Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7

Frequently we have issues that occur when we install software or make changes to our computer that we would like to undo.  Fortunately, Microsoft has installed in the Windows operating system a system restore feature that allows exactly that.  We can create restore points when we are about to make changes which after created allow us to undo those system changes, but unless turned off Windows by default creates a restore point regularly, the schedule depends upon which version of Windows you have and can be edited by using the control panel, system features.

What I am discussing here is how to reverse changes using an already created restore point.  While there are differences in each version of Windows the flow is very similar as are the results.  The following is an outline of the steps required:

Go> Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools program group and choose System Restore.

1. Follow the directions in the window that opens, if you need information click on the appropriate help menu.

2. Choose a specific restore point

3. Click Next > to begin the System Restore.                                       Note: Windows will shut down to complete the System Restore so be sure to save any work you might have open in other programs now.

4. Important: System Restore will not revert any of your non-system files like documents, email, music, etc. to a previous state. These types files are completely unaffected by System Restore. If your intention with this tool was to recover a deleted non-system file, try a file recovery program instead of System Restore.

5. System Restore will now restore Windows to the state that was recorded in the restore point you chose in Step 4.                                             Note: The System Restore process could take several minutes. Your computer will then reboot as normal when complete.

6. Immediately after logging in after the reboot, you should see the Restoration Complete window.

7. Click OK.  Windows will now continue to start.

8. Check to see if whatever Windows problem you were troubleshooting has been corrected by this System Restore.

   If the problem still persists, you can repeat the steps above and choose another restore point if one is available.

   If this restoration caused a problem, you can always undo this particular System Restore.

Hope this helps to solve a few issues for you.

There are many reasons why one would want to copy or export their contact information.  One is to save time when changing email services, another might be to create address labels for mailing holiday cards and lastly to back up this information for security.

Most email clients and webmail services allow you to export your contact information.  Generally to do this one needs to find an import or export function when the mail program is displaying contact information.  The best way to find out how to do this is to use google and search for “exporting contacts” + your mail service or program.

For example:  To copy your Outlook Express address book to a file

• Select File | Export | Address Book from the menu in Outlook Express (at the computer whose address book you want to copy).
• Select Text File (Comma Separated Values).
• Click on Export.
• Save the exported address book with a meaningful name like contacts to a floppy disk, ZIP drive or something similar.
• Click the Next button.
• Select the fields you want to include in the exported Outlook Express address book.
• Finally, click the Finish button.

Your file will now have a name like contacts.csv which is a transportable format, so we that might copy it to another program, store it, or use it as a database for mailing list purposes.  The format of choice here is CSV or comma separated value, which can be opened with excel or open office spreadsheet easily.  

Lastly, this file is now a database file that can be linked to a mail merge letter or a sheet of labels for printing using your word processor of choice. For information on how you might do this use, google and search on creating mail labels, envelopes or letter + your word processor of choice.

Now that email has become a primary source of communication between friends, relatives and acquaintances, as well as more formal business relationships, I thought maybe a discussion of some ideas about email etiquette might be in order.

When sending email:

• Make sure your e-mail includes a courteous greeting and closing. Helps to make your e-mail not seem demanding.
• Spell check – emails with typos are simply not taken as seriously.
• Just because someone doesn’t ask for a response doesn’t mean you ignore them. Always acknowledge emails from those you know in a timely manner.
• Don’t hesitate to say thank you, how are you, or appreciate your help!
• Keep emails brief and to the point. Save long conversations for the old fashioned telephone.
• Do not type in all caps. That’s yelling or reflects shouting emphasis.
• Stay away from fancy-fonts use only the standard fonts which are on all computers.
• When sending large attachments, always "zip" or compress them before sending.
• Learn how to resample or resize graphics before attaching them to an email. This will greatly reduce download time.
• Make sure the other person has the same software as you before sending attachments or they may not be able to open your attachment. Use PDF whenever possible.
• If any email states to forward to all your friends, or just 5 people — do everyone a favor and just hit delete!
• Posting or forwarding of private email is copyright infringement — not to mention downright rude. You need permission from the author first
• Before getting upset because you think someone didn’t respond, check to see if their reply was inadvertently deleted or sent to your Trash or Junk folder.
• Take a quick look at the e-mails in your Trash before you delete them just in case a good e-mail landed there by mistake.

