Transporting information on portable hard drives and USB drives is a very convenient way of getting information between home and work. However, if you lose that drive then it is possible that someone else who finds the drive may gain access to your personal information stored on the lost drive. A good way around this issue is to encrypt the contents of the portable drive. TrueCrypt is a free encryption program which also has a handy “Portable Mode” allowing TrueCrypt to run as a standalone application on a portable hard drive, requiring nothing to be installed on the destination computer in order to decrypt the drive contents (although you do need administrator rights on the destination computer). TrueCrypt is available for free download from www.truecrypt.org .

Whenever a DVD is inserted into the computer a dialog box appears asking which program I would like to use to open and play the DVD. However, there are quite a few redundant entries in this window referring to programs no longer installed. How can these be removed from the window? Also, is it possible to completely prevent Windows from opening this dialog box when a DVD is inserted? On an unrelated topic, is it possible to convert a Word 2003 document into a PDF file and retain all formatting (such as bold lettering, italics, and hyperlinks)? If so, can you advise what additional software I require and the procedure for the conversion process? (more…)

Several AVI video files on my computer play perfectly, however when I take these files to a different computer they do not play, but instead only the audio component of the video plays. Is there something wrong with these videos preventing them from playing on the other computer? (more…)

One of the questions this week relates to tracking down programs and processes which could be slowing down the startup time of Windows and also slowing down the operation of the computer. Using the default Windows Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) is a good place to start looking for resource hungry processes, but often you will want more information than the Task Manager can provide. There is a free utility on the Microsoft website called Process Explorer (technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx). This provides you with much more comprehensive information about the processes currently running on the computer, including other files folders which particular programs or processes may have opened, the historical CPU usage of the program or process, and a facility to search the programs and processes. If you are interested in exactly what is running on your computer then Process Explorer is a very useful utility. Be aware, given the large amount of information it presents, you may initially be somewhat overwhelmed so take your time to understand what each piece of information is representing.

I would like to reduce the number of items which appear in the Windows system tray (next to the clock) so that the computer will start and shutdown quicker. Am I correct that the relevant startup items need to be removed from the System Configuration Utility > “Startup” tab? If this assumption is correct can you clarify why the “Startup” tab has 16 items enabled but the system tray displays less than half these icons? (more…)