Archive files like ZIP files and JAR files provide a way to package multiple files as a single file, decreasing the amount of space needed to store them. JAR stands for Java Archive. It’s a package file format used to combine multiple Java class files and their associated resources like text and images into a single file. 

Indeed, JAR files were originally developed so end users could download Java applets and their components in a single HTTP request.

If you try to open a JAR file without having a compatible program installed that can open that file type, you might see an error saying, “Unable to access JAR file.” In that case, try one of the apps below to open a JAR file on your Windows computer.

JAR files can be opened in two ways:

1. Open and browse the file contents
2. Run the JAR file in Java (execute)

We will take a look at apps to help you browse and examine the contents of JAR files.

Apps to Open JAR Files on Windows

There are several programs you can use to browse and view JAR file contents on a Windows computer. We’ll run through a few of them. You might even find you already have an app capable of opening JAR files on your computer.

1. WinRar

WinRar is shareware that you can download and run for free, but it will persistently remind you to buy a license. In any case, download WinRar, install it, and use it to open a JAR file. Once you’ve opened the JAR file with WinRar, you can extract its contents.

2. 7-Zip

Similar to WinRar, 7-Zip is an archive viewer and extractor that you can use to open JAR files. Unlike WinRar, 7-Zip is free and open source. Download it for Windows here. Once you’ve installed it, you can open a JAR file, extract it, and view the files the archive contains. Simply right-click on the JAR file, choose Open With and select 7-Zip File Manager.

If you don’t see the option to open the file with 7-Zip File Manager, select the Choose another app option, and choose 7-Zip File Manager from the list:

Select the Always use this app to open .jar files option to make 7-Zip the default JAR file viewer.

Apps to Open a JAR File Online

When all else fails, you can always use an online tool to open a JAR file. There are several to choose from. All of the online tools listed below allow you to drop a JAR file into the website and download the contents. This is a good option if you don’t encounter these archives often and don’t want to install new software.

3. Online Archive Extractor

The Online Archive Extractor is a browser-based tool you can use to extract several kinds of archive files, including JAR files. The site is secure, and, since the tool works locally inside the browser (i.e., not server-side), you can rest assured that your files won’t be sent over the internet. You’ll also find that extracting JAR files using the Online Archive Extractor is speedier than some other archive extractors since virtually no data is being transferred online.

4. AppsCMS JAR File Opener

The JAR File Opener from AppsCMS works a little differently than the Online Archive Extractor. It does transfer your file to its servers. They do, however, assure users, “We store your Jar files only for a very short duration for extracting content and then delete the files. We do not store any of your JAR or contents of your JARs.” Since it’s online too, this option will also work for opening JAR files on Mac, Linux, Ubuntu, and all flavors of Windows.

5. Online Java Decompiler

The Online Java Decompiler is made available by Leonardo Santos of Brazil. His tool decompiles .jar and .class files online. It’s a simple tool that does exactly what it says it does. Most of the files you extract from a JAR file will be text files, but some may be other types of files that require additional apps to view them.

6. EzyZip’s Extract Jar File Tool

EzyZip’s Extract Jar File Tool has a few more bells and whistles than the other online JAR file openers. Some files extracted with the tool can be previewed within the browser, and you also have the option to save multiple files and folders into a target folder of your choosing all at once.

7. FreeFileConvert

The last entry in our list is a little different than the others. The Convert JAR to ZIP tool from FreeFileConvert converts your JAR file into a ZIP file you can open natively in Windows. The JAR file you want to convert can be on your computer or in a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox. Additionally, if you have the URL of a JAR file you can enter it and use this tool to convert it to a ZIP file.

Running JAR Files with the Java Runtime Environment

So far, we’ve discussed ways of viewing JAR files. If you want to run those files, you’ll need to use the Java Runtime Environment. Check out our article on how to run JAR files on Windows to learn how to install Java on your computer and run JAR files in the Java Runtime Environment.

Whether you are a frequent traveler who uses public computers or just wants to be prepared if you need to reset your PC, loading up a USB drive with some useful portable apps is a great idea. But which are the best tools for your USB flash drive? Let’s find out.

1. Chrome

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call a web browser the most essential application on any computer. And Google Chrome is currently the fastest and most powerful browser available in the market.

Fortunately, Chrome is also available as a portable application. This means you can carry your bookmarks and personal settings with you while traveling without having to reinstall and reconfigure the browser every time.

That is not to say that Chrome is the only option. If you prefer open source apps, then Mozilla Firefox is another great portable browser. Whichever app you choose, make sure to keep a web browser on your USB stick.

2. 7-zip

Computers can deal with .zip files by default. The thing is, most files downloaded from the internet are going to be using other archiving formats. Extensions like .7zip and .rar are quite commonly seen these days.

To open such files, you need to carry a good file extraction app on your pen drive. And 7-zip is the most popular and most lightweight of these apps.

You can use it to open and create almost every file archive out there, including obscure formats like tarballs or gzips. Keep a portable version of 7-zip on your USB stick to open all kinds of compressed files with ease.

3. Recuva

A common reason you might need to use portable apps on a pen drive is for formatting or resetting your computer. Such an action can often wipe all the data from the PC, leaving it with nothing useful.

That is why you should also load your USB stick with a data recovery tool. This is one of the best portable apps for your flash drive that makes it possible to partially or even fully restore all of your lost data.

Recuva is an excellent choice for this, as it is a portable data recovery tool that can run directly from a USB drive. Moreover, unlike most such tools, it also lacks a data limit. As a result, you can use Recuva to recover as many deleted files as you want from your computer.

4. Gimp

Image editors tend to be large programs. Applications like Adobe Photoshop require quite a bit of storage space to be installed. But what if you could carry a fully functional image manipulation software on your pen drive?

Gimp is a relatively lightweight open-source tool for working with digital images. Its feature set is quite similar to photoshop and allows for advanced image editing. The best part is that it is available in a portable form, which can be put on a USB stick and operated without installation.

5. VLC

The most irritating thing about reinstalling the operating system on your computer has to be multimedia. Playing a video file isn’t as simple as just double-clicking on it – the appropriate codecs are also required.

The best way to ensure that you can always play your multimedia files on any computer is to carry a good media player with you. The VLC media player is probably the best choice for this, as it is a well-known open-source application that supports almost all multimedia file formats.

6. Free Download Manager

If you are in the habit of frequenting cyber cafes or relying on public wifi hotspots, you know how spotty the internet connection can be in such places. Unfortunately, downloading anything larger than a few megabytes is an exercise in frustration.

The Free Download Manager is one of the best tools for a USB flash drive that can help you out in these situations. Keeping the portable version of this app on your USB allows you to manage and accelerate your downloads on any PC. It can continue paused downloads, split them into parts, or even download videos from some sites.

7. qBittorrent

On the topic of download managers, you may also want to keep a torrent client on your pen drive. Because while you can still download normal files without a download manager, you cannot download a torrent without a suitable client.

There are many good torrent clients out there, but one of the most lightweight is qBittorrent. The portable qBittorrent barely comes up to a few megabytes and can easily be taken on even the oldest USB drives without any issues.

8. SumatraPDF

A web browser like Chrome can usually open .pdf files as well. But, a web browser is resource-intensive, and you might want a dedicated PDF reader, especially on old public PCs.

SumatraPDF is a well-known free PDF reader available in a portable form as well. You can place the executable on a USB stick and run it from there to open .pdf files and view them without installing anything.

9. CopyQ

A clipboard manager is probably one of the best tools for your USB flash drive you can get to boost your productivity right away. Instead of keeping track of what you have copied last, you can just keep copying and sort it all out later.

CopyQ is a popular open-source clipboard manager. It allows you to save copied text and images in customized tabs, then paste them anywhere. Better yet, it is available as a standalone app that can be carried on a USB drive and used from there.

10. Everything Portable

The default Windows search functionality can be a pain to navigate. The search results don’t appear immediately, and the interface is unintuitive. Thankfully, better search tools are available.

Everything is a simple application that can locate any files and folders you are looking for instantly. The resource usage is minimal, so you can use it easily even on older computers.

The best part is that it is available as a portable version too. Just put it on a pen drive, and you can tap into its advanced search capability on any computer you use.

