Category: Beginners

Disable Google personalized search

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.

How to add a folder of Kindle books to your PC

PCRepairMan

Kindle book downloadThe following instructions detail how to add a folder of Kindle books to your PC.

  • Copy the ‘books’ folder to your computer, eg to d:\books
  • Use c:\books if you have to but a different partition is preferable.
  • Install Calibre – download it from here (opens in a new tab).
  • Once installed start Calibre.
  • Click ‘Add books’.
  • From the dropdown menu click ‘Add books from directories (Assumes every ebook file is the same book in a different format)’.
  • Navigate to your books folder.
  • Click on ‘Select folder’.
  • Calibre creates a database for you.

To select a book and send it to Kindle.

  • Plug in your Kindle using the USB cable.
  • In Calibre, right click on a chosen book.
  • From the pop up menu, select ‘Send to device’ then ‘Send to main memory’.
  • It should now be on your Kindle.
  • Repeat for any book.
  • Be sure to eject your Kindle from your PC using the tray icon in the bottom right of the screen.

 

Convert ebook formats

It is often necessary to convert a book from a format such as ePub to the Kindle .mobi format. This is easily done in Calibre.

  • Select the book.
  • Right click and select ‘Convert books’.
  • Select ‘Convert individually’.
  • Select the output format as MOBI and click on ‘OK’.
  • The book now exists in both formats on the hard drive.

Hope this helps, please drop me a social link or Facebook ‘Like’ if it helped you.

Be sure to check out my daily updated list of free books available for Kindle

 

 

Mozy discount code for 10 percent off

PCRepairMan

mozy-online-backup-dicount-coupon-code-freeWe 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

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

Different types of graphics card slots

PCRepairMan

Here I’ll try to explain briefly the graphics card slots used on most PCs.

Video or graphics cards come with three different connector types – PCI, PCI Express and AGP. The slots in your PC’s main board (motherboard) will dictate which one you need.

  • PCI are often white slots and have been around since the early 90s
  • PCI Express also known as PCIe  are often black slots but manufacturers can choose the colour. Useful eh?
  • AGP slots are mostly brown and they have different speeds. The newer versions for sale are predominantly designed for AGP 2.0 and 3.0 standards but check first
  • ISA cards are very old and it’s unlikely you have one of these as they were predominantly an 80s technology

You’ll also need to think what you will be using the graphics card for. Heavy graphics use (eg gaming, 3d rendering etc) will mean you need a more expensive card whereas a cheaper one will suffice for the odd Internet surfing and Word document. Gamers tend to look at FPS (Frames Per Second) as a benchmark to performance but there are a number of factors that contribute.

Hope this helps explain the graphics card slots minefield a bit more! Take a look at my deals on ATI graphics cards and Nvidia graphics cards.

 

Change Windows startup sound to a voice

PCRepairMan

Change windows startup soundYou 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….

 

AVG free download antivirus and internet security links

PCRepairMan

avg free antivirus discount downloadLooking for AVG free antivirus downloads?  Here are our official links:

AVG Free Antivirus

AVG Internet Security (full registered product) for much less than you think!

For a better fully featured antivirus, antispyware and Internet security package I’d suggest trying Kaspersky Internet Security.  Here’s a link with a 10% discount:

Alternatively, try searching for current offers on all antivirus products in our shop

Backup WordPress database tutorial

PCRepairMan

wordpress backup

This is a tutorial on how to backup your WordPress database manually using phpMyAdmin and the SQL export method. It may sound difficult for the non-technical but it isn’t really and is something that is essential for the maintenance of any WordPress site. If you have ever lost any data before you’ll know what a huge and time consuming problem this can lead to so let’s get going.

First off, please bookmark this page in your browser, you’ll probably need to refer to it again for the first few backups!

Login to your cPanel. This is where you will see lots of useful tools and the one we shall use is phpMyAdmin shown below.

php myadmin wordpress backup

Click to open it and you will now have to select your database from the left hand side, usually something like mysite_wrdp1. Don’t select the information_schema as this is not the one we want.

Now you look to the right of the screen and you can see tabs relating to functions we can actually run on the database.

phpmyadmin sql wordpress

We want to select ‘Export’ here. Now for the bit everybody gets wrong…. You should select the ‘Custom export method’ which gives you greater control over the final exported database. For ease of reference, I have compiled a screenshot of the best options to select for the majority of users. Make sure you click to select all tables in your database, I have seen so many people just backup one table within the database and the backup is effectively useless. Here are all the settings you need to have in the latest version of  phpMyAdmin:

database backup wordpress phpmyadmin latest

Notice I have removed the prefix from the table names (shown in blue above) as you or a program may have modified this. By default it is wp_ but many security packages rename it. There is nothing to do here, I’m just pointing this out for clarity.

