Today one of my customer reported to me that two of his computers are infected by virus. When I asked what are the symptoms that made him think that his computers is infected by virus, he said there’s a text saying “Hacked by pokemon“. I find it funny because out of so many nicknames, a hacker actually chose “pokemon”! Anyway, I was eager to see what can this virus or trojan can do. Will it be as powerful as Brontok? Or will it be weak that I don’t even require anti-virus to remove it?

When I reached my customer’s place, he ran Internet Explorer, and the title bar did have an added text saying “Hacked by pokemon”.

I tried searching for this virus in Google and it’s not a popular virus because I couldn’t find much information about it. Even searching in Symantec’s website yield no results. Sorry as I couldn’t give you more information about this virus because when I was there, the virus was already removed using AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition.

The only problem is, the Anti-Virus didn’t restore back the Internet Explorer title bar text. Here’s how you can change Internet Explorer window title bar text.


Adding extra text in Internet Explorer window is not something new. I first saw this feature many many years ago when everyone was still using Internet Explorer 3! Follow the steps below to change your Internet Explorer window title bar text.

1. Go to Start -> Run
2. Type regedit and click OK.
3. Navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
4. Right click, New and select String Value.
5. Type the string value as Window Title
6. Double click the Window Title and type the title you want in the value data.

To remove added text in Internet Explorer title bar, just delete the Window Title string value.

Without a doubt that ZIP compression is the most well known archive format until today even though there are other compression format such as 7z and KGB that gives better compression. When I was using Windows 95, the compression format that most people use was ZIP. Since it’s so popular, Windows XP started to support opening and extracting ZIP files without even the need to install WinZIP. However, RAR compression is picking up and it’s quite popular too because it can compress 8 to 30 percent better than ZIP!

Since RAR can compress better than ZIP, why people still use ZIP? For me, I still prefer to use ZIP file extension because majority of PC end user still uses zip file extension. And also most importantly Windows XP and above can open it. Sometimes I have files in RAR compression and if I want to send it to someone, I’d have to unrar it and then zip it.

Fortunately I no longer need to do that again because I can easily convert the RAR archive into ZIP. It can also support many other types of compression types.


ArcConvert is a free and easy to use tool which converts archives into different compression formats.

ArcConvert can convert the following archives: 7-ZIP /LZH /CAB /ZIP /ARJ /ACE /RAR /TAR /TGZ /GZ /Z /BZ2 /YZ1 /YZ2 /GCA /BEL /RPM /DEB/ BH/ Noa32 /HKI /PAQAR /SQX /HA /ZOO /UHARC /LFB /ZLIB /UCL /IMP /RS /SPL /APK /Arc /DZ /MSI /ALZ /PMA /PAQ7 /CHM /UDA /PAQ8 /Cryptonite /ISO /LZOP /BMA

To the following ones: ZIP, 7-ZIP, CAB, LHA, TAR, TGZ, BZ2, YZ1, BGA, RAR, ACE, NOA32, HKI, PAQAR, UHARC, YZ2, DZ, HA

ArcConvert is very easy to use. Just download, extract and run arc_convert.exe. Click the Open Archiv button to locate the archive file that you want to convert. Select the NEW archive extension that you want to convert and click Convert button. There’s also a Check button for you to check your archive file. Sometimes you’ll get “Archive ERROR” message but it can still be converted. There seems to be problem in converting ZIP to other extension. But I tried RAR to ZIP, and also 7-ZIP to ZIP, it works. I have contacted the author and he claims that there is no problem. What about you? Are you able to convert RAR to ZIP?

[ Download ArcConvert ]

Just yesterday my customer encountered a problem where his computer wasn’t able to boot in Windows. It just got to the point where it loading Windows with the bar and then the screen is blank. However, there’s no problem in booting into Safe Mode. My guess is if you’re able to boot in Safe Mode but not in Windows, chances are the drivers might be corrupted. I uninstalled the display driver from Safe Mode. True enough, I am able to boot in to normal Windows but without display driver. So everything looks big with the 640 x 480 resolution.

