Computer Truths (Tips & Tricks)

Orkut is Banned, don't try to open it since it is restricted!!!

2008-07-29T10:07:00.002+05:30

Yesterday one of my friends called me up and told me that he cannot open any of the files in his Pen drive and was getting a message something related to 'system.exe',

Firstly I thought there could be some bad sectors in his drive so I told him to bring his drive to my home so that I could check it out.

When I inserted the drive into my laptop, the message popped up in my system also, I cant recall the message but I can tell u that it was for the file 'system.exe' and below it there were two buttons 'yes' and 'no', accidently I clicked the yes button and then my system restarted.

On the restart I came to know that my antivirus was disabled, then I tried to open the task manager but it also appeared for only 2-3 seconds. Then I came to know that my system is affected with a virus and my first guess was W32.USBWorm.

Ok I wont go into the details now and will tell u the virus symptoms and how to remove it.

Symptoms:

1) The Task manager shows up for 2-3 sec and then the message comes "—SORRY— –SAM–".

2) When u try to access orkut then the message "Orkut is banned, don't try to open it since it is restricted!!!" is displayed.

3) You cannot search anything related to the virus as the message "Obscene sites banned" or something like that is displayed.

4) You cannot unzip or extract any zipped files.

5) Most important one is that it also disables any antivirus.

6) You wont be able to open 80% of your software, there would be some or the other error.

Actually I could find out only these symptoms, there could be more of them.

Removal Instructions:

1) Restart the computer in Safe Mode by pressing F8 key during the restart and then selecting Safe Mode from the list.

2) Open the drive in which Windows is installed, in most cases it is "C:".

3) Go to Tools > Folder Options > View, search for the Radio button "Show hidden Files and Folders", check it. Just below it there is a check box "Hide Protected Operating System Files", uncheck it.

4) Now in the 'C:' drive you will see a folder named "Config", simply delete that folder.

5) Now Open the registry editor by typing 'regedit' in the run dialog box.

6) Go to the following Key :

[HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run], delete the key whose path is something like this "C:\config\system.exe"

And another edit, just do the above action with the below mentioned key also

[HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies]

7) Restart the computer and you are done.

BIOS Tutorial.....(MUST READ)

2008-07-19T10:27:00.002+05:30

Guys,
actually i was really busy with my exams so was not able to update the blog...........

Newayz i had found a very useful link for you people........
its a BIOS tutorial,

just download the tutorial by clicking the following link:
Size: 30.65 MB

http://www.lejabeach.com/sisubb/Practical_BIOS_Editing.pdf

PC Protection

2008-06-22T12:59:00.002+05:30

Huh, this week was not less than a nightmare for me seriously. I was all screwed up with removing those F****** (sorry for that) viruses (I don’t know what the hell programmers get by coding a virus).

I had 4-5 calls daily for questions on troubleshooting, most of them had the same problem viz no folder options, no task manager, registry disabled, pen drive has infections and bla bla bla……
Use the below method to recover from problems mentioned above

1) Registry Disabled: click the link to download the patch.Just run the downloaded file and the registry editor would splash up on the monitor.

2) Folder Options: In the registry editor goto the following key[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\policies\explorer][HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\policies\explorer]In the right hand window look for the key “NoFolderOptions” and edit its value to “0”.

3) Task Manager: Again in the registry editor goto the following key[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\policies\system]In the right hand window look for the key “DisableTaskMgr” and edit its value to “1”.
Here are some guidelines for a perfect protection of your system.1) Most of the people are confused in Antivirus selection, don’t worry I’ll tell you. “Kaspersky Internet Security Suite 7” is the best security suite I have ever used.Download and install Kaspersky 7 by clicking the following link.Kaspersky Internet Security 7
Note:- Please make sure that you regulary update the antivirus software.

2) Most of the viruses these days spread with the pen drives. To stop them there is a utility called “USB Firewall” download it from the link below.Download HereExtract the files and install the utility.

3) Now you don’t have to worry about anything, the combination of these two software gives you maximum protection upto 95%.
Some Tips for Smart Computing1) Don’t open pen drives directly by double clicking or simply pressing [Enter]. Instead use the explore feature by pressing [shift]+[Enter].

2) Keep the antivirus database up to date.

3) Schedule a disk defragment and virus scan every weekend.
If you follow these tips than I can assure you that your system is capable to stand untouched in the virtual world full of viruses.

Blocking a Website: An easy way

2008-06-22T12:56:00.003+05:30

Guys just found out an easiest way to block websites on your computer, here are the steps you need to follow:

1) Go to the address given below:C:\windows\system32\drivers\etcyou will find a file named “hosts” in this folder, just open it in Notepad.

2) Look for the line which says “127.0.0.1 Local host”, below this line start adding the sites which you want to block.There should be only one website in one line and make sure that you increase the last digit of the IP by 1.Example:127.0.0.1 localhost127.0.0.2 www.yahoo.com127.0.0.3 www.google.comJust note the last digit of the IP address (in Bold) keeps on increasing by one digit.

3) Just save the file and you are done.

Note:- Some antivirus software may give you a warning about the changes but don’t worry and let the changes to take effect.Many of you might be thinking that in the IE there is a option to block the websites in the internet options dialog box.Buddies you can go by that method also but the problem is that it will only block the websites in IE but the sites can be opened through other browsers like firefox, safari, opera.To avoid such problems, this method is often followed.

Regulating a Remote Computer

2008-06-22T12:54:00.001+05:30

Start and end a process on a remote computer??
Ever thought of starting a process on a remote computer? Here it goes..
You would need windows NT resource kit for performing such a task. You can download the resource kit from the following link:
http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/PsTools.zip.

What exactly is a resource Kit?
It is basically a set of software or you can say utilities which are released after a major windows version. These utilities lets you administer tasks such as networking, security, troubleshooting, OS issues etc.

Note: Some anti-viruses might show the utilities as infected but don’t worry its certainly not infected.

Now coming back to the topic, here are the steps you need to perform:

1. Extract the tools to a folder. They don’t need any installation to run. The main advantage of these tools are that they don’t require any client software installation.
2. To start a process you will need a tool named PsExec. This will serve as a light weight Telnet that lets you control the Remote System.
3. A simplified usage of this command looks like the following:
PsExec \\computer u username p password command.
Here,
Computer = Name of the remote computer in UNC format.
Username = A username on the remote computer preceding the u
Password = Password to the above mentioned username preceding the p
Command = The command that is to be performed remotely.
4. Now to stop a process you will need another tool that is PsKill.
5. Copy PsKill on the executable path and type in pskill with the command line options defined below.
PsKill t \\computer u username p password procedd_id process_name
Here,
Computer = Name of the remote computer in UNC format.
Username = A username on the remote computer preceding the u
Password = Password to the above mentioned username preceding the p
Process_id = The process ID for the process you want to kill.
Process_name = The process name for the process you want to kill.
Note here that you can either specify the process ID or the process name of the process you want to kill.
If computer name is omitted then PsExec will start the process on the local system and if you enter a computer name as “\\*” then PsExec will run the process on all the computers available on the current domain.

If you want to perform any other task other than this then you can create scripts with multiple commands of the above mentioned kind.

Lock Folders without any software

2008-06-22T12:53:00.001+05:30

Guys sorry for the delay in updating my blog. I was really very busy with my personal life that I just forgot this gr8 virtual world.

Newayz lets come back to the topic.

I clicked loads of personal photographs which I cant show it to my family and cant evn keep in my system as there are many users of it. Then I thought of getting a Folder Lock software wherein I could keep all my files safe and hidden but the problem was that there are no such software available with a freeware license. I searched like hell and finally got a simple program which could do this job so I am publishing it here so that u all can take advantage of it.

/***********Start Copying here************/

cls
@ECHO OFF
title Folder Locker
if EXIST “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}” goto UNLOCK
if NOT EXIST Locker goto MDLOCKER
:CONFIRM
echo Are you sure u want to Lock the folder(Y/N)
set/p “cho=>”
if %cho%==Y goto LOCK
if %cho%==y goto LOCK
if %cho%==n goto END
if %cho%==N goto END
echo Invalid choice.
goto CONFIRM
:LOCK
ren Locker “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
attrib +h +s “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
echo Folder locked
goto End
:UNLOCK
echo Enter password to Unlock folder
set/p “pass=>”
if NOT %pass%==type your password here goto FAIL
attrib -h -s “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
ren “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}” Locker
echo Folder Unlocked successfully
goto End
:FAIL
echo Invalid password
goto end
:MDLOCKER
md Locker
echo Locker created successfully
goto End
:End

/****************Stop Copying here*************/

Just follow the steps given below

1. Copy and paste the above code in Notepad.

2. Type your password in place of “Type your password here”

3. Save the file with *.bat extension instead of *.txt

4. Now double click to open the file.

5. When you open it, a new folder named Locker will be created in the same place.

6. Move all the folders and files you want to lock into this folder.

7. Now double click the batch file again and in the confirmation type ‘y’ to lock the folder, and the locker folder will disappear.

