What?  my computer has cookies in it?  How do I get them out?  I’m hungry!

Not exactly those kind of cookies.  Cookies in computer terms are little files on your computer (harddrive) that stores some information about you.  They can store your preferences for certain websites, your authentication information if you need to login etc.

Have you ever been told you should delete your cookies? Well, generally this is a good practice as it will remove these text files from your computer and in the process clean away your personal information as well.  There are some drawbacks when doing this, as it will *forget* all your stored authenication information for sites.  

If your browser is set to remember your passwords, it will still know them when you login, but setting this option is not a recommended practice

To remove your cookies in IE follow these steps:

Tools \ Internet Options \ Browsing History \ Delete button
on the popup remove the check marks from all options but Cookies

To remove your cookies in FireFox follow these steps:

Tools \ Options \ Privacy Tab \ remove individual cookies
from here, you can remove individual sites cookies, or all.

To remove your cookies in Chrome follow these steps:

Wrench \ Options \ Personal Stuff \ Clear Browsing Data… \ Delete Cookies \ Clear browsing Data

As you can see on those pages, there is other options for passwords, browsing history and some other options.  I also recommend that you periodically update / remove these bits of your personal information as well.

Clearing your Cookies is something that you should do time to time just to make sure that you have removed the settings, and personal data for websites from your computer.

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I get asked this question a lot.  People are always being infected with a virus, or some piece of software that is just plain ol’ bad for your PC.

What software do I use to get rid of those nasty programs?  You know the ones that are trying to get your information, or destroy your PC.  I use a couple of programs depending on how bad the infection is, but as my start I always use Malware Bytes.

Once you have installed this program, its really easy to use it, and keep your machine clean.

Just click on “Perform Full Scan” and “Scan”.

Once you have run this atleast twice then you can run quick scans after that.  If the program find anything it will prompt you to remove it, or clean it automatically.

Here are the settings that I use

and I recommend that you click on the update tab and check for updates every time that you go to run the software after your first download.

You don’t need to purchase the software to get the functionality, but if you like the software, why not give the developers something for their time.

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A NAS is a device that sits on your home network, and it allows your to have a centralized location for all your files to sit.  NAS stands for Network Area Storage, and that’s exactly what it does.  It is a self contained box that plugs into your home netowrk, normally into your switch or router, and it provides a place to dump common files.

A NAS is a device that sits on your home network, and it allows your to have a centralized location for all your files to sit.  NAS stands for Network Area Storage, and that’s exactly what it does.  It is a self contained box that plugs into your home netowrk, normally into your switch or router, and it provides a place to dump common files.

People use NAS devices for storing Photos, Music, Movies, and other programs.  Some NAS devices will allow you to have access to the files from remote locations as well.

These devices can be used in a variety of configurations, and normally hold atleast 2 Hard Disks.  They will allow for RAID configurations, such as:

RAID 0 – Striping – Faster Data access as data is written across both disks.

RAID 1 – Mirroring – copies the files from Disk 1 to Disk 2

RAID 5 – Striped Disks with Parity – Copies the information across the disks, but keeps one for parity information.  Requires 3 disks at a minimum.

RAID 1+0 – Mirrored Data Set which is Striped – Minimum of 2 Disks needed.

Most NAS devices will only allow for 2 Disks (drive bays) to be added to the unit, but there are 3 disk versions which are normally a lot more expensive.

Having a NAs in your network is a great way to not only share files across multiple computers, but also to have a place to store files, so they are not residing on your personal pc.  The best application is to use the NAS to store images of your hard drive, so if you ever experience a crash, your data can easily be recovered.

So what do you use your NAS for?  Do you have a favorite manufacturer?

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By now you would probably know that I am a supporter of the new Windows 7 Operating System.  This is the best OS that they have made since they released XP for home users.  They have had a few flops in the home markets namely Windows ME, and Vista (until they made patches for the OS.)

I have liked this OS since I have had time to try the first versions of Public Beta, and I am still using the pre-release on my main system now.  So I thought I would let you all know about a special offer that Microsoft has on right now.

I have a special bit of news for all you students out there.  I know that times are tough and that you need to pinch every penny so you can get by, but for a limited time Microsoft is offering a full license of Windows 7 Home Premium for $29.99 USD.  A full operating system for under $30!  Can’t complain about that one.

You will need to provide your College/University email address in order to qualify.  If you qualify, they will send you an email with purchase details, then you will be able to download the software.

If you are not sure if you can run the new OS on your older laptop, here is a link for your to run the Windows upgrade advisor which will let you know if it will work.

Want to know if your school is included in the list of acceptable institutions?  Here is a link for you to check out your Schools information as well.

If your school is not listed you will need to provide information to Microsoft about your course, and they will ask some information and add your school if it meets their criteria.

Sadly this site doesn’t say anything about Canada or any other country, but I have learned that they will be eligible but not until Oct 22nd.  No prices have been set for these countries yet.

This is great news for students.  I know that I will be purchasing a full version of Windows 7 soon.

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Periodically, while operating your computer, you might get a popup from Windows that says ‘Insufficient Memory’ or something similar to this.

This is a general system error that your computer is letting you know that you may have 1 of 2 conditions happening.  Either your PC doesn’t have enough RAM to open the applications that you want to run, and hence you might have too many running at the same time.  The other option is that you might have some old processes still running from applications that were shut down already.

Depending on the amount of RAM that you have in your computer is normally what will dictate how often you get this error.  To check on the amount of RAM you have in your PC, read my other post here.  If you have a very small amount of RAM, you might want to purchase more for your PC, if you have enough space to install it (slots for it to sit in on your motherboard).

If you have RAM that is not being freed when you close applications, this can be due to a memory leak or a rogue process that is not shutting down correctly.  There are 2 ways to get rid of this message.  The first is to simply do a cold boot of the machine, so all memory is wiped clean.  A cold boot is done by shutting down the system and waiting 10 or more seconds before starting it again.

If you have applications running that you can’t shut down at the moment, yet you need to get some RAM back, you can “kill” the process that is causing the issue.

***WARNING*** terminating processes that you are unsure of, might lead to data loss in applications that are open.

Let’s start shall we?

First open the Task Manager for Windows. Right click on your task bar and select Task Manager

when the task manager launches select the Performance tab

If your system is running out of resources the second graph will be very close to the top.

select the Processes tab and sort by memory used

Here you will be able to see which applications are using the most RAM on your system.  You can select the application, and select end process.

This will terminate the application, and get you back some of your RAM.  Remember if you don’t know what the process is, it might not be safe to terminate it.

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Do you get really annoyed when you login to Facebook and all you see on your wall is a bunch of updates from your friends, but not really from your friends?  Rather, the update is from a game or application that they are using on Facebook, and it has decided to let you know that your friend is playing thier game, and that they want to let you know, or they need your help!

I know that this topic is not one that I normally cover, but I liked the question so I decided to post on it.

In Facebook, these apps and games are trying to advertise themselves to everyone, and thats why they are posting to your wall.  I can appreciate that, but I personally find it annoying, so I am going to tell you how to stop it, without blocking your friend!

When you login to Facebook and you are looking at the home page, you might see a bunch of updates from Farmville, Mafia Wars, some random quiz, or whatever the latest Facebook fad is.  The best way and easiest way to stop them is really simple.

Beside each post on the right hand side, there will be a drop down arrow.

You won’t see it unless you move your mouse over that area, thats the trick!  once you have your mouse over that area, you will be able to select “hide” or hide application.

Hide, will remove all posts from that user, so you never see their updates again.  Not sure you will want to do that, but its there.  Hide application, will remove all the posts from that application.  So if you have 20 friends all playing Farmville, or passing around the 10 things I know about you quiz, once you hide that application, you won’t see anyones update about it afterwards.

Although you are not able to do this on the iPhone with the Facebook app, once you do this on your PC in a web browser, then you will not see these updates on your iPhone anymore either.

There you go, now you don’t have to see all those application updates anymore!

This was a request from a subscriber to DutchGeek.com.  If you want to get your questions answered, why not post a comment below.

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Have you ever wondered just what a system restore point was, and just why you need them?

Your not alone.  A lot of people don’t know how to effectively use them, and they can be a great tool for backup.  However; that being said, it should never be your ONLY form of backup of your system.  System Restore points should be considered the front line of your backup solution.

System Restore points can be made in Vista or Windows 7 by opening the Control Panel and choosing System.

Select on System Protection

Here we are able to choose the specific settings of our backup.  Choose configure, and Select the following options:

Restore system settings and previous versions of files.

The amount of Disk Space that is used, is up to you.  I would  normally recommend about 10% of your total Hard Disk.  Once these options are enabled, then your system should be backing up the data. The default for the task in Windows is to run at midnight each day.

***NOTE***

I do not consider this to be a full backup of your system, however; if used correctly this can be used as one component of a full backup routine for your data.

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I had been holding off on posting this, but after finally getting this to work flawlessly for me, I have decided to publish this article.

For all the different domains that I own, and all the websites that I have setup, I have always needed some form of software to be my mail server.  I used to run a few different mail server programs out of my own home, so I had greater control over the application.

Then a few years ago I was invited to the Gmail beta when it was still closed.  I had used Hotmail, Yahoo, and a few other free mail clients before this, but they just never seemed to interest me enough to keep using them.  Don’t get me wrong, I still have my yahoo account, but I use that as a spam address.

The biggest problem that I was facing was I needed an application that would allow for mail client usage such as Outlook Express (Microsoft Mail now), and also for web viewing, as some of the people that I was serving mail for needed to view it over the web.

I was using a program called Icewarp, and it was great, until I starting getting innudated with SPAM.  The different organizations, that I was hosting for free started to complain about receiving way too much SPAM, and asked me to decrease it.  It became a never ending battle.  So the search started.  Then I stumbled upon it… oh could this be it?  Gmail had been released for orgainzations.  Yes free and paid email solutions for all!  Upto 25 accounts was still free, and since my customers were all smaller, this was perfect!

Yes, yes it was all I needed until I got my first iPhone.  I saw all the different mail accounts I could have and I could seperate them, and be organized!  My previous Blackberry needed special apps to be able to view HTML mails, and even seperate the accounts.

Being on an exchange server at work, I was able to push emails, for my work account, and IMAP for my Gmail, and yahoo accounts.  I was in heaven!  Then in order to save the company a bit of money, I removed myself from the push server, freeing up my 1 available Exchange connection.

Then Gmail started to tease me.  They allowed for contacts and calendars to be synced through push!  I copied all my contacts from my work email, and published them into my personal gmail account.  Now I had access to all the contacts that I would ever need, and they were in my personal email.  This meant that if I was ever let go from the company, I would not scramble to get my contact data out of my work email account.  I had seen it far too often that people were let go, and I would have to disable access to their accounts.

That’s right people.  If its your work account, it doesn’t belong to you.  You might think it does, but sadly, it doesnot.  This was a great way for me to prepare incase any ever happened, I would retain my contacts, and my work email account would be clean for anyone else to look at.

Then a short while ago, Gmail allowed mail push.  Oh Happy Day!  yes that’s right, I am now able to push all my information for my gmail account in realtime to my iPhone.

Gmail for organizations has become a true leader in email services.  They are second to none, as they offer free accounts for the smaller organizations, and low cost enterprise solutions as well.  Everytime I am asked how to setup an email acount for a client, I always recommend Gmail, as the administrator is able to control the accounts, and the people in the organization can have an email address with their proper domain name rather than a @gmail.com account or a @hotmail.com.  This is much more professional looking, and its very easy to setup.

Congratulations Google for giving us yet another stunning service!

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If you remember a little while back I wrote an article on wireless security and I briefly mentioned that you should make sure that its turned on, and I mentioned that at a minimum you need to have WPA.

Now is the time to explain the differences between the different types so you can understand why I make the recomendations that I do.

There are 3 main types of Wireless security for your router.  They are WEP, WPA and WPA2.

WEP Encryption – (Wired Equivalent Privacy) 1997

This form of security has a few flaws.  The most noticeable being that the encryption is done in plain text.  It can be set to handle 64 bit encryption and 128 bit as well.  This format uses RC4 for its traffic key.  This is a very short key, and requires less packets to determine the network password.

Tests have been done on secured WEP Networks, and the key was determined in about 1 minute.   There are software packages that are readily available for people to download in order to hack into this type of network.  The latest ports have even been setup for the iPhone.  The info I saw showed an iPhone hacking a network in less than 2 minutes.

WPA – (WiFi Protected Access) 1999

This is still using the RC4 stream, but the key type was changed to TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol).  This was designed to replace the older, failing WEP format.  This format was designed to fix some of the flaws from WEP, but still needed to communicate with the older hardware.  This meant that a flaw was available for hacking in order to find the key.  This flaw is only able to decrypt short packets that were known to contain data.

WPA2 – 2006

This is a newer protocol, and might not work with all the older equipment that is still in some networks.  Some hardware will need to be replaced, or if you are lucky just have the firmware updated.

Based on the WPA format, WPA2 uses a much stronger advanced encryption standard, rather than RC4.

With WPA2 being the stronger format available, this is the best option for your network.  While nothing can ever be truly secure, there are steps that you can take to make it harder for hackers to retrieve your personal data.

1.  SSID (Service Set IDentifier) – try not to use common words or names for your network.  Use random letters B2BIR or pick an acronym that you can remember. ROY G BIV, JJASONDJFMAM, or SOHCAHTOA works for me.

2.  Once you have the network setup there should be an option to disable broadcast of your SSID.  This is why having a random acronym that you can remember makes it easier for you to enter your credentials

3.  Turn on the MAC (Media Access Control) Filter.  This means that only approved MAC addresses are allowed to connect to your network.

*note – While 99% of network cards have this information hard coded onto the hardware, there are some network cards allow you to type in your own MAC Address for the card.  This is primarily used to hack networks and to bypass licensing restrictions for software.  I own one of these cards, and they are extremely handy for those situations*

4.  Change your Network Key in intervals, ie every 3 – 7 days.  This is a manual process and requires all clients to update as well.

5.  Use a NetBEUI protocol for file sharing (Advanced users only).  As most people do not have this option enabled, and rather than using the IP address of the machine it uses the computer name to authenticate.

6.  While setting up the DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) on the router, set the available amount of licenses that it delivers to the exact number of machines on your network.

7.  Don’t use 192.168.0.1 as your default address for your router.

8.  Change the admin login and password on your router.

While some of these are basic and should be done, others are more advanced, and unless you feel comfortable, should be avoided, or you might need a professionals help you to set these options in place.  I am not able to post screen shots for setup as there are hundreds of manufacturers, and each one does things just a little bit differently.

I am happy to help you as much as I can through the comments, or I can do some consulting for you to assist with your setup.

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Yep, you guessed it, I made a bit of a mistake earlier today, and I thought I would share my experience with you.

I was making a new avatar for a social site, and I was chatting with a friend of mine on skype.  So there was mistake number 1, I should have been focusing on what I was doing at the time.

While editing the image to make it smaller, I mistakenly clicked on the save button and not the save as button.  Now, my large nice image has been replaced by a much smaller one.  This is where I start swearing at my computer right?

Wrong.  Why? because I use Windows 7.  Windows 7 and Vista have a built in feature called shadow copy.  This allows you to restore files from a previous version.  In order to restore the file all I need to do is follow these steps.

Right click on the file and choose properties.  A dialog box like this will pop up:

Choose the Previous Versions tab

Now I can select the old version that I want to restore from.  Simply choose the file that you want, and hit Restore

Those of you that are paying attention will notice that the old version is from Feburary.  Yes, that’s a little old, but in this case its fine.  The reason that this file is so old is because the shadow copies are only created during a system restore point.  By default this option is turned on, but you can manually invoke it so you have more backups of your data.

I will teach you how to setup this option in my next posting.

So remember, that even the professionals make mistakes.  The difference is that we know how to recover from them.

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