Now I need to download the latest display driver to install on to the computer. I asked my customer whether he has any idea what video card is on his computer and he didn’t had a clue. I can use a CD or USB flash drive that contains utility that can automatically detect the video card on that computer. There’s another method on how you can manually detect what video card you have by using the built-in Windows debug tool.


Before we start, I’d like you to remember not to include the double quotes when typing commands. Open up the DOS command prompt by clicking on “Run” in the START menu, and type “cmd” in the dialog window.

Type “debug” on the command line. This will start the debug prompt, indicated by the – at the beginnning of each line.

Now type: “d c000:0000“, and press Enter. There are some tutorial will suggest you to type “d c000:0010″ or “d c000:0040″ and etc… Either one will work but I prefer the 0000 because it’s the starting point and you won’t miss out any information. If the first shown contents doesn’t display any useful information, you can always type “d” and press enter to show the next content. To quit the debugger, just type “q“, press enter and you’re back in your DOS command prompt.

Now the debugger will show the contents of the address after typing the “d c000:0000″ command. You might have to take a look at the two or three next addresses to see some information about your video card. At the image below, you can see the commands being used at the yellow colored box.

Here’s a close up shot at the important information. As you can see, it’s written GeForce 6200.

I can say that this method works 80% of the time. Some graphic card such as Intel Extreme doesn’t display information when you debug the address above. On my Acer laptop, I have a ATI Mobility Radeon X700 but I could only find ATI information on the address and not the model. I would consider this the secondary method to detect video card if somehow I couldn’t use hardware information utility on that computer.

I had to create a short presentation when the church’s website that I was developing ready. Instead of using powerpoint slides or screenshot slideshow to do the presentation, I wanted to do something that has more impact. So I opt for flash intro which comes together with nice animation and music as well. When I finished creating the 1 minute flash intro, I did a test run on the computer that was connected to the projector. The problem that I faced was the computer that is connected to the projector doesn’t have an Internet connection and it only has Internet Explorer 8 without flash player.

I could easily download the flash player offline installer to a USB flash drive and install it on the computer but that would be the last alternative because I don’t want to install stuff on other people’s computer. Probably the easiest way to play the flash intro is to use a portable version of Firefox with Flash support.


All you need to do is go to a computer that has flash installed and copy the NPSWF32.dll file from C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash to the \FirefoxPortable\Data\plugins folder. MozillaZine Knowledge Base also did mention to copy the flashplayer.xpt file to the plugins or components folder but it is not really necessary because it is for scripting support. To play flash on Firefox Portable, only NPSWF32.dll is needed.

To make sure that flash is properly installed and loaded into your Firefox portable, type about:plugins at the URL bar and hit enter. You should see Shockwave Flash together with the filename and version listed on that page. Alternatively, you can also do that from the Add-ons Manager (Ctrl+Shift+A) > Plugins.

After the flash presentation, I simply deleted the Firefox Portable folder and the computer is back to the way it was, untouched.

When Bitdefender 2012 products were released, they had some major sale that went on for a while. I remembered buying a 1 year Bitdefender Total Security 2012 license for around $10 which I still haven’t got a chance to use it until today. When it comes to Bitdefender, they are one of the famous brands that help to keep users PCs, data, and identities safe from attack. Antivirus today is not only about protecting against viruses anymore as different types of threats has emerged. They had to offer protection against phishing, hackers, spams, and even social network, thanks to Facebook and Twitter. According to VB100 results, AV-TEST independent test reports and AV Comparatives, Bitdefender is currently rated as one of the top antivirus that offers really good protection against malwares. The new version comes in a sleek and black interface like the screenshot below.

The new Bitdefender Internet Security 2012 adds a couple of new interesting features which are Autopilot, Rescue mode, Virtualized Browser, Social Network Protection, Scan Dispatcher and Search Advisor.