Whenever you want to unlock the folder, open the batch file and enter the password, the locker folder will reappear again.

Lock Folders without any software

2008-06-22T12:53:00.000+05:30

10 Reasons for PC Failure

2008-06-22T12:50:00.001+05:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-ScanDisk

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

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

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

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-Display-Settings

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another useful way to resolve video problems is to go to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-06-22T12:49:00.001+05:30

hi guys

i have written some tricks which can be applied on the windows xp system so as to increase the speed.

click the below link to download the file and please do give me a feedback whether u liked it or not.

http://www.freedrive.com/files/8fylf3hzzlcsw/My%20Documents/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20make%20xp%20fast.pdf

Tweaking Tips

2008-06-22T12:45:00.002+05:30

Lets face it ! Tweaking gives us the satisfaction...of having done something to beat the system ! There is that urge, esp amongst die-hard tweakers, to squeeze out the last drop of performance ! Frankly speaking, the best "tweak" is to throw RAM at it ! Its one BIG healthy dose of tonic to perk up your machine.

There are some tweaks which can at best be considered to be of dubious value. Though most of them may not cause much harm, some of them, if applied indiscriminately may actually hurt performance. Some of them worked with older Windows versions, but are redundant & irrelevant now.

Always Unload DLL (Disable DLL Caching) to free up memory and improve performance. Using this tweak on Windows 2000, XP or Vista has absolutely no effect. This registry key is no longer supported in all post-2000 Windows OS's.

Cleaning the Prefetch Folder. Every time you clean up the Prefetch folder, you delay application load times, the next time you launch them. Its only after the second time that you regain optimal application load times. Only one Prefetch file is created per application . Windows cleans this folder at 128 entries, down to the 32 most used Application's prefetcher files. In Vista this folder does not occupy mre than around 50MB. Cleaning the Prefetcher can therefore be construed actually as a...a temporary self-inflicted unoptimization ! Now why would you want to do that ! The developers of the memory management system of Windows Vista have done a good job...no question about this one.

Disabling Certain Services. Dont take this advice to its extremes, for in fact this could actaully cripple your system ! For instance Disabling the task Schedular to improve performance actuall prevents the Prefetcher and the Layout.ini file from forming or being updated ! Forcing, inter alia, longer application startup times. Never ever shutdown the System Restore Service...never know when it may save your day ! Disbaling the DNS Client Service may decrease the the overall performance of the client computer, and the network traffic for DNS queries increases if the DNS resolver cache is deactivated. This effectively reduces Internet Performance for sites you have previously visited and puts an unnecessary load on your ISP's DNS server.

So do refer a good Services Guide like BlackVipers. Or simply use a safe Program like Tune-Up Utilities. Shutting down services indisciminately is a sureshot prescription for trouble !

Page (Swap) File Tweaks. "Create a Fixed Size Page File to improve performance" : This was relevant in the earlier days of Windows; Definately irrelevant for Vista ! "Eliminate your Page File completely, if you have a large amount of memory installed" : There are simply NO published benchmarks establishing any performance gains from doing so ! And in any case Windows wasn't designed to run without a page file.

-The ReadyBoost Tweak. Several ways being suggested on the net as to how to make ur USB compatible in Vista with some hacks/tweaks. Here is one for example :1. Plug the device and open the device properties : Start > My Computer > Right click Device > Properties > Readyboost Tab2. Select, "Stop retesting this device when I plug it in." Remove the device.3. Open Regedit : Start > Type regedit in the search bar4. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SOFTWARE / Microsoft /Windows-NT / CurrentVersion / EMDgmtChange the Device Status to 2, ReadSpeedKBs to 1000, WriteSpeedKBs to 1000.5. Re-Plug the device. Readyboost should work.But using such methods only fools Vista into thinking that such USB drive are compatible. Expect no performance gains in such cases !

-"How to turn the PC 'on' in 10 seconds" ! Modifying the regkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ ContentIndex some claim makes your PC start in 10 secs ! Changing the default value of its '"Startup Delay/Decimal" from 4800000 to 40000 makes this happen; are the claims.

This has nothing to do with the time it takes for windows to load, only the duration that the welcome screen shows up. And its is my opinion that this is best left at its default value, as a certain delay in startup is required so that necessary programs & services can be fired up properly.

-Deleting junk/files in general, is a good idea from the point of good PC maintenance. But some people like to go on cleaning rampages with the mind set that they are improving performance ! All they are doing is freeing disk space since NTFS performance does not degrade with increased file numbers.

-Setting your CPU's L2 cache in the registry. This tweak is a joke. Windows is designed to detect how much L2 cache you have automatically.

-Enable "Large System Cache". I have read around on many forums about people talking about this setting and how it's supposed to improve performance. This setting is enabled by default for server versions of windows and is good for servers but for the average home user this setting hurts performance. All it does for a home user is increase paging and makes it so more of an application is paged which causes an application to launch slower.

All kind of restrictions for windows XP and 2003

2007-07-11T10:49:00.001+05:30

In this tutorial, I'll tell u some interesting restrictions, which can be made in XP/2003. Like u can restrict Display properties, taskbar properties, folder options, etc.

Though many of u may know all of them or a few of them already, but I think it would be good to share them with u.

All tricks are based on Registry editing.
So I'll tell the keyname and the value, that u hv to create for the restriction! If the key is not present, then simply create it.

So here we go:

1.) Restrict Display Properties:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\System

create DWORD value NoDispCPL and set its value to 1

2.) Restrict Taskbar Properties:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoSetTaskbar and set its value to 1

3.) Restrict Folder Options:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoFolderOptions and set its value to 1

4.) Restrict Locking/Unlocking the taskbar:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value LockTaskbar and set its value to 1

5.) Restrict Active Desktop:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoActiveDesktop and set its value to 1

6.) Restrict adding/deleting items from Toolbars:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoToolbarCustomize and set its value to 1

7.) Restrict adding/deleting toolbars:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoBandCustomize and set its value to 1

8.) Restrict right-click in Start Menu:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoChangeStartMenu and set its value to 1

9.) Restrict Desktop Cleanup Wizard:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoDesktopCleanupWizard and set its value to 1

10.) Restrict notification at low disk space:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoLowDiskSpaceChecks and set its value to 1

11.) Restrict Taskbar Context Menu:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoTrayContextMenu and set its value to 1

12.) Restrict Programs to run:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer\DisallowRun

create String value with any name, like 1 and set its value to the program's EXE file.

e.g., If u want to restrict msconfig, then create a String value 1 and set its value to msconfig.exe. If u want to restrict more programs, then simply create more String values with names 2, 3 and so on and set their values to the program's exe.

13.) Restrict Registry Editor:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\System

create DWORD value DisableRegistryTools and set its value to 1

14.) Restrict Task Manager:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\System

create DWORD value DisableTaskMgr and set its value to 1

15.) Restrict Drives in My Computer:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

In right-side pane, create a new DWORD value NoViewOnDrive and change its value as following:

3 : To Restrict A and B drives only.
4 : To Restrict C drive only.
7 : To Restrict A, B, and C drives only.
8 : To Restrict D drive only.
F : To Restrict A, B, C, and D drives only.
03FFFFFF : To Restrict all drives.

And if you want more specific restrictions, like you want to restrict a combination of other drives, then you can use decimal no. instead of hexadecimal no. Following is a list for all drives decimal no.:

A: 1
B: 2
C: 4
D: 8
E: 16
F: 32
G: 64
H: 128
I: 256
J: 512
K: 1024
L: 2048
M: 4096
N: 8192
O: 16384
P: 32768
Q: 65536
R: 131072
S: 262144
T: 524288
U: 1048576
V: 2097152
W: 4194304
X: 8388608
Y: 16777216
Z: 33554432
ALL: 67108863

So if you want to disable a combination of drives, just sum their numbers and give the same value to NoViewOnDrive. e.g., for restricting CDEF drives, give the value: 4+8+16+32 = 60

NOTE: You can also hide the drives using NoDrives DWORD value. The location and its value remain same as the above trick.

16.) Restrict New option in context menu:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\Con textMenuHandlers\New

And delete the value of Default, e.g., empty it.

17.) Restrict Send To in context menu:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\Con textMenuHandlers\Send To

And delete the value of Default, e.g., empty it.

