Simon Hughes - Software Architect, Tutor, Developer

https://www.grc.com/ is run by Steve Gibson. He has many great utilities and has a Security Now podcast. I can't recommend them strongly enough. GRC "Perfect Passwords" Generator https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm Spinrite hard disc recovery and maintenance http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm SecurityNow podcast with Leo Laporte http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm ShieldsUP! https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 SecurAble http://www.grc.com/securable.htm

Recently I’ve noticed my laptop going quite slow. For example, using Windows explorer and clicking on a folder resulted in a 40 – 60 second wait for the folder to show its contents. Well, I’ve worked out by stopping the ‘DHCP Client’ service my PC goes like lightening again. I'm also using Windows XP. To fix, you need to delete all Printers that are offline, and remove all mapped network drives. Why does the ‘DHCP Client’ affect windows explorer? I don’t know, but Microsoft if your reading this, please fix it.

I started off with Dbase III, then Borland Turbo C for about 5 years, then when Microsoft Visual Studio v1.0 came out, I moved to that. I've been using Visual Studio ever since. Coding in C++ and have since moved to C# when that came into existance. Do I use component? Yes. Which ones then? Telerik http://www.telerik.com/ Dundas http://www.dundas.com/ Rebex http://www.rebex.net/ I've also used DevExpress reports, but they peg the CPU to 100% on the webservers when exporting an excel spreadsheet with a lot of data in them, and more often than not, cause a timeout on the ASPX page. So I don't like to use them anymore. My essential toolkit consists of: SVN - Subversion source control http://subversion.tigris.org/ Winrar http://www.rarlab.com/ Colour Schemer (web design) http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html SQL Prompt http://www.red-gate.com/ ANTS Profiler http://www.red-gate.com/ NUnit http://www.nunit.org/ Microsoft Visual Studio http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/vstudio/de...