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Print directory folders, dump dopey Balloon Tips, save ornery files. Plus: I debunk a bogus performance trick.

Had enough of Windows' shenanigans? I'll show you how to print elegant folder lists, dispatch Balloon Tips and annoying icon wizards, and copy files that won't copy. Plus, I debunk a performance hoax that's making the rounds on the Net.

Disable customize notifications

The Hassle: In your last column, you explained how to hide and restore the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the System Tray. Easy for you to say -- the Customize option in the Taskbar tab of the Properties menu on my PC is grayed out.

The Fix: Leave it to Microsoft to make things confusing. Right-click the Taskbar and choose Properties -- "Hide Inactive Icons" is checked, right? Clear that check box, click Apply, and you're in business. And if you ever trash your system tray, grab a copy of the Taskbar Repair Tool: It's a miraculous freebie ($5 for the Pro version) that fixes dozens (36 to be exact) of taskbar, quick-launch and system-tray problems.

Battle balloons and icons

The Hassle: I bought a laptop with Windows Vista (I know, silly me). The OS keeps asking to remove desktop icons, and the Balloon Tips are driving me nuts. Have a solution?

The Fix: I agree -- Windows' Desktop Cleanup Wizard is ever so annoying. (Hey, Microsoft, I like my old, unused shortcuts!) In XP, you can disable the wizard with a VB script from Kelly Theriot. Grab the freebie from our Downloads library. It's safe, so ignore any security warnings. The process is easier in Vista: Right-click on the Desktop, choose Properties, Desktop, Customize Desktop, and clear the Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard Every 60 Days check box. You can ditch Balloon Tips in XP with Doug Knox's VB script; in Vista this script can be a killer, so you'll want to read the instructions on the gHacks page about it.

Print any folder list

The Hassle: My friend asked for a printed list of all my MP3s. I spent an hour and still couldn't figure out how to do it.

The Fix: There's an easy way to do this, and a hard way. Me, I'm lazy (it's the genes), so I use Karen's Directory Printer. The free utility generates folder and subfolder listings in every way imaginable, including (or excluding) the file size, creation date and attributes. For you purists avoiding extra programs, Microsoft has a weekend project to print folders from your context menu in XP or Vista. Be aware, though, that it involves batch files, folder mods and Registry hacks.

Beware this speedup hoax

Not everything you read on the Internet is true. I spotted a tweak -- a modification of the Quality of Service (QoS) Packet Scheduler's settings -- that purportedly gives both XP Professional and Vista a 20 percent bandwidth boost. I wish. I tried it, as did a few buddies. Though some of us didn't see a thing, others, me included, perceived improved performance. Unfortunately, it was merely the power of suggestion -- Microsoft's experts say the tip is bogus, and I believe them. However, if you use Wi-Fi, tuning your router's QoS settings can help with some applications. Check out Becky Waring's "Optimize Wi-Fi for VoIP, Video and Gaming" and then read Preston Gralla's "Internet Boosters."

Tool of the Month

Copy stubborn files with HoboCopy: I watched a neat Flash streaming video on a Web site and wanted to keep it to view offline. I found the file sitting in the temp folder and tried copying it to another folder. No luck -- the error message "File in use" was the only thing I saw. None of my copying tricks worked; and when I closed the browser tab that was playing the video, the file was automatically deleted. But now I've outsmarted Windows with the help of HoboCopy, an obscure, slick utility that uses Volume Shadow Service to copy files (and folders) that are in use. Once you get the hang of this command-line tool, it's easy to work with. For help, read the How-To Geek's tutorial.

A growing number of good Web sites, like Prosper and Bankrate, are popping up, offering useful tools to help you manage and conserve your money.

You’ll found numerous sites that are full of good advice on how to save money and protect your financial interests. In a sour economy, sites like these are getting more attention (and site traffic) than ever before.


GasBuddy: GasBuddy is actually a network of local sites (such as sanfrangasprices.com for the San Francisco area), each of which allows consumers to find and report high or low gas prices around town.

