Raymond.CC Blog

Author: raymond

  • 3 Ways to Analyze Memory Dump (.dmp) File

    The dreaded blue screen of death (BSoD) has been around since Windows 95. It is scary in a way that this blue screen can happen anytime without the user expecting it and there is no way to recover from this blue screen other than restarting the computer. Obviously the biggest problem is actually when you are working on something important and haven’t got a chance to save it. An unexpected blue screen will just cause you to lose all or some parts of your work depending on how often it is being saved. Other than that, the blue screen on an older Windows does look a bit scary with all the text and technical information on screen. Fortunately the blue screen on Windows 8.1 doesn’t look so frightening.

    blue screen in windows

    Anything can cause a blue screen in Windows. It can be from an unstable driver for a hardware device, 3rd party software such as an antivirus/firewall, or even a rootkit based malware. It can also be caused by an attacker exploiting or in another word “nuking” an unpatched Windows. Hardware such as memory, CPU and motherboards that are failing can also randomly cause blue screen.

    If the blue screen is caused by software, an inexperienced computer technician will have to spend more time to determine the culprit by going through the process of elimination of disabling all 3rd party programs that startup automatically, enable them one at a time and test until they experience the blue screen. However with the right tools in hand, it can quickly reveal which software is possibly causing the blue screen so you can work towards fixing the problem. Here we have 3 free software that can do that.
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  • Download Sony Memory Card File Rescue Software for Free

    My uncle recently bought a Sony NEX-5 camera and he was advice to get a Sony memory stick PRO-HG Duo because of the high speed data transfer. At the back of the memory stick PRO-HG Duo plastic cover, it said that the purchaser can use Sony’s own file rescue software that enables users to recover accidentally deleted files. The weird thing is it doesn’t come with a disc that can allow the user to install Sony’s memory card file rescue software. Although there are other free software to recover deleted photos, a Sony made software might have better compatibility with Sony memory cards.

    He asked me if I knew anything about it but I never heard about it. After researching on it, I found out that the Sony Memory Card File Rescue software can be downloaded from Sony’s website. Before you can download, you will need to type in the model name and serial number or downloading code as a proof that you actually own Sony’s memory card in order to use their file rescue software. It’s easy getting Sony’s model name as it is displayed on Sony’s official website but as for the serial number, it requires a bit of searching and it is provided by us for your convenience. Here is the step-by-step instructions on how to download Sony Memory Card File Rescue software for free even if you don’t own a Sony Memory Stick.
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  • Download Norton Security 2015 with Free 90 Days Trial Subscription

    Most people would have at least heard of Norton AntiVirus because they have been around for a very long time. The first version of Norton AntiVirus was released on 1991 during the Windows 3.X time and has been in active development till today. There were a few different versions of Norton products offered by Symantec which is the AntiVirus, Internet Security and 360 but they have all been replaced by Norton Security since September 2014.

    norton security

    You will find 3 different versions of Norton Security available at the official website. Norton Security for One Device, also known as the standard edition can only be installed on one device while Norton Security deluxe edition can be installed up to 5 devices. Both of this product replaces the old Norton AntiVirus and Internet Security. A premium edition also known as Norton Security with Backup is a replacement for Norton 360 that comes with slightly more features such as 25GB online cloud storage and allows installation up to 10 devices.
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  • 5 Tools to Delete or Replace Multiple Lines for All Files in a Folder

    One of the most useful features found in text editing software is the search function. By searching using keywords, you can quickly find information that you are looking for rather than referring to the index at the first page and then read the whole chapter. Another handy feature that most of the time you will find accompanying the search is the replace feature. You can find both search and replace feature even on Notepad, the most basic text editing software included in Windows operating systems.

    notepad search replace

    This search and replace feature is only limited to the text file that is currently opened in Notepad. If you want to automatically replace a word of phrase across multiple text files, there are plenty of third party free software that can do it because it is a very simple operation. For a more sophisticated search and replace that involves multiple lines, it is advisable to use regular expressions to do the job but regex is not easy and something that most people wouldn’t know how to use or even to write a working string.

