Hacker Ten

Adobe Acrobat PDF reader is loaded with unnecessary features that will take away your precious computer resources, if you just want a lean simple and free PDF reader to be able to read PDF documents, simply download any of these free alternatives to Adobe Acrobat PDF reader.

List of free PDF readers for Windows

Xpdf: Xpdf is an open source viewer for Portable Document Format (PDF) files, Xpdf also includes a PDF text extractor, PDF-to-PostScript converter, and various other utilities.

STDU Viewer: STDU Viewer is a document viewer for multiple file formats. The goal of this software is to replace the multiple document viewers with a single simple application.

Nuance PDF reader: Nuance PDF Reader enables you to do much more than just view PDF files. You can convert PDF files to Word, Excel, and RTF via a hosted web service. Use annotation tools to highlight, cross-out, and underline text for more effective collaboration.

Perfect PDF Reader: Powerful alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF reader with additional features such as exporting pages as images and saving filled forms.

Evince PDF Reader: Evince is an open source document viewer for multiple document formats. It currently supports pdf, postscript, djvu, tiff and dvi.

Nitro PDF Reader: With Nitro PDF reader you can create PDF files, comment and review, save PDF forms, extract text and images, type text directly onto the page, and more.

MuPDF reader: MuPDF has a small footprint. A binary that includes the standard Roman fonts is only one megabyte. It renders text with metrics and spacing accurate to within fractions of a pixel for the highest fidelity in reproducing the look of a printed page on screen.

PDF X-Change Viewer: The PDF-XChange Viewer is smaller, faster and more feature rich than any other FREE PDF Reader/Viewer/Editor available.

Sumatra PDF reader: Sumatra PDF is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows. Portable out of the box. This free PDF reader has a minimalistic design. Simplicity has a higher priority than a lot of features.

SlimPDF reader: This is the smallest PDF reader in the World, it allows you to view any PDF document just like in Adobe Acrobat reader but without all the bloatware.

FoxIt PDF reader: FoxIt PDF reader is a small, fast, and feature rich PDF viewer for Microsoft Windows, which allows you to open, view, and print any PDF file.

Windows registry explained

The Windows registry is a database in which Windows keeps track of relationships between hardware, software and the operating system. Over time the Windows registry will become saturated with redundant files and broken links that will slow down youw Windows operating system and make it sluggish.

Windows registry cleaners explained

A registry cleaner is a piece of software that runs on the Windows operating system, issues involving the registry could cause you to lose your personal data, or make the computer completely unusable, you need to be very careful with it, all of the registry cleaners will allow you to store a back up copy of the old configurations before cleaning it.

The registry cleaner will scan through the registry keys and point out any issues which it finds, most usual are registry keys pointing at non existant files already deleted or to uninstalled software as well as pointers to missing DLLs, listings of no-longer-valid file extensions, invalid paths, invalid ActiveX Controls, and much more.

A registry cleaner will attempt to fix those keys, leaving your registry slimmer and your computer prepared to run free of junk once again. Some registry cleaners will also compact and defrag it making it easier and quicker for Windows to access the registry.

Sluggish computer

Free Windows registry cleaners

ACleaner: This two-button Windows Registry cleaner lets you search for problems and then fix them. You can choose which Registry sections to include and restore a backed-up version of the database if you encounter any problems.

AusLogics: Auslogics Registry Cleaner offers a simple wizard-based interface. You can choose between quick and advanced scans, and undo any previous changes. If you choose to run an advanced scan, the program lets you select the categories you want to target.

EuSing: Eusing Free Registry Cleaner will repair registry problems with a few simple mouse clicks, this is one of the easiest to use registry cleaners.

Comodo System Cleaner: Comodo System Cleaner is a powerful suite of utilities and tools that allows you to make your Windows based computer faster, more efficient and more secure. This is not simply a stand alone registry cleaner.

Wise Cleaner: The free version of this registry cleaner has no registry compactor (defragger), but otherwise it quickly identifies orphaned registry keys and makes them easy to fix.

OpenOffice and Word documents hold hidden information that includes revision logs, author name, comments, saved dates, keywords and much more, all this is called metadata and you may want to erase it for good if you are posting it to the internet or sending it to someone else as it may contain private information that was not meant to be released in public.