Fuelly: Fuelly is a cool little Web tool that lets you track and keep a history of your vehicle's gas mileage and compare your results with those of other drivers.

RetailMeNot: Find coupons (about 85,000, the site says) for thousands of stores nationwide. Many of them are sent in by site users, for others to use. It's not the only online coupon community, but it's the biggest and probably the best.

BillShrink: A big chunk of your money probably goes to your wireless carrier every month. BillShrink asks you for your locale, wireless usage habits and current plan, then recommends other plans in your area that might be better deals for you. It's a small way to trim the fat, but every little bit counts.

Prosper: Prosper is like a dating site that brings people who want to borrow money together with people who want to lend it. Borrowers post their borrowing re­­quests, and prospective lenders bid on the interest rate at which they're willing to loan part or all of the money.

Kiva: Kiva follows roughly the same business model as Prosper, but adds a philanthropy aspect. The site allows you to extend a loan to a person in the Third World who needs the money to get a small business off the ground, for example.

Bankrate: This is the largest and most complete aggregator of financial rate information that we've seen on the Web. The site constantly surveys 4,800 financial institutions in all 50 states to provide real-time rates on around 300 financial instruments -- mortgages, credit cards, car loans, money market accounts and certificates of deposit -- so you can find the best rates and save money.

Pageonce: You've accumulated numerous online accounts -- everything from banking sites to Netflix to shopping sites to social networking -- and they all have separate logins. PageOnce brings all of your accounts together in one dashboard where they're easy to access. But it does much more than store passwords: Once the site is linked to the accounts, it notifies you of any changes at them -- from payment alerts to new-friend requests on Facebook.

AnnualCreditReport: Since 2003, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act has made it possible for individuals to obtain one free credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies per year. AnnualCreditReport.com is the only site that provides them without strings attached.

Finding great sites on the Web is easy. But it takes hard work and dedication to find the truly annoying and dazzlingly useless ones. Of course we didn't shrink from the task.

While locating the most useful sites on the Web, we felt it only fair to call out the some of the most useless, too. We found no shortage of sites that are poorly designed or boring, but we list here some of the sites that go that extra mile -- the dazzlingly ugly, the patently offensive and the mind-bogglingly pointless.


AOL AIM Dashboard: I'll admit that Dashboard already has two strikes against it just because it immediately gets right into my face every time AIM starts up, which means every time I fire up my PC. Once this lame site has your eyeballs, the site seems willing to do anything to keep them, if just for a few seconds, using eye-candy graphics and tabloidy headlines like "High School Love Triangle" and "My Nasty Texts Went to my Dad!" Strike Three.


HavenWorks: If a Web-design program got sick and threw up, it might look something like this site. My uncle from Santa Cruz says the first time he saw it he had an acid flashback.


Juicy Campus: Juicy Campus provides a public place where college kids can engage in gossipy smear-fests against fellow students, teachers or anybody else, with complete anonymity. The tenor and intelligence level of the posts are, well, what you might expect from people who spend most of their time pulling bong hits, playing "Madden 2000," beer-sliding and vomiting up Night Train.


Zombo: A Web site? Concept art? A prank gone horribly wrong? I honestly don't know. Open the page and you will hear: "This is Zombo.com. You can do anything at Zombo.com. The only limit is yourself. Anything can happen at Zombo.com." Well, in fact, nothing happens at Zombo.com.


Brill Publications: It's virtual! It's like being in the real world, except, uh, it's on the Net! On the InterWeb! Walk through the front door of Brill Publications. See the secretary. Take the elevator. Talk to Bob on the fifth floor. Wait, why am I here?


City Optix: Sorry to pick on this little local optometry franchise, but sites that immediately launch and force you to watch ridiculously long, loud and inane flash presentations -- and there are many of them -- drive me nuts. This one is one of the worst examples of site design I've seen.


