My quick and easy solution to this problem is so simple that it barely deserves a full article, but we’re going to cover it anyway—basically, you just create a shortcut to edit the file in Notepad, and set the properties to always start as Administrator. The final step is to create that shortcut in the Start Menu, so it will be easily accessible with the start menu search engine.

Once you’re done, all you have to do is type hosts into the start menu, and you can edit the Hosts file.

Let’s Make a Shortcut! 

Open up the start menu folder—for those of you that might be new, we’ve covered how to easily open up the start menu folder in Windows 7. Then right-click and create a shortcut, with the following location:

notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Once you’ve created the shortcut, and make sure you give it a useful name like “Edit Hosts”, you should open up the shortcut properties, click the Advanced button, and then select the “Run as administrator” option.

Once you’ve done so, you can simply type hosts into the start menu to pull up the item…

You’ll be prompted to accept the UAC prompt, since you have to edit the hosts file in administrator mode.

And there we are. Edit away!

And yes, you might point out that you can simply change the permissions on the Hosts file to not require admin mode, but that would lead to a less secure system, since malware often tries to edit the hosts file.

Also, you might point out that this was such a simple and easy topic that I shouldn’t have bothered. But I did! Loss of geek points for me.

Windows SteadyState

Not only does SteadyState return the PC back to its original state, but you can set it up to restrict what the user can access. You can lock down virtually every aspect of the computer from programs to websites and more. Of course you’ll need to be the administrator, and the first thing to do is install current drivers and Windows Updates. Then install programs and configure settings you want to how you want the machine to be every time it’s restored. Once everything is set up and you create different user account, you can let the public have at it. Any changes they make to the configuration will be undone just by restarting the machine. Here we take a look at SteadyState running on a Windows XP machine.

When you install SteadyState you’ll need to validate your copy of windows with Genuine Advantage. If you don’t have the WGA tool already on your machine you will be prompted to download and install it.

Add and Restrict a New User

When SteadyState starts you’ll get an overview of User Settings and Global Computer Settings. Now the fun part begins, you can make access as strict of lenient as you want.

In the first part of the SteadyState wizard, add the username, password, and picture. Notice you can create the user on the system drive or an alternate partition or drive.

In the next step you’ll start with General settings and adjust the time the user can spend on the system. Make sure to lock the profile so they can’t make permanent changes themselves.

In Windows Restrictions you can restrict them from several aspects of the OS. You can set the restrictions from High, Medium, Low, none or customize them according to your needs. You can hide certain drives from the user as well, so they can’t mess around with any data on them.

In Feature Restrictions you can lock down Internet access through IE and program menus and settings. The cool feature here is you can set the user home page and also create a Whitelist of sites they will have access to.

In the Block Programs section you determine which programs a user can access.

Windows Disk Protection helps protect system settings and data on the drive where the OS is installed. It is turned off by default and to turn it on click Protect the Hard disk.

In the next screen you can turn it on and to complete the process a restart is required.

After the restart you can choose a level of protection for the disk from always removing changes, retaining them temporarily, or allowing all changes.

You can change the cache file size if you need to free up disk space. The minimum amount of space you can use is 2GB.

Schedule Windows Updates and other program updates. You can also use your own script to schedule a time.

Getting this to work in Windows 7 is rather tricky. I installed it using compatibility mode on Windows 7 32-bit, however not everything worked. Right now I see no official support for it. They were going to include a similar feature but it was scrapped. If you still have a public XP or Vista machine however, it is still a great choice.

Conclusion

This is a great program for a public computer at a coffee shop, at a school, a library or just from keeping your young ones messing things up. It officially works with XP and Vista…Maybe some of you have gotten it to work on Windows 7? Leave a comment and let us know.

Download SteadyState

Note: Requires .NET Framework 3.5+ (link provided at bottom of article).

Setup

Windows Utilities Launcher is wonderfully simple to set up…just unzip the exe file, place it in a “Program Files” folder, and create a shortcut. Get ready for instant access goodness!

This is what you will see as soon as you start Windows Utilities Launcher… In the “Utilities Tab Area” you can quickly access the utilities shown with a single click of the button beneath each listing. Notice that you can easily minimize Windows Utilities Launcher to the “System Tray” or exit the program using the two buttons in the lower right corner. Windows Utilities Launcher will also display the version of Windows that you are using in the “Status Bar”.