18.) Restrict Balloon Tips:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Create DWORD value EnableBalloonTips and set its value to 0

19.) Restrict Users to enable New XP StartMenu:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

Create DWORD value NoSimpleStartMenu and set its value to 1

20.) Restrict Command Prompt:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Wind ows\System

Create DWORD value DisableCMD and set its value to 2

21.) Restrict Writing to USB Drives:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\StorageDevicePolicies

Create DWORD value WriteProtect and set its value to 1

22.) Restrict RUN in New XP StartMenu:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

Create DWORD value NoRun and set its value to 1

Unlimited freedom, unlimited storage. Get it now

Recover Root Password

2007-07-11T10:27:00.003+05:30

A common problem faced by new users ( and sometimes even experienced users ) is not knowing what to do when they lose their password. Even worse, when they lose the password for 'root'. Luckily, there are several solutions to help you recover access to your system.

Root Password - Easy Method:

The simplest way to recover from a lost password is to boot into single user mode.

If you are using LILO, at the LILO boot prompt (graphical LILO users can press Ctrl-x to exit the graphical screen and go to the boot: prompt), enter:

Code:

linux single

This will make you the "root" user without asking for a password. Once the system has booted, you can change the root password using the password command:

Code:

passwd
The instructions for GRUB users are similar. Press 'e' at the GRUB prompt to select boot parameters. Select the line for the kernel you want to boot, and go to the end of it. Add "single" as a separate word, and then press ENTER to exit the edit mode. Once back at the GRUB screen, press "b" to boot into single user mode.

If for whatever reason, the above solution doesn't work for you, there is another option. Boot using a so called "Live CD" Linux distribution, such as Knoppix. For the purposes of this example, it will be assumed that the user is using Knoppix.
After booting up from the Knoppix CD, go to a terminal and su to root (no password is required). After your priviledges have been escalated, issue the following commands (be sure to replace each /hda1 with your own root ('/') partition):

Code:

mount -o dev,rw /mnt/hda1 cd /mnt/hda1/etc

Once you are into your system /etc directory, you can use a text-editor (such as vim, nano, pico, etc.) to edit the /etc/shadow file where the password is stored. Various information about root and user accounts is kept in this plain-text file, but we are only concerned with the password portion.

For example, the /etc/shadow entry for the "root" account may look something like this:

Code:

root:$1$aB7mx0Licb$CTbs2RQrfPHkz5Vna0.fnz8H68tB.:/
10852:0:99999:7:::
(The '/' indicates a line continuation)

Now, using your favorite editor (I'll use vim) delete the password hash (the green text).

Code:

vim shadow

After you've edited this field, it should look like this:

Code:

root::10852:0:99999:7:::

Now save the file and change back to the root directory and unmount the system root partition (don't forget to change the /hda1) as follows:

Code:

cd / umount /mnt/hda1

Now reboot the computer.

Once the computer has booted and you're at the login prompt, type "root" and when asked for the password just press ENTER (entering no password). After a successful login, you need to set the new password for root using the following command:

Code:

passwd

Why delete messages? Unlimited storage is just a click away.

Setting up RAID 0+1 (Great Tutorial)

2007-07-11T10:27:00.001+05:30

You're sold. You want a RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks/drives). Maybe you've witnessed the phenomenal speed of a RAID 0, or perhaps you want the safety net of immediate data backup that a RAID 1 offers. In any case, you're ready to take the plunge. (See other "How To Install" articles for more details on RAIDs 0
and 1.)

But hang on. What about the risks of a naked RAID 0? And isn't a RAID 1 no faster than a single hard drive? Moreover, you'd rather spend your money on bigger hard drives than on an add-in RAID controller card, so you want a RAID with support built into a motherboard. The answer might be RAID 0+1.

Goal

A RAID 0+1 starts with a pair of striped hard drives, meaning that the PC writes part of each file to both drives for nearly double the read/write speed. But that's a little risky because if either drive fails, you might not be able to access any of the data. So the RAID mirrors the data, or copies it, to another RAID 0 drive pair so that there will be an automatic backup at all times. In effect, RAID 0+1 is a RAID 1 made up of two RAID 0 arrays. It combines the speed of RAID 0 with the data redundancy of RAID 1.

You need at least four hard drives to make a RAID 0+1, which is why few people do it. ( NOTE: Intel's Matrix Storage Technology, built into its 915G, 915P Express, and 925X Express chipsets, provides RAID 0+1's primary benefits in a different manner. Using only two drives, MST divides part of the array into a RAID 0 for speedy app loading and the remaining part into a RAID 1 for personal data safety.) RAID 0+1 is out of most enthusiasts' price range, yet it's not efficient, scalable, or fault-tolerant enough for critical business uses. Out of those four drives, RAID 0+1 loses half the storage space to backup data. Furthermore, it also necessitates a computer case that can hold four drives and keep them cool, not to mention a power supply with enough oomph to run them all.

Don't confuse RAID 0+1 with RAID 10, by the way. A RAID 10 has a striped pair of drives like RAID 0+1, but it backs these up to a pair of mirrored hard drives for a total of three copies of all data. RAID 10 is very reliable, but it loses a lot of capacity keeping all that backup data. For most desktop users, it makes more sense to use more of their drives' space in a different type of RAID and make regular backups to DVD or tape.

Here's how we almost succeeded in making a RAID 0+1 PC for less than $1,000. A few component shuffles from out-of-stock or defective parts put us over that mark, but we've included tips on bringing the price down.

Background

Four 160GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) hard drives seemed perfect for this ambitious RAID0+1 system. Fortified with 7,200rpm spindle speeds and ample 8MB caches (found in model 6Y160M0), these zippy hard drives cost us $105 each.

The $420 hard drive bill forced us to look for less expensive hardware with great features. We bought an Athlon XP 2000+ (a 2500+ cost just $22 more). We also bought a motherboard that ostensibly supported RAID 0+1, although it was a mystery just what type of RAID we'd created until we installed Windows and a RAID monitoring utility. The DFI NFII Ultra Infinity motherboard's box and docs all claimed RAID 0+1 support from its Silicon Image 3114 controller chip, but the preboot SiI RAID utility said that it offered RAID 10 instead.

The final necessity was an Antec True430W power supply, which would offer enough amperage on its 12V rail (26A) to be able to start the computer with all those hard drives. The remainder of our PC parts reflects the bare minimum hardware available at low prices.

Two changes could make this system ring up for less than $1,000, which was our original intention. One is to use 120GB drives, which would have saved us about $52 as of this writing. The other is to use a lighter graphics card, such as the $43 Radeon 9200 SE we originally purchased but had to return. Together, these two modifications will net you a $982 RAID 0+1 PC, not including tax or shipping.

The Build

Our RaidMax case came with a 350W power supply with 10A on the 12V rail, which we knew wouldn't be strong enough to fire up all the hardware we'd bought. We unscrewed it and pulled it from the case. However, we didn't install the new Antec power supply just yet, as we'd learned from working with similar systems that we'd need the room when we installed the CPU's heatsink.

Next, we placed the case on its side. We installed standoffs in the case's motherboard panel using our DFI NFII's silver-lined mounting holes as our guide. After fitting the included chromed I/O (input/output) shield, or port plate, to the hole in the back of the case, we screwed the mainboard into place in the RaidMax case.

RAID 0+1

LEFT: A RAID 0+1 stripes
partial data to a pair of hard drives for speed, like a RAID 0. It also mirrors that same data to another striped RAID 0 for redundancy, like a RAID 1.

Capacity: Half of
A + B + C + D

RIGHT: A PC moves data to/from one unRAIDed hard drive at a time. Data isn't backed up, but one drive's failure won't affect the others and no capacity is lost.

Capacity: A + B + C + D

We lifted the CPU socket lever to 90 degrees, dropped the Athlon XP 2000+ into place (it will only fit facing one direction), and snapped the lever back down parallel to the socket. Next, we unwrapped the retail CPU's heatsink/fan combo, making sure not to smudge its preapplied thermal putty. The bottom of the heatsink had a recess meant to face the high part of the CPU socket, so like the processor, the heatsink could only face one way. Holding the sink at a slight angle, we snapped one end of its metal clip over the socket's tabs. Next, we set the sink on the Athlon chip and cautiously used a well-fitting, flat screwdriver to press the other end of the metal clip down over that side's tabs, locking the sink down. Finally, we connected the fan cable to the CPU FAN header on the motherboard.

Power to the PC. Now we could install the Antec power supply. This particular Antec came with its main harness neatly sleeved in black mesh, plus a large intake fan that fortuitously ended up right above our CPU. We snapped its 20-pin and 4-pin power leads into the motherboard, turning the connectors until they fit. The Antec also came with a couple of SATA power connectors. A few SATA hard drives require this type of power coupling; more often, they accept either SATA or typical 4-pin Molex connectors. If this describes your hard drive, use one or the other power lead type (never both).