This list was extracted from: 

101 Email Etiquette Information Tips by WordPress Consultant

Sharing your photos with friends and family is easy with Picasa.  First if you just want to email a photo or two.  Using your mouse select a photo that you would like to email, then select email from the menu at the bottom right of the Picasa screen,see image below, at this time your default mail program will open and you will be able to address your email to whomever, even multiple addressees.  Keep in mind that to select multiple photos they have to reside in the same folder or album.

Another way to share is to upload your photos to a Picasa Web Album.  First you will have to signup for a Google account and then login to Picasa Web .  Get started by setting your profile picture, which displays on your public gallery. Now you can upload your selected photos from Picasa on your desktop(use upload button above) or directly on Picasa web albums from your profile page using the upload new photos button.  After the photo album is created you can visit your web album site via Picasa(link in upper right corner) or from the link Picasa Web above.  Once there you may open the album you want to share and a menu appears at the top.  Here you select share and a blank email message opens for you to address as you wish.

As you can tell from the above menu you can do a lot more here, so using the sandbox theory try them you might like them……

Lastly when you create a web album under the my photos tab you can set the visibility to PUBLIC(anyone), limited(anyone with the link), limited(people you specify and have a Google account), or only you.  Changing from one to the other is done by editing visibility on the My Photos tab below.

There is a lot more to Picasa but by now you should have a good foundation to begin exploring and sharing.   Next time we will examine what you can create using Picasa.   Have fun

Today I am going to talk about what to do with you photos after you have downloaded them onto your computer. I assume you put your photos into the My Pictures folder in the My documents folder, if not just use the folder you put your photos into.  If you are organized you probably have a your photos organized in a flat file structure either by topic or by date.  Wouldn’t be nice to be able have tags on each photo describing who, what, where, why etc.  Or be able to find photos of subjects faces.  By using Picasa to catalog your photos you will be able to do this. If you have not already done so go to:  http://picasa.google.com and download and then install the latest version of Picasa.

Picasa is a way to view, edit, and organize the photos on your computer.  When you open Picasa, it  looks at the folders on your computer and displays the photos it finds. Only displaying the file types that you tell it to find, in the folders that you tell it to search.

When using the editing tools in Picasa, your original files are never touched. The photo edits you make are only viewable in Picasa until you decide to save your changes. Picasa creates a new version of the photo with your edits applied, leaving the original file .

Organize your photos

The folder list in the left column of the Picasa screen  shows all photos displayed by Picasa in their folders that you instructed Picasa to scan and any changes you make here impact your computer, if you delete a folder here it deletes the same folder on your computer. The folder list represents your filing system

Another list in the left column of the screen is Albums.  This list exists only in Picasa. Albums allow you to create groups of photos taken from multiple folders on your computer, right click(control click on a MAC) on any photo to add it to an album or create a new album. Albums display those photos without actually moving the photo. When you delete or move photos from an album, the original files remain in their original folders on your computer.  It is here that you can create WEB ALBUMS at Picasa Web using your Google account.

You can organize your photos by the people in them. Picasa uses facial recognition technology to find and group similar faces together across your entire collection of photos. By adding name tags to these groups of faces, new people albums are created. These people albums are just like the albums above: when you move or delete faces, the original files stay on your computer.

Editing your images by double click any image and the editing screen below opens

You can make basic fixes like removing red-eye, touch-up blemishes, or add text as well as other edits using Picnik.  You can adjust the lighting and color temperature, or you can add some basic effects. Feel free to explore trying everything, until you are comfortable with these tools. When you save your edited photo Picasa creates a new photo, leaving your original unaltered.

You can share your photos by emailing them, uploading to a web album, exporting to a file or blog, and printing.  I will discuss these sharing options next time.

One thing I learned a long time ago was that preventative maintenance was a lot cheaper than repair for most animate and inanimate objects.  Keeping your computer running smoothly is less about the brand than about doing some regular housekeeping.

