Turn the Internet connection on or off

By Martin Brinkmann on June 18, 2012 - Tags:internet connection, Windows software

Sometimes you may want to turn off your Internet connection in an instant, for instance if you have noticed that malware is running on a system to avoid it leaking information or data. A switch to turn off the Internet can be useful in other situations as well, like during software installations to block applications from phoning home, or cutting off all network traffic to have those resources available for other more important tasks on the system. Lastly, you could also use it to avoid distractions during work by turning of the connection.

While you could use a firewall for most of those tasks, depending on what you want to achieve, it may not be the easiest thing to configure.

Turn Internet Off is a free application for the Windows operating system that you can use to quickly turn the Internet off or on again. All you need to do is install the application on your system and start it up afterwards. It automatically starts minimized in the system tray area, from where you can turn off the Internet with two clicks of the mouse button.

The application furthermore displays the current status of the Internet connection in the window that pops up after you click on the program’s system tray icon. If you click on the button you will notice that all Internet traffic is automatically blocked, and that all applications that try to interact with resources on the Internet will not be able to do so. You may see error messages or other behavior as a result.

When you are ready to turn on the Internet connection again, you have the option to turn it on permanently, or for a limited amount of time ranging from 5 minutes to an hour.

Closing Words

InternetOff can be useful in a variety of situations, of which a few have been mentioned in the opening paragraph. If you are looking for a tool that allows you to quickly cut off the Internet connection, then this one is offering exactly what you are looking for.

Get a listing of all Internet cookies with CookieSpy

Nearly every site on the Internet makes use of cookies. Some use those little files to store session information in  and others for customizations the user has made on the site. Besides first party cookies, which more often than not serve a purpose directly linked to the user visiting the site, there are third party cookies which are mostly used for tracking purposes. And those have been in the news lately with browser manufacturers implementing do not track features and all that kind of stuff.

CookieSpy is a free program for the Windows operating system that displays the cookies of each browser that it detects on the system. Supported by the program are installed and portable versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and various Firefox and Chrome variants.

When you start the program after installation you will notice that it has already picked up all installed browsers automatically that it supports. Each browser is displayed in its own line in the interface.

For Firefox, it needs to be mentioned that it is only picking up cookies saved in the default profile, and not in other profiles that may be used on the system. Portable browser versions can be added with a click on the settings button in the upper right corner of the screen, and the selection ofBrowsers > Add portable browser from the context menu. You can alternatively click on the plus icon in the main window to do the same thing.

Cookies are displayed with the domain they originated on, their path, name, value, expiration date and a handful of other parameters. A click on a column sorts the cookies automatically based on the selected parameter.

A right-click lets you copy the cookie’s contents, or delete the selection right away. You can furthermore enable a search to find specific cookies, or refresh the listing to pick up newer cookies that have been created since the start of the program.

Closing Words

A listing of all cookies is a good start for a program, but there are things that I’d like to see implemented to increase the usefulness of it. I’d first love to see an option to display all cookies of all browsers in a single tab. I’d furthermore like to be able to search all browser cookies automatically, copy cookies from one browser to the other, and create detailed reports that I can save as HTML or csv documents.

For now, CookieSpy may have its used for developers who design and create web projects, and users who are curious about the cookies stored on their systems. It can be used to quickly check if the cleanup of cookies on the system was successful.

Please note that CookieSpy requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0.

How to move installed programs in Windows

Moving an installed program from one partition or hard drive to another in Windows is actually a straightforward process if you have the right tools for the job. You may have different reasons for this, from running out of disk space on the partition the software is installed on, to moving the folder into a folder that is synchronized with the cloud, to pure cosmetic reasons for moving a program folder.

The application I’m going to demonstrate the process with is SymMover, an easy to use program for the Windows operating system – Vista and up only – that you can use for that purpose. You can even use it to move a set of folders to another hard drive if you prefer that over moving folders individually.

