Defragmenting your hard drive

As normal computer maintenance goes, defragmentation is pretty standard. Why do you need to defrag your hard drive?

Think of your computer's hard drive like a huge dvd rack where you'd store your dvd's. The dvd's represent files on your computer. When you first start off you don't have many dvd's so the rack is relatively empty. It's easy to access a particular movie you want because there isn't many to choose from. Now as your computer is an avid dvd collector your rack starts to fill up and things get more disorganized and chaotic. You no longer can instantly find your favorites among the thousands of dvd's piled together. If you want to watch a couple movies, it now takes a lot longer for you to search through your collection becoming tedious and frustrating.

What a disk defragmenter does is separates and places your files in order of how often you access them and what kind of files they are. So basically it's organizing your dvd's by your most watched, and then in a specific order that way you can get to them a lot faster than before.

Windows comes with it's own defragmenter program, but there are mixed feelings about it. I personally say better to use that, then none at all. There are however a few good and free disk defrag programs out there.

Defraggler by Piriform, the same company that makes CCleaner. It's a very useful defragmentation tool. Allows to defrag individual folders and files without having to do the entire hard drive.

JkDefrag is completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies, and can handle floppies and USB disks/sticks. Has been around for a while and is widely trusted.

O&O Defrag 2000 is a freeware Windows defragmentation tool. It is completely integrated into the Microsoft Management Console as a snap-in and can be used to replace the standard Windows 2000/XP defragmentation software.

Now depending on the program you get, there's a number of options that you can choose for defragmenting your hard drive. There really isn't any concern for changing these options. The simple action of starting to defragment is adequate.

For JkDefrag is just a matter of running the executable file and it'll automatically start. However with Defraggler you need to choose which drive, or which folder you'd like to defragment and then start the task. O&O Defrag you would need to go to your control panel and select Administrative Tools. You'd see an option for Computer Management. When that's opened you should see the defragment option under Storage.

There's also another method you can do, which is to auto defrag when idle. To do this you need to create a scheduled task. In order to set this up follow these directions.

1. Go to your START button and click Control Panel.

2. You should see an option for Scheduled Tasks, if not on the left you should see a 'Switch to classic view' option. Click that and it should appear.

3. In here right click your mouse and select New> Scheduled Task

4. Name it Defrag

5. Right click the Defrag task and go to properties

6. Under Run click Browse and find the .exe file for your defragmentation program. For example JkDefrag.exe

7. Then click Schedule tab at the top and under Schedule Task, select When Idle from the drop down list.

8. You can set the amount of minutes of being idle before the task start, I recommend 10.

9. Click Apply, a dialog box should appear, if you have a username and password for your account type it in.

10. Hit OK and your set, you'll now defrag your drive while your pc is idle. If you wish to delete it, just go to scheduled task and right click and delete that task.

This is a great way to keep your hard drive in good condition without having to manually run a scan every week.

The long awaited update: PC protection

It has been far too long since my last update. It seems like I didn't keep my word of providing basic internet and computer information. I'm back though and hopefully will be doing an update at least monthly if not every 2 weeks or so. I have plenty to cover, it's just a lack of excitement or inspiration has kept me from writing.

In this entry I'll be covering ways to protect yourself from viruses, adware/spyware, and hackers.

If you buy a commercially made computer (Dell, HP, Compaq,etc...), it usually comes with a trial or limited version of an anti-virus program. In most cases Norton or McAfee will be the program. The first thing I would do is look for alternatives. Why would you do that? Well it's always good to see what your options are. There are a few free anti-virus programs out there better than Norton or McAfee and the best thing is... they're free.

A few years ago when you used the internet, depending on your browsing habits you'd constantly run into spam, worms, and viruses. In today's usage of the internet, we now have a couple more things to worry about such as adware and spyware. Adware is usually software that will show advertisements on your PC. They come in the form of random pop up messages and may start initializing even when you're not using a browser. You can get adware from installing software that packages it either as an incentive to being free, or hidden without your knowledge.

Spyware is software that sends personal information to a third parties without your permission or knowledge. This can include information about Web sites you visit or something more sensitive like your user name and password. Unscrupulous companies often use this data to send you unsolicited targeted advertisements.

Now there are tons of programs out there designed to stop all this from happening, but what most people don't know is which to choose. Most of the pc users I know tend to go with the most popular since so many people have it, it has to work right? You would think that, but sometimes they can work too well. Norton likes to take over your computer, so much so that you get fed with your PC and won't even use it. Sure it works by keeping you away from the internet, but no one really wants that.

