Tips & Tricks, Tutorials, Hacking, Troubleshooting,

Recently a client asked me to help him find the biggest files on his computer because he wanted to clean up his hard disk and free up some space. There are a couple of ways to do this. In Windows 7, the new search functions allow you to find files of a particular size and then sort them.

Method 1 – Use Windows Explorer

To find the largest files on your computer using Explorer, open Computer and click up in the search box. When you click inside of it, a little window pops up below with a list of your recent searches and then a add search filter option.
add search filter
Go ahead and click on Size and then you’ll get another menu with a couple of options:
file search
Go ahead and pick something like Large, Huge or Gigantic otherwise you will get a list of way too many files. If you just want to see larger files, I suggest choosing huge or gigantic. Then just press enter without typing in anything else.
huge files
You’ll start getting a list, but it’s not sorted yet as you can see above. To sort it by size, you have to click on the little options button:
options button
From there, you can to select Details view. Then you will see the size column and be able to sort by size.
details view
Here’s the final list of files on my computer sorted by size. This is the easies way since it’s built right into Windows and you don’t have to install anything. It also has enough options so I can see just the largest files on the computer.
sort by size
If you’re not running Windows 7, then you can use a third-party program. My favorite program for several years for finding the largest folders or files on my computer has been TreeSize.
You can download TreeSize Free from here:
http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/
Once you install it, go ahead and run it and you’ll see a window like this:
treesize
The program will automatically start to scan the C drive and you’ll see in realtime as the sizes of the directories are calculated. Once it has finished, the blue progress bar will disappear and you’ll be able to see the largest folder by size.
largest folders
You can then expand out the folders and see the largest files in each folder. With this program, it’s still not possible to instantly see the largest files on the entire computer, just the largest by folder. Still it’s a really useful app and it’s not hard to find the largest files quickly because those tend to be the largest folders also.
What do you use to find the biggest files on your computer? Post a comment and let us know. Enjoy!

I have receive various question about this issue, and I was going to create a tutorial, but I found a great tutorial at Pixel 77. This article is credited to DOINK the author of Pixel 77. He has an amazing site.
So you’ve acquired an impressive collection of vectors and you want to be able to use them asPhotoshop brushes, right ? Well, you can easily transform them into brushes in just a few seconds and I’m here to show you how to do it.

STEP 1

Open your .EPS file in Illustrator and turn all the vector shapes’ color into pure black (#000000). If you vector has more colors, use the Magic Wand (Y) to select each color and hit Delete, leaving only the outline.
(to set Tolerance to “0″, hit Enter after you select the Magic Wand Tool (Y))
1 How to convert vector shapes into Photoshop brushes

STEP 2

Open Photoshop,go to File > New… and create a new document of 2500 x 2500 px in RGB color mode, with the “Background setting set to “White”. (2500 px  is the maximum size for the brushes).[/cleeng_content]
2 How to convert vector shapes into Photoshop brushes

STEP 3

Go back to Illustrator, grab the Selection Tool (V), select a vector shape and copy it (CTRL+C).
3 How to convert vector shapes into Photoshop brushes

STEP 4

Go back to Photoshop and paste it in (CTRL+V). When prompted to select the paste type, check “Smart Object” and hit OK.
4 How to convert vector shapes into Photoshop brushes

STEP 5

Now you’re in Free Transform mode. Resize it to fit the entire document, either on width or height, depends which one is larger. Hit Enter to exit Free Transform mode.
5 How to convert vector shapes into Photoshop brushes

STEP 6

Go to Edit > Define Brush Preset…, name your brush and hit OK. Repeat for the other vector shapes.
6 How to convert vector shapes into Photoshop brushes

STEP 7

To save your brushes, open the Brushes palette (F5) and click the small arrow in the top right corner of the window. Select “Preset Manager”. Here, you can delete any extra brushes, load others or rename the brushes.
Hit OK when you’re done cleaning them up.
7 How to convert vector shapes into Photoshop brushes

7.1 How to convert vector shapes into Photoshop brushes

STEP 8

In the same menu as STEP 7, select “Save brushes…”. Name your set, set its location and hit OK.
8 How to convert vector shapes into Photoshop brushes

DONE!

HOW IT WORKS:

When you define a brush preset, Photoshop only sees you image in grayscale and uses the gray tones to set the opacity of the brush. That’s why you need to set the vectors to pure black and the background color to white.