Do You Need To Keep Portable Tools On Your Flash Drive?

Prepping at least one pen drive with a bunch of useful tools is highly recommended. You never know when your PC might break down or need to be reset. Running some essential apps from a USB stick can help out a lot in such a case.

Each of the applications mentioned above has been carefully selected for its utility, making up a versatile toolbox that can handle the most common uses of a PC without installing anything.

In this article, we’ll talk about how you can check whether a download is safe and we’ll also mention a couple of our favorite sites to download free software for Windows.

Are Free Software Download Sites Safe?

There are only two ways to know if a download site is safe. You can check its reputation and you test its downloads yourself. 

There are businesses that rank how safe sites are. One of the most popular sites for this is WOT or Web of Trust. WOT rates sites based on community ratings, reviews, and their own machine learning algorithms. There are WOT plugins for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera browsers. If you have the plugin installed, you can check the download site.

You can also check the site before you go to it. Go to Virus Total and enter the web address of the site. It’ll check with a bunch of other sites that track reputations and viruses and lets you know if the site is safe.

That does not mean that what you download from the site has no malware or viruses. There are a couple of ways to test the download. 

1. Use a sandboxed web browser like Sandboxie to download it. In the sandboxed web browser, go to Virus Total and submit the download for testing.
2. Download the program inside a virtual machine and test it there.

Safe And Free Software Download Sites for Windows

To compile this list, we researched the sites on WOT, VirusTotal, Norton Safe Web, URLVoid, and ScanURL. At the time of writing this, none of the download sites showed any issues on the website checkers.

FileHippo

On the web since 2004 and Alexa-ranked at 625, FileHippo is solid. FileHippo states that they hand-pick the software, and test it for malware and viruses. They also don’t allow software that bundles other software into it or browser toolbars. FileHippo currently has over 40,000 program versions listed.

Be careful if you do a web search for FileHippo. There are a lot of sites out there with similar names and URLs. 

Nirsoft

Nirsoft is a freeware utility site that was created and currently run by a guy named Nir Sofer. He’s single-handedly written all of the software utilities that you see on the site.

Each utility is completely free and usually very tiny in size. That’s because each utility is designed to perform one task and one task only. For example, some of the most popular utilities on the site are the password viewers, which will show you passwords stored on your computer, in your browser, etc.

Ninite

More than just a free software download site, Ninite is also a package management system. Using it as a package management system, Ninite can be used to automate the installation of your favorite software and keep it up to date, with just one click. This is likely the safest site on the list.

The number of free apps is limited. It does cover most of the software that you’d install first on a new computer though. Chrome, Firefox, 7-zip, iTunes, VLC, Malwarebytes are amongst the free downloads Ninite can provide and manage.

Softpedia

Even older than FileHippo, Softpedia has been a software download staple since 2001. Softpedia hosts a lot of free downloads on their own physical servers. That means they have even more to gain from making sure the apps are safe. That’s a lot of work when they have over 1.2 million apps, drivers, and games available.

Download Crew

Offering some of the most well-known Windows freeware in an easy to read, easy to search site, Download Crew should be on your list. Download Crew has been around for over 10 years, boasts almost 300,000 members, and over 33 million downloads. 

Its sister site is Download Crew Store, where you can get deeply discounted proprietary software. Between the two you’ll get all you need as cheaply as possible.

File Horse

When it comes to free software download sites, it’s hard to tell them apart. They all do the same thing. They all offer downloads. What might set File Horse apart is that they also keep archives of previous versions of the software. 

So if an update to your favorite app makes an unwanted change, you could download the older version here and roll it back. File Horse also curates a directory of free cloud apps.

Major Geeks

Don’t let the early-2000’s design fool you. Major Geeks is a legitimate free software download site. Founded in 2001, Major Geeks built a reputation by being one of the first to test all the software they offer. 

First, they check the reputation of the company and software, then they scan it with several virus scanners, including VirusTotal. If it makes it past that, Major Geeks actually installs the software on their own VMWare Workstation to test the functionality. If it meets their standards, then the software gets listed. This thoroughness warrants their military-style theme.

Microsoft Store

Partly a website and partly an app that’s probably already on your computer, Microsoft Store does have a lot of good freeware. Being Microsoft, there’s already a reputation in place and you’d like to think they’re hosting safe software.

Some of them are from the big names you already know, like Netflix, Apple, and, of course, Microsoft. Some are made by smaller development teams but can be very useful. Not all apps are free. There are thousands that are and it’s easy to find them. Just search on ‘free’.

Beyond that, you should also check out the great Sysinternals tools that used to be a separate site, but Microsoft purchased. The tools are still updated, but are geared more towards geeks.

Anymore Good Free Software Sites?

There are a few more good safe free software sites, but if you can’t find what you need on the sites above, then they’re not going to help much. Over time, you’ll get to know the sites you like that have the software you need. 

Remember to always check the downloaded file with your antivirus app or through Virus Total. If possible, test the program installation in a virtual machine or sandboxed environment. 

The Kindle desktop app is free for you to use and is available for Windows and macOS devices. To help you decide whether the Kindle app is as good as the physical device, we’re going to talk you through some of the pros and cons behind the Kindle Desktop and answer a simple question—is it as good as a real Kindle?

Benefits Of Using The Kindle Desktop App

If you want the best eBook reading experience, you need an eBook reader—there’s no question about it. If that’s out of the question, however, then the Kindle desktop app is probably the next best thing. It gives you immediate access to your Kindle eBook collection as soon as you sign in using your Amazon account.

To save space, the Kindle desktop reader will automatically download any book you choose to open, rather than downloading hundreds of books at once. eBooks aren’t very big, so this is usually only an added delay of a few seconds.

The Kindle interface is simple to understand and navigate, with your library most prominent and accessible from the left-hand menu, but with a quick-access link to the Kindle store in the top-right. Any books you purchase on your Amazon account will appear here immediately for you to download and read.

It has many of the features you’d expect to see from an eBook reader, including many seen on Kindle devices, offering the ability to change font and font sizes, alter page widths for better reading, as well as switch to an accessible viewing color mode. 

You can also use a built-in text-to-speech mode to create auto-generated audiobooks you can listen to while you work, as well as annotate your books directly—perfect for students or academics. 

Kindle Desktop vs. Kindle Mobile vs. Kindle Devices

While the Kindle desktop app isn’t designed to be portable, it does have one distinct advantage over Kindle mobile apps—size. The larger screens on desktop PCs and laptops allow you to view much more text at once, which could be useful for those studying books and those who want to catch up on reading from their PC.

Amazon wants you to buy its books through its own store and, while it isn’t impossible to read non-Amazon eBooks on Kindle devices, it isn’t the easiest process—unless you’re using the Kindle desktop app. 

This leads to another direct advantage that the Kindle desktop app over other Kindle products. Using it, you can open .mobi eBook files using the Kindle app natively with no additional fuss.  

Otherwise, there really isn’t a huge amount of difference between the Kindle desktop app, Kindle mobile apps, or Kindle devices themselves. For instance, many of the accessibility features are common across all Kindle products, although the Kindle devices lack some of the more advanced features like text-to-speech.

You can also share the same collection, keep your saved position and sync it across your devices, and do the same with any book annotations you make across all Kindle products.

Alternatives To The Kindle Desktop Reader

If you want to escape the Amazon ecosystem, then alternatives do exist for desktop users. The most popular of those is Calibre, the desktop eBook reader available for Windows, Linux, and macOS devices.

Like the Kindle desktop app, it allows you to read your eBooks, share your collection with others, sync it across multiple devices, and more. It’s free, open-source software that you can extend further (if you have the skills) by helping to develop it directly, or by creating additional plugins for others to use.

While it isn’t as polished as Amazon’s own desktop app, Calibre is still a great alternative eBook reader that is more than capable of supporting your Amazon eBook collection (as well as accessing and using other non-Amazon eBooks, too).

If Calibre isn’t for you, paid alternatives do exist, like Adobe Digital Editions. It supports desktop and mobile users and, like Calibre and Amazon, it allows you to share and read your eBook collection across multiple devices.

