INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Windows 7 will be released at october 22 2009

2009-09-25T01:01:00.000-07:00

If you have been toying with the idea of cutting your users over to Vista as part of a PC refresh, you may want to hold that thought. In less than a year, windows 7 will likely be available.

The word on the blogosphere is that windows 7 should be released to manufacturing in October 22 2009 with general availability by November. Blogger Long Zheng has come to this release-date conclusion and says that he's been given the nod by an unnamed source at Microsoft who validated his guess. Zheng sites two sources for his guess. Today the WinHEC 2008 site boldly says that Windows 7 will be released before the next annual WinHEC. ("WinHEC is the only chance for you to engage with the team at this level - there is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released," it says). Also ASUS CEO Jerry Shen said in an interview with Laptop magazine that Eee PCs should be running Windows 7 by the second half of next year.

What is Windows 7?
Windows 7 is the easiest, fastest, and most engaging version of Windows yet. Better ways to find and manage files, like jump lists and improved taskbar previews, help you speed through everyday tasks. Faster and more reliable performance means your PC just works the way you want it to. And great features like Windows Media Center and Windows Touch make new things possible. Get to know Windows 7, and see how it can simplify just about everything you do with your PC.

Features
Make the things you do every day easier with improved desktop navigation.

Start programs faster and more easily, and quickly find the documents you use most often.

Make your web experience faster, easier and safer than ever with Internet Explorer 8.

Watch, pause, rewind, and record TV on your PC.

Easily create a home network and connect your PCs to a printer with HomeGroup.

Run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode.

Connect to company networks easily and more securely with Domain Join.

It's designed to sleep and resume quicker, be less memory hungry, and spot USB devices faster.

Windows 7 makes the most of powerful 64-bit PCs, the new desktop standard.

New power-saving features are designed to help laptops run longer.

Windows 7 gets you online quicker, so you can work anywhere.

Watch, record, and pause live TV (additional hardware required).

With Windows 7 and a touch-sensitive screen (additional hardware required), you don't always need a keyboard or mouse.

A quick (and fun) new way to resize and compare windows on your desktop.

Must-have software for your PC—free! Get Mail, Photo Gallery, and other favorites.

At last, searching your PC is as simple as searching the web.

Introducing improved taskbar previews, bigger icons, pinning, and creative ways to
personalize.

Takes the headache out of home networking, so it's easier to share files and printers.

Speedy access to your favorite pictures, songs, websites, and documents.

Recover your data easily with automatic backup to your home and business network.

Help protect data on your PC and portable storage devices against loss or theft with BitLocker.

Work in the language of your choice and switch between any of 35 languages.

How to fasten up Windows XP..??

2009-07-04T07:43:00.000-07:00

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’

How to bypass CD DRM Encryption??

2009-07-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

How to bypass CD DRM Encryption??

DRM is an encryption manifest file which dissallows an individual who's purchased a CD which contains the DRM directly written into the actual Audio Disk. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management.

What's the cause for DRM Encryption?
DRM(Digital Rights Management) is to control the internets piracy of Audio files, mp3s for example.. on P2P (Peer To Peer) Clients, (A famous one is KaZaA) for non-3rd party use. Which this means that You can rip the audio to your computer, and listen to them only at your computer and nowhere else. Now there usually is an internal ripper provided by the CD itself, for you to burn the audio to another CD-R or whatever, but if you follow my howto it'll make things a lot simpler.
-What you need-

1: 6-ft. (182m)* Shielded Audio Cable, 1/8/11th's stereo miniplug, to 1/8/11th's stereo miniplug. Radio shack item # (42-2387A)
2: A CD Player.
3: The CD which has the DRM encryption.
4: A Computer with working Microphone input, and soundcard output.
5: An Audio editor such as Sonic Foundry Sound forge 6.0 or something like it.

Now, take the Audio chord and plug it into your CD player where you'd put your headphones, then take the other end and plug it directly into your CPU's microphone input.

Once that's done, open up your Audio Editor... click on File>New> Once the new layout has opened, click "Record" now once it has started to record, click Play on your CD Diskman. (Make sure you have your Sound on the Diskman to MAX output)

Now thats pretty much it... once the disk has been fully played and upstreamed to your audio editor... you can disect the Tracks and the name them on New Sound layouts, name the track... and save it as mp3. Becuase by default all audio editors save upstreamed tracks as .WAV format, and wav format is a relativelly enormus size as far as bytes are concerned. Remember, it's our right to do what we want with what we buy.

Removing Multiple Boot Screens

2009-07-04T07:40:00.000-07:00

Removing Multiple Boot Screens

If you are getting unwanted multiple boot screen
Then Follow these Steps.

1> Right Click on My Computer
2>Select Properties
3>Select Advanced Tab
4>Select Settings In the Startup & Recovery Section(3rd grp)
5>Select the operating system which u want.
6>And Click OK.
7>Further again press the setting and click on Edit.
8>It will open boot.ini File.
9>Now u can delete those o/s which you don't want to be displayed.

Note: For deleting operating systems from boot.ini file, keep it mind that you can'tdelete that o/s which is selected by default there. Beforemaking any changes make a copy of boot.ini file.

How to have a safer and faster XP..??

2009-07-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

How to have a safer and faster XP..??

To disable unneeded startup services for a safer, faster XP, use the "Services" Admin Tool (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services). If you are a single user of a non-networked machine, you can disable the following items, with no ill effect.

Alerter
Clipbook
Computer Browser
Fast User Switching
Human Interface Access Devices
Indexing Service (Slows the hard drive down)
Messenger
Net Logon (unnecessary unless networked on a Domain)
Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing (disabled for extra security)
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager (disabled for extra security)
Remote Procedure Call Locator
Remote Registry (disabled for extra security)
Routing & Remote Access (disabled for extra security)
Server
SSDP Discovery Service (this is for the utterly pointless "Universal P'n'P", & leaves TCP Port 5000 wide open)
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Telnet (disabled for extra security)
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Upload Manager
Windows Time
Wireless Zero Configuration (for wireless networks)
Workstation

Getting an Older Program to Run on Windows XP

2009-07-04T07:37:00.001-07:00

Getting an Older Program to Run on Windows XP

1.Right–click the executable or the program shortcut to the executable, and then click Properties.

2.Select the Run this program in compatibility mode check box.

3.From the list, select an operating system that the program runs in comfortably.

If necessary, also change the display settings and/or resolution, or disable the Windows XP visual themes.

Run the program again when you’re finished changing the settings. Adjust the compatibility settings again if the program is still not running smoothly: a program that’s unhappy on Windows 2000 may flourish on Windows 98.

Getting an Older Program to Run on Windows XP

2009-07-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

How to Remove Windows XP's Messenger

2009-07-04T07:36:00.000-07:00

How to Remove Windows XP's Messenger

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

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

New Sound Blaster Drivers

2009-07-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

New Sound Blaster Drivers

With the loads of problems reported by users with Soundblaster cards on Windows XP Creative has stepped up and offered drivers for at least some models of their Sound Blaster cards, but check your particular model closely. I have downloaded the SB128 drivers and my sound problems have been resolved..! So they do work.

http://www.creative.com/support/winxp/

Set Processes Priority

2009-07-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

Set Processes Priority

Follow this tip to increase the priority of active processes, this will result in prioritisation of processes using the CPU.

CTRL-SHIFT-ESC

1.Go to the second tab called Processes, right click on one of the active processes, you will see the Set Priority option

2.For example, your Run your CDwriter program , set the priority higher, and guess what, no crashed CD’s

Getting an Older Program to Run on Windows XP

2009-07-04T07:19:00.001-07:00

Getting an Older Program to Run on Windows XP

2009-07-04T06:55:00.000-07:00

Getting an Older Program to Run on Windows XP

1.Right–click the executable or the program shortcut to the executable, and then click Properties.

2.Select the Run this program in compatibility mode check box.

3.From the list, select an operating system that the program runs in comfortably.

If necessary, also change the display settings and/or resolution, or disable the Windows XP visual themes.
Run the program again when you’re finished changing the settings. Adjust the compatibility settings again if the program is still not running smoothly: a program that’s unhappy on Windows 2000 may flourish on Windows 98.

Keyboard Shortcuts

2009-07-04T06:18:00.000-07:00

Keyboard Shortcuts

When speed counts, the keyboard is still king. Almost all the actions and commands you can perform with a mouse you can perform faster using combinations of keys on your keyboard. These simple keyboard shortcuts can get you where you want to go faster than several clicks of a mouse. You'll work faster on spreadsheets and similar documents, too, because you won't lose your place switching back and forth between mouse and keys.

