Lavalys Everest Ultimate Edition 4.50 (Build 1330)

A computer is somehow like a jet fighter – it has so many features and its hardware is extremely complex, that in order to know everything about it your have to be a real pro. While pilots have to know as much as possible about their planes, since their life may depend on that knowledge, with computers it's different. If you have bought a standard computer configuration and you started using it without asking yourself too much about the hardware or software part, you can get into a situation where you will need information. Why? For example, a friend starts telling about his new video card and its game performance and when asked about yours, you can't even tell who manufactured it. Even worse, you have problems with a software that you bought and you call the support line. They ask you some details about your computer's configuration and you have no idea what they're talking about. It's clear; something needs to be done about this. But what? The old-fashioned way to solve this problem would be to call a human to help you, while the right solution is to use a computer program to solve this computer-related problem. The program that should be used to get information about your computer's configuration can be picked from the large family of system information tools. Today's subject is a brand-new version of one of the most famous members of this clan, and once was known as AIDA32. Now, it is named EVEREST and comes in more that just one flavor, but I have chosen the strongest one, called Ultimate Edition. The installation kit of this program is almost 7MB in size, while the setup process is extremely easy for everybody (you can choose between a self extracting install package and a ZIP archive with all the files needed to run the program). The interface of this program is clean and very easy to use for everybody. It has a menu bar, a toolbar and the work area, composed by a tree view panel to the left and the main view area to its right. Of course that the problem we have to solve now it's "what" and not "how", so let's start! The branches from the tree view can help you get all the needed information about your system and even more. I'll tell you what to expect to find in the most important areas, leaving the rest for you to discover, of course... First category is called Computer and contains general information about your PC, such as Summary, Computer Name, DMI or Sensor information. Next, we have the Motherboard and all that's on it: CPU, Chipset, Memory or BIOS. You can also check details about the CPU (CPUID page) or memory (SPD information). The third stop – Operating System. What about it? You can find out almost everything about your Windows: general properties, running processes, started services, loaded device drivers or details about your system's uptime. Next four stations are called Server, Display, Multimedia and Storage. The last one has a very useful feature that displays SMART information so you can see how healthy your hard drive is. I will only name the other categories from the tree view and I will stop then at the last one, so here it goes...Network, DirectX, Devices, Software, Security, Config, Database and Benchmmark. There are ten benchmarks available: four on memory and six built to test your processor, with three of them being FPU tests. The recorded results that you can compare your system with start with hardware platforms over a decade old and finish with the brand new Core Duo processor. EVEREST Ultimate can also perform a system stability test that is able to stress your processor, memory and hard drive(s) while monitoring the temperatures reported by your system's sensors. This application also has a diagnostics module for your monitor, it can create reports about your system and display the sensor information inside the system tray. Although this program is a bit annoying, having a pop up that keeps coming back to remind you that you're using a limited trial version, its price is very good and you get all that you paid for, and a little extra. The Good EVEREST Ultimate Edition is, maybe, the best program in its family. Anyway, nobody can say that this is not a fast, easy to use and extremely detailed system information tool. Add a very useful Help file to this and you will get an excellent result! The Bad This application uses low level routines for hardware detection and this may cause freezes on some computers. A feature that I missed here is a graphics benchmarking tool.

How to optimize Google Desktop

The latest version of Google Desktop no longer enables by default the desktop search engine probably because it uses too many resources. I thought this is a good opportunity to list some ways you could improve Google Desktop's performance, especially if you want to use it as a search engine and not as a widget engine.

When you install Google Desktop 5.5 for Windows, the enhanced search option is disabled and you should leave it that way for now. If you don't need the sidebar with gadgets, disable the option from Google Desktop's setup wizard.

Google Desktop will only index the shortcuts from the Start Menu, the entries from Control Panel. To enable the indexing of your files, right click on the system tray icon, select "Options" and click on the check box next to "Enable Enhanced Content Indexing". Some other relevant options:

* Disable the search types you don't find useful. "Web history" indexes all the web pages that you load in Internet Explorer and Firefox, so it uses a lot of disk space. If you use Outlook or other email clients and you don't want to index the email messages from your computer, disable the "email" options. Google Desktop can also search Microsoft Outlook's Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Journal, and Notes, so disable these search types if you're satisfied with Outlook's search options.

* Exclude folders from indexing. Since Google Desktop tries to index files from your entire hard disk, it's important to exclude the folders that don't contain useful files for a desktop search engine. Some examples:
C:\Program Files\ (don't exclude it if you use Google Desktop to launch apps)
C:\Windows\ (don't exclude it if you use Google Desktop to launch apps)
C:\ProgramData\ (in Vista)
D:\ (if D: is used for backup)

* Exclude file extensions from indexing. There's no option for this in the interface, but you can edit this Registry key and add other extensions you want to exclude. The default excluded extensions are: tmp, temp, moztmp, log, pst, ost, oab, nk2, dat, 000, pf, xml, obj, pdb, tlb, pcc, pch, exp, res, map, sconsign, msf. You can also other extensions that aren't associated with useful content: bak, chk, old, gid, prv, wbk, dll.

The Registry value can be found at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software

\Google\Google Desktop\file_extensions_to_skip

* Disable the Google integration. By default, Google performs a desktop search every time you search the web and it displays some results from your computer in an OneBox, above the web search results. If you want faster Google searches, less computer resources used to search your desktop and less embarrassing moments when someone else temporarily uses your computer, you can disable the integration.

* More screen space. To disable the taskbar and show the search box by pressing Ctrl twice, select "None" for the "Display Mode". You can also disable the gadgets button if you don't use the sidebar.

* Disable Safe Browsing. Google downloads and automatically updates a database of URLs that are used for phishing or for distributing malware and shows you a warning when you visit one of these web pages. If you use other security software or your browser has anti-phishing protection, you can disable this option.

* Save preferences. Google Desktop will only index files when your computer is idle. "Assuming you leave your computer on, Google Desktop should need only a few days to create your initial index. This initial indexing process occurs only when your computer is idle, so you may want to leave your computer on for an evening or two after you install Google Desktop," explains Google's help center.

If you already have Google Desktop, excluding folders and file extensions will not remove entries from the index, so the best way to clean your index is to delete it and rebuild it. Close Google Desktop by selecting "Exit" from the system tray menu and delete this folder:

%APPDATA%\Google\Google Desktop\ (Windows XP)
or
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Google Desktop\ (Windows Vista)

After reopening Google Desktop, choose "Re-index" from the system tray menu.
From: Google Operating System

How to safely remove software and files from your PC

he first step is to decide which programs you no longer need. Try to keep only the programs you use regularly as it’s easy to become a digital packrat. If it helps, make a list of programs you want to keep and others you can do away with.

Has it been a year since your child touched that action game? Chances are you still have the original CDs anyway (should you want to reinstall it in the future), so perhaps it’s time to wipe it off the hard drive.

Have your music tastes changed since you went through that Country & Western “stage”? You can easily delete downloaded MP3 files—or at least burn them to a CD to free up space on your PC.

If you’re unsure about a program that’s on your hard drive, you can always do a search at your favorite search engine (e.g., Live Search) to see what it is. For example, if you don’t plan on buying a camcorder, remove any preinstalled video-editing software that may have come bundled on your PC.

The easiest way to remove a program from your hard drive is to look for an uninstall or remove option from within its program group. You will find this by clicking the Start menu, then All Programs (or Program Files), and then choosing the program that you want to uninstall.

Once inside this program group, you will usually see an icon to launch the program, a ReadMe file (documentation that tells you how to use the program), and, for our purposes, an option that enables you to remove or uninstall the program. Click this and follow the onscreen wizard to safely remove the program from your PC. You may be asked to reboot your computer. Only click to do so once you’ve saved everything that’s open at that time.

If you want to free up even more room on your hard drive, go to My Computer or Windows Explorer and right-click on the letter associated with your hard drive (usually C:). Click Properties, then click Disk Cleanup. Check off the desired boxes and it will tell you how much space it can free up.

When uninstalling a program, you may also get a message that says the program can remove a file that may be shared by another program. To be safe, keep these suggested files on your PC (they shouldn’t take up much room on your hard drive, anyway). Similarly, when you uninstall a game, the program may ask if you want to keep saved game files (i.e., a bookmark of your progress). If you think that you will reinstall and play this game again, you can choose to keep these files.

Sometimes the program group may be the company’s name. Move your mouse over the name and it will reveal which program(s) are inside.

