tips-tricks-9

How to Troubleshoot a Computer

2009-09-03T06:08:00.001-07:00

Before calling technical service and paying for "help," take a look at your computer yourself. A little common sense may help you solve simple hardware and software problems.

Steps:
1. Restart the computer. Many software problems will correct themselves when you do.
2. Check your cables. Keyboard not working? Make sure it's plugged in. Mouse not responding? Make sure it's plugged in.
3. Check the electric power. Plug a lamp into the same power outlet that's connected to your computer to make sure the outlet is working.
4. Make sure the computer and monitor are plugged in.
5. Disconnect peripheral devices (such as a printer or external Zip disk) and restart the computer.
6. Listen for unusual sounds. Is the cooling fan running? Is the hard drive making noises?
7. Look inside the computer for wires that aren't plugged in all the way or other faulty connections.
8. Start the computer from an external start-up disk, such as the system software CD that came with your computer.

Tips:
If you do decide to call technical support, write down the exact problem and what you were doing when it occurred. Also note any error messages. Try to replicate the problem if you can.
Be as specific as possible when talking to the support person. Example: "Whenever I try to start up my Mac, I see an icon with a little question mark. With my iMac CD, though, the computer boots normally."
Computers tend to crash or hang when their hard disks become too full. Free up space by deleting unnecessary files and emptying the Trash or Recycle Bin.

Warnings:
Don't zap yourself or your RAM. When working inside the computer, turn the power off but leave the electrical cord plugged into the surge suppressor. Ground yourself by touching the casing of the power supply before touching any of the computer's circuits.

Tips from eHow Users:
Most computer problems are very easy to repair and most of the time no
technician is required.
What you need is to use your head and think.
Often when a computer does not work, it's caused very often by the user itself that does not understand how it works.
Take a cup of coffee or hot cocoa, sit down and relax...It will help to find a solution.

Switching Attacks from a Hacker

2009-09-03T06:07:00.001-07:00

The point of that thread is to enlite the lack of security implementation and consideration for ethernet swithing based network!

Many guys think that using private VLAN will secure there system, and I believe it is unpartially false. But it is time to wake up to real !!!

A layer2 attack is hard to achieve from the outside world but a man inside can do disastrous malicious attacks, so the main message is watch your logs and tune your IDS to detect such attacks!

After a good threat leaded few days ago by brandon64_99 Hacking VLANs/Packet Stealth if felt I could write something about VLAN hacking!

1. INTRODUCTION

This memorandum aims to describe the list of security threats and counter measure that might be identified on an 802.1q ethernet switch based network.
Switch based network are layer 2 networks, this lead to an inside network attack risk.

For the guys who are still using LANE over ATM networks these attacks are achievable as well!!!

2. BASICS LAYER 2 KNOWN ATTACKS

Attacks described below are applicable to any ethernet switch based network and are based on common and basic switching functions.

2.1 CAM OVERFLOW / MAC FLOODING

2.1.1 Ethernet Switching Basics

The main difference between HUB and switch is the forwarding of unicast packet. The switch learn about the frames transmitted through its ports and cache information about hosts connected to it.

Information such as MAC addresses available on physical ports with their associated VLAN parameters are stored into the CAM table (Content Addressable Memory).

Let take an example in a private VLAN; 3 hosts A, B & C are connected to 3 differents switched ports. When host A send data to host B through port 1, the switch learn that host A is located on port 1 and cache it into the CAM. If host B never sent a packet, the switch is not able to locate host B and will flood the packet originated by A to all VLAN ports.

When B is replying to A on port 2, the switch learn that host B is located on port 2 and cache it into the CAM. The packet is forwarded to host A on port 1 and host C will not receive that packet.

Next time A sent a packet to host B, it will be exclusively forwarded to port 2 and host C will know nothing about it.

2.1.2 CAM Overflow Attack

Because memory is not unlimited, the CAM table has a fixed size. This fact allows the switch to be exploited for sniffing purposes. On some switches, it is possible to bombard the switch with bogus MAC address data. The switch, not knowing how to handle the excess data, will 'fail open'. That is, it will revert to a hub and will broadcast all network frames to all ports.

In 1999, the MACOF tool (MAC OverFlow) had been created for that purpose. It is capable to generate about 155000 ethernet packets per minute with randomized MAC source. As an example CISCO catalyst CAM table size is 131 052 entries.
At this point, one of the more generic network sniffers will work to spy the VLAN segment, the attacker is also able to drive a DoS attack by sending data floods broadcasted over the VLAN slowing down drastically the switch and hosts performances.

It is interesting to note that the CAM is common to all VLAN therefore there are all compromised, if an attacker as access to only one VLAN he will be able to sniff only that one but may DoS the whole network. Therefore this attack compromise confidentiality and user services on a ethernet switch.

2.1.3 Attack Mitigation

1. Some switches allow to limit the number of MAC addresses learn through a port. If host are directly connected to the switch this function will surely protect the system by limiting the number to a single. In that case the attacker will DoS himself by driving such an attack. If a hub is connected to the switch all users using that very hub may be DoSed.

2. Most switches implement port security functions based on static MAC adresses. But this procedure is very heavy as a management point of view. Even more is users are mobile in the network.

2.2 ARP SPOOFING

2.2.1 Principe

One of the basic operations of the Ethernet protocol revolves around ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) requests and replies. In general, when Node A wants to communicate with Node C on the network, it sends an ARP request. Node C will send an ARP reply which will include the MAC address. Even in a switched environment, this initial ARP request is sent in a broadcast manner.

It is possible for Node B to craft and send an unsolicited, fake ARP reply to Node A. This fake ARP reply will specify that Node B has the MAC address of Node C. Node A will unwittingly send the traffic to Node B since it professes to have the intended MAC address.

Some available tools are specialized for sending fake ARP replies to classes of machines (i.e., NFS servers, HTTP servers, etc). One such tool is dsniff and it works well to sniff for specific types of traffic. Other tools listen for the general ARP request and send the fake ARP reply at that time.

The parasite program falls into this category and it serves well to sniff the entire network. For this type of attack to work, we need the ability to forward on the frames we receive to their intended host. This is most commonly achieved through some type of IP forwarding, either at the kernel or application level.

2.2.2 ARP Spoofing for Sniffing Purposes

An attacker may compromise the confidentiality of IP connections transmitted on the VLAN he is connected to by sniffing data transfer avoiding been detected. As an example the ethernet target spoofed may be the gateway (e.g. routeur).

The attacker spoof the routeur MAC address by either sending a gratuitous ARP saying that packet to the outside world should be forwarded to the attacker MAC address. Note that IP duplication may alert the administrator but ARP request transmitted by a router are very few because the ARP caching time for such device may be huge (e.g. 8 hours for default CISCO router configuration)

Then all packets originated by a local victim is forwarded to the attacker machine. In order to be undetectable the attacker shall re forward those packet to the real routeur otherwise the outside world connectivity is denied.

The attacker machine behaves like a proxy and provides a half-duplex sniffer for the whole VLAN segment.

In the case of the attacker is willing to sniff a specific host in a full-duplex manner he can use exactly the same technique for spoofing the victim, therefore data exchange from outside world to the victim may be sniffed in both directions.

2.2.3 ARP Spoofing for Anonymity and DOS Purposes

ARP spoofing may be use in a different way in order to receive data to a victim usurping its addresses.

If the victim is a host then the attacker will be able to appear like the victim and receive data such as e-mail or database resulting in Denial of Service for the victim, a lack of confidentiality and anonymity for the attacker (because he is usurping the victim network characteristics).

In order to avoid IP address duplication between the attacker machine and the victim, the victim host may be DoSed.

If the victim is the routeur; outside connectivity will be denied for the whole VLAN segment.

2.2.4 Attach Mitigation

There is no real solution to mitigate that attack but it can be detected thanks to Intrusion Detection System (IDS).

2.3 MAC DUPLICATING

It's not difficult to imagine that, since all frames on the network are routed based on their MAC address, that the ability to impersonate another host would work to our advantage. That's just what MAC duplicating does. You reconfigure Node B to have the same MAC address as the machine whose traffic you're trying to sniff. This is easy to do.

This differs from ARP Spoofing because, in ARP Spoofing, we are 'confusing' the host by poisoning it's ARP cache. In a MAC Duplicating attack, we actually confuse the switch itself into thinking two ports have the same MAC address.

2.4 VLAN HOPPING ATTACK

2.4.1 Principe

This attack highly depends on platform implementation. The idea is to send data from a user port with 802.1q encapsulation, please note that the port is not a trunk and should transmit only 802.3 or EthernetII frames.

Doing that on a single switch whatever the VLAN ID used the frame will never be forwarded to destination. But in a multiple switch configuration a trunk implementation may be exploit. Trunk ports may be set implicitly to a VLAN_ID (CISCO default native VLAN for trunk is VLAN 1). Therefore when a user port send a packet to a destination located into a distant switch and that very packet is encapsulated into 802.1q format with the native VLAN ID, it will be forwarded to the distant switch.

In order to achieve this attack:
- the attacker shall know what the victim MAC address and VLAN.
- the attacker must belongs to the trunk native VLAN
- The packet need a double encapsulation to reach the victim, the first one is based on the native VLAN the second on the victim VLAN.

Thanks to that attack a unidirectional malicious stream may be generated to the victim from the attacker. It is a blind attack similar to IP spoofing attack.

2.4.2 Attack Mitigation

The trunk native VLAN must be identified and other port than trunk port shall be removed from that one.

3. ADVANCED LAYER 2 KNOWN ATTACKS

3.1 SPANNING TREE ATTACK

3.1.1 Principe

The goal of this attack is to sniff traffic on the backbone but interesting hosts located on distant switches and have static ARP entries to prevent against ARP spoofing attack.

The STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) attack idea is to fool a network composed by several ethernet switches by force all switches to forward packets to the attacker machine.

In order to do that the Attacker sends a BPDU packet advertising a priority zero bridge (root bridge) to the switch he is connected to. Therefore traffic that should normally go through a distant link are transmitted across the attacker local switch. Then thanks to the CAM overflow attack he may sniff distant data (cf. figure).

3.1.2 Attach Mitigation

Spanning tree functions must be disabled on all user interfaces but maintained for Network to Network Interfaces to avoid loop.

3.2 VIRTUAL TRUNK PROTOCOL ATTACK

3.2.1 Principe

VTP is a protocol used to distribute VLAN configuration among switches aver trunk port, if an attacker becomes a trunk port he could use that protocol to configure at will the whole network. For instance he might send VTP messages faking to be a VTP server with no with no VLAN configured, as a result all VLAN configured with VTP will be deleted across the entire VTP domain. That's a huge DoS attack.

3.2.2 Attack Mitigation
Don't use VTP!

3.3 VMPS ATTACK

3.3.1 Principe

The aim of VLAN Management Policy Server is to assign dynamically VLAN basing on MAC address, IP address or HTTP authentication (URT). VMPS is centralizing host information in a database which is downloaded to servers via TFTP. VMPS uses VLAN Query Protocol (VQP) for client/server exchanges which is unauthenticated and runs over UDP.

All VMPS traffic is in clear text, unauthenticated and over UDP, therefore that protocol may be easily misused for hijacking purposes.

3.3.2 Attack Mitigation

VMPS traffic shall be transmitted on a Out Of Band basis (user traffic separate network) or not used.

3.4 DHCP STARVATION ATTACK

3.4.1 Principe

Using the MAC overflow attack an attacker is able to DoS the network by requesting all of the available DHCP adresses.

3.4.2 Attack Mitigation

Same counter measure than for MAC overflow attack.

3.5 DHCP ROGUE ATTACK

3.5.1 Principe

The attacker could turn its machine to a rogue DHCP server and provide address to the VLAN clients. DHCP server assigns IP address as well as default gateway address and DNS address. Therefore, the attacker may force all traffic to go through its own machine (by assigning the default gateway as its own address) for sniffing purpose.

3.5.2 Attack Mitigation

There is no real mitigation known. RFC 3118 "Authentication for DHCP messages " should help but is not widely implemented by DHCP servers.

Track USB Drive Users

2009-09-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

How I can track users who used my USB drive after giving someone and get the usernames of the accounts where the pendrive was used. It can achieve this feat either by using Trojans or a combination of Batch and Autorun files. However,you must advise users to not to format the pendrive in order for this to work.The second option of Batch files was easy and less suspicious.So Here is how to made it possible to get the usernames when the pendrive was plugged into the PC.

Create an autorun.inf file on the root of your flash drive/Pendrive with the following contents:

[autorun]
open=username.bat
action=Open folder to view files

Now, create a batch file called username.bat with the following contents:

@echo off
echo %username%>>users.dat
date /t>>users.dat
time /t>>users.dat
start "Explorer" %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe

NOTE : The Last Line of the code is optional which will open the explorer in a new window.

Save both file and you are good to go. Now whenever a user plugs your pendrive into their PC,it will display an autoplay option indicating that they have to click on the icon to open the drive to view its contents. A small DOS window will flash for a moment and then disappear.Now If you go into the root of the drive, you will find a new file called users.dat which will record the user names of all the users who have accessed your drive by clicking on the icon. You can open the DAT file using notepad and view its contents.

However..This is not a fool proof method as some geeks disable the autoplay option (or disable writing to USB drives) ,or they just bypass it by pressing RISHT SHIFT key when the pendrive is connected and hence their name will not be recorded or they can delete the users.dat file. But that said,it will work fine nevertheless

NOTE 2 : Umm..I think the above code is way too easy and harmless.

How to move your WinXP User Profile to a Different Location

2009-09-03T06:05:00.000-07:00

If you have ever needed to do this, here's the way.

[1] First, you have to have another working user profile, with administrator privileges.

[2] Then log off from your profile, which you need to move.

[3] Log in from the other account.

[4] Copy the profile files to wherever you want to move it to. (eg: copy C:\Documents and Settings\YOU to D:\Users\YOU)

[5] Go to regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

[6] Expand the ProfileList key. You will see something like this:

Note: You might see different keys, but they will look similar to these.

[7] Click on the profiles with a long name (eg: S-1-5-21-149326177-3158526017-926773828-1006) and check on the right hand side pane if you can identify which profile is yours. There is an Expandable_String_Value (REG_EXPAND_SZ) called ProfileImagePath, and its value should be the current path of the profile. (i.e. C:\Documents and Settings\YOU). Change its value to D:\Users\YOU.

[7] Log off and log in from the changed profile.

[8] Now you can delete C:\Documents and Settings\YOU

[9] Expand the ProfileList key. You will see something like this:

10 SEO Tips For Maximizing Facebook Visibility

2009-08-29T00:46:00.001-07:00

No discussion of social media’s effect on organic search results is complete without consideringFacebook’s well-laid play for “search” domination, in a closed-loop-members-only end run around Google’s public algorithmic crawl.

With 250 million users, the recent purchase of friendFeed and newly offered ability to search at macro and/or granular users’ network levels, Facebook’s internal community-search platform may well threaten other search models by sheer magnitude of participation and users’ trust of their friends, extended networks and themed groups.

Why SEO for Facebook is now crucial

Whereas most SEOs think “Google” and other mainstream engines when gauging the effect social media profiles on organic SERPs, Facebook is quickly becoming a massive walled-garden parallel organic internet. Think Facebook internal search results won’t matter? Think again and start “optimizing.”

According to its publicly released statistics, Facebook claims 120 million of its registered members log in at least once each day. Every month friends share 1 billion photographs and 10 million videos. In any given week users post over a billion content blocks, news stories, links and blog posts. There are over 45 million active user groups. Little-to-none of Facebook’s is activity is indexed by Google and other mainstream engines. It’s easy to see why Facebook’s members-only organic search results deserve attention!

At the root of this new consideration is the reality that Facebook is now allowing users to search the last 30 days of their news feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by friends and the Facebook pages of which they’re fans.

Check out my personal Facebook search results (from among friends) for “Indian food.” I see my friend Reem ate Indian food for lunch.

If other users have chosen to make their content available to everyone, you also will be able to search for their status updates, links and notes, regardless of whether or not you are friends. Search results will continue to include people’s profiles as well as pertinent Facebook Pages, groups and applications. Also note the cool ability to filter your personal “search visibility” by various Facebook internal channels: links, status updates, wall posts and notes.

There are commercial results in my Facebook wide “everyone” SERPs from a restaurant promoting their participation in the San Francisco Food Festival.

Here’s another commercially-tinted result, R2 Indian Buffet. The listing was was sourced from R2’s Facebook Indian Buffet page.

Look at these 2 results for the search “seafood in New York.” Chef Andrew Hunter’s listing comes as a result of his using the words “seafood & New York” in the most current wall post.

Next, Andrea Cohn’s profile comes up #2 for “seafood in New York. She’s promoting the Bongo seafood lounges, in West Village and Chelsea, with a wall post of a martiniboys.com listing. Facebook is showing the title tag of the Bongo post Andrea bookmarked.

One other important observation: Bing is the official Facebook “web results” search engine. With the recent Microsoft/Yahoo deal Bing will be also be powering Yahoo. Consider the branding and traffic implications of Bing powering Facebook behind the garden wall, especially when one click actually takes users to Bing.com.

Ten Facebook SEO tips

1. Search results continue to include people’s profiles as well as pertinent Facebook pages, groups and applications. Therefore what you’ve done to date still works. The gravity of Facebook groups, which some thought lame, will increase as Facebook internal search is adopted.

2. Facebook gives us some clues regarding its algorithmic ranking factors. Read it and understand. Stay up to speed on changes in the Facebook blog, as they will certainly occur. Hopefully as Facebook grows they’ll make a search quality team ambassador available like Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Sasi Parthasarathy. As people learn to spam these results, Facebook will react and SEOs will want more information.

3. In addition to wall posts, think SEO in tendering status updates, links and notes. You never know who will find it, searching for whatever.

4. Wall-post external content like blog posts and news should be optimized for important keywords, especially the content’s title tag. If possible post content where the call to action and/or contact information is actually in the title tag. This gets your pitch to the search results as opposed to requiring a second click through to a profile page.

5. If you want your promotional data indexed in the wider Facebook, outside of your friends, make sure you select “everyone” in privacy settings > search. Though it’s possible users might not be happy if they were aware, existing accounts default to “everyone,” understanding this is a cool inside tip for early success.

When “everyone” is selected, others may see your data regardless of whether or not you are friends. Reciprocally, users should uncheck if they want to exclude their profile from wider Facebook SERPs. It would not be surprising if users protest when folks start to discover that all of a sudden some of their personal sharing is visible to everyone.

7. Remember that it’s not only wider (non-friends) Facebook search that matters. Your friends, friends of friends, networks and networks of friends are likely to trust you a bit more since you’re “local.” It’s fascinating to extrapolate the implications of a “trusted local personal search network.” As a user or searcher, be aware of how Facebook search privacy settings function.

8. Seek advice from other tools Facebook gives us regarding users common social graphs.Lexicon, which is about to get deeper, and the Facebook paid search platform offer cool insight regarding what’s hot.

9. Contribute continually. A good portion of the physical search results are comprised of social graph points generated within the last 30 days.

10. Be there or be square! Stay tuned for attributes, in and out of Facebook, may factor in the search results as Facebook evolves.

A crucial new channel for search marketers to master

All of this has potentially massive repercussions for how marketers view Facebook chatter. By really digging deep into how Facebook is searching internal content, you’ll be tapping into the next level of the web’s development, uncovering a gold mine of data about what people are talking about, what they like and dislike, and how they are influencing the opinions of others. This is clearly an important search frontier.

Dig around. Learn the specifics in form and functionality of Facebook’s newly enhanced organic search results. In order to “optimize” for Facebook internal search, it’s important to learn precisely what areas of participation to focus on for the most influence. Facebook gives us a bit of ranking criteria information regarding how the engine is wired. Facebook groups will matter more than before, as a result of the new search algorithm, if & when Facebook internal search achieves wider adoption.

As always in social media marketing, leveraging friends’ (and your own) recommendations, without being a spammer, is sticky business. Follow the timeless axioms of social media participation. give more than you take by contributing unselfish & recurrent content recommendations for others to consume. Be holistic in how you promote your own content and (as always) think in terms of supporting the community first.

Beginner SEO Tips from Network Solutions

2009-08-29T00:22:00.000-07:00

I know that this is a pretty old video and very elementary, but I’d say this is one of the best explanations that you can give someone that inquires about SEO. People ask me on a regular basis what the secret or the aim of Search Engine Optimization is and this sums it up quite nicely.

How to Resolve the Problem of Sexless Marriage?

2009-08-09T18:39:00.001-07:00

Sexless marriage is the curse for the life of the individual that makes the married life anguish. A sexless marriage means sometimes there are very infrequent sexual encounters and later on it leads to the no more sex at all. Sexless marriage is serious cause of concern and may lead to the divorce. A sexless marriage induces the feelings of loneliness, unconfident, and confusion among the partners. Surviving in a sexless marriage is difficult because sex is a key ingredient of any romantic relationship and marriage without sex is merely half the marriage.

The fast and furious lifestyle that we are living today is found to be the major reason behind the sexless marriage as both the partners doesn’t have enough time for each other. Some other reasons that tend to sexless marriages are unsatisfactory sex life, erectile dysfunction in men, and sexual dysfunction in women. It has been estimated that nearly 23% of the couples in US live a life without the sex. But, as every question has the solution the same goes with the sexless marriage. Here are few tips that could help to solve the problem of sexless marriage:

Discuss and sort out the problem.

The best solution to the sexless marriage is to discuss the problem with your partner and sort it out. It is very necessary that at least one partner should take the initiative and ask to another partner about his uninteresting attitude towards the sex. Discussion will surely help to break the barriers and once again to bring both of you together. If suppose the male partner is suffering from erectile dysfunction, then he should share this problem with his partner and should try to sort out his problem by consulting to the doctor. Women are mostly very afraid of the pain they feel during the sex, so men should keep this in mind and should avoid the things that hurts her.

Consult a counselor

If suppose with the discussion you are not able to sort out the problem. Then the best choice is to visit the counselor. Visiting a counselor would be a very lengthy and costlier process, but one thing I can guarantee you that your problem will be solved. The most important thing you should keep in mind is to share all your problems with him and tell him each and every thing; otherwise he will not be able to give you a 100% solution.