Our matching DIMMs (dual in-line memory modules) of DDR400 (double-data-rate 400) SDRAM (synchronous dynamic random-access memory) from MemoryPRO went in next. The RAM could only go in one way, so we pushed them into the DIMM slots with moderate finger pressure on their top edges. We made sure the white end retainers pivoted up to fit in each stick's notches.

Next, we installed our Radeon 9200 graphics card, screwing its bracket down and flipping up the retention lever on its AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) slot. We attached our monitor's video cable to the rear of the Radeon card and then followed the DFI users manual to connect the front-panel LEDs (light-emitting diodes)and switches to the mainboard. These can be tricky, so use a flashlight, mirror, or magnifying glass if you need to.

Finally, we ran power cords to the PC and monitor and turned the system on. We knew it wouldn't get far without an OS or boot diskette, but at least we found out that the hardware worked. We pressed DEL to enter its BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) Setup program, which you should always check when you're using a new motherboard. We set the clock and date; rearranged the boot devices to Floppy, CD-ROM, and SCSI (BIOSes often consider SATA drives as SCSI [Small Computer System Interface] devices for system configuration purposes), in that order; and set the Init Display First field to AGP instead of PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect). We saved our changes, exited, and shut down the PC.

Drive time. We stood the computer on its feet again. Then, from top to bottom, we installed our drives in the front bays of the case. We had to pop out two plastic panels in the case's fascia for our CD-RW drive and floppy drive and then secured the drives in their bays with four screws each. If you use fewer screws, especially on optical and hard drives, you run the risk of letting uneven vibrations affect the drives' error rates, transfer speeds, and possibly lifespan.

Moving down to our four hard drives, we handled them gently as we slipped them into the lower 3.5-inch bays and bolted them in place. We had already installed an 80mm case fan in front of the drive cage, first flattening a raised section in the middle of the panel with a bolt, nut, and some washers. With so many hard drives and a hot motherboard chipset like our NFII Ultra Infinity's Nforce2, we knew we had to add at least one more fan to the RaidMax case's side fan (which we flipped to blow inward instead of outward).

Once our drives were snug, we connected data and power cables to them. The CD-RW used an ATA/133 cable included with the mainboard to attach to an IDE header on the board, as well as a smaller audio cable to reach the board's distant CD audio input header. The floppy drive took a smaller power connector from our Antec supply. Its data cable, also supplied by DFI, had a twist that went toward the drive and a red stripe that faced Pin 1 on the drive, which is marked with a triangle. Use the end connectors of a floppy drive cable; the middle one is for a second diskette drive (B.

Finally, we added either SATA or 4-pin Molex power leads to each hard drive (never both). Being careful not to break any fragile SATA ports, we then ran SATA data cables from the drives to the four ports on the DFI motherboard. We were now ready to create our RAID, install Windows, and test the monster we'd just built.

RAID creation. We started the PC. At the prompt a few seconds later, we pressed CTRL-S to start Silicon Image's RAID utility. We chose Create RAID Set and then RAID 10. (This eventually proved to be a typo for RAID 0+1, although we didn't find that out until later.) Note that if your particular motherboard doesn't recognize your USB (Universal Serial Bus) keyboard or mouse in the utilities that load before Windows, such as this one, fit the device with a USB-PS/2 (Personal System/2) adapter and restart the system. You might also have to press NUM LOCK before you can type numerals on the right-hand keypad.

At this point, instead of choosing Auto Configuration, we selected Manual Configuration to get a better understanding of the process. We decided on a 16KB chunk size. Chunk is another term for allocation unit or cluster, which defines the smallest unit of storage the hard drives will use to store data. A 16KB size would make the drive speedier than would 4KB or 8KB chunks, yet less wasteful of storage space than would 64KB or 128KB clusters. As an example of that waste, if you saved a 5KB file on a drive with 128KB clusters, it would still take 128KB of space to save it, wasting 123KB.

Here's how we flattened an area in front of our hard drive bays to accept an 80mm case fan. We also had good results prying on the bolt with the box end of the wrench.

Next, we pressed ENTER to select the first, second, third, and fourth drives of the RAID set. We simply chose our drives in the order they were listed. None of our hard drives had Windows or any other data on them yet, so we selected Create Without Data Copy. Choose the Create With Data Copy option if you're converting an existing system to a RAID 0+1 and you don't want to reinstall your OS and apps. We continued and found ourselves back at the main menu, the proud owners of . . . an SiI RAID 0+1 array.

Still, with no way of knowing if we actually had a RAID 10 or 0+1 on our hands, we slipped the Windows XP CD into the drive and pressed CTRL-E to exit the RAID utility. The system rebooted into Windows Setup. A few seconds later, we had to press F6 to install a third-party SCSI or RAID driver (if you miss your chance, reboot and try again). When Setup asked us, we inserted DFI's SATA RAID driver diskette and directed Setup to the driver for WinXP.

Later, when Setup showed us the space available on our RAID, it was 312GB, or roughly half of the 640GB we would have had without RAIDing our four 160GB drives. This supported the RAID 0+1 theory, we thought. We set up two 10GB partitions for Windows and our apps and then a third with 292GB for our data. Next, we installed WinXP on the first partition, choosing the NTFS file system. We had to eject the RAID driver diskette as WinXP Setup restarted the computer, and we also had to tell Setup twice to use those drivers without Microsoft certification.

The plot thickens. Once we made it through typing in the product key and selecting a few network and clock settings, we reached WinXP's Desktop. We immediately clicked Start, Control Panel, Switch To Classic View, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, and Disk Management to verify our RAID type and format our partitions. The RAID showed up as one drive, Disk 0, with about half of our drives' total capacity, 305GB. We right-clicked Disk 0 and selected Properties, which told us that Windows considered it a RAID 0+1. However, Disk Management didn't consider any of the drives fault tolerant, which was confusing. We right-clicked the E: and F: partitions in turn, formatted them with NTFS, and then exited Disk Management.

There was one more thing to check. We put the DFI motherboard's installation CD in the optical drive, clicked Tools when the GUI popped up, and chose SIL3114 RAID Utility. This installed Silicon Image's SATARaid utility, which, when launched, put a blue icon in the System Tray by the clock. We double-clicked this to open SATARaid's GUI (graphical user interface) and then clicked Set 0. SATARaid told us that we had built a RAID 0+1 after
all. We clicked the Members tab, and
it showed us that indeed we had a mirrored set of striped pairs. Case closed: RAID 0+1.

As always, refer to other "How To Install"RAID articles for further details on the components we used and how we put them together. Together these articles will give you a fairly thorough overview of multidrive PC building.

Testing

This PC's results don't compare directly to those of the RAID 0 and 1 PCs we built for other articles in our "How ToInstall" area, as those two systems had Athlon 64s and another motherboard.

One surprise on this system, though, was how fast the IOmeter scores were compared to the other PCs'. Silicon Image's 3112 was the fastest SATA controller at its introduction, so perhaps the 3114 on our DFI board holds a similar speed advantage over the VIA 8237 southbridge on our RAID 0 and 1 systemsdespite the VIA's faster non-PCI pipe to a speedier CPU.

Finally, we disconnected two drives to make a RAID 0 for comparison, as reported in our "Benchmark Scores" chart. RAID 0+1 was just a hair slower than the RAID 0 champ, yet vastly safer.

Final Remarks

Despite using so many hard drives, RAID 0+1 is actually cheaper than some more efficient types of RAID because it often doesn't need a special RAID controller card, depending on the motherboard. With a good power supply and a roomy case, you could enjoy high speed without sacrificing data safety. That's having your cake and eating it, too.

Windows XP easter egg

2007-07-11T10:22:00.001+05:30

If you're using Windows XP operating system, try this little hidden and secret trick which reveals sort of easter egg or bug by using Notepad.

Open Notepad by clicking on Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Notepad.
Type "bush hid the facts" or "this fun hit video" (without quotes and do not hit Return or Enter key, either one will work, but not both).
Save the file by clicking on File then Save. You can put any filename to the saved text file in .txt
Close the Notepad.
Open again the saved text file by relaunch Notepad and clicking on File then Open and choose the saved document, or simply double click on the saved text file from Windows Explorer.
Check what happen to the text that you have just typed.

You will see the text of "bush hid the facts" or "this fun hit video" has been changed to small square or some weird and funny Chinese characters if you have installed East Asian languages support.

Download prohibited? No problem. CHAT from any browser, without download.

23 ways to speed up windows XP

2007-07-11T10:21:00.001+05:30

Since defragging the disk won't do much to improve Windows XP performance, here are 23 suggestions that will. Each can enhance the performance and reliability of your customers' PCs. Best of all, most of them will cost you nothing.