How To Download & Use The Kindle Desktop App

The Kindle desktop app is freely available for anyone with an Amazon account, even those without any existing Amazon Kindle eBooks. Downloading it and setting it up on your PC or Mac is a pretty straightforward process.

1. To start, download the Kindle desktop app for your operating system and install it. Once you open the Kindle app, you’ll need to sign in using your Amazon account details—type your details in, then press Sign-In to begin.

2. Your Amazon Kindle eBook collection will automatically begin to sync to the Kindle desktop app once you sign in. To access any of the books in your collection, simply double-click on them—the book will download and open as soon as the download has completed.

3. By default, the Kindle desktop app will default to showing only a single page. You can change this by opening an eBook and clicking one of the page width options in the top menu bar.

4. To view your eBook in full screen without distractions, press the full-screen icon in the menu bar.

5. To access the Kindle desktop app’s accessibility features to change font, font size, color scheme, and more, tap the Aa button in the menu bar. This will bring up the options menu, allowing you to change various font and style settings as desired.

6. If you want to purchase any Kindle eBooks through the Kindle desktop app, tap the Kindle Store icon in the top-left. This will take you straight to the Kindle store, where any books you purchase will sync automatically to the app for you to download.

Reading eBooks On Desktop & Mobile

While the Kindle desktop app is a great option for your Amazon eBook collection, there are other ways you can read your favorite books for free, with websites like BookBub working well with third-party Kindle alternatives like Calibre to build up an ebook collection without Amazon involvement.

That said, the Amazon Kindle still remains one of the best services for eBooks, with millions of books, a great set of eBook readers, and feature-filled and easy-to-use apps for desktop and mobile users. If you’re a keen writer, you can even write your own eBook and get it published on the Amazon Kindle store for others to enjoy.

This metadata is actually what allows your music player apps to organize your files. When your files lack this information, they remain unorganized and make it difficult for you to filter through your files.

One of the ways to fix the problem is to edit the MP3 metadata of your files. This way, you can add the missing information in each of your music files and make them searchable using various filters. There are plenty of apps to tag MP3s and you can use any of them to edit your files’ metadata and add in the missing information.

MusicBrainz Picard (Free)

MusicBrainz Picard is a multi-platform open-source tool that lets you easily add metadata to your music files that miss them. It supports almost all the music file formats available out there and so your files don’t necessarily have to be in MP3 format in order to edit the metadata

It uses something called AcoustID that helps it identify your music files by their contents and not their other meta fields. So even if your MP3s have zero data available, you can use the tool to add the missing information.

MP3Tag (Free)

MP3Tag is a popular app to tag MP3s and it supports batch processing as well. That means if you have a number of music files sitting on your computer without any metadata, you can load them all into this tool and let it find and add the required metadata for you.

It looks up various online databases to find the required information and album artwork and adds that to your files. It even lets you rename your MP3 files based on the tag information.

Frigate3 (Paid)

Frigate3 is actually a file manager but it has various other features as well. One of these features lets you view and edit MP3 metadata. You basically need to navigate to the folder where your MP3 files are, click on any one of them, and you have a window open on the right-hand side pane to add the missing information.

Besides letting you edit MP3 metadata, it lets you view other information as well such as the MP3’s bit-rate and the frame numbers.

The GodFather (Free)

If there are several MP3 files that you want to add metadata to, The GodFather can help you do it with ease using its batch processing mode. It supports various tag formats even for non-MP3 files, helps update all the tags at once, lets you use the replacement matrix, and also allows you to delete all the tags at once, if you want to do it.

The tool is suitable for those of you wanting to update the metadata of a number of MP3 files at once. It makes the job a whole lot easier for you.

ID3 Tag Editor (Free)

ID3 Tag Editor is a Unicode supported app to tag MP3s and you can use it to add missing metadata values to your files in various languages. It also lets you add a cover art to your MP3 files which remains embedded in the main file itself.

Other features include the ability to add custom comments to your files, remove all the tags at once, and compatibility with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows.

Music Tag (Paid)

Most apps that let you edit MP3 metadata use manual methods to do the task. Music Tag is unlike those apps and lets you automatically download and add missing metadata to your music files. To use the app, all you basically need to do is give it your MP3 files and it’ll download the required information and add it to all of your MP3 files.

This way it’s quicker than the other apps and gets the job done in no time. Also, it recognizes over 35 million music tracks and it’s highly likely your files are included here.

TigoTago (Free)

If you like Excel spreadsheets, you’re going to love the TigoTago app to tag your MP3s. It uses a spreadsheet-like format to let you edit and add new information to your MP3 files. Any changes you make to your files are first visible to you before they’re actually applied to your files.

It’s convenient for mass-tagging tasks and requires almost no typing as most of the data is fetched from online databases.

EasyTAG (Free)

EasyTAG is a feature-rich program for both Linux and Windows that helps you edit the metadata part of your audio files. It lets you view, read, and edit any part of the metadata for your files. You can also apply a single change to all of your MP3 files at once.

It has an easy to use interface and is available in multiple languages.

Kid3 (Free)

Kid3 is both an MP3 metadata editor and a tag converter to help you convert your tags into multiple formats. You can use it to tag almost all the audio file formats out there including MP3, generate tags from file names, and import data from online databases to add to your files.

It comes with a command-line interface as well to help you use it from a Command Prompt window and to automate some of its tasks.

Metatogger (Free)

Metatogger helps you both edit your existing tags in your MP3 files and clean-up any junk content in these tags. As you start using the app, you can go for either the manual mode or with C# scripts to speed-up the process. It also lets you organize your files by their tags content which is something not offered by many other tag editors.

It identifies your music files using the acoustic fingerprinting technology and downloads the required data from various online databases.

Hopefully, by the time you’ve read through this article, you’ll have a solid understanding about how music copyright works on YouTube and how you can stay on the good side to ensure your videos can be monetized.

How to Find Royalty Free Music

To start with, let’s take a look at the best ways to find royalty free music for YouTube videos. There are plenty of sources online, so it should be quite easy to find music that’s suitable to your video and your tastes.

Here is a quick overview of what we’ll be covering in this section;

• Copyright free music through YouTube search
• YouTube provided royalty free music

We’ll start with the safest option and that is to use royalty free music offered directly by YouTube. Simply navigate to YouTube.com/audiolibrary/music and you’ll be able to browse through thousands of free music tracks and sound effects.

Not only are these tracks royalty free, but you can use them in your video without worry that they may mistakenly get copyright claimed. YouTube specifically provides the audio on this page for creators to avoid getting copyright claims.

Whilst you may not be able to find exactly what you are looking for, you can use this page to filter music by genre, instrument, duration, and even mood, which makes it a powerful tool to find music specific to your needs. The sound effects tab is a nice addition, too. You can organize by sound category and all of these sounds are free to use, too.

Next, we have copyright free provided by different channels on YouTube itself. Performing a simple search for ‘copyright free music’ can often return some useful results.

You can even include specific terms like ‘copyright free piano music’ or ‘copyright free comedy music’ to find more specific tunes. Keep in mind that just because a video has copyright free in its title, doesn’t mean it’s free to use on YouTube.

Carefully read the description of the video and see what rules apply. In many cases, it will state that you are allowed to use the song for free, so long as you credit the artist. In some cases, the video may state that you must pay first on their website to use their song – avoid these ones.

In some rare cases, using these songs, even if they are marked as copyright free, can cause you to run into copyright claim issues. At any point, artists can get signed or set up copyright for their content and this could make an older video that has promoted it invalid. We’ll talk more about how you can avoid this in the next section.

How to Make Sure Your Music Doesn’t Get You Demonetized

If you do not want to risk it, you should always use the music and sounds provided by YouTube on the music library that we linked earlier in this article. However, if you are willing to go further for slightly more enjoyable music, you can ensure your videos don’t get demonetized by following the steps I will outline below.

Step 1 – Make sure you read the description of any video you want to use the music from. Make sure it says in the description you are free to use their song without demonetization.

Step 2 – Ensure you go through the proper routes to claim the music that has been provided for free. Usually, this may be a third party  link or hosted on a music website like Soundcloud. Don’t just rip the music from the video.