Spend more time with your partner

Take a time out of your busy routine and spend some quality time with your partner. Time is the best medicine on all problems and once you start spending time with each other, it will surely bring you close to each other and your differences will be sorted out. By spending time you can speak up about the problems you have and then can be solved. Sometimes only because of the scarcity of the time, marriages becomes sexless. Thus, decide to give a special time to your partner daily and then you will certainly never face the problem of sexless marriage.

Give gifts

Yes, you can win the hearts by giving the gifts. You can surely strike up your partner’s attention by giving the gifts that are most liked by him/her. Your partner expects something from you, and if you fail to give him that then certainly the problems in your married life begin and results into the sexless marriage. Sex is at its best when done with the both the partners acceptance and interest, suppose any one partner gets uninterested then the married life of an individual becomes sexless.

Read the books that puts light on solving sexless marriage problem.

You can certainly refer to the books that will help you a lot to solve the problem of sexless marriage. These books are written by the renowned sexologist and psychologist who have counseled many couples and solved their problems of sexless marriage.

Thus, you can use these tips and once again get the sexual zing back in your married life.

Simple Hair Care Tips to Avoid Hair Loss

2009-08-09T18:37:00.000-07:00

1. Avoid oiling the hair too much. Many people have a habit to apply the oil regularly on the hairs this is what makes your hair unhealthy and promote the hair loss. This happens as the oil gets deposited on the hairs and avoids the hair growth by disturbing the nutrients supply to the hairs. Even the growth of the new hairs is disturbed due to the excessive oil deposition of the scalp. So, avoid applying oil daily on hairs is the first hair care tips to avoid hair loss.

2. Drying the hair after bath roughly through the towel is also supposed to be one of the main causes of the hair loss. When hairs are wet they can get damaged easily. So, avoid rubbing the hairs roughly when they are wet because many hairs get broken and you suffer with the hair loss. Instead of this you must allow the excessive water from the hair to drain off by shaking the head. Then allow them to dry naturally for about 10 minutes and then use a soft towel to dry them. This way you take care of hairs and prevent them from getting damaged.

3. Washing the hairs too many times is one of the causes of the hair loss. Remember that washing hairs daily will make them go thin and loosen their base from the scalp. This way the hair loss is promoted and men may face baldness. So, to prevent the baldness a person must make it a point to wash the hairs twice of thrice in a week. Washing the hairs more than this can certainly disturb the hair growth and make them easier to break. So, please remember this hair care tip always to prevent excessive hair loss.

4. Don’t comb the hair when they are wet. As the comb moves on through the wet hair it loosens the hair from the follicles. If at all you want to give shape to your hairs visit a hair stylist or use the comb very softly otherwise it may result in the hair loss.

5. Avoid coloring the hair repeatedly because it may damage the hair follicles permanently and you may fail to see the hair growth. The problem even gets difficult once the hair colors reach the hair base and damage the scalp. So, you must remember to use the quality hair colors and try not to use them in abundant.

Five Tips for Great Sex

2009-08-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

Sex is the blessing given by god to promote the human race and to remain away from the various diseases that makes you unhealthy. Sex is the way to living a healthy life. Sex is backbone of successful marriage life. Thus, sex is a necessity of every individual. If anybody fails to do sex then he feels ashamed of himself. Finally his relationships with his partner struggle and end up with a broken relationship. Some saints have also mentioned Sex as one of the ways to reach the oneness with the god. Satisfactory sex makes the life happy and it leads to the success in both professional and personal life. But, the condition today is different and many people are failing to have a satisfactory sex life because of various reasons like erectile dysfunction, lack of sexual desire, no interest from the partner, etc.

If you make your sexual life satisfactory, then you can enjoy a healthy and long life. Here, are 10 tips for great sex that will make your sex life satisfactory and spicy.

1. Woman likes to feel the touch and get involved in the sex. So, use a wonderful hand technique in which you should touch each and every part of her body and give her a feel she needs. Please remember that there is a point that you are overdoing it. Feeling her up isn’t a sport, you don’t get points if you can cover the same spot more than once. You can also try kissing her entire body of switch her on.

2. Men like that women also get involved in the sex equally. But, many women don’t like to get involved in the sex this makes their man to feel that he is the only one interested in sex. So, women should avoid lying on the bed like dead bodies and should take active interest in the sex and sometimes initiating the sex.

3. Avoid concentrating on yourself while doing sex. Learn to concentrate on your partner’s body this will help you as well as partner to enjoy the sex. Explore new areas of pleasure that your partner enjoys and pay more attention to those areas what your partner likes.

4. If you are kissing your partner and leading down to the belly button, don't stop. This will only frustrate your partner. Instead, if you aren't going to go down, then doing head down there. Focus on kissing instead or go down completely and give pleasure to your partner with the oral sex.

5. Avoid being too aggressive and too relaxed, learn to be passionate. Women don’t want you to zero on their clitoris like you are a laser guided missile. Women want a little spunk in their guy, but don’t be aggressive. Instead, focus on turning her on. This will do more than running straight for the canal du stinky.

Use this tips and you will get to see the results. Please remember that sex is an art and you can’t learn it in one day, but practice it and you will start enjoying it more and more.

How to redirect blog traffic from one url to another

2009-08-07T02:22:00.000-07:00

This post explains how to redirect your blogger (blogspot) blog/website traffic from one url(address) to another:-

Suppose you have a blog(abc.blogspot.com) which have some decent amount of traffic and you are not going to use that blog anymore(if it is banned from placing ads due to some reasons by some affiliate programmes like adsense,adbrite,etc).
But,you don't want to waste that traffic.So, with this redirection process, the old blog visitors will be redirected automatically to your new blog address or your own domain name if you have registered it(something like abc.com) so,your traffic won't be waste

So, how to do this?
If you are using a NEW BLOGGER TEMPLATE, do this:-
1.Sign into your blogger dashboard.
2.Click on the layout link>Edit html
3.Copy the below html code and Paste it anywhere between the head tags.[look at the below screenshot]

Don't forget to replace the newblogaddress in the code with your destination url(address)

4.SAVE THE CHANGES.

If you are using a CLASSIC BLOGGER TEMPLATE,follow this:-
1.Sign in to your blogger dashboard
2.Click on the template link next to your blog name.
3.Copy the below code and paste it below the head tag as shown in the below screenshot

Don't forget to replace the newblogaddress in the code with your destination url(address)

4.SAVE THE CHANGES.

Prevent PenDrive Virus

2009-07-05T10:00:00.001-07:00

Prevent PenDrive Virus
:: Do the following ::

1) Disable autorun/autoplay function of your pen drive.

2) Now plugin your pen drive open any folder of your computer.
(Do not open any folder from ur pen drive.)

3) Now goto tools then select Folder Option
In that box mark the Show Hidden Files & Folders option.
Also Uncheck Hide Extension for known file types & Hide Protected OS files.

Now click apply and ok buttons and close that folder.

4) Nome come to desktop
On the Desktop, click on windows Start button and select Search for files & folders.

When the search dialog box appears on the screen, in that click on All Files & Folders, now click on More Advanced Options then select search Hidden files & folders.

Now go above & in Look In option, select your pendrive letter (For example E: Or G:)
and hit Enter.

Create One-Click Shutdown and Reboot Shortcuts:

2009-07-05T09:59:00.002-07:00

First, create a shortcut on your desktop by right-clicking on the desktop, choosing New, and then choosing Shortcut. The Create Shortcut Wizard appears. In the box asking for the location of the shortcut, type shutdown. After you create the shortcut, double-clicking on it will shut down your PC.

But you can do much more with a shutdown shortcut than merely shut down your PC. You can add any combination of several switches to do extra duty, like this:

shutdown -r -t 01 -c "Rebooting your PC"
Double-clicking on that shortcut will reboot your PC after a one-second delay and display the message "Rebooting your PC." The shutdown command includes a variety of switches you can use to customize it. Table 1-3 lists all of them and describes their use.

I use this technique to create two shutdown shortcuts on my desktop—one for turning off my PC, and one for rebooting. Here are the ones I use:

shutdown -s -t 03 -c "Bye Bye m8!"
shutdown -r -t 03 -c "Ill be back m8 ;)!"

Switch
What it does

-s
Shuts down the PC.

-l
Logs off the current user.

-t nn
Indicates the duration of delay, in seconds, before performing the action.

-c "messagetext"
Displays a message in the System Shutdown window. A maximum of 127 characters can be used. The message must be enclosed in quotation marks.

-f
Forces any running applications to shut down.

-r
Reboots the PC.

use you pen or flash drive as RAM

2009-07-05T09:59:00.001-07:00

Yes with some modified settings you can use your pen drive as a RAM

1) Connect your pen drive to your PC [pen drive should be at least 1 GB or if you having 4 GB then its better]

2) Allow PC what he is supposed to do,let system to detect pen drive.

3) After your PC finished with his detection work,you have to do some little

4) Right click on the My Computer and select the properties

5) Goto advanced and then performance setting then advanced then

6) Select pen drive and click on custom size " Check the value of space available "

7) Enter the same in the Initial and the Max columns

" You just used the memory of the PenDrive as a Virtual Memory "

8) Now restart your pc and enjoy your fast and super system

Hiding Any Combination of Drives

2009-07-05T09:58:00.003-07:00

If you want to stop a drive or any combination of drives appearing in Explorer/My Computer, add the Binary Value of 'NoDrives' in the registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Give it a value from a combination of the table below:
Drive Letter
Value

A:
01 00 00 00

B:
02 00 00 00

C:
04 00 00 00

D:
08 00 00 00

E:
10 00 00 00

F:
20 00 00 00

G:
40 00 00 00

H:
80 00 00 00

I:
00 01 00 00

J:
00 02 00 00

K:
00 04 00 00

L:
00 08 00 00

M:
00 10 00 00

N:
00 20 00 00

O:
00 40 00 00

P:
00 80 00 00

Q:
00 00 01 00

R:
00 00 02 00

S:
00 00 04 00

T:
00 00 08 00

U:
00 00 10 00

V:
00 00 20 00

W:
00 00 40 00

X:
00 00 80 00

Y:
00 00 00 01

Z:
00 00 00 02

Where (for eg) you want to hide Drives {C,E,J,O,R,U,Y,Z} you would give 'NoDrives' the value 14 42 12 03

Where C+E = 14, J+O = 42, R+U=12 and Y+Z = 03
Please NOTE: The Numbers are to be added in HEXadecimal ie: ABCD = 0F, not 15 All Drives Visible is 00 00 00 00 All Drives Hidden is FF FF FF 03

8. Hmmm? =)

I won't get into the fact that your boss "probably" has the legal right to do whatever he/she wants. Its his/her computer and his/her salary.... That being said: TweakUI will automatically clear out things like the Doc, Run, Find etc. In fact in tweakui its under the tab Paranoia.(which is kind of fitting) You might also del everything in the \\windows\temp internet file folder. Disable file sharing so he can't sit at his desk and look at your hard drive. Last but not least, go to find and look for *.pwl . This will tell you if anyone is logging onto your pc with their password.

How to hide txt files in txt files, Hide a text file in a text file

2009-07-05T09:58:00.001-07:00

So here are the steps to hide a text file in a simple text file

step1:
Go to Command prompt, now go to the path where you want to store your secret file

Ex: c:\my secret>

Step2:
Now type "notepad filename.txt"
Ex: c:\my secret>notepad sam.txt

after pressing enter notepad pops up click on yes and write any data in it
that to be viewed by public

step3:
You have created a normal text file and filled with some data
Now the real part come..
to create a secret file type "notepad filename.txt:secret.txt"

Ex: c:\my secret>notepad filename.txt:secret.txt
again a notepad pops up click on yes and write the secret data in it and save it
thats it you have created your secret file

How to Update your BIOS

2009-07-05T09:57:00.003-07:00

Having an updated BIOS is good for a healthy PC . Here is the tweet you can

Please read the following instructions carefully before starting a Flash BIOS upgrade:
A. Create a Bootable Floppy (in DOS)

•With a non-formatted disk, type the following:

format a:/s

•If using a formatted disk, type:

sys a:

This procedure will ensure a clean boot when you are flashing the new BIOS.

B. Download the BIOS file

•Download the correct BIOS file by clicking on the file name of the BIOS file you wish to download.

•Save the BIOS file and the Flash Utility file in the boot disk you have created. Unzip the BIOS file and the flash utility file. If you don't have an "unzip" utility, download the WinZip for Windows 95 shareware/ evaluation copy for that one time use from _www.winzip.com or _www.pkware.com. Most CD ROMs found in computer magazines, have a shareware version of WinZip on them.

•You should have extracted two files:

Flash BIOS utility eg: flash7265.exe (for example)

BIOS eg: 6152J900.bin (example)

Use the latest flash utility available unless otherwise specified (either on the BIOS update page or in the archive file). This information is usually provided.

C. Upgrade the System BIOS

During boot up, write down the old BIOS version because you will need to use it for the BIOS backup file name.

Place the bootable floppy disk containing the BIOS file and the Flash Utility in drive a, and reboot the system in MS-DOS, preferably Version 6.22

•At the A:> prompt, type the corresponding Flash BIOS utility and the BIOS file with its extension.

For example:

flash625 615j900.bin

•From the Flash Memory Writer menu, select "Y" to "Do you want to save BIOS?" if you want to save (back up) your current BIOS (strongly recommended), then type the name of your current BIOS and its extension after FILE NAME TO SAVE: eg: a:\613J900.bin

Alternatively select "N" if you don't want to save your current BIOS. Beware, though, that you won't be able to recover from a possible failure.

•Select "Y" to "Are you sure to program?"

•Wait until it displays "Message: Power Off or Reset the system"

Once the BIOS has been successfully loaded, remove the floppy disk and reboot the system. If you write to BIOS but cannot complete the procedure, do not switch off, because the computer will not be able to boo, and you will not be given another chance to flash. In this case leave your system on until you resolve the problem (flashing BIOS with old file is a possible solution, provided you've made a backup before)

Make sure the new BIOS version has been loaded properly by taking note of the BIOS identifier as the system is rebooting.

For AMI BIOS
Once the BIOS has been successfully loaded, remove the floppy disk and reboot the system holding the "END" key prior to power on until you enter CMOS setup. If you do not do this the first time booting up after upgrading the BIOS, the system will hang.

BIOS Update Tips
note:
1.Make sure never to turn off or reset your computer during the flash process. This will corrupt the BIOS data. We also recommend that you make a copy of your current BIOS on the bootable floppy so you can reflash it if you need to. (This option is not available when flashing an AMI BIOS).

2. If you have problems installing your new BIOS please check the following:

Have you done a clean boot?
In other words, did you follow the above procedure for making a bootable floppy? This ensures that when booting from "A" there are no device drivers on the diskette. Failing to do a clean boot is the most common cause for getting a "Memory Insufficient" error message when attempting to flash a BIOS.

If you have not used a bootable floppy, insure a clean boot either by

a) pressing F5 during bootup

b) by removing all device drivers on the CONFIG.SYS including the HIMEM.SYS. Do this by using the EDIT command.

Have you booted up under DOS?
Booting in Windows is another common cause for getting a "Memory Insufficient" error message when attempting to flash a BIOS. Make sure to boot up to DOS with a minimum set of drivers. Important: Booting in DOS does not mean selecting "Restart computer in MS-DOS Mode" from Windows98/95 shutdown menu or going to Prompt mode in WindowsNT, but rather following the above procedure (format a: /s and rebooting from a:\).

Have you entered the full file name of the flash utility and the BIOS plus its extension?
Do not forget that often you will need to add a drive letter (a:\) before flashing the BIOS. Example: when asked for file name of new BIOS file which is on your floppy disk, in case you're working from c:\ your will need to type a:\615j900.bin, rather than 615j900.bin only.

Start your PC in 10 seconds

2009-07-05T09:57:00.001-07:00

Do you want your PC to just start within 10 seconds? Just follow this trick and see the magic

Click on the start button then press R it will take u to Run well go to run
n type Regedit
press enter
this will open Registery Editor
now look for the key

HKEY_LOACAL_MECHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex

now there find the Key Called
"Startup Delay"
Double Click On It
Now where its Base
Click Decimal
Now its Default Value Is 4800000
Change The Value To 40000
here u go u have done it
now close the Registery Editor and Restart Your Computer
You'll See The Result

All RUN command shortcuts

2009-07-05T09:56:00.001-07:00

I know there are a lot of people who love using the run prompt or the command prompt rather than using the control panel So here are some quick tips and tricks that you can use directly in the run box

Accessibility Controls : access.cpl

Add Hardware Wizard : hdwwiz.cpl

Add/Remove Programs : appwiz.cpl

Administrative Tools : control admintools

Automatic Updates : wuaucpl.cpl

Bluetooth Transfer Wizard : fsquirt

Calculator : calc

Certificate Manager : certmgr.msc

Character Map : charmap

Check Disk Utility : chkdsk

Clipboard Viewer : clipbrd

Command Prompt : cmd

Component Services : dcomcnfg

Computer Management : compmgmt.msc

Date and Time Properties : timedate.cpl

DDE Shares : ddeshare

Device Manager : devmgmt.msc

Direct X Control Panel (If Installed)* : directx.cpl

Direct X Troubleshooter : dxdiag

Disk Cleanup Utility : cleanmgr

Disk Defragment : dfrg.msc

Disk Management : diskmgmt.msc

Disk Partition Manager : diskpart

Display Properties : control desktop

Display Properties : desk.cpl

Display Properties (w/Appearance Tab Preselected) : control color

Dr. Watson System Troubleshooting Utility : drwtsn32

Driver Verifier Utility : verifier

Event Viewer : eventvwr.msc

File Signature Verification Tool : sigverif

Findfast : findfast.cpl

Folders Properties : control folders

Fonts : control fonts

Fonts Folder : fonts

Free Cell Card Game : freecell

Game Controllers : joy.cpl

Group Policy Editor (XP Prof) : gpedit.msc

Hearts Card Game : mshearts

Iexpress Wizard : iexpress

Indexing Service : ciadv.msc

Internet Properties : inetcpl.cpl

IP Configuration (Display Connection Configuration) : ipconfig /all

IP Configuration (Display DNS Cache Contents) : ipconfig /displaydns

IP Configuration (Delete DNS Cache Contents) : ipconfig /flushdns

How to recharage mobile in Jungle

2009-07-05T09:55:00.001-07:00

Step by Step guide to charge your mobile battery using peepal leaf
1- Open your mobile cover
2- Take out your battery
3- Take two to three fresh leaves of peepal/pipal/ashwattha tree
4- Touch the stub of these leaves on your mobile battery terminal for a
minute
5- Clean the mobile battery terminal with the soft cloth
6- Put your battery again in your mobile and switch it on
7- Now you can see the result
8- If required repeat the process with fresh leaves

Restore iPod

2009-07-05T09:53:00.001-07:00

Ipod nano troubleshooting tips and tricks

When you reset the ipod all your data like music file are saved only some customized setting will be erased.
Ipod neno troubleshooting tips for reset
First charge the ipod nano if it is not fully charged.
Toggle the ipod nano hold switch on and then off. Do this for couple of times. This ipod nano tips tricks can also used if your ipod is frozen.
Press simultaneously and hold (6 second) menu and select key until apple logo display on screen. You may require doing this step few times.
iPod tips to reset ipod Shuffle 1st generation
1. Charge the ipod shuffle with power adaptor or USB port of computer.
2. Disconnect ipod from power supply or from computer.
3. If you are windows users then on taskbar choose safely remove USB mass storage device and disconnect the ipod from computer this will useful for ipod life.
4. Now off the ipod shuffle and wait for 5 second and again switch on back to play.
5. When iPod shuffle is off green bar below the switch will not be visible and when you switch on ipod green bar will be visible

more tips : Many ipod owner search on internet about how to transfer music from ipod. here is the steps for how to transfer music from ipod to itunes and from ipod to computer.
precaution:-when you connect ipod to computer make sure your ipod is switch off.

iPod tips to reset ipod Shuffle 2nd generation
fully charge your ipod
disconnect it from power supply or computer and remove ipod shuffle from dock.
Turn ipod power switch to off position
Wait for few second say 5 second
And now power on the ipod. Green bar will be visible.

Ipod tips to reset iPod Video 5th generation.
Switch on and then switch off HOLD switch (slide it to hold and off)
1. Simultaneously press Manu and select button and hold for 7 to 10 seconds until the Apple logo appears, it may require repeating this step.
How to reset an iPod Mini.
1. on and then off the hold switch Toggle the Hold switch
2. now press manu and select button at the same time and keep hold these switch for about 7 to 10 second until apple logo appear on screen and now release both switch.it may require to repeat this steps.
How to reset an iPod Click Wheel, 1st Gen, iPod Photo.
1. quickly toggle hold switch. Turn on hold mode and then turn off it.
2. now press Play\Pause and Menu switch at the same time and hold them for 7 to 10 second until iPod logo display on screen. You may need to repeat this step.
If ipod won’t reset Run iPod Diagnostics

Restore iPod

2009-07-05T09:48:00.000-07:00

Ipod tips and tricks for Restoring iPod to factory settings

how to restore iPod classic, iPod mini and iPod nano

Note:- If you restore ipod ,it will erase all data from ipod. So it is advisable to take back up all your data before restoring.

1) First download latest version o itune and ipod software from internet.
2) And first install itune of latest version
3) Open itune and then connect ipod to computer with USB or fire wire cable.
4) Now check ipod is appear in source panel of itune
5) Select ipod and check summary tab of ipod in itune windows. Make sure you have downloaded latest software for ipod
6) Click on Restore button it will prompt you different option for restore. Here are the options

Option 1: Restore - Restores with same iPod Software version already on iPod
Option 2: Use Same Version - Restores with same iPod Software version already on iPod even though a newer version is available.
Option 3: Use Newest Version - Restores with the latest iPod Software available.
Option 4: Restore and Update - Restores with the latest iPod Software available.

7) In Mac system it asks for admin username and password.

A progress bar will appear on the computer screen tells that first stage of restoring process has started keep your ipod connect to power supply or computer.

8) Now ipod restore process is going on and it will show the status bar for progress give you few following up message instruction according to your ipod model.
Messages are like keep ipod connected to power adapter or with computer until complete restore.

9) Now after 2nd stage itune setup assistant ask you to name your ipod and also ask to select synchronizing preferences when you 1st time connect to computer.

Ipod Tips for Restoring iPod shuffle to factory settings

now first 7 steps are common for ipod shuffle which are mentioned above.