1.) To decrease a system's boot time and increase system performance, use the money you save by not buying defragmentation software -- the built-in Windows defragmenter works just fine -- and instead equip the computer with an Ultra-133 or Serial ATA hard drive with 8-MB cache buffer.

2.) If a PC has less than 512 MB of RAM, add more memory. This is a relatively inexpensive and easy upgrade that can dramatically improve system performance.

3.) Ensure that Windows XP is utilizing the NTFS file system. If you're not sure, here's how to check: First, double-click the My Computer icon, right-click on the C: Drive, then select Properties. Next, examine the File System type; if it says FAT32, then back-up any important data. Next, click Start, click Run, type CMD, and then click OK. At the prompt, type CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS and press the Enter key. This process may take a while; it's important that the computer be uninterrupted and virus-free. The file system used by the bootable drive will be either FAT32 or NTFS. I highly recommend NTFS for its superior security, reliability, and efficiency with larger disk drives.

4.) Disable file indexing. The indexing service extracts information from documents and other files on the hard drive and creates a "searchable keyword index." As you can imagine, this process can be quite taxing on any system.

The idea is that the user can search for a word, phrase, or property inside a document, should they have hundreds or thousands of documents and not know the file name of the document they want. Windows XP's built-in search functionality can still perform these kinds of searches without the Indexing service. It just takes longer. The OS has to open each file at the time of the request to help find what the user is looking for.

Most people never need this feature of search. Those who do are typically in a large corporate environment where thousands of documents are located on at least one server. But if you're a typical system builder, most of your clients are small and medium businesses. And if your clients have no need for this search feature, I recommend disabling it.

Here's how: First, double-click the My Computer icon. Next, right-click on the C: Drive, then select Properties. Uncheck "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching." Next, apply changes to "C: subfolders and files," and click OK. If a warning or error message appears (such as "Access is denied"), click the Ignore All button.

5.) Update the PC's video and motherboard chipset drivers. Also, update and configure the BIOS. For more information on how to configure your BIOS properly, see this article on my site.

6.) Empty the Windows Prefetch folder every three months or so. Windows XP can "prefetch" portions of data and applications that are used frequently. This makes processes appear to load faster when called upon by the user. That's fine. But over time, the prefetch folder may become overloaded with references to files and applications no longer in use. When that happens, Windows XP is wasting time, and slowing system performance, by pre-loading them. Nothing critical is in this folder, and the entire contents are safe to delete.

7.) Once a month, run a disk cleanup. Here's how: Double-click the My Computer icon. Then right-click on the C: drive and select Properties. Click the Disk Cleanup button -- it's just to the right of the Capacity pie graph -- and delete all temporary files.

8.) In your Device Manager, double-click on the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers device, and ensure that DMA is enabled for each drive you have connected to the Primary and Secondary controller. Do this by double-clicking on Primary IDE Channel. Then click the Advanced Settings tab. Ensure the Transfer Mode is set to "DMA if available" for both Device 0 and Device 1. Then repeat this process with the Secondary IDE Channel.

9.) Upgrade the cabling. As hard-drive technology improves, the cabling requirements to achieve these performance boosts have become more stringent. Be sure to use 80-wire Ultra-133 cables on all of your IDE devices with the connectors properly assigned to the matching Master/Slave/Motherboard sockets. A single device must be at the end of the cable; connecting a single drive to the middle connector on a ribbon cable will cause signaling problems. With Ultra DMA hard drives, these signaling problems will prevent the drive from performing at its maximum potential. Also, because these cables inherently support "cable select," the location of each drive on the cable is important. For these reasons, the cable is designed so drive positioning is explicitly clear.

10.) Remove all spyware from the computer. Use free programs such as AdAware by Lavasoft or SpyBot Search & Destroy. Once these programs are installed, be sure to check for and download any updates before starting your search. Anything either program finds can be safely removed. Any free software that requires spyware to run will no longer function once the spyware portion has been removed; if your customer really wants the program even though it contains spyware, simply reinstall it. For more information on removing Spyware visit this Web Pro News page.

11.) Remove any unnecessary programs and/or items from Windows Startup routine using the MSCONFIG utility. Here's how: First, click Start, click Run, type MSCONFIG, and click OK. Click the StartUp tab, then uncheck any items you don't want to start when Windows starts. Unsure what some items are? Visit the WinTasks Process Library. It contains known system processes, applications, as well as spyware references and explanations. Or quickly identify them by searching for the filenames using Google or another Web search engine.

12.) Remove any unnecessary or unused programs from the Add/Remove Programs section of the Control Panel.

13.) Turn off any and all unnecessary animations, and disable active desktop. In fact, for optimal performance, turn off all animations. Windows XP offers many different settings in this area. Here's how to do it: First click on the System icon in the Control Panel. Next, click on the Advanced tab. Select the Settings button located under Performance. Feel free to play around with the options offered here, as nothing you can change will alter the reliability of the computer -- only its responsiveness.

14.) If your customer is an advanced user who is comfortable editing their registry, try some of the performance registry tweaks offered at Tweak XP.

15.) Visit Microsoft's Windows update site regularly, and download all updates labeled Critical. Download any optional updates at your discretion.

16.) Update the customer's anti-virus software on a weekly, even daily, basis. Make sure they have only one anti-virus software package installed. Mixing anti-virus software is a sure way to spell disaster for performance and reliability.

17.) Make sure the customer has fewer than 500 type fonts installed on their computer. The more fonts they have, the slower the system will become. While Windows XP handles fonts much more efficiently than did the previous versions of Windows, too many fonts -- that is, anything over 500 -- will noticeably tax the system.

18.) Do not partition the hard drive. Windows XP's NTFS file system runs more efficiently on one large partition. The data is no safer on a separate partition, and a reformat is never necessary to reinstall an operating system. The same excuses people offer for using partitions apply to using a folder instead. For example, instead of putting all your data on the D: drive, put it in a folder called "D drive." You'll achieve the same organizational benefits that a separate partition offers, but without the degradation in system performance. Also, your free space won't be limited by the size of the partition; instead, it will be limited by the size of the entire hard drive. This means you won't need to resize any partitions, ever. That task can be time-consuming and also can result in lost data.

19.) Check the system's RAM to ensure it is operating properly. I recommend using a free program called MemTest86. The download will make a bootable CD or diskette (your choice), which will run 10 extensive tests on the PC's memory automatically after you boot to the disk you created. Allow all tests to run until at least three passes of the 10 tests are completed. If the program encounters any errors, turn off and unplug the computer, remove a stick of memory (assuming you have more than one), and run the test again. Remember, bad memory cannot be repaired, but only replaced.

20.) If the PC has a CD or DVD recorder, check the drive manufacturer's Web site for updated firmware. In some cases you'll be able to upgrade the recorder to a faster speed. Best of all, it's free.

21.) Disable unnecessary services. Windows XP loads a lot of services that your customer most likely does not need. To determine which services you can disable for your client, visit the Black Viper site for Windows XP configurations.

22.) If you're sick of a single Windows Explorer window crashing and then taking the rest of your OS down with it, then follow this tip: open My Computer, click on Tools, then Folder Options. Now click on the View tab. Scroll down to "Launch folder windows in a separate process," and enable this option. You'll have to reboot your machine for this option to take effect.

23.) At least once a year, open the computer's cases and blow out all the dust and debris. While you're in there, check that all the fans are turning properly. Also inspect the motherboard capacitors for bulging or leaks. For more information on this leaking-capacitor phenomena, you can read numerous articles on my site.

Following any of these suggestions should result in noticeable improvements to the performance and reliability of your customers' computers. If you still want to defrag a disk, remember that the main benefit will be to make your data more retrievable in the event of a crashed drive.

Once upon a time there was 1 GB storage in your inbox. Click here for happy ending.

Ccleaner configuration for getting best results

2007-07-11T10:20:00.001+05:30

Open CCleaner

Click Options/Advanced
In the Advanced window , tick the following:
Show prompt to backup registry issues.
Show detailed log of Internet Explorer temporary file.

Click Settings
Ensure that Automatically check for updates to cleaner is ticked.
If you wish to use the default ( fastest ) setting , ensure that the
Normal file deletion is ticked.
If you wish a more secure file deletion , mark .
Secure file deletion and then from the box below
Select either Simple ( 1 pass ) , DOD (3 passes) or NSA (7passes)

Now you are ready to use CCleaner. Clickthe Cleaner ( brush ) icon
Located in the upper left corner. A new window will open .

Under cleaner settings , click the Windows tab and ensure that :
Internet Explorer is ticked and all its sub entries ,with the exception of
Auto complete form history. ( If you tick this , any of your saved passwords will be lost )
Windows Explorer is ticked as well as all its sub entries.
System is ticked as well as all its sub entries.

