Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 makes it easy to protect your home network, personal identity, and online activity. It guards against present viruses, spyware, and identity theft as well as the web threats of tomorrow. Confidently e-mail, shop, bank, or share photos online, knowing your privacy and files are well protected. Easy to install, configure, and manage, Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 automatically updates and immunizes your PC and removes malicious threats buried deep inside your computer. With features for home network protection, URL filtering, data-theft and online-fraud protection, unauthorized change prevention, and much more, this superior suite goes far beyond the basics.

Here are some key features of Trend Micro PCcillin Internet Security 2008: Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, Email safety scan, Protection against rootkits, Proactive intrusion blocking, Anti-spam, Two-way firewall, Home network protection, Website authentication, Parental controls and Data theft prevention.

Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 normally cost $49.95 per year. To get your free Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 serial number that is valid for 3 years (value of $150), please continue reading and follow the few really simple steps below.


1. Go to this page http://www.sccoast.net/tools/internetsecurity/download.php and note down the serial number (PFEP-9991-7436-4997-1545)

2. Download Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 v16.1 from the link below.
http://www.trendmicro.com/ftp/products/tis/TrendMicro_TIS_16.1_1063_x32.exe

3. After finished downloading, run the installer, enter serial number that you got from step 1 and proceed with the installation.

4. After finished installing, you’ll need to activate Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 by providing your first name, last name, email address and country. Restart when you’re asked to.

You now have a fully licensed Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 valid until September 29, 2011. Make sure you update the definition and program after restarting your computer by clicking the Update Now button.

Here is a few simple test I conducted with Trend Micro Internet Security 2008. It wasn’t able to detect the undetectable trojan that I have using the manual scan but when I tried to run the trojan, it detected a suspicious activity that could pose a security risk and automatically blocked it. I ran a full system scan and it took only few minutes to finish scanning 50000 targets/files. Pretty impressive but one thing I don’t like about Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 is it takes up as much as 60MB in memory usage. During scanning, the memory usage can go up to 80MB.

There are a lot of keygenerators and cracks for Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 but none at all for Trend Internet Security 2009. Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 works on Windows 2000, XP,and Vista (32/64bit). Actually I got to know about this offer much ealier but didn’t want to immediately post it on this blog because the license supposed to last until December 4th 2008. So I thought maybe by December 5th, HTC Broadband will give a new serial number that can be used on the latest Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 v17. Unfortunately that is not happening because the serial number expiration date has been extended to September 29th 2011! I’ve tried my best to find a way for free upgrade but that wasn’t possible too. So if you are a big fan of PC-Cillin or currently using Trend Internet Security 2008 and the license is expiring soon, then this promo is for you. This offer is actually FREE for all HTC Residential Internet customers, that’s why I did not use the word “EVERYONE“.

I recently upgraded my broadband connection from 1Mbps to 4Mbps because my new house is within 5KM range from TM exchange. I would say that the Blockbuster Deal 4Mbps package is really worth it because I get to call nationwide for free and also I am able to download 4 times faster than before. The package also comes with a free cordless deck phone and a free WiFi modem. Even though I already have a Belkin router that can support more than 4Mbps but I just took the WiFi modem since it is free and I can use it as a backup in case my Belkin router goes faulty.

The free WiFi modem given by Streamyx is RIGER DB108-WL and honestly, the router looks cheap with very low quality casing. I connected the router to my laptop for first time configuration. The only manual I found is a piece of paper from Riger Corporation Sdn Bhd for Smart Configure. The instruction asks to open http://192.168.1.1 in Internet Explorer browser and type in both the username and password as tmuser. The WiFi modem configuration page is very simple and requires only a few basic information to get connected. From there, it seems that this RIGER DB108-WL wifi modem only supports WEP encryption which can be cracked by anyone who knows how to run a few commands in BackTrack.

Fortunately I found that it is possible to set the wireless encryption to WPA2 which offers better wireless security than WEP.


First, fill up everything that is on the Smart config-PPPoE page and click on the Save/Reboot button. Then click the Logout link from the left pane and then login again with the username & password tmadmin. You will notice that the configuration page now shows more options. I got to know about the tmadmin login through the full RIGER manual that is uploaded to Scribd.

