Thank you all very much for your kind birthday wishes. Although not many of my friends remembered my birthday, but getting 152 wishes from yesterday’s post was a record! I am deeply touched because you all don’t know me in real life but are willing to write a comment to wish me well. With that, I am not going to let you all down and will continue to post what I know even if I am busy with my job.

Whenever I finish installing Windows, there are some software that I will surely install. They are Adobe Reader for reading PDF files, PowerArchiver for extracting ZIP/RAR files, Winamp for playing audio and video files, Microsoft Office for opening excel, word and powerpoint files, hexeditor of editing executable files, and etc… The more software we install on a computer, the slower it becomes.

What if I tell you that there is a software which is able to help you preview 100 over file formats from Windows Explorer or Microsoft Outlook even if you don’t have the original software installed? Imagine previewing PDF files without Adobe Reader, opening ZIP files without WinZIP, playing audio without winamp or media player and etc… Check it out!


Explorer View is an instant file viewer for more than 100 file types, including: a Powerpoint viewer, Visio, DWG viewer, Excel, PDF, AutoCad and many more which works inside Windows Explorer.

The big feature of this utility is the Preview Pane that will preview images, documents, HTML and even audio files. In the case of documents, the whole file is located instantly into the preview pane so that you can browse through the contents. You can also print the file directly from the preview pane, and copy selected text to the clipboard. Explorer View brings up the standard viewing buttons for image preview such as flip and zoom. Audio files bring up a set of standard player buttons. This means that you can conveniently check a text file without having to load up Word, or organise your music collection without the need to start your player. It’s the simplest, safest and quickest file viewer you can ever use!

There are 2 versions of Explorer View. Explorer View for Windows Explorer and Explorer View for Microsoft Outlook. Explorer View for Windows Explorer allows you to view the file’s content from Windows Explorer. As for Microsoft Outlook version, you can preview email attachments inside Microsoft Outlook. This useful universal file viewer it is a shareware. Each cost the same price which is $29.95. As usual, I am here to help you save your hard earned money by showing you how to legitimately get a genuine license on both ExplorerView for Windows Explorer and Microsoft Outlook for FREE!

To get free genuine license for Explorer View for Windows Explorer

1. Visit this page, enter your first name, last name, Email address, Secure Code, check the agreement and click Register button.

2. Check your email and you should receive an email from [email protected] with the subject “GetData software updates and support registration”. Note down the key. The key has a format which looks like XXXX-XXXX-XXXX.

3. Download Explorer View for Windows Explorer and install.

4. Launch Explorer View for Windows Explorer after installation. You should see a new tray icon appear. Right click and select Activate.

Make sure Activate Online is selected and click Next. Enter the license key that you received via email and click Next. You should get a dialog window that says “Activation Succeeded. Thank you for activating your software.”

To get free genuine license for Explorer View for Microsoft Outlook

1. Visit this page, enter your first name, last name, Email address, Secure Code, check the agreement and click Register button.

2. Check your email and you should receive an email from [email protected] with the subject “GetData software updates and support registration”. Note down the key. The key has a format which looks like XXXX-XXXX-XXXX.

3. Download Explorer View for Microsoft Outlook and install.

4. Launch Microsoft Outlook after installation. You should see a ExplorerView button at the menu bar. Click the ExplorerView button and select About. At the About dialog box, click the Activate button.

Make sure Activate Online is selected and click Next. Enter the license key that you received via email and click Next. You should get a dialog window that says “Activation Succeeded. Thank you for activating your software.”

Get it quick! I have a feeling that this offer wouldn’t last long after I’ve posted it out. Enjoy and good luck!

If you are using the default password manager that is built-in to Firefox, you would notice that logging in to websites such as PayPal and Citibank doesn’t prompt you to remember the password. However it seems to work on other websites. Well this is not a bug but it is just the web browsers respecting the autocomplete=”off” code that is on the HTML. Many years ago I’ve shared a tip on how to force Firefox to save password on websites such as Yahoo Mail and Hotmail using a bookmarklet which I can confirm that it is still working today. All you need to do is paste a long string of javascript to the address bar and hit Enter before logging in and the web browser will magically prompt you if you would like to save the password. Below is the HTML source code of the Paypal site that has autocomplete=”off” added to the login form.

