Computer Tips n Tricks

Change Logon Wallpaper In Windows XP

2009-11-06T06:12:00.000-08:00

Change Logon Wallpaper In Windows XP

Logon wallpaper is the wallpaper or image that windows xp shows on screen when windows logs on (before it asks for username & password) . It’s usually set to the image-logo of the brand(manufacturer) of our computer (e.g. in compaq laptops). Now we can set it to our own image or any other image(any bmp file) by following trick.

Open Startmenu->Run type regedit and press ok to open registry editor.(shows a tree like structure of directories at left)

In that hierarchical structure in left, navigate to registry entry
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

In right side pane see a number of values placed in a table format. choose the value named Wallpaper from there and double click it. Now you see a box with value name as Wallpaper and value data as Path to the image file .There give the full path of the image(bmp file) which you want to set as logon wallpaper by deleting previous path and writing path to your bmp file e.g. C:\WINDOWS\lon.BMP (to set image lon.BMP file as log on wall paper).

Also double click on WallpaperStyle and change it’s value to 2 to get a stretched wallpaper at logon.

Put that bmp file in windows directory for better results.
If that is a jpeg file, convert to bmp file by opening in Windows Image Viewer and save as bmp.

How To Improve Page Rank

2009-07-24T05:10:00.000-07:00

How To Improve Page Rank

Hai Friends,Very Happy to announce that my blog started 3 months back got the Google Page Rank 2.Its all in the maintaining.So,I wanted to explain what i did to get page rank.

What’s PageRank?

PageRank is Google’s system for ranking web pages. A page with a higher PageRank is deemed more important and is more likely to be listed above a page with a lower PageRank.

1]Include useful high-quality information on your site.

2]Submit your site to several web directories and reference sites.

Post your site’s URL (web address) to popular web directories including Open Directory Project (ODP), Yahoo!, and LookSmart. Also post your URL to online reference, e.g., Wikipedia, industry-specific expert sites, blogs, etc.

Examples : digg,blogexplosion,technorati,ezinearticles etc..

3]Publicize your site to everyone with whom you communicate.

Add your site’s URL to every piece of communication you initiate. We recommend that “your Web address should be listed everywhere that your phone/fax number and mailing address,” e.g.,

* Business cards
* Letterhead
* Newsletters
* Brochures
* Press Releases
* Fax cover sheets
* Email signatures

4]Provide a Rich Site Summary (RSS).

RSS is also known as Really Simple Syndication. JISC describes RSS as “a lightweight XML format for distributing news headlines and other content on the Web.”

In addition to making it easy for other sites to distribute your headlines and content, your RSS feed will be indexed by popular Blog search engines, including Technorati, BlogSearch, and Ask.com Bloglines.

Ask other high-quality websites to link to your website.

Getting other “good” websites to link to yours usually helps your website’s PageRank and ranking on Google.

Note: If your site links to delisted websites, your website might also be removed from Google’s index.

5]Finally,Maintain your blog regularly.Don't Post more articles at a time.Make the robot feel happy coming to your site.Don't give more strain to it.My ecommendation from my experience is 5-1o post's/day.

Hope You too get the pagerank as early as possible.

Free talk 6-18 Minute more then 40 countries

2009-07-21T02:01:00.000-07:00

Free talk 6-18 Minute more then 40 countries

By using this software you can be talk 6-18 minute more then 40 countries. By this way you can be talk 3 times daily. maximum 18 minute. This facility is give below site. For that what you have to do, that is at first register that site and then download this software. You can use this software PC and windows mobile.

Using is so easy just put user name and password then login. Then press your calling number then dial. Before dial please see this country code chart . After dial a advertisement will be see then will be your dialing number. This is nice website. For download and details click here

Source:http://www.tuitalk.com/

Hard Drive not Recognized/ Found/ Detected/ Accessible

2009-07-16T06:25:00.000-07:00

Hard Drive not Recognized/ Found/ Detected/ Accessible

If you install a new hard drive and install an Operating System on it and it suddenly acts like it is not there, it may be a loose connection.

If a bootable CD, such a s Knoppix, is not able to read your hard drive, it can have several causes. The list of possibilities below can also be used for troubleshooting hard drives, floppy drives, and CD/DVD drives.

CAUTION: Make sure the power is off and that the PC is disconnected from power. Also be sure to avoid static electricity, or you will need a new PC. Do not force any thing. All parts should easily fit together if they are properly aligned. Sometimes you may have to push or pull harder than you think. Just be careful to make sure any levers or buttons that hold it in place are not overlooked.

* Least likely is that a new hard drive has failed. Try the other options before assuming it is the new hard drive. If all of the below do not work, and it is a new hard drive, contact the manufacturer. New hard drives should include very good instructions for installation and troubleshooting. When in doubt read the instructions.

* Open the case and make sure that all the connections are correct.

* Unplug the power supply connection, make sure there are no bent pins, and plug it in securely.

* Repeat the procedure with the connection to the motherboard, make sure no pins are bent.

* If you have multiple drives, try hooking up just one drive to make sure you can read it.

* Make sure that the power supply, and other components are working correctly. It is possible that another component of the PC has failed.

* If you have another PC available, try connecting it to the other PC. This could point to failure of the power and/or motherboard cables in the original PC.

* If none of the above works, call in professional help. You can also beg a friend or family member to help. If you cannot pay a friend or family member, a good meal, is a nice way to get them to rescue you again.

How to recover MOST of scratched CD/DVD data discs

2009-07-14T04:06:00.000-07:00

How to recover MOST of scratched CD/DVD data discs

for dvd do the same thing as that in cd

I learn an old thecnique to how to recover damaged or scratched disks
with some lost of data. In this case i have one borrowed game - MAX PAYNE 2
with a chunck of 4 mb lost with a scratch in CD1 Install. Here we cover some
special thecniques of how to create a full working CD from the scratched one.

First some tools will be needed:

1. Alcohol 120%
2. UltraISO
3. Windows XP/2000
3. Small piece of cotton
4. Dry cleaner paper
5. Finally, oil for cooking.

First step - preparing the CD

Get the cotton and drop some water, start cleaning vertically the surface of CD.
Do it 3 times and dry the water with a piece of dry cleaner paper. With a new piece
of cotton, drop some oil for cooking and start to wet the surface like you are
washing the CD with the oil. Dry carefully now. Some particles of oil will stay on the
microsurface of the scrath. It's okay. Seems the oil helps the laser of the CD/DVD driver
to read the surface again. Sure this will work with small unreadable scratchs - some hard
scratchs loose parts of the surface of the CD where we have data and it's lost forever.
But if it is loosed try anyway. Whith this tip 80% of the small scratched CD's coud be
recovered.

Second Step - testing the CD

With Alcohol 120% make an ISO - image making wizard - and lets see if the app can
read the loosed surface. In my case Alcohol 120% had recovered 60% of the data.
This is not enough. Have tryed other appz, they do not recover all the data. But the
CD/DVD driver laser CAN recover all data in this case. the data is still there, what we do?

third step - making the new CD

With the main copy system of windows explorer you can do it. Just create one folder
with the same name of the CD label for future burn reference, and copy the CD content
to the folder. When the CD copy process find the scratch, in majority of the cases, it's
slow down the reading and will recover ALL loosed data.If not, it just tell you there's
an unreadable sector. In this case your CD is lost. But it's not my case, finally
windows explorer got all the data from the scratch and made a copy in the folder.
with the ultraISO, wrote the original CD label, drop the content of the folder and
save as Iso. You can Test the new CD just mounting the iso in the Alcohol 120%. In my
case i did ISO of the two discs from MAX PAYNE 2 and tested installing from the mounted
ISO. Works like a charm. I got the 4 mb lost again. So, I have burned the CD and now i
have a working copy from the scratched one.

Sounds too bizzarre, but works. Course you can jump the cleaning process and try to copy
the content with Windows explorer. But in my case did not work without oil...

Change Your Ip In Less Then 1 Minute

2009-07-14T03:08:00.000-07:00

Change Your Ip In Less Then 1 Minute

1. Click on "Start" in the bottom left hand corner of screen
2. Click on "Run"
3. Type in "command" and hit ok

You should now be at an MSDOS prompt screen.

4. Type "ipconfig /release" just like that, and hit "enter"
5. Type "exit" and leave the prompt
6. Right-click on "Network Places" or "My Network Places" on your desktop
.
7. Click on "properties"

You should now be on a screen with something titled "Local Area Connection", or something close to that, and, if you have a network hooked up, all of your other networks.

8. Right click on "Local Area Connection" and click "properties"
9. Double-click on the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" from the list under the "General" tab
10. Click on "Use the following IP address" under the "General" tab
11. Create an IP address (It doesn't matter what it is. I just type 1 and 2 until i fill the area up).
12. Press "Tab" and it should automatically fill in the "Subnet Mask" section with default numbers.
13. Hit the "Ok" button here
14. Hit the "Ok" button again

You should now be back to the "Local Area Connection" screen.

15. Right-click back on "Local Area Connection" and go to properties again.
16. Go back to the "TCP/IP" settings
17. This time, select "Obtain an IP address automatically"
tongue.gif 18. Hit "Ok"
19. Hit "Ok" again
20. You now have a new IP address

With a little practice, you can easily get this process down to 15 seconds.

P.S:
This only changes your dynamic IP address, not your ISP/IP address. If you plan on hacking a website with this trick be extremely careful, because if they try a little, they can trace it back

Change Logon Wallpaper In Windows XP

2009-07-11T03:33:00.000-07:00

Disable The Booting Logo in Windows XP

2009-07-11T03:19:00.000-07:00

Disable The Booting Logo in Windows XP

One can remove the boot logo that appears when you start Windows XP. This little
tweak saves a few seconds of your boot time, but seconds count if you are serious about trying to get Windows XP up and running as quickly as possible. The only negative is that if you remove the boot logo, you will also not see any boot messages, such as check disk.

To remove the boot logo, follow these steps:
1. Select Start-->Run, type msconfig, and click OK.
2. In the System Configuration Utility, click the BOOT.INI tab.
3. On the BOOT.INI tab, click the NOGUIBOOT check box option. Click OK.
4. Restart your computer to check the results.

NTFS vs FAT

2009-07-10T08:14:00.000-07:00

NTFS vs FAT

To NTFS or not to NTFS—that is the question. But unlike the deeper questions of life, this one isn't really all that hard to answer. For most users running Windows XP, NTFS is the obvious choice. It's more powerful and offers security advantages not found in the other file systems. But let's go over the differences among the files systems so we're all clear about the choice. There are essentially three different file systems available in Windows XP: FAT16, short for File Allocation Table, FAT32, and NTFS, short for NT File System.

FAT16
The FAT16 file system was introduced way back with MS–DOS in 1981, and it's showing its age. It was designed originally to handle files on a floppy drive, and has had minor modifications over the years so it can handle hard disks, and even file names longer than the original limitation of 8.3 characters, but it's still the lowest common denominator. The biggest advantage of FAT16 is that it is compatible across a wide variety of operating systems, including Windows 95/98/Me, OS/2, Linux, and some versions of UNIX. The biggest problem of FAT16 is that it has a fixed maximum number of clusters per partition, so as hard disks get bigger and bigger, the size of each cluster has to get larger. In a 2–GB partition, each cluster is 32 kilobytes, meaning that even the smallest file on the partition will take up 32 KB of space. FAT16 also doesn't support compression, encryption, or advanced security using access control lists.

FAT32
The FAT32 file system, originally introduced in Windows 95 Service Pack 2, is really just an extension of the original FAT16 file system that provides for a much larger number of clusters per partition. As such, it greatly improves the overall disk utilization when compared to a FAT16 file system. However, FAT32 shares all of the other limitations of FAT16, and adds an important additional limitation—many operating systems that can recognize FAT16 will not work with FAT32—most notably Windows NT, but also Linux and UNIX as well. Now this isn't a problem if you're running FAT32 on a Windows XP computer and sharing your drive out to other computers on your network—they don't need to know (and generally don't really care) what your underlying file system is.

The Advantages of NTFS
The NTFS file system, introduced with first version of Windows NT, is a completely different file system from FAT. It provides for greatly increased security, file–by–file compression, quotas, and even encryption. It is the default file system for new installations of Windows XP, and if you're doing an upgrade from a previous version of Windows, you'll be asked if you want to convert your existing file systems to NTFS. Don't worry. If you've already upgraded to Windows XP and didn't do the conversion then, it's not a problem. You can convert FAT16 or FAT32 volumes to NTFS at any point. Just remember that you can't easily go back to FAT or FAT32 (without reformatting the drive or partition), not that I think you'll want to.

The NTFS file system is generally not compatible with other operating systems installed on the same computer, nor is it available when you've booted a computer from a floppy disk. For this reason, many system administrators, myself included, used to recommend that users format at least a small partition at the beginning of their main hard disk as FAT. This partition provided a place to store emergency recovery tools or special drivers needed for reinstallation, and was a mechanism for digging yourself out of the hole you'd just dug into. But with the enhanced recovery abilities built into Windows XP (more on that in a future column), I don't think it's necessary or desirable to create that initial FAT partition.

Command Prompt Codes

2009-07-10T06:18:00.000-07:00

Command Prompt Codes

Some BASIC Commands:

1. Accessibility Controls - access.cpl
2. Accessibility Wizard - accwiz
3. Add Hardware Wizard - hdwwiz.cpl
4. Add/Remove Programs - appwiz.cpl
5. Administrative Tools - control admintools
6. Automatic Updates - wuaucpl.cpl
7. Bluetooth Transfer Wizard - fsquirt
8. Calculator - calc
9. Certificate Manager - certmgr.msc
10. Character Map - charmap
11. Check Disk Utility - chkdsk
12. Clipboard Viewer - clipbrd
13. Command Prompt - cmd
14. Component Services - dcomcnfg
15. Computer Management - compmgmt.msc
16. Control Panel - control
17. Date and Time Properties - timedate.cpl
18. DDE Shares - ddeshare
19. Device Manager - devmgmt.msc
20. Direct X Troubleshooter - dxdiag
21. Disk Cleanup Utility - cleanmgr
22. Disk Defragment - dfrg.msc
23. Disk Management - diskmgmt.msc
24. Disk Partition Manager - diskpart
25. Display Properties - control desktop
26. Display Properties - desk.cpl
27. Dr. Watson System Troubleshooting Utility - drwtsn32
28. Driver Verifier Utility - verifier
29. Event Viewer - eventvwr.msc
30. Files and Settings Transfer Tool - migwiz
31. File Signature Verification Tool - sigverif
32. Findfast - findfast.cpl
33. Firefox - firefox
34. Folders Properties - control folders
35. Fonts - control fonts
36. Fonts Folder - fonts
37. Free Cell Card Game - freecell
38. Game Controllers - joy.cpl
39. Group Policy Editor (for xp professional) - gpedit.msc
40. Hearts Card Game - mshearts
41. Help and Support - helpctr
42. HyperTerminal - hypertrm
43. Iexpress Wizard - iexpress
44. Indexing Service - ciadv.msc
45. Internet Connection Wizard - icwconn1
46. Internet Explorer - iexplore
47. Internet Properties - inetcpl.cpl
48. Keyboard Properties - control keyboard
49. Local Security Settings - secpol.msc
50. Local Users and Groups - lusrmgr.msc
51. Logs You Out Of Windows - logoff
52. Malicious Software Removal Tool - mrt
53. Microsoft Chat - winchat
54. Microsoft Movie Maker - moviemk
55. Microsoft Paint - mspaint
56. Microsoft Syncronization Tool - mobsync
57. Minesweeper Game - winmine
58. Mouse Properties - control mouse
59. Mouse Properties - main.cpl
60. Netmeeting - conf
61. Network Connections - control netconnections
62. Network Connections - ncpa.cpl
63. Network Setup Wizard - netsetup.cpl
64. Notepad - notepad
65. Object Packager - packager
66. ODBC Data Source Administrator - odbccp32.cpl
67. On Screen Keyboard - osk
68. Outlook Express - msimn
69. Paint - pbrush
70. Password Properties - password.cpl
71. Performance Monitor - perfmon.msc
72. Performance Monitor - perfmon
73. Phone and Modem Options - telephon.cpl
74. Phone Dialer - dialer
75. Pinball Game - pinball
76. Power Configuration - powercfg.cpl
77. Printers and Faxes - control printers
78. Printers Folder - printers
79. Regional Settings - intl.cpl
80. Registry Editor - regedit
81. Registry Editor - regedit32
82. Remote Access Phonebook - rasphone
83. Remote Desktop - mstsc
84. Removable Storage - ntmsmgr.msc
85. Removable Storage Operator Requests - ntmsoprq.msc
86. Resultant Set of Policy (for xp professional) - rsop.msc
87. Scanners and Cameras - sticpl.cpl
88. Scheduled Tasks - control schedtasks
89. Security Center - wscui.cpl
90. Services - services.msc
91. Shared Folders - fsmgmt.msc
92. Shuts Down Windows - shutdown
93. Sounds and Audio - mmsys.cpl
94. Spider Solitare Card Game - spider
95. SQL Client Configuration - cliconfg
96. System Configuration Editor - sysedit
97. System Configuration Utility - msconfig
98. System Information - msinfo32
99. System Properties - sysdm.cpl
100. Task Manager - taskmgr
101. TCP Tester - tcptest
102. Telnet Client - telnet
103. User Account Management - nusrmgr.cpl
104. Utility Manager - utilman
105. Windows Address Book - wab
106. Windows Address Book Import Utility - wabmig
107. Windows Explorer - explorer

50 Tips

2009-06-30T00:54:00.000-07:00

50 Tips

1. You can rename several files at one time within Explorer. A long overdue feature, in my opinion. (See before and after screen shots.)
2. The tiles view is there for getting quick picture dimensions -- a wonderful thing for those of us who work with the Web. When you select an image, its dimensions will also be displayed in the Status bar (if it's turned on). (See a screen shot.)
3. Check out the Details view if you have a ton of similar files in the folder. In one glance, you can view the number of pages, bitrate, details, and so on. Of course, it depends on what it is you're trying to view. ). (See a screen shot.)
4. ClearType is a great reason to upgrade to XP. While it does have a noticeable impact on 2D performance, the view is spectacular. It's not just for LCD screens, contrary to popular belief. Font smoothing is so 20th century. (See before ClearType and after ClearType screen shots.)
5. Your removable drives are automatically added to the SendTo menu. I can't figure out how to get them out of there, as I never really use my floppy or Zip drives. (See a screen shot.)

6. EXIF support is built into the Explorer shell. This allows you to see embedded information from untouched digital photos. This is another awesome feature for shutterbugs.
7. Details view in MP3 folders is a must. It's very much like WiMP in the sense that you can view all sorts of song details from within the Explorer window. (See a screen shot.)
8. Being a neat freak, I appreciated the new Align to Grid feature for the Windows desktop. Now I don't have to right-click and Arrange every time I move a stupid icon. Try as you might, you can't drag desktop icons off of the screen with this option turned on. (See a screen shot.)
9. Man, you've got to play with the Show in Groups Arrange option. It's neat, and depending on how you have the folder set up, it will provide different sorting options (alphabetically by file type, general file type, and so on). Very, very cool. (See a screen shot.)
10. When you see the shutdown dialog pop up, hold onto the Shift key if you want to flip energy saving modes (from Stand By to Hibernate).
11. WiMP will now grab cover shots and detailed information for your DVDs.
12. When you put in a CD with MP3s on it, XP asks you what you want to do with it. It does the same basic thing when you insert a picture CD or plug in a digital camera. Very friendly. (See a screen shot.)
13. Icons in the System Tray are now displayed in high color. It's about time! Oddly enough, when you configure the System Tray (by right-clicking on the Taskbar and selecting Properties), in the Notification area, someone forgot to update the old icons for Paint, Network, Calculator, and so on. I get paid to notice these things, you know.
14. Zip file support is finally built into the OS. Yes, I know Me had it, too, but I hate that OS.
15. No powertoys ship with the Windows XP CD, although they will be available from Microsoft's site after October 25. They are a must for any user, experienced or not. Super Fast User Switcher, PowerToy Calculator, Alt-Tab replacement, Virtual Desktop Manager, Photo Toys, TweakUI, Command Window Here, Slideshow generator, Magnifier, HTML Generator, and TimerShot.
16. ID3v2 is supported throughout the OS (in WiMP 8.0 as well as in the Explorer shell). To edit an MP3's information, pull up its properties and flip to the Summary tab. (See a screen shot.)
17. You can store/save your current Theme to the My Documents folder. On the surface, this feature appears to be backwards compatible with classic Desktop Themes.
18. I think I've rebooted this computer less than 10 times, yet XP's boot process (from BIOS to desktop) is faster than it's ever been. Let me time the sucker. Hold on -- this should only take a minute. I take that back! It took me 45 seconds to get back up and running again.
19. MSConfig is back, baby. Windows 2000 users will appreciate its return. Of course, X-Setup works just fine on XP, too. (See a screen shot.)
20. In folders designated for pictures, the Tasks pane will give you an option to print them. Choose your images, layout, printer, and so on. If you have a photo printer, this is a spectacular feature. If you choose not to work with the Tasks pane, you can simply open an image in the Windows Viewer and print from there to get to the same wizard. (See a screen shot.)
21. You'd be surprised at how much alpha blending of icons improves the experience. No matter what wallpaper or background color you're using, they will always look smooth. (See a screen shot.)
22. SNTP/NTP time synchronization is now built into the Date and Time applet. With it, you can connect to any Internet time-server. Never miss a meeting again! (See a screen shot.)
23. When Explorer crashes, the icons are restored in the System Tray. Finally. I verified this the other day when I ran into that weird gray screen problem.
24. XP comes with a basic slideshow screen saver -- perfect for showing off your recent vacation photos. (See a screen shot.)
25. The Task Manager now has Networking performance indicators. Right-click on the Taskbar and select Task Manager for more. (See a screen shot.)

