Have you heard about a remote access software called ShowMyPC? No? Perhaps you’ve heard of Crossloop and TeamViewer? Well, they all share the same similarities which allows you to connect to another computer at a remote location dead easy without port forwarding configuration or finding out what is the IP address. The only thing that the 2 person involved in the remote access is to know the secret code in order to authorize the connection.

This kind of remote access software are meant for providing computer support to another person and not to connect to your home computer. Reason is there must always be another person over the other end to provide the password or allow the connection before it can connect. Just like LogMeIn Free, it is a very good remote access and desktop control software but for providing support, LogMeIn Rescue would be a more suitable tool.

Recently I discovered another free software called Ammyy Admin that can be used to easily connect to another remote computer to provide computer support without port forwarding and knowing the IP address of the other computer.


Ammyy Admin is a reliable and friendly tool for remote computer access. You can provide remote assistance, remote administration or remote teaching for your clients or employees regardless of their location. Ammyy Admin connects remote computers within seconds without any installation or configuration. You can view or control (using your keyboard and mouse) any applications running on the remote computers.

To get remotely access another computer, both end needs to download and run AMMY Admin. The computer that will be controlled is called the Client and the person who is remotely controlling another computer is called the Operator. The client will need to make sure that the Client tab is selected and then click the Start button.

If this is the first time that the client is using AMMYY Admin, it will automatically download a small 121KB target.zip file and drop the extracted target.dll in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AMMYY. Then the client will need to give the operator the 4 digit ID.

The operator will then make sure that he is at the Operator tab, enter the client ID that he just received from the client and click Connect.

If this is the first time that the Operator is connecting to a client, AMMYY Admin will automatically download 125KB viewer.zip file and drop the extracted viewer.dll in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AMMYY.

Before the operator gets to see and control the client’s computer, the client will have to authorize the connection. It will show the operator ID that is connecting and the client has the power to enable/disable access to the file system and keyboard & mouse. If the client wants to do a demonstration or presentation to the operator, the client can just show the screen without allowing the operator to control the keyboard and mouse. Simply uncheck all the boxes and click Accept.

Once accepted, the operator can now control the remote computer. I think that AMMYY Admin uses VNC because the remote control interface and settings looked exactly like the open source VNC program.

Unlike Crossloop, Ammyy Admin can be used to administrate unattended servers or computers. Like I mentioned earlier, usually these kind of remote tools requires another person on the other end to accept or allow the remote connection but Ammy Admin has the capability to auto accept connection. ShowMyPC has this feature but it charges $5 per month for 1 PC. TeamViewer also has this feature and it is free.

Here’s an easy tip to get a faster and smoother remote connection. Even if you have a high-speed internet connection given by your ISP faster than 1024Kb, it’d be better if you select Low-Speed < 256 Kb on the operator tab. The quality of the graphics will be lower but at least you’ll get a smoother remote control experience. Ammyy Admin might not be the best remote computer access software but it’s always good to have another alternative when Crossloop, TeamViewer and ShowMyPC doesn’t work on the client’s computer. AMMYY Admin is free and portable.

[ Download AMMY Admin ]

Previously I’ve written a guide on how to add your Hotmail account to Microsoft Outlook. Before doing that, you’ll need to subscribe for the MSN Hotmail Plus which is now known as Windows Live Hotmail Plus. If you are using the FREE basic Windows Live Hotmail account, you’ll only get an error message saying “Access to Hotmail via Outlook and Outlook Express now requires a subscription. Please sign up at http://join.msn.com/general/Email“.

For people who have Microsoft Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007, Microsoft has released a free utility for Microsoft Outlook called “Microsoft Office Outlook Connector” that allows you to download email from your Windows Live Hotmail to local Microsoft Outlook WITHOUT Windows Live Hotmail Plus subscription.

Please take note that Microsoft Office Outlook Connector only works with Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007 only. Earlier version of Microsoft Outlook and also Outlook Express won’t work.


Using Windows Live Hotmail with Microsoft Outlook can be much powerful because it uses Junk Mail filter, Rules Wizard and other features in Outlook. Download, installing and running Microsoft Office Outlook Connector is very easy.

