Recently I stumbled on a Rescue Live CD provided by Vba32 for free. The good thing about Rescue CDs are it can scan and remove virus even without booting in to Windows. Usually it is booted from a Linux LiveCD and autoruns the scanner module. If your computer has been infected by a virus but unable to boot up to Windows / safe mode or it is too slow to do anything on it, rescue CD is probably your only chance to remove the virus and get Windows working again.

VBA32 is a less well known antivirus company internationally but it is well established in Belarus. VirusBlokAda Ltd. has been established in May, 1997. The Vba32 products are successfully used in The National Bank of The Republic of Belarus, in all sorts of the Belarusian organizations and enterprises. Also it is installed at the mail servers of such Belarusian Internet providers as tut.by and mail.by. Vba32 is the first antivirus software which has been certified in The State Centre of Information Security supported by the President of The Republic of Belarus.


VBA Rescue runs on Linux LiveCD and uses VBA32 Console Scanner for Linux (Vba32.L). VBA32 Rescue doesn’t contain any fancy looking graphics or interface. The menus are simple and easy to navigate through so you shouldn’t have a problem using it. To get your free VBA Rescue, just download the ISO image (72 MB) from the link located at the end of this article. Burn the ISO image with your favorite disc recording software. If you’re unsure how to burn ISO image to a CD, read this article. Insert the VBA Rescue disc and set your computer to boot up with it. You should see a menu that looks like the image below. If you’re unsure which resolution can your computer support, just select the first one by simply hitting the ENTER key.

Next you’ll get to select the language of the interface. Currently it only supports English and Russian.

You will get an information window advising you on how to work in VBA Rescue Menu. Hit enter to continue. Now you get to configure VBA Rescue on where to scan, what files to scan, what to do with the infected file, Midnight Commander File Manager and etc. When you’re done configuring, select the second option “Scanning files” to start scanning your computer for viruses with VBA Rescue.Good news is before VBA Rescue starts scanning, it will check for the latest virus signature and updates automatically.

You will need a computer with i586 CPU and 128MB of RAM. It only supports NTFS and FAT file systems. Vba32 Rescue supports auto-mounting including removable devices so you don’t need to know or memorize those elite linux mount commands. NTFS state is checked during mounting and additional confirmation dialog such as the partition was unmounted incorrectly and the partition contains system memory image (hibernate).

I personally have never heard of Vba32 antivirus before but I’ve seen it appear in VirusTotal, AV-Comparatives, Virus Bulletin, Anti-Malware Test Lab and virus.gr. Unfortunately Vba32 doesn’t perform very well at all of the tests conducted by the test lab. In my opinion, Vba32 wouldn’t be the best choice to use on desktop computer for real-time protection but no harm having another rescue disc in hand when other rescue disk fails to boot up. Do take note that currently VBA Rescue is still in BETA.

[ Download VBA32 Rescue ]

The reason I wanted to write this is because when I found HJSplit and posted an article about it, I’ve got two comments recommending The File Splitter. temosis said that it’s the best and fastest file splitter program while jakpo agrees. So I decided to put The File Splitter and HJSplit to the test.


I tested splitting and joining the same 600MB file on a computer that has fresh Windows XP. Only drivers and no software are installed on that computer so it won’t affect the performance while splitting and joining. Here’s the computer specification that I tested on:

CPU: Intel Pentium D 2.8GHz
Mainboard: MSI 945P Platinum
Memory: 1GB
Hard Disk: 120GB 7200RPM

The File Splitter claims to support splitting files up to 9 billion GB and as for HJSplit, it claims to handle files which are larger than 10GB. I’m not sure if there is a single file bigger than 100GB for now… So let’s just test splitting 600MB into 6 parts and joining it back.

