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Setting up Chinese Input in Windows XP

Apple — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:46:51 +0000

This is a simple tutorial dedicated to my friend, Mei Ling. I hope this tutorial can help her solve the Chinese character input problem in her Windows XP.

If you want to input Chinese character (or other Asian languages like Japanese or Korean), the first thing you have to ensure is your Windows XP has the additional language installed. First, you will have to go to the Control Panel.

Click on Start > Control Panel.

For the sake of this tutorial, I suggest you to switch your Control Panel to Classic View if you haven’t. To do so, just click on the Switch to Classic View on the upper left of the Control Panel window.

Next, look for the icon and double click on it. Then, in the Regional and Language Options window, navigate to the Languages tab. Then tick the Install files for East Asian languages. (Note: If you already can see Chinese character, means you already have this feature installed. Therefore you can skip this step.)

You will see a Windows message something like this:

You choose to install the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language files. This will require 230MB or more of available disk space. The files will be installed after you click OK or Apply on the Regional and Language Options dialog box.

To setup the language input, you have to click on the Details button.

To add the input language, follow these 4 steps:

Click on the Add button.
Select Chinese (PRC) for the Input Language.
Select Chinese (Simplified) – Microsoft Pinyin IME 3.0 for Keyboard layout/IME. (Assuming that you are using Pinyin 拼音 for Chinese input.)
Click OK to confirm.

By default, to input Chinese character, you will have to press on the left Alt + Shift key. If you don’t want the default setting, you can always do your own setting by clicking the “Key Settings” button.

Once you have finish install this, you may want to restart your computer (or during the earlier stage). Then you should be able to see the language bar at the right bottom of your desktop with the letters “EN“.

When you want to input Chinese character, just press on the left Alt + Shift key (for default settings), then the EN will change to CN. Vice versa, if you want to input English character again.

IF you can’t see this at the bottom of your desktop, you probably haven’t enable the language toolbar. To do so, right click on your taskbar, choose Toolbars > Language bar.

Lastly, you can now input Chinese characters.

Voila~

Tip: This is not only limited to Chinese input. You can use the same method to setup other supported languages, as long as you install the corresponding input language.

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Delete Undeletable Files in Windows

Apple — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:08:45 +0000

Here is a scenario. When you want to delete a file or folder in your Windows, it is “undeletable”. No matter how many times you delete, you always get an error message that looks something like this: (note: z is a folder)

Or other error messages such as:

Cannot delete file: Access is denied
There has been a sharing violation.
The source or destination file may be in use.
The file is in use by another program or user.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

This is very irritating and normally we have to reboot our system before we can successfully remove that particular file or folder. No worries, you can now delete those unwanted files or folders in seconds!

You can’t delete a file or folder because it is “occupied”, so what you need to do is to “unlock” it before you are able to delete it. To “unlock” a file or folder, you will need a freeware called Unlocker.

It will create an eBay shortcut upon installation. However, you can choose not to install it. Uncheck eBay shortcuts.

After installation, you will now be able to “unlock” the undeletable file or folder. Now, you will be prompt an Unlocker window after you click on the “OK” button on the error message window. Or you can right click on the file that you want to “unlock” and choose “Unlocker“.

Then you will see something like this:

You can select individual process to unlock, or just unlock all. After that just delete that particular file or folder as usual. Cheers!

Unlocker is a light-weight software, best of all, it’s FREE! Yes, it supports 32-bit Windows XP and Vista as well.

[ via InternetGecko ]

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End Not Responding Task Automatically in Windows XP

Apple — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 02:11:24 +0000

Sometimes an application will “hang” and stop working. In Ubuntu Linux, there’s a feature called. With this feature, the not responding application will quit within clicks. In Windows, to quit a not responding application, you will have to go to the Windows Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del) to “End Task”.

Sometimes, it takes even longer time than expected to end a not responding application, which is really very annoying. Now, you can make the not responding application end itself automatically (in Windows XP) by editting the Windows registry.

This requires you to be extremely careful because you need to edit the Windows registry. Before doing that, make sure you backup your Windows Registry and go to the Registry Editor.

Go to Start > Run and type regedit.

On the left panel, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Then on the right panel, create or edit the following values:

Set “AutoEndTasks” value to 1. (default value: 0)

Set “HungAppTimeout” value to 1000. (default value: 5000)

Set “WaitToKillAppTimeout” value to 0. (default value: 20000)

If the key does not exist, you will have to create a new DWORD by right clicking any where at the right panel and select:

and enter the above values.

After you have finish editting the registry, exit the Registry Editor. Every now and then when an application is not responding, it will end automatically.

