Yodlee Free Personal Finance Solutions

Online personal finances, or personal money management tools, gain increasing popularity among users all over the World. In my previous publications, Online Money Management with Free Secure Financial Tools and Personal Finances Management? Take it Easy and Have Fun with Moneytrackin’!, I have already addressed several possibilities to get yourself financial adviser and personal banker for free at the convenience of your home. In this post, I will present one more service offering, which can be considered to be at the same quality level of provided free services, as already presented sites.

Yodlee Personal Finance uses patented aggregation technology to deliver a complete financial picture to consumers. By capturing all assets and liabilities, Yodlee provides more than a just an accurate net worth statement. It quickly becomes an essential part of consumers’ financial lives.

Instead of logging into separate sites for checking, savings, credit card, brokerage, 401-k and mortgage accounts, consumers log onto your online banking site for up-to-date financial information. Tracking, budgeting and spending categorization are simple and intuitive. And consumers can view financial data from many different angles, including:

• Account Overview
  
• Dashboard
  
• Net Worth Statement
  
• Portfolio Manager
  
• Rewards Manager
  
• Bill Reminders
  
• Home Equity Chart
  
• Graphical Financial Calendar
  
• Spending Analysis views

So, the basic idea behind Yodlee is aggregation. The average American has 12 financial accounts of various types, according to CEO Anil Arora, and there are thousands of different services on offer, from banks to stock accounts. Yodlee got its start in 1999 as an aggregator of all the information from those different account types.

The Personal Financial Management Suite helps users understand where and how their money is distributed. However, it’s also used a growing majority of the country’s largest banks. Most banks were very slow to add any online functionality beyond showing account balances and a list of transactions. That’s what provided an opening for personal finance sites to start up - consumers obviously want to see all the information from their various accounts in one place, arrayed in ways that are understandable.

The following institutions use Yodlee as part of their sites functional modules:

• Bank of America MyPortfolio
  
• Fidelity Full View
  
• HSBC Easy View
  While the amount and depth of the available options, offered by Yodlee, is one of the best (if not the best) among the competitors, the front end is not very attractive and eye catching.

Here are some tips if you decide to give Yodlee a try:

1. Define some sub-categories. Yodlee is actually allows to define as many categories as you want.
   
2. Go to the options page and make your default homepage the "Dashboard" It is what gives you the quick look into your current status.
   
3. Import as many accounts as you can think of. You can also import many of the services providers you pay bills to. It is handy to see not just when you spend money but also where it is all going.
   
4. Also on the options page notice you can organize your dashboard a little - By default the right column is MUCH taller than the left so shift things around a bit so you get a good balance.
   
5. After you have imported a bunch of accounts define a custom account group that contains just your primary accounts (checking, savings and that’s it). Then setup the transactions module on the dashboard to just show that group. It makes it much easier to focus on your actual cash flow at a glance while still letting you run deep and complex reports

Yodlee company headquarters are located in the Silicon Valley - Redwood City, CA - and has offices in the United States, United Kingdom, and India.

Website: http://www.yodlee.com/

Office XP Problem: Text File Stops Responding at Initialization

Have you ever experienced that when you open text file through your Microsoft Word in Windows XP operating system, a program seems to hang before it opens or may appear to stop responding at all?

If positive, you are suffering from the known problem that is affecting the MS Word files operation in this Operating System. We will offer you the basic action plan to troubleshoot the listed annoyance.

Turn OFF file indexing on the drive(s), where you are trying to open files. In "My Computer" right click on the drive and select "Properties". UNCHECK "Allow indexing service xxxxx". In most cases, this simple operation will resolve your issues.

If the problem will not go away, most likely, it is related to the recent history folder of Windows. This problem might appear on different machines with different hardware but all with Office XP and Windows XP (with default settings). Note that the symptoms might be slightly different on different computers. There are two known solutions to resolve the issue:

1) Temporary solution: Delete all files in the following folder.
C:’Documents and Settings’(Your User Name goes Here)’Application
Data’Microsoft’Office’Recent.

If the temporary solution resolves your issue, you can follow up to perform the permanent solution, presented below.

2) Permanent solution: Disable the recent history.

* Access the registry through built-in registry editor regedit, or any other third-party registry editor, available on the market.

