Optimize PC is a do-it-yourself resource website built with inexperienced computer users in mind. We offer computer optimization tutorials, a computer repair directory and even an ask-and-answer section to help you with your most perplexing questions.
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On the internet, cookies are a way of life — love them or loathe them, they are a required component of day-to-day use of the ‘internets’. While there are many misconceptions about cookies, namely that they’re evil or that they may damage your PC, even some of the people who know better just like to remove their cookies from time to time. However, this can be problematic for those who use websites that require cookies to maintain their login status, especially if they use those websites frequently. For instance, Gmail, Last.fm, eBay, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace all utilize cookies, and if you’re visiting these websites quite a bit, the last thing you want to have to do is type in your username and password multiple times per day. So, how can you delete cookies that you do not need, while saving those that you do need?
Recently, Spamcop disallowed forwarding spam message from Microsoft’s Outlook email client. As this was the easiest solution for me to report spam that actually made it to my inbox, I really wanted to find a way to view the full source code of Outlook Emails easily, and I did.
Chances are, the files that you store on your computer are pretty important to you. Whether you have personal projects on your computer’s hard drive, important emails, videos and pictures of your family and friends, your taxes, or just a big list of your favorite recipes — you would probably hate to lose some of these things. However, we can’t really predict when a hard drive might fail, or when a virus or bug will take possession of our PCs, along with all of our prized documents, so it’s important to have a backup of your work, just in case something bad happens. Because, inevitably, it is almost guaranteed to happen at least once in your lifetime. It happens to me at least once every couple of years.
A few weeks back I was using Google Chrome to browse the net, and then my firewall went nuts — it appeared as though all kinds of bugs were installing themselves on my system, and I couldn’t stop them. Well, after running several different anti-spyware, adware, and anti-virus utilities, my PC was labeled as “clean”, but I still had a problem — my Google searches were hijacked in the Firefox browser. Something strange was showing in my statusbar when I performed a search in Google via Firefox, most notably, “v1.adwarefeed.com”. It was super-annoying because I couldn’t search with Google, my primary search engine, with my primary web browser, Firefox.
Sometimes the reason that your internet connection seems slow is because your computer is not configured correctly. In this day of blazing-fast DSL and Cable Connections — some of us, who have these fast internet services, still live with dialup / ISDN internet settings… and that’s a shame.
We all love tips on how to make our computers faster, and this line of thinking is the very reason why we started OptimizePc and why we offer a number of computer how-tos. Our newest tutorial covers a simple trick for Windows computer users that will allow them to remove a service that is oftentimes not used, but really can slow down your computing experience.
Sometimes certain folders and files just do not want to cooperate. You get a “cannot delete” message when trying to delete, remove, or copy certain files or folders - predominantly on Windows XP. There is a simple, and free, fix for Windows Computers that will allow you to delete and remove locked folders and files - and that fix is Unlocker.
Continuing on in our vein of supplying top-of-the-line PC optimization tips and tutorials, we have put together a step-by-step guide on how to clean your Internet Explorer web browser. This tutorial covers not only the quick and easy way of removing your temporary internet files, cookies, form data and stored passwords, but it also include a couple of IE7 browser optimization tips as well.
Before my laptop’s hard drive failed, my Windows XP start menu and installed programs list was three columns long. Needless to say, it was nearly impossible to find anything when I had to rely on sifting through the scores of programs and applications that were installed on my PC.
I somehow knew I was making a mistake, yet I continued on with my ignorance anyway. My hard drive failed in my Dell Vostro laptop, which was still under warranty - so Dell shipped a new hard drive out to me straight away - they even “preloaded” it for me… Nice in theory, except the installation would not “take” - blue screens for hours trying to set my laptop back up.