If you download a .zip or .exe file from the Web and then install the program to the hard drive, you can delete the original file once it’s successfully installed.

Keep in mind that your PC automatically creates restore points while you’re using your computer. That way, if you accidentally delete a program that you want to keep, you can revert your PC back to an earlier time. To do so, click the Start menu, then All Programs (or Program Files), then Accessories, and then System Tools. Click System Restore and the program will guide you through the steps.

Some programs do not give you the option to uninstall them from a program group. No problem. You’ll need to go to the Start menu, select Control Panel, and then Add or Remove Programs.

It may take a few seconds for this page to load but once it is finished, it will display a long alphabetical list of installed programs. Once you see the name of a program you no longer want on your hard drive, click it, then click the tab to the right of it, which will say Remove or Change/Remove, and follow the prompts. A progress bar will show you how long it will take to safely remove the program. When it’s finished, you will see the list once again.

Go through the list, but leave those programs that you are unsure of. Remember you may use Microsoft Word all the time so do not uninstall Microsoft Office, as Word is part of it. Some programs may not be familiar to you, but are required for another to run a rule of thumb is to ignore it, especially if it doesn’t take up too much space on your hard drive (you will see how many megabytes on the right-hand side of the program name). If the program is spyware or adware, then you may want to leave this for your spyware/adware program to sniff out and safely remove. Two good free programs are Ad-Aware and SpyBot, both of which are available at Windows Marketplace. You can also download the free Windows Defender.

This article focuses on uninstalling entire programs, but it’s even easier to delete individual files. Once you’re inside My Computer or Windows Explorer, simply highlight the files that you no longer want on your hard drive and tap the delete button or right-click and select Delete. This will send all unwanted files to the Recycle Bin for safekeeping until you’re sure that you no longer want them.

From:www.pctipsbox.com

The Black Google Homepage

Google's homepage is black for the users from United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and Denmark to promote Earth Hour, an event that encourages energy conservation. "On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. (...) Given our company's commitment to environmental awareness and energy efficiency, we strongly support the Earth Hour campaign, and have darkened our homepage today to help spread awareness of what we hope will be a highly successful global event," explains Google in a special page created for the event. Earth Hour started last year in Sydney, but this year many cities from all over the world joined the event.

The purpose of the black homepage is not to save energy, but to raise the awareness of the world's environmental problems. Most people will be surprised to see Google's homepage so radically different and will start to wonder if it's a good idea to imitate Google's blackout. Sometimes small actions make a difference, but in this case the key is elsewhere.

From Google operating system

Windows XP and Vista: The Benchmark Rundown

Windows Vista SP1 Improves Speed Up to 86% Faster

Is Vista SP1 really the shot in the arm your Vista system needs? We’ve spent many hours strapped to our benchmarking system in a caffeine and pizza fuelled haze to uncover these very interesting results.

We tested Vista:

* as it comes out of the box (RTM — or “release to manufacturing”)
* as it comes out of the box, with all Windows Update patches applied (”RTM patched)
* with the final SP1 service pack applied

Testing Setup

Although Vista SP1 has many documented improvements, we aimed to test a particular scenario which has proved to be a major problem for pre-SP1 users: file copy speed, particularly over a network.

Our scenario was a home user running Vista Home Premium on a fast, low-latency network with decent PC hardware. All file copy tests were initiated from the main machine.

Our test machines were:

* Main machine - an Acer Veriton 7900 Pro (Intel Core 2 Duo 6700/4GB RAM/ATI RADEON X1950/2xSATA-II HDD) running Windows Vista Home Premium
* A second machine running Windows Vista Home Premium (connected via gigabit Ethernet for file copy tests)
* A third machine running a fully-patched Windows XP SP2 installation (connected via a dedicated gigabit network to two remote systems).

Each system used the latest available vendor (non-Microsoft) drivers and the November release of DirectX. No modifications were made to the operating system, so as to represent as closely as possible the configuration of an OEM machine.

We uses two test file batches – the first was a single 2.5 GB ISO, and the second was 2.5GB of small files (over 300 MP3s). Each file batch was copied to a remote destination (write), and then written back across the wire to the test system (read/write).

The file copy destinations were:


* the second hard drive in the main testing system
* a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB USB flash drive
* the remote Vista system
* the remote XP system.

File copies were timed from the time “Copy” was clicked to the time the copy shell disappeared.

We also ran PCMark Vantage across the test systems to get an overall impression of system performance.

The aim of the tests was to see how changes in the test machine’s patch level affected performance.

We therefore ran the tests three times – once with Vista Home Premium RTM, once with all the available patches applied from Windows Update, and once with SP1 RTM applied.

The secondary Vista system was also patched to maintain consistency between it and the test machine.

The XP system was unchanged throughout the tests, running fully patched XP SP2.

Hard drives on all the three systems were defragmented before each file copy test.

Source: Vista SP1 up to 86% faster | APC Magazine

XP virtual computing avoids dual-boot complexity

It’s possible to have Vista and chow down on your XP cake, too, if you apply a free — for now — virtual machine.

If you’re stuck with a Vista PC, but you really prefer using XP, I’ll show you how to set up XP as a virtual machine on Vista, plus some tricks you can use to get the most out of this setup.

Why you should give virtual machines a free try

It’s unarguable: Windows XP operates more quickly than Vista (a fact that PC World recently demonstrated even with the new Service Pack 1 installed on Vista). Additionally, no one who’s independent of Microsoft’s payroll suggests that device drivers are just as easily available for Vista as they are for XP, or that Vista supports as many software applications that people own.

It’s Microsoft’s mission to make the marketplace more Vista-friendly, which seems to be the company’s primary motivation for shutting off retail sales of XP on June 30. But many Windows users want to stick with XP, either for performance reasons or so they can use software that’s not Vista-friendly. With fewer PCs on the shelf that will run, or even support, Windows XP — and with that number dwindling each day — a way you can run XP on a Vista machine that may be your only option is a blessing.

Operating XP in a virtual machine (VM) is a great alternative for those with newer PCs that may not, out of the box, be XP-compatible. Indeed, when I explained in a Feb. 14 article how to set up a computer to dual-boot between Vista and XP, a number of readers suggested another possibility: run XP in a virtual machine.

One related fact makes this option even greater: you can prove that it works for free, using downloads from Microsoft that will function at least through July 3, 2008. (More on that later.)

The advantages of running a second operating system like XP inside a virtual machine include:

• Compatibility. You don’t have to worry about locating XP drivers for most hardware components. Vista’s drivers provide all the support XP needs within the VM.

• Faster access. You don’t have to reboot your computer to start a session running XP or another operating system in a VM.

• No System Restore bugs. Running XP in a virtual machine bypasses the fact that XP deletes Vista’s restore points, as I discussed in tip.

In my tests, I’ve found Microsoft’s Virtual PC to be a simple and convenient way to run XP within Vista. But, if you’re interested in trying virtual-machine software from a non-Microsoft source, download the free VMware Player from (who else?) VMware.

To use the VMware Player to install Windows XP, you’ll need to install some additional software and create a couple of special files. Fortunately, self-described freelance Perl programmer John Bokman details the steps on his Web site.

How to install XP on Microsoft Virtual PC

Before beginning, make sure that you meet all of these requirements:

1. A computer with adequate muscle. Your PC needs to a be good performer, with at least 2GB of disk space and 128MB of RAM to run Windows XP. That means 128MB of RAM over and above what your current operating system demands, not 128MB total. More than 128MB of spare RAM works better. You can find the requirements on a Microsoft System Requirements page.

2. A copy of Microsoft’s Virtual PC. Virtual PC is free and — once you’ve installed the (equally free) Virtual Machine Additions — you’ll probably find the software is easy to work with.

3. A copy of Windows XP. You’ll need a Windows XP install disc to add that operating system to your virtual machine. If you’re transferring a retail copy of XP from another machine, this should not be a licensing issue. If your only copy of XP is an OEM copy, however, you may need to purchase a retail copy while packages are still available. See my Mar. 13 article for a discussion of licensing concerns.

If you only need XP (or Vista) to run in a VM for a few weeks for testing purposes, Microsoft makes preactivated images of those operating systems available for free at its Download Center.

Note, however, that this free version of XP expires on July 3, 2008. Microsoft has been giving away these short-term versions for some time, so it’s possible that another downloadable version of XP will be available when the current one expires. If you ever reinstall the OS within your VM, unfortunately, you’ll also have to reinstall any software you added to the VM.