The File Splitter

Splits 600MB to 6 parts. 100MB each.
Time taken to split: 1 min 23 sec
Time taken to join: 1 min 36 sec

HJSplit

Splits 600MB to 6 parts. 100MB each.
Time taken to split: 1 min 38 sec
Time taken to join: 1 min 51 sec

Clear winner here. I noticed that The File Splitter is 15 seconds faster than HJSplit in both splitting and joining the 600MB file. Not only The File Splitter is faster, the other feature I like about it is it automatically creates a “joiner” executable file after splitting the file. HJSplit also has the joiner program called HJJoin, but it didn’t automatically include together with the splitted parts. You have to download separately. Another reason The File Splitter is better than HJSplit is that The File Splitter file size is only 131KB and HJSplit is 313KB.

Looks like I will only be using The File Splitter in future if I need to split and join files. Thanks to the commenters!

[ Download The File Splitter ]
[ Download HJSplit ]

The last time I did a quick review on IObit Advanced SystemCare was nearly 3 years ago when it was still version 3. A major update version 4 was released about half a year ago and was approached by Keros from IObit multiple times to do a review but with my really busy work schedule, my 1 year old daughter and my wife to take care of, it had to wait until today… IObit Advanced SystemCare is one of the most popular automated system maintenance software for Windows computer. Currently the version 4 supports both 32 and 64 bit of Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7.

After installing Advanced SystemCare 4 on my test system, I was presented with a sleek and dark skin that contains 4 huge main buttons which are Quick Care, Deep Care, Turbo Boost and Toolbox.

There are two care modes which automatically runs a few tools from the Toolbox to optimize your computer. The Quick Care runs only 5 modules (Malware Scan, Registry Fix, Shortcut Fix, Privacy Sweep and Junk Files Clean) while the Deep Care runs 10 (All 5 modules from Quick Care plus System Optimization, Passive Defense, Disk Scan, Vulnerability Fix and Disk Defragment) with a more thorough scan for malware and deeper registry fix. Which care options you decide to run very much depend on how much free time you have to spare. If you don’t mind waiting, you can run the Deep Care that takes longer time to finish but giving your computer a more optimized state compared to the Quick Care.


The Turbo Boost feature allows you to quickly speed up your computer but temporarily shutting down unnecessary background processes and services, cleaning RAM, and intensifying processor performance. One click and you’re good to go. The first time you click on the Boost your PC now button will ask you to configure Turbo Boost. It is important to go through the configuration because some of the functions that you may want constantly enabled will be disabled when Turbo Boost is turned on. For example, if you need to print when Turbo Boost is in effect, you should uncheck the “Disable printer support” option.

Finally, the Toolbox button offers you with 20 smart and dedicated system tools where you can clean, optimize, repair, secure and control your Windows computer. Basically the tools used in Quick Care and Deep Care can be manually launched from here.

At the top right corner, there is a Rescue at the menu. The rescue function is a very important feature to provide rollback in system maintenance software such as Advanced SystemCare in case if something goes wrong and you are able to revert the changes made by the software. I noticed that the rollback would only be created when the whole repair process has been completed. If you manually stop the repair somewhere in the middle before it is finished, the backup will not appear in Rescue Center. The trick is to finish the repair so that the backup will be created. I also noticed that the backup is only created for registry changes while others such as invalid shortcuts and junk files are permanently removed from the system.

Advanced SystemCare 4 also comes with a built-in updater where it checks for the latest version but doesn’t do auto update on the main program. For example, to update from ASC v4.1 to v4.2, you will be brought to download.com to redownload a newer installer which is 29.1MB in size and reinstall. Do note that at the end of the installation, you will be prompted to install the IObit Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox. Depending on whether you need it or not, there is an option to skip the installation of the toolbar.

There are two versions of Advanced SystemCare 4 which is the free and professional. The professional version offers automatic and scheduled functions with registry deep clean and some useful tools in Toolbox are locked in Free version. As an extra added feature, the Professional edition allows eye candy lovers to choose as many as 10 fantastic skins that make the use of the software more enjoyable. There are more that can be downloaded from the official IObit’s forum. The Professional version cost $19.95 for a year subscription but it is currently discounted to $12.97.