Now .. if you look over into the main window it will be blank with 2 buttons at the bottom , one called Analyze ( pressing it will display all the files that will be deleted ) and it is safe to delete them all.
To Delete them .. click the Run cleaner button and you will be prompted if you wish to permanently delete these files click yes . You will see activity on the progress bar and the indication that the files have been deleted.

Next click on the ISSUES icon ( located on the left side , below the cleaner icon.
You will notice that under Issue scanning settings everything is checked ..leave it that way.
Now click on the Scan for Issues button located down at the bottom
Again , you will see activity on the progress bar and when it reachs 100% if you have no issues , it will display. No issues were found . Or if it found issues ,
They will be displayed below. Now click on Fix selected issues and you will be asked to back up . Follow the advice and save the backup. ( You can now safely fix these issues by clicking on the Fix Selected Issues button. )
If you run into any programs which you are unable to remove by the "Normal method" . Going into the control panel and using the add/Remove programs feature .. give CCleaner a try , by opening CCleaner and clicking on the Tools icon . The uninstall window will appear with a list of all the programs that are currently installed on your machine .. scroll down and select the one you wish to remove and then click on Run uninstaller

If you wish to change any program that are set-up to run each time you restart your machine . Click on the Start-up button . Again , scroll to the app you wish to remove from the start-up and click . Delete entry.

Here's a new way to find what you're looking for - Yahoo! Answers

Modifying your CD-ROM to watch DVD movies

2007-07-11T10:19:00.001+05:30

There are two types of CD-ROM drives we can mod:
24x to 40x
40x or higher
Drives slower than 24x are too old to be modded.
24x to 40x CD ROMs
Laser Head Adjustments:
The track pitch of CDs is 1.6 microns, and the track pitch of DVDs is only 0.8 microns. The minimum length of track pits of CDs is 0.843mm, and the minimum length of track pits of DVDs is 0.293mm. That's why DVD discs can store much more data in the size of a CD.
Pinpointing this situation, we need to adjust the laser head so it can read discs with smaller track pitchs and shorter track pits. Open up the CD-ROM drive, do you see a lens on the rail? That's the laser head. On the side of the laser head, there's a screw you can adjust.
This is the key of this mod.
This screw can adjust the size of the laser beam that lands on the disc. Referring to the above, after adjusting, the laser beam should be less than 0.293mm, to suit the needs of DVD discs. So turn that screw 2-3 times. I got this number through trial and error. Mark with a pencil, in case you forget how many times you turned that screw.
Speed adjustments:
DVD-ROM drives can play DVD movies smoothly at 4x speed. If we're modding a 32x CD-ROM drive, the rotation speed is obviously too high, increasing heat, and shortening the life of the drive.
So we need to decrease the speed of it.
Most people know that power supplies can provide 5V (red wire) and 12V (yellow wire) electricity output for Molex connectors. Find the Molex connector you'll plug into the modded CD-ROM drive, cut the yellow wire or insulate it with tape, so only 5V of electricity is transferred to the CD-ROM drive. The speed of the drive is now 32 * 5/17 = 9.41x and can now fulfill our requirements.

40x or higher CD ROMs
When 40x CD-ROM drives are released, most manufacturers are already producing DVD-ROM drives. To lower cost, they use the same core as DVD-ROM drives with DVD functions disabled. What we need to do here is to re-enable the DVD function.
Open up the CD-ROM, behind the circuit board, look for a jumper that says DVD JUMP. Find a jumper to connect this jumper. Thin metal wire also works fine.
OK, so the DVD function is unlocked, but we still need to decrease the speed. Use the instructions above on how to decrase the speed of the drive.
Notes:
Modded drives cannot be detected in POST, that means you cannot use it in DOS. But once you get into Windows, the drive works fine.
Modded drives have no region code problems.
Modded drives MIGHT NOT read DVD9 discs, that's why I said you can watch most retail DVDs in the beginning

Get the freedom to save as many mails as you wish. Click here to know how.

"REAL" Formatting

2007-07-11T10:17:00.001+05:30

What exactly is formatting and why is it necessary?

Formatting is the method of whipping your hard drive clean of previously installed / stored data. Do not think that the data is completely removed when formatting, because in fact its not. But, we do not need to cover this. When you format, you do lose everything that was previously installed, so if you have important documents, back them up!.

There are various reasons that formatting is necessary. Some may be because your computer is lagging horribly and sound and such just start failing, you have to run all sorts of tools to tweak it and ran diagnostics, but it's just not cutting it. You want it back to stock performance and everything to work correctly, so you just say screw it and reformat it. Various viruses and worms can wreak havoc and are not able to be rid of unless you format your pc. Sometimes it's necessary to completely delete the partition and re-create it, then format. As stated previously, there are methods that the more advanced users may do to dig up past data, usually just file names, but that is more then enough to tell what was previously on your hard drive disk.

What is required for formatting?
I will show you some of the tools that you should have when reformatting. This may vary, depending on what file system you have and what operating systems been previously installed.

- Win9X Boot Disk
This is used to boot up your PC into DOS for various formatting operations. The situations call for different measures. Sometimes a boot disk is a must.

- Restore CD
A restore cd comes with your new computers. They have the factory settings, drivers, OS and everything you need for your PC to be put to its factory settings. Some users may have lost this or never got one, so I will cover some optional solutions.

- Windows Operating System ( OS )
You may have bought or even burnt a copy of a windows operating system. This does not mean that your computer will install 100% complete without any problems, this is simply the basic foundation for a newly installed OS. You may be required to supply drivers and such. Read later on about this.

What if I do not have a restore or windows operating system cd?
If you are lacking everything that you need, please do not try to reformat. With that being said, let me tell you what should be done if you are supplied with efficient tools necessary for a reinstall. If you do not have a restore cd, but you have a copy of the Windows OS, then there are various steps you should take for a successful install. First, determine your PC brand, which could be Hewlett Packard, Gateway, E-Machine etc. Once you have figured this out, simply determine the model. I know that Compaq and HP have an auto-detection system to determine the settings for you, if you have this type of machine, others might too just make sure to check there official web site and look for Downloads or Support. With a manufactured pc you should be able to give them a call and request a new restore cd, depending on how old the computer is.

If you can not figure out your model and make try using the msinfo32 (start --> run --> msinfo32) or a utility called Sisoft Sandra Pro to detect your model and make for you. This is also handy if you have a custom built pc which has no restore cds created for it. Use Sisoft to determine all of your hardware settings and the type that's installed, and then use it on www.google.com to search for the drivers you need. You must search for drivers that are designed for the exact operating system you are installing or they will be incompatible! Mainly, with an older computer, if you are installing Windows 95/98/ME then you SHOULD download all drivers ahead of time. If you have Windows XP and are installing it on an older system then the Plug and Play should pickup most of the settings for you, so needing drivers downloaded ahead of time would not be needed. If the drivers are something like video driver then you should download updated ones from the default manufacturer because MS only supplies you with the lowest quality drivers possible.

I have everything I need, what next?
Now, you must determine the operating system that is currently installed. If it is Windows XP then there are more steps that must be taken in order to format successfully from DOS. If you are on Windows 95/98/ME then the steps are a lot less struggling. If you wish to remove the partition completely and reformat it and previously had Win9X then do so, just follow the steps that are required for reformatting an XP system from DOS.

FIRST STEP FOR BOTH XP & 9X:
Determine if your copy of the restore/windows cd is bootable, or your computer is setup to boot from CD at startup. Simply place the CD in the CD-Rom, reboot your computer and see if it tries to read the cd before starting windows. If, instead it reads something like the A: drive first, then you must change the boot-up sequence to CD-Rom first. This method varies by the type of motherboard you have. To enter your BIOS to change the settings use either F1 or Del. These are the two mostly used ways of entering, if that's not doing it, it should say what key to press to enter bios setup. Look for the option Boot, they should be presented like Floppy Disk; Removable Devices, CD-Rom, Hard Drive etc. If its an older motherboard, they are identified totally different, you will have to look up the sequences online. Once you have changed these and place CD-Rom at the top by usually using the + and - keys on the number pad to your right, save the settings and reboot. If it does not pickup the CD-Rom and ask you for various operations, then the CD is not bootable, which is where a boot disk comes in. If the CD is not bootable, make sure to set the boot first priority to Removable Devices or Floppy Disk.

Any asterisk that is provided means the steps are used in conjunction with each other.

Restore CD's
1) Place the Restore CD into the CD-Rom once you have determined that its bootable
2) You will be given a list of various options for restoring. Make sure you choose something like Clean Restore, they should provide descriptions of each.
3) Just follow the required steps for installation, its all self-explanatory with a restore CD.
4) If the Restore CD does not provide any means of a clean install, just a over ride of the current windows install, follow the below methods up to format it.