    For a simple replace or removal of multiple text lines, an easy solution that might work for some cases is by using the greedy dot star (.*) to match anything in between. An example is removing the whole HTML head tag from the starting <head> until the closing </head> in HTML files by using the following search syntax:

    <head>.*</head>

    After testing a bunch of third party search and replace freeware tools, here are 5 that can allow the dot star usage.
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  • 2 Ways to Test and Determine If Your BitTorrent Speed is Limited or Throttled

    BitTorrent is a protocol that is being used for file sharing. It has been around since 2001 and is still going strong today with it estimated to be using up at least 50% of all Internet traffic. BitTorrent is not equal to piracy as it is merely a method to transfer file. However there are quite a few Internet Service Providers that don’t like their customers downloading files through BitTorrent and employ technology to block or throttle Internet traffic that is used by BitTorrent.

    There are a few different ways to block or throttle BitTorrent by ISP. They could be blocking the BitTorrent tracker host and without a tracker, you wouldn’t be able to connect to any peers. They could also block the BitTorrent website itself but this can be easily bypassed by changing the DNS or use a web proxy. Sometimes an ISP can temporarily lift the BitTorrent ban on certain days or time range that normally starts from midnight till morning.

    A more sophisticated method in detecting and controlling BitTorrent traffic is by Deep Packet Inspection. This system is able to intelligently detect BitTorrent usage and starts shaping the traffic by throttling the download speed to a minimum without requiring specific rules of blocking BitTorrent websites or trackers.

    As we said earlier, not all BitTorrent usage is linked to piracy. There are many legitimate software packages such as the different Linux distributions that can be downloaded using BitTorrent. If you are curious to know if your ISP is throttling or slowing down BitTorrent usage, here are some ways to test it without getting into trouble.
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  • Fix “Steam needs to be online to update” by Changing Download Servers

    Steam by Valve Corporation is a very successful software to distribute games that are purchased online. This system makes it so much easier because there is no need to wait for the arrival of the installation disc after purchase and the need to care for the CD/DVD which can be easily scratched and damaged. Whenever you need to reinstall the game, simply install the Steam software, log in to your Steam account and the game is available to download.

    This would not be a problem since most home Internet connections are broadband with fast download speeds, and it is also possible to backup the game files for offline installation. The only possible problem that a user can face is when Steam itself cannot be updated or fully installed. In a situation of a new Steam installation, the user will be required to download SteamSetup.exe at only 1.4MB in size and install it on their computer. Running Steam the first time will require downloading the necessary files at around 113MB in size.

    If you are experiencing problems in updating Steam, a fatal error window will appear with the message “Steam needs to be online to update. Please confirm your network connection and try again“.

    steam-fatal-error

    It is important that Steam is able to update and run without problems or else you won’t be able to download or play the games that you’ve purchased. If you are experiencing problems in updating the Steam software, here we have some workarounds to fix the problem.
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  • 3 Application Launchers with Automated Portable Software Installation System

    With the combination of the ability to easily create a portable application out of any software and reasonably large size USB flash drives that are getting more affordable, this allows us to store more files such as documents and even applications to the disk. Nowadays a computer technician is only required to bring along their USB flash drive containing their collection of tools such as antivirus rescue disks to repair a computer unlike many years ago when they had to carry a CD wallet.

    As time goes by, the accumulated programs on a USB Flash drive can be by the thousands and it may not be that easy to locate and launch the intended program not to mention keeping them up to date. Searching for the program is a waste of time. Alternatively you can store the programs in different folders according to their categories but a more efficient way is to just use a portable application menu software which is designed to manage and to launch portable applications from USB flash drives.

    There are easily around 20-30 such application launching programs if you include the start menu replacement software with most of them offering nearly the same features with different eye candy effects. So in this article we will only list the application launchers that have the additional built-in functionality to automatically download and update portable apps on a USB flash drive.
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  • How to Bypass User Account Control (UAC) in Windows

    The User Account Control feature has been around since Windows Vista and can still be found implemented on Windows 10. Basically UAC is a security feature implemented in the Windows operating system to prevent potentially harmful programs from making changes to your computer. Even if your user account belongs to the administrators group that is supposed to have complete and unrestricted access to the computer, you are still subjected to the UAC restriction.