1. You can now turn off thumbnail caching to save disk space (via Folder Options). With TweakUI, you can change the default dimensions of the thumbnail images.

2. Internet Explorer now has built-in support for Google (as long as you're using the search assistant).

3. They finally updated the card backs in Solitaire. Considering how many people play it on a regular basis, it's a notable improvement.

4. Go directly to the Start Menu properties by right-clicking on the Start Button. Switch to the "classic" Start Menu if the new one annoys you. The "Highlight newly installed programs" feature is nice for download maniacs.

5. XP's movie maker truly sucks; you can't do ANYTHING with it. No transitions beyond a simple fade, no export options other than Windows Media, and so on. Save your money and get a true video editor. Better yet -- use iMovie on the Mac.

Just don't think you're gonna film a businessman flying around your neighborhood and wind up producing an award-winning film using Windows XP. It ain't gonna happen with this crapplet.

6. Microsoft's marketing campaign is a bit misleading; you can't play DVD movies without purchasing a third-party decoder first. While MP3s can be played out of the box, ripping music into this audio format is possible only through (again) third-party software.

7. Even with XP's built-in Internet Connection Firewall features, I still recommend Tiny Personal Firewall (freeware).

8. Most of you have heard about the automatic grouping of open applications in the Taskbar (when you have several instances running, Windows will put them under the same Taskbar button). Here's something else I discovered: open Internet Explorer, then Notepad, then Internet Explorer again. Look at that. It puts the same apps next to each other, no matter the order in which they were opened.

9. Someone at Microsoft forgot to update the individual Administrative Tools and Offline webpages folder icons. They're still ugly. Under the "Customize" tab of the folder properties dialog, you can assign a different icon for each and every folder. Sweet!

10. The Windows help system has a wealth of new features. In one swoop, you can perform queries against the local database as well as the Microsoft Knowledge Base. However, I don't think the MSKB integration is working yet. For one, it doesn't return any results on basic terms. Plus, it defaults to searching for Windows 2000 specific issues. Anyway, click the last icon in the toolbar (the document with a red checkmark in it). Tweak away!

11. The OS only comes with three Visual Styles -- which are lame to begin with. The Plus! site may have more available in time, but who really knows?

12. I thought it was rather shortsighted that XP doesn't allow you to associate WMA sounds to your events. I mean, they're shoving the format down your throat in every other application. Why not here, too? Anyway, system (default) sounds have received a much-needed upgrade

13. In Windows 2000, you really couldn't make a boot disk. Sure, you could create a set of setup disks, but nothing like a simple boot floppy. Right-click on the Floppy drive icon, select format, then place a checkmark in the "Create an MS-DOS startup disk." The MSDOS.SYS file contains W98EBD -- which leads me to believe that the files were taken from Windows 98. This won't do you much good if you have an NTFS drive.

14. When was the last time you forgot your password? Uh, don't forget it for Windows XP until you create a password recovery disk. Under Related Tasks in the User Accounts Control Panel applet, click Prevent a forgotten password.

15. The Kodak Imaging Application that came with other versions of Windows has been replaced by the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. It has a few built-in options, but you can't easily view the image at its full size. While this replacement is good enough, I miss the Kodak app already.

16. People think XP doesn't support plug-ins. That's not true -- it stopped supporting Netscape-style plug-ins, but Apple updated its QuickTime control within days of IE6's release.

17. Yes, you can hide inactive System Tray icons, but why on Earth didn't they line up the double-arrow indicators with those in the main Taskbar area? Another oversight by the design team, I'm certain.

18. Window transparency works much better in XP than it ever did in 2000. Again, this speed difference could be attributed to the video driver being used.

19. Microsoft should have licensed Quicktime and RealMedia decoders. Every one of these companies wants to install its jukebox on my system. Bah humbug! At least they included the classic 6.4 player (accessible by entering MPLAYER2 on the Run command line).

20. Passport is all over the place in Windows XP. However, you don't have to sign up for a new email account if you don't want to. Just use your current email address, and make a Passport password for it. Since I'm not sure what Microsoft plans on doing with Passport, I just used my secret Hotmail account. You can change this any time via the User Accounts applet in the Control Panel.

21. Managing file associations is a dream. Right-click on a file, locate the updated Open With cascading menu (which now uses a program's default icon), then click Choose Program if you want to change how the file is opened. Plus, if you don't know what program to associate a file with, there's a nice hyperlink included in the dialog to take you to a helpful Microsoft webpage.

22. The desktop properties dialog is extensive, but scattered. For instance, the Themes tab is the first one you see, yet you have to flip to the Appearance tab in order to change how your interface works.

23. The volume mixer looks weird. Call me a stickler for details, but the Main play control is not the same width as the other controls. Not to mention, they didn't replace the yellow speaker icons for the other controls. And as if that wasn't enough, you can no longer tap ESC to quickly close the window. They should have left well enough alone.

24. Are you the type of person who notices speed increases (and decreases)? Well, as far as file operations are concerned, this is the snappiest version of Windows I've ever used. In Windows 2000, I'd select a few files on the desktop, delete them, and then two seconds later, their icons would disappear. When I do the same thing in XP, the removal is immediate. Likewise, it takes far less time for me to open the Recycle Bin when it's filled with items now.

25. The default search "doggie" is annoying for power users; thank goodness the new TweakUI will allow you to easily switch back to the "classic" Windows 2000 search feature. I don't know if this is a bug I uncovered; when I browse for a folder when I'm doing a Search, it shows me two My Documents folders. They each have the same folder structure inside of them

Delete An "undeletable" File

2009-06-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

Delete An "undeletable" File

Delete An "undeletable" File

Open a Command Prompt window and leave it open.
Close all open programs.
Click Start, Run and enter TASKMGR.EXE
Go to the Processes tab and End Process on Explorer.exe.
Leave Task Manager open.
Go back to the Command Prompt window and change to the directory the AVI (or other undeletable file) is located in.
At the command prompt type DEL where is the file you wish to delete.
Go back to Task Manager, click File, New Task and enter EXPLORER.EXE to restart the GUI shell.
Close Task Manager.

Or you can try this

Open Notepad.exe

Click File>Save As..>

locate the folder where ur undeletable file is

Choose 'All files' from the file type box

click once on the file u wanna delete so its name appears in the 'filename' box

put a " at the start and end of the filename
(the filename should have the extension of the undeletable file so it will overwrite it)

click save,

It should ask u to overwrite the existing file, choose yes and u can delete it as normal

Here's a manual way of doing it. I'll take this off once you put into your first post zain.

1. Start
2. Run
3. Type: command
4. To move into a directory type: cd c:\*** (The stars stand for your folder)
5. If you cannot access the folder because it has spaces for example Program Files or Kazaa Lite folder you have to do the following. instead of typing in the full folder name only take the first 6 letters then put a ~ and then 1 without spaces. Example: cd c:\progra~1\kazaal~1
6. Once your in the folder the non-deletable file it in type in dir - a list will come up with everything inside.
7. Now to delete the file type in del ***.bmp, txt, jpg, avi, etc... And if the file name has spaces you would use the special 1st 6 letters followed by a ~ and a 1 rule. Example: if your file name was bad file.bmp you would type once in the specific folder thorugh command, del badfil~1.bmp and your file should be gone. Make sure to type in the correct extension.

5 Ways to Retrieve Data Off a Crashed Hard Drive

2009-06-27T05:11:00.000-07:00

5 Ways to Retrieve Data Off a Crashed Hard Drive

The hard drive has the shortest life expectancy of all components, but when it inevitably fails it’s always when you least expect it. It’s an inevitability, and it always happens when you’re least prepared - the hard drive crash. Sure, you might notice it’s taking a bit longer to boot, or there’s an occasional click that just doesn’t sound right, but it’s still a surprise the day your computer fails to boot. How do you get your data off that hard drive once it’s no longer able to boot? Is it still possible? This depends on what exactly went wrong with your drive. It is safe to assume, however, that will the proper method, you will be able to retrieve at least part of your lost data.

Source: Laptop Logic

Below are five different methods for getting documents, pictures, and other important files off a crashed hard drive.

1. Use an External Case
This method is the most simple available, and for many people it is also the solution they need. Simply purchase an external hard drive case that allows you to plug your hard drive into a computer with a standard USB cable. Remove the crashed hard drive from your computer and carefully insert it into the external case (make sure you ground yourself before touching it), then plug it into a different system and try to open the drive. There’s a good chance you’ll be able to navigate into your documents and other folders and copy them onto a different hard drive.
2. Use a LiveCD
Don’t have access to a second computer for doing as you please? This method will be ideal, then. You’ll need to get temporary access to a computer with Internet and a DVD burner. Download a Linux LiveCD - Damn Small Linux is the smallest, but also has issues mounting hard drives. The most simple for an average computer user would be Puppy Linux. It has a larger file size, but should recognize your drive.
Burn the Live CD ISO to a CD and insert it into your computer (the one with the crashed hard drive). Restart the computer and when it the computer logo appears, press F2 (or whatever key for your system) to enter BIOS. Change the boot sequence to CD first, Save and then Exit.
The Live CD will start, simply follow the directions on the screen–don’t worry, nothing is being done to your hard drive. The OS will start, and you should see your hard drive mounted on the desktop–something like “60GB”, etc. Plug in a second drive and copy and paste the folders over.
3. Data Recovery Software
Do the above solutions have your head spinning? If you want something a little less complicated, you may want to give recovery software a go. There are a number of different free recovery tools available, and you may be one of the lucky users who have success with the programs.
There are a large number of programs available, but the quality of each varies. A good place to start would be Data Disc Recovery–it’s free, easy to use, and works on crashed drives (it can also retrieve deleted files and others). If one doesn’t work, try a different one.
4. Freeze It
This method surprises many, but it actually does work (depending on what happened to the drive). The idea is that freezing it will constrict loose parts long enough for the drive to work properly. Make sure you have a computer ready to plug the drive into and an external case. Place the hard drive into a baggy, seal it tightly, and put it in the freezer overnight. The next day, remove it from the baggy and put it in the external drive case. Transfer the data from the drive before it warms too much and crashes again.
5. Get a Pro
If all else fails, you either have to accept that the data is gone or, if the data is really important, take the hard drive to a professional. It will be expensive, but there’s a good chance a pro will be able to retrieve some of the data for you.

List of useful Run Commands for Windows XP

2009-06-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

List of useful Run Commands for Windows XP

Here is a list of useful commands that you can run from the Run Command prompt in windows XP. The Run Command prompt itself can be found on the start menu or with the key combination ‘WINDOWS+R’.

An A-Z Index of the Windows XP command line

ADDUSERS Add or list users to/from a CSV file
ARP Address Resolution Protocol
ASSOC Change file extension associations•
ASSOCIAT One step file association
AT Schedule a command to run at a later time
ATTRIB Change file attributes
B
BOOTCFG Edit Windows boot settings
BROWSTAT Get domain, browser and PDC info
C
CACLS Change file permissions
CALL Call one batch program from another•
CD Change Directory - move to a specific Folder•
CHANGE Change Terminal Server Session properties
CHKDSK Check Disk - check and repair disk problems
CHKNTFS Check the NTFS file system
CHOICE Accept keyboard input to a batch file
CIPHER Encrypt or Decrypt files/folders
CleanMgr Automated cleanup of Temp files, recycle bin
CLEARMEM Clear memory leaks
CLIP Copy STDIN to the Windows clipboard.
CLS Clear the screen•
CLUSTER Windows Clustering
CMD Start a new CMD shell
COLOR Change colors of the CMD window•
COMP Compare the contents of two files or sets of files
COMPACT Compress files or folders on an NTFS partition
COMPRESS Compress individual files on an NTFS partition
CON2PRT Connect or disconnect a Printer
CONVERT Convert a FAT drive to NTFS.
COPY Copy one or more files to another location•
CSCcmd Client-side caching (Offline Files)
CSVDE Import or Export Active Directory data
D
DATE Display or set the date•
Dcomcnfg DCOM Configuration Utility
DEFRAG Defragment hard drive
DEL Delete one or more files•
DELPROF Delete NT user profiles
DELTREE Delete a folder and all subfolders
DevCon Device Manager Command Line Utility
DIR Display a list of files and folders•
DIRUSE Display disk usage
DISKCOMP Compare the contents of two floppy disks
DISKCOPY Copy the contents of one floppy disk to another
DISKPART Disk Administration
DNSSTAT DNS Statistics
DOSKEY Edit command line, recall commands, and create macros
DSADD Add user (computer, group..) to active directory DSQUERY List items in active directory
DSMOD Modify user (computer, group..) in active directory
E
ECHO Display message on screen•
ENDLOCAL End localisation of environment changes in a batch file•
ERASE Delete one or more files•
EXIT Quit the current script/routine and set an errorlevel•
EXPAND Uncompress files
EXTRACT Uncompress CAB files
F
FC Compare two files
FIND Search for a text string in a file
FINDSTR Search for strings in files
FOR /F Loop command: against a set of files•
FOR /F Loop command: against the results of another command•
FOR Loop command: all options Files, Directory, List•
FORFILES Batch process multiple files
FORMAT Format a disk
FREEDISK Check free disk space (in bytes)
FSUTIL File and Volume utilities
FTP File Transfer Protocol
FTYPE Display or modify file types used in file extension associations•
G
GLOBAL Display membership of global groups
GOTO Direct a batch program to jump to a labelled line•
H
HELP Online Help
I
iCACLS Change file and folder permissions
IF Conditionally perform a command•
IFMEMBER Is the current user in an NT Workgroup
IPCONFIG Configure IP
K
KILL Remove a program from memory
L
LABEL Edit a disk label
LOCAL Display membership of local groups
LOGEVENT Write text to the NT event viewer.
LOGOFF Log a user off
LOGTIME Log the date and time in a file
M
MAPISEND Send email from the command line
MBSAcli Baseline Security Analyzer.
MEM Display memory usage
MD Create new folders•
MKLINK Create a symbolic link (linkd)
MODE Configure a system device
MORE Display output, one screen at a time
MOUNTVOL Manage a volume mount point
MOVE Move files from one folder to another•
MOVEUSER Move a user from one domain to another
MSG Send a message
MSIEXEC Microsoft Windows Installer
MSINFO Windows NT diagnostics
MSTSC Terminal Server Connection (Remote Desktop Protocol)
MUNGE Find and Replace text within file(s)
MV Copy in-use files
N
NET Manage network resources
NETDOM Domain Manager
NETSH Configure network protocols
NETSVC Command-line Service Controller
NBTSTAT Display networking statistics (NetBIOS over TCP/IP)
NETSTAT Display networking statistics (TCP/IP)
NOW Display the current Date and Time
NSLOOKUP Name server lookup
NTBACKUP Backup folders to tape
NTRIGHTS Edit user account rights
P
PATH Display or set a search path for executable files•
PATHPING Trace route plus network latency and packet loss
PAUSE Suspend processing of a batch file and display a message•
PERMS Show permissions for a user
PERFMON Performance Monitor
PING Test a network connection
POPD Restore the previous value of the current directory saved by PUSHD•
PORTQRY Display the status of ports and services
PRINT Print a text file
PRNCNFG Display, configure or rename a printer
PRNMNGR Add, delete, list printers set the default printer
PROMPT Change the command prompt•
PsExec Execute process remotely
PsFile Show files opened remotely
PsGetSid Display the SID of a computer or a user
PsInfo List information about a system
PsKill Kill processes by name or process ID
PsList List detailed information about processes
PsLoggedOn Who's logged on (locally or via resource sharing)
PsLogList Event log records
PsPasswd Change account password
PsService View and control services
PsShutdown Shutdown or reboot a computer
PsSuspend Suspend processes
PUSHD Save and then change the current directory•
Q
QGREP Search file(s) for lines that match a given pattern.
R
RASDIAL Manage RAS connections
RASPHONE Manage RAS connections
RECOVER Recover a damaged file from a defective disk.
REG Registry: Read, Set, Export, Delete keys and values
REGEDIT Import or export registry settings
REGSVR32 Register or unregister a DLL
REGINI Change Registry Permissions
REM Record comments (remarks) in a batch file•
REN Rename a file or files•
REPLACE Replace or update one file with another
RD Delete folder(s)•
RMTSHARE Share a folder or a printer
ROBOCOPY Robust File and Folder Copy
ROUTE Manipulate network routing tables
RUNAS Execute a program under a different user account
RUNDLL32 Run a DLL command (add/remove print connections)
S
SC Service Control
SCHTASKS Create or Edit Scheduled Tasks
SCLIST Display NT Services
SET Display, set, or remove environment variables•
SETLOCAL Control the visibility of environment variables•
SETX Set environment variables permanently
SHARE List or edit a file share or print share
SHIFT Shift the position of replaceable parameters in a batch file•
SHORTCUT Create a windows shortcut (.LNK file)
SHOWGRPS List the NT Workgroups a user has joined
SHOWMBRS List the Users who are members of a Workgroup
SHUTDOWN Shutdown the computer
SLEEP Wait for x seconds
SOON Schedule a command to run in the near future
SORT Sort input
START Start a program or command in a separate window•
SU Switch User
SUBINACL Edit file and folder Permissions, Ownership and Domain
SUBST Associate a path with a drive letter
SYSTEMINFO List system configuration
T
TASKLIST List running applications and services
TASKKILL Remove a running process from memory
TIME Display or set the system time•
TIMEOUT Delay processing of a batch file
TITLE Set the window title for a CMD.EXE session•
TLIST Task list with full path
TOUCH Change file timestamps
TRACERT Trace route to a remote host
TREE Graphical display of folder structure
TYPE Display the contents of a text file•
U
USRSTAT List domain usernames and last login
V
VER Display version information•
VERIFY Verify that files have been saved•
VOL Display a disk label•
W
WHERE Locate and display files in a directory tree
WHOAMI Output the current UserName and domain
WINDIFF Compare the contents of two files or sets of files
WINMSD Windows system diagnostics
WINMSDP Windows system diagnostics II
WMIC WMI Commands
X
XCACLS Change file and folder permissions
XCOPY Copy files and folders

Top 5 Important Security Tests For Your Computer

2009-06-26T03:01:00.000-07:00

Top 5 Important Security Tests For Your Computer

Until and unless you are not attacked by any virus or spyware you think that your computer security is very high but when your PC gets infected it is too late. It is highly essential to check your Pc Security Status Frequently to stay uptodate.This Tests Prevents Hackers Attacks & Security Vulnerabilities.

1.Browser Security Check : This test will check your Browser Security. If you have good browser like Mozilla Firefox you will surely pass this test.

2.Firewall Leak Tester : This website, on one hand, enables you to test your software personal firewall thanks to different test programs ('leaktests'), and on the other hand, shows a global vulnerabilities view of the most common personal firewalls in a summary page.
Firewall Leak Tester provides also documentation and advices to improve your security dramatically.

