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Free Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, InDesign, Acrobat, Audition, GoLive

29th May 2013 PCRepairMan

adobe-photoshop-free-cs2 Do you want a free licensed version of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, InDesign, Acrobat, Audition, GoLive, Acrobat, InCopy, or Elements? Well Adobe have done a very strange thing and put direct download links to the CS2 versions of this excellent software online WITH the activation serial key. Why would they do that I hear you ask? Well apparently Adobe have problems with their licensing server and older software is not validating correctly. To combat this and in a gesture of goodwill (or long-term customer baiting) they are making older versions like CS2 run, without requiring validation, on these keys.

Windows and Mac versions can be downloaded free from the Adobe website here

So why give away Adobe CS2 for free?

Supposedly, these licences are for existing customers, although the software is now coming up to 8 years old so it would be understandable if it was given away to tempt people to upgrade to later versions. Because of the high prices that Adobe has previously charged for this software, my guess is that it would possibly be perceived as putting a finger up to previous customers who bought this suite if they released it free of charge. Hence some mystery surrounds this ultra discreet release of serials and downloads.

I’m not sure all programs are Windows 7 or 8 compatible. There are Mac OSX downloads in there too, again I’m not sure what version of the OS it will go up to. What I do know is that the original minimum spec for CS2 was

Mac OS X v.10.2.8–v.10.3.8. PowerPC® G4 or G5 processor
Microsoft® Windows® 2000/Windows XP. Intel® Pentium® III or 4 processor

I’d recommend that you go for the complete CS2 download listed at the start as it contains all the individual software programs. If you manage to get a copy and install it, please let me and others know what operating system you’re running it on by dropping a quick comment below.

Printer keeps printing pages when pc starts

26th May 2013 PCRepairMan

If your printer keeps printing pages when your pc starts, then follow these steps to clear the print queue.

These instructions are for Windows 7 or Vista, and won’t do any harm to your PC. I usually advise this and 99.9% of clients will cure their printer problems this way.

Click Start.
In the box above, type cmd
Right-click on cmd.exe (the command prompt shortcut) and select Run as administrator
In the black box that appears, type net stop spooler then press Enter
Type in del %systemroot%\System32\spool\printers\* /Q then press Enter. (Note there is a space before the /Q)
Type net start spooler then press Enter

The print queue on your Windows 7 or Vista PC will now be cleared out. Close the black command window using the cross at the top and restart your PC.

Has my fix for Printer keeps printing pages when pc starts worked? Then please use the icons below to tweet, like or share this article if you found it useful, it really helps this site to help others!

Manage multiple WordPress sites with WPRemote

25th May 2013 PCRepairMan

Looking for an easy way to manage updates on multiple WordPress websites? Well there’s a new tool in town and it’s called WP Remote. Here’s a brief review.

This nifty tool installs on WP sites via a small plugin and gives you a single console from which to monitor your sites for plugin updates, theme updates and WordPress updates. You can apply the updates from the console so no need to login to any site after the initial plugin install. Not only that but it allows manual backups of files and MySQL databases in one click. Fiddly and incomplete WordPress backups are a thing of the past, you can expect to add the site to the console, update all plugins and themes and do a complete backup within a few minutes. Stunning.

It’s free, easy to setup, minimalist, stable and incredibly useful. And no, I don’t own the company, just thought you might like it as much as I do. Look out for this company over the next few months as I think this is going to be very popular!

https://wpremote.com

Norton subscription has expired – but it hasn’t!

21st May 2013 PCRepairMan

A fairly common fault is for a Norton product such as Antivirus, Internet Security or 360 to report that your subscription has expired when it hasn’t. This can be due to a number of issues and often occurs after some major Windows updates or when there are problems with the Symantec (Norton) subscription servers.

The best methods to address this I have found are to do these in steps in order. If any one works then you have resolved the problem and need to go no further. Before trying these you will need to be connected to the internet.

1. Try a manual update – Open the main program window (double click on the tray icon or open it from the desktop icon) and do a ‘check for updates’.
2. Restart the computer – This ensures you have nothing that is pending a restart and affecting the definition updates.
3. Force a subscription check – In the main Norton window, click “Support” then click on “Subscription Status”. After the “Subscription Status Check” is complete, click “Finish”. This updates the subscription information of your installed product to the status that is stored on the Symantec (Norton) servers.

Norton internet security subscription expired
4. If you still have an issue beyond this then you will need to login to your Norton Account and check your subscription status then raise any issue you have with Symantec support. Use the menu “Support” then “Get Support”. If you didn’t create a Norton Account then you can still talk to support, just try to have your serial number handy from the original installation.

Hope this helps you, please drop me a comment below if it does. If you want to save a lot of money on renewal then check out my articles on The cheapest way to renew Norton 360 or The cheapest way to renew Norton Internet Security

Disable Google personalized search

21st May 2013 PCRepairMan

It’s difficult to get an accurate set of search results these days from Google as they unfortunately personalize far too much, even if you explicitly tell them not to. Now they have integrated Google Plus into the search results, it’s even more difficult.

Google remove personalization

“Aha” I hear you shout, “I can turn that personalization off by clicking on the settings gear at the top right of the Google page, then clicking ‘Search Settings’ can’t I?”. Well, no you can’t, this just makes “Hide personal results” the default. Worryingly, this choice is not saved with your Google profile and it’s forgotten on browser restart.

So how does someone easily make a fresh, unbiased Google search these days? Well, I would recommend you install Yoast’s excellent free plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer here:

https://yoast.com/tools/seo/disable-personalized-search-plugin/

For me, I build websites primarily for US and UK, so I selected “Install for Google.com” and “Install for Google.co.uk”. Set it as your default and use it for your searches as normal. It removes personal messages like ‘You visited this site 4 times’ which demonstrate that Google tracks you and weights your search preferences accordingly.

For tracking the actual ranking of websites rather than biased ones, it is an invaluable free tool.

Backup website databases with a free automated tool

19th May 2013 PCRepairMan

Backup your web site! If you are using a database driven website such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc you probably know how to FTP files but when it comes to the database many people are baffled. FTP does not grab the database files (unless Access format) and this is where your backup regime may fail.

Don’t presume that your hosting company will do it all for you. Hard disk drives are mechanical, breakdowns are unavoidable. And even those who use Raid arrays can end up losing your data. So who is responsible? Does it really matter? That hard work you put in creating the database could take weeks, months or years to recreate.

The answer? HeidiSQL is a completely free tool which you can download from https://www.heidisql.com

Using this tool, you can backup MySQL databases with ease. It can also export your MySQL database as a text file onto your PC which is very useful. You can import or restore any databases provided you have the necessary passwords.

Don’t delay, do it now before you forget!

Mozy discount code for 10 percent off

18th May 201320th February 2017 PCRepairMan

mozy-online-backup-dicount-coupon-code-free We have a Mozy discount code for those of you who want to take advantage of this clever online backup service. Mozy is one of the foremost online backup providers with a very stable, simple and accessible platform.
2 easy steps…

1. Click here – MOZY DISCOUNT CODE

2. Type in the PCRepairmansBlog.com promotional code SAVEME10 for a generous 10% off of any Mozy subscription. This offer officially expires on October 1, but may carry on beyond that date.

Mozy Stash

Mozy is also beta testing a synchronising feature called Stash. If you are a Mozy Online Backup user and you haven’t got Stash already, apply for the stash beta here.

Bot blocking tool Spyder Spanker review

17th May 2013 PCRepairMan

Websites are plagued with bad bots and often come grinding to a halt without the aid of a bot blocking tool. Here, I’ll review the latest kid on the block, Spyder Spanker.

Bot blocking plugin wordpress

First off, Spyder Spanker is a WordPress plugin, so if you don’t have a WordPress powered site then you’re out of luck. If you do however, then read on, it’s pretty impressive. Here’s a video that shows its merits:

Seen enough? Get Spyder Spanker Pro now at the best price or continue reading the review.

Spyder Spanker full review

Initially installing the tool is as simple as uploading your provided zip file to your server via the WordPress plugin page. Once uploaded and activated, Spyder Spanker installs itself as an admin menu item. There, you can add your licence details and you are straight in to the interface, a very neatly styled area where each component is separately presented to you.

