Multi-Player Gaming

Computers are not only useful for work, they are also an excellent way to waste time by playing games. Computer games have come a long way since Pong, Breakout and Pacman. Using recent technology such as OpenGL, 3D, advanced environmental sound, Force Feedback joysticks and incredible game engines with amazing artificial intelligence have taken PC games to a whole new level of entertainment. Landscapes never looked so nice, race cars never drove so real, foot steps never sounded so scary, monsters never so smart.
But even with all this amazing technology and realistic games, they are still limited as far as the opponents are concerned. After a while you figure out where the monsters are waiting – always in the same spot in the same levels – and the driving style of that computer race car driver you’re competing against. You master all the levels, win all the races – what now? Is the game over?
Not at all, the fun is just beginning. Mastering a game in single-player mode is just a way of getting used to the controls and familiar with the game, just a way of preparing you for the next step – multi-player gaming.
Multi-Player Gaming
Multi-player gaming has become very popular over the last few years and added a whole new level of excitement to games. Instead of fighting senseless and predictable monsters, you compete against other human minds that are sneaky, competitive and much less predictable. There are always new people to play, no game is ever the same, the fun never ends.
There are now hundreds of PC games that have the capability of playing against other people over a network, either over the Internet or a local area network (LAN) at your house or the office. Probably the most popular and all-time favorite multi-player game is Quake, a first-person-shooter (FPS). The third installment of Quake will actually be multi-player only, no single-player mode. That should speak for the popularity of multi-player gaming. Other popular multi-player games are Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, Half-Life, Links, Need for Speed, Unreal, Mech Warrior, just to name a few.
To play a multi-player game you need a game that of course supports multi-player gaming, a PC with decent performance, and a connection to a network, either the Internet or a local area network. Let’s first take a look at how to set up a local network game.

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Multi-booting Windows

- Alex -
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Contents

• Introduction/What You Need
• Starting From Scratch/Making A Battle Plan
• Fresh Installation – Step-By-Step
• System Commander – Installation, How It Works, Customizing
• Testing It and Adding Partition Magic and Drive Image
• Adding An Operating System To Your Collection Afterwards
• Drive Imaging Made Easy, Partition Magic
• Tips and Troubleshooting

Introduction
Having multiple versions of Windows available can be helpful in many ways for home as well for business use. For example, you prefer working with Windows NT 4, but other family members prefer Windows 98 and Windows 95. Or maybe you mainly use Windows ME but you have a game that only runs in Windows 98. You could be a software engineer who needs to test some code in different operating systems. Perhaps you are a QA tester and need to put an application through its paces in several operating systems.
Whatever the reason may be, unless you have multiple PCs and plenty of desk space available to you, a computer with a multi-boot environment is the optimal setup. A PC with a multi-boot setup allows you to switch between different versions of Windows by simply restarting the PC and selecting the desired operating system. The instructions in this guide will show you how to take a machine with a blank hard drive, and turn it into an efficient multi-boot machine. You’ll learn about:

• Creating and managing multi-boot environments with System Commander 2000
• Installing different versions of Windows operating systems
• Creating and restoring images of partitions
• Creating, deleting, moving, and resizing partitions

If the instructions seem a bit long, it is because they were written for detail and clarity and to cover almost any possible situation, and to help make the process as simple as possible.
What You Need
There are of course several ways of setting up a multi-boot system and making drive images. We’ll leave it up to you what Windows versions you decide to multi-boot and what boot manager program you want to use. In our example, we started out with a collection of CDs and floppies for the following programs:

• MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Disk
• Windows 98 Boot Disk
• Windows NT 4 Setup Disks
• Windows 2000 Setup Disks
• MS-DOS 6.22 Installation Disks
• Windows 95 Installation CD
• Windows 98 Installation CD
• Windows ME Installation CD
• Windows NT 4 Installation CD
• Windows 2000 Installation CD
• System Commander 2000 Installation CD – http://www.v-com.com
• Partition Magic 5.01 Rescue Floppy Disk – http://www.powerquest.com
• Drive Image 3.02 Rescue Floppy Disk – http://www.powerquest.com
• Current drivers for all hardware for all Operating System you plan to use!
• Service Packs for Windows NT 4 and/or Windows 2000

This collection is a good start for a multi-boot toolkit.