Let’s get started with the installation process. It looks long, but if you follow my steps precisely, it’s straightforward:

Step 1: Get a copy of Virtual PC from Microsoft’s Download Center.

Step 2: Launch the downloaded setup.exe and follow the steps in the Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 Wizard.

Step 3: Launch the Virtual PC Console by choosing Start, All Programs, Microsoft Virtual PC. (In Vista, you can also click Start, type Virtual PC, and press Enter.)

Step 4: If you have no virtual machines, the New Virtual Machine Wizard starts automatically. Otherwise, you’ll need to click the New button to start the New Virtual Machine Wizard. Click Next.

Step 5: In the wizard, select Create a virtual machine and click Next.

Step 6: Type a name for your VM. If you want to change the folder that the VM (.vmc) file is stored in, type in a new path or use the Browse button. Click Next.

Step 7: Specify Windows XP as your operating system (this is the default if you’re running Vista). Click Next.

Step 8: I recommend you select Adjusting the RAM and increase the setting rather than accepting the wizard’s 128MB default. Your choice depends on several considerations, including how much RAM your system has and whether you’ll be running other applications in Vista at the same time that you’re working in the VM. You can always adjust the RAM setting later. Pick a number, enter it, and click Next.

Step 9: Reserve a chunk of hard disk space to simulate a hard drive for the VM to use. Select A new virtual hard disk and click Next for this file. (It has a .vhd extension.) The default option is to let the virtual disk expand dynamically until it reaches the size you specify. Click Next.

Step 10: Specify the size and location of the .vhd file and click Next. Then click Finish.

Step 11: Select your new VM in the Virtual PC Console window and click Start.

Step 12: When the system finishes loading the VM, insert your XP install CD or DVD and press Enter. XP setup should begin. If it doesn’t, choose CD, Use Physical Drive X: (where X is the drive letter displayed). Then press Enter again.

Step 13: Allow XP setup to proceed just as though you were installing the OS on a new computer. Installation is a faster process on a virtual machine, because the PC hardware doesn’t have to go through a hardware reboot several times during the installation.

Step 14: Once you’ve installed XP and have it running in a window, you’ll need to install some Virtual Machine Additions to give Virtual PC more features and flexibility. From the window that shows your new XP VM, pull down the Action menu, and select the option entitled Install or update Virtual Machine Additions.

Without the Virtual Machine Additions, your mouse pointer is trapped inside the VM until you press the Right-Alt key on your keyboard. With VM Additions installed, however, you can move the mouse freely between the windows.

VM Additions also enables folder sharing between your VM and the host OS, supports drag-and-drop file copying between guest and host systems, and sharing the Clipboard between guest and host systems. VM Additions also adds joystick support, provides optimized video drivers, and more.

Tricks to improve your VM experience

If you haven’t run a virtual machine before, it’s a different experience from what you’re used to. Here are a few quick-start tricks to make your XP virtual-machine journey easier:

• The new Ctrl+Alt+Delete. The Ctrl+Alt+Delete combination affects only your host version of Windows. If you need this feature within your VM, hold down the Right-Alt key and press Delete instead.

• Run full screen. To run your VM full screen, hold the Right-Alt key and press Enter. Repeat to reduce the VM to a window again.

• Make your VM hibernate. To get the equivalent of Windows Hibernate within the VM, click the VM’s Close button or pull down the Action menu and click Close. Then choose Save State when the system prompts you.

• Share folders. To share a folder between your VM and your host OS, right-click the folder icon in the bottom of your VM window and choose Share Folder. Select the folder (on your computer) that you want to share and specify a drive letter. Click OK. Within the VM, the folder appears as a network drive with the letter you assigned.

• Adjust memory. If you need to adjust the amount of memory you’re giving your VM, you must first close the virtual machine down completely, without the Save State feature. This is detailed in the following steps:

Step 1. Within the VM, choose the Start button and then the Shut Down option. Alternatively, use the VM’s Close button (or pull down the Action menu and select the Close option) and choose Turn off.

Step 2. Select the VM in the Virtual PC Console window and click Action, Settings.

Step 3. Select Memory on the left side and adjust the slider on the right side. Click OK.

Running XP in a virtual machine isn’t perfect. XP won’t run as fast in a VM as it would running by itself. In addition, VMs have a limitation that may be a deal-breaker to some: Microsoft’s Virtual PC does not support access to USB devices from within the VM. Note that VMware Player does not have this problem.

Running the free, preactivated version of XP within either Microsoft’s Virtual PC or VMWare Player can give you a sense of whether the VM approach is right for you without spending any money.

special thanks to pc tips box

Adobe Photoshop Express- Free Web Based Photoshop

Adobe has launched an online version of its popular software Photoshop. The online version is named Photoshop Express and is a free service. Photoshop Express allows users to store up to 2GB of images, make edits to their photos, and share them, all online. This tool may not have all the features of Photoshop, but it has basic features needed to edit photos.

Another good feature of this tool is that you can reverse the changes made to the photos just like Photoshop. You can use any of the 17 editing tools to modify your images.

Photoshop Express also includes features that let you choose how to view and share photos. You can group your photos into albums or slideshows and a gallery feature lets you gather together your Web-based albums and slideshows. You can also change layouts, add captions, and email images or albums to family or friends.

Users will also be able to integrate with social networking sites like Facebook. Photoshop Express works with all major browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, Adobe said. It requires an Internet connection and Flash Player 9 to work. There is also a test drive in case you want to try it before joining.

The limitation of this service is that only Jpeg files can be edited at present and also only 2GB limit for photo storing.

Photoshop Express Home Page | Test Drive

How To Find the Windows Vista Product Key Code

If you’re preparing to reinstall Windows Vista you’ll need to locate your copy of the Windows Vista product key. Normally this product key is on a sticker on your computer or located with the Windows Vista product manual.

If you’ve lost your product key, it’s located in the registry but is encrypted and not readable, making finding it difficult. The key was not encrypted in previous versions of Windows like Windows 98.

Follow the steps below to locate your Windows Vista product key code.

Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: Less than 15 minutes
Here’s How:

souece and more:http://pcsupport.about.com/od/tipstricks/ht/findvistakey.htm

Top 4 Free Windows Password Recovery Tools

Password recovery tools are used to recover lost user and administrator passwords used to log on to Windows.

Password recovery tools are often called “password cracking” tools because they are sometimes used to “crack” unknown passwords by hackers. Legally cracking your own password is certainly a legitimate and often necessary practice!

Many Windows password recovery tools cost hundreds of dollars. Luckily there are a few completely free password recovery tools available that will help you recover forgotten Windows passwords fast!

Check out my list of the best free Windows password recovery tools available:

more and source:http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/passrecovery.htm

Top 3 Free Product Key Finder Programs

If you’re preparing to reinstall an operating system (for example, doing a clean install of Windows XP) or an application like Microsoft Office, you will need to find your copy of the software’s product key (CD key). Normally this product key is located with the manual or CD that came with your software.

If you’ve lost your product key you can often times find it in the registry but this can be very difficult to impossible to retrieve manually. Luckily, there are many free key finder programs available to help.

Below are the top 3 free key finder programs.

more and source:http://pcsupport.about.com/od/productkeysactivation/tp/topkeyfinder.htm

How To Fix Problems Copying and Moving Large Files In Windows Vista

Although Windows Vista is a major improvement over Windows XP, there is one particular bug that has really upset me which is how slowly it moves or deletes files. In Windows XP there were no problems moving big files. However, with Windows Vista if you move big files even on the same drive there is a long pause while it calculates how long it will take and the actual move takes forever, whereas on XP it is instanteneous.

Luckily, the How To Geek has discovered what the problem is and has come up with the solution for moving and copying large files in Vista. The problem is because of the new auto-tuning network. Once Vista is auto-tuning network is turned off, then the issue of moving files goes away.

To Turn off Auto-Tuning:

1. press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open the Command Prompt. Choose run as admin
type in: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

2. Reboot

If you have any problems, then to turn auto-tuning back on type the following in Command Prompt:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

Windows Vista Run with Zero RAM

That’s right! Windows Vista can run using a total of zero system memory. Well, bear with me, it will all make sense in the end. When it first introduced Windows Vista, Microsoft faced criticism because of the system requirements associated with the new platform. And the truth of the matter is that Vista is nothing short of a resource hog. The latest operating system from the Redmond company will eat right through CPU cycles, and will swallow every last bit of Random Access Memory you can throw at it. Vista will hesitate little to consume all the resources at its disposal in order to deliver the high-end performance level and user experience synonymous with the Wow.