Here are some of the most useful keyboard shortcuts:

Copy. CTRL+C
Cut. CTRL+X
Paste. CTRL+V
Undo. CTRL+Z
Delete. DELETE

Delete selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin. SHIFT+DELETE
Copy selected item. CTRL while dragging an item
Create shortcut to selected item. CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item
Rename selected item. F2
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word. CTRL+RIGHT ARROW
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word. CTRL+LEFT ARROW
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph. CTRL+DOWN ARROW
Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph. CTRL+UP ARROW
Highlight a block of text. CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys
Select more than one item in a window or on the desktop, or select text within a document. SHIFT with any of the arrow keys
Select all. CTRL+A
Search for a file or folder. F3
View properties for the selected item. ALT+ENTER
Close the active item, or quit the active program. ALT+F4
Opens the shortcut menu for the active window. ALT+SPACEBAR
Close the active document in programs that allow you to have multiple documents open simultaneously. CTRL+F4
Switch between open items. ALT+TAB
Cycle through items in the order they were opened. ALT+ESC
Cycle through screen elements in a window or on the desktop. F6
Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer. F4
Display the shortcut menu for the selected item. SHIFT+F10
Display the System menu for the active window. ALT+SPACEBAR
Display the Start menu. CTRL+ESC
Display the corresponding menu. ALT+Underlined letter in a menu name
Carry out the corresponding command. Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu
Activate the menu bar in the active program. F10
Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu. RIGHT ARROW
Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu. LEFT ARROW
Refresh the active window. F5
View the folder one level up in My Computer or Windows Explorer. BACKSPACE
Cancel the current task. ESC
SHIFT when you insert a CD into the CD-ROM drive Prevent the CD from automatically playing.

Use these keyboard shortcuts for dialog boxes:

Move forward through tabs. CTRL+TAB
Move backward through tabs. CTRL+SHIFT+TAB
Move forward through options. TAB
Move backward through options. SHIFT+TAB
Carry out the corresponding command or select the corresponding option. ALT+Underlined letter
Carry out the command for the active option or button. ENTER
Select or clear the check box if the active option is a check box. SPACEBAR
Select a button if the active option is a group of option buttons. Arrow keys
Display Help. F1
Display the items in the active list. F4
Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the Save As or Open dialog box. BACKSPACE

If you have a Microsoft Natural Keyboard, or any other compatible keyboard that includes the Windows logo key and the Application key , you can use these keyboard shortcuts:

Display or hide the Start menu.
Display the System Properties dialog box. +BREAK
Show the desktop. +D
Minimize all windows. +M
Restores minimized windows. +Shift+M
Open My Computer. +E
Search for a file or folder. +F
Search for computers. CTRL+ +F
Display Windows Help. +F1
Lock your computer if you are connected to a network domain, or switch users if you are not connected to a network domain. + L
Open the Run dialog box. +R
Display the shortcut menu for the selected item.
Open Utility Manager. +U

Helpful accessibility keyboard shortcuts:

Switch FilterKeys on and off. Right SHIFT for eight seconds
Switch High Contrast on and off. Left ALT +left SHIFT +PRINT SCREEN
Switch MouseKeys on and off. Left ALT +left SHIFT +NUM LOCK
Switch StickyKeys on and off. SHIFT five times
Switch ToggleKeys on and off. NUM LOCK for five seconds
Open Utility Manager. +U

Keyboard shortcuts you can use with Windows Explorer:

Display the bottom of the active window. END
Display the top of the active window. HOME
Display all subfolders under the selected folder. NUM LOCK+ASTERISK on numeric keypad (*)
Display the contents of the selected folder. NUM LOCK+PLUS SIGN on numeric keypad (+)
Collapse the selected folder. NUM LOCK+MINUS SIGN on numeric keypad (-)
Collapse current selection if it's expanded, or select parent folder. LEFT ARROW
Display current selection if it's collapsed, or select first subfolder. RIGHT ARROW

XP Computer management console

2009-07-04T06:12:00.000-07:00

XP Computer management console

To quickly access the computer management console, where you can see event logs (to see what's causing a problem, for example), right-click My Computer and choose Manage.

Then, select the Event viewer and double-click highlighted events in the Applications or System areas to view detailed explanations of what went wrong.

What are XP powerToys

2009-07-04T05:49:00.001-07:00

What are XP powerToys

PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after the product has been released to manufacturing, but before the next project has begun. These toys add fun and functionality to the Windows experience.

We've taken great care to ensure that PowerToys operate as they should. But please note that these programs are not part of Windows and are not supported by Microsoft. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about PowerToys

The PowerToys are installed into the directory you specify during setup. Typically this is the system32 directory.

To uninstall the PowerToys, Open the control Panel. Launch the Add/Remove Programs control panel applet. Find the PowerToys for Windows XP entry, and choose Modify/Remove. From here you can remove specific toys or all of them.

Faster User Switcher

Note: You cannot use this toy if fast user switching is not enabled.

What it is: With Fast User Switching enabled on Windows XP, this PowerToy allows you to switch users without having to use the logon screen.
Special requirements: This PowerToy requires a Windows key on your keyboard.
How to use: Press the Windows key then the Q key to activate; release and press Q to switch to a different user tile, then release both Q and Windows key to switch to that user.

Shell Player

What it is: This PowerToy plays MP3 files and WMA files from the taskbar.
How to use: Right click on the taskbar, click toolbars, then click "Audio Player." If the taskbar is locked and you want to resize the player, you will have to unlock it. This will allow you to access the play list editor and view all the buttons.

Task Switcher

What it is: Replaces the existing Alt + Tab application switching mechanism of Windows XP. It provides a thumbnail preview of windows in the task list and is compliant with the new Windows XP visual style.

How to use: (NOTE: You must log off and then log on again for the changes to take effect). Use just as you do the existing Alt + Tab mechanism by pressing the Alt key and the Tab key to activate. While holding down the Alt key, press the Tab key to cycle through running applications. To move backwards, press Shift + Alt + Tab. Release all keys when the desired application is highlighted.

Open Command Window Here

What it is: This PowerToy adds an "Open Command Window Here" context menu option on file system folders. This gives users a quick way to open a command window (cmd.exe) pointing at a selected folder in the Explorer UI.
How to use: After installation, right click on the folder you would like to have a quick launch command window for.

Tweak UI

What it is: Provides access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface.
How to use: Go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, TweakUI for Windows XP.

PowerToy Calc

What it is: Graphing calculator
How to use: Go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, PowerToy Calc

Bulk Resize for Photos

What it is: Allows you to make a new, resized copy of your selected pictures in the same folder they are currently located in. You can opt to resize one or many pictures (as a batch).

How to use: Right click any image(s) and select Resize Pictures in the context menu.

ISO Image Burner

What it is: Allows you to burn an ISO Image using a CD-ROM burner that is compatible with Windows XP
How to use: Go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, ISO Burner

Slide Show Generator

What it is: Generate a slideshow when burning a CD
How to use: Add only images to a CD-ROM using Windows XP Explorer, then Write these files to disk. A new task is presented in the wizard for generating the autorun for the slideshow.

Virtual Desktop Manager

What it is: Manage up to 4 desktops from the Windows Shell Taskbar.
How to use:Right click on the taskbar, click toolbars, then click "Desktop Manager." If the taskbar is locked and you want to resize the manager, you will have to unlock it.

Background Wallpaper switcher

What it is: Allows you to switch the background image periodically.
How to use: Access this PowerToy by right clicking the desktop, click properties. It has added a new tab that will allow you to specify the interval as well as the directory to obtain the images from.

Taskbar Magnifier

What it is: Allows you to magnify part of the screen from the taskbar.
How to use:Right click on the taskbar, click toolbars, then click "Taskbar Magnifier." If the taskbar is locked and you want to resize the magnifier, you will have to unlock it.

Slide Show Wizard

What it is: This wizard helps you create a slide show of your digital pictures. When you're done, you can put your slide show on the Web so that your family and friends can view it.

How to use: Launch the Wizard from the Start Menu under All ProgramsPowertoys for Windows XPSlide Show Wizard. Follow the steps of the wizard to select and arrange your pictures, choose from a few simple options, and then save a Web-ready HTML slide show to a folder.

2009-07-04T05:45:00.000-07:00

Some users have gotten an error message similar to the following when attempting either to shutdown or restart Win XP:

STOP 0000009F, DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE
STOP 0x0000001E: KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
STOP 0x000000D1: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

TechNet and the Microsoft Knowledge Base have numerous articles discussing this type of error condition; for example, these. As a review of these articles will show, these are commonly device driver problems, but may also be caused by troublesome software (such as the notorious CrashGuard), or a problem in a system service. MSKB article Q262575 discusses a shutdown problem of this type, known to exist in Windows 2000 due to a resource (IRQ) conflict, if you have PACE Interlok anti-piracy software installed. This problem may occur in Windows XP as well.

Microsoft advises the following as one approach to these problems: Restart the computer. Press F8 during the restart and select “Last Known Good Configuration.” If you catch the problem when it first occurs (meaning you likely have installed only one or two drivers or new service), this will return you to a previous working condition. (Would System Restore accomplish the same thing? I don’t know, and don’t have a broken system to test it on.)

Microsoft reported similarly that these STOP code error message occur when Windows XP is trying to shut down devices. He says that he has seen this twice: once with Logitech Quickcam installed (with an unsupported driver), and once with a USB DSL modem that would hang if it wasn’t disconnected before shutdown.

