Is Firefox getting slower?

Have you experienced your favorite browser Firefox getting slower and slower after some time used. Not just only that, Firefox sometimes hangs without reasons and consumes a large amount of memory and CPU time climbs to over 90% when you open the application with many tabs opened.

Maybe one of you have tried to uninstall most of the toolbars and extensions, deleted cookies and internet temporary files, cleared up the file download queue and disabled the background check for software updates - but none of this has helped you speed-up Firefox.

One solution to speed up your firefox without install it again is by creating a new profile. The following steps will help you to create a new profile.
1. Start Firefox and export your bookmarks as a file on your hard-drive (we'll need them later).
2. Type firefox.exe - P in the Run box of Windows.
3. Click the Create Profile button without making any modifications to your existing profile.

Now when you Start Firefox in the new profile, you are very likely to be impressed with the speed. You can import the bookmarks that you saved in Step 1.

Yes, there won't be any old Firefox add-ons in the new profile but the browser will be extremely quick and won't hog the CPU - just the way you want Firefox to run on your computer.
And if you ever need to revert to the old profile, just type Firefox -P again and click the old profile. Nothing is lost.

Another option is by changing the setting of firefox. But this is recomended to broadband user. If you’re still on dial-up you can just skip this one for now. The secret behind this is by allowing multiple connections so it can download more than one file at a time.

The folowing steps will help you:

1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 10. This means it will make 10 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages MUCH faster now!

Happy trying.
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Windows Registry Cleaner Unleashed Part 1

The Windows registry is a directory which stores settings and options for the operating system for Microsoft Windows. It contains information and settings for all the hardware, operating system software, most non-operating system software, users, preferences of the PC, etc. Whenever a user makes changes to Control Panel settings, file associations, system policies, or most installed software, the changes are reflected and stored in the registry. The registry also provides a window into the operation of the kernel, exposing runtime information such as performance counters and currently active hardware.

Keys and Values
The registry contains two basic elements: keys and values.

Registry Keys are similar to folders - in addition to values, each key can contain subkeys, which may contain further subkeys, and so on. Keys are referenced with a syntax similar to Windows' path names, using backslashes to indicate levels of hierarchy. E.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows refers to the subkey "Windows" of the subkey "Microsoft" of the subkey "Software" of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key.

Registry Values are name/data pairs stored within keys. Values are referenced separately from keys. Value names can contain backslashes but doing so makes them difficult to distinguish from their key paths. The Windows API functions that query and manipulate registry values take value names separately from the key path and/or handle that identifies the parent key.

Hives
The Registry is split into a number of logical sections, or "hives".Hives are generally named by their Windows API definitions, which all begin "HKEY". They are abbreviated to a three- or four-letter short name starting with "HK" (e.g. HKCU and HKLM).

The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER nodes have a similar structure to each other; applications typically look up their settings by first checking for them in "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Vendor's name\Application's name\Version\Setting name", and if the setting is not found looking instead in the same location under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key. When writing settings back, the reverse approach is used — HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE is written first, but if that cannot be written to (which is usually the case if the logged-in user is not an administrator), the setting is stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER instead.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
Abbreviated HKCR, HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT stores information about registered applications, such as Associations from File Extensions and OLE Object Class IDs tying them to the applications used to handle these items. On Windows 2000 and above, HKCR is a compilation of HKCU\Software\Classes and HKLM\Software\Classes. If a given value exists in both of the subkeys above, the one in HKCU\Software\Classes is used.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU)
Abbreviated HKCU, HKEY_CURRENT_USER stores settings that are specific to the currently logged-in user. The HKCU key is a link to the subkey of HKEY_USERS that corresponds to the user; the same information is reflected in both locations. On Windows-NT based systems, each user's settings are stored in their own files called NTUSER.DAT and USRCLASS.DAT inside their own Documents and Settings subfolder.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM)
Abbreviated HKLM, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE stores settings that are general to all users on the computer. On NT-based versions of Windows, HKLM contains four subkeys, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE and SYSTEM, that are found within their respective files located in the %SystemRoot%\System32\Config folder. A fifth subkey, HARDWARE, is volatile and is created dynamically, and as such is not stored in a file. Information about system hardware drivers and services are located under the SYSTEM subkey, while the SOFTWARE subkey contains software and Windows settings.

HKEY_USERS
Abbreviated HKU, HKEY_USERS contains subkeys corresponding to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER keys for each user registered on the machine.

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG
Abbreviated HKCC, HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG contains information gathered at runtime; information stored in this key is not permanently stored on disk, but rather regenerated at boot time.

HKEY_PERFORMANCE_DATA
This key provides runtime information into performance data provided by either the NT kernel itself or other programs that provide performance data. This key is not displayed in the Registry Editor, but it is visible through the registry functions in the Windows API.
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Task Manager Advanced

For those who have been familiar with Windows NT based system will know what Task Manager (TM) is. TM is an application that used to get detailed information about computer performance and running applications, processes and CPU usage, commit charge and memory information, network activity and statistics, logged-in users, and system services. TM can also be used to set process priorities, processor affinity, forcibly terminate processes, and shut down, restart, hibernate or log off from Windows.

But maybe one of you have experienced that when you plug in your USB drive and when you want to unplug it, the system shows error that the system could not unplug the USB drive because the device is being used. And you don't know which applications are still using it. TM can not help you.

For this scenario, I want to introduce another free application and very useful in your daily work. The application was made by Mark Russinovich, one of the well known expertise in Windows Operating System Internal. You can download Process Explorer here.

Another advantages of the using of Process Explorer are it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.

Happy exploring.
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Windows Registry

Windows Registry is the heart and soul of all Windows Operating System. It contains information that needed by the operating system itself and installed programs. Most todays applications store their information in the registry. When you install an application, a new registry entries will be created. These entries will automatically be deleted when you uninstall the application. Unfortunately, it does not always work that way. Sometimes, you will find that some applications fail to remove their own registry entries. These entries will become obsolete.

Just imagine if this happens regularly, how many obsolete entries are in registry will be. One approach to solve this problem is by using an application that can delete the obsolete entries such as windows registry cleaner. One of the application I know is Tweaknow RegCleaner Standard from Tweaknow.com. The application was made by one of my friend in college. It's free and the features it has I think quite enough to clean our registry. But unfortunately, it is missing one feature that I think as a mandatory, that is registry defragmenter. But don't worry, I found another free application to do this.

Why registry defragmenter is so important? As the growing of the registry, the files that store registry become larger and larger. Because the Windows itself does not remove the entries directly but it just marked as deleted. So by time registry becomes big and big. This is the link that you can download.

In the next posting I'll explain how those application really work. Who knows you could make ones. :)
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Generic USB mass storage driver for windows 98

Once I had a problem with windows 98 when I was trying to fix the computer of my friend. The problem came when his digital camera could not be recognized with the system. I have tried to install the driver from its CD but I could not install the driver. It's said that some files are missing from the system. My thought come to conclusion that the driver is specified for NT base system.

This what made me wonder, is there any generic USB driver for windows 98. Likes windows XP, you can plug any USB drive from many vendors and the system can recognize it.

After searching and asking to uncle Google, I found such an interesting page that describe step by steps and links to download the needed driver and software. The link is here.

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Hello World

Hi all,

This is my first blog here in blogger. hope can write much about windows and its product.

see u soon.
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