No matter how big Facebook gets, I stand on my ground not to create a personal Facebook account. Although I am able to find a lot of old friends through Facebook but I don’t want to risk my personal information being used by anyone. Moreover anyone, especially your enemies can create a fake identity and spread bad things about you. You can try reporting the violation but most of these cases are being ignored unless you can get 2000 people to help you report it.

If you ask me if I have a Facebook account, yes I do have one without any personal information in it and it is only for the purpose of creating a Raymond.CC Technology Blog page so that I can share updates. Yesterday after publishing the post about DirectX Happy Uninstall, I had problems in sharing the link in my wall. I have no problems attaching a link but when I click the Share button, an error saying “Something went wrong. We’re working on getting it fixed as soon as we can” is shown on the page.

From the looks of this error, it seems like a generic error because it doesn’t have any error code, or specific explanation to the problem. I also doubt that Facebook engineers are actually getting it fixed as soon as they can. So I’ve decided to investigate on this Something Went Wrong problem.


I searched in Google and it appears that this problem has been ongoing for a very long time. Some people get it and some don’t. Anyway, my first suspect is that the cookies or cache has been corrupted so I used another web browser and surprisingly I was able to share this time without any problems.

Then today I tried to share a link and I got the dreaded something went wrong error again! Clearing the cache/cookies and changing to a different web browser did not solve the problem this time… At least I now know for sure that this problem is not caused by my computer. I noticed that this problem only occur when the Post Update only shows 2 methods of sharing which is Post and Link.

After playing around with Facebook for a couple of minutes, I got lucky and found the cause of something went wrong in Facebook problem. The rule is you have to create a Facebook account first in order to create a page. After created a page, you’re automatically an admin of the page. Now, if you haven’t noticed, you can switch between “Use Facebook as Page” and “Switch back to YourProfileName” from the Account drop down menu at the top right.

I noticed that when I am using facebook as my profile, sharing a post or link to my page will cause the error. All I need to do is switch to Use Facebook as Page and I can share status, photo, link, video and question to my page, instead of just seeing post and link.

The official Facebook page for this blog is http://www.facebook.com/www.raymond.cc. Do help to click on the Like button at our Facebook page if you have a Facebook account.

Last week I got a live chat request asking if I could help him find Windows XP driver for HP Pavilion A6540D. That HP desktop came with Vista pre-installed and there is no XP drivers for that model of PC in official HP website. We could easily downgrade from Vista to XP if we have the XP installation disc but the problem is we have to look for the drivers. If you didn’t know, even if the PC vendors such as Acer, HP and Dell doesn’t provide official XP drivers, we can still find working XP drivers for your computer hardware from the “manufacturer’s” website.

If we’re lucky, someone might have already searched for the correct drivers and posted it on the web. If not, it is very troublesome to identify each unknown devices, search for the drivers, download and test it. Let’s take my Acer laptop as an example. I downgraded from Vista to XP and there is 10 unknown devices (Audio, LAN, FingerPrinter Reader, Mass Storage Controller, Modem, Wireless, SM Bus, Video and 2 unrecognized devices)!

No way I am going to spend hours or perhaps even days looking up drivers for each unknown devices so I’ve figured out a way to automatically do it.


There are software that could scan your whole system for outdated or missing drivers and you can install the latest drivers with a few simple clicks without even searching the Internet. Every hardware has a unique ID and these software uses them to cross check with their driver database to find if there is a newer one available for your computer. So far I found

Do take note that different computer should get different results from the driver updating software. This test is done on my new laptop pre-installed with Windows Vista that was purchased 4 months ago. I installed Windows XP and used the software below to scan for drivers using my USB wireless broadband (Celcom) because there is no default drivers for my network card.

1. Driver Detective v6.4.0.4 ($29.95)
Found drivers for: Audio, FingerPrinter Reader, LAN, Mass Storage Controller, Modem, SM Bus, Video, Wireless.