Step 3 – Add the music to your video, making sure to save the project file in case you need to remove the music in the future. Next, upload the video to YouTube, let it process, but do not upload it.

Step 4 – Fill in all of the details you normally would, such as video description, tags, title, and thumbnail. Do not press publish. Instead, set the video as unlisted and then press done. Don’t worry, you can still switch it from unlisted to public in the future and your subscribers will still get notifications.

Next, you’ll need to wait some time. The best bet is to wait roughly 2 hours. If YouTube’s content ID system detects copyrighted material on your song, you’ll be notified by email. You can then remove your uploaded unlisted video, go back to your original project file, and choose a new song.

If you’ve followed the first steps, it’s very unlikely your video will get copyright claimed, however. But, this makes sure you don’t get caught out by rare cases where it does happen.

For example, once I used a song that was on a copyright free channel, but the artist got signed by a record label after it was published to that channel, which meant the information they provided about it being free to use was outdated.

By following the steps above, you make sure you test the system first to ensure you don’t fall victim to something like this. This then allows you to publish your video knowing that it’s safe for monetization and there’s no risk that you might have to reupload and lose your views.

What Happens if You Get a Copyright Claim on Your Video?

If you get a copyright claim on your video for using music, don’t worry. It won’t impact your channel. In most cases, any of the revenue you would have earned will just go to the original artist instead. In some cases, the video will be blocked from being published.

Copyright claims like this are completely different to channel strikes, which can cause your channel to be banned. Channel strikes are often only applied when you blatantly steal content without any fair use applied, for example uploading an entire movie, and a company manually files a DMCA notice. When using audio, this is very rarely going to happen, especially if you follow all of the steps in this article.

Summary

Thanks for reading this far. If you’ve read up to this point, you will have learned the following things:

• How to find music that’s safe to use on your YouTube channel.
• How to test that music won’t demonetize your videos.
• What happens if you do get a copyright claim and why you don’t need to worry.

I hope that this article has been useful. Do you have any questions about YouTube’s copyright or content ID system? If you do, leave your question below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

VR gaming in particular has really taken off, which might lead to the impression that this is all that VR is good for. However there are some nifty applications out there that makes use of VR technology for something other than innovative gaming experiences.

From actual useful utilities to educational experiences to art. There’s a VR app for just about everything. These five VR applications are perfect examples of how VR can be used for much more than video games.

Virtual Desktop for Oculus Go

The Oculus Go is a standalone, self-contained VR headset from Facebook-owned Oculus. Many applications that were originally designed for the tethered Oculus Rift have been ported in one form or another to the Go.

One popular application is Virtual Desktop. Basically, it puts you into a virtual space and then replicates your desktop displays within that space. There’s a lot of reasons to do this.

For one, it’s a great way to work in private without distraction or shoulder surfing. It also means you aren’t constrained by your physical monitors. Have as many as you want, in any arrangement and at any size. VR desktop software also lets you watch VR content like 360-degree YouTube videos natively.

Bringing the software to an untethered VR headset really opens up possibilities. Use it with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and you can bring your desktop with you anywhere in your home, within reach of the WiFi. You can also the software over an internet connection from anywhere in the world, but obviously latency and bandwidth become factors to consider.

Get it here.

Google Earth VR

Google has done a lot to digitize and map our planet. From satellite images in Google maps to Google Street View, you can see an amazing amount of the world from the comfort of your chair.

The apex of all this geographic data capture is certainly Google Earth, which doesn’t get that much attention these days. So you might be surprised to hear that Google Earth has a full-on VR version, compatible with both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

Using advanced photogrammetry and 3D rendering tech, Google Earth VR lets you fly around the world, looking down into cities, soaring through canyons and experiencing the world as some sort of titanic god. The imagery on offer here is really an impressive achievement and it’s a fantastic educational tool, even if you don’t opt for the VR version.

Get it here.

vTime

One of the best things about modern VR is something called “presence”. That’s the sensation you get when your brain thinks you really are wherever the VR world tells you. It means you perceive the virtual objects around you as really there, which includes virtual people.

This means social VR apps have the potential to bring us a whole new social experience online. vTime is one of the most impressive examples of this VR app type. It’s a cross-platform application that lets people use VR and traditional 2D devices to hang out with each other seamlessly. They refer to it as a “cross-reality” platform, which essentially means people in the same virtual space will have different experiences.

Those spaces are pretty nice too. From tropical islands to cosy fireplace lounges, vTime makes a space for you to be with other human beings. Albeit in the form of cartoony avatars.

While the effect may not be all that impressive using something other than VR, the surprising feeling of presence with a headset when using social apps like these really make you feel like this is something special.

Get it here.

Henry

While VR uses plenty of technologies that we already know, it’s actually a properly new medium. Which means people still have to figure out how to tell stories effectively using it.

Unlike a film frame, you can’t take total control over what the viewer sees or pays attention to. So creators have to invent new ways to subtly and effectively give people the experience they intended when making their content.

Henry, a VR animated short, is currently the best example of how to tell a story in VR. It’s a showcase title for the Oculus Rift, Oculus Go and Gear VR. Expertly rendered and designed, with Hollywood-levels of production quality, Henry shows what’s possible with VR and has yet to be topped.

The story itself is pretty charming, but it’s just as important as a technical and artistic milestone and showcase. If you own the right VR gear and have never seen Henry, that’s something you need to rectify right away.

Get it here.

Tilt Brush

VR has been promoted mainly as a way to consume things that other people have created. Whether it’s a VR video, game or other interactive piece of software. Google looked at it from another perspective and instead created a tool that allows you to use the unique attributes of VR to make content instead.

Tilt Brush is available for the Vive, Oculus and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. It’s a painting tool that works in three dimensions. Or perhaps it’s a VR 3D modelling tool that works with brushes. Really, you’ll have to re-evaluate how you think about things for it to really make sense.

Even if you don’t want to make your own creations, you can explore the works of others in VR, as they are meant to be seen. It’s a whole new way to approach art, and it is glorious.

Get it here.

VR – More Than Meets the Eye

As with any new medium, creators and developers are still exploring what’s possible. It took decades from TV’s mainstream adoption to the pinnacle of modern day television.

Proper, practical VR has only been around since around 2016, so seeing such a diversity of apps already bodes well. So if you’re a little burnt out on VR games, there’s no reason for that headset to gather dust. There’s plenty more to do!

But then the open source movement picked up steam and suddenly we were treated to outstanding quality products. The price? Absolutely nothing. Don’t you just love the Internet?

But What Is Open Source?

There are two forms of software – open source and closed (proprietary) source. It’s important to understand the difference.

Open source is when the source code (the code that runs the software) is freely available for anyone to inspect. You can see how features work, clone your own versions of that software and release them as open-source too (meaning you don’t make a profit on it). Open-source projects are always free. That is the whole point.

On the other hand, closed source (proprietary) software is, as the name says, completely closed. The companies don’t want you to see the source code because they rely on the source code to make a profit with their products.

For example, you will never see the source code for Microsoft or Apple products. It’s just not in their best business interests. You can run open source products on Microsoft or Apple operating systems but getting under the hood of Windows or macOS to inspect their code? Yeah good luck with that.

Below are what I feel are the biggest and best open source projects around. Obviously “biggest and best” is very subjective so maybe you disagree with me? If so, please do let me know.

Linux

Linux is probably the biggest, most well-known, and most popular open source project in existence. Since it began in 1991, there is now easily a couple hundred active Linux operating system “distros” (short for distributions). This includes the Tails system, which I recently profiled, and high-profile ones such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Debian.

Linux is attractive to people who are turned off by the thought of having to pay for expensive operating systems or by people with a hatred towards Windows.

Linux is supported by most major software apps but its downside is that installing those apps is not as straightforward as it would be on Windows or macOS. Some technical ability is required.

Mozilla Firefox

I’ve made no secret of my fondness for Google Chrome, but I still have a place in my heart for Mozilla Firefox. Firefox has been around longer than Chrome has been, and Firefox were the ones who started to destroy Microsoft’s browser monopoly.

I’m surprised though that not many people know that Firefox is open source and that its owner Mozilla is a non-profit foundation. You can freely inspect the code, volunteer to help develop the browser, and even make your own browser based on the Firefox code. Three examples are WaterFox, PaleMoon, and the Tor Browser.