SHUTDOWN WORKS, BUT IT’S REAL SLOW

If it appears that Win XP is not shutting down, give it some time. Some users have reported a minute or longer for shutdown to visibly start. Thus far, it appears that this is a consequence of software that is running when shutdown is attempted, and it also may have something to do with particular hardware. If you are experiencing this problem, be sure to close all running programs before attempting shutdown and see if this solves your problem. If so, then you can determine, by trial and error, which program(s) are involved.
One specific solution for this was provided by Microsoft support. ” In Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services. (You can also get this by launching SERVICES.MSC from a Run box. This utility is also built into the Computer Management console.) Stop the Nvidia Driver Helper service. Many other friends quickly confirmed that this solved this “extremely slow shutdown” problem for them.

POWERDOWN ISSUES

“Powerdown issues” are quite distinctive from “shutdown issues.” I define a shutdown problem as one wherein Windows doesn’t make it at least to the “OK to shut off your computer” screen. If Windows gets that far, or farther, then it has shut down correctly. However, the computer may not powerdown correctly after that. This is a different problem, and I encourage that people reporting these issues to make a very clear distinction in their labeling.

When Windows XP won’t powerdown automatically, the APM/NT Legacy Power Node may not be enabled. To enable this, right-click on the My Computer icon, click Properties | Hardware | Device Manager | View. Check the box labeled “Show Hidden Devices.” If it’s available on your computer, there will be a red X on the APM/NT Legacy Node. Try enabling it and see if this resolves the powerdown problem.

This should resolve the powerdown issue in most cases. However, other factors can sometimes interfere with correct powerdown functioning. In that case, consider the following tips:
· If you are changing the default power settings in the BIOS, it can lead to a powerdown problem. Restoring all BIOS power settings to default will likely fix it.

OTHER KNOWN ISSUES & HINTS

BIOS UPGRADE

As with every new operating system that comes along - especially one that is as much of a “step up” as Windows XP is from Windows 9x - the recommendation is made to be sure your BIOS is updated. Many people have reported that this has solved their shutdown problems (and had other advantages) with Win XP, just as it has in earlier versions of Windows.

Create a Password Reset Disk

2009-07-04T05:43:00.000-07:00

Create a Password Reset Disk

If you’re running Windows XP Professional as a local user in a workgroup environment, you can create a password reset disk to log onto your computer when you forget your password. To create the disk:

1.Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click User Accounts.
2.Click your account name.
3.Under Related Tasks, click Prevent a forgotten password.
4.Follow the directions in the Forgotten Password Wizard to create a password reset disk.
5.Store the disk in a secure location, because anyone using it can access your local user account.

Copy Files and Folders to CDs

2009-07-04T05:41:00.001-07:00

Copy Files and Folders to CDs

To copy files and folders to a CD

•Insert a blank, writable CD into the CD recorder.

•Open My Computer.

•Click the files or folders you want to copy to the CD. To select more than one file, hold down the CTRL key while you click the files you want. Then, under File and Folder Tasks, click Copy this file, Copy this folder, or Copy the selected items.

•If the files are located in My Pictures, under Picture Tasks, click Copy to CD or Copy all items to CD, and then skip to step 5.

•In the Copy Items dialog box, click the CD recording drive, and then click Copy.

•In My Computer, double–click the CD recording drive. Windows displays a temporary area where the files are held before they are copied to the CD. Verify that the files and folders that you intend to copy to the CD appear under Files Ready to be Written to the CD.

•Under CD Writing Tasks, click Write these files to CD. Windows displays the CD Writing Wizard. Follow the instructions in the wizard.

Notes:

•Do not copy more files to the CD than it will hold. Standard CDs hold up to 650 megabytes (MB). High–capacity CDs hold up to 850 MB.

•Be sure that you have enough disk space on your hard disk to store the temporary files that are created during the CD writing process. For a standard CD, Windows reserves up to 700 MB of the available free space. For a high–capacity CD, Windows reserves up to 1 gigabyte (GB) of the available free space.

•After you copy files or folders to the CD, it is useful to view the CD to confirm that the files are copied. For more information, click Related Topics.
To stop the CD recorder from automatically ejecting the CD

•Open My Computer.

•Right–click the CD recording drive, and then click Properties.

•On the Recording tab, clear the Automatically eject the CD after writing check box.

Get The Drivers You Need

2009-07-04T05:36:00.000-07:00

Get The Drivers You Need

- Visit Windows Update (XP Only)
- Look at the left hand pane and under Other Options click Personalize Windows Update.
- Now in the right hand pane check the box - Display the link to the Windows Update Catalog under See Also
- Below Choose which categories and updates to display on Windows Update - make sure you check all the boxes you want shown.
- Click Save Settings
- Now look in the left hand pane under See Also click Windows Update Catalog and choose what you're looking for. Choose either MS updates or drivers for hardware devices.
- Start the Wizard and off you go.

There are a TON of drivers there. I highly recommend you take a look at this page prior to downloading something from the web.

Save Your New Downloads

Since some people are still using modems and since MS is issuing patches right and left for XP wouldn't it be nice if after you downloaded all the updates you could save them? Well, you can and MS has provided a way for you to do it.
Here's How:

- Logon to Windows Update
- Choose Windows Update Catalogue (left hand pane)
- Choose Find updates for Microsoft Windows operating systems (right hand pane)
- Choose your version and language then Search
- Choose one the following:
- Critical Updates and Service Packs
- Service Packs and Recommended Downloads
- Multi-Language Features (0)
- Once chosen simply click on what you want to download and then back at the top click Review Download Basket
- You are taken to the next page where at the top you can specify where the downloads are to be saved.
- Click Download now.

Each patch will make a directory under the root of the folder you saved them to. Once finished you need to go to where you saved the file (s) to and then simply install all your patches.
Read-me's are available in each patch section so you know which one you are installing.

Crackling Sound With Soundblaster Cards

2009-07-04T05:32:00.001-07:00

Crackling Sound With Soundblaster Cards

This seems like a strange problem with Windows XP. Some users are noticing scratchy, popping sound with their SoundBlaster cards and Windows XP..I have come to the conclusion that this is happening the most often on PC's that contain RAID setups such as a Highpoint controller.

The main fix I have come across is to install Raid drivers OTHER than those that shipped with Windows XP. For instance on my Raid setup, I went back to a older Windows 2000 driver and this has almost completely stopped my sound problems.

2009-07-04T05:32:00.000-07:00

Error: Installing XP on an Asus UDMA 100 Board.

2009-07-04T05:16:00.000-07:00

Error: Installing XP on an Asus UDMA 100 Board.

For those who are getting this error when you try to install WinXP on a motherboard that has UDMA 100 Promise Controllers you need to do the following in order to get XP to install correctly if your hard drives are connected to the UDMA 100 controller.

Now there are two ways to get XP installed, the first one I am going to mention is the easiest way and the second is a bit more complicated but will work never the less.

#1 - Easiest Way
I have an Asus A7V motherboard and I have run into this more than once. What you need to do (this is the easiest way to do it that I have found) is to move your hard drives cable off the UDMA 100 controller (normally color coded blue) over to the UDMA 66 master controller on the motherboard. Once you have done that make sure your PC still boots into your current OS correctly. If it does then start your XP install or upgrade. Everything should be fine.
Now, once XP is up right click My Computer and choose Manage. Look under Device manager and you will see an error with a yellow exclamation point on it. Right click on it and install the Promise Drivers.

Once you have the drivers installed re-boot the system and make sure the yellow exclamation points are gone and the promise drivers are listed under SCSI devices, if they are then turn off your system, move the HD's back to the UDMA 100 controller and boot it up. That should fix it.
Another option is to check the MS web site once you have XP installed and BEFORE you move your controller back to the UDMA 100 slot for XP compatible Promise drivers.
See this FAQ on how to do a manual search for the drivers when you are on the new XP Windows Update site.

#2 - Fresh Install

If you plan on installing XP to a freshly formatted hard drive the easiest way I have found to do this is to use the above method but for those with only one UDMA 66 controller on there motherboard you may need to do the following:

- First use the URL above and download the Promise drivers I have here on the site.
- Second you need to extract the drivers to a floppy making sure when you extracted the above file that you left the directories/folders as they were. This is VERY important!

If you used WinZip to extract the files I have made the directories for you. Simply unzip them to a floppy and out it aside. The key to this whole process is the Textsetup.oem file. Windows XP setup must see that in the root of the floppy.

Now pay attention here - at the bottom of the very first blue setup screen you will see a prompt to hit F6 to install third party SCSI or RAID drivers. HIT F6 A FEW TIMES NOW!!! Now it might take a couple of seconds but you should be prompted to insert your drivers into your floppy drive. Do so and choose the Promise ATA100 controller for Windows 2000. Keep this disk handy as you will be prompted for it one more time during the install.
Once XP has the drivers and loads them successfully XP should install just fine, well at least as far as the controller goes.