If for some reason you don’t want to use the bookmarklet or it doesn’t work and want this feature to be permanently removed, making Firefox to always ignore the autocomplete=”off”, this is how you do it on Firefox 4. It was much easier to do this on Firefox 3 because of the naked nsLoginManager.js file but Firefox 4 has packed all of the .js files into one omni.jar file.


You can refer to my previous article on how to edit files inside omni.jar by first deoptimizing it and then changing the extension from .jar to .zip which will allow you to edit the files in omni.jar.

Once you have done all that, go to components folder and edit the nsLoginManager.js with your favorite text editor (I would recommend Notepad++). Press CTRL+F which will bring up the search box and type _isAutoCompleteDisabled followed by hitting the enter key. The whole code should look like the screenshot below.

Now all you need is to change the value from true to false which I have circled in red. Make sure that the semicolon is still there after the false. Save it and rename the omni.zip back to omni.jar. For best performance and optimization, make sure you re-optimize the jar file by using the –optimize switch with optimizejars.py. As you can see at the screenshot below, I am now able to save my PayPal password on Firefox 4.

Do note that you probably need to go through the whole process of editing the nsLoginManager.js file whenever Firefox 4 gets updated. If you’re using LastPass to manage all your saved passwords, then you do not need to worry about this because by default LastPass does not respect AutoComplete=off. You can either enable or disable that from the LastPass Preferences window. I hope to have the LastPass review with (surprise) posted as soon as I can.

Every new version of Acrobat Reader that is released by Adobe seems to be slower and slower.
I’ve used Adobe Acrobat Reader since v4 and it was fast. When it gets to v5, the loading speed is still fine.
But when it gets to v6 and v7, the loading speed is quite ridiculously slow!

Good news, because I’ve found a software that is able to speed up your Adobe Acrobat Reader launch time.



Adobe Reader SpeedUp
Adobe Reader SpeedUp is a simple application that was created to help make the loading time of Adobe’s Acrobat/Reader software bearable for everyday use.
Adobe Reader SpeedUp only needs to be used once (a process taking only a few seconds) and then your ‘Reader will be transformed forever. There are also some tweaking options available.
“w00t!”, as the young kids say.

** I’ve tested it and it really works. It will disable plugins that most of us don’t use and thus, speeds up the loading time. Very useful and it’s FREE. 😀

[ Adobe Reader SpeedUp Website | Download Adobe Reader SpeedUp ]

I remembered once seeing this sentence at a website that says “nearly everyone and their DOG knows about AVG and is testing the latest AVG FREE version 8 right now”. I believe that is very true because I have a friend who is 50 over years old and he once “suggested” AVG to me… He is a business man and not even a computer literate person. That proves how successful AVG’s marketing is.

In my opinion, the latest AVG 8 is a bit bloated and not as light as the previous version 7.5. In fact, many software has started to add more and more feature in every major release and that makes it bloated. If you’re using AVG FREE 8, I’d suggest you to switch to another one which I’ve tested and found to be better than AVG. Also, recently more and more Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 key that gotten from Barclay’s promotion has been blacklisted. You could switch to this antivirus if you want…


RISING Antivirus 2008 is developed by a Chinese software company in Beijing. It protects your computers against all types of viruses, Trojans, Worms, Rootkits and other malicious programs. Ease of use, Active Defense technology, Patented Unknown Virus Scan&Clean technology and Patented Smartupdate technology make RISING Antivirus ‘ install-and-forget ‘ product that lets you focus on what you really want to do.

RISING Antivirus Free Edition is a solution with no cost to personal users for the life of RISING Antivirus 2008 while still provides the SAME level of detection and protection capability as Rising Antivirus 2008. RISING Support centre will also provides technical support for Free Edition users. RISING expects more users can enjoy Lion-strong security protection.