Note: Windows (Computer) Info works on Vista & 7 only.

The “Settings Tab Area” lets you decide if you would like to have Windows Utilities Launcher start up with Windows each time and if you would like to have the app start as minimized.

The “About Tab Area” provides basic app information and also a way to contact the developer.

The Right Click Menus

Time for a closer look at the “Right Click Menu” setup for Windows Utilities Launcher. Here you can see the main menu… Notice that there are two additional apps that you can access here (Notepad & Calculator).

Use the “Windows Utilities” sub-menu as an alternate way to quickly access individual Windows Utilities.

Windows Utilities Launcher in Action

For our example we decided to access the “Date and Time Utility”. With a single click the “Date and Time” window opened very quickly. We had the same great result on any of the other utilities that we chose…quick and easy access.

Conclusion

Windows Utilities Launcher is still in the earlier stages of development, but this little app is already demonstrating how easy it should and can be to access common Windows Utilities. This is definitely worth trying out…have fun!

Links

Download Windows Utilities Launcher (version 1.1)

Download the .NET Framework (version 3.5 SP1)

Works On: Windows XP – 7

Installed On: Windows Vista (32 bit), Service Pack 2

Installation

The install process for Stickies does not run quite like other programs. As you can see with the first install window you are immediately placed into the major part of the decisions. Make the selections and/or changes that best suit your preferences.

Just before the installation process begins you will be presented with the following message concerning backups. Click “Yes” to proceed with the installation.

Here is the final install window. You are shown the exact actions that were performed during the install and also have an example note with some helpful information.

Stickies in Action

To get started simply “Right Click” on the “System Tray Icon” and select the action that you would like to perform.

Here are some Stickies Notes posted on our Vista Desktop. You can easily add things such as text, bullets/numbering, pictures (drag and drop), and highlighting.

You can go a step further and add titles to your notes, use an image as a background (drag and drop), and add text on top of the image.

These are the “Right Click Menus” for your Stickies. The first is for the text-based notes and the second is for the image background notes.

Use the following window to manage your Stickies collection.

Options

Stickies has a nice amount of options to help you customize the program just the way that you want it. Choose how you want your Stickies Notes to act and select specific layout/design details for new notes in the “General Tab Area”.

Set up how your Stickies Notes will look in the “Appearance Tab Area”. You can do a really nice job of matching how notes look to blend well with your desktop theme.

Set up networking if desired in the “Network Tab Area”…

Enable the e-mail function for notes in the “Email Tab Area”.

Tie your PDA into Stickies in the “PDA Tab Area”.

Set up the alerts (if desired) that best suit your preferences in the “Alerts Tab Area”.

Want to use hotkeys with Stickies? See what the defaults are for Stickies or set up your own personalized set in the “Hotkeys Tab Area’”.

Choose the search engine lineup, level of logging, and other features that you want active in the “Advanced Tab Area”.

Conclusion

If you have been looking for a good sticky notes program for your desktop, then Stickies is definitely a recommended addition for your Windows system.

Links

Download Stickies (version 7.0-b)

What is mDNSResponder.exe or Bonjour?

The mDNSResponder.exe process belongs to the Bonjour for Windows service, which is Apple’s “Zero Configuration Networking” application, typically installed automatically by iTunes. If you’ve ever wondered how one iTunes install can talk to another on the same local network, Bonjour is what actually does this behind the scenes.

Don’t use iTunes? You aren’t alone, and that’s not the only way that Bonjour gets installed on your computer. It’s also bundled in a whole bunch of other software, like Pidgin, Skype, and Safari, and used to connect clients together on the same network.

It’s implemented as a Windows Service, which you can see if you head into the services panel (or just type services.msc into the start menu search box). You can stop it from here anytime.

The whole problem we have is that it generally doesn’t show up in Add / Remove Programs, so you can’t get rid of it through any normal methods. Thankfully you can still remove mDNSResponder.exe if you really want to, and it will simply limit some of the functionality in the apps that might rely on it.

Important: Don’t remove Bonjour if you use iTunes to share libraries, or any other feature from an application that relies on it.

How Do I Remove It?

First, it should be noted that you can disable Bonjour without necessarily removing it—just head into the Services panel, double-click on the service, and change the Startup type to Disabled.

