DNS is playing a pivotal role in the Internet. However, every coin has two sides, your Internet service provider (ISP) or other organizations may use DNS hijacking (DNS redirection) or even DNS cache poisoning to push advertisements or block specific contents…

This article will guide you resolve the issue, switch to the famous secure DNS resolution services – they are all free.

First of all, you need to know the way to Change Windows 7 DNS Settings or Change DNS Settings in Windows XP.

Then, there are several free secure DNS resolution services for you to choose from.

• OpenDNS
  

OpenDNS is a free DNS resolution service. An opt-in service, OpenDNS offers faster resolution and advanced features, such as misspelling correction, phishing protection, and optional filtering.

OpenDNS Blocks Phishing Sites

To Use OpenDNS, just switch DNS Server Addresses to 208.67.222.222 or 208.67.220.220.

What’s more, you can sign up free or paid OpenDNS account to get advanced features like Web content filtering, Detailed reports and stats or even Whitelist-only mode.

• Google Public DNS
  

Google Public DNS is a free, global resolution service that you can use as an alternative to your current DNS provider. The provider – Google, is the biggest highlight of this DNS resolution service, which means secure, fast and reliable.

Google Public DNS

To Use Google Public DNS, you need to switch DNS Server Addresses to 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4, easy to remember, isn’t it

• Comodo Secure DNS
  

Comodo Secure DNS is a domain name resolution service that resolves your DNS requests through our worldwide network of redundant DNS servers. It is provided by Comodo – a leading security company that offers Antivirus Firewall Software and SSL Certificate.

Comodo Secure DNS

To Use Comodo Secure DNS, you need to switch DNS Server Addresses to 156.154.70.22 or 156.154.71.22.

You can also try its free Comodo Internet Security to enhance your PC and network safety, with advanced HIPS (Host-based Intrusion Prevention System) features, for free.

• Norton DNS Public
  

Symantec published Norton DNS Public days ago, provides alternative DNS servers that can be used by any Internet-connected device for a faster and more secure surfing experience.

Norton DNS Public

To Use Norton DNS Public, you need to switch DNS Server Addresses to 198.153.192.1 or 198.153.194.1.

At last, you may need to pick the fastest DNS resolution service for your network, and Domain Name Speed Benchmark can do the speed test for you. It is recommended to set “Preferred DNS server” and “Alternative DNS server” addresses to different DNS resolution services in case service failure (for example, 8.8.8.8 as preferred, 208.67.222.222 as alternative).

The tiny software program is simple, but powerful. It can wipe away your tracks from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome from various Windows system areas, and from some third-party applications, such as Nero Burning ROM, Adobe Flash Player, WinRAR and more. The recent version even adds support for Microsoft Office 2010, RealPlayer SP and Opera search field history cleaning.

Besides common functions of CCleaner, there are many useful advanced tips to employ CCleaner as your system cleaner and disk wiper.

• More than deletion – Wipe traces and history

I discussed this topic months ago – Top Excellent Software Programs to Perform Disk Wipe for Free. In fact, CCleaner can do the job, too.

First, switch to “Settings” in “Options” tab, select “Secure file deletion” and the erase method, the larger number the better, but higher value will consume lots of time. For example, “Gutmann(35 passes)” means 35 times of data rewriting.

Secure Deletion function in CCleaner

Then, you can specify files and folders to wipe out in addition to pre-defined system or application areas.

You can include custom paths to be wiped out

At last, check all the items you want to wipe out, especially “Custom Files and Folders” and “Wipe Free Space” (you can configure drives to be wiped in the first step). Click “Analyze” and then “Run Cleaner”.

• Clean your system after startup and before shutdown

If you rarely shutdown even restart your computer, there will be lots of junk files need to clean up. You can now let CCleaner do them for you silently and automatically.

First of all, you need to configure CCleaner in Cleanup Areas and Options.

Then, create a shortcut to CCleaner. Add /AUTO /SHUTDOWN parameters after the target path.

For example “C:\Program Files\CCleaner\CCleaner.exe” /AUTO /SHUTDOWN

Shortcut to CCleaner

AUTO parameter means run CCleaner to clean up pre-defined areas silently; SHUTDOWN parameter means shutdown computer after processing cleanup. That means, if you want to clean your system after startup, you can drag the shortcut (with AUTO parameter ONLY) to “Startup” in Windows Start Menu; if you want to do the job before system shutting down, just double click the shortcut (with AUTO and SHUTDOWN parameter). Rather easy.

• Remove unused MSConfig startup items

Many of you may like to manage system startup items with Microsoft Windows MSConfig utility. However, sometimes even if you have uninstalled a software application, the program’s startup item in MSConfig still exists.

