Have you ever been intrigued by the flashing LED on your computer’s cabinet, the one that indicates hard disk activity? What is causing the hard disk to spin? Sure, you can tell by looking at your desktop. If you are web browsing, then it is your web browser saving files and images from opened webpages to the browser cache that resides on the disk. If you are watching movies or listening to music it’s the media files that are being retrieved from the hard disk. If you are typing a document than it’s Microsoft Word periodically saving the document.

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When editing videos for homemade movies you might feel the need to replace the audio track with one of better quality or different sound. Maybe you want to swap voices with music, or replace the original dialogues on a movie with different set of dialogues – a process called dubbing. Maybe the audio turned out to be distorted and you need to replace it. This short tutorial will show how to do just that.
Once again we will use the software Avidemux for our job. Open the video file which you want to edit from the File menu of Avidemux.

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Practically every Windows user loathes the entire exercise of formatting and reinstalling Windows. The actual installation of the operating system is not a pain, in fact, it’s the breeziest part. It’s the part after the installation that takes colossal amount of time – reinstalling drivers and software, and generally configuring the computer to make it behave like it did before the user reinstalled Windows.

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When you right-click on Windows explorer after selecting multiple files or folders, Windows presents a context menu which is different from the one you get when you select a single file or folder. Often this context menu is reduced with several items such as open, print and edit missing. Recently Microsoft published an article explaining why this happens and how to fix it.

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Windows Installer Cache is located at C:\Windows\Installer and the folder is hidden by default to protect it against tampering or deletion. The Installer Cache can take significant amount of space on your hard drive, particularly if you have installed large software or large number of updates, and it might be tempting to delete the contents of the folder - considering they are just backup copies of installers. But Microsoft advises users against it.
The Installer Cache is used to store important files for applications installed using the MSI Windows Installer technology and should not be deleted manually.

When an application is installed using Windows Installer Technology, a stripped version of the original .MSI data file is stored in the Windows Installer Cache. Every subsequent update installation for the installed products like hotfixes, cumulative updates or service packs also stores the relevant .MSP or .MSI file in the Windows Installer Cache.
Any future update to the product relies on the information present in the Windows Installer Cache. Without this information, the new patch cannot perform the required installation. If the Windows Installer Cache is altered, it will cause serious problems that may require you to clean-up and reinstall the application and in some instances reinstalling the operating system.
Deleting the installer cache files doesn’t harm the installed applications which will continue to work as normal but the application cannot updated or repaired should the need arise.
Previously, Microsoft had offered a Windows Installer Cleanup Utility to fix problems arising from broken or partially installed Windows Installer (MSI) packages if the regular measures like uninstalling from Add/Remove Programs control panel have failed. Last year, Microsoft removed the tool from its Download Center as the program was found to damage other components of the Windows operating system. Instead, Microsoft now offers a safer command line utility Msizap.exe that removes either all Windows Installer information for a product or all products installed on a computer.
So as it stands, unless you have no intention to repair or update or reinstall applications installed using the MSI technology, do not delete Windows Installer Cache files.

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One way to safely disconnect a USB connected hardware is to use the ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ option which appears on the system tray whenever a USB storage drive is connected to the machine. Another way is to use software that lets you manage USB devices such as the recently mentioned DevEject. For most cases, the little icon on the system tray is enough but if your find its location inconvenient, you can add this option to the desktop context menu. Here is how.
Open Windows Registry editor (regedit.exe) and navigate to the following key
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\
Right-click on Shell and create a New>Key titled Safely Remove Hardware. Now within the Safely Remove Hardware key create a New>String Value called Icon.
Double-click on Icon and set it’s Value data to hotplug.dll,-100

Right-click on the Safely Remove Hardware key and create a New>Key titled Command
The new key will have a Default value which you should set to C:\\Windows\\System32\\control.exe hotplug.dll

Return back to your Windows Desktop you should now see a new option in the context menu – Safely Remove Hardware. Selecting this entry will launch the Safely Remove Hardware Wizard.

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If you ever had your computer stuck at startup or shutdown, or take unusually long time, you know how frustrating it is because you don’t know what is causing the delay. Unlike in Linux, Windows doesn’t display detailed information during startup and shutdown. However, there is a verbose message switch in Windows. If you flick it on, Windows will start displaying a little more details about what is happening behind the blue screen. For example, if verbose message is not enabled you only see the message “Shutting down” at shutdown or “Welcome” at startup. If verbose logging is enabled, you will receive additional information, such as "RPCSS is starting" or "Waiting for machine group policies to finish...”.
This article will show you how to enable verbose message in Windows.

Enable verbose status messages using Group Policy Editor

1. Open the Run dialog box by pressing Win+R. In the Open box, type gpedit.msc, and then click OK.
2. On Group Policy Editor, expand Computer Configuration, expand Administrative Templates, and then click System.
3. In the right pane, double-click Verbose vs normal status messages.
4. 
5. Click Enabled, and then click OK.

Enable verbose status messages using Registry Editor

1. Open the Run dialog box by pressing Win+R. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the following registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type verbosestatus, and then press ENTER.
5. Double-click the new key that you created, type 1 in the Value data box, and then click OK.
6. Quit Registry Editor.

Enable verbose status messages using Startup Shutdown Tracer

The easiest way to enable verbose messages is to use the automated tool Startup Shutdown Tracer. Simply download the program and run the executable file. Click the button “Display information” to enable verbose status messages and the button “Disable messages” to disable it.

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Windows 7 lets you customize the behaviour of the icons that appear on your system tray, also called the notification area. You can configure the icons to remain hidden unless there is notification to display. This reduces the visual clutter on the system tray. The trouble is, Explorer keeps a cache of the icons and over time this cache can grow to hundreds of items. If you right click on the Taskbar and choose “Customize Notification Icon” you can see many obsolete items on the list. Some of these programs you might not even have on your computer anymore.

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Windows Photo Viewer – the default programs for opening images in Windows is more customizable than you think. Previously, I showed you how to change the default time interval between pictures when slideshow viewing mode is turned on in Windows Photo Viewer. In this short tutorial I’m going to show you how to change the background color of Windows Photo Viewer as well as Windows Live Gallery. The default background color is light blue (in Photo Viewer) and white (in Live Gallery). Some people feel that a darker background is better as it makes the pictures pop-out. If you have strong color preferences and want to change the background, here is how to do it.

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