What is ReadyBoost and How You Can Utilize It to Speed up Your PC?

SuperFetch and ReadyBoost are the two famous features introduced with Windows Vista OS. However, as Vista fails to leave strong remarks of their success & functionality, these features aren't become in light enough to catch the audience attention. However, the same feature has been equipped in Windows 8, the latest operating system from Microsoft introduced at 26 October 2012.


ReadyBoost is used to speed up your PC specially when you've limited capacities RAM and don't want to purchase additional RAM. As soon as you insert any USB stick or memory cards to your PC, a pop up dialog box will open with the option to use the drive as an extra RAM to have higher system performance. By default, you'll get the screen as shown in image below and the option will be Speed up my system.

                              

Once you click on the option at dialog box Speed up my system, at the next screen you'll able to set the amount of USB storage space that you want to let system use for improving performance. Don't forget to click on the radio box stating Use this device before assigning the space to improve system speed. Remember, you'll not e able to use reserved space for saving documents or for any other activities.

                             

How ReadyBoost works?
Lets digg into little deeper to find out how ReadyBoost exactly works in conjunction with your system memory. SuperFetch, introduced with Windows vista changes the way how open programs and files were handled in memory RAM. SuperFetch loads a copy of file information and libraries into RAM and use it access directly instead of looking into hard disk drive, which may eventually takes longer time. SuperFetch works concurrently with ReadyBoost when USB device is used and Windows will place the SuperFetch data into ReadyBoost drive. This will free up some more system memory and ultimately, improves the PC speed.


Experts will not recommend using ReadyBoost specially, when you've more than enough RAM capacity say 2 or 4 GB. Though, if your system faces extremely low operation speed due to shortage of RAM capacity (merely 512 MB or below), you should try this features if that can helps you to optimize your system performance.

If you need to further explore about ReadyBoost and live benchmarking test, AnandTech has a guide for it.

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An Ultimate Solution to Stop Error Code “KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED”

There is a long list of STOP error (s) that may occur at anytime with your Windows PC, after which, the PC will stuck at the same screen till you force reboot the PC. Kernal_Mode_Exception_Not_Handled or Stop error with a value of 0x0000008E is very common to modern PC's and occurs most frequently. Usually, It indicates that the system kernel mode has developed an exception that couldn't handled by error handler OR, any application tends to write or read the addresses from non allowed space.

Most probable causes could be damaged hardware device, old driver, or faulty third party software. Reinstalling Windows could easily solve this problem, but you need to agree with loosing all your valuable data as well as again purchasing the key for paid application (s), currently installed on your PC.

Steps to Remove This Error?

1. Remove or Upgrade Hardware Device As a faulty hardware could be the primary suspect in throwing this error, you'd better try to look for any problem hardware first and replace it with any new hardware. Your CPU contains lot of hardware equipments like Motherboard, RAM, and GPU etc. So pin pointing the exact failing part could be little hectic to you but worth trying as you may later able to resolve these kinds of problem on your own.  Remove RAM or test it one by one, make sure that Motherboard is not burnt and having proper supply or see if the is GPU become fails to supply enough power to all the internally attached equipments etc.
   
   
2. Update Windows as well as the driver Updating Windows on regular intervals will keep the system and all the running programs up to date. You need to run windows update at least once in a week to maintain healthier PC environment.
   Failing to do so, might gives series of error like system inaccessibility, unhandled error exception, system freezing etc. And later result the error mentioned above. Driver should be updated separately from the manufacturer's website to make sure that all the internally attached equipments have updated driver and will perform well when used.
   
   
3. Check For Bad or Failing Hard Drive Checking hard drive with chkdsk utility will inform you about possible bad sectors and blocks found around the hard drive. These bad sectors could prevent your OS from accessing required information and gives freezing issues or interrupted copy/move operations. Remember, these sectors couldn't be removed from the drive and have high probability to affect nearby sectors in future. So, it's advisable to immediately replace such drives from your computer after taking a complete backup and later then, replace it with hard drive only from known manufacturer.

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How to Fix PC that Automatically Turns Off Without Warning?

Ever got stuck in situations when your PC fails to start normally or automatically turns off every time you restart it? This could happen either while playing games or using programs that require PC graphics card to be initialized. Moreover, many time a new build PC can have such problems too and finding a solution requires you to digg deeply. 

There are numbers of issues can caused your PC to turn off and then restart unexpectedly and you might have hard time in fixing this. Let’s see how we can fix it with minimum efforts and basic computer knowledge.