If you are one of many Android users who like rooting your phone then newest version of Samsung Galaxy S will not be of any exception. By rooting your Android phone you will be able to use many cool things such as custom ROMs, and other applications that are not available at Google Play store. By removing this protection from your phone you will also lose all of the safety features so have this risk on your mind. If your decision is final and you want to root your Samsung Galaxy S 3 phone then this tutorial will help you by leading you step by step.

Samsung galaxy s3, Image Credit: Samsung
Before proceeding to below steps you need to make sure which version of Samsung Galaxy S3 because this tutorial will work on devices GT-I9300 and GT-I9300T. If by any chance your device model has a suffix I don’t recommend you to use this tutorial because you may brick your device. To check your device model go to Settings -> About device -> Model number
If your device model don’t have any suffix you may continue following steps below
Step 1: Download Odin 3 from this link and unpack it on your computer
Step 2: Next you need to download CF-Root-SGS3 from this link and again unpack it on your computer
Step 3: If by any chance while extracting CF-Root-SGS3 you end up with a recovery.img and cache.img file, you’ve extracted twice. In order for all to work you need to end up with a .tar file making sure you do not unpack that one

Step 4: Now if your phone is connected with a computer over USB, disconnect it.
Step 5: Now start Odin 3 which yu previously downloaded in Step 1
Step 6: When Odin opens click on PDA button, then locate and select CF-Root-SGS3 which you previously downloaded and extracted in Step 2

Step 7: Now it comes a tricky part. You need to put your phone in download mode by turning it off, and then hold buttons Volume-Down + Home + Power to boot. If you receive a message to press a button to continue, tap on the listed button, or run adb reboot download command
Step 8: Now using USB cable connect phone to your computer
Step 9: Before proceeding to below steps make sure Repartition option is not checked
Step 10: Click the Start button, wait for few minutes and your Samsung Galaxy S3 is now rooted.

When you login into Windows 8, you wont see a classic desktop as the one in Windows 7 or later, but you will see a new Metro style Start screen. If you are using a tablet or smart phone this wont be a problem for you, but if you are on laptop or desktop computer this Start screen may not be that much useful so that’s why I will show you which changes you need to make inside Windows 8 in order to login directly to classic desktop.


The method which we will be using involves of creating a small .scf file with notepad. To get started follow below steps.
Step 1: Open you Notepad and then add following code inside
[Shell] Command=2 IconFile=Explorer.exe,3 [Taskbar] Command=ToggleDesktop
Step 2: Save this Notepad file naming it classic-desktop.scf (it’s very important to use .scf extension)

Step 3: Next press Win+C on your keyboard and choose search. Type control panel and press Enter on your keyboard

Step 4: From Control Panel choose small icon view and click on Administrative Tools

Step 5: Double click on Task Scheduler and then select Task Scheduler Library

Step 6: Inside middle pane right mouse click on empty space and from context menu choose Create New Task

Step 7: Give your task a random new name
Step 8: Now choose Trigger tab and then click on New button located at bottom left
Step 9: For Begin the Task drop down menu select At log on and click OK to save your changes

Step 10: Now click Actions tab and then again on New button
Step 11: Click Browse and locate the script we create in Step 1

Step 12: Now click on Conditions tab, uncheck the option Start the task only if the computer is on AC power and save your changes by clicking on OK

Step 13: Now close your Task Scheduler, restart your computer and next time when you login into your Windows it should lead you straight to classic desktop.

By default, the local Administrator account in Windows 8 is disabled. There are certain programs that require the user to be logged in using the local administrator account in order to install software or perform some action on the computer. Even though you normal user account is considered an “administrator” account, you will still be prompted by UAC when performing certain actions on the computer.
The built-in Administrator account will not receive the UAC prompts. In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps to enable the administrator account so you can log into it in Windows 8.