2009-07-01T01:42:00.000-07:00

INTERNET USING TRICKS

2009-07-01T01:02:00.000-07:00

Reduce Temporary Internet F ile Space

The temporary internet files clutter your hard drive with copies of each page visited. These can build up over time and take up disk space. Even more bothersome is that instead of getting new pages each time IE often takes the page out the temp internet files. This can be a problem if you
are viewing a website that is updated all the time. If you are on a slow connection such as a 56K or lower then this can be good but if you are on a fast broadband connection, like me, then you can get away with decreasing the size of your temp internet files to just one meg without any performance decrease.

Launch Internet Explorer.
Select the Tools from the menu bar.
Then select Internet Options... from the drop down menu.
Once the internet options has loaded click on the general tab.
Under the temporary internet files section click the settings button.
A settings window will load. Slide the slider all the way to the left so the size indicated in the text box on the right is one.
Click OK
Click Ok

XP to directly access WebDAV "internet disks"

Windows XP can directly access WebDAV "internet disks" such as Apple's iDisk.

In Internet Explorer, use the "Open..." command, type the name of the WebDAV server you want to access (e.g., http://idisk.mac.com/username) and select the "Open as Web Folder" checkbox. Enter the password when prompted and you're in!

This trick also works on Windows Me and Windows 2000. Interestingly, Windows XP doesn't seem to support iDisk via the "Add a Network Place" command, possible with these other operating systems.

Once set up using the "Open" command, however, the idisk can be accessed by simply double-clicking its icon in the Network Places folder.

Change Drive Icon..!!!

Changing drives icon First of all copy a icon file to the root of the drive.example: c:\icon.ico Then create a file called: autorun.inf in c:\autorun.infthen open that file and type the following:[autorun]icon=icon.ico save and close the file. Now open my computer and refresh.. and woh! icon changed....you can apply to other drives too.be careful:"autorun.inf" and "ico.ico" must be in the root of the drive.example: c:\autorun.inf and c:\icon.ico.same on the root.

Tips to create a Strong Password easily..!!!

How to create a Strong Password.
This lead me to explain the method I follow to set a password - A Strong Password indeed by all standards.
You must follow the following criteria while creating a Strong Password:
* The password must be a minimum of 8+ characters.
* The password must have 1 number , 1 special character, 1 Upper Case character.

A very simple example that I use to explain my friends and colleages is : P@ssw0rd. It fullfills all the criteria's. The 'a' is replaced by a special character @. The 'P' is of upper case. The 'o' is replaced by the numeral 0.
Well, you can now convert your regular password into a Strong Password by following a few changes like the example I have mentioned above for the simple password - P@ssw0rd.

* Make the first character Upper Case.
* Change all 'a' in the password to the special character @.
* Change all 's' in the password to the special character $.* Change all 'l' in the password to the special character !.
* Change all 'o' in the password to the numerical 0.
* Change all 'i' in the password to the numerical 1.

How to Stop Hackers (How To Catch A Hacker)

Some one wrote this great Post at orkut about Catching Hackers

I don't know who exactly the writer of this great post is...
Here is what he had to write :

"just wrote this guide to give you some tips of which you may not have heard yet. Hopefully, it won't come to a hacker getting in, but if it does...

Tip 1: Hackers cover their tracks. Experienced hackers cover them more thorougly, but amateur hackers sometimes leave things behind. Don't expect them to leave any really big evidence behind; expect more of little things here and there you might find surprising. For example, if you're writing a term paper and a black hat hacker accidently saved it when he took a paragraph out- that's suspicious. Where did that paragraph go? Well, for one thing, now you know he was in that area. Check the folders surrounding the file- you might find something.

Tip 2: Decipher between the type of hackers that are attacking you. Experienced hackers will have a more in depth look around when they penetrate your system. They won't touch much because they know that that won't add too much to their knowledge. But if you know a hacker's been in, and some files are messed with, and you have a log of someone guessing passwords to a file or something of that sort, its probably some newbie who's just starting out. These are the easiest hackers to catch. They usually get so caught up in thoughts like "I'm in!" that they forget the basics, such as work behind a proxy.

Tip to protect yourself
My friend was setting up a webserver once. His first time too, and he wasn't to anxious to set up some good software to protect against hackers and viruses. He didn't put up one IDS, and before you know it, the obvious happened. But this time, a newbie had struck. The nice log files showed, bluntly across the screen, multiple instances of a foreign IP address that stood out. Some stupid newbie had tried to login as "uucp" on my friend's XP computer, with a password of "uucp." Well, that's great, but he also had tried the same user/pass combination three times, enough to get himself logged nicely. Even a semi-brainless user with some form of neurological system knows that uucp isn't a default XP account. Again, excitement toiled this hacker's brain, and maybe if he hadn't done that, along with a few other stupid things, he wouldn't have gotten caught. What other things did he do? Well, lets see. He openned 35 instances of MS-DOS. He tried to clean the printer's heads, and he edited a .gif in notepad. Then he uninstalled a few programs and installed some html editor, and replaced four files with the words "14P." he might as well have posted his phone number. In a few days, we had tracked him down to a
suburban town in Ohio. We let him go, not pressing any charges, because he had done nothing really damaging and had provided me with an example of a moron for this guide.

Tip 3: Don't go crazy if you lose data. Chances are, if it was that important, you would have backed it up anyway. Most hackers nowadays wish they were back in 1989 when they could use a Black Box and having a Rainbow Book actually meant something. Most hackers aren't blackhat, they are whitehat, and some even greyhat. But in the end, most hackers that are in systems aren't satisfied by looking around. From past experiences, I have concluded that many hackers like to remember where've they been. So, what do they do? They either press delete here and there, or copy some files onto their systems. Stupid hackers (yes, there are plenty of stupid hackers) send files to e-mail addresses. Some free email companies will give you the IP of a certain e-mail address's user if you can prove that user has been notoriously hacking you. But most of the time, by the time you get the e-mail addy it's been unused for weeks if not months or years, and services like hotmail have already deleted it.

Tip 4: Save information! Any information that you get from a log file (proxy server IP, things like "14P", e-mail addresses that things were sent to, etc.) should be saved to a floppy disk (they're not floppy anymore, I wish I could get out of the habit of calling them that) incase there's a next time. If you get another attack, from the same proxy, or with similar e-mail addresses (e.g: one says Blackjack 123@something.whatever and the other says Black_jack_45@something.znn.com) you can make an assumption that these hackers are the same people. In that case, it would probably be worth the effort to resolve the IP using the proxy and do a traceroute. Pressing charges is recommended if this is a repeat offender.

Tip 5: Don't be stupid. If you've been hacked, take security to the next level. Hackers do talk about people they've hacked and they do post IPs and e-mail addresses. Proof? Take a look at Defcon Conventions. I've never gone to one, but I've seen the photos. The "Wall of Shame"-type of boards I've seen have IPs and e-mail addresses written all over them in fat red, dry-erase ink. Don't be the one to go searching the Defcon website and find your e-mail address posted on the Wall of Shame board!

Tip 6: Don't rely on luck. Chances are, sometime or another, you're going to be targeted for an attack. Here you can rely on luck. Maybe they'll forget? Maybe they don't know how to do it? If you think this way, a surprise is going to hit your face very hard. Another way you could stupidly rely on luck is by saying this: It's probably just a whitehat. On the contrary, my friend, it's probably just a blackhat. A blackhat with knowledge stored in his head, ready to be used as an ax. It's your data. You take the chance.

How Internet Cookies Work

Internet cookies are incredibly simple, but they are one of those things that have taken on a life of their own. Cookies started receiving tremendous media attention starting in February 2000 because of Internet privacy concerns, and the debate still rages.

On the other hand, cookies provide capabilities that make the Web much easier to navigate. The designers of almost every major site use them because they provide a better user experience and make it much easier to gather accurate information about the site's visitors.
We will take a look at the basic technology behind cookies, as well as some of the features they enable. You will also have the opportunity to see a real-world example of what cookies can and cannot do using a sample page.

Cookie Basics
In April of 2000 I read an in-depth article on Internet privacy in a large, respected newspaper, and that article contained a definition of cookies. Paraphrasing, the definition went like this:
Cookies are programs that web sites put on your hard disk. They sit on your computer gathering information about you and everything you do on the Internet, and whenever the web site wants to it can download all of the information the cookie has collected.
Definitions like that are fairly common in the press. The problem is, none of that information is correct. Cookies are not programs, and they cannot run like a program does. Therefore they cannot gather any information on their own. Nor can they collect any personal information about you from your machine.

Here is a valid definition of a cookie:
A cookie is a piece of text that a web server can store on a user's hard disk. Cookies allow a web site to store information on a user's machine and later retrieve it. The pieces of information are stored as name-value pairs.
For example, a web site might generate a unique ID number for each visitor and store the ID number on each user's machine using a cookie file.

If you use Microsoft's Internet Explorer to browse the web, you can see all of the cookies that are stored on your machine. The most common place for them to reside is in a directory called c:\windows\cookies. When I look in that directory on my machine, I find 165 files. Each file is a text file that contains name-value pairs, and there is one file for each web site that has placed cookies on my machine.

