M.A.S. Electronics' Blog

Legislation that affects the use of Internet-connected computers is springing up everywhere at the local, state and federal levels. You might be violating one of them without even knowing. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the existing laws and some of the pending legislation that can influence how we use our computers and the Internet. Nothing in this article should be construed as legal advice; this is merely an overview of some of the legislation that’s…

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You’re probably pretty familiar with the Registry Editor. For Windows XP, you just run the REGEDIT command at the Run prompt. Then, move down through the organization tree levels to the values and settings you want and double-click them to change them in a dialog box format. However, before you start making any changes, it’s a good idea to make a backup copy of the registry by choosing File | Export. Here are a few handy hacks that will help…

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1: Knoppix [UPDATE: New link] Knoppix is one of the better tools for rescuing data from sick machines. It’s a full-blown live Linux distribution with a strong, user-friendly GUI that will allow you to easily mount a drive and then copy the data (which you will locate in an easy-to-use file manager) to an external source. Of course, Knoppix comes with the full arsenal of Linux commands, which place just about everything you need at your fingertips. 2: Trinity Rescue…

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Certain security zones may require that file transfer is prohibited in or out of the network. This is frequently addressed by blocking file transfer permissions at a firewall. There are a number of ways to do this; off the top of my head, I can think of the following file transfer mechanisms: ports 80 and 443 for web-based file transfer sites port 21 for FTP port 445 for server message block (Windows file transfer) port 135 for remote procedure call…

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It’s a feature not a bug According to Microsoft Knowledge Base article 977346, set a solid color as your desktop background will cause Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to displace the Welcome screen for 30 seconds during logon. Why? Apparently, the pause occurs because of a time-out interval that sometimes occurs when Windows switches between sessions. Microsoft Knowledge Base article 940452 discusses this time-out interval in greater detail and explains how it can also cause a 30-second delay…

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IT pros and confirmed geeks tend to develop strong feelings about their favorite technology, whether it’s an OS, an application, or even an icon. So, it’s no surprise that many long-time Windows users were pretty ticked when the Classic Start Menu disappeared with the release of Windows 7. Some people even refused to upgrade over it!   To get the Start Menu back in Windows 7 start using a free program called Classic Shell.

If some of your Windows XP clients run slower than others, it could be due to some of the default settings located in the Performance Options dialog box. You can change the options in this dialog box to boost the performance of a Windows XP client. Let’s examine the settings you can change to improve Windows XP’s performance. 1: Access the Performance options The most useful Windows XP performance-tuning options are on the Visual Effects and Advanced tabs of the…

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Windows Vista has some great new security and functionality features, as well as cool eye candy, such as Aero transparency, Flip 3D, and other graphical tricks. But all this comes with overhead that may lead to a performance hit on anything less than a top-of-the-line supercomputer. If you find Vista’s performance lagging, the good news is that you can make it run faster. Here are some of the steps you can take. #1: Add more RAM There’s no denying it:…

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We’ve all experienced it. That PC you know should be zipping along but isn’t. You add more memory, but it’s still barely chugging. Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to troubleshoot those ailing machines. Here are five steps you can take to help your machines run much faster. 1: Defragment This one should go without saying. However, I am always surprised at how few people regularly do this — or how many IT admins neglect to set up machines to do this…

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For many users, the Recycle Bin typically found on the Microsoft Windows Desktop is an important facet of the graphical-user interface and the overall operating system experience. However, under certain conditions, which we will not go into here, the Recycle Bin has been known to disappear from the Windows Desktop. This quirky behavior is no big deal for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users because the fix is just a few clicks away under Desktop Properties. However, for Windows XP…

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