If you have been following my blog, you would have read a couple of articles that mentioned my wife using an iPhone 4 phone. Other than using a digital camera to take photos and videos of our baby, she would normally also use her iPhone to do that too. iPhone 4 is capable of snapping photos at 5 megapixels and also 1280 x 720 HDTV video or 720p for a shortname hand. She recently shot a very cute video of our baby which lasted for 50 seconds that she wanted to share it with her close friends in Facebook. I connected her iPhone 4 to my computer via USB cable and copied the video file in .mov format to my hard drive to upload it to Facebook.

To my surprise that such a short 50 seconds video takes up 62.6MB in size. Although my Internet download speed is 5Mbps, but my upload speed is only 512Kbps which would take approximately 20 minutes to complete uploading IF the line is not interrupted. Even if I am willing to spend the 20 minutes to upload the 62.6MB video to Facebook, I still need to rotate the video 90 degrees to the right so that her close friends can comfortable view the video without having to turn their head sideways…


Since I am going to edit the video anyway, I thought I might as well convert it to another format making the video size smaller. If you search on the Internet, there are many video editors available and some of it requires me to install Quicktime in order to rotate a .MOV video file. I’ve decided to give the free Windows Live Movie Maker by Microsoft a try since it supports a wide range of video formats such as “wmv, asf, wm, m2ts, m2t, mov, qt, avi, dvr-ms, wtv, mp4, m4v, 3gp, 3g2, k3g, mpeg, mpg, mpe, m1v, mp2, mpv2, mod and vob”

All I need to do is drag the .mov video file to the right hand box that says “click here to browse for videos and photos”. To rotate the video, I simply click on the “Rotate right” button that is on the ribbon menu. Now to save the mov video to a smaller sized file, I will need to click on the pull down menu to the left of the Home tab in the upper left corner, click Save Movie and select For Email. This option resizes the video’s width and height to a smaller window which also reduces the size of the file.

Windows Live Movie Maker took merely 21 seconds to save the movie and the final result file is only 9.38MB in size. It is THAT EASY and FAST! Now I only need 3 minutes to upload the video file instead of 20 minutes. For more information, you can also select “Create Custom Settings” from the Save Movie menu.

Windows Live Movie Maker doesn’t come pre-installed in Windows 7 and I have to use the Windows Live Essentials 2011 to download it. The Live Essentials installer allows you to install Mail, Windows Live Mesh, Bing Bar, Outlook Connector Pack, Writer, Family Safety, Messenger Companion, Messenger and Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. Make sure you select the “Choose the programs you want to install” when asked What do you want to install? or else your computer will end up having all of Windows Live Essentials programs.

[ Download Windows Live Movie Maker ]

Any amateur computer technician should know how to reset BIOS password because there are times when they need to access the BIOS and change some configuration such as boot order. The old school way of resetting BIOS password is by taking out the battery from the motherboard and let it sit for 5 minutes, then put it back and power it on. If you read the motherboard manual, they will tell you to switch the jumper to reset all CMOS settings. When it comes to HP computers, it is very different. I’ve tried taking out the battery and left it for a day but still the BIOS doesn’t get reset. There is no CMOS reset jumper on the motherboard as well. From the CMOS itself, you can even configure it to lock the casing and the BIOS access password has an extra security where it will be completely locked out if you specified 5 consecutive wrong password.

Now, if I don’t set BIOS password, some student will. If I set it, the student will try to brute force it and end up locking the BIOS completely. The only way is to call HP support center, wait for their technicians to come and clear the password for you. If the computer is within the warranty period, then there will be no charges but if the warranty is over, we’ll have to end up paying for it. I recently discovered a free tool that can be used to reset BIOS password from Windows.


CMOS De-Animator is a service utility which allows you to invalidate the checksum of your system’s CMOS memory, resetting all settings to default and clearing any stored BIOS passwords (if any) upon re-boot. There is no graphical user interface and all you need to do is just run the executable file. You will only get confirmation message to begin or exit, error handling messages and a success dialog box upon successful operation. There are 2 versions, the 32bit and 64bit so make sure you use the correct version according to your Windows operating system.

Although it did mention that no administrator privileges is required, but you may want to run it as administrator if the BIOS password did not get reset. I’ve tried it on my Dell 1909 all-in-one computer and it worked perfectly. Both the supervisor password and user password has been cleared leaving me able to access the BIOS without entering any password. I am not sure if CMOS De-Animator will work on HP computers or not because I currently do not have access them but I will update once I’ve tested it.

