Archive for the ‘Free Software’ category

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How to Mute a Tab in Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Firefox

July 10th, 2020 by Admin

When you’re surfing the web with multiple tabs open, an ad may pop up suddenly on another tab and it starts playing sound automatically. This could put yourself into embarrassing situation if you’re in public. In this tutorial we’ll show you easy ways to mute a tab in Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Firefox.

Mute a Tab in Chrome

To mute a website in Chrome, right-click on a tab that is playing sound, and then select “Mute site” from the drop-down menu.

That tab will get muted immediately.

Mute a Tab in Microsoft Edge and Firefox

Just like Chrome, both Microsoft Edge and Firefox also offer a similar method to mute tabs individually. If you wish to mute a tab, right-click it and select the “Mute tab” option from the popup menu.

The easiest way of muting a tab is to click the small speaker icon that appears on a tab that is playing audio. Clicking the speaker icon once again will unmute the tab.

Conclusion

If you have tons of tabs opened in your Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Firefox browser, just look for the speaker icon on every tab and you can easily find which tab is playing background audio.

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How to Export Saved Logins from Firefox Lockwise

June 8th, 2020 by Admin

How can I move saved logins and passwords in Firefox to new computer? Like other browsers, Firefox will soon allow you to export saved logins from its built-in Lockwise password manager. This feature is already implemented in Firefox Nightly. Here we’ll walk you through the steps to export saved passwords from Firefox Nightly to a CSV text file on Windows 10.

How to Export Saved Logins from Firefox Lockwise

  1. Open Firefox and click the three-line menu icon in the upper right corner, and then select “Logins and Passwords” from the pop-up menu.

  2. The Firefox Lockwise page will open in a new tab. Click the three dots icon to open the Lockwise menu and choose “Export Logins“.

  3. You’ll get a warning saying your passwords will be saved in plain text and readable to anyone who has access to the exported file. Click on the Export button to continue.

  4. Enter your Windows password to confirm your ownership of the system. Click OK.

  5. Select a target location for saving the exported logins, and click on Save.

  6. You’re done. Open the exported CSV file in a text editor or Microsoft Excel and you can view the plain-text passwords, website URLs and other information.

If you’re using an old version of Firefox which doesn’t support exporting logins, just download Password Recovery Bundle and you can extract saved credentials from Firefox as well as many other popular web browsers with ease.

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Posted in Free Software, Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

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How to Turn off Search Suggestions in Microsoft Edge

June 3rd, 2020 by Admin

When you start typing in the address bar of Microsoft Edge, it will instantly display search and website suggestions based on each letter you type.

If you think those search predictions are not useful, here’s how you can disable or turn off search and site suggestions as you type in Microsoft Edge.

How to Disable Search Suggestions in Microsoft Edge

  1. Open Microsoft Edge and click on the three horizontal dots (…) on the upper right corner of the browser, then select Settings from the drop-down menu.

  2. Click on the Privacy & security tab. On the right, scroll down until you find “Show search and site suggestions as I type” and turn the slider off. You’re done!

    If you’re running the new Microsoft Edge based on Chromium, select the Privacy and services tab. On the right, scroll down to the bottom, click on Address bar under the Services category.

    On the next page, turn off the “Show me search and site suggestions using my typed characters” switch.

That’s it!

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Posted in Free Software, Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

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Turn off Hardware Acceleration in Chrome or Microsoft Edge

January 26th, 2020 by Admin

How do I disable hardware rendering in Edge? Chrome won’t load or play videos in the webpage, no sound upon playing? To resolve these problems, you can try to disable hardware acceleration. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to turn off hardware acceleration for the most popular web browsers – Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

Part 1: Disable Hardware Acceleration in Chrome

Open your Chrome browser and type “chrome://settings/system” in the address bar, hit Enter.

Uncheck the box of “Use hardware acceleration when available“. Click on the Relaunch button appeared just now to apply the change.

Part 2: Disable Hardware Acceleration in Microsoft Edge

The new Microsoft Edge is built on the same Chromium platform as Chrome, so you can use the similar method to disable hardware acceleration in Microsoft Edge Chromium:

Open Microsoft Edge and type “edge://settings/system” in the address bar, hit Enter.

Turn off the toggle switch for “Use hardware acceleration when available“. Click on the Restart button to relaunch Microsoft Edge.

That’s it!

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Posted in Free Software, Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

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Configure Chrome / Firefox / Edge to Automatically Clear Cookies on Exit

October 24th, 2019 by Admin

After surfing the Web, your cookies and browsing history can remain on your computer even after the browser is closed. This can pose a potential security and privacy risk. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to set Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge to automatically clear cookies, browsing history and cache when you close it.

