Npackd is an installer/application store/package manager/marketplace for applications for Windows. It helps you to find and install software, keep your system up-to-date and uninstall it if no longer necessary. The process of installing and uninstalling applications is completely automated (silent or unattended installation and un-installation).

Find and install software in minutes

The default repository contains over 900 packages free for personal use. You can also easily host your own repository.

For more information go to http://npackd.appspot.com/

Download for 32-bit OS and 64-bit OS

The post Npackd appeared first on ConfigOS.

Classic Start 8 is a free application which adds a traditional-style start button to the Windows 8 desktop taskbar. With full functionality just like in Windows 7, Classic Start 8 brings back all the familiar features of a traditional start menu into Windows® 8, including quick access to the search box, control panel, documents, all programs and more!

To get your Classic Start 8 follow these steps:
1. Download application from www.ninite.com
2. Run it.

The post How to make Windows 8 or 8.1 look like Windows 7 appeared first on ConfigOS.

BitDefender Internet Security 2015 free 6 months license key

To get your free licence code follow these steps:

1. Go to their website
2. Fill in your email and mark “I’m not a robot” on the right side of the page and press “GET FREE LICENCE”  button.
3. You will get an email in your Inbox with the license code with 6 months validity and a download link to the security suite.

You can also download Bitdefender Internet Security Suite 2015 from the following direct download links:

Bitdefender Internet Security 2015 (32 bit)
http://download.bitdefender.com/windows/desktop/i_security/2015/en-us/bitdefender_is_18_32b.exe
Bitdefender Internet Security 2015 (64 bit)
http://download.bitdefender.com/windows/desktop/i_security/2015/en-us/bitdefender_is_18_64b.exe

System requirements
You may install Bitdefender Internet Security 2015 only on computers running the following operating systems:
● Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (32-bit)
● Windows Vista with Service Pack 2
● Windows 7 with Service Pack 1
● Windows 8
● Windows 8.1

Minimum system requirements
● 1 GB available free hard disk space (at least 800 MB on the system drive)
● 1.6 GHz processor
● 1 GB of memo

Recommended system requirements
● 2 GB available free hard disk space (at least 800 MB on the system drive)
● Intel CORE Duo (2 GHz) or equivalent processor
● Memory (RAM):
● 1 GB for Windows XP
● 1.5 GB for Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8

The post BitDefender Internet Security 2015 free 6 months license key appeared first on ConfigOS.

The advantage of dual boot is that you can have multiple operating systems on one computer and if one fails you can always start second system and save your data. Since I already have Windows 7 installed on this computer (VirtualBox) my second system will be Linux Mint 17.1 Xfce. The first step is to create a partition for Linux.

1. Open the Start Menu and type “DISKMGMT.MSC” and press enter.

2. Right click on (C:) partition and select “Shrink Volume…”

3. Enter the size of the new partition and press “Shrink”. 30 GB (30000 mb) of free space will be enough for Linux but you can make the larger partition if you want.

Partition is created.

4. Restart your computer and press Del or F2 or F12 (depend on your computer’s mainboard) to enter the system BIOS and chose BOOT FROM CD/DVD, save the configuration and exit BIOS.
5. Insert Linux Mint 17.1 into your DVD drive.

6. Press enter key on “Start Linux Mint”.

7. Double click “Install Linux Mint” icon.

8. Choose installation language and press “Continue”.

9. Click “Continue”.

10. Select “Something else” and press “Continue”.

11. Mark “free space 31458 mb” and press “+” in down left corner to create Linux partition’s.

12. Create a swap partition of 4 GB shown in the image above and press “OK”.

13. Press “+” in down left corner and create file system partition shown in the image above and press “OK”.

14. Press “Install Now”.

15. Press “Continue”.

16. Choose your location and press “Continue”.

17. Choose your keyboard layout and press “Continue”.

18. Fill out the required fields and press “Continue”

19. Wait a few minutes until the installation is complete.

20. Press “Restart Now” button and remove Linux Mint installation disc from DVD rom.

21. When you reboot you will see a menu where you can choose to start Linux (first option) or Windows (fifth option). Choose the first option and press enter.
The next step is to upgrade the system.