NOTE: Some antivirus flags this tool as a threat (trojan, malware, dropper, downloader) since this tool is capable of bypassing password protected BIOS. I am not surprised at all and am confident that they are false alarm. You should not even download it if you always listen to your antivirus.

[ Download CMOS De-Animator ]

When you buy a new branded computer or laptop from HP, Dell, Compaq, Acer, chances is the manufacturer has already helped you to install Microsoft Office 2007 trial version valid for 60 days. After 60 days trial period, you have to either buy the full license or you can’t continue using it. One of my customer who uses his laptop in his work place wanted to remove the preinstalled Microsoft Office 2007 that has expired but he wasn’t able to. I tried to uninstall from Programs and Features but got the error “Setup error – The language of this installation package is not supported by your system.” I’ve also tried running Microsoft Office diagnostics and nothing happens.

Microsoft has provided an article on how to uninstall the 2007 Office system if you cannot uninstall it by using the “Add or Remove Programs” feature. The steps is very long and involves searching and deleting a lot files including registry keys. Fortunately I found a small tool called Remove Office 2007 that is able to strip out Microsoft Office 2007 when the standard uninstall process wont work.


Remove Office 2007 is only 128KB in size and is able to remove only only Office 2007. I’ve ran this tool on my customer’s computer and it was able to uninstall the pre-installed Microsoft Office 2007. All you need to do is to click the OK button and it will do the rest.

Do take note that this tool automatically restarts the computer when it has finished deleting all the services, files and registry that belongs to Office 2007. After reboot, your operating system will try to look for the Office MSI installer again. Canceling the setup will take care of it.

Remove Office 2007 doesn’t have a close button where you can close the program if you don’t want to uninstall office. You’ll have to launch Windows Task Manager (right clicking the Taskbar and select Task Manager), and kill the RipOutOffice2007.exe process. A useful tool that is going in to my USB flash drive which I bring along with me when I service computers.

[ Download Remove Office 2007 ]

Google Adsense pays publishers in a few methods which is through western union, check or direct deposit. For Malaysians, we can only opt for Western Union or Check either through courier or local postage. Although Western Union is much easier and convenient where you can get cash by filling up the form but I prefer to receive the payment through check so that I can keep a nice record of the original receipt as a proof of income for taxation or any application purposes such as credit card, loan and etc.

Normally I would receive Google Adsense check on the first week of the month. If the 1st of the month falls on a Friday or the weekend, I will only receive the check on Monday or latest on Tuesday. However for this month, I felt that there’s a little delay in receiving my Adsense check because today is already the 5th and as far as I know DHL is very efficient. If you log on to your Google Adsense page, in the My Account > Payment History page shows the DHL tracking number if you click on the details link for Payment issued. I am not sure when Google actually prints out the DHL Tracking Number in your payment issued page but I know it’s usually later in the month. I just found out that even though Google haven’t provide the DHL Tracking Number, you can still trace where is your Adsense check.


Log in to your Adsense page, go to My Account > Payment History and click on the details link for the latest “payment issued”. Note down the “Payment Number” which is in all numbers and paste it in DHL’s website below.

http://track.dhl-usa.com/TrackByRef.asp?nav=TrackRef

For the shipment pickup date range, enter the Payment Date in your Adsense Payment Details for “From” and today’s date for “To”. Leave the rest blank and click the Track button.

From what I can see on the DHL tracking, my Adsense check is actually on the way and I would probably receive it either today or latest tomorrow. Most important thing to learn here is your Adsense Payment Number is actually the same as DHL’s Reference Number.

ESET security products such as NOD32 Antivirus and Smart Security are like one of the easiest program to use for free without buying a license or cracking it. You can request for the free trial username & password and when it expires, you can request another one. Unlike Kaspersky, once the trial has been activated and expired, the trial can never be activated the second time unless you use the illegal Kaspersky Trial Reset tool. There are also websites that offers lists of NOD32 username and password for free but with very short subscription period.

Last week I’ve shared with you all on how to obtain a 3 months free ESET NOD32 Antivirus username and password. Guess what, today I’ll share with you on how to get a 6 months free NOD32 username and password. The process is a little long but I think it is worth it because I am sure you get to LEARN something and also how to get a 6 months NOD32 license for free. I’ve been researching on this for the past 4 days until late night to get it right, my eyes are so tired that they are twitching all the time but I am glad that I got the steps written down to share it with you all.