What Firewall Leak Tester is testing ?

Nowadays, threats from the Internet are growing, both from the inside and the outside.
To answer to a security need from Internet users (us), security software firms have created "personal firewalls", softwares acting like real hardware firewalls, but on user's computers.
These personal firewalls have network level filtering, that we will name "network filtering", and an outbound application filtering that we will name "software filtering".

Due to the fact that most of these Personal Firewall offer reasonable protection against inbound attacks coming from the Internet, we will only study here their software filtering, outbound filtering that can be stressed by Trojans which try to initiate themselves by connecting to the outside to transmit data out.

To test this software filtering feature, many leaktests (""leak"" test) exist, they are programs created by different authors, each trying to bypass the personal firewalls with his own trick.

3.Firewall Test : This test will check your computer for ports that are commonly left open. Open ports could allow your computer to be compromised. This firewall test will also check for Open ports known to be used by Viruses and Trojans.

4.Online Port Scan : This test will make a scan of all your Open Ports.

5.PopUp Blocker Test : This popup test is is an automated way to check your popup blocker's ability to allow good ads.Your popup blocker will be given a series of tests that range from your standard popup to very complex popups that will slip by most popular ad blockers.

That's it if you know other useful Security Test Share it here.

How to enable/disable access to USB Pen drive

2009-06-26T02:49:00.000-07:00

How to enable/disable access to USB Pen drive

You may want to block USB mass storage device to disallow the unauthorized use of pendrives or you may want to unblock USB mass storage device to get access (most of the case in college’s net lab). Well, this can be done by a simple registry tweak. Before doing so, I recommend taking a backup of the regustry because playing with registry can be harmful for your OS

The advantage of this is, you restrict users from copying and transferring sensitive data to and from the computer. This is mostly a necessity in: offices to protect intellectual property and cybercafe / public browsing centers to prevent users from knowingly or unknowingly infecting the system with viruses.

Here’s how you can disable USB storage device drive access in windows :

1> Click on “Start –> Run –> Type regedit and hit Enter.”

2> Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor”

3> Select the key UsbStor and double click on the Start value, which can be found in the right pane.

4> In Value data part, put 4 (numeric value four), if you want to disable USB storage and put in 3 (numeric value 3), if you want to enable USB storage on your computer.

The change will be effective immediately, however sometimes a reboot may be required. This hack will ensure that all the USB storage devices are disabled / blocked or enabled according to your choice.

15 Awesome Tips for a Long Lasting Laptop

2009-06-25T03:23:00.000-07:00

15 Awesome Tips for a Long Lasting Laptop

Times are tough, and even with falling prices, the purchase of a laptop computer constitutes a serious investment for the average consumer. Give your laptop a couple more years with these simple tips. There are a lot of ways to extend the life of your notebook, most of which are very simple and which just about anyone can do. If you take care of your laptop from year one, you’ll be thanking yourself heartily during years four, five, six and beyond. And even if you’re already in the latter years, it’s never too late to start.

Source: Laptop Logic

This guideline is divided up into three categories, each with five easy to apply tips. General Maintenance applies to computers in general and not just laptops, Battery Maintenance will help you get the longest life out of your laptop’s battery, and Laptop Common Sense will have you kicking yourself for not already following the tips when all along you knew you should.Oh, and almost nothing on this list will cost you anything.

General Maintenance

1) Use Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware SoftwareMost laptops ship with at least some sort of anti-virus software like Norton or McAfee, but these frequently expire after a short time. Viruses and spyware can be crippling to a computer, and have a tendency to build up over time and get worse. Running weekly scans can nip these problems in the bud. If you don’t feel like ponying up for a paid subscription service, there are plenty of free ones, such as AVG.

2) Keep Your Laptop Up To DateYour computer was up to date when you bought it, but unless you’ve set up regular updates that was the last time. Beyond your anti-virus software, which should be kept up strictly, both Microsoft and Apple offer regular updates for their operating systems to correct bugs and plug up vulnerabilities. Updating your software regularly will help keep your laptop in working order and stop many problems before they can threaten the usability or potentially the life of your computer.

3) Defragment Your Hard DriveWhen you save something on your computer, it gets physically written on a portion of your hard drive. As time goes on and your hard drive fills, this storage becomes somewhat disorganized, and your hardware must work harder and spend longer to find data. Defragmenting your hard drive rearranges the data into an organized structure. Defragmenting regularly will extend the life of your hard drive as well as make everything on your computer run just that much smoother.

4) Keep 5-10% of Your Hard Drive EmptyBy the time you’ve had your laptop for a few years, your hard drive will seem impossibly small. It’s important, however, to keep at least a small percentage of your hard drive empty at all times. Operating systems use a portion of your hard drive space for Virtual Memory, and if you don’t leave them any room your computer will slow down tremendously, potentially overheating or crashing under the stress. Key life-extending features like System Restore require empty space to function as well.

5) Use a Surge Protector When ChargingThis probably belongs in the common sense section below, and the reason for it should be obvious. Surge protectors help protect your computer from an electrical surge in your socket, such as might come from a bolt of lightning or a large appliance turning on. Without this, your laptop is vulnerable to being short-circuited and could fry after any surge. Surge protectors are extremely cheap and can be useful too, as most have multiple outlets.Bonus- personal preference 5+) Use Older SoftwareOften software will come out with a new version that is just the same thing with more graphics, which can be a drain on an older computer. For non-essential items like chat programs and the like, sometimes using an older version can help your computer run smoothly and error free. If you want to try this, check out http://www.oldversion.com, a great free resource for this.

Battery Maintenance

1) Charge Fully, Your First Time And Every TimeWhen you open your new laptop for the first time, it’s always a temptation to turn it on and begin playing with it. Resist this temptation! Proper conditioning of your battery by charging it fully before its first use and then discharging it completely and repeating once or twice ensures that your battery’s capacity starts at its highest. Your battery also has a preset number of charges/discharges, so it’s important to charge/discharge fully to extend the life of your battery too.

2) Avoid Battery Memory EffectBattery memory is what causes your laptop to stop charging before the battery reaches 100%, or to turn off before it reaches 0%. This is caused by not charging your battery fully or not discharging it fully – the battery “remembers” where it stopped charging/discharging and doesn’t go any further. Modern Li-Ion batteries are thankfully not subject to this, but if you’ve got an older battery avoid this effect at all costs. It can render a battery frustratingly useless.

3) Store the Battery Partially ChargedIf you’re not going to be using your laptop for an extended period of time, it’s a good idea to remove the battery and store it. Batteries discharge slowly over time, but storing a battery fully charged/discharged can permanently damage the battery by causing it to lose capacity or worse, go entirely dead. Charging the battery to 40% minimizes the negative long term effects of storing.

4) Use the Battery At Least MonthlyIt’s important to keep your battery in good condition through occasional use. If you typically use your laptop plugged in, you are not using your battery, and this can cause the capacity to shrink. At least once a month, your battery will benefit from a full charge/discharge cycle. This keeps the battery stronger, the capacity fuller, and helps its overall longevity.

5) Avoid Extreme TemperaturesYour battery was designed to work at a certain temperature, and it’s completely normal for it to heat up a little during use. Subjecting your battery to extreme temperatures it’s not prepared for can damage its life. Cold temperatures are not good for it, but excessive heat is the real battery killer. Simply making sure not to leave your laptop in your car during the summer could save you from buying a new battery the next day.Bonus tip 5+) Daily Use TipsThe above tips will help keep your battery in good shape, but there are tons of things you can do to cause your computer to consume less energy. Dim the LCD, mute the speakers, turn off features like WiFi if you’re not using them, make use of the power settings and be sure to use both hibernate and standby where appropriate. This is only a start, but using as little power as possible while operating on batteries can help you squeeze some extra time out of your battery’s capacity.

Laptop Common Sense

1) Take Care of the LCDLCDs on laptops are designed to outlast the usefulness of the laptop they’re connected to, but can be easily damaged by a simple careless mistake. Don’t lift the laptop up by the display (it will bend) and be easy on the hinges. Only clean the display with something soft and never store anything under the LCD when its closed. These precautions seem obvious but you basically need only treat the LCD with care and it will last for as long as you need it to.

2) Take Care of the KeyboardLike the displays, with proper care a keyboard should easily outlast the life of the laptop, but a silly accident can render it useless. Many laptops today are “spill resistant”, but I wouldn’t recommend testing it – don’t drink around your laptop. Don’t eat around it either, as crumbs or grease can fall between the keys and cause malfunctions. Hit the keys gently and dust them once in a while and your keyboard should last year after year.

3) Be Aware of TemperatureExtremes in temperature can be extremely dangerous for a laptop. I mentioned that heat is a battery killer, but the display can be damaged by extreme conditions as well. Using the laptop when the environment is too hot can cause failures from overheating, and using it in an environment that is too wet and humid can cause similar malfunctions. Modern rugged laptops excluded, your laptop is meant to be used on a desk in your home or office. Keep it somewhere temperature controlled and this will never be a problem.

4) Watch Your FanYour fan is responsible for cooling your CPU so that it doesn’t overheat in normal conditions. A large number of problems related to overheating are solved simply by moving the laptop to a new position where the fan’s exhaust is not blocked. Even if there is nothing large obstructing it, it’s important to make sure dust doesn’t build up in the fan as that can cause overheating too. Make sure your fan is clear to fan away excess heat and your laptop will live longer, guaranteed.

5) Protect Your Laptop From Jolts With a CaseLaptops are sensitive instruments, and they are never more vulnerable than when they are traveling. Constant bumping and shaking can cause parts to shift and can permanently damage the laptop. Using a cushioned laptop bag will preserve it from the shocks of travel, and storing it in a laptop bag when not in use can help prevent any number of accidents. This is virtually the only item in the list that isn’t free, but it’s a small price to protect your computer and the bag can last for a lifetime of laptops.Bonus – personal preference 5+) Use External PartsUsing external hardware, such as a monitor, hard drive, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc., can help extend the life of your internal hardware by preventing wear and tear. At the same time, it can provide a more comfortable experience at home. While this can be expensive, if you regularly use your laptop you may find the investment worth your while.

(Of course, if we’re spending money, buying new RAM and occasionally replacing the battery can also do wonders for your performance and overall enjoyment of the laptop as well. But that’s another article.) Follow these simple tips and you easily will extend the life of your laptop.

How to select all Unread Mails In Gmail ?

2009-06-24T02:14:00.000-07:00

How to select all Unread Mails In Gmail ?

As you all know in yahoo mail, there is a simpler way to view all unread mails with just a single click. But in case of Gmail there is no such option to select all unread mails once. What if there are lot of e-mails in your Gmail Inbox and nearly a hundred more arriving every day, and you don’t end up reading them..lol. This simple tutorial will tell you how to Select all unread mails.

Follow the simple steps :
Step 1 : Log in to your Gmail Account !

Step 2: Now enter is:unread in the search box and select the Search Mail button.

or

type just type in the search box, label:unread.

Step 3 : Thats it, Now it will display the list of all unread mails

I hope this trick will reduce a lot of work as many of us recieve many emails a day. Just give it a try and let me know about your response. Drop your valuable comments here. thanks!

How to Create A Shutdown Timer for Windows

2009-06-24T01:56:00.000-07:00

How to Create A Shutdown Timer for Windows

Do you know that you can make your PC shutdown at a time u wish to?
Here is the trick!!
How To Make A Shutdown Timer!

METHOD # 1

* Right click on your desktop and choose "New=>shortcuts".
* In the box that says "Type the location of the shortcut",
type in "shutdown -s -t 3600" without the quotation marks and click next.

Note: 3600 are the amount of seconds before your computer shuts down. So , 60secs*60mins=3600secs.

* Make up a name for the shortcut and you're done.
* You can change the icon by right clicking=>properities=>change icon=>browse

TO ABORT:
To make an abort key to stop the shutdown timer just create another shortcut and make
the "location of the shortcut" to "shutdown -a" without the quotes.

METHOD # 2

{EASIER THAN THE PREVIOUS ONE}

Here is another trick to shutdown at a specific time, for example you wish to shutdown at 11:35am.

Type this in
start=>Run

Type Code: at 11:35 shutdown -s

TO ABORT:

Type this in
start=>Run

Code: shutdown -a

Understanding Google

2009-06-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

Understanding Google

Meet Google, the "coolest kid" on the cyberblock!

Google is popular, and popularity means it may be tough to get in initially. Even if you do everything right, it could take months to see results, at least if you use their URL submission page. However, there is hope! There's a method to get indexed in 24 hours, so don't even bother submitting through the URL page.

But before you get to that, you should know about the guidelines you must follow to ensure that your site not only gets listed, but also doesn't get banned. Plus, you should learn about elements of your website that Google won't look at.

How to Get Google to Read Your Keywords First

Google's bots read web pages from the topmost left corner of your site to the bottom right. However, most sites are designed with all of the links on the left side, and the content on the right. Yet the problem with this design is instead of seeing your content first, Google sees the links first. Your links may not be seen to be as optimized as your content.

One solution is to use three panes rather than two. Keep the normal left and right panes, but add an extra pane at the top left of the layout. Don't put keywords in this extra pane. With this area "blank" when the Google bots read the site, rather than going for the links as they normally would, the bots see that a portion of where the links are is "blank." This then forces it to read the content first, which is more keyword-rich than the links.

Note that not all search engines read sites this way, which is why this guideline was dedicated to optimizing for Google. You could be on the safe side and use the layout anyway, especially if you do plan to submit to Google, which you should. It doesn't take away from the look of the site, and by using it you ensure that your content gets read first. If you don't use it, you aren't giving yourself the best opportunity to rank highly in Google search engine listings. Making tables isn't very hard to do. Most word processors and even WYSIWYG HTML editors provide them, so take advantage of it.

Things That Google Ignores

There are some HTML attributes that Google pays no attention to when it goes through its crawling process. While you won't get penalized if you use these attributes, why waste your time with them if they're not going to count anyway?

Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, as noted in the numbered list below. There are also some elements listed that you will choose not to include.

1. The keywords and description attributes of the meta tag. The keywords and description attributes are read by other search engines. However, the boost you get from having them isn't as much as if you follow the other techniques, such as proper link building. If you submit to Google only, you may not want to include the keywords attribute, but focus on a smart "upsell" or "positioning," "branding" of your message in the description attribute. Other search engines use them, so you should go on and include them.

2. The comments tag. The comments tag is an optional tag designed more for the website designer than for search engines or browsers. You use it to make personal notes related to what the upcoming coding does. It's especially useful if other webmasters are working on web pages that have been started by someone else. Still, it isn't a necessary tag, so you can omit it if you want.

3. The style tag. This tag has attributes that specify what your site will look like. This deals with styling of your page (CSS). If you're using extensive CSS, include the file as an external reference.

4. The script tag. This tag lets the browser know that a block of JavaScript code is about to be initiated. While Google ignores the information in this tag, it's still useful if you want to take advantage of JavaScript. You would use JavaScript when you want to run applets, special programs that run in a separate browser window. Use of this tag may or may not be optional, depending on what your site is for.

5. Duplicate links. If you have duplicate links to the same page, Google only counts the first one.

6. Interlinking to points on the same page. Interlinking involves picking a point on your web page called an anchor that you want another anchor to link to. This practice is commonly used when websites present very long copy on the same page. Readers can click on links throughout the document to jump to other parts of the document. It's very effective for increasing readability, but it's another optional device. Worst case, you could break up the copy and make more subtopic links.

7. Graphics, animation and video. Google pays no attention to these types of content, but it may notice the descriptive attributes surrounding them and certainly their URLs.

8. Boolean words. They are words like a, an, the, is, etc. If you're optimizing for Google only, don't bother including these keywords.

How Not to Link to Sites That Are in a Bad Neighborhood

Basically, sites that are in a bad neighborhood are those that post on link farms, splogs, or other sites using black hat SEO techniques. Stay away from these types of sites. Do you know that if a person you're linking to posts on these types of sites, you could get in trouble with Google as well? It's unfair, but true. And don't think that because a site has a good page rank today that tomorrow it won't use black hat techniques that would mess up your site. This is why you need to keep your eye on the sites to which you link.

One way you can do this is to read the page rank bar on the Google toolbar. This is better than using linkvendor.com, because it tells you if a site has been banned, whereas linkvendor.com may not. If the page rank bar is gray, that indicates a ban. However, don't confuse being banned with having a page rank of 0. Just because a site has a 0 page rank, that doesn't mean it's linking to sites in a bad neighborhood. It could just mean that not enough time has passed for the webmaster to get the site to rank high enough in search engines to receive a higher page rank. Recently, for example, there was a proxy problem (now fixed) that erroneously returned sites with a page rank of 0 which in fact were ranked higher.

How to Get Your Site Listed in Google in 24 Hours or Less

Wouldn't it be nice to start seeing your site in Google's search engine results in 24 hours or less? It should be first noted that if a site is crawled but not yet indexed, the results aren't visible to search users. For example, if you enter the full domain of your site with the "http://www." and your site hasn't been listed yet, it won't show up in Google's results. When your site does get indexed, if you enter the full URL, you'll see your site listed. This listing contains the URL, the title of your website, and a description.

To get your site indexed quickly, you won't use Google's submission form (google.com/addurl.html). Using this method may take 2-6 weeks to get your site indexed.

So, what do you need to do to get your website indexed in 24 hours or less? The first step is to visit Google and enter a broad, generic keyword that's relevant to your site. This is the rare time that the broader the keyword, the better. Don't worry about trying to go for niche markets with this step, because you're going to want to have access to sites with the highest level of traffic. Once you enter the keyword, you see the Google listings. Use the "Page Rank" indicator on the Google toolbar to see what the page rank is (or you could use SEO Elite or LinkVendor, but doing it right from the browser is faster).

To refresh your memory, the higher your page rank, the more websites that are linking to you. Keep an eye out for sites that have a page rank of 5 or higher (with the higher ranking being the better one). Visit each of these sites to see if they offer a link exchange. Remember, if they do they'll advertise it in the same way you did yours, through a "Link to Us" web page or something similar. Look for the contact information if it's listed. If it's not listed, use the Whois utility found through domain name services or SEO Elite to find their e-mail address. Use the same methods of e-mail etiquette you learned about before and send them an e-mail asking if they're interested in a link exchange. Remember to post their links on your site first before you send out the e-mail.

Just make sure the site you choose has a page rank of over 5. If you advertise your site on a site with a page rank of 5, your site will get indexed in three days or less. If you advertise your site on a site with a page rank of 6, you can get your site indexed in less than 24 hours.

INCREASE UR SYSTEM PERFORMANCE

2009-06-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

INCREASE UR SYSTEM PERFORMANCE

If you have 512 megs or more of memory,
u can increase system performance
by having the core system kept in memory

steps are

Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive
Set the value to be 1
Reboot the computer

iPhone 3G Battery Saving Tips

2009-06-10T01:25:00.000-07:00

iPhone 3G Battery Saving Tips

Following its previous hit (read iPod) that has revolutionized the portable music player now Apple has also decided to join the mobile-phones market.
Here comes the impressive iPhone 3G with its Multi-Touch capability. With elegant design and massive built-in features, Apple has once again successfully become the trendsetter. But it also come with some flaws mainly for the battery issues. For some users, the capacity of iPhone 3G battery is still not sufficient to cope with all of its power-hungry features. As a 'on-the-go' gadget that combines communication, Internet, and entertainment functions, battery here holds critical role to enjoy this gadget to the max. The battery duration which can last for only 1.5 day is a bit annoying for most users.

Heard from its name, you should've known that this latest version comes with 3G support as its new feature. As 3G excels in Internet speed, browsing becomes faster and more enjoyable. But, its battery capacity really lets you down here, you can't browse or download for too long before the battery finally runs out of power. So, in this post I'll give some tips and tricks to prolong your iPhone 3G battery:

1. Lower the brightness level

iPhone 3G has brighter screen compared to its elder brother. That's a nice upgrade, but it consumes more power as well. So, try to lower the brightness level if you are inside a brightly-lit room.

Go to Settings>Brightness

Turn off auto brightness, then slowly slide down the level till everything still visible on screen. I think 10% brightness is still possible.