22. Open Menu, type “update” and press enter.

23. Click “Install Updates”.

24. Enter your password and press “Authenticate”

25. Update Manager will automatically download the package files and install it.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed Linux Mint on your computer

The post Linux Mint 17 installation tutorial – dual boot with Windows 7 appeared first on ConfigOS.

7. Create several partitions by clicking the New button and entering a size for each partition.When you’re finished select the partition you want to install Windows to and click the Next button. Windows will install to that partition. The space on the other partition will be available as its own separate drive letter in Windows. In this tutorial I chose to use entire hard disk without other partition’s but my recommendation is to create two partition’s:
– Windows partition (c:) size: 70 – 100 GB.
– Back up partition (D:) size:  depending upon the free space of your hard disk that left.

8. Select the partition you want to install Windows to and click the Next button.

9. Wait for Installing Windows to progress. Your computer might be restarted during the process.
Depending on your hardware, this can take some time (15 – 40 min).

10. Type you’re a user account and computer name. After click Next.

11. Type a password for your account, you can also type a password hint to help in case of forgetting the password in the future, and click Next.

12. Type in activation code or key for your license in Product key box if you have any. Click Next.

13. Choose how to protect your Windows. Here we choose Use recommended settings.

14.  Set up your Time zone and click Next.

15.  Choose an option from 3 choices: Public Network, Work Network, Home Network. Choose Home Network for using Internet at home.

     16. You should already have a CD/DVD’s with driver’s that came with the computer/laptop, or with the mainboard/graphic card and other hardware in your PC so insert it in DVD drive and run all driver installation’s.

17. Now we are going to update OS. Click “Start” button in left corner + All programs

18. Click Windows Update

19. Click Check for updates

20.  Click Install updates

21. And that’s it  After all updates been installed you need to restart pc and Windows installation is finished.

The post Windows 7 installation guide step by step appeared first on ConfigOS.

1. Open Mint menu, type “driver” and press enter.

2. Type your password and click “OK”.

3. Select the driver and click Apply.

It would then download the necessary packages for the selected driver, install it and configure it.

If you have ATI graphics card then will ATI driver appear in Driver Manager.

Restart your PC.

The post Linux Mint 17.1 installing graphics cards drivers appeared first on ConfigOS.

Removing unnecessary system service can help you to gain faster booting time.

1. Open Mint menu, type “startup” and press Enter.

2. Click “Application Autostart” and disable services you don’t need.

 Decrease the swap use

This is especially noticeable on computers with relatively low RAM memory (1 GB or less): they tend to be far too slow in Linux Mint, and Linux Mint accesses the hard disk too much. Luckily, this can be helped.

On the hard disk there’s a separate partition for virtual memory, called the swap. When Mint uses the swap too much, the computer slows down a lot. Mint’s inclination to use the swap, is determined by a setting. The lower the setting number, the longer it takes before Mint starts using the swap. On a scale of 0-100, the default setting is 60. Which is much too high for normal desktop use, and only fit for servers.

– Check your current swappiness setting:

Menu – Accessories – Terminal

Type (use copy/paste to avoid errors):
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

Press Enter.

The result will probably be 60.

– Make sure that you have installed the applications gksu and leafpad:

Menu – Accessories – Terminal

Type (use copy/paste to transport this magical incantation to the terminal):
sudo apt-get install gksu leafpad

Press Enter. When prompted, type your password. Your password will remain entirely invisible, not even dots will show, this is normal. Press Enter again.

– To change the swappiness into a more sensible setting, type in the terminal (use copy/paste):
gksudo leafpad /etc/sysctl.conf

Press Enter.

Scroll to the bottom of the text file and add your swappiness parameter to override the default. Copy/paste the following bold lines:

# Decrease swap usage to a more reasonable level
vm.swappiness=10

– Save and close the text file. Then reboot your computer.

Note: your machine might benefit from an even bigger decrease in swappiness. A useful rule of thumb might be this:
1 GB RAM or more: set swappiness to 10
Less than 1 GB RAM: set swappiness to 5

Preload

Preload learns how applications behave and loads them into memory so the applications will launch quickly on next time.You can install the software with following command in terminal:

sudo apt-get install preload

Press Enter.

The post Linux Mint 17.1 speed up and tune up appeared first on ConfigOS.

1. Open Mint menu, type “software manager” and press enter.

2. Type your password and press “OK” button.

3. Open categories. For example “Featured”

4. Double click on app you want to install

5. Click “Install” button

Linux Mint/Ubuntu recommended apps

GParted uses libparted to detect and manipulate devices and partition tables while several (optional) filesystem tools provide support for filesystems not included in libparted.

VLC is the VideoLAN project’s media player. It plays MPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, MOV, WMV, QuickTime, WebM, FLAC, MP3, Ogg/Vorbis files, DVDs, VCDs, podcasts, and multimedia streams from various network sources.

Opera is a small, fast, customizable, powerful and user-friendly web browser, as well as an Internet suite, including an email client, an IRC client, and web developer tools (Opera Dragonfly).

Firefox delivers safe, easy web browsing. A familiar user interface, enhanced security features including protection from online identity theft, and integrated search let you get the most out of the web.

Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows applications on Linux. Applications are run at full speed without the need of cpu emulation. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, however it can use native system dll files in place of its own if they are available.

GIMP is an advanced picture editor. You can use it to edit, enhance, and retouch photos and scans, create drawings, and make your own images. It has a large collection of professional-level editing tools and filters, similar to the ones you might find in Photoshop. Numerous fine-control settings and features like layers, paths, masks, and scripting give you total control over your images.

Thunderbird is a full-featured email, RSS and newsgroup client that makes emailing safer, faster and easier than ever before. It supports different mail accounts (POP, IMAP, Gmail), has a simple mail account setup wizard, one- click address book, tabbed interface, an integrated learning spam filter, advanced search and indexing capabilities, and offers easy organization of mails with tagging and virtual folders. It also features unrivalled extensibility.

Skype is software that enables the world’s conversations. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users. Every day, people also use Skype to make low-cost calls to landlines and mobiles.

K3b provides a comfortable user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks. While the experienced user can take influence in all steps of the burning process the beginner may find comfort in the automatic settings and the reasonable k3b defaults which allow a quick start.

Deluge is a full-featured, multi-platform, multi-interface BitTorrent client using libtorrent-rasterbar in its back end and featuring multiple user-interfaces: GTK+, web and console.

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily.

Shutter is a feature-rich screenshot program. You can take a screenshot of a specific area, window, your whole screen, or even of a website – apply different effects to it, draw on it to highlight points, and then upload to an image hosting site, all within one window.

LibreOffice is a full-featured office productivity suite that provides a near drop-in replacement for Microsoft(R) Office.

Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized.

VirtualBox – Run other operating system within virtual machines. This package points to the latest version of Virtualbox from Oracle and includes USB support and shared folders.

Banshee is a media management and playback application for the GNOME desktop, allowing users to import audio from CDs, search their library, create playlists of selections of their library, sync music to/from iPods and other media devices, play and manage video files and burn selections to a CD.

BleachBit deletes unnecessary files to free valuable disk space, maintain privacy, and remove junk. It removes cache, Internet history, temporary files, cookies, and broken shortcuts. It handles cleaning of Adobe Reader, Bash, Beagle, Epiphany, Firefox, Flash, GIMP, Google Earth, Java, KDE, OpenOffice.org, Opera, RealPlayer, rpmbuild, Second Life Viewer, VIM, XChat, and more.

Docky – A full fledged dock application that makes opening common applications and managing windows easier and quicker. Docky is fully integrated into the GNOME Desktop and features a no nonsense approach to configuration and usage. It just works.

The post Linux Mint/Ubuntu recommended apps appeared first on ConfigOS.

Press “Start” + right click on “Computer” + click “Properties”.

Click on “Device manager”.

Right click on unrecognized device + Click on “Update Driver Software”.