I prefer to enable automatic installation of Windows updates, making sure that your windows installation has the latest updates and patches is one of the easiest ways to keep your computer secure and functioning well.  You can however turn off automatic updating and visit the Windows update site every week or so and install the latest updates manually.

Secondly, using a firewall and a virus protection program are prudent.  I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials for the later and enabling Windows built-in firewall for the former.  Microsoft has made a big commitment to making computing as safe as possible and Security Essentials runs quietly and efficently without a big demand on system resources, and what’s more is updated with Windows automatic updates.  Because I believe in multiple malware scans, I periodically scan my computer with the free version of Malwarebytes.  Aside from scanning for malware, if you cannot run the program it is a pretty good sign you have already been infected and you may need some addition assistance.

Next, I periodically remove programs that I no longer use or need, you can use add and remove programs for this task or a program in CCleaner to remove programs or Revo Uninstaller.   It would a good time to check for updates to your installed programs using File Hippo’s Update checker.

Clean out temporary files and the registry with CCleaner, this program clears cookies, temporary internet files etc  and surface scans the registry and removes entries that are no longer needed.

Performing the above tasks regularly will go a long toward increasing your computing enjoyment free from some distracting elements.

Recently, I had occasion to see a friend’s email inbox and to my shock there were over 300 emails from a variety of sources…..friends, relatives, newsletters, account notices, and announcements etc.  Some of the emails contained attachments, my friend explained, they did not want to lose or not be able to find again. I then asked numerous acquaintances about the status of their email inboxes and I was amazed to find out that many of them had similar email inbox situations.  I asked several of them, why had they allowed this to occur and the consensus was they did not know what else to do except to delete the emails, and that …in the inbox they could always find a specific email if they needed it.

Years ago when I was teaching a time management seminar, before computers became so prevalent, paper management was hot topic, “the rule of thumb” was the fewer times one handled a single piece of paper before it was filed appropriately or trashed, the better one’s time was managed.  In my opinion, this same rule can be applied to email.  In most cases, email can be handled upon receiving, then filed or trashed.  This includes downloads of attachments.  If one gets too much mail regularly, the use of folders can assist.  For example, creating an attachment folder, a not now but later folder, family and friends folders, can help one clear out important emails leaving fewer to decide to file or trash.

A note about emails containing attachments.  Generally people do not back up their incoming emails, nor for that matter their saved ones. (More about this later).  If an attachment is important and irreplaceable, then filing(saving as) to your documents folder in the appropriate sub-folder, is clearly the safest, especially if you have scheduled regular backups of your my document files.

All email clients and web mail programs allow you to create numerous saved mail folders and all allow drag and drop from the inbox to the appropriate folder. Check the help menu of your email program for how to create saved mail folders or do a google search with your email program and folder create. You may organize the folder structure however works best for you, using folders, sub folders, and sub-sub folders, i.e.  saved mail/accounts/wellsfargo/homeloan/2011 or saved mail/family.

Clearly creating and using saved email folders helps to reduce the clutter of a stuffed email inbox and allows the user to download and backup important attachments. More tools exist to help you organize your inbox, adding labels to emails(available only in Gmail) affords even more sophisticated email cataloging and creating rules in your email client automate some of the filing.  Do internet searches on those topics to find out more.

We are consistently being advised or required to use more secure passwords and change them frequently.  For many of us this is something we put off or don’t do unless absolutely required to do so.  Many users select a password that is easy to remember and type, like their last name, or a pet’s or child’s name, family birthdays are also popular.  A number of users select a common word or name as a password, such as “admin” or the ever popular “password”.  Generally a computer program can “hack” these kinds of passwords in something less than 60 minutes, by using a dictionary and trying different words until successful.

If we use passwords containing 6 random letters the time to “crack” the password increases to about 30 days of continuous attempts.  Adding random placed numbers and “cracking now takes more than 8 months.  Increase password strength further by adding mixed case and symbols, which would take over 100 years to “compromise”. It is clear that increased complexity decreases the possibility that a user’s password is vulnerable to hacking.

How then do we recall these passwords without writing  them on a post-it note or some other place.  What about typing a complex password?  i.e.  j%k^6m.  Another issue is that we should never use the same password for multiple accounts, meaning we must create multiple complex passwords, remember it and the correct place to use it.