If you go to the Disk Defragment Settings, you should see an additional option “Enable Optimization Defragmentation” which can only be enabled in Professional version. It seems that the freeware IObit’s Smart Defrag v2.2 is able to do the same because I tried running the “Defrag and Fast Optimize” method in Smart Defrag first and then followed by running Disk Defragment from Deep Care with the Optimization Defragmentation option enabled. Surprisingly Advanced SystemCare Disk Defragment reports “No Problem” and doesn’t require any further action.

With all the functions and automation that can be found on Advanced SystemCare 4, any Windows users (whether they don’t know how to maintain their computer or just plain lazy to do it) that uses it can easily keep their computer clean and optimized.

IObit has generously sponsored 50 Advanced SystemCare 4 Professional license valid for 1 year to be given away at Raymond.cc. However because I needed to use one of the license to test the professional version, there will be 49 to be given away instead. Head on to the forum to participate in the draw.

[ Download IObit Advanced SystemCare 4 ]

Previously I’ve introduced a total of 3 free rescue CDs provided by Kaspersky, Avira and BitDefender. In my opinion, Kaspersky is very well known for its detection rate but it is not updated regularly and can’t auto update. As for Avira, it is also pretty good in detecting both known and unknown virus. Although Avira Rescue CD is updated several times a day, we can’t possibly burn the ISO into a CD each time it is updated because we’ll wasting CDs. As for BitDefender Rescue CD, it has a very sensitive detection rate and is able to automatically update the virus definition and saving it to RAM disk. Each rescue disk has its own pros and cons.

Here’s another Rescue CD recommended by leofelix. Last month, F-Secure released a new major update on their free Rescue CD. It was one and a half year ago since their last update version 2.00. If you don’t know what is a Rescue CD, it is a CD that you can boot up the computer with and can run an antivirus program even without a working or bootable Windows. Rescue CD are best used when your computer no longer starts because the operating system has been corrupted by malware and you can use Rescue CD to scan the computer and quarantine the malware. This may allow the operating system to start properly again.


F-Secure Rescue CD 3.00 will by default scan all hard drives in the computer, all USB drives attached to the computer, Windows FAT and NTFS filesystems. F-Secure Rescue CD ISO file is 155MB in size and you’ll need to burn the ISO to a CD. Boot up the computer with the CD and you’ll see a screen that looks like the image below. You have 15 seconds to press ENTER to start the CD or it will boot normally via hard drive.

Once the ENTER key is pressed, it will start uncompressing Linux and boot the kernel. Please make sure that you have access to the Internet. Either plug in your network cable or make sure you have wireless enabled. Once F-Secure Rescue CD is loaded, select Next and hit the ENTER key. It will automatically start updating virus definition database. I have a 1Mbps connection and it took less than 3 minutes to update. Click Next to agree the end user license agreement. At the next screen you get to select what to scan. To select or deselect an item on the list, use the space key and select Start Scan. While the scan is ongoing, you can hit Alt+F5 key to see details of files being scanned, Alt+F6 to see any malware found and Ctrl+C to cancel scanning.

F-Secure Rescue CD scans the computer and renames all files containing malware to .virus file extension. Using Rescue CD on a working operating system may rename essential system files and so cause your operating system to no longer start. If this happens you can use your operating system repair disk to reinstall the operating system. Note that this may reinstall a fresh operating system and so remove any personal settings and files you have. If your computer is working fine after the scan, simple do a search on all *.virus file and delete it.

Rescue CD cannot scan encrypted disks. This includes for example, Windows Vista BitLocker disk encryption.

If you do not have an internet connection, can download Rescue CD virus definition updates to a USB drive using a healthy computer. This USB drive must be empty and 256mb or greater in size. Just download fsdbupdate.run file (40MB) and save it to the root directory of the USB drive. Insert the USB flash drive to the infected computer, boot up using F-Secure Rescue CD and follow the instructions.

[ Download F-Secure Rescue CD 3.00 ]

Instead of uploading your documents to free file hosting such as Rapidshare, why not try using Scribd? Scribd is very useful for documents because it has an embedded PDF player to publish and view documents right out of your browser! Even if you do not have Adobe PDF reader installed, you still can view because the embedded PDF player is in FLASH. Just like Youtube, when you upload a video file, it will only require Flash player installed to start streaming the video.