Click on “Browse my computer for drivers software”.

Click on “Browse”

and locate your driver.

 Once it’s done simply click Next and Windows 7 will start installing the driver.

The post Windows 7 driver installation tutorial appeared first on ConfigOS.

Services are a computer program or process that runs in the background and provides support to other programs in Windows 7/8. By disabling unnecessary services, the performance can be improved significantly, especially on computers with low system resources.

– Open the Start Menu + right click on “Computer” + left click “Manage”
or
open the Start Menu and type “SERVICES.MSC” and press enter.

-expand “Services and Applications” and select “Services”

– Double click icon on the service you want to disable or start + click on the Stop button + Startup type, click on the drop down menu and select Disable.

-Click on the Apply button + OK button.
– Restart PC.

Services safe to disable:

Tablet PC Input Service  / Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service (Windows 8): you can safely disable this service, unless you use Tablet PC.

Secondary logon: if you are the only user of your computer, it can be disabled. But only if you don’t plan to use more than one user account.

Fax: unless you use your computer to send or receive faxes using fax resources available on your system  you can disable it.

Print Spooler: if you don’t have a printer attached to your computer and you don’t use virtual printers (PDF creator, Microsoft XPS Document Writer, , etc) you can disable it.

Offline Files: unless you use the Offline Files functionality from Windows, you can disable it.

Routing and Remote Access Service: This service offers routing services to businesses in local area and wide area networks. It allows computers to dial in to the local computer in order for it to get access to the local network. On a home computer you won’t need such features.

Bluetooth Support Service: unless you use Bluetooth devices such as keyboards, mice, printers or phones, you can disable this service.

BitLocker Drive Encryption Service: unless you use Microsoft’s Encryption Software you can disable this service. BitLocker Drive Encryption is a feature that allows users to protect data by providing encryption for entire volumes.

Encrypting File System:EFS provides file encryption technology for storing encrypted files on NTFS file systems. If you don’t need to encrypt data on your hard drives, it is OK to disable it.

Certificate Propagation: if you don’t use SmartCards, it is safe to disable this service.

Netlogon: this service is not needed in a home computer. It maintains a secure channel between the local computer and the domain controller for authenticating users. Unless you are connecting to a network domain, this service will never be used.

Parental Controls (in Windows 7) / Family Safety (in Windows 8): unless you have children using your computer and you want to monitor and control their activities, this service is not required.

Remote Desktop Configuration: Remote Desktop Protocol is a protocol developed by Microsoft which provides Windows users with a graphical interface to another computer.  If you don’t need to connect remotely to another computer or allow incoming remote connections to yours, then it is safe to disable this service.

Remote Desktop Services: same as above.

Remote Desktop Services UserMode Port Redirector: same as above.

Smart Card: Smart Cards are generally used for safety reasons in large organizations or corporations.

Smart Card Removal Policy: same as above.

Windows Firewall: This service should be disabled only if you are using a third-party security solution that provides firewall protection.

Windows Defender: if you use a third-party security solution (antivirus and antispyware), then disabling this service is a safe choice.

Windows Search: Provides content indexing, property caching, and search results for files, e-mail, and other content.

CCleaner – protects your privacy and makes your computer faster and more secure!

CCleaner removes cookies, temporary files and various other unused data that clogs up your operating system. This frees up valuable hard disk space allowing your system to run faster. The built in Registry Cleaner fixes errors and broken settings to make your computer more stable.

Download CCleaner and run installation.

Select your language and press Next.

Select any additional options and press Next.

Choose if you want to install Chrome and Google Toolbar and press Install.

Run CCleaner.

To remove cookies, temporary files and various other unused data  click Analyse and after that Run Cleaner.

To fixes errors and broken settings in registry click Registry button in the left panel
– click Scan for Issues
-select all problems
– run Fix selected issues…

Disk Defragmenter
-rearranges fragmented data so your disks and drives can work more efficiently.

Open Start menu, type “disk defragmenter” and press enter.

Choose disk drive and press Defragment disk button.

The post Windows 7/8 speed up and tune up appeared first on ConfigOS.