LibreOffice

If there was ever a reason never to pay for Microsoft Office again, LibreOffice would be it. Even paying for Office 365 is pointless when you see free alternatives like LibreOffice and Google Suite.

LibreOffice is a word processing suite which includes text documents, spreadsheets, databases and “presentations” (their version of Powerpoint). Although LibreOffice has its own file format, other file formats, such as Microsoft files, are fully supported, and there is a nifty one-click PDF generation button.

KeePass

Not so long ago, I wrote about my love for KeePass and despite shinier rivals trying to get my attention, my affection for KeePass has never waned. Sure, KeePass is a bit plain and functional. But sometimes that’s all you need.

As well as storing your passwords, it also has a very easy-to-use password generator. When you accept the password it offers you, it automatically pre-fills the KeePass fields so all you need to do is “save”.

Since KeePass also has a portable version, it is easy to stick the password database file in cloud storage and sync it across computers.

WordPress

Along with Linux, this is probably the other most famous example of open-source projects. It is used by a staggering 60 million websites to power everything from online shops to portfolios to blogs (and many more uses in-between).

Let’s just say that if WordPress decided to stop development tomorrow, a lot of websites would have serious problems.

To extend its usability, WordPress relies heavily on its vast library of plugins and themes. Most of them are free but there are a lot of premium options as well.

Chromium

I mentioned earlier on that Mozilla Firefox was the best open-source browser, but Google has also been working on their own light open-source offering.

Not to be confused with Google Chrome, Chromium is Google’s open-source browser. Most of Google Chrome’s code is based on Chromium but Chromium is also a browser in its own right.

Many other browser developers use Chromium code for their own browsers. This includes Amazon Silk and Opera. As of this year, Microsoft Edge will also incorporate Chromium into their browser.

Cryptocurrency

Finally, cryptocurrency. Yes, even that is open-source as anyone can take an existing cryptocurrency, study the code, and make a new one. For example, I could take Bitcoin and use the code to make an ONeillCoin if I was so inclined and had the developing skills.

But that is for another article and for someone who knows what they are talking about.

Thankfully, there are a number of third party desktop apps that can be better for using Instagram on your PC than the standard desktop website is.

In this list, we take a look at three best desktop apps available and explain what their positives and negatives. All downloads were scanned with VirusTotal to make sure they are malware/spyware free. 

Also, be sure to checkout my post on how to browse and search Instagram using the desktop website. That post also shows you how to download high-resolution images from Instagram.

Gramblr

Gramblr is a free Instagram client that hooks straight into the Instagram API. You can download Gramblr from Gramblr.com

This app can be a useful way to upload new photos and videos straight from your desktop, but it’s also very powerful for growing your follower count and engagement thanks to a number of different tools.

We’ve taken a look at some of the biggest reasons why Gramblr is one of the best desktop PC clients for Instagram below.

Uploading Tools

One of the most powerful things about Gramblr is its built-in uploading tools. With these, you are able to upload photos and videos straight to Instagram.

Before you click the upload button, you can go through a number of steps to touch up your photo. These steps are similar to what you’d find on the Instagram app. This includes adding a variety of Instagram filters and a selection of Gramblr exclusive filters.

You also get far finer control over how your image looks thanks to controls for focus, saturation, lighting, and sharpness. It can be incredibly simple to add a fresh look to an image or bring life to a photo that would otherwise be dull.

After you’ve edited your photo, you can add a caption, add a location, include hashtags, and then click post. Interestingly, you are given the option to add 60 likes from real users immediately to your image. More will be explained on this below.

Schedule Posts

There are many Instagram post schedulers on the internet, but nearly all of them don’t actually automate the posting process. Instead, they push the photo and caption to your phone at a certain point and you’re then forced to manually upload it.

This is due to some restrictions Instagram has made to stop users from automating posts with third party tools. Thankfully, this isn’t the case with Gramblr.

With Gramblr, the client essentially hooks straight into the Instagram API to post images on your behalf. This means that so long as the Gramblr client is up, any scheduled posts you’ve set will automatically be posted at the scheduled time.

Auto Like To Grow Follower Count

Because of Gramblr’s workaround, it also has a number of other automation tools that can be beneficial for growing your Instagram account. One such tool is an auto like feature. With this, you’re able to automatically like pictures on Instagram to grab the attention of new users.

You can choose photos with specific hashtags so that you’re always targeting a specific audience. After that, you can press ‘auto-like’ and as long as the Gramblr client is open, your profile will automatically like new posts.

Boost Posts With Likes

You are also able to boost each post you make with Gramblr. You’re given 60 free likes and regularly get free coins that can be spent on more likes. You can also pay for coins to get likes.

Gramblr claims that these likes are from real users. All Gramblr users can gain coins by liking those in the ‘earn coins’ queue. By liking another user’s photo, you’ll get 5 coins, and you can add a like on your own photo for 10 coins.

Potential Issues

Gramblr is a great Instagram client, but it doesn’t come without issues. Firstly, the client rarely gets support or updates and the developer is very hard to get hold of.

Secondly, the features that Gramblr uses are technically against Instagram’s terms of service, but because Gramblr goes straight through Instagram’s API, the auto like, post scheduler, and like boost feature sit in a gray area.

There’s some concern over whether using Gramblr’s marketing tools too much may place restrictions on your account or ban it completely, so it’s something to consider before using it.

Another downside with Gramblr is that you cannot use it to add Stories or to message users.

Windows Store Instagram App

Windows 10 now features an Instagram app that gives you many of the features that the mobile application gives you. It’s free to download and very lightweight. You can download it by visiting the Microsoft Store on your PC.

Because it’s tied into Windows 10, notifications will pop up on your display and be sent straight to your action center.

On the surface, the Windows Store Instagram app looks very similar to the mobile version.

Below, we’ve provided an overview of the Windows Store Instagram app and how it compares to the desktop website.

Overall Layout

The overall layout for the Windows Store Instagram app is parallel to the mobile app. At the top, you have access to the options for refreshing, accessing your direct messages, and uploading photos and videos to your story.

Below that, the stories are showcased. You then have a taskbar at the bottom to access your homepage, search Instagram, view recent likes, and view your profile.

Adding Photos And Videos

One of the main reasons why the Windows Store app is better than the desktop website is the included option for adding photos and videos. When you visit the desktop website, you’re not able to upload new posts.

With the Instagram app on Windows, you can easily add a new post by right clicking the app icon in your task bar and clicking New Post.

If you have a camera, you can take a photo or video with it, or you can click the Camera Roll drop down arrow at the top to browse photos saved to your PC.

Potential Issues

For the most part, the Windows Instagram app is everything you would ever need. The only concern is that the app can sometimes be quite slow. Pages take longer to load than they would when accessing them on your mobile.

Logging in can also be a pain. Sometimes, you’ll struggle to get past the login screen – it just stalls after entering your password. When you do get in, you’ll find the experience to be a treat, for the most part.

Ramme

Ramme is a lightweight desktop app that signs you into an experience that’s practically identical to the Instagram iOS application. You can download Ramme from github.com.

There are a number of reasons why Ramme stands out when compared to the desktop version. Firstly, all functionality from the mobile app is present and exactly where you’d expect it to be. That includes photo uploads, stories, and direct messages.

Below we’ve provided a look at some of the key points worth mentioning with Ramme.

Well Optimized and Lightweight

With Ramme, you just need the .exe file from the GitHub page and you’re good to go. There’s no need to go through an installer or visit the Windows store like you do with Gramblr or the Windows Store app. This makes it easy to store Ramme on a USB stick or download it to use temporarily on a shared computer.

Ramme is very lightweight and runs smoothly too, and you’ll rarely come across any performance issues.

It’s also possible to resize the Ramme window on your desktop and everything on the screen adjusts to fill the window size without any hiccups.

Uploading Images is Easier

The upload process on the Windows Store app is a little odd and uploading images on the desktop website isn’t possible at all.

With Ramme, uploading uses the same process seen on the mobile app. You simply click the ‘+’ icon at the bottom and then browse through Windows File Explorer to find a photo or video to upload.