Now click on Wireless > Security. At the Network Authentication drop down box, select from Open to WPA2-PSK. Enter a password at the WPA Pre-Shared Key box. The best password to use is to make sure you set one that is not even a word consisting of both letters and numbers with at least 8 characters. Dictionary attack on WPA2 would definitely fail to crack. Leave the WPA Group Rekey Interval (0) and WPA Encryption (AES) as default. Finally click the Save/Apply button. You now have a much safer wireless network. Do note that if you go back to the Smart config-PPPoE page after enabling WPA2, you will see that Enable Security checkbox is unchecked. You can simply ignore that.

Another tip is to enable UPnP so that software such as uTorrent is able to automatically forward ports. You can enable UPnP for RIGER DB108-WL wifi modem at Advanced Setup > LAN and check the Enable UPnP checkbox.

By default the DNS that is set to the RIGER DB108-WL modem is TM Net’s DNS 202.188.0.133 and 202.188.1.5. If you normally visit websites that are blocked by Streamyx, you can easily bypass that by changing the it to Google DNS 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. The Smart-Config PPPoE page is very useful and easy but then they should at least encourage the usage of WPA2 instead of WEP. It is just WRONG to still use WEP today.

It has been nearly a week since I am having slow loading problem on certain websites. During the day, it is still not too bad as I can visit the sites that I normally do. But when it reaches at night, I can’t even sign in to Windows Live Messenger, can’t login to my Adsense to check my earnings, can’t login to online banking to pay my bills, and searching in Google takes forever to load the searched results! Luckily I do not have problems accessing my own website which is hosted in US.

What the heck is going on with our Malaysian Internet Service Provider TM Net Streamyx? Whenever there are problems, it takes weeks for them to fix it. Come on, you are an ISP and you should hire really professional people, and not some n00bs that does trial and error. You should also change your mascot from blue colored hippo to a snail! Well enough of the rant. I am here to solve problems and not be a cry baby.

If you’re in Malaysia and getting really slow connections on certain websites during this period and also in future, here is a solution that you can try.


The reliability of our ISP is very important because no matter what, we’ll need to go through them first before able to surf the web. If they provide us with crappy and unstable connections, it is still not the end of the world because we can try to use VPN or open proxies. I have a WiTopia VPN account but it is also slow maybe because the server is located in US and our ISP is (always) having connectivity problems with international links.

I was browsing Malaysia’s very popular LowYat forum and found a thread that reports a very fast open proxy. By setting our browser to use the open proxy, a lot of websites started to load REALLY fast.

Here are the steps to set our browser to use the open proxy. For Mozilla Firefox browser, go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Network tab > click Settings button on Connection, select Manual proxy configuration and enter the HTTP Proxy as 219.93.178.162 with the port 3128. Check Use this proxy server for all protocols.

For Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Internet Options > Connections tab > click LAN Settings button > check Use a proxy server for your LAN (These settings will not apply to dial-up or VPN connections). Enter the address as 219.93.178.162 with the port 3128.

Please take note that visiting blogspot URL using Firefox with 219.93.178.162 proxy gives me a 500 Server Error with the message “The following error occurred: [code=CACHE_FILL_OPEN_FILE] An internal error prevented the object from being sent to the client and cached. Try again later. Please contact the administrator.”

As for Internet Explorer, you’ll get HTTP 500 Internal Server Error with the message “The website cannot display the page. Most likely causes:The website is under maintenance. The website has a programming error.” When you get such error and need to access that website, you’d have to set your browser not to use the open proxy or use another open proxy. I found another open proxy (IP:219.93.175.67 Port:3128) which is also fast and able to load a lot of websites. If you’re using Firefox, there is one very useful Firefox add-on called Multiproxy Switch which you can use to easily switch between multiple proxy configurations.

Other than having problems loading some websites, it is nearly impossible for me to connect to my Windows Live Messenger at night. I kept on trying to connect and got a total of 3 different error codes “80072efd, 81000306, 80048820 with extended error code 80048439”.