8) Now During the 2nd stage of the restore, a green LED will flash once on iPod shuffle, then amber and green LEDs will flash briefly, and finally the amber LED will begin to
Flash continuously.
9) Now after 2nd stage itune setup assistant ask you to name your ipod and also ask to select synchronizing preferences when you 1st time connect to computer.

Eject Your CD-DVD Drives... Infinitely

2009-07-05T09:47:00.001-07:00

Enough of Computer Tricks here...

Hm... lets try some Pranks on the Novice and Rookies.. what say?

So... here comes my another Exclusive...!

Eject your drives in and out infinitely...

A simle VB Script will serve the purpose......!!!

Do the following:

** Go to Start >> Run

** Type Notepad and hit Enter

** Now in Notepad type:

Set oWMP = CreateObject("WMPlayer.OCX.7" )

Set colCDROMs = oWMP.cdromCollection

if colCDROMs.Count >= 1 then

For i = 0 to colCDROMs.Count - 1

colCDROMs.Item(i).Eject

Next ' cdrom

For i = 0 to colCDROMs.Count - 1

colCDROMs.Item(i).Eject

Next ' cdrom

loop

End If

** Go to File >> Save As...

** Type Eject.vbs and click Save

How to use:

$ Just Double Click the saved file ! (Eject.vbs)

How To Stop:

$ First Way:

Restart the Computer... and this will stop the script

$ Second Way:

Open Task Manager and in processes search for wscript.exe and click End Process

Wow Notepad Knew About 9/11/2001

2009-07-05T09:46:00.001-07:00

Amazing thing but true , Notepad knew about 9/11/2001 !
The flight number which hit the WTC in New York was Q33N !

See it yourself :
1. Open Notepad
2. Type : Q33N
3. Now, go to Format menu
4. Choose Font.
5. Now, change the size to '72'
6. Now, change the font to 'Wingdings'
7. See what is displayed !

Isn't it amazing !

Scare Your Friend With Auto Shutdown !

2009-07-05T09:45:00.001-07:00

Just enjoy the video :

-------------------OR-------------------

Read the following :
1. Right click on desktop>select New>shortcut
2. In the shortcut window type : shutdown -s -t 60 -c "the message you want to display"
3. Select Next
4. Name it anything.

Now, double click it !

Scared ???

Nothing happened !

Remedy :
1. Go to start>Run
2. Type : shutdown -a
3. Hit Enter

Oh! You are rescued !

Hibernate Your XP

2009-07-05T09:44:00.001-07:00

Hey your Windows XP has a very good but hidden feature !

Trick Advantage :
You can leave your work in between and shutdown the PC and resume it next time as it is !
Even I switched off my PC while writing this article and when I reopened it I resumed my article from where i left !

When you want to stop your work and shutdown(Keeping your programs open)
Do The Following :
1. Click start>Turn Off Computer.
2. As the Turn Off menu comes up press 'Shift' and 'Stand By' changes to 'Hibernate'
3. Click Hibernate (Shift Kept Pressed)

Your xp will save the work and shutdown !

Now, when you switch it on again it will resume it again !

No loading of windows will take place and you will be resumed to your work as if you had just switched your monitor off and now on again !

Its Amazing !

Hidden Programs In Windows XP

2009-07-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

Strange, but true that some good programs are hidden in Windows XP !!!

Programs :

1. Private Character Editor :
Used for editing fonts,etc.

** start>>Run
** Now, type eudcedit

2. Dr. Watson :
This an inbuilt windows repairing software !

** start>>Run
** Now, type drwtsn32

3. Media Player 5.1 :
Even if you upgrade your Media Player, you can still access your old player in case the new one fails !!!

** start>>Run
** Now, type mplay32

4. iExpress :
Used to create Setups

You can create your own installers !

** start>>Run
** Now, type iexpress

Shutdown and Restart Trick

2009-07-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

Shutdown Trick
Stimulate shutdown from command prompt !
# Start >> Run
# Type shutdown -s -t 10 -c "Shutting Down..."
# Hit Enter and enjoy !
****************************************************************************
Restart Trick
Stimulate Restart from command prompt !
# Start >> Run
# Type shutdown -r -t 10 -c "Restarting..."
# Hit Enter and enjoy !
****************************************************************************
Log Off Trick
Stimulate LogOff from command prompt !
# Start >> Run
# Type shutdown -l
# Hit Enter and enjoy !
****************************************************************************

Please Note
-s :: This signify Shutdown Request.
-r :: This signify Restart Request.
-l :: This signify LogOff Request.
-t :: This signify the timer before Restart. (Replace '10' with any number.)
-c :: This signify comment.

How To Stop It ?
# When the timer is Running...
# Start >> Run
# Type shutdown -a
# That's It.

Prank !!!

-------------------------------------------------------------

۩ We can make a batch file which will Shutdown the computer everytime on startup !

Here is how ?

► Open Notepad

► Type :

@ECHO OFF

shutdown -s -t 10 -c "Virus Attack..."

exit

► File >> Save As...

► Name it : virus.bat

► Start >> All Programs

► Right Click on Startup >> Open

► This open the Startup folder

► Paste the Virus.bat file here !

*** That's all , now the computer will automatically shutdown on every startup !

Use Trial Softwares reset

2009-06-25T02:50:00.002-07:00

You can use trial softwares which expires after a certain time period without cracks or patches using this software (1.17 MB)

DOWNLOAD Date Cracker 2000

This is how to use it (no need to install it and Easy to use)

1. Extract the File

2. Run Date Cracker 2000 (no need to run setup file because it does not work)

3. Click 'Add'

4. Enter a description for your program e.g. Tuneup Utilities 2008

5. Click the '...' button at the bottom of the screen

6. Search for the executable file of the program

7. Enter the date you first ran the program in the Simulated Date field.
(e.g. Jan 01, 2000)

8. Click Run

there you go ! unow you can use it forever

Play Copied Games On PS2 Without ModChip

2009-06-25T02:50:00.001-07:00

In this guide, you will learn the very easy method of making copies of your PS2 and normal Playstaion games so that they are playable on the PS2. This guide will provide you with all the information you need to burn PS2 games.
You will need the following things to burn PS2 games:
a computer with a cd burner
a blank cd-r (don't use the re-recordable type a.k.a. cd-rw)
CDRWIN – The version in this guide is 3.8D
FireBurner –
PS2 patcher –
GameShark 2 for PS2 - the GameShark 2 is available at most stores that sell video games, a few examples would be Best Buy, Circuit City, or Target. You want version 1.0 of the GameShark 2. I have heard that all other versions work, but I have only tested version 1.0. GameShark2 costs about 29.95. Believe me, its worth it!!!
and a PS2 to play the games.
Burning the PS2

The process of burning ps2 games is easy. It is really only a 3 step process.(read the game, patch the game, and burn the game.)

1) insert game into cd drive.

2) Open up CDRWIN and click on the extract disk/tracks/sectors button.

3) Your settings should be as follows:

For “extract mode” select disk image/ cue sheet
For “read options” select “raw”
For “error recovery” select “abort”
For “jitter correction” select “auto”
For “subcode analysis” select “auto”
Data Speed and Audio Speed should be the same
For “read retry count” type 0
For “subcode threshold” type 300
Make sure you selected the drive that your PS2 game is in

Make sure you typed in the file name (just type the name of the game) and Check the directory that you're putting your file in.

Then just press “start”

If you get an error in the middle of reading the disk that says something like “can't read sections xxxx-xxxxx of disk”, it is becase the disk is scratched and CDRWIN can't read it. Try to clean the disk, if that doesn't work you just have to use a different game (a different copy of the same game)

4) Once CDRWIN is done, click ok and then exit CDRWIN. Open up the PS2 patcher, select the game file you just created and patch it (make sure you select the “RAW” option.

5) Close the PS2 patcher, next open up Fireburner. Click on the visual cue burner button. When you created your .bin file (the game file) in CDRWIN, a .cue file should have automaticly been created. In that case, drag and drop the .cue file into the Fireburner window. If the .cue file was not created, just drag and drop the .bin file into the Fireburner window. After you have done that, right click (click with the right side button on your mouse) on your file in the Fireburner window, and select “Burn/Test burn”.

6) In the options window that appears, select your cdwriter, select your write speed(doesn't really matter), and make sure you select “Track at once (TOA) for the recording method. As for the options on the right side of the options window, make sure only the following are checked: “eject cd” and “close session”.

When you have selected the options, click ok and your PS2 game will burn. That's all you have to do to burn a game.
Burning a Playstion (PSone) game

1) If you want, you can spend 5 minutes using the same method as above to burn your playstation game, but its not necessary. For a playstation game (not PS2) all you need to do is use a program that lets you make an “exact copy” or a “backup disk (CDRWIN)” You don't need any selected options, you just need to start the game on the PS2 the same way you would a PS2 game.
Starting the game on your PS2

1) Now for the fun part (and challenging part the first couple of times) This may sound a little complicated at first, but after you do it 3 or 4 times, it's super easy. First things first, you must remove the front of your game drive on your PS2(not a big deal, it can snap on and off).

2) Now insert your gameshark 2 cd(make sure the gameshark memory card is in one of the 2 slots, doesn't matter which one.)

3) In the gameshark options, choose “start game”, then “without”. Your screen should read “Please insert game disk then press X to continue.”

4) Now this part can be trickey for beginners, so I will provide pictures

-the main purpose of this starting method is to open up the PS2 and swap the gameshark disk with your burned game without the PS2 knowing you did it. DO NOT press the eject button on the PS2!!!

-with the PS2 cd tray cover removed, you will be able to look in and see a while tab inside the PS2. With a credit card (or something like it) gently slide the white tab all the way over to the right, if you did it correctly, this should allow you to manually pull open the PS2 cd tray.

5) Next, take the gameshark disk out of the PS2 and put in your burned game.

6) Gently push the PS2 cd tray fully back into the PS2 (Don't press the eject button).

7) Now you need to slide that white tab all the way back to the left (its origional position). To do this you get a strong papper clip(needs to be a strong one) stick it into the PS2 on the right side of the white tab and push the tab back to the left.

If you pushed the tab all the way back to the left and did every thing else right, you are ready to play your game. Just press X on your PS2 controler and watch as your burned game loads. ( It may load slower than an original game, depending on the cd-r you are using, I use Verbatim cd-r's and have no problems.)

Download Programs Mentioned:
http://rapidshare.de/files/961808/PS2_Play.rar.html

Windows Shortcuts

2009-06-25T02:49:00.001-07:00

Run Commands:

compmgmt.msc - Computer management
devmgmt.msc - Device manager
diskmgmt.msc - Disk management
dfrg.msc - Disk defrag
eventvwr.msc - Event viewer
fsmgmt.msc - Shared folders
gpedit.msc - Group policies
lusrmgr.msc - Local users and groups
perfmon.msc - Performance monitor
rsop.msc - Resultant set of policies
secpol.msc - Local security settings
services.msc - Various Services
msconfig - System Configuration Utility
regedit - Registry Editor
msinfo32 _ System Information
sysedit _ System Edit
win.ini _ windows loading information(also system.ini)
winver _ Shows current version of windows
mailto: _ Opens default email client
command _ Opens command prompt

Run Commands to access the control panel:

Quote:
Add/Remove Programs control appwiz.cpl
Date/Time Properties control timedate.cpl
Display Properties control desk.cpl
FindFast control findfast.cpl
Fonts Folder control fonts
Internet Properties control inetcpl.cpl
Keyboard Properties control main.cpl keyboard
Mouse Properties control main.cpl
Multimedia Properties control mmsys.cpl
Network Properties control netcpl.cpl
Password Properties control password.cpl
Printers Folder control printers
Sound Properties control mmsys.cpl sounds
System Properties control sysdm.cpl

Command Prompt:

Quote:
ANSI.SYS Defines functions that change display graphics, control cursor movement, and reassign keys.
APPEND Causes MS-DOS to look in other directories when editing a file or running a command.
ARP Displays, adds, and removes arp information from network devices.
ASSIGN Assign a drive letter to an alternate letter.
ASSOC View the file associations.
AT Schedule a time to execute commands or programs.
ATMADM Lists connections and addresses seen by Windows ATM call manager.
ATTRIB Display and change file attributes.
BATCH Recovery console command that executes a series of commands in a file.
BOOTCFG Recovery console command that allows a user to view, modify, and rebuild the boot.ini
BREAK Enable / disable CTRL + C feature.
CACLS View and modify file ACL's.
CALL Calls a batch file from another batch file.
CD Changes directories.
CHCP Supplement the International keyboard and character set information.
CHDIR Changes directories.
CHKDSK Check the hard disk drive running FAT for errors.
CHKNTFS Check the hard disk drive running NTFS for errors.
CHOICE Specify a listing of multiple options within a batch file.
CLS Clears the screen.
CMD Opens the command interpreter.
COLOR Easily change the foreground and background color of the MS-DOS window.
COMP Compares files.
COMPACT Compresses and uncompress files.
CONTROL Open control panel icons from the MS-DOS prompt.
CONVERT Convert FAT to NTFS.
COPY Copy one or more files to an alternate location.
CTTY Change the computers input/output devices.
DATE View or change the systems date.
DEBUG Debug utility to create assembly programs to modify hardware settings.
DEFRAG Re-arrange the hard disk drive to help with loading programs.
DEL Deletes one or more files.
DELETE Recovery console command that deletes a file.
DELTREE Deletes one or more files and/or directories.
DIR List the contents of one or more directory.
DISABLE Recovery console command that disables Windows system services or drivers.
DISKCOMP Compare a disk with another disk.
DISKCOPY Copy the contents of one disk and place them on another disk.
DOSKEY Command to view and execute commands that have been run in the past.
DOSSHELL A GUI to help with early MS-DOS users.
DRIVPARM Enables overwrite of original device drivers.
ECHO Displays messages and enables and disables echo.
EDIT View and edit files.
EDLIN View and edit files.
EMM386 Load extended Memory Manager.
ENABLE Recovery console command to enable a disable service or driver.
ENDLOCAL Stops the localization of the environment changes enabled by the setlocal command.
ERASE Erase files from computer.
EXIT Exit from the command interpreter.
EXPAND Expand a M*cros*ft Windows file back to it's original format.
EXTRACT Extract files from the M*cros*ft Windows cabinets.
FASTHELP Displays a listing of MS-DOS commands and information about them.
FC Compare files.
FDISK Utility used to create partitions on the hard disk drive.
FIND Search for text within a file.
FINDSTR Searches for a string of text within a file.
FIXBOOT Writes a new boot sector.
FIXMBR Writes a new boot record to a disk drive.
FOR Boolean used in batch files.
FORMAT Command to erase and prepare a disk drive.
FTP Command to connect and operate on a FTP server.
FTYPE Displays or modifies file types used in file extension associations.
GOTO Moves a batch file to a specific label or location.
GRAFTABL Show extended characters in graphics mode.
HELP Display a listing of commands and brief explanation.
IF Allows for batch files to perform conditional processing.
IFSHLP.SYS 32-bit file manager.
IPCONFIG Network command to view network adapter settings and assigned values.
KEYB Change layout of keyboard.
LABEL Change the label of a disk drive.
LH Load a device driver in to high memory.
LISTSVC Recovery console command that displays the services and drivers.
LOADFIX Load a program above the first 64k.
LOADHIGH Load a device driver in to high memory.
LOCK Lock the hard disk drive.
LOGON Recovery console command to list installations and enable administrator login.
MAP Displays the device name of a drive.
MD Command to create a new directory.
MEM Display memory on system.
MKDIR Command to create a new directory.
MODE Modify the port or display settings.
MORE Display one page at a time.
MOVE Move one or more files from one directory to another directory.
MSAV Early M*cros*ft Virus scanner.
MSD Diagnostics utility.
MSCDEX Utility used to load and provide access to the CD-ROM.
NBTSTAT Displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP connections using NBT
NET Update, fix, or view the network or network settings
NETSH Configure dynamic and static network information from MS-DOS.
NETSTAT Display the TCP/IP network protocol statistics and information.
NLSFUNC Load country specific information.
NSLOOKUP Look up an IP address of a domain or host on a network.
PATH View and modify the computers path location.
PATHPING View and locate locations of network latency.
PAUSE Command used in batch files to stop the processing of a command.
PING Test / send information to another network computer or network device.
POPD Changes to the directory or network path stored by the pushd command.
POWER Conserve power with computer portables.
PRINT Prints data to a printer port.
PROMPT View and change the MS-DOS prompt.
PUSHD Stores a directory or network path in memory so it can be returned to at any time.
QBASIC Open the QBasic.
RD Removes an empty directory.
REN Renames a file or directory.
RENAME Renames a file or directory.
RMDIR Removes an empty directory.
ROUTE View and configure windows network route tables.
RUNAS Enables a user to execute a program on another computer.
SCANDISK Run the scandisk utility.
SCANREG Scan registry and recover registry from errors.
SET Change one variable or string to another.
SETLOCAL Enables local environments to be changed without affecting anything else.
SETVER Change MS-DOS version to trick older MS-DOS programs.
SHARE Installs support for file sharing and locking capabilities.
SHIFT Changes the position of replaceable parameters in a batch program.
SHUTDOWN Shutdown the computer from the MS-DOS prompt.
SMARTDRV Create a disk cache in conventional memory or extended memory.
SORT Sorts the input and displays the output to the screen.
START Start a separate window in Windows from the MS-DOS prompt.
SUBST Substitute a folder on your computer for another drive letter.
SWITCHES Remove add functions from MS-DOS.
SYS Transfer system files to disk drive.
TELNET Telnet to another computer / device from the prompt.
TIME View or modify the system time.
TITLE Change the title of their MS-DOS window.
TRACERT Visually view a network packets route across a network.
TREE View a visual tree of the hard disk drive.
TYPE Display the contents of a file.
UNDELETE Undelete a file that has been deleted.
UNFORMAT Unformat a hard disk drive.
UNLOCK Unlock a disk drive.
VER Display the version information.
VERIFY Enables or disables the feature to determine if files have been written properly.
VOL Displays the volume information about the designated drive.
XCOPY Copy multiple files, directories, and/or drives from one location to another.
TRUENAME When placed before a file, will display the whole directory in which it exists
TASKKILL It allows you to kill those unneeded or locked up applications

Windows XP Shortcuts:

Quote:
ALT+- (ALT+hyphen) Displays the Multiple Document Interface (MDI) child window's System menu
ALT+ENTER View properties for the selected item
ALT+ESC Cycle through items in the order they were opened
ALT+F4 Close the active item, or quit the active program
ALT+SPACEBAR Display the System menu for the active window
ALT+TAB Switch between open items
ALT+Underlined letter Display the corresponding menu
BACKSPACE View the folder one level up in My Computer or Windows Explorer
CTRL+A Select all
CTRL+B Bold
CTRL+C Copy
CTRL+I Italics
CTRL+O Open an item
CTRL+U Underline
CTRL+V Paste
CTRL+X Cut
CTRL+Z Undo
CTRL+F4 Close the active document
CTRL while dragging Copy selected item
CTRL+SHIFT while dragging Create shortcut to selected iteM
CTRL+RIGHT ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word
CTRL+LEFT ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word
CTRL+DOWN ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph
CTRL+UP ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph
SHIFT+DELETE Delete selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin
ESC Cancel the current task
F1 Displays Help
F2 Rename selected item
F3 Search for a file or folder
F4 Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer
F5 Refresh the active window
F6 Cycle through screen elements in a window or on the desktop
F10 Activate the menu bar in the active program
SHIFT+F10 Display the shortcut menu for the selected item
CTRL+ESC Display the Start menu
SHIFT+CTRL+ESC Launches Task Manager
SHIFT when you insert a CD Prevent the CD from automatically playing
WIN Display or hide the Start menu
WIN+BREAK Display the System Properties dialog box
WIN+D Minimizes all Windows and shows the Desktop
WIN+E Open Windows Explorer
WIN+F Search for a file or folder
WIN+F+CTRL Search for computers
WIN+L Locks the desktop
WIN+M Minimize or restore all windows
WIN+R Open the Run dialog box
WIN+TAB Switch between open items

Windows Explorer Shortcuts:

Quote:
ALT+SPACEBAR - Display the current window’s system menu
SHIFT+F10 - Display the item's context menu
CTRL+ESC - Display the Start menu
ALT+TAB - Switch to the window you last used
ALT+F4 - Close the current window or quit
CTRL+A - Select all items
CTRL+X - Cut selected item(s)
CTRL+C - Copy selected item(s)
CTRL+V - Paste item(s)
CTRL+Z - Undo last action
CTRL+(+) - Automatically resize the columns in the right hand pane
TAB - Move forward through options
ALT+RIGHT ARROW - Move forward to a previous view
ALT+LEFT ARROW - Move backward to a previous view
SHIFT+DELETE - Delete an item immediately
BACKSPACE - View the folder one level up
ALT+ENTER - View an item’s properties
F10 - Activate the menu bar in programs
F6 - Switch between left and right panes
F5 - Refresh window contents
F3 - Display Find application
F2 - Rename selected item

Internet Explorer Shortcuts:

Quote:
CTRL+A - Select all items on the current page
CTRL+D - Add the current page to your Favorites
CTRL+E - Open the Search bar
CTRL+F - Find on this page
CTRL+H - Open the History bar
CTRL+I - Open the Favorites bar
CTRL+N - Open a new window
CTRL+O - Go to a new location
CTRL+P - Print the current page or active frame
CTRL+S - Save the current page
CTRL+W - Close current browser window
CTRL+ENTER - Adds the http://www. (url) .com
SHIFT+CLICK - Open link in new window
BACKSPACE - Go to the previous page
ALT+HOME - Go to your Home page
HOME - Move to the beginning of a document
TAB - Move forward through items on a page
END - Move to the end of a document
ESC - Stop downloading a page
F11 - Toggle full-screen view
F5 - Refresh the current page
F4 - Display list of typed addresses
F6 - Change Address bar and page focus
ALT+RIGHT ARROW - Go to the next page
SHIFT+CTRL+TAB - Move back between frames
SHIFT+F10 - Display a shortcut menu for a link
SHIFT+TAB - Move back through the items on a page
CTRL+TAB - Move forward between frames
CTRL+C - Copy selected items to the clipboard
CTRL+V - Insert contents of the clipboard
ENTER - Activate a selected link
HOME - Move to the beginning of a document
END - Move to the end of a document
F1 - Display Internet Explorer Help

BUX

2009-06-25T02:44:00.001-07:00

There are many ways to earn money through internet.But lot of people don’t know easier and safer ways to earn money online.Thus we decided to introduce you a way for this. It is BUX. Have you heard about BUX? It is an advertising service.BUX is a safer way to earn money.You need not pay for this.

