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Can you download RAM?

Dave Farquhar scams May 12, 2020April 1, 20221990s, android, Fraud, malware, optimizing windows, Windows 10

A software developer asked me about a website called Download More RAM. I don’t think he heard my other coworkers snicker. He asked if it was a security issue, while missing the even more important question: Can you download RAM? I said it’s best not to visit the site, and spared him the history lesson.

Downloading RAM isn’t possible because RAM is physical hardware–computer chips on a circuit board. You can only download software. But still, the sites remain.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Taming Windows 95/98/98SE/ME Out of Memory Errors

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Windows April 6, 2017June 19, 2025disk cache, optimizing windows, win9x, windows 2000, windows 7, windows 9x

The symptom: If you install more than 512 MB of RAM in a system running Windows 9x (that’s any version of Windows 95, 98, 98SE, or ME), you get weird out of memory errors. Here’s how to get around those memory limitations to make Windows 95 and Windows 98 work with 2 GB of RAM.

The culprit is a bug in Windows 9x’s disk cache. The solution is to limit the cache to use 512MB of memory, or less, which is a good thing to do anyway.

Dave Farquhar

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Migrate Windows 7 to SSD or install fresh?

Dave Farquhar Windows March 8, 2017July 27, 2017chrome, firefox, optimizing windows, Windows 10, windows 7

Here’s a good question. Should you migrate Windows 7 to SSD or install fresh? And what about Windows 10? This is likely to be controversial and everyone has an opinion. I’ll weigh the pros and cons of each, as a guy who knows a little about optimizing Windows, and who has been using SSDs since 2009.

Dave Farquhar

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Cleaning the Windows registry – and optimizing

Dave Farquhar Windows February 17, 2017April 26, 2017ccleaner, optimizing windows, TEMP, TMP, Windows 10, Windows XP

Cleaning the Windows registry is a popular and controversial topic. Many pundits tell you never to do it. When I wrote a book about Windows back in 1999, I dedicated most of one chapter to the topic. But today the pundits have a point. Most registry cleaning utilities do much more harm than good. I don’t recommend you clean your registry, per se, but I do recommend you maintain it.

I don’t want to dismiss the concept completely out of hand. There’s a difference between a bad idea and a bad implementation. Registry cleaning and maintenance is a victim of bad implementation. But that doesn’t mean it was a bad idea. So let’s talk about how to get the benefit while minimizing the drawbacks.

Dave Farquhar

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Speed up Firefox

Dave Farquhar Software October 3, 2016July 27, 20171980s, chrome, firefox, optimizing windows, ramdisk, Windows 10

I’ve seen a lot of gimmicky hacks to speed up Firefox, and you probably have too. But chances are Firefox ran just fine when you started, then it slowed down over time. Here’s my collection of tips to restore Firefox’s performance if Firefox is slow.

Dave Farquhar

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Can’t connect to this network? Here’s the fix.

Dave Farquhar Windows July 6, 2016November 26, 2018dell, hp, intel, lenovo, optimizing windows, vista, Windows 10, windows 7

After upgrading to Windows 10, when I unhibernated my laptop the next morning, my wifi connection didn’t work. The connection dropped and I couldn’t reconnect. Forgetting the network and reconnecting didn’t help. Any time I tried to reconnect to my wireless network, I’d get the message that Windows 10 can’t connect to this network.

The problem seemed to be in the power management.

Dave Farquhar

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Add a TCP/IP printer in Windows 10

Dave Farquhar Windows January 27, 2015November 16, 2021Click Finish, Click Next, hp, jetdirect card, laserjet, optimizing windows, Technical Preview, Universal Plug and Play, Windows 10

Sometimes you have to manually add a TCP/IP printer in Windows 10. For example, I have an older HP Laserjet 4100 with a Jetdirect network card in it that I use to print from all of my PCs over my local area network (LAN). Getting Windows 10 to print to it isn’t difficult but it’s hardly intuitive.

If you have your network printer already set up but just need to change its IP address, I covered that here. If you want to share a locally attached printer with other computers on your network, you can do that too.

Printing straight to the TCP/IP address of the printer is convenient. It means you don’t have to have another computer powered up when you want to print.

Dave Farquhar

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EMET protects against what your antivirus cannot–and it’s free

Dave Farquhar security July 1, 2013November 29, 2015antimalware, antivirus, Brian Krebs, firefox, hp, microsoft word, optimizing windows, randomization, vulnerability, windows 7, Windows XP

A few years ago, Microsoft quietly released a security tool called EMET–the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit. EMET is now in version 4.0, and it’s probably the best security tool you’ve never heard of. And that’s a real shame.

Modern versions of Windows and modern CPUs include several security-enhancing technologies that aren’t necessarily switched on by default. EMET is a wrapper that forces software to use these technologies, even if they weren’t designed from the get-go to use them. The idea, then, is that if a badly behaving data file tries to exploit a traditional vulnerability in one of these programs, EMET steps in and shuts it down. A real-world example would be if you visit a web page that’s playing a malicious Flash video, or that contains a malicious Acrobat PDF. The malicious data loads, starts to execute, and the minute it misbehaves, EMET slams the browser tab shut. You won’t know right away what happened, but your computer didn’t get infected, either. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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So, would I rather be a full-time author?

Dave Farquhar Writing March 9, 20131990s, Canada, optimizing windows

When I wrote my take on used-book sales, I originally included a question, then took it out because it turned into a sidebar. But it’s a valid question.

Would I rather be a full-time author? Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Living with a past-its-prime computer

Dave Farquhar Hardware February 28, 2012July 15, 2017defragmenter, firefox, IBM, intel, Intel Atom, Libre Office, lifehacker, Linux Mint, McAfee, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Security Essentials, model m, oatmeal, office 2007, office 2010, Open Office, optimizing windows, overclocking, ramdisk, symantec, vista, Windows 10, Windows XP

I’m playing catch-up a bit. This weekend, Lifehacker ran a guide about living with a computer that’s past its prime.

I’ve made a career of that. One of my desktop PCs at work (arguably the more important one) is old enough that I ought to be preparing to send it off to second grade. And for a few years I administered a server farm that was in a similar state. They finally started upgrading the hardware as I was walking out the door. (I might have stayed longer if they’d done that sooner.) And at home, I ran with out-of-date computer equipment for about a decade, just this summer buying something current. Buying something current is very nice, but not always practical.

So of course I’ll comment on a few of Lifehacker’s points.

Dave Farquhar

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