Check your computer’s USB boot support

Before creating a bootable USB disk or USB installer for your favorite Linux Ubuntu operating system or for your Windows 7, it is good to know whether your computer can boot from a USB drive or not. Though newest motherboards have USB boot support, here is a simple solution to check USB boot support for your PC.

Download the free tool called USB Boot Tester (158Kb) into your computer. Connect a pen drive to your PC. Run the USB Boot Tester and follow the instruction.

Now restart your PC and change the first boot device to USB or Removable Devices or External Devices (depending on BIOS versions) from the BIOS and save the settings. Restart your PC again.

If nothing happened and your computer boots from the hard disk as usual, just switch the pen drive to another USB port and once again restart your PC. Still nothing happened, it means that your PC can’t boot from USB. In that case change the boot priority back to normal from the BIOS.

But, if you get Memtest launch from the USB flash drive, then it means that your PC can boot from a USB device. You need not to complete the memory test of your system. (Via)

Also Read:

1. How to Create Bootable USB for Linux
2. How to Make Windows 7 Bootable USB
3. How to Make Linux Bootable USB
4. How to Add USB Support for PC when it does not Support USB Booting

GRaiN : A Simple Google Reader Notifier for Windows

The Google Reader Notifier (GRaiN) is a small system tray application for Windows that alerts you when you have new unread items in Google Reader. GRaiN is very simple to use and the default settings are enough for most uses.

Just install the application and launch it. Right click the icon to select Preferences. Enter your Google Reader username and password and click OK. Wait until it starts displaying, or just click the Check Now to test it out.

You can also force the program to display selective tags only, choose default browser for opening the reader, and set the sound file for reminder.

Download at http://code.google.com/p/google-reader-notifier-windows

Norton Antivirus 2011 Free Three Month Trial

The Internet is not a safe place as many think, there are innumerable threats just waiting for the unwary user. To ensure a worry free online experience every time, a fast and reliable security solution is a must for every computer user. Norton is one of the best security software available today and its new version (Norton 2011) has many performance improvements over its previous version such as faster startup time, better resource usage, faster shutdown and expanded memory metrics.

Norton Antivirus 2011 and Norton Internet Security 2011 max your life on the Internet with smarter, faster protection that won’t let you down. It lets you email, surf, shop and bank online without worrying about cybercrime.

Whether you are using Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or even a Macintosh, Norton is right for you. Interested readers can now download a free three month trial of Norton Antivirus 2011, Norton Internet Security 2011 and Norton 360 Version 4.0 at source.

Remove Cookies And Cache For Individual Website In IE9

After surfing a web site, sometimes it may be necessary for you to delete all remnants – cookies, temporary files or cache of that particular site from your computer. Normally this is not possible without a special tool. But in Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) you can delete cookies and cache for a particular single domain just with a click.

To do that, just follow as described below:

1. Open Internet Explorer 9 and press F12 key on your keyboard
2. It will open the Developer tools. Click ‘Cache’ button. You’ll see two options: (i) Clear cache for this domain and (ii) Clear cookies for domain.

Select these two and perform the cleaning action. These options are quite handy especially if you are a developer.

Unlock, Delete, Copy or Rename a Locked File With LockHunter

Because of some unknown reasons sometimes you can’t delete a file from your computer, instead you’ll get error messages like disk is write-protected, it is being used by another person or program, file is currently in use, etc. In such situation the freeware tool LockHunter may help you.

LockHunter is useful for fighting against malware, and other programs that are blocking files without a reason. Unlike other similar tools it deletes files into the recycle bin so you may restore them if deleted by mistake.

Key Features of LockHunter:

1. Shows processes locking a file or folder and lets you kill the process
2. Allows to unlock, delete, copy or rename a locked file
3. Integrates in to Explorer menu
4. It deletes files into the recycle bin, so you may restore them if deleted by mistake

LockHunter supports both 32 and 64bit Windows and you can download it at source. Other similar tools that we covered in the previous posts are: Unlockme, Folder and File Unloacker.

Run Games Faster with Mz Game Accelerator

As we all know modern games require more CPU power and memory. Even if your system has a decent configuration, a number of games still require some system tweaking like unloading unused data from RAM to run faster.

Mz Game Accelerator is a freeware tool that helps to make games run faster with a single click. You needn’t to reboot your system; it works by temporarily shutting down unnecessary services, unloading unused data from RAM and intensifying CPU performance.

We already have covered similar tools in the previous posts. You may visit here to know about theme. Mz Game Accelerator works on Windows XP / 2003 / Vista / 7 (both 32/ 64 bit) and it is very simple to use.

Free Mind Map editor With Windows 7 Features

Mind mapping software is very useful if you need to collaborate on critical ideas, especially during a brainstorming session, you tend to skip some important points if you don’t list them in an organized manner. Mind maps can come to your aid to segregate ideas, especially for planning and decision making.

TouchMind is a simple to use, free mind mapping application for Windows 7 that offers some latest Windows technologies like Ribbon Framework, Multi Touch, Direct2D, Jump list, etc for mapping your mind.

Currently following new technologies are used in TouchMind:

1. Direct2D
2. HLSL (using Direct2D's Direct3D interoperability)
3. DirectWrite
4. Multi Touch
5. Ribbon Framework
6. Shell Library (Jump list)
7. TSF (Text Services Framework)
8. XPS Printing
9. MUI (Multilingual User Interface)

TouchMind only works on Windows 7 and you can free download at source.