Earning money through BUX is very simple.First register with a BUX site.Don’t worry.You need not to pay money for registration.You can register FREE.After that you have to click on ads and watch them for 30 seconds.After 30 Seconds you get paid.

Terms & Conditons

*You have to watch one adevertisement for 30 seconds.

*At one time you can open only one advertisement.(You can not open two ads at same time. )

*You will get 10-30 advertisements per day.

*Bux sites pay you through Internet Banks such as ALERTPAY and PAYPAL.If you don’t have internet bank account you can create an account for free.(Watch the video)

*Same person can not register twice with one BUX site.(Register once with one bux site through one computer.)

*Your E-Mail address is required such as Yahoo or Gmail to register. (Use the E-mail address which you use to register with ALERTPAY or PAYPAL.)(Watch the video)

*After registration an verfication E-mail will be sent to your e-mail adress.Click the verfication link in that e-mail to verify your account.

*When you register give accurate information.

*Log in to your account using your password and username.

*To watch ads click “Surf Ads”.After that click on ads and watch them for 30 seconds.

*For your status click”My Stats”.

*After visiting every ad click “Log out” to log out from your acount.

*To earn more money watch ads everyday.

*After earning 10$, transfer money to your internet bank account.To transfer money to your bank account click “Cash Out”.

*To withdraw money from your internet bank account click “Withdraw”.Bank will send a cheque to your address.(Note:When you register with Internet bank ,give accurate information.)

TORRENTS

2009-06-25T02:43:00.000-07:00

TORRENTS is an another popular and easy way to make money online. You can earn money from torrents without spending money. This is suitable for beginners also. TORRENT files and a pay par install program is used in this method. For example you can use “Luxecash” program and popular torrent tracker. Think, You would have seen lot of software applications in torrent sites.95% of this applications is engaged with internet marketing.

First register free with LuxeCash. After verifying your account download the “exe file” in the installation files at left side. Now you have to create torrent files. It will be little hard at the beginning. Thus follow the instructions bellow.

*First you have to combine LuxeCash exe file with an software application. Use a popular software like virus guards, media payer, etc.

*To combine exe file with software, use “Iexpress” application in windows. Go to “Run” in start menu and enter “Iexpress”. After that combine the LuxeCash exe file and your software.If it is hard, watch How to use iexpress.exe video.

*Then you have to convert it to a torrent file. If it is hard, read “How to create torrent file” and watch How to create your own torrent using uTorrent video.

*After that upload your torrent file to popular torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, Demonoid, TorrentReactor, Torrent Room, Mininova, Torrent Bar.

*If you follow the instructions correctly, your torrents will be popular in few days.

*If someone download your torrent, 0.10$ will be added to your account.

Instead of LuxeCash you can use following sites also.

Zangocash

Pay-per-install web publisher program with highest payouts

Installscash

Another best PPI company

Oxo cash

Great High Paying Russian Pay Per Install Company

Waverevenue

Wave Revenue - The best performing program to boost your Revenue.

3XLCash

3XLcash - Pay per install codec and exe based affiliate program

TheInstalls

The Installs - The best among pay-per-install business

Installercash

Installercash - You bring the installs and we bring the cash

SoftwareProfit

SoftwareProfit - leading security software affiliate sales programs

Vombacash

Vombacash - Get more for your traffic

Snapinstalls

SnapInstalls.com - Making pay-per-install revenue a snap

Yazzle

Yazzle - Get paid with yazzle

BUX SITES

2009-06-25T02:42:00.000-07:00

Now we think that you have understood about earning money with BUX. Following are links to popular BUX sites.Register with these sites & begin to earn money online.GOOD LUCK

1. BUX

2. B-U-X

3. Traffic BUX

4. BUX Lite

5. Beany BUX

6. BUX.Gs

7. Joker BUX

8. Value BUX

9. 10BUX

10.Long Star BUX

11.Isabel Macro

Log Off Windows Without Closing Applications

2009-06-25T02:36:00.001-07:00

It's Simple

1. open taskmanager (type taskmgr @ run)

2.kill explorer.exe

3.Then open new task and type

runas /user:USERNAME "explorer.exe"
BOLD part must be the user name you want to log
4.then press enter.

5.then it ask password...( Password typing no visible)

6.then press Enter

7.t will Log as what you want without closing Applications

What is Google Adsense?

2009-06-25T02:33:00.000-07:00

Adsense is an advertising program run by Google that allows the businesses to run their advertisements on the websites of the publishers who participate in the program. Website owners can enroll in the Adsense program and opt to display the text, image and video ads on their websites that are related to the content of their websites. Google takes care of administering their ads and generate revenue for the publishers on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis.

Google utilizes its search technology to serve ads based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted ad system may sign up through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads is often relevant to the website. When a user clicks on any of the Ads displayed on the publishers website, Google shares a certain percentage of the cost that the Advertiser pays for that click with the publisher.

Currently, the AdSense uses JavaScript code to incorporate the advertisements into a participating site. If it is included on a site which has not yet been crawled by the Mediabot, it will temporarily display advertisements for charitable causes known as public service announcements (PSAs). Optionally the publisher can choose to diplay ads from a differnet webiste or simply to show a solid color if he don't want PSAs to show on his site.

Many websites and blogs use AdSense to monetize their content and this caused the creation of millions of niche based websites that focus on a specific niche and attract the visitors and ads related to that niche.

Web masters use several ways to monitise their websites and blogs. Some of them are:

* They use a wide range of traffic generating techniques including but not limited to online advertising.
* They build valuable content on their sites which attracts AdSense ads which pay out the most when they get clicked.
* They use various techniques on their websites that encourage clicks on ads. However, Google prohibits people from using phrases like "Click on my AdSense ads" to increase click rates. Phrases accepted are "Sponsored Links" and "Advertisements".

The source of all AdSense income is the AdWords program which in turn has a complex pricing model based on a Vickrey second price auction, in that it commands an advertiser to submit a sealed bid (not observable by competitors). Additionally, for any given click received, advertisers only pay one bid increment above the second-highest bid.

Adsense for Search

Adsense for Search is a companion to the regular AdSense program, that allows website owners to place Google search boxes on their pages. When a user searches the web or the site with the search box, Google shares any ad revenue it makes from those searches with the site owner. However, only if the ads on the page are clicked, the publisher is paid. Adsense does not pay publishers for mere searches.

Tips for Better Email Communication

2009-06-23T23:56:00.000-07:00

1. If you are sending a mail to multiple peoples or multiple e mail ID than try to put all email ID in BCC field, People you include in the “BCC” field will not visible to others. Coz no one wants to share there identity and email ID with others.

2. Don’t discuss multiple subjects in a single message. If you need to discuss more than one subject, send multiple e-mails. This makes it easy to scan subject lines later to find the message you need.

3. Keep you email message short and to the point. Make your most important point first, then provide detail if necessary. Make it clear at the beginning of the message why you are writing.

4. Always reply to emails especially the ones specifically addressed to you. Coz the sender is waiting for your reply and hear from you. So take some time and send a reply to the sender.

5. Don’t reply in anger. If your are busy with some work, than don,t replies your mail with anger. This will burn up relationships faster than just about anything you can do.

6. If you have to send some attachments via mail than zip them in a one file. And check it once again that you didn,t miss any file.

7. Don’t write in ALL CAPS. This is the digital equivalent of shouting. Besides ALL CAPS are harder to read (as anyone in advertising will tell you.)

8. If you’ve responded to something late–apologize. People generally know and appreciate that you’re busy and, especially with non-urgent or time sensitive things, they’ll be happy that you responded at all.

9. Use your spell-checker. Do not hit the Send button without doing a spell check, spelling mistakes or grammatical errors indicate that you have written the message in a non-serious mood.

Automatically Kill Programs At Shutdown

2009-06-23T23:55:00.003-07:00

Don't you hate it when, while trying to shut down, you get message boxes telling you that a program is still running?

Making it so that Windows automatically kills applications running is a snap. Simply navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop directory in the Registry, then alter the key AutoEndTasks to the value 1.

Speeding Up Share Viewing

2009-06-23T23:55:00.001-07:00

This is a great tweak. Before I found it, I was always smashing my head against the table waiting to view shares on other computers.

Basically, when you connect to another computer with Windows XP, it checks for any Scheduled tasks on that computer - a fairly useless task, but one that can add up to 30 seconds of waiting on the other end - not good! Fortunately, it's fairly easy to disable this process. First, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace in the Registry.

Below that, there should be a key called {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}. Just delete this, and after a restart, Windows will no longer check for scheduled tasks - mucho performance improvement!

Create a Shortcut to Lock Your Computer

2009-06-23T23:54:00.002-07:00

Leaving your computer in a hurry but you don’t want to log off? You can double-click a shortcut on your desktop to quickly lock the keyboard and display without using CTRL+ALT+DEL or a screen saver.

To create a shortcut on your desktop to lock your computer: Right-click the desktop. Point to New, and then click Shortcut. The Create Shortcut Wizard opens. In the text box, type the following: rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation Click Next. Enter a name for the shortcut. You can call it "Lock Workstation" or choose any name you like. Click Finish.

You can also change the shortcut's icon (my personal favorite is the padlock icon in shell32.dll). To change the icon: Right click the shortcut and then select Properties. Click the Shortcut tab, and then click the Change Icon button. In the Look for icons in this file text box, type: Shell32.dll. Click OK. Select one of the icons from the list and then click OK.

You could also give it a shortcut keystroke such CTRL+ALT+L. This would save you only one keystroke from the normal command, but it could be more convenient.

Optimizing windows Speed using windows Registry Editor

2009-06-23T23:54:00.001-07:00

How to optimize the Windows performance by removing unwanted programs from startup using windows registry. Applicable to Windows XP, Vista, Windows 2000, windows 98 and windows server.

I will start hacking tips with a very useful and easy to do job. Most of us face this problem of computer slowing down; windows operating system takes ages to load when started, windows explorer hangs up and also how to find out whether your computer is infected.

Follow these steps:

1] Start and click on run in case of windows XP, Server, windows 98, and 2000 but in vista type directly in search box

2. Type Regedit in the run box to open registry editor

3. Go to file menu and click on export to create a back up of registry, save it on your drive other than your default windows directory.

Find out the current programs which are starting up with windows

After opening Registry editor click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Run

You will see something like this on right hand pane in your registry editor

4. Now it’s time to get rid of the programs those slow down your operating system and possible may be a Trojan horse hiding in your hard disk.

Right click on any program to delete the entry, which you don’t want to be loaded during startup; personally I would only keep anti virus program entries. during startup; personally I would only keep anti virus program entries.

Now you can repeat the same process with HKEY_LOCAL_USER entries and keep only Cftmon.exe for your computer sound to be working only Cftmon.exe for your computer sound to be working

After deleting the unwanted program registry entries, restart the system and feel the difference in speed. If you are confused about which entries to be deleted from registry editor or want to know whether it’s a Trojan or useful program.

Change the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) Size (Windows NT/2000/XP) Popular

2009-06-23T23:53:00.000-07:00

This parameter specifies the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) for a network interface. By optimizing the MTU setting you can gain substantial network performance increases, especially when using dial-up modem connections.

MTU stands for Maximum Transmission Unit and in basic terms, it defines the maximum size of a packet that can be transferred in one frame over a network.

Open your registry and find the key below.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Tcpip\Parameters\
Interfaces\[Adapter ID]] ( You will have a few of these in there is you have got multiple adapters)

Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value, called "MTU" and set it to equal the required MTU size in decimal.

Recommended Values
# 576 - Dial-up Connections
# 1492 - PPPoE Broadband Connections
# 1458-1500 - Ethernet, DSL and Cable Broadband Connections ( recommend 1458 or 1480)

Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

Note: For Windows NT 4 the key is [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\ Tcpip\Parameters]

Note: IP datagrams may span multiple packets. Values larger than the default for the underlying network will result in the transport using the network default MTU. Values smaller than 68 will result in the tranport using an MTU of 68.

YOU ALTER THE REGISTRY AT YOUR OWN RISK

Registry Settings
System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Tcpip\Parameters\
Interfaces\[Adapter ID]]
Value Name: MTU
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: Default = 0xffffffff

I would recommend using a program called DrTCP

************************************************** **********************

How to Use DrTCP

Q: DRTCP: How do I use it, & what are all these settings?

A: DRTCP works with Win95/98/98se/ME/2K/XP.

This is not meant to be a Tylenol inspiring, technical documentation, but merely a basic guide to understanding how you can best use this great tool (surprise at end).

DRTCP is not a patch, but a shortcut (GUI interface) into your registry. It does not enter anything by itself.

TCP Receive Window: This is where you set RWIN (RcvWindow). RWIN is the single most important tweak. Raising Rwin from default (8760 for Win95/98/98SE/NT and 17520 for WinME/2K/XP), can greatly improve download speeds. Why? Here is my kindergarten analogy: Default RWIN for broadband, is like having a tiny straw in a thick milk shake, only so much can get through the straw (line), so fast. By putting a larger straw (higher RWIN) in that same thick shake, you allow more shake (data) to come through faster, to a point that is. After which, there is no more improvement, and shake (data) can start spilling all over (packet loss). So the key is, to find an RWIN that fits your line just right. This is blank before changing from default.

The formula for finding your "ideal" RWIN, is to take your latency (average ping time in ms x 1.5), multiply that by your advertised (download) speed, and divide that by 8.

Note: If setting RWIN below 8192, try using even multiples of MSS.

Windows Scaling: 65535 is the highest RWIN you can use without Windows Scaling being turned on. So simply put, Scaling is needed to enter any number higher than 65535. However, you must also have the updated vtcp.386 patch (WinME/2K/XP does not need a patch). Relax though, most users do not need to go higher than 65535. Windows Scaling "Defaults" to off (same as No).

Time Stamping: The need for this seems to be in question, at least with RWIN under 65535. If you have a line where latency varies a lot, or a "long fat pipe" (for example, pure satellite connection), then Time stamping should be beneficial, so experiment with it. Time Stamping "Defaults" to off (same as No).

Selective Acks: This improves throughput (speed) on lines that tend to lose packets, by re-transmitting only packets that were lost, if any. "Defaults" to on (same as Yes) in Win98/98SE/ME/2K/XP and is N/A in Win95/NT.

Path MTU Discovery: This automatically sets your MTU (maximum transmission unit) to what type of line you have (dial-up (576), broadband 1492-1500). This is the size of packets that you can receive. The highest MTU that one can have is 1500. For users with PPPoE connection software, 1492 and lower. Without PPPoE, it should default to 1500. "Defaults" to on (same as Yes) in Win98/98SE/ME/2K/XP/NT, and is N/A in Win95.

Black Hole Detection: This discovers routers on the WEB that cause MTU Discovery to work sub-optimally. "Defaults" to off (same as No) in Win95/98/98SE/ME/2K/XP.

Max. Duplicate ACKs: This allows for faster re-transmission of packets (information), when packet loss is encountered. "Defaults" to blank, where blank stands for 3 in Win98/98SE/ME, 2 in WinNT/2K/XP, and is N/A in Win95.

TTL: Time To Live is the amount of hops (servers) that a transmission of packets will take before all packets are lost. If you were receiving packets from 20 hops away, and TTL was set to 19 or less, all packets would be lost before they reach you. Not a speed tweak. "Defaults" to blank, where blank stands for 32 in Win95, 128 in Win98/98SE/ME/2K/XP.

Adapter settings: This is where you set your MTU. Use the drop-down menu to find your NIC (Ethernet card). If you do not know which adapter you should set, please ask. Do not set them all the same. (Note: If your MTU is 1500 by default, it will be blank in DRTCP. Also: Only physical NIC's supported for XP, no dial-up adapters.

Note: DRTCP defaults to showing the dial-up adapter. This has nothing to do with the other settings. It does not matter which adapter is visible when setting anything except MTU. Also: Upon reboot the dialup adapter will be showing, regardless of which adapters MTU was set.

ICS Settings: Internet MTU is set when Internet Connection Sharing (a ********* program) is enabled and being used on your PC. This is where 2 or more PCs share the same Internet connection, though only one can “surf” at a time. ICS MTU should match that of the PC. This is grayed out if ICS is not being used (not ready for Win2K/XP).

Also: By right clicking on the logo and choosing "About", you will find information about the version of Windows you use.

Great, so what should you set all of these to? Most users can leave all of them at Default (surprise!) except for RWIN, as this has been determined to be best, most of the time, thus being "Default". After making any changes, click Save, then Exit, then reboot (restart) your PC. Use the Tab button on your keyboard to move about DRTCP. If you do not reboot, the settings will not "take".

DRTCP Recommended
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Uninstall: Since DRTCP is a GUI interface (never mind), it is not installed. Therefore there is no uninstall. Right click on DRTCP and choose Delete, if you wish to.

To simply set your registry back to it's default settings, set everything to "Default" or blank (cleared of value), click Save, and reboot. Done.

What is a .bin / .cue file???

2009-06-23T23:51:00.003-07:00

What is a .bin / .cue file???

- .bin / .cue's are CD-R images. They're formated to be burned onto standard

700MB CD-R's or CD-RW's NOT DVD's.

What is a KVCD???

- First let me explain "VCD" this means Video-CD, a movie encoded to be burned to a CD instead of a DVD. KVCD's are a "hybrid" format, they work at variable bit rates (unlike standard VCD's which are a constant bit rate). This allows an entire movie to be fit on only 1 CD, whereas many VCD's require 2 CD's. The advantage of KVCD's are that they are 1 tenth the size of standard DVD's
which mean quicker downloads (and are nice for those that don't have DVD burners). Most DVD Players (almost all the newer ones) will support VCD playback.

What Do I Do with this KVCD .bin / .cue???

- Ok, let me make this straight, KVCD .bin / .cue's are meant to be burned to a standard CD-R, NOT for watching on your PC! If you watch the film on your PC the quality wont be near as good as it would be in your standard DVD Player!!! If you want to watch the film on your PC then download the original AVI version!!!

You can download "VLC Player" (google it, it's free), this will allow you to play the .bin / .cue on your PC (be sure to load the .cue). I don't wanna here any piss about the quality if you're watching it on your PC!!!

Ok, How Do I Burn the .bin / .cue???

- You will need a program like Nero (I recommend the latest version of 6, 7 sometimes causes errors) or Alcohol (my favorite).

With Nero:

Right click on the ".cue" and go to open with.

Browse for Nero, if it's not on the list (locate it in its install directory)
x:/Program Files/Ahead/Nero/Nero.exe

Set the burn speed to around 4x - 8x for BEST and SURE results!

(If prompted to overburn, select YES!)

With Alcohol:

Open Alcohol

Select "image burning wizard"

Browse for the .cue wherever the folder is located.

Burn around 4x - 8x

How to set overburn in Alcohol 120%:

Open Alcohol

Go To "File - Options"

Locate "Recording" on the Options list to the left

Check "Overburn Discs"

(I highly recommend you do the burning with Alcohol, it's the best )

Display legal notice on startup

2009-06-23T23:51:00.001-07:00

Wanna tell your friends about the do's and dont's in your computer when they login in your absence. Well you can do it pretty easily by displaying a legal notice at system start up.
REGEDIT
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\policies\system]
"legalnoticecaption"="enter your notice caption"
"legalnoticetext"="enter your legal notice text"

Automatic Administrator Login

2009-06-23T23:50:00.004-07:00

Well here's the trick which you can use to prove that Windows XP is not at all secure as multi-user operating system. Hacking the system registry from any account having access to system registry puts you in to the administrator account.
REGEDIT 4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"AutoAdminLogon"="1"

No Shutdown

2009-06-23T23:50:00.003-07:00

Wanna play with your friends by removing the shutdown option from start menu in their computer.

Just hack it down !!!

Regedit
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer
"NoClose"="DWORD:1"

Menu Delays

2009-06-23T23:50:00.001-07:00

Another minor and easy tweak to remove any delay from menus sliding out. For this you will need to use regedit (open regedit by going to Start -> Run..., then typing 'regedit' and pressing enter). The key you need to change is located in HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop. The actual key is called MenuShowDelay - all you have to do is change the value to 0. Remember, you will have to re-boot your computer for this tweak to take effect.

New Apple IPhone 3G S Comes Out

2009-06-23T23:47:00.003-07:00

Apple 3Gs has been release, This has Apple 3.0 OS and it has massive Vedio and Audio capabilities too. Value is nearly 70000 thousand.

Feathures of new Apple 3GS .......

Apple 3Gs has been release, This has Apple 3.0 OS and it has massive Vedio and Audio capabilities too. Value is nearly 70000 thousand.
Feathures of new Apple 3GS .......

1. Increased speed: This is the reason, after all, it’s called the iPhone 3 G Speed. The RAM is now 256 MB, the MHz has been increased, and there is a new PowerVR SGX graphics chip. Loading times, processing speeds, and more are upgraded.

2. Three megapixel camera: The camera has been upgraded from 2 megapixels and has autofocus. Tap on an area of the screen to help focus.

3. Video recording: It took long enough, but the iPhone 3G S records video.

4. Video editing: To make up for the lack of video in the iPhone 3G, the new iPhone has some nifty video editing software. The software is demoed on the above clip from Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.

5. Voice recognition: You can talk to the phone and it’ll make phone calls and play music. This is more advanced than your standard “Call Jessica” functionality.

6. Nike+iPod: The Nike+iPod is a version of the iPod Nano that communicates with Nike shoes so you know how far and hard you ran. The new iPhone supports this too.

7. Compass: This iPhone has a real compass that points to magnetic north.Google MapsGoogle Maps will also move with you based on which direction you face, which is very neat.

8. Increased battery life: It’s supposed to provide 12 hours of talk time, 30 hours of audio, and 10 hours of video. In reality, it seems to be a slight increase, but we’ll take it.

GPEDIT.MSC And Autoplay

2009-06-23T23:47:00.001-07:00

A great tweaking file that comes with XP is gpedit.msc. Go to Start -> Run... and then type in 'gpedit.msc' and press enter.

This is effectively the Policies Editor, and it comes in handy often. For example, if you hate CD autoplay like I do and want to permanently disable it, you can use this tool to do so. Just run gpedit.msc, then go to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System. In here you can see the value 'Turn Off Autoplay'. Right-click on it and then click 'Properties'.