Now you can click on ‘Go’ and you should be able to download a working copy of your database. You can’t really view this file as it requires a database server (although you can connect to it with a few software tools that exist). You can however upload it to a new installation or use it when the poop hits the fan and disaster strikes on your server.

That’s about all you need to do to have a working backup of your database. Remember to FTP into your server and copy all the files over too as many files and folders are necessary to get back up and running as you were. For example, your wp-content/uploads folder is not backed up automatically and this is where most images used on your blog are stored.

Automatic WordPress SQL backups and file copying features

If you want a click-and-forget solution then I would heartily recommend the excellent WP-Twin which you can download here https://wp-twin.com
This neat program not only backs up your database but also ALL of your files on the server, meaning that any special folders outside of WordPress get copied over too. It has an easy reinstall option that takes the pain out of disasters, well worth it if you aren’t too sure how to go about reinstallation.

I hope this helps you to start a decent WordPress backup regime and I’d be happy to know if this helped you, please drop me a comment below or click the social buttons to share with others.

 

Typing into the address bar – the right way!

PCRepairMan

microsoft-internet-explorer-top-tips-smallVery often I see people mistakenly typing into the browser’s search box instead of into the address bar. This is a fairly common mistake but one that you need to be aware of for its security repercussions.  For reference, your ‘browser’ is Internet Explorer (possibly also Firefox or Chrome if you have them installed).  The address box is the long one across the top middle of the browser window, the search box is the smaller one to the top right.

Any web address that you already know must be typed into the address box and NOT the search box thus:

When you type into the search box (top right of the browser) you are doing a search across the internet for a website, not going there directly. Imagine this scenario….

You want to go to your bank HSBC. You type in “hsbc” to the search box in the top right and a list of results from the search engine appears. How do you know the one you are clicking is your bank and not some website that looks the same waiting for you to type your login and password into it? By entering www.hsbc.com into the address box (top middle bar) you are going DIRECTLY there.

This is the same for www.bbc.co.uk, www.cnn.com, www.wikipedia.com etc so please don’t get caught out and change your habits. Searches are great but the results can be what you didn’t expect.

Safe surfing

Can I install OEM software on Mac Boot Camp or Virtual Machine?

PCRepairMan

Well, it seems there are lots of people asking about this installing OEM Windows software on Mac desktops and laptops. This is a grey area that I’d like to clear up (or make slightly off-white). I’ll present the facts and you can make your own decision.

OEM versions are, in theory, to be used by system builders. It is generally accepted now, although unwritten, that people can readily purchase these and install them. Just look at the plentiful supplies on major ecommerce sites and you’ll see that the OEM software is not just for system builders. Effectively, someone who installs an operating system on a PC is doing the job of a system builder, it’s just the component assembly part they are missing, and many system builders actually buy whole machines now anyway.

The thing to note with OEM software, is that if your computer dials out for licence verification then it needs to be installed on just one piece of hardware to be classed as genuine. That’s the only check. Since Retail versions are much more expensive than OEM, people are naturally drawn to them.

There are a few things to be aware of for OEM installation which I’ll clarify here:

1)  Retail versions come with both 32-bit and 64-bit installations as an option. OEM versions are one or the other, so you will want to make sure you’re ordering the right version. For your Mac, check that it is a 64 bit machine and go for this if it is. If you do have 64 bit then choose a product like Windows 7 as it’s stable, well rounded and I have seen Windows 8 splutter and complain a few times. Something like this would be perfect:

Cheap Windows 7 OEM (opens in a new tab)

The differences in 32 and 64 bit operating system software can often be marginal unless you are really pushing the computer hard, but for a small price difference 64 is a better operating system when on full load. Many software programs are 32 bit so they don’t take advantage of the extra ‘word architecture’ but when you run something like Adobe Photoshop 64 bit that is resource-hungry, it can be noticeable.

2)  OEM versions are tied to the hardware they are installed on and cannot be moved. This will only be an issue if you are planning on using virtualization software as well as your bootcamp (dual boot) installation, since the virtual machine “hardware” looks different to the real hardware.

3)  OEM versions do not come with telephone support from MS, although if you try to talk to a Microsoft representative about issues you are getting on a Mac then you may be fighting a losing battle as they are known to pass them back to you.

To summarise, I would go with an OEM dual-boot installation (64 bit if possible) OR run a virtual machine. You may even be able to run a cheaper XP licence as a virtual machine and this may suffice. If it is to run an older program such as MS Money this could work well as it may run more happily too.

64 bit architecture explained on Wikipedia

Drop me a comment below if this helped you or please click the social buttons to help others save a bit of money too.