Clean up MSConfig startup items in CCleaner

CCleaner can remove these used MSConfig startup items. Just switch to “Startup” in “Tools” tab, select the specific startup programs, and then click “Delete”.

Haven’t used CCleaner before? Download CCleaner and try it now – totally free!

Have more tips or suggestions to share with us? Comments are welcome

Although the Microsoft new brand Windows 7 is much more reliable than any previous versions of Windows desktop family, mistakes are bound to occur. So, it is necessary to prepare some knowledge as well as useful tools for troubleshooting.

• Error Messages for Windows
  

Error Messages for Windows

Error Messages for Windows is a small utility that will allow you to look up MS Windows error code numbers and display a descriptive message explaining what the numeric code actually means. If you have software programs that produce numeric error codes now you can find out what they really mean.

• BlueScreenView
  

BlueScreenView

BlueScreenView scans all your minidump files created during ‘blue screen of death’ crashes, and displays the information about all crashes in one table. For each crash, BlueScreenView displays the minidump filename, the date/time of the crash, the basic crash information displayed in the blue screen (Bug Check Code and 4 parameters), and the details of the driver or module that possibly caused the crash (filename, product name, file description, and file version).

• What’s More…

MSDN also provides a detailed System Error Codes list. It doesn’t matter if you are not a programmer. Simply refer the Description besides Constant/value, and you may find a proper way for troubleshooting. Good lock.

Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech; other systems render symbolic linguistic representations like phonetic transcriptions into speech.

Back to the days of Windows XP, Microsoft merely included Microsoft Sam as system default voice; other languages have to be downloaded individually. Unfortunately, the sound quality of them are rather poor, or say, disgusting – from my point of view. Of course, you can purchase and install excellent third-party voices, but they usually expensive.

In Windows 7, things are a little different. There are usually two voices built into system – Microsoft Anna for English, and a localized voice for the current language. You will obviously find that the quality is much better than before.

After having the proper voices, you are ready to use the TTS technology to convert text to speech. Now the task is, installing suitable TTS software.

In fact, both Windows XP (English Version Only) and Windows 7 has Microsoft Narrator to read the screen, but it’s too simple in functions. You can read this article How to read text from dialog box for more information about it.

Windows Narrator

In this article, I will introduce two more powerful TTS converters. I’m sure they will cover almost all your needs, hope you like them.

• TextAloud

TextAloud is Text to Speech software that converts your text from MS Word Documents, Emails, Web Pages and PDF Files into natural-sounding speech. You can listen on your PC or create audio files for use on portable devices like iPods, PocketPCs and CD players. TextAloud even has automatic iTunes/iPod syncing.

TextAloud

There are already many articles in Recipester about TextAloud. At first, you can use TextAloud to read text from a file or read text from a webpage. Then, you may need to convert documents to MP3 speech for use on portable devices. The whole story is too long? You can also split and convert text while converting text to audio files. What’s more, it’s easy to insert Pause and Voice Change while reading text file to speech…

Don’t you think it’s awfully powerful? But a slight disadvantage of TextAloud is, the excellent program is not free…

• NVDA
  

While TextAloud reads only text files and webpages, NVDA reads your entire screen.

NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Providing feedback via synthetic speech and Braille, it enables blind or vision impaired people to access computers running Windows for no more cost than a sighted person. Major features include support for over 20 languages and the ability to run entirely from a USB drive with no installation.

NVDA

Although NVDA is awesome freeware, many people does not know it at all, so there seems no more tutorials about the program, except the official NVDA Documentations.

Want to know more about funny and useful software applications? Please comment this post to let me know

As we all know, using a pirated Windows copy comes with continually problems or risks including (and not restricted to) security, legal issues, and constant notifications from WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage). But there are still a significant number of people using pirated Windows 7. So Microsoft released a WAT update package KB971033 to disable “Windows 7 activation crack” like RemoveWAT, Chew-WGA or other Windows 7 Loaders, and then display WGA Notification screens to remind users to pay for genuine software products.

However, if you confident with your genuine Windows 7 copy, then KB971033 hotfix will be dispensable for you. In fact, the WAT update adds many unnecessary files and system components to Windows 7, send some of your personal data to Microsoft (although MS announced that users information will NOT be abused). What’s more, KB971033 will check your system for illegal use every 90 days…

Sounds terrible? Don’t worry, you of course have the right to stop it! You can manually uninstall KB971033 if the hotfix has been installed automatically. And the second choice to fix the issue is the tiny tool – RemoveWGA.

