Monitey Monitors A Website’s Status & Notifies You When It’s Down

Have you ever wondered if your website is up and running as it should be, and everyone from around the world can access it perfectly? It’s a waste of time and effort if you put a lot of content on your site but it remains inaccessible to your visitors. Even though you can employ web services like DownForEveryOneOrJustMe (yeah, that’s a long name, I know) and other such tools for the purpose, they’re only good for manually checking the status of a website. In case you want to constantly monitor a website and get instantly notified upon any outage, Monitey might be just what you’re looking for. This free Windows application monitors any URL in the background, keeping a detailed log of its status and in addition, it notifies you whenever the URL goes offline. The application can be quite useful for all website owners who want to continuously monitor the online status of their web server. Let’s see how it works!

Note: Monitey’s installer comes with a pile of bloatware including browser toolbars and search engine replacements. Make sure you don’t install any third-party tools, apps and other such utilities by selecting Custom Installation and unmarking all these items during setup.

The application comprises of a pretty straight-forward interface and doesn’t bother you with any complicated settings. When launched, all you have to do is enter the URL of the website you want to monitor, and click ‘Start Monitoring’. By default, the application monitors the website automatically after every minute, but you can specify a custom frequency as well. For example, if you replace 1 with 10, Monitey will check the status every ten minutes. The Logs section at the bottom provides you with a summary of the website status for previous attempts. It displays the last checked time and date, along with availability status of the site. If the website goes offline (or you provide a wrong URL), you get a notification stating “The remote name could not be resolved”.

You can also save URLs for monitoring by clicking ‘Saved Websites’ and manually entering the site address. This allows monitoring multiple sites at the same time, and saves you the hassle of reentering a website’s address into the app in the future. Lastly, Monitey allows to save the log files in TXT format for any further analysis. To do this, simply click the ‘Save Log’ button and select the destination directory for saving the file.

To sum it up, Monitey is a brilliant, light-weight tool that does what it’s supposed to in the most simple and straight-forward manner. The application works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Testing was carried out on Windows 8 Pro, 64-bit edition.

Download Monitey

How to Set a Custom Logon Screen Background on Windows 7

Windows 7 makes it possible to change the welcome screen that appears when you start your computer without any third-party software, but this setting is well hidden. You can set any image you like as your background.

This setting is intended for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to customize their systems, but there’s nothing stopping you from using it yourself. All you have to do is change a single registry value and put an image file in the correct location.

Enabling Custom Backgrounds

This feature is disabled by default, so you’ll have to enable it from the Registry Editor. You can also use the Group Policy Editor if you have a Professional version of Windows – scroll down a bit for the Group Policy Editor method.

Launch the Registry Editor by typing regedit into the search box in the Start menu and pressing Enter.

In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background

You’ll see an DWORD value named OEMBackground. If you don’t see it, right-click in the right pane, point to the New submenu and create a new DWORD value with this name.

Double-click the OEMBackground value and set its value to 1.

Note that selecting a new theme in the Appearance and Personalization window will “unset” this registry value. Selecting a theme will change the value of the key to the value stored in the theme’s .ini file, which is probably 0 – if you change your theme, you’ll have to perform this registry tweak again.

Changing the setting in group policy will allow it to persist even when you change your theme, but the Group Policy Editor is only available in Professional editions of Windows.

If you have access to the Group Policy Editor, launch gpedit.msc from the Start menu.

Navigate to the following section in the Group Policy Editor window:

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon

You’ll find a setting named “Always use custom login background.” Double-click it and set it to Enabled.

Setting An Image

Your image file must be less than 256 KB in size. It’s also a good idea to use an image file that matches the resolution of your monitor, so it won’t look stretched.

Windows looks for the custom logon screen background image in the following directory:

C:\Windows\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds

By default, the info and backgrounds folders don’t exist. Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\oobe folder and create them yourself by right-clicking inside the folder, pointing to New, and selecting New Folder.

Copy your desired background image to the backgrounds folder and name it backgroundDefault.jpg.

(I can see the inevitable question coming in the comments, so if you like this wallpaper image, you can get it here.)

The change will take effect immediately – no system reboot required. The first time you log out or lock your screen (try the WinKey-L keyboard shortcut), you’ll see your new background.

Third-Party Tools

You don’t have to do this by hand. There are a variety of third-party tools that automate this process for you, like Windows Logon Background Changer, which we’ve covered in the past. Windows Logon Background Changer and other utilities just change this registry value and put the image file in the correct location for you.

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To get the default logon screen back, just delete the backgroundDefault.jpg file. Windows will use the default background if no custom background image is available.