Fortunately some solutions exist, one could use a document or spreadsheet file to list accounts, passwords, and other information, then encrypt it with a password.  Microsoft and Open Office(free) are vendors.  One could use a password manager program, such as CoffeeCup Lockbox($19), or a variety of other shareware programs, like KeePass.  In addition,  LastPass is a browser enabled cloud solution for password management system(free) with additional advantages.  Read about each, but most of all decide to strengthen your weakest link!!!!!

Most computer users are familiar with shortcuts that appear on your desktop….sometimes by magic when programs are installed or downloaded, but are not sure how to create them to save time and speed access to files and programs used all of the time.

The easiest method to create a shortcut is to use your mouse and click the right mouse button when the cursor is located on an open spot on your desktop, in the menu that opens select new and then shortcut.  The create shortcut wizard opens and allows you to browse for a program(generally the executable file) or file folder for your new shortcut.  You need to select the desired program or file folder, then click OK, the wizard then asks you to name the shortcut or accept the name chosen for you and click on the finish button.  Then go to your desktop and check to make sure the shortcut works as you expect. If not make sure you selected the proper program file, this is sometime confusing.  You can create shortcuts to folders exactly the same way as for programs except in the browse list select a folder not a program.

You can create shortcuts to websites that you use frequently, which automatically open your default web browser and go to the site indicated in the short cut.  Generally it is wise to use your browser to go to the desired website,  then highlight the complete web address in the address bar, the holding the CTRL key, right click your mouse and select copy.  Then you are ready to create your shortcut by again right clicking on your desktop when the wizard opens, right click your mouse and select paste the previously copied web address will then appear,  next and name your shortcut something familiar.  The icon displayed will be the one for your default web browser, but the name will be whatever name you chose.   A very good use of desktop shortcuts for web pages is to make one for your WEBMAIL at yahoo or gmail or hotmail.

It is very easy with a few click to create shortcuts to your most used programs, folders and frequently visited web sites saving you much time and effort.

(MAC folks can substitute CTRL click for right click)

Well with the holidays in the background, it is time to do some serious thinking about our digital world.  If you are a bit like me and my family, you take tons of pictures during  the holiday time period, for some of us those are still on our camera card awaiting a transfer to a more permanent location, hard disk, flash drive, cd, or hard copy, others have already moved these picture files to their new home.  Remember, the longer you wait to permanently store these files the more likely something devastating will happen to them, lost camera, corrupted card, etc.

Okay, you moved your valuable  and irreplaceable photos to a safe and organized location on your computer hard disk where you can periodically look at them, print them, email them, create projects with them and so on.  What about your other important and irreplaceable digital files like financial records and personal correspndance?  The truth is that all hard drives FAIL.  It is not a matter of IF it will fail, it’s just a matter of when.  Hard drives are mechnaical devices operating at high speeds with small tolerances for error, reading and writing data.  The older(in operational time) your hard drive is the more likely it is to fail, taking your files, and pictures with it.

The solution to this failure occurring with disastrous outcomes is very simple, multiple copies using multiple mediums, like dvd/cd, flash drives. external hard disks, offsite/online/cloud storage.  Making a single copy of your important files is GOOD, storing it away from home BETTER, making multiple copies stored in multiple locations BEST.

Creating a backup plan is important, following the the plan is critical. From an organized file structure , decide what files are irreplaceable or would tak enormous time to recreate.   Estimate the space that a copy of all of these files would take to store, then select a medium that contains at least twice that space.

For most of us small flash drives4-8 gigabytes are of the correct size and are cost effective $1-2 per gigabyte, if you buy three you can plan a monthly backup and rotate the oldest to current maintaining  3 backup sets, storing them in a safe deposit box, or with friends/relatives, away from your computer.

Another method involves storing your irreplaceable files at an online storage site like WindowsLive or Google which offer free storage in the 25 gigabyte range, which you use by uploading your files on a regular basis.  Lastly you can set up an online backup service that automatically backs up your files from the identified hard drive folder on whatever schedule you set, without intervention on your part and charges you a fee based upon how much storage is required.  There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these methods so investigate each further so you may avoid the very sad lesson about not backing up the digital moments of your life.