2.Turn off WiFi and 3G if not used

One of the advantages of iPhone 3G is its 3G and WiFi capability to browse in a hotspot area.
But, that does not mean you should activate it all the time. Though it is idle, battery energy will still be used to stabilize the phone network. This become worse in poor 3G signal area.

Go to Settings>General>Network

3. Turn off vibration on games

Though it gives you more realistic and thrilled experience, vibration will further consumes more energy. Try to turn off that feature when playing games.

Apple has introduced its new iPhone
Now with 3G capability

4. Download and purchase applications through iTunes on PC

Though it is viable to do it directly on phone, try to search and download the applications on your PC. Since it will consume much energy to browse and download the data.
Hence, it's better to download via PC and then manually synchronize from iTunes to your iPhone 3G.

5. Set auto-lock function in minimum time

This is used as precaution only. So, it's not possible to activate some features accidentally when you forgot to lock the screen.

Go to Settings>General>Auto-Lock

6. Turn off Push Data

Turn off to reduce energy consumption. Don't worry! You can still fetch the data per time interval.

Go to Settings>Fetch New Data

7. Charge iPhone via PC

You can charge iPhone by connecting to USB port without synchronizing it. Or if you have a car charger, charge it when you are driving.

As you should know, the battery on iPhone is difficult to be replaced by own effort. So hopefully above tips and tricks can help you to maximize your iPhone 3G.

Disable copy paste function

2009-06-09T05:21:00.000-07:00

Disable copy paste function

Sometimes we have important files that we don't want to share with others.
But, how if people accidentally find those files and duplicate or sent them to their portable storage.
To avoid above condition, simply applying this simple tip and the copy paste function will be unavailable.
Here are the steps:
1. Click Start>Run>type regedit then ok
2. Click HKEY_LOCALMACHINE>SYSTEM>CurrentControlSet>Control
3. Right click on Control choose New>Key then name it StorageDevicePolicies
4. Right click on StorageDevicePolicies then choose New>DWordValue then name it WriteProtect
5. Double click on WriteProtect, then change its value to 1
6. Then restart your computer
If succeeds, Error Copying File or Folder warning will now appear when trying to copy paste files
To return to default condition, simply change the value become 0 again.

New Feature In Windows 7 : Virtual WiFi Technology

2009-06-08T02:20:00.000-07:00

New Feature In Windows 7 : Virtual WiFi Technology

After the research of almost a decade the researchers from the Microsoft support has released a new technology in the Windows 7 called as V WiFi (Virtual Wi-Fi). It is a technology which virtualizes wireless adapter into as many wireless adapter depending upon the requirement, and make the machine to think that it has many wireless adapter in it thus provides the ability to connect to multiple hotshots simultaneously i.e. it allows a single wireless adapter to act like two, two NIc in one machine.

This Virtual Wi-Fi feature will make it easier to set up a mesh network where every system in the network act as a repeater i.e. one adapter grabs a signal and another passes it another.

The Virtual Wi-Fi (VWIFI) feature has been included in Windows 7 for the first time which is in its RC1 Phase of evolution. Although no drivers are reportedly available to take advantage of the feature so this feature is still waiting to come out and play.

Some users wonder why more than one wireless card would be needed inside your computer. There are a very few circumstances where multiple wireless adapters would be needed. For instance, users could connect to one wireless network and use the virtual adapter to turn their machine into a hot spot that other computers could connect to and share the internet access.
After the research of almost a decade the researchers from the Microsoft support has released a new technology in the Windows 7 called as V WiFi (Virtual Wi-Fi). It is a technology which virtualizes wireless adapter into as many wireless adapter depending upon the requirement, and make the machine to think that it has many wireless adapter in it thus provides the ability to connect to multiple hotshots simultaneously i.e. it allows a single wireless adapter to act like two, two NIc in one machine.

This Virtual Wi-Fi feature will make it easier to set up a mesh network where every system in the network act as a repeater i.e. one adapter grabs a signal and another passes it another.

The Virtual Wi-Fi (VWIFI) feature has been included in Windows 7 for the first time which is in its RC1 Phase of evolution. Although no drivers are reportedly available to take advantage of the feature so this feature is still waiting to come out and play.

Some users wonder why more than one wireless card would be needed inside your computer. There are a very few circumstances where multiple wireless adapters would be needed. For instance, users could connect to one wireless network and use the virtual adapter to turn their machine into a hot spot that other computers could connect to and share the internet access.
Another good usage scenario for the technology would be connecting to a wireless network while also connecting to a wireless ad hoc network at the same time. Istartedsomething reports that supporting Virtual Wi-Fi is going to be a requirement for WLAN drivers sporting the Windows support Certification Logo. The drivers will be coming to add support for the feature.

The feature is described as, “On Windows 7 and later, the operating system installs a virtual device if a Hosted Network capable wireless adapter is present on the machine. This virtual device normally shows up in the “Network Connections Folder” as ‘Wireless Network Connection 2’ with a Device Name of ‘Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport adapter’ if the computer has a single wireless network adapter. This virtual device would be used exclusively for performing software access point (SoftAP) connections. The lifetime of this virtual device is tied to the physical wireless adapter. If the physical wireless adapter is disabled, this virtual device will be removed as well.”

The caveat to the technology is that only one virtual adapter can be created.

Remove Invalid Entries from os selection menu

2009-06-08T01:59:00.000-07:00

Remove Invalid Entries from os selection menu

Remove Invalid Entries from Operating
System Selection Menu
A common complaint after reinstalling XP is the appearance of a boot screen asking the user
to select the copy of XP that is to be loaded, even when there is only one copy of XP on the
system. XP provides a method that eliminates the danger of manual editing of boot.ini by
using the System Configuration Utility.
Click Start > Run .Type msconfig and click OK to open System Configuration Utility. Select
the tab labeled BOOT.INI. Click the button labeled. Check All Boot Paths. A dialog box will
open detailing the location of any invalid operating system locations. Confirm you want to
remove the entry and reboot the system

Things you must know about Internet

2009-06-06T08:18:00.000-07:00

Things you must know about Internet

The Internet is a computer network made up of thousands of networks worldwide. No one knows exactly how many computers are connected to the Internet. It is certain, however, that these number in the millions.

No one is in charge of the Internet. There are organizations which develop technical aspects of this network and set standards for creating applications on it, but no governing body is in control. The Internet backbone, through which Internet traffic flows, is owned by private companies.

All computers on the Internet communicate with one another using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol suite, abbreviated to TCP/IP. Computers on the Internet use a client/server architecture. This means that the remote server machine provides files and services to the user's local client machine. Software can be installed on a client computer to take advantage of the latest access technology.

An Internet user has access to a wide variety of services: electronic mail, file transfer, vast information resources, interest group membership, interactive collaboration, multimedia displays, real-time broadcasting, shopping opportunities, breaking news, and much more.

The Internet consists primarily of a variety of access protocols. Many of these protocols feature programs that allow users to search for and retrieve material made available by the protocol.

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COMPONENTS OF THE INTERNET

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WORLD WIDE WEB
The World Wide Web (abbreviated as the Web or WWW) is a system of Internet servers that supports hypertext to access several Internet protocols on a single interface. Almost every protocol type available on the Internet is accessible on the Web. This includes e-mail, FTP, Telnet, and Usenet News. In addition to these, the World Wide Web has its own protocol: HyperText Transfer Protocol, or HTTP. These protocols will be explained later in this document.

The World Wide Web provides a single interface for accessing all these protocols. This creates a convenient and user-friendly environment. It is no longer necessary to be conversant in these protocols within separate, command-level environments. The Web gathers together these protocols into a single system. Because of this feature, and because of the Web's ability to work with multimedia and advanced programming languages, the Web is the fastest-growing component of the Internet.

The operation of the Web relies primarily on hypertext as its means of information retrieval. HyperText is a document containing words that connect to other documents. These words are called links and are selectable by the user. A single hypertext document can contain links to many documents. In the context of the Web, words or graphics may serve as links to other documents, images, video, and sound. Links may or may not follow a logical path, as each connection is programmed by the creator of the source document. Overall, the Web contains a complex virtual web of connections among a vast number of documents, graphics, videos, and sounds.

Producing hypertext for the Web is accomplished by creating documents with a language called HyperText Markup Language, or HTML. With HTML, tags are placed within the text to accomplish document formatting, visual features such as font size, italics and bold, and the creation of hypertext links. Graphics and multimedia may also be incorporated into an HTML document. HTML is an evolving language, with new tags being added as each upgrade of the language is developed and released. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), led by Web founder Tim Berners-Lee, coordinates the efforts of standardizing HTML. The W3C now calls the language XHTML and considers it to be an application of the XML language standard.

The World Wide Web consists of files, called pages or home pages, containing links to documents and resources throughout the Internet.

The Web provides a vast array of experiences including multimedia presentations, real-time collaboration, interactive pages, radio and television broadcasts, and the automatic "push" of information to a client computer. Programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic, Cold Fusion and XML are extending the capabilities of the Web. A growing amount of information on the Web is served dynamically from content stored in databases. The Web is therefore not a fixed entity, but one that is in a constant state of development and flux.

For more complete information about the World Wide Web, see Understanding The World Wide Web.

E-MAIL
Electronic mail, or e-mail, allows computer users locally and worldwide to exchange messages. Each user of e-mail has a mailbox address to which messages are sent. Messages sent through e-mail can arrive within a matter of seconds.

A powerful aspect of e-mail is the option to send electronic files to a person's e-mail address. Non-ASCII files, known as binary files, may be attached to e-mail messages. These files are referred to as MIME attachments.MIME stands for Multimedia Internet Mail Extension, and was developed to help e-mail software handle a variety of file types. For example, a document created in Microsoft Word can be attached to an e-mail message and retrieved by the recipient with the appropriate e-mail program. Many e-mail programs, including Eudora, Netscape Messenger, and Microsoft Outlook, offer the ability to read files written in HTML, which is itself a MIME type.

TELNET
Telnet is a program that allows you to log into computers on the Internet and use online databases, library catalogs, chat services, and more. There are no graphics in Telnet sessions, just text. To Telnet to a computer, you must know its address. This can consist of words (locis.loc.gov) or numbers (140.147.254.3). Some services require you to connect to a specific port on the remote computer. In this case, type the port number after the Internet address. Example: telnet nri.reston.va.us 185.

Telnet is available on the World Wide Web. Probably the most common Web-based resources available through Telnet have been library catalogs, though most catalogs have since migrated to the Web. A link to a Telnet resource may look like any other link, but it will launch a Telnet session to make the connection. A Telnet program must be installed on your local computer and configured to your Web browser in order to work.

With the increasing popularity of the Web, Telnet has become less frequently used as a means of access to information on the Internet.

FTP
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. This is both a program and the method used to transfer files between computers. Anonymous FTP is an option that allows users to transfer files from thousands of host computers on the Internet to their personal computer account. FTP sites contain books, articles, software, games, images, sounds, multimedia, course work, data sets, and more.

If your computer is directly connected to the Internet via an Ethernet cable, you can use one of several PC software programs, such as WS_FTP for Windows, to conduct a file transfer.

FTP transfers can be performed on the World Wide Web without the need for special software. In this case, the Web browser will suffice. Whenever you download software from a Web site to your local machine, you are using FTP. You can also retrieve FTP files via search engines such as FtpFind, located at /http://www.ftpfind.com/. This option is easiest because you do not need to know FTP program commands.

E-MAIL DISCUSSION GROUPS
One of the benefits of the Internet is the opportunity it offers to people worldwide to communicate via e-mail. The Internet is home to a large community of individuals who carry out active discussions organized around topic-oriented forums distributed by e-mail. These are administered by software programs. Probably the most common program is the listserv.

A great variety of topics are covered by listservs, many of them academic in nature. When you subscribe to a listserv, messages from other subscribers are automatically sent to your electronic mailbox. You subscribe to a listserv by sending an e-mail message to a computer program called a listserver. Listservers are located on computer networks throughout the world. This program handles subscription information and distributes messages to and from subscribers. You must have a e-mail account to participate in a listserv discussion group. Visit Tile.net at /http://tile.net/ to see an example of a site that offers a searchablecollection of e-mail discussion groups.

Majordomo and Listproc are two other programs that administer e-mail discussion groups. The commands for subscribing to and managing your list memberships are similar to those of listserv.

USENET NEWS
Usenet News is a global electronic bulletin board system in which millions of computer users exchange information on a vast range of topics. The major difference between Usenet News and e-mail discussion groups is the fact that Usenet messages are stored on central computers, and users must connect to these computers to read or download the messages posted to these groups. This is distinct from e-mail distribution, in which messages arrive in the electronic mailboxes of each list member.

Usenet itself is a set of machines that exchanges messages, or articles, from Usenet discussion forums, called newsgroups. Usenet administrators control their own sites, and decide which (if any) newsgroups to sponsor and which remote newsgroups to allow into the system.

There are thousands of Usenet newsgroups in existence. While many are academic in nature, numerous newsgroups are organized around recreational topics. Much serious computer-related work takes place in Usenet discussions. A small number of e-mail discussion groups also exist as Usenet newsgroups.

The Usenet newsfeed can be read by a variety of newsreader software programs. For example, the Netscape suite comes with a newsreader program called Messenger. Newsreaders are also available as standalone products.

FAQ, RFC, FYI
FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions. These are periodic postings to Usenet newsgroups that contain a wealth of information related to the topic of the newsgroup. Many FAQs are quite extensive. FAQs are available by subscribing to individual Usenet newsgroups. A Web-based collection of FAQ resources has been collected by The Internet FAQ Consortium and is available at /http://www.faqs.org/.

RFC stands for Request for Comments. These are documents created by and distributed to the Internet community to help define the nuts and bolts of the Internet. They contain both technical specifications and general information.

FYI stands for For Your Information. These notes are a subset of RFCs and contain information of interest to new Internet users.

Links to indexes of all three of these information resources are available on the University Libraries Web site at /http://library.albany.edu/reference/faqs.html.

CHAT & INSTANT MESSENGING
Chat programs allow users on the Internet to communicate with each other by typing in real time. They are sometimes included as a feature of a Web site, where users can log into the "chat room" to exchange comments and information about the topics addressed on the site. Chat may take other, more wide-ranging forms. For example, America Online is well known for sponsoring a number of topical chat rooms.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a service through which participants can communicate to each other on hundreds of channels. These channels are usually based on specific topics. While many topics are frivolous, substantive conversations are also taking place. To access IRC, you must use an IRC software program.

A variation of chat is the phenomenon of instant messenging. With instant messenging, a user on the Web can contact another user currently logged in and type a conversation. Most famous is America Online's Instant Messenger. ICQ, MSN and Yahoo are other commonly-used chat programs.

Other types of real-time communication are addressed in the tutorial Understanding the World Wide Web.

MUD/MUSH/MOO/MUCK/DUM/MUSE
MUD stands for Multi User Dimension. MUDs, and their variations listed above, are multi-user virtual reality games based on simulated worlds. Traditionally text based, graphical MUDs now exist. There are MUDs of all kinds on the Internet, and many can be joined free of charge. For more information, read one of the FAQs devoted to MUDs available at the FAQ site at.
Unrated

Increase Internet Download Connections

2009-06-06T06:45:00.000-07:00

Increase Internet Download Connections

This trick increase Simultaneous Internet Download Connections
and increases the number of allowed simultaneous connections to a higher number. The
default value is only five connections.
Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings.
Right click on the window pane and create a DWord key with the name
“MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server” as it is without quotes. Set the value to a higher number
like 0000000a. Note that they are zeros and not alphabet ‘O’.
Right click on the window pane and create another DWord key with the name
“MaxConnectionsPerServer”. No quotes please. Set the value to a higher number like
0000000a. Note that they are zeros and not alphabet ‘O’.

How to fasten up Windows XP..??

2009-06-05T06:18:00.000-07:00

How to fasten up Windows XP..??

1. DISABLE INDEXING SERVICES:-
Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don’t search your computer often, or even if you do search often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following:

1. Go to Start
2. Click Settings
3. Click Control Panel
4. Double-click Add/Remove Programs
5. Click the Add/Remove Window Components
6. Uncheck the Indexing services
7. Click Next

2. OPTIMISE DISPLAY SETTINGS

Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimise:

1.Go to Start
2. Click Settings
3. Click Control Panel
4. Click System
5. Click Advanced tab
6. In the Performance tab click Settings
7. Leave only the following ticked:
- Show shadows under menus
- Show shadows under mouse pointer
- Show translucent selection rectangle
- Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
- Use visual styles on windows and buttons

3. SPEEDUP FOLDER BROWSING:-

You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:

1. Open My Computer
2. Click on Tools menu
3. Click on Folder Options
4. Click on the View tab.
5. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
6. Click Apply
7. Click Ok
8. Reboot your computer

4. IMPROVE MEMORY USAGE:-

Cacheman Improves the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings.
NOTE: This program is shareware and some features require activation.
Once Installed:

1.Go to Show Wizard and select All
2.Run all the wizards by selecting Next or Finished until you are back to the main menu. Use the defaults unless you know exactly what you are doing.
3.Exit and Save Cacheman
4.Restart Windows

5. OPTIMISE YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION:-

There are lots of ways to do this but by far the easiest is to run TCP/IP Optimizer.

1. Download and install
2. Click the General Settings tab and select your Connection Speed (Kbps)
3. Click Network Adapter and choose the interface you use to connect to the Internet
4. Check Optimal Settings then Apply
5. Reboot

6. OPTIMISE YOUR PAGEFILE:-

If you give your pagefile a fixed size it saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file.

1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties
2. Select the Advanced tab
3. Under Performance choose the Settings button
4. Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change
5. Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.

Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.

7. SPEEDUP FOLDER ACCESS - DISABLE LAST ACCESS UPDATE:-

If you have a lot of folders and subdirectories on your computer, when you access a directory XP wastes a lot of time updating the time stamp showing the last access time for that directory and for ALL sub directories. To stop XP doing this you need to edit the registry. If you are uncomfortable doing this then please do not attempt.

1. Go to Start and then Run and type “regedit”
2. Click through the file system until you get to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSys
tem”
3. Right-click in a blank area of the window on the right and select ‘DWORD Value’
4. Create a new DWORD Value called ‘NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate’
5. Then Right click on the new value and select ‘Modify’
6. Change the Value Data to ‘1′
7. Click ‘OK’

8. MAKE YOUR MENUS LOAD FASTER:-

This is one of my favourite tweaks as it makes a huge difference to how fast your machine will ‘feel’. What this tweak does is remove the slight delay between clicking on a menu and XP displaying the menu.

1. Go to Start then Run
2. Type ‘Regedit’ then click ‘Ok’
3. Find “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\”
4. Select “MenuShowDelay”
5. Right click and select “Modify’
6. Reduce the number to around “100″
7. This is the delay time before a menu is opened. You can set it to “0″ but it can make windows really hard to use as menus will open if you just look at them - well move your mouse over them anyway. I tend to go for anywhere between 50-150 depending on my mood.

9. IMPROVE XP SHUTDOWN SPEED:-

This tweak reduces the time XP waits before automatically closing any running programs when you give it the command to shutdown.

1. Go to Start then select Run
2. Type ‘Regedit’ and click ok
3. Find ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\Desktop\’
4. Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
5. Right click and select ‘Modify’
6. Change the value to ‘1000′
7. Click ‘OK’
8. Now select ‘HungAppTimeout’
9. Right click and select ‘Modify’
10. Change the value to ‘1000′
11. Click ‘OK’
12. Now find ‘HKEY_USERS\ .DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop’
13. Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
14. Right click and select ‘Modify’
15. Change the value to ‘1000′
16. Click ‘OK’
17. Now find ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\CurrentControlSet\Control\’
18. Select ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’
19. Right click and select ‘Modify’
20. Change the value to ‘1000′
21. Click ‘OK’

10. IMPROVE SWAPFILE PERFORMANCE:-

If you have more than 256MB of RAM this tweak will considerably improve your performance. It basically makes sure that your PC uses every last drop of memory (faster than swap file) before it starts using the swap file.