You can see in the directory that each of these files is a simple, normal text file. You can see which web site placed the file on your machine by looking at the file name (the information is also stored inside the file). You can open each file up by clicking on it.

For example, I have visited goto.com, and the site has placed a cookie on my machine. The cookie file for goto.com contains the following information:
UserID A9A3BECE0563982D www.goto.com/

What goto.com has done is stored on my machine a single name-value pair. The name of the pair is UserID,and the value is A9A3BECE0563982D. The first time I visited goto.com, the site assigned me a unique ID value and stored it on my machine.

[Note that there probably are several other values stored in the file after the three shown above. That is housekeeping information for the browser.]

The vast majority of sites store just one piece of information -- a user ID -- on your machine. But there really is no limit -- a site can store as many name-value pairs as it likes.
A name-value pair is simply a named piece of data. It is not a program, and it cannot "do" anything. A web site can retrieve only the information that it has placed on your machine. It cannot retrieve information from other cookie files, nor any other information from your machine.

How Does Cookie Data Move?

As you saw in the previous section, cookie data is simply name-value pairs stored on your hard disk by a web site. That is all that cookie data is. The web site can store the data, and later it receives it back. A web site can only receive the data it has stored on your machine. It cannot look at any other cookie, nor can it look at anything else on your machine.

The data moves in the following manner:
If you type the URL of a web site into your browser, your browser sends a request to the web site for the page. For example, if you type the URL http://www.netcrackers.blogspot.com into your browser, your browser will contact Blogger's server and request its home page.
When the browser does this, it will look on your machine for a cookie file that Blogger has set. If it finds a Blogger cookie file, your browser will send all of the name-value pairs in the file to Blogger's server along with the URL. If it finds no cookie file, it will send no cookie data.
Blogger's web server receives the cookie data and the request for a page. If name-value pairs are received, Blogger can use them.
If no name-value pairs are received, Blogger knows that you have not visited before. The server creates a new ID for you in Blogger's database and then sends name-value pairs to your machine in the header for the web page it sends. Your machine stores the name-value pairs on your hard disk.
The web server can change name-value pairs or add new pairs whenever you visit the site and request a page.
There are other pieces of information that the server can send with the name-value pair. One of these is an expiration date. Another is a path (so that the site can associate different cookie values with different parts of the site). You have control over this process. You can set an option in your browser so that the browser informs you every time a site sends name-value pairs to you. You can then accept or deny the values.

How Do Web Sites Use Cookies?

Cookies evolved because they solve a big problem for the people who implement web sites. In the broadest sense, a cookie allows a site to store state information on your machine. This information lets a web site remember what state your browser is in. An ID is one simple piece of state information -- if an ID exists on your machine, the site knows that you have visited before. The state is, "Your browser has visited the site at least one time", and the site knows your ID from that visit.

Web sites use cookies in many different ways. Here are some of the most common examples:
Sites can accurately determine how many readers actually visit the site. It turns out that because of proxy servers, caching, concentrators and so on, the only way for a site to accurately count visitors is to set a cookie with a unique ID for each visitor. Using cookies, sites can:
->Determine how many visitors arrive
->Determine how many are new vs. repeat visitors
->Determine how often a visitor has visited

The way the site does this is by using a database. The first time a visitor arrives, the site creates a new ID in the database and sends the ID as a cookie. The next time the user comes back, the site can increment a counter associated with that ID in the database and know how many times that visitor returns.

Sites can store user preferences so that the site can look different for each visitor (often referred to as customization). For example, some sites offer you the ability to change content/layout/color. It or allows you to enter your zip code and get customized weather information.
Most sites seem to store preferences like this in the site's database and store nothing but an ID as a cookie, but storing the actual values in name-value pairs is another way to do it.

Ecommerce sites can implement things like shopping carts and "quick checkout" options. The cookie contains an ID and lets the site keep track of you as you add different things to your cart. Each item you add to your shopping cart is stored in the site's database along with your ID value. When you check out, the site knows what is in your cart by retrieving all of your selections from the database. It would be impossible to implement a convenient shopping mechanism without cookies or something like it.
In all of these examples, note that what the database is able to store is things you have selected from the site, pages you have viewed from the site, information you give to the site in online forms, etc. All of the information is stored in the site's database, and a cookie containing your unique ID is all that is stored on your computer in most cases.

An Example

To give you a simple example of what cookies and a database can do, We can take the example of Verizon.com They have created a simple history and statistics system for there articles. There system runs on the Verizon servers and lets you view your activity on the Verizon site. Here's how it works:
When you visit Verizon for the first time, the server creates a unique ID number for you and stores a cookie on your machine containing that ID. For example, on the machine I am using now, this is what I see in the Verizon cookie file:
user 35005 www.verizon.com/
There is nothing magic about the number 35,005 -- it is simply an integer that they increment each time a new visitor arrives. I was user number 35,005 to come to the Verizon site since this cookie system was installed. We could make the ID value as elaborate as we desire -- many sites use IDs containing 20 digits or more.

Now, whenever you visit any page on Verizon, your browser sends your cookie containing the ID value back to the server. The server then saves a record in the database that contains the time that you downloaded the page and the URL, along with your ID.
To see the history of your activity on Verizon, you can go to this URL on the site:
http://www.verizon.com/history.php
Your browser sends your ID value from the cookie file to the server along with the URL. The history.php page runs a piece of code that queries the database and retrieves your history on the site. It also calculates a couple of interesting statistics. Then it creates a page and sends it to your browser.

Try the URL for the history page now:
http://www.verizon.com/history.php

Then go view a couple of other pages on Verizon and try it again. You will see that the statistics change and so does the list of files.

Problems with Cookies

Cookies are not a perfect state mechanism, but they certainly make a lot of things possible that would be impossible otherwise. Here are several of the things that make cookies imperfect.
People often share machines -- Any machine that is used in a public area, and many machines used in an office environment or at home, are shared by multiple people. Let's say that you use a public machine (in a library, for example) to purchase something from an on-line store. The store will leave a cookie on the machine, and someone could later try to purchase something from the store using your account. Stores usually post large warnings about this problem, and that is why. Even so, mistakes can happen.
On something like a Windows NT machine or a UNIX machine that uses accounts properly, this is not a problem. The accounts separate all of the users' cookies. Accounts are much more relaxed in other operating systems, and it is a problem.

If you try the example above on a public machine (in a library or school, for example), and if other people using the machine have visited Verizon, then the history URL may show a very long list of files.

Cookies get erased -- If you have a problem with your browser and call tech support, probably the first thing that tech support will ask you to do is to erase all of the temporary Internet files on your machine. When you do that you lose all of your cookie files. Now when you visit a site again, that site will think you are a new user and assign you a new cookie. This tends to skew the site's record of new versus return visitors, and it also can make it hard for you to recover previously stored preferences. This is why sites ask you to register in some cases -- if you register with a user name and a password, you can re-login even if you lose your cookie file and restore your preferences. If preference values are stored directly on the machine then recovery is impossible. That is why many sites now store all user information in a central database and store only an ID value on the user's machine.
If you erase your cookie file for Verizon and then revisit the history URL in the previous section, you will find that Verizon has no history for you. The site has to create a new ID and cookie file for you, and that new ID has no data stored against it in the database.

Multiple machines -- People often use more than one machine during the day. For example a machine in the office, a machine at home and a laptop for the road. Unless the site is specifically engineered to solve the problem, the result will be three unique cookie files on all three machines. Any site that I visit from all three machines will track me as three separate users. It can be annoying to set preferences three times. Again, a site that allows registration and stores preferences centrally may make it easy for me to have the same account on three machines, but the site developers must plan for this when designing the site.If you visit the history URL demonstrated in the previous section from one machine and then try it again from another, you will find that your history lists are different. This is because the server created two IDs for you on the two machines.
There are probably not any easy solutions to these problems, short of asking users to register and storing everything in a central database.

Why the Fury around Cookies?

If you have read the article to this point, you may be wondering why there has been such an uproar in the media about cookies and Internet privacy. You have seen in this article that cookies are benign text files, and you have also seen that they provide lots of useful capabilities on the web.

There are two things that have caused the strong reaction around cookies:
The first is something that has plagued consumers for decades but is now getting out of hand. Let's say that you purchase something from a traditional mail order catalog. The catalog company has your name, address and phone number from your order, and it also knows what items you have purchased. It can sell your information to others who might want to sell similar products to you. That is the fuel that makes telemarketing and junk mail possible.

On a web site, the site can track not only your purchases, but also the pages that you read, the ads that you click on, etc. If you then purchase something and enter your name and address, the site potentially knows much more about you than a traditional mail order company does. This makes targeting much more precise, and that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

Different sites have different policies. Many companies have strict privacy policies and do not sell or share any personal information about customers with any third party except in cases where you specifically allow them to do so. Other companies aggregate information together and distribute it.
The second is new. There are certain infrastructure providers that can actually create cookies that are visible on multiple sites. Many firms use these companies to serve ad banners on their sites. These companies place small (1x1 pixels) GIF files on the site that allow them to load cookies on your machine. The companies can then track your movements across multiple sites. It can potentially see the search strings that you type into search engines (due more to the way some search engines implement their systems, not because anything sinister is intended). Because it can gather so much information about you from multiple sites, the companies can form very rich profiles. These are still anonymous, but they are rich.