I have tried possibly 4-5 different programs in my time, among them Norton, Kasperky, and AVG. The best so far has to be AVG. It's free and there's no hooks or catches. Take a look at the wiki table for comparing anti virus programs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antivirus_software

I do however use this in conjunction with a few other programs. For my spyware and adware I use Lavasofts Adaware program. You should always be kept up to date with any of these programs. You can setup automatic scans during anytime time of the day. Virus protection should be ran everyday, and ad/spyware scans once a week. You should also note to only have one anti virus program installed on your computer, otherwise they might start conflicting with one another.

The last program you should install is a personal firewall. A firewall is a program or hardware device that filters the information coming through the your internet connection to your home network. If an incoming piece of information is flagged by the filters, it is not allowed through. A firewall with block protocols hackers (or programs) would use to communicate directly with your pc. The best program out there that I've come across is Sunbelt's Personal Firewall.

With all of these programs I mentioned it's really up to you to become familiar with them. There is plenty of documentation provided by the company, but for the most part navigating around the program and getting used to the interface is a big step in the right direction. No one is instantly familiar with a programs settings. It can also be a bit intimidating with all the features they include. Don't be afraid to join forums and ask questions, that's why they are created.

Filehippo.com is a great site to get free, trial, or open source software. It's linked on the right and I recommend it for obtaining most of the software I use.

What is a torrent file?

This is old news, I know. Yet a lot of people still ask me what a torrent is. You could find out simply by googling, but I thought I'd try to simplify the actual process as much as possible.

When dealing with torrents there are three parts to using it. The program you use to open torrent files, the actual torrent itself, and the site where you get your torrents. I'm splitting this post up into sections to explain what each part actually does. Let's first start off with why torrents were created.

Why were torrents created?

Say a website creates a program, and they want to allow users who visit their site to download that program. Well this particular program gets really popular and there are now thousands of users getting it at once. If the website has a maximum download rate of 1mb a second, and there are a thousand users getting that file at the same time, the download speed is split between all those users. So each individuals download speed is really really slow.

Well someone thought of a solution. What if there was a program that allowed the downloaders to use their upload stream to share the parts they had already downloaded. Then once they were done, they could continue to share the file increasing the speed at which others would receive their download. So instead of everyone getting it from one place, there is now thousands of places to get bits and pieces of that download.

In this picture it shows how normal downloading works. A central server sending out information to each individual computer requesting the file.



In this picture, it simply explains how torrents work. Once a user has started downloading from the server, they can send that data to other users requesting the file, thus relieving the server of a lot of stress from downloads.
















The actual torrent file itself does not contain very much information. It is not the actual program, or video, or anything other than some information. Torrent files actually come from individuals who want to share their content, or companies looking for an alternative way to share downloads. You can verify a torrent file by the actual extension itself saying .torrent instead of the usual three letter extension most files have. It will also only open with a bittorrent client.

What is a BitTorrent client?

In simple terms it's a program that allows you to use a torrent file. What it exactly does is a lot more complicated. For this example I'm going to use uTorrent, which is a very small and very good bittorrent client. Once you open up a torrent file the program will start searching for peers. Peers are other users who are also using the same torrent as you, but not necessarily the same client. What a torrent does is tells the program to connect you to anyone else sharing the file you want. It gets the file in pieces from various peers depending on how many actual users have that file.

It used to be that if someone had a torrent that contained a bundle of various files, like a season of a show, then you'd have to get the entire season even if you wanted just one episode. With clients like uTorrent you can select exactly which files you want, and exclude others. If you have any concerns about privacy of files being downloaded, this is one of the few that has encryption. Here is a wiki page displaying all the features of various torrent clients. You can see why I like uTorrent. Ususlly torrent clients need a certain port to be opened if you are behind a router, and hopefully you are behind one. If you have troubles figuring out how to do so, here's a site to get started -> Portforward.com


Where do I get torrent files from?

There are literally thousands of sites specified to host torrent files. The most famous of course is ThePirateBay. Known for not backing down when threatened by numerous corporations. They are not located in the US, so copyright laws don't apply to them. I like the site, but it's not always reliable with certain files and the majority of comments is complaints. The site that I would recommend for beginning is isoHunt.com. They recently implemented a comment and rating system for torrents. This is for the most part to notify other users if the torrent is valid and not a fake. There is also a rating system for torrent files as well.

Now if this is your first time being at a torrent hosting site, you might be confused with all the information provided. First thing you should do is type in something in the search field, for an example use the word book. What comes in might be different than what you'll see in the pic below, but most of it should look the same.

Click to enlarge me!

Click to enlarge me!

1. Is the Category, which displays what the file is, book, movie, music, tv show and so on.

2.The age of the torrent, how long has it been put up, h= hours, d= days, w= weeks.