#1. Perform a Repair Install
This is most basic yet effective solution for such kind of problems and hardly takes 2-3 minutes. All you need is your Windows 7 or XP Installation media, which could be either your CD/DVD or bootable flash media.

To fix this issue in Windows XP, you have to have Windows XP installation CD and boot the system using that media. You'll get the repair install windows just after the screen confirming the license agreement.

However, you can directly use repair install option in Windows 7 by pressing F8 key just after starting the system and choose Startup Repair option from the system recovery options.

If the first option didn't helps you, heads up to the second option, which is least likely to be the root cause of this problem.

#2. Registry Corruption

Installing third party applications have high vulnerabilities that it may damage the system registries and leave system in unbootable or inaccessible stage. You could fix the system registries by installing any registry repair applications, which is off course free and 100% safe to use. CCleaner is one of the best open source applications to fix damaged registries in minute. 

#3. Replace Hardware Equipments

PC's hardware doesn't give any significant warning or hint's that its failing or going to. You need to check for failing hardware equipments and replace it whenever necessary to stay safe from loosing your valuable data, which may imminently get lost or damaged due to hardware failure.

You can check for failing hardware equipments by going to Start > Control Panel > Administrative tools > Device Manager and find the hardware listed with yellow sign on it.

#4. Check for Heat Related Issues
This is another important issue that you've to look first with PC's that shuts off automatically. Remember, this step requires you to open the CPU case, so be cautious.
Check for fan and make sure it’s working fine as it's the main source to throws out the heat generated by the CPU hardware equipments.  Many computers are designed to shut off automatically if too much heat is generated inside the case to prevent PC from crashing or protecting hardware equipments to fail permanently.

Also Read Windows Vista Hangs at Black Screen

If you've fixed this issue with different tricks or have additional tip that can helps further on the same, don't forget to share it using the comment form below.

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Windows 8 is Designed to Support Larger Hard Disk Drive Capacities

In Microsoft building Windows 8 blog, Bryan Matthew, Storage & File System team manager at  Microsoft, describes how Windows 8 supports and handle hard disks of larger capacities while assuring that every sectors and blocks of large hard disks will be fully utilized.

Windows 8 can support drive of up to 2.2 Tera byte or more in size and give fast startup, secure bootup, minimum level of failure etc. and many other advanced features which are lacking in most other operating systems. 

                        

This implementation is bit tricky for Microsoft as well as requires manufacturer to change the traditional architecture of any hard disk. In late 2009, Manufacturer's agreed to release hard drive of large block size (4KB in size, enough for storing ECC codes and your data) entitled 'Advanced Format' disks to meet the modern LBA (Logical block addressing) scheme and less signal-to-noise-ratio(SNR) when reading data from the disk platters.

[Read Also: How to Restore Traditional Start Button in Windows 8]

In 'AF' series, two types of disks are currently available in the market i.e.  512-byte emulation short for '512e' and '4K Native' with only one difference that is capable to utilize full 4K block in 512e.

Above figure will give the clear idea about how 512byte emulation drive works and save data in each of the empty 4k sectors if it founds any and thus filling all the free space in your large capacity disks.

Additionally, to ensure full disk utilization, Microsoft further divided these challenges into three sub parts, which is :

• Addressing Method
• Disk Partitioning Scheme
• Firmware implementation in PC – Weather BIOS or UEFI

As we talk earlier, Windows 8 uses latest addressing method called logical block addressing (LBA) instead of CHS (Cylinder-Head-Sector) method to clearly define sizes of every sector, beginning from sector 0 to sector n. Where as, in CHS method, sizes of hard disk are limited i.e. Utmost 160 GB and makes it typical to locate any particular block of data in large disks.

Disk partitioning scheme is also updated from traditional Master Boot Record partition table (MBR) to GUID partition table (GPT), part of the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) to support partitioning scheme in drive of up to 2.2TB in size.

PC firmware begin to use UEFI techniques instead of old BIOS hardware initialization method to work well with GPT partitioning scheme and provides great level of security during Windows booting as well as higher security for your valuable stuff.

These three methods UEFI Firmware + GPT Partitioning + LBA collectively allow Windows 8 to fully utilize capacities of large hard disks without trouble.

Windows 8 will soon start to support even great sizes of hard disk like 8TB and ensures full data safety.

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Looking for Traditional Start Menu in Windows 8, here’s how to get it back?

Microsoft Windows 8 has been introduced recently find few basics Windows programs like Address Bar, Computer, Control Panel, Libraries etc. at the lower left corner of Windows 8 metro screen. Wherein the Address Bar, you could directly type web addresses or program name like notepad, Calc to access it directly. It seems obvious that many of us don't like this annoying change as it will slows down the overall PC operating speed for new users as the new options will make you confused about starting and operating programs.