Uploading is very easy. On the top right hand side of the Scribd main page, you’ll see a small section where you can upload multiple documents by using Ctrl or Shift key when selecting the documents to upload. After completed uploading, you’ll have the option to give a title for the documents you’ve uploaded and also tag it with necessary keywords for easy searching and browsing through documents.

Formats supported by Scribd are .pdf, .doc, .ppt, .xls, .txt, etc.(document formats only). Other than viewing in PDF, you can also download the documents in PDF format, Microsoft Word format, plain text format and also MP3.

I think Scribd might face a big copyright problem in future when the website gets famous. If you search for popular copyrighted ebooks such as O’Reilly, McGraw Hill and etc… it exist FREE for you to view. I did a search on Nostradamus and found “The Nostradamus Code World War III” free to download and view. From the author’s website, you’ll need to pay $14.95 to download and view the ebook. I tried this search because I remembered seeing this advertisement on Google a few days ago.

Scribd is definitely a very unique and useful concept but for the copyright reasons, sooner or later Scribd will have to remove all those copyright materials or else the whole website will be shut down. Before this happens, quickly visit Scribd and search for whatever ebooks you’ve been searching for.

[ Upload Documents to Scribd ]

Previously I’ve written about Kaspersky offering free Rescue Disk to clean virus without booting in to Windows. This is very useful when you have a computer that is unable to boot in to Windows caused by virus. All you need to do is to boot up the computer with Kaspersky Rescue Disk CD and it launch the latest Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 to scan your computer.

However, problem with Kaspersky Rescue Disk is it is not updated frequently, unlike the free Kaspersky AVP Tool which is updated few times a day. Kaspersky Rescue Disk was last updated on 11 Jun 2008. I’ve tried to figure out a solution on how to manually update the virus definition but it seemed to be different. The Rescue Disk virus definition file extension is .kvc and the official Kaspersky virus definition is in .avc. Even some of the XML filenames are not identical.

I am definitely not giving up on this but in the meantime, here is another Rescue CD alternative by Avira that can clean unremovable virus without booting into Windows. If you’ve read my research on which is the best Anti-Virus program, Avira AntiVir appears to be on top of the list after Kaspersky.


The Avira AntiVir Rescue System is a linux-based application that allows accessing computers that cannot be booted anymore. Thus it is possible to repair a damaged system, to rescue data or to scan the system for virus infections. Just double-click on the rescue system package to burn it to a CD/DVD. You can then use this CD/DVD to boot your computer. The Avira AntiVir Rescue System is updated several times a day (contains the current virus definitions VDF) so that the most recent security updates are always available.

Once you’ve booted up your computer with Avira Rescue System, you get a boot option to either boot from hard drive or AntiVir Rescue System. Press the number 2 on your keyboard to boot into AntiVir Rescue System. It will start loading linux and you get to select either deutsch or english. Next, drivers will be loaded, and when it completes, the Rescue System main menu will show.

To scan a computer, select the second option “Scan” and hit enter. You get to select whether to scan all files, only program files or only boot sectors. You can then select either to log scanning events or try to repair infected files. If Rescue System is unable to repair infected files, you have the option to rename the files. Finally, you can select additional file types to scan such as dialers, jokes, games, and security privacy risk software. The whole process simplifies the command-line arguments so you don’t need to manually type the commands.

The open command at the main menu will launch Linux console, not DOS command prompt. Unless you’re familiar with Linux commands, I wouldn’t recommend you selecting that option. If you’ve accidentally got into the linux console, press CTRL+F1 simultaneously to go back to Rescue System Main Menu.

According to the latest report rom AV-Comparatives, Avira AntiVir scored the highest points for Retrospective / ProActive test on May 2008. It has the least false positives and fast on demand scanning speed.