Increasing Options in add/remove programs

2009-06-23T23:46:00.001-07:00

Not a fan of MSN Messenger? don't want Windows Media Player on your system? Fair enough, but if you go to Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, by default none of Windows XP's 'built in' programs are visible. it's fairly easy to change, though... just open the file X:\Windows\inf\sysoc.inf (where X: is the drive letter where Windows XP is installed) in Notepad. You should see a section of the file something like this:

[Components]
NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,,4
WBEM=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,wbemoc.inf,hide,7
Display=desk.cpl,DisplayOcSetupProc,,7
Fax=fxsocm.dll,FaxOcmSetupProc,fxsocm.inf,,7
NetOC=netoc.dll,NetOcSetupProc,netoc.inf,,7
iis=iis.dll,OcEntry,iis.inf,,7
com=comsetup.dll,OcEntry,comnt5.inf,hide,7
dtc=msdtcstp.dll,OcEntry,dtcnt5.inf,hide,7
IndexSrv_System = setupqry.dll,IndexSrv,setupqry.inf,,7
TerminalServer=TsOc.dll, HydraOc, TsOc.inf,hide,2
msmq=msmqocm.dll,MsmqOcm,msmqocm.inf,,6
ims=imsinsnt.dll,OcEntry,ims.inf,,7
fp_extensions=fp40ext.dll,FrontPage4Extensions,fp4 0ext.inf,,7
AutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,au.inf,hide,7
msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7
RootAutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,rootau.inf,,7
IEAccess=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,ieaccess.inf,,7

This is a list of all components installed at the moment. I've taken the example of MSN Messenger - the program entry called 'msmsgs', third-last line. You can see the word 'hide' highlighted - this is the string which tells Windows not to display the component in the Add/Remove Programs list. Fix this up by simply deleting the word 'hide' like so:

To this:

msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,,7

Now, after restarting, you should be able to see MSN Messenger in the Add/Remove Programs list. If you want to be able to quickly view and remove all components, simply open the sysoc.inf file and do a global find and replace for the word ",hide" and replace it with a single comma ",".

How do I get a popup window to work in my site?

2009-06-23T23:26:00.002-07:00

You have been looking around at other sites and you see how they use popup windows and you decided you would like to add one to your site for one reason or another. Well you are in luck, it is easier than you think.

There are only a few simple steps you need to take in order to get this to work.

1) Identify HTML page you would like to trigger the popup window from. This means the page that will contain the link that prompts the window to open. We will call this the primary page.

2) Identify the page you would like to open in the popup window. Let's assume it is a welcome HTML page (welcome.htm).

3) Let's make this real easy, place both HTML files in the same directory. Then you don't have to specify the path to the file, you can call it directly.

4) Open up the primary page with your favorite text editor and locate the opening tag, then locate the closing tag. between these two tags is where you will add the JavaScript code (one portion of it).
Figure 1
Basic Web Page Example:

5) Go to the Ace Popup Creator web page and follow the instructions on that page to create the desired results. After you grab the code from "Step 1" go to the next step in this article.

6) Paste the code from the Ace Popup Creator in the location shown in Figure 1 above.

Figure 2
It should look like this now:7) Believe it or not you are almost done! Go back to the Ace Popup Creator web page and get the data "Step 2". Paste the code from the Ace Popup Creator in the location shown in Figure 2 above.

Figure 3
The completed web page should look like this:8) Save the file and you are done. Open the primary html file in a browser and click the "LinkText" link.

You can now upload the HTML pages to your server. Make sure both files are stored in the same directory.

Practice this a few times and you will be ready to start adding advanced features to the popup windows.

How do I round-off numbers using JavaScript?

2009-06-23T23:26:00.001-07:00

It is easy, you can even round numbers off to a certain number of decimal places.

JavaScript offers the following method: Math.round(x)

Math.round(295.9); // returns 296
Math.round(245.2); // returns 245
Math.round(-102.58); // returns -103

Here is how you round to specific decimal numbers:

Use the Math.round() function along with the basic multiply and divide operators and you can easily round numbers to a specific decimal.

For example:

var pi = "3.1415926535";

// Round to tenths
pi = Math.round(pi*10)/10; // returns 3.14

// Round to hundredths
pi = Math.round(pi*100)/100; // returns 3.142

// Round to Bazillionths
pi = Math.round(pi*infinity)/infinity; // Just Kidding

This function is very useful when rounding dollar amounts:

var totalDue = "1003.1415926535";

// Round to tenths:
totalDue = Math.round(totalDue*100)/100; // returns $1003.14

__________________

How can I change the physical location of "My Documents" folder?

2009-06-23T23:25:00.002-07:00

By default, the My Documents folder for your user account resides in the %Userprofile% folder:

Example: C:\Documents and Settings\Robert\My Documents (Assuming your user account name is Robert)

If the system drive is running out of space and you want to redirect the My Documents folder to a different partition, follow this method:

Create a folder in a different drive.
Assign appropriate folder permissions.
Open My Computer window.
From Common Tasks pane, right-click My Documents and choose Properties.
Type the target folder path and click Apply.

Removing invalid entries from Add or Remove Programs

2009-06-23T23:25:00.001-07:00

Sometimes when you uninstall a program, corresponding entry in the Add or Remove ProgramsAdd or Remove Programs applet, follow these steps: listing may not be removed. This may be due to incomplete uninstall or poorly designed uninstaller itself. To manually remove the orphaned entries from the Click Start, Run and type "regedit.exe"

Navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall
Backup the branch to a file

Note: Each subkey represents a program that you've installed. To determine which program that each key represents, click the key, and then view the DisplayName value data in the right pane.

Select the subkey that you want to delete
Right-click on the subkey and choose
Delete Close Registry Editor

Configure Windows XP to Automatically Login

2009-06-23T23:24:00.003-07:00

After downloading fixes from Windows Updates page or via Automatic Updates, you may notice that Windows XP no longer logs into your account automatically. This is usually caused after the installation of .NET Framework from Microsoft. It creates an additional user account called ASP.NET, which you can see in the Control Panel User Accounts applet. But, you neither need to remove this update nor delete this account. You can still configure Windows XP to automatically login using this method:

Click Start, Run and type "Control UserPasswords2", and click OK. Select the user account from the list (the account to which you want to automatically logon). Uncheck Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer option, and click OK. Type the user account password and complete the process.

For Windows XP Home, don't try to auto-login as the built-in Administrator, as you'll receive an error message.

How to Remove Windows XP's Messenger

2009-06-23T23:24:00.001-07:00

Theoretically, you can get rid of it (as well as a few other things). Windows 2000 power users should already be familiar with this tweak.

Fire up the Windows Explorer and navigate your way to the %SYSTEMROOT% \ INF folder. What the heck is that thingy with the percentage signs? It's a variable. For most people, %SYSTEMROOT% is C:\Windows. For others, it may be E:\WinXP. Get it? Okay, on with the hack! In the INF folder, open sysoc.inf (but not before making a BACKUP copy first). Before your eyes glaze over, look for the line containing "msmsgs" in it. Near the end of that particular line, you'll notice that the word "hide" is not so hidden. Go ahead and delete "hide" (so that the flanking commas are left sitting next to one another). Save the file and close it. Now, open the Add and Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel. Click the Add / Remove Windows Components icon. You should see "Windows Messenger" in that list. Remove the checkmark from its box, and you should be set. NOTE: there are other hidden system components in that sysoc.inf file, too. Remove "hide" and the subsequent programs at your own risk.

Multi Yahoo! Messenger

2009-06-23T23:23:00.005-07:00

click ''run'' type ''regedit''
click .....''HKEY_CURRENT_USER""
Expand = ''Software''
Expand = ''Yahoo''
Click = ''Pager''
Click = ''Test''
right click = ''Below default''
click = ''Sting Value''
change = ''New Value to Plural''
Double click = plural put ''0'' Value
Close = ''Regedit''
Restart your computer for better result then open Multiple Messengers

Shortcut to switching between Tabbed Window

2009-06-23T23:23:00.003-07:00

Frequent browsers might have experienced in tabbed window browsing. These tabbed window was supported in Mozilla and in Internet Explorer version 7.0. Meanwhile it is not supported in the version 6 of Internet Explorer. Hope the tabbed window can be added to it by some add-ons. Switching between the tabbed window can be done through ‘CTRL+TAB’ key combination to proceed in clockwise direction and to proceed on the anti clockwise direction make use of ‘CTRL+SHIFT+TAB’ key. What you do when need to switch over to the third tabbed window from the first window?. I just stumbled over the Internet for such shortcut key and find atlast. You could achieve by using the combination of ‘CTRL+’ key. For example if you need to look of the sixth tabbed window, just press the key ‘CTRL+6′. Hope many of you might be aware of this. This is just to add upon for those who unaware of it.

Firefox & Deer Park Alpha2 Speed Tweaks

2009-06-23T23:23:00.001-07:00

Firefox Performance Settings (from the MozillaZine Forum)

How to: just cut and paste then save to your user.js file (use chrome edit so you don't need to dig into your Documents and Settings/"username"/Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/"default"/user.js)

I tested it and it works! (56K, DSL & Wi-fi Connections tested, but it should speed things up regardless of your connection.)

One of the limitations of pretty much all computer applications is the need to target for a general audience because of the wide array of computer components and varied network infrastructure. This is where tweaking comes in. Firefox by default is aimed at a general audience too and hopefully we can tune it more to the needs of theindividual. The majority of the information comes from this excellent thread over at the MozillaZine Forum.

The first post in particular goes through in great detail what each of the settings do. The thread however gets fairly long and convoluted and we attempt to summarize the contents of this thread along with a couple other sources into something that is easier to digest. As with the settings on the previous page, the contents are copied into the user.js file. We do not go into major detail about the setting as the thread goes into detailed explanations of what the settings mean in the first post. Instead, the configurations are culled from the thread of what people have reported to have worked for them along with some modifications on our end.

Quick and Dirty Settings (part of the tweaks further below)

user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.firstrequest", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

Pipelining does multiple data requests at once and should speed things up. I believe IE did this before and this was partially attributable to the speed advantage that IE had over older versions of Mozilla/Netscape. Initial Paint Delay actually slows down the rendering of the ENTIRE page but since users tend to start reading before the entire page is rendered, setting this to a low value gives the impression that the page loads faster.

The following configurations are based off of recommendations off of the Mozillazine thread with some editing.

These are the settings that seem to be common to all configuration files regardless of connection speed or computer speed with a couple of additions - plugin paths can be found with about:plugins and the bookmark menu delay is turned off.

user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);
user_pref("network.http.request.max-start-delay", 0);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("plugin.expose_full_path", true);
user_pref("ui.submenuDelay", 0);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

Fast Computer, Fast Connection:

Definitions:

Fast Computer: is a machine with a CPU greater than 1.5Ghz and with memory installed of at least 512MB RAM

Fast Connection: is a DSL, cable or a better connection

According to the above, 'Slower' connections means slower DSL or cable connections as well as double line ISDN connections, and 'Slow' means all other analog modem connections.

A 'Slow' computer is a computer with a CPU slower than 1.5Ghz, and with less memory than 512MB RAM.

user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

A couple settings of note - Firefox is allocated 4096 KB of memory by default and in this configuration we give it roughly 65MB as denoted by the last line. This can be changed according to what is used.

Fast Computer, Slower Connection:

This configuration is more suited to people without ultra fast connections. We are talking about slower DSL / Cable connections as well as double line ISDN connections.

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

Fast Computer, Slow Connection:

Slow connection means connections through an analog 57k modem or slower.

user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true);
user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 8191);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 4);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

Slow Computer, Fast Connection:

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 1000000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 1000000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 4095);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 1000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change", true);

One of the changes made for this particular configuration is the final line where the status bar is disabled for changing web pages to save processor time.

Slow Computer, Slow Connection:

We have entered the doldrums of the dial-up user

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 750);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 4);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change", true);

Missing Files

2009-06-23T23:22:00.001-07:00

You downloaded a software and when you try to run it, you receive a "missing file" error like this...

What's up with that ?
A particular file (e.g MFC42.DLL or COMDLG32.OCX or any other) is missing

Code:

http://www.google.com/search?q=MFC42.DLL
http://www.google.com/search?q=comdlg32.dll

Developers sometimes assume that most people have those files, however if you don't download very often and don't use a lot of software other than what came with your computer - you may need an additional support file here and there. Microsoft releases new "Run-time" files every now and then, they allow software developers to make use of the latest technology when creating new software. In order for YOU to use these programs, you need to update your Windows system with these files. Many software products requires the VB6 Runtimes or the earlier version, the VB5 Runtimes.

Code:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q192/4/61.ASP
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q180/0/71.ASP

Download VB runtime files
VBRun60.exe Installs Visual Basic 6.0 Run-Time Files

Code:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q192/4/61.ASP

This package includes: ASycFilt.dll, ComCat.dll, MSVBVM60.dll, OLEAut32.dll, OLEPro32.dll, STDOLE2.tlb, ADVPack.dll, W95Inf16.dll, W95Inf32.dll, VBRun60.inf,

Msvbvm50.exe Installs Visual Basic 5.0 Run-Time Files

Code:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q180/0/71.ASP

This package includes: Msvbvm50.dll, Oleaut32.dll, Olepro32.dll, Stdole2.tlb, Asycfilt.dll, Comcat.dll

VBrun4.exe installs Visual Basic 4.0 Run-Time

Code:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/vb40ent/Sample27/1/W9XNT4/EN-US/Vb4Run.exe

VB4 Runtimes may still be required by some older products. If you receive an error that VB40032.DLL is missing, you need to download and install these.

Code:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/vb40ent/Sample27/1/W9XNT4/EN-US/Vb4Run.exe

The package includes Vb40016.dll and Vb40032.dll More info.

Code:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q196/2/86.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=VB40032.DLL%20&rnk=16&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=MSALL

Need mfc42.dll? Click here to download.

Code:

http://alltheweb.com/search?cat=ftp&ftype=4&query=MFC42.DLL&Search=Find+file

Java Runtime Environment

Java is a programming language just like Visual basic, C etc. However, in order to run programs written in Java on a Windows computer, you need to install the latest support files, the Java 2 Runtime Environment from Sun. You only need to install the JRE once, then you are ready to use any software that requires the JRE1.3 or Java2 (same thing).

Download Java from SUN

Code:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.1/download.html

.NET Runtimes

Some program take advantage of Microsoft's new .NET framework. You will need the .NET Runtimes in order to run those programs.

Download .NET Runtime files from Microsoft

Code:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=262D25E3-F589-4842-8157-034D1E7CF3A3&displaylang=en

Other errors & solutions
Runtime Library Microsoft Visual C++, Runtime Error Program C:\Windows\Explorer.exe or Iexplore.exe, abnormal program termination.

Could be related to the browser add-on Common Name.

Code:

http://www.commonname.com/

Click here for details and possible fixes (or just use Add/Remove to uninstalle Common Name)

Code:

http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/CommonName.html

Need WS_32.DLL?
Visit Microsoft and download the Winsock 2 update

Code:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/wuadmintools/s
_wunetworkingtools/w95sockets2/?RLD=357

WNASPI.DLL
Often needed for CD burning related applications. Get it from Ahead Software AG here.

Code:

http://www.nero.com/en/631940733573829.html

DLL Help Database
Microsoft DLL Database Search
Use Microsoft DLL Help to identify which software installed a specific version of a DLL. Just enter the name of the files (e.g WS_32.DLL, COMDLG32.OCX) and click the search button. If it is a Mic rosoft file, the datbase will tell you which software installed it.

Code:

http://support.microsoft.com/dllhelp/

For all other missing files, check the

Code:

http://support.microsoft.com/

web site or find that file by doing a public FTP search (below) and then downloading and placing it in you C:\\Windows\System directory.
Example: If you received an error that a software requires COMDLG32.OCX, you would enter the exact name into the search box below and press"search". You would then find a list of available downloads found on FTP servers. There may be multiple locations available, select the one that is dated most recently and download the file. Save it in your C:\\Windows\System directory.

List of some of them:

Code:

advapi32.dll
awcapi32.dll
awfxrn32.dll
awlft332.dll
awlhut32.dll
awlzrd32.dll
awutil32.dll
bwcc.dll
bwcc32.dll
cmc.dll
cncs232.dll
commctrl.dll
ctl3d.dll
d3d8.dll
ddraw.dll
deskcp16.dll
dinput.dll
dinput8.dll
directx2d.dll
disktool.dll
dplay.dll
dsound.dll
gdi32.dll
glide2x.dll
glu32.dll
icm32.dll
iconlib.dll
imagehlp.dll
kernel.dll
kernel32.dll
mapi32.dll
mfc30.dll
mfc40.dll
mfc42.dll
mros432.dll
msajt200.dll
msnp32.dll
mso9.dll
mso97.dll
msoe.dll
mspdb60.dll
mss32.dll
msvbvm50.dll
msvbvm60.dll
msvcp50.dll
msvcp60.dll
msvcirt.dll
msvcrt.dll
msvcrt10.dll
wnaspi32.dll
msvcrt20.dll
msvcrt40.dll
netapi.dll
nshlp32.dll
npccs32.dll
nwnp32.dll
oleaut32.dll
olepro32.dll
opengl32.dll
pndx5016.dll
pndx5032.dll
pngu3263.dll
ra32.dll
ragui32.dll
rasapi16.dll
rasapi32.dll
regsvr32.dll
riched20.dll
rnaui.dll
secur32.dll
setup.dll
shdocvw.dll
shell.dll
shell32.dll
shlwapi.dll
urlmon.dll
user32.dll
vba332.dll
vb40016.dll
vb40032.dll
vbrun100.dll
vbrun200.dll
vbrun300.dll
winaspi32.dll
wing32.dll
wmmutil.dll
wmvcore.dll
winmm.dll
wnaspi32.dll
ws2_32.dll
ws2help.dll
wsock32.dll
wz32.dll
xmlparse.dll

__________________

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Commands in SoftICE

2009-06-23T23:21:00.006-07:00

SoftICE is a kernel mode debugger for Microsoft Windows. Crucially, it is designed to run underneath Windows such that the operating system is unaware of its presence. Unlike an application debugger, SoftICE is capable of suspending all operations in Windows when instructed. For driver debugging this is critical due to how hardware is accessed and the kernel of the operating system functions. Since its low-level capabilities, SoftICE is also popular as a software cracking tool. Microsoft offers two kernel-mode debuggers, WinDbg and KD, for no charge. However, the full capabilities of WinDbg and KD are available only when two interlinked computers are used. SoftICE therefore is an exceptionally useful tool for difficult driver related development and continues to function well even with Microsoft's latest operating system versions.
Older versions exist for DOS and compatible operating systems. SoftICE was originally produced by a company called NuMega, and was subsequently acquired by Compuware.

Following is a list of commands for SoftICE. SoftICE is worth being studied ... the more about SoftICE you know the faster you can crack (Assembly Knowledge Needed Of Course).

Code:

Basic Stuff
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
?                             Evulate Expression
A                             Assemble code
ADDR                          Display/Change address contents
BC                            Clear Breakpoint
BD                            Disable Breakpoint
BE                            Enable Breakpoint
BL                            List current Breakpoints
BPE                           Edit Breakpoint
BPT                           Use Breakpoint as a template
BPM, BPMB, BPMW, BPMD         Breakpoint on memory access
BPR                           Breakpoint on memory range
BPIO                          Breakpoint on I/O port access
BPINT                         Breakpoint on Interrupt
BPX                           Breakpoint on execution
BPMSG                         Breakpoint on windows message
C                             Compare two data blocks
CLASS                         Display window class information
D, DB, DW, DD, DS, DL, DT     Display memory
DATA                          Change data window
E, EB, EW, ED, EL, ET         Edit memory
EXIT                          EXIT
F                             Fill memory with data
FORMAT                        Change format of data window
G                             Go to address
H                             Help on specific function
HBOOT                         System boot (total reset)
HERE                          Go to current cursor line
HWND                          Display window handle information
M                             Move Data
MOD                           Display windows module list
P                             Step skipping calls, Int, etc
R                             Display/Change Register contents
S                             Search for data
T                             Single Step one instruction
TASK                          Display windows task list
THREAD                        Display thread information
U                             Un-Assemblers instructions
VER                           SoftICE Version
WATCH                         Add watch
WHAT                          Identify the type of expression
WMSG                          Display windows messages
X                             Return to host debugger or program

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Advanced Stuff
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPU                           Display CPU register information
GDT                           Display global descriptor table
GENINT                        Generate an interrupt
HEAP                          Display windows global heap
LHEAP                         Display windows local heap
IDT                           Display interrupt descriptor table
I, IB, IW, ID                 Input data from I/O Port
O. OB, OW, OD                 Output data form I/O Port
LDT                           Display local descriptor table
MAP32                         Display 32Bit section map
MAPV86                        Display v86 memory map
PAGE                          Display page table information
PCI                           Display PCI device information
PEEK                          Read from physical address
PHYS                          Display all virtual addresses for physical address
POKE                          Write to physical address
PROC                          Display process information
QUERY                         Display process virtual address space map
TSS                           Display task state segment
STACK                         Display call stack
VCALL                         Display VxD calls
VM                            Display virtual machine information
VXD                           Display windows VxD map
XFRAME                        Display active exeption frames

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Mode Control
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FAULTS                        Enable/Disable SoftIce fault trapping
I1HERE                        Direct INT1 to SoftICE
I3HERE                        Direct INT3 to SoftICE
SET                           Change an internal variable
ZAP                           Zap embedded INT1 or INT3

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Customization Commands
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALTKEY                        Set key sequence to invoke window
ANSWER                        Auto-answer and redirect console to modem
CODE                          Display insctruction bytes in code window
COLOR                         Display/Set screen colors
DEX                           Display/Assign window data expression
DIAL                          Redirect console to modem
FKEY                          Display/Set function keys
LINES                         Set/Display number of lines on screen
MACRO                         Define a named macro command
PAUSE                         Control display scroll mode
PRN                           Set printer output port
SERIAL                        Redirect console
TABS                          Set/Display tab setting

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Window Commands
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.                             Locate current instruction
EC                            Enable/Disable code window
WC                            Toggle code window
WD                            Toggle data window
WF                            Toggle float point stack window
WL                            Toggle locals window
WR                            Toggle register window
WW                            Toggle watch window

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Window Control
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALTSCR                        Change to alternate display
CLS                           Clear window
FLASH                         Restore screen during P and T
RS                            Restore program screen

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Symbole/Source Commands
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EXP                           Display export symbols
FILE                          Change/Display current source file
LOCALS                        Display locals currently in scope
SRC                           Toggle between source, mixed & code
SS                            Search source module for string
SYMLOC                        Relocate symbol base
TAB                           Select/Remove symbol table
TYPES                         List all types, or display type defination

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Back Trace Commands
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SHOW                          Display from backtrace buffer
TRACE                         Enter backtrace simulation mode
XT                            Step in trace simulation mode
XP                            Program step in trace simulation mode
XG                            Go to address in trace simulation mode
XRSET                         Reset backtrace history buffer

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Special Operators
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.                             Preceding a decimal number specifies a line number
$                             Preceding an address specifies SEGMENT addressing
#                             Preceding an address specifies SELECTOR
@                             Preceding an address

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

__________________

How to Get the Codecs Downloaded Automatically to Windows Media Player

2009-06-23T23:21:00.005-07:00

Windows Media Player may not be able to play a portion of content that you select because that content requires a codec that either could not be downloaded to your computer, or is not supported by Windows Media Player. By default, Windows Media Player downloads codecs automatically when you need them to play a file.