To solve this problem, open up the browser, set it to use the open proxy and go to http://webmessenger.msn.com/ or http://www.meebo.com/ to login to our MSN account and use the web based messenger. Rest assured that both of these websites encrypts your login credentials with SSL. If you’ve set your Internet Explorer to use the proxy, your MSN should be able to connect because Windows Live Messenger uses the default connection setting from IE.

I wouldn’t advice you to simply login to any websites especially online banking sites using the open proxy. Although online banking websites has SSL and will encrypt your username and password, I still wouldn’t want to risk my bank account being compromised. Remember, this is a temporary solution until our ISP TM Net Streamyx get things right again.

When a virus or malware is active on the computer, meaning that is it running in background, it can do a lot of damage to your computer. They can stop antivirus or antispyware from working, enable restriction on the computer by disabling task manager, sending keylogs to the hacker and etc. Since a virus needs to be active and running in background all the time, there is surely a method that it uses to auto run itself whenever Windows is booted up. Locating the auto startup entry is not difficult using Sysinternals Autoruns but virus makers have made it possible to auto re-add the startup entry whenever it is deleted.

That means you now have to first locate the virus process and terminate it, then only remove the startup entry. A virus disabling Windows Task Manager to prevent itself from being killed is no longer efficient since we can always use a third party task manager such as Process Explorer, Anvir Task Manager and etc to find the virus and terminate it. Some virus programmers have gotten smarter by protecting its process either through injection (firewall bypass) or a smart piece of code that creates a blue screen of death if you ever try to terminate the process in Windows.


Here is a screenshot of a bot creator where it has the “Protect Process” option.

If I try to end the process in Windows Task Manager, I get a warning saying “Ending this process will shut down the operating system immediately. You will lose all unsaved data. Are you sure you want to continue?”. Checking the Abandon unsaved data and shut down checkbox and then clicking the Shut down button causes a blue screen with crash dump and auto restarting Windows. To be honest, even “some” antivirus is unable to clean this virus because it kept on trying to terminate the process which ends up crashing Windows. If you encounter a similar case, it doesn’t mean you have to reformat your computer and waste hours to reinstall Windows and all your applications.

First you will need to know where the file is. The Task Manager in Windows 7 is already capable of doing that. Right click on the taskbar and select Start Task Manager. Locate the process that you cannot kill, right click on it and select Properties. Take note of the Location that is shown in the properties window. If Windows Task Manager has been disabled, use Process Explorer instead.

Now download BlitzBlank and run it. At the designer tab, click once at Type column and select File. Then click once at the < File path > which will reveal the … button. Click on the … button and locate the executable file. Make sure the action is Delete, you can change it to Move if you want. If you wish to backup the file, click once on the checkbox for Backup. Finally click Execute Now button which will prompt you to save all your work and close all running applications to avoid data loss followed by a reboot. Before Windows is even loaded, BlitzBlank will delete the file that was specified earlier by working at a very low level.

There are other similar free tools that can do the same thing as BlitzBlank such as Unlocker and EMCO MoveOnBoot. I prefer BlitzBlank because it is portable and small in size. EMCO MoveOnBoot requires installation and is 24.1MB in size. Unlocker also requires installation although there are unofficial portable versions.

Another manual method of deleting file that cannot be deleted or terminated without using any third party tool is via Command Prompt from Windows System Recovery. Restart your computer and start tapping the F8 key. When you see the Advanced Boot Options menu, select Repair Your Computer and hit enter. Select a keyboard (by default is US) and click Next. When you see the System Recovery Options, select Command Prompt. The default current directory should show X:\windows\system32. Try changing the drive letter until you find one that is the same as your C: drive in Windows. For example, the C: drive when I am in Windows ended up as D: in System Recovery command prompt. Now all I need to do is use the cd command to navigate to the file that I want to delete and then use del command to delete the file. To move, use the move command.

I am supposed to announce the winners for Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 license today but I’ve decided to do that tomorrow because I have something more important to share with all of you. You know I try to bring you the best computer tip of the day before anyone else does it. Rest assured that the comments will be closed to prevent further entries for the KIS 2009 lucky draw which will lower your chances in winning a license.

