Newsletter Archives

It's time for another edition of our tips and tricks where we present you with a few helpful bits of information which we hope makes your everyday computing tasks just a little bit quicker & easier.

Stopping Auto Restarts
You may have noticed that if Windows encounters a problem, your computer automatically restarts. This may be helpful, but it might not be so helpful if you haven't had a chance to jot down the details of the error to look up a fix on the internet.

To prevent Windows from automatically restarting when it encounters and error, right-click on My Computer in Windows Explorer (Start > All Programs > Accessories), select Properties, select the Advanced tab and then click the Settings button in the Startup and Recovery section. Simply de-select the "Automatically restart" checkbox.

Shutdown Shortcut
Shutting down Windows - though relatively easy and quick, can be even quicker if you'd like.

To avoid having to click Start, then Shutdown, then choosing the Shutdown option and then clicking OK, just follow these steps.

1. Right-click on your desktop and select New > Shortcut.
2. When you arrive at the "Type the location of the item:" in the icon wizard, enter "%windir%System32shutdown.exe -s" (without the quotes).

The "s" stands for shutdown. You can also add "f" to force running applications to close and/or "t xx" to set a wait time before the computer shuts off completely. For example, "%windir%System32shutdown.exe -s -f -t 00". This will cause your PC to shutdown immediately.

After you've completed the icon wizard, now you just have to double-click the icon you created to shutdown your PC. Much faster!

Make Money With Media Investigator
Data Recovery Systems Ltd will soon be launching its own affiliate program allowing you to earn money on the internet while you sleep. Media Investigator v6 has been in the making for several months and is expected to be released this month. It's got easier-to-use screens, with "walkthroughs" on each screen to help people recover their files as quickly and easily as possible. It looks much better and the recovery algorithms are more powerful than ever (and our competitors). You can give it a try simply by going to www.DigitalFileRecovery.com and download the full version which will allow you to scan your drives for lost, deleted and formatted files absolutely free.

We don't want to give too much away, but if you're interested in making some money by promoting Media Investigator through your web site, newsletter or any other way you want (and helping others recover their lost & deleted files and photos at the same time), you can sign up now to be notified when our affiliate program is launched by visiting http://www.digitalfilerecovery.com/affiliates.html.

When it's launched, you'll have access to banners, sales copy, images, links and we'll be paying you a BIG percentage of any sales we get as a result of your efforts.

Spring Desktop Cleanup
For many of you north of the equator, spring is starting and that usually brings on a desire to perform a spring cleaning.

When doing so, don't forget your desktop. We don't mean the top of your desk but your Windows desktop. :-)

In haste, many people will often quickly save files to their desktop which they end up doing nothing with, leaving it cluttered and blocking that special photo in the background. Well, to help speed up the clean up of your desktop if you've decided it's finally time to delete some of those files you never opened from a couple years ago, here are a couple options.

• Press and hold the left muse button outside of one of the icons you wish to delete. The drag the mouse to "lasso" all of the icons you wish to delete. Then just press the Delete button. Just remember - EVERYTHING in the square will be deleted. If you don't want to delete everything, you may want to use the next option.
• Left click once on one of the icons you wish to delete then, while holding the CTRL key, left click on another icon. Keep holding the CTRL key while clicking on all of the icons you'd like to delete and then press Delete.

Voila! A nice, clean desktop for the spring!

That's it for this month. We hope you find these tips useful and if you did, someone else will, so please share them!