Autopilot – Provides a hassle-free experience by making optimal security-related decisions without input from you
Rescue mode – Reboots your computer in a trusted environment, which is used for cleanup and restoration
Virtualized Browser – Isolates the browser from the operating system in a Bitdefender-provided environment to block web-based threats
Social Network Protection – Filters the links you receive from your Facebook and Twitter friends and monitors your privacy settings
Search Advisor – Gives advance warning of risky websites right in your Google and Bing search results
Scan Dispatcher – Triggers system scans when resource usage falls below a certain threshold to avoid any impact on your system’s performance

The Rescue Mode basically boots you in to a linux environment so you can scan your hard drive without Windows being loaded. This is very similar to rescue disk except that you don’t need to burn to a disc or USB. To get into Rescue Mode, go to the Antivirus panel, click Scan Now and select Rescue Mode from the drop-down menu. You will be prompted to restart your computer.

When I was benchmarking Bitdefender Internet Security 2012 today, I didn’t even see a single notification from the program at all because the autopilot mode is enabled by default. This mode is very useful to amateur users that don’t want to be constantly asked for a decision. This option can be easily disabled from the program’s main interface.

From what I’ve read, the Virtualized Browser is a part of the Bitdefender browser Toolbar. The system requirement page did say that it requires Internet Explorer 7 and higher but for some weird reason the toolbar wasn’t installed on my test machine’s Internet Explorer 8.

Bitdefender Internet Security 2012 should be able to keep your computer safe and secure from current threats but when it comes to performance, it is quite sluggish. Comparing Bitdefender with its previous product, the 2012 version are slightly slower. The time taken to launch an application, full hard drive scan, installation and uninstallation of 3rd party software, compression and extraction of ZIP files has increased while other tests stayed around the same numbers.

For those who are interested in using the latest Bitdefender Internet Security 2012, here is a new trick posted by Ant0ni0411 in forums on how to obtain a 1 year license for free. If you are looking for the Bitdefender Internet Security 2012 direct download links:

[ 32-bit | 64-bit | Homepage ]

Have you ever encountered a computer that is so badly infected by spyware and virus that the computer is so slow and you could hardly do anything on it? Fully booting in to computer takes like 15 minutes, then to install an on-demand antivirus program takes another 30 minutes and then to update the signatures takes another hour. Running a full scan would definitely take more than an hour. The computer should be cleaned from virus IF the on-demand antivirus is able to detect and remove the virus from computer. If not, you have to spend a few more hours hoping that the next on-demand antivirus that you’re going to install can detect the virus that’s causing the slowdown.

I used to go through all that but I no longer do that now. Whenever the computer is too slow to fix, I’d just pop in an antivirus rescue disk which is able to scan the computer for virus even without booting in to Windows. It is faster and more effective since the virus is not active when Windows is not running. I’ve already introduced 4 brands of free rescue CD which is Kaspersky Rescue Disk, Avira AntiVir Rescue System, F-Secure Rescue CD and BitDefender 2008 RescueCD. Here is yet another free antivirus rescue disk from Dr. Web called Dr.Web LiveCD which is very useful to scan and remove virus when the computer is very badly infected by virus.



Dr.Web LiveCD is an anti-virus emergency aid disk that would restore a system that became non-operational due to activities of malware. If a workstation or a server running Windows or Unix won’t boot from a hard drive, Dr.Web LiveCD will clean a system of suspicious and malicious files and will also try to cure infected objects.

All you need to do is to download the 66MB ISO image (minDrWebLiveCD-4.44.0.XXXXXXX.iso) from the link at the end of this article and burn it to a CD. Then boot up the computer with the CD by setting your computer as the first boot device. As loading starts a dialogue window will prompt you to choose between the standard and the safe mode. Make sure that the first option DrWeb-LiveCD is selected and hit the ENTER key. Once finished loading, you will be presented with a really cool nice looking screen that has Start Menu.

