Nmap is a very popular and powerful security scanner that can be used to discover hosts and services which has been in development for more than 10 years. It is unlike any simple port scanner where you enter an IP address and it will sweep through 65535 ports to look for any open ports and inform you the common service that is normally running on that open port. Nmap is able to accurately detect the service and version even if the service is running on some obscure port. Another well known feature of Nmap is the ability to tell what operating system is on the machine. It also support scripting allowing users to write (and share) simple scripts (using the Lua programming language, ) to automate a wide variety of networking tasks. One example is a built-in script that is able to detect whether a host is infected with the Stuxnet worm. The current version of Nmap 5.51 contains a total of 178 scripts.

As good as it sounds, Nmap may not be very user friendly because it is a command line application that requires user to input command line options. If you would like to give Nmap a try, you can use the official graphical user interface frontend and results viewer called Zenmap. Zenmap is already included in the Nmap self-installer and during installation, just make sure that Zenmap (GUI Frontend) is checked.


Using Nmap will be a piece of cake with Zenmap. Just enter the IP address or hostname at the Target box and select a profile followed by clicking the Scan button. There are 10 built-in profiles and selecting any of them will automatically update the command line options so you don’t need to figure them out through the manual. You can customize or just check the scan profiles by clicking the Profile from menubar and select Edit Selected Profile.

Nmap is free and runs on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, and many UNIX platforms. Other than security analyst and hackers uses Nmap, it also has been used in a couple of movies such as Matrix Reloaded, Bourne Ultimatum, Die Hard 4 (Yippee Ki-Yay!) and a few more.

Download Nmap

When discussing a project online, sometimes it is very difficult to explain what needs to be done and providing a screenshot can be tedious because you need to circle the area where you want the attention to be placed on. Other than that, language can be a barrier when either one doesn’t speak fluent English. Probably the best way is to create an online meeting that is able to share your screen while simultaneously chat or talk to the project manager. The ability to record or save the meeting is also very important so that both parties can refer back the agreements and what needs to be done.

Recently I needed someone to help me work on something and I want the discussion to be completed as soon as possible. I remembered that I reviewed Mikogo before which was pretty good but I needed something more advanced that allows me to record the meeting and also possibly speak to the other parties using a microphone through VoIP. After doing further research, I found out that TeamViewer now offers online meeting!


First thing I like about TeamViewer is they provide an option to run it without installation. If you prefer a portable ZIP version that can be run directly from a USB stick or a CD, they also have it on the download page but the file size is slightly bigger at 20MB compared to only 5MB installer. All participants must run TeamViewer in order to create and join online meetings.

The presenter will have to first create a meeting by clicking on the Meeting tab, followed by clicking on the Start instant meeting button. Once the meeting has been created, a bar will appear at the right side of your screen with a Meeting ID which you need to give it to the person to join the meeting. The participant will also run TeamViewer, go to Meeting tab, enter the Meeting ID and their name followed by clicking the Join meeting button. Once connected, the presenter will have a lot of options to play with so let’s check it out.

1. Participants
You can mute or unmute and allow or deny your participants to remote control the presenter’s computer. The invite button creates a ready made email message containing the meeting ID and the download link. You can also sent chat messages directly to the user by clicking on the username and then type your message on the Chat box.

2. Screen sharing
You can pause presentation or stop screen sharing. Pausing a presentation will only allow the participants to see the the last screen before presentation was paused. When stopped, the whole screen sharing will be removed but it is possible to share the screen again. You can also set which application that you want to share for further privacy. For example, selecting Firefox as the presenting screen will only show Firefox when the window is on top while others will be hidden in black background. By default wallpaper is automatically and temporarily removed when a meeting is created for a faster transfer. You can also set whether to optimize quality or speed and also record a meeting from here. The recordings will be saved in .tvs extension which can be opened with TeamViewer and converted to .AVI format.

3. File box
Both presenter and participants can share files by dropping files into the file box area. The files are not automatically downloaded or sent when shared but merely made available to download whenever the participants wants to. The presenter is able to deny participants from sharing files.

4. Voice over IP
This is a very useful feature where all participants can talk to each other using the microphone and speaker on their computers. Simply click on the Transmit my audio now link and start talking. You can increase/lower the volume and mute/unmute speakers and microphone.