2. Uniblue DriverScanner 2009 v2.0.0.49 (29.95)
Found drivers for: Audio, Chipset, LAN, Modem, SM Bus, Video, Wireless.

3. Driver Magician v3.4 ($29.95)
Found drivers for: Audio, Chipset, LAN, SmartCard Reader, Video, Wireless.

4. Driver Agent v2.2009.2.11 ($29.95)
Found drivers for: Audio, LAN, Mass Storage, SM Bus, Video, Wireless.

5. Driver Updater Pro v2.2.8.0 ($29.95)
Found drivers for: Audio, LAN, SM Bus, Video, Wireless

6. Driver Genius Professional v8.0.0.316 ($29.95)
Found drivers for: Network

7. ParetoLogic DriverCure v1.1 ($29.95)
Unable to detect unknown device drivers.

8. Driver Checker v2.7 ($29.95)
Unable to detect unknown device drivers

9. Driver Robot v1.0 ($29.95)
Unable to detect unknown device drivers

10. DriverGuide Toolkit v2.1.45 ($19.95)
This tool is very weird. On the test laptop that doesn’t have a single driver installed, it ONLY display a list of 11 unknown devices. When searching for updates, it found a total of 17 updates but there is no DOWNLOAD button to download the driver. However when I tested it on another XP computer that has all drivers installed, it worked as normal.

11. RadarSync 2009 v2.0.0.7 (Freeware)
Unable to detect unknown device drivers

12. DriverMax v4.91 (Freeware)
Found drivers for: Audio, Chipset, LAN, Modem, SM Bus, Texas Instrument PCMCIA, Wireless

From what I found out, there is NOT a single software including the paid ones that can identify all unknown devices. Driver Detective performed the best by detecting 8 out of 10. Best part is it can even detect the model of my Acer laptop! You should also take note of DriverMax, a free software for looking the latest driver did pretty well by finding 7 out of 10! The only thing that I didn’t like about DriverMax is you must first obtain a free license code by registering an account.

Most of the paid software above cost $29.95 and all of them allows you to “scan” for free during the trial period but you CANNOT download the drivers. There are keygens and cracks for most of it but don’t ask me where to get it (Google is your best friend).

If XP has a working default driver for your network card, then you can just go ahead and use the software to scan for updated drivers. If not, you will need to find a way to get a temporary internet connection (built-in modem to dial up to your ISP, wireless broadband, wired broadband via USB DSL modem) and use the software above to find and download the network ethernet driver first. Once you got your network card working, you can now use your fast broadband to download the rest.

Tip: You can also try going to Microsoft Windows Update to find for drivers. It only manage to find a driver for my wireless card, hopefully it can find more for your computer.

Most probably you’re here because you got the error message “Savedump.exe – Entry Point Not Found, The procedure entry point SymSetSymWithAddr64 could not be located in the dynamic link library DBGHELP.dll” whenever you boot up Windows.

There’s no way of knowing how did the problem starts because some people got it after installing Media Center, some after installing Pinnacle Studio, and some even after installing Internet Explorer! But I do know that this is caused by installing some application in Windows.

Your computer will still work as normal but then it’s annoying to see the message every time you start up your computer. Here’s how to fix the problem to prevent the error window from showing whenever you startup Windows.


Most probably the DBGHELP.dll file located at C:\Windows\System32 is corrupted or outdated. Replacing the DBGHELP.dll with a good one usually fixes the problem. There are a few ways to restore DBGHELP.dll.

1. Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache and copy the DBGHELP.dll to system32 folder.

2. If you have Windows CD, assuming that your CD/DVD drive is D, copy DBGHELP.dll from D:\i386 folder to Windows\System32 folder overwriting the old one.

3. If you can’t find DBGHELP.dll in dllcache folder and you don’t have a Windows CD, you can download DBGHELP.dll from DLL-Files.

Hope this solution will help you get rid of the nagging SymsetSymWithAddr64 Not Located in DBGHELP.dll error message whenever your computer is booted up.

FTP client software are used to connect to FTP server and to upload files or folders to the server. When you sign up for a webhosting package, normally they would provide you with a FTP login information for you to upload your website to their server. It is very important to keep your FTP username and password safe because if it falls into the wrong hands, they can embed malicious scripts to your website infecting your visitors. Other than that, they can also delete your website and upload a single index HTML file to show that the site has been defaced or hacked.