1. Download Microsoft Office Outlook Connector and install.

2. Run Microsoft Outlook and you’ll need to enter your Hotmail email address, password and name that you want to appear in the receiver’s inbox.

3. You’ll notice that on the left pane where all your mail folders are, a new folder with your hotmail email address will appear. Simply click on Send/Receive button to start downloading all your emails from Hotmail to Outlook.

If you have multiple Hotmail account, you can continue adding them to Outlook by going to Outlook Connector from menu bar, and select Add a New Account. It’s so much easier maintaining multiple Hotmail accounts now!

There are also free third party utilities such as HotPOP3 which acts as a proxy between an HTTPMail server (MSN Hotmail) but I’d prefer to use Microsoft utilities on Microsoft products.

I’m sure all of us hate bloated software and in my opinion one of the most bloated software is iTunes. I would never install it or use it but since my wife has both iPad and iPhone 4, I am forced to install iTunes on my computer so that I can update its iOS to the latest version. In fact one of my friend even complained to me that he too hates iTunes because it pretty much takes over the whole operating system. If you didn’t realize, installing iTunes will also install Quicktime, Bonjour (mDNSResponder), Apple Software Update, Apple Mobile Device Support and Apple Application Support. Try extracting the iTunesSetup.exe file using 7-Zip and you will get an additional 6 MSI and 1 EXE file.

Some people tried to install iTunes 10 in Sandboxie so that it runs in an isolated space which prevents iTunes from making permanent changes to other programs and data in your computer but so far unsuccessful. I personally tried using VMware ThinApp to make iTunes 10 portable and also failed. Then I remembered another powerful software called Xenocode where you can use it to make a portable .NET application which means you can actually run a .NET application without installing .NET on the Windows operating system. The only issue is a small sized .NET application would become an over 20MB file. Xenocode is no longer available because it has evolved (renamed) into Spoon Studio. I downloaded the trial version of Spoon Studio 2011 and easily made a working portable version of iTunes 10 with it. Here are the steps…


1. Download iTunes 10 installer and save the iTunesSetup.exe on your hard drive. Don’t install it yet.

2. Download Spoon Studio 2011 from the official website and install.

3. Run Spoon Studio 2011 and click on the middle button “Virtualize a third-party application or component” in Configuration Wizard.

4. Click Next to capture the “before” snapshot.,

5. When you see the window asking you to install and configure your application, install iTunes 10 now. I would uncheck all 3 checkboxes (Add iTunes and QuickTime shortcuts to my desktop, Use iTunes as the default player for audio files, Automatically update iTunes and other Apple software) in iTunes installation options.

6. Click the Next button in Spoon Studio.

7. Click Next again when you are asked to capture the “after” snapshot and compute deltas.

8. Select a destination folder to save the snapshot copies.

9. Click the Multiple button when asked to Select a startup file.

10. Check ONLY iTunes and click OK.

11. If you want to run iTunes portable from USB flash drive, select the second radio button that says “Removable story device (ideal for USB keys)”. If you want to save it on your hard drive and run it from there, just select the first radio button “User application data folder on the host PC”. Click Next.

12. Click Next again and when asked to select an output file, specify the filename of the portable iTunes and click Save.

13. The final step is to click the Finish button.

14. Before Spoon Studio 2011 starts building your portable iTunes 10, you will either have to activate using an existing license certificate OR create a free spoon.net trial account. Just fill up the form and click OK. Click OK again to acknowledge that you have read and understood the End-User License Agreement. Follow the on-screen instruction and the final result is only one single 420MB executable file.

You can now run iTunes 10 from the single EXE file without installing the super bloated iTunes package. When you launch iTunes portable, you should get a notification window “The software required for communicating with iPods and mobile phone was not installed correctly. Do you want iTunes to try to repair this for you?” Just click No.

Connecting your iPhone or any other devices from Apple and you should also get another error “This iPhone cannot be used because the required software is not installed. Run the iTunes installer to remove iTunes, then install iTunes again.” In order for iTunes to recognize your iPhone, iPad, iPod, you will need to install the Apple Mobile Device Support and Apple Application Support. Extract iTunesSetup.exe with 7-Zip, run AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi then AppleApplicationSupport.msi.

