I have a couple of active premium accounts for file sharing websites such as FileSonic, FileServe, Hotfile and Uploading. I even used to have premium accounts for RapidShare, Megaupload and FileFactory as well but they are expired and I didn’t bother to renew them. The reason why I have or had so many different premium accounts is because of the type of files that I normally download kept changing host, thanks to the uploaders. The uploaders normally don’t stick to one file host forever due to their account being banned for copyright reasons and etc. So when they switch to a different file host, we just have to tag along unless we can tolerate the slow and restricted downloading features.

FileSonic was very popular and big until they’ve recently decided to disable file sharing service when Megaupload got into trouble. This has caused many uploaders to upload files to different hosts and it can get quite costly if I were to subscribe to the premium accounts of current popular file host. The ultimate solution for this problem is to purchase one special multi-host downloader account which allows you to download from different file hosting websites without any restriction.


No, I am not talking about premium link generators such as RapidLeech where the files will first be downloaded to the server and then provides you with a link to download the file from their server to your computer. This method is a waste of time and also bandwidth. These multi-host downloader service has perfected it by “streaming” the premium links allowing you to immediately download the files without any wait time or restriction. Pair the multi host downloading service together with JDownloader, it makes it even easier because everything is automated.

Here are a few popular multi-host downloader that is supported by JDownloader nightly build. You need to check them out yourself to see which suits you better because some may not include the file host that you want to download from. They generally cost a few euros for a 30 days access which it is VERY cheap if compared to buying the premium accounts for every file host out there.

https://www.fast-debrid.com/ (49 hosts)

http://www.real-debrid.com/ (91 hosts)

http://www.linksnappy.com/ (20 hosts)

http://www.zevera.com/ (36 hosts)

http://rehost.to/ (16 hosts)

http://premium4.me/ (11 hosts)

http://alldebrid.com/ (88 hosts)

http://www.streammania.com/ (25 hosts)

I am getting pretty decent download speed at over 500KBps on my 5Mbps internet connection

The only possible problem that you may face when using these multi-host downloaders are inconsistent/slow downloading speed, or a file host that has been temporarily disabled probably due to the premium account that they used being disabled/banned. Actually having an individual premium account doesn’t necessarily mean you can achieve maximum full downloading speed all the time.

You all might have noticed that the design for Raymond.CC and also forum has changed. I think it has a much cleaner and brighter look compared to the old dark design. The structure of this site is still the same. I didn’t want to make any drastic changes to the structure because it might confusing for some people. Do let me know what do you think of this new design by leaving your vote at the poll below.

Finally, if you find any bug, please let me know through email or the comment box below. Thanks!

End of last year I posted a tool which is able to check ICQ invisibility status of a person. The author of this tool has updated the tool to work with the latest changes in ICQ and also improved the program by adding a few additional features.

Changes in Newest Invisibility Checker version 2.0
– Login with ICQ account
– Able to register ICQ UIN
– Two methods (OSCAR ICBM Packet) of checking for invisibility status
– Able to specify time interval to perform check
– Hotkey to put NIC in tray
– Able to use NIC if you are using Proxy


It’s best that you use a new ICQ UIN to check on your friend’s ICQ status because if you send an OSCAR ICBM Packet using Newest Invisibility Checker to your friend, your ICQ UIN will show up on your friend’s ICQ.

Yeah I know you definitely want to post a comment asking is there anyone else still using ICQ. I believe many of us still has an ICQ account but we’re just not using it. So for those we still uses ICQ, enjoy this latest version of Newest Invisibility Checker.

[ Download Newest Invisibility Checker v2.0 ]

MBRWiz is a command line tool designed to directly modify the MBR, with the capability to set partitions active for booting, delete or hide partitions, back up and restore copies of the MBR, as well as sort the partition entries.

Included in the download is a 32 bit version (MBRWiz.exe) for Windows NT/2K/XP/PE/2003, a 16 bit executable (MBRWizD.exe) for DOS and Win9x, as well as a version for Linux.