Method 1 – Local Users and Groups

The first way to enable the built-in administrator account is to open Local Users and Groups. You can do this by right-clicking on Computer and choosing Manage.
manage users
On the Computer Management screen, go ahead and expand Local Users and Groups and then click on Users. You’ll see the Administrator account in the right-hand pane.
built in administrator
Right-click on the Administrator account and click on Properties.
account disabled
Go ahead and uncheck the Account is disabled box. It is also a good idea to set a password for the Administrator account since it has total unrestricted access to the system. Now you can log off your current account and you’ll see the Administrator account show up in the list of users.
local admin account

Method 2 – Command Prompt

You can also enable and disable the local Administrator account via the command prompt. In order to do that, you have to open an elevated command prompt in Windows 8. To do that, you have to go to the start screen and then right-click and choose All apps.
windows 8 all apps
Then you’ll see Command Prompt under Windows System. Instead of clicking on it, you need to right-click on it. This will bring up options in a separate pane at the bottom of the screen.
run as administrator
You’ll see an option to Run as Administrator. You need to click on this and then it will open the command prompt with elevated permissions. You may also get a UAC dialog where you just have to click Yes. At the command prompt type in the following to enable the built-in Administrator account:
net user administrator /active:yes
net user administrator
To disable the built-in Administrator account, use this command instead:
net user administrator /active:no
administrator uac

Method 3 – Local Security Policy

The last way to enable or disable the administrator account in Windows 8 is to use the local security policy. This option will probably only be available in the Professional version of Windows 8. To open the Local Security Policy in Windows 8, go to Control Panel and then click on Administrative Tools. You can read my previous post on how to access the Control Panel in Windows 8. You may also need to change the view to small or large icons instead of Category.
local security policy
In the left-hand pane, click on Local Policies and then Security Options. The first item is Accounts: Administrator account status.
local policies
Double-click on the item and you can click on the Enabled radio button.
enabled account
That’s it! Those are the 3 different ways to enable and log into the built-in Administrator account in Windows 8. If you have any questions, post a comment and I’ll try to help. Enjoy!

XHTML Validation serves the purpose of rechecking our site to see if it follows the W3C standards. It not only ensures quality, but also teaches us good coding practices and thereby eases maintenance. Validating one's code before taking it live serves as a sign of good professionalism in a coder's career.
Common errors found during XHTML validation are listed below:

1. Not closing empty tags.
Empty tags are tags that do not contain any content.
Example:
<br />
<hr />
Wrong : <br>
Correct :<br />
Wrong : <hr>
Correct :<hr />

2. Not closing non-empty elements
Example:
Wrong : <p>This is a paragraph.<p>
Right : <p>This is a paragraph.</p>

3. Missing a / on self-closing tags.
Example:
Wrong : <img >
Right : <img />

Other self closing tags include:
<area />
<base />
<br />
<col />
<command />
<embed />
<hr />
<img />
<input />
<keygen />
<link />
<meta />
<param />
<source />
<track />
<wbr />

4. Using Uppercase characters in Markup Tags.
Example:
Wrong : <BODY> </BODY>
Right : <body> </body>

5. Not escaping Special characters.
Example:
Wrong : Using the ampersand character as "&" and the angled brackets as "<".
Right : Use them as "&" and "<" instead.

6. Nesting the block level elements
Example:
Wrong : <em><h2>About Us</h2></em>
Right : <h2><em>About Us</em></h2>

7. No specifying alternate text for images.
Example:
Wrong : <img src="images/image.jpg" />
Right : <img src="image.jpg" alt="Image Logo" />

8. Non inclusion of quotes around attribute values
Example:
Wrong: <td rowspan=2>
Right: <td rowspan="2">

9. Starting a class or ID with a number.
Class, ID or name attributes should not begin with a number but can include them
Example:
Wrong : <ul class="bottomregion" id="4">
Right : <ul class="bottomregion" id="level4">

If you recently got your Nexus 7, you probably done plenty of things with it, but there is most likely one thing you are wondering how to do and that’s how to print from your Nexus 7. Unfortunately Nexus 7 does not have AirPrint feature like the one in iPad. Many of your will probably say that there is a Google Cloud Print which is true, but unfortunately it requires you to have/use mobile version of Gmail to be even able to print with it. In this tutorial I will show you how to print your documents from your Nexus 7 using Google Cloud Print as a share action.


Let me note that before you proceed to below steps you need to have Google Cloud Print service up and running. After that continue following steps below
Step 1: Visit Google Play store, download Cloud Print from this link and install it on your computer
Step 2: Once the installation is finished and you start setting up the app make sure you use the same Google account ID which you have used to set up your Google Cloud Print.
Step 3: Now, next time when you need to print your document, web page or a picture from your Nexus 7, choose the Share option and then choose Cloud Print as the action.