I’ve received an email today morning from Merlin Magii regarding VNU offering free commercial download for the latest iolo Search and Recover 5 worth $39.95. iolo Search and Recover 5 is developed from the same company as the popular System Mechanic 8. Search and Recover 5 is a very powerful yet easy to use data recovery software that can help you recover deleted pictures, movies, songs, sounds and emails. Other than that, it has advanced disk tools that can help you to make a copy of a drive, create virtual drive, search for lost or damaged partition and even a file terminator to permanently and securely delete sensitive information through your right click menu.


iolo Search and Recover 5 is an excellent data recovery software that helps you instantly recover deleted photos, documents, email messages, videos, MP3 files, and more. The easy-to-use interface allows you to quickly sort through irrelevant files to rescue your precious data—be it from a hard drive, a floppy disk, a CD/DVD, an MP3 player, a digital camera, or any other portable device.

It’s StrongScan technology recovers information even if you have emptied the Recycle Bin, formatted a drive, or suffered a PC disaster—even years after the data was lost. Never worry about losing your files again! Search and Recover also offers tools for system backups and the secure deletion of sensitive data, making it a comprehensive product for managing your critical data.

To get your free activation key for iolo Search and Recover, you can either head on to the original VNU Search and Recover promotional page, or follow the easy step-by-step instructions below.

1. Go to this promotional page http://www.iolo.com/casr to get your Search and Recover activation key.

2. You should see a Continue button like image shown below. If you do not see it, please temporarily disable your script blocker such as NoScript, AdBlock Plus and also antivirus.

3. You should now see that Search & Recover 5 1 Year Subscription Promotion has been added to the shopping cart with the unit price $0.00. Click the red Secure Checkout button.

4. Enter your first name, last name, address, city, postal code, country, phone number, email address and click Continue. Make sure you enter a valid email address because the Search & Recover activation key is sent there.

5. Click Continue again on delivery method page.

6. And finally click Place Order. You should be forwarded to a page that says “Thank You! Your Order #2101XXXXXXX is complete”.

7. Now check your email that you’ve entered in step 4. You should receive an email from iolo technologies, LLC with the subject “Thank you for ordering from iolo technologies, #2101XXXXXXX”. Note down the Search & Recover 5 1 Year Subscription Promotion activation key.

8. To download the latest Search & Recover, you can either download from VNU site, or here to directly download the SearchAndRecover.exe installer.

9. Install and when you see a dialog box below, select “I own Search and Recover and can enter my serial number later” and click Next.

10. Enter the activation key at the next window and you now have a fully licensed iolo Search and Recover 5 valid for 1 year.

Here are a few important tips that you should know on how to improve your chances of successfully recovering data. For effective data recovery, you must recover your data as soon as possible and save recovered files to a drive that is different from the drive it originally existed on. For best results, do not restart your PC after data loss, save any documents or files, start or use any programs other than Search and Recover, and compact or compress your mailbox when want to recover your emails.

Chris Wiles, I hope it is fine for me to post this as it is a website promo and not a magazine promotion for your magazine readers. I am not distributing this software nor mirroring this promotion. I am actually promoting your site by sending my readers to your VNU. If you do a search on the promotional iolo link, you’ll find that there are already sites “mirroring” this promotion and not helping you to promote.

To keep up with times, I recently purchased a new Sony Ericsson Xperia ray smartphone that runs on Android so that I can play around with it. It is a little overwhelming at first because there are icons everywhere but I eventually got used to it. I’ve heard about rooting android phones which is actually the same term as jailbreaking an iPhone. One thing is for sure. Rooting your android will void any warranty that you have on your phone unless there is a stock rom for your device in which case you can reverse the rooting and make your phone stock again.

Checking on the steps that has been posted on numerous forums and they seemed a little confusing with a lot of new jargon to learn. Thanks to UnlockRoot tool, it currently support automatic rooting of 563 android devices with a single click of a mouse button. Of course before rooting your android phone, it is best for you to first read up what is rooting and why should you root your android phone. If you think it is all worth it, then go ahead and root it with UnlockRoot.