Unfortunately FTP is not safe at all. First of all, FTP credentials are transferred in clear text and you can see the username and password by using a packet sniffer. SFTP solves this problem but it is not very commonly installed on webservers. If your webserver has SFTP, I suggest you to use it. The next thing to worry is how securely FTP client software store your FTP password? If you didn’t know, FileZilla, one of the most popular free FTP client software saves your FTP login information to sitemanager.xml and recentservers.xml in clear text. Even if you use commercial paid FTP client software such as SmartFTP which encrypts your FTP password, it is still not very safe because there are recovery software that can decrypt the encrypted password.


Most of the time a FTP password recovery software or a trojan is programmed to instantly recover passwords. This is done by looking in the registry to find if a FTP software is installed, then decrypt and reveal the FTP login information. Here is one example on FileZilla to help you understand better. I downloaded the installer and ran the setup. During installation I am prompted to choose the install location. Even if I changed the default install location, password recovery software can still find it because the registry reveals where FileZilla is installed!

The Windows registry reveals the location of where FileZilla is installed.

A FTP password recovery software managed to locate FileZilla even if it is installed in a non-default location, and reveals the password.

One way to ensure that you are safe from such password recovery software is to use a “portable” version of FTP client software. There is a FileZilla Portable that can be downloaded from PortableApps. A portable version of FileZilla does not write any information to the Windows registry, hence password recovery software won’t know that FileZilla is installed.

The FTP password recovery software did not find any FTP password on my computer when I am using a portable version of FileZilla.

This is still not really safe yet because it is possible that a password recovery software has a file searching feature which scans the whole hard drive for possible files containing FTP passwords. A good way to protect your FTP password further is to save the portable FTP client software in TrueCrypt encrypted container. You can refer to my previous article on how to create a TrueCrypt container and stop at step 12.

So sum it up:

1. Use SFTP if possible
2. Use portable FTP clients
3. Save the portable FTP client in TrueCrypt encrypted container

I am still around and been busy testing out a lot of stuff. One of the things which I’ve tested and noticed is that when you install Norton 2010, it also automatically installs plugins to Firefox. If you have Norton Antivirus 2010, you should have a plugin called Norton IPS 2.0 and if you have Norton Internet Security 2010, it also comes with Norton IPS 2.0 together with Norton Toolbar 4.5. The IPS plugin is the Norton Intrusion Prevention System which guards against malware being delivered to your system via an exploit of a software vulnerability. The Firefox add-on specifically looks for attacks using security holes that may exist in the browser. This feature is not really essential because other functions of Norton will be able to deal with any malware that tries to run, regardless of its method of installation.

Sometimes we have too many things going on in Firefox and we don’t need extra those extra plugins. Unfortunately you cannot easily uninstall both Norton IPS and Norton Toolbar plugins by clicking the Uninstall button because it is disabled or grayed out. If you’ve searched around, most of the methods to remove the Norton plugins is by deleting the extension folders but that doesn’t work in the latest Norton 2010 products. Here is how to remove the Norton IPS 2.0 and Norton Toolbar 4.5 from the latest Firefox 3.6.


The easiest method to remove the 2 Norton Firefox plugin is to simply disable them from Firefox add-ons window. Go to Tools > Add-ons, select the plugins to highlight it and then click the Disable button. Trust me, by doing that the 2 plugins will not be loaded into Firefox. I know this because Process Hacker and AppMonitor tells me so.

From Process Hacker, I get to know that this file IPSFFPl.dll is used for Norton IPS 2.0 and coFFPlgn.dll is used for Norton Toolbar 4.5. Just run Process Hacker, double click on the firefox.exe process to open the process properties and go to the Modules tab. After disabling both Norton plugins from Firefox, this 2 files is no longer shown in the Modules tab, which means it is not loaded and doesn’t take up extra system resource.

And as for AppTimer, it is a tool to measure and benchmark the start-up time of Firefox on my system. I ran 10 execution to get the average startup time of Firefox and compared the results. With Norton IPS 2.0 and Norton Toolbar 4.5 “enabled”, the average Firefox startup time is 0.95925. But when I disabled both plugins, the startup time drops to 0.86703.

If you still don’t like to see both Norton plugins in Firefox, here’s how to remove it from the list.

