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  • How to Secure Your Windows 7 System – Part 3

    How to Secure Your Windows 7 System – Part 3

    This is the third part in my series on securing your Windows 7 system. In part one I talked about securing your system using a hardware router and an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). In my last post I discussed creating a standard user account, disabling certain services, and a few other tasks you could perform within Windows to secure your system.

    In this post I will begin talking about some applications you can install, as well as a service that I recommend you use. The focus on this post is mainly on securing the communication channel to and from your Windows 7 system.

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  • How to Secure Your Windows 7 System – Part 2

    How to Secure Your Windows 7 System – Part 2

    In my last post titled How to Secure Your Windows 7 System – Part 1, I talked about securing your wireless router and about how to protect your computer with a UPS. While the tips provided in that post can apply to more than just a Windows 7 system, I felt it was important to discuss how to secure you system outside the actual operating system.

    This post, however, will now look into securing your Windows 7 system by making changes within the actual operating system. Now we will start to get into a few changes you can make to help keep your system safe. It is also important to note that you may not be able to apply all settings outlined in this post because of such things as your computer being connected to a LAN. I’ll try and point out such situations in the post.

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  • How to Secure Your Windows 7 System – Part 1

    How to Secure Your Windows 7 System – Part 1

    I recently purchased a new computer that had Windows 7 installed. With my new computer I figured it would be a new start with both the new operating system and security. Over the past month I have been busy reading, learning, and applying various security measures on my new computer.

    I have learned a bit more about security during that time, and feel that I have a fairly secure desktop, and have now decided to write several posts that outline what I have done on my Windows system to make it more secure.

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  • Internet Connection Slow in Windows 7

    Internet Connection Slow in Windows 7

    I like tinkering with my operating systems. I change many settings from their defaults, and sometimes the settings improve things, while other times it may break something. After I recently began exploring Windows 7, I began tinkering with some connection settings to see what they do.

    Unfortunately, I had changed several settings and then realized that my broadband Internet had slowed down to a crawl. My highspeed became dialup speed. In order to solve the problem I began to undo some of the changes until I found the culprit. I eventually found the problem, which I explain in this post.

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  • Rebuild the Icon Cache in Windows Vista and Windows 7

    Rebuild the Icon Cache in Windows Vista and Windows 7

    I recently purchased a new desktop computer to replace the 8 year old desktop I was previously using. The previous desktop had served me well for those 8 years, and had been running Windows XP without any problems. It had begun to show its age recently, however; so I bought myself a new one.

    My new desktop included Windows 7 Professional installed (I didn’t want Vista), which I so far have enjoyed using. I did run into a minor problem recently where some of the icons for specific file types went missing. While this didn’t stop the application from loading, it was a little annoying as it was a bit difficult to tell two shortcuts apart. Luckily, it is easy to delete and rebuild the icon cache.

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  • How Often Should You Post?

    How Often Should You Post?

    How often should you post on your blog is probably one of the most frequently asked questions. When someone starts a blog, they are not sure how many times they need to post to make their blog successful.

    Over the past year, my life has become busy so I haven’t been posting as often as I have done in the past. I recently decided to look at my stats to see how they were affected by the drop in posts each month. I present my visitor numbers and AdSense earnings below along with my posting frequency to see how they compare.

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  • Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Router Not Connecting to Internet

    Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Router Not Connecting to Internet

    Recently, my Linksys WRT54G wireless router could not connect to the Internet. The odd thing about this was that just the day before I didn’t have any problems. I have two computers and a Wii connected to the router. Once computer is a desktop that is hard-wired into the WRT54G with a network cable. I was able to connect to the Internet with the desktop without any problems.

    The second computer is a laptop, and like the Wii, it is connected to the router through the wireless connection. Neither system was able to connect, which indicated there was a problem with the wireless signal. After some testing I managed to find a solution.

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  • Couldn’t Print to a Local Printer

    Couldn’t Print to a Local Printer

    I recently had an issue where I couldn’t print to a local printer. The printer was connected directly to a laptop, and Windows had no trouble identifying the printer, but when the job was sent to, it wouldn’t print.

    While I usually like to post more challenging problems, this one turned out to be rather easy to solve. I will explain the symptoms in the post, which will hopefully help others that are experiencing similar problems.

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