RemoveWGA

RemoveWGA will enable you to easily remove the Microsoft “Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications” tool, which is calling home and connect to MS servers every time you boot. But notice that, RemoveWGA only removes the notification part, phoning home, and does not touch the Validation part.

For pirated software users: As many 0day crackers say, “If you like it, just buy it!” Do you think so?

Do you think there is still something missing? Mmm… How about the “Waiting time”?

You may have met the concept Elevator music, it refers to the gentle instrumental arrangements of popular music designed for playing in shopping malls, grocery stores, department stores, telephone systems (while the caller is on hold), cruise ships, airports, doctors’ and dentists’ offices, and elevators.

In Windows system, the “Waiting time” I have mentioned means the time while system copying files, waiting for archives to extract… It’s rather annoying to wait for the progress bar to complete its work, so why not employ an “Elevator Music” agent for such events?

Such creatively idea has been realized by a university student, with the software Instant Elevator Music.

Click to watch the Instant Elevator Music demo from Youtube.

Instant Elevator Music works with a surprisingly large number of programs, including:

• Windows Explorer: while copying/moving/deleting files
• Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox: while waiting for downloads to finish. It also works with the DownThemAll! Firefox extension.
• Microsoft Office and Visual Studio: while waiting for programs to load
• 7-Zip: while waiting for archives to extract
• TeraCopy: while waiting for files to copy/move
• Audacity: while waiting for music files to open/save
• Eclipse: while waiting for it to load, complete a build or refresh the workspace
• VMWare: while waiting for a virtual machine to resume
• Virtual PC: also while waiting for a virtual machine to resume
• TortoiseSVN: while waiting for a Subversion update/commit/checkout
• Most installers…

In fact, Instant Elevator Music will work with anything that shows a progress bar (that is, a rectangle which shows progress while you wait for things to happen).

Instant Elevator Music in Taskbar

Install and launch the tiny program, and you will hear the “Waiting time” music while system displaying progress bar, it plays the cute Mario’s Elevator by default.

Instant Elevator Music Settings

You can double click the program icon to stop playing elevator music immediately, or right-click it to temporarily disable the function. Select “Settings” to adjust more configurations.

One of many new features that I really appreciate is the improved Windows Search component. In Windows 7, users can search almost everything merely by using text filed in Windows Start Menu. Fantastic, isn’t it?

I’m sure there are many people still using Windows XP, or Windows XP/Windows 7 dual boot environment due to multifarious reasons. So, if you are currently using the previous versions Windows for work and study, you may feel some inconvenient to deal with the Windows Search component that lacks of function, because you cannot search detailed information by using it.

In this post, I will introduce three excellent tools to help you search almost everything in no matter Windows XP, Windows 7 or other versions of Windows desktop operating system.

• Everything - Locate files and folders by name instantly

Everything is perhaps the FASTEST file search tool in the world. It can index and search billions of files (by file name) in several seconds. When you type in the keywords, the search result will display immediately!

Everything - Search files by filename

Everything has clean and simple user interface, real-time updating, can share search results in HTTP and FTP. It’s fairly an excellent freeware tool.

Notice that Everything can use only in NTFS partitions. Still using FAT32? You can refer to this article – Convert FAT or FAT32 to NTFS.

• Windows Desktop Search 4.0 – Improvement of Windows XP Search function

Windows Desktop Search was initially released as MSN Desktop Search, as a part of the MSN Toolbar suite. It’s now built in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 as Windows Search or Instant Search.

Windows Search uses a different architecture and a new indexer compared to Indexing Service. For Windows XP, Windows Search is available as an add-on application, which is Windows Desktop Search 4.0 to be introduced here.

Windows Desktop Search - Instant Search in Taskbar

Windows Search provides an easy and comprehensive solution for finding and organizing the content you care about, no matter where it lives. The latest version of Windows Desktop Search for the desktop and the enterprise delivers fast search capabilities for files, e-mail, documents, and more.

Windows Desktop Search - Complex Search in Windows Explorer

Just download Windows Desktop Search and it will take over almost all file search requests.

• Google Desktop – Alternative to Windows Search

Google Desktop is desktop search software made by Google for Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows. The program allows text searches of a user’s e-mails, computer files, music, photos, chats, Web pages viewed. You can quick access Google desktop search by pressing <Ctrl> two times.

Google Desktop - Fast Search UI

Google Desktop provides a different way to handle file searches. While Windows Search provides search results in Windows Explorer, Google Desktop provides them via web browsers.

