Everyday Nerd

We’ve all been in need of securely wiping a hard drive before - Either selling an old computer, or donating it to a charity.  Either way, you want to make SURE that all of your private data is gone before it leaves your hands. 

DBAN’s Boot and Nuke is your solution!  Coming in many different bootable formats, this is THE way to protect yourself before ditching a drive.  I personally like the bootable CD image - but make sure you label it with a big warning!  You don’t want someone coming by and booting your machine to this by accident!

Do you have Windows Vista Home Basic, or Business?  Wish you had the Vista Media Center?  Well, now you can have the next best thing!  Microsoft Origami although designed for the UMPC platform, has come to Vista, showing a very nice interface for your media!  While it doesn’t measure up to Media Center, Origami still has a easy to navigate, and very functional media "center."

Download Origami Experience 2.0 here

Firefox 3 has been released!  With great performance and security enhancements, it is hands down, the best browser you can use!

Today, Tuesday June 17th, Mozilla is trying to break a world record, of the number of downloads in a 24 hour period.  Go here to download and get counted in the millions already grabbing the best browser on the net!

Link:  Download

Source:  HowToGeek

From the HowToGeek, comes an EXCELENT little trick, that I have needed on more than one occasion.  I’ve and so many times that I had a selection of files in explorer, and needed to paste the names of the files into a notepad for a script, or something like that…  Well - this sure would have been handy!!!!  Better late than never right?

Continue to HowToGeek for How-To

UAC is a great security enhancement to Windows Vista (over XP) but you know, it can be rather annoying too!  As an administrator, I use certain programs that require me to “Run as Administrator” - such as command prompt, computer management, and others.  Thanks to the HowToGeek, here are 4 ways to make your vista experience better…

**Note:  Disabling and/or modifying UAC may put your system at risk.  To be the most secure, leave UAC at default settings.

 1:  Disable UAC completely via Command line:

Disable UAC:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Enable UAC:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

2:  Disable for Administrators Only

To configure this setting on Windows Vista Business and Ultimate, you can use the Local Security Policy configuration. Just type in secpol.msc into the Start menu search box and hit enter.

Now browse down to Local Policies \ Security Options

Find the following in the list: “User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode” and double-click on it.

 Change the setting to “Elevate without prompting”. You should be all done.

<< Download Registry Tweak >>

3:  Disable Screen Dimming

UAC itself is a good thing - but on some video cards, it seems to take forever for the screen dimming to pop, and prompt you.  So, this is my personal favorite - keep the security, but get rid of the dimming:

<< Download Registry Tweak >>

4:  Create Specific shortcuts that don’t prompt for UAC

This is quite a nice little trick.  You want UAC, you want Desktop Dimming, but you just have one program that  you run all the time that you don’t want to prompt you for UAC.  This is for you…

Read the rest of this entry »

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 has been released to the wild, and man, is it fast!  Firefox 3 has some awesome features - like location bar auto complete, star for bookmarks, a better Add-ons manager, and

Smart bookmarks folder (items such as most visted, and recently bookmarked).

Aside from features, it is also very fast!  Load time is very fast - especially compaired to Firefox 2.  Memory usage is also much better.  Even after keeping it open all day, I have yet to see any memory leaks.

Security is also beefed up in Firefox 3 RC1.  Features include One-click site info, Web Forgery Protection,

Anti-virus integration, and Vista Parental Controls.

For a complete list of features, go click here.

Download:  Firefox 3 RC1

Source [LifeHacker]

Windows only: Freeware application Elevator disables the User Account Control prompt for specific applications through your right-click menu, getting rid of the UAC annoyance for apps that require administrator privileges every time they run.  Elevator is freeware, Windows Vista only; installation requires a little finesse, so be sure to read the instructions.

Link:  Elevator