There are 2 ways to scan the computer using Dr.Web LiveCD. You can either select Start Dr.Web Scanner to start scanning the hard drive, or select Start XOrg to launch the graphical user interface version of the scanner. Before scanning, I’d suggest you to update the virus signature first by selecting Start Dr.Web Update from Start Menu.

Do take note that the Rescue CDs are NOT meant to replace the real-time antivirus program which protects your computer against malware every second. It is only used when the installed antivirus fails to detect and block the virus.

If you’ve never heard of Dr.Web and not sure how good it is, here’s a report that will give you a shock! In the latest October 2008 antivirus test conducted by Anti-Malware Test Lab, Dr.Web Anti-Virus 4.44 scored a perfect 100%, making it the only antivirus that receive the Platinum Malware Treatment Award. Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 and Avast! Professional Edition 4.8 tied at second place. Again, very sorry to let the NOD32 fans know that Eset NOD32 Antivirus 3.0 completely failed the test at 0%! It didn’t even manage to detect the file of the virus on an infected system, although the parent file (distribution package) is detected.

Go ahead and download a copy of the free Dr.Web LiveCD as may never know when will your computer be infected by a virus that cannot be detected by the currently installed antivirus sofware on your computer.

[ Download Dr.Web LiveCD ]

On October 12, 2005, I talked about what is IP Address.
They are practically just numbers with dots (.) between them and also hard to remember.
Some Internet Service Providers (ISP) provides dynamic IP address which means that everytime you disconnect and reconnect back to the internet, you’ll get a different IP address than the previous one.

It’s pretty expensive to get a static ip address for running services such as FTP, WWW and etc…
Thankfully there are Dynamic DNS services!
Check out No-IP, The Dynamic DNS Leader which they claimed to be…
No-IP gets rid of the need to remember IP address, ever again.
Sign up is free and they also offers paid packages such as Plus, Enhanced, Squared and Free.
See the package comparison below.

I personally is using the FREE service and is considering to get the “Plus Managed DNS” since it’s only USD24.95/year.
I do a lot of remote access in different sites especially from my PDA to home and office computers/servers.

It’s useful, try it 🙂

I very rarely write about bittorrent because for the past few months I’ve only been getting my stuff from RapidShare file hosting. As you know, RapidShare has a storage capacity of several petabytes (a petabyte is a million gigabytes) of files and you could almost everything there. I have a RapidShare Premium account and I used to get maximum download speed. However, for the past few weeks, the maximum download speed that I’ve been getting has been pretty bad, and now they’ve reduced the download limit from 10 gigabyte a day to 80 gigabyte a month. That’s like only 2.66gb of download per day! I have a 1.5mbps download speed and according to calculation, I can download as much as 12GB per day. RapidShare system is getting really absurd so I am turning to BitTorrent.

I downloaded and installed the latest version of uTorrent v1.8.1, got a torrent file from IP Torrents with 1051 seeders and only 34 leechers. With that numbers, I should be downloading at maximum speed but I am only getting less than 3kbps!

Double checked uTorrent settings and applied half connections limit patch, still no improvement. All this while I knew that my ISP TM Net Streamyx has been throttling P2P connections and I guess I’m their victim too. They claim to have a hardware to detect and throttle certain kinds of traffic such as p2p (for e.g. BitTorrent) in an effort to save their bandwidth that we have rightfully paid for. After spending hours trying to find out how to bypass bittorrent throttling, I found a simple solution.


Well the simplest way is to use VPN. VPN establishes an encrypted connection behind SSL security to encrypt BitTorrent and taking out traffic shapers. Last year I’ve already mentioned a few VPN companies such as XLCore, IdealVPN, HostCK and SecureIX but they’ve all closed down, leaving only BolehVPN that is capable to unthrottle your P2P connections. Currently BolehVPN has a total 14 servers located at Luxembourg, Sweden, United States and United Kingdom for you to choose from. If you want to watch online TV from Veoh or Hulu, simply connect to the US VPN.

