We are able to easily customize program window by using the 3 buttons located at the top right which is minimize, maximize/restore and close. This feature is quite standard in all other operating systems such as Max OS and Linux. Maximizing a window is great and I use it all the time so that I am able to focus better when the program is covering the whole screen instead of windows everywhere which makes it very messy. However there may be times when you have some monitoring program running and need it to be visible at all times even when another program window is maximized. One solution is to configure the program to run “on top” if it comes with the feature or use a third party software to do it. There is another solution which is to set the maximum window size so that all windows that you maximize will not cover the area defined by the user.

When you’re using your computer and a certain program or process crashes, it can cause a series of problems. Normally, the best thing to do is open up Windows Task Manager and try to terminate the troublesome application. Sometimes the ‘End Task’ window will appear on the desktop for you to try and force the program to close but it doesn’t always work. The application may not respond to requests to close it down completely, and then you have to try and close it down manually. After that, you have to navigate to, and relaunch the program to get going again.

While the standard Windows Task Manager is a very familiar tool to most people, it can be a bit cumbersome when trying to close down troublesome programs because it sometimes will keep popping up the same windows for you to click on. The more advanced user may already be running an advanced task manager such as Process Explorer, but for a quick and simple way of closing down programs there is another piece of software which could make this easier.

Other than a unique IP address that is being used to communicate between computers in a network, the port being used by a software is also very important. Without an open port, it is just impossible for a software to work. For example, when you use your web browser to access a website, by default it uses a standard port 80 which are assigned by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). If the website uses an alternative port 81 for HTTP, you can only access the website if you manually specify the port at the URL which is example.com:81. Entering just example.com at the URL bar will display “The connection has timed out” error.

There are times when you need to investigate what process is using a TCP port probably because the software is unable to initialize due to the port being used or you can check for unknown connections that are used by malicious software. One good example is your computer needs to have an established connection when it is connected to the hacker via a hidden remote administration tool (RAT). Here is how you can easily check which process is using a TCP port.

Back in the days when floppy disk are still being commonly used, flashing BIOS can only be done by booting the computer in DOS. When DOS is booted up on the computer, you’ll probably have to switch to the floppy disk that contains the BIOS update file. Unlike today where updating BIOS is so easy and convenient that you can update the BIOS directly from Windows using the software provided by the manufacturer. If for some reason the software provided by the motherboard manufacturer is broken and you’re not able to update the BIOS from Windows, you can still do it from DOS by booting up the computer with a USB flash drive. You can either use Rufus or UNetbootin to create a bootable USB flash drive containing FreeDOS, a free and 100% MS-DOS compatible operating system to update the BIOS firmware.

Nearly every person who knows how to fix some of their own PC problems has probably heard of the Windows Event Viewer. It’s a comprehensive reporting system which tracks and logs program, security, and system events and can give you valuable information about what piece of software, hardware or Windows component could be causing a possible problem on your PC. It is a very useful resource and is something budding techs and professionals can get a lot of useful information from.

Although it provides mountains of data for you to look through, the Event Viewer isn’t the easiest thing to try and get your head around sometimes because for some, it gives a bit too much information. Ever heard of the Windows Reliability Monitor? If you haven’t, don’t worry, it’s another one of those hidden away Windows components that is very easy to miss. Essentially it takes the data logged by the Event Viewer and puts it into a much easier to read interface complete with a daily or weekly graph to give an indication of how ‘stable’ the Windows installation is over a given period of time.

I have previously talked about resizing images using seam carving or retargeting method. This impressive image resizing algorithm is capable of resizing an image without making it looked “squeezed” or “stretched” while still retaining the key areas. One convenient way to test this technology is by going to rsizr.com and use their free web application so that you don’t need to download and install any software. If you haven’t noticed, I did not directly link to rsizr.com because the website seems to be a bit dodgy. Try doing a search in Google on rsizr.com and you’ll see that it contains some directories with viagxx and cialxx… Not to worry if you’ve already used the website because it doesn’t contain any malicious scripts. If you’re uncomfortable in using rsizr.com, do give Seam Carving GUI a try.

I’m not a graphic designer and has never used any heavy weight image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. So far I am happy with the basic image editing features found in the screen capture software HyperSnap. The screenshots that were taken during testing and reviewing a software normally requires simple editing such as resizing. Some windows which are wider than the width of the post content area needs to be resized so that it doesn’t overlap the sidebar. The resize feature in HyperSnap is called “scale”. I would first crop out the unnecessary areas then only followed by scaling it to a smaller size with the “Keep aspect ratio” checked or else the image would appear squeezed or stretched. The biggest challenge that I find in resizing images is when I need to insert a vertically tall photo into a horizontal wide space. No matter how I crop or scale the image, it would either look bad or some important key areas are being cut off.

Luckily I’ve just learned out about Seam Carving, which is also known as image retargeting that allows an image to change sizes without distorting key areas of interest. This image resizing algorithm is developed by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir. If you’re a Photoshop user, you may already know about this feature since CS4.