First you should check if your android phone is listed on the support page. If your phone is supported, download UnlockRoot and install. First, you need to enable USB Debugging mode. To turn it on, go to Settings > Applications > Development and check the USB debugging checkbox. Then connect your phone to your computer and make sure that the computer is able to recognize your phone. If it doesn’t recognize, then you will have to download and install the software which contains the driver provided by the phone manufacturer.

Now run UnlockRoot and click the Root button.

UnlockRoot will then try to determine your phone model with version. Click on the correct model to confirm.

After successfully rooting your android, UnlockRoot will prompt if you would like to install an app called PowerSaver which claims to help to prolong the phone battery life. They also have a PRO version that cost $3.86 that enables level 4 power saving mode.

Finally you will be prompted to reboot your phone to complete the rooting process.

Congratulations! Your android phone is now rooted and you have full control over your system and can tweak it to your liking. You may have noticed that there is an UnRoot button at UnlockRoot. The UnRoot button does exactly what it says which is unrooting your android phone which restores the warranty if it hasn’t expired.

Download UnlockRoot

I’ve encountered problems with uninstalling Norton or Symantec products. Actually the uninstallation goes well when I do it in Add or Remove Programs from Control Panel but when I restart the computer, it shows error and unable to boot in to Windows. Somehow uninstalling Norton or Symantec products can corrupt Windows! It happened on a Windows NT4 server and Windows XP professional.

Now I found a tool to remove Norton products developed by Norton themselves. Think about this… Why would Norton create a Removal Tool when it can be removed from Add or Remove Programs? There must be something wrong uninstalling Norton products from Add or Remove Programs.


Norton Removal Tool can remove:

1. Norton AntiSpam 2004 and 2005
2. Norton AntiVirus 2003 through 2007.1
3. Norton Ghost 2009, 9.0 and 10.0
4. Norton GoBack 3.1 through 4.2
5. Norton Internet Security 2003 through 2007.1
6. Norton Password Manager
7. Norton Personal Firewall 2003 through 2006
8. Norton SystemWorks 2003 through 2007
9. Norton Confidential Online 2007
10. Norton Internet Security Add-on Pack
11. Norton 360

Very easy to use. Just select the version of Norton Removal Tool to run (either Windows XP/2000 or Windows Me/98). Accept the agreement and enter a random generated security code.

[ Download Norton Removal Tool for Windows XP/2000 ]
[ Download Norton Removal Tool for Windows Me/98 ]

The Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool checks Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 computers for and helps remove infections by specific, prevalent malicious software—including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom. When the detection and removal process is complete, the tool displays a report describing the outcome, including which, if any, malicious software was detected and removed. The tool creates a log file named mrt.log in the %WINDIR%debug folder.

Note The version of this tool delivered by Windows Update runs on your computer once a month, in the background. If an infection is found, the tool will display a status report the next time you start your computer.
If you would like to run this tool more than once a month, run the version that is available from this Web page or use the version on the Malicious Software Removal Tool Web site.

[ Download Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool 1.10 ]

Without a doubt that Kaspersky is known as one of the best antiviruses. If you check AV-Comparatives.org, you’ll see that its performance tops the chart most of the time. This is mainly due to its large signature database, frequent virus definition updates, smart heuristic analyzer and strong static unpackers that allow it to unpack more packers/ciphers than most antiviruses.

Kaspersky has an online scanner but it can only detect virus but not removing them. If you want to remove, you must purchase their product. Two months ago I discovered a method to obtain free Kaspersky Anti-Virus genuine license that works for a year and I am sure many of you manage to get the free license. IF you visit my site daily or subscribed to my daily newsletter, you wouldn’t have missed this great offer.

If you wasn’t able to get the free license, not to worry because Kaspersky themselves are offering a FREE tool that is similar to Kaspersky Anti-Virus but without real-time scanning.


Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool is a free on demand virus scanner and cleaner. It uses the same technology as Kaspersky Anti-Virus to detect and remove viruses. For a free tool, it is very configurable, allowing you to set what to scan, how much to scan, whether to use heuristics etc..