Chrome:

  1. Open up your Chrome browser and type the following URL in the address bar and hit Enter.

    chrome://settings/content/cookies

  2. This will bring up the Cookies section. Just turn on the option named “Clear cookies and site data when you quit Chrome” or “Keep local data only until I quit my browser” depending on your Chrome version.

  3. Every time you close Chrome, it will now automatically clear your cookies and browsing data.

Firefox:

  1. After opening Firefox, click on the three-line icon in the top-right corner. In the drop-down menu, select Options.

  2. Select the Privacy & Security tab. Under History, click the drop-down menu next to “Firefox will:” and select “Use custom settings for history“.

  3. Check the option “Clear history when Firefox closes“, and then click on the Settings button.

  4. Choose what you want Firefox to automatically clear on exit, and click OK.

  5. When you exit your FireFox browser, your cookies and browsing history will automatically be deleted.

Microsoft Edge:

  1. Click on the three-dot icon in the top right-hand corner of your Microsoft Edge browser, and then select Settings from the drop-down menu.

  2. Choose the Privacy & security tab and click on the button “Choose what to clear“.

  3. Check the boxes for the types of browsing data you want to clear when you exit Edge. Then, turn on the option “Always clear this when I close the browser“.

  4. From now on, Microsoft Edge will automatically delete your browsing data like cookies, browsing / download history, autofill data, and other things when you close it.

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2 Ways to Open Chrome in Guest Browsing Mode on Windows 10

October 6th, 2019 by Admin

Chrome browser can be started in guest mode so you don’t leave any traces like cookies, cache or browsing activities on the computer. This is useful when you need to use a public computer for private browsing. In this tutorial we’ll show 2 different ways to launch Chrome in guest browsing mode on Windows 10.

Method 1: Open a Guest Window from within Chrome

Launch the Chrome browser. Click on the Profile icon in the top right corner and then select Open Guest window.

A new window will pop up in guest mode and you can browse privately.

Method 2: Create a Shortcut to Always Start Chrome in Guest Mode

The above method requires so many steps to open a guest window. If you need to use guest mode frequently, it’s a good idea to create a desktop shortcut for launching Chrome in guest mode by default. Follow these steps:

Right-click on the Chrome desktop shortcut and select Properties from the context menu.

Switch to the Shortcut tab. Add “ --guest” at the end of the string present in the Target text box, and then click Apply.

When Chrome asks for administrator permission, click on Continue.

Now, double-click on the Chrome desktop shortcut and it will open a guest window directly.

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Posted in Free Software, Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

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Create Windows 10 bootable USB from ISO on Mac without BootCamp

March 21st, 2019 by Admin

How can I make a bootable Windows installation USB on Mac OS X? After upgrading to macOS Mojave, you may find that Boot Camp Assistant is no longer supported and thus creating a bootable USB turns out to be a little bit challenging. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to create Windows 10 bootable USB from ISO on Mac, by using the Terminal or third-party software like UNetbottin.

Method 1: Create Windows 10 Bootable USB on Mac Using UNetbottin

UNetbootin is a free, open source utility that allows you to create bootable USB drives on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. If you’ve downloaded Windows 10 ISO image, here is how you can create a bootable Windows installer USB on Mac using UNetbootin.

  1. Plug a USB drive into your Mac and open Disk Utility. Select your USB drive from the left panel and click on Info button. Note down the device name since we will need that later.

  2. Next, download and launch the UNetbottin utility. Select the “Diskimage” radio button, click “…” to select a bootable ISO image.

  3. After locating your Windows 10 ISO file, click on Open.

  4. Choose Type as USB Drive and select the device name of your USB drive (you probably would’ve noted it down earlier, so refer to that). Click OK to start installing to the USB drive.

  5. This process takes several minutes or longer, depending on the size of your selected ISO image.

Method 2: Create Windows 10 Bootable USB on Mac Using Terminal

Of course, if you prefer not to use third-party software, you can still use the excellent Terminal app, which is a little bit more involved, but no additional software needs to be installed. Follow these steps:

  1. After connecting a USB drive to your Mac, open a Terminal window and type diskutil list to display all the disks attached to your machine. You have to figure out the disk identifier of the USB drive you need to format. In my example, my USB drive is mounted as “disk2” and it’s about 32GB.