The system requirements for Vista are divided according to SKU. There are the recommended minimum hardware requirements valid for Windows Vista Home Basic and Starter editions, and then the standard is raised when it comes to the Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs. According to Microsoft, Vista can go as low as an 800-MHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor and 512 MB of RAM. But this does not mean that users cannot feed some 3.5 GB of RAM into 32-bit editions of Vista and up to 128 GB in the 64-bit versions.

But as you can see from the screenshot included at the bottom of this article, Vista can function with zero RAM. I know, it does sound illogical, but then again… And no, it is not an example of my Photoshop skills at work, it is a genuine screenshot from Vista. It has become a sort of a reflex for me to go for either Ctrl + Alt + Delete or for Ctrl + Shift + Esc, when Windows freezes. And this is exactly what happened. With the small mention that Windows Task Manager had a small surprise for me. Windows Vista was apparently using no RAM and no CPU. No handles, no threads, processes, up time or page file. No kernel memory, paged or not paged. And a total of zero RAM both cached and free, out of my 2 GB of physical system memory. Now I know that asking Vista to run on zero RAM is a tad too much from Microsoft, but they could have lowered the bar to something more acceptable than a minimum of 2 GB. Because if you think Vista will run smooth with 512 MB of system memory or 1 GB under all scenarios, and whatever workload you throw at it, you are sadly mistaken.

Windows Vista Defragmentation

Although it is virtually handicapped in terms of the options it actually provides to the user in comparison to Windows XP, the hard disk defragmentation utility in Windows Vista is an evolution of the equivalent from the predecessor operating system. But the enhancements come essentially under the hood of the tool. In this context, the actual defragmentation engine was tuned up, as well as the management of the fragmentation process.

“By default, the defrag tool only defragments files smaller than 64 megabytes (MB). Therefore, files larger than 64 MB are not moved unnecessarily. In earlier versions of Windows operating systems, if the defrag engine was in the middle of a large move request, it could take lots of time to cancel defragmentation. In Windows Vista, the defrag engine processes input and output requests in smaller portions. Therefore, you can avoid situations where the defrag engine is busy with processing large move requests when you cancel a defragmentation session”, Microsoft explained.

Microsoft’s vision with Disk Defragmenter in Vista was to introduce a tool that would perform its tasks automatically at intervals scheduled by default. In the end, the Redmond company aimed at delivering a tool that virtually takes the user out of the equation, automating the process entirely. On top of this, the new system memory management in Vista confines the defragmentation as a process with low priority designed not to impact the performance of the operating system.

“The defrag engine in Windows Vista does not affect the performance of other processes that are running on the computer. Other processes are not affected because defragmentation runs as a low priority process. And, defragmentation uses only minimal CPU resources and memory resources. If the system is using lots of CPU resources and memory resources, the defragmentation process may take a longer time to finish,” Microsoft added.

Additional improvements are related to the minimum amount of free space required for the defragmentation, as well as the speed and overall performance of the process. Microsoft applauded the fact that defragmentation in Vista takes up to two or even three times less than in older versions of the Windows platform. Vista will even combine the Master File Table into a single unit if it is fragmented.

“You can now use Task Scheduler to schedule defragmentation. Therefore, you do not have to manually start defragmentation. By default, a task is created and is set to run at 1 A.M. on every Wednesday.

In shadow-copy-aware defragmentation, defragmentation uses Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) in-box software to optimize defragmentation. The VSS software minimizes copy-on-write change blocks. Shadow-copy-aware optimization slows down filling the difference area. This kind of optimization also slows down the reclaiming of old snapshots during defragmentation,” the company said.

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn for Speed

If you use Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) as your Linux distribution, which everyone knows it’s a pretty fast Linux operating system, you can also do some tricks in order to get a boost. I will teach you today some quick hacks on how to improve the overall performance of your system.

WARNING: Please follow the instructions below very carefully, in the order in which they are listed below and reboot your machine after each one. If not, your operating system will NOT work anymore.

1. Boot tweaking

It is a very good idea to do this tweak when you first install Ubuntu, but you can also do it anytime after the installation. This will reorganize some files that are read when the computer boots and it makes the boot process a little faster. All you have to do is hit the ESC button to see the GRUB menu when the computer starts, then select the second line (the one that looks like this: /vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic root=UUID=6162302f-3f32-4b73-bb56-c42f4f9fbce2 ro quiet splash) and hit the “e” key to edit that line. Add the word profile at the end of this line (don’t forget to put a space before you type profile). Hit enter when you’re done and then push the “b” key on your keyboard in order to boot the system.

It will take a little longer to boot, but only this one time, because after this process it will boot faster.

2. Filesystem tweaks

The following tweaks are for EXT3 and ReiserFS filesystems

Open a console and type:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Add the following options marked in bold to the root (/) mount line. In other words, it should change from this:

# /dev/sdb2
UUID=f4d4d73d-4141-4701-a7e2-ec41664483a7 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1

into this:

# /dev/sdb2
UUID=f4d4d73d-4141-4701-a7e2-ec41664483a7 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro,noatime,data=writeback 0 1

Now type the following command in the console:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

And add this option:

rootflags=data=writeback

to the end of the following lines:

# defoptions=quiet splash rootflags=data=writeback

# altoptions=(recovery mode) single rootflags=data=writeback

Now save and close, and type the following command in the console:

sudo update-grub

Type now the following command in order to manually change your filesystem “on-the-fly” into writeback.

NOTE: Please note that /dev/sdb2 is my root (/) partition. If you have the root (/) partition in another place, change it accordingly. Please look in /etc/fstab for this!

WARNING: The next trick is only for EXT3 filesystems! For ReiserFS this will NOT work, so don’t run the following command, just reboot your system for the changes to apply.

sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sdb2

That’s all, now reboot your system and when you get back, you should feel an increased speed in video, image or audio usage.

3. Tuning Swappiness

If you have been running Linux systems for some time and you have used applications like ‘top’ to see what’s going on in your machine, then you’ve probably wondered: Where has all my memory gone? You should know that the largest place is being used in the disk cache, as the cached memory is free and it can be replaced anytime if a newly started application needs that memory. Linux systems are made like this to use so much memory for disk cache because the RAM is wasted if is not used and if something needs the same data again, then there is a very good chance to be in the cache memory.

In a console type the following code:

sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

Now add the following line at the end of this file:

vm.swappiness=0

The number at the end of this line can be between 0 and 100. At 100 the Linux kernel will prefer to find inactive pages and swap them out, while value 0 gives something close to the old behavior where applications that wanted memory could shrink the cache to a tiny fraction of RAM.

4. Concurrent booting

If you have a dual-core processor or one that supports hyperthreading then concurrent booting allows Ubuntu to take advantage of them. Just open a console and type the following code:

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/rc

and find the line CONCURRENCY=none and change it to:

CONCURRENCY=shell

Save and reboot your computer.

5. IPv6 tweaking

In Linux, most of the installed software uses the IPv4 Internet protocol in order to connect to the internet and because the IPv6 protocol is enabled by default in Ubuntu, you must create a file to block this protocol. Type the following code in a console:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/bad_list

and add the next line in that file:

alias net-pf-10 off

Remember to hit enter after you’ve added the above line, save and exit.

Ubuntu Feisty with Firefox

This tips explains how to set up Tor in Feisty based on my own experience (with Gnome interface). Tor is a program that allows one to surf through a local proxy with a routed IP address (so the webpage you surf does not have a record of your own IP address). I got it work in Firefox2, so this tutorial will mainly be for Firefox users (if you use Firefox 1.5 or under, you need to install Privoxy in addition to the two steps below).

Installing Tor in Ubuntu Feisty

We will be using apt-get command to install Tor. However, the Tor copy in Ubuntu universe didn’t work for me. I had to use the one from noreply.org. To do so, do in the terminal

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

After the file is opened, add these two lines to the end of the sources.list file:

deb http://mirror.noreply.org/pub/tor feisty main
deb-src http://mirror.noreply.org/pub/tor feisty main

Save the file and exit gedit.

