Ricky Says

Question: Suppose we have a networking in a LAB and i have total rights over all other systems on the LAN. Now how to change the wallpaper of the system which is there on the LAN???

Answer: This question has been heroically rescued from the Open Questions forum by Greg Woosley. You can view his reply below, and stop by his website at http://codenoter.blogspot.com/ for some useful tips on "tricky geek things he's figured out once and doesn't want to figure out again later".

Question: I ran defrag on my Windows XP box to hopefully speed things up, but it still left quite a few files that are fragmented. What gives?

Answer: Defragging your hard drive should be like giving your car an oil change and dropping a can of octane booster into your gas tank. It should speed things up and make your system run smoother.

What gives is that the built-in Windows defrag program completely sucks. It's slow and doesn't do a very thorough job, as you've seen first hand.

The story gets worse with Vista, and the built-in defrag utility doesn't even show the graph anymore, so you can't even see how many files are still fragmented. I guess Microsoft decided it would be better to not even show people how ineffective the defragmentation program is!

You'll get much better results from a third party defrag program like Diskeeper, and better system performance too.

Diskeeper just released their 2009 version, and you can download a free 30-day trial to see what a fully defragmented hard drive really feels like. I ran it on my 160GB hard drive that's half full, and it took less than 30 minutes to defrag it - much faster than the hours it can take for Window's defrag utility to run.

I like that you can see a graph of the files on your system, so you can visualize the defragmentation of your hard drive. Here's a screen shot of my hard drive after running Diskeeper 2009, showing blue for files that have been defragmented and red for files that are still fragmented (you'll have to look hard for any red lines):

Wondering what file fragmentation means, and if it can affect your system's performance?

Twitter is a free service that lets you communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

I call it "IM for the world", because it lets you post status updates (tweets) that anyone can reply to. People can also choose to follow you, which makes your tweets show up on their Twitter page.

Facebook is another free service that helps you connect and share with the people in your life, but provides a lot more features than Twitter. You can upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people you meet.

Facebook lets you post status updates just like Twitter, and you can link Twitter with Facebook so that your Twitter tweets show up automatically in Facebook (saving you the trouble of having to update your status in 2 different places).

Here's how to link Twitter with Facebook in 5 easy steps:

Step 1: Find the Twitter application in Facebook

Click the "Applications" link in the lower left of your Facebook homepage, and then click "Find More" in the popup menu.

You'll see a list of free applications that provide additional functionality to your Facebook account, and Twitter should be listed near the top.

If it's not listed at the top, then enter "Twitter" in the Search Applications field near the top right of your Facebook Applications page.

Step 2: Select the Twitter application

Click the Twitter image to select the application, and then click "Go to Application".

Selling your Blackberry or just want to get it back to it's original factory settings? Here's an easy way to do it using a built-in menu option.

Find the Settings folder on the main Blackberry screen, and select the following menus:

"Options" -- "Security Options" -- "General Settings"

In the General Settings screen, press the menu button (the button to the left of the track ball) and select "Wipe Handheld" from the popup menu.

Confirm that you want to erase all data on the Blackberry, and be sure to select the option to include any third party applications that you might have installed (e.g. Google maps or the Opera web browser).

As a final confirmation step, you'll be asked to enter the word "blackberry", and then the resetting process will begin.

It takes a minute or 2 to wipe a Blackberry clean, which resets it to the original factory settings and removes all address book entries, photos, videos, etc.

I've had my Motorola RAZR V3 phone sitting in my desk for about a year now, after upgrading to a Blackberry Curve (which I recently upgraded to an iPhone).

Figured it might be worth something to someone, so I put an ad on craigslist for $50 and was able to sell it the next day for $35. Not bad for a very popular phone that take camera pictures, shoots video, browses the web, and lets you text message your friends.

Before I handed the phone over though, I wanted to erase all of the pictures and address book contacts (preferably without having to delete them one by one).

The RAZR has a built-in menu option for wiping the phone clean and resetting it to factory specifications, with all of the default settings it came with out of the box.

Click the menu button, and then select "Settings" -- "Initial Setup" -- "Master Clear".

This will reset all the default factory settings for your Razr phone, and will also delete all user content. That includes pictures, address book entries, ring tones, text messages, the work.

You'll be asked to enter a security code, which is 000000 by default for AT&T phones (6 zeros).

If you only want to reset your Razr to default factory settings but not delete your data on the phone, then choose the "Master Reset" option instead of Master Clear.

The Master Reset option won't delete your address book entries or your photos.

The Master Clear option will completely wipe your Razr of all data (ideal if you're selling your Razr and don't want any personal files to be visible to the phone's new owner).