As you can see from the image below, iTunes 10 is running but it is not installed on my computer. iTunes can also detect my wife’s iPhone 4. I am also able to update to the latest iOS 4.3.5 using the portable iTunes 10.

Note: If you built the portable iTunes with the option “Removable story device (ideal for USB keys)” and you run the portable iTunes executable file from your hard drive, you will get an error message “UsbActivationOnly is missing from string table. It has a strict restriction that it must be launched from USB flash drive.

Spoon Studio 2011 is amazing but unfortunately it is not a freeware… A single Spoon Studio 2011 Standard Edition Developer License cost a whoping $2400! I know that none of you is going to spend that money just to make a portable iTunes but I am just showing you a possible way in case you have a valid Spoon Studio 2011 license 😉

Many popular BitTorrent clients such as uTorrent, BitComet and Azureus can work right out of the box. Download, install, load a torrent file and it’ll start downloading. If you don’t tweak the configurations, most probably it’ll take you longer to complete downloading the torrent.

Slow to finish downloading a movie or file from torrent is not a big problem. The biggest problem I always encounter when someone in the same network as me downloading a torrent and all of sudden my internet connection has been cut off entirely. I am unable to browse the web, my MSN messenger disconnected and etc. Pinging the router gives me a “Request time out” error message.

This problem happens both in modem and router. To get back the connection, I need to disconnect and reconnect if using modem or restart the router if I am using a router. Restart the router is not a good solution because when the BitTorrent starts downloading when it detects connection, my connection gets killed again.

I’ll share with you how to configure uTorrent, BitComet and Azureus so that internet won’t get disconnected while downloading torrent.


This happens mainly because there is a large number of connections that BitTorrent utilizes is stressing out your router/modem. The default settings in BitTorrent client is normally more connections than cheap modems can handle. Since many of us are actually using the free and cheap modems provided by our ISP, we have to lower the global connections in BitTorrent Client.

For uTorrent
1. Go to Tools -> Preferences (or press CTRL+P) to bring up the preferences options.
2. Click on BitTorrent and set the “Global maximum number of connections:” to a lower number.

For Azureus
1. Go to Tools -> Options (or press CTRL+,) to bring up the options.
2. Go to Mode and select Advanced.

3. Next go to Transfer and set the “Max connections globally” to a lower number.

For BitComet
1. Go to Options -> Preferences (or press CTRL+P) to bring up the preferences options.
2. Go to Advanced -> Connection.
3. Set the “Global maximum connections” to a lower number.

You can try the value “100″ for starters. If your router is able to handle that amount without killing your connection, you can try adding 20 more. Continue until you find the limit.

Alternatively, you can get a better router such as 3Com or Belkin to replace your cheap router provided by your ISP. I’ve also heard that full bridging mode works but it’ll leave your computer more vulnerable to attacks. In this case you’ll need to install a firewall to protect you.

One day I was curious to know what files are being opened on my system. For example, when I run Firefox, I know for sure that there are other associated files such as fonts, dat and jar files that are ran together with Firefox and it’s invisible. From what we see on desktop, it’s only Firefox being loaded. It is possible for a trojan to be injected into Firefox and you won’t even know or see that it’s being automatically loaded every time you run Firefox.

I found a very small, less than 40KB and useful tool that is able to display a list of all opened files on your system and I’d like to share with all of you.


OpenedFilesView is able to display the list of all opened files on your system. For each opened file, additional information is displayed: handle value, read/write/delete access, file position, the process that opened the file, and more… Optionally, you can also close one or more opened files, or close the process that opened these files.

This utility is especially useful if you try to delete/move/open a file and you get one of the following error messages:
* Cannot delete [filename]: There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in use.
* Cannot delete [filename]: It is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again.

When you get one of these error messages, OpenedFilesView will show you which process lock your file. Closing the right process will solve this problem. Optionally, you can also release the file by closing the handle from OpenedFilesView utility. However, be aware that after closing a file in this way, the program that opened the file may become unstable, and even crash.

Actually it is much easier and simpler to use Unlocker to solve the problem of unable to delete files. I’d prefer to use OpenedFilesView to manually check on systems to see what is being loaded especially trojan, spyware or virus.