Step 4: Now confirm the printer which you want to use for printing and the printing should start within few seconds
Step 5: If you don’t have any physical printers connected to your account you can simply choose Save to Google Drive and your document, picture or web page will be saved to your Google Drive storage, and then you can print it later.

Many Facebook users don’t know that Facebook can use their name inside Facebook social ads and draw more attention about your personal preferences to all people you have added as friend. These ads usually appear inside the right hand side of your Facebook profile page and use your name to suggest others about what you liked on Facebook, for example “John Johnson like this.”. If you don’t want your name being used inside these ads I will show you how to disable it with just few click.

Facebook, Image Credit : honeynet.org
To get started follow steps below
Step 1: Visit Facebook and login into your profile
Step 2: Now click a small down arrow which is located in the top right corner of Facebook page, right next to your profile picture
Step 3: From drop down menu click on Account Settings

Step 4: Inside left pane choose Facebook ads
Step 5: Now click on the link Edit social ads settings located at the bottom of the page

Step 6: Now under Pair my social actions with ads for drop down menu select No one

Step 7: Click Save Changes.

Windows 8 has some cool new tools for fixing your PC without having to go through all kinds of crazy boot screens and command prompts like in older versions of Windows. The two main features you may have heard of are Refresh PC and Reset PC. Refresh PC is kind of like doing a repair install of Windows, but now you just press one button instead of the long process it was in Windows XP and Windows 7. Resetting your PC is basically performing a full reinstall of the OS, again with just one click of a button.
In addition to those options, there is also another very easy recovery option that is better than refresh and reset, in my opinion. You can create an image backup of your Windows 8 PC with all your settings, data, and apps the way you want them to be restored. The only downside to Refresh PC is that it will preserve your data and Metro apps, but it will remove any desktop apps that you install. With an image, you can configure Windows 8 with all the Metro and desktop apps you want, plus any other settings and then create the image.
What’s really nice is that when you go to refresh your PC again after creating the image, it will refresh the PC from the image backup automatically! And again, the Refresh PC and Reset PC options are available through Windows and they are also available in Windows RE, which is the Windows Recovery Environment that you can load in case Windows 8 won’t boot up.
In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps to create a image backup of Windows 8 and also show you how easy it is to restore the entire image. So now when your computer is infected with malware and viruses your kids downloaded onto your computer, you can restore it to it’s original state with ease.

Create Windows 8 Backup Image

To get started, you need to open an elevated command prompt in Windows 8. To do this, go to the start screen and right-click anywhere to see All apps.
all apps
Next, right-click on the the Command Prompt and you’ll see a couple of options show up on the bottom. Go ahead and click on Run as Administrator.
run as administrator
Now at the command prompt, you have to type two simple commands. One to create the folder that will hold the image and one to actually create the image.
mkdir C:\RefreshImage
recimg -CreateImage C:\RefreshImage
The process to create the image takes about 10 to 15 minutes and could take longer depending on the amount of data you have on your system. Overall, though, the process is fairly fast for a backup image.
backup image windows 8
It will first initialize, then create the snapshot, then write the image and then register the image so that it is used automatically when you refresh the PC. That’s it! You now have a complete backup image of your Windows 8 machine. If you go to the directory you created, you’ll see a .WIM file there, which is a Windows Image file.
wim file
I suggest copying this backup file to an external drive also, just so you have a backup of the file in case the entire hard drive crashes with some kind of hardware error. In that type of case, no recovery option will help if the hard drive is physically damaged. You’ll have to get another hard drive and then restore the image using the Windows Recovery Environment. Anyway, assuming your hard drive is OK and something went wrong with Windows, you can restore the image by going to Refresh PC.
Open the Charms bar and then click on Settings and then click on Change PC Settings.
change pc settings
Click on General and then click on Get Started under Refresh Your PC.
refresh pc
You’ll see a dialog pop up telling you what will happen in the process and then click Next. Refreshing the PC from an image will take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, possibly longer depending on your hardware specs and the size of the image.
pc refresh
Once the refresh is done, you can login and you’ll be good to go with all your settings and apps! Pretty sweet eh! You can also update the image at any time by simply creating another one using the commands above and the latest image will be set as the currently registered image for the PC refresh to use. Enjoy!