1. First, you need to find a working open China proxy and set it to your web browser. Roinstrument is a good proxy server list website that lists the well-known proxy. Look for those with “cn” beside the proxy which means it is a China proxy server. Here is how you set your web browser to use the open proxy.
Internet Explorer: Go to Tools > Internet Options > Connections tab > LAN settings > Check Use a proxy server for your LAN. Enter the proxy address and also the port.
Firefox: Go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Network tab > Click Settings button > Select Manual proxy configuration and enter the proxy and port.

2. Go to http://tq.360.cn/trail-c.html. You should see a page that looks like the image below.

Enter the 4 digit code shown at the image and click the button below. You will then get a 24 digit activation code. (By clearing your browser’s cookies and cache, you can get new 24 digit activation code. Otherwise it’ll keep on generating the same 24 digit serial number) Remember to remove the proxy from your web browser once you’ve got the 24 digit activation code. The 24 digit activation code has a 5 days shelf life. If you don’t activate it within 5 days, the activation code cannot be activated anymore.

If you get a page that says “ESET NOD32防病毒360专用版半年免费试用仅面向于中国大陆地区用户，请检查您是否使用代理服务器。”, it means that the open China proxy that you’re using is not working.

3. Go to Australia’s NOD32 website to request for a 1 month trial license. Just enter your email address and hit the Submit button.

Check your email and you should receive an email from [email protected] with the suject “ESET Smart Security – Trial License”. Note down the 1 month trial ESET NOD32 Antivirus username and password.

4. Download the latest ESET NOD32 Antivirus here and install. Enter the NOD32 username and password when requested. If you’re using a 64-bit Windows operating system, you have to download this installer instead. During installation, check “Setup update parameters later” when asked to enter your ESET NOD32 username and password.

5. Now download ESET Activation Tool. This ESET Activation Tool is an official program by ESET to activate/convert the 24 digit serial number into a genuine NOD32 username and password. The problem in using the ESET Activation Tool is it verifies your IP address. If you’re not from China, you won’t be able to convert the 24 digit serial number into a usable NOD32 username and password. You will keep on getting the error message “Activation failed, please try again later. Error Code:62” when trying to activate. We couldn’t use China proxy because the tool itself doesn’t support using proxy. The solution to this problem is to use either Proxifier, ProxyCap or WideCap to tunnel the ESET Activation Tool through China proxy server. This will make the tool think that we’re in China trying to activate the 24 digit serial number.

6. Extract the downloaded ESET Activation Tool and run essact.exe. Make sure the first option “Activate with Activation Code” is selected. Enter your name, email and the 24-digit activation code. The name and email in the activation tool is not important so you can enter anything.

If you got it right, you should see the message “Activation succeed, the Expiry Date is:2009-MM-DD”

7. Now launch ESET NOD32 Antivirus, click the Setup icon on the left hand side and then click Username and Password setup. You should only see the NOD32 username with the password hidden. To view the hidden password, download Asterisk Logger. Extract, run astlog.exe and voila! the password is revealed!

Do take note that most open proxies are not stable and sometimes it’ll cause the page not to load properly or even the activation tool to work. Just keep on refreshing/trying and I am sure you will get it. The 6 months ESET username and password works on NOD32 Antivirus version 2.7, 3.0 and surely for the upcoming 4.0.

Some of you including sunkumar think that the article that I written yesterday was useless but if you do not have this knowledge, you will NEVER get to activate the 24 digit serial number to convert it to a genuine 6 months NOD32 username and password unless you ask a friend from China to do it for you or use a China VPN which costs money. Enjoy the free ESET NOD32 Antivirus username and password that will last you 6 months!

Did you learn how to setup FTP server yesterday? If yes, then this is sort of like a continuation of yesterday’s tutorial. One of my client’s place has hundreds of computer and it’s pretty common for their computer to be infected by virus and resulting in an “unrescuable” system which requires to reformat and reinstall Windows.

Their worst nightmare is hearing me telling them that the Windows on his/her computer is totally corrupted, can’t be fixed and the hard drive must reformat to reinstall Windows. They are only afraid of loosing their important documents and files on their computer. I’ve always advised them to backup their daily work to server because you may never know when your computer can’t be booted up but they’re lazy to do that.