5. Conference call
If the attendees doesn’t have a speaker or microphone but wants to take part in the conversation, they can use their phone to dial the provided number and enter the conference PIN on your telephone keypad.

6. Whiteboard
Attendees can draw on screen probably to highlight interesting things. Only the presenter can Save and Clear the drawings.

7. Chat
In my opinion, the chatbox is a bit too small. If there are a few people typing at the same time or you don’t read fast enough, you will need to scroll up to read the posted chat messages.

8. My video
This will only appear if you click on the first video icon. Basically this feature allows you to transmit the video that is captured from your webcam.

TeamViewer 7 is free for non-commercial use, runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and even Mobile devices, and most importantly packed with really useful features that blows away their competitors! TeamViewer 7 is definitely my current first choice when it comes to screen sharing or online meetings.

Download TeamViewer 7

One of the most annoying thing that a computer gamer would have to do when they reformat their hard drive to reinstall a clean Windows is they risk losing their game profiles and saved games. After spending a lot of hours playing the game to reach the level that you are in now, it would not be wise to start all over again. If the game itself provides a method to backup and restore the saved games, then it is all good. However there are still a lot of games out there that doesn’t offer you a convenient way to backup and restore your saved games.

This is when SaveGameBackup.net comes to play. The main purpose of this free portable tool is to allow you to effortlessly backup and restore game saves with just a couple clicks. Currently the latest database 65 which was released on 12/19/2011 supports up to 1379 games. You can view the complete list at this page.


To use SaveGameBackup.net to backup a game, download the program from the link at the end of this article, extract it and run sgbnet.exe. The program automatically detects the games that are installed on your computer and shows on the interface. First you must set the path where you want SGB to save the game backup to. After that, check the checkbox for the entry that you want to backup and click the Backup button. The backup will be saved into one single .sgbzip file.

To restore the backup, select the backup path of where the sgbzip file is and click the Refresh list button. Click the Restore button and it’s done. Make sure you’ve installed the game prior to restoring. Other than that backing up and restoring saved games, you can also use SaveGameBackup.net to share your saves with friends by sending them the .sgbzip file for them to restore on their computer.

The Options tab contains additional settings such as not overwriting old backups, adding datestamp to filename, detection methods and switching to a different language. SaveGameBackup.net runs on Windows from Windows XP SP3 to Windows 7 and requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile.

[ Download SaveGameBackup.net ]

Nullsoft announced that Winamp v5.2 was released on Feb. 23, 2006. I swear that I was on Winamp’s website almost everyday after I heard rumours that the new version is releasing soon but today only I noticed that the new version is out.
Weird… Anyway, the updated Winamp v5.2 contains a lot of new features, improved features and also fixes with updated codecs.
So head on to Winamp’s website to get the new updated Winamp version 5.2 😀


New features
• New! Portable Device Sync – Supports iPod®, PlaysForSure®, and Creative® Devices
• New! Enhanced Media Library
• New! Online Services
• New! aacPlus High Bitrate encoder available in Pro
• New! SingingFish Media Search