When you are trying to play back content, temporarily set the Internet Explorer Download unsigned ActiveX controls security setting to Enable or Prompt. This setting will let you install the codec.

1. In Internet Explorer 4.x, click Internet Options on the View menu. In Internet Explorer 5 and 6, click Internet Options on the Tools menu. (Or go to Start > Control Panel > Internet Options).

2. On the Security tab, click on the Custom Level... button.

3. Scroll down to Download unsigned ActiveX controls and click Enable.

4. After codecs were downloaded, follow again steps 1-3. On step 3 change your settings back to Download unsigned ActiveX controls, Disable.

Note: If you want to avoid step 4, select Prompt instead of Enable. In this way, you'll always be notified of new "unsigned downloads".

Signed and Unsigned codecs

The following codecs are no longer signed. These codecs are available on the Microsoft codec server.

• Sharp G.726 Audio Codec
• Voxware MetaSound
• Voxware MetaVoice
• Sipro Lab Audio Telecom CODEC (ACELP.net)

As of the time that this article was published, the following decoders were signed and were available on the codec server:

• Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec v1
• Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec v2
• Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec v3
• Microsoft ISO MPEG4 v1.0
• Microsoft ISO MPEG4 v1.1
• Microsoft Windows Media Video v7
• Microsoft Windows Media Video v8
• Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 (DMO)
• Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 (VCM)
• Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile
• Microsoft Windows Media Audio 9 Professional
• Microsoft Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless
• Microsoft Windows Media Voice 9
• Microsoft Windows Media Voice 9 (DSHOW)
• Microsoft Windows Media Video Image 9
• Microsoft Windows Media Screen 9

VBR encoded MP3 files, advantages (and disadvantages?)

2009-06-23T23:21:00.003-07:00

VBR stands for Variable Bit Rate. The bit rate of a coded audio file is the number of bits (binary digits - 0s or 1s - bits of digital information) that are required to store 1 second of audio. An mp3 at 128kbps requires 128,000 (ish!) bits to store 1 second of audio.

The point of psychoacoustic coding is that you only store the audible part, but just how much information is needed to represent the audible part varies from 1 moment to the next. Silence doesn't contain very much information at all - rather than storing thousands of zeros, you could just store a code meaning "so many seconds of silence".

A Variable BitRate Coder will vary the bit rate, depending on how much information is needed to store the audible part of a signal from moment to moment. If a decoder expects the same number of bits every second, this can really confuse it!

MPEG 1/2/2.5 layer 3 files (.mp3 files) are encoded with a specified bit rate, usually 128 kbps (thousand bits per second) or, sometimes 160 or 192 kbps.

Greater bit rates generally mean better sound quality and a closer representation of the original sound. With variable bit rate MP3s, the encoder automatically detects which bit rate is most apropriate for the sound being encoded, live.

This means that when there is little sound to be heard, the encoder encodes the MP3 with a low bit rate (as low as 16 kbps or less), but when there is very complex sound to be heard, the encoder uses a much higher bit rate (up to 320 kbps) to attain better sound reproduction.

• What are the major advantages of VBR encoded MP3 files?
- VBR encoded MP3s are generally smaller than standard MP3s of the same sound quality and generrally sound better, especially in the high frequencies.
Also, it's great for spoken word audio as there are often pauses and silence between sentences.

• What are the major disadvantages of VBR encoded MP3 files?
- Some older MP3 players cannot play them.
- Must be re-encoded in order to be streamed. Although variable speed compressed files are difficult to stream continuously over most Internet connections, those that download the entire file before viewing are unaffected.

What Codecs Should I Use?

2009-06-23T23:21:00.001-07:00

You have downloaded a video or audio file and you are unable to open it or it does not play properly. This can be due to a simple reason: a missing codec. But what codec(s) should i download?

• The easiest way to find out is to check the file extension. One thing to be noted is that some files can be named wrongly and some file formats such as AVI require different codecs depending on the file even if the file extension is the same.

• Other method - also very simple - to find out the proper codec for video/audio files is GSpot or AVIcodec. These small tools can help you to check what codecs you need and whether your computer is able to play the file(s).

Sometimes it would be simpler to just install most of the commonly used codecs so as to avoid having to search for one each time you download a file using a new codec. Such codec packs are available here at Free-Codecs.com, however, you must take precautions to ensure that there are no software conflicts.

Many users reported troubles with codec packs. Our advice is: Always use tools like GSpot and AVIcodec and try to install only the codecs you need. Almost all packs give you the option to select the codec before installation.

Codecs related tools:

• GSpot: is a video codec identification utility - identifies which video codec and audio compression method is used on .avi files, whether the matching codec is installed, and more.
• AVIcodec: gives detailled information, especially the codecs needed to play the file...
• Sherlock - The Codec Detective!: The Codec Detective helps to determine the codecs installed on computer and check to see if any of the codecs are broken.
• Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility: this utility helps you determine if an MPEG-2 video decoder is installed on your Windows XP computer...
• CodecInstaller: CodecInstaller detects which Audio and Video codecs are installed on your system and suggest you to install the ones necessary to correctly view the movie.
• MMCompView: displays the details of all installed multimedia components (codecs, ActiveX filters) and allows you disable/enable specific components.
• CodecViewer: is a little tool, which tells you which audio and video codecs you need for an avi file.
• DirectShow Filter Manager: helps to list, sort, find, add or remove DirectShow filters.
• DXMan: allows you to add or remove video and audio codecs and plugins.
• VideoInspector: is a Freeware which aim is to detect codec required by AVI, MKV, QT, etc etc files.
• RadLight Filter Manager: this little tool allows you to change merit of DirectShow filters and it can also be used to list all registered codecs and to register or unregister codecs.

__________________

How to fix "divide error in module IVIAUDIO.AX at..."

2009-06-23T23:20:00.001-07:00

Only exists in systems that have various "Sound Blaster Live" (Creative Labs) sound cards and WinDVD (InterVideo, Inc.) installed. This is a documented compatibility problem between some "Sound Blaster Live" cards and the WinDVD product. The problem is realized when MP3 oriented applications call upon certain sound card services making it look as though the error was raised from within the application in question.

1. Search your computer for the location of the files IVIAUDIO.AX and IVIVIDEO.AX [START > Search, or just push F3 button]

2. Then launch command prompt [START > Run], then type in the following string - regsvr32 /u "\IVIAUDIO.AX"

3. Press the OK button.

4. When presented with the successful pop-up press the OK button.

5. Type in the following string - regsvr32 /u "\IVIVIDEO.AX"

6. Press the OK button

7. When presented with the successful pop-up press the OK button.

8. Close all windows and applications and re-boot your system.

Note: Where is the fully qualified path name to the 2 files (IVIAUDIO.AX and IVIVIDEO.AX) (i.e. c:\program files\intervideo\common\bin\ivi...).

__________________

Play your Custom MSN Sounds !

2009-06-23T23:19:00.003-07:00

I just found out how 2 play custom sounds for msn plus as mp3 !!

just make a copy of it and rename the file from bat to mp3 ( no progs used !!!)

1. go to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Messenger Plus!\Custom Sounds

2. make a copy and paste it where u want it !!

3. reneme the .bat to .mp3

Thats it !!!

Registry Disassembled

2009-06-23T23:19:00.001-07:00

The registry is a hierarchical database that contains virtually all information about your computer's configuration. Under previous version of Windows, those setting where contained in files like config.sys, autoexec.bat, win.ini, system.ini, control.ini and so on. From this you can understand how important the registry is. The structure of the registry is similar to the ini files structure, but it goes beyond the concept of ini files because it offers a hierarchical structure, similar to the folders and files on hard disk. In fact the procedure to get to the elements of the registry is similar to the way to get to folders and files.
In this section I would be examing the Win95\98 registry only although NT is quite similar.

The Registry Editor

The Registry Editor is a utility by the filename regedit.exe that allows you to see, search, modify and save the registry database of Windows. The Registry Editor doesn't validate the values you are writing: it allows any operation. So you have to pay close attention, because no error message will be shown if you make a wrong operation.

To launch the Registry Editor simply run RegEdit.exe ( under WinNT run RegEdt32.exe with administer privileges). The registry editor is divided into two sectios in the left one there is a hierarchical structure of the database (the screen looks like Windows Explorer) in the right one there are the values.

The registry is organized into keys and subkeys. Each key contains a value entry , each one has a name, a type or a class and the value itself. The name is a string that identifies the value to the key. The length and the format of the value is dependent on the data type.

As you can see with the Registry Editor, the registry is divided into five principal keys: there is no way to add or delete keys at this level. Only two of these keys are effectively saved on hard disk: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_USERS. The others are jusr branches of the main keys or are dynamically created by Windows.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
This key contains any hardware, applications and services information. Several hardware information is updated automatically while the computer is booting. The data stored in this key is shared with any user. This handle has many subkeys:

Config
Contains configuration data for different hardware configurations.

Enum
This is the device data. For each device in your computer, you can find information such as the device type, the hardware manufacturer, device drivers and the configuration.

Hardware
This key contains a list of serial ports, processors and floating point processors.

Network
Contains network information.

Security
Shows you network security information.

Software
This key contains data about installed software.

System
It contains data that checks which device drivers are used by Windows and how they are configured.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
This key is an alias of the branch HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes and contains OLE, drag'n'drop, shortcut and file association information.

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG
This key is also an alias. It contains a copy of the branch HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Config, with the current computer configuration.

HKEY_DYN_DATA
Some information stored in the registry changes frequently, so Windows maintains part of the registry in memory instead of on the hard disk. For example it stores PnP information and computer performance. This key has two sub keys

Config Manager
This key contains all hardware information problem codes, with their status. There is also the sub key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum, but written in a different way.

PerfStats
It contains performance data about system and network

HKEY_USERS
This important key contains the sub key .Default and another key for each user that has access to the computer. If there is just one user, only .Default key exists. . Each sub key maintains the preferences of each user, like the desktop colors, the fonts used, and also the settings of many programs. If you open a user subkey you will find five important subkeys:

AppEvent
It contains the path of audio files that Windows plays when some events happen.

Control Panel
Here are the settings defined in the Control Panel. They used to be stored in win.ini and control.ini.

Keyboard Layouts
It contains some advanced code which identifies the actual keyboard disposition how it is set into the Control Panel.

Network
This key stores subkeys that describe current and recent network shortcuts.

RemoteAccess
The settings of Remote Access are stored here.

Software
Contains all software settings. This data was stored in win.ini and private .ini files.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
It is an alias to current user of HKEY_USERS. If your computer is not configured for multi-users usage, it points to the subkey .Default of HKEY_USERS.

Description of .reg file

Here I am assuming that you already have a .reg file on your hard disk and want to know more about how it is structured.Now do not double click the .reg file or it's content will be added to the registry, of course there will be warning message that pops up. Now to view the properties of the .reg file open it in notepad.

To do so first launch notepad by going to Start>Programs>Accessories>Notepad.
Then through the open menu open the .reg file.
Now the thing that differentiates .reg files from other files is the word REGEDIT4. It is found to be the first word in all .reg files. If this word is not there then the registry editor cannot recognize the file to be a .reg file.
Then follows the key declaration which has to be done within square brackets and with the full path.If the key does not exist then it will be created.
After the key declaration you will see a list of values that have to be set in the particular key in the registry.The values look like this:

"value name"=type:value

Value name is in double commas. Type can be absent for string values, dword: for dword values and hex: for binary values. For all other values you have to use the code hex(#): , where # indicate the API code of the type.
So:

"My string" = "string value" is a string
"My dword" = dword:123456789 is a dword
"My binary" = hex:AA,BB,CC is a standard binary
"My other type" = hex(2):AA,BB,00 is an expand string

Important Note: expand string has API code = 2 and extended string has API code = 7.

As you can see, strings are in double quotes, dword is hexadecimal and binary is a sequence of hexadecimal byte pairs, with a comma between each. If you want to add a back slash into a string remember to repeat it two times, so the value "c:\Windows" will be "c:\\Windows".
Before write a new .reg file, make sure you do this else you will get an error message.

Command Line Registry Arguments

FILENAME.REG to merge a .reg file with the registry
/L:SYSTEM to specify the position of SYSTEM.DAT
/R:USER to specify the position of USER.DAT
/e FILENAME.REG [KEY] to export the registry to a file. If the key is specified, the whole branch will be exported.
/c FILENAME.REG to substitute the entire registry with a .reg file
/s to work silently, without prompt information or Warnings.

That wraps up the Windows Registry.

Increase your ADSL 20%!

2009-06-23T23:18:00.003-07:00

Windows XP uses 20% of your bandwidth !

Microsoft reserve 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes (suspect for updates and interrogating your machine etc..)

Here's how to get it back:

Click Start-->Run-->type "gpedit.msc" without the "

This opens the group policy editor. Then go to:

Local Computer Policy-->Computer Configuration-->Administrative Templates-->Network-->QOS Packet Scheduler-->Limit Reservable Bandwidth

Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth. It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab :

"By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default."

So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO. This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20%.
Works on XP Pro and 2000.

Topic taken from PUZO forums, but I thought it was worth the post so here ya go. Oh BTW, this gpedit.msc is another great way to tweak pc without having to use outside tools. But be careful and read the information bars before you make any changes.

Make your own Icons

2009-06-23T23:18:00.001-07:00

It's shockingly easy to create your own icons in Windows XP. Let's do it:

Click Start => All Programs => Accessories => Paint.
On the Image menu, click Attributes. Type 32 for both the Width and Height of the document, and make sure that Pixels is selected under Units. Click OK to create a new 32x32-pixel document: the size of an icon.

Now add type, color, or do whatever you'd like to your image. I like to shrink photos (headshots work best) to 32x32 and simply paste them into my Paint document. When you're finished, open the File menu and click Save As. Use the dialog box to choose where you want to save your file, then give it a name followed by ".ico" (without the quotes), and click Save. (The extension ".ico" tells Windows that it's an icon file.) You just created an icon! Now you can change any shortcut or folder to your own icon - just browse to it on your hard drive.

How to Create a Boot Disk

2009-06-23T23:17:00.006-07:00

This is quite simple.

01: Go into MY Computer.

02: Have a floppy disk in your drive and then Right click on on the floppy drive and then click on Format.

03: You will be greeted with a number of options. The one you need to select is "Create an MS-DOS start up disk".

04: Click OK.

Note: This requires up to 5 floppy disks and DOES NOT contain ANY CD-ROM drivers to boot from. A proper CD-ROM boot up disk is going to be release by Microsoft after the Windows XP public release. You can however use you old Windows Me start-up disk if you would prefer, as long as you have not upgraded to an NTFS drive.

__________________

Disabling Unnecessary Services

2009-06-23T23:17:00.005-07:00

Services are programs that start up when your computer boots. They continue to run in the background while your PC is on, some services load automatically, some when a program is used. Some of these services are not needed by various users and can be safely disabled. But BE WARNED there are some of these services that MUST not be disabled. To get a good idea what can and can't be removed check out for a very detailed list. Remember, you can always turn the service back on if you find out that you need it in the future. Below is the procedure to turn off a service.

Click the start button.
Click on Control Panel.
Click on Administrative Tools.
Click Services.
Once the services window has loaded you are now able to turn off any unneeded services.
For instructional purposes we are going to turn off the Printer Spooler (Which isn't needed if you don't have a printer installed) service.
Find this service in the list and select it with the mouse.
Right click and select Properties.
Once the properties windows has loaded find the Start up type drop down box and select disable.
Then finally click ok and the next time the computer starts the service will no longer be loaded.

__________________

Modem Speed Tweak (Dial-Up)

2009-06-23T23:17:00.003-07:00

Improve your Dial-Up Modem Performance. You can't assume that just because you connected at a speed like 50.kbps that you will stay there. Today's modems automatically fall back to a lower speed if the line noise is too high to maintain a faster connection, but sometimes they fall back too soon or too far.

01. Click Start
02. Setting
03. Control Panel
04. Printers and Other Hardware
05. Phone and Modem options
06. Modem
07. select ur modem
08. Properties
09. Advanced
10. Extra initialization commands:
11. type S36=7

This will force your modem to try to stay connected at high speeds in two different ways before dropping back to an a synchronous mode with auto speed buffering.

How to Access Your Folders from Your Taskbar

2009-06-23T23:17:00.001-07:00

This is an easy way to get to the folders on your system without having to open a Windows Explorer Window every time you want to access files. I find it very useful to have this feature as it allows me to access my Folders and Drives immediately and saves me a lot of time.

01. Right Click an empty spot on your Taskbar (Between your Start Button and your System Tray).

02. Click Toolbars.

03. Click New Toolbar.

04. A Small Window will Open that allows you to pick the folder you wish to make a Toolbar. If you want to access your Desktop Without having to minimize all your windows. Just Pick Desktop. If you want to access ONLY your My Documents Folder, Select that. Any folder will work for this.

05. Click OK.

The New Tool bar will appear at the bottom of your screen next to your System Tray.

If you find this to be not useful, Repeat Steps 1 and 2 and then check click the Toolbar you created that has a check mark next to it. And it will disappear.

How to Access Your Folders from Your Taskbar

2009-06-23T23:16:00.002-07:00

__________________

How to set up proxies in your browser

2009-06-23T23:16:00.001-07:00

===================================
How to set up proxies in your browser,
(!!!!be anonymous and make the passes last longer...!!!!!!
===================================

In Internet Explorer

===================================
Click "Tools", then "Internet Options", the in the "connections" Tab, click the "LAN Setup" Button in the bottom. There is a "Proxy Servers", tick the "Use a proxy....." and then enter the proxy in the bigger textbox and the port (the part that comes after the ":") in the smaller textbox. Hit okay, and then go to

Code:

www.whatismyip.com

to see if the proxy is now your IP.
===================================

In OPERA

===================================
Click "Files", then "Preferences", then "Network", then click the button "Proxy Servers", tick "HTTP", fill in with the proxy:port, click okay and that's it! Don't forget to check with

Code:

www.whatismyip.com

===================================

In Firefox

===================================
Tools -> Options
Then click the General Icon
Then the "Connection Settings..." button
Then click the "manually configure proxies" radio button, and enter the proxy address and port in the HTTP Proxy area.
Don't forget to check with

Code:

www.whatismyip.com

===================================

To be clear: if I give you 255.255.255.255:8080, that means 255.255.255.255 is the proxy and 8080 is the port

To Optain Fresh and new proxies,u can alvays check Google...

Some more useful sites:

Code:

www.proxy4free.com
www.safeproxy.org
www.megaproxy.com
www.guardster.com
www.silenter.com
www.anonymizer.com

Happy Anonymous surfing!

Hacker Lingo

2009-06-23T23:15:00.005-07:00

back door n. In the security of a system, a hole deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. May be intended for use by service technicians. syn. trap door.

bit bucket n. 1. The universal data sink. Discarded, lost or destroyed data is said to have gone to the bit bucket. Sometimes amplified as "The Great Bit Bucket in the Sky."

cracker n. One who breaks security on a system. Coined by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of the term "hacker." The term "cracker" reflects a strong revulsion at the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. There is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than most would suspect.

deep magic n. An awesomely arcane technique central to a program or system, esp. one that could only have been composed by a true wizard. Many techniques in cryptography, signal processing, graphics and artificial intelligence are deep magic.

foo interj. 1. Term of disgust. 2. Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files. Etymology is obscure.

hacker n. 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities. 2. One who programs enthusiastically. 3. A person who is good at programming quickly. 4. An expert at a particular program, as in "a Unix hacker." 5. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. The correct term for this sense is "cracker."

KISS Principle n. "Keep It Simple, Stupid." Often invoked when discussing design to fend off creeping featurism and control development complexity. Possibly related to the marketroid maxim, "Keep It Short and Simple."

kluge n. 1. A Rube Goldberg (or Heath Robinson) device, whether in hardware or software. 2. A clever programming trick intended to solve a particularly nasty case in an expedient, if not clear, manner. 3. Something that works for the wrong reason.

lots of MIPS but no I/O adj. A person who is technically brilliant but who can't seem to communicate with human beings effectively. Technically it describes a machine that has lots of processing power but is bottlenecked on input-output.

munge vt. 1. [derogatory] To imperfectly transform information. 2. A comprehensive rewrite of a routine, data structure or whole program. 3. To modify data in some way that the speaker doesn't need to go into right now.

netiquette n. The conventions of politeness recognized on Usenet, such as avoidance of cross-pointing to inappropriate groups and refraining from commercial pluggery outside the biz groups.

phreaking n. 1. The art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls). 2. By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not exclusively, on communications networks).

raster burn n. Eyestrain brought on by too many hours of looking at low-res, poorly tuned or glare-ridden monitors, esp. graphics monitors.

RTFM imp. [Acronym for "Read The F—— Manual."] 1. Used by gurus to brush off questions they consider trivial or annoying. 2. Used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just asking out of randomness: "Yes, I RTFM first."

security through obscurity n. (alt. security by obscurity) A hacker term for vendors' favorite way of coping with security holes — namely, ignoring them; documenting neither any known holes nor the underlying security algorithms; or trusting that nobody will find out about them, and that people who did find about them won't exploit them. This "strategy" never works for long.

sneaker n. An individual hired to break into places in order to test their security; analogous to "tiger team."

spaghetti code n. Code with a complex and tangled control structure, esp. one using many GOTOs, exceptions or other "unstructured" branching constructs. Pejorative. The synonym kangaroo code has also been reported, doubtless because such code has so many jumps in it.

time bomb n. A subspecies of logic bomb that is triggered by reaching some preset time; set to go off if the programmer is fired or laid off and is not present to perform the appropriate suppressing action periodically.

