Handy Tweakers is a freeware tool that you can use to tweak various Windows behaviors. It includes the following functions: Turn off tool, Start Menu tool, Miscellaneous, and the History tool. You can download the 209K executable here.

Also, be sure to check out my other posts on tweaking Windows, such as tweaking Windows Vista and using Tune-Up Utilites to tweak Windows XP. Also, check out cool and useful tweaks for Firefox.

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I always am needing to know which ports are being used by my computers.  Whether it is for security reasons or for debugging port accessing programs, Advanced Port Scanner is a small, quick, easy-to-use and robust port scanner for Windows.

It is multithreaded, so on relatively new machines you can scan ports in just a few seconds. You can download the latest version here: http://www.radmin.com/products/utilities/portscanner.php. Previously, I wrote about GFI Languard, a more comprehensive solution for security vulnerability port scanning.

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One of the new features in Internet Explorer 8 is InPrivate Browsing, which helps prevent Internet Explorer from recording any kind of data about your browsing session or habits.

Basically, when in an InPrivate Browsing session, no cookies are created, no temporary Internet files, no history, no form data, and anything else that a browser would normally record.

Note: The InPrivate Browsing feature of IE 8 is different than InPrivate Filtering. InPrivate Filtering prevents other sites from tracking your browsing habits, instead of the browser not tracking your session (InPrivate Browsing).

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I’ve been playing around with a Cisco ASA 5520 for the last couple of days and after updating the software and loading up ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) version 6.1, I kept getting the following error message when trying to access the ASDM via web or win32:

ADSM is unable to continue loading. Unconnected sockets not implemented

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Google Books is a really cool service from Google that has hundreds of thousands of books, magazines and newspapers scanned into digital format. You can access many of the books from free and others you can view portions of.

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to download a copyrighted book from Google Books, you have to view it online. The other annoying thing is that you can’t even print all the pages in the book! You have to go page by page and print them out.

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I recently ran into an issue on a client machine that was running Vista in which we were trying to manually download updates for Windows Vista from the Windows Update site online.

However, we ended up getting an error message saying the updates could not be installed and giving an error code of 0×80073712.

If you are having this issue, it means some Windows system files are corrupted or incorrect. This same problem also occurs if you notice that the “Windows Features” dialog box under Programs and Features when you click Turn Windows features on or off is empty.

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