3.This is the name of the torrent. This can either be really simple or pretty complex. Take a look at the first one. It says National Treasure 2 book of secrets, which is the name of the movie. [2007] is the year of when the movie premiered. DvDrip means it's a rip from an actual DVD disc. [Eng] means that it's in English. Finally aXXo is the name of the group that ripped and put it up to share. This is usually the format for movies. Other formats look different, but for the most part you should be able to decrypt it.

4. The size of the actual file you are getting. This is usually in MB (megabytes) or GB (gigabytes)

5. The letter S is for seeders. This is the number of users currently just sharing the file. They already completed the download, but are still sharing it. This is how torrents work, by people sharing the files even after it's completed. It's proper torrent etiquette to upload as much as you download, called a 1:1 ratio.

6. The letter L stands for leechers. This shows the amount of people getting the file at that time. It's best to have more seeders than leechers. The more seeders the better, and if the leecher count is way more than seeders, you're better off waiting a bit until they even out.

7. This is the rating system. Each star means someone liked that torrent and basically recommends it. If this is in red and has a minus it means stay away from this torrent.

8. The speech bubble with the number means the amount of comments this torrent file has. Clicking on the number takes you to the comments so you can read them. Most comments verify the quality of the file. Some comments might be about troubles users have encountered, or opinions they might have.

Now that you know what those statistics are for, clicking the actual torrent name drops down a box with even more information. Most of it not really necessary, like trackers and the actual files contained within the torrent. Just click the download torrent link and you'll be prompted with what to do with that file. If you already have uTorrent installed, the first option should be to "Open with uTorrent". This will then launch the program and you'll be asked to save the file. After that is done wait for the download to complete and you'll be able to use the file. Just remember to remove the torrent from uTorrent before moving it from wherever it is you saved the file to, otherwise you'll get a torrent error since the program won't be able to find that file to share anymore.

So what you have just read should be more than enough to get you started on using torrents, which is a great way to replace using such unsafe programs as Limewire. I do however recommend that you have an anti-virus program installed and up to date before using torrents. That will be my next blog so stay tuned if you want suggestions for which anti-virus program you should be using.

The best of media players?

Have you ever tried watching a movie or show you got from a friend or downloaded off the internet, only to have it give an error or say you were missing something to play it?

Most of us who have ran into this problem just click the message and go to download whatever it is we need to playback the video, not caring the reason for the message. Others give up when the proper file isn't found or ask a friend for advice. Wouldn't it be great to just have a media player that does it all? It never requires you to download extra plug-ins or add-ons. It plays back anything that you throw at it.
Well I ran into a media player a couple years back that I've stuck with up until this day. I was having such a hard time finding something better than Windows Media Player to playback my files. It's all I had known until I searched for an alternative. I switched to a program called BS Player that a friend referred me to that worked for a while, but started having adware in later updates. Plus it was still not able to play all my video files.
I did a bit of research and found that a program called VLC Player would allow you to playback broken video files or a wide variety of file formats in general. I downloaded it and realized that it was larger than other media players by about 5-6 megabytes, and yet when I opened it the interface was very basic. That threw me off for about two minutes as I was able to open every single format I had with it: AVI, MPEG1 and 2, OGG, DVD's, VCD's, ASF, VOB, etc. Oh, did I mention that it's free?

Like I said before, you might not like the simple interface but it has the options all there. It's skinnable, can stream, transcode, accepts subtitles, and can also be used as your default audio player as well.

The only gripe I have with it is the playlist. Now I have a ton of shows, I think more than the average user would ever have. My 'bedtime' playlist consist of about 4 shows with a total of about 600 episodes. Well it seems that VLC doesn't like opening up that many files at once, especially from an external drive. I might be one of the only ones with this problem, but I've heard from others about their frustration with the playlist. This excerpt is taken from the Wikipedia page on VLC.
"Despite rewrites, the VLC playlist is still far from industry standards. It can not open its native playlist format and retain the saved playlist ordering, regularly placing a number of tracks that should be at the start of the playlist at the end. It also lacks the ability to manage tracks as a group, requiring users to move individual tracks to reorder the playlist. Lastly, some users have reported that when reordering tracks, the playlist can collapse back to the playlist title, requiring expansion before reordering can continue." So there's the con for this player.
VLC is by no means the only free media player out there. It might not even be your favorite, but it's mine and I recommend it for anyone who has had troubles playing videos back. The following is links to other various media players that are totally free. They should not contain any mal-ware, although I cannot guarantee they will stay free forever.

Note: This is a list of free players, ones that don't have a option to purchase a better version. These are windows based, but might support other operating systems.

