Free Fixes: Recover Stolen Laptops, Add Uninstall Option, Organize Icons
In the last month, two family members and one friend have had laptops stolen right out of their homes. Sadly, none of the systems were equipped with remote-monitoring software--unlike the folks we profiled last month in " Laptop Thieves Punk'd! Six Amazing Recovery Stories ." Unfortunately, their chances of getting their laptops back are just about zero.
To me this serves as a wake-up call; I'm in the process of evaluating various laptop-recovery services to see which one I should deploy on my own machines.
Short-term, I'm equipping my primary, can't-live-without-it laptop with LockItTight . Like similar services, it relies on a small, hidden client program that performs location tracking, Webcam captures, file recovery, and even keylogging. Unlike similar services, LockItTight is free--for one PC, anyway.
After you sign up for and activate your account, you download and run the LockItTight client (which is compatible with Windows XP and later). And that's pretty much the last you see of it; you won't find any evidence of it in the system tray or Programs menu. (Neither will tech-savvy thieves, which is exactly the point.)
To tweak LockItTight's settings and/or find out what your laptop's been up to, you sign into your account via a Web browser. By default, the client will simply report the laptop's position (usually via Wi-Fi, which in my tests was accurate to about 500 meters), but you can also enable screen capture, Webcam capture, key logs, clipboard logs, remote file retrieval, and remote file deletion.
Pretty neat, eh? Alas, if there's no Internet connection, there's no data for LockItTight to gather--so there's no guarantee this will help you locate your stolen system. (If it does, make sure to let the police handle the recovery.) But it's a damn sight better than nothing.
The other catch: LockItTight Free limits you to one device and will report its location only every two hours. If you want more devices and more frequent reporting, you'll need a paid account. LockItTight Standard, for example, costs $1.99 per month per device, and reports location every 12 minutes. It also boosts the screenshot and Webcam capture resolutions.
There are lots of other laptop-recovery services out there, so I recommend doing some research before deciding which one to entrust with your laptop's safety. That said, I definitely recommend choosing one of them--because there's nothing worse than sitting there wishing your stolen machine had a way to "phone home." With a remote-monitoring system like this, it can.
System Tray Icon - News
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So you have all your icons selected and now you need to get them into your taskbar. First right click on ALL shortcuts on the taskbar. Go to "Unpin". This will remove the icons from the bar. Don't worry. Your putting them back anyways. Now drag all the shortcuts from the "Shortcuts" folder onto the taskbar. This will "Pin" them there. Now you should have something like this. Of course your going to want to change that darn start orb. Well you can go through hours of editing the "explorer.exe" file with something like resource hacker. Or you can create an icon just for your startbar. To do this you will need a little app called OpenStartMenu . Download the app and put it into any folder you want. I like to use the Documents folder. Some apps don't like to use the normal method of shortcuts to launch an application. iTunes is a good example. To properly use itunes you need to launch it. Then right click on the itunes icon on the taskbar and select "Pin this program to Taskbar". Now right click on the itunes icon again and In that menu right click on "iTunes" again. Go to properties. You can now edit the icon. You can activate a "player" option like windows media player has when you use the preview mouse over look. To do this open iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced and select it to "Show iTunes icon in system tray". Save and close iTunes. Launch it from your new shortcut and play a song. Hover your mouse over the new icon to be able to pause and skip tracks.
Change Battery Icon In Windows 7 Taskbar In System Tray via @
@ try going into the system tray to find the lion icon and toggle download restart/pause
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