Google Desktop - Provide search functions in web browser

Windows Search and Google Desktop is both powerful file contents search tool. In my test, the former is faster in indexing, while the latter is faster in providing search results. Which one to deploy? The choose is up to you

This week, Microsoft launched the upgraded version of Fix It, which was called Fix It Center. The tiny tool can be used under Windows XP SP3, Windows XP Pro (64-bit) SP2, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, and has more than 300 fixes already built in. You don’t need to download the fixes one by one, Fix It Center will do all the things automatically for you – diagnose and troubleshoot even potential problems, with just a few clicks.

Download Fix It Center and install it, the tool will recognize your system and components, providing troubleshooters for your computer.

Fix It Center provides Troubleshooters for you system

In the main interface of Fix It Center, you can run diagnostics for each component in Windows.

Run Diagnostics with Fix It Center

At last, you can select to apply the fixes automatically.

Fix Problems with Microsoft Fix It Center

What’s more, different from Fix it Blog and Fix It Center, you can also get categorized quick fixes for specific issue in Microsoft Fix it Solution Center.

The best and ultimate solution to Internet security and Internet censorship is the VPN services. A virtual private network (VPN) is a computer network that is layered on top of an underlying computer network. The private nature of a VPN means that the data travelling over the VPN is not generally visible to, or is encapsulated from, the underlying network traffic. A VPN connection can be envisioned as a “pipe within a pipe”, with the outer pipe being the underlying network connection.

Unfortunately, many VPN services are not free. It’s rather annoying to pay two times money for the Internet access…

In this post, I will introduce 5 free VPN services for Windows 7, Windows XP as well as other Windows NT platform systems. The list is in no particular order, hope you can appreciate it.

• Hotspot Shield

Hotspot Shield protects your entire web surfing session; securing your connection at both your home Internet network & Public Internet networks (both wired and wireless). Hotspot Shield protects your identity by ensuring that all web transactions (shopping, filling out forms, downloads) are secured through HTTPS. Hotspot Shield also makes you private online making your identity invisible to third party websites and ISP’s. Unless you choose to sign into a certain site, you will be anonymous for your entire web session with Hotspot Shield.

Hotspot Shield - You don't need to install the IE toolbar.

It is no need to register or pay for the service, but you will receive advertisements and forced URL redirect some times – just in requital

• UltraVPN
  

UltraVPN is a client/server SSL VPN solution based on OpenVPN. It encrypts and anonymizes your network connection. It has a simple user interface to connect or disconnect to its VPN servers.

UltraVPN - Free to register and free to use.

UltraVPN is free, and you just need to register a new user account in its website, then you can enjoy web surfing.

• FreeVPN
  

Similar to Hotspot Shield introduced above, it’s free and no need to register, but has forced URL redirect for ads display.

FreeVPN - Servers all around the world.

FreeVPN has servers all around the world. If you want advertisements free and higher speed, you can pay for the premium servers.

• proXPN
  

proXPN is a way to secure your internet connection for free. Your privacy and security are protected with their military-grade VPN featuring. It’s free of charge and has no ads.

proXPN - An up-rising star.

You have to register a user account in their website, and then you can download proXPN with your e-mail address and password.

• VPNTool

VPNTool provides L2TP VPN tunnel for Windows 2000 and IPSEC VPN tunnel for Windows XP/Windows 7, both are secure and reliable. You can sign up an account from VPNTool website, download the VPN client and login with the account you have registered.

VPNTool - Providing IPSEC VPN tunnel for Windows 7.

Each account will be valid for one-month, and you can register new ones after expired.

WinFS (short for Windows Future Storage) is the code name for a data storage and management system based on relational databases, designed for persistence and management of structured, semi-structured as well as unstructured data.

For example, one of your movie files can belong to “Thrill” “Horror” “Fantasy” or more categories. In FAT or NTFS filesystem, you can only create multiple Shortcuts or Symbolic Links (Junctions) to a specific file or folder. The same situation in WinFS, you can simply add tags and relationships for each file, which makes file management faster and easier.

Unfortunately, such wonderful stuff has cancelled in 2006, neither included in Windows Vista RTM nor Windows 7, although many people think the library feature in Windows 7 is more or less based on WinFS…

WinFS, merely a fairy tale?

Don’t despair, today I have another useful tool to introduce for you – Tabbles.

Tabbles allows you to organize and find files not just by folders but by tags and relationships – one of the many unfulfilled promises of WinFS.

Tabbles - Alternative to WinFS

Download Tabbles Free installer to your PC and/or Tabbles Portable Free to your USB drive, then you can manage your files and folders in your home or on the go.

* Tabbles (normal and portable) requires the .net framework 3.5sp1. The Tabbles installer will install the framework for you.