There are few good alternatives of Windows 8 metro home screen that could bring back the old start button without affecting the Metro start screen. An interesting utility that I found efficient and have excellent workaround is Classic Shell. The best thing about Classic shell is that it prevents Windows 8 to boot in the UI screen which clearly saves some time for you and speedily boot the Windows.

[Relevant Readings: Fix Windows 7 Freezing and Hanging Problem]
 
Though, there are many other utilities too which can be used to get the old start menu back like Vistart, Startmenu etc. out of which classic shell is the most effective one. Let me tell you why?


Introduce yourself With Classic Shell

Classic shell has been used in previous operating system’s to customize start button, menu items and provides flexibility to play with start options look & feel. Once you installed classic shell onto your system, it automatically places a new start button just like Windows 7 start button. Classic shell don't limits you to add only the start button, instead it also allows you to access command option, settings directly from the start menu. Shut down option of this start button can bring you the same options like shutdown, hibernate, restart or standby as you could previously see in Windows 7, Vista or XP.

You can download classic shell from the sourceforge and install it on your PC anytime for free.

Microsoft has removed many other features too but either we don’t yet reached to or just enjoying via using them. One more thing which annoyed me most in Windows 8 is its direct deleting feature. Means, In Windows 8 you won’t able to see the deletion confirmation box after hitting the “del” key alike in previous versions of Windows. However, you can enable the confirmation dialogue from control panel > recycle bin settings menu.

As a result, Windows 8 has more vulnerabilities of loosing your precious documents, files, photos etc. and again, you are at the risk of data loss. After which, you might need efficient file recovery program to recover your data. Check out the great post about data loss problems in Windows 8 which contain the detail step about recovering your documents from Windows 8.

Don’t forget to sounds off your personal opinion about Windows 8. And yes, we also welcome any likes and dislikes that you personally have with Windows 8.

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Your PC Needs to Restart - Fix This Windows 8 Installation Error

Windows 8 has been grabbing good attention from people throughout the world. Windows 8 features such as Windows 2 Go, metro start screen, removed start button etc. make users crazy and eager to try it either by upgrading their current version of OS or buying a complete new license. But when it comes to the new installation of Windows 8, various errors may occur and many of those have already been reported & discussed on the web.

One of the most recent errors that many user complaints about and occur just after starting the Windows 8 installation says “Your PC Needs to Restart, Please Hold down the Power Button”. After which, users would have no option left other than restarting the setup and follow the same loop again but not luckily enough to pass on that screen. No matter weather you are using Windows XP, Vista or 7 etc. anyone can face this issue and there are some easy steps you can follow to fix this error.

              

Basically, the error mentioned above is related to your current motherboard configuration and a simple tweak in the BIOS settings could fix the cause.  Technically, you need to “Turn On” the BIOS option to prevent execution in non executable memory segments.

Here's how to fix it – Step by Step

1. Find the motherboard model and its manufacturer. If you don't know who is the manufacturer of your current motherboard, you can check out your BIOS version
2. Restart your computer and press F2, F10 or F12 key whichever is set for your motherboard to enter the BIOS settings.
3. Select CPU configuration under ‘Advanced’ menu.
4. Look for No Execute memory protection, check or uncheck the box to enable or disable Windows NX features.
5. Select F10 or F12 (Again, the key may be different depending on the motherboard) to save the changes and exit the BIOS.

Note: You could find the option to enable or disable No execute memory protection either under Advanced or Security (specially for intell motherboard holders) tab.

Remember, Windows 8 is just yet released and there is lot more to happen. Professionals recommend to purchase Windows 8 only after 4 or 5 months of it's release so that Microsoft will fix the post release errors and present a bug free Windows 8 for PC lovers.
Learn more about exciting features of Windows 8.

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What is Remote Data Recovery and Why It's Beneficial for us?

Data Recovery is an amazing art that lets you never loose your critical files, residing on any storage device. It effectively reclaim user's data in many situations such as logical drive corruption, drive inaccessibility due to hardware failure, accidental file deletion and many more.

In most cases, users fail to safely recover data either because of improper recovery steps or not able to manage the hardware problem. One of most astonishing data recovery techniques called Remote Data Recovery (RDR) could address all such data recovery needs in speedy and efficient manner.

What is Remote Data Recovery?

