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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Microsoft, Freeware

Temporarily turn off Windows Update restart nags using Leave Me Alone!

Leave Me Alone!Since you want your computer to be as secure as it can possibly be, you have Windows set to automatically install updates as soon as they're available, right? Well, if you do, you will have noticed that Windows can be pretty pushy about wanting to restart. In fact, it will pop up a reminder every 10 minutes until you finally give in, or worse, accidentally press the space bar when the update dialog pops up and initiate a restart at the exact wrong time.

To avoid this annoying situation, check out Brad Isaac's free utility called Leave Me Alone! Leave Me Alone! allows you to temporarily turn off the restart nag window until you actually do restart. This allows you to finish what you were doing and choose when to restart, rather than being bullied into restarting at the least convenient time.

Leave Me Alone! works on both Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Filed under: Audio, Utilities, Windows, Freeware

LAUNCHcast AdMute shuts up the ads

LAUNCHcast AdMuteIf only there was something like this for my car stereo: LAUNCHcast AdMute is a free Windows app by Brad Wheeler that keeps an eye on LAUNCHcast's streaming radio player and automatically mutes the feed whenever an ad comes on. Discussions of ethics aside, we're all about taking control of your computing experience here at Download Squad, and if LAUNCHcast's ads irk you as much as they do Brad, AdMute might be just what you're looking for. It lets you specify a maximum mute period for when the LAUNCHcast player fails to update and has a button for muting the current song or ad. AdMute will also automatically refresh the player when that obnoxious "Are You Still There?" message pops up, and lets you minimize the player to the system tray.

Filed under: Windows

Get rid of the Windows Update reboot nag

Restart Now/Restart LaterOne of my biggest Windows pet peeves is the Restart Now/Restart Later nag box that pops up after your install a patch from Windows Update. Yes, Windows, I know there's a reason I shouldn't wait too long to reboot but there's absolutely no reason I should be reminded of it every 10 minutes. Fortunately, there seems to be a solution, at least for folks with SP2. Using the Group Policy editor you can change the time between nags from 10 minutes to something more reasonable like, say, an hour, or get rid of them entirely. To learn how to do it, head over to The Code Project's forum, where a user called Daniel Turini describes the tweak.

Additionally, if you just want a temporary fix (or don't have SP2), stopping the Automatic Updates service will make the nags go away. Just go to Start > Run and type net stop wuauserv. Once you eventually reboot, the Automatic Updates service will start again by itself.

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Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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