In the terminal, type:

$ sudo apt-get update

Read to see if apt-get tells you that you are missing a Pubkey for noreply.org. If so, you need to use gpg command to add the key to apt-get. In the terminal, do:

$ sudo gpg –keyserver subkeys.pgp.net — recv 94C09C7F

$ sudo gpg –fingerprint 94C09C7F

After you got the key, do:

$ sudo gpg –export 94C09C7F | sudo apt-key add -

Now you can do install through apt-get:

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install tor

You should see a message showing that tor is starting.

SETTING UP FIREFOX

The easiest way to use Tor with Firefox is to use an extension/addon to manage the Tor proxy. Neither Torbutton nor Switch proxies recommended in other tutorials worked for me. However, I find that it is really easy to work with FoxyProxy.To install the addon, open your Firefox browser and go here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2464

Follow the link to install the FoxyProxy addon.

Upon Firefox restarts, the addon will ask you some configuration questions and automatically make Tor work for you.

Now through the FoxyProxy option, you can specify which website to be visited with Tor proxy.

CHECKING IF ITS WORK

To see if your Tor is working, first visit this site without using FoxyProxy:
https://torcheck.xenobite.eu/.Note the IP address on the site.

Then, open FoxyProxy option, add this site as a whitelist in FoxyProxy (by editing the property of the Tor proxy in FoxyProxy), and then visit the site again:

https://torcheck.xenobite.eu/

The test may show a message saying that you are not using Tor, but you can ignore it. Look at the IP address being shown and see if it is different from your previous visit. If so, you are routing your address successfully.

Game will not install for XP

If you are having trouble installing a games software, the steps listed below may help you determine the cause and help you finish the installation.

1. Be sure that the Windows version that you are trying to install on is supported by the game.
2. Check to make sure that you have enough Hard Disk space available to load the software.
3. Check to make sure that your PC meets the minimum system requirements to run the game.
4. Turn off DMA:

Some game manufactures use a copy protection verification test. But with high-speed drives, the disc may spin so quickly that the test fails. If the test does not pass, the software will not install. Do get around this issue, try turning off DMA (Direct Memory Access) in your Device Manager. Here’s how:

1. Go to Start>> Control Panel>> System>> Hardware tab>> Device Manager tab.
2. Go to the “View” menu and make sure that “View devices by type” is selected.
3. Expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers entry (double click).
4. Double click Secondary IDE Channel entry.
5. Select the Advanced Settings tab.
6. Under the Device 0 category and next to the Transfer Mode entry, you will find a drop down menu that lists two entries:

* DMA if available
* PIO Only

7. If “DMA if available” is showing, select PIO Only. Click OK.
8. Exit Device Manager and Control Panel.
9. Restart your system

Note: Once the verification process completes and your game software is successfully installed, you can turn DMA back on using the above method.

Slysoft Anydvd HD 6.4.0

AnyDVD HD comes with same functionality as AnyDVD, but with additional features for full
Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD support, including decryption of Blu-ray and HD DVD movies.
Allows you to watch movies over a digital display connection, without HDCP compliant graphics
card and without HDCP compilant display. No need to buy an expensive monitor. Sweet!

Playback your discs on your PC with PowerDVD Ultra, which otherwise do not run (titles released

by Studio Canal, The Weinstein Company, Kinowelt, Optimum Releasing).

AnyDVD HD is the "must have" utility for the serious home theater enthusiast using a media

center / home theater PC.
Another amazing feature of AnyDVD HD is "magic file replacement™". Remaster any commercial movie

disc using simple XML scripts. These scripts will "magically" replace the files on the physical

disc. You can customize discs as you like without even making a copy to harddisk!

AnyDVD comes with a UDF 2.5 file ripper, no need to install 3rd party UDF 2.5 filesystem under

Windows XP.
Features HD DVD

* Same features as regular AnyDVD
* Removes encryption (AACS) from HD DVDs
* Watch movies over digital display connection, without HDCP compliant graphics card and

HDCP compliant display.
* Playback of discs on the PC with PowerDVD Ultra which otherwise do not run.
* Removes user prohibitions, you can select the language and subtitle track without going

through the disc's menu.
* Removes parental restrictions.
* Allows you to remove or skip Studio Logos and warning messages.
* With "magic file replacement™" you can remaster any commercial movie disc using simple XML

scripts.
* The "must have" utility for the serious home theater enthusiast using a media center /

home theater PC.
* Includes a UDF 2.5 file ripper, no need to install 3rd party UDF 2.5 filesystem under

Windows XP.

Features Blu-Ray

* Same features as regular AnyDVD
* Removes encryption (AACS) from Blu-ray Discs
* Removes region codes from Blu-Ray Discs
* Removes BD+ copy protection from Blu-ray Discs
* Watch movies over digital display connection, without HDCP compliant graphics card and

without HDCP compliant display.
* The "must have" utility for the serious home theater enthusiast using a media center /

home theater PC.
* Includes a UDF 2.5 file ripper, no need to install 3rd party UDF 2.5 filesystem under
Windows XP.
DOWNLOAD

Microsoft Windows XP Professional Corporate SP2 (2008)

With features like Windows Firewall, Pop-up Blocker for Internet Explorer, and Windows Security Center, you can be confident that your computer has the right tools to stay more secure and up to date.

Your computer is not up to date with the latest version of Windows XP. Upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) today to help keep your computer secure (it's free!). Below is what you need to know to upgrade.

Download
File size:100mb x 6 and 12mb x 1

Release Date...2008-02-07
Release Size...42X15mb
Program Type... OS
Protection...Gates
Platform...Windows
Language...English
Image Type...ISO

DOWNLOAD


Windows Vista Ultimate

CLEAN INSTALL ONLY
You will get Full Updates! As far as Microsoft is concerned, you have bought this copy legitimately.
This is the closest thing to an authentic Vista Ultimate Disk, period. OEM Pre-Activated + Genuine Forever





























The most complete edition of Windows Vista—with the power, security, and mobility features that you need for work, and all of the entertainment features that you want for fun.

When you want to have it all, including the ability to shift smoothly between the worlds of play and productivity, there's Windows Vista Ultimate. You'll never have to worry about having the most advanced capabilities—they're all here. This edition of Windows Vista offers an advanced, business-focused infrastructure, mobile productivity, and a premium home digital entertainment experience, all in a single offering.

Specifically, Windows Vista Ultimate offers all of the features found in Windows Vista Home Premium, including Windows Media Center, Windows Movie Maker with high-definition support, and Windows DVD Maker. It also offers all of the features found in Windows Vista Business, including business networking, centralized management tools, and advanced system backup features. And Windows Vista Ultimate has all of the new security and data protection features that help take Windows Vista to a whole new level of dependability.

In addition, Windows Vista Ultimate includes support for all of the new mobility features in Windows Vista, including Windows Tablet and Touch Technology, Windows SideShow, Windows Mobility Center, and other new, advanced mobility features.

Exclusive to Windows Vista Ultimate are Windows Ultimate Extras. Windows Ultimate Extras are add-ons that extend certain capabilities of your operating system or just make using your PC more fun. Windows Ultimate Extras currently available include:

• Windows DreamScene, an Extra that enables you to use looped, full-motion video as your desktop wallpaper instead of a static image
• Windows Hold’em, a poker game for players of all skill levels
• Language packs for Windows multi-language interface, where users can install and use multiple languages on a single PC. Great for multi-lingual households or if you are learning a new language.
• Secure Online Key Backup, where Ultimate users can store their BitLocker recovery password and Encrypting File System certificate on Windows Marketplace’s Digital Locker website for access to the key anytime, anyplace, and from any computer that has an Internet connection
• BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool, an automated tool which removes the complexity of setting up your PC to use this exclusive data security feature.

Whenever a new Windows Ultimate Extra is ready for distribution by Microsoft, you will see the Ultimate Extra control panel inform you that there are new extras to download. Simply download and install the Extras and begin enjoying these exclusive software and services that give your Windows Vista experience an extra lift!

If you want a single PC that fulfills all of your work, travel, and entertainment needs, or if you simply want to be confident that you have the very best, Windows Vista Ultimate is the no-compromise edition for you.

I patched it so it won't ask you for a serial or activation at any time!
Download

Get a list of all recently accessed files with RecentFilesView

RecentFilesView is a small, no install freeware program that can retrieve and save the list of the most recently accessed files.