Allow trusted bots

Setting up the plugin is very easy because all of the major trusted bots are whitelisted. By trusted, I mean the ones you actually WANT to come to your site such as GoogleBot, BingBot etc. Without these, the search engines wouldn’t know your site content and you would never get listed in the search engine results pages. This is something that is a welcome addition to the software, other packages leave it up to you to select your own trusted bots.

Disallow bad bots

You don’t even need to add any bad bots either because these are also setup when the plugin installs. Bots such as Baidu (Chinese search bot) and Yandex (Russian search bot) are unneccesary on many English language sites as they steal bandwidth to add you to their results pages, regularly returning to your pages to re-crawl them and taking valuable bandwidth.

Allowing individual bots

OK, so we have a good setup straight out of the box, but let’s dig a bit deeper and see what we can modify. Let’s take the scenario where an English language website sells products to China. If this is the case then it would make sense to allow the Baidu bot to index the website. To do this is a simple 2-click operation, tick the Baidu bot and then click on ‘Remove selected’. Very slick and no messing about with CSF firewall rules or .htaccess country-blocking or IP address blocking rules.

The differences between Spyder Spanker and other tools

I wanted to point out that Spyder Spanker is predominantly a bot blocker and doesn’t do a lot of what tools like WP Better Security does such as secure admin areas, make files ineditable etc. What it does excel at is blocking the bots that use your resources on a daily basis and it can throttle back the good bots when they spider your site aggresively too.

WP Better Security comes with a basic list of bad bots for .htaccess (which I use) but they’re a bit more devious these days and use new names. Here is an example of a logfile entry in Spyder Spanker:

Blacklist agent testing...
---------------------------------
0447705 - 2013-05-03 03:12:52 CDT / IP: 208.115.113.90 / HOSTNAME:
AGENT: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Ezooms/1.0; [email protected])
---------------------------------
BLOCK: blacklist agent: mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ezooms/1.0; [email protected])

This is a bot you won’t generally find on many htaccess blacklists but it’s a ‘rule-breaker’ for sure. SS responded by blocking it and will pass the rule to my other sites and the community network.

Let’s be honest, a bot with a gmail address probably shouldn’t be trusted that much anyway!

Spyder spanker review – the verdict

I’d thoroughly recommend you buy this tool, you’ll recoup any outlay back in a short time with reduced bandwidth fees, time saved and more sales if you run any type of ecommerce or affiliate site. One thing though, go with the Pro upgrade that is presented as a “One Time Offer” when you have paid for the basic version because Spyder Spanker Pro integrates beutifully with Project Honeypot. This means that it can be run ‘hands-off’ and will be updated against the raft of ever-increasing spammers and bad bots out there. Add this to the community update facility and you’ll be protected for years to come across ALL of your domains.

Purchase Spyder Spanker at the current best price online

Change Windows startup sound to a voice

15th May 2013 PCRepairMan

Change windows startup sound You know in all those futuristic films where computers speak to their owners? Ever wondered if you can actually get yours to welcome you in this way? Well let’s have a go at doing this and see what we can use it for.

This should work on Windows from XP upwards. If you have security settings a bit high then running scripts may be an issue but it won’t hurt to try this.

Click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Notepad

In the notepad window, paste the exact code below:

Dim speaks, speech
speaks="Welcome PC Repair Man, what can I do for you today"
Set speech=CreateObject(“sapi.spvoice”)
speech.Speak speaks

Obviously once you have this working, you’ll replace the text with your own!

Save as startmessage.vbs. You can rename this file to anything you like but keep the .vbs on the end. If you can’t see the .vbs then you really should turn on file extensions, it helps you to identify files. Turn on your speakers then double click this file to see if it works.

Copy the saved file and paste it into the following folders (I’m presuming that C is your Windows drive, most are):

For XP users: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (in Windows XP)
For Windows 7 and Windows Vista: C:\Users\ User-Name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

When you next start your computer, it will welcome you!

NOTE: I’d suggest you don’t turn off the Windows startup sound, it’s best to keep the rest of the system as-is.

To remove, simply delete or move the startmessage.vbs out of your startup folder.

Want to trick a friend? Create a personal message and drop it into their startup folder. Watch as their computer reminds them of something they’d rather not be reminded of like “Hey John, bad luck on the driving test” or “Is that a pimple on your nose, Lucy”.

Don’t be evil, or if you do, don’t tell them it was me that told you how to do it….