There are many examples around you can check out for yourself which are easily accessible and few of these are Google Docs, Microsoft Office Live Workspace and which also allows you to save around 500 MB of data which in normal standard can save around 1000 documents. Many other applications and services are being launched from these as well as other IT giants in the race for providing better and more convenient services to us.

These cloud computing applications and services are easy to use as well because they are developed in such a format which is more or less similar to the software which was previously used offline by us, just a bit modified for more convenience. Saving this files and folder after working in the web server actually means that you can access the same from just anywhere in the world and you do not have to save them in your memory stick. This kind of flexibility is like a heaven for many and many people with these applications have been able to make their business much more organised and successful, leaving no room for errors.

Skype is another such cloud computing application which allows you to make phone calls from your PC and laptop for free and charges a very nominal amount for other calls, which is too good to be true for almost everyone.

The benefits one can derive from cloud hosting are endless if you actually know how to derive. Users do not have to bother themselves to buy, install or manage software but can do the same for almost free over the net. Employee cost is reduced to great extent since the work can be organised much rapidly through these applications and can be managed in a very short time.

Darik’s Boot and Nuke software is free and very easy to use. So before you recycle or sell your computer to a stranger, protect yourself and information by using this tool.

Here is a little background on Darik’s Boot and Nuke Freeware-

Darik’s Boot and Nuke (“DBAN”) is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer, and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis.
The development and support of the DBAN software project is funded in part by GEEP International. GEEP is the largest, the most efficient, and the most environmentally conscientious consumer electronics recycling company in North America

 To make sure the hard drive is properly deleted, follow these easy steps before selling your hard drive:

Total Disk Wipe – All Platforms

• Darik’s Boot and Nuke – an open-source boot disk utility (read: works on nearly any computer) that supports a wide variety of disk wiping methods and operates from inside the computer’s RAM, allowing it to scrub the disk thoroughly at a remove.

Let us know if you have any questions or need some assistance.

Also, look at the file extension before opening. If you meant to download a .mp3 and the extension is .exe or anything other than the .mp3 you meant to download, delete that file right away. Please click here if you need a free anti-virus program to keep those pesky viruses away from your computer. I would suggest Avast over AVG. It seems to get rid of more viruses than AVG. Free Anti-Virus Software

1) Upgrade your hardware
This includes the RAM, CPU and graphics card. For gaming in Vista, make sure that you have at least a dual core processor, 2 GB RAM and a DirectX 10 compliant graphics card.
2) Disable System Restore
Vista’s System Restore helps you to backup your files and provide a restoration in the event that the OS crash. Although a useful feature, it can slow down your system to a great extent. I have had very little luck in getting this feature to work in the past. So let’s disable this now. To disable it, click on Start -> Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> System and remove the tick next to any drives that you have protected.
3) Turn off hibernation
If you don’t use the hibernation feature, you can disable it and recover around a gigabyte of hard disk space. To do this, open up “Run” and type “powercfg – H off”
4) Disable the Sidebar
While this looks very catchy and makes your desktop look like something is actually going on, it takes up a TON of resources. To disable the sidebar, open Control Panel -> Windows Sidebar Properties. Uncheck the “Start Sidebar When Windows Start”.
5) Move swap file to another drive/partition
Swap file is a temporary file used to store data for future use. If you have another drive, you can speed up Vista a bit by moving the swap file to that drive. Or if you are using only one drive, you can set up a partition to store your swap file.
• Click on Start -> Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> System
• Choose Advanced system settings from the top left hands side
• Make sure that the Advanced tab is selected
• In the Performance section click Settings
• Click on the Advanced tab
• In the Virtual Memory section click Change
• Uncheck “Automatically manage paging file sizes for all drives”
• Click on the partition you want to use as a swap partition, select Custom Size, and set the new sizes of your swap file. The recommended size is 2.5 times your RAM size, and my choice is to set the Initial Size and Maximum Size values equal, to get a fixed size swap file.
• Click on the primary partition, check “No paging file” and click Set. This is to prevent Vista from placing a swap file on your primary partition.
• Restart the computer
6) Add 3D sound
The DirectX 10 architecture changed the ways sound is processed in gaming. If you are playing Windows XP games that use hardware 3D audio effects, most likely you will not hear any sound at all. To overcome this, you can use Creative’s ALchemy tool. Download and install the Alchemy tool from Creative website. This tool will pipe any DirectSound calls in Windows XP games to OpenAL to give it a full 3D audio hardware support.
7) Turn off Vista’s Indexing Engine
The Vista’s Indexing Engine is a useful tool that allows you to search for files easily. However during gaming, it is running in the background and takes up resources that affect the gaming performance. To turn it off, go to Control Panel -> Indexing Option. Click Modify -> Show All Locations to remove any drives or folders that you don’t want to be indexed.
Change your Startup program
To prevent any unused programs from loading during the boot up process and take up your system resources, you can change your startup program by typing “msconfig” into the Run box. Click the startup tab and uncheck the box next to any software that you don’t want to run during startup.
9) Use Ready Boost
This is a new feature in Vista that uses an external USB flash drive as a cache to store frequently access data. It is said to be able to increase the performance up to 10 times. Insert in a USB 2.0 flash drive into your USB port. In the window that pops up, click on the ReadyBoost tab. Select “use this device”.
10) Disable SuperFetch
Another new feature of Vista that utilizes all your free memory to store frequency accessed data. While it is a good feature, it is actually causing more harm to your game performance. Your game needs a lot of free memory to load maps, process AI and so on, while the SuperFetch is constantly taking up free memory to store data. To disable the SuperFetch, open Run and type “services.msc”. Select “Stop/Disable SuperFetch”, and then reboot the computer.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments!

So, what exactly is svchost.exe?

According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in english please?

Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability… but the problem is that you can’t launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born.

So What Can I Do About It?

You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don’t absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.

If anyone needs more information on this, including a tutorial, please let us know and we will make a detailed tutorial for you.