  2. Next, run the following command to format your USB drive and name it “WIN10“, where # is a placeholder for the disk identifier of your USB drive.
    diskutil eraseDisk MS-DOS "WIN10" GPT disk#

  3. Now, mount your Windows 10 ISO image with the command below, assuming it’s saved the Downloads folder. In my case, it is mounted as a volume named “ESD-ISO“.
    hdiutil mount ~/Downloads/your_windows_10_image.iso

  4. Finally, run the following command to copy all the files from the mounted ISO to your USB drive.
    cp -rp /Volumes/ESD-ISO/* /Volumes/WIN10/

    This command will take a while, and once it finishes, you can disconnect the mounted ISO with this command:
    hdiutil unmount /Volumes/ESD-ISO

  5. Now you should be able to boot from the USB to install Windows 10 on your Mac or Windows machine.

Conclusion

These should be the easiest ways to create a Windows 10 bootable USB from ISO on Mac, without using Boot Camp Assistant. No matter which method you prefer, be sure that you backup any important data on your USB drive, as the procedure of creating bootable USB will delete everything on it.

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Posted in Free Software, Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

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How To Stop Firefox Quantum from Updating Automatically

January 8th, 2019 by Admin

How can I disable automatic updates in Firefox Quantum? It could be frustrating for Firefox to push the update notifications and interrupt what you’re reading.

Starting with Firefox version 63, Mozilla has removed the ability to disable updates completely. When you click on the Menu button at the top right corner and select Options.

Scroll down to the Firefox Updates section, you’re left with two options: Automatically install updates, Check for updates but let you choose to install them. The option “Never check for updates” is no longer available.

If you don’t like Firefox frequently installing the updates, here is a simple way to prevent Firefox Quantum from updating the version automatically in Windows 10 / 8 / 7.

Part 1: Stop Firefox Quantum from Updating Automatically

  1. Open Windows Explorer and type %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile in the address bar and press Enter.

  2. The name of your default profile folder should start with eight random characters and end with .default. Just open the Firefox profile folder, then right-click on the prefs.js file and select Edit.

  3. Add the following line to the file and save your changes.
    user_pref("app.update.enabled", false);

  4. Now, Firefox Quantum should never download and install updates automatically.

Part 2: Install Firefox Updates Manually

After disabling automatic updates in Firefox Quantum, you can decide how often and when you want Firefox to install updates. Here’s how to install Firefox updates manually:

  1. Open up Firefox and click on the Menu button in the upper right hand corner, and then select Help from the drop-down menu.

  2. Click on About Firefox.

  3. You can see the exact version number of Firefox you’re running. If a new version of Firefox is available, you can click on the “Check for updates” button to download and install it.

That’s it!

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Posted in Free Software, Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8

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Turn On / Off Cloud Based Protection in Windows 10

August 6th, 2018 by Admin

Windows Defender is a free antivirus software built into Windows 10, which runs real-time protection in the background. When Windows Defender finds a suspicious file, it will send the data to the cloud service so it can decide whether or not to block it.

If you are highly concerned about your privacy, you may consider disabling the cloud based protection. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to turn on or off cloud based protection in Windows 10.

How to Turn On / Off Cloud Based Protection in Windows 10?

Open Windows Defender and then click on the Settings (gear) icon at the bottom left corner.

Click on the “Virus & threat protection settings” link under the “Virus & thread protection notifications” section.

Turn on (default) or off “Cloud-delivered protection” for what you want. If you’ve enabled cloud protection, make sure “Automatic sample submission” are also turned On.

That’s it!

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Tutorial: Reset Windows 10 / 8 / 7 Password with Knoppix

July 22nd, 2018 by Admin

There could be a number of scenarios that might cause a Windows system to be locked down, some of them are:

  • Can’t log in to Windows or you do not have any clue what the password is?
  • You’re given a computer without knowing the password?
  • Someone changed your Windows password without your knowledge?

The only ways to “break into” a Windows system is to boot with a Live CD so you can access the SAM database and reset the stored login credentials. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to reset forgotten Windows 10 / 8 / 7 password with Knoppix, a free Linux CD based on Debian designed to repair unbootable or damaged PC.

How to Reset Windows 10 / 8 / 7 Password with Knoppix?

Boot your Windows PC with Knoppix Live CD. Press Enter at the boot prompt.

When you reach the Knoppix desktop, use the built-in file manager to find the SAM file located under /Windows/System32/config. Make a note of the full path to the SAM file.

Click the “K” button in the bottom left corner, and then select System Tools and click LXTerminal.

Now, load the SAM file by running the built-in utility – chntpw.

In order to reset Windows local Administrator password, type 1 and hit Enter. You’ll see the message “Password cleared!”

Type q and then type y to save your changes.

Reboot and eject Knoppix Live CD, your computer should automatically log in as you have a blank password on the local Administrator account.

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