Password recovery, USB unmount, privacy and more

Here are some invaluable system helps.
Asterisk Key does one thing, but it's a lifesaver. It reveals the actual passwords hidden under the dots or asterisks in the password field. Invaluable when you've forgotten yours.
You are supposed to "unmount" USB drives before pulling them out of your computer. Which in XP you do by clicking on the little icon at the RH foot of your screen.

But sometimes when you try, you get cryptic messages saying you can't do that. Rather than just using brute force, try a little bit of freeware called USB Safely Remove.
The Blue Screen of Death is every Windows owner's nightmare. Most often it leaves you with no clue as to the real problem. Maximum PC magazine has a helpful Blue Screen of Death survival guide - everything you need to know.
Windows XP won't be around forever, and Microsoft will stop supporting it soon, meaning there will be no more bug fixes/security patches. Here's some advice from PC World for when that happens.
Internet privacy continues to dominate the news (you may have seen the hooha over Facebook in the last few weeks). Here's a list of the latest threats. And here's what you can do to fix the Facebook problem.

RSS feeds, lost passwords, Firefox add-ons and more

Some recent gleanings from round the traps:

Do you routinely hop from one favorite Web site to another, just to see if anything new has been added? There's a faster, easier way: Use an RSS reader. (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, a technology that enables sites to come to you instead of you having to go to them.)One of the most popular is the Google Reader, and here are some hints on how to use it.

As a researcher, I often have to clip references, quotes, etc from webpages, which used to require two trips to Notepad (one for the quote, and one for the URL). With Quotepad, I just select the text, press Ctrl+Shift+Q and the selected text is saved to QuotePad together with the URL of the webpage it was copied from.

Lost passwords are a pain. Just as bad is that row of dots staring at you in the password box and you can't remember what they stand for. This is where Asterisk Key rides to the rescue. It uncovers hidden passwords on password dialog boxes and web pages.

How to Fix Your Family's PC Problems: Are you the first line of tech support for your friends and family? Here's everything you need to troubleshoot for the not so tech-savvy.

Backing up your hard disk is imperative, but sometimes it's not just enough to back up the data. If you want to also back up the operating system and other installed software, you have to make what's called a drive image, or disk image. Fortunately, there are plenty of good options, and this article from Gizmo discusses some alternatives.

When your computer won't boot properly, you probably need a Boot CD, which bypasses the internal operating system. According to Simple Help, the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows is “a bootable recovery CD that contains software used for repairing, restoring, or diagnosing almost any computer problem”. There are a lot of great tutorials for using the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, including the How-To Geek’s create your own Ultimate Recovery CD for Windows tutorial and how to reset your forgotten Windows password using the Ultimate Boot CD tutorial.

You mean you can do THAT in Firefox! Sure can. Bet you never knew what amazing things can be done with these add-ons. Here are seven to wet your appetite.