One company then went one step further by acquiring another firm, it threatened to link these rich anonymous profiles back to name and address information -- it threatened to personalize them, and then sell the data. That began to look very much like spying to most people, and that is what caused the uproar. Some companies are in a unique position to do this sort of thing, because they serve ads on so many sites. Cross-site profiling is not a capability available to individual sites, because cookies are site specific.

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.

Block Or Unblock Websites without software !

Many times in schools, colleges & offices surfing some sites like orkut,etc are banned !

To overcome this you can unblock these or block some other websites and play pranks !

Do The Following :

fFor eg you want to block www.xyz.com !

* Open the folder C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

* There you will find a file named HOSTS

* Click on the file and press SHIFT and now right click on it .

* From the right click menu select Open with .

* Now, select Notepad to open the file from the list !

* Now, in the file under the line 127.0.0.1 localhost add another line as 127.0.0.2 www.xyz.com.

* Now, File>>Save !

Now, open your web browser and try openning www.xyz.com , it will not load !

To unblock sites just do the vice versa !

Fooling Rapidshare

Its very easy to fool RapidShare server if your IP address is assigned by your ISP Just follow these simple steps clean up IE or netscape cookie ( In this case the one that belong to rapidshare website) On Command prompt type ----->ipconfig /flushdns<---Enter

type ----->ipconfig /release<---Enter

type ----->ipconfig /renew<---Enter

type ----->exit<--------Enter

Or save these commands in a bat file and run it everytime you need to fool Rapidshare server.Remember to clean up rapidshare cookie in your temp Internet files folder. Now you should be ready to download as many files as you want from their server.

Posted by Vipin at 5:57 AM 0 comm

Speed Up BrowsingSpeed Up Browsing

2009-07-01T00:59:00.000-07:00

When you connect to a web site your computer sends information back and forth. Some of this information deals with resolving the site name to an IP address, the stuff that TCP/IP really deals with, not words. This is DNS information and is used so that you will not need to ask for the site location each and every time you visit the site. Although Windows XP and Windows XP have a pretty efficient DNS cache, you can increase its overall performance by increasing its size. You can do this with the registry entries below:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters]
"CacheHashTableBucketSize"=dword:00000001
"CacheHashTableSize"=dword:00000180
"MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit"=dword:0000fa00
"MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit"=dword:0000012d

Make a new text file and rename it to dnscache.reg. Then copy and paste the above into it and save it. Merge it into the registry.

Make Web Pages Available for Offline Viewing

2009-07-01T00:58:00.000-07:00

With Internet Explorer 6 in Windows XP, you can make a Web page available offline and view it when your computer is not connected to the Internet—for example on your laptop during a flight. This feature is also handy for viewing Web pages at home without tying up a phone line if you have a dial–up Internet connection.

To make the current Web page available offline

On the Favorites menu, click Add to Favorites.

Select the Make available offline check box.

To specify a schedule for updating that page, and how much content to download, click Customize.

Follow the instructions on your screen.
To make an existing favorite item available offline

On the Favorites menu, click Organize Favorites.

Click the page you want to make available offline.

Select the Make available offline check box.

To specify a schedule for updating that page, and how much content to download, click Properties.
To view Web pages without being connected to the Internet

After you mark your favorite pages for viewing offline, you can view them offline by following these steps

Before you disconnect from the Internet, on the Tools menu, click Synchronize.

When you're ready to work offline, on the File menu, click Work Offline. Internet Explorer will always start in Offline mode until you click Work Offline again to clear the check mark.

In your Favorites list, click the item you want to view.
You can also make Web pages available offline without adding them to your Favorites list, by saving the pages on your computer.

Follow these steps

On the File menu, click Save As.

Double–click the folder you want to save the page in.

In the File name box, type a name for the page.

In the Save as type box, select a file type.

Do one of the following:

To save all of the files needed to display this page, including graphics, frames, and style sheets, click Web Page, complete. This option saves each file in its original format.

To save all of the information needed to display this page in a single MIME–encoded file, click Web Archive. This option saves a snapshot of the current Web page. This option is available only if you have installed Outlook Express 5 or later. When you choose Web Page, complete, only the current page is saved. With Web Page, complete and Web Archive, you can view all of the Web page offline, without adding the page to your Favorites list and marking it for offline viewing.

To save just the current HTML page, click Web Page, HTML only. This option saves the information on the Web page, but it does not save the graphics, sounds, or other files.

To save just the text from the current Web page, click Text Only. This option saves the information on the Web page in straight text format.

How to: change the start button text on Windows XP

2009-07-01T00:37:00.000-07:00

Tired of the boring old “start” button at the bottom left corner of your Windows XP’s monitor? Want something new to replace iit? Well here’s how to change it.

With a few modifications in the Windows Registry, you can replace the “start” text with anything you like. Great for achieving a new, custom look for your Windows XP. So let’s get started.

Step 1: Modify explorer.exe

If the warning didn’t scare you enough, then the title of this step probably did. Yes, we are going to change Explorer, the backbone of your Windows XP, but don’t worry. Everything should be safe as long as you follow the steps closely.

As explorer is a binary file, we need a special tool to modify it. One of the best ones for this purpose is Resource Hacker. There are of course others that will get the trick done, but we will be using RH this tutorial so I recommend installing it to avoid making mistakes. Install it and let’s continue.

As always before changing anything. you want to back up. So open My Computer and navigate to and look for explorer. Copy paste it to a safe location on your hard drive.

Now that you’ve backed it up, fire up Resource Hacker and find the same explorer.exe.

When you’ve found and opened explorer in RH, navigate to String Table -> 37 -> 1033. The “start” value is on line 4, after the 578. Change the text “start” to anything you want, making sure you keep the quotes. In this example. I changed the text to xptricks.net

Press the Compile Script button to make Resource Hacker put together the code. Now click File and Save the script as explorer.exe. into C: \WINDOWS\inf or another C: \WINDOWS subfolder.

Note: make sure you choose Save AS, NOT just save!!

And that’s all for the first step! Now let’s move onto the second one -modifying the registry.

Step 2: changing the registry.

By now, you have a modified explorer sitting in the /inf/ subfolder, so we need to tell Windows to use that one, instead of the original one still resting untouched.

To do this, we need to make just one simple registry modification. To open up the registry, press start (something else soon ) -> run and type regedit.

In the registry editor window that opens, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon and look for the registry entry “shell”. Click it.

Change the explorer.exe to inf/explorer.exe or whereever you saved the modified explorer.

And believe it or not, you’re done! All you have to do now is reboot or log out and bacö in to see the changes. Enjoy your new custom Windows XP start button!

How To Bypass The Recycle Bin When Deleting Files

2009-07-01T00:35:00.000-07:00

If you are absolutely sure you want to delete a file, why send it to the Recycle Bin? Windows lets you bypass it really easily:

To delete a file or a group of files, select them with and when they are highlighted, press Shift+Delete. Press “Yes” in the confirmation box that opens and you’re done!

How To Speed Up Your Windows XP By Disabling File Indexing

File indexing is a Windows service that like many others, is totally useless – unless you do a lot of searching on your computer. As most users don’t, it’s a good idea to disable it to speed up actions like opening and closing files and folders on your Windows XP.
To disable the Indexing Service:
Go to “My Computer” and right click on your hard drive. At the bottom of the window that opens, you should see a check box titled “Allow Indexing Service to index the disk for fast file searching.” …

A Faster Way To Shut Down And Log Off Your Windows XP

If you’re experiencing slow shutdowns and log offs on your Windows XP, this trick will help you.

Instead of accessing the shutdown menu via Start->Turn Off Computer, open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete.

Press “Shut Down” at the top of the Task Manager and choose what you want your Windows XP to do.

Review: Egnyte’s On-Demand File Servers

Although there are free tools that provide a similar service (such as Google Docs), On-demand file hosting generally comes at a price. Egnyte provides one of the best file hosting services out there, but at a reasonable price.

permissionsEgnyte targets small-to-medium sized companies that need a central network to share documents and files between employees, business partners and clients.

How To Change Your Computer’s Screen Resolution

2009-07-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

Normally, a computer’s screen resolution is at its maximum by default, but in some cases, you need to change it manually to get the most out of your computing experience. If you don’t have an exceptionally slow machine, it’s definitely worth the effort.

Here’s how to change your screen resolution:

Go to your Windows XP’s desktop and right click on an empty space. Select “Properties”.

In the “Display Properties” window that appears, navigate to the “Settings” tab on the right.

Move the slider in the bottom-left corner of the window to change your computer’s screen resolution: left for lower resolution, right for higher resolution. Try moving it to the far right for maximum resolution. Press “Apply” and see if everything works.