I’ve tested Rising Antivirus free edition on my desktop test system with a few trojans. Some are public versions which is detectable by most antiviruses and some private which can only be detected by certain good and powerful antivirus such as Kaspersky. When Rising AV sees the virus, it doesn’t immediately notify me that it has found a virus. Only when I try to run it, Rising File Monitor Alert appears telling me that it has found a virus and giving me the option to clean, delete or ignore the file. This is good because it doesn’t constantly scan in background which will slow down your computer. It can detect all public version of trojans that I try to copy to the computer.

Next, I tried scanning a private version of trojan with Rising Antivirus but it did not detect anything. I was a bit disappointed, thinking that this is like any other free AVs out there that doesn’t have a good proactive engine. When I run the private trojan, it did not infect my system! I suspect that Rising Antivirus somehow blocked the threat. So I disabled all Rising Antivirus auto-protect, and ran the trojan again. Now the system is infected. I re-enabled auto-protect and ran Hidden Process Detection. It detected a hidden process which spawned by the trojan. I ran a scan on the memory and boot records and it was able to detect and remove the private trojan. I AM IMPRESSED! As you can see, although Rising Antivirus did not have the virus definition to identify the private trojan as a threat, but it can somehow block it from infecting the computer. Even if it is infected, it can detect hidden process and remove it from memory.

Is Rising Antivirus a bloatware? Here are the process that I’ve identified which belongs to Rising Antivirus.
ravtask.exe – 676K
ravstub.exe – 3411K
ravmond.exe – 8192K
ravmon.exe – 2048K
ccenter.exe -1652K
All 5 processes above takes up about 15MB from memory. Since most of the computer nowadays come with at least 1GB of RAM, you wouldn’t really feel that Rising Antivirus is hogging on your computer. It is not heavy in system resource usage nor light. Moderate would be the best word to describe Rising Antivirus’ system resource usage.

Rising Antivirus can run on Windows 98 up to Windows Vista 64 bit. The system requirements to run on non-Vista computer is Pentium3 500 MHz, 64 MB of RAM and a standard VGA 24-bit true color. As for Windows Vista, Pentium3 1 GHz CPU, 512 MB of RAM and a Standard VGA 24-bit true color.

[ Download FREE Rising Antivirus ]

The lucky winner for BitDefender giveaway has been announced. Those that did not win, please do not despair as I have something even better this time. So far I’ve given away Norton Antivirus, Kaspersky and BitDefender license to my subscribers and I will continue doing that. I hope that I am able to give something at least once or twice per month. As an appreciation to my subscribers, I will be giving out PC Tools Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus genuine serial number license to 10 lucky subscribers this time. Yes, TEN! This means the chances of you getting it has been increased to 10 times!

Spyware Doctor is not only one of the most popular spyware removers on the market (with 500,000+ downloads per week) but also one of the most highly awarded! It has won a total of 57 awards and counting! Think about it. If a software can win that much awards, it must be good.

Here’s how to win Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus to protect you from spyware and virus for 365 days.


To be eligible for this lucky draw, you must meet 2 conditions.

1st Condition: Must be Raymond.CC daily newsletter subscriber. If you are not a subscriber, here is how you can subscribe.

– Enter your email at the top right hand side and hit the subscribe button.

– Next, you need to enter the random text characters and hit the Complete Subscription Request button. Finally, you need to check your email inbox for a verification message from FeedBurner’s “[email protected]” and click a link listed in this message to activate your subscription. If you got it right, you should see a message that says “Email Subscription Confirmed!” at your web browser.

2nd Condition: Leave a comment with the email address you’ve used to subscribed to Raymond.CC’s newsletter. This is to inform me that you want to be in this draw.

The 10 lucky winners will be announced on 1st of May 2008.

Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus is a top-rated malware, spyware & virus removal utility that detects, removes and protects your PC from thousands of potential spyware, adware, trojans, viruses, keyloggers, spybots and tracking threats.

Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus Key Features:

Comprehensive Malware Protection

Constant Real-time Protection

Advanced Detection and Removal Technology

Comprehensive Malware Protection

Protection against zero-day threats – Behavioral Heuristic Detection

Advanced Rootkit Detection

Works silently in the background with low CPU usage

Automatic and silent Smart Updates

Most internationally awarded anti-spyware product

In my opinion, I think that Spyware Doctor has been flying under the radar all this while. When talk about antivirus or antispyware programs, we only think of big names such as Norton, Kaspersky, NOD32, BitDefender, Spybot, Ad-Aware and etc… I’ve tested Spyware Doctor myself and it is really good in terms of detecting and blocking trojans, spywares and viruses. I tried to infect my computer with a private version of trojan but the OnGuard protection is smart enough to detect and block it. Not only that, Spyware Doctor with Antivirus only takes up 4MB memory when running in background.

Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus works on Windows 2000, Windows XP(32bit) and Windows Vista(32bit). 64-bit is not yet supported. Your system must have at least 1 GHz processor with 256 MB of RAM Memory for XP or 1GB for Vista. As for hard drive space, 100MB of free hard disk space is sufficient. There are Spyware Doctor cracks but it will be unusable whenever a newer build is out. As for Spyware Doctor serial number that is pirated, don’t even think about it because it validates the Spyware Doctor serial number online. So just subscribe and participate in this lucky draw which might just win you a free Spyware Doctor with Antivirus genuine serial number license!

Recently I got to know about a software called TweakPrefetch which is able to do exactly what the name of the software and that is tweaking Windows Prefetch and also Superfetch. Honestly, I’ve heard of it and briefly know that it has something to do with caching to speed things up in Windows computer but never really bothered to research further on it. After reading the article about Prefetch and Superfetch in TweakPrefetch’s official website, I found that it is quite important to know what is it all about especially if you have a SSD drive.

Basically Prefetch is available in Windows XP, Vista and 7 while Superfetch only available in Vista and Windows 7. These two functions aim to reduce applications startup time as well as the operating system boot time by preloading it in memory. The author of TweakPrefetch claims that prefetching in Windows XP is better left at its default value and the same goes to superfetch on Windows Vista and 7. However if you are a gamer, have a solid state drive (SSD) or the system has less than 2GB of RAM, then you might want to consider tweaking prefetch and superfetch to improve the overall performance for your system.


Solid state drive is already fast enough and prefetching doesn’t help a bit in increasing performance. Hence, disabling prefetch and superfetch can extend the lifespan of the unit. As for gamers, some may noticed random in-game framerate drops which can be possibly caused by the caching process and disabling prefetch can prevent that from happening. As for systems with less than 2GB of RAM, you are able to reduce memory usage by disabling prefetch since it uses a considerable amount of system memory for this function.

TweakPrefetch makes it all easy to configure prefetch and superfetch. The simple user interface displays the options clearly on how you would like to tweak the prefetch and superfetch for your Windows system. You can either enable the fetching for applications only, boot only or the default applications & boot only. Do note that disabling of Prefetch, Superfetch and its service can only done when Advanced Controls is selected from the Options menubar.

If you are not sure on which option to choose or dare not take the risk, click on the Tools from the menubar and select Configuration Wizard. This is a helpful wizard which will help less experienced users to find the optimal Prefetch and Superfetch settings for their system and needs. All you need to do is select what kind of hard of hard drive is on your computer and then select the main computer usage. Click the Detect button and it will show you the recommended settings.

If you feel that your computer is sluggish after tweaking the prefetch, you can always revert it back to the default “Application & Boot” from the program. TweakPrefetch is free and requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 or newer to run.

Download TweakPrefetch

The first version of Messenger 8 Beta branded as Windows Live Messenger 8 has been spotted on the internet. Version 8.0.0328 features a lot of graphical improvements, from display picture borders to replacing toast boxes. Noticeable updates in this version: