remover

Now that nearly every popular online music store is selling a la carte tracks in the unprotected MP3 format, it's high time to clean house and convert those legally-acquired-yet-unfortunately-DRM-saddled WMAs. Maybe you don't want to depend on the parent company continuing to back up the licenses going forward, or perhaps you shunned the iPod years ago but the appeal of the 3G iPhone is far more alluring...or maybe you just want all your music in one, universally-supported format. No matter what the reasons, conversion from a protected format to an unprotected one takes some effort. There are … Read more

One of the best programs out there for giving more control over Windows functions to users, Revo Uninstaller does far more than fast uninstallations. It has several levels of programs removal, from basic to giving your Registry a thorough scrubbing. Revo also provides in-depth resources for researching just what a program is and does, so you know what you're removing, as well as offering a suite of strong system tools. Check out what it can do for you in this First Look video.

Sometimes I wish I was one of those people who manages to keep their e-mail inbox empty by assigning the messages they need to keep appropriately named folders and deleting the mail they don't need.

Most of my inboxes have thousands of entries dating back years. And since I've combined my ISP's POP mail account with my Gmail account, the inbox-overflow problem has gotten out of hand.

Rather than spending half a day manually removing the duplicates, I installed Vaita's free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover. The program places an "ODIR" entry on Outlook's … Read more

I'm always looking for a little bit more performance from my PCs, so I regularly use Piriform's free CCleaner utility to clear out the clutter on my systems' hard drives. (Note that CCleaner is donationware, so if you find yourself using it regularly, drop a few ducats in the virtual coffer.)

The last time I ran CCleaner on my XP test machine, it freed up almost 2GB of hard-drive space by removing temporary Internet files, sweeping out the Recycle Bin, and deleting various Windows updates and other system and application files I no longer needed. Then I clicked … Read more

One of Power Downloader's pet personal computer peeves is the Safely Remove Hardware icon that pops up and nags him anytime he removes a device. External hard drive, thumb drive, a USB-powered fan--there's no escaping that pesky pop-up.

Except, of course, there is a solution. In fact, there are two easy solutions, says Power Downloader: One uses a small program, while the other involves tweaking the QuickLaunch bar's properties.

The tiny and free program called Icon Remover comes with two functions: a button to remove the Safely Remove Hardware icon, and a second button to restore it. … Read more

Every Windows user knows that removing a program is more complicated than just deleting it. During the installation process, several files are dropped into different areas of your system to make a program work. The Windows Add/Remove programs utility was meant to be the tool to use for getting the various parts of programs off your hard drive, but it doesn't always do a great job.

Fortunately, some savvy developers designed uninstall programs to do all the guesswork for you. These applications attempt to gather all the files associated with unwanted programs, so that you can get every … Read more

True story, happening now. It's 1:48 a.m. on a Saturday morning and I'm hand-picking through a mountain of spyware and adware on a friend's laptop. I've borrowed the laptop and Internet connection to "quickly" finish some work, then quickly realized this was actually going to take all night. After a 20 minute start-up churn, I had only just gotten VPN running and Firefox loaded. It wasn't the interminable start-up that had me worried so much as the two casino icons squatting on the desktop. There's no way they were legitimate … Read more

It's true. Some security apps get more fame and recognition than others. Why is Spybot Search & Destroy cited more often than BitDefender Free Edition, or McAfee's online virus scan better known than Trend Micro HouseCall, a tool that also removes what it detects?

In a stab at fairness, we've picked out five of the more overshadowed, but still reliable, antivirus software titles and highlighted their main points. Give them a whirl and let us know in the comments why you can't live without your favorite undersung security app.

On Tuesday I reported on Microsoft Outlook 2007's unexcused absence from my Vista PC. I thought the problem might due to Outlook 2003 being installed on the same machine. When I upgraded to Office 2007, the older versions of the apps remained on my system, even though I never used them. This didn't appear to be a problem until Outlook 2007 took a hike.

My second surprise was my inability to uninstall Office 2003. Vista's Programs and Features Control Panel applet (which XP calls Add or Remove Programs) would pop up this error message: "This patch … Read more