Firefox 2.0 has an excellent feature called Recently Closed Tabs. This means that Firefox keeps track of browser tabs which you have recently closed, allowing you to re-open these tabs. If you go to the “History” menu > “Recently Closed Tabs” this will list the tabs which were most recently closed. If you accidentally close a tab in Firefox, this provides an easy method to re-open that tab. (more…)

Recently I switched from a two-way satellite internet connection to a wireless broadband connection (through Yless4U). The satellite modems used to connect through a USB port, but the new connection is an Ethernet cable. The new Yless4U connection appears in the “Network Connections” window and works perfectly until I restart the computer. Once the computer is restarted the connection disappears from the Network Connections control panel and is not accessible, requiring me to reconfigure the entire connection from scratch. One other odd aspect is that Windows will not let me reconfigure the connection until I go to the “Control Panel” > “Internet Options” and delete the connection from the “Connections” tab. The computer is running Windows XP Home Edition. (more…)

In the Windows XP notification area (also known as the system tray, next to the Windows clock) a balloon message appears looking like a system alert. The message claims that I have spyware installed on the computer, and instructs me to click the balloon to remove the spyware. This opens an Internet Explorer window which is trying to sell me spyware removal products. Obviously this is some sort of unsolicited advertising. In an attempt to remove this adware I have run Norton Antivirus 2006 together with Ad-Aware SE and Spybot Search & Destroy. This detected and removed the adware (VirusProtectPro 3.6) but the icon is still visible in the notification area. Subsequent rescans do not detect the adware, so presumably the core components have been removed from the computer, although the icon remains. How can I remove the icon from the system all together? (more…)

Windows Vista has the new Aero Glass interface, allowing for nice graphic effects such as using the Windows Key + TAB to show all open windows as a 3D “stack”. In addition to the classic ALT + TAB combination, this provides an easy way to switch between open applications. Additionally, you can also use the mouse in conjunction with these shortcuts. Press Windows Key + TAB or ALT + TAB and, using the mouse, click any of the windows which appear as options. This will automatically open that window on the computer, removing the need to tab through the list to the window you wish to open. (more…)

I have plugged my digital camera SD card into the computer using a USB adapter. I would like to put the images onto my computer so these can be edited before burning the images onto CD. However, the scanner and camera wizard only detects the scanner connected to the computer, and not the camera SD card. How can I transfer the images to the computer? The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)