Winamp detailed version history from 5.13 to 5.2
* New: [ml_pmp] Synchronize your Media Library with your portable media player Compatible with iPod®, Creative®, and Microsoft Plays For Sure® devices
* New: [enc_aacplus] Coding Technologies aacPlus High Bitrate encoder available in Winamp Pro
* New: [enc_aacplus] Coding Technologies aacPlus (HE-AAC) in MP4 container
* New: [enc_aacplus] Coding Technologies LC-AAC encoder
* New: [gen_ml] icons in treeview
* New: [ml_online] Dynamic AJAX Internet Media Hub
* New: [in_nsv] Using Coding Technologies AAC playback within NSV container
* New: [in_mp3] gapless MP3 playback
* New: [installer] multi-user profile options
* New: [installer] remembers your previous installer settings
* New: [in_wave] in_wave 3.0
* New: right-to-left playlist display
* Improved: new ATF functions and tags, including:
$repeat(x, count) – creates a string with x repeated count times
$lpad() – same as $pad, but adds padding to the left
$decode(…) – switch/case function. example:
$decode($fileext(%filename%),MP3,MPEG-1 Layer 3,MP4,MPEG-4 Container,Other)
$IfStrEqual(string1,string2,result) – if string1 and string2 are equal, displays result. case insensitive
$IfStrEqual2(string1,string2,result,else) – if string1 and string2 are equal, displays result, otherwise displays else. case insensitive
%folder% – top level folder name of the file
* Improved: Stereo beat visualization for modern skins
* Improved: [gen_ff] new vis modes available to skinners
* Improved: [gen_ml] CD drive info view (Rip & Burn)
* Improved: [gen_tray] gen_tray v1.0 (thanks DrO)
* Improved: [in_midi] provides metadata to media library
* Improved: [in_mod] provides metadata to media library
* Improved: [in_mp3] unicode id3 tags
* Improved: [in_mp3] preliminary id3v2.4 support
* Fixed: broken playlist sorting
* Fixed: playlist problems with multi-line tags (e.g. %comment%)
* Fixed: shuffle with only one song in playlist
* Fixed: ghost seek slider appears if Winamp loses focus during seeking
* Fixed: video options from video window right-click context menu
* Fixed: playlist winshade international character support
* Fixed: fullscreen video display international character support
* Fixed: m3u playlist handling security vulnerability (thanks to NSFOCUS and Information Risk Management Plc)
* Fixed: [enc_lame] bit reservoir
* Fixed: [enc_lame] cutoff of last frame
* Fixed: [gen_ff] regions on components don’t work
* Fixed: [gen_ff] playlist & video focus bug
* Fixed: [gen_ff] playlist winshade memory leak
* Fixed: [gen_ff] GDI Object leak with Current Skin prefs page
* Fixed: [in_midi] not following winamp’s title formatting options
* Fixed: [in_midi] reset button blocks further access to config
* Fixed: [in_mod] not following winamp’s title formatting options
* Fixed: [in_mp3] incorrect version identification (showed 5.18 in 5.12)
* Fixed: [in_mp3] incorrect information shown for AAC+ files
* Fixed: [in_mp3] reading incorrect id3 comment tag
* Fixed: [in_mp3] sometimes failing to read last id3 frame
* Fixed: [in_mp3] id3v2 album art loss when editing tags
* Fixed: [in_mp4] loss of album art when modifying metadata
* Fixed: [in_vorbis] not following winamp’s title formatting options
* Fixed: [in_vorbis] registry usage (now multi-user profile safe)
* Fixed: [in_wave] 32bit floating point WAV playback distortion
* Fixed: [in_wm] changes made with Attribute Editor not updating in ML/Playlist
* Fixed: [vis_milk] missing files from distro (you can stop bugging us now, Rovastar 🙂
* Fixed: [vis_milk] 100% cpu usage when paused
* Updated: [enc_lame] LAME 3.97b2
* Updated: [gen_ff] libpng 1.2.8
* Updated: [gen_ff] FreeType 2.1.10
* Updated: [enc_aacplus] Coding Technologies aacPlus encoder v7.2.0a

[ Download Winamp v5.2 ]

Frequent Windows maintenance is very important to keep our computer running in tip top shape. One of the first thing you should do in Windows maintenance is removing temporary junk files. Most of your Windows applications create temp files on your hard disk when they are running. These files are supposed to be removed but not all programs do it automatically. The temp files may have been accumulated to megabytes since you have begun using your PC, and they can waste large amounts of your hard drive space without you knowing it! This will lead to the reducing of free space on your hard disk, fragmentation and reduction of the system performance.

Even when a computer is being infected by virus of spyware, the first thing you should do before running a scan is to delete all temp files. Without a doubt that CCleaner is one of the best free program to clean up junks and it supports cleaning many third party applications temp files.

Here’s another great temporary file cleaner which is very small in size (49.5 KB) and widely recommended by malware cleaners.


ATF (A Temporary File) Cleaner is a free temporary file cleaner for Windows Windows 98/ME/2K/XP and Vista, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera with a simple, easy-to-use interface. This tool is commonly recommended by malware cleaners in forum to clean the temporary files in your computer before running a scan with HijackThis.