Potential Issues

We don’t have much bad to say about Ramme, so long as you’re happy to sign in through an app that’s not officially endorsed or created by Instagram.

That wraps up our look at the top 3 apps for using Instagram on your PC. Which desktop app do you like the most out of these three? If you use a different app, leave a comment below to let us know which one. Enjoy!

Other times you need to capture a screenshot and send it to someone else so that they can help you or see what you were doing. Finally, you may want to capture multiple screenshots over a certain time period so that you can see the activity occurring on the computer.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to use a free program to automatically capture screenshots of your computer screen at specified time intervals.

Auto Screen Capture

Auto Screen Capture is an open source utility on SourceForge that has quite a few options for capturing screenshots on your Windows machine. The program works with Windows Vista and higher, including Windows 10.

The good thing about the program is that it doesn’t even require you to install it. All you have to do is download the EXE file and run it. This is great because it doesn’t add anything to your registry or copy files into your system directories.

When you run the program, you’ll see the main interface is split up into a couple of different sections. At the top left is a calendar and below that are the main settings for the program. On the right-hand side, you have previews of each screen connected to your computer. If you only have one monitor, you’ll only see the preview for Screen 1.

By default, the program is set to Demo Mode ON and Schedule Off. This means that when you open the program, the main interface will show up so that you can configure the options. The first thing we want to do is change these settings. Click on the Options button at the very bottom left and then click on Turn on demo mode at application startup to uncheck it. Click on Turn on scheduled screen capturing at application startup to check that option.

The rest of the options are self-explanatory. If you are trying to capture screenshots stealthy, it’s a good idea to uncheck Open this window at application startup, Open this window after stopping the running screen capture session, and Show the slideshow after stopping the running screen capture session. You can also store the screenshots on any drive connected to the computer, including network drives. This is great if you want to install the program on several computers and have all the screenshots saved directly to a server, NAS, etc.

On the Screen Capture tab, the top section controls how often the screenshots will be taken. By default, the program is set to take a screenshot every second, which is a bit ridiculous. If you don’t want all the space on your computer gone in two days, change the timings to something more reasonable like every 30 seconds or every 2 minutes. I would keep Initial capture checked as that includes an additional screenshot of the active window.

The program will create two folders for each day, one with a screenshot of the full desktop and one with a close up of wherever the mouse is located at the time of the screenshot. This is a cool little feature that lets you see the screen in more detail only for the active section of the screen.

Also by default, the program is set to stop after 30 minutes, so if you want screenshots taken continuously or for a longer time, either uncheck the Limit box or type in a higher value. Finally, the Resolution box is set to 100% by default, but you can adjust this setting if the files are too big.

If you scroll down, you’ll see you can also set a schedule for taking screenshots. If you want the program to automatically start taking screenshots, rather than you having to manually start the capture process, check the Start capture at and Stop capture at boxes. Screenshots will only be taken during that time period at the time interval you specified above.

Finally, if you scroll down a little more, you can change the image type to something other than PNG. You can choose from BMP, EMF, GIF, JPEG, TIFF and WMF. In my opinion, the best option is JPEG as it will give you the best quality with the smallest size. In my tests, a full desktop screenshot at 2560×1440 was about 160 KB. If I used the PNG format, the same screenshot was a whopping 1.7 MB!

Click the Start Capture button to start the capturing process. The program should disappear into the taskbar, where it will remain while taking the screenshots. Unfortunately, the best thing you can do to hide it is put it inside the overflow section in the notification area.

This program wasn’t created with any kind of stealth mode or anything like that, so if you need discreet screen recording software, this might not work for you. Once some screenshots have been taken, you can easily view them by going to the Slideshow tab.

If you don’t want to view the screenshots in the program, you can also just browse through the folder using Explorer. In my case, the top level folder was the date and then inside I had a folder named 1 and a folder named 5. One contained full-desktop screenshots and the other contained close-ups.

It’s also worth noting that if you are using Windows 10 with multiple virtual desktops, the program will capture a screenshot of only the active desktop at that time. So if the user switches to desktop 3, you’ll get a screenshot of desktop 3. If they switch back to desktop 2, then you’ll get that desktop in the next screenshot.

Finally, if you click on the Keylogger tab, you can set the program to record all keystrokes while the program is running. Just check the Enable keylogging while screen capturing box. The file will be stored in the same location as the screenshots.

The keylogger is pretty nice in the sense that it actually lists out the program where the keystrokes were recorded. This helps you make sense of all the text in the document.

Overall, the program works really well, considering it’s free of charge. It only works on Windows, but that should be fine for most people. If you need screenshots at set time intervals, this is the best program for the job. Enjoy!

In this article, I’m going to mention a couple of tools that I’ve used to recover a ZIP password on some test files that I created. Hopefully, you’ll be able to access your ZIP file by cracking the password using one of these tools.

It’s worth noting that if the ZIP file is encrypted using AES 128-bit or 256-bit encryption, your only option will be a brute force attack. If the password is very long, you’ll need a really powerful computer to process as many passwords per second as possible.

Also, be sure to check out my other posts on opening password protected RAR files, cracking XLS passwords, resetting Windows administrator passwords, and resetting BIOS passwords.

Elcomsoft Archive Password Recovery

In my opinion, Elcomsoft Archive Password Recovery is the best choice for recovering a password from an encrypted ZIP, RAR, ACE or ARJ archive. The software comes in two flavors: Standard and Pro. The Standard version is $49.99 and the Pro version is $99.

The main difference between the two versions is that the Pro version supports WinZip archives that use enhanced AES encryption and guarantees WinZip recovery with some limitations (must be WinZip 8.0 or earlier and the archive has to have at least 5 files). In addition, it has an additional method of recovery called Password from keys that can be used in addition to brute-force, dictionary and plain-text attacks.

What I like about this program is the number of different methods you can use to recover the password and the different options you have for each method. The toughest situation is when you have a password and you don’t know the length or what kind of characters are included. In these types of situations, you should start with the faster methods before moving on to attacks that will take much longer.

Once you download and install the software, you’ll see the main interface as shown above. To get started, click the Open button and choose your archive file. By default, the Type of Attack is set to Brute-force and the options that are checked include all capital and all lowercase letters.

Before you click Start, you should go ahead and click on the Benchmark button, which will check the type of encryption on the file and give you an estimate of how long it will take using the current options.

As you can see, it will take about 11 minutes to recover a password that was encrypted using AES 256-bit and by only looking at lowercase and uppercase letters with a maximum password length of only 4 characters. If you choose All Printable characters, the time went up to 2.5 hours in my case. Again, this is only for a short four-character password. The time goes up exponentially as the password gets longer.

If you’re not sure how long the password is, click on the Length tab and increase the maximum password length to something higher. The trial version only works up to four characters.

Obviously, if you have no idea what the password is, checking All Printable and then increasing the length to 10 or higher will guarantee you more success, but it might also take way too long. I suggest starting with only letters up to a higher character count and if that doesn’t work, then add All digits and All special symbols one at a time.

Before you start with a brute-force attack, it might be worth trying a dictionary attack first as that will take less time. Choose Dictionary from the drop-down and then click on the Dictionary tab.

The program comes with a small, but decent dictionary already built-in. The nice thing is that you can download bigger dictionaries online and use them in the program if you want. Of course, this won’t work if someone used a complex password, but it’s worth a shot since it’s much faster.

Another thing to note is that the whole archive can be decrypted if you happen to have one of the files that are inside the archive. This probably won’t be the case most of the time, but if you do happen to have at least one file that you know is inside the archive, you can use the Plain Text attack to decrypt the entire archive.

Also, if you happen to know the length of the password and anything else about it, you can use the Mask attack. For example, if you know the password starts with x and is 7 characters long, you would enter x?????? into the Mask box on the Range tab.

Overall, this is an excellent program and definitely worth the cost if you need to get into a ZIP or other archive file. On my test file with a short four-character passcode and 256-bit AES encryption, it worked flawlessly and got me the password in just a few minutes.

The main thing is to run the program on the fastest computer you have around. The more passwords than can be tried per second, the faster you’ll break into the file.