    When you run an application that needs privileges to make file or registry changes that can globally affect all users on the computer, it will initiate a User Account Control notice window. The user can either click on the Yes button to allow the program that will make changes to the computer to run or else clicking No will stop it from running.

    user account control window

    If you compare between the versions of Windows that come with and without the User Account Control feature (XP vs. Vista and newer), XP has a very high malware infection rate while the newer Windows requires a much more sophisticated and advanced rootkit malware in order to take full control of the computer. In this article we’ll be taking a closer look at how effective the User Account Control feature is and what are its weaknesses.
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  • 10 Free Ways to Stream Torrents Without Waiting for Download

    BitTorrent has been around for so many years and it’s still widely being used today. You can find a lot of things including the latest movies and TV series to download on a popular Torrent tracker websites like “The Pirate Bay” which the authorities can’t seem to permanently shut down. Downloading files using BitTorrent is usually done with client software such as uTorrent, Vuze, qBitTorrent or Tixati.

    Every torrent client has its own distinct advantages and one very useful feature that is not commonly found is the ability to “stream” which is to start the playback without waiting for the whole file to complete downloading. Just like viewing online videos on YouTube, you get to start watching right away and that saves you a lot of time.

    If you’d like to stream a video or movie file from a torrent without waiting for it to download first, here we have 10 options that allow you to do that for free.
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  • 3 ForceBindIP GUI to Easily Bind Windows Application to Specific Network Adapter

    There are times when you are able to have both a wired and wireless adapter connected to different networks at the same time. A simple example is when you’re connected to your home router using the wired Ethernet adapter while an unencrypted Wi-Fi network is also available to connect using your wireless adapter. With both wired and wireless adapters connected to different networks at the same time, Windows does not give you the advantage of binding both of the adapters to give you a faster connection speed.

    ethernet wireless connected

    Which network adapter is being used for Internet purposes will depend on the metric being automatically assigned to the network adapter by Windows. Although it is possible to disable the automatic metric feature and override it with a custom value, this will only route all but not specific Internet applications to a network adapter.

    The ability to configure which IP address or network adapter to use for an application is commonly found in a BitTorrent client software such as uTorrent, Vuze, Tixati and Deluge. If your program does not support IP or network adapter binding, fortunately there is a very unique free and small program called ForceBindIP that allows you to control which network adapter or IP address to use on an application.
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  • 3 Ways to Modify Windows Route Table to Choose Which Connection to Use

    It is common to find two networking adapters in a notebook or in an all-in-one desktop which are a wireless and wired connection. Since both adapters can be simultaneously connected to a router, you might wonder which network connection your computer will use or will it use both at the same time? Obviously having multiple networking adapters connecting to the same gateway is unnecessary because it may cause unwanted routing issues. The best way is to manually disable the network adapter that you don’t want to use from Network Connections in Control Panel.

    disable network adapter

    Some BIOSes on branded computers such as HP have the ability to automatically disable the wireless when a wired connection is being used. This is logical because a wired connection is often more stable than wireless as it is prone to interference. Moreover, there is a higher chance that the wired connection these days has a faster connection speed up to 1Gbps while the fastest wireless speed at 1.3Gbps with the latest 802.11ac standard is hard to achieve.

    Even if your computer’s BIOS doesn’t support switching of networking adapter automatically, Windows actually has a built-in algorithm to decide which network adapter to use for best performance. It is not entirely true that there is a rigid rule whether the Ethernet or WiFi adapter will always be used when both are connected to the same router/gateway.
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  • 3 HTTP Debuggers to Decode Secured and Encrypted HTTPS Direct Download Links

    Ever since Google started using HTTPS as a ranking signal in the hopes of making the Internet safer, you can find more and more websites and online services starting to use HTTPS. HTTPS is safe in the sense that when you visit a website that uses the secure HTTPS protocol instead of HTTP, anyone such as your Internet Service Provider or network administrator that runs a packet sniffer on the network level cannot see what exactly you are doing.