The main screen allows the user to either clean all temporary files, or select files for cleaning. The program also knows if Firefox and or Opera is being used, and gives the option of cleaning the temporary files associated with those applications. ATF Cleaner provides the user with a window showing the total bytes freed upon completion. The program is small (49.5 KB), quick to run and no installation required.

Note for Vista users: On Windows Vista that “Windows Temp” is disabled, to empty “Windows Temp” ATF-Cleaner must be “Run as an Administrator”.

[ Download ATF-Cleaner ]

My favorite and I believe it’s also majority’s favorite BitTorrent client, µTorrent version 1.7 stable is finally here!

The biggest changes were full Vista support and the removal of the 65,536 piece limit for torrents. Also added was support for finding local peers (peers on the same LAN) and optionally not having any upload restrictions for them. It is also possible to turn on automatic updating for betas now, found in the “Other” section of the preferences.

If you’re interested in seeing what has been fixed and changed from utorrent version 1.6 to version 1.7, see here. uTorrent changelog shows a lot of changes and fixes from v1.6 to v1.7. It’s a major update, so make sure you download and use the latest version for better support when downloading torrents.

If you didn’t know about uTorrent or have not used it, please give it a chance. It is only 218KB in size and it is known as the lightweight and efficient BitTorrent client.

Note: Also, check out this post on protecting yourself when downloading using bittorrent if you’ve missed it.

[ Download uTorrent v1.7.1 ]

Firefox hit its second major milestone Tuesday with the release of version 1.5, arriving just over a year after the alternative browser debuted at 1.0. The update sports Mozilla’s new Gecko 1.8 rendering engine to speed up Web surfing, along with a myriad of other fixes and improvements.
Notable changes in Firefox 1.5 include the ability to reorder tabs, faster back and forward buttons, a feature to clear personal data, improved accessibility and popup blocking, along with support for more Web standards such as SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6. Firefox 1.5 is available now for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Mozilla Firefox project (formerly Firebird, which was formerly Phoenix) is a redesign of Mozilla’s browser component, written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform. It includes a popup blocker, tabbed browsing, a smarter search, hassle free downloading, and improved privacy and security.

Latest Changes:


• Automated update to streamline product upgrades
• Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance
• Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs
• Improvements to popup blocking
• Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut
• Answers.com is added to the search engine list
• Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and “Safe Mode” experience
• Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers.
• Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox
• Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer
• New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6
• Many security enhancements

[ Download Mozilla Firefox for Windows 1.5 ]

First of all I’d like to apologize for not being able to announce the winners of the Christmas Giveaway which I did three days ago. There are just too many problems that I had to go through in randomly picking the winners. First of all, I got caught up with my job, then it’s tough separating the requests on 13 different type of licenses, and finally the latest WordPress 2.7 cannot list all comments in one page for a post in the admin area. It can only display 20 posts in one page so you can image I had to go through 72 pages to screen through cheaters and putting the request in the correct categories.

The good news is I will be announcing the winners now. I have the license codes for most of the products with me except for RISING Antivirus, BitDefender and F-Prot which I have to send your name and email to the respected party so they’ll send the license to you.

I will be sending an email to the winners and you MUST reply before I send the license to you. This is to ensure that the winner actually receives the license. If your name appears in the list that you won but did not receive my email in a few hours, please check your junk or spam folder. Here are the lucky winners of the Raymond.CC Christmas Giveaway 2008!