If you've ever needed a list of the last opened files on your machine, RecentFilesView is for you. It provides a much more comprehensive list than the one in the "Recent Documents" folder. Here are some scenarios I could think of where you wil find this program very useful:

• If you are working on a project and for whatever reason need to create a list of all the relevant files for that project. With RecentFilesView you can export a comprehensive or partial list to a text or CSV files and edit that as needed.
• If you are uncertain as to which files or file versions you were using when you were working on a project 5 days ago. With RecentFilesView you should be able to survey that history in a snap.
• Please post other uses you might think of in the comments.

Here are more notes on this app:

• Sorting: you can sort by created time, modified time, executed time, and filename.
• Which files will be listed?: those files that were either opened from the desktop or from an application. It will list folders that were opened as well.. It will display your file activity, not files that were created or accessed by programs, such as temp files or cached files saved by your browser. Files that are deleted will also be listed, although it will indicate in the list that the file is no longer available.
  

• Where does it get the list from?: from recent folders and the registry. More info on this on the program page.
• How far back will it go?: I've been using this program for about three days, and the list of files, which goes back 10 days, is at 158 and keeps growing whenever I access a new file. I do not believe that the program is saving this list but is rather retrieving it every time.
• Exporting: save your list as a text, CSV, XML, or HTML file. You can select a sub-set of file using CTRL or Shift selecting and export only the entries you are interested in.
• No install program: just unzip and use.
• Command-line use: if you need to, you can use RecentFilesView from the command line.

The verdict: a very nice, simple program that does what it does very well. I imagine that for those who need a program like this RecentFilesView will be a very welcome addition to their set of tools.

Version Tested: 1.05

Recent Files View

Force Windows to Boot Into Safe Mode Without Using the F8 Key

There's an option in the well-known System Configuration utility that will let you force Windows to always boot into Safe mode… until you turn the option off.

Note: While this method is nothing new, I have to give credit to reader Larry for mentioning it in a comment and prompting this article. Thanks, Larry!

Force Windows to Boot into Safe Mode

Open up the start menu search or run box, and type in msconfig and hit the enter key.

Select the Boot tab, and then check the box for "Safe boot" and make sure the radio button below is set to "Minimal".

Once you hit the OK button you'll be asked if you want to Restart now or wait until later. Either way, the next boot will take you into safe mode.

Once you restart, you'll realize that you are in Safe Mode because it not only places that text in the four corners of the screen, but it even opens up the safe mode page from the help file in Vista.

Now you can work on getting rid of that spyware…

Turn Safe Mode Back Off

Once you are done fixing whatever you were working on, you'll probably want to turn safe mode off and go back to normal mode. Just open up msconfig the same way as above, and then on the Boot tab you'll uncheck the "Safe boot" checkbox.

This method especially helps if you need to repeatedly boot into Safe mode.

The Easy Way To Run Your Own File Server

We've all thought about running our own file sharing server for our own network of friends. We don't actually go through with it since running a file server is not for the average computer user. For those of you looking for an easy way to run your own file sharing server, this should help you out.

HFS (HTTP File Server) is a free application that lets you run a file server without having to install anything. The program is just one executable file. No need to install anything, just run it.

Just drag and drop any file you wish to share into HFS and you're good to go. You can monitor all connections from the tray icon, specify the IP address, and define which port you want the server to run on.

HFS runs on all Windows versions and can run with Wine under Linux. Shared files are presented in a simple HTML page for your friends, although you can customize the page template if you want it to look differently. HFS is also capable of integrating with Windows Explorer so you can share any file with just a right click.

For those who are interested, here's the HFS FAQ and the HFS Guide.

Windows Vista : Use your flash drive as RAM!

Till this date, Microsoft's windows had two options for the memory requirement of the computer, so that the computing can be done at cheaper rates and that too without installing the physical memory.

1. Physical Memory (RAM)
2. Page File (A virtual memory file, stored on hard disk).

The page file is used by the Windows OS to cater the needs of various applications when the physical memory is fully used up. The reason for that is, that Virtual memory is slower as compared to the physical memory and thus Physical memory takes the first priority.

However, with the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft has introduced a new technology called ReadyBoost. With the help of this technology one can use any Flash drive, SD Cards, CF Cards as the third memory option for the computer.

Now, the benefits of Flash Drive or Cards as a source of Memory :

1. It is faster than the virtual memory which is accessed through the hard disk drive.
2. It is cheaper as compared to the actually Physical Memory.

How can it be activated ?

In order to activate the ReadyBoost technology on your FlashDrive or Memory Cards, you have to follow these steps…

1. Open My Computer.
2. Right Click on the Removable Disk Drive and select Properties.
3. Click on ReadyBoost Tab.
4. Enable the feature by selecting the option and allocate the amount of space you want to use as memory.

Things to be noted….

1. Regardless of the fact that you use Readyboost or not, you need at least 512 Mb of memory to run Windows Vista decently.
2. If your device is not giving the option of ReadyBoost then it means that it doesn't clear up the minimum data trasfer rate required by ReadBoost technology.

Unzip your file archives online | Wobzip

WobZip online is a very interesting application that allows us to decompress files from its website. And why would that be interesting or useful? Because not only works with files on your hard drive, but also with URLs. So, you can access files and directories contained in the compressed file, without having to download it in its entirety.

The limit of file size is 100 MB, though we imagine that this is because they are still in testing phase, precisely because what is most interesting is the ability to access parts of larger files. Extensions that support, for the moment, are 7z, zip, gzip, tar, bzip2, rar, cab, arj, z, cpio, rpm, deb lzh, split, iso and chm. Other Limitations are that it does not support Unicode and files cannot be encrypted/password-protected.

Moreover, while decompresses files, I pass antivirus (Bitdefender, always updated to the latest version), which is appreciated. And as if that were not enough, allowing decompress files from one’s address bar, using the address :
http://wobzip.zitr.us/?type=url&url=FILE_URL_HERE

Visionary, awesome Blogger Template and Wordpress Theme

I really liked this theme, its like a premium WP theme styles with video embedding, Flickr RSS, Tabbed version and much more. Moreover, Blogger template is also available for free download here.

The Visionary theme has a lot of features, and I’m not going to rehash them all here. I’m particularly proud of how well the video feature works. There still seems to be some bugs with IE6. If you’re using that version of IE, I would greatly appreciate any feedback on what’s going on when you view the theme. I keep having to “Press OK” for the videos to load (that’s 5 times I get an alert box).

Features

• Customized front page to look like a news or magazine site.
• Sidebar tabbed navigation through the use of a custom jQuery script (jQuery is packaged with the theme).
• Embed YouTube, Google Video, and Metacafe videos easily with Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict. Or, use the Flash Video Player plugin to input your own videos.
• Supports the Flickr RSS plugin.
• Related Posts plugin support.
• WordPress 2.3 tag-ready, but backwards-compatible with previous versions of WordPress.
• Custom post information can easily be input through the use of a Visionary theme-specific plugin modified from the custom field GUI plugin.
• Customized templates for every type of WordPress file, such as category.php and and archive.php.
• Customized sidebars for different pages of the site.
• Placeholders for ads. Great sidebar sizes for 125×125px ads.
• Widget-ready sidebar, but I suggest not using widgets because this theme wasn’t designed for them.

You can now discuss how to customize and ask theme-support questions in the Visionary forum.

View Demo - WP - Theme | Blogger template
Download - WP - Theme | Blogger template

The exception breakpoint Yahoo messenger login error

When Sign In into yahoo messengers it just flash and automatically closing.

Also getting following error.

The exception breakpoint
A breakpoint has been reached
(0x80000003) occurred in the application at location 0x1001c3a7

Reinstall or upgraded to a latest versions is not a solution for this case (I tried up to version 9 )

To solve the Problem

Right click on the shortcut of yahoo messenger

Click on Properties > Advanced > Check the box ' Run with different credentials '

Click on Compatibility > Check the box ' Turn off advanced text services for this program’

Now Run Yahoo messenger

Now you will get a “Run as” window

Click on “The following user” and login as administrator

Now you can login to yahoo messenger.

Next time you login, remove tick from

“Click on Properties > Advanced > Check the box ' Run with different credentials '”

Enjoy Yahoo Chatting

Hidden Google Pages - Awesome

There might be some rare human being around who has surfed Internet but hasn’t used Google in some way or the other. Still there are some great works of Google that are known but to a smaller community of people. They are worth looking.Here is the compiled list. Worth a look for all the Google lovers/critics.

Google Moms
Google’s way of expressing love.

Rare Google Beta Logo
They really have improved.