This is probably your best bet if you don’t really want to break anything—if you have problems you can always re-enable it.

Alright, How Do I Really Remove It?

Let’s get down to business. If you’re absolutely sure you want to remove it, it’s really pretty simple. Open up a command prompt in administrator mode (right-click and choose Run as Administrator), and then change into the installation directory, usually the following:

\Program Files\Bonjour

If you are using Vista or Windows 7 x64 edition, you’ll need to head into the Program Files (x86) folder instead. Now that you are there, type in the following command to see the options:

mDNSResponder.exe /?

Ah, so now we know what to do to remove it! Simply type in the following:

mDNSResponder.exe –remove

You’ll get a message saying that the service has been removed. (Note again that you need an Administrator mode command prompt)

You’ll want to also disable the DLL file in the directory by renaming it to something else:

ren mdnsNSP.dll mdnsNSP.blah

You should be able to actually remove that entire directory if you really want to.

Wait, How Do I Enable It Again?

Oh, so your favorite application broke? No matter, you can easily re-install the Bonjour service with the following command:

mDNSResponder.exe -install

But I Deleted It!

See, you really shouldn’t delete things until you are sure they aren’t useful anymore. That’s why renaming is a good thing. Thankfully you can simply head over to Apple’s page and install Bonjour again.

Download Bonjour for Windows

Setup

Setup for Directory List & Print is quick and easy. Unzip the zip file, add the two files inside (DirectoryListPrint.exe & DirectoryListPrint.pdf) to their own folder in Program Files, and create a shortcut. Now everything is ready to go…

Note: The pdf file is the “Help Manual” for Directory List & Print.

This is what Directory List & Print looks like when you start it up for the first time. Only the top two information categories are selected…you can easily select additional categories and the program will remember your selections each time that it is opened up afterwards.

Directory List & Print in Action

Time to try things out. For our example we decided to create a list for the Opera Browser folder on our Vista system. As you can see there is a very nice preview of the list in the lower part of the window. From here you can choose to directly print your new list, copy it to the clipboard, or export it to Microsoft Word and/or Excel.

To export to Microsoft Word or Excel, simply click on the appropriate button(s) and the new windows will automatically open as shown below…

This is what your list will look like when exported to Microsoft Word…

And what it looks like when exported to Microsoft Excel. Of the two, the Excel version has a cleaner more organized look. Using Excel you can also arrange the rows and cells to make it even easier to read in case you need to present it to your supervisor.

Conclusion

If you have been looking for a very smooth way to print directory lists or export them to Microsoft Word & Excel, then you are really going to enjoy having Directory List & Print added to your Windows system.

Links

Download Directory List & Print (version 1.9.9.16)

If you’ve got any geek skills at all, you probably don’t need to bother paying for an expensive security suite and a subscription. Instead, you can use the completely free Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus application, which we’ve already given our official blessing as a great solution.

I also explained the basics of how to keep your computer updated using Windows Update and third-party tools like Secunia PSI (which we’ve previously covered here).

For more, check out the article over at Lifehacker: Stop Paying for Windows Security; Microsoft’s Security Tools Are Good Enough

Blue Screen of Death

The BSOD is actually a protection mechanism that shuts down the system functions before further damage can occur. Many times the BSOD is caused by a hardware driver issue and a reboot can solve it. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case and additional troubleshooting is needed. The problem is that the computer will reboot before you can write down the error message and figure out what is wrong.

BlueScreenView

BlueScreenView is a handy utility that will display the BSOD dump file in an easy to read report so you can see what caused it. When you launch BlueScreenView it scans for minidump files (usually C:\Windows\minidump) created by the crash and displays the information. The dump files are displayed in the top pane and and in the lower pane it highlights the drivers involved that caused the crash.

Double click on the drivers to display an easy to read table showing the various properties of the error.

If you don’t want a lot of clutter you can just show the driver files involved.

Right-click on any of the dump files and send them to an HTML Report, which will be handy if you need to send the information to a technician. The ability to save the reports is also good for identifying reoccurring issues.

Another neat feature is you can have the original BSOD error be displayed.

You can also customize the settings for what you want to make visible.

It’s available in several different languages and works with XP, Vista and Windows 7. With BlueScreenView installed, you’ll no longer have to worry about frantically trying to write down the error message.

