CompuClever Blog

PC tips: what are sticky keys?

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You’ve probably encountered this before – you’ve hit some sort of keyboard combination when using a Windows computer that results in a dialogue box asking you if you want to enable “StickyKeys”. And like me, you’ve probably quickly hit “escape” or “close” and have continued on with whatever you were doing in the first place.

What are StickyKeys? Fundamentally they’re a form of accessibility for PC users who may be living with some sort of disability, typically visual impairment, or blindness.

Andy Thompson frequently writes about PC tips.

However, StickyKeys can become a powerful tool that can help anyone get more out of their computer.

Of course, we all use keyboard shortcuts – combinations of keys that allow us to do certain activities, and save time and typing rhythm by taking the mouse out of the equation. Some keyboard shortcuts, however, require you to hold down three keys at a time. If you want to use a keyboard shortcut but find it difficult to hold down two or three keys at the same time, StickyKeys makes it easy.

When a shortcut requires a key combination, the StickyKeys feature in Microsoft Windows lets you press a key, such as SHIFT, CTRL, or ALT, and keep it active until another key is pressed.

To activate StickyKeys, go to your desktop and press the SHIFT key five times. A dialog box opens with instructions on how to set up the StickyKeys feature. Then click OK. An icon (a group of squares) appears in the notification area.

To turn off StickyKeys, press the SHIFT key five times, and then click Cancel in the StickyKeys dialog box.

Andy Thompson frequently blogs on PC tips

Protect your online identity

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protect your online identityIt’s the Christmas season, and more and more people are doing shopping online in order to save time and to stick to a budget. If you’re doing a lot of online holiday shopping, are you taking basic steps to protect your online identity?

You might be surprised by the amount of personal information that is stored on your computer – everything from passwords to, in some cases, banking and credit card information.

If you happen to download malware such as a Trojan or a virus, it may be possible for someone to learn and use your personal information – after you’ve been using your credit card to buy Christmas presents, for example – which can become a nightmare to fix.

So, to save you some worry, here are 2 tips for protecting your privacy online:

1. Scan your computer for cookies, passwords, chat email history, web search term history

Every time you use the internet, your browser stores “cookies” that remember personal information about the websites you’ve visited – personal information such as passwords for your online banking, your birthday, or even your mother’s maiden name, for example.

Your internet browser also saves the specific search terms you’ve been using to find things on the internet. Your internet chat program is also storing the records of every hat you’ve ever had.

Add these three different kinds of personal information together, and it’s possible to learn a lot about your private information, which can have serious consequences if the wrong person has the chance to snoop through your computer.

So, one way to protect your privacy online is to scan your computer for cookies, passwords, chat email history, and web search term history, and delete unneeded information.

2. Delete temporary files

Your web browser regularly creates temporary or “temp” files of the websites you visit to help speed up the browsing process. This means anyone with access to your computer can see any web page you’ve ever visited.

So, if you’re worried about online privacy, it’s always a good idea to periodically remove temp files. As an added bonus, removing temp files can sometimes speed up your computer.

More next time

That’s all for now. If you’re interested in using a powerful tool that will help improve computer performance, why not give PC Tuneup Maestro a try? PC Clean Maestro can help you easily remove speed up Windows.

 

How to free up memory on your PC

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Thanks to the incredible growth in online services in recent years, paired with the ability to quickly an easily connect your home computer to your entertainment system, it’s really easy to start downloading movies from Amazon or other providers and never stop! Combine that with our tendency to take HD videos of our kids, and it all adds up to hard drives that fill up quite quickly.

So what do you do if you run out of memory on your computer?

If your hard disk is filling up, you can free up a considerable amount of memory by reducing the size of your Recycle Bin. Your Recycle Bin is where all of your “deleted” files end up, but they’re not really deleted until you, the user select “empty Recycle Bin”.

Until they, all of these old files, everything from old Word docs to very large media files stay where they are, taking up space on your hard drive.

So, to empty your Recycle Bin and free up some space:

  1. Right click on the Recycle Bin icon with your mouse, choose Properties from the pop-up menu.
  2. In Vista and Windows 7, you can enter in a maximum MB that the recycle bin can hold. Whatever the number is currently there, start off by dividing it by 2 and using that value.
  3. For other Windows versions, you can drag the slider to a lower value. 2% of the drive should be enough if you’re really stuck.