1. Go to Start then Run
2. Type “msconfig.exe” then ok
3. Click on the System.ini tab
4. Expand the 386enh tab by clicking on the plus sign
5. Click on new then in the blank box type”ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1″
6. Click OK
7. Restart PC

11. ENSURE XP IS USING DMA MODE:-

XP enables DMA for Hard-Drives and CD-Roms by default on most ATA or ATAPI (IDE) devices. However, sometimes computers switch to PIO mode which is slower for data transfer - a typical reason is because of a virus. To ensure that your machine is using DMA:

1. Open ‘Device Manager’
2. Double-click ‘IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers’
3. Right-click ‘Primary Channel’ and select ‘Properties’ and then ‘Advanced Settings’
4. In the ‘Current Transfer Mode’ drop-down box, select ‘DMA if Available’ if the current setting is ‘PIO Only’

Change The Default Location For Installing Applications.

2009-06-05T04:51:00.000-07:00

Change The Default Location For Installing Applications.

As the Hard sizes are increasing we are using Partition system in our Operating system.As when we install any program in our computer it automatically assigns
"C:\Program Files" directory for installation. This causes a lots space problem in our HDD.

XP uses the C:\Program Files directory as the default base directory into which new programs are installed. However, you can change the default installation drive and/ or directory by using a Registry hack.

Go to :-

- Start > Run

- Type “regedit” (without “” NOOBS!)

- Go to this directory…
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

- Look for the value named ProgramFilesDir. by default,this value will be C:\Program Files. Edit the value to any valid drive or folder and now XP will use that new location as the default installation directory for new programs.

happy installiation...

10 reasons why PCs crash you must Know

2009-06-03T06:45:00.000-07:00

10 reasons why PCs crash you must Know

Fatal error: the system has become unstable or is busy," it says. "Enter to return to Windows or press Control-Alt-Delete to restart your computer. If you do this you will lose any unsaved information in all open applications."

You have just been struck by the Blue Screen of Death. Anyone who uses Mcft Windows will be familiar with this. What can you do? More importantly, how can you prevent it happening?

1 Hardware conflict

The number one reason why Windows crashes is hardware conflict. Each hardware device communicates to other devices through an interrupt request channel (IRQ). These are supposed to be unique for each device.

For example, a printer usually connects internally on IRQ 7. The keyboard usually uses IRQ 1 and the floppy disk drive IRQ 6. Each device will try to hog a single IRQ for itself.

If there are a lot of devices, or if they are not installed properly, two of them may end up sharing the same IRQ number. When the user tries to use both devices at the same time, a crash can happen. The way to check if your computer has a hardware conflict is through the following route:

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-System-Device Manager.

Often if a device has a problem a yellow '!' appears next to its description in the Device Manager. Highlight Computer (in the Device Manager) and press Properties to see the IRQ numbers used by your computer. If the IRQ number appears twice, two devices may be using it.

Sometimes a device might share an IRQ with something described as 'IRQ holder for PCI steering'. This can be ignored. The best way to fix this problem is to remove the problem device and reinstall it.

Sometimes you may have to find more recent drivers on the internet to make the device function properly. A good resource is www.driverguide.com. If the device is a soundcard, or a modem, it can often be fixed by moving it to a different slot on the motherboard (be careful about opening your computer, as you may void the warranty).

When working inside a computer you should switch it off, unplug the mains lead and touch an unpainted metal surface to discharge any static electricity.

To be fair to Mcft, the problem with IRQ numbers is not of its making. It is a legacy problem going back to the first PC designs using the IBM 8086 chip. Initially there were only eight IRQs. Today there are 16 IRQs in a PC. It is easy to run out of them. There are plans to increase the number of IRQs in future designs.

2 Bad Ram

Ram (random-access memory) problems might bring on the blue screen of death with a message saying Fatal Exception Error. A fatal error indicates a serious hardware problem. Sometimes it may mean a part is damaged and will need replacing.

But a fatal error caused by Ram might be caused by a mismatch of chips. For example, mixing 70-nanosecond (70ns) Ram with 60ns Ram will usually force the computer to run all the Ram at the slower speed. This will often crash the machine if the Ram is overworked.

One way around this problem is to enter the BIOS settings and increase the wait state of the Ram. This can make it more stable. Another way to troubleshoot a suspected Ram problem is to rearrange the Ram chips on the motherboard, or take some of them out. Then try to repeat the circumstances that caused the crash. When handling Ram try not to touch the gold connections, as they can be easily damaged.

Parity error messages also refer to Ram. Modern Ram chips are either parity (ECC) or non parity (non-ECC). It is best not to mix the two types, as this can be a cause of trouble.

EMM386 error messages refer to memory problems but may not be connected to bad Ram. This may be due to free memory problems often linked to old Dos-based programmes.

3 BIOS settings

Every motherboard is supplied with a range of chipset settings that are decided in the factory. A common way to access these settings is to press the F2 or delete button during the first few seconds of a boot-up.

Once inside the BIOS, great care should be taken. It is a good idea to write down on a piece of paper all the settings that appear on the screen. That way, if you change something and the computer becomes more unstable, you will know what settings to revert to.

A common BIOS error concerns the CAS latency. This refers to the Ram. Older EDO (extended data out) Ram has a CAS latency of 3. Newer SDRam has a CAS latency of 2. Setting the wrong figure can cause the Ram to lock up and freeze the computer's display.

Mcft Windows is better at allocating IRQ numbers than any BIOS. If possible set the IRQ numbers to Auto in the BIOS. This will allow Windows to allocate the IRQ numbers (make sure the BIOS setting for Plug and Play OS is switched to 'yes' to allow Windows to do this.).

4 Hard disk drives

After a few weeks, the information on a hard disk drive starts to become piecemeal or fragmented. It is a good idea to defragment the hard disk every week or so, to prevent the disk from causing a screen freeze. Go to

* Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-Disk Defragmenter

This will start the procedure. You will be unable to write data to the hard drive (to save it) while the disk is defragmenting, so it is a good idea to schedule the procedure for a period of inactivity using the Task Scheduler.

The Task Scheduler should be one of the small icons on the bottom right of the Windows opening page (the desktop).

Some lockups and screen freezes caused by hard disk problems can be solved by reducing the read-ahead optimisation. This can be adjusted by going to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-System Icon-Performance-File System-Hard Disk.

Hard disks will slow down and crash if they are too full. Do some housekeeping on your hard drive every few months and free some space on it. Open the Windows folder on the C drive and find the Temporary Internet Files folder. Deleting the contents (not the folder) can free a lot of space.

Empty the Recycle Bin every week to free more space. Hard disk drives should be scanned every week for errors or bad sectors. Go to

* Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-ScanDisk

Otherwise assign the Task Scheduler to perform this operation at night when the computer is not in use.

5 Fatal OE exceptions and VXD errors

Fatal OE exception errors and VXD errors are often caused by video card problems.

These can often be resolved easily by reducing the resolution of the video display. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-Display-Settings

Here you should slide the screen area bar to the left. Take a look at the colour settings on the left of that window. For most desktops, high colour 16-bit depth is adequate.

If the screen freezes or you experience system lockups it might be due to the video card. Make sure it does not have a hardware conflict. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-System-Device Manager

Here, select the + beside Display Adapter. A line of text describing your video card should appear. Select it (make it blue) and press properties. Then select Resources and select each line in the window. Look for a message that says No Conflicts.

If you have video card hardware conflict, you will see it here. Be careful at this point and make a note of everything you do in case you make things worse.

The way to resolve a hardware conflict is to uncheck the Use Automatic Settings box and hit the Change Settings button. You are searching for a setting that will display a No Conflicts message.

Another useful way to resolve video problems is to go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-System-Performance-Graphics

Here you should move the Hardware Acceleration slider to the left. As ever, the most common cause of problems relating to graphics cards is old or faulty drivers (a driver is a small piece of software used by a computer to communicate with a device).

Look up your video card's manufacturer on the internet and search for the most recent drivers for it.

6 Viruses

Often the first sign of a virus infection is instability. Some viruses erase the boot sector of a hard drive, making it impossible to start. This is why it is a good idea to create a Windows start-up disk. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-Add/Remove Programs

Here, look for the Start Up Disk tab. Virus protection requires constant vigilance.

A virus scanner requires a list of virus signatures in order to be able to identify viruses. These signatures are stored in a DAT file. DAT files should be updated weekly from the website of your antivirus software manufacturer.

An excellent antivirus programme is McAfee VirusScan by Network Associates ( www.nai.com). Another is Norton AntiVirus 2000, made by Symantec ( www.symantec.com).

7 Printers

The action of sending a document to print creates a bigger file, often called a postscript file.

Printers have only a small amount of memory, called a buffer. This can be easily overloaded. Printing a document also uses a considerable amount of CPU power. This will also slow down the computer's performance.

If the printer is trying to print unusual characters, these might not be recognised, and can crash the computer. Sometimes printers will not recover from a crash because of confusion in the buffer. A good way to clear the buffer is to unplug the printer for ten seconds. Booting up from a powerless state, also called a cold boot, will restore the printer's default settings and you may be able to carry on.

8 Software

A common cause of computer crash is faulty or badly-installed software. Often the problem can be cured by uninstalling the software and then reinstalling it. Use Norton Uninstall or Uninstall Shield to remove an application from your system properly. This will also remove references to the programme in the System Registry and leaves the way clear for a completely fresh copy.

The System Registry can be corrupted by old references to obsolete software that you thought was uninstalled. Use Reg Cleaner by Jouni Vuorio to clean up the System Registry and remove obsolete entries. It works on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE (Second Edition), Windows Millennium Edition (ME), NT4 and Windows 2000.

Read the instructions and use it carefully so you don't do permanent damage to the Registry. If the Registry is damaged you will have to reinstall your operating system. Reg Cleaner can be obtained from www.jv16.org

Often a Windows problem can be resolved by entering Safe Mode. This can be done during start-up. When you see the message "Starting Windows" press F4. This should take you into Safe Mode.

Safe Mode loads a minimum of drivers. It allows you to find and fix problems that prevent Windows from loading properly.

Sometimes installing Windows is difficult because of unsuitable BIOS settings. If you keep getting SUWIN error messages (Windows setup) during the Windows installation, then try entering the BIOS and disabling the CPU internal cache. Try to disable the Level 2 (L2) cache if that doesn't work.

Remember to restore all the BIOS settings back to their former settings following installation.

9 Overheating

Central processing units (CPUs) are usually equipped with fans to keep them cool. If the fan fails or if the CPU gets old it may start to overheat and generate a particular kind of error called a kernel error. This is a common problem in chips that have been overclocked to operate at higher speeds than they are supposed to.

One remedy is to get a bigger better fan and install it on top of the CPU. Specialist cooling fans/heatsinks are available from www.computernerd.com or www.coolit.com

CPU problems can often be fixed by disabling the CPU internal cache in the BIOS. This will make the machine run more slowly, but it should also be more stable.

10 Power supply problems

With all the new construction going on around the country the steady supply of electricity has become disrupted. A power surge or spike can crash a computer as easily as a power cut.

If this has become a nuisance for you then consider buying a uninterrupted power supply (UPS). This will give you a clean power supply when there is electricity, and it will give you a few minutes to perform a controlled shutdown in case of a power cut.

It is a good investment if your data are critical, because a power cut will cause any unsaved data to be lost.

Computer Acronyms

2009-06-03T05:46:00.001-07:00

Computer Acronyms

ADSL - Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
AGP - Accelerated Graphics Port
ALI - Acer Labs, Incorporated
ALU - Arithmetic Logic Unit
AMD - Advanced Micro Devices
APC - American Power Conversion
ASCII - American Standard Code for Information Interchange
ASIC - Application Specific Integrated Circuit
ASPI - Advanced SCSI Programming Interface
AT - Advanced Technology
ATI - ATI Technologies Inc.
ATX - Advanced Technology Extended

--- B ---
BFG - BFG Technologies
BIOS - Basic Input Output System
BNC - Barrel Nut Connector

--- C ---
CAS - Column Address Signal
CD - Compact Disk
CDR - Compact Disk Recorder
CDRW - Compact Disk Re-Writer
CD-ROM - Compact Disk - Read Only Memory
CFM - Cubic Feet per Minute (ft?/min)
CMOS - Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor
CPU - Central Processing Unit
CTX - CTX Technology Corporation (Commited to Excellence)

--- D ---

DDR - Double Data Rate
DDR-SDRAM - Double Data Rate - Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory
DFI - DFI Inc. (Design for Innovation)
DIMM - Dual Inline Memory Module
DRAM - Dynamic Random Access Memory
DPI - Dots Per Inch
DSL - See ASDL
DVD - Digital Versatile Disc
DVD-RAM - Digital Versatile Disk - Random Access Memory

--- E ---
ECC - Error Correction Code
ECS - Elitegroup Computer Systems
EDO - Extended Data Out
EEPROM - Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory
EPROM - Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory
EVGA - EVGA Corporation

--- F ---
FC-PGA - Flip Chip Pin Grid Array
FDC - Floppy Disk Controller
FDD - Floppy Disk Drive
FPS - Frame Per Second
FPU - Floating Point Unit
FSAA - Full Screen Anti-Aliasing
FS - For Sale
FSB - Front Side Bus

--- G ---
GB - Gigabytes
GBps - Gigabytes per second or Gigabits per second
GDI - Graphical Device Interface
GHz - GigaHertz

--- H ---
HDD - Hard Disk Drive
HIS - Hightech Information System Limited
HP - Hewlett-Packard Development Company
HSF - Heatsink-Fan

--- I ---
IBM - International Business Machines Corporation
IC - Integrated Circuit
IDE - Integrated Drive Electronics
IFS- Item for Sale
IRQ - Interrupt Request
ISA - Industry Standard Architecture
ISO - International Standards Organization

--- J ---
JBL - JBL (Jame B. Lansing) Speakers
JVC - JVC Company of America

- K ---
Kbps - Kilobits Per Second
KBps - KiloBytes per second

--- L ---
LG - LG Electronics
LAN - Local Are Network
LCD - Liquid Crystal Display
LDT - Lightning Data Transport
LED - Light Emitting Diode

--- M ---
MAC - Media Access Control
MB ? MotherBoard or Megabyte
MBps - Megabytes Per Second
Mbps - Megabits Per Second or Megabits Per Second
MHz - MegaHertz
MIPS - Million Instructions Per Second
MMX - Multi-Media Extensions
MSI - Micro Star International

--- N ---
NAS - Network Attached Storage
NAT - Network Address Translation
NEC - NEC Corporation
NIC - Network Interface Card

--- O ---
OC - Overclock (Over Clock)
OCZ - OCZ Technology
OEM - Original Equipment Manufacturer

--- P ---
PC - Personal Computer
PCB - Printed Circuit Board
PCI - Peripheral Component Interconnect
PDA - Personal Digital Assistant
PCMCIA - Peripheral Component Microchannel Interconnect Architecture
PGA - Professional Graphics Array
PLD - Programmable Logic Device
PM - Private Message / Private Messaging
PnP - Plug 'n Play
PNY - PNY Technology
POST - Power On Self Test
PPPoA - Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM
PPPoE - Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet
PQI - PQI Corporation
PSU - Power Supply Unit

--- R ---
RAID - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
RAM - Random Access Memory
RAMDAC - Random Access Memory Digital Analog Convertor
RDRAM - Rambus Dynamic Random Access Memory
ROM - Read Only Memory
RPM - Revolutions Per Minute

--- S ---
SASID - Self-scanned Amorphous Silicon Integrated Display
SCA - SCSI Configured Automatically
SCSI - Small Computer System Interface
SDRAM - Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory
SECC - Single Edge Contact Connector
SODIMM - Small Outline Dual Inline Memory Module
SPARC - Scalable Processor ArChitecture
SOHO - Small Office Home Office
SRAM - Static Random Access Memory
SSE - Streaming SIMD Extensions
SVGA - Super Video Graphics Array
S/PDIF - Sony/Philips Digital Interface

--- T ---
TB - Terabytes
TBps - Terabytes per second
Tbps - Terabits per second
TDK - TDK Electronics
TEC - Thermoelectric Cooler
TPC - TipidPC
TWAIN - Technology Without An Important Name

--- U ---
UART - Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter
USB - Universal Serial Bus
UTP - Unshieled Twisted Pair

--- V ---
VCD - Video CD
VPN - Virtual Private Network

--- W ---
WAN - Wide Area Network
WTB - Want to Buy
WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get

--- X ---
XGA - Extended Graphics Array
XFX - XFX Graphics, a Division of Pine
XMS - Extended Memory Specification
XT - Extended Technology

How to Format USB Drive with NTFS File System

2009-06-03T05:22:00.000-07:00

How to Format USB Drive with NTFS File System

The advantage of NTFS file system is more security options and fast. Normally USB drive capacity is very small enough that NTFS is not recommended. But, nowadays USB drives are coming with larger capacity also. So we can format USB drive with NTFS to have more security options.

NTFS enabled USB Drives are write-able only on one PC and becomes read only on all other PCs. Hence, we can read and write on our own PC and transfer files to elsewhere without any fear of virus.

In XP, only FAT and FAT32 file systems are available in format options, use the below steps to format in NTFS File System.

a. Insert USB drive in your PC
b. Goto Device Manager
c. Select Disk Drives and expand
d. Right Click on USB drive and select Properties
e. Goto policies tab and select Optimize for performance and press OK
f. Open My Computer, Click on USB Drive and select Format Opton

Now you can have NTFS option there.

Windows XP vs Windows 7

2009-06-02T02:41:00.000-07:00

Windows XP vs Windows 7

vs

Windows 7 is the latest operating system released by Microsoft but still the major market share is ruled by Windows XP. Windows XP which was till yet dominating the Client Operating System Market was given a push back by Microsoft Windows Vista. As Windows Vista was not a major success in the market,that's why Microsoft is bought a new OS Windows 7.

Although their could be thousand of differences between Windows XP and Windows 7. I found some major differences between both the operating system which are listed below.

Differences between Windows XP and Windows 7

1. One of the major difference between both the operating system is User Access Control. Where Windows XP doesn't have any UAC on other side Windows 7 enables the UAC feature which was introduced in Windows Vista.

2. Windows 7 supports DirectX 11 where Windows XP support Directx 9.

3. One major difference is regarding the graphics , where Windows XP lacks them on other hand Windows 7 is known for its visual appearance.

4. Their is a difference in speed of both the operating system where Windows 7 boots quicker than Windows XP

5. Networking features like Direct access and VPN reconnect which were not available in Windows XP but are introduced in Windows 7 also adds a point to this list of differences between Windows XP and Windows 7.

2009-06-01T03:22:00.000-07:00

Prevent Users From Writing to USB

If you have windows XP with SP2, then you can disable the writing option to USB drives. This trick is very useful if you have virus in your computer and want to copy files from a USB Drive but don’t want to transfer virus to the USB. Follow the given steps to disable the USB writing option:

To edit the computer registry, first you should log onto your computer with administrative rights.

First click on Start button and type “Regedit” in Run option.

Here locate the location to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control

Here in right side panel, click right to create a key with the name “StorageDevicePolicies”.

Now in left side panel, select “StorageDevicePolicies” key, again right click to create new DWORD value then label it “WriteProtect”. Set its value to “1″. But again to enable writing, set its values to “0″.

Now close the registry editor and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.

Internet Download Manager Trick

2009-05-30T00:16:00.000-07:00

Internet Download Manager Trick

Microsoft reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes like Windows Updates and interrogating your PC etc

You can get it back:

Click Start then Run and type "gpedit.msc" without quotes.This opens the group policy editor. Then go to:
Local Computer Policy
then Computer Configuration
then Administrative Templates then Network then QOS Packet Scheduler and then to Limit Reservable Bandwidth.
Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth. It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab i.e."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%.It works on Win 2000 as well.

How to disable program fixes and Program Compatibility Assistant warnings in Windows Vista

2009-05-29T23:49:00.000-07:00

How to disable program fixes and Program Compatibility Assistant warnings in Windows Vista

Programs may have program fixes applied to them to help them run without issues in a Windows operating system. However, you may want to disable a program fix on computers in your organization.

How to disable a program fix

To disable a program fix, use a test computer to determine the registry keys to create. You can then use these registry keys to disable the fix on other computers. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Install Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 on a test computer. To download the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=81

2. Click Start, type compatibility, right-click Compatibility Administrator in the results list, and then click Run as Administrator.
3. In the Analyze pane, expand Applications, and then click a program.
4. In the details pane, right-click the program for which you want to disable the fix, and then click Disable Entry.

Note This action creates a registry entry in the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags
The name of the entry is the GUID that represents the program entry in the Appcompat database. The entry type is DWORD, and the entry has a value of 0x77.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for all the program fixes that you want to disable.
6. Export the newly created registry entries to a .reg file. Then, deploy the .reg file to production computers.