[ Download Avira AntiVir Rescue System ]

I am sure all computer technicians have to face with reinstalling Windows very often. After installing Windows, the nightmare starts when Windows don’t have generic drivers for a hardware. You need to identify the brand and model of the hardware and sometimes you even need to look for drivers using another computer when the owner of the computer says that he/she doesn’t have any driver CDs. To solve this problem, I’ve previously written an article on making a CD with all current drivers using DriverPacks but it only has drivers for Windows XP.

I’ve stopped using them for a while because I wasn’t happy with them. I written an article to promote their software and sent visitors to their site. In return of that, they threaten me with lawsuits saying that I can’t post screenshots of their software and I can’t use the word DriverPacks accusing that I stole their keywords. Obviously their attempt failed because their request is absurd. Think about this, they allow people to download and use DriverPacks for free but nobody can’t take screenshot and use the word “DriverPacks” on blogs. Where’s the logic in that?

Let’s forget about DriverPacks because I found a better one called DriverPack Solution 9 Professional.


DriverPack Solution 9 Professional is the most popular Russian program to automatically install drivers. It simplifies the process of reinstalling Windows on virtually any computer. Now you will be free from the problems of finding and installing drivers. The latest version even supports Windows Vista and Windows 7.

There are 2 versions of DriverPack Solution 9, the home and professional. Both versions are free and professional version offers slightly more features which is downloading from fast server, support for Windows 7 and loads missing drivers from the Internet. To get the Professional download link, you’ll need to sign up, get your personalized link and then get 5 different people to click on the link. Then the password to open the download page for Professional version will be sent to your email. To simplify this process, you can use a list of web proxies to open the link.

At the time of writing, this is the page and password to download the Professional version of DriverPack Solution 9. If it doesn’t work, you will need to go through the steps above. I will also try to update the details whenever I can.
Download page: http://drp.su/get/659/
Password: ofhe4uvg

The file size of the Professional version is about 1GB. After finished downloading, extract and you can burn it to a DVD. Simply run start.cmd to launch the program. It will then automatically scans for any drivers that requires to be installed. When found, check the drivers that needs to be installed and click Run. By default the interface of the program is in Russian but you can change it to English. Find the dropdown box like the image below and select the second one on the list which will turn the program’s interface into English.

DriverPack Solution 9 Professional is really good and useful but I still didn’t like the fact that it hijacks Internet Explorer’s default website and change it to start.drp.su. I find this action intrusive like what normally spyware does as it didn’t prompt me if I’d like to change my IE’s default webpage.

[ Visit DriverPack Solution 9 ]

If you have an internet account with your ISP, chances are you already have POP3 email account and you check your emails using Outlook Express, Windows Mail or Microsoft Outlook. It is definitely convenient using an email client to download all emails but it pisses me off when someone forward an email containing a huge attachment which takes very long to download. It is even worst when I am at my mum’s place where the connection is slow and unstable… If the connection breaks or time out, I’ll have to redownload all the emails again including the attachments.

If the POP3 email account has a webmail service, I could just log in to the webmail and delete the email message containing big sized attachment. When I delete an email from webmail, I am actually deleting it from my server. So when I run Outlook Express, it will no longer download the deleted email. What if your POP3 email account doesn’t have a webmail service?

Here is a fast and easy tip on how to manually delete an email from your POP3 email account without using any software.


All Windows computer has a Telnet client. I am going to show you how to delete POP3 e-mail using Telnet. Sounds tough right? You won’t think so after you’ve finished reading this article.

1. Go to Start > Run.

2. Type telnet mail.yourserver.com 110. If your POP3 port is different from the default 110, please change accordingly.

3. Telnet would connect to your mailserver at port 110. Once connected, it will show the message +OK Hello there.

4. Now you’ll have to login using the user command. Some pop3 username requires full email address as login and some only username.
Type user [email protected]
You will now see the message +OK Password required.