Google Heart 1 & Google Heart 2
Google’s way of expressing love on valentines day.

Google’s Metaplex
Google’s way of saying “April fool”

Google Newsletter
You have read Google’s blog, but did you read this. It contains there progress from the day it was launched to till date.

Google’s Search Statistics For 9/11/01
… and there tribute. (a rather general one)

Google Zietgeist
What you see here is a cumulative snapshot of interesting queries people are asking – some over time, some within country domains, and some on Google.com – that perhaps reveal a bit of the human condition.

Google’s Help To Build Better Query
Some useful sets of tips from the makers themselves. See how to use advanced search to get better results.

Google Doodles
Few more: UncleSam, Microsoft, Mac, Linux, BSD. Google remembers all.

Google’s Languages Which Only Google Can Understand (This Link Is For Ewmew Fudd)
More for you. Bork, Bork, Bork!, thlngan Hol, H4×0r, lgpay Atinlay. Did you understand any one of them? I did not.

A real cool real time collection of how people go wrong with spelling while searching for Birteny spears aaa Britney spears
That’s bad. Most of you Britney fans never even cared to know about Britney’s original spelling?

Google’s Librarian Central Newsletter
They do take care of everyone.

And last a non Google page but worth a look.

Great Collection Of 17 Firefox Extensions For Smoother Blogging

The best thing about firefox is that it always has solution to your surfing needs. And when it comes to bloggers, who need to be connected to internet with all kinds of services, firefox is a boon.

Collecting

1. Google Notebook - Highlight the content you want to save, Note it with this extension. You can organize different ‘notebooks’ with their own sections. Each note will have a link back to the original website.
2. Session Manager - Great for doing research and rounding up a few sources. Save the session of tabs so you can come back to them later.
3. coComment - Keep tracks of comments you’ve left on other websites. This is particularly useful if the comment section is providing more resources than the actual post content.
4. Speak It - Have articles read out to you so you can do the dishes while researching. Not to be used while at the computer - speed reading = productivity. This extension uses the Microsoft TTS Engine.
5. DocuFarm - This is a cool extension that previews word, PDFs etc within Firefox. It comes with a search, which you can also use to search PDFs!

Writing

1. Scribefire - Performancing.com’s popular split-browser blog editor. Multiple blog management, categories and simple source editing. FTP Uploads are available but buggy. No good image support.
2. Deepest Sender - Very similar to ScribeFire, these two extensions lack greater features like image uploading, time-stamp editing and compatible tagging. Both are very easy to set up.
3. Resizable Text Area - If you stick with your regular blog editor, such as Wordpress, this extension comes in handy to resize the text area quickly and freely.
4. Spellbound & Google Toolbar - Inline spell-check, ala Microsoft Word. Use the extension or Google Toolbar’s built-in spell-checker. Both work great. Superseded by Firefox 2’s built in spell check.
5. Tabinta - turns the Tab Button to a text editor spacing tab rather than cycling through the web forms. Only interacts with the text area, otherwise does the regular Firefox tabbing.
6. Split Browser - Great when copy and pasting content and URLs, this extension makes it easy to split any tab any which way. Put your editor in a ’sidebar’ and continue surfing the other tabs in the other pane.
7. Copy Plain Text - This is a can’t-live-without extension for me. When I copy text, I don’t want any of the original site’s formating, links or text-link-ads to be copied over as well. Just the text. That’s what this extension does.
8. Copy As HTML Link - Use this extension in conjunction with Copy Plain Text to create links for your posts. Only make links when you want with the text you want.

Images

1. Web Developer - Other than View Source and those functions, Web Developer is great for getting image information like size etc. If a site is making it hard to get access to their images, use the View Image Information button to get all the images and their links. Respect copyright.
2. Snagit - to use with the SnagIt image capture application, this extension just makes it easy to start grabbing screenshots while still in Firefox.
3. Picnik - this web based app trumps SnagIt in many respects. With the Picnik extension you can grab a screenshot of the visible page, or the entire page, with one click. The same goes with any images on the web, including a button at Flickr.com. Picnik is also a very good image editor. I don’t use anything else to edit images for articles. You can take any photo, from your computer, Flickr or Picasso account, or anywhere on the web, and start editing without downloading anything to your computer.

Cheats’ guide for customizing Blogger Templates

“Guide tricks for customizing templates blogger” (A Cheats’ Guide to Customizing Blogger Templates) is a book by Amanda Blogger Buster in which shows several techniques to learn how to customize and design templates for Blogger.The book is in English but very well illustrated with a good design, many images and examples. This divided into the following chapters:

1. Customizing templates fixed width.
2. Customizing templates layout fluid.
3. Customize the sidebar.
4. Buttons, banners and pictures.
5. More resources.

This guide can be downloaded under Creative Commons and additionally you can download the package with examples, images and templates to get the most out.They can take a step back throughout the blog, which has a large number of tutorials and collections primarily oriented to Blogger.

Download:

• A Cheats’ Guide to Customizing Blogger Templates (PDF, 1.2 MB)
• Cheats’ Guide Downloads folder (templates, images, etc.)

Create and manage a strong password

The days of using simple words or single character or a blank as a password are gone. Today, easy passwords can be cracked or guessed within minutes. Since the information on your computer is precious, you need to protect it as much as you can. This guide is to help you create solid passwords that will be a roadblock for intruders who are trying to break-into your computer.

Length – The number of characters for your password is very important. The recommended number of characters is at least 7 characters. The reason is that a 3 character password such as fgy can easily be guessed by an intruder faster than a 7 character password.

Strength – The strength of a password refers to the complexity of the password. In another words, can any one guess what your password is. For example, if your computer account is Krishnakumar and your password is krishnakumar or KrishnaKumar, an intruder can easily try and succeed in logging into your computer. To strengthen your password, the recommendation is to use a mix of special characters, numbers, and the alphabet. Special characters are !@#$%^&*()_+{}. Here are a few examples of stronger passwords

Eg: 0!Mygod , H31pme

Do NOT use Common name with numbers and symbols merely substituting for

Similar looking alphabetic characters.

Eg : R@mesh, P@ssw0rd, R3liance,

But you can use like this in sentences

Eg: Ilike5* = “I like Five Star”

Do NOT make your password a dictionary word

Keywords – Most people are familiar with creating simple temporary passwords for new employees or for other trusted people with the intent on allowing them to change the password at a later time. Passwords like abc123 and 567fgh were commonly used. Now, you should break this habit. These passwords are almost like not having a password because intruders have programmed these words into their software to guess your password. The recommended practice is to assign a strong password from the beginning so that the new employee or trusted colleague will also follow your lead.

Do NOT use 123, 456, 555, 007, ABC. XYZ, XXX ,ASDF, Year of birth, phone number with your name /username

Eg: Ramesh007

Ramesh1980

IMPORTANT - The above password has only been shared as a technique for crafting a strong but easy to remember password. You should NOT use Ilike5* as your own password nor should you use any sample password shared in any other password guide. Prospective intruders often review password guides when compiling their lists of passwords to try.

More Spam Originating from Gmail

The email security vendor MessageLabs published a report about the increasing number of spam messages originating from Gmail. "Analysis of spam shows that 4.6 percent of all spam originates from Web mail-based services and the proportion of spam from Gmail increased two-fold from 1.3 percent in January to 2.6 percent in February, mainly promoting adult-oriented websites. Yahoo! Mail was the most abused Web mail service responsible for sending 88.7 percent of all Web mail-based spam."


Spammers create accounts at free mail services like Yahoo Mail or Gmail, but to make the process more efficient, they need to automatize it. The major challenge is that most web mail providers use CAPTCHAs ("Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") and they are difficult to solve automatically. Last month, Websense Security Labs discovered that spammers managed to create bots that automatically sign up for new Gmail accounts with a success rate of 20%.

We discovered that the CAPTCHA breaking process for Gmail is sophisticated when compared to the Live Mail CAPTCHA break up which was reported in our recent blogs. It is observed that two separate hosts active on same domain are contacted during the entire process. These two hosts work collaboratively during the CAPTCHA break process. Unlike Live Mail CAPTCHA breaking, which involved just one botted host doing the entire job (signing up, filling in details, getting the CAPTCHA request), the Gmail signing process involves two botted hosts (or CAPTCHA breaking hosts).

Jeff Atwood thinks that "there's simply too much money to be made in email spam for the commercial CAPTCHA algorithms, regardless of how good they may be, to survive forever." He suggests to diversify the tests and use more difficult tasks like distinguishing dogs from cats or solving failed OCR inputs, but making the test more complicated will frustrate users.