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Multi-booting Windows

- Alex -
Download this article as a text file (Self-Extracting Zip)
View this article in printer-friendly plain-text format
E-mail this article to a friend

Contents

• Introduction/What You Need
• Starting From Scratch/Making A Battle Plan
• Fresh Installation – Step-By-Step
• System Commander – Installation, How It Works, Customizing
• Testing It and Adding Partition Magic and Drive Image
• Adding An Operating System To Your Collection Afterwards
• Drive Imaging Made Easy, Partition Magic
• Tips and Troubleshooting

Introduction
Having multiple versions of Windows available can be helpful in many ways for home as well for business use. For example, you prefer working with Windows NT 4, but other family members prefer Windows 98 and Windows 95. Or maybe you mainly use Windows ME but you have a game that only runs in Windows 98. You could be a software engineer who needs to test some code in different operating systems. Perhaps you are a QA tester and need to put an application through its paces in several operating systems.
Whatever the reason may be, unless you have multiple PCs and plenty of desk space available to you, a computer with a multi-boot environment is the optimal setup. A PC with a multi-boot setup allows you to switch between different versions of Windows by simply restarting the PC and selecting the desired operating system. The instructions in this guide will show you how to take a machine with a blank hard drive, and turn it into an efficient multi-boot machine. You’ll learn about:

• Creating and managing multi-boot environments with System Commander 2000
• Installing different versions of Windows operating systems
• Creating and restoring images of partitions
• Creating, deleting, moving, and resizing partitions

If the instructions seem a bit long, it is because they were written for detail and clarity and to cover almost any possible situation, and to help make the process as simple as possible.
What You Need
There are of course several ways of setting up a multi-boot system and making drive images. We’ll leave it up to you what Windows versions you decide to multi-boot and what boot manager program you want to use. In our example, we started out with a collection of CDs and floppies for the following programs:

• MS-DOS 6.22 Boot Disk
• Windows 98 Boot Disk
• Windows NT 4 Setup Disks
• Windows 2000 Setup Disks
• MS-DOS 6.22 Installation Disks
• Windows 95 Installation CD
• Windows 98 Installation CD
• Windows ME Installation CD
• Windows NT 4 Installation CD
• Windows 2000 Installation CD
• System Commander 2000 Installation CD – http://www.v-com.com
• Partition Magic 5.01 Rescue Floppy Disk – http://www.powerquest.com
• Drive Image 3.02 Rescue Floppy Disk – http://www.powerquest.com
• Current drivers for all hardware for all Operating System you plan to use!
• Service Packs for Windows NT 4 and/or Windows 2000

This collection is a good start for a multi-boot toolkit.

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Ultimate PC Secrets

I just read a good book thats shows many tips for speeding up computers. Ultimate PC Secrets is the name and it comes packed with page after page of optimization tricks. I read thru the entire thing and even this old dog learned a few new tricks.
Download Ultimate PC Secrets
I highly suggest any pc users grab a copy and check it out.

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Internet Speed Test Updated

Our wildly popular internet speed test has been updated. This will tell you your upload and download speed very quickly and is the most accurate speed test we know of.
You can even download a copy of our internet speed test, just click here. Now you can test your speed right from your desktop as much as you want, anytime you want. Download Speed Test
Test Your Internet Speed Now

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Optimizing Windows Vista Process and Resource Handling

 Windows Vista by default installs services and configures several applications which may not suite your needs. If you are a home user rather than in a business environment there are many things you can change to give your computer that little extra oomph for applications and process you use.

 I have put together a few items which when set correctly can help you control how resources are used on your system. Some of these items listed will simply uninstall certain features or change a program configuration. Others listed can be used to actually designate what resources are dedicate to individual programs. If used properly this can make specific programs operate faster and more efficiently.