There is a free program called Doc Scrubber that will easily delete all of your OpenOffice or Word document,( right now it does not work with .docx).

Doc Scrubber settings

Doc Scrubber can also produce an analysis of any Word and OpenOffice document to show what metadata it contains.

Download Doc Scrubber for free

If you are giving away your computer, selling it on eBay or simply discarding it, and want to make sure that no personal data is left behind, then you will need to safely erase everything, including the operating system.

Luckily there is some free software that will help you to do that, WipeDisk.

WipeDisk erases physical and logical disks (complete harddisks or single partition) secure and fast.

WipeDisk overwrites the information sector-wise, from the first sector of the disk to the last one. This is particularly important for forensically correct deletion of data.

WipeDisk supports 14 different wipe methods, e.g. two US Navy standards, the standard of the US Department of Defence, US Airforce and the NATO.

Download WipeDisk

If you only want to securely wipe files and folders (ie not the whole hard disk) then you can use WipeFile or Eraser, they both are free utilities to securely delete data off your hard disk.

Free data wiping software

If your Recycle Bin has disapeared, or you want to erase it for good, there are various Windows hacking tricks you can use:

How to restore your Recycle Bin using Windows Vista

Right click your desktop, click Personalize, on the left pane click  Change desktop icons. Check the Recycle Bin, and click OK.

Another way to restore your Recycle Bin in Windows Vista by accessing the change desktop icons:

–>control panel
–>appearance and personalization
–>personalization
–>change desktop icons

Select the icons you want on the desktop and you will be able to restore or delete Windows Recycle Bin, as well as other icons.

Windows Recycle Bin

Why does Windows Recycle Bin disappear?

It has been known to happen when using a registry cleaner. It can also happen if you are if you use software to securely erase computer data overwriting it various times, like for example Eraser and if you use some tweaking utility you can also delete Windows Recycle Bin by mistake.

Other ways to restore Windows Recycle bin

There are numerous Windows tweaking utilites that will allow you to do this, you can download TweakUI for free, but it does not work in Windows7 right now, it is only useful for XP users.

If you just got your new shiny Windows 7 out of the box and are thinking about how to protect yourself from spyware and malware online, free antivirus software does a pretty good job, there is no need to shell out any cash if you are the average Joe Doe. Actually, most viruses get into computers thanks to people installing cracked software, they themselves authorise that trojan to be installed together bundled with their cracked program. The most stupid of all of them even install a hacked antivirus.

Here goes a list of free antivirus software that claims to be compatible with Windows 7, there is no reason why you should not look after your operating system security, even more given that you have to pay nothing, this is not a free trial this is truly free antivirus software with regular updates, if you want extra features you can upgrade to their paid for version, but otherwise it works just fine.

• Avira Antivir Personal Edition

• avast! Antivirus Home

• AVG

If you have an old computer with old hardware there is a good chance you may not be able to run the latest Microsft Windows 7 operating system, officially, if you want to run Windows 7 on your PC you will need this as a minimum:

Windows 7 Minimum System requirements:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

There is an easier way to know if your PC will run Windows 7, simply download Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, an official tool by Microsoft itself. You can get it from here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/upgrade-advisor

This tool will also tell what software installed in your computer is not compatible with Windows 7.

Windows 7 minimum system requirements

You can now perform a clean, full-featured installation of Windows 7 for the price of an upgrade.

Simply follow these instructions:

1. Perform a clean installation using the Upgrade disc, you should have no problems here

2. Make sure there are no Windows Updates pending — if there’s an orange shield icon next to the Shutdown button in the Start Menu, that means you need to reboot before attempting the next steps.

3. Open ‘regedit.exe‘ from the Start Menu — just type it in there, where it says: Search programs and files. Accept the User Account Control dialogue that pops up to give yourself Windows 7 superpowers.

4. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/

5. Change MediaBootInstall from ‘1‘ to ‘0‘

6. Open the Start Menu again and type ‘cmd’ — use ctrl+shift+enter to run it as an elevated-permissions user

7. Finally, type slmgr /rearm — and press enter.

Windows 7 hacked

Your computer will now reboot and run the Activate Windows utility. Type in your product key, and there you go… a full Windows 7 with all of its utilities for eighty dollars less than the original price.