[ Download OpenedFilesView ]

I bought an iPad for my wife during our wedding anniversary so she could easily and quickly surf the web without turning on the laptop. iPad is light, slim, powers on instantly, doesn’t heat up like the laptop and there are tons of apps to install from the iTunes App Store. I can just sit on my sofa and play Fruit Ninja HD or Angry Birds Rio whenever I want to relax. That’s the good thing I find about iPad but the real inconvenience is I can’t browse flash animated websites. Although there is an application called Skyfire which converts flash to HTML5 but it does not support flash animated websites such as Nandos or Mcdonalds.

I also purchased the expensive AlwaysOnPC app which allows me to log in to a virtual computer pre-loaded with over 40 apps including Chrome and Firefox with Flash support. It can open flash based websites but unfortunately everything on the Virtual PC loads very slow because the server is located in US and there is a huge delay/lag as I am located in Malaysia.

Then I found another app called iSWiFTER which is cloud-based Flash browser for Social Games and MMOs categorized under Games in iTunes App Store. In addition, I can still instantly browse any of your favorite shows, music videos, movies across the web using iSWiFTER!


iSWiFTER successfully loads up both Nandos and McDonalds website. It is not blazing fast but it is definitely faster than AlwaysOnPC. The official iSWiFTER website doesn’t explain how iSWiFTER works but it felt like everything has been converted into an animated image being streamed to iSWiFTER. In Safari I can copy the text from a website by touching and holding on the screen until the Copy popup appears but I couldn’t do that on iSWiFTER.

iSWiFTER used to charge monthly for the browser module to load flash websites but now has reverted to a one time purchase price of $4.99. It has a 30 minute trial for you to test iSWiFTER. Currently iSWiFTER 4.0 requires Wi-Fi connection and they are working on supporting iSWiFTER over 3G networks and also support for iPhone and iPod Touch. Browsing the web with iSWiFTER is not the best experience but at least it allows me to open flash based websites. If given another chance, I would have chosen Motorola Xoom over iPad just because it comes with Adobe Flash 10 Player.

[ Visit iSWiFTER | iTunes App Store ]

I spent a lot of time researching and learning how to crack WEP encryption with BackTrack 3 during my 2 weeks time off last month. After spending a lot of hours getting my wireless card working, I had another problem which is unable to use Kismet to search for hidden and non-hidden wireless network. That is not a problem because I could boot up Windows and use a Windows based wifi network scanner called NetStumbler. I went to the official NetStumbler website and found that the latest version is 0.4.0 released on April 21, 2004! Obviously it couldn’t work in Windows Vista because this program is way too outdated!

Actually in Windows Vista, we can use the command netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid to discover access points but this doesn’t show “hidden access point”. After a little searching, I found netstumbler alternative called inSSIDer that works on Windows Vista and also on 64-bit of Windows XP.


inSSIDer is a free Wi-Fi network scanner for Windows Vista and windows XP. Because NetStumbler doesn’t work well with Windows Vista and 64-bit Windows XP, they decided to build an open-source Wi-Fi network scanner designed for the current generation of Windows operating systems.

inSSIDer Features:

Inspect your WLAN and surrounding networks to troubleshoot competing access points.

Use Windows Vista and Windows XP 64-bit.

Uses the Native Wi-Fi API.

Track the strength of received signal in dBm over time.

Filter access points in an easy to use format.

Highlight access points for areas with high Wi-Fi concentration.

Group by Mac Adress, SSID, Channel, RSSI, and time “last seen.”

It’s very easy to use. After installation, run the program, select your wireless network card from the drop down list and click the Start Scanning button. RSSI values are measured in NEGATIVE decibels. So the higher the number, the more negative you are. So in fact lower RSSI’s are better. Do take note that not every wireless card is supported and it is recommended to use the “Connect to a Network” tool in Window instead of the software provided with your wireless card.

inSSIDER is a freeware and was strictly created for troubleshooting wireless networks but not to help you connect to any unencrypted wifi networks. Again, this is another tool that can be both good and evil. The only issue is where we draw the line and decide where we should stand.

[ Download inSSIDer ]

I am very used to clicking the “Save and Continue Editing” button whenever I am in the midst of writing an article for this blog. Even though starting from WordPress version 2.1, it already has the auto-save function which happens in the background, it’s still a good practice to manually save because you might never know when it won’t work.