You may or may not wish to implement some or all of these changes as it will be a matter of preference. Please remember you should document any changes made to your system. This well help you reverse any changes made if for any reason you experience adverse effects. 

Uninstalling remote differential compression

The remote differential compression feature is designed to streamline file transfers to and from remote directories by keeping track of file changes and only transferring the changed information.

To disable this feature:

Go to “start/control panel/programs/uninstall a program”.

On the sidebar select “turn windows features on and off”.

Uncheck “remote differential compression” and select “ok.”

Designating which CPU (if using multiple processors) runs a specific process

Windows Vista allows you the ability to assign an application to run only on a specific CPU. This is called processor affinity. This is a good way of balancing the load on a multi-core CPU.

Assigning processor affinity to an application:

Launch the desired application.

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL and choose the “task manager”.

In the “applications” tab locate the desired program and right click it. Choose “go to process”.

This will bring you to the “processes” tab with the process used by the application application highlighted. Right click the process and select “set affinity”.

The processor affinity window will open. Using the check box select which processor(s) you want to run that application.

Note: All settings will reset to default when a restart of the computer is performed.

Assigning priority to an application

All recent Microsoft operating systems have contained the concept of priority, meaning in this case, which process gets the most attention from the CPU. In Vista, you can customize these priority settings so that your hardware is concentrating most on what you want it to.

Vista has a range of available settings ranging from “low” to “real time”.

Note: Any full screen application automatically is assigned high priority by Windows Vista.The best way to optimize such applications is to tweak the commonly used windowed applications.

Assigning a custom priority to an application:

Launch the desired application.

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL and choose the “task manager”.

In the “applications” tab locate the desired program and right click it. Choose “go to process”.

This will open the “processes” tab with the process highlighted.

Right click the process and choose “set priority”. The priority list will openand you may designate your desired level.

Note: that choosing “realtime” is not wise as this will designate all processing being alloted to this one specific process. All settings will be reset to default when you restart the computer.

Configuring Windows Defender

Windows Defender by default runs a scan daily. Even though this scan runs in the background it can impact system performance. You may wish to disable the automatic scanning and perform only occasional manual system scans.

Disable Windows Defender automated scans:

Open the “start” menu and in the search field type “defender.”

select the “tools” icon at the top of the window and then “options”.

Uncheck “automatically scan my computer” and select “save”.

This will be the first in a line of articles dedicated to improving performance on Windows Vista. If you have a suggestion of your own that you have implemented and you feel may be beneficial to others please comment on this article. We would be happy to include any viable tips in our next article.

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Cleaning your mouse

Your mouse is subject to a lot of wear and tear as it gets used extensively in Windows. One of the things that is most detrimental to mouse performance is dirt. As you move the mouse around, it picks up lint, dust, and other dirt and transfers it into the insides of your mouse where it gradually builds up deposits of this dirt on the rollers and ball inside the mouse. In addition, when you touch your mouse with sweaty or dirty hands, it can develop a sticky coating on its textured surface. Even though this happens only gradually, eventually your mouse will feel pretty nasty to the touch and perform erratically, causing the cursor to jump and stick, and making accurate use of the mouse impossible.
But there’s no reason to throw away your mouse and buy a new one, since you can restore it to almost perfect condition again by taking only ten minutes and giving it a thorough cleaning with some basic household cleaning items. We’ll show you how to turn that filthy rodent back into the precise pointing tool it used to be. But make sure you first shut down your computer and unplug the mouse from the system to be safe.
Look at this filthy rodent
I dug through a box of old used mice at my company and came up with a prime candidate for cleaning. It looks extremely nasty and feels even worse. And that’s only the outside. Let’s take a look at the inside. Turn the mouse over and look at the underside. You should see a circular plastic piece that holds the mouse ball in place. Twist this piece counterclockwise as indicated by the arrows to remove it and the ball.

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