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Posts with tag reboot

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Troubleshooting

ShutDownGuard tells Windows where to stick automatic restarts

My office workstations - which runs Windows Vista - has an annoying tendency to restart following updates, even though I've told it not to. Via the radio button, of course, though I have tried actually yelling, and that's not working either.

It's a pain, but I'm not about to disable Windows Updates. All I want is for it to be my choice when my system gets restarted.

ShutdownGuard waits in your system tray like a thug in the shadows, waiting to leap out and beat unwanted shutdown requests into submission. It uses about 2mb of memory and blocks shutdown, restart, and logoff attempts.

When it springs into action, you'll receive a balloon tip notification. Click the message to continue shutting down, click the x to close the alert, or just ignore it. If tips aren't being displayed, grab this .VBS from Kelly's Corner ( # 11 ) to re-enable them.

It's a free, tiny (7kb) download for Windows only. ShutdownGuard is packaged as a .7z file, so you'll need 7zip or a compatible app to extract it.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

How to add Windows tray icons for the trash bin, disc drive, and power

MinibinIt only takes a few clicks to do things like empty your Windows recycling bin, reboot your PC or open your CD-ROM drive. But if you're looking for easy access to these features, why not add system tray icons that give you two-click access no matter what you're doing with your computer?

E-sushi has a series of utilities that add these features to your system tray. Disc Tray Toggler lets you open and close your disc drive through a right-click context menu. MiniBin lets you open or empty your recycle bin. And iPower lets you logoff, shutdown, or reboot your PC.

The company also has a couple of other useful utilities including MyKeyGen, a password generator, and TimeBomb, a tool that lets you shutdown, logoff, or reboot your system after a specified periord of time. There's also a program called RunIdleTasks that's designed to force any tasks that normally run when your PC is idle to run immediately. But to be honest, we had a hard time figuring out if RunIdleTasks was doing anything when we took it for a test drive.

[via Shell Extension City]

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.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

WhyReboot: Is that reboot really necessary?

WhyRebootOne of my biggest pet peeves is software that insists on you rebooting your computer after you've installed it. As a guy who writes about software, if I rebooted for every installer that insists I do I'd spend more time looking at XP's loading screens than actually using it. WhyReboot is a free little app that tells you what file operations are pending for the next reboot, i.e. what that urgent reboot is really going to accomplish. Whiler it won't answer the question "Do I really need to reboot?" for you, it will help you guess whether a reboot is really necessary right now, or if you can just wait until you were gonna reboot anyway.

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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