Booting From a Floppy **
1) Grab yourself a bootable floppy disk at www.bootdisk.com designed for Win9X. Any will work just as long as it provides access to DOS and CD-Rom activity.
2) Provide a 1.44MB floppy disk that is not needed and install the boot disk files to it.
3) Place the floppy disk in the floppy drive and restart.
4) Once its reading the floppy a menu will come up and ask if you wish to boot with CD-Rom support, choose the option to boot into this mode.

Windows 9X Non-Bootable CD(**)
1) You will be given a command line interface, depending on what your default drive letter is, it would look something like C:>, if its A:> simply type in C: and hit enter.
2) Simply issue the command format C: where C: would be the default letter of the drive. It will ask you for confirmation, just type Y.
3) The formatting phase will start, it could take a while depending on the size of the hard drive.
4) Once finished, it will prompt you for a volume name, which simply is what the hard drives label will be, its not necessary but you may enter something if you wish.
5) Now, you will be dropped back into a C:> prompt. Enter in the Win9X CD to the CD-Rom.
6) You must now drop into the CD-Rom drive to issue commands from it. To do this simply type in D: or whatever drive letter has been assigned to the CD-Rom
7) Once it shows up as D:> type in Setup and the setup phase will initialize, just follow the simple steps and you will make it.

Windows 9X Bootable CD
If the CD is bootable, then you will be given similar options that a floppy boot disk would provide. Make sure to startup into DOS with CD-Rom support. Do not startup from hard drive or this will just load your current OS. Just use the above methods once you have chose to startup into DOS. Then follow the required steps provided when you are in the command prompt.

NOTE: Be sure that you have the correct drivers for your machines specifications or you will come across a lot of driver problems.

Windows 2K/XP Non-Bootable CD w/ Win9X Boot Disk (**)
1) Once you have got the DOS prompt in front of you issue the fdisk command
2) You will be asked "Do you wish to enable large disk support?" type in Y. This simply allocated all the possible space for large sized hard drives.
3) We must determine the type of file system you have. Choose the option "Display partition information"
4) Look under the tab labeled "Type" if it is FAT32 then it will be a DOS partition, if its NTFS then its a Non-DOS partition.
5) Hit Esc to go back to the first options
- If it was NTFS choose the option "Delete Non- DOS Partition" which is option 3.
- If it was FAT32 choose "Delete Primary DOS Partition" which is option 1
5) Next you will be asked to enter the number of the partition, which is will probably be 1, unless you have two hdd installed. If you are not sure which one is which, the default selected partition will be the one your windows is installed on, so choose that one.
6) It will ask you for the volume label, if there is even one entered, them type it in as it should be typed.
7) Now, it will ask you if you are sure you want to delete this partition, type Yes.
It will now tell you that the partition has been deleted, hit Esc to continue.
9) You have the list of options at your view again. Choose "Create DOS Partition or Logical Drive".
10) Now choose "Create Primary Dos Partition"
11) It will now ask you if you wish to enable the full size of the HDD for that partition and make it active, choose Yes.
12) It will create the partition, it might take a little while, but not long. Once this is done, it will ask you to restart your computer.
13) Restart with the boot disk inserted, get back into DOS Prompt and now type in format C:
14) Once its done formatting and you have optionally entered a volume name, enter the Win2k/XP CD into the CD-Rom.
15) Browse to the assigned CD-Rom drive letter by simply typing D: where D would be the drive letter
16) Now type in the following: "cd i386" and it should drop you into something like D:/I386
17) Now type in "winnt" and the setup phase should startup, just follow the required steps.

Windows 2K/XP Bootable CD
1) When you startup with the CD entered, it should say "Press any key to boot from cd" or similar.
2) It will load all the necessary files to give you a graphical users interface for the setup, instead of a DOS based environment.
3) It will ask you if you wish to install Windows XP to press Enter, so do so.
4) Now comes the license agreement, simply press F8 to move on.
5) You will see your partitions, choose the one you wish to install 2K/XP to then press Enter
NOTE: If you wish to delete the current partition and recreate it, then simply press D, Enter, then L to the next given screens then choose this as the partition you wish to format and install.
6) Now you will get a list of options to to format the file system. Choose "Format the partition using the NTFS file system"
7) Now it will format and copy the required files to startup the setup once you reboot. A warning will popup telling you its about to reboot.
Let it reboot and do not press any keys and wait for it to reboot, the Windows XP logo will show up and then initiate the rest of the setup

You should print this out so you may refer to it when needed.

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Interesting Hacks using Resource Hacker

2007-06-06T09:37:00.000+05:30

==> Changing the look of RUN Dialog Box

For it, u hv to edit %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1003 -> 1033

==> Changing the Progress Dialog Box (The box which appears while Copying/pasting/deleting stuffs)

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1020 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Open With box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1063 -> 1033 & Dialog -> 1070 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Classic Logoff dialog box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1071 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Drive Properties box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1080 -> 1033 & Dialog -> 1081 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of New Logoff dialog box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1089 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of the box, which appears when Windows ask to select application/search with web service to open the UNKNOWN filetype

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1091 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Autoplay box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1119 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Folder Customize box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1124 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Windows Default CD Writing Wizard

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1125 to 1138 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Classic Shutdown dialog box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 8226 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of About Windows dialog box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 14352 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Format Drive dialog box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 28672 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Scandisk dialog box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 28800 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Desktop tab in Desktop Properties box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 29952 to 29956 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Folder Options box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 29959 & 29960 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of DOS Properties box

Open %windir%\System32\shell32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 32768 - 32885 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Taskbar & Start Menu Properties box

Open %windir%\Explorer.exe file, and goto: Dialog -> 6 to 1135 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Windows Security box, which appears when we press ctrl+alt+del keys while Welcome Screen is Disabled

Open %windir%\System32\Msgina.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1800 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Shutdonw Reason UI box

Open %windir%\System32\Msgina.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 2200 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of New Shutdown dialog box

Open %windir%\System32\Msgina.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 20100 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Shutdown Timer box

Open %windir%\System32\WinLogon.exe file, and goto: Dialog -> 1300 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of System Properties box

Open %windir%\System32\Sysdm.cpl file, and goto: Dialog -> 41 to 4103 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Choose Color box

Open %windir%\System32\Comdlg32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> CHOOSECOLOR -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Choose Font box

Open %windir%\System32\Comdlg32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 401 & 1543 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Printer Properties box

Open %windir%\System32\Comdlg32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1538 & 1539 & 1546 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Open/Save Dialog box

Open %windir%\System32\Comdlg32.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1547 * 1552 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Many tabs in Desktop Properties box

Open %windir%\System32\ThemeUI.dll file, and goto: Dialog -> 1000 to 1017 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Classic Programs Menu

Open %windir%\Explorer.exe file, and goto: Menu -> 204 -> 1033

==> Changing the look of Taskbar Context Menu

Open %windir%\Explorer.exe file, and goto: Menu -> 205 -> 1033

==> Changing the Start button Text

Open %windir%\Explorer.exe file, and goto: String Table -> 37 -> 1033 -> 578 (For New Theme) & String Table -> 38 -> 1033 -> 595 (For Classic Theme).

==> Changing the Start Button Tool-Tip Text

Open %windir%\Explorer.exe file, and goto: String Table -> 51 -> 1033 -> 800

==> Changing the Log off, Shutdown, Search, Help & Support, Run, etc. Text entries in New Start Menu

Open %windir%\Explorer.exe file, and goto: String Table -> 439 -> 1033

==> Changing the Internet & E-Mail text in New Start Menu

Open %windir%\Explorer.exe file, and goto: String Table -> 440 -> 1033

==> Changing the All Programs text in New Start Menu

Open %windir%\Explorer.exe file, and goto: String Table -> 515 -> 1033 -> 8226.

==> Changing the Connect to, Control Panel, Favorites, My Recent Documents text entries in New Start Menu

Open %windir%\Explorer.exe file, and goto: String Table -> 515 -> 1033

==> Changing the Start Button Icon

Open %windir%\Explorer.exe file, and goto: Bitmap -> 143 -> 1033

==> Changing the Side Image in Classic Start Menu

Open %windir%\Explorer.exe file, and goto: Bitmap -> 167 -> 1033

Microsoft - General Motors Exchange

2007-06-06T09:32:00.000+05:30

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon."

In a response to Bill Gates comments General Motors issued a press release by Mr. Welch himself, GM's CEO:"If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
Only one person at a time could use the car unless you bought Car95 or CarNT, but then you would have to buy new seats.
Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "General car default" warning light.
New seats would force everyone to have the same size butts.
The airbag system would say "Are you sure? before going off.
Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.
GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally (a GM subsidiary) road maps even though they neither need them or want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine.