Program Compatibility Assistant warnings
When you try to perform a silent installation or an automated installation of a program, the Program Compatibility Assistant may display a warning. Additionally, it may stop the installation. To allow for the automated installation of a program, you may want to disable this Program Compatibility Assistant warning.

How to disable a Program Compatibility Assistant warning

To disable a Program Compatibility Assistant warning, use a test computer to determine the registry keys to create. You can then use these registry keys to disable the Program Compatibility Assistant warning on other computers. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Run the affected program on a test computer.
2. When you receive the Program Compatibility Assistant warning message, click to select the Don't show this message again check box.

Note This action creates a registry entry in the following registry subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags
The name of the entry is the GUID that represents the program entry in the Appcompat database. The entry type is DWORD, and the entry has a value of 0x77.

Note The Program Compatibility Assistant warning appears only for a program that is not blocked from running.
3. Exit the program.
4. Note the registry entry that was created in step 3.
5. In the installation script, include steps to add the registry entry before the installation starts.

GOOGLE TALK SECRETS

2009-05-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

GOOGLE TALK SECRETS

HOW TO Use multiple identities on Google Talk

Want to run Google Talk with multiple Gmail identities? If you have several Google Gmail accounts you also may want to run multiple instances of Google Talk This is especially important for families that share a single PC. Nothing worse than a family member signing you out so they can sign in under their own account!
Basically, to have "Google Polygamy" you need to run Google Talk with the following switch: /nomutex
Step 1: Right-click on the desktop
Step 2: Select New
Step 3: Select Shortcut
Step 4: Paste this into the text box:
"c:\program files\google\google talk\googletalk.exe" /nomutex
Step 5: Click Next and choose a shortcut name such as Google Talk1, Google Talk2, or something related to your Gmail account for easy remembering which account is which.
Step 6: Click OK a few times.

HOW TO Use Google Talk via a Web Browser

You want to use Google Talk anywhere ? Follow these guidelines :)
Step 1: Opens your favorite web browser at the following address :
http://www.webjabber.net:8080/jim/
Step 2: Follow the instructions of the Page.
Step 3: You can talk with your friends
Google's Secret Command-Line Parameters
There are a few secret parameters you can add to Google Talk and make it function differently.
The most important, I think, is /nomutex, which allows you to run more than one instance of GT. Here are the others:
/nomutex: allows you to open more than one instance of Google Talk
/autostart: when Google Talk is run with this parameter, it will check the registry settings to see if it needs to be started or not. If the "Start automatically with Windows" option is unchecked, it won't start.
/forcestart: same as /autostart, but forces it to start no matter what option was set.
/S upgrade: Used when upgrading Google Talk
/register: registers Google Talk in the registry, includig the GMail Compose method.
/checkupdate: check for newer versions
/plaintextauth: uses plain authentication mechanism instead then Google's GAIA mechanism. Used for testing the plain method on Google's servers.
/nogaiaauth: disables GAIA authentication method. The same as above.
/factoryreset: set settings back to default.
/gaiaserver servername.com: uses a different GAIA server to connect to Google Talk. Used for debug purposes only, there are no other known GAIA servers.
/mailto email@host.com: send an email with Gmail
/diag: start Google Talk in diagnostic mode
/log: probably has something to do with the diagnostic logging
/unregister: ?
/embedding: ?
To add these, open up your GT shortcut, and where it says "Target:" add one or more of these inside the quotations, but after the .exe part.

How To do Conference Calls

What you need to do to have conference calls:

Open up a copy of Google Talk on all computers with which you wish to conference.

After one copy is opened make a new shortcut for Google Talk but at the end of it add /nomutex.

If you installed it to the default folder then your shortcut should read "C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe" /nomutex.

Open 2nd instances of the software on every user's computer.

After this start a chain: User 1 should connect on one instance to user 2. User 2 will connect on his second instance to user 3. User 3 will connect using his second instance back to user 1. With this chain everyone is connected to everyone.

Nickname & Status Message

You can't change your nickname in a way that other people will see it change. Every nickname in the Google Talk contact list is the part that is before @gmail.com (only the alphabetical characters are used) or the name you chosen for your GMail account.

To change the nickname need to go to your Gmail account and change the name there. Choose Settings, Accounts, and then Edit info. Click on the second radio button, and enter your custom name. As a result all of your emails will have that nick as well, there is no way to seperate the two. You can add a website in your custom message, it will be click-able when someone opens a conversation window with you.

Contacts

You don't need to say Yes or No when someone wants to add you as a friend; you can simply ignore it, the request will go away. (On the other hand, someone with whom you chat often will automatically turn to be your friend, unless you disable this).
The Gmail account 'user@gmail.com' can't be invited as your friend.

Play Music

It's possible to broadcast music, MP3, etc.. through Google Talk.
Unplug your microphone. Double click on the speaker icon in the lower right corner. This will open up "Volume Control". Select "Options" and then "Properties". Then check the button next to "Recording" then click OK. You may also have to change your setting under Mixer Device. Now the Recording Control screen should be up. On my computer I selected "Wave Out Mix". Click on the green phone in Google Talk and call your friend.

Keyboard Shortcuts

* Ctrl + E - It centralizes the selected text, or the current line.
* Ctrl + R - It justifies to the right the selected text, or the current line.
* Ctrl + L - It justifies to the left the selected text, or the current line.
* Ctrl + I - The same thing does that Tab.
* Tab - It is giving the area to each of the windows opened by Google Talk.
* Ctrl + Tab - The same thing does that Shift + Tab .
* Shift + Tab - The same thing does that Tab but in reverse.
* Ctrl + Shift + L -Switch between points, numbers, letters, capital letters, roman numbers and capital roman numbers
* Ctrl + 1 (KeyPad) - It does a simple space between the lines.
* Ctrl + 2 (KeyPad) - It does a double space between the lines.
* Ctrl + 5 (KeyPad) - A space does 1.5 between the lines.
* Ctrl + 1 (NumPad) - It goes at the end of the last line.
* Ctrl + 7 (NumPad) - It goes at the begin of the last line.
* Ctrl + F4 - It closes the current window.
* Alt + F4 - It closes the current window.
* Alt + Esc - It Minimize all the windows.
* Windows + ESC - Open Google Talk (if it's minimized, or in the tray)
* F9 - Open Gmail to send an email to the current contact.
* F11 - It initiates a telephonic call with your friend.
* F12 - It cancels a telephonic call.
* Esc - It closes the current window.

Command Line stuff

There are a few secret parameters you can add to Google Talk and make it function differently.
The most important, I think, is /nomutex, which allows you to run more than one instance of GT. He Talk is run with this parameter, it will check the registry settings to see if it needs to be started or not. If the "Start automatically with Windows" option is unchecked, it won't start.

/forcestart: same as /autostart, but forces it to start no matter what option was set.

/S upgrade: Used when upgrading Google Talk

/register: registers Google Talk in the registry, includig the GMail Compose method.

/checkupdate: check for newer versions

/plaintextauth: uses plain authentication mechanism instead then Google's GAIA mechanism. Used for testing the plain method on Google's servers.

/nogaiaauth: disables GAIA authentication method. The same as above.

/factoryreset: set settings back to default.

/gaiaserver servername.com: uses a different GAIA server to connect to Google Talk. Used for debug purposes only, there are no other known GAIA servers.

/mailto email@host.com: send an email with Gmail

/diag: start Google Talk in diagnostic mode

/log: probably has something to do with the diagnostic logging

/unregister: ?

/embedding: ? To add these, open up your GT shortcut, and where it says "Target:" add one or more of these inside the quotations, but after the .exe part. ere are the others:

/nomutex: allows you to open more than one instance of Google Talk

Emotions

All these emotions appears in color in a conversation :

:-|
:-O
:-x
:-P
:-D
;-)
:-(
:-)
B-)
:'(
:|
:O
:x
:P
:D
:)
:(
:)

Fix the problems almost occur after installing new software in Windows

2009-05-28T07:43:00.000-07:00

Fix the problems almost occur after installing new software in Windows

There can be many errors occur after installing a new software for a PC. However there are three common types of errors that can be appearing in any computer system because of the incompatibility or not proper installation of software. Fix Software Crashes

Mostly many of errors can be occur after installing system utilities and drivers than a normal software. Generating almost endless list of errors that can be caused by any of the below reasons.

1. Confliction of newly installed programs with exist software in the pc.
2. Issue comes with the program.
3. Improper installation or problems that can be occur within the installation.

* Reinstall or uninstall the program

Most of the times you can fix the problems that grows because of the installation errors or any other incorrect process that was occur within the installation by reinstalling the software back. It is good to uninstall the program first before begin the reinstallation.

Other than using normal windows uninstaller I almost prefer and tend to use uninstaller software like Revo and Your-uninstaller. Revo one of my preferred one as it completely free of charge and hefty for remove all remains of a program.

Note:
If after installing a program you're unable to boot into Windows, try booting into Safe Mode.

* Check for software program updates or New versions

Incompatible, old and un-upgraded versions can make affect system stability by working against the CPU instruction and so on. As these cannot be done higher impact these can be affect into certain areas only. However this can be incapacitate your overall system performances in some cases.

Obviously you should try to getting newest versions of software as developers improving and fixing bugs with the new versions. However this can cost you more if you trying to buy every new software release with upgrades and this is something which is not practically do.

But in here I’m not focusing on shareware. System drivers are the major section which always suffers with the old/incompatible versions. Hardware drivers cost you nothing as they freely published by the hardware manufactures.

So always try to get the newest versions issued by your hardware manufacturers, try to use the update driver feature in windows for search drivers automatically without paying third party products.

Send message from Computer Management Console

2009-05-28T01:55:00.000-07:00

Send message from Computer Management Console

Many times we need to send a message to users who are logged on any other remote computer, for some maintenance issues or any thing else. There are many ways for informing a user like net meeting or any other chat software but these software doesn't solve the issue completely. Why? because either the user takes these messages lightly or sometimes doesn't even try to take any message.

So their must be a proper mechanism so that the message sent to the user must flash on his screen, to let him know about any issue.

To sent this kinda warning or information messages you will need to open your computer management console

Go to Start --> Administrative Tools --> Computer Management

In Computer Management Select "Action" from the menu bar and select "All tasks" --> "Send Console Messages"

Click "Add"
Type the name of the recipient computer
Click O.K

Type your message in your message box and click send.

Windows 7 is much more than graphics

2009-05-28T01:41:00.000-07:00

Windows 7 is much more than graphics

According to me, Windows 7 the latest operating system from Microsoft will stand out to be a major performer in the desktop client operating system market. Till yet we have seen a lot of operating systems of Microsoft. We have also witnessed a lot of hype in the market about Microsoft operating systems every time a new operating system is launched. Do you remember the launch of Windows XP, the launch of Windows Vista and now of course you are witnessing the launch of Windows 7.

Being a technology enthusiast and a System Engineer I study a lot about operating systems. I don't know why everyone today is just busy blogging and telling people about Windows 7. Their are only graphics is this OS and nothing else. Don't you think so ?

If yes then you are wrong Windows 7 is much more than graphics. I don't say this because I am a big supporter of Microsoft, but yes as an engineer I will of course appreciate the effort made by Microsoft in creating this operating system. This OS is not only about graphics "Loud and Clear".

Let me give you an example, if you are a tech geek you will understand it quiet easily. Just the Technology VPN has been revived in a manner in Windows 7 operating system with the integration of Windows 2008 server that it could change the way we look at VPN. I won't speak much but in future if the word VPN is completely gone from Microsoft Operating System than it won't be a surprise for me.

Not many times we see Microsoft innovative. We know Microsoft because of the copy cat behaviour of their business. Yes Windows 7 is something which is making us , at least me to restructure the image of Microsoft in my mind. Microsoft is innovating not in some but in many technologies.

The open source lovers may find this article as something very weird and the writer a crazy person. Yes this is also a truth that how much good a paid technology could be on the other side people and companies trying to lower their cost, do go for the free versions. But as you know that Microsoft operating system dominates the client side OS, I think this time it will much easier for Microsoft.

Build blog traffic using 5 quick tips

2009-05-27T23:40:00.000-07:00

Build blog traffic using 5 quick tips

Today I want to discuss 5 quick tips to build traffic for a blog. These techniques or strategies are absolutely free to use and also provide a huge stream of traffic to your blog.

Build Blog Traffic Tip #1

Social Bookmarking - Social Bookmarking is an awesome method to increase traffic to a blog. With social bookmarking one can easily make his blog visible to others and get free traffic.This strategy works for every one, but social bookmarking must be followed as a practice and must be followed properly if you need huge amount of traffic flowing to your blog. To implement this strategy not much has to be done just implement a bookmark plug in on your blog which is available for free and that's it. If your blog already has some readership or traffic you will see your blog being bookmarked by your reader to major social bookmarking websites like digg and stumbleupon. Bookmarking of your blog to social bookmarking sites will lead to more users on these bookmarking sites to know about your blog, thus they will either bookmark you or become your blog readers in turn giving you traffic again.

Build Blog Traffic Tip #2

Blog Comments - This is a proven way to get good quality targeted traffic to your blog. Always comment on other blogs as much as possible and always comment as good as possible because blog commenting provide you more visibility(try to comment on established blogs). This visibility could be wasted if you are not commenting properly, ie whenever you comment on any blog always comment as long as possible and as much specific to the topic you can be. This will of course give your blog a lot more visibility and a lot more traffic than before.

Build Blog Traffic Tip #3

Forum Marketing - Forum marketing is a great tool to get huge blog traffic, because you find like minded people in forums who can turn into targeted traffic for your blog. So creating a good forum profile in order to get huge blog traffic is not a bad idea. The rule of writing better blog comments applies here too and always try to write something useful in forums. Writing helpful topics in a forums creates a good profile giving you good visibility and thus increasing your blog traffic. A point to be noted down here is that a forum is run by humans , so don't spam it or you will be banned or your ip will be banned, because these forum guys hardly care about web traffic.

Build Blog Traffic Tip #4

Article Marketing - Some people will agree to me that article marketing works and some don't but let me tell you that article marketing does work if done properly and can provide huge traffic to your blog. If you are ignoring article marketing to get blog traffic then let me tell you that these article sites have a very high page rank in google and of course which your blog needs. Writing an effective article in these article directories can get your article and blog to the first page of google without much effort thus indirectly giving your blog some traffic.

Build Blog Traffic Tip #5

YouTube Marketing - Really effective method to get huge traffic to the blog but doesn't works for everyone. Uploading Videos on YouTube and sharing it with the world can get you a huge traffic if any of your video get a lot of hits. One really needs to know some good marketing strategy before going for YouTube marketing because many people who try never get more than 100 views annually. Some blogs who deal in categories like movies or TV show this marketing strategy to get blog traffic is a must, other must also try it but not make it the main stream marketing strategy for building traffic for your blog.

“Your system is low on virtual memory” error message

2009-05-27T06:56:00.000-07:00

“Your system is low on virtual memory” error message

How to fix “Your system is low on virtual memory” error message

The solution to “Your system is low on virtual memory” error message is very simple only what one need to do is to increase the systems virtual memory or pagefile. This can be done by following simple steps by step by step procedure given below.

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. In the System Properties dialog box, click Advanced
3. Click Performance Options.
4. In the Virtual memory pane, click Change to increase the paging file.
5. After you change the setting, click Set, and then click OK.
6.
The changes you have made require you to restart your computer before they can take effect.
7. When you are prompted to restart your computer, click Yes.

SPEEDING XP BY 60 TIMES

2009-05-27T05:24:00.000-07:00

SPEEDING XP BY 60 TIMES

Speed up Booting Xp by 61 Times

run -> msconfig - Hit Enter

Awesome tricks Explained here for u Free! : Rahul Dutt Avasthy

Whenever you start your computer, you are faced with a few moments of thumb twiddling while Windows XP boots and prompts you to log on. Although you should expect to wait for a few moments, sometimes Windows XP seems to boot rather slowly. In fact, you may notice that over a period of time the PC that used to roar to life seems a bit sluggish instead. Fortunately, you can perform several techniques that help Windows XP get the bootup speed you want. This Article explores how to put these techniques to work.

Stopping Unneeded Startup Services !

Along with the core operating system and programs that Windows XP runs when it starts, there is also a host of services involved. Many of these services are necessary for Windows XP to operate correctly. However, many of them are for features in Windows XP that you may not use at all. You can peruse the services and disable any service that you do not want to run. The fewer services that run, the more quickly Windows XP will boot.

Caution:

Exercise caution when stopping services. If you do not know what a service does or are unsure of the ramifications of stopping the service, leave it alone. Some services are critical to Windows XP's operations, so make sure you understand what the service is before you disable it.

To reduce the number of services that start on bootup, you can access two different areas of Windows XP. The first is the System Configuration Utility. The Services tab shows you the services that start when the computer boots.
You can stop a service from starting by simply clearing the check box next to the service and clicking OK. However, before you do so, there is another way to disable services that you may prefer because the interface gives you more information about the service in question.

Open Control Panel/Administrative ToolsServices or else select Start/Run, type services.msc, and click OK. Either way, you see the Services console.
I prefer to use the Services console instead of the System Configuration Utility because it describes what the service does. Additionally, you can double-click a service and examine its properties.

Notice the Startup Type column in Figure 4-2. This information lists whether the service is automatic or manual. Manual services are only started in Windows XP when you start a process that requires the service. Some other process may require the service that has a "dependency" relationship with it; in this case, the dependency service will start, as well. Because these services do not start automatically when you boot Windows XP, you do not need to do anything with manual services.

However, all services listed as automatic start when Windows XP boots. These are the services that increase boot time. As I have mentioned, many of them are necessary and important, so you should not stop automatic services from booting unless you are sure of the ramifications. You can get this information by looking at the Description column. Here's a quick look at common services you may want to live without:

SPEED UP BOOT BY DISABLING UNUSED PORTS.!!

You may have tried many tweaks like modifying windowsXP start-up applications, prefetches, unload DLLs method,etc. And yes those methods do work for me.
I have just accidentally found out another way to give you an extra boost in windowsXP's boot performance. This is done by disabling your unused devices in
Device Manager. for example, if you don't have input devices that are connected to one of your USBs or COM ports, disabling them will give you an extra perfromance boost in booting. Go to Control Panel -> System -> Hardware tab -> device manager Disable devices that you don't use for your PC and then restart.

Do Dis !!

1.Start Registry Editor (Regedit.exe).

2.Locate the following key in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement\PrefetchParameters

3.Make sure you backup the keys by exporting them to a .reg file.

4.On the EnablePrefetcher value, change the setting from 3 to 5 (decimal).

5.Close the registry editor.

6.Restart your computer

Automatic Updates !

This service enables Windows XP to check the Web automatically for updates. If you don't want to use Automatic Updates, you can disable the service. You can always check for updates manually at the Windows Update Web site.

Computer Browser: If your computer is not on a network, you don't need this service. If you are on a network, leave it alone.

DHCP Client: If you are not on a network, you do not need this service. If you are on a small workgroup, you can still increase boot time by configuring manual IP addresses (which I explore later in this chapter).

DNS Client: If you are not on a network, you do not need this service. If you are, leave it alone.

Error Reporting and Event Log: You don't have to use these services but they can be very helpful, so I would leave them configured as automatic.

Fax: If you don't use your computer for fax services, you can disable this one.

Help and Support: If you never use the Windows XP Help and Support Center (found on the Start menu), you can disable this service.

IMAPI CD-Burning COM: This service enables you to burn CDs on your computer. If you never burn CDs, you can disable the service.

Indexing Service: Your computer keeps an index of files but if you rarely search for files, the service is just a resource hog. You can stop it and turn the service to manual.

Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing: If you do not use these features, you can disable them.

Infrared Monitor: If you do not use infrared devices, you can disable this service.

Messenger: This service sends alert messages on a local area network (it is not the same as Windows Messenger). If you are not on a network, you can disable this service.

Print Spooler: If you do not do any printing from the computer, you can disable this service. If you print, make sure you leave it as automatic.

Remote Registry: This service allows remote users to modify the Registry on your computer. If you are not on a network, you can disable this service.

System Restore Service: This service allows you to use System Restore. If you have turned off System Restore anyway, you do not need to turn off the service. If you do, you turn off System Restore.