Actually I could just tell them that I don’t know how to rescue the data from the unbootable system and just reinstall Windows. Being the nice guy that I am, I’ve decided to “try” rescuing their data before reformatting and reinstalling Windows.


The manual way of backing up data from a dead system is to take out the hard drive and connect it to a working system as secondary drive but I try to avoid doing that first. I always do the software way first. If that fails, I’ll do the hardware way.

The best software way I can think of is to boot up the dead machine with Windows PE (pre-install) environment CD. The best Windows PE CD I know is Ultimate Boot CD for Windows from UBCD4Win. UBCD4Win is a bootable CD which contains software that allows you to repair, restore, or diagnose almost any computer problem. UBCD4Win is based on Bart’s PE and all software included are freeware utilities for Windows. In short, Windows PE is Windows in a disc. You can run Windows directly from CD without having a hard drive. I always carry UBCD4Win in my CD case with me.

With UBCD4Win, I can use any of the methods below to backup files from an unbootable Windows. First, I boot up the system with UBCDWin. When I get in to Windows PE, I can either:
– Plug in a USB flash drive and backup
– Plug in USB external hard drive and backup
– If computer has CD burning capabilities, burn data to CD
– If network is supported, backup data to server/computer.
– Backup to FTP using built-in FileZilla Client

My customer told me he doesn’t have an external hard drive and only has a 256MB USB flash drive. Computer does support CD burning, but the data that he wants to backup is more than 15GB. That leaves us with 2 remaining methods which is IF UBCD4Win is able to load the network drivers, then I can copy his data to a server’s shared drive or to a local FTP server. I tried accessing a file server but I got the error message “SERVER is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. Access is denied.“.

I tried accessing a workstation nearby but still got the same error message. I don’t know why I couldn’t access any computers on the network… The final option is to try connecting to a local FTP server. I ran FileZilla client, typed in the FTP server IP address, username, password and port, hit the Quickconnect button…. AND IT CONNECTED! My customer was so happy and he quickly copied all his important data to the FTP server.

At first I only know the first 4 methods and I got to know about the FTP method when I discovered that UBCD4Win has FileZilla client. Then I remembered many months ago I helped them setup a FTP server in their network. So I figured I can use FileZilla client to connect to the FTP server and transfer files there.

If you’re interested to have the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, follow the steps below on how to create the disc.
1. Download and install UBCD4Win

NOTE: Step 2 and 3 is optional. Always check in UBCD4Win forums to see if the Net Drivers update is required or not.
2. Download the latest UBCD4Win Net Drivers v2.02 for supporting more than 500 types of NIC. This step is optional.
3. Delete the C:\UBCD4Win\drivers\Net folder and extract the latest UBCD4Win Net Drivers v2.02 (UBCD4WinNetDriversV202.exe) to C:\UBCD4Win\drivers folder.

4. Launch UBCD4Win from Desktop or Start Menu.
5. Insert original Windows XP CD to CD/DVD ROM and select the source. To confirm that the source is correct, click on Source from the menu bar and select Check.

6. If your computer can burn CDs, select Burn to CD/DVD and click Build button. If can’t, select Create ISO image and once it has complete creating the ISO image, copy it to a computer that can burn CDs and burn it.

To boot up computer with UBCD4Win, you need to go BIOS and set the boot sequence. Once the computer is being booted up with UBCD4Win, you’ll see a blue colored screen. Select Launch “The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows” and it will start loading…

When asked “Network support is not start yet. Do you want to start network support now?” Click Yes.

You can run FileZilla client by going to Start -> Programs -> Networking Tools -> FileZilla.

Enter Address as IP address of the FTP server, username, password and port and click Quickconnect.

If all methods above doesn’t work, the final option is to take out the hard drive and plug it in to another working computer as secondary disk. Boot up Windows and a new drive will appear. Depending on how the security is being configured on the dead Windows, you might be able to access the user’s application data such as Desktop, My Documents…

The overall computer’s performance doesn’t depend on just the CPU or RAM alone. You can have the a lot of RAM with the fastest CPU but if you have a hard drive that is not capable of keeping up with the speed, the whole performance gets degraded. Many years ago, whenever I help someone to build a computer, I would make sure that they would at least get a 7200RPM hard drive instead of the “standard” 5400RPM. It cost slightly more but the speed improvement is noticeable. As for now after installing Corsair Force SSD hard drive on my laptop, I find it hard to tolerate the slowness of 7200RPM hard drive that is on my desktop 😛

When your computer is performing very slowly but you find that the CPU usage and memory usage are not hitting the roof, then most of the time it is your hard drive that is being maxed out. One very good tool to confirm that is by using Drive Speedometer. Drive Speedometer is a simple and small utility created by Shane from PcWinTech (the same author who created CleanMem) that lets you monitor your hard drive’s read and write speed.