This happened while I was writing an article just now. Suddenly I got the error message “Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 163569 bytes) in /home/…/translator.php on line 0“. At first I thought it was the Translator plugin that was causing the problem. I moved the plugin to another location and still the same error. Later I noticed that I couldn’t get in to any part of Raymond.CC anymore. Forum don’t work, WordPress admin don’t work, not even the blog’s main page!

If all don’t work, it must be a problem on the server side. I did a little searching and luckily I found a solution to fix this problem without submitting a support ticket to my webhost.


The error message “Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 163569 bytes)…” indicates that some PHP scripts needed more memory than PHP was allowed.

You can fix the problem by increasing PHP’s memory limit in either way:

1. Try looking for php.ini file on the root of your site. Mine was located in public_html folder.
Open up php.ini file with any text editor and change the values for memory_limit. By default you should see memory_limit = 8M. Try changing it to 12M. If it doesn’t work, increase it to 16M or even 24M if 16M doesn’t work.

2. If you can’t find the php.ini file, open up the PHP file that requires more memory, and add a line below just after ini_set(‘memory_limit’, ’12M’);
Same thing. Memory can be increased but do try it with 12M first.

3. Final way is to look for .htaccess in your root, and add a line that looks like below.
php_value memory_limit 12M

Good luck in fixing the fatal error allowed memory size error.

Have you ever noticed that when you copy the text contents from a website or anywhere that has formatting and paste it to a new Word document file, it will carry along the formatting? Here is an example that I experience everyday in forum because by default it has Rich-Text Editor enabled. I tried copying a text content from the blog site that has bold and also a hyperlink.

When I paste it in the forum’s rich-text editor reply box, you’d notice that it is pasting the exact same thing with the bold, color and hyperlink formatting included. If you paste it in Microsoft Word, the same thing would happen. This feature is convenient because it allows computer newbies to paste what they see without knowing the HTML or forum BBCode. The annoying part of this feature is sometimes we don’t really need all these formatting. There are two ways which I normally do to paste a copied text without the formatting that is by pasting it to notepad, then select all, copy again and then paste. If it is a short text, I’d paste it to the browser’s URL bar, copy and paste it.

Now I don’t need to go through all those steps to paste a formatted text without the formatting.


PureText makes this simple by adding a new Windows hot-key that allows you to paste text to any application without formatting. After running PureText.exe, you will see a “PT” tray icon appear near the clock on your task bar. You can click on this icon to remove formatting from the text that is currently on the clipboard. You can right-click on the icon to display a menu with more options. The easiest way to use PureText is to simply use its hot-key to paste text instead of using the standard CTRL+V hot-key that is built into most Windows applications. The default hotkey is WINDOWS+V and it can be changed in Options.

PureText only removes rich formatting from text. This includes the font face, font style (bold, italics, etc.), font color, paragraph styles (left/right/center aligned), margins, character spacing, bullets, subscript, superscript, tables, charts, pictures, embedded objects, etc. However, it does not modify the actual text. It will not remove or fix new-lines, carriage returns, tabs, or other white-space. It will not fix word-wrap or clean up your paragraphs.

PureText is a free, small and portable tool that works on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista. Running it in notification area takes only 4MB from your memory and doesn’t lag your computer in any way. The good thing about this tool is it doesn’t replace the paste command (CTRL+V) in Windows, but it gives an extra pasting method with a new hotkey (WINDOWS+V).
[ Download PureText ]

TrustPort is well known for their multiple antivirus engine integrated into one product. Most of the time these multi-engine antivirus top the rank in malware detection but with a price of slowing down your computer. No matter how fast an antivirus engine is, it still requires time to check the files on your computer. When have have a few engines running together, the amount of time required to check on a file obviously increases. TrustPort Total Protection 2012 which uses AVG and Bitdefender engines normally cost EUR 49.95 for 1 year 1PC license but they are offering home users a chance to gain its paid version of the product TrustPort Total Protection 2012 for free! You can also stand a chance to win an XBOX 360 by solving all of the cryptogram.

All you need to do is to play an online game and able to successfully decrypt one cryptogram will win you a free license. The license will be automatically sent to your email address.


