We recently reviewed CollageIt on Windows Guides; PearlMountain technology have been kind enough to provide 20 license keys (12 Windows; 8 Mac.)

I’ll reply to the first 20 emails to collageitpro@mintywhite.com with a key and then remove this post so hopefully, if you see this post on mintywhite.com (link), you will get a key.

Please specify which key type you would like (Windows/Mac)

collageitpro@mintywhite.com

There are three ways to do this on your laptop. One of them requires that you delve into the command prompt, a task many feel unwilling or unprepared to handle. If you are one of these people, there’s still a way to make your laptop a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Windows 7 Hotspot instructions

Create a hotspot with “Virtual Router Plus”

Here’s what you’ve got to do, based on our trials from sources:

1. Download Virtual Router Plus. This is a free, open-source program that you can download onto your computer
2. There’s an option on the site to download the program. Click to start the download
3. Once the file has downloaded, extract and launch it
4. When installing the software, be careful to only install the additional software if you feel it will be of use; otherwise, click Skip then Cancel for the offers presented:
5. Choose and enter a name for your network
6. Do the same with a password that is at least eight characters long
7. Click Start

To get your other web-enabled devices connected:

1. Connect your device to the network you just created on your laptop with the program called Virtual Router Plus
2. Type in the password and press Enter

If you’ve input everything correctly, your device should be connected to the Internet via the hotspot you’ve created on your laptop.

If you don’t want to download Virtual Router Plus, there’s another way to set up a Wi-Fi hotspot with Windows 8 on your laptop.

Set up a Wi-Fi hotspot using a command prompt

Here’s how you get started, we’ve also referenced howtogeek.com for these steps:

1. On your laptop’s keyboard, press Windows + R to launch a run box
2. Once the window appears, type ncpa.cpl in the bar, and press Enter
3. Your network connections will open. Right-click on your Wireless network adapter
4. Click Properties
5. In Wi-Fi Properties, you’ll see two tabs. Click the Sharing tab
6. Check the box beside the command that reads, Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection
   
7. Uncheck the second box beside the command that reads, Allow other network users to control or disable the shared Internet connection
   
8. Right-click in the bottom left corner of your screen to start an administrative command prompt (Command Prompt (Admin))
9. Use the netsh command. Type it in this way:
   netsh wlan hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=[name of your network] key=[password of your choosing]
10. The next command broadcasts the network you’ve created:
     netsh wlan start hostednetwork
11. The last command shows you what channel you’re on, and how many users are connected to your network:
    netsh wlan show hostednetwork

That’s it! Follow these steps and you should be able to use your Windows 8-eqipped laptop as your very own hotspot for other devices and/or users.

This is a guest post from Ryan Harris.  We encourage you to reach out to him with questions on this post or anything else tech related on Twitter – @harrisryan30.  Outside of his failed attempts at comedy on Twitter, Ryan is a copywriter for a variety of sites – including internet.clear.com.  Please connect with him on Twitter for guest post requests or if you need copywriting guidance with your site!

Here are some of the noteworthy features of Zoolz:

1. Complete backup of your computer including internal, external and network drives.
2. Encrypts your data with strong AES 256 bit cipher.
3. Displays previews of uploaded pictures, music, videos from the web interface.
4. Can resume incremental backups of disconnected drives automatically.
5. Supports clients and apps for Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android.

Zoolz offers both the cold storage and the instant storage services. The difference between the two is that restoring of the files from cold storage backup takes about 3-5 hours, while the restoring of your files from the instant storage is done instantly. Consequently, the cold storage services from Zoolz are cheaper than the instant storage services. The price for 100 GB cold storage is $3/month while that for instant storage is $9/month.

To begin with, you should sign-up with Zoolz on their website. After a successful sign-up, you would be shown a download link for the desktop client for Windows. If you are a Mac user then you will have to wait as they are still working on the Mac client software. The desktop client for Windows, starts up in a wizard mode asking you login information, selection of the folders or disks you want to backup, configuration for backup schedule (you can choose to backup every 4 hours, 12 hours or 24 hours) and encryption (you can choose your own password for encryption or let Zoolz use an internal password) etc.