5. Type pass yourpassword
If you’ve entered a correct password for the user, you will get the message +OK logged in.

6. You can now type the command list to list all the messages on the server and their sizes in bytes.
You should see a message that says +OK POP3 clients that break here, they violate STD53.
1 2243
2 2841
3 1241188
4 4932
The above image shows that you have 4 emails on the server, they are listed in order from oldest first to newest last.

7. To view any of the email message, use the retr command followed by the message number that you see in the list command. It will return the whole message including all headers. Example, retr 3.

8. To delete a message, use the dele command followed by the message number. Example, delete 3

9. Type quit to end the session.

Tip: If you accidentally deleted a wrong email message, quickly type rset. It will resurrect the email message. When you use the dele command, the message is only marked for deletion and will only permanently delete the messages once you quit the session.

In Windows Vista, if you type telnet in run, you will get the error message “Windows cannot find ‘telnet’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.” To enable Telnet in Windows Vista, go to Control Panel, Programs, Programs and Features, and then click Turn Windows Features on or off. In the list, scroll down and select Telnet Client. Click OK to start the installation.

By the way, the winners for Nero BackItUp 4 and Nero 9 license has just been announced. You can go to this page to see if you’ve won!

Few weeks ago I had a project to create a website for a church. A church’s website doesn’t need to have any complicated features, just static pages for maps and directions, service times, photo gallery, some introductory write ups, etc and this can be easily done using WordPress. The Church already have a Facebook page with a few photo albums that I have to move to the official website. Although it is not something very difficult, but it is definitely very time consuming if I had to manually save every single photo from right click menu and then upload it to the official website.

What I need is probably a web browser extension either for Chrome or Firefox that can somehow help me to easily download and save all the photos to my computer so that I can upload it to the official church website. There seems to be quite a few suggestions but most of them are outdated plugins that no longer works. Finally I found a website called PhotoLive that lets me save photos and albums from social networks like Facebook, without needing access to my account.


PhotoLive works with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE, Opera, and more. All I need to do is drag the bookmarklet to my bookmarks bar or save it as a bookmark to install. Then when I want to download the album from Facebook, I will just need to be in the album page and click the “Download Photos” bookmarklet. A small PhotoLive bar with two buttons (Download Album or Hi-Res) will appear on top of the photos.

Clicking the Download Album button will bring me to PhotoLive’s website and within a couple of seconds will prompt me to download all the photos compressed into a single in ZIP file. If the album in Facebook contains more than 25 photos, PhotoLive will split them into a multiple parts with 25 photos per part.

Downloading photo albums from Facebook using PhotoLive can’t get any easier than this. No need to install third party software and don’t need to use apps that always ask for access to your accounts. The service is 100% private and secure, meaning they don’t save or cache the photos, account information, browsing history, etc.. In fact, the extension doesn’t even retrieve any information other than the photos you select. Very useful and I hope their free service will be available for a long time.

[ Install PhotoLive Bookmarklet ]

Having a webserver on your PC can greatly help you, since you can test out stuff on your local PC. Main reason is you don’t need to wait till files are uploaded to a webhost, if you make changes to files you don’t need to reupload them. You have no restrictions and you have full flexibility. Another reason is when you’re installing plugins or making changes on the script, you wouldn’t want your visitors to see the error codes or distorted layout when things doesn’t go right.

Many years ago when I was just started basic web designing, that is exactly what I did. I registered a free Geocities webspace, use Frontpage to design a HTML page and then upload to Geocities. Since I wasn’t experienced in web designing, I had to do a lot of trial and error to get things right. I really wasted a lot of time reuploading and refreshing the page whenever I made any changes.

Most of the PRO web designers and coders that I know usually have a local webserver to do their thing. If you think installing Apache, PHP, MySQL, WordPress, PunBB, Mambo, Joomla, Drupal and other server application on your computer is tough, you’re wrong. I am going to show you how EASY it is for you to install a local webserver with Apache, SQL, PHP and other applications in Windows.


There are a few brands of free software which allows you to easily install local webserver but I am going to share with you my favorite which is WOS because it’s portable. Good thing about portable is if you don’t run it, it doesn’t run any unnecessary services that takes up your memory and CPP resources.