Digg: OK, Digg isn't a horrible site, but it is one of the most depressing when you compare it to what it once was. Digg's top stories (as voted on by Digg users) used to be interesting and tech-oriented. But since Digg has grown so immensely popular, the top 10 Diggs usually consist of "lowest common denominator" stories: funny photos and videos, for the most part. It's a site cursed by its own popularity.


Weekly World News: "The world's only reliable news" site is chock full of news you can't do without. A recent lead feature investigates whether James Carville or Britney Spears (bald) looks more like "Bat Boy." Why isn't CNN all over this?


Meet an Inmate: Life not creepy enough for you? Now you can befriend and correspond with a lonely ex-meth-addict doing hard time in Leavenworth for aggravated assault.


Bermuda Triangle: Stunningly bad graphics and site design are mixed with really pointless content. It's a double threat.

Microsoft is so often the behemoth everyone loves to hate that people overlook the stuff it does right. We tried its newer Web services and found five gems.

When you think of Web apps and services, Microsoft doesn't immediately come to mind. Lately, though, the company has been rolling out a slew of them, including several that match or beat competing offerings from Google, Yahoo and any number of startups you've never heard of.

Which of those Microsoft services are the best? We've tried them all, and we've selected five free hidden gems.

You'll notice that most of these services carry Microsoft's "Live" brand. If you're like most people, you're probably thoroughly confused by the Live lineup, and by what Live actually means -- especially since Microsoft has muddied the waters with the newer "Live Essentials" moniker. For the record, Windows Live is a central online location for accessing the Live services and applications. Windows Live Essentials is a subset of the Windows Live brand that houses downloadable applications, including Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Messenger and others.


Windows Live SkyDrive

How's this for a deal: Get 25GB of online storage, at no cost, with no strings attached. That's what Windows Live SkyDrive offers. Just create folders on the site and upload files to it. You can share any of your folders with colleagues, as well. The site's design is simple and straightforward.

That isn't to say SkyDrive is flawless. You can't use it as a virtual drive -- it won't appear on your PC as a drive, so you can't save files directly to it within a program like Microsoft Word. That's a minor point, though. You can't argue with 25GB of free storage, especially considering that neither Google nor Yahoo currently has this kind of service. While Google is rumored to be working on a similar service called GDrive, Yahoo's Briefcase provides only 25MB of space, and is shutting down at the end of March anyway. So right now Windows Live SkyDrive is as good as online storage gets.


Windows Live Sync

If you have more than one PC and you want to keep files and folders on them synchronized, you need this service. After you download and run a small piece of software on each PC, head to the Windows Live Sync Web site and tell it which folders on which PCs should stay in sync.

You can synchronize your personal folders as well as your shared ones. Whenever any of your PCs are connected to the Internet, they will automatically sync the specified folders with one another. In addition, you can connect to any synced computer from any other computer to browse through the remote system's entire hard disk and to download files.

Note that unlike some of the fee-based sync services we looked at last year, Live Sync does not keep copies of your files in the cloud: It merely serves as a conduit between PCs. Since it involves no online storage, however, it puts no limit on the amount of data you can sync. And, of course, it's free.

Live Mesh

Here's a free Microsoft service for people who do want to keep their files in the cloud. Though Live Mesh is more powerful than Windows Live Sync, it's also a bit more complicated.

Rather than synchronize files and folders from PC to PC, you create folders in Live Mesh and then have all of your PCs synchronize with those folders. With this arrangement, you can access the files and folders from any Internet-connected computer. You have an exceptional amount of control over the synchronization, too -- for example, you can choose to synchronize only the files modified in the last 30 days, or those under 500MB. Live Mesh supports remote control of any PC in your mesh, as well. So far, Microsoft has announced no plans to charge for storage -- or to limit the amount of data you can store.


Microsoft Office Live Workspace

Office Live Workspace will help anyone with a small business or in a work group who needs a simple way to collaborate on projects. With this service you can create and share documents, schedules, to-do lists and more.