Just follow the few simple steps below to play the game and win your free TrustPort Total Protection 2012 activation code valid for 1 year.

1. Visit http://www.trustport.com/game/index.html

2. Click on PLAY NOW ON OUR WEB

3. Enter your nickname and a VALID email address (the license key will be sent there), then click on the LOGIN button

4. Click on button that says “CLICK TO DECRYPT” for SAT #01.

5. You will need to decrypt the hidden message by clicking on the alien symbol and replacing it with a corresponding letter from below. Since this is a game and meant for all to win, here I will provide the answer for the first SAT #01 cryptogram which is enough for you to obtain the free TrustPort Total Protection 2012 license.

we must infect all trustport products which secure computers from viruses and other malicious software!

6. Once you’ve finished solving the cryptogram, a Congratulations popup window will appear showing you your points. Click the OK button.

7. Finally, click on the UNLOCKED button and the website will send a genuine TrustPort Total Protection 2012 activation code valid for 1 year. Do check your JUNK/SPAM box if it is not in your inbox. Hotmail’s spam filter marked the message as junk and it ended up in my JUNK folder. The setup installer is a whopping 252MB in size!

Thanks to leofelix for posting this in our forums. Thomasalan also shared that it is possible to use the activation code on TrustPort USB Antivirus. Please visit TrustPort official website for more information on TrustPort Total Protection 2012. I have a feeling that a lot of leechers are going to start leeching the free license to organize a giveaway on their website. Be prepared for a lot of TrustPort giveaways in the coming weeks…

Java software in general and the Java JRE in particular allow you to run applications called “applets” that are written in the Java programming language. You probably have Java JRE installed on your computer because these applets allow you to play online games, chat with people around the world, calculate your mortgage interest, view images in 3D, get real time nba scores, as well as many others.

As with all software, the JRE is updated on a regular basis. Updates are necessary to add new functionalities, to remove programming bugs or to repair possible vulnerabilities. Usually older versions of programs are removed during the install of new versions but Sun (the owner of Java) has somehow decided not to do this. The result is that a number of different versions of the JRE may exist on your computer. These older versions potentially pose a threat to your sense of security due to the possible vulnerabilities or security holes that may exist in them.

Java advises users to always have the latest version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). The latest version is always the recommended version because it contains updates and improvements to previous versions of the JRE. The latest available version is always compatible with the older versions.

But they also tell you that you can keep older versions of the JRE installed, in case you have an applet or an application that still depends upon a previous version. But this warning is quite useless as all applets and applications should be kept updated to ensure a maximum level of safety and security.

JavaRa is a small and simple tool that does a simple job: it removes old and redundant versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

What JavaRa does is to check if your computer has the latest version of Java Runtime Environment (JRE). If the version you have installed has been superseded by a newer version the program will download and install this newer version for you, by running Java’s update program. JavaRa then allows you to remove all possible older versions of this program. This will ensure that the security of your computer is enhanced and extra space on your hard disk is created.

In some instances Java Runtime Environment (JRE) will create logs or temporary files which are not needed in normal circumstances. These files take up space and can be safely removed. JavaRa does this tedious job for you with one click of a button.

[ Download JavaRa ]

I read some interesting post in a forum few days ago about some private software got leaked and the post came with a download link. When I clicked on it, I got redirected to ShareCash.org website which is my first downloading a file from this website. Basically ShareCash.org is pretty similar to RapidShare except it gives people opportunity to make money out of it. The uploader will have to sign up for a free account, then upload the file and share the download link with other people. If anyone wants to download from ShareCash, there are 2 options which is the regular download or premium download. The regular download requires you to complete a survey and finally giving your cell phone number to the advertiser to unlock the download link. As for premium download, it is a paid account where the downloader can download immediately from sharecash without going through the survey.

I had a quick look at the source code, played around with it but was unable find a way to download as a free user without completing the survey. Searched in Google for a solution and some of the methods such as using UserScripts, NoScript and link generators are no longer working. ShareCash.Org sure works very hard to beat all those bypassing techniques.


I really wanted to download that file which I found on the forum and I ended up paying for the Premium ShareCash account so I can download without giving out my cell phone number. Entering a fake or bogus cell phone number doesn’t work because the advertiser requires me to send a text message to a number to confirm my application.