[ via Tech Bold ]

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Know The Windows Error Codes

Apple — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:41:39 +0000

Sometimes it’s really annoying to get error codes when using Microsoft Windows, yet we don’t know what do those error codes actually mean. The easiest way is to get connected to the Internet, and google for the meaning of the error codes for troubleshooting.

What if you don’t have an Internet connection while having such error codes appear in your operating system? Now, you can straight away get to know what do the error codes mean by using the Error Messages For Windows 2.9.

It’s a very light weight program which enables you to instantly check for Microsoft Windows error codes.

There’s a list of error codes with the error messages along side.

Instead of browsing the Error Code List one by one, you can use the Lookup feature. Enter the error codes and the message will be shown almost instantly.

This is a simple utitlity tool for you to troubleshoot your Windows system. However, please take note that:

This program provides a simple means of looking up the meaning of the various MS Windows error code numbers that often accompany error message boxes.

Error messages such as 0A 87F35E 49 are not error codes, but rather the memory location where the error has occurred.

License: Freeware
Supported OS: Windows 98, ME, XP, 2000, 95/NT
Download: Error Messages For Windows 2.9

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Create Your Own Windows Screensavers

Apple — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:32:40 +0000

Tired of the old screensavers available in your Windows PC? Yes, you can use the Windows default “My Picture Slideshow” as your screensavers setting. What if you want to share your own cool screensaver pictures with your friends?

Now, you can easily create your own Windows screensavers just within minutes! How? instaSaver will help you out just in 3 simple steps.

Step 1: Specify the screensaver name (eg. Free Collection)
Step 2: Upload pictures (maximum 10 files in JPG format) or get photos from Flickr
Step 3: Specify the slideshow settings including style, text watermark, speed and background

Lastly, just click the “Next >” button and everything will be generated in minutes. A link for downloading your screensaver will be provided after it has been generated.

Installation is easy. Just double click on the installer and follow the instruction. As simple as that. I’ve created a screensaver with 5 custom pictures. You can download it and try it out.

Download Free Collection screensaver

Make your own screensaver with instaSaver and have fun today!

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Removing Sensitive Data

Apple — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:13:16 +0000

You don’t want other people to access sensitive data which you are going to dispose. Do you know that your files still can be retrieved even if they are being deleted? Yes, even if you empty your recycle bin. It can be done by running any undelete utilities.

How is this possible? Every time you delete a file, only the location of the file is being removed from the index, and the content is still somewhere around your hard drives. That is why even when you delete a file, you are still able to retrieve it by using undelete software.

Worry not, as Eraser can make your day…

What is Eraser?

Eraser is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.

License: GNU General Public License (Freeware)
Platform: Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista (Eraser version 5.86a), Windows 2003 Server and DOS

Different methods for removal

It has several algorithms to choose from to perform the removal task:

It has many other features that can completely delete your data. Check out a list of feature here. You can always refer to the Help file to learn how to use this program.

My Two Cents

Right click file to erase

The interface may be very simple and not really attractive, but it helps you to remove deleted files from the index. I am not quite sure how the algorithms mentioned above work. The easiest way of using Eraser is right clicking the file/folder that you are going to delete and choose the Eraser option. You can even empty your recycle bin via Eraser too. That will totally remove sensitive files which cannot be retrieved later.

[via Tech Bold]

Get a Clean Desktop with RocketDock

Apple — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 06:14:07 +0000

One attractive feature available in Mac is the arrangement of the desktop icons. Windows user can also have similar desktop appearance by using some customization software such as Objectdock. However, Objectdock is not a free software.

But now, you can have a software compatible to Objectdock that allow you to customize your desktop, as well as some enhancement to your PC. It’s call the RocketDock.

Here is a list of features that what RocketDock can do:

Minimize windows to the dock
Real-time window previews in Vista
Running application indicators
Simple drag-n-drop interface
Multi-monitor support
Supports alpha-blended PNG and ICO icons
Icons zoom and transition smoothly
Auto-hide and Popup on mouse over
Positioning and layering options
Fully customizable
Completely Portable
ObjectDock Docklet support
Compatible with MobyDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher, and Y’z Dock skins
Runs great on slower computers
Unicode compliant
Supports many languages and can easily be translated
A friendly user base
And best of all… its FREE!!!

Yes! It’s absolutely FREE, and it’s under the Creative Commons Public License.

This is my desktop appearance before using RocketDock [Click for larger view]:

This is how my desktop look like after using Rocketdock [Click for larger view]:

Tips: Use Tweak UI (freeware) to hide the default recycle bin icon.

Download RocketDock here.

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