VistaSwitcher - Alt+Tab replacement for XP, Vista and Windows 7

VistaSwitcher is a Ridiculously Awesome Alt-Tab Replacement :: the How-To Geek

This is a great Alt+Tab replacement viewer. It has a big preview, and a very legible list of the open programs. Plus, you can change how it works and with what keys. 32bit and 64bit versions for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Buying a new computer? Wait until after October 22, 2009

Gizmodo - Windows 7 To Be Released October 22 - windows 7

If you are planning on buying a new computer soon, wait until after Oct. 22nd. Windows 7 comes out then. From all I've read, Windows 7 is better than Vista. Don't get me wrong, Vista works great (contrary to all the bad press it got). But Windows 7 sounds like it is pretty much a version of Vista that has been tweaked under the hood and has some new features added.

My Top 15 Free Windows Programs for 2008

Inspired by the post at Lifehacker, and, since it's been a while since I've written up a top-list, here is my top 15 list of free Windows programs.

In no particular order:

Firefox 3 - the latest version of Firefox is fast and very secure and remains the best with extensions of all the browsers

AVG Free 8 - anti-virus and anti-spyware, and much improved since it first came out. Easy to use and works better than the big programs that must be purchased.

7zip - decompression and compression of many many compression formats, and free!

Foxit PDF reader - now works directly inside a Firefox tab as well as on its own. Faster and with a much smaller footprint than Adobe Reader. They keep making this better with every version

Crossloop - for remote connections with clients for help/repair - free and very simple to use

Shutdown Guard - for stopping Windows Updates from automatically restarting your computer (XP and Vista)

Winamp - best free media player overall - yes it has playlists and you can use it with your ipod or any other MP3 player. Works better than iTunes and doesn't install other programs behind your back, and you can customize its many settings (file formats to deal with, whether it launches on its own or by your command...)

Quicktime Alternative - streamlined and unobtrusive version of Quicktime

Realplayer Alternative - streamlined and unobtrusive version of Realplayer

Open Office 3 - the best free alternative to MS Office. And it can open .docx files now. You can create a PDF directly from any of the programs in the suite with a click of an icon. Word processor, spreadsheet, drawing program, database, you can make it save things in MS Office format by default if you need to share documents with others have MS Office, and more.

Thunderbird - excellent email program from Mozilla (same group that brings you Firefox). I find this much easier to customize and to backup and move files around when need be than Outlook or Outlook Express.

Picasa - a good, free program from Google for viewing, sorting and editing your photos and more

Superantispyware - A great 2nd program for manually scanning your computer after AVG Free 8 to catch and fix anything that might have been missed. I like this better than Ad Aware and Spybot put together.

CCleaner - great for cleaning up temp files, temp files leftover from crashes, and cleaning up the Registry and more.

Cobain Backup - a free backup program that you can fully customize - scheduling, backing up to various drives including network drives, etc.

Got any favourite free programs I left out? Add them in comments.

Happy New Year!

Stop automatic Windows restart

shutdownguard - Google Code

Here's a little program I just discovered via Lifehacker. It is supposed to stop Windows from automatically restarting after updates.

I'll check it out and get back to you about it (sometime in December, after the next Windows update). I'm testing it in XP and Vista.

UPDATE
It works! In Vista and XP.
It stops Windows Updates from automatically restarting.
In XP, if you want to re-start or shutdown your computer, you have to exit shutdownguard first (as it won't let you shut down Windows)

Updated instructions:
Download the file (see link above)
Copy to Program Files.
Run.
Right-click system tray icon
Autostart
Check off Autostart.
Make sure you Enable it.

Next time Winows update wants to restart after an update, the Restart Your Computer To Finish Installing Updates window will pop up to give you the choice of Restart Now, or Postpone, and a Remind Me in xx minutes.
Usually, if you are away from your computer, Windows will automatically restart in 10 minutes.
With Shutdown Guard running and enabled, this window stays up and the computer does not restart. So, when you come back to your computer, everything is still there and you can choose when to restart the computer (you can leave this pop-up window open in the background and when you are finished your work, restart the computer when YOU want to.)
In XP, it will keep popping up with the Restart/Later window every 10 minutes, but it won't restart your computer automatically.

Note. You should restart it soon though as the updates are usually security related. I would start it less than a day after this pops up - preferably within a few hours.

Rthdcpl.exe - Illegal System DLL Relocation

If you receive a message pop-up that starts with this, most likely a recent Windows update is conflicting with your Realtek HD Audio Control Center.

To fix it, go here, download the Microsoft hotfix, run it, and restart your computer.

If this doesn't fix it, it is possibly a spyware/virus issue and you need to run your antivirus and/or antispyware scans to find and fix it.

UPDATE: The recent Windows security fix for animated cursor problem caused a number of other programs to not work properly, including the above issue. For more information and Microsoft's fixes for these problems, check out their page here.