I even tried using JDownloader, one of the best file host downloader that is able to decrypt captchas and defeat wait time but was unable to download from ShareCash.org using free account with the status showing “online > This file is only downloadable for premium users!”. In my opinion, if JDownloader can’t do it, I don’t think there are any current available methods to download from ShareCash as a free user without going through the survey.

Since I already have a ShareCash Premium account, I thought it would be useful to help out some people that wants to download from ShareCash without revealing their cell phone number. What I do is not really hacking or bypassing the ShareCash download restriction but merely just use my server to auto download with a ShareCash premium account and then subsequently auto upload to mediafire (all this is done with a custom script). Finally I’ll send the mediafire link to you. Do note that all this is done automatically from the server and I do not have access to the files at all. I am just doing you a favor and you are responsible to check if the file is safe or not. Also, be informed that you won’t get a single cent if the link that I help to download is created by you because I am using a premium account and don’t need to do the survey.

Please send your ShareCash.Org download request via contact form. You should already have a ShareCash link that you want to download and you should send that link to me. Then I will help you convert that link into MediaFire. I will not let you have access to my script to prevent from abuse usage.

Previously xje4bv has shared with us 5 free tools to automatically extract multiple zip or rar archives. They are Unpacker, RARZombie, ExtractNow, The Scene Release Unpacker and Scene Unpacker (1.0.0.1). We’re not talking about software to manage zip archives such as 7-Zip or Universal Extractor but rather a simple portable tool that is able extract multiple archive files. For example, if you’ve downloaded many different types of files that is compressed into ZIP or RAR, extracting one by one is going to be a tedious task.

Other than the 5 tools that xje4bv shared with us, there are 6 more free tools that can handle extracting multiple compressed files. They are BulkExtractor, AutoUnpack, ParNRar, ZipALot, UnZipThemAll and QuickZip4. I’ve tested all 11 of them and I am not going to go into details because not even one out of the 11 that satisfies my requirement in batch extracting archive files. To me, a tool to extract multiple zip or rar archives MUST support password because there are a lot of sites that encrypts the archive with password so that people would know where the file originally came from. Or it can be a form of advertisement when another site leeched the download link.


Out of the 11 free batch extracting tools, only a few that can support password. For some, you can set the password in the settings so that it will try to extract with the predefined password and some will prompt you to enter the password when it finds out that the archive is encrypted with a password.

Unfortunately not even ONE can support entering multiple passwords or a password list. A lot of times I just download what I think it’s interesting but never had the time to immediately check the file. So I ended up accumulating a bunch of compressed files with different passwords and I got even lazier to check them out because I knew I had to extract one by one which will take a lot of my time doing just that.

Ah, good news is I found that jDownloader, a very good one-click file hosting downloader tool that is able to handle extracting multiple RAR archive files WITH a password list! I am going to show you how easy it is to extract multiple RAR archives using jDownloader.

1. Make sure your computer have at least Java Runtime Environment v1.5 installed. You can go here to verify the version of Java that is installed on your PC.

2. Download the latest version of jDownloader. If you already have it on your computer, it has an auto update feature to make sure you have the latest version of the program and addons.

3. Extract the downloaded jDownloader and run JDownloader.exe. It should take a few seconds to load and this is normal because it runs on Java.

4. Click Addons in menu bar and go to JD-Unrar > Settings. Go through all the settings there and also enter all the password that you want JD-Unrar to try to extract when it finds a RAR file passworded. Click OK when done.

5. Now again click Addons in the menu bar and go to JD-Unrar > Extract archive(s).

6. Select all the RAR files in a folder (make sure you move all your RAR files that you want to extract in a folder first) and click Open.

7. jDownloader will now extract all your RAR files that you selected and also automatically tries the list of password. If the password is not found, it can prompt you to manually enter the password. It is like brute forcing an encrypted RAR file. Do take note that if you have a long list of password, the extraction time can take very long.

jDownloader is free, portable and is very actively being developed but unfortunately JD-Unrar can only support RAR archive. I know the main coder of jDownloader and will make a request for him to add ZIP support in JD-Unrar. When that happens, it will be the perfect archive batch extracting tool!