1. Run Firefox, go to Tools > Add-ons. Select Norton IPS 2.0 and click Disable. Then select Norton Toolbar 4.5 and click Disable.

2. Close Firefox.

3. Simultaneously press Win+R to bring up the run window and type: %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles and hit the Enter key.

4. You should see your Firefox profile folder that has random letters and numbers followed by .default. Double click on that folder and open the extensions.rdf file with a text editor such as Notepad++ or Wordpad.

5. Delete this 2 lines that has the following number and save the file.

{BBDA0591-3099-440a-AA10-41764D9DB4DB}
{2D3F3651-74B9-4795-BDEC-6DA2F431CB62}

Try launching Firefox now and you should not be seeing Norton IPS 2.0 and Norton Toolbar 4.5 in the Firefox add-ons window. If you still do, that means you did something wrong. If you’re stuck at step 3, what you can do is search for the file extensions.rdf and open it with a text editor. For your information, the IPSFFPl.dll file that is responsible for the Norton IPS is protected by Norton 2010 and you cannot delete or rename it. Even if you managed to delete it in Safe Mode, the files will be automatically re-created.

If you have Norton 360 v3 installed or Norton 2009 installed, you can easily uninstall the Norton IPS 1.0 and Norton Toolbar 3.7 by deleting this 2 files {7BA52691-1876-45ce-9EE6-54BCB3B04BBC} and {8545daff-ad1e-493f-a37e-eed1ac79682b} from C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\extensions\

Today’s article will be about another freebie which I am sure it will end very quickly. So if you’re already reading this, make sure you don’t wait and continue reading on how to get your free one year license for Norman Security Suite v7 that normally cost $59.95. Norman Security Suite is a set of security programs to guard you against Internet threats such as viruses, worms, trojans, spyware and hackers. The different programs will protect you against inappropriate content, rootkits and other hostile activity against you and your computer, whether you are using online banking, chatting, emailing, playing or just surfing the Internet.

Norman has a well-known trademarked technology called SandBox™ which is used to check if a file is infected by an unknown virus or spyware. The method allows un-trusted, possible viral code to play around on the computer – not in the real computer, but in a simulated and restricted area within the computer. The virus is exposing itself in the sandbox, and because its actions have been recorded, the cure for this new perpetrator can be generated automatically. Sounds good? Continue reading on how to get your free 1 year license for Norton Security Suite version 7.10!


1. Go to this page http://www.norman.com/support/auth/de

2. Enter your name, email (make sure it’s a working one), OEM Code (Registriercode) as PRX812SS-DE PCMG8SS-DE and click the Bestätigen button.

3. Check your email and you should receive an email from Norman Web ([email protected]) with the subject Norman – Lizenz. Note down the authentication license key which is in 5×5 character format.

4. Download the latest version of Norman Security Suite. There are 32 and 64 bit of installer with many different languages.

5. During installation, you’ll be prompted to enter the 5×5 character license key. Paste the key and continue with the installation. Restart the computer when prompted to and make sure you run the update in Norman Security Suite to update all products to the latest versions.

Norman Security Suite comes with Antivirus & Spyware, Personal Firewall and Parental Control. If you don’t want any of the feature, you can choose not to install them during installation. Simply select Custom after the part where you enter the license key.

While I was taking screenshot of Norman Security Suite with HyperSnap, Norman detected one of HyperSnap’s DLL file HprRes6.dll as a trojan. That report is definitely a false positive. Norman boast of its sandbox technology but it couldn’t detect the private version of Trojan that injects itself to default browser on both scan and run time. However it managed to catch all 19 current virus that I planted on my test computer. There are a total of 15 processes that belongs to Norman Security Suite and taking up a total of 135MB of memory usage. The CPU usage during full scan is very low which never goes more than 30%. Get it quick before this offer expires!

Thanks to flippertje for sharing this latest OEM code with us in forum!

Virus writers/creators are getting smarter nowadays. Most of the time, I was able to clean virus / trojans / spywares in Windows Safe Mode since the normal Windows loads up virus during startup. So in Safe Mode, it doesn’t load and I get to check all the startup methods and remove whatever entries that’s suspicious. If you’ve been infected by a virus called Brontok, you’ll know how it can get on your nerves and want to look for the writer to bash him up! The author of Brontok virus always update its variant so that Brontok cleaners and antivirus wouldn’t be able to clean Brontok from the system.