Trojan horse n. A malicious, security-breaking program that is disguised as something benign, such as a directory lister, archiver, game or (in one notorious 1990 case on the Mac) a program to find and destroy viruses.
vaporware n. Products announced far in advance of any release.

voodoo programming n. The use by guess or cookbook of an obscure or hairy system, feature or algorithm that one does not truly understand. The implication is that the technique may not work, and if it doesn't, one will never know why.

Vulcan nerve pinch n. The keyboard combination that forces a soft-boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On many micros this is Ctrl-Alt-Del; on Suns, L1-A; on some Macintoshes, it is ! Also called the "three-finger salute."

wedged adj. 1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, it has become totally nonfunctioning. If the system is wedged, it is trying to do something but cannot make progress. 2. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions.

wetware n. 1. The human nervous system, as opposed to computer hardware or software. 2. Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attached to a computer system, as opposed to that system's hardware or software.

wizard n. A person who knows how a complex piece of software or hardware works; esp. someone who can find and fix bugs quickly in an emergency. Someone is a hacker if he or she has general hacking ability, but is a wizard only if he or she has detailed knowledge.

zipperhead n. A person with a closed mind.

Recover from a Corrupted Registry

2009-06-23T23:15:00.003-07:00

This article describes how to recover a Windows XP system that does not start because of corruption in the registry. This procedure does not guarantee full recovery of the system to a previous state; however, you should be able to recover data when you use this procedure.

Warning:
Do not use the procedure that is described in this article if your computer has an OEM-installed operating system. The system hive on OEM installations creates passwords and user accounts that did not exist previously. If you use the procedure that is described in this article, you may not be able to log back into the recovery console to restore the original registry hives.

You can repair a corrupted registry in Windows XP. Corrupted registry files can cause a variety of different error messages. See the Mcft Knowledge Base for articles about error messages that are related to registry issues.

This article assumes that typical recovery methods have failed and access to the system is not available except by using Recovery Console. If an Automatic System Recovery (ASR) backup exists, it is the preferred method for recovery. Mcft recommends that you use the ASR backup before you try the procedure described in this article.

Note Make sure to replace all five of the registry hives. If you only replace a single hive or two, this can cause potential issues because software and hardware may have settings in multiple locations in the registry.

If you experience a repetitive occurrence of registry corruption related issues, Mcft recommends that you obtain and install the hotfix in the following article:
318159 Damaged Registry repair and recovery in Windows XP
This update is also included in Windows XP Service Pack 1.

MORE INFORMATION:
When you try to start or restart your Windows XP-based computer, you may receive one of the following error messages:
Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SOFTWARE
Stop: c0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive (file): \SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate
System error: Lsass.exe
When trying to update a password the return status indicates that the value provided as the current password is not correct.

The procedure that this article describes uses Recovery Console and System Restore. This article also lists all the required steps in specific order to make sure that the process is fully completed. When you finish this procedure, the system returns to a state very close to the state before the problem occurred. If you have ever run NTBackup and completed a system state backup, you do not have to follow the procedures in parts two and three. You can go to part four.

Part one
In part one, you start the Recovery Console, create a temporary folder, back up the existing registry files to a new location, delete the registry files at their existing location, and then copy the registry files from the repair folder to the System32\Config folder. When you have finished this procedure, a registry is created that you can use to start Windows XP. This registry was created and saved during the initial setup of Windows XP. Therefore any changes and settings that occurred after the Setup program was finished are lost.

To complete part one, follow these steps:

1. Insert the Windows XP startup disk into the floppy disk drive, or insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.
Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted to do so.

2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.

3. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you want to access from the Recovery Console.

4. When you are prompted to do so, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.

5. At the Recovery Console command prompt, type the following lines, pressing ENTER after you type each line:
md tmp
copy c:\windows\system32\config\system c:\windows\tmp\system.bak
copy c:\windows\system32\config\software c:\windows\tmp\software.bak
copy c:\windows\system32\config\sam c:\windows\tmp\sam.bak
copy c:\windows\system32\config\security c:\windows\tmp\security.bak
copy c:\windows\system32\config\default c:\windows\tmp\default.bak

delete c:\windows\system32\config\system
delete c:\windows\system32\config\software
delete c:\windows\system32\config\sam
delete c:\windows\system32\config\security
delete c:\windows\system32\config\default

copy c:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config\system
copy c:\windows\repair\software c:\windows\system32\config\software
copy c:\windows\repair\sam c:\windows\system32\config\sam
copy c:\windows\repair\security c:\windows\system32\config\security
copy c:\windows\repair\default c:\windows\system32\config\default

6. Type exit to quit Recovery Console. Your computer will restart.
Note This procedure assumes that Windows XP is installed to the C:\Windows folder. Make sure to change C:\Windows to the appropriate windows_folder if it is a different location.

If you have access to another computer, to save time, you can copy the text in step two, and then create a text file called "Regcopy1.txt" (for example). To create this file, run the following command when you start in Recovery Console:
batch regcopy1.txt
With the batch command in Recovery Console, you can process all the commands in a text file sequentially. When you use the batch command, you do not have to manually type as many commands.

Part Two
To complete the procedure described in this section, you must be logged on as an administrator, or an administrative user (a user who has an account in the Administrators group). If you are using Windows XP Home Edition, you can log on as an administrative user. If you log on as an administrator, you must first start Windows XP Home Edition in Safe mode. To start the Windows XP Home Edition computer in Safe mode, follow these steps.

Note Print these instructions before you continue. You cannot view these instructions after you restart the computer in Safe Mode. If you use the NTFS file system, also print the instructions from Knowledge Base article KB309531. Step 7 contains a reference to the article.

1. Click Start, click Shut Down (or click Turn Off Computer), click Restart, and then click OK (or click Restart).

2. Press the F8 key.
On a computer that is configured to start to multiple operating systems, you can press F8 when you see the Startup menu.

3. Use the arrow keys to select the appropriate Safe mode option, and then press ENTER.

4. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot system, use the arrow keys to select the installation that you want to access, and then press ENTER.
In part two, you copy the registry files from their backed up location by using System Restore. This folder is not available in Recovery Console and is generally not visible during typical usage. Before you start this procedure, you must change several settings to make the folder visible:

1. Start Windows Explorer.

2. On the Tools menu, click Folder options.

3. Click the View tab.

4. Under Hidden files and folders, click to select Show hidden files and folders, and then click to clear the Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) check box.

5. Click Yes when the dialog box that confirms that you want to display these files appears.

6. Double-click the drive where you installed Windows XP to display a list of the folders. If is important to click the correct drive.

7. Open the System Volume Information folder. This folder is unavailable and appears dimmed because it is set as a super-hidden folder.

Note This folder contains one or more _restore {GUID} folders such as "_restore{87BD3667-3246-476B-923F-F86E30B3E7F8}".

Note You may receive the following error message:
C:\System Volume Information is not accessible. Access is denied.
If you receive this message, see the following Mcft Knowledge Base article to gain access to this folder and continue with the procedure:
309531 How to gain access to the System Volume Information folder

8. Open a folder that was not created at the current time. You may have to click Details on the View menu to see when these folders were created. There may be one or more folders starting with "RPx under this folder. These are restore points.

9. Open one of these folders to locate a Snapshot subfolder. The following path is an example of a folder path to the Snapshot folder:
C:\System Volume Information\_restore{D86480E3-73EF-47BC-A0EB-A81BE6EE3ED8}\RP1\Snapshot

10. From the Snapshot folder, copy the following files to the C:\Windows\Tmp folder:

o _REGISTRY_USER_.DEFAULT
o _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SECURITY
o _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
o _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM
o _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SAM

11. Rename the files in the C:\Windows\Tmp folder as follows:
o Rename _REGISTRY_USER_.DEFAULT to DEFAULT
o Rename _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SECURITY to SECURITY
o Rename _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE to SOFTWARE
o Rename _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM to SYSTEM
o Rename _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SAM to SAM

These files are the backed up registry files from System Restore. Because you used the registry file that the Setup program created, this registry does not know that these restore points exist and are available. A new folder is created with a new GUID under System Volume Information and a restore point is created that includes a copy of the registry files that were copied during part one. Therefore, it is important not to use the most current folder, especially if the time stamp on the folder is the same as the current time.

The current system configuration is not aware of the previous restore points. You must have a previous copy of the registry from a previous restore point to make the previous restore points available again.

The registry files that were copied to the Tmp folder in the C:\Windows folder are moved to make sure that the files are available under Recovery Console. You must use these files to replace the registry files currently in the C:\Windows\System32\Config folder. By default, Recovery Console has limited folder access and cannot copy files from the System Volume folder.

Note The procedure described in this section assumes that you are running your computer with the FAT32 file system.

For more information about how to access the System Volume Information Folder with the NTFS file system, click the following article number to view the article in the Mcft Knowledge Base:

How to gain access to the System Volume Information folder

Part Three

In part three, you delete the existing registry files, and then copy the System Restore Registry files to the C:\Windows\System32\Config folder:

1. Start Recovery Console.

2. At the command prompt, type the following lines, pressing ENTER after you type each line:
del c:\windows\system32\config\sam

del c:\windows\system32\config\security

del c:\windows\system32\config\software

del c:\windows\system32\config\default

del c:\windows\system32\config\system

copy c:\windows\tmp\software c:\windows\system32\config\software

copy c:\windows\tmp\system c:\windows\system32\config\system

copy c:\windows\tmp\sam c:\windows\system32\config\sam

copy c:\windows\tmp\security c:\windows\system32\config\security

copy c:\windows\tmp\default c:\windows\system32\config\default
Note Some of these command lines may be wrapped for readability.

3. Type exit to quit Recovery Console. Your computer restarts.
Note This procedure assumes that Windows XP is installed to the C:\Windows folder. Make sure to change C:\Windows to the appropriate windows_folder if it is a different location.

If you have access to another computer, to save time, you can copy the text in step two, and then create a text file called "Regcopy1.txt" (for example).

Part Four
1. Click Start, and then click All Programs.
2. Click Accessories, and then click System Tools.
3. Click System Restore, and then click Restore to a previous RestorePoint.

Make Old Extensions Work in Firefox 1.5

2009-06-23T23:15:00.001-07:00

At location bar, enter: about:config This will show you a list of Firefox internal preferences.

Right click on the list, select New > String

At preference name enter: app.extensions.version
Then, enter 1.0 as the value for app.extensions.version

Restart Firefox 1.5, then enable those disabled Firefox extensions

Restart Firefox 1.5 again to active the extensions

Removing Spyware or Malware

2009-06-23T23:11:00.001-07:00

Overview

Malicious software goes by many names: Spyware, worms, viruses, Trojans, Adware, keystroke loggers, pests, and more. "Spyware" often is used to mean all malicious software other than viruses. I use the term "malware" instead.

The following is a blueprint for removing any and all malicious software from an infected Windows computer. This is not customized for a particular malware program, but applies to all malicious software. The intended audience are computer nerds and, as such, some details have been omitted. It's more a cheat-sheet than a tutorial. If you are not a computer nerd and think your computer may be infected (see Symptoms section below), print this page and give it to your local techie.

The goal described below is to remove the malware from Windows. This should not, however, be the goal in all instances. Depending on the circumstances, the correct approach might be to wipe the hard disk clean and re-install or recover Windows. A clean install is the only 100% guaranteed way to return the computer to a fully functioning state. If the computer is used for anything judged to be important, a clean install is probably called for. If the person who owns the infected computer says there are no important files or that all the important files are backed up, then a clean install is called for. On the other hand, there may be application software that can't be re-installed easily. Regardless of the approach used, the first thing to do is a disk image backup (see below).

There is still another approach, one never mentioned elsewhere. Do both. Keep the old infested copy of Windows and install a new fresh clean copy. This has the advantage of not having to back up all the important files and thus not risk forgetting to back up something. First you need to re-partition the hard disk, which means purchasing software. Also, this assumes there is enough free space for a new instance of Windows. For desktop computers, you can add a second internal hard disk to hold the new clean copy of Windows.

The steps below are designed for a computer brutally infested with malicious software. Some of the symptoms of a Spyware infection are at the bottom of the page.

The main phases of the cleanup are: backup, stop the malware from running, check for other errors, delete the malware, and finally, prevention from this sort of thing happening again. Some malware is very well defended, so it's worth some time and effort to prevent it from running in the first place before trying to remove it.

Preparation

Disconnect the infected machine from any and all computer networks (the Internet and/or Local Area Network). If possible use a PS/2 based mouse and keyboard rather than USB (if you have to boot to DOS or Linux there may not be USB drivers). Have these programs ready to run off removable media (floppy, CD, USB flash drive): a disk imaging program, a program to control auto-started programs, a process monitor, a utility to disable Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) and a firewall. (more on this below) It is best to run this software from removable media both to insure it is not compromised and because some malware may prevent the use of equivalent Windows based software on the infected machine. Also, there are a number of steps that should be taken before connecting the infected machine to the Internet to download any other software.

Backup

Make a disk image backup using bootable removable media. My preference would be for the image backup to reside outside the computer. If the machine does not have an internal CD or DVD burner, use an external model (which means adding drivers for the external burner to the list of software you need up-front). Another options is to copy the Windows partition to a hidden partition on the hard disk.

Make a registry backup too.
Stop Malware From Running

Boot to Safe Mode via F8.

Stop the obvious malware from running at boot time with a utility that controls auto-started programs. This is best done from Safe Mode because I have seen malware that puts itself back into the list of auto-started programs as soon as its removed.

The AutoRuns program from SysInternals is a free program that controls auto-started programs. It is small, safe program from a reliable source. No installation is needed, you can run autoruns.exe from removable media.

Beware of malware with a good name in a bad directory. For example, the real version of winlogon.exe resides in the C:Windowssystem32 directory. A copy of winlogon.exe in the C:Windows directory is trouble. Likewise, winlogin.exe (slight name change) in the C:Windowssystem32 directory is also bad news.

Check the "hosts" file and if it has any entries other than 127.0.0.1, comment them out.

For Windows XP and 2000 look in C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32DRIVERSETC
For Windows 98ME look in C:WINDOWS

Check My Network Places and delete anything suspicious, especially FTP sites referenced by IP address.

If the computer is behind a router, change the administration password for the router and tape the new password to the box.

Look for BHOs and disable anything you don't recognize. When in doubt disable it, you can always re-enable a BHO later.

You want to do this early because BHOs are kicked off by both Windows Explorer and IE. For this, I like BHODemon from Definitive Solutions. Windows XP SP2 has the IE Add-On manager. However, BHODemon can run off removable media without being installed to Windows, works with all versions of Windows and offers opinions about the BHOs, making it the far better choice. An actively maintained list of BHOs is available at ComputerCops.biz (thanks Larry) but beware, it's a very big page. In the Status column "X" means malware, "L" means benign. Sysinfo.org also has a list of known BHOs but I'm told this is no longer maintained.

Review the list of auto-started Services (for Windows XP/2000) and disable the ones you don't recognize. Pay special attention to services that have no description.

Services are one of many ways to auto-start a program at boot time. To research Windows 2000 services see Purpose of Windows 2000 Services and Glossary of Windows 2000 Services. For XP see Windows Server 2003 System Services Reference or System Services for the Windows Server 2003 Family and Windows XP Operating Systems. To research the EXE that underlies a service see Windows Startup Online or WinTasks Process Library or Task List Programs at AnswersThatWork.com.

Examine the scheduled tasks for any obvious malware that kicks itself off this way.

Make sure Windows Explorer is displaying hidden and system files.

Re-boot back to Safe Mode.

The previous steps were the low hanging fruit. Rebooting in Safe Mode is to find any malware that auto-starts despite the initial steps above. Eventually, we reboot normally and look for malware that snuck through the steps below. The goal is that by the time we run anti-Spyware software there's a clean playing field for malware removal.

Use a Process monitoring program to examine all the running programs. For each malware program, note the location of the underlying executable file. Kill the process and rename the underlying EXE. If it resides in its own directory rename that too. Give it a name something on the order of: someprogram.DONOTRUN.exe. If you can't kill the process, boot to DOS or the Recovery Console and rename the underlying file from there.

For this, I like Process Explorer, another free program from SysInternals.com. Like AutoRuns, it requires no installation, you can run it directly from removable media. It can also drill down into svchost.exe and report the underlying services.

Even with newer versions of Windows such as XP, older mechanisms for automatically running a program at startup time still work. If you want to manually inspect these holdovers, check:

The [windows] section of Win.ini looking for an entry such as load=spyware.exe and run=spyware.exe
The [boot] section of System.ini looking for an entry such as Shell = Explorer.exe spyware.exe
Autoexec.bat looking for something like c:spyware.exe

Boot normally.

Use a process monitor to check for any malware that might have been auto-started. Anything that shows up here is pretty darn resistant. It may have detected that its process was being terminated and created a new instance of itself. Or, it may use different names and run from different locations at each startup. Or it may be auto-started from an obscure part of the registry that the software you used to control automatically run programs does not handle (AutoRuns seem pretty complete to me). Note the underlying EXE, reboot to DOS or the Recovery Console and rename this file. Trying to kill the process may only tell it that we are on its existence and trigger a defense mechanism.

In Windows XP and Me make a Restore Point.

Delete:

* All ActiveX controls (see below)
* The web browser cache (Temporary Internet Files), for each user, if necessary
* Temporary files
* Cookies (perhaps overkill, I admit)
* The web browser history
* Empty the recycle bin
* Disable System Restore to delete the old Restore points, then re-enable it and take a new Restore point

Active X programs/controls reside in C:WINDOWSDownloaded Program Files
on Windows XP/ME/98 and in C:WINNTDownloaded Program Files
in Windows 2000. With IE6 and Windows 2000 and XP, the cache and cookies
reside in Cocuments and SettingsuseridLocal SettingsTemporary Internet Files
Windows XP SP2 displays the installed ActiveX controls and offers to disabled them, but I would rather delete them.

Reboot normally. Hopefully, no malware is auto-started at this point.

In Windows XP and Me make a Restore Point.

Review the IE Trusted Zone (Tools -> Internet Options -> Security Tab -> Trusted Zones -> Sites button) and delete any web sites there. Review the IE Favorites and delete anything that looks suspicious. Change the IE home page to a blank page (if you can). On the Content tab, click the Publishers button and remove any trusted publishers.

Get a firewall program up and running.

If the machine already had a firewall installed, review the rules, it only takes a single exception to punch a big hole in the protection. Better yet, uninstall the current firewall and do a clean install of the latest version of the free edition of ZoneAlarm. ZoneAlarm is better than the firewall in Windows XP SP2 because it starts out with no exception rules and because it is more resistant to being shut down by malware.

Log on to the Internet.

Scan the entire hard disk with Housecall from Trend Micro, then scan it again with another Anti-Virus scanner such as Security Check from Symantec.

Any computer infected with malware, is also likely to be infected with viruses. Better to get rid of the viruses first. Online virus scans should be used because client side anti-virus software may have been crippled. I suggest using Housecall first because my experience has been that new virus definitions are added to it very quickly. A second scan with another product may be overkill, but better safe than sorry.

In Windows XP and Me make a Restore Point.

At this point, none of the installed malicious software should be running automatically at system start-up and the machine should be virus free. This is the time to run a barrage of anti-Spyware programs. It's a shame that you need to run more than one, but you do. Opinions vary as to the "best" anti-Spyware programs, however, the following are generally respected and free.

* The classic programs are Ad-aware and Spybot.

* There is a 30 day free trial version of Spy Sweeper from Webroot

* Mic*ft has an Anti-Spyware program that, as of this writing, is still in beta.

* Run the ActiveX based online CounterSpy scan from Sunbelt software (I've experienced some false positives with it). This is only a scan, if it finds something you want to remove, there is an installable free trial version.

* The Yahoo IE Toolbar uses the Pest Patrol engine and both detects and removes Spyware

* Can't hurt to run the ActiveX version of Mic*ft's Malicious Software Removal Tool

* CA offers a free ActiveX scan with Pest Patrol. However, if it finds anything there is no free trial. There used to be manual removal instructions, but that was before the product was purchased by Computer Associates.

If Spyware was detected and removed by the above programs, then you should also remove any Restore Points (Windows XP and Me only) that may include the malicious software. You do this by turning off System Restore. Then turn it back on and make a new Restore Point.

Make sure that you can change the IE home page and security settings and that Internet Options appears in the Control Panel. If not, try HijackThis and/or read this article by Mike Healan.

In a Baltimore Sun article, (Patience, basic toolkit, updates to security can block spyware July 29, 2004) Mike Himowitz suggested that the cleanup is not done at this point. On NT class machines with multiple users he warns that "Spyware programs embed themselves in each user's personal settings" which requires you to log off the current userid, logon as each of the other users and run the Spyware removal software again. He says "If you don't do this, your Spyware may come back." Makes a clean install look better and better.

Be aware that running the usual anti-malware software can create problems. In the September 21, 2004 issue of PC Magazine, Bill Machrone wrote about malware that infests the TCP/IP stack. The usual anti-malware products removed only half the infection resulting in corrupted TCP/IP software. He found software to fix the problem under Windows XP avoiding the need to un-install and re-install TCP/IP itself. See Corruption at the Jersey Shore.
Prevention and Cleanup

This is a good time to round up the usual suspects: run Windows Update manually, adjust IE settings for high security, lower the size of the IE cache and the System Restore cache (XP and Me only), defrag, delete TEMP files and (for XP,2000) disable the Messenger service. Install an anti-virus product and get it up to date (bug fixes and virus definitions). Set both the anti-virus software and Windows Update for automatic updates. Needless to say, set up an anti-Spyware program to run in auto-protect mode.

For Windows XP and 2000, let me suggest setting task manager to run automatically in the system tray at boot time and train the user to watch for cpu spikes, a good first indicator of Spyware running in the background.

If ZoneAlarm is installed, set it to protect the Hosts file. If Norton AntiVirus is installed set a password for its configuration options. If your firewall allows, set a password on it to protect configuration changes. Likewise, the anti-Spyware software may also offer this feature.