MBRWiz v1.53 has been released as Freeware software, by Roger Layton. He has designed and developed this software to directly modify the MBR which can (and possibly will) destroy partitions and data on the hard disk. Me and the author can take no responsibility for any loss of partition information or data loss by using this program.


Available Command Line Options
/List: Display the partitions listed in the MBR, their order in the MBR, partition type, size, and whether active or hidden. The Pos field indicates the order the partitions are laid out on disk, while MBRndx shows them as they’re listed in the MBR record.
/Sort: It isn’t uncommon for the partition entries in the MBR to be unsorted, meaning that their order in the MBR doesn’t match the order on disk. This normally wasn’t a problem until Windows NT/2K/XP came along with its new boot loader, and the requirement for each partition entry in the boot.ini to point to the actual partition number. This option will sort the entries in the MBR to match their order on disk.
/IsSorted: Returns an ErrorLevel code based on the status of the partition entries:
0 = Sorted
1 = Not Sorted
/Disk=#: Selects the disk to use for all operations. This switch is always processed first, verifying that all operations specified on the command line will use the disk specified here. If not specified, Disk 0 will be used by default. All operations use the physical location of the partition on the disk (the first column in /list), while the MBRndx simply identifies the current position of the partition entry in the MBR.
/Active=#: Sets the partition specified by # active for booting. If the partition is hidden it will unhide it before setting it active. No other partitions will be hidden, or otherwise changed by this command. DOS and Win9x do not properly recognize multiple visible primary partitions, so make certain you also hide remaining primary partitions if necessary.
/InActive=#: Sets the partition specified by # in-active, therefore it will no longer be bootable. This option will not automatically set another partition active. An entry of * (asterisk) will cause all partitions to be set as inactive.
/Hide=#: Hides the partition number specified by #. An entry of * (asterisk) will cause all partitions to be hidden
/Unhide=#: Un-Hides the partition number specified by #. An entry of * (asterisk) will cause all partitions to be unhidden.
/Del=#: Deletes the partition specified by #. /Del=* removes all partitions on selected disk, Del=** removes all partitions on all disks
/Wipe=# Selecting an option of 1 will wipe the MBR clean, effectively removing all information from the first sector of the disk. An option of 2 will remove all information from the first (hidden) 63 sectors of the disk.
/Save=filename: Saves the current MBR to filename, where filename is a drive:\path combination to store the file. Substituting the word SECTOR for filename will store the MBR in a hidden sector on the disk
/Restore=filename: Reads an MBR file from filename, where filename is an existing path:\filename containing the backed up contents of the MBR. Substituting the word SECTOR for filename will restore the MBR from the hidden sector on the disk, if it has been previously backed up.
/ShowFile=filename: Show the partition structure from a backed up MBR filename or sector.
/BootMenu: This option will list the available, bootable partitions, and allow the user to select one of them to set active.
/Shutdown=#: An entry of 1 will force Windows to shutdown. An entry of 2 will force Windows to shutdown and reboot. This option may cause data loss if open programs contain unsaved data. NT/2K/XP/2003 version only.
/Ignore: Allows the program to complete the specified operation if an error occurs.
/Result: Displays the return code for visual verification of success/failure.
/HideErrors: Hides the display of any errors that may occur.
CommandFile: If no switches are specified on the command line, and a file by the name of mbrwiz.opt exists in the same folder as the executable, then the mbrwiz.opt file will be parsed for possible switches. Switches can be located on the same line, or dispersed across multiple lines. This option can be used when it’s not possible to pass switches on the commandline. The following is an example option file to save the disk 1 mbr to hidden sector, then reboot the machine
—————————-
/disk=1 /save=sector
/shutdown=2
—————————-

Version History
Note: The author is currently working on version 2.0 with an added/modified feature set, including functionality to Repair the MBR, Write new disk signature, Change partition type, Copy sectors, and more. You can check out the new stuff here.

v 1.53 August 3, 2004
Added option to delete all partitions on single disk, or all partitions on all disks
Added /Ignore option, to allow operation to continue if an error occurs

v 1.52 Nov 13, 2003
Minor release to resolve an issue sorting on disks other than disk 0 (zero). Fixed issue where DOS version would not properly read multiple disks Added a feature to Auto-backup the MBR if a command to sort, delete, or restore an MBR is specified. Windows version will write the file to the Temp folder specified by Windows, DOS version will write file to c:\, Linux stores file to /usr/tmp. The filename will be Disk-0.mbr, Disk-1.mbr, etc. for each physical disk in the system.

v 1.5 Sep 16, 2003
Added feature to read and display the partition table from a backed up mbr file. Added feature to read command options from a text file. Added ability to deactivate all partitions using *.

v 1.4.1 Sep 5, 2003
Minor release to fix display problem in DOS version

v 1.4 Sep 2, 2003
Added a version for Linux, including support for IDE, SCSI, and RAID devices.

v 1.3 August 12, 2003
Added support for multiple disks. Added Bootmenu option. Added ability to hide/unhide all partitions on a disk. Added functionality to save the MBR to a hidden sector on disk

v 1.2 July 7, 2003
Added Wipe functionality. Added Shutdown and Reboot functionality under 32 bit

v 1.1 May 25, 2003
Added support for a 32 bit version Windows version.

v 1.0 March 2003
Added functionality to activate, hide, delete, and sort partitions. Save and Read the MBR from a file was also included here.

[ Download MBRWiz for Windows XP/PE/2003 version 1.53 ]
[ Download MBRWiz for DOS/Win9x version 1.52 ]
[ Download MBRWiz for Linux version 1.52 ]

Note: This freeware is very useful to me as I just successfully tested to install Mac OSX 10.4.3 on my Intel computer. From Windows, I am unable to choose whether to boot to Mac OSX or Windows XP. So one of the way is to set my Mac OSX partition as active in order to boot to Mac OSX.
I only need to create a batch (.bat) file with the command below.
c:\mbrwiz /active=1
exit

I’ve copied the mbrwiz.exe to C:\ drive and the /active=1 is because my Mac OSX is at partition 1 and my Windows is partition 0. If I want to set my Windows partition active, the command would be c:\mbrwiz /active=0 (zero and not the letter O).

I will soon start blogging about Mac OSX on Intel because these few days I have been very busy with work and when I had the time, I am on my Mac OSX installed on Intel 🙂 So stay tuned!

From the company that brought us CCleaner, (one of the best free system optimization and privacy tool for Windows) and Recuva (one of the best free file recovery tool that will unerase files that you have mistakenly deleted from your computer), here is Defraggler!

Defraggler differs from other defrag tools on the market, by enabling you to quickly and simply defrag the files you want to, without having to process the whole drive. Simply run it, select the file and defragment in seconds. No more struggling with the Windows defragmentation tool! And remember like all Piriform products, Defraggler is completely free for both corporate and individual use.

Defrag Individual Files
Most defragmentation tools only let you defrag the whole drive. Defraggler gives you the power to select individual files and folders to defrag. So you can get the job done in seconds, rather than waiting for the whole drive to complete. Of course if you want to defrag the whole drive Defraggler will let you do that too.

Compact and Portable
Defraggler was written in the same compact architecture as other Piriform products (CCleaner and Recuva). This results in a compact single EXE application, which can be copied to a thumbdrive and then used whenever you need it, without a complex installation process. The EXE itself is less than 1MB!

Vista Support
Defraggler supports all OSs released since Windows 2000, this includes Windows 2000, 2003, XP and Vista. Although 64-bit support is not included in this version, we are working on compatibility, so it will be available soon! Additionally Defraggler supports both NTFS and FAT32 file systems.

Locate Files on the Drive
After analysis Defraggler lists all the fragmented files on the drive. Selecting one or many will highlight their location on the disk. Allowing you to visually see the location of files on the disk.

Freeware
Why pay hundreds of dollars for a commercial defragmentation tool, when you can use Defraggler for free! This includes corporate use as well!

Defraggler is still BETA, so there “might” be bugs. So far I’ve tested it and didn’t find any problem. Since it’s still in BETA, I’d advice you not to use it on servers or computer that contains important data. I truly admire Pirisoft for creating useful, small, portable, free and easy to use tool. They also mention that they’re currently working on some even newer titles, which will be out later this year.

[ Download Defraggler ]

Remember 2 months ago I wrote how nice if Microsoft implemented “tabs” in Windows Explorer? What if I tell you that there’s a way to add tab support to almost any running window? For example, lets say you have 3 windows explorer, 1 internet explorer, 1 windows live messenger, 1 uTorrent, 1 Limewire, 1 WinAMP all running together at the same time… I am sure your taskbar will be messy and filled up! It’ll be a lot neater if you can put selected running programs or even all of them in a tabbed program.



WinTabber is tabmanager that can add tab support to almost any window under windows 2000/XP. Working with tabbed windows works faster and efficiently.

This software is free and is too easy to use. On WinTabber main menu, click on the load new tab button to select the running task you want to put in WinTabber. To release the running task from WinTabber, you can either release all tabs from WinTabber main menu or go to Active Tab menu and click release. WinTabber is still in beta and it still has a long list of wishlist to make this tool better.

The shortcut keys for WinTabber:
Ctrl + Tab: Go to next tab
Shift + Tab: Go back to previous tab
Ctrl + 1..9: Activate numbered tab
Mouse Right Click: On active tab to show the window menu

Note: I think it’s better not to add Firefox browser to WinTabber because there’s a conflict in the Ctrl+Tab shortcut key. Firefox uses Ctrl+Tab to cycle between tabs and WinTabber also the same. So if you’re on Firefox browser and you press Ctrl+Tab, it commands WinTabber to cycle to the next tab instead of Firefox. Hopefully in future version of WinTabber will support custom shortcut key to fix this problem.

Enjoy a neater and cleaner taskbar after using WinTabber!

[ Download WinTabber ]

It is the 1st of May today and as I’ve promised, I will select 10 lucky subscribers from my newsletter which has commented in the article as winners. There are a total of 195 entries on Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus giveaway. I copied all 195 participants email address to a list randomizer at random.org. The first ten that appears after shuffling the list will be the lucky winners.

Congratulations to nchcoloh, waqas_abdulrazzaq, flashkidz3221, zewdu_c, geminithang266, utkarsh30june, mybiggerman, micro_dynamix, samyun112233 and rodrigo.provasi. You should receive an email from me shortly together with the Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus license key code. Please check your JUNK/SPAM folder if you did not receive my email after a day.

For those that did not win, please do not be despair. Remember yesterday I said that I will be posting about getting commercial software for free on this whole week? Today I will share with you on how to get full retail version of Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus for free!


If you go to Spyware Doctor website, you can find that it has 3 versions of Spyware Doctor. The paid, trial and starter version. Obviously the paid version has all the features and the trial version offers time unlimited real-time protection (free spyware blocking), but does not remove threats detected during on-demand scans, updates may also differ to those supplied to registered users. Weirdly the Starter edition listed there is actually Spyware Doctor WITHOUT antivirus. It is offered for free as part of Google Pack.

After a little digging, I found 2 links that is offering Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus starter edition. First link is a promotional hidden link from PC Tools website and the second link is from vnunet. Out of curiosity, I tested all 4 versions (trial, starter edition from pctools, starter edition from vnunet and paid version) to see what are the differences because I want you to use the best and most updated Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus.

1. Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus from PC Tools hidden promotional link
– Starter Edition
– After installation, product version shows 5.0.5.259
– Intelli-Signatures detects 199,382 threats
– AntiVirus Engine version 4.3.11

2. Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus from vnunet
– Starter Edition
– After installation, product version shows 5.5.0.212
– Intelli-Signatures detects 217,606
– AntiVirus Engine version 4.4.5

3. Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus Trial version (Before activating)
– Trial version
– After installation, product version shows 5.5.0.212
– Intelli-Signatures detects 217,606
– AntiVirus Engine version 4.4.5

4. Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus Paid version (activated)
– Paid version
– After installation, product version shows 5.5.0.212
– Intelli-Signatures detects 666,525
– AntiVirus Engine version 4.4.5

The hidden promotional link is offering old version of Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus compared to vnunet. I also noticed that the trial version and vnunet starter edition is pretty much the same except you can get a 30% off the retail price if you upgrade from vnunet starter edition to paid version. You can see from the intelli-signatures that the paid version is able to detect much more threats compared to the starter edition. The starter edition doesn’t have Startup Guard, Browser Guard, Process Guard, Cookie Guard, Keylogger Guard, Network Guard and Site Guard, so I guess that explains the significant drop in Intelli-signatures.

In my opinion, Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus offered by vnunet is the best option if you do not want to pay for it because it is able to scan and remove threats while trial does not remove threats detected during on-demand scans. For those that wasn’t so lucky to win this lucky draw but want to use Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus, you can use the version offered by vnunet.

[ Download Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus Starter Edition ]

Found a very interesting website that captures billions of web pages and archive them.

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a service that allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites. Visitors to the Wayback Machine can type in a URL, select a date range, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the Web. Keyword searching is not currently supported. Imagine surfing circa 1999 and looking at all the Y2K hype, or revisiting an older version of your favorite Web site. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine can make all of this possible.

I tried searching for www.raymond.cc at the internet archive wayback machine and I found…


The empty page before this blog even began.

Then I also found the first design I used for this blog.

Brings back the memories…

Anyway, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains almost 2 petabytes of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. Terabytes is not very common and the Internet Archive Wayback Machine already has petabytes of data!

If you have a web site, and you would like to ensure that it is saved for posterity in the Internet Archive, and you’ve searched wayback and found no results, here’s what you can do to allow the Internet Archive Wayback Machine crawl your web site.

Method 1: Visit the Alexa’s “Webmasters” page.

Method 2: If you have the Alexa tool bar installed, just visit a site.

Method 3: While visiting a site, use the ‘show related links‘ in Internet Explorer, which uses the Alexa service.

Sites are usually crawled within 24 hours and no more than 48. Right now there is a 6-12 month lag between the date a site is crawled and the date it appears in the Wayback Machine.

[ Visit Internet Archive Wayback Machine ]

There is something that has always annoyed me about the way windows shares are displayed to a user – they get to see all of them!

Yes I know about putting a $ after the share, such as c$, or admin$, but what about those shares that the president of the company wants to have – and doesn’t want his employees to even know that they exist?

Finally Microsoft has put out a utility to fix this.


It is called “Access-based Enumeration”. It is only available for Windows 2003 SP1.
Here is a typical shared folder with a few folders beneath it. The user does not have permissions to the Microsoft folder however it still appears.

Once you start the Microsoft Access-based Enumeration installation, you get asked a simple question:

If you select all, then access based enumeration will be enabled for all current shares on the system – otherwise you will need to set them each individually.

Once the install is finished, a new tab appears when looking at the properties of a share:

When enabled, Access-Based Enumeration will hide the folders and files underneath a share when the user who is mapped to the share has no permissions to read them. This is a security friendly and end user friendly feature, if you don’t have permissions to see it you shouldn’t and if you don’t need to see it you won’t!

Too bad they don’t have this type of functionality for 2000, or 2003 without SP!

The official download page for Microsoft Access-based Enumeration is located here:
Microsoft Access-Based Enumeration

I wonder how many of you tried netCut after reading yesterday’s article? Don’t you find it kind of hard to believe that netCut has been available for so long yet so many computers is affected by this attack just because of the standard of ARP. Attacking computers with netCut seemed to be fun for script kiddies but the person who got cut is no fun at all.

If you felt that your Internet connection that is shared on network being cut off when others is working fine, then here is how you can determine whether if someone is really poisoning your ARP cache. Other than that, if you’re connected to a public wi-fi, you should protect your computer against these attacks. Even when you think you are on a paid wifi which seems to be safer, you’re wrong because someone could cut off your Internet and then spoof their computer as your computer to get free internet on a paid wifi.


I did some research on how to protect against netCut and here are a few working ones. Not all can protect against netCut, for example Anti Netcut by tools4free and StopCut. Both of these anti netcut tools doesn’t work and annoying as well because every once in a while, an advertisement window will popup. In fact I even got a warning from Comodo Firewall that Anti Netcut is trying to secretly connect to a FTP server. In the Arcai’s netcut Software 2.0, there is a checkbox “Protected My Computer” which supposedly to protect your computer against Arcai’s netcut Software but it didn’t work on my Windows XP SP3 computer.

A working third party software that can intercept ARP spoofing/ARP attacks/ARP poisoning, intercept IP Address conflict, prevent Dos attack, safety mode, ARP flow analysis, protect ARP cache, active defense, locate attacker and ARP virus cleaner is AntiARP.

There are 2 version of AntiARP which is the Personal Edition and the Server Edition. Unfortunately both versions are shareware. The Personal edition can only work on desktop operating system such as Windows 2000, XP and Vista. If you want to use it on Windows server based OS, then you have to go for the Server edition which cost more. It can automatically block netCut’s attack and also let you know who is the attacker.

So far I found out that the free Comodo Firewall is able to protect your computer against ARP poisoning but you have to enable it as it is disabled by default. Click on Firewall at the top bar and then click Advanced button at the left pane. Go to Attack Detection Settings and check “Protect the ARP Cache”.

As for Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 users, sorry to let you know that it doesn’t block netCut attacks.

Very rarely we get a full 1 year license for free on popular antivirus such as Kaspersky. As far as I know, there were a few 6 months license promotion on and off but as for a full year, the first time was from China Kaspersky forum, followed by Barclays offer (2 years), then the Windows 7 launch party. Today I got an email Nisith informing me that currently there is an on going offer that allows anyone to obtain a one year Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 license for free!

This is a Chinese promotion and you can only use the activation code to activate the Chinese version of Kaspersky Internet Security 2011. The activation fails if you try to use the code on the English installer. The web page to obtain the license says that the promotion will end in 25 days but I have a feeling that it will not last long because there are a few methods which I’ve discovered on how to switch the Chinese interface to English which is now widely known. Simply follow the few simple steps below on how to get your free Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 activation code valid for 1 year worth $59.95.

1. Visit http://song.kaba365.com/

2. Enter your email twice at the 2 boxes and click on the button.

3. A new window will open and you have to key in the exact 5 digits you see on the window to verify that this request is legitimate.

Then clicking the button will show your personalized 20 character license key.

Now you’ve got your Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 license. If you can read Chinese and don’t mind having a Chinese version of Kaspersky on your computer, then go ahead and download the Chinese installer from the link below.

http://download.kaba365.com/kaspersky/kis11.0.1.400zh-Hans-CN.zip

Installing should be quite easy since most software requires you to click Next until it is completed. However since this installer is in Chinese, you can follow the step-by-step screenshot on how to install Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 Chinese edition.

If you want to switch to English interface, the first thing you must do is to turn off or disable Kaspersky Self-Defense. You can do that by right clicking on the Kaspersky tray icon at notification area and select the seventh option which will open the Settings window.

Then click on the buttons by following the numbers which will disable the Self-Defense in Kaspersky Internet Security 2011.

Next, click the Windows start button and type regedit in the “Search programs and files” bar. Right click on regedit.exe that is shown at the start menu and select “Run as administrator”. Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\KasperskyLab\protected\AVP11\environment\

Look for SkinSwitchDisabled, double click on it to edit and change the Value data from 1 to 0 and click OK. (If you get “Error Editing Value, Cannot edit SkinSwitchDisabled: Error writing the value’s new contents”, it means you did not disable Kaspersky Self-Defense).

Now open Kaspersky program and simultaneously press SHIFT+F12 which will instantly switch the interface to English edition. Do note that the language interface change is not permanent. Every time after rebooting your computer or restarting Kaspersky will require to press SHIFT+F12 to use the English interface.

For more reference, you can refer to my previous article on how to switch from Chinese to English interface in Kaspersky. There are 3 methods on that article and I would say that the first method (Shift+F12) is the best. There is another one which is renaming folders from EN to zh-Hans-CN and zh-Hans-CN to EN in C:\Program Files\Kaspersky Lab\???????? 2011\Skin\loc\ but it is causing the error “This application should be reinstalled”.

Do note that you have to activate this KIS2011 license key within a week or else it will get deactivated. It means this free license has only 1 week of shelf life to prevent people from harvesting tons of keys and make money by selling them as long as they can. This free offer from Kaspersky seemed to be public and NOT leaked which means you won’t risk your free Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 getting deactivated after a few days.

You might be here because you’re having titlebar problem with your Internet Explorer. When you run Windows Explorer or start Internet Explorer, the text in the title bar may be displayed as a single letter (for example, an “M” or an “E”). It might be your Internet Explorer’s titlebar contain garbage characters, or title bar truncated to 1 character. See an example below.

This Internet Explorer title bar problem can’t be fix by editing the registry. After a little searching, I found a solution to fix this problem.


It seems that Google Toolbar has been reported to sometimes produce truncation of the title bar text. Uninstalling and reinstalling Google Toolbar will fix the problem.

To uninstall the Google Toolbar from your system, use the Add/Remove Programs utility in the Microsoft Windows Control Panel.
1. Click Start
2. Select Settings
3. Select Control Panel
4. Double click the Add/Remove Programs control panel icon
5. Select Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, and then click the Remove button.

Once you’ve done uninstalling Google Toolbar, go to this link to download and install the latest version of Google Toolbar.

If uninstalling and reinstalling Google Toolbar didn’t work for you, try the solution suggested in Microsoft Support.

Late last month I’ve given out 100 license for BitDefender Internet Security 2010 to subscribers and there are 5 more winners that has yet to claim their prize. I’ve used a different email address to contact them hopefully it won’t go into their spam/junk folder. Just one day after the BIS 2010 giveaway, a kind person by the name of BB-Style from Germany sponsored 55 Norton Antivirus 2010 genuine license keys valid 366 days worth $2197.25 for the next giveaway!

I knew that the Norton 2010 products should be released somewhere around September based on previous versions release dates and I thought of only giving out the 55 NAV 2010 licenses after I get back from my honeymoon. After discussing with my wife, we both think that it’d be better to give it away before I leave since I will be gone for a month! Even when I am back, I probably won’t have time for this blog yet since I have to deal with many pending issues.

I’ve given a quick test on Norton Antivirus 2010 and I was IMPRESSED by the performance and also the intelligent virus detection. As usual, to be eligible for the lucky draw, all you need to do is subscribe to my daily article and write a comment at the end of this article. The lucky winner will be randomly picked and announced at tomorrow’s article.


Norton AntiVirus 2010, developed and distributed by Symantec Corporation, provides malware prevention and removal during a subscription period. It uses signatures and heuristics to identify viruses. Other features include e-mail spam filtering and phishing protection.

Here are the new features in Norton Antivirus 2010 which are not found in older versions of NAV:

Norton Insight Network

Norton Download Insight

Norton File Insight

Norton Threat Insight

SONAR 2 Behavioral Protection

Norton System Insight

The speed of scanning is very fast. I did a full scan on a clean Windows 7 Ultimate installation and the first time took 568 seconds (9 minutes 46 seconds) to complete the full scan on 65472 items. When I ran the full scan again for the second time, it only took 328 seconds (5 minutes 46 seconds) to scan 64578 items. The amount of items and time takes to scan has decreased because the number of trusted and skipped files has increased.

Next I tested Norton Antivirus 2010 against 23 current virus, worms and trojans that are circulating around the Internet. I turned off Antivirus Auto-Protect, dropped all the virus, trojans and worms into desktop and scan it. There seems to be a bug on the manual scan because it took 254 seconds to scan and “process” all 23 files. 20 out of 23 has been automatically quarantined. The 3 virus that was missed by NAV 2010 is the private trojan, an autorun.inf file and a trojan downloader which is created by Sality worm. When I tried to run the private trojan and trojan downloader created by Sality worm, a few seconds later SONAR detected security risk which blocked the file preventing from being ran and deleted it. As for the autorun.inf, it is pretty much harmless because it is pointing to a file that does not exist. All I can say about the SONAR II is its really impressive. It also checks how many users in the Norton Community have used this file.

If you open Windows Task Manager, you can only find ccSvcHst.exe that takes up around 10MB+ of memory. But when I used Process Explorer to view the running process, there are actually two ccSvcHst.exe process.
The memory usage for one of the process can get really high during scanning but after a while Norton would intelligently clear off the memory usage, dropping it to merely less than 10MB for both process.

Norton Antivirus 2010 is DEFINITELY BETTER than 2009 because of the SONAR II. Norton Antivirus 2010 runs on Windows XP (32-bit), Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit) and Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit). The system requirements are 300 MHz or faster processor, 256 MB of RAM (512 MB RAM required for Recovery Tool) and 200 MB of available hard disk space.

For those that already have a valid license for previous versions of Norton Antivirus, you can update to the latest Norton Antivirus 2010 for free. Visit the Norton Update Center, click the “Update Me Now” button download the AutoSetupPkg.exe to update your NAV to the latest v2010. There are times when this tool will wrongly detect that you are using the latest version when you have an old version. If that happens on you, click the “Choose My Product Manually” link to manually download NAV 2010.

I have the habit of launching the icons from quick launch more often than in desktop. Reason is when all the Windows are open, I needed a simple and fast way to show desktop, switch between windows and also to run software that I use very often such as Firefox. Although I am aware of shortcut keys such as Win + D to show desktop, Win + M to minimize all opened windows and Win + Tab to switch between windows but I seldom use it. Maybe I’m just not use to it.

Here is a question that I recently got in forum which is how to restore the missing Show Desktop and Flip3D Switch Between Windows shortcut if accidentally deleted it? First of all, make sure that you or someone else did not accidentally disable the Quick Launch bar. Simply right click on the taskbar, go to Toolbars and see if Quick Launch is checked or not. If not, checking it will bring back the Quick Launch bar with your Show Desktop and Windows Switcher Flip3D shortcut. If you’re sure that both of the icons are not there, here’s how to restore it back.


The easiest way to restore both Show Desktop and Switch Between Windows icons is to go to this location.

C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

If you can’t see the Default folder, you’ll have to go to Control Panel > Folder Options > View tab and select “Show hidden files and folders”.

Copy both of the icons to your profile’s quick launch. Your profile’s quick launch folder would be at:

C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

If navigating to these browsers are way too confusing, the easier way would be opening My Computer, type shell:Quick Launch at the address bar and hit Enter. That’d bring you directly to YOUR profile’s quick launch folder. Now paste the copied icons there.

If somehow the default user’s quick launch icon are also gone, then you can download both of the icons from the link below and extract them to your Quick Launch folder. They are taken from my Vista computer.

[ Download Vista Shows Desktop and Window Switcher Shortcut ]