    Visiting a website that uses HTTPS on all pages is definitely good but there is a small problem whereby you won’t be able to obtain the direct download links from a web installer that downloads from a HTTPS URL. An example is 2 years ago you were able to use URLSnooper, HTTPNetworkSniffer, Free HTTP Sniffer, Socket Sniffer or PacketViewer to display the hidden remote URL for Adobe Flash Player Installer but these tools no longer work because the installer downloads from an encrypted HTTPS source, rather than HTTP.

    adobe-downloader-port-443-https

    As you can see from the screenshot above, NetLimiter shows that the Adobe Download Manager connects to port 443 which is used for the encrypted HTTPS protocol (HTTP uses port 80). In this article we’ll show you some tools that can decrypt the encrypted HTTPS traffic so that you get the same level of details as HTTP.
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  • Unable to Remotely Control or Configure Kaspersky using Remote Access Software

    An antivirus software must be efficient in detecting and blocking a malicious software to ensure that the computer stays safe while connected to the Internet or network. Other than that, the antivirus must also be very good at protecting itself to prevent its processes from being forcefully terminated or modified by an external application so that it can continue to run on the system and monitor for suspicious activity.

    A simple example is attempting to end the avp.exe process that belongs to Kaspersky using the Task Manager and it shows an “Unable to terminate process” error window with the message “Access is denied”.

    unable to terminate process

    The example above is only a very basic self defense mechanism and it actually protects much more than that. A unique feature found in Kaspersky but is not available in other antivirus such as Avast, Avira, AVG, ESET, Bitdefender and Norton is the ability to prevent most third party remote access software from interacting with the program’s interface. If you’re connected to a remote computer using a remote access software, you won’t be able to configure and control Kaspersky as the graphical user interface does not respond to mouse clicks.

    While this is a safety feature to protect Kaspersky, it can also be a possible annoyance when an administrator legitimately wants to remotely configure the antivirus or internet software.
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  • 4 Online Services to Find Old Domain Whois History Information

    Anyone can register a top level domain such as mydomain.com from an Internet domain registrar for a small price that is normally paid annually. One of the registration steps involves providing valid and accurate contact information of the registrant. This contact information is known as WHOIS info that is published online and is accessible publicly by anyone at anytime.

    Some domain owners are very concerned that their real full name, mailing address, email address and phone number can be obtained so easily especially by spammers, hence they pay extra money to subscribe for Private Registration such as “Domains By Proxy”, “Domain Privacy”, “Privacy Protect” or “WhoisGuard” that hides their personal information from public display. As for people who cannot afford the private registration, they simply provided fake details or just copy the generic private registration information and use it on their profile.

    whoisguard example

    Providing fake WHOIS information can lead to losing your domain name if this matter is reported to ICANN. You are also not supposed to abuse any of the private registration services by illegally using their contact information for your WHOIS without paying for it and that too can get your domain into trouble.

    If you need to contact the current or previous owner of a domain name, it is still possible to do it by looking up the historical WHOIS information. There is a chance that when they registered the domain, the owner did not subscribe to any of the domain privacy services and instead entered their real contact information. Here we have 5 online services that can lookup domain WHOIS history records.
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  • Fix for Very Slow or Hang When Right Click On a File or Folder

    I’ve recently reformatted my laptop’s hard drive and reinstalled Windows because it was getting a bit slow and also unstable. Well I normally install and test software on my desktop computer but sometimes I am too lazy to boot it up so I ended up installing it on my laptop. This time I am very careful on what I install because I do not want to slow it down and then had to reinstall windows and set it up all over again. It’s not difficult, just time consuming…

    Weirdly after using the laptop for a few weeks, a problem started to appear that is the computer sort of hangs for a while about 10 seconds whenever I right click on a file or folder. I checked Windows Task Manager and there isn’t any process that shows any high CPU usage during that 10 seconds. I didn’t think it was virus because I could not find any suspicious autostart entries.

    right click slow or hang

    Then I figured perhaps it was some shell extensions that is causing the problem. For example, if you install WinZip on your computer, you’ll see a special WinZip menu when you right-click on a Zip file. This menu is created by adding a shell extension to the system.
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