Don’t look down on BolehVPN because the fact that they started operating since March 2007 until today already prove that they really “boleh” (Boleh means Can). I signed up for a 60 days VPN account to test it out and here’s a video showing how fast it hits my maximum download speed through BolehVPN. (This is my first attempt in making a video presentation, promise that it’ll be much better next time 😛 )

Another factor that contributes to the speed of bittorrent downloading is the amount of seeders and leechers. Some public trackers offers horrible amount of seeders which would make your download really slow. To solve this problem, BolehVPN provides access to a very popular private tracker (IPTorrents) with free leech! That means you can download without maintaining a good 1:1 ratio (although it’d be nice that you upload as well).

Other than providing VPN service, BolehVPN is also one of the very few providers of game servers in Malaysia. We’re actually in the midst of configuring the first ZombieMod server in Malaysia. Reason why I wanted a ZombieMod server hosted in Malaysia is because the routing done by our ISP TM Net is really bad and I get like 200-300 ping when playing CSS on servers overseas. If you want to check it out, here’s the IP and Port: 202.71.97.88:25555

Back to VPN, I have a US VPN account from Witopia that costs $39.99 per year but the connection is pretty slow and Veoh has blocked the IP saying “Veoh is no longer available in Anonymous Proxy”. I’ve also tested 1 month China VPN from BCRChina and it’s even worse as a lot of pages couldn’t load. So for a mere RM1 (US$0.25) a day at BolehVPN, you can download from BitTorrent with maximum full speed without being throttled and also watch online TV from Veoh, Hulu and etc by connecting to their VPN located in US (You have 14 VPN servers to choose from). A normal pirated DVD cost RM5 and Blu-Ray at RM12, I may as well spend the money on BolehVPN to have freedom in downloading whatever I want using P2P.

As part of the Christmas giveaway, I will be giving out 3 BolehVPN accounts valid for 125 days to 3 Malaysians. You must be subscribed to this website’s newsletter via FeedBurner or Feedblitz and then leave a comment. First 3 Malaysians that leaves a comment will get it. Readers from other country, please don’t be despair because I assure you that I have more giveaways coming very soon.

You can give BolehVPN a try if you’re a heavy P2P downloader that’s being throttled by your ISP. Just so you know, I gain nothing whether you subscribe to BolehVPN or not. I am just sharing with you based on my experience with BolehVPN.

[ Visit BolehVPN ]

I have to admit that although I know the importance of defragmenting my hard drive to keep my hard disk running at peak performance but I rarely do it. I am just lazy. PERIOD. If you do a search on this blog, you’ll find that the only article I’ve written about disk defragmentation is “Defraggler“. It is more like a file defragmenter rather than disk defragmenter. Well ,everyone should defrag their hard drive once in a while especially for people like me who downloads a lot of stuff from the Internet and moving files around. By doing this, your programs and files launches faster because your hard drive takes lesser time to seek the file fragments and it puts less stress on your hard drive as well.

Now the question is which would probably be one of the best disk defragmenter software since there are so many free and commercial disk defragmenter tools to use? Just few days ago I noticed that a disk defragmenter software called IObit SmartDefrag has released version 1 final. I did a little research and found that SmartDefrag has been in BETA test for 2 years and it is finally out of beta!

The developers of SmartDefrag has done a comparison between a few disk defragmenter such as Defraggler, JKDefrag, Auslogics Disk Defrag, Diskeeper Professional, PerfectDisk Professional. SmartDefrag actually provides features other free defragmeters cannot offer, highest disk performance and better fragments prevention.




SmartDefrag helps defragment your hard drive most efficiently. Smart Defrag not only defragments computer deeply but optimizes disk performance. With “Install it and forget it” feature, Smart Defrag works automatically and quietly in the background on your PC, keeping your hard disk running at its speediest. Slow down, freeze-ups and crashes will be a thing of the past. Smart Defrag is 100% free for home, organization, and business.