There is another feature called “Manual Cure”. It works similarly as HijackThis. You press the Collect system information button to gather information about your computer. Then Send the report to analitics (forum). The people from Kaspersky forum will then let you know the script to paste on the program and then click the Execute button to fix the virus.

Other than not having realtime on access scanner, Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool also doesn’t have an updater function. So you will need to download the whole 16MB package every time you want to use the latest version to scan and remove virus. If you are already using other anti-virus program such as BitDefender or NOD32, you can still install this and run periodically, maybe once a month for a second opinion. This is not an real time scanner, so it won’t affect your currently installed anti-virus program.

Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool may looks like portable because when you run the setup, it actually extracts the contents to “Kaspersky Lab Tool” folder at your desktop. However, it is NOT portable because it installs a service that is set to autostart. If you try to delete the folder, you’ll get the error message “Error Deleting File or Folder“. The reason you’re unable to delete the folder is because Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool has a feature called “Self-Defense”. It is used to protect itself from being infected by viruses. If you want to delete it, you must click Settings at the program and uncheck “Enable Self-Defense” checkbox.

[ Download Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool ]

Disabling autorun in Windows is a must especially if you’re like me who doesn’t run an antivirus. Most of the time an experience computer user is able to determine if a file is dangerous or not by looking at the icon, file name, double extension, file size and where it is downloaded from. No matter how experience or smart the computer users is, some day he/she will be careless. I can never forget that one nasty virus managed to get into my computer and corrupted all my executable (.exe) files because I was “careless” and tired after a hard days work. All I did was open My Computer, double click on the drive letter to access my USB pen drive and poof! that activated the virus via hidden autorun.inf.

The best solution I’d say is to create a registry key that totally disables Windows from processing autorun.inf file. A year ago I’ve shared with you all on how to do that by creating a registry key and then merge it into your computer. If you have trouble editing registry, then here is a tool from Panda Security that is able to do the exact same thing with a click of a button. I know that it works exactly the same as the registry tweak I posted last year by using SysTracer to take my system’s snapshot and then comparing the snapshots from before and after vaccination.



Panda Security has recently came up with a small portable tool that is able to “vaccine” your computer from virus that spreads through external USB drives. The computer vaccination prevents your computer from executing autorun.inf file and the USB drive vaccination creates a dummy autorun.inf file in your external usb drive so that virus can’t infect it.

It is weird that when I ran USB Vaccine on my laptop and saw that my computer is NOT vaccinated although I remembered very clearly that I’ve already disabled autorun.inf via the registry tweak. If I am not wrong, the setting was removed by registry cleaner software. So for those that use registry cleaners, make sure you run USB Vaccine after finish scanning and cleaning.

A lot of newer generation antivirus software such as the latest ESET v4, RISING 2009, Kaspersky 2009 and etc has protection against USB virus. Still, it is always better to disable autorun.inf because if your USB drive has a virus that is yet to be detected by the antivirus software, your computer will be a victim of the virus.

Just wanted to share an experience with you all. In one of my workplace where I maintain hundreds of HP computers, disabling autorun.inf GREATLY reduced the risk of the computers being infected by virus. On computers that I did not vaccine, it took merely a few days for the whole computer lab to get infected by virus and I had to clone them all over again.

[ Download Panda USB Vaccine ]

An ISO image (.iso) is a disk image of an ISO 9660 file system. ISO 9660 is an international standard originally devised for storing data on CD-ROM. We can burn ISO files to CD or DVD. Microsoft has started to distribute ISO files which you can buy online and burn them to CD/DVD.

We can also backup our whole CD in ISO image in case if the CD/DVD media is missing or unreadable. Burning ISO files is very easy. You can use Nero to select the ISO file and it’ll burn. There are times that I need to pull a few files off the ISO without burning it to physical media. I will show you two methods I know which allows you to access your ISO image and pull out the files that you want.