Once these steps are completed, Zoolz places an icon in the Windows system tray. The right-click menu of the Zoolz system tray icon has many options like opening Zoolz website, running or pausing the backup, restoring files and toggling between smart and turbo backup mode. The smart backup mode uses optimal amount of system resources and the internet bandwidth depending on the user activity. The turbo mode runs the backup at full throttle and can consume a lot of internet bandwidth.

Double-clicking on the system tray icon opens up the Zoolz Dashboard where you can choose what you want to backup through data selection, restore your files and change settings. In the settings, you can select the upload speed limits, change the backup schedule, decide if you want to run Zoolz automatically at startup, display cloud storage icons for backed up files, enable Windows right-click context menu and more.

The right-click context menu integration in Windows File Explorer is very useful. Using this you can just right-click on any file and backup it to the cloud storage. You can also view the different versions of that file that exist on the cloud storage. This way you can restore a previous version of an altered or corrupt file easily.

The web interface of Zoolz cloud storage shows all the computers that you are backing up. You can select a computer from the list and it will display all the folders and files you have backed up. Clicking on a media file would open it in your web browser. The picture files are displayed in a photo viewer app while the music and video files are played in your web browser. The mobile apps for Zoolz are also able to stream the videos and music directly from your cloud storage. There are options to delete, view versions and restore your files too.

Zoolz is the first cloud backup that is offering large storage starting from 100GB for backing up your files. In the 100GB cloud backup you can store all your videos, music collection and pictures without worrying about space limitations. All your files are encrypted with the AES 256 encryption cipher so that not just about anybody can access them. Zoolz makes use of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a very robust infrastructure.

You can apply for a Zoolz account from their website at http://www.zoolz.com/.

In the Settings window for DVDFab Virtual Drive software you can set it to automatically start with Windows, mount the last used image automatically on computer restart, change the icons for virtual drives in the File Explorer and more. You can also integrate the ISO, CUE, BIN etc. files with DVDFab Virtual Drive, so that you can just double-click on these files to load them into a virtual drive.

If you have integrated the ISO files with the DVDFab Virtual Drive, then all you have to do is double-click on the ISO image files to load them. But even if you have not associated the ISO files, you can right-click on the system tray, select a virtual drive and choose to mount the image. Both ways the disk ISO image is loaded and can be accessed like a regular disk drive in the File Explorer.

Download DVDFab Virtual Drive

When you launch the CollageIt software it shows you a gallery of photo collage templates and you can choose any one them. All these templates have different styles, borders, rotations background colors etc. There are total fifteen templates to be chosen from. After you select a template click on the Choose button to open the main CollageIt window.

In the main CollageIt window, you can drag-and-drop your picture files that you want to create the collage from. The program would immediately create the collage from the dropped image files. If you do not like the selected template, then you can select another one by clicking on the Choose Template button. You can click on the Shuffle button to re-order the pictures and create a new collage. You can also click on the Random Layout button to randomly select a layout for your collage. These functions are very useful if you want to try different styles of collages created from the same set of pictures.

From other settings for your collage, you can choose the rotation angle for your pictures, sparsing for the picture (the distance between two pictures), number of photos in a collage, space and margin between pictures, shadows and frames for the pictures etc. When you are finished with creating the collage, you can click on the Export button to export it into an image, send it to someone through email, set it as your desktop wallpaper, post it on Flickr or share it with friends on Facebook.

The CollageIt collage creator software is easy to use for users of all levels – from beginners to advanced user. You can create impressive looking photo collages with this simple to use software. Using CollageIt you can create stunning photo collages for special occasions like Valentine’s day, wedding anniversaries, mother’s day, father’s day etc., print them on paper and present them to your dear ones.

Download CollageIt Free

We are glad to announce that we are giving away five licenses to the fabulous password management utility StickyPassword Pro which we have reviewed earlier. The Pro license for StickyPassword, which would normally cost you $29.99, is being given away for free by Windows Guides in cooperation with StickyPassword. The licenses are valid only for one computer use. You can read more about this utility in our review of StickyPassword.

StickyPassword Pro has the following enhancements over the free edition:

1. Unlimited accounts creation for websites and applications (free edition has a limit of 15).
2. Unlimited identities to store multiple online form filling profiles (free edition has a limit of only 1).
3. iPhone version of StickyPassword available only with Pro edition.
4. You can group accounts together in Pro edition only.
5. Bluetooth device can be used to lock/unlock StickyPassword.
6. Pro edition users get prompt priority professional customer support via email.

To take part in the giveaway, you can send your license request through email to StickyPassword @ mintywhite.com with full name, city, country and a brief explanation about how you are going to use StickyPassword Pro.

Good luck!

EDIT : A large number of requests were received so we have randomly selected the lucky recepients to whom the license keys of StickyPassword Pro have been sent.

You can follow these steps in order to repair the corrupt Word, Excel, PowerPoint or other office files:

1. Open a Microsoft Office application from the Start Menu. If you want to fix Word file, then open Microsoft Word; if you want to repair Excel file, then open Microsoft Excel, etc.
2. In the Microsoft Office window, click on the circular Office button at the top-left corner and select Open from the menu.
   
3. When the Open File dialog is opened, select the file you want to repair, then click on the downward arrow next to the Open button and select Open and Repair… from the drop-down list.
   
4. Microsoft Office will show you options to repair the file or extract data from the file. If this is the first time you are trying to repair the file, then click on the Repair button. If you have tried to repair the file before without success, then you should choose Extract Data.
   
5. Office will attempt to repair the file and open it. Once the file is opened, you can save it with a different name by clicking on the Office button and choosing Save As.

The file repair feature is available only in Microsoft Office versions 2007, 2010 and 2013. There is no guarantee that a corrupt file will be successfully recovered as the file recovery entirely depends on the level of damage that the file has undergone. If there is little or no data inside a corrupt file, then you cannot possibly repair it using any of these methods.

Unlike Mac or Linux, the file extension is very important  in Windows. The extension of a file indicates the content type and which program should be used to open that file. But sometimes we stumble upon files without any extension and we don’t know what to do with them. If you try to double-click on a file without any extension, Windows would just throw up an error that ‘No program is associated with this file type‘. But using an open-source program called TrID we can find out the file types of such files and then look for a program that can open it. TrID scans the files based on signatures and can successfully predict the file types based on the data contained inside a file without having to depend on the file extension.

TrID is an open source program but it is has only a command line interface (CLI). If you are not comfortable with a command line interface, then you can download a GUI designed for it called TrIDNET (the NET part means that this software was programmed in Microsoft .NET). You have to download the TrIDNET program and the definition files separately, extract their contents to the same folder and then run the TrIDNet.exe from there.

Then all you have to do is click on the Browse button and select the file, content type of which you want to determine. The file would be analyzed immediately without any delay and the results would be displayed. The results are displayed in form of the probability. The percentage is higher if the probability of the file to be of a certain type is higher.

For example, I selected a file without any extension and TrIDNET showed that the probability of its being LAME encoded MP3 file is 62.5%, while that of its being MP3 audio is 37.5%. The suggested extension in both cases is MP3. So now I can rename this file to be an MP3 file and try playing it in a media player like Windows Media Player.

But sometimes, the suggested extensions are not something that we can open with an installed program. If you do not know which program can be used to open a file extension, then you can either google that extension or you can visit the openwith.org website to search for that extension and find the programs that can open it.

Download TrIDNET File Identifier

McAfee Stinger does not detect all the known malware like the McAfee Internet Security does, but it scans only for the known latest malware that are in the wild. Because it scans only for a limited set of malware, it is very quick in scanning your system for them. At present, it scans for more than 6,000 malware and their variants. Since the McAfee Stinger database is updated often to include latest malware signatures, it is suggested that you always download the latest version from the McAfee website.

