PCAnswers celebrates it's 200^th issue with a "must have" list of 200 essential PC apps and services!

With PCAnswers' most comprehensive guide to date of the greatest free applications and services available, you'll be able to do almost anything with PC. Sectioned off into 8 vast categories you'll be able to find the best the internet has on offer without you damaging the bank balance.

Crashproof your PC

Hate those pesky blue screens of death? Don't we all? With the PCAnswers Crashproof your PC guide all that will be a thing of the past. Discover the meaning behind those cryptic error messages, patch up problem files and identify system weakpoints. With a little effort and this outstanding 8-page guide of computer fixing wisdom you'll be back enjoying the simple joys of computer usage without fear of a potential PC error.

Become a photoshop master

Make your photos look amazing! In this month's 16-page pull-out Explained! section, we show you how to get that proffessional finish in all your photos using Adobe Photoshop. Learn how to correct image perspective, amplify colours and quickly edit your photos to get that "Wow" factor.

Also - You could win your very own full copy of Adobe Photoshop CS4 or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 - More details to follow!

If your PC feels like it's going in slow motion, and taking an age to get to the desktop, then follow these tips to really claw some speed back on your machine. There are various reasons why your Windows PC will have slowed down over time and there's dozens of apps that claim to help you out. But, really all you need to know is the following tips that can all be done for free using Windows itself.

1: Monitor Startup list

MSConfig is the classic Windows way of reducing startup clutter. Type 'msconfig' into Vista's search bar or just Run > MSconfig in Xp to launch. Head over to the Startup tab and uncheck any items that you don't want to start. Remember programs like iTunes and Quicktime add themselves to Strtup everytime there's an update to them!

2: Turn off indexing ... read more »

Here's a useful tip for Firefox users. When you want to perform a Google search, how often do you click File > New Tab and then click in the search box? You can save some clicks by telling Firefox to always open a Google search in a new tab.

The setting we need is on the about:config page, which is where all the super-advanced settings are kept. To get to it, type about:config into the address bar and press enter. Then click the button that says you promise to be careful.

  ... read more »

Here at PCAnswers we like to dish out six of the best. That’s six of the best PC video tutorials, in case there’s any misunderstanding. You’ll find these videos in the Tutorials section of the web site and include Nick Veitch’s excellent "Install a new larger hard drive and format it with ease" guide. In it, he takes you through the process of adding a high-capacity drive to your PC and applying the NTFS format. You may have seen this video either on the Western Digital web site or alongside our previous subscription offer, which gave away a free 500GB internal hard drive to the first 100 people who took up the offer. Congratulations to all those who managed to take advantage of this great deal before our stock of Western Digital drives ran out!

Jump right in:

• Install a new larger Hard Drive and format it with ease.
• Fix wonky photos using The GIMP.
• Map a network drive.
• Manage your music with ID3 tags.
• Sample the Windows 7 beta and RC1 virtually.
• Stop the Windows Update restart nag.

What's the best free software available online? Joe Cassels picks out the creme de la creme of open source applications. If you're looking for a free office, media player, art package or any other type of application, if it's well made and free it will be in here.

The release date of Windows 7 has been confirmed as Thursday, October 22, by Microsoft at Asia's largest computer show, Computex. But if you want to download the release candidate for Windows 7 today at www.microsoft.com/downloads, which will remain free to use until June next year.

Windows 7 will available in five editions - Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate - with a Basic edition also sold in developing countries.

Initially, Microsoft said that the Starter edition would be limited to running just three applications simultaneously (excluding background processes such as anti-virus applications, wireless and Bluetooth, and system tools like Explorer and Control Panel). ... read more »

Network your home

There are lots of products on the market that utilise and internet connection and no-one want's to be huddled round their modem fighting for the net, thus networking is all the rage. Don't fear, as daunting as the task may seem with a little help from PCAnswer you'll be up and running without breaking a sweat.

Guiding you through the ins and outs of networking from the jargon to the various types, we should you how to get the results you desire regardless of your technical level.

Searching EXPLAINED!

With so many searching options it's easy to find yourself lost in a sea of meaningless search results, with the PCAnswers Explained guide to searching you'll quickly narrow down your results to accommodate your needs.

Find answers to niggling questions from people just like your and navigate the country using Google maps and the amazing new Street View.

PCAnswers issue #199 On sale now!

Try it for free!

Follow these PCAnswers tips to set up efficient power management techniques to bring down your carbon footprint or squeeze more battery life from your laptop!

1. Ditch the screensaver
Screensavers look pretty, but modern LCD monitors don’t need them to protect the screen – a better energy saving technique is to set the monitor to switch itself off after the same period you’d normally allow the screensaver to kick in – say five or ten minutes. The added bonus is that you’ll be extending the monitor’s life too. Set this from the Power Options Control Panel.

2. Hard drive use
Excessive use of the hard drive consumes more power as well as affects performance – make sure your drive is regularly defragged, add more RAM to your PC to reduce the load Windows places on your drive and let the drive spin down to conserve energy around the same time as your monitor powers off. ... read more »

Recently I’ve encountered a relatively new and crafty Trojan called Infostealer.Banker.C (Symantec’s codename), it’s a general data stealer Trojan that sends your information in packets the original programmers, however it has a few nasty tricks up it’s sleeve like it’s ability to block your antivirus and antispyware applications from launching. It also shuts down your PC if any AV software tries to meddle in its affairs also. And the piece de resistance, it hides itself, I don’t mean hides as in hidden folders, on some PCs it’s hidden even further and won’t appear regardless of your view settings, even using Windows search will yield no results for the sdra64.exe file. So all around it’s a pretty nasty piece of work. ... read more »

If you've ever tried to rename a new folder that you've created from the desktop it might be because it's one of the few reserved extensions of Windows iteself. For example, you can't rename a New Folder as CON, COM1, LPT1 or even AUX. In fact, if you take a look at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/74496/en-us you'll find a complete list of extensions you cannot use when creating new folders. So, if you've tried to rename a folder and you can't, it isn't that your Windows operating system has gone wrong, it's just a quirk of the OS itself.