Did you notice that Windows will automatically generate crash dumps whenever you get blue screen of death (BSOD)? I’ve gotten lots of them when using Windows 98 but when come to XP, it is nearly flawless and I can’t remember when was the last time I ever got a blue screen. However on my new laptop that comes with Vista, it’s a whole different story because it happened so often and I can’t really remember how many times I got the blue screen. If you’ve never seen a Windows blue screen before, it looks something like what it says below.

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you’ve seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the Stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters.

Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical information:
*** STOP: 0x0000007E (0C0000005, 0x81C908A2)
Collecting data for crash dump …
Initializing disk for crash dump …
Beginning dump of physical memory.
Dumping physical memory to disk: 50

The memory crash dump are usually saved in C:\WINDOWS\Minidump and C:\WINDOWS\MEMORY.DMP. I remembered many years ago when I took computing course, one of my lecturer told us Windows crash dump are very hard to analyze and we actually have to pay Microsoft to do that. I don’t know how true is that but researching on how to analyze crash dumps with Microsoft Debugging tools did show that it is not easy. Fortunately here is a tool called WhoCrashed that is able to read Windows crash dumps and roughly tells us what is causing the blue screen crash.


WhoCrashed shows the drivers which have been crashing your computer with a single click. In most cases it can pinpoint the offending drivers which have been causing misery on your computer system in the past. It does post-mortem crashdump analysis and presents all gathered information in a comprehensible way. Normally, debugging skills and a set of debugging tools are required to do post-mortem crash dump analysis. By using this utility you do not need any debugging skills to be able to find out what drivers are causing trouble to your computer.

Before start using WhoCrashed, you’ll have to make sure that Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows has been installed. The first time you click the Analyze button, it’ll ask you to select the path to the Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows (usually in C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows) or you can download the installer by clicking “Download the required file from Microsoft site now”.

On my Acer laptop that has Vista installed, WhoCrashed is able to determine that the crash was likely caused by usbvideo.sys. It also did advice that the crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Likely the culprit is another driver on your system which cannot be identified. Looks like I am back to square one. So is analyzing Windows crash dump useless? Not really, on some cases it might be able to help you pinpoint the cause of the problem but definitely not all the time. One example is many years ago I was testing an exploit called IGMP nuke which is able to crash Windows XP machines by causing blue screens, lockups and automatic reboots on XP computers that don’t have SP2 installed. When that happens, Windows will create a crash dump file and I am very sure you’re not going to find any clues on what caused the crash after analyzing it.

WhoCrashed Home Edition is free and works on Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/2008. Resplendence Software also have a PROFESSIONAL version that cost $34.95 which can analyze crash dump on remote computers on the network and on a local dump directory of your choice. It also gives more detailed analysis of crash dumps and license not limited to use at home only.

[ Download WhoCrashed ]

Did you know that using keyboard shortcuts can save time and effort compared to only using mouse? If you can use both keyboard shortcuts and mouse, it can really speed up. Not speed up your computer but speed up what you do on the computer. One of my mentor taught me this when I just started to use the computer. At first I find it very troublesome and slow because I am not used to it. But now, I never regret taking the time to learn and memorize keyboard shortcuts. Not only that, I even look like a geek who is really into computers when I use keyboard shortcuts infront of my customers.

All operating systems and a lot of softwares has keyboard shortcuts. You can either go to the official website to hunt for the keyboard shortcuts, or you can just go to one website that has a database of keyboard shortcuts for your convenience.


KeyXL is the largest online database of keyboard shortcuts in the world. Their keyboard shortcut database is searchable by software program and covers all the major operating environments including Windows, Macintosh, Linux and browser-based applications.

The people at KeyXL are constantly adding new programs to their keyboard shortcuts database. There is a form for you to add a new application to the KeyXL keyboard shortcut database. However, I wonder why isn’t there a form for us to conveniently submit keyboard shortcuts to them? For example, I checked the list of keyboard shortcuts for Windows XP and I couldn’t find CTRL+SHIFT+ESC. Press this 3 keys simultaneously will launch Windows Task Manager.

A great idea and website but hopefully they’ll have more complete shortcut keys for an application.

[ Visit KeyXL Keyboard Shortcuts ]