McAfee Stinger is a portable app. You do not have to install anything on your system. Just download and run it. By default, it scans rootkits, running processes, loaded modules, registry and directory locations known to be used by malware. However, you can add a directory or drive to be scanned if you think it should be looked for viruses too. But before you proceed with the scanning, you should set the preferences. You can open the preferences by selecting the Settings tab.

This is necessary, as you can set what to do on virus detection in the Preferences. By default,  McAfee Stinger tries to repair the infected files. You can set it to rename or delete (not recommended) them if required. You can also increase the heuristic sensitivity level.  But all the other settings should be left untouched.

McAfee Stinger comes with many different types of scans – Quick Scan, Full Scan and Custom Scan. The quick scan looks only in the key areas of your system, the full scan searches all across your computer system and the custom scan looks for the malware in the selected folders. The folders can be selected in the Locations tab.

After selecting a scan type, click on the Scan button would initiate the scanning. The scanning would go through scanning the MBR of your hard disk, registry, system folder and other sensitive places. It will display the results in the log window and take the action (set in the settings) upon the detection of a virus. At the end of the scan, you’ll see how many files were scanned, how many files were found to be infected and how many of them were cleaned.

If McAfee Stinger encounters a malware that it is unable to repair, then this is most probably due to the Windows System Restore feature which protects some files in the System Restore points from being deleted. In that case, you can turn off the System Restore feature first and then try scanning your system with McAfee Stinger.

McAfee Stinger is a free portable malware scanning tool, which is good at what it does. But it should not be used as a replacement of a good installed security solution. If McAfee Stinger indicates the presence of malware on your system, then you should download and install a full antivirus solution like McAfee Internet Security or avast! antivirus, update it and run a full system scan of your system.

	Download McAfee Stinger 32-bit
	Download McAfee Stinger 64-bit

When you install StickyPassword, it asks you for a master password. This master password is required for you to unlock and access the stored login credentials. This way you have to remember only one password instead of dozens of them. Using a master password also prevents just about anybody from accessing your stored login credentials. You should never forget this master password.

StickyPassword integrates smoothly with different web browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and many more. It also supports various other applications like Skype and Mozilla Thunderbird. When you try to login to a website by entering your username and password, StickyPassword takes over and asks you to save your account – which stores not only the user name and password but also the login webpage address and other options.

Unlike the password managers of different browsers, StickyPassword shares passwords stored in it with all the supported browsers and applications, so you do not have to worry about which browser you saved the password in. Just click on the StickyPassword icon in a web browser and select the account from the list login. StickyPassword will do the rest – it will open the correct login page, enter the credentials and select the options (if you selected any, during previous login) and automatically log you on to that site.

You can also open the StickyPassword interface, which lists all the stored accounts. The accounts can be organized into groups like Work, Personal etc. You can select an account and click on the Launch button next to it. This opens the appropriate login page in your default web browser and signs you on automatically using the saved password information.

Apart from the password manager, StickyPassword can also manages your bookmarks. You can even import bookmarks and passwords from other web browsers into StickyPassword. To import the bookmarks and the passwords stored by the built-in password managers of various browsers, you can open the StickyPassword window, select the Quick Access section and then click on the Import button. This opens an Import data window where you can load the data for a web browser and then select which data you want to import.

The Password Generator feature of StickyPassword is very useful in generating extremely strong passwords. It can generate passwords of up to 99 characters in length containing only uppercase letters, lowercase letters and numerals. You can also add additional non-alphanumeric characters if you want to make the generated password even stronger.

The free edition of StickyPassword has a limitation of storing only 15 web accounts and one identity. They also offer a Pro edition which has no such limitations and can store as many web accounts as you want. The Pro edition comes as a trialware that you can use for 30 days, after which you can buy the license for only $29.99.

StickyPassword is an excellent password manager, password generator and automatic form filler. It is an indispensable tool for everyone who uses the internet. If you do not want to install it on your computer then you can create a portable USB key edition from within the StickyPassword interface and take your passwords anywhere you go. It can not only protect your saved passwords from the prying eyes, but also saves your time that you would have otherwise wasted in entering the login information on various websites.

Download StickyPassword