Nowadays, overclocking has become more and more popular. Even hardware manufacturers are implementing new and easier ways to get things done.

I have my CPU, RAM, Front-Side Bus and video card overclocked. One if not the most important thing to keep an eye on is operating temperatures, because too much heat can lead to crashes and/or physical damage to the hardware. Not mentioning that this lowers the life span of your equipment.

There are two great tools to read and messure temps. Both are free and can be used to log temperature over time. This is very useful when overclocking and checking for stability.

CoreTemp

This one is the one i use the most because of it logging feature. You can customize read and log intervals so you can keep an eye when stressing the hardware using games or benchmarks.

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Real Temp

This one is very simplistic but does what it claims. It offers a convenient logging for basic needs because the maximum and minimum temperature are displayed and constantly updated as long as the program is running. This feature is not better than CoreTemp logging, but can be useful when monitoring over shorts periods of time.

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Nvidia released a new set of ForceWare drivers today.

Current version is 175.16 WHQL, which means that these drivers passed Microsoft’s certification and are going to be deployed via Windows Update as well. For more details read the release notes for XP or Vista.

Remember to use a program like Driver Sweeper to clean registry entries and other files after you uninstall video, audio or chipset drivers.

This way you make sure the new versions are being installed without problems.

Download XP | Vista

New version of Realtek HD Audio drivers. This time is 1.92.

If you experience problems with drivers, use Guru 3D Driver Sweeper after you have uninstalled your current drivers to clean the system before installing the new ones. You can do this right in you windows session or in Safe Mode.

Unattended usage:

setup.exe -s -f2<path\LogFile> -z[-rp<path\LogFile>]
example:
setup.exe -s -f2C:\mylog.log -z[-rpC:\RHDSetup.log]

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Two months ago, i posted about the strategy of releasing free music albums and asking the fans to set the price they think is fair. This has been great news because you can get the for free and, if you want to support the band directly, you can donate or pay for the special editions of the albums.

A few days ago, Nine Inch Nails released another free album, called The Slip.

To get the download link, simply register your email here. An email with download links to all options will be sent to your Inbox.

Best of all, all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits. The files are fully tagged and include album art as well as lyrics.

If you want to download the High Quality versions, here are some Bit Torrent links directly from NIN website:

• FLAC
• WAV 24/96
• Apple Lossless

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If you ever encounter yourself stuck in a file operation that cannot be completed, like moving or deleting a file or folder this program can help you. It is called Unlocker and it adds an entry to the shell context menu.

When you try to delete or move a file or folder and windows says it cannot do it because another process or person is accessing it, you right-click the file or folder in question and choose Unlocker.

It opens a windows where you can see which process are locking the item. You can either kill the process or unlock it. The latter works great for 99% of the cases. If you still can’t do it, well, kill the process and you are ready to go.

Its freeware

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BurnAware is a program for burning files to CD/DVD.

It can burn DVD Video discs and Audio CD’s as well. Supports multi-session and can save (not from discs in the freeware edition) and write ISO images.

There is a Home Edition available which has more features but is a bit expensive is you ask me.

Look at this comparison table to learn about the differences between freeware and paid versions.

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I’ve never been a fan of registry optimizers and/or cleaners because i never saw any noticeable performace after using these kind of programs. But i also think that i can’t hurt either.

RegDefrag is program whose only purpose is to defragment Windows¿s registry. It is free and has one of the most simplistic, yet nice, interface.

Try it if you want to see if applications such as RegDefrag can help you with a little performance increase.

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Yesterday i read this on some sites: Windows Live Messenger is blocking sites like YouTube and Deviantart, among others…

People went crazy on this because many thought that Microsoft was behind this “censorship” of website url being sent in Windows Live Messenger. You can imagine all the complains that were posted on major news sites and forums.

Just a few minutes ago i went to the official Inside Windows Live Messenger blog and learned that this was just an error and it wasn’t Microsoft’s fault. Instead, they posted that a third-party partner of them handles the blocking system.

According to them, the problem is now gone.

As some of you noticed, we had a problem from Friday night to Saturday morning where our Messenger service was incorrectly blocking some legitimate IP addresses. We sincerely apologize for any difficulties this caused our users. And we want to thank those of you that reported this problem to us so that we could quickly fix it. Because of your help, the incorrect block was only in place for a few hours. [...]

Source: URL Blocking: Problem now fixed