1 x VirusBuster Professional v6

Ryan Ma

---

1 x 1 Year IKARUS virus.utilities v1

Luke Smith

---

3 x 1 Year F-Prot Antivirus v6

Glen Carr

-Talan-

Laurent-Charles

---

3 x 1 Year BitDefender Total Security 2009

E. Ewing

Quan

Keyur

---

3 x 1 Year BitDefender Internet Security 2009

Gary

Adrian Christopher Miller

wutzup

---

6 x 1 Year BitDefender Antivirus 2009

Kim, Kiseong

alex

Ammar

Zoe Iepure

Prasad Johannessen

Raymond Truong

---

5 x 1 Year eScan Internet Security Suite v9

ashle t

Tylicia Tchel

Michael M

Belinda wong

John McNeilly

---

8 x 125 Days BolehVPN Subscription

Muhammad Muaz

Keithyan

ng hui ya

dino

myariff

Jun

Yu Meng

Ng Phooi Hoong

---

30 x 1 Year Kaspersky Internet Security 2009

Andriy suhanyak

Jose

Li

vamsi

kenn

Bill Bumbarger

jamie

Dave Hart

Eugene

Ken Saigo

Suresh

Odie

webcadre

blackrose

Jose Jacob

Norman

Steve Tomas

Rush

ricardo

hy

Juan De Leon

Carlos Hernandez

Chris

sndymny3

Darryl Duke

Nick C

Michelle Marsh

Walt Roth

Gary in TN

Hardy Lim

---

30 x 1 Year Norton Antivirus 2009

Mike Lewandowski

Da Cozzy

Tony (Comment #256)

Amy Robbins

David Weber

Armando

Rick H

Darryl Duke

Matt

Philip Newcomer

S.Lee

Frankie Zacharias

Travis Jackson

CyberTails

fx

danglee

Anthony Desouza

MZ

Braedon

Jan

Moneypenny

Chooky

NAV09

John Smith

John Wong Ging EE

Naushadali Rangoonwala

David (Comment #210)

Lee (Comment #72)

bahirzaheri8

kefekoto

---

10 x 1 Year Norton Internet Security 2009

xje4bv

heart reaper

utkarsh30june

ismailtahir

Solaris

Mark (Comment #82)

Alan Martin

Sarah

Robin Edwards

Yehuda Alexander

---

50 x 1 Year Dr.Web Anti-virus v5

thathagat

Robin Edwards

gavin

Indranil Maulik

Danny

Jason

Mar

marioncas

petre paltin

sanford john

zanes

Shinod P George

KeKe

Mihai Iepure

flashkidz

Alexa

Chang Chung Hon

Tony Rogers

Evgenii

Karim G Daiah

em

Sony

Ann

aamirullah

leofelix

Aaron

seeyaseb

Ginette Basile

Jerry Chance

dron

Richard Jongeling

Ali Eram

shaheen

Budy Sasongko

Hugo Santos

nk

trashmem

scottrade

ben Smith

next2222

王鑫

Hell Noire

Gladwell

Hong Meng

Justin Chen

Dean Gordon

Ken

S.Jaafar N. Ahmed

imran

Alex

---

100 x 1 Year RISING Antivirus 2008 + Firewall

Ishaan

Omar Shraim

blackcobra

Morpheus

Cat

gurmi

Syed

Devi

Bob

Suanne

f1tzy

Kees

Ernest Lang

Danilo

Erfan jok

Poosy

Joshua Kisorio Mutai

Bruno

kash

Brendan McMullan

Radu

MerleOne

Nathan4

nivek_hcerg

Jason Andrews

Andrew

clydeman

kris

labin

steve

nawarudin

zuraidah

Ross Fortune

Nicolas Velasquez

Harsh Gupta

draemdonck

Xeekder Novaritus

Muhammad

Tanju Engin

adigantengs

Phyllis

ankit pasi

chuy

helloakhtar

Matt Maltby

joeffrey

aircave

Andy Hayes

ACMPS

Akash

Joseph M. Nelson

Leland Whitlock

Steve Mills

Nick

Grant

Rico R. Palallos

Guseppe Luis Rumpaddi

iki

Kor Kats

David D

jana

Jason

denis

Safan

Piotr Nowacki

kevzz

Kirk James

Vikram Shivkumar

karel

sugang

Teri Hermans

eleuterio

swk_myy

dino (Comment #1408)

WJM

I am still in the midst of compiling the winners list. So do check back in a few hours to see if your name appears in the list 🙂 OK I’ve learned my lesson not to post all giveaways in one because I know that I will not be able to handle it. I roughly checked the lists and there should be leftovers license for RISING Antivirus 2008 + Firewall and Dr.Web Antivirus v5. I will reveal later how many are left and will be given away on first come first serve basis. Thank you all for your patience and happy holidays!

I bet everyone would like to play the latest games that comes with really nice graphics and animation but unfortunately not all of us have a computer configuration that is good to support modern games. Moreover those games are really huge and comes with multiple DVD discs. Even though you are able to find the download source, it will probably take you a couple of days to finish downloading it. If you would like to play games that are free and yet they don’t take too long to download, you can easily do so by using Game Downloader. Game Downloader saves you the trouble of searching for free games yourself from Google as it currently lists over 200 (207 to be exact) games that are free and open source while allowing you to easily download the game by clicking a button.


Game Downloader is a portable and very easy to use. All you need to do is run it, select the Category of the game that you would like to play, and the list of Games will be shown at the box. Selecting the game name will give you more information on the game at the About box. The icon shows if the game is for single player, multi player, playable online, requires an account with a short description, version number, file size and a small screenshot. From what I noticed, the game can be as small as 0.5MB to as big as 500MB. Game Downloader requires an active internet connection in order to refresh the latest list of games and categories directly from SourceForce’s servers.

If you have an interest on a particular game, you can click on the YouTube button to try to search if there are any video demo for the game. The Game Website button launches your default web browser and brings you to the official game website. Ready to play? Click on the Download Game button and Game Downloader will automatically download the game for you.

By default Game Downloader saves the downloaded game into the Downloads folder located at the same directory as the Game Downloaded.exe. If you want the game to automatically run when it has finished downloading, click on the Settings button and select Open Download File.

[ Download Game Downloader ]

Yesterday I went to one of my friend’s house to help him check on a problem with connecting to Windows Live Messenger. He was unable to connect to Windows Live Messenger for a few days already. All he got was an error message that says “Signing in to Windows Live Messenger failed because the service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. Error Code: 8100030d“. I really hate the error messages given by Windows Live Messenger because it is very unclear and there are no proper documentation for us to check.

I checked .NET Messenger Service Status and it said “All systems are stable and running.” Then I ran Connection Troubleshooter to conduct a series of tests to try to determine the cause of connection problem and it passed all basic Internet connectivity tests. I have a list of solution and one of it worked for my friend. So if you’re unable to connect to Windows Live Messenger and get the error code 8100030d, you can try the solutions.


1. First of all, make sure you have the latest version of Windows Live Messenger. Download the latest version here.

2. Check the date on your computer. 8100030d can be caused by wrong date on your computer.

3. Disable any firewall program such as ZoneAlarm, Norton Internet Security and etc. Reboot and try connecting again. Sometimes even after disabling firewall, it will still block your connection. Try uninstalling to verify that firewall isn’t causing the problem.

4. Check your Internet Explorer LAN settings. Open Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Internet Options > Connections tab > LAN Settings. If you’re not connecting using proxy, make sure that use proxy server is unchecked.

5. Check your Internet Explorer Security settings. Open Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Internet Options, Advanced tab, scroll to the Security section, and verify that “Check for server certificate revocation” is unchecked. Also verify that ‘Use SSL 2.0′ and Use SSL 3.0′ is checked.

6. Make sure Windows Live Messenger DLL are registered. Click Start, then Run, and enter the following command one by one and click OK.

regsvr32 softpub.dll
regsvr32 wintrust.dll
regsvr32 initpki.dll
regsvr32 MSXML3.dll

7. Delete the cache for Windows Live Messenger. Browse to the folder below and delete all files and folder inside them:

For Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Contacts\Messenger email
C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\Messenger Email

For Windows Vista
C:\Users\Username\Contacts\Messenger email
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\Messenger email

8. Reset your router. Power it off, wait for 2 minutes and turn it back on.

9. Try to connect to the Internet using another router, modem or even try to use cellular GRPS/3G connection to connect to the Internet. Then try to connect to Windows Live Messenger again.

10. Scan your computer for virus and spyware. It might be some nasty virus hijacking your Windows Live Messenger.

My friend’s Windows Live Messenger was able to connect from his computer after I’ve changed the existing router. I’m not sure why can a router be causing 8100030d error during Windows Live Messenger sign in… but if it is, you can try updating your router’s firmware first before throwing it away. Hope one of the solution above is able to help you connect to Windows Live Messenger without getting 8100030d error.