WOS Portable stands for the three letter abbreviation Webserver On Stick Portable and makes it possible, to run a webserver based on Apache, MySQL and PHP from an USB Stick or any other writable media (harddrive, flash cards etc.) without installation under Windows (98 to Vista).

With WOS, you can install the following server software:
– Apache2
– ImageMagick
– MySQL5
– PHP4
– PHP5

There are also optional Application Software which you can install:
– Drupal
– GTD-PHP
– Joomla
– Mambo
– MediaWiki
– Moodle
– OS_Commerce
– OpenDB
– PHPMyAdmin
– PunBB
– TYPO3
– Taskfreak
– WordPress
– knowledgeroot
– xoops

Installation is very easy. WOS Portable can be downloaded using the WOS Mixer (there you can choose which packages you want to have). If you only want to have Apache, MySQL, PHP and WordPress, just check the following and click the Download Now button.

After finished downloading, extract wosportable.zip and run wos.exe from the wosportable directory. I’d advice that you extract wosportable directory to the root of your drive (C:\wosportable) because I encountered error messages when I tried to install from desktop. Choose the language that you want to use, accept the terms of use, and the next screen will show you the packages found and ready to install. Click Install button and it’d start installing the packages.

After completing the installation, WOS Portable status window will appear.

Your default browser will also open with WOS Portable information page. Take note of the URL, it’s your local address! Click on Back on the left to get to the main page. At the main page, it will show you the services that’s running and also packages installed.

Congratulations! You now have a PORTABLE local webserver with Apache, SQL, PHP, and other applications installed in your computer. There is another version of WOS called WOS X. WOS X is the “big brother” of the free WOS Portable. WOS X can do everything WOS Portable can and much more such as easy editing for the PHP, MySQL, htaccess, and Apache settings, remote control WOS X via web browser over a network, integrate more server software with include files and etc… The only requirement of WOS X is you must have a working WOS Portable. Then just extract and copy WOS X contents to the WOS Portable folder.

With WOS, you don’t need to setup a webserver using the tougher way by downloading Apache, PHP, MYSQL, phpMyAdmin and setting up the server manually, defining the php variables and connecting phpMyAdmin with MYSQL. You can also easily install third party application software such as WordPress, PunBB and many more automatically.

Thanks to Frank for sharing this software with me. Frank is a talented GFX guy and he’s the one that made the new forum theme based on this blog.

[ Download WOS Portable II | WOS X ]

Every once in a while, a giant antivirus company will make a huge mistake by flagging a very important file as a threat. As far as I know, Kaspersky once detected explorer.exe as a virus and quarantined the file making the entire Windows desktop, system tray and start menu to disappear! Many years ago, Norton too detected Flash Player as a trojan called PWSteal. Now, it is AVG’s turn to do that. Three days ago AVG detected a critical legitimate Windows file user32.dll as a trojan horse Generic9.TBN.

If you trust your antivirus program too much and quarantined the file, you’ll find that your computer unbootable when the next time you try to start up your computer.

You will end up with an endless loop of reboot with the error “STOP: c0000135 {Unable To Locate Component}. This application has failed to start because USER32.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem“.

For an advanced computer user, fixing this is pretty easy if they have a Windows installation disc, Windows PE disc or Linux LiveCD with them. Just boot in to recovery console and copy the backed up USER32.dll file from \WINDOWS\system32\dllcache to system32 folder. Boot up the computer, AVG should again detect user32.dll as trojan but this time choose ignore. Update the virus signature and the nightmare is over.

This is probably a little old by now but I thought of posting this fix because I got an email from Peter who resides in Belgium requesting me to write a step-by-step on how to fix this problem when the user don’t have a Windows installation disc. Otherwise he’ll have to send it to a local computer store that charges 50 euro to fix this problem.


You’ll need to have access to another computer to download the fix from AVG and burn it to a CD or USB flash drive. If you only have one computer, borrow your friend’s computer or go to your cousin’s place to do it. It’s better than wasting the 50 euro to fix this small problem.