AL Show - Have never used it
GOM Player - Decent player
iTunes - Everyone uses it, not bad
Kantaris - Never used it
FLV player Used it, it's okay. It's for .flv videos files
LCPlayer - Never heard of it
MediaFrame - Java based player, never heard of it
Media Player Classic My second favorite, plays everything!
Nemesis - Never tried it
NicePlayer - Uses quicktime, never tried it.
Simple Center - Free basic version, have not used this one
The Core Pocket Media Player - for Palm OS
The KMPlayer - Never used it
TrayPlayer - Taskbar player, never used it
ViPlay - Supports an ass load of subtitle formats, only for 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP
Windows Media Player - standard player, not that great

Let me know if I missed any...

How to properly waste time

If you are like me, then you spend the majority of your life in front of a computer. Most of this time is spent doing work, learning, and reading. I'd like to spend my break or free time doing something leisurely like playing a game. Well most work places won't allow you to download and install games, and solitaire can get pretty boring after the millionth time you play it. There is an alternative though... flash games! Yes, these browser based games are becoming very complex and creative nowadays. You can find thousands of sites that host flash games, but I know of only one that does it the best. Kongregate.com
Kongregate has been around for only a couple years, but they have grown enormously. They have taken flash gaming to an all new level. Not only do you have over 3000 games to choose from but they are all scored based on player reviews. A star scale from 1-5 lets you know what others think as well as a comment system. There is also an achievement like system that I think is derived from Xbox360's own achievement system.

Certain flash games, usually the popular ones, are given badges to earn. A badge has four difficulty levels: easy, medium, hard, and impossible. Points are given for each badge earned, easy being 5, and impossible being a whopping 60. Each game you rate also gives you a point to add. As your points increase, you gain levels. So far this leveling system only shows how much time you've wasted or how competitive you are. As an added bonus usually each Thursday a challenge is posted. The challenges are like mini badges, but you receive a special Card for Kongregates own card game called Kongai. Kongai is part of a premium games pack created by Kongregate. These games usually have a lot more content and effort put into them, which separates them from everyday flash games usually created by one or two people.

It even has a chat room system that is unheard of for flash gaming sites. You can join a chat room at random, or switch between tons of rooms to find one you particularly like. Sometimes the chat rooms can get out of control, but there's always a mod nearby to get things back in order. I will commend them on this too. I've never seen a site that cared so much for their users than Kongregate.
With such a massive amount of games, you come across a broad assortment of game styles from simple Tetris and Snake clones, to complex TD (tower defense) games, and story driven RPG's. There are even a couple multi-player games if you want direct competition. You can favorite the games you like, or search by tags given to games. If you wish to not sign up for an account, you'll be limited to only playing the games. Points, badges, and challenges are not available for guest.

You can find my profile under Professor Chaos, and yea... I spend a lot of time there.

Cleaning Your PC

You probably use your laptop or desktop every single day. Have you noticed any slow down or poor performance? How often do you clean out old programs? How often do you clean up your registry?

You might not even care about the cleanliness of your pc, but just by clearing up some temp files and cleaning your registry, you can drastically increase the overall performance of your computer. Lucky for you there is an awesome program that covers just this problem, and the best part is it's free. CCleaner or what it use to go by Crap Cleaner, is a utility which will optimize windows performance based on routine maintenance. It has 4 areas of clean up to choose from. The first is the Cleaner, which selects windows files and application files such as temporary internet files, cookies, recycle bin, and so on. If you click the Analyze button it will search through and give a list of items to be removed along with a size. If it's your first time, I've seen upwards of 1-2 gigs of crap that was just taking up space. Hit Run Cleaner to delete the files and see how it magically increases your pc's performance.

The next tool in it's arsenal is the Registry Cleaner. This will search your windows registry for any unused file extensions, any left over files from removed programs, missing .dll files, and tons more. ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS backup your registry before you clean it. When you hit clean CCleaner will always ask you to backup changes made to registry, just in case something happened to windows or it removed a needed component by accident. It saves it as dates, so you can keep track of when the problem occurred and restore your registry prior to that.

The last clean up is under the Tools area. This has two parts and both are pretty important. The first being the Uninstall section. This will list every program that is installed currently on your PC. You might want to remove programs that you no longer use and take up space on your hard drive. Bundled software that came with your PC might not even show up in your programs list. Select the program you want removed and hit the Uninstaller button. It will run either the programs own uninstall or windows add/remove program. Then the final utility is called Startup, which controls the programs that start when you load up windows. This is important because the amount of programs that start up when Windows does actually slows down the start up process. This is also handy if you a program gives errors when Windows start, you can disable the program that gives the error. Don't just guess the programs to be disabled, look for any obvious ones like google or adobe, you can say don't run at startup and still have those programs. They'll just be ran when needed, not upon startup.

So that's it for now, here's the link for the CCleaner. I'd run this maybe once a week, the first time always takes the longest, it shouldn't be as bad the second or third time you run it.