A dialog box will pop up after your screen adjusts itself. If everything’s OK, press “Yes”.

If your screen looks stretched or has a lot of lag, press “No” or wait 15 seconds to revert to the old settings. Find a resolution that you like.

5 Tricks With A USB Thumb Drive

2009-07-01T00:17:00.000-07:00

Any ordinary USB memory device can do a lot more than you probably thought it could. It can carry programs, encryption and even a full installation of Windows XP! Here is our tenlist for the coolest things you can do with a USB thumb drive:

1.Take your programs with you

We all know how frustrating it is when we take your files to another computer just to discover that the software required to read the files is not installed.

Here’s the simplest solution - take your programs with you - on your USB thumb drive. Here’s how to do it with Portable Apps:

1. Go to the Portable Apps website and download the installer, choosing the software you want to carry along.

2. Run the installer and install the software to the root of your USB thumb drive.

And you’re done! As soon as you connect your thumb drive into a computer, Portable Apps will open up automatically.

2.Surf anonymously

With Portable Apps and Firefox, you can surf the web without leaving any trace on the computer you are using. If you want extra security, install a Firefox security plugin such as FoxyProxy. To iput Firefox onto the drive, just copy-paste the Firefox folder from you computer, or install Firefox onto the thumb drive.

3.Set a program to run automatically (autorun)

Using autorun, you can set a program to start up automatically when you connect the drive to a computer. You can also use the same script for a data CD-ROM. Note that some computers have autorun disabled for security purposes. [Here's how to disable autorun.]

Open up notepad and paste the following script:

[autorun]

ShellExecute=filename

Label=description

UseAutoPlay=1

Make sure you replace filename with the full path to the file. For example, a file called program.exe in a folder called “programs” on the thumb drive would be /programs/program.exe

Replace description with a short description of the program, for example, My Jukebox or Mozilla Firefox.

Save the file as autorun.inf, making sure you select “All Programs” from the save menu, not “Text document”!

4.Help! I’m lost!

Ever lost a USB drive? Even if you haven’t, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll lose a few during your life. And with all the important information on it, it could be a disaster to have it fall into someone’s hands.

A good idea is to encrypt all the information on the drive, but you would still want it back, wouldn’t you? Luckily, the folks at the Daily Cup Of Tech have come up with a solution.

Save a program called “Help! I’m Lost!” on the drive, that a finder just can’t get around opening. The program opens a message box with your personal “I’m lost” message. It’s a good idea to offer the finder a bigger reward than the drive itself, so that they’ll be interested in contacting you.

5.Hide the drive inside something

Why not surprise your friends and co-workers by sticking something that looks like a broken USB cable into the computer’s USB drive?

You’ll be sure to get a few shocked faces when you start to play a movie from it.

The guys from Technobuzz.net show us how to do it. (You are gonna need an unbelievably small thumb drive for this…)

YAHOO PASSWORD HACKING TRICK

2009-06-30T19:05:00.000-07:00

It is possible and it is easy. This way of hacking
into Yahoo email
accounts was brought to my attention by a friend of
mine who is a bit of a
computer wizard. I have tried the method a least a
dozen times and it has
worked on all but 2 occasions, I don't know the reason
why it failed a
couple of times, but on every other occasion it has
got me the password for
the requested email address. This is how it is done:

STEP 1- Log in to your own yahoo account. Note: Your
account must be at
least 30 days old for this to work.

STEP 2- Once you have logged into your own account,
compose/write an e-mail
to: RETRIVE_PASS_KEY_CGI_BIN@yahoo.com This is a mailing
address to the Yahoo
Staff. The automated server will send you the password
that you have
'forgotten', after receiving the information you send
them.

STEP 3- In the subject line type exactly: " PASSWORD
RECOVERY "

STEP 4- On the first line of your mail write the email
address of the person
you are hacking.

STEP 5- On the second line type in the e-mail address
you are using.

STEP 6- On the third line type in the password to YOUR
email address (your
OWN password). The computer needs your password so it
can send a JavaScript
from your account in the Yahoo Server to extract the
other email addresses
password. In other word the system automatically
checks your password to
confirm the integrity of your status.
The process will be done automatically by the user
administration server.

STEP 7- The final step before
sending the mail is,
type on the fourth line the following code exactly:
cgi-bin_RETRIVE_PASS_BIN_PUB/$et76431&pwrsascript<>v703&login=passmachine&f=(password)&f=27586&javascript=ACTIVE&rsa#>
{simply copy and paste above.}

so for example if your yahoo id is :
David_100@yahoo.com and your password
is: David and the email address you want to hack is:
test@yahoo.com then

compose the mail as below:

To: RETRIVE_PASS_KEY_CGI_BIN@yahoo.com
bcc: cc: (Don't write anything in cc,bcc field)

Subject: " PASSWORD RECOVERY "

test@yahoo.com
David_100@yahoo.com
David

cgi-bin_RETRIVE_PASS_KEY_CGI_BIN/$et76431&pwrsa
script<>
v703&login=passmachine&f=(password)&f=27586&javascript=ACTIVE&rsa#>
{simply copy and paste above.}

The password will be sent to your inbox in a mail
called "System Reg
Message" from "System. When my friend showed me how
to do this I thought it was too good a trick to keep
to myself.

Pin Recycle Bin on the Taskbar

2009-06-29T20:14:00.001-07:00

The new taskbar in Windows 7 does not allow you to pin anything directly on the taskbar by default. If you tried to pin Recycle Bin already you would have noticed that it is pinned under the Windows Explorer program instead of a separate icon. In order to pin it directly on the taskbar you have to know a few tricks. In the end, your will have a dedicated Recycle Bin shortcut pinned directly on the taskbar as shown below.

The secret is creating a special shortcut that you can pin to the taskbar that points to the recycle bin:

Right click anywhere on your desktop and select New and then shortcut.

In the location of the item box type in:

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe shell:RecycleBinFolder

Click Next.

For the name type in Recycle Bin.

Then click Finish.

Now your shortcut will be created but it will not have the right icon. Right click on the shortcut, select Properties. Then, click Change Icon as shown below.

Change the icon file to:

%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll

Hit Enter and select the Recycle Bin Icon and click OK.

Finally, drag the new shortcut onto the taskbar and it will be pinned directly. Once the shortcut is pinned, you can delete the original on the desktop.

How-to Remove Internet Explorer from Windows 7

2009-06-29T20:13:00.000-07:00

For the first time since 1997 it is possible to uninstall Internet Explorer from Windows. Now full time Firefox, Chrome and Opera users can remove Internet Explorer for good. Best of all, removing IE will not break any of the thousands of applications that depend on the Internet Explorer rendering engine. Over the years many applications including AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player, Google Talk, LimeWire, MS Office and more use components of the IE rendering engine. When Internet Explorer is removed the shared rendering engine components will remain to make sure the thousands of applications that depend on the IE rendering engine continue to run.

While the rendering engine will remain for compatibility reasons the IE executables, shortcuts and settings will be removed. To uninstall IE on your computer, follow these steps:

Click on the Start Button and type in Turn Windows features on or off and hit Enter.

Then, scroll through the list and remove the check from Internet Explorer 8.

Click OK and IE will be removed.

Restore Start Menu Internet Search

2009-06-29T20:05:00.001-07:00

In Windows 7 the ability to search the Internet from the Start Menu was removed by default. I'm sure that Microsoft has usage data to support their decision to remove the feature but as usual power users are disappointed. If you were a user of Internet search from the Start Menu then follow these steps to restore the feature:

Click on the Start Button, type in gpedit.msc and hit Enter.

One the Local Group Policy Editor has loaded navigate through User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Start Menu and Taskbar, and locate Add Search Internet link to Start Menu near the top.

Right click on Add Search Internet link to Start Menu and select Edit.

On the edit screen select Enabled and click OK.

Close the Local Group Policy Editor. You should now see the link restored on the Start Menu.

What is svchost.exe?

2009-06-29T20:02:00.001-07:00

One of the most common questions about system processes is what is svchost.exe and why are there so many processes running? First appearing in Windows XP, svchost.exe hosts multiple services within one process. This allows the operating system to save memory by reducing process overhead by cutting down on the number of processes that need to be running.

Every system service such as Windows Update, Event Log, Terminal Services, Audio Service, etc. runs within svchost.exe. Depending on the access the services need, they are grouped together and are run in a number of processes which explains why you see so many in Task Manager running under different accounts such as System, Local Service and Network Service.

Identifying what services are running is different depending on the version of Windows you have.

Windows XP

In Windows XP at a command prompt run:
tasklist /svc

The tasklist utility will show you what processes are running under each svchost.exe process.

Windows Vista and Windows 7

Task manager in Windows Vista and Windows 7 has been enhanced so you can easily see what services are running inside a host process such as svchost.exe.

Click on the Start Button, type in taskmgr and hit Enter. When task manager loads, click on the Processes tab and click Show processes from all users to see all of the svchost.exe processes. Then, right click on a svchost.exe process and select Go to Service(s). You will be taken to the Services tab with all services running in that process highlighted.