Data Recovery Professionals can salvage data from your PC using remote data recovery (RDR) methods. Remote Data Recovery is performed in highly secured and encrypted environment to comply with user's security concerns. Remote data recovery supports recovery from all major operating system, latest file system volume, any hard drive configuration (RAID, NAS, Removable media), storage providers etc. It can be used in the following situations:

1. User is not able to handle software or the data loss situations
2. Logical corruption of storage volumes
3. Virus attack
4. Unable to find the desired files (Lost or misplaced)

It basically requires the RDR client hardware setup which provides secure connection between server and host. Once the connection is established, a professional will begin examining the case and possible attempts to give best data recovery results.

Note: Please avoid using disk check utilities to make your data easily recoverable and intact.

Benefits of Remote Data Recovery

Engineer will deeply examine the data loss situation and develop well researched plan to give best recovery results. Here are some quick benefits of using RDR facility.

• Provides secured, fast and cost effective solution to various data loss situations.
• You don't need to visit any physical location for recovery i.e., saves more than a week.
• Just an easy installation and engineers will begin recovering your data.
• Number of cases are handled everyday, so there are certain solutions for any type of data loss situation.
• Your data will remain intact and secured at your own machine.

There is a huge list of data recovery firms you can choose from, Stellar Phoenix is among the top firms. Professionals at Stellar Phoenix are highly trained and specialized in efficiently recovering data from your troubled PC.

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Data Loss Reasons From Hard Drive, Memory Card, You Can't Ignore

Loosing your precious files is one such instance that may put your years of efforts disappeared. Whenever this happens, you won't get time to take backup or lucky enough to access your precious data one more time and store it somewhere else. They were just gone and you might work very hard to get those data back.

Malicious software, faulty hardware, human misdeeds are the common reasons that when occur, will results in permanently inaccessibility to your computer or hard drive data. Sometime the problems are temporary and restarting the system might solve your problem, but unfortunately you can't same for all the time. Below, I've compiled the list of cases into which data loss situations can strike and make your data deleted, damaged or corrupted. 

Crash or Burnt Hard Drive:

Overheating or overclocking your PC are the common reasons responsible for making your hard drive damaged and inaccessible, also known as physically damaged hard drive. Running your PC roughly or uninterrupted uses for a longer period of time, avoid using heat observer etc. could cause your hard drive as well as other hardware to stop working properly. After which, it is impossible to access your system or data inside the hard drive.

Virus Attack

There are bunch of virus/malware created everyday to harm your PC and steal confidential data. Viruses such as Trojan, malware, adware etc. are created to malfunction hardware parts as well as can damage your precious data inside the system. After which, system will starts behaving abnormally like never before and you won't capable to retrieve important files. Formatting the system will make everything fine but you may permanently loose your files.

Memory Card/ External Hard Drive Corruption

These are the most popular medium to store your data widely used. Storing data in one such drive involves the high risk of loosing your valuable data as it contains less security features and can be easily corrupted due to overage, improper use, human faults etc.

Faulty HD Equipments

Hard Drive contains list of equipments i.e., platter, heads, spindle motor etc. which can be damaged or can stop working due to hard drive overage, power outage, system failure etc. As results, hard drive will stop working properly and may gives you error messages while reading or accessing stored data. As it contains the bootable partition, you can also face booting failure or similar circumstances.

Damaged or Corrupted CD DVD

As like memory card/SD Card, CD DVD are also used popularly among home PC users for storing photos, videos, movies etc. It can easily becomes damaged either due to of scratch or broken and couldn't be read by your computer or CD DVD players.

Emptied Recycle Bin

Computer users delete files they don't need or think of no value and delete it from the partitions as well from the recycle bin (or delete by using shift+delete). But later realizes that they have mistakenly deleted an important one and wants those file back. The good news is, you can still capable to rescue your items inside the computer using available recovery programs, which is intended to pin point the deleted files and recover them instantly without modifying it's actual quality.

That's all I've regarding data loss reasons, but I'd most welcome your suggestions too using the comment options below.

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What is a Windows Update Error: 80070005 and How Can You Fix It

Have you recently tried updating your windows and get the following error message?

“Windows could not search for new updates
an error occurred while checking for new updates for your computer.
Errors found: Code 80070005 Windows update encountered an unknown error"

Basically, this error relates to “Access Denied” error and happens when you don't have sufficient permissions or administrator rights to do the needy task such as updating your Windows. Moreover, there are various other reasons too when system throws the above error message, such as:

• You do not have permission on specific files and folders or registry keys
• There could be virus on your system preventing you to update any information
• Your firewall settings won't authorize the action

So, have you got stuck with similar problem and wondering about how you can fix it, then you are at the right place and the solution might be simpler than you think.