First method to access files in ISO image is to extract the ISO image with archiver software that supports ISO format.
Here are a few archiver that supports ISO format. Universal Extractor, ALZip and 7-Zip are freeware while PowerArchiver and WinRAR are shareware.
1. Universal Extractor
2. 7-Zip
3. PowerArchiver
4. WinRAR
5. ALZip

Usually you can simply right click on the ISO image file and select extract from the menu if you are using an archiver software that supports ISO image. For example, I have Universal Extractor installed and right clicking on an ISO image file brings up the menu to extract files from ISO image.

Many people thought that WinZIP supports ISO but in fact it doesn’t. I’ve installed the latest version of WinZIP PRO v11.1, open the ISO image and I got the error message “Cannot open file: it does not appear to be a valid archive. If you downloaded this file, try downloading the file again.“. Honestly, I can’t even remember when was the last time I use WinZIP…

Second method to access files in ISO image is to create a virtual CD/DVD drive and map the ISO image to it. Gamers should find this method familiar because Virtual CDs are alternative to NO-CD patches. It is a solution for not having to put CDs in the drive to play games. A very popular software used by gamers to create virtual CD/DVD drive is Alcohol 120%. Unfortunately I won’t be discussing about it because it’s shareware.
You can instead try using SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive or Microsoft Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel which is both freeware!
1. SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive
2. Microsoft Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel

It’s very easy to map ISO image to a virtual CD-ROM using SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive. Just installing Slysoft Virtual CloneDrive, you’ll have the option to create the number of virtual CD/DVD drives.

After creating a virtual CD drive, you’ll notice a new drive letter. Right click on the new drive letter, select Virtual CloneDrive and select Mount. You will then need to browse for the ISO image file to map it to the virtual drive. To unmap, right click on the drive again, select Virtual CloneDrive -> UnMount.

As for Microsoft Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel, no installation is required. Just download, extract, and run VCdControlTool.exe.
1. Click Driver Control… button.
2. Click Install Driver… button.
3. Select VCdRom.sys which is located at the same folder as VCdControlTool.exe
4. Click Start button and then OK.
5. Click Add Drive button and then OK. You’ll notice that a Z: drive will appear.

6. Now click on the Mount button and look for the ISO image file that you want to map and click OK. You will now have access to the files in your ISO image.

Important Note: If you have both SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive installed and Microsoft Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel installed, Microsoft Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel will fail to mount ISO images. Uninstalling SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive will do fix this problem. You can use either one but not both.

Of course, there are also powerful ISO softwares such as PowerISO, MagicISO, UltraISO, IsoBuster and etc which can be used to create/edit/extract ISO images. If you only need to extract a few files from ISO images, the methods above should be sufficient and you don’t need those powerful ISO software on your computer to do it. Moreover, most of the popular ISO tools are sharewares.

I usually stay away from BETA software because I do not want my computer or the software to be crashing on me while I am using it. However, I am more daring when it comes to BETA web browsers because they are able to load up websites slightly faster compared to the older versions. My computer is currently running Internet Explorer 8 RC1 and also just updated my Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 to the latest Beta 3.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 was released early December and I am sure everyone has been having problems viewing the emails in Hotmail Inbox. When I click Inbox or any other folders on the left pane, the bottom left will show a yellow “Loading…” message box and it remains like that. Clicking on any messages in my Inbox is inaccessible too. It is a known bug and I’ve tried searching for a workaround but couldn’t find any. The only way I could check my Hotmail is by using Internet Explorer.

After 3 months of waiting, thankfully the latest Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 fixed this problem and I can now log in to my Hotmail to view the emails using Firefox 3.1! You can try it too because Firefox developers consider this release to be “stable”.



Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 9 months. Firefox 3.1 is an incremental release on the previous version with significant changes to improve web compatibility, performance, and ease of use:

This beta is now available in 64 languages.

Improved the new Private Browsing Mode.

Improvements to web worker thread support.

Improved performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.

New native JSON support.

Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.

Support for new web technologies such as the |video| and |audio| elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.

If you’re thinking of being adventurous in trying out the latest Firefox 3.1 Beta 3, please take note that there will be add-ons incompatibility problems and Firefox will prevent you from using it unless the plugin has proven compatible. You can check out this article on how to enable firefox incompatible add-ons.