You start by creating a shared "workspace." You can choose from 11 pre-built ones -- such as a Project Workspace, a Meeting Workspace or a Travel Workspace -- or you can create your own from scratch. Each workspace has templates already created for it, including PowerPoint presentations, Excel worksheets and Word documents. Group members can work on the documents and save them for colleagues to see and edit. To edit the Office documents, you'll need to install a free Office add-in, although anyone can view them without the add-in or Office.

Why use this rather than Google Docs or Zoho? One big, exclusive benefit is its direct integration with Microsoft Office -- right within the Office suite, you can save files to your workspace, and you can use the Office programs to edit files in your workspace. On top of that, the template-driven approach to creating documents and workspaces is superior to anything you'll find in Google Docs or Zoho.


Microsoft's Virtual Earth 3D

OK, this one isn't a Web service, strictly speaking -- it's a desktop app that works with a Web service. But it's a good one: Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D.

Because Google Earth is so predominant in this arena, not many people bother with Microsoft's product, and that's a shame. This downloadable application works in concert with Windows Live Maps to give you dramatic and compelling 3-D views of places around the world. Using simple controls, you can fly in and out of cities in full 3-D. You can also go on guided tours that other people create, and you can make tours of your own. You can save your tours for future visits, too, or share them with other users.

The views are richer and more compelling than what Google has to offer, so if you're looking for great 3-D mapping, this is the service to try.

To use Virtual Earth 3D in concert with Microsoft's Live Maps service, you must download the Virtual Earth 3D software, from either Windows Live Maps or Microsoft's general downloads site.

Microsoft says that the software will work with a 1GHz processor and 256MB of RAM, but recommends a 2.8GHz or faster CPU and 1GB of RAM. Go with the recommended specs or better, or else you'll find the app very slow going.

Is your PC healthy? Don't be too sure. Think back to when you heard a kerklunk sound coming from the hard drive. Or maybe you remember the last time your Internet connection was down (and I don't mean just a little depressed).

The best way to find out what's wrong is to take a proactive approach: Check under your PC's hood with the following mostly free diagnostic tools, and see if anything is amiss -- before disaster strikes.


Hard drive health
Hard drives are about as stable as the stock market. The more you know about your drive -- the brand-specific idiosyncrasies and the diagnostic sounds that drives produce -- the better prepared you are for the inevitable crash. Here are a couple of helpful services and programs.

Hard Drive Inspector: This utility is always on guard, monitoring all your drives for spin rate, seek time and almost 20 other potential problem spots. Hard Drive Inspector gives you technical data, including the drive model, firmware version and serial number, all things you'll need to know when calling for warranty support.

It displays the hard drive's temperature in the system tray. If the drive gets too toasty (I have mine set for 120 degrees Fahrenheit), the program can send you an e-mail alert -- or, better, automatically put the computer in Standby mode.

You can view a summary health report, which typically has enough information for most users; the S.M.A.R.T. report has the details. The program costs $30, but you can download a 15-day trial version of Hard Drive Inspector to get a feel for the tool.



DataCent's Hard Drive Sounds: You shouldn't hear more than a low hum from your hard drive. But drives don't know the rules, and they often make weird sounds, emitting thuds, screeches, knocks or whining. Determining whether one of the sounds means trouble can be, well, troublesome.

The data-recovery company DataCent has an extraordinarily helpful site that plays the actual sounds of bad or unstable drive heads, stuck spindles, wobbly bearings and media with bad spots, to name a few. You can hear your specific drive brand.

The company also offers another valuable tool that lists typical hard-drive failures by manufacturer.


Broadband speed tests
Does your broadband Internet connection feel more like a sluggish dial-up link? Put it to the test by recording your connection speed every 30 minutes or so for a couple of days. Keep a log, and if the speed is nowhere near advertised rates, send the results to your ISP -- and raise a ruckus

If you complain vigorously yet politely, chances are good that the provider will have you back at full speed ahead in short order. With all of the following tests, resist the temptation to check e-mail or browse the Web while testing, so as not to alter the results.

Quick tip: If any of these online tests don't work, give me a call for help. Just kidding -- instead, make sure you have the current version of the Flash Player; if not, download and install it.


