. Secondly, I shelved it when I started working on a longer article that provides more detail on the scenarios. I never finished that other article so now I'm publishing this shorter article because it will still be useful to the many Windows XP users.

Gizmo’s Freeware reviews many Windows system utilities. Two of the premier sources are Microsoft Windows Sysinternals and Nirsoft Utilities.

Would you like to know the details of the hardware on your Windows PC? Or maybe you would like to check the state of your hardware's health. There are a variety of ways to get information about system hardware but here is a free utility that will tell you as much as you want to know (and more) about all your hardware.