Take note that it will move the files to the new folder before it creates symbolic links from the old to the new.

1. Download and install SymMover

First thing that you need to do is download and install the SymMover application on your system. The developer website links to a download on download.com, so make sure you click on the direct download link option on the page to avoid the download wrapper. Installation should not pose any troubles. You can start the program afterwards from the start menu, which will trigger an UAC prompt.

2. Moving installed programs

Before you start moving folders around, you need to make sure that you have everything planned out correctly. I suggest you check the size of the program folder by right-clicking on the folder and selecting properties in Windows Explorer, and the available size on the partition you want to move the folder to.  Once you have verified that click on the plus icon to start the process. It may take a few seconds before the window that you see on the screenshot below opens.

Sne of the great features of SymMover is that it taps right into the listing of installed programs on the system, making it super easy to move any of those applications to a new drive. If the software that you want to move is listed here, select it, and then change the destination folder to the folder you want to move the program to. If it is not in that list, click on the Folders on your computer tab instead, and select a folder here. Usually though, you should find all programs listed here that are installed on the computer.

SymMover will display the selected program or folder in its main interface. Since you can only select one application or folder at a time, you may need to repeat the process until you have added all folders and programs to the queue.

The program displays the storage space needed in the interface as well, which you can use for verification purposes to make sure you have got enough free disk space available on the target drive. A click on the green right pointing arrow in the program window moves the selected folders and programs to the new destination. You will see a prompt that you need to confirm before the folders and files are moved. You can at any time move select folders or programs back to their original location, for instance when you encounter errors using them after the move.  The programs should however work just like before after you have moved them.

Closing Words

SymMover is pretty handy for the purpose of moving programs to another drive or partition which can mainly be attributed to it displaying all installed programs in a list for easy selection. If you do not need that, you can also make use of previously reviewed programs like Application Mover,Steammover or Dopboxifier, with the latter two primarily designed for very specific purposes.

Repair Microsoft .Net Framework installation, update issues

All recent versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system come with a version of the Microsoft .Net Framework preinstalled. Updates have been released for the .Net Framework that Windows users can install on their systems, and while those updates complete without issues on most systems, it can happen that they do not complete correctly on some.

The best way to deal with .Net Framework related issues up until now was to use verification and cleanup tools for that purpose. The cleanup tool for instance is a third party program that removes all traces of the .Net framework that have been installed on top of the version that the operating system shipped with. The idea here was to remove all user-installed traces of the Net Framework, before retrying the installation or update anew.

Microsoft yesterday has released the Microsoft .NET Framework repair tool which is compatible with all versions of the Windows operating system from Windows XP to the latest release versions. The program analyzes the state of the .Net Framework installation on the system before it tries fixes for known issues that could have corrupted the installation or update of the framework on the system.

The Microsoft .NET Framework repair tool detects and tries to fix some frequently occurring issues with the setup of or with updates to the Microsoft .NET Framework.

The troubleshooting steps are the following:

• Scan for issues related to the .Net Framework
• Try fixes for issues that have been discovered during troubleshooting (with user consent)
• Try repairs for the .Net Framework 4
• Log collecting (with user consent)

The program scans the system and displays its findings in a recommended changes window afterwards. Here you see the issues that it has discovered, and the suggestions to fix those issues. It is still up to you to go ahead and apply those changes to the system, or click on the cancel button to stop the troubleshooting and repair process at this point.

If you go ahead, you are then presented with another screen where the data can be submitted to Microsoft. If you click finish here, the information will be submitted to Microsoft for further analysis. If you do not want that, click on cancel instead.

The Microsoft .NET Framework Repair Tool is an official Microsoft application, and I would recommend 

How deceiving Ads trick you on download sites

Many download sites, and it does not really matter if they are download portals like Softpedia or Download.com, or file hosting services like Turbobit or Mediafire, use ads to generate revenue. That’s a perfectly fine business model and all, and I do not think a lot of Internet users would criticize them for that.

I recently paid a visit to Download.com and noticed that the site went a bit overboard with the amount of deceptive advertisements on its download pages. I counted a total of five download links on the page above the fold, of which four were ads for other products unrelated to the one that I tried to download.

The top two Start Download banners are obviously ads, and unrelated to the product that I tried to download.  The textual ads underneath the right banner also contain the term download, and may deceive some users as well.

Experienced users usually know what link they have to click on and which better to avoid. I decided to take a look around how other sites’ download pages are designed. Before I start I’d like to mention that ads may and probably will change if parameters change. This can be the user’s IP, language or other factors, the time of day, the budget of the company or limits that have been set. Keep in mind that I’m not criticizing the use of ads as a revenue source.

Softpedia did not display that many ads on the page. I received an offer to try a 30-day trial version of Windows Intune, and an offer to download an unrelated program on the same page the download button was displayed. Especially the ad right underneath the title could be seen as relevant to the requested download.

On Major Geeks things changed to offers to scan my PC before downloading the file. They may look like recommendations from the site operators. A text link is displayed in the content area as well that is leading to an offer to scan the PC for driver updates.

Downloadcrew once again displayed a Download Now banner in a premium location on the screen.

FileHippo actually looked like one of the cleanest sites to me. While it displayed a Google Adsense banner on the left, and a banner on the lower right, they could not really be mistaken as download links.

File Hosting Sites

Now that I have looked at some popular download portals, it is time to take a look at how file hosting services handle these things.

FilesTube is using two different kinds of advertisements. First the banners that only consist of two large buttons to play now or download. But you also have ads at the top of the results, just like Google does in their search engine. All three links there lead to a commercial offer that suggests that you can download the desired file right there (which is unlikely if you look at the search term).

Mediafire displays many ads on its download page. At the top a download ad, and then around the actual download option additional ads, which at the time of testing, did not display download buttons or options.

4Shared displayed ads around the requested file, and a second download button for the company’s own 4Shared Desktop application.

Turbobit finally went overboard with the ads by displaying a total of five download buttons on the screen, plus additional ads.

Finding the right download button

On most download portals, you should not really have that much troubles finding the right download button. One of the easiest ways to locate it is to know all standard ad formats to ignore those automatically. Formats like 728×120, 468×60, 300×250, 160:600 or 336×280 are commonly used to display ads, and it is unlikely that the “real” download button uses those formats.

You can obviously automate the process with ad blockers like AdBlock Plus or the excellentNoScript.

Another option that you have is to right-click a button or ad which often helps you identify whether it is an add or not. If you see About Adobe Flash in the context menu, you can be almost certain that it is an ad and not the real deal.

You can also hover over the element to take a look at the link. If it points to a third party site, or looks like the one you see on the screenshot below, you can also be certain that it is indeed an ad and not the real download link.

While not always possible, you can also try and find a download site that is lighter on ads, or at least does not use deceptive ads.

For file hosting sites, you could alternatively use a program like JDownloader to avoid the ads and confusion completely.

Closing Words

As far as download portals are concerned, it is often better to download the files directly from the developer website and not the portal. While this works well most of the time, you sometimes can’t download from the developer site, for instance if they have decided to cooperate with a download portal.

What’s your take on the situation?

I’d like to thank Raymond for his article on the subject, as I used it for inspiration.

Free up disk space with Clean Temporary Places

The first thing that I do when I discover a new temporary file cleaner is to find out if and how it differs from CCleaner. I think we can all agree that CCleaner is one of the best tools in the temporary file cleaning niche, and that every other application that gets created in the niche should be compared to it to answer the simple question why one should use it instead of CCleaner.

When you look at Clean Temporary Files you will immediately notice that it does not support as many locations as CCleaner, even if CCleaner Enhancer is not taken into consideration. And while you can add custom folders to the program that you want to clean up, it would mean lots of work to add all the locations manually to the application.