* Backup your registry first (export to file at the predetermined location). Every registry operation, especially by inexperienced user might be a threat to the system functionality. If something goes wrong, you can always restore the initial registry status by loading the backup registry patch.

* Open your registry and find the following key in the HKCU registry branch.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER’Software’Microsoft’Windows’CurrentVersion’Policies’Explorer].

* Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value called ’NoRecentDocsHistory’. Set the value to equal ’1’ to enable the restriction.
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = disable restriction, 1 = enable restriction).

* Open the registry and find the following key in the HKLM branch.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE’Software’Microsoft’Windows’CurrentVersion’Policies’Explorer].

* Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value called ’NoRecentDocsHistory’. Set the value to equal ’1’ to enable the restriction.
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = disable restriction, 1 = enable restriction).

Sources and additional information:
http://www.compu-help.us/215.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833041
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313937

Windows Problem - Computer Randomly Reboots Itself

When a computer freezes and reboots, it is difficult to discern what the problem is without some process of elimination. There could be various reasons for the computer rebooting itself - software and hardware.

Your first thought should be did you install any new hardware/software in your computer before this behaviour started? If the answer is yes, remove the newly installed device and see if your computer stops acting up. If you haven’t installed any new hardware/software then, you should look into your drivers and operating system updates. Keeping your system up-to-date with its drivers and service packs is essential to a properly working computer.

Hardware problems

Hardware problems are more probable when computer reboots randomly with no pattern in relation to the problem or problems combination, you are running at the time. A noisy power supply, loose screw under the motherboard, bad CPU fan, and memory, expansion boards, socketed chips, and cables that are not fully seated are among the common causes. The motherboard could be cracked-these are usually hard to find.


Overheated CPU is a frequent problem cause. Be sure all air vent pathways are clear for at least several inches outside the machine. Check inside of your fan and case, and especially around the CPU heat sink for dust or pet hair. Replace CPU fan and/or add a Case fan. Clean is important. Try checking the system health in the BIOS for the processor or system temperature. You’d like it to be less than 50d Celsius, anything over 75d is running dangerous.

You can also use for the advance troubleshooting a free hardware monitoring utility SpeedFan, that will help you to read the temperatures of your motherboard and your hard disk, read voltages and fan speeds and check the status of your hard disk using S.M.A.R.T. or SCSI attributes.

Also a bad memory chip can do this. Remove one at a time or replace the current module and run the computer. Free utility from Microsoft might help you on this stage of the memory investigation. The Windows Memory Diagnostic tests the Random Access Memory (RAM) on your computer for errors. The diagnostic includes a comprehensive set of memory tests. If you are experiencing problems while running Windows, you can use the diagnostic to determine whether the problems are caused by failing hardware, such as RAM or the memory system of your motherboard.

Power problems such as a very brief loss of power can cause the computer restarting as well. We recommend always plugging your computer into a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). It is clear that the same bad outcome can be caused by intermittently failing power supply.

Disabling automatic restarting option

When a Stop error occurs, by default XP is set to restart. This makes it hard to troubleshoot the error. To change this behavior, perform the following operation:

* Right click on My Computer and select properties.
* Click Advanced tab.
* Click Settings under Startup and Recovery.
* Under System Failure uncheck Automatically Restart.
* Click OK.

This will not solve your problem, but will instead give you a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). At which point Windows will give you a vague error, at which point we can trace your problem. You can note the error ID and try to troubleshoot the problem.

If you still get the system rebooting and there is no BSOD then it’s likely that your processor is overheating or your PSU is faulty.

Software Problems

Other possible causes include new device drivers, viruses. You have to check your system for viruses, worms, and Trojans as the first step of the software troubleshooting.

To help figure out whether it’s a software problem (Windows, a driver, a virus, etc.) or a hardware problem, you can try rebooting and entering Setup (CMOS) or booting to MS-DOS from a floppy or to another operating system if you have a dual boot configuration. Wait a while and see if the computer still restarts unexpectedly. If it does, you probably have a hardware or heat problem. If not, it’s probably a problem with the software in Windows.

Summary

The random computer rebooting issue is not an easy and straightforward problem to resolve. Be patient and consider logical troubleshooting plan when you address it.

Sources and Additional Reading:
http://www.aeonity.com/david/computer-automatically-reboots-itself
http://askbobrankin.com/computer_restarts_itself.html