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Disable Dumprep.exe in XP and Turn off Error Reporting in Vista
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Suddenly your machine bogs down right at that critical moment, you reach for your Louisville slugger to give your PC a piece of your mind but you pause. A further examination of your machine finds a new application running in the background tying up your precious resources. The dreaded Dumprep.exe, what is Dumprep.exe? Well if you use Windows XP its a Microsoft tool called “Windows Error Dump Reporting”. Basically if some file crashes on your system Windows “phones home” via Dumprep.exe and sends a error report back to the mothership where it will deleted and never looked at. The funny thing is that the dumprep.exe isn’t the most reliable program ever and can make a already bad situation worse. So let’s get rid of the narky ET.
Disable Dumprep.exe on Windows XP:
1. Right click on “My Computer” choose “Properties” from that menu.
2. Click on “Advanced tab”.
3. Click the “Error Reporting” button.
4. Check the “Disable error reporting” box.
You may choose to uncheck the the box below it, “But notify me when an error occurs” if you want.
But wait! There’s more! If you are using Vista you get the same phone home with a different application. So if you are using Vista, here’s your instructions to turn it off.
Disable Error Reporting on Windows Vista:
- Right click on “Control Panel”.
- Click on “System Maintenance”. If you view your Control Panel by “Classic view” skip to the next step.
- Click on “Problem Reports and Solutions”.
- Click on “Change Settings” in the left sidebar.
- Now look for the “Advanced Settings” button and click it.
- You can now turn off “problem” reporting.
Easily Take Ownership of your Vista files
XPero over at WinMatrix designed piece of software called “Take Control” for Microsoft Vista users. You will need to take ownership of a file if you need to delete or modify a system file. Take Ownership lets breaks down probably 6 screens of settings into once application that lets you select and “take ownership”. It really doesn’t get any easier than this. Previously you had to jump through tons of hoops to get do this, see howtogeeks convoluted instructions here. If you are not a Windows Vista user or a Mac user you may be shrugging why do I need this? Obvious reasons are a nasty piece of spyware that attaches to a system file and now you cannot repair or delete the file, (you will need to take ownership) or you are modifying a piece of the operating system (tweaking) a piece of the operating system. This is also handy if you have an old XP partition or HD laying around and now when you try to access the files Vista wants you take ownership.
Right Click with Mac Book Pro under Windows
Are you a MacBook Pro user running Windows on occasion? Do you long for the day that you could easily right click without a tremendous amount of effort or another mouse? Well your answer is here, well at least until Apple releases their redesigned cases with two mouse buttons. This simple program turns your mouse button into a right click when you press the control key.
Clean out your registry
It happens to even the best of us. You install a program and thinking its the best thing since sliced cheese, it turns out to be moldy cheese. You uninstall the moldy software and move on. A few weeks later after installing a few more moldy software titles you are basking in the glow of a bogged down PC that either responds with an error or a shrug. What next? Chances are your moldy software left behind a trail of junk. Thats where CCleaner comes in. Originally named Crap Cleaner which probably was a far more yet descriptive yet somewhat offensive name it digs through your registry to clean out old, unused, and corrupt entries.
Not only can it drill down into the muck into your registry but it can also clean out other areas of your PC such as temp files, cookies, cache files, prefetch and many more. In other words it slices it dices and spits out a much cleaner PC.
Eliminate Microsoft’s slow updates with portable Autopatcher
Autopatcher is a utility that offers automated Windows updates. No more downloading from Microsoft, everything is inside with one single download. Just download the latest Autopatcher for Vista or XP and you can install all of the latest updates on whichever PC you would like. Autopatcher makes all of the latest Microsoft updates totally portable and eliminates the need to download from slow connections when you are updating someone else’s machine. It also allows for customizations so you can add whatever gizmos you usually install.
Capture screenshots from Windows Media player
Taking screenshots of Windows Media Player without the video disappearing apparently is not common knowledge so I will divulge. It really is easy, all you need to do is go to the “Tools” menu, then click on “Options”. Once you are in the options menu click on “Performance”. Slide the hardware acceleration bar to none and go back to take your screenshot. This time it will work, just don’t forget to push the slider back to full hardware acceleration before you quit so future video plays smoothly.
Special thanks to David