Clean Temporary Places on the other hand ships with features that CCleaner does not ship with. This includes statistics about the cleanup history, displayed as a graph, and as total, maximum and previous values. And unlike CCleaner, Clean Temporary Files ships with networking support that network administrators can make use of to clean files on connected systems (CCleaner’s Network Edition offers the same functionality at a price).

The supported locations are what’s holding the program back, at least for users who expect a similar level of support that CCleaner is offering. The program supports Firefox’s and Internet Explorer’s cache location for instance, but not that of Google Chrome, Opera or other web browsers. You may also ask yourself what software distributions cover for instance, as it is not explained anywhere in the program.

It takes two clicks to clean up all the locations though, and while it lacks several locations that you may want to include in cleanup operations, it covers important locations by default. Another are where it lacks is support for Registry cleanups.

Closing Words

Clean Temporary Places ships with features that the free version of CCleaner does not ship with, which is always a good sign. The cleaning locations it supports cover the basics, but everything beyond that is up to the user to add, which many may feel is to strenuous to do. Still, if the locations cover what you want to clean, you could take a closer look at the program after all.

Chrome uses way more memory than Firefox, Opera or Internet Explorer

When you ask Internet users about their personal opinions about web browsers, some may tell you that they feel Firefox is using too much memory which is keeping the browser back, and that Google’s Chrome browser on the other hand is a slim fast browser that does not use that much RAM when running.

It seems like a fight between the two browsers, with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Opera only taking up the roles of bystanders that watch how those two browsers – or users of those browsers – are battling it out.

If you have followed the development of both browsers in recent time, you may have noticed that Mozilla has started to cut down on Firefox’s fat to improve the browser’s memory usage and snappiness, while Google seems to have shifted priorities elsewhere. Some users even see the browser becoming more bloated, with all the features and additions that Google is implementing into it.

The benchmark

What better way to test a browser’s memory use than to let them load a series of websites. All plugins, extensions and toolbars have been disabled for the test to avoid a distortion of the test results.

Memory usage itself was tested in Google Chrome’s About Memory page (chrome://memory-redirect/) and Windows Task Manager to make sure the results matched up.

A sample of ten popular websites has been opened in all browsers before the memory use of each browser was analyzed.

• Websites used in the test: Youtube, Leo.org, Mozilla, Google, Userscripts, Armorgames, Ghacks, Lifehacker, Reddit and Softpedia
• Browsers: Google Chrome Canary 22, Internet Explorer 9, Mozilla Firefox 16 Nightly, Opera 12.00
• System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, 8GB RAM

Without further ado, here are the results of the benchmark:

	Memory			Virtual Memory
	Private	Shared	Total	Private	Mapped
Google Chrome 22 Canary	341,444	16,475	357,919	453,72	182,972
Internet Explorer 9	270,764	27,742	298,506	399,788	236,828
Mozilla Firefox 16 Nightly	216,604	35,816	252,42	215,972	103,352
Opera 12.00	197,828	11,292	209,12	194,248	29,284

As you can see, Chrome is at the top of the list followed by Internet Explorer, then Firefox and finally Opera.

Key findings:

• Opera is the most memory efficient browser, followed by Firefox
• Opera needs 150 MB less of memory than Chrome for the ten websites
• Firefox needs 100 MB less of memory than Chrome to display the ten sample websites
• When it comes to virtual memory, both browsers use only half of what Chrome needs.

Closing Words

Memory usage is obviously not the only factor that is playing a role when it comes to the web browser of choice. Other factors, like theme and extensions support, the layout and design, compatibility, stability or page loading speed can also play a role in a user’s decision. The benchmark did not look at those – sometimes subjective – factors, but purely at the memory utilization of the tested browsers. As you can see, Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer are more memory efficient than Google’s Chrome browser.

Would you have ever thought this to be the case?