If you’d like to use a USB flash drive (pendrive) to fix the problem. For this to work, the computer that you’ll be fixing must support USB boot function.
1. Click HERE to download this file.
2. Backup all files in USB flash drive. Extract the rescue_en.zip file and copy everything to the root of your USB flash drive. It’d look something like the image below.

3. Run makeboot.bat file and press any key to continue.
4. Connect the USB flash drive to the affected computer and restart the computer. It should boot up from the USB flash drive. If not, please see the user’s manual for you motherboard to find out how to let the computer boot from a USB flash drive.

If your computer is quite old and doesn’t support booting from USB, then you’ll have to use the CD method.
1. Click HERE to download the ISO image.
2. Burn the ISO image to a CDR by opening the ISO image. Don’t burn as file. Refer to this article on how to burn ISO images to CD.
3. Insert the CD into the CD-ROM drive of the affected computer and restart the computer. It should boot up from the CD. If not, please see the user’s manual for you motherboard to find out how to let the computer boot from a CD.

By completing the steps above, Windows should be able to boot up. WAIT! You’re not done yet! There are a few more steps required in order to fix AVG false detection.

1. Once Windows has successfully booted up, update the AVG program (Open AVG User Interface and click the “Update now” button)

2. Go to Control Panel > Folder Options > View tab > UNCHECK Hide extensions for know types.

3. Go to AVG program folder, by default should be in C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8 and rename the file “avgrsx.exe_off” to “avgrsx.exe”.

4. Then rename another file “avgsched.dll_off” to “avgsched.dll”.

That is all. Pat yourself at the back because you’ve fixed the missing user32.dll problem caused by AVG false detection problem. Go buy yourself a nice meal with the 50 euro 🙂

Few years ago one of my friend recommended a customer to me and they are in the real estate business. They were using Microsoft Excel to record down all the property listings and they wanted a website. I could help them develop a CMS website where they can easily key in the property listing to publish it on their website but it’d be double work since they have to maintain the real estate listings in the excel file and the website. So I looked around, tested almost all real estate software and I found one that can do both. You can key in the property details in the software and it has the ability to automatically create HTML files and publish it on the website. How cool is that?

However, the real estate software license is not cheap and it cost EUR 299 or US$429 for a single license and each computer needs its own license (e.g. 4 computers = 4 licenses). As you can see, this software is very very costly but I was stunned to learn that the full commercial real estate software is now offered for free!


Jade Property Suite is software for managing and marketing your real estate listings. The software allows you to generate a complete listings section for your website, to instantly print real estate brochures and flyers and to send PDFs by email. It has a database for your agency listings and contacts that is easy to update, search, match, print, export and web publish. It can be used with a standalone local database or with a shared database in a multi-agent office.

Features of Jade Property Suite 6:

Standalone or networked

Desktop database with easy search and fast data entry

Manage your real estate listings, contacts and enquiries

Publish your property listings to your website

Create personalized emails with full-color details

Print flyers, brochures, catalogs, reports, letters, labels and business cards

Customize to fit your business

Compact and powerful

Easy to install, understand and use

One of the best feature that I really like in Jade Property Suite 6 is the ability to select the property listing that you want to publish to the website. Jade Property Suite has a powerful web publishing system that generates the real estate listings for your website. Your customers will find it easy to locate a property on your website. You will find it easy to maintain. Jade handles everything, from image processing to search scripts and synchronized uploading. The latest version includes the new Animated Zoom makes examining a photo in detail very smooth and fast.

The reason why we do not need to pay for the latest Jade Property Suite 6 is because they want to help all of their existing users get up-to-date. Many users are still using versions 3 and 4 (upgrade cost money) and the software has improved hugely which they want everyone to know that. The best way to spread the word is by removing the cost for this version. So now Jade Property Suite 6 is THE full commercial product. There are no catches. The software can be used indefinitely and on as many computers as you like. There is no obligation to upgrade later. So get it now before this offer expires!

[ Download Jade Property Suite 6 ]