Brontok virus disable Registry Editor (regedit.exe), System Configuration Utility (msconfig.exe) and also Task Manager. When you try to run any of the tool, your computer automatically restarts. Even in Safe Mode!!! That can be solve by using a Brontok cleaner which removes Brontok from memory and then enable back the Registry Editor and System Configuration Utility. Then you can use various types of antivirus or brontok cleaners which I found to scan and remove any Brontok infected files.

Yesterday I met a new case where Brontok virus doesn’t allow you to boot in Windows at all. Not even in Safe Mode! It automatically restarts when you log in to any user account. Here’s how you can make a Windows bootable again if it’s caused by virus, trojans or spywares.


There are so many startup methods and it’s very hard to check them when you can’t boot in to Windows. What you can do now is clean up as many virus files as possible. For example, Brontok virus place a file called Empty.pif on your Windows Startup. If the Empty.pif file is removed, it won’t be able to load Empty.pif when you boot up your computer. You’ll most probably be getting an error message saying that “file is not found” or something similar to that but now you can boot in to Windows. It can be that buggy Empty.pif causing your computer to automatically restart when you log in Windows. You get the whole picture?

This is what I suggest you to do if your Windows auto restarts itself whenever you log in to Windows and it’s caused by virus, trojan or spyware.

1. Download and burn the latest Hiren’s BootCD.
2. Put in the CD and boot up with it.
3. When you get the Hiren’s BootCD startup menu, select number 2 to Start BootCD.
4. Select option number 3 that says Antivirus Tools…

5. Select option number 1 that says F-Prot Antivirus 3.16f 26-04-2007 (Date and version might be different)
6. A blue colored screen will appear that says F-Prot Antivirus Scanning options.
7. Select option number 2 that says “Dumb” Scan of all files.
8. You will now have the option of what to do with the infected files. For me, I’d choose delete automatically.
9. Select the drive to scan and wait for the scanning to complete.

After using F-Prot Antivirus to scan, you can use McAfee Antivirus to scan again. Just select option number 2, then select option number 1 that says “Scan of all files“.

Most of the virus, trojan and spyware should be removed after scanning with F-Prot Antivirus and McAfee Antivirus. Eject Hiren’s BootCD and boot your computer as normal. Very likely you’re able to boot in Windows now but you’ll be getting a error message saying couldn’t find some certain file. That’s OK, you know that at least it doesn’t load the Virus during startup.

The next step after you can boot in to Windows is, run AIMFix. AIMFix is a very powerful tool that is able to remove suspicious files that’s running in memory.

If you’re infected by Brontok, use ALL of the tools listed here to scan and fix your system. It should bring back your regedit and msconfig.

To be on the safe side, install a good Antivirus such as Kaspersky on your system, update it to the latest version and definitions, and run a thorough scan.

You should be able to remove most virus, trojan or spyware using the method above. Make sure you always have Hiren’s BootCD with you because it’s the best of the best Boot CD. Also, a USB flash drive containing AIMFix, and all brontok cleaners would be very useful too.

Good luck and hope you’re able to boot in Windows after cleaning the nasty virus.

If you have just created a new Facebook account, by default the Facebook users that are not your friend would not be able to view your Facebook profile. They would see a message that says “Raymond only shares some of his profile information with everyone. If you know Raymond, send him a message or add him as a friend.” Since people couldn’t even see anything on your profile unless they are your friend, logically they can’t see your private photos or albums too right? Only half right…

There is one working javascript hack that has been discovered more than a month ago which allows anyone to view Facebook private photo and album without being in the friend list. All the user needs to do is login to their Facebook account first, then go to the main user profile page and paste the javascript below at the address bar and hit enter.

javascript:(function(){CSS.removeClass(document.body,%20'profile_two_columns'); tab_controller.changePage("photos");})()

When it works, it shows the Facebook album photos instantly and if not, you get the error message “There are no photos to display. Photos of Raymond may not have been tagged, or may not be visible due to privacy.” I have done more tests and found that this is caused by a privacy setting in Facebook allowing “EVERYONE” to view photos and videos of the user.

Fortunately there is a fix to protect your privacy and prevent anyone from viewing your private album photos in Facebook. Simply follow the steps below on how to configure a more strict privacy setting for your Facebook profile.

1. Login to your Facebook account
2. Click on Account at the top right and select Privacy Settings
3. Click on Profile Information
4. Select either Only Friends or Friends of Friends for Photos and Videos of Me.

To me, this does seemed like a bug and Facebook should definitely fix it. Even if the user did configure that everyone can view their album/photo, but if their profile is set to private, the same should happen for the album photos too. Found any friend that didn’t have their photo protected? Let them know about it while waiting for Facebook fix the bug.

Internet theft is very common nowadays. Many people got the wrong idea that whatever you find on the Internet is free. Well it may be free for you to read or view but definitely not free for you to use unless you have permission. It is same like the concept of finding an unprotected wifi. If there is no WEP or WPA password, it doesn’t mean you can use the wifi. It a door to a house is not locked, it doesn’t mean you can go in to watch their TV and grab a beer from their fridge!

Images or pictures too can be easily found on the Internet and is widely being used anyone because very seldom people use any encryption to protect the images. Images should be conveniently allowed to be viewed immediately without installing any third part decryption software. That is why one of the most common way to protect an image is by watermarking the images. There will be some people who don’t care about the watermark and use your images. Here is how to find out if someone is using your images without permission.


TinEye is a reverse image search engine that is very easy to use. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. When you submit an image to be searched, TinEye creates a unique and compact digital signature or ‘fingerprint’ for it, then compares this fingerprint to every other image in TinEye’s index to retrieve matches. TinEye can even find a partial fingerprint match.

Images uploaded to TinEye are not added to the search index, nor are they made accessible by other users. Copyright for all images submitted to TinEye remains with the original owner/author. Search images submitted by unregistered users are automatically discarded after 72 hours. Links to these searches will stop working after 72 hours, unless a registered user happens to save the same image.

TinEye offers this service for free. If you find this service useful, there are plugins for Firefox and Internet Explorer which allows you to search an image on TinEye via right click.

[ Visit TinEye ]

If you’re a computer newbie, don’t get turned off by the word “Server”. There are many ways to share files but this is actually one of the easiest way to do it without uploading to file hosting websites. All you need to do is download a small 550KB executable file that requires no installation, run it and add files/folders that you want to share. If you are using a direct connection through modem without router, it works right out of the box without any configuration. And if you have a router, you’ll need to do port forwarding. There are also expert mode which gives you more configuration such as Dynamic DNS Updater and etc…

Actually I got to know about HTTP File server about 2 years ago and it has improved a lot along the years. Perhaps many of you already know about HFS, if not, I assure you won’t regret taking a few minutes to learn about this great file sharing server tool.


HFS (Http File Server) is file sharing software which allows you to send and receive files. You can limit this sharing to just a few friends, or be open to the whole world. HFS is different from classic file sharing because there is no network. HFS is a web server which uses web technology to be more compatible with today’s Internet. Since it is actually a web server, your friends can download files as if they were downloading from a website using a web browser, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. Your users don’t have to install any new software.

Let’s go through a short step by step on how to get HTTP File Server working.

1. Download HTTP File Server from the link at the end of this article.

2. Run hfs.exe

3. Right click on the left pane, select Add files if you want to share files or select Add folder from disk. You can also drag and drop files/folders.

4. Once you’ve done adding files/folders that you want to share, you’ll need to give your friend your IP address. To find your IP address, go to Menu > IP address > Find external address. A small window will appear displaying your external IP address.

5. Ask your friend to enter the URL http://IPADDRESS at their web browser. The file/folder that you shared will appear for them to download.

Very useful when you frequently need to share files with your friends. It’s small, free and powerful. There are other similar software such as BadBlue, Easy File Sharing Web Server, WWW File Share Pro and Myweb but they are all shareware. Why pay when there is a free one that does the same?

[ Download HTTP File Server ]

Normally computer optimization software such as TuneUp Utilities doesn’t allow free upgrade to the latest version when there is a major update. The latest version of TuneUp Utilities is now 2009 and for those that previously own a 2008 license, they’ll need to pay $29.95 to upgrade to the latest version. For new customers, when they purchase TuneUp Utilities, they will definitely get the latest version and not the old version. So what happens to the old version? The best way is to team up and work together with magazines or bloggers to give out free licenses for old version to get more exposure and hoping that they’d pay a small price to upgrade to the latest version.

I found two magazines which is Chip and PC User that is giving free TuneUp Utilities 2008 genuine license key. Now I normally stay away from older versions of software and always try my best to use the latest version. The fact is, previous version works well too and before they came up with version 2009, I am sure the software developers worked very hard to make sure that the version 2008 is one of the best in the market.


All important settings are hidden in the Windows boot files and the system registry. The registry is the central database for Windows, in which settings for all applications and hardware modules are stored. Using regedit or other similar tools, you can open this special database and change its settings. The problem is that only experienced users know how to change the right settings among the cryptic entries in the registry. Most users don’t understand a word of the information contained in an open registry file. Even if you know the registry entries inside and out, a small typo in the registry can still lead to serious consequences and even complete system failure.

That’s where TuneUp Utilities 2008 comes in. The software helps both beginners and experts to make Windows meet their needs in a way that is better, easier and safer. All important system options are explained in an easy way and can be turned on or off at the click of your mouse. TuneUp Utilities 2008 will then make the necessary changes in the registry or boot files automatically.

1. Download and install TuneUp Utilities 2008 v7.0.8007. If the download link can’t work, try this mirror.

2. When you see a window that tells you that this is a limited trial version of TuneUp Utilities, click the Enter product key button.

3. There are 2 product keys that can be used to register TuneUp Utilities 2008. Either one will work and you can enter anything for the registration name.

Product Key 1 by PC User: LLYLB-ASGHK-ANKTM-DBYKS-QXQMT-ESRYC
Product Key 2 by CHIP: RFEAH-CDXKX-UMFBW-GSCES-YFWCM-WUHWB

Make sure you run the TuneUp Update Wizard after installation to grab the latest updated files. Do take note that TuneUp Utilities 2008 supports and automatically adapts to Windows 2000, XP and Vista both 32 and 64 bit. Enjoy tweaking and optimizing your Windows computer!

About a week ago WordPress announced that attacker has gained access to 3 popular plugins (Add This, W3 Total Cache and WPtouch) and has made unauthorized changes to the plugin by adding malicious backdoor codes. This is indeed very dangerous because installing the backdoored plugins can cause the website to get compromised by the attacker. Adam Harley, a contributor to WordPress core development, shows what kind of malicious code is injected to the plugins on his website. mtekk’s Crib also pointed out what the evil code does. Surprising it takes only 1-2 lines to create a backdoor on a plugin…

During that time, I remembered I’ve just updated W3 Total Cache to the latest version and wasn’t sure if the installed version is clean or backdoored. Unfortunately WordPress doesn’t provide a way to easily re-install plugin and the only way I can reinstall is to download the plugin to my computer and upload it via FTP, overwriting the files on the server. I was more on the curious side to find out if the installed W3 Total Cache contains the backdoor code, so I downloaded the W3 Total Cache from my server to my computer, and then downloaded the real W3 Total Cache from the WordPress site for comparison.


There are a lot of folder comparison software with tons of settings but all I need is a simple tool that don’t require installation and is able to compare all the files through file size or binary. I found a pretty useful and light folder comparison software called TreeCompare.

All I need to do is specify two folders that I want to compare, click on the Options button to choose the compare criteria and finally click the Compare button. A result window will open showing you the number of files and folders it has compared together with the number of same/different files. Binary Compare option is the best way to check for changes between two folders or files but it takes more time.

TreeCompare is portable, small (only 50KB) and free. You will two versions of TreeCompare which is in the i386r (ANSI) and i386ur (unicode) folder. If you are using Windows NT/2000/XP and above, both unicode and ANSI will work but unicode is supposed to work better. However if you want to run TreeCompare on Windows 95/98/ME, you must use the ANSI version.

Fortunately this blog is safe from the backdoored plugin as I couldn’t find any difference using TreeCompare.

[ Download TreeCompare ]