Backup your Blog online | BlogBackupr

You can take backup of your blog in other ways but BlogBackupr is a free online service which takes a daily backup of your blog using RSS feeds.

But if your blog uses Wordpress and supply your user name and password (stored encrypted on a server) also saved the comments and categories. On the other hand, for bloggers (in addition to the Wordpress), it allows the option of restoration, which will be able to go back to previous statements of your blog. For the moment, the service is limited to the content rather than the continent. Thus, the staffing and the images are not stored, although they want to implement it in future versions (to be more precise, images can be stored in a couple of days).

Another method (for Wordpress users only) - You can download a plugin called Wp-db-backup to backup your blog. Here, you can specify Email address to get the regular backup of your blog content.

Delete Your Blog?

Delete Your Blog?

This will permanently delete your blog including all your posts. You can create another blog at this address using the Google Account you're currently logged in with, however, we can't restore your posts once you choose to delete your blog.

It's so easy to delete a Blogger blog: the delete button is easily accessible from the settings page and there's only one confirmation dialog. After you delete the blog, all the posts and comments disappear, but the blog's address instantly becomes available.

If you want delete a Gmail account, it's much more complicated. Google asks your password and it doesn't delete the account instantly. What's more, the address can't be reused and you won't be able to retrieve your messages.

For Google, deleting a blog is infinitely less important than deleting an email address, even though they're both ways to communicate with someone. Deleting a blog has many more side-effects for a bigger audience: broken links, broken hearts, less relevant search results, an entire context that disappears.

50 Great Widgets For Your Blog

Most of them work with both WordPress and Blogger so it doesn’t matter which blogging platform you use.

Go through the list and pick and choose some new widgets to test drive on your blog. I recommend not overdoing it by dressing up your blog with too many widgets. There’s a fine line of functionality vs clutter and a blog with too many confusing widgets will only deter people from your site.

So check out Mashable’s 50 Great Widgets article and let me know which widgets you like best!

Google Calendar Sync for Microsoft Outlook

One of the most popular requests for Google Calendar was synchronization with mobile devices and Outlook. After launching a sync tool for Blackberries, Google Calendar now offers a small utility for synchronizing events with Outlook.

By default the synchronization is bi-directional, but you can change this when you install the utility or from the options dialog. The only significant drawback is that you can only synchronize your main Google Calendar, but a future update should remove this limitation.


Google installs a small program that loads at start-up and sits on your system tray, while waiting for the next synchronization (the default sync interval is 2 hours). After synchronizing your calendar with Outlook, you can access it offline and synchronize it with your mobile phone.


It's worth noting that Google's new tool works with Google Apps accounts and it's another step towards making Google Apps more business-friendly.

Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner 5.1.70829

Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner 5.1.70829
As many as 70% of web sites have vulnerabilities that could lead to the theft of sensitive corporate data such as credit card information and customer lists.
Hackers are concentrating their efforts on web-based applications - shopping carts, forms, login pages, dynamic content, etc. Accessible 24/7 from anywhere in the world, insecure web applications provide easy access to backend corporate databases.

Firewalls, SSL and locked-down servers are futile against web application hacking!
Web application attacks, launched on port 80/443, go straight through the firewall, past operating system and network level security, and right in to the heart of your application and corporate data. Tailor-made web applications are often insufficiently tested, have undiscovered vulnerabilities and are therefore easy prey for hackers.
Acunetix - a world-wide leader in web application security
Acunetix has pioneered the the web application security scanning technology: Its engineers have focused on web security as early as 1997 and developed an engineering lead in web site analysis and vulnerability detection. Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner includes many innovative features:
* An automatic Javascript analyzer allowing for security testing of Ajax and Web 2.0 applications
* Industries' most advanced and in-depth SQL injection and Cross site scripting testing
* Visual macro recorder makes testing web forms and password protected areas easy
* Extensive reporting facilities including VISA PCI compliance reports
* Multi-threaded and lightning fast scanner crawls hundreds of thousands of pages with ease
* Intelligent crawler detects web server type and application language
* Acunetix crawls and analyzes websites including flash content, SOAP and AJAX

Link

OCA/OCP: Introduction to Oracle9i SQL Study Guide

Here's the book you need to prepare for Exam 1Z0-007: Introduction to Oracle9i:
* In-depth coverage of official exam objectives
* Practical information on using SQL in a real-world Oracle9i environment
* Hundreds of challenging review questions, in the book and on the CD
Authoritative coverage of all exam objectives, including:
* Writing basic SQL SELECT statements
* Restricting and sorting data
* Displaying data from multiple tables
* Aggregating data using group functions
* Producing readable output with iSQL*Plus
* Creating and managing tables
* Controlling user access

Download: Rapidshare

Mirror: DepositFiles
Mirror: Easy-Share
Mirror: FileFactory
Mirror: MegaUpload

Add Feeds to Google Reader in Internet Explorer 7

Unlike Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 doesn't let you subscribe to a feed using your favorite feed reader. You can only use the feed reader included in IE7, which is not that good. That's probably the reason why 70% of Google Reader's traffic comes from Firefox users.

Google Toolbar 5 took the liberty to add options for subscribing to feeds in iGoogle and Google Reader. So the next time you want to add a feed in Google Reader, you can just click on the orange button from Internet Explorer and select one of the two options added by Google Toolbar.


Alternatively, you could go to Google Reader's Settings page, scroll to the bottom of the Goodies tab, right-click on "Subscribe...", select "Add to Favorites" and choose the "Links" folder. Make sure that the links bar is visible.

A Feed for Unread Gmail Messages

Gmail has a very cool feature not available in other webmail applications: feeds for unread messages. For example, the feed http://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/ shows the most recent unread items from your inbox. Gmail also offers feeds for your labels: http://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/labelname/, but it would be nice to have a comprehensive listing of all the unread messages, not just the ones that have a certain label. As you probably know, "unread" is one of the many built-in labels in Gmail, so you can use it to obtain this feed: http://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/unread/. In the URLs above, you can replace "http" with "https" for more security.

Gmail's feeds require authentication, so they don't work in many feed readers, like Google Reader or iGoogle. There are some feed readers that support password-protected feeds:

Browsers
* assuming you're logged in to your Gmail account, you can add any of the feeds to Firefox's Live Bookmarks (this is more like a workaround than true support for authenticated feeds)


* you can subscribe to the feeds in Opera if you don't like the built-in mail client

Desktop feed readers
* some desktop feed readers listed by Google that support Atom 0.3, SSL/HTTPS, and HTTP authentication

Online feed readers
* Netvibes is a notable example of online feed reader that supports authenticated feeds


Gmail recommends to make sure that the feed's content is private. "Keep in mind when you subscribe to your Gmail feed that some aggregators allow you to share, syndicate, or otherwise re-publish the feeds you subscribe to. This means that even though your Gmail feed is private, its contents could be made public through one of these methods. So you'll want to double-check the privacy settings in your aggregator to make sure you aren't sharing any information you don't want to."

Okoker All Video Converter&Burner Pro 6.0

Okoker All Video Converter&Burner Pro is a professional media conversion tool that can batch convert almost all video to MPEG, AVI, WMV, DVD, VCD and SVCD, and burn them to a DVD, CD disc. It is a good video converter. You can change the codec/system type to PAL or NTSC, and adjust the video size of the output files . It has all of the functions of Okoker video converter software series.It supports conversion of almost all video, such as: RM to AVI, RM to MPEG, RM to VCD, RM to DVD, RM to WMV, AVI to MPEG, AVI to VCD, AVI to DVD, AVI to WMV, MPEG to AVI, MPEG to VCD, MPEG to DVD, MPEG to WMV, WMV to DVD, WMV to MPEG, WMV to AVI,MOV to DVD VCD MPEG AVI DIVX WMV, ASF to DVD VCD MPEG AVI DIVX etc.

• Batch convert almost all video to AVI format.
• Batch convert almost all video to DVD, VCD, SVCD format.
• Batch convert almosty all video to MPEG format.
• Batch convert almosty all video to WMV format.
• It is a good video converter.
• Burn media files to CD, DVD.
• Create best video and audio quality.
• Adjust the video size of the output files.
• Change the codec/system type to PAL or NTSC.
• Automatically shutdown your computer after long time batch conversion.

Link Pass: freshdl.net