Of course, this is really a last-ditch effort, and sooner rather than later you’re going to need buy a hard drive.

One other trick to freeing up memory is by defragmenting your computer’s registry

Your PC’s hard drives and system registry can become fragmented if not regularly inspected, and this fragmentation registry causes slowdown while your computer attempts to perform seek and write commands. This, in turn, slows down the performance of your entire system.

Defragmentation reduces the amount of fragmentation in file systems (in other words, your registry) by reorganizing the contents of the hard drive in order to make sure pieces of each file are stored as close together as possible; this reduces the amount of time it takes for the system to access the whole file.

Defragmentation also creates larger regions of free space by compacting the files in the registry – this actually can prevent the return of fragmentation. Defragmenters also keep smaller files within a single directory together, as they are often accessed in sequence.

PC TuneUp Maestro’s Registry Defragmentation tool completely removes fragmentation gaps and produces a cleaner, more compact registry that takes up less disk space and consumes fewer memory resources. The result is that your computer has optimal access to its registry, so your system and application response times are improved.

 

How to speed up Internet Explorer for free

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How to speed up Internet Explorer

It’s a fact: Internet Explorer slows down over time. Pages take longer to load, and sometimes even crash.

Why is this?

Often when you purchase a new computer, Internet Explorer comes pre-installed with “tool bars”. These may look useful, but they can slow down your computer.

Other things like “cookies” and other Internet Explorer “plugins” can also slow down your internet browsing.

Our cool trick

Luckily, we have developed a cool trick that’s easy to do, that speeds up Internet Explorer on your computer.

If you’ve downloaded the newest version of PC TuneUp Maestro:

1) Click on the “Fix & Clean”.

2) Click on “Internet Explorer Repair”, and you’ll be presented with some choices.

Reset Internet Explorer

If you click on “Reset Internet Explorer”, you’ll be able to remove all the toolbars and plugins that may be slowing down your computer.

Don’t worry, PC TuneUp Maestro will ask you every step of the way about what to remove – you get the final say on what toolbars and plugins stay, and which ones get removed.

Launch Internet Explorer Without Add-Ons

Launch this tool, and a new Internet Explorer window will open and you can start enjoying a faster web browser immediately.

So there you have it – two ways to help speed up Internet Explorer. Let us know how it works!

Want to speed up Internet Explorer? Try downloading PC TuneUp Maestro for free!

Speed up your computer in 5 days

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speed up my computerUse PC TuneUp Maestro to speed up your computer over 5 days by completing 5 taks. Some of these can be used without even purchasing PC TuneUp Maestro!

Here’s the boot camp line up:

Day 1: Remove clutter

Over time, your applications run more slowly and your computer is not performing as fast as it used to. You may be experiencing the effects of clutter: excess files on the computer.

The solution is to delete these files to prevent delay time and make your computer more responsive.

Day 2: Re-organize your files

Over time, as your computer saves and stores files, the files can become fragmented. This fragmentation can result in poor hard drive performance, which means it takes longer for your computer to open programs and files.

Use PC TuneUp Maestro to quickly access the Disk Defragmenter, a tool that will speed up the access to files on your hard drive by re-arranging them.

Day 3: Speed up the startup time

It is common for applications to add functions to your computer that run when you start the computer and possible stay active (but out of view), while you use the computer.  Each of these programs takes time to load up and run when you start the computer, making the wait longer.

Review startup plans and decide whether to enable or disable an item from opening when you start your computer

Day 4: Clean up the registry

The Windows registry stores information about applications, file locations, application settings, and entries from program installations, and can sometimes store out-dated and empty entries that will slow down your computer.

Use Registry Repair to detect and errors in the registry that have an impact on stability and performance.

Day 5: Tune up the performance

Adjust the Windows settings to improve PC performance – settings in Windows that can affect how much memory and CPU time it needs to perform tasks and these settings may not be configured at optimal levels.

Use PC TuneUp Maestro to quickly analyze your computer and provide a recommended list of items that will bring about performance improvements specific to your computer system.

Download PC TuneUp Maestro here.