Drive Speedometer effectively shows you the current read and write speed of your hard drive. As you can see from the screenshot below, the SSD hard drive on my laptop has an excellent 71MB read and 56MB write.

But when it comes to the normal 7200RPM hard drive, it maxed out at a pathetic 10MB read and 10MB write.

This is a very simple straight forward program that uses the Windows performance counters to pull the information. If Drive Speedometer doesn’t work, probably you have Windows performance disabled and you can easily re-enable it back by running the provided enable_performance_counters.reg file.

[ Download Drive Speedometer ]

I received an email from Mariana asking me to review about a HTML5 remote desktop access tool they just released. It definitely sounds interesting because HTML5 is upcoming major update for HTML standard and one example is you can view YouTube videos directly from the web browser that supports HTML5 without using Flash player anymore. To remote control a computer using VNC, normally there is a server and a viewer(client) module. However by simply using ThinVNC, all you need to do is install the server module and you can access the remote computer from anywhere using just a web browser that supports HTML5. Currently Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera are HTML5 compliant. Internet Explorer users would have to wait until IE9 to enjoy the HTML5 support.

ThinVNC takes advantage of the latest web technologies like AJAX, JSON and HTML5 canvas to deliver a high-performance Remote Desktop access over the web, using HTTP and SSL protocols. Without the need for any plugin, add-on or any kind of installation on the client side, ThinVNC is the optimum way to ensure that you can connect to your remote computer from any place.


Installing and setting up the ThinVNC server is very easy. After installation, run ThinVNC and you will see an interface that looks like the screenshot below.

At the General tab, you get to set whether you want to allow anyone to connect or restrict it using authentication. By default both user and password is admin. Finally you can click the Start Server button to instantly allow connection. The checkbox for Auto-start is to allow the server to start automatically, not the software. If you want ThinVNC to auto run whenever Windows is booted up, then click on File at the menu bar and select Install as Windows Service. At the HTTP tab, you get to define the port and also to use HTTP or HTTPS protocol.

For a client to connect to the ThinVNC server, fire up any HTML5 compliant browser such as Google Chrome and type in the IP address followed by the port, for example http://192.168.1.1:8080 and hit enter. Then type in the server’s computer name and click Connect. You will then be prompted to login by entering username and password. There is a top bar which you can enable/disable control, show cursor, pause, refresh screen, scale, 256 color for faster and smoother control and disconnect.

ThinVNC also has a presentation mode to show your desktop or selected application windows to people over the LAN or Internet. It allows to create a presentation ticket and invite others to connect to your presentation, each using a different userid/password combination created ad-hoc. To access the ThinVNC Presentation Manager, you will have to right click on the ThinVNC icon at the notification area and select Start Presentation. Then you get to add the e-mail address of whom you want to invite to the presentation and select the application that you want to present. The server must be started in order to start the presentation mode or else the option will be grayed out.

I tried using TightVNC viewer to connect to ThinVNC server and it’s not possible. When you connect, it would say connection established and ends up with Connection closed. Of course no one would use the VNC viewer anymore if you can directly connect through a web browser but just wanted to test the possibilities. Another problem I discovered while testing ThinVNC is the scaling when using Firefox and Opera browser. If you click on the Scale button, the mouse cursor doesn’t get updated according to the new scale and causing the mouse clicks and movements to be inaccurate.

ThinVNC is definitely very useful, fast, easy to use and it’s free for non commercial usage. However it is still lacking of some advanced features such as file manager, chat and support for other operating systems. The ThinVNC server supports Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/Win 7/Windows Server 8.

[ Download ThinVNC ]

Here’s a quick tip for Windows Vista on how you can boost your hard disk drive performance. It is not enabled by default because there’s a risk of loosing your data if the disk loses power. Meaning do NOT enable this option if you don’t have a battery backup (UPS). If you’re using laptop, then enabling this option wouldn’t pose any risk since there’s a battery attached on every laptop.

