Load up Fraps and hit the Movies tab. Make sure Record Sound is checked and Detect best sound input is selected. Next, head into Control Panel, Sounds and Audio Devices (in classic view).

Click the Audio tab, and under the Sound Recording section hit Volume…

Click Options, Properties at the top and you should see a window similar to the above. Check the box that says Stereo Mix and hit OK.

A new section should pop up in the main window called Stereo Mix. Unmute it if necessary, and you should be good to go to record sounds from your system.

Select Your Game

On the front page you’ll see a box asking you to select a product. It lists many of the newer generation games. Pick one and hit Can You Run It?

A loading bar will appear, and depending on whether you’ve used it before, it’ll ask you to install the applet. Let the applet install, and your results should appear shortly.

The Results

The first thing you’ll see is a quick glance at where your PC stands relative to the minimum and recommended requirements.

The second thing you’ll see below is a list of the required PC specifications, and then your PC specifications with a rating bar relative to the requires specifications. It’ll also list any “helpful” information, including links to free driver updates, and if your hardware does not meet the requirements, a link to their recommendations (which uses a page from the store TigerDirect).

Scroll to the bottom, make sure Windows Pidgin Options is checked, then click it and Configure Plugin.

Next to Keep Buddy List window on top, click the menu and select Always. Hit Close to both windows and Pidgin should now remain on top of your other windows.

Open Control Panel, enter Accessibility Options, and check the box that says Use ToggleKeys. Hit OK and you now have auditory notification when you hit a “toggle key.”

Head over to the Control Panel, hit Power Options, and click on the Advanced Tab. Under When I press the sleep button on my computer, select from a number of choices. I picked “ask me what to do.”

Simply, Sandboxie forces applications to write to the layer instead of the hard disk, and is able to wipe everything clean afterwards, perfect for demoing software. In this post we’ll be explaining the very basic usage of Sandboxie so you can run and install programs into a layer (sandbox). Download and install from here.

Running Windows Explorer in a Sandbox

When it finishes installing, you’ll be greeted with this window. We want to run Windows Explorer (which will allow us to access all our programs), so hit Sandbox → DefaultBox → Run Sandboxed → Windows Explorer.

See the [#] around the window title? This designates that the program is sandboxed. If you want to double check, just take a look at the main window and which processes are running inside the sandbox.

I decided to run Firefox, so I browsed over to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox and double clicked on firefox.exe. This will execute Firefox in a sandbox as you’re running it from a sandboxed Windows Explorer. Any attempts of Firefox to write to the cache, history, bookmarks, etc. will be erased on quit, allowing you to hide your tracks.

Firefox is now contained in a sandbox, as indicated by the [#] surrounding the title. Your browsing history and such will be erased upon exit, allowing for privacy.

Using Sandboxie, you can install programs onto a virtual layer, allowing you to erase them once you are finished using them as all registry and file changes are caught by the layer.

Head over to Control Panel, head over to Sounds and Audio Devices, and hit the Sounds tab. Scroll down to either Start Windows or Exit Windows and select [None] from the option menu. That’s it!

For this tutorial, we’ll be showing you how to setup XAMPP using the self extracting 7-Zip file.

Downloading XAMPP

Head over to this page to download XAMPP, and pick the EXE (7-zip) as it’s the smallest package size. Save it to your main drive (usually C:\).

Setting up XAMPP

Double click the archive, and just accept the default location. It’ll automatically create a folder called xampp.

Head into the newly created xampp folder and double click on setup_xampp.bat, where an install script will configure XAMPP. It’ll prompt you to press a key once you’re done.

Double click on xampp_control.exe, where a control panel will launch. For basic functionality, you’ll need to start Apache, and for most needs, you’ll need to launch MySQL. Closing the window will minimize it to the system tray.

That’s it! To access your new webserver, head to http://localhost/ to see the default XAMPP pages. To place pages on your website, place your HTML files in the htdocs folder.

It allows you to easily take a picture of the current window, the selected window/object, a rectangular region, a freehand region, full screen, and scrolling regions (like a webpage in a web browser). It’ll allow you to save or annotate the image in the same dialog, eliminating the need for pasting into Paint. Other features include a magnifier and a screen color picker.

Download it here.

As a follow up to our seamless Ubuntu in Windows tutorials, we’re going to show you how to sync a Windows (host) folder to a folder in the Ubuntu (guest). You’ll need to have guest additions installed on the guest OS for this one.

For this tutorial we’ll be syncing the H: drive on Windows (yours will probably be C:) with /home/jason/windows in Ubuntu.

Create a New Share

When you boot up into Ubuntu, do not switch to Seamless Mode just yet. Right click the blue folder icon at the bottom right hand corner.

The Shared Folders dialog will popup. Click the folder icon with the plus sign to add a new share.

Browse for a folder using the yellow folder icon next to Folder Path. I chose the location of my Windows installation, H:.

VirtualBox will then automatically fill the Folder Name, which you can change if you don’t like it. I kept the default. Make sure Make Permanent is checked. Click OK.

Mount the Share in Ubuntu

You can switch to seamless mode if you want now.

Open up Terminal (Applications → Accessories → Terminal). You’ll default automatically to your home folder. For the sake of simplicity, we’re going to mount the Windows drive inside your home folder.

Type the following to create a windows directory:

mkdir windows

You’ll have created /home/YOUR_USERNAME/windows

To mount your new drive, type the following:

sudo mount -t vboxsf YOUR_SHARE_NAME_GOES_HERE /home/YOUR_USERNAME/windows

For example, I’d type:

sudo mount -t vboxsf H_DRIVE /home/jason/windows

That’s about it to syncing a folder on your host Windows machine to an Ubuntu guest. If you have any question, direct them to the comments section below.