[ Download Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 ]

So frequently we need to upload screenshots of an error we get when using a software to the software support guys, or even send our cool desktop wallpaper for our friend to see.
The famous ImageShack(tm) offers provide an easy-to-use image hosting service for everyone.
What if you’re a programmer and need to send your code to the people in forums to take a look?
You can upload your code to YouSendIt.

It’s quite troublesome if you always need to open up your browser, Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, browse to ImageShack(tm) or YouSendIt and upload your files.
What if there’s a “one click” way you can do it?
Yes, someone(Kirk Dunlap) thought of this idea and went ahead to create a Windows Explorer Context-Menu extension called Upload Express.


The program is called Upload Express and it enables you to upload images to ImageShack(tm), and application files to YouSendIt. You can also define your own custom FTP server to upload it to your own FTP, if you have one.
After installation, you will get this function by using your mouse to Right Click on your files.

To upload image to ImageShack(tm), just right click on your image and then select ImageShack Upload.

After upload complete, you’ll get the Image URL. This will be the link where your image is hosted.
If you try to upload an application (.exe) files, the ImageShack Upload selection will not appear because ImageShack only host images.

To upload files or image to YouSendIt, just right click on your image or files and select YouSendIt Upload.

After upload complete, you’ll also get the Image URL. This will be the link where your image or file is hosted.
You can upload application (.exe) files to YouSendIt.

Please check carefully on whether YouSendIt and ImageShack will host your files or images forever. If I am not mistaken, some free image/file hosting websites will automatically delete your file once it reaches the amount of downloads or time upload.

To upload your files to your own custom FTP server, you’ll need to set up first.

As you can see, everything is pretty straight forward.
Upload it to my own FTP server is the same as the way I did it on ImageShack and YouSendIt.

This software is free, useful and it does its job very well. It doesn’t take up a lot of space and memory. The author of this software will try to implement the following features in the next release.
1.) PASV support FTP
2.) Multiple file uploads
3.) Logging for the URLs that are returned
4.) Flickr support

[ Upload Express Website | Download Upload Express ]

LimeWire claims to be the fastest file sharing program on the planet. There are 2 versions (FREE and PRO) of LimeWire. The PRO version cost $21.95 for 6 months of software updates and technical support or both for 1 year at $34.95. The benefits of LimeWire PRO is you get optimized search results, turbo-charged downloads, connections to more sources and more reliable downloads.

LimeWire doesn’t implement any protection on it’s PRO version. No serial number or any security checks at all on the software. After purchasing LimeWire PRO, you’ll immediately being forwarded a sales page where you can download the PRO version of LimeWire for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, OS/2 and Solaris. Whenever the customer requires to re-download LimeWire PRO, he/she will only need to access the sales page.


It seems that LimeWire doesn’t care at all on protecting its own software from piracy. No protection on the program and the sales page don’t require authentication/logging in. If you know the sales page, you can download the PRO version anytime. As we all know, Google has the smartest bot that crawls millions of websites and guess what, it managed to index the LimeWire PRO sales page as well which enables many pirates to download the latest LimeWire PRO for FREE!

If you know how to use Google’s search strings, simply use the “site” string and look for “sales.limewire.com“. As you can see at the screenshot below, only 1 link appears on the page but if you click at the text that says “repeat the search with the omitted results included”, about 70+ LimeWire sales page links will appear.

Most of the LimeWire sales page indexed by Google will tell you that “This account has expired”, “This account was cancelled” or redirects you to LimeWire FREE download page. Out of the 70+ links, only 4 sales page are still valid.

This bug has been around for many years already and I don’t know why LimeWire still allow this to go on. They are already using robot.txt to prevent search engine bots from crawling into the sales subdomain but it is still being indexed because people post the links to forums and websites. This is an important lesson for all of you who are selling ebooks or any intangible products on the Internet. Most of the time your products will be leaked out via direct link (just like Chapter-M). At least password protect the page or install some kind of script to detect unauthorized multiple logins. Also, using random characters on the filename also helps.