Thursday, January 23, 2014

Having Problems Removing Conduit Search from Chrome?


At the Control Panel, go to Programs and uninstall Conduit. Also look for the item Protected Search and uninstall it.

If Condit is still around then do the following. Or if you cannot uninstall the Conduit  from Programs in the first instance, then do the following first and then uninstall Conduit from Programs.


Go to the Chrome Settings option which you access from the three bar button on the extreme right of the Chrome ribbon.

Click on Extensions and remove all references to Conduit.

On Start Up  select Set Pages and replace all reference to Conduit with google.com or your own start page.

Click on Appearance select Show Home Button and type google.com or your own home page.

Go to Search, Manage Search Engines, and delete all reference to Conduit.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Download Youtube Videos

Tried several, some online and some offline and concluded that one of the better ones is Free Youtube Downloader Version 3.5.187.0. It is very easy to use, fast and it doesnt seem to have problems with large files. It is not an extension of any of the browsers but a stand alone program. The interface is very simple and all you really need to do is to copy and paste the youtube video url in the space provided and press the download button. You can select the quality of the downloads -- I download my files as MP4 with the highest quality all the time without any problems. All files are saved in this default directory  C:\Users\(user)\Documents\Downloads\Free YouTube Downloader, but this can be changed using the Settings option.

When installing the program just be alert and decline all the extras that the program wants to instal. Because it is free, it needs to get some revenue from these third party programs, but you can avoid these.

There are many youtube downloaders, and one or two with logos very similar to this one. To find the Free Youtube Downloader that I am referring to, use this link http://youtubedownloader.com/

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Freemake Video Converter: Convert DVD files to MP4, AVI

Found this new website http://www.freemake.com with a suite of 3 frequently searched for and used freeware. I was most interested in the Freemake Video converter as I wanted an alternative to WinX DVD Ripper, which while good and serviceable was limited in some areas. In particular, the subtitles in MP4 movie files which I created ie converted from original DVDs showed up when played using VLC and did not not when using Windows Media Player. Also, the substitles could be turned off and on with some MP4 files and not on others.

So I decided to see if Freemake Video converter was better or at least more consistent as far as subtitles were concerned.

The MKV file and MP4 files of the movie I converted worked fine. Subtitles showed when using VLC and Windows Media Player. The quality was as good as the file made by WinX.

Another useful feature of Freemake is that it easily combines the main movie with a downloaded subtitles file (.srt). I combined the movie Argo with the subtitles downloaded from Subscene ( http://subscene.com/subtitles/argo-2012/english/674657) and it worked on the very first attempt.

But, the attempts using Freemake to convert the DVD file to AVI ended in failure -- the movie was truncated, by about 30 minutes.

Yes the software is very easy to use and the neat feature that allows one to combine a movie with its downloaded subtitles makes this very attractive software.  The options are easy to access and easy to modify, so a beginner will not be lost with this programme.  But while there are lots of options available to convert video files to but some conversions don't work. Also, the programme is not as fast as WinX.

Recommended because it is free and has some useful features.