Themes: If you do not use themes, you can disable this service.

Windows Image Acquisition: If you do not use scanners or digital cameras, you can disable this service.

Wireless Zero Configuration: If do not use wireless networking devices, you can disable this service.

You may have a number of other automatic services, depending on software and other configurations on your computer. So it's a good idea to look through the services and learn more about them. If you double-click a service, a Properties dialog box appears
Notice that on the General tab, you see a Startup Type drop-down menu. If you want to change an automatic service to manual, select Manual here and click OK. As a general rule, don't disable a service unless you are sure you will never use it. However, manual configuration allows the service to be started when you find it necessary, thus speeding up your boot time.
However, before you change a service to manual, look at the Dependencies tab (see Figure 4-4). This tab shows you which other services depend upon the service you are considering changing.
Keep in mind that services are necessary for the vast functionality you get with Windows XP. Change only those services that you understand and do not use. How you use your Windows XP computer should be the best guide in terms of optional startup services.

Tip !

The Indexing service and the System Restore service take up a lot of disk space and system resources across the board. You can live without the Indexing service but I suggest that you keep using System Restore. It works great when you are in a bind and this is one case where the loss of speed may not be worth the ramifications of not using System Restore.

Speed Tips and Tricks for Windows XP Startup
Aside from startup programs, services, and the Prefetch folder, there are a number of other startup procedures and issues you can modify to help Windows XP start faster. The following sections explore those tips and tricks.

Manual IP Addressing on Small Office/Home Networks
Windows XP is configured to help you take care of networking. It uses the TCP/IP protocol for networking in workgroups, or what you might call small office or home networks that do not use a dedicated server.

The problem is that automatic IP addressing can be slow. When your computer boots, it has to query the network to see what IP addresses are already in use and then assign itself one. If you want to speed up the boot time a bit, consider manually assigning IP addresses to all computers on the network. This way, the network computers do not have to worry about locating an automatic IP address. Because one is manually configured, the operating system doesn't have to spend time solving this problem.

This isn't a networking book, however, so I won't delve into the implications of using a manual IP address, but if you are using a computer that functions as a host computer to the Internet (using Internet Connection Sharing [ICS]), you can get into connectivity problems if you change the configuration of the IP address. However, you can still work around this problem by starting with the ICS host computer.

Select Start/Connect To/Show All Connections. Right-click your network adapter card and click Properties. On the General tab, select TCP/IP in the list of services and click the Properties button.

In the TCP/IP properties, you can see if you use an automatic or manual IP address. In the example in Figure 4-5, I have configured a manual IP address of 90.0.0.1 and a default subnet mask. The other computers on my office network each use a different IP address in the same class, such as 90.0.0.2, 90.0.0.3, 90.0.0.4, and so on. This way, each computer has a permanent IP address, which helps increase boot time. Note that if you change the IP addresses of your computers, they must all use the same subnet mask. A default subject mask of 255.255.255.0 will keep you in good shape.

Make sure you understand the implications of changing IP addresses on your network. If you have no networking experience at all, you may be wiser to leave the automatic IP addressing as is and try to gain some speed using the additional suggestions in this chapter.

Disabling Recent Documents History !

Windows XP includes a feature that keeps track of all recent documents you have opened or used. The idea is that you can select Start/Recent Documents History and quickly reopen any document you have recently used. I use many documents each day and never use the feature myself. In my opinion, I can keep up with what I want to use without Windows XP doing it for me.
The bad thing about Recent Documents History is that Windows XP has to calculate what should be put there each time you boot Windows, which can slow things down. So, if you never use the Recent Documents History, it's a good idea to disable it. Here's how:
1. Open the Registry Editor (select Start/Run, type regedit, and click OK).
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mcft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
3. Create a NoRecentDocsHistory D_WORD key. Double-click the value to open it once it is created.
4. Set the Data Value to 1 to enable the restriction.
5. Click OK and close the Registry Editor. You'll need to restart the computer for the change to take effect.

Disabling the Boot Logo !

You can remove the boot logo that appears when you start Windows XP. This little tweak probably shaves only a few seconds off your boot time but seconds count if you are serious about trying to get Windows XP up and running as quickly as possible. The only negative is that if you remove the boot logo, you will also not see any boot messages, such as check disk. (But if you are not having problems with your computer, this isn't such a big deal.)
To remove the boot logo, follow these steps:
1. Select Start/Run, type msconfig, and click OK.
2. In the System Configuration Utility, click the BOOT.INI tab.
3. On the BOOT.INI tab, click the NOGUIBOOT check box option. Click OK.

Removing Unwanted Fonts !

One trick that increases your boot time a bit is to lose any fonts in the Fonts folder in Control Panel that you never use. The more fonts you have, the more processing Windows XP has to do to prep all of those fonts for use. You must be a bit careful here to not remove fonts that you might want, but there is a good chance that you can live without many of them. For instance, you may have foreign language fonts and other symbol fonts (such as Wingdings) that you never use.
To delete unneeded fonts, follow these steps:
1. Open the Fonts folder in Control Panel.
2. Select Edit/Select All and then Edit/Copy.
3. Create a new folder on your desktop, open it, and select Edit/Paste.
4. In this new folder, delete any of the fonts you do not want.
5. Return to the Fonts folder in Control Panel. Right-click the selected fonts and click Delete.
6. Go back to your new desktop folder and click Edit/Select All.
7. Return to your Fonts folder and click Edit/Paste. You now have only the desired fonts in the Fonts folder.

Tip:

You can directly delete fonts from the Fonts folder without creating the secondary folder. However, I recommend the preceding steps to help ensure that you do not make a mistake in the deletion process.

Stopping Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop Sharing !

In Windows XP Professional, you have two remote networking features called Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop Sharing. These remote networking features are very helpful in a variety of situations but if you don't use them, it is good idea to disable them to save boot time. You can always enable them later if you want to use them.
Note:
If you are interested in using Remote Desktop or Remote Assistance, see my book Windows XP for Power Users: Power Pack published by John Wiley & Sons.
1. Open the Start menu, right-click My Computer, and choose Properties.
2. Click the Remote Tab.
3. Clear both check boxes to disable Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop.

Speeding Up the Dual-Boot Timeout !

If you dual-boot your computer with Windows XP and another operating system, you see an operating system selection menu on startup. If you typically boot into Windows XP and not the other operating system, you can speed up the dual-boot timeout value so that you do not wait so long for the boot process to select your default operating system and continue with the boot process. The default timeout value is 30 seconds but you can change this setting to 10. This gives you enough time to select the alternate operating system if you want but also speeds up the boot process. You can skip this section if you do not use a dual-boot configuration.
Follow these steps:
1. Locate the boot.ini file on your computer. It is a hidden file by default; mine is located in C:\boot.ini.
2. Open the file with Notepad (which is what opens it by default).
3. Change the Timeout value to 10 (see Figure 4-11).
4. Select File/Save and close Notepad.

Speeding Up Your PPPoE Connection !

If you use a Point-to-Point Protocol connection over Ethernet (PPPoE), you may notice a delay in using the PPPoE connection after startup. By default, there is a 120 second delay but you can stop this behavior by manually configuring an IP address for the network adapter card. If you do not use a PPPoE connection, you can skip this section.
1. Select Start/Connect to/Show All Connections.
2. Open the TCP/IP properties for your LAN network interface card.
3. Manually set the IP address on the TCP/IP properties to an appropriate IP address and subnet mask for your network.

Reducing the Wait Time

When you start to shut down Windows XP, it has to quit, or "kill," any live applications or processes that are currently running. So close all applications first. However, some applications and processes are always running in the background. You can reduce the amount of time that Windows XP waits for those applications and processes to close before Windows XP kills them. Edit three different Registry settings to change this:
1. Open the Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Select WaitToKillAppTimeout and set the value to 1000.
3. Select the HungAppTimeout value and set it to 1000 as well.
4. Navigate to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop. Set the WaitToKillAppTimeout and set the value to 1000. Select the HungAppTimeout \newline value and set it to 1000 as well.
5. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control. Select the WaitToKillServiceTimeout value and set it to 1000.
6. Close the Registry Editor.

Automatically Killing Tasks on Shutdown !

You know the drill. You start to shut down the computer, you wait a few moments, and then you see a dialog box asking if you want to kill an application or service that is running. Instead of prompting you, you can make Windows XP take care of the kill task automatically. Here's how:
1. Open the Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop.
3. Highlight the value AutoEndTasks and change the value to 1.
4. Close the Registry Editor.

More

Here's a great tip to speed up your browsing of Windows XP machines. Its actually a fix to a bug installed as default in Windows 2000 that scans shared files for Scheduled Tasks. And it turns out that you can experience a delay as long as 30 seconds when you try to view shared files across a network because Windows 2000 is using the extra time to search the remote computer for any Scheduled Tasks. Note that though the fix is originally intended for only those affected, Windows 2000 users will experience that the actual browsing speed of both the Internet & Windows Explorers improve significantly after applying it since it doesn't search for Scheduled Tasks anymore. Here's how :

Open up the Registry and go to : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace Under that branch, select the key : {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF} and delete it. This is key that instructs Windows to search for Scheduled Tasks. If you like you may want to export the exact branch so that you can restore the key if necessary. This fix is so effective that it doesn't require a reboot and you can almost immediately determine yourself how much it speeds up your browsing processes.

|| 3000 JavaScript || Must See ||

2009-05-27T02:37:00.000-07:00

|| 3000 JavaScript || Must See ||

Welcome to javascript Source Code 3000. With almost 800 ready-to-use Java Scripts that you can cut & paste into your own web pages, this package is the largest collection of javascripts available anywhere!

All of the scripts have been organized by category so you can find what you need quickly. Even so, we invite you to browse through all of the categories so you get a feel for what is available. You may find some useful scripts you didn�t even know existed or pickup some ideas for your own projects! Happy scripting!

|| 3000 JavaScript || Must See || | 6 Mb
Download link:-

http://rapidshare.com/files/237728784/3000_Javascript_Soft-tricks.rar

How To Reinstall Windows Without Losing Anything.

2009-05-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

How To Reinstall Windows Without Losing Anything.

Here Is Another Possible Solution:easy way and tested:

1- Start WindowsXP
2- Go to the location of your source files
3- Run WINNT32 /unattend
For example, D:\I386\winnt32 /unattend ( copy & paste this command into the RUN box, then press ENTER ) Your computer will do the rest.
Or,
Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt.

Copy & paste > D:\I386\winnt32 /unattend
Press Enter.
If you have i386 on your drive, you can replace D: ( if D: is your cd drive ) with the location of it.
I've often need to do this to repair something that had gotten corrupted and didn't want to do a clean install.

D: is the driver letter where your windows XP Cd is
if D:\I386\winnt32 /unattend doesn't work then try : d:\winnt32 /unattend.

How to Speed up Your Applications Without Using Any Software

2009-05-26T08:22:00.000-07:00

How to Speed up Your Applications Without Using Any Software!!!

This is what you need to do:

Click on: Start Menu
Go To: Run
Type: Regedit

Look For the Keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MECHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentConrolSet\Control \Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
Now Look For The DWORD KEY : ENABLEPREFETCHERA
Its Default Value Is: 3
Change The Value To: 6

Now Close The Registery Editor And Restart Your Computer
Note: If u Change its Value to 1 It'll b verry Slow

Maximum Speed from Torrents.

2009-05-26T08:03:00.001-07:00

Maximum Speed from Torrents.

The download speed mostly
depends on the seeder-to-leecher ratio (SLR). Poor download speed is
mainly a problem with new and very popular torrents where the SLR is
low.

(Proselytising sidenote: make sure you remember that you did not enjoy the low speed. Seed so that others will not endure the same.)

There are a couple of things that you can try on your end to improve your speed:

Do not immediately jump on new torrents

In
particular, do not do it if you have a slow connection. The best speeds
will be found around the half-life of a torrent, when the SLR will be
at its highest. (The downside is that you will not be able to seed so
much. It's up to you to balance the pros and cons of this.)

Limit your upload speed

The upload speed affects the download speed in essentially two ways:

* Bittorrent peers tend to favour those other peers that upload to
them. This means that if A and B are leeching the same torrent and A is
sending data to B at high speed then B will try to reciprocate. So due
to this effect high upload speeds lead to high download speeds.
*
Due to the way TCP works, when A is downloading something from B it has
to keep telling B that it received the data sent to him. (These are
called acknowledgements - ACKs -, a sort of "got it!" messages). If A
fails to do this then B will stop sending data and wait. If A is
uploading at full speed there may be no bandwidth left for the ACKs and
they will be delayed. So due to this effect excessively high upload
speeds lead to low download speeds.

The full effect is a
combination of the two. The upload should be kept as high as possible
while allowing the ACKs to get through without delay. A good thumb rule is keeping the upload at about 80% of the theoretical upload speed.
You will have to fine tune yours to find out what works best for you.
(Remember that keeping the upload high has the additional benefit of
helping with your ratio.)

If you are running more than one
instance of a client it is the overall upload speed that you must take
into account. Some clients (e.g. Azureus) limit global upload speed,
others (e.g. Shad0w's) do it on a per torrent basis. Know your client.
The same applies if you are using your connection for anything else
(e.g. browsing or ftp), always think of the overall upload speed.

Limit the number of simultaneous connections
Some
operating systems (like Windows 9x) do not deal well with a large
number of connections, and may even crash. Also some home routers
(particularly when running NAT and/or firewall with stateful inspection
services) tend to become slow or crash when having to deal with too
many connections. There are no fixed values for this, you may try 60 or
100 and experiment with the value. Note that these numbers are
additive, if you have two instances of a client running the numbers add
up.

Limit the number of simultaneous uploads

Isn't
this the same as above? No. Connections limit the number of peers your
client is talking to and/or downloading from. Uploads limit the number
of peers your client is actually uploading to. The ideal number is
typically much lower than the number of connections, and highly
dependent on your (physical) connection.

Just give it some time

As
explained above peers favour other peers that upload to them. When you
start leeching a new torrent you have nothing to offer to other peers
and they will tend to ignore you. This makes the starts slow, in
particular if, by change, the peers you are connected to include few or
no seeders. The download speed should increase as soon as you have some
pieces to share.

Why is my browsing so slow while leeching?

Your
download speed is always finite. If you are a peer in a fast torrent it
will almost certainly saturate your download bandwidth, and your
browsing will suffer. At the moment there is no client that allows you
to limit the download speed, only the upload. You will have to use a
third-party solution, such as NetLimiter.

Browsing was used just as an example, the same would apply to gaming, IMing, etc...

Last But Not Least
Buy Good Internet Package Which Gives You Rockingg Speed

How To Share Internet Connection in XP Without Wireless Router.

2009-05-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

How To Share Internet Connection in XP Without Wireless Router.

Let’s say you have a laptop that is equipped with both ethernet(wired) and wireless network adapter and it is connected directly to the Internet using an ADSL modem. Now your younger brother also bought a new laptop and wants to use the Internet. Instead of spending money in buying a wireless broadband router, you can save up the money and share the Internet from your laptop using the built-in wireless network adapter.

If you have a desktop computer that don’t have built-in wireless adapter, you can buy a USB wireless adapter for less than US$10 and it is so much cheaper compared to a router. Here’s how to share Internet connection from your laptop or desktop that is equipped with wireless adapter.

First we’ll need to setup the HOST computer. HOST means the computer that is directly connected to the Internet via ADSL modem and it will be the one that is sharing the Internet connection. Go to Control Panel > Network Connections, you should see a Local Area Connection, Wireless Network Connection and a connection dailer (I use Streamyx). In detailed view mode, it shows a lot of useful information regarding your connections.

Below are the steps to configure the HOST computer:

Code:

1. Right click the connection which you use to connect to the Internet and select Properties. Go to Advanced tab and check “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection”
2. Click the drop down menu and select “Wireless Network Connection“. Click OK.
3. Go back to Network Connections, right click Wireless Network Connection and select Properties.
4. Go to Wireless Networks tab.
5. Click Advanced button, select Computer-to-computer (ad hoc) networks only, and make sure that Automatically connect to non-preferred networks is UNCHECK. Close it.
6. Click Add button and Wireless network properties Window will appear. Enter any Network name (SSID), and change Data encryption to Disabled. You can change it to WEP when everything is working fine.
7. Right click at the wireless adapter icon from system tray and select “View Available Wireless Networks“. Select the Network name (SSID) that you entered at step 6 and click Connect.

The HOST configuration is done. From what I read on most guide, step 7 above is not necessary but don’t know why if I don’t do that, the CLIENT won’t see the HOST in the wireless network list.

Next, we’ll need to configure the client computer now which is very simple. CLIENT computer means the laptop or desktop that will be connecting to the HOST computer.

1. Right click tray wireless adapter icon from system tray, and select “View Available Wireless Networks”. Select the HOST computer and click Connect.

Increase Net Speed by 50%

2009-05-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

Increase Net Speed by 50%!!.

Follow the steps:-
Go to Desktop->My computer-(right click on)->Properties->then go HARDWARE tab->Device manager-> Now you see a window of Device manager.
Then go to Ports->Communication Port(double click on it and Open).
After open you can see a Communication Port properties.

Go the Port Setting:----
And now increase ur "Bits per second" to 128000.
And "Flow control" change 2 Hardware.

Apply n Restart ..
See the Result Yourself .

How To Make FIREFOX browser run at full speed

2009-05-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

How To Make FIREFOX browser run at full speed

Firefox 1.5 and above, including Firefox 2.0.x limits the amount of time that a script or Javascript took to run and complete.

Whenever a web page takes too long to load, an error will pop up with the following message:

Warning : Unresponsive script
A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding.

You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.
Firefox Unresponsive Script

Users have two option buttons namely Stop Script or Continue.

Pressing Continue will likely to make the Firefox browser to remain sluggish or not responding, while Stop Script will inevitably cause part of the website depends on script not functioning properly, such as Java script menu, auto refresh or update of streaming live contents.
If you click on Continue, and yet script is still hanging, you will keep getting the Unresponsive Script error dialog again and again once the the preset maximum script running time hit, which is default to 5 seconds in Firefox 1.5 and 10 seconds in Firefox 2.

To get rid of the annoying Unresponsive Script error dialog and fix the behavior of script that takes long execution time in Firefox, we can longer the waiting time for script to run before Firefox intercept it with warning.

1.Run Firefox.

2. In the Firefox address bar, type about:config, and then press Enter.

3. Scroll and locate or search with Filter text box for dom.max_script_run_time.

4. Double click on the line of dom.max_script_run_time, and change the value to a higher number (in seconds) that you want Firefox to wait before getting the Unresponsive Script warning.

Be default, the value is 5 or 10 seconds. You can safely set the magical number to let’s say 20. You can set the value to 0 to instruct Firefox to wait foever - no warning and dialog whatsoever.

Note that the whole Firefox may be not responsive and cannot be used while waiting for scripts to execute, so the number should not set too high in order to give you an opportunity to stop truly nasty or buggy scripts and recover use of Firefox.

5. Click OK.
6. Restart Firefox.

Winxp System Response, reboot whitout rebooting

2009-05-26T07:00:00.001-07:00

Winxp System Response, reboot whitout rebooting

Have you ever been using your computer and your system sudddenly stops responding in ways like it if you try to open something it just hangs? One time I tried deleting a folder and it said it was in use, but it really wasn't. If this ever happens to you, you can follow these simple steps to 'reboot' your computer without 'rebooting' it.

Press CRTL + ALT + DEL

Goto the 'processes' tab and click explorer.exe once and then click 'end process'.

Now, click File > New Task and type explorer.exe

Everything should be fine now! If the problem is major, I would recomend actually shutting down then starting up again

Make ur own security Tool

2009-05-26T02:32:00.000-07:00

Make ur own security Tool

So you have read tons of tutorials , guides , FAQ's and you have some kind of image of what computer security is ... The next logical step that you should make is to start learning a programming language . I'm not going to describe each language ( its advantages and disadvantages ) because there are tons of paper that cover that ... Instead i will focus on just one language : Perl ( Practical Extraction and Reporting Language ) .
This language was written for manipulating text , but it has become one of the best languages available to programmers . You can write games , web applications , about everything you can think of . I wanna show you just how easy it is to write some security tools using Perl .