Passware Zip Key

The other good program that I recommend is Passware Zip Key. The program is only $39, which is a bit cheaper than Elcomsoft. They also have a demo version, but it only runs each attack for one minute, so you really can’t test to see if it works, even on a short password.

However, I purchased it so that I could test it and it worked fine. It’s very similar to Elcomsoft in terms of the attacks, etc. Once you install it, click on Recover File Password and then you’ll see the options below.

You can choose Run Wizard, which will let you pick from different options if you happen to know anything about the password. This is good if you know the password only contains letters, etc.

If you click on Use Predefined Settings, it will start with some simple attacks and then automatically move on to more complex attacks. If you click on the Attacks tab at the bottom, you will be able to see all the attacks that will be tried.

Some attacks will take longer than others, again depending on the password length and encryption type. Brute force is the slowest method, so that’s why the programs tries other methods in-between.

Lastly, you can choose Advanced: Customized Settings and basically configure everything manually like how the Elcomsoft program is setup by default.

You choose an attack from the list and then click the left arrow button to add it to the queue. You can add several attacks and they will run one after the other. In my case, I choose a brute force attack with a four-character password that contains letters, numbers and symbols. It didn’t take long for Zip Key to crack my test file, which is the same one I used for testing Elcomsoft.

If you plan to purchase Zip Key, please do it using this purchase link. The price is the same, but I get a small cut for recommending the program instead of the company getting all the money. Thanks!

There are a lot of other programs out there for cracking ZIP files, but these are the two that I really liked in terms of ease of use, features and actual ability to recover the password. If you have used something else, feel free to let us know in the comments. Enjoy!

The SD Association provides an SD card formatter for this purpose. Yes, they recognize Windows has a built-in formatting feature, however, they warn that by using the generic operating system formatter, “optimum performance may not be experienced.” Translation: SD card death and less picture-saving space.

The program can be downloaded on both Mac and Windows. All SD, SDHC and SDXC cards are supported and using a USB SD card reader is recommended for the formatting process.

Once you install and run the program, it initializes with just one small screen.

Make sure you insert your SD card into the reader before you start up the program. The program is smart enough to scan all the drives and find the drive for the SD card. If not, just click the Refresh button. If you’re having trouble getting the card to show up in the dropdown, you might have to install the SDXC driver for that particular type of card.

Next, click Option to select how you want the SD card formatted. A dialogue box appears with a dropdown menu listing three “format type” options. The first, Quick, is simply a standard format that erases the Master Boot Record (MBR) on the SD card. Even though the data cannot be accessed using Explorer or Finder on Windows and Mac, it remains on the card itself.

The Full (Overwrite) option will initialize the card and overwrite all the data with meaningless data. This method is more secure than simply erasing the data on the SD card because it is much harder to retrieve previously written data if you overwrite it. This option will take much longer than Full (Erase) or Quick.

The Full (Erase) option deletes the data on the SD card. Using special software and tools, it is possible to retrieve data that was deleted using this method. If the card does not support this method, it will revert to the Quick format.

Under the Format Type dropdown menu is a second menu called Format Size Adjustment that asks if you want to try to increase the amount of space on your SD card or not. Turning this option on will allow you to use the maximum space possible on your SD card. Once you have made your selection, click OK.

My recommendations are to choose Full (Overwrite) and turn Format Size Adjustment to ON. Back on the main screen, it should show you the settings you have selected.

Finally, click Format. You will be asked one last time if you are sure you want to do this. If you are sure, click OK.

A new dialogue box then displays the status of the formatting process. For the options selected above, it will overwrite the entire card with random data and then format the card. If you are using a larger disk, the process could take a while. Do not turn off your computer or remove the disk until the entire process is complete.

When complete, a dialogue box appears telling you the results of the formatting process.

Overall, the program works well and it will ensure that your card lasts longer and that your data is permanently removed, if you are planning on giving it to someone else. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. Enjoy!

The virtual version of Windows is just a large file and special software running on your Windows computer (virtualization software) acts as a fake computer so that Windows can run. Anything you do in the virtual machine will not affect your host operating system. So you could download 10 viruses onto the virtual machine and your main operating system would be safe.

What’s nice about virtual machines is that you can reset them. So if you get a virus while browsing in the virtual machine, you can simply reset the virtual machine to the default state when you first installed it and start over. It’s also a great way to increase your privacy because you can simply erase anything you’ve done in a virtual machine.

Before we get started, let’s talk about the requirements. There are many software virtualization tools out there like VMWare, Parallels, VirtualBox, etc., but I’m going to stick with only Microsoft software. In order for this to work, you need two things:

1. Disk2VHD – A free tool from Microsoft that will be used to convert any Windows operating system from Windows XP onwards into a virtual machine file.
2. Windows 8.1 Pro or Windows 10 Pro – You’ll need the Pro versions of either Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 in order to complete this process. Both operating systems have a tool called Hyper-V that can be used to access the virtual file created by Disk2VHD.

It’s also worth noting that even though you can use Windows XP, Vista and 7 as the virtual machine, it’s best if you can convert a Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 machine because the highest resolution that Hyper-V supports for those older operating systems is 1600×1200. It’s really annoying and I don’t know why Microsoft hasn’t bothered to fix this issue yet. Anyway, it’s only a problem for those with high resolution monitors.

Convert Windows OS to VHD

Let’s start with the easy part: converting your current version of Windows into a virtual machine (VHD or VHDX file). To do this, download the Disk2VHD tool mentioned above and run the EXE file.

When you run it, you’ll see a screen like the one above. There really isn’t much you have to do here other than choose the location where you want to save the VHDX file and which volumes you want to include.

If you have a large hard drive, you can just let it save the file to the same partition as Windows. If not, choose another location like a second hard drive or an external USB hard drive. By default, it’s going to select all of the volumes it finds on your computer, which may not be want you actually want.

In my case, I have several hard drives connected to the computer, so I only want to select volume C:\, which is 37.26 GB in size. In addition, you want to make sure to select any other volumes that were created when you installed Windows, most likely the Boot volume and System Reserved volume. These are usually really small: in my case, the System Reserved volume is only 34 MB and the other volume, which has no label, is only 322.08 MB.

It’s very important that you select these other volumes in addition to the main Windows volume because if you don’t, the operating system won’t boot when you load it into Hyper-V. Instead, you’ll get a Boot Failure message! This is because those two extra volumes tell the system where Windows is located and how to boot it.

It will probably take some time to create the VHDX file depending on how big your Windows partition is. Once finished, you’ll have one really large file and two smaller files.

Install Hyper-V in Windows 8.1/10

Next, we have to install the Hyper-V tools in Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 Pro. If you have the Home editions, you’ll have to upgrade to Pro before you can install Hyper-V. Click on Start and type in windows features.

At the top, click on Turn Windows features on or off. A window will appear where you can check off extra items you want to install. Go ahead and check the box for Hyper-V. It should automatically check the boxes for Hyper-V Management Tools and Hyper-V Platform also.

Click OK and let Windows install the features. You will also have to restart your computer. Once you boot back up, click on Start, All Apps and then scroll down to Windows Administrative Tools. You should see Hyper-V Manager listed there. You can also just click on Start and type in Hyper-V to search for it.

Configuring Hyper-V

Now for the fun part! Let’s get started with Hyper-V. Go ahead and open the Hyper-V Manager and you’ll see a blank workspace.

At the far left is the server, which should be the name of your computer. In the middle section are the list of virtual machines and checkpoints. On the right, you have a dynamic menu that changes depending on what item is selected in the left-hand sections. To get started, select the computer name at the far left.

Now at the far right, click on New and then Virtual Machine. This will bring up the new virtual machine wizard. The first step is to give your virtual machine a name.

Next, you have to choose the generation for the virtual machine. If you are converting a 64-bit version of Windows to a virtual machine and your computer hardware supports UEFI, go ahead and choose Generation 2, since that allows for more advanced features. Use Generation 1 for 32-bit versions of Windows or if your machine is using legacy BIOS. Generation 2 also supports wide-screen displays when virtualizing Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.

If you have no idea what all that means, just choose Generation 1 to be on the safe side. Note that if the virtual machine fails to boot, you can easily just delete it and start this process again. Select a different generation and see if it boots up properly. Deleting the virtual machine inside Hyper-V does not delete your original VHDX files.