Install the free SpywareBlaster program to update the kill bits in the registry and the IE Restricted Zone. This protection is partial, but better to have than not. Use it to make an IE settings snapshot backup.

Use my Java Tester web site to see which JVM, if any, is installed. If none, fine. If there is a Mic*ft JVM, maybe upgrade to the current Sun JVM. This Macromedia page tells you the version of Flash that is installed and this page tells you what the latest Flash version is.

Install Firefox and a non-Mic*ft email program (such as Thunderbird) and show the computer owner how to use them. Install the Flash plug-in for Firefox and possibly also Shockwave, Java and QuickTime. If the computer user is a beginner and unable or unwilling to deal with Firefox extensions, turn off the Firefox option that allows new extensions to be installed (Tools -> Options -> Web Features -> Allow web sites to install software). This should prevent future accidental software installs.

Show the user(s) how to back up their most important files (I teach a short class on backups, but only in New York City).

To prevent malware infections in the future, teach the user safe Internet techniques. The time spent here is probably well spent when compared to using software that automatically watches for new installs of malicious software (Spybot, BHODemon and the paid versions of Ad-aware can do this, among others). Any such software would need to be maintained and, when it finds something, the user may not fully understand the situation. Also, the software applies to a single computer, whereas safe computing habits apply everywhere. Along this line, I have a web page about recognizing and dealing with bad emails and maintain a page with malware links. I also teach a class on Protecting Your Computer, but only in New York City.

And, Finally

If you need to run a web browser from removable media (that is, a program that does not need to be installed on the hard disk) I know of two:

* On the low end, there is Off By One, a single, standalone EXE that supports all versions of Windows
* On the high end, John Haller has created a Portable Firefox. As of October 2004, the latest stable version was 0.9.3 but he also has version 1.0PR available as a test.

A reader of this page suggested Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE). It lets you boot from a CD into Windows, totally bypassing the corrupted copy of Windows. This lets you run your favorite malware removal software unmolested. I'll have to look into this . . .
Some Symptoms of Spyware, Adware, Malware Infection

The symptoms of a malware infection vary.

Your web browsing speed may be slow. Your computer, in general, may be slower that it was and may take much longer to start up than it used to.

It is likely Internet Explorer is modified. You homepage and/or search page may be changed, new favorites that you didn't create may appear, a new toolbar may appear or you may end up at unknown web sites when you try to do a search.

To prevent you from undoing the browser modifications made by a malware program, some of them remove or disable the Internet Options from the Tools Menu and from the Control Panel. If you try to reset your home page and can't, it's likely due to malware. If you can't get to anti-virus or security web sites, but can get to other web sites, it's likely due to malware.

Adware will bombard you with pop-up ads. More malicious programs serve up a constant barrage of ads for pornographic web sites. That's on top of the pop-ups from the web sites you're viewing. If you see pop-up ads even when you are offline, it's due to malware.

Actual Spyware (as opposed to other malware) has to phone home to report what it found. If your firewall provides outbound protection you may see the "phone call" and be able to stop it.

Malicious software may also shut down or disable your anti-virus program or your firewall program. It may prevent the normal activity of your anti-Spyware software. It may prevent you from accessing Task Manager or msconfig or regedit.

Adware programs may create new icons on the Windows desktop, task bar, or system tray. They may also create popup windows that you are unable to close. If your computer mysteriously dials the phone on it's own, it may be infected with a porn dialing program.

The P.O.S.T. Test

2009-06-23T23:10:00.003-07:00

The computer POST (Power On Self Test) which tests the computer insuring that it meets the necessary system requirements before booting up. If the computer fails the POST the computer then returns a beep code indicating what is causing the computer not to post the POST. Generally if the computer POSTs properly you will receive a single beep (with some computer BIOS manufacturers it may beep twice).

Each time the computer boots up the computer must past the POST. The following is the procedure of the POST:

1. The first step of POST is the testing of the Power Supply to ensure that it is turned on and releases its reset signal.
2. CPU must exit the reset status mode and thereafter be able to execute instructions.
3. BIOS must be have readable.
4. BIOS checksum must be valid, meaning that it must be readable.
5. CMOS be accessible for reading.
6. CMOS checksum must be valid, meaning that it must be readable.
7. CPU must be able to read all forms of memory such as the memory controller, memory bus, and memory module.
8. The first 64KB of memory must be operational and have the capability to be read and written to and from.
9. I/O bus / controller must be accessible.
10. I/O bus must be able to write / read from the video subsystem and be able to read all video RAM..

If the computer does not pass any of the above tests your computer will receive an irregular POST. An irregular POST is a beep code which is different from the standard which can be either no beeps at all or a combination of different beeps indicating what is causing the computer not to past the POST.

AMI BIOS BEEP CODES

The following are AMI BIOS Beep Codes that can occur. However because of the wide variety of different computer manufacturers with this BIOS the beep codes may vary.

1 short DRAM refresh failure
2 short Parity circuit failure
3 short Base 64K RAM failure
4 short System timer failure
5 short Process failure
6 short Keyboard controller Gate A20 error
7 short Virtual mode exception error
8 short Display memory Read/Write test failure
9 short ROM BIOS checksum failure
10 short CMOS shutdown Read/Write error
11 short Cache Memory error
1 long, 3 short Conventional/Extended memory failure
1 long, 8 short Display/Retrace test failed

AWARD BIOS BEEP CODES

The following are Award BIOS Beep Codes that can occur. However because of the wide variety of different computer manufacturers with this BIOS the beep codes may vary.

1 long, 2 short Indicates a video error has occurred and the BIOS cannot initialize the video screen to display any additional information
Any other beep(s) RAM problem.

If any other correctable hardware issues the BIOS will display a message.

IBM BIOS

The following are IBM BIOS Beep Codes that can occur. However because of the wide variety of models shipping with this BIOS the beep codes may vary.

No Beeps No Power, Loose Card, or Short.
1 Short Beep Normal POST, computer is ok.
2 Short Beep POST error, review screen for error code.
Continuous Beep No Power, Loose Card, or Short.
Repeating Short Beep No Power, Loose Card, or Short.
One Long and one Short Beep Motherboard issue.
One Long and Two short Beeps Video (Mono/CGA Display Circuitry) issue.
One Long and Three Short Beeps. Video (EGA) Display Circuitry.
Three Long Beeps Keyboard / Keyboard card error.
One Beep, Blank or Incorrect Display Video Display Circuitry.

MACINTOSH STARTUP TONES

Error Tone. (two sets of different tones) Problem with logic board or SCSI bus.
Startup tone, drive spins, no video Problem with video controller.
Powers on, no tone. Logic board problem.
High Tone, four higher tones. Problem with SIMM.

PHOENIX BIOS BEEP CODES

The following is for PHOENIX BIOS Q3.07 OR 4.X

1-1-1-3 Verify Real Mode.
1-1-2-1 Get CPU type.
1-1-2-3 Initialize system hardware.
1-1-3-1 Initialize chipset registers with initial POST values.
1-1-3-2 Set in POST flag.
1-1-3-3 Initialize CPU registers.
1-1-4-1 Initialize cache to initial POST values.
1-1-4-3 Initialize I/O.
1-2-1-1 Initialize Power Management.
1-2-1-2 Load alternate registers with initial POST values.
1-2-1-3 Jump to UserPatch0.
1-2-2-1 Initialize keyboard controller.
1-2-2-3 BIOS ROM checksum.
1-2-3-1 8254 timer initialization.
1-2-3-3 8237 DMA controller initialization.
1-2-4-1 Reset Programmable Interrupt Controller.
1-3-1-1 Test DRAM refresh.
1-3-1-3 Test 8742 Keyboard Controller.
1-3-2-1 Set ES segment to register to 4 GB.
1-3-3-1 28 Autosize DRAM.
1-3-3-3 Clear 512K base RAM.
1-3-4-1 Test 512 base address lines.
1-3-4-3 Test 512K base memory.
1-4-1-3 Test CPU bus-clock frequency.
1-4-2-4 Reinitialize the chipset.
1-4-3-1 Shadow system BIOS ROM.
1-4-3-2 Reinitialize the cache.
1-4-3-3 Autosize cache.
1-4-4-1 Configure advanced chipset registers.
1-4-4-2 Load alternate registers with CMOS values.
2-1-1-1 Set Initial CPU speed.
2-1-1-3 Initialize interrupt vectors.
2-1-2-1 Initialize BIOS interrupts.
2-1-2-3 Check ROM copyright notice.
2-1-2-4 Initialize manager for PCI Options ROMs.
2-1-3-1 Check video configuration against CMOS.
2-1-3-2 Initialize PCI bus and devices.
2-1-3-3 Initialize all video adapters in system.
2-1-4-1 Shadow video BIOS ROM.
2-1-4-3 Display copyright notice.
2-2-1-1 Display CPU type and speed.
2-2-1-3 Test keyboard.
2-2-2-1 Set key click if enabled.
2-2-2-3 56 Enable keyboard.
2-2-3-1 Test for unexpected interrupts.
2-2-3-3 Display prompt "Press F2 to enter SETUP".
2-2-4-1 Test RAM between 512 and 640k.
2-3-1-1 Test expanded memory.
2-3-1-3 Test extended memory address lines.
2-3-2-1 Jump to UserPatch1.
2-3-2-3 Configure advanced cache registers.
2-3-3-1 Enable external and CPU caches.
2-3-3-3 Display external cache size.
2-3-4-1 Display shadow message.
2-3-4-3 Display non-disposable segments.
2-4-1-1 Display error messages.
2-4-1-3 Check for configuration errors.
2-4-2-1 Test real-time clock.
2-4-2-3 Check for keyboard errors
2-4-4-1 Set up hardware interrupts vectors.
2-4-4-3 Test coprocessor if present.
3-1-1-1 Disable onboard I/O ports.
3-1-1-3 Detect and install external RS232 ports.
3-1-2-1 Detect and install external parallel ports.
3-1-2-3 Re-initialize onboard I/O ports.
3-1-3-1 Initialize BIOS Data Area.
3-1-3-3 Initialize Extended BIOS Data Area.
3-1-4-1 Initialize floppy controller.
3-2-1-1 Initialize hard-disk controller.
3-2-1-2 Initialize local-bus hard-disk controller.
3-2-1-3 Jump to UserPatch2.
3-2-2-1 Disable A20 address line.
3-2-2-3 Clear huge ES segment register.
3-2-3-1 Search for option ROMs.
3-2-3-3 Shadow option ROMs.
3-2-4-1 Set up Power Management.
3-2-4-3 Enable hardware interrupts.
3-3-1-1 Set time of day.
3-3-1-3 Check key lock.
3-3-3-1 Erase F2 prompt.
3-3-3-3 Scan for F2 key stroke.
3-3-4-1 Enter SETUP.
3-3-4-3 Clear in-POST flag.
3-4-1-1 Check for errors
3-4-1-3 POST done--prepare to boot operating system.
3-4-2-1 One beep.
3-4-2-3 Check password (optional).
3-4-3-1 Clear global descriptor table.
3-4-4-1 Clear parity checkers.
3-4-4-3 Clear screen (optional).
3-4-4-4 Check virus and backup reminders.
4-1-1-1 Try to boot with INT 19.
4-2-1-1 Interrupt handler error.
4-2-1-3 Unknown interrupt error.
4-2-2-1 Pending interrupt error.
4-2-2-3 Initialize option ROM error.
4-2-3-1 Shutdown error.
4-2-3-3 Extended Block Move.
4-2-4-1 Shutdown 10 error.
4-3-1-3 Initialize the chipset.
4-3-1-4 Initialize refresh counter.
4-3-2-1 Check for Forced Flash.
4-3-2-2 Check HW status of ROM.
4-3-2-3 BIOS ROM is OK.
4-3-2-4 Do a complete RAM test.
4-3-3-1 Do OEM initialization.
4-3-3-2 Initialize interrupt controller.
4-3-3-3 Read in bootstrap code.
4-3-3-4 Initialize all vectors.
4-3-4-1 Boot the Flash program.
4-3-4-2 Initialize the boot device.
4-3-4-3 Boot code was read OK.

DVD Recordable Formats (Guide)!

2009-06-23T23:10:00.001-07:00

C/P
Buying or bought a new DVD Burner and now you see DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM?, DVD+R DL? What are all these? AHH Im confuzled? Well I will tell you what this is about and other junks too

DVD-R
DVD-R is the most compatible of the formats. This format will play in about 90% of DVD Players, DVD-Roms etc. It was the first recordable format out. This format supports up to 4.37GB of data on a disk. You can also get this disc double sided* and expand its space to 8.75GB of data. This disc can be written on once and only once. Basically if it screws up, you get a nice, shiny coaster.

DVD-RW
This format is the same as DVD-R but can be rewritten several times. This format is compatible with about 80% of DVD Players, drives, etc.

DVD+R
DVD+R is very simlar to DVD-R but supports a few more features, thus sacrificing compatiblity. It supports lossless linking and both CAV and CLV writing. Newbies dont worry about these features . This format is compatible on about 80% of DVD Players, drives, etc. This disc can be written on once and only once. Basically if it screws up, you get a nice, shiny coaster. Supports the same amount of data DVD-R does. 4.37GB and 8.75 GB Double Sided

DVD+RW
DVD+RW is the same as DVD+R but can be written on more several times. It is compatible with about 70% of DVD Players, drives, etc.

DVD+R Dual-Layer
DVD+R is the same as DVD+R but supports 7.95GB on one disc. This disc achieves this by having two seperate recordable layers. This disc is the most expesive of the formats. This disc is also available in double sided* format supporting up to 15.9GB of data. It is compatible in about 75% of DVD Players, drives, etc.

DVD-RAM
DVD-RAM is the least supported format. many DVD Burners do not support this. DVD-RAM usually comes in a catridge and will not fit in most DVD-ROM drive, Player, etc. It is compatible with about 20% of DVD Players. To my knowlage, no DVD-ROM drives support this format. Think of this format as a slow harddrive. This format is not recommended.

Which is Right for Me?
Okay so now you know about all the formats but which is right for you? Well that is up to your DVD-Player. It is best to buy 1 or 2 of each format and try them out. Sometimes a DVD-Player will read DVD+R but not DVD-R. Same goes for other formats. Some DVD-Players will not read any recordable format and that just is no fun now is it.

Speeds
There are several speeds for discs. 2.4x, 4x, 8x, 16x. What do I get?
Well you should get the same speed as your DVD Burner supports. If you get slower than what it supports do note try to burn with a higher speed than what the disc says on it or you will probably end up with a coaster. EG: burner a 2.4x Disc at 4x. Same goes for burning a 4x disc at 2.4x. That stragely could still cause you to get a coaster.

Cheap Media
When CD-Writers came out blank discs were about $5 each. But then cheap $2 blanks came out and people decided to save money and buy those. Big mistake, back then. Those people ended up with alot of coasters and ended up losing money. Now times have changed, you can buy any brand blank CD discs and you will probably get a quality burn. Well that old expensive versus cheap media has started all over again, this time for Recordable DVD media. Do not buy cheap no name DVD Recordable discs. Stick with known brands. I recommend:

-- TDK
-- Kodak
-- Verbatim
-- Ritek

Definitions
Double Sided: Both sides of the disc have a recordable surface.
Coaster: An object you use to place cups on or beverages on to.
Dual-Layer: A disc with two recordable layers. Almost doubling the discs capacity.
Sizes: The disc size may say 4.7GB on the Label but infact is 4.37GB.

=================

Also I suggest you avoid Ebay and be VERY careful of other online suppliers. Always use suppliers that guarantee their sales, because what many people don't know is that there are many levels of quality main ones being A grade B grade and C grade.

Manufacturers create a batch of DVD blanks which are tested as part of the process, this is where the grading happens (A B or C or reject).
(Most big name brands will not suffer this problem as they will settle for not less than A grade)

A grade is the best quality that is used by most people and commercial producers

B grade is medium quality that is good for general use but you will get a few fualty DVD's in a batch. Mainly used for temporary storage (magazine covers etc)

C grade is not really used by anyone knowingly but unknowingly I think most of us have. This really is the lowest level before total reject. The emulsion used for the DVD is usually organic and will deteriorate over time (good quality A grade organic is OK). Ever noticed a DVD you have burned worked ok initially but after a couple of months it started to stop playback?

Unfortunatly SOME Wholesalers and mail order suppliers will buy a bulk batch of A B and C grade media mix them up and flog them off as A grade >>Not Good<<
Ebay is the worst place for this.

example would be Princo. Their A grade is excellent but the packs you get on Ebay are littered with the false A grade. Also some Ritek DVDs are sold this way on EBAY.

Please note that it is a few amongst the many that do this.

My advice is:
1. Buy from a well known "Ebay store" who guarantees their quality or avoid ebay and buy from a local supplier
2. Always seek out "guaranteed" A grade media.
3. Most media with "A grade" imprinted on the media itself is ok
4. (general burning advice) If you are doing many DVDs, pause after each one or do a few and wait 5 minutes. All burners get hot, they are lasers after all and non stop continued use will effect the burn quality eventually.

Finally Always check the manufacturers web site for a compatability list and keep your firmware up to date.

If you want to try out a brand of disk buy 1 - 5 and test them out yourself. Most incompatible media types will play up on first few burns. As norseman said AVOID cheap no name disks BUT if you are careful there are excellent cheap alternatives out there.

How to Captured Image In Windows Media Player

2009-06-23T23:04:00.001-07:00

How do I capture an image from a movie in Microsoft Windows Media Player?

Often a user may attempt to capture an image from a video in Microsoft Windows Media Player using the print screen button. Unfortunately when pasting the image into an image editor the capture will be a blank or black image.

Answer:
There are several different answers that can apply to this question. Depending on the type of movie that is being played and what codec it is using may change what will work and what will not work. We suggest going through each of the below recommendations, if a solution does not work continue down the list.

First Option:

While in Microsoft Windows Media Player press "CTRL + I", if the video you are watching is using a Microsoft supported movie file you should receive a "Save Captured Image" window, allowing you to save the image as "capture" or any other name.

Although this solution is a quick and easy solution, you may not get the results you want as the image will often be smaller and lesser quality then what you see when you press the keys. If you wish to capture better images at any size, even full screen try the second solution.

Second Option:

This solution should only be used to capture images from any video, once done it should be changed back as it may cause other issues. However, this should work with all types of video files.

1. Open Microsoft Windows Media Player.

2. Click Tools and then Options.

3. Within the Options window click the Performance tab.

4. Within Performance click the Advanced button.

5. In Video Acceleration Settings uncheck "Use Overlays"

6. Click Ok.

7. Finally, click Apply and then Ok in the Options window.

How To Remotely Access Your PC

2009-06-23T23:03:00.005-07:00

Windows XP Professional includes a basic PC remote control tool which lets you log onto your PC remotely from anywhere. Do you know how to use it?

It’s called Remote Desktop Connection, and when you’ve properly configured your PC, this handy utility will let you log into your computer from anywhere in the world and control it as if you were sitting in front of it instead of half a world away.

If you’re running Windows XP Professional, you already have all the software you need to connect remotely to your PC. Whether you’d like to monitor a server, grab files from your home PC at work, or just keep an eye on your machines when you’re out, connecting remotely is easy to do. However, due to the vagaries of network configurations and various other quirks beyond your control, you may not be able to actually connect. Until now.

Prepping your system

First, you need to know the IP address of the computer you want to connect to. The only sure-fire way to always be able to connect to your PC’s is to use an ISP that provides you with a static IP address. Most ISPs give customers dynamic IP addresses, which can change every few days or even hours. Because your IP address is the way you’ll locate your computer on the net, you’ll need to know what your IP address is and monitor it as it changes.

The good news is that there are loads of programs that will notify you of IP address changes, whenever they occur. We like IP Address Monster (ipmonster.com). It’s a small program that runs in your system tray and can be configured to e-mail you whenever your IP address changes.

IP Address Monster should be your first stop to remote connectivity. This handy utility will keep tabs on your Internet address and send you an e-mail whenever it changes.

Now that you know your IP address, you need to make sure that Remote Desktop Connection is enabled. Make sure your firewall is configured to allow incoming connections on port 3389 (firewalls vary, so check your documentation to find out how to open the port).

You can turn on Remote Desktop Connection in the System Control Panel (Start, Control Panel, System). Check the Remote tab and make sure “Allow users to connect remotely to this computer” is checked. You’ll also need to have at least one user account that requires a password because accounts without passwords are prohibited from logging into Remote Desktop.

To enabling Remote Desktop, open the System Control Panel, go to the Remote tab, and check this box.

It’s important to make sure the passwords on the machine you’re going to remotely log into are “good” ones. This means you should use a mixture of letters and numbers, avoid words that are found in dictionaries, and change the password regularly to protect yourself from mischief.

Making the connection

At this point, your PC should be prepped and patiently waiting for a connection. To log in, you need to open the Remote Desktop Connection client on your remote PC. Go to Start, Programs, Accessories, Communications, Remote Desktop Connection. Input the IP address you want to connect to (courtesy of IP Address Monster) in the Computer field. Then enter your username and password.

Now you’ll want to tweak a few settings to optimize your remote experience. Whiz-bang features gobble up bandwidth, so you should tune your settings to match your home net connection. We recommend you start with a minimal feature set. Press the Options button, then the Display tab. Change the display settings to full-screen, 256-color. This looks acceptable and consumes practically no bandwidth. You’ll also want to browse to the Experience tab and change the Performance setting to reflect your home PC’s connection speed.

Switching to a lower color resolution and a smaller display area will greatly minimize the amount of data that has to transfer between your computer and the remote PC.

Once you’ve tuned the connection a bit, you’re ready to connect. Press the Connect key and you’re in!

What to do next

At this point, you should be connected. You can run programs and manipulate files just like you’re sitting in front of your PC. In fact, you can even use your PC’s e-mail and web browsers. Do you want to start downloading Desert Combat now so you can start playing it when you get home? That’s easy enough; just log into your PC using Remote Desktop, open your web browser, and download the file. It will be sitting on your machine waiting for you as soon as you get home. If all your PCs are running Windows XP Pro, and you enable drive-sharing in the Local Resources tab, you can transfer files from remote PC to local PC. You can even remotely transfer files between local PCs on your home network.

Once connected, you can interact with printer ports and networked hard drives. This is a handy way to delete those “special interest” videos you downloaded before your wife finds them.