I'm going to start with a port scanner ... for those of you that don't know what a port scanner is , here is a little definition : a port scanner is a program that checks if a certain port is open ( by connecting to it ).

I.The port scanner

# scanner.pl
use strict;
use warnings;
use IO::Socket;
$|++;
my($host,$a,$b)=@ARGV;
map { my $s=IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr=>$host,PeerPort=>$_);
print "$_ - open\n" if $s } ($a..$b);

That my friends is a very simple port scanner ! You can run it from your command line ( command prompt in windows or konsole in linux ) like this :

perl scanner.pl host_to_scan starting_port ending_port

II.The brute forcer

Perhaps you gained access to some computers , or you're just testing a password to see how strong it is . One of the most used encryption method is the md5 algorithm ( it's also the one used by the Linux/Unix/BSD Operating System ).
The md5 hash ( that's the name a password gets after it's being encrypted ) cannot be transformed back to its corresponding word . Let me give you an example : the word "security" after its md5 encryption will become the hash e91e6348157868de9dd8b25c81aebfb9 . Let's say you have the hash and you find out what word it is ... you would have to find a way to decrypt it , which isn't possible because md5 cannot be decrypted ... So that leaves you with the question : so how can i find out what word does a hash represent ? Well , since you can't decrypt it , why not try encrypting words and see if the resulting hash matches the hash we're trying to crack ?
Here's the perl code that does that :

# brute.pl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Digest::MD5 qw(md5_hex);
my $hash=shift || die "Give me a hash to crack\n";
my $file=shift || die "Give me a dictionary file\n";
open(F,$file) || die "can't open the file\n";
while()
{
print "Processing $_";
chomp($_);
my $t=md5_hex($_);
print " $t\n";
die "Found it -> $_\n" if($t eq $hash);
}

Here's how you run it :

perl brute.pl md5_hash_to_crack text_file

So you would have to supply it with an md5 hash and a dictionary file ( that has words in it , one per line ) . The script will read each of the words , encrypt it and check if the hash matches the hash we're trying to crack . If it does , we found the word !

This concludes the first part of building your own security tools . Next time we'll talk about creating a bot and keeping track of your filesystem.

Enjoyable browsing tips

2009-05-26T01:44:00.000-07:00

Enjoyable browsing tips

If you feel uneasy internet browsing for some times, these are several tips to make your Internet browsing easier yet faster and efficient :

Bookmark web addresses you most visited.
Some adresses we visited more often everyday, keep them in your bookmark will save more time. You can even make them as your browser start page so they will open everytime you start your browser
Opera : Tools -> Preferences -> General ,type homepage
IE : Tools -> Internet options -> General -> Homepage, type several homepage
Firefox : Tools-> Option -> Main , type homepage

Save password for your account.
Checking emails and other account need you to enter your password, if you had more than one account(ie. email account, forum account, works account, etc) some time its frustrating. Do this tips only if you are the one who use the computer, otherwise anyone can use your account. To do this, click yes if your browser offer to remember your pasword

Find TEXT in a Page.
Long HTML pages can be scanned for keywords by pressing the Ctrl+'F' Keys and entering the text you look for. This is a real time saver when researching specific topics or looking for place or business names.

Reading TEXT clearly.
Reading text on a long pages might make your eyes exhausted and unfocus. To keep you stay focus on a part of page you can click and hold the text, so the text will be highlited and you will find a contrast text easy to read

Quick type url address.
Typing www. ......... .com is not efficient in time, you can just type the address and press ctrl+enter. then the www. ... .com will appear appropriately

Fast Navigations.

Did you know that within any browser, by clicking on mouse's RIGHT button, you will be noticed with "back", "forward", "reload", and "stop"?

This quick tip will save mouse from becoming very exhausted going up to top left hand corner back and forth all the time!

How Google search engine works

2009-05-26T00:59:00.000-07:00

How Google search engine works ?

Did you ever worder that google crawls and consider more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms in every search and return your search result in less than half a second

" From the beginning, our developers recognized that providing the fastest, most accurate results required a new kind of server setup. Whereas most search engines ran off a handful of large servers that often slowed under peak loads, ours employed linked PCs to quickly find each query's answer. The innovation paid off in faster response times, greater scalability and lower costs. It's an idea that others have since copied, while we have continued to refine our back-end technology to make it even more efficient ".

The software behind our search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, we're able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.

*

PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.
*

Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.

Our innovations don't stop at the desktop. To give people access to the information they need, whenever and wherever they need it, we continue to develop new mobile applications and services that are more accessible and customizable. And we're partnering with industry-leading carriers and device manufacturers to deliver these innovative services globally. We're working with many of these industry leaders through the Open Handset Alliance to develop Android, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform, which will offer people a less expensive and better mobile experience.

Make Firefox 3 Faster

2009-05-25T23:20:00.000-07:00

Make Firefox 3 Faster

Firefox 3 as we all know is now super quick at loading pages. But there is always room ofr improvement and best of all since Firefox is open source software there is a lot of ways that you can mod the app.

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit enter. You will get a warning about changing settings but we are not doing anything too radical so it is OK. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 8. This means it will make 8 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

Clearing History and Temporary Internet Files

2009-05-23T07:38:00.000-07:00

Clearing History and Temporary Internet Files

When you are browsing the internet, the Internet browser cached some file on the system as temporary files for later use. Your co-workers, family members can trace your activates on the internet with clicking of toolbar history button or with simply press Ctrl+H.

Also, if your are using internet at any public place like internet cafe then you should clear your temporary file history to safe yourself from cyber crimes.

To delete cookies, history and other temporary files, follow these steps:

*
Open your Internet Explorer
.
*
Click on Tools Menu then go to Internet Options. Here in General tab you will find the Delete Cookies and Delete files tab in the center of the screen.
*
First click on Delete Cookies option to delete all the cookies in the temporary files folder and then click on Delete files option to delete all the offline temporary files.
*
Now click on the Clear History button to clear your recently visited sites. You can set days to keep pages in history here.
*
Click on Ok button to save your changes

Everything You wanted to know about FIREWALLS

2009-05-23T06:26:00.000-07:00

Everything You wanted to know about FIREWALLS..!

A firewall is basically something that protects the network from the Internet. It is derived from the concept of firewalls used in vehicles which is a barrier made of fire resistant material protecting the vehicle in case of fire. Anyway a firewall is best described as a software or hardware or both Hardware and Software packet filter that allows only selected packets to pass through from the Internet to your private internal network. A firewall is a system or a group of systems which guard a trusted network( The Internal Private Network from the untrusted network (the Internet.) To understand how a firewall works, firstly we need to understand how exactly data is transferred on the Internet.

The TCP\IP suite is responsible for successful transfer of data across a network both the Internet and the Intranet. The TCP\IP suite is a collection of protocols which are inter-related and interdependent and act as a set of rules according to which data is transferred across the network. A protocol can be defined as a language or a standard which is followed while transfer of data takes place.

A firewall relies on the source and destination IP and also the ports to control the packet transfer between the untrusted network and the trusted network. Firewalls can be classified into 3 types:

1. Packet Filter Firewalls
2. Application proxy Firewalls
3. Packet Inspection Firewalls

Packet Filter Firewalls
They are the earliest and the most criticized firewalls, which nowadays are not easily found. They are usually Hardware based i.e. Router Based (a router is a piece of device which connects two
networks together.) Whenever a Packet Filter Firewall receives a packet for permission to pass through, it compares the header information i.e. the source and destination IP address, and port number with a table of predefined access control rules If the header information matches, then the packet is allowed to pass else the packet is direct contact between the untrusted system and the trusted private system.
Such Firewalls can be fooled by using techniques like IP Spoofing in which we can change the source IP such that the firewall thinks that the packet has come from a trusted system which is among the list of systems which have access through the firewall.

Application proxy Firewalls
The shortcomings of the packet filter firewalls are addressed by the new type of firewalls developed by the DARPA. It was widely believed that the earlier type of firewalls were not secure enough as they allowed the untrusted systems to have a direct connection with the trusted systems. This problem was solved with the use of Proxy servers as firewalls. A proxy server which is used as a firewall are called application proxy servers. This kind of a proxy firewall examines what application or service (running on ports) a packet is meant for and if that particular service is available only then is the packet allowed to pass through and if the service is unavailable then the packet is discarded or dropped by the firewall.

Packet Inspection Firewalls
It can be also known as an extension of the Packet Filter Firewall. It not only verifies the source and
destination IP's and ports, it also takes into consideration or verifies that content of the data before passing it through. There are two ways in which this kind of a firewall verifies the data to
be passed:
State and Session.
In case of state inspection, an incoming packet is allowed to pass through only if there is a matching outward bound request for this packet. This means that the incoming packet is allowed to pass through only if the trusted server had requested for it or had sent an invitation for it.
In case of session filtering, the data of the incoming is not verified, but instead the network activity is traced and once a trusted system ends the session, no further packets from that system pertaining to that session are allowed to pass through.

All along you will come across many Firewalls on various systems, basically a
firewall can be established
or setup in two ways:

1. Dual-homed gateway
2. Demilitarized zone (DMZ)

In a dual homed gateway firewall, there is a single firewall with 2 connections, one for the trusted network and the other for the untrusted network.
In the case of a Demilitarized Firewall or a DMZ there are two firewalls, each with two connections, but there is a slight difference in the case of a DMZ setup.
In the case of a DMZ setup, there are two firewalls, the first having two connections, one leading to the untrusted network and the other leading to the host systems like the email server or the FTP server etc.
In the case of a Dual Homed Gateway the untrusted network is connected to the host systems (email and FTP servers etc) through a firewall and these host systems are connected to the internal private network. There is no second firewall between the host systems and the internal
private trusted network.
The basic structure of the DMZ setup declares it to be a more secure system as even if an attacker gets through the first firewall, he just reaches the host systems, while the internal network is protected by another firewall.

Usefull MS-DOS Commands For Easy Use

2009-05-23T05:30:00.000-07:00

Usefull MS-DOS Commands For Easy Use

very commonly used commands in dos are listed here with a brief description

md

Creates a directory.

MKDIR [drive:]path
MD [drive:]path

If Command Extensions are enabled MKDIR changes as follows:

MKDIR creates any intermediate directories in the path, if needed.
For example, assume \a does not exist then:

mkdir \a\b\c\d

is the same as:

mkdir \a
chdir \a
mkdir b
chdir b
mkdir c
chdir c
mkdir d

which is what you would have to type if extensions were disabled.

cd

Displays the name of or changes the current directory.

CHDIR [/D] [drive:][path]
CHDIR [..]
CD [/D] [drive:][path]
CD [..]

.. Specifies that you want to change to the parent directory.

Type CD drive: to display the current directory in the specified drive.
Type CD without parameters to display the current drive and directory.

Use the /D switch to change current drive in addition to changing current
directory for a drive.

If Command Extensions are enabled CHDIR changes as follows:

The current directory string is converted to use the same case as
the on disk names. So CD C:\TEMP would actually set the current
directory to C:\Temp if that is the case on disk.

CHDIR command does not treat spaces as delimiters, so it is possible to
CD into a subdirectory name that contains a space without surrounding
the name with quotes. For example:

cd \winnt\profiles\username\programs\start menu

is the same as:

cd "\winnt\profiles\username\programs\start menu"

which is what you would have to type if extensions were disabled.

rd

Removes (deletes) a directory.

RMDIR [/S] [/Q] [drive:]path
RD [/S] [/Q] [drive:]path

/S Removes all directories and files in the specified directory
in addition to the directory itself. Used to remove a directory
tree.

/Q Quiet mode, do not ask if ok to remove a directory tree with /S

dir

Displays a list of files and subdirectories in a directory.

DIR [drive:][path][filename] [/A[[:]attributes]] [/B] [/C] [/D] [/L] [/N]
[/O[[:]sortorder]] [/P] [/Q] [/S] [/T[[:]timefield]] [/W] [/X] [/4]

[drive:][path][filename]
Specifies drive, directory, and/or files to list.

/A Displays files with specified attributes.
attributes D Directories R Read-only files
H Hidden files A Files ready for archiving
S System files - Prefix meaning not
/B Uses bare format (no heading information or summary).
/C Display the thousand separator in file sizes. This is the
default. Use /-C to disable display of separator.
/D Same as wide but files are list sorted by column.
/L Uses lowercase.
/N New long list format where filenames are on the far right.
/O List by files in sorted order.
sortorder N By name (alphabetic) S By size (smallest first)
E By extension (alphabetic) D By date/time (oldest first)
G Group directories first - Prefix to reverse order
/P Pauses after each screenful of information.
/Q Display the owner of the file.
/S Displays files in specified directory and all subdirectories.
/T Controls which time field displayed or used for sorting
timefield C Creation
A Last Access
W Last Written
/W Uses wide list format.
/X This displays the short names generated for non-8dot3 file
names. The format is that of /N with the short name inserted
before the long name. If no short name is present, blanks are
displayed in its place.
/4 Displays four-digit years

Switches may be preset in the DIRCMD environment variable. Override
preset switches by prefixing any switch with - (hyphen)--for example, /-W.

tree

Graphically displays the folder structure of a drive or path.

TREE [drive:][path] [/F] [/A]

/F Display the names of the files in each folder.
/A Use ASCII instead of extended characters.

ren

Renames a file or files.

RENAME [drive:][path]filename1 filename2.
REN [drive:][path]filename1 filename2.

Note that you cannot specify a new drive or path for your destination file.

copy

Copies one or more files to another location.

COPY [/D] [/V] [/N] [/Y | /-Y] [/Z] [/A | /B ] source [/A | /B]
[+ source [/A | /B] [+ ...]] [destination [/A | /B]]

source Specifies the file or files to be copied.
/A Indicates an ASCII text file.
/B Indicates a binary file.
/D Allow the destination file to be created decrypted
destination Specifies the directory and/or filename for the new file(s).
/V Verifies that new files are written correctly.
/N Uses short filename, if available, when copying a file with a
non-8dot3 name.
/Y Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
existing destination file.
/-Y Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
existing destination file.
/Z Copies networked files in restartable mode.

The switch /Y may be preset in the COPYCMD environment variable.
This may be overridden with /-Y on the command line. Default is
to prompt on overwrites unless COPY command is being executed from
within a batch script.

To append files, specify a single file for destination, but multiple files
for source (using wildcards or file1+file2+file3 format).

format

Formats a disk for use with Windows XP.

FORMAT volume [/FS:file-system] [/V:label] [/Q] [/A:size] [/C] [/X]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/F:size]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/T:tracks /N:sectors]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q]
FORMAT volume [/Q]

volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
/FS:filesystem Specifies the type of the file system (FAT, FAT32, or NTFS).
/V:label Specifies the volume label.
/Q Performs a quick format.
/C NTFS only: Files created on the new volume will be compressed
by default.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary. All opened
handles to the volume would no longer be valid.
/A:size Overrides the default allocation unit size. Default settings
are strongly recommended for general use.
NTFS supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K.
FAT supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).
FAT32 supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).

Note that the FAT and FAT32 files systems impose the
following restrictions on the number of clusters on a volume:

FAT: Number of clusters <= 65526 FAT32: 65526 <>

To Lock Your Folders Without Using any Software

2009-05-23T04:09:00.000-07:00

To Lock Your Folders Without Using any Software

Yes!! With this wonderful windows hack you can lock or make inaccessible your favorite/personal folders without using any software.
All you need is a notepad.

Here is how we can make it happen::

1) Go to the location where the folder you want to lock is located.

2) Rightclick and select New Text Document and type in the following code
and save it as loc.bat (replace YOURFOLDERNAME with folder name ur locking)

ren YOURFOLDERNAME YOURFOLDERNAME.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

3) Open another new text document and type in the following code and
save it as key.bat (replace YOURFOLDERNAME with folder name ur locking)

ren YOURFOLDERNAME.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} YOURFOLDERNAME

4) That's it!! Now whenever you want to lock the folder double click loc.bat which converts your folder to control pannel and protects it from being accessed and when you want to unlock it then double click key.bat

Hope this Helps....

Automatically Log On Windows PC

2009-05-23T01:44:00.000-07:00

Automatically Log On @ Windows PC

You can set up your Windows PC to Automatically Log On so that the users do not have to type a user name and password. This feature in Windows is especially useful when you want to restrict other users of your PC to use only the account that you configured to automatically log on.

Follow the steps below to invoke this feature:

1. Go to Start-->Run... and type control userpasswords2 and click OK.

This open the User Accounts window.

2. Uncheck the box that says "User must enter a user name and password to use this computer" and click Apply/OK.

3. Now, 'Automatically Log On' window pops up and prompts you to specify the user account details to be used to automatically log on.

4. Enter the user name and password of the user account you wish to Automatically log on when your PC starts & click OK.

5. Finally Click OK in the User Accounts window and you're all done.

Hope this helps...

Try it yourself and post in your valuable comment.

How-To Hack Web Cameras Using Google Search Tricks

2009-05-23T00:18:00.000-07:00

How-To Hack Web Cameras Using Google Search Tricks

This trick works on all those web cameras without password.
Google Search any of these to hack and view the live web cameras.

inurl:/view/index.shtml

inurl:view/shtml

inurl:"viewerframe?mode=refresh"

SNC-RZ30 HOME

inurl:live view/-AXIS

inurl:"viewerframe?mode=motion"

intitle:Snc-rz30

intitle:liveapplet

inurl:home/

inurl:lvappl

For hacking the web camera on a particular ip address, type in that ip in place of inurl

Try it yourself and post in your valuable comments.

Hide Hard Drive Partitions In Windows

2009-05-22T06:16:00.000-07:00

Hide Hard Drive Partitions In Windows

If you want to hide any partition of your hard disk just follow these simple steps.

1. Goto Start > Run and type diskpart

A DOS window will appear with following description

DISKPART>

2. Then type list volume

All partitions will be listed, there will be also a volume number for each partitions

3. Suppose you want to hide drive E:, type select volume 3 (Here 3 is the volume number of E:, in your pc it may vary). A message will now appear in the window saing "Volume 3 is the selected volume".

4. Now type remove letter E . You may have to reboot the computer. Diskpart will remove the letter. Since Windows XP doesn't have the capability to identify the unknown volume, it won't display or show results from it. To access the content of the hidden drive, repeat the process, but in the foruth step, replace remove to assign, ie., assign letter E.

USB Optical Mouse that cools your Sweaty Palm

2009-05-22T06:02:00.000-07:00

USB Optical Mouse that cools your Sweaty Palm
Thanko has introduced a unique optical mouse that features 3 button with scroll wheel layout. The unique feature that sets apart this mouse is a 2 inch fan that is present beneath. The 2 inch fan helps cool palm while you are using the mouse. If you are person who has got sweaty palms like mine then you really love this mouse. The fan can be switched ON or switched OFF using a switch that is present in the side panel of the mouse.

This mouse uses USB interface for connectivity, measures 6 x 12.6 x 4 cm and works with Windows XP, Vista. You can get this mouse in Japan for around USD $18.

Different Ways to Shutdown PC

2009-05-20T07:41:00.000-07:00

Different Ways to Shutdown PC

There are so many different ways to turn off your Windows XP computer, let's look at some of them:
1. The standard approach - click the Start Button with your mouse, then select the Turn Off menu and finally click the Turn Off icon on the Turn Off computer dialog. blink.gif

2. Press Ctrl+Esc key or the Win key and press u two times - the fastest approach.

3. Get the Shutdown utility from Download.com - it add the shut down shortcuts for you. Else create them yourself using approach 4.

4. Create a shutdown shortcut on your desktop. Right click on the desktop, choose New Shortcut and type shutdown -s -t 00 in the area where you are asked to specify the location of the program file. Now you can just double click this icon to turn off the computer. The best location would be your quick launch bar.

5. Press the Win key + R key to open the run window. Type shutdown -s -t 00. [s means shutdown while t means the duration after which you want to initiate the shutdown process].

If some open processes or application won't let you turn off, append a -f switch to force a shut down by closing all active processes.

6. Win+M to minimize all windows and then Alt+F4 to bring the Turn Off computer dialog.

7. Open Windows Task manager (by right clicking the Windows Task bar or Alt+Ctrl+Del) and choose Shut down from the menu. Useful when the Windows are not responding.

8. open task manager--->click on shutdown--->hold the ctrl key and click on Turn off::::::: pc will be turned off in 3 secs.. fastest method other than hard shutdown