Simply follow the steps below on how to boost your disk drive performance.


1. Go to Start, Control Panel -> Device Manager.

2. Expand Disk Drives.

3. Right-click on your hard disk drive and select Properties.

4. On the Policies tab, check Enable Advanced Performance.

5. Click OK and close Device Manager.

This option only available in Windows Vista. I’ve checked Windows XP and there’s no such option.

I bet you’d have heard about Windows 7 by now, the next release of Windows operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers. Few days ago Microsoft released Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 to public and allowing everyone to download the ISO image and test it out. The word BETA means it is tested for bugs, crashes, errors, inconsistencies, and any other problems before releasing it out to the public as stable version. There are 3 situations that I’d never use a BETA and that is an operating system, patches/updates and security software (antivirus and firewall)

Until today I was never satisfied with Windows Vista, so I was curious to test out Windows 7 and see if it could be as good as Windows XP. I don’t want to mess around with the master boot records to create a dual boot and also re-partitioning my hard drive for extra space to install Windows 7. The best way is to test drive Windows 7 in a virtual environment. Today I will show you step by step on where to download Windows 7, how to get Windows 7 product key for activation and how to install it on VirtualBox so you can mess around with it. I chose VirtualBox because it’s free and also much easier to use compared to other virtualization software.


Before you start, please make sure that your computer is faster than 1 GHz processor and has more than 1 GB of system memory to install and run Windows 7 Ultimate.

Where To Download Windows 7 Beta Build 7000

Windows 7 Beta 32-bit ISO (English): 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso

Windows 7 Beta 64-bit ISO (English): 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.ISO

If you’re not sure which one to download, just get the first one Windows 7 32-bit ISO (English).

Obtain genuine Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 Product Key
1. Go to Microsoft TechNet website

2. Click Sign In link which is located at the top right corner of the website.

3. Sign in with your Windows Live ID. Login with your Hotmail account will do.

4. Copy the URL below and paste it to the web browser that you used to login to Microsoft TechNet.

https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/scripts/gcs.aspx?Product=tn-win7-64-ww&LCID=1033

5. Windows 7 product key will be displayed.

Download, Install and Configure VirtualBox for Windows 7 Installation
1. Download and install VirtualBox.

2. Run VirtualBox and click New button.

3. Click Next

4. Enter the name as Windows7, select Operating System as Microsoft Windows and select Other Windows for Versions.

5. Depending on how much RAM is on your computer. My computer has 2GB and I could only set 1018MB. The Next button will be inaccessible if I set more than that value. Try setting as high as possible so that running and installing Windows 7 would be faster.

6. Click New button to create a virtual hard disk.

7. Click Next

8. Select “Dynamically expanding storage” and click Next.

9. Select the size of the virtual hard disk. I set is as 10GB but if you can set it higher if you have more to spare.

10. Click Finish and you’ll be brought back to Virtual Hard Disk. Click Next.

11. Click Finish.

12. Make sure that Windows7 is selected at VirtualBox and click Settings button.

13. Go to CD/DVD-ROM, check “Mount CD/DVD Drive” and select ISO Image File. Click the small folder icon.

14. Virtual Media Manager window will appear. Click Add button and browse for the Windows7 ISO file that you downloaded and click Open. Click Select.

15. Now you’re back to the Settings to configure the options for Windows7. Click Network.

16. Make sure that “Enable Network Adapter” is checked. Click on Adapter Type drop down box and select Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM). Windows 7 doesn’t include drivers for PCnet-Fast III.

17. Click OK to close the VirtualBox Settings for Windows7.

Install Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 on VirtualBox
1. Make sure that Windows7 is selected at VirtualBox and click Start button. You will see a bar saying Windows is loading files.

2. When it has finished loading the required files, you can select the language to install, time and currency format and keyboard or input method. Click Next when done.

3. Click Install now

4. Check “I accept the license terms” and click Next.

5. Select Custom (advanced).

6. Select the drive that you created from VirtualBox and click Next. Windows 7 setup will start copying files, expanding files, installing features, installing updates and completing installation.