Download BlueScreenView (download link toward bottom of the page)

For more help with the BSOD check out The Geek’s article: Help Troubleshoot the Blue Screen of Death by Preventing Automatic Reboot

It was more than two years ago that we first highlighted DisplayFusion as a great way to put more than one wallpaper on each of your desktops, and since then the software has continued to improve with full support for Windows 7 taskbars and Aero.

DisplayFusion, the Free Version

Arguably the best feature in DisplayFusion is the ability to put more than one wallpaper on your each of your multiple monitors, but you can also span a single wallpaper across the entire desktop, and size them different ways to make them fit.

You can also use the built-in wallpaper browser to pull in images from Flickr or Vladstudio.

You can then browse through and find a wallpaper that you like, and assign it to the desktop.

There’s an enormous amount of hotkeys that are built right in:

And you can add buttons to the window title bar for various functions, like moving windows from one monitor to the other. (Limited to 1 button for the free version)

For instance, here I’ve added a button that moves the window to the next monitor.

It’s an extremely useful software, but the best part is that you can just download and use all these features (and more) for free. 

Pro Edition Features

The Pro edition adds more functionality—you can add more buttons to the title bars, do a little more configuring with the hotkeys (or add new hotkeys), or the most interesting feature: Add a Taskbar on each monitor!

The taskbar isn’t identical to the Windows 7 one, but it does look very similar, and even includes mouse-over hover previews. Unfortunately the previews don’t seem to do Aero Peek yet, but one can only assume that feature will be coming eventually.

The Pro edition also adds the ability to rotate between wallpaper images, either on your computer, or from Flickr or Vladstudio.

The Rules (Important!)

So you want a copy of the Pro version? We have FIVE copies to give away, and we’ll be selecting them randomly from the comments. Here’s what you have to do:

1. Grab yourself a free copy of DisplayFusion (you can get a free trial of Pro if you want, or stick with the free one).
2. Leave a comment explaining one (or more) thing you like about the software, and one thing you think could be improved. Be sure to use your real email address.
3. To cut down on accidental spam filtering, include the keyword DisplayFusion in your comment.
4. We will announce the winners in the weekly roundup, so you have a couple of days to participate.

Make sure that your comment includes something you like, and something you don’t like. If you don’t think it can be improved, say that, but if you completely hate it, maybe leaving a comment is a waste of time =)

Download DisplayFusion (Free or Pro) from binaryfortress.com

PC Decrapifier

PC Decrapifier requires no installation…just double-click the exe file to get things started.

The first screen introduces you to the program and gives you the opportunity to check for a new release. Click “Next” when ready…

The second screen has the EULA.

The third screen provides a warning to be careful regarding software that you may have purchased and installed yourself. You definitely do not want to accidentally remove the good stuff.

This screen asks which type of computer you are running. Choose the appropriate response…for our example we went ahead and checked “Yes”.

You will have the opportunity to create a “Restore Point” before going any further with the removal process. It is recommended that you do so before going to the next step.

You will be notified as soon as the “Restore Point” has been created…it may take a few moments depending on your individual setup. Now you are ready to check for “garbage software”. Click “Next”…

Our Windows 7 install came up clean but that is not the end of things yet. At this point you will have the opportunity to remove other software that is not in PC Decrapifier’s list yet or was added after you got your computer. Click “Next” to see what is found.

As you can see PC Decrapifier shows a list of the other software on your computer. Here you can see non-OEM installs of Google Toolbar and Musicmatch Jukebox have been selected. It is a good opportunity to remove unwanted software that is cluttering up your hard-drive. Select the particular items that you would like to have removed and click “Next”.

You will be provided with a final opportunity to cancel the removal if you are uncertain about any of your selections.

Then all that you have to do is enjoy watching that unwanted software being removed for you… You may be occasionally prompted to confirm removal of non-OEM software in uninstall windows…

All done…

In the final window you will have an opportunity to provide feedback to the software author if desired, otherwise click “Finish” to close PC Decrapifier.

What Does It Look For?

If you are curious about the list of items that PC Decrapifier looks for, there is a list (three pages) provided at the author’s website (link provided below). Here is a sample from the first page…

Conclusion

If you are looking for a good way to clean up your new (or old) computer, then PC Decrapifier can help make it as painless as possible.

Links

Download PC Decrapifier (version 2.1.0)

See the list of what PC Decrapifier removes