New windows messages

2007-06-06T09:25:00.001+05:30

The following are new Windows messages that are under consideration for the planned Windows 9x/xp/vista:

Smash forehead on keyboard to continue.
Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue.
Press any key to continue or any other key to quit.
Press any key except... no, No, NO, NOT THAT ONE!
Press Ctrl-Alt-Del now for IQ test.
Close your eyes and press escape three times.
Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner.
This will end your Windows session. Do you want to play another game?
Windows message: "Error saving file! Format drive now? (Y/Y)"
This is a message from God Gates: "Rebooting the world. Please log off."
To "shut down" your system, type "WIN."
BREAKFAST.SYS halted... Cereal port not responding.
COFFEE.SYS missing... Insert cup in cup holder and press any key.
CONGRESS.SYS corrupted... Re-boot Washington D.C? (Y/N)
File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)
Bad or missing mouse. Spank the cat? (Y/N)
Runtime Error 6D at 417A:32CF: Incompetent User.
Error reading FAT record: Try the SKINNY one? (Y/N)
WinErr 16547: LPT1 not found. Use backup. (PENCIL & PAPER.SYS)
User Error: Replace user.
Windows VirusScan 1.0 - "Windows found: Remove it? (Y/N)"
Welcome to Microsoft's World - Your Mortgage is Past Due...
If you are an artist, you should know that Bill Gates owns you and all your future creations. Doesn't it feel nice to have security?
Your hard drive has been scanned and all stolen software titles have been deleted. The police are on the way.

Almost ALL Windows Drivers For All Of You Who Hate Searching

2007-01-09T16:45:00.001+05:30

How did it come into existance? (A brief history)

I've started these DriverPacks because I wanted to achieve a Uniform UXPCD. Why in the world would you want support for all available hardware, I hear you thinking. Well, that's easy to explain: to be able to use these unattended Windows XP installation CD's on any computer (of course one that's capable of running Windows XP).

After a while I decided to just try it, and I started the DriverPack Sound. It was a hell to get it fully working, but the positive feedback kept me continuing. Later DriverPack LAN was added and also DriverPack MassStorage (this last one was started by RyanVM). In January '05 I released DriverPack WLAN, which contains about 250 drivers (at that time)! This one has without a doubt the largest collection until now. In February, DriverPack Graphics has become available. This one has been split into three parts: A, B and C. DriverPack Graphics A supports the ATI Radeon series and the nVidia GeForce and GeForce Go series (current low-, mid- and high- end GPU's), while DP Graphics B supports the older and rather exotic graphics cards. DriverPack Graphics C contains the drivers for the professional GPU's: ATI's and nVidia's Quadro series. DriverPack Chipset has also been added to the list! DriverPack Sound has also been split into two parts (A and B) because of its size. DriverPack CPU, a tiny DriverPack, contains the AMD K8 CPU drivers. This (nearly) completes the circle: all important device drivers are now available in the form of DriverPacks!

Each of these DriverPacks support the widest variety of controllers in their category: even brands of whom you've never heard are included! At the moment there is support for hundreds of devices (Chipset, Graphics (A, B and C), LAN, MassStorage, Sound (A and B) and WLAN).

If you need help with, then you can register at the DriverPacks support forum!
What DriverPacks are currently available? Currently there are 11 DriverPacks available, all for the wnt5_x86-32 OS platform:

DriverPack Chipset
DriverPack CPU
DriverPack Graphics A
DriverPack Graphics B DriverPack Graphics C
DriverPack LAN
DriverPack MassStorage
DriverPack Sound A
DriverPack Sound B
DriverPack WLAN and to slipstream them, you will also need:
DriverPacks BASE This is the tool you have to use to slipstream the DriverPacks. It's got a nice GUI, extensive configuration options and an UpdateChecker. (For both itself and the DriverPacks.)

Click here to Download.

2007-01-09T16:45:00.000+05:30

DriverPack Chipset
DriverPack CPU
DriverPack Graphics A
DriverPack Graphics B DriverPack Graphics C
DriverPack LAN
DriverPack MassStorage
DriverPack Sound A
DriverPack Sound B
DriverPack WLAN and to slipstream them, you will also need:
DriverPacks BASE This is the tool you have to use to slipstream the DriverPacks. It's got a nice GUI, extensive configuration options and an UpdateChecker. (For both itself and the DriverPacks.)

Click here to Download.

Format Your PC

2007-01-08T17:38:00.000+05:30

Sometimes you just have to format. I equate it to a baptism for your computer, you are washing away all the sins from it, making it new, fresh, giving it a new beginning. I know people feel formatting can be a traumatic experience, but if it's any comfort to you, most computer pros format their computers more often then most beginners. The difference is: Computer Geeks can get their computer up and running in an hour after a format (maybe less time than that) and a beginner might get it up and running in 4 to 5 hours (sometimes longer).

So let me walk you through the important things you should do before, during, and after a format:

Pre-Format steps (The stuff before you go nuts and format):

Backup your important data - Just because you have to format doesn't mean you have to lose everything on your computer. Backup outlook, important documents, downloads, just about anything you can burn to a disk that will make your computer like home again. Just think of this step as if you're moving...you pack up all the junk you want before you move into the new place.
Startup Disk - Make a bootable startup disk, in Windows 98, ME, 2k, and XP they have where you can make a startup disk. So, get yourself a startup disk.
Go to your device manager and write down the hard drive components you have on your computer. This will make it easier if you can't find the drivers you need, you'll be able to get them off the net or the original CD's that came with your computer or components.

FDisk - Getting the partition ready (SKIP THIS STEP IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR EXISTING PARTITIONS)

If you already have a partition on your hard drive you can skip this step. I personally like to make a new partition and really have a clean start when installing an operating system or if I want to manage the partition size of a large hard drive. So here are the steps:

Insert the startup disk that you made in the first part of this tutorial. Restart your computer and your computer will boot from the floppy disk drive. In Windows (98 and ME) you'll get a question asking if you want cd support or not, go ahead and scroll down to: "Start Computer Without CD-Rom support"
At the command prompt type fdisk
If your hard drive is bigger than 512 mb (ugh, like who's isn't now) It will ask if you want large disk support. Type in Y or yes

You'll then see an option menu that contains the follow choices:

Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive
Set Active Partition
Delete Partition or Logical DOS Drive
Display Partition information
Change current fixed disk drive

Once you get to this you'll have a few options and there are a few things you need to know. If you already have a DOS partition and you want to delete it then you go to 3. Delete Partition or Logical DOS Drive and you'll select to delete this drive.

To create a new partition on your hard drive you select 1. Create DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive then press enter. Then on the next menu select 1. Create Primary DOS Partition and then press Enter. After you do this you'll get the message "Do you wish to use the maximum available size for primary DOS partition?" That basically is assigning how much space you want on the partition (only for Fat38 or NTFS if you want to install using a FAT 16 you'll have to follow a few different steps not covered in this tutorial...mainly because I haven't formatted anything in FAT16 in such a long time I forgot off the top of my head). If you have a large hard drive you might want to break it up into smaller partitions. For now let's say you just want to use the whole hard drive space for this partition. You'll type Y and then Enter. After doing this you'll hit Esc and then Esc to quit Fdisk.

This will create one large partition hard drive...(if you've wanted to make multiple partitions you would basically not assign all the space to the one partition and then go

Create DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive and then on the second menu you would hit choice
Create Extended DOS Partition and then you can create another partition with the remaining space.)

Formatting your Hard Drive

Insert Start Up Disk
Get to the command prompt
Type Format C: (or whatever letter is assigned to the drive you want to format) **Note if you get a message like "Bad command or file name" you'll have to extract the format.com file to do this just type: extract ebd.cab format.com at the command prompt and then type Format C:
The startup disk will ask you "WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST!Proceed with Format (Y/N)?" Now once you hit Y everything on your hard drive will be deleted. Type Y
After the format is complete it will ask "Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)?" Either put a name in or just hit enter
There you have it a formatted hard drive!!! Ready for you to install an operating system on...so get going and install one already.

Stupid Computer Tricks

2007-01-08T17:06:00.000+05:30

Here's a new activity - let's see how many modems we can load into device manager. Or maybe we can load more web pages this way?
The autoexec.bat file isn't used much anymore in these non-dos days. This one was used once. If I was this guy, I'd take stock of my circle of friends.

This poor sap couldn't figure out how to unplug the telephone line from his modem. Solution? Just yank out the whole connector block. Then whine when the service center won't cover the modem under warranty!

The complaint here? It "Won't read CDs..." Gee - I wonder why?? Kinda missed the tray, there!

"This damn front cover won't fit...." #1

"This damn front cover won't fit...." #2. This is what happens when you replace an OEM drive with a standard one!

This laptop floppy drive was "choking" on a large rubber band!