DSLReports: The granddaddy of online testing, DSLReports gives you a stack of tests to try. The Speed Test has a cool interface that looks like a car dashboard and that watches your upload and download speeds. You can test your speed by using any of six servers in different locations. You'll obtain a good average by testing with two; try one close to home and another across the country.

If you're worried about your connection while gaming, use the site's Line Quality test to look for packet loss and excessive latency. Make sure to register and log in when testing -- that way you can compare results months apart.


Speedtest.net: You'll see pretty much the same results from broadband speed testing at Speedtest.net. But this site is quicker to get to than DSLReports, and it has an oh-so-nifty interface, the kind you want to show off when friends are in your office.


Internet connection quality
In addition to running overall speed tests, you can use other tools and tricks to improve your online experience.


VoIP Speed Test: If you're making phone calls over the Internet, make sure you have the bandwidth -- as well as the quality of service -- to get decent VoIP sound, using the VoIP Speed Test.

The bandwidth analysis tells you the percentage of VoIP service quality to expect from your connection, as well as the number of concurrent VoIP lines your connection can support.


Down for Everyone or Just Me: You head for a Web site, but you get an error. I know you've said it: "Is the site down, or is it my problem?"

Now there's a way to find out. Type a Web site's URL into Down for Everyone or Just Me? (a smartly named site, no?), and it will give you the scoop. Very handy -- using it keeps you from bothering co-workers or members of your buddy list.

Fixes for Wi-Fi woes: If you use Wi-Fi, turning your router's Quality of Service (QoS) settings on will definitely help with some applications. For more, see our story "Optimize Wi-Fi for VoIP, Video and Gaming," which has tips for tweaking the data transmission speeds of your wireless network.

More Internet advice: To give your Internet connection a goose, see "Internet Boosters." And to prepare for the times when your connection gives up the ghost, check out "5 Quick Fixes for Internet Connection Hang-Ups."

Inside your PC
Not everyone can recite the MAC address of their PC's network card or the driver version for their graphics board (not even me). If your computer is hiccuping, knowing exactly what hardware and system software you have inside your PC is invaluable.

For troubleshooting, being armed with such details is ideal: You can pass them along to tech support, to your computer guru (no, definitely not me), or to an online help forum.

PC Pitstop: If you want to visit just one site to test your PC, I'd recommend PC Pitstop's Full Test. This comprehensive tool not only gives you an unbeatable hardware report but also alerts you to various potential problems that could be harming performance.

After I used it recently on my machine, PC Pitstop recommended 11 fixes, gave me a 35-count list of system specs, provided an even longer list of installed hardware, told me what drivers I needed to upgrade, tallied almost 40 performance results, and -- get this -- compared my PC's ratings with those of all the other computers that PC Pitstop has tested.

If you create a free account, you can save the reports and refer to them. One warning: If you have a pop-up or ad blocker, disable it before starting the tests.

Belarc Advisor: You can put your PC on the couch and run the free Belarc Advisor to obtain an inventory of your system's hardware. But that alone is no big deal. Where Belarc shines is in its comprehensive analysis of the software installed on your PC, including the version numbers.

Equally useful is the report of Microsoft security hot fixes that are missing from your system, as well as the list of software licenses. After you run the scan, save the HTML page in a safe spot so that you can refer to it if the worst happens.


SIW -- System Information for Windows: You can ask the SIW tool anything about your PC -- it'll give you a list of regional settings or scheduled tasks, or which DLLs are loaded and which are shared. How about which video and audio codecs you have installed, or details about your network or open ports? SIW has everything, offering lists that you can easily access from toolbar shortcuts or from a panel with a hierarchy list.

By the way, because SIW is a stand-alone utility that you don't need to install, it'll run directly from a USB flash drive, a floppy (if you still have one), a burned rescue CD or a network drive.

Be careful: Unless you uncheck the Add Crawler Toolbar to IE and Firefox box during the installation, SIW will automatically install that toolbar and make it your default search provider. Not a cool thing for such a useful tool to do.