Category Archives: PC related

How to reinstall Windows on a Notebook PC with no CD / DVD drive

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My friend’s daughter has a lightweight Sotec notebook PC with Windows XP. As often with the case of browsing the Internet with Windows XP logged in with Administrator privileges, in spite of the antivirus program in use, some virus crept in and was causing poor performance. Moreover, it corrupted some Window system file so that no hardware devices displayed in the device manager! And, the Network device went missing so … Continue reading →

Creating mutilingual WordPress sites

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I made a three language web site for my friend in Vietnam (http://activeandlovingit.com/)using a WordPress plugin called WPML. The site uses English as the basic language with Vietnamese and Japanese as the translated languages. Previously I used a plugin called qTranslate but I found WPML to be superior to it in that it makes a separate URL for each language. This means better SEO with search engines, for they will … Continue reading →

Speeding up WordPress Blogs

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The more plugins you use, the slower your WordPress blog will load. The key is to use only the plugins that give you the most benefit while not taking a considerable amount of resources or load on your server. To find out which plugins are taking the most load, install a plugin called Query Monitor. It will tell you which plugins are taking the longest to load. Perhaps the slowest-loading … Continue reading →

A look at Ubuntu 10.4

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I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu Linux, version 10.4, and installed it as a virtual machine with VMWare on my Fedora 12 pc. I also ran it as a live CD from boot. I’m still not convinced that Ubuntu is better than Fedora for me. Ubuntu is missing two GUIs (software with a graphic user interface) I use all the time in Fedora. There is no firewall GUI no … Continue reading →

Dramatically restoring the performance of an exceedingly slow Windows XP machine

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Last night a young lady asked me to look at her Windows XP laptop. It was running much slower than it did when she first got it. Usually, I first consider that the system is probably infected with malware or spyware, and I installed and ran SuperAntiSpyware to scan the C drive of her PC. But later I realized that she, being the type of girl she is, would not … Continue reading →

Using Gnome Shell

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I installed a beta version of the new Gnome Shell desktop environment on my Fedora Linux PC, and it seems to be very cool indeed! And it’s free, not only free in in the meaning of “freedom” but even free as in “free lunch.” Gnome is the standard desktop graphical environment for many Linux distributions, including Fedora, the Linux distribution I’ve been using on my PC since February 2005. Another … Continue reading →

WordPress power

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I realized today it’s been a little more than a year since I started to use WordPress blogging software. My first post was on January 7, 2009. I’ve grown used to it and think it’s probably better overall and easier for me than the HTML / CSS hand coding coding method I used to use. Not that it’s not good to learn HTML and CSS. Because I know these technologies, … Continue reading →

PC security issues

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I noticed the performance of a certain Windows XP PC was down again, even though I cleaned it from malware only a few months ago. I installed and ran Super Anti Spyware and it found over 1500 security issues!! The browser was hijacked and a fake anti-virus program called Antivirus 2008 was installed. SuperAntiSpyware cleaned it up and its running fine again.

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