7. Enter your user name, computer name and click Next.

8. Enter your password and hint.

9. Enter the 25-digit Windows 7 Product Key that you got earlier and click Next.

10. Select “Ask me later”

11. Review the time and date settings. If it is correct, click Next.

12. Windows 7 will now finalize your settings and voila! You have Windows 7 running in VirtualBox.

The Windows 7 Beta (build 7000) installs Ultimate Edition by default. When you activate the Windows 7 product key, it will allow you to continue using until August 1, 2009. Not sure what will happen next but most probably you’ll need to upgrade to a later beta version of Windows 7.

The first thing I noticed about Windows 7 is the fish wallpaper. I wonder why… Then I tried looking for a way to change the Start Menu to classic but was unable to. Seems like Microsoft is not planning on having a Classic Mode that lets you switch back to the old interface. The bad thing about it is people like me will have to try to get use to the new interface, menus and etc, but at least they’re setting a standard so that it won’t be so confusing.

I always like to use program that can do everything rather than installing two or more separate programs that does the same thing just because they used different type of technology with the same function. For example, you can’t use WinZip v10 to open RAR files. They had to wait till version 11 to support reading RAR and BZ2 files. That’s why I chose PowerArchiver.

Back to the story… Viewing files can be a pain since there are SO MANY types of extensions and softwares available. What if you can view all types of images, text, media, internet files and RTF files by using only ONE program?


Universal Viewer (ATViewer) is an advanced file viewer with wide range of formats supported. Implemented view modes and corresponding file formats are:

* Text/Binary/Hex/Unicode: all files, with unlimited file size (even 4Gb+ sizes are allowed);
* RTF/UTF-8: RTF and UTF-8 encoded texts;
* Image: all general graphics formats: BMP JPG GIF PNG TGA TIFF etc;
* Multimedia: all formats supported by MS Window Media Player: AVI MPG WMV MP3 MIDI etc;
* Internet: all formats supported by MS Internet Explorer: HTML XML DOC XLS etc;
* Plugins: all formats supported by Total Commander Lister plugins.

The Viewer is fully Unicode compatible and can be integrated into Windows Explorer’s context menu, so there is no problem to call it from anywhere in Explorer: right-click on a file and select “Universal Viewer” item. It can also be integrated into file managers that can pass to Viewer filenames via the command-line: in this case filename should be passed as first command parameter.

Some files can’t be read if you don’t install the main program. For example, you’ll need to install Microsoft Word to read .doc files. I know it doesn’t make sense to have Microsoft Word installed but not using it to read .doc files. That’s why there is something called “Lister plugins” which you can use load it to Universal Viewer and it will then support reading the respective extensions.

It’s free, open source and only 750KB in size. Might be useful to you if you’re like me who constantly need to handle many types of files.

[ Download Universal Viewer (ATViewer) ]

This data recovery software is free and developed by a Russian named Ivan Komlev. It features a friendly user interface and only three steps required to copy files from damaged CD.

1. Choose source drive
2. Selecting destination drive and folder
3. Copy files automatically.

Dead Disk Doctor – allows copying files from scratched or damaged CD, DVD disks, unreadable Floppy and Hard Drives or other media. It replaces lost data with random bytes reading files by expandable blocks. (Click on image to enlarge)

This software reads file by 4-16kb blocks and when hardware involves errors, the size of block decrease two times and so on until the moment when block of data will be read without any errors, or it reach minimum read size block, depending on file system, then program fills one block with random data and starts to read second one. After successfully reading data, block size increase two times again and again to reach maximum size.

I believe the text above is being translated directly from Russian to English. Whole paragraph seems a little blur to me and I find it hard to understand. From what I understand, this software will try to read the damaged media block and copy it to the specified location. For the block that is unreadable, it will replace with random data. Usually when you try to play a scratched CD, your CD player will be jumping from one track to another or will hang if it’s badly damaged. This software lets you create a new CD out of the damaged CD, so you can still play it.

The Dead Disk Doctor website says that this freeware “works excellent with Video or Audio files“. From logic, I think that’s true because you can skip a few seconds in video or audio files and you can still play it. As for data, if any part of the bytes are being replaced by random data, it will definitely corrupt the data.

Another good news is Dead Disk Doctor works on Intel Pentium 133Mhz or equivalent supporting Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP or higher with only 32Mb RAM and 7Mb free disk space on hard drive for installation. Of course you’ll be needing more disk space to recover and copy your dead disc data to your hard drive.

[ Download Dead Disk Doctor v1.23 ]