I really appreciate people who provide screenshot together with an explanation of the problem that they are experiencing when they get help from our forum. This enables everyone at the forum to understand the problem better and provide a more accurate solution to solve the problem. Since ImageShack is one of the most popular image hosting website where anyone can upload images for free, most of the time the screenshot ended up being uploaded there. You may have noticed that there are times you see an image of a frog being stuck in an ice cube with the message Domain Unregistered. To view, register at: bit.ly/imageshack-domain. Even if you copy the direct link and try to open it on your web browser, the same image will appear and auto forwarding you to the blocked_login.jpg image.

In order for ImageShack images to be displayed when embedded to a website, the domain will have to be registered with ImageShack for manual review and approval. I registered long ago and the restriction has been lifted on raymond.cc. I just tried visiting the ImageShack domain registration page and all I see is 403 Forbidden error. For a normal user, if someone sends you an ImageShack image in direct link, you will have to be a registered user in order to view it or else you’ll be redirected to the blocked_login.jpg image. Good news is I’ve discovered a simple trick to bypass this restriction so that you can view ImageShack direct link images without an account.


Here is an image which I’ve uploaded to ImageShack.

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/8056/logobwu.png

Opening the link above directly on your web browser will show you the frog stuck on ice cube image. However if you login to ImageShack, you will be able to see the following image.

If you don’t want to register with ImageShack but still want to view the image hosted in ImageShack, the simple trick is to “reupload” the image to ImageShack or imgur using the URL or Web method.

Reupload to ImageShack
1. Go to www.ImageShack.us
2. Select url
3. Paste the ImageShack link to the box where it says “Paste image url here”.
4. Click Upload Now button and you should see the image

Reupload to imgur
1. Go to www.imgur.com
2. Click the Web button
3. Paste the ImageShack link to the box and click Upload.

imgur is a much better image hosting website compared to ImageShack. It’s simpler, fast and doesn’t have all those restriction in viewing direct link images. I would advice everyone to switch to imgur.

The only reason you need to update your BIOS is when your computer is having compatibility issues with other hardware or experiencing problems that are caused by a buggy version of BIOS. The saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies to updating BIOS and drivers. Downgrading BIOS is hardly what normally people do but there are times when the older BIOS version works better than the newer/current one and you need to downgrade.

I recently bought an OEM laptop battery for my Acer notebook and has been experiencing problems with it. First of all Windows 7 shows an error “No battery is detected” and the battery LED keeps on blinking orange in color. I sent the battery back and got a new replacement but still getting the same problem. Finally the battery seller/manufacturer told me that it is caused by the newer versions of Acer BIOS and I need to send my laptop back to the manufacturer to reset it back to the default factory version. The latest version BIOS for Acer TravelMate 6293 is v1.41 and the Acer support website allows me to download 4 versions that are older than the current version.


Fortunately flashing of BIOS is way easier now because you can do it directly in Windows. Many years ago you will need to use a boot disk such as DrDOS with NO drivers loading up in config.sys or autoexec.bat. Anyway I downloaded the older version of Acer BIOS that is made for my Acer TravelMate 6293 notebook and ran the Phoenix WinPhlash tool (WinPhlash.exe). By default the “Backup BIOS and Flash BIOS with new settings” is selected and all I need to do is click the Flash BIOS button.

The process of Load new BIOS, Analyze old and new BIOS compatibility, Read old BIOS, Save old BIOS to backup file has passed but upon reaching the final stage “Flash new BIOS”, an error message “The current system BIOS is the same version (or newer) than the version you are trying to flash, so the BIOS will not be changed” appears.

This is actually the extra security check by Phoenix WinPhlash tool to prevent users from downgrading BIOS. If you still want to downgrade, here is the trick.

1. Open the folder where the WinPhlash tool is located and edit the PHLASH.INI file with a text editor.

2. Look for the line Advanced=0 which is normally at the second line, change it to Advanced=1 and save.

3. Now run WinPhlash.exe and you will notice an extra “Advanced Settings” button at the top right of the program. Click on the Advanced Settings button.

4. Uncheck “Flash only if BIOS version is newer than system” and click OK.

Now you can successfully flash your BIOS with an older version without getting the error message. Again I would like to stress that normally you do NOT need to upgrade or downgrade your BIOS if everything is working fine on your computer.