The easy Way

• Turn off Windows update by going to control panel
• Navigate to folder C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution
• Rename the SoftwareDisctribution to SoftwareDistribution.old
• Create new folder with the name SoftwareDistribution
• Turn on the Windows update and update your windows.

Note: To follow the above mentioned steps, you have to enable the option 'Show hidden files and folders' by going to Control Panel > Folder Options > Clicking on View tab.

The Tough Way

• Download SubInACL from here, a free command line tool to extract security information about files, registries, changing file permissions etc.
• Install the downloaded file. Make sure that you chose the location C:\Windows\System32 as the destination folder to install the above application.
• Open notepad from all programs
• Copy the below code & paste it into notepad@echo off

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f

subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=administrators=f

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=system=f

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=system=f

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=system=f

subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=system=f

@Echo =========================

@Echo Finished.

@Echo =========================

@pause

• Save notepad file with name reset.bat at the desktop, so that it can be accessed easily.
• Navigate to desktop > Right click on file reset.bat > Choose Run as administrator > authenticate the Windows action.
• DOS like Window will process and when completes, you will see a confirmation message 'Finished, press any key to continue'

Most probably, your issue is resolved now and now you can update it your Windows without any trouble. If the issue still persists and annoys you, disable any firewall or antivirus settings from the control panel or AV programs setting option.

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Fix Annoying BSOD Error Caused By NVIDIA Nvlddmkm.sys

BSOD problems on Windows operating system are very hectic and dealing with one such error requires deep knowledge, time, and efforts. I've recently faced a new kind of BSOD problem looks like:

0x00000116 (0x8811A008, 0x8E414E80, 0x00000000, 0x00000002)
nvlddmkm.sys - address 8D00A680 base at 8D0020000, datestamp *D00A680

After deeply analyzing the dump files what I've found is something unearth to me and never faced previously. Though, I've followed some quick fixing steps and finally solved this annoying BSOD error caused by NVIDIA® Display driver entitled nvlddmkm.sys, found under the path C:\Windows\system32\drivers.

Error Explanation with causes

Basically, Windows 7 or Vista users may face this error any time while playing games, installing applications or doing any other tasks that uses the latest version of nvlddmkm.sys file. This file is a part of NVIDIA® Display driver used by Windows in providing quality graphics. When the file nvlddmkm.sys is too old than Windows 7 or Vista needed and thereafter results in BSOD (Blue Scree of Death). You can check this file existing version by going to

C:\windows\system32\drivers folder, right click on the file named nvlddmkm.sys and check the details tab under its properties Window. It should be 7.15.11.5669 or something similar to this.

You can edit, modify, or replace this file but doing this doesn't guarantees that the issues are solved. Instead, I'd suggest some easiest ways to solve this problem in complex mode if the most basic one doesn't seems to work.

Methods to permanently solve this error

Sometime, BSOD errors point to nvlddmkm.sys was done in mistake and actual cause behind current BSOD errors is due to of different driver. So, I'd personally suggest updating your entire hardware and software driver using automatic update driver tool. This tool will scan and shows you the most updated/suitable driver for current configured hardware as well as update it in real time. If this tool doesn't work with your system, you can look here for few more driver update software. Moreover, you can follow this handy tutorial about how to make Windows 7 automatically find new device drivers which really helps user in avoiding BSOD errors due of faulty or outdated drivers on Windows platform.

If you believe that the BSOD is caused by faulty nvlddmkm.sys driver, you can download and update it manually using Nvidia official drivers download page or let NVIDIA to automatically find the newest driver for your current video card and thereafter install it. Doing this will most likely to results in issues is permanently solved, if not continue on.

The most effective solution which works very well in my case is by replacing and renaming the driver file to old. Here's how to do this manually:

1. Click Start > Run > Type C:\windows\system32\drivers and hit enter.
2. Copy the file nvlddmkm.sys to any other location.
3. Again right click on the same file (nvlddmkm.sys) and choose rename
4. Rename it too nvlddmkm.sys.old and paste the old file (nvlddmkm.sys which we had copied in last step) to the same location.
5. Restart the computer and see if issues are solved permanently.

The computer problems are full of mystery and no one can guarantee that whosoever steps will work for sure. Therefore, if you are facing the same problem and couldn't manage to fix the issue even after trying all of the above mentioned steps, you can post your particular situation here in comment section with full system configuration and I'll try best to help you as much as I can.

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