On the next screen, you have to choose the amount of memory you want to assign to your virtual machine. I left it at the default value of 1024 MB, but you can increase it if you have enough RAM available on your host machine.

Go ahead and skip the Configure Networking screen for now because we will have to do that later. For now, just leave it at Not Connected. On the Connect Virtual Hard Disk screen, you need to select Use an existing virtual hard disk.

Click the Browse button and select the VHDX image that represents your actual Windows partition. This should be the really big VHDX file. We will have to manually add the other two VHDX drives after the wizard, which I will show further down. At this point, review the summary and click Finish.

Now you should see a new item listed under Virtual Machines. If you click on this, you’ll see a bunch more options in the right-hand pane also.

To start the virtual machine, select it and then click on Start. The State column will change to Running. Next to view the virtual machine, click on Connect. If you did this now, you’ll see that error message that I mentioned at the beginning of the article: Boot failure. We still need to add the other hard drives.

Select the virtual machine and click Turn Off. Then click on the Settings link. On the left hand side, you should see IDE Controller 0 and IDE Controller 1. Click on the Controller 0 first. If you chose Generation 2, you will see SCSI Controller only.

You will see that the first VHDX file we added in the wizard is already listed. Now we have to add the second and third files. Make sure Hard Drive is selected and then click Add.

The Location box should automatically choose 1 since the 0 slot is taken by our first VHDX file. Each IDE Controller only has two slots available for adding drives. Click Virtual hard disk and choose your second VHDX file.

Now click on IDE Controller 1 and then click the Add button again. Do the same thing here, but choose your third VHDX file.

Now that we have all three VHDX files attached, we can click OK and start up our virtual machine. This time you should hopefully get a screen with Windows loading!

Configure Networking

Lastly, we need to setup networking for the virtual machine so that you can connect to the local network and to the Internet. To do this, click on Virtual Switch Manager at the top of the right hand menu.

Click on New virtual network switch and then select External from the list box. Finally, click on Create Virtual Switch.

Give your virtual switch a name if you like and then choose the correct network from the dropdown box. If you have more than one network card, choose the one that is connected to the network and Internet. Once your switch has been created, we need to tell the virtual machine to use it. To do that, click on the virtual machine in Hyper-V manager and then click on the Settings link in the right pane.

Click on Network Adapter and then choose the new virtual switch that you created in the previous step. That’s it! Now when you start up your virtual machine, it should get network access via the host computer.

Hopefully, this article helps you take your current PC and convert it into a virtual machine that you can run on the same PC or another PC if you like. There are lots of things that can go wrong in this process, so feel free to comment if you run into problems. Enjoy!

Luckily, most damaged AVI or MPG files can be fixed because the problem is normally related to the index. If the index is repaired, then the files can be read by the media player again.

In this article, I’m going to talk about a couple of programs that can help you repair corrupt video files. Note that you might end up with a smaller file or with parts of the video missing when using these tools, so make sure to create a backup of the original file.

Also, if you end up using multiple tools, make sure to always start off with the original file for each program. Performing multiple repairs on the same video file using different programs could lead to more corruption!

It’s also worth noting that I specifically didn’t mention a couple of programs that you might run across online because of various issues. Digital Video Repair by Rising Research showed up as having malware when I ran it through VirusTotal.

Another program called File Repair that claims it can repair files of all sorts, but it didn’t repair my test AVI file and therefore wasn’t really worth mentioning for this article.

DivFix++

DivFix++ has been around for a long time and does a really good job of repairing AVI and DivX files. Once you download it, go ahead and extract all the files and then run the EXE file.

Click the Add Files button to choose your video file and then click on the Check Errors button to have the program scan to see if there are any issues.

In order to fix the file, go ahead and click on the Fix button. In my instance, it gave me an error count of 0, but the video was still not playable because I purposely messed up the index.

Even so, when I clicked the Fix button, it instantly repaired the file and created a copy because I checked the Keep Original File box. It will output the repaired video in the same directory as the original video file.

I could also tell before I even played the video that the file was repaired because Windows was showing me a thumbnail of the first frame rather than a generic video icon. Go ahead and give this program a shot first because it usually works.

VLC Media Player

If you already have VLC Media Player installed on your computer, then this might be the better option because it has the ability to repair the index for an AVI file.

When you open the damaged file, you’ll get a message asking what you would like to do: Build index then play, Play as is, or Do not play.

If you have a bunch of files that are having this problem, you can have VLC automatically fix the file when it is played by going to Tools and then Preferences. Click on Inputs and Codecs and then choose Always Fix next to Damaged or incomplete AVI file.

Now whenever you open a damaged AVI file, it will automatically fix it temporarily and play the video. Note that it does not actually modify the original video file itself, instead it just fixes the issue in memory and plays the file.

Remo Repair AVI

Remo Repair AVI is a free program to download, but will try to charge you a whopping $70 when you go to save your repaired video. This is just a ridiculous price and because of the way the program is currently coded, it can easily be bypassed.

Download the program, install it and then run it. Click the Browse button to select your video file and then click on the big Repair button.

Now don’t worry about clicking on Save or Preview because the program has already repaired the file and simply saved it to a hidden folder on the computer.

First, go ahead and open Explorer and configure it so that you can see hidden files and folders in Windows 8 or Windows 10. If you’re running Windows 7, click on Organize and then Folder and Search Options.

Next, click on the View tab and then click on the Show hidden files, folders and drives button.

Now navigate to the following folder on your hard drive:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Remo Repair AVI 2.0\$tp

Here you should see a file called $tp and it should be the same size or very close to your original video file. The file won’t have any extension so it’ll look like a default document.

Go ahead and copy this file to anywhere you like and then just rename it to anything you like, but make sure to put an .AVI extension to the end. For example, I copied mine to the desktop, right-clicked on it, chose Rename and then typed in MyVideo.avi. BAM! You can now play the repaired video just fine.

Hopefully, one of these three methods will get you a repaired and playable AVI video! If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!

For example, you could use this command to map the Outlook folder stored at C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook to a drive letter like Z.

Whenever you click on the Z drive in My Computer, you would actually be redirected to the Outlook folder! This can be very useful in many different situations, especially when working with paths that are longer than 256 characters.

So what’s the problem with using the SUBST command? It’s not persistent! That means when you restart the computer, your drive is gone. You have to create it again and you can’t have any startup program try to access the substituted drive since it’ll disappear.

psubst is a nifty little program that you can use to create persistent substituted drive in Windows that will remain even after restarting.

Creating a persistent virtual drive in Windows using psubst is very easy. First, download the ZIP archive and extract the .BAT file. You can extract files in Windows by simply right-clicking on the ZIP file and choosing Extract All.

Go ahead and drop the psubst.bat file into your C:\Windows\System32 folder so that you can run it from anywhere at the command prompt.

Once in place, go to the command prompt (Start, Run, CMD or just type CMD into the search box) and start creating virtual drives. The syntax for using psubst is as follows:

Create a disk:

psubst drive1: drive2:path

Delete a disk:

psubst drive1: /D

List of existing disks:

psubst

This will use the standard subst command to create virtual drives. If you wan to create a persistent one, just the /P argument as shown:

Create a persistent virtual drive:

psubst drive1: drive2:path /P

Delete a persistent virtual drive:

psubst drive1: /D /P

So to create a persistent virtual hard drive (Z) to the Outlook data folder I mentioned above, I would issue the following command:

psubst z: "C:\Documents and Settings\akishore\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook" /P

Now your new drive will show up as a local disk in My Computer:

Clicking on the disk will bring your directly into the Outlook folder. If you drop files or folders on the drive letter, the data will be copied to the folder.

When you restart your computer, your drive will still be there. Not only that, but you can have other programs, such as services, etc, access the virtual drive even before Windows fully starts up because the drive will be available. It also shows up anywhere that Explorer is used like Open dialogs, Save as dialogs, etc.

Overall, mapping a folder to a drive letter is a great way to access a very deep folder quickly and easily. You can obviously also create a desktop shortcut to your folder, but the substituted drive method has the advantage of being accessible from any Windows dialog that lets you browse the computer. If you have a any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!