Especially on smaller screens, the advertisements on Windows Live Messenger really takes up quite a lot of space. It is also annoying for popping up when the cursor is accidentally moved to the ads.

A-Patch is one of the best thing to remove advertisements on Windows Live Messenger, as it can be also used to customize the messenger to the fullest. Removing e-mail button, remove nudge delay, disable nudge shake, removing buttons, logos—you name it, they probably have it.

You can view all the features included here.

To start using A-Patch, download it according to your Windows Live Messenger version (which  can be checked via Help > About Messenger). Run the software and you can begin customizing your Windows Live Messenger according to your liking.

To remove the advertisements on the messenger, just simply select "Remove Advertisement" which can be found under "Contact List" (page 5). This is how it looks like when you are done.

Without advertisements:

It is against the terms of use to patch your messenger, so do it at your own risk. Also, make sure your messenger is not on when doing the patch, or it would not proceed.

MSN Messenger/Windows Live Messenger has a quite annoying feature to me, which is having a popup of Windows Live Today/MSN Today every single time you sign into your account. That might be useful to some, but in my case, I am not using Hotmail, thus making the pop-up not useful at all.

To disable Windows Live Today, simply follow the instructions below:

1. Click on Tools, select Options
2. Click on the General tab
3. Uncheck the Show Windows Live Today after I sign in to Messenger box

Voila, the next time you sign into your Windows Live Messenger, the popup will not appear anymore and all you see is just your contact list.

There are times when I am having a project and it requires me to look for resources from the internet. Most of the time, I will look up on Wikipedia, and it troubles me so much when I copy and paste an article that is full of links to Microsoft Word.

Instead of removing those links one by one, you can try this method, which only consist of two steps, but will remove all links in one go.

1. Press Ctrl+A, which will highlight the entire text
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+F9 (OR Ctrl+6), and you will see all links disappearing within seconds

This method is working on my Microsoft Word 2003, but I have not tested it on other versions.

Most of my wallpapers are found on the internet. Whenever I encountered a decent wallpaper that looks appealing to me, I would right click on it and set it as desktop background—to see if it looks good on my desktop.

Unfortunately, there are times where I was not satisfied with the wallpaper, and want the older wallpaper again, that I did not download earlier, but just set it as desktop background using the right click menu. Therefore, it is only possible for me to obtain the wallpaper again if only I could remember where I encountered it in the past.

One of the easiest way to solve the problem is to simply download the wallpaper to just any location on your local disk. But instead, I prefer to add all my favorite wallpapers to the local wallpaper directory on my Windows XP.

Once they are moved into the directory, the wallpapers will appear as one of the default wallpapers on the Display Properties (Right click on Desktop > Properties). To do so, just simply move your selected wallpapers to the wallpaper folder.

Windows XP - C:\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper\
Windows Vista - C:\Users\*User Name*\Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery\

The next time you want to revert your wallpaper, you can just simply select it from the Display Properties window.

Microsoft has proposed to acquire Yahoo! at $44.6 billion, equivalent to $44,600,000,000 or about 27 YouTubes. Read more about it at:

• Microsoft PressPass
• TechCrunch
• Microsoft CEO’s Internal email to Microsoft employees

It’s funny to see things run as time goes. Back in 1998, Google’s co-founders, Larry and Sergey once contacted Yahoo! to sell their search engine technology. Yahoo! founder, David Filo, then encouraged them to grow the service themselves by starting a search engine company instead.

“When it’s fully developed and scalable,” he told them, “let’s talk again.”

But today, Google is the one who has the most U.S. search market share, at 58.4%. Microsoft and Yahoo! is still being left behind even if they successfully combined.

Your kids are spending way too much time on a certain website and you are not happy with it? Discover adult websites in the History after your kids used your computer?

If your kids still won’t listen even after all the nagging, you might want to just block the websites you don’t want them to visit. In just 3 simple steps, without any software downloading, you can block as many websites as you want easily.

Step 1
Click Start > Run. Type notepad C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts in the “Open:” field and click OK.

Step 2
A notepad will pop up. Find the line where it says “127.0.0.1 localhost”

Step 3
Immediately under the “127.0.0.1 localhost“, enter the website you want to block by using the format “127.0.0.1 webaddress.com”. For example, you want to block Google and Yahoo from being accessed:

You can block as many websites as you want, just make sure you only enter one URL per line. To remove the blocked websites, just simply remove the line and you are done.

Demo

Click on the icon for a full screen view.

This guide is for people who removed or accidentally un-installed their Microsoft Paint on their Windows, but now want them back. I lost my MS Paint too two days ago, poking at the wrong place of my Add/Remove Windows Component and there goes my mspaint. It can only be re-installed with a Windows XP CD in my case, but I don’t have any with me.

If your Paint is gone from your computer too, do this to make sure the software really does not exist in your system, and not just the shortcut being deleted. Go to Start > Run > Type “mspaint” > OK. If your MSPaint starts, meaning it is still there, just that you have deleted the shortcut. Just create another shortcut and it will be fine.

I have a Windows XP CD
If you are 100% sure that MS Paint does not exist in your system anymore, there are three ways to get it back. The first way is to install it via your Windows XP CD. You can do so by going to

Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > Add/Remove Windows Components > Double click on "Accessories and Utilities" > Double click on "Accessories" > Check "Paint" > OK > Next..

I DON’T have a Windows XP CD
The second way is grab a copy of the mspaint file from a relative, a friend or your pet dog’s computer. Copy mspaint.exe from their C:\WINDOWS\system32 to your flash drive, and paste it back to your computer’s “system32″ folder. Create a shortcut of it and place it anywhere you like and you are done.

Worse comes to worst, you don’t have a CD, nor a friend or relative with Windows XP, and your pet dog is using a MacBook, you are left with no choice but to download it. The following folder consist of most System Apps of Windows XP SP 1, and paint is available in it.

Download Windows XP System Apps

After you have downloaded it, move mspaint to your C:\WINDOWS\system32 and Paint will be available again for your computer. Alternatively, you can also download other similar free softwares but more powerful like Paint.NET or GIMP.

Happy painting

Turning off your computer can be frustrating when you are urgent, as it takes quite a while before everything is completely shut down. In Windows XP, there are several ways to speed the process up. » Read the rest of the entry..