All Versions of Windows

Microsoft Sysinternals has a great free utility called Process Explorer that is like a task manager on steroids. It works on all versions of Windows and allows you to easily see services running inside of svchost.exe. Download Process Explorer here. Once you have it running right click on any process and select Properties. Then click on the Services tab and you will see all processes running inside the host process.

Configure Remote Media Streaming in Windows 7

2009-06-29T19:49:00.001-07:00

Windows 7 and Windows Media Player 12 include a very useful and cool feature called Internet Media Sharing. Integrated with an online ID provider such as Windows Live ID users can access their media located on a home Windows 7 computer remotely over the Internet on any other Windows 7 computer. For example, I have a desktop at home that is running Windows 7 Ultimate and a laptop running Windows 7 Pro. Remote Media Streaming allows me to connect to stream my music and videos from home over the internet to my laptop.

Configuring Remote Media Streaming is the same on both the remote and local computer. Follow these steps to configure Remote Media Streaming on Windows 7:

First, start up Windows Media Player and then click Stream and Allow Internet access to home media…

Next, you will need to link and online ID to your Windows account. Click Link an online ID.

If you have not yet linked an online ID to your Windows account you will need to download the Windows Live Provider first. Click Add an online ID provider.

You will now be taken to your Web browser where you can select an online ID provider plug-in to use with Windows 7. Click on the plug-in you want to use.

Then download the plug-in and close your browser.

Install the plug-in you just downloaded.

Now you will see the Windows Live ID listed as an online ID provider. Click Link online ID to setup your Windows Live ID.

Type in your Windows Live ID credentials and then click Sign in.

Now you will see your Windows Live ID linked to your Windows account.

Next, switch back to Windows Media Player and click Allow Internet access to home media.

After a UAC prompt you will see the confirmation screen.

You are now finished with configuring Remote Media Streaming on one computer. Repeat the above steps on your other Windows 7 computer. After both computers are configured restart Windows Media Player 12 on each computer and you will see the shared media show up under Other Libraries.

Kill Processes from Command Prompt

2009-06-29T06:26:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you are familiar with the traditional way to kill or end a process in Windows using Task Manager. This method is effective but not nearly as fun as killing a process in Command Prompt. Additionally, killing processes in Command Prompt provides much more control and the ability to end multiple processes at once.

All of this is possible with the TaskKill command. First, let's cover the basics. You can kill a process by the process ID (PID) or by image name (EXE filename).

Open up an Administrative level Command Prompt and run tasklist to see all of the running processes:
C:\>tasklist

Image Name PID Session Name Mem Usage
========================= ======== ================ ============
firefox.exe 26356 Console 139,352 K
regedit.exe 24244 Console 9,768 K
cmd.exe 18664 Console 2,380 K
conhost.exe 2528 Console 7,852 K
notepad.exe 17364 Console 7,892 K
notepad.exe 24696 Console 22,028 K
notepad.exe 25304 Console 5,852 K
explorer.exe 2864 Console 72,232 K

In the example above you can see the image name and the PID for each process. If you want to kill the firefox process run:
C:\>Taskkill /IM firefox.exe /F

or
C:\>Taskkill /PID 26356 /F

The /f flag is kills the process forcefully. Failure to use the /F flag will result in nothing happening in some cases. One example is whenever I want to kill the explorer.exe process I have to use the /F flag or else the process just does not terminate.

If you have multiple instances of an image open such as multiple firefox.exe processes, running the taskkill /IM firefox.exe command will kill all instances. When you specify the PID only the specific instane of firefox will be terminated.

The real power of taskkill are the filtering options that allow you to use the following variables and operators.

Variables:
STATUS
IMAGENAME
PID
SESSION
CPUTIME
MEMUSAGE
USERNAME
MODULES
SERVICES
WINDOWTITLE

Operators:
eq (equals)
ne (not equal)
gt (greater than)
lt (less than)
ge (greater than or equal)
le (less than or equal)

"*" is the wildcard.

You can use the variables and operators with the /FI filtering flag. For example, let's say you want to end all processes that have a window title that starts with "Internet":
C:\>taskkill /FI "WINDOWTITLE eq Internet*" /F

How about killing all processes running under the Steve account:
C:\>taskkill /FI "USERNAME eq Steve" /F

It is also possible to kill a process running on a remote computer with taskkill. Just run the following to kill notepad.exe on a remote computer called SteveDesktop:
C:\>taskkill /S SteveDesktop /U RemoteAccountName /P RemoteAccountPassword /IM notepad.exe /F

To learn more about taskkill run it with the /? command just like any other Windows command.

Adjust Live Preview Hover Delay

2009-06-29T06:15:00.000-07:00

Here is how you can customize the Live Preview hover delay:

Click on the Start Button, type in regedit and hit Enter.

Navigate through HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced.

Right click on Advanced and select New DWORD and name the new value "ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTime".

Right click on ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTime and select Modify.

Switch to Decimal base and enter in your new number in milliseconds. 1000 = 1 second. Anything larger than 0 is a valid value.

Once changed click OK and restart the explorer process or restart your computer.

Optimize Solid State Drives in Windows 7

2009-06-29T06:03:00.001-07:00

Windows 7 is designed to automatically turn off certain features such as Disk Defrag and Superfetch on drives it detects as solid state disks (SSD). To be sure I like to disable the components globally so I know I will not be putting extra stress on my SSD and decreasing its life. Many believe you should also disable the paging file but I don’t recommend that. I’ll get into more detail on why later.

Before we get started it is important to understand that if you have a mixture of SSD and traditional drives in your computer this tweak will disable Superfetch and Disk defragmenter for all hard drives.

Both Disk Defragmenter and Superfetch are system services that can be disabled to prevent them from running. Follow these steps to disable them on your computer:
Click on the Start Button, type in services.msc and hit Enter.
Scroll through the list and locate Disk Defragmenter, right click on it and select Properties.

Change the Startup type to Disabled.

Click Stop if the service is running.

Then, click OK to save the changes.

Next, scroll down to the Superfetch service, right click on it and select Properties.

Change the Startup type to Disabled.

Click Stop if the service is running.

Then, click OK to save the changes.

Many sites on the web also tell SSD users to disable the paging file because it allegedly wears down the disk too much. While the paging file is an active file on your computer it is not written to as much as you would suspect. According to Microsoft, reads to the paging file outnumber writes by about 40 to 1. Additionally, Microsoft recommends placing the paging file on a SSD claiming, “there are few files better than the pagefile to place on a SSD.”

Setting the SSD concerns aside, disabling the paging file on a computer with less than 3 or 4 GB of ram will result in poor performance. You may even create out of memory errors depending on what applications you use. Overall, it is just not worth disabling.

WINDOWS 7 TWEAKS

2009-06-29T04:35:00.000-07:00

Fine Tune Windows 7 on Net books

According to a report by DisplayBank in 2008 over 14.9 million netbooks were sold with that number expected to almost double in 2009. Netbooks have become a great secondary PC when you want a very portable and low cost way to do basic computing. Many ship with Windows XP home edition but that is just not as fun and helpful to use as Windows 7.

Fine Tune Visual Settings

The Windows 7 eye candy is the main cause of GUI slowness. While my netbook has a decent graphics card that can display Aero Glass it can be choppy at times. Follow these steps to improve the performance of the interface:

Click on the Start Button and type in adjust the appearance and hit Enter. This will load the Visual Effects performance options.

* Animate controls and elements inside windows
* Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
* Fade or slide menus into view
* Fade or slide ToolTips into view
* Fade out menu items after clicking
* Show window contents while dragging
* Slide open combo boxes

Click OK when you are finished.

Remove Startup Programs

Nothing wastes resources more is startup programs that you don’t need. Click on the Start Button and type in msconfig and hit Enter.

When the System Configuration utility is loaded click on the Startup tab.

Remove the check next to any applications you don’t need and click OK.

Disable Services

Now it’s time to trim the Windows services running in the background of your computer.

Click on the Start Button and type in services.msc and hit Enter.

When the Services management console is shown you can stop and disable services by selecting the service, right clicking and selecting Properties. Then change the Startup type to Disabled and hit the Stop button. Finally click OK to return to the Services management console.

I recommend disabling the following services on a netbook:

* Block Level Backup Engine Service
* Certificate Propagation
* Homegroup Provider
* Offline Files
* Portable Device Enumerator Service
* Software Protection
* SSDP Discovery
* Windows Defender
* Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service
* Windows Search

Keep in mind that if you use any of these services or applications that depend on them they will no longer function. E.g. if you are a homegroup user don’t disable the Homegroup Provider.

Install More RAM

There is really no good substitute to having plenty of ram in a computer. You can use ReadyBoost but with memory prices so cheap why not just buy more. I purchased a 2GB chip for my netbook for $16 (hopefully the mail-in rebate will come through).

The popular Intel Atom processor netbooks use the Mobile Intel 945GSE Express Chipset that has a max of 2GB of ram supported. The amount of expansion slots or if your netbook even has one depends on the vendor and model of your netbook.