SmartDefrag Key Benefits

Extremely Easy to Use
Install it and forget it. This powerful, free defragmenter works continuously, automatically and quietly in the background on your PC. Its intuitive interface makes Smart Defrag the ideal utility for complete computer dummies.

Exceptionally Efficient Defragmentation
Smart Defrag has the world’s fastest defragmenting engine. It’s been specially designed for modern, large hard drives, so it eliminates long waiting times.

Optimize Disk Performance
Smart Defrag doesn’t just use simple defragmentation. It also streamlines your file system, places the frequently used files and directories into the fastest area of the disk, enabling your computer to run at top speed with the most stability.

Always-on to Work Automatically
Smart Defrag works automatically and quietly in the background, so it continually and constantly keeps your computer fragment-free.

Data Safe and Reliability Guaranteed
Smart Defrag uses the commercial-level standard to move data and does not damage any file in your disk. Besides, unlike other “Automated” Defragmenters, Smart Defrag does NOT constantly perform analysis and defragment, which does damage your hard drive and shorten its life. Smart Defrag has a “Safe Intelligence” technology that can assure the health of your disk by deciding When and How to start defragmentation.

Free Defragmenter Forever
Smart Defrag is 100% freeware. You can download it and update absolutely free –– it won’t cost you a penny.

What I like about SmartDefrag is the interface is very clean and straight forward, small in size, rather fast in defragmenting, has smart features such as auto defrag, SmartSilent technology, scheduler, stop defrag while using battery and etc. Definitely worth using!

[ Download IObit SmartDefrag ]

The DESPERATE TURK CRACKERS GROUP (DTCG) has been consistently releasing cracks for Windows Genuine Advantage that enables you to download Windows Update. However, this time for v1.5.540, they released it a little late.

If you visit their site, you’ll find two nearly identical cracks for Windows XP Genuine v1.5.540.

The difference between the “Fixed Exe” and “Patch” is….


The “Patch” is for patching LegitCheckControl.dll which enabling you to download updates from Windows Update but you might still get the notification messages stating that you are using a pirated version of Microsoft Windows nag popup.

The “Fixed Exe” is the already cracked wgatray.exe, wgalogon.dll and LegitCheckControl.dll. Meaning if you install this crack, you will be able to download updates from Windows Update and also the nag popup will disappear.

So installing the “Fixed Exe” will be more complete and better choice.

[ DTCG “Fixed Exe” for Windows XP Genuine v1.5.540 ]
[ DTCG “Patch” for Windows XP Genuine v1.5.540 ]

I found an interesting website today while I was browsing the Internet.
This website enables you to check a person’s status on MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AIM instant messengers.
That means, you can use it to see your friend is Online or Offline on MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AIM instant messenger.
Best part is, you don’t need to download or install anything.
Just visit the website, enter the ID that you want to check and click the “Check” button. It’s that EASY!

Not only you can check the status of a person on instant messenger, you can also check who has deleted you on MSN Messenger!
That’s really cool so that you can remove unnecessary people on your MSN Messenger contact list.

The website is…


Blockstatus.com

Just after days Microsoft released Windows Genuine Advantage Validation version 1.7.18.1, now it has an updated version 1.7.18.5 or 1.7.0018.5. Looks a like a bug fixed version of WGA. All 3 files LegitCheckControl.dll, WgaTray.exe and WgaLogon.dll has been updated to version 1.7.18.5. Even Wikipedia doesn’t display the latest version of WGA.



Team ETH0 downloaded the latest WGA and cracked it. They released the cracked version of WGA 1.7.18.5 on 26 March 2007 which is 5 days later after they released cracked WGA 1.7.18.1.

This WGA 1.7.18.5 crack does NOT work with Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player 11. Both uses their own wga check that is in their install program. It only lets you use Windows Updates and download from Microsoft Download Center. And also, no more nag screens.

Same thing. Just extract the compressed file and run installer.bat. Everything is automated.

[ Download Windows Genuine Advantage v1.7.18.5 Crack ]

Ever had such an annoying message given by Windows?

It has many other similar errors: