Whenever you delete a file it will be sent to the Recycle Bin so that it can be restored if you change you mind (unless the file is too large for the recycle bin).Sometimes, however, you may want to bypass the Recycle Bin and delete a file completely(ish), to do this highlight the files you wish to delete, hold down the Shift key and press Delete. As with a normal deletion you will be asked to confirm...
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Monday, 28 January 2008
Jargon busting: software
In a new regular feature I will try to translate a few technical terms into plain English. In the first post I will look at some terms about software that you may have seen.FreewareSoftware that the authors retain the copyright for, which is free to use for an unlimited period. The term has come to refer to any free software, such as public domain and open source.SharewareSoftware that can be used...
Sunday, 27 January 2008
Carnival of Computer Help and Advice
I have decided to start a blog carnival to provide a monthly digest of the best blog articles that offer computer help and advice, preferably those that are written in novice-friendly language.This carnival will be published on the 27th of each month.The submission deadline for new articles is the 20th of each month.Like all blog carnivals, this is a community effort. If you wish to host a carnival...
Friday, 25 January 2008
Free Lightweight Alternatives to Bloatware
We have to install many programs to open the variety of files we are sent or download off the Internet, and we have to install more programs to keep in touch with people on the Internet.These programs are often quite large and the install files can take a while to load, even on broadband connections....
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Keyboard shortcut of the week: jump up a level
When you are using Windows Explorer - the file management program that opens when you double-click on 'My Computer' and the like - you can move to the parent folder by clicking the back-space key.By 'parent folder' I mean the folder that contains the one you are looking at. In the following image we...
Monday, 21 January 2008
Five freeware image manipulation tools
The GIMPThis is a fully featured image editor with an interesting name - it stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program (apparently). This is an incredibly powerful application with features that rivals professional software like Photoshop. Whilst this software was originally developed for a Linux environment...
Saturday, 19 January 2008
MS Word: replace, reformat, rejoice
Here is the scenario, you have copied some text from somewhere and pasted it into Word; however, the text ends up looking something like this.To see the cause of this problem, press the 'Show/Hide ¶' button. As shown, the original text has carriage returns - as indicated by the '¶' marks - at the end...
Friday, 18 January 2008
Guest article: Computer Error Basics
This is the first guest article here at Bloody Computer! It was written by James Ricketts from Instant Registry Fixes. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. K Windows errors can occur at any time due to several reasons. Most of the time, these errors leave us helpless and may even cause us to lose important data and spend large amounts of money on expensive computer repairs. We end up going through...
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Eject that CD or DVD the lazy way
After recently writing about context menus and the 'Applications' key, I remembered that you can eject your CD or DVD drive tray using Windows, rather than having to press that little button, which - for some reason - the drive manufacturers put beneath the tray. So if you have to reach down to your...
Monday, 14 January 2008
Windows Task Manager Explained: Part 2
Continuation from part 1Networking TabThe 'Networking' tab provides a visual representation of the amount of data that your network connections are transmitting and receiving over time. Note that the percentages quoted are of the maximum possible capacity under ideal circumstances, and do not take other...
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Windows Task Manager Explained: Part 1
Starting the Task ManagerThere are a couple of ways to show the Windows Task Manager: hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys and press the Delete key - Task Manager will then open some versions of Windows, in others you will be presented with a small dialog box that has a button you can click to open the Task...
Saturday, 12 January 2008
Keyboard shortcut of the week: So what is this key anyway?
The 'Application' KeyMost Windows compliant keyboards have a rarely used key between the Windows Key and the Ctrl key to the right of the space bar. This key can be used to bring up what is called a context menu for whatever is selected at the time. Context menu is the name for the menu that pops up...
Monday, 7 January 2008
50th post and first for 2008
After a period of disruption in my life I am hoping to be able to post regularly to Bloody Computer! again. I am going to start with a review of posts from 2007.Top 3 Most Read Posts1. Where has all my hard-drive space gone? (30th August): 51 views2. The mystery of the disappearing Taskbar. (10th December): 47 views3. Keyboard shortcut of the week: control your selections (8th December): 30 viewsData...