Raymond.CC Blog

Author: raymond

  • How To Change Windows Default Save As or Open Location

    Whenever you open a file from any program or try to save a file using “Save As”, most of the time the default location would be either Desktop or My Documents. I did a little research and found out that it can’t be changed. However, at the left side of the “Save As” dialog, you will see 5 locations which is My Recent Documents, Desktop, My Documents, My Computer and My Network Places that has been preset for you to save.

    Those 5 locations are called the “Places Bar” and it is supposed to be a convenient way for you to save it to the preset location. The “Places Bar” concept is a good idea, but not everyone regards those five default locations as the most suitable for their situation.

    Change default save as location

    If you’re working on something that frequently needs to save files to other than one of the preset locations, you can change the default save location, so you don’t need to browse to the location each time you want to save. I will show you how to easily you can change the Windows default Save As or Open Places Bar Locations. This method is only for Windows XP and will not work on Vista and 7. There is another article covering newer Windows operating systems such as Vista and 7 although the tools mentioned do also work with XP.
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  • 6 Ways to Test if Your Antivirus and Antimalware is Working

    Most of us have security software such as an antivirus, antimalware, firewall or Host Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) installed to help protect our computer against known or unknown malware. Malicious software can be very sneaky, getting onto your computer when you least expect it and stay hidden until the security software finally detects it. By then, the damage has already been done since the virus has been active and you wouldn’t know what information has been stolen from your computer.

    The question is, how do you know if the antivirus or antimalware installed is actually protecting your computer? The program would probably state that your computer is protected or the protection is enabled but how can you be sure that it is really working and confirm if the antivirus or its virus definition hasn’t been tampered with? Searching for a real virus from the Internet and downloading it to your computer just to test if your antivirus can detect it may not be the best option because you’re risking your computer being infected by it if you’re not careful.

    Here we have 6 ways how you can safely test your antivirus to see if the real time protection is truly enabled and working to protect your computer against viruses.
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  • How To Enlarge Images Without Losing Quality or Pixelated

    Have you ever tried enlarging an image and then it became blur? I tried many years ago but I never found a way to enlarge it without loosing quality. Some people said that it’s impossible and some even suggested to pay and get them done professionally… Here is an example. I want to enlarge my logo to 200% and here is what it looks like after scaling it to 200%.

    How to scale image without loosing quality

    As you can see, the enlarged image is horrible. I wouldn’t want to use such low quality and blur image on my website. Fortunately, there’s a simple way that I can enlarge images without loosing their quality.
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  • 5 Ways to View, Schedule Delete or Move Files on Next Windows Bootup

    Files that are currently opened or in use in Windows cannot be moved or deleted until they are closed. Most of the time closing the associated program would do the job but sometimes it still won’t work because its mapped to the memory or protected by another process. To solve this problem, most of us would simply rely on a third party software such as FileASSASSIN, LockHunter, IObit Unlocker, BlitzBlank and etc that is capable of detecting locked files and attempt to unlock them for further actions. Unlocking locked files has its own risk that can possibly cause crashes on the operating system.

    The safer solution is to mark the file for deletion on the next reboot and the Microsoft Windows operating system has made it easy for developers because it comes with a MoveFileEx API to delete or rename/move files the next time the system boots up. This task is performed by reading a registry entry called PendingFileRenameOperations located at HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager. Do note that the PendingFileRenameOperations registry key will not exist unless there is a pending operation.

    If you do not like messing with the Windows registry, here we have a few free tools that can help you read the PendingFileRenameOperations keys and display the list of pending file operations. Some of them have the capability of allowing you to schedule move and delete commands for the next reboot.
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  • File2HD Downloads Any Files From Website Including Myspace MP3

    A website can consist many types of files such as images, text, cascading style sheets, javascripts and etc to construct the website’s layout. Any experienced users will be able to identify the items being requested when a website is loaded using Firebug and viewing the Net tab. If you’re trying to analyze a website especially a malware infected one, you wouldn’t want to do that because it would mean that the malware is already downloaded onto your computer.

    One of a good and safe way to list all the files from a URL is by using File2HD, a free web service where it can list every single file that is pulled from the link that you entered and you can conveniently download it to your computer by clicking on the result. Other than that, it also offers premium service to help you download thousands of MP3 from Myspace even if they are disabled and not available to download.
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  • How To Uninstall or Remove Bonjour mDNSResponder.exe

    Bonjour, also known as zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. Bonjour uses industry standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically discover each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers.

    If you’ve installed software by Apple such as iTunes, software by Adobe such as Photoshop Creative Suite, Trillian, Pidgin, etc, chances are there’s already a Bonjour folder in your Program Files. This service starts automatically and runs a process named mDNSResponder.exe which you can usually end quickly in Windows Task Manager, although sometimes you will not be allowed to end the process. If you do not want Bonjour to be present on your computer and want to uninstall it, sometimes you can’t find any uninstaller for it and this is when third party uninstaller software comes into play! Even if you go to Control Panel’s Add or Remove Programs or Programs and Features, you might not be able to find the uninstaller there as well.
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  • 5 Ways to Preview ZIP and Download Selected Files in Archive

    ZIP is the most commonly used archive format today even though there are so many other better formats out there that offers faster compress/extract speed with smaller file size. Windows is probably one of the main contributing factor since the operating system itself is able to extract and compress ZIP files without relying on a third party software. Compressing multiple files into one will most of the time produce a smaller file size which can save web/hard drive space, time, bandwidth and it is also easier to send or download.

    As useful as it is, sometimes it can get a bit annoying especially when you only need a few small files from a huge ZIP archive. This would mean you will have to fully download the ZIP file first, then only get to extract the files you want on your computer. An easier way to get around this is to preview the ZIP file and then selectively pick the files you want to download from the archive. Here are 5 ways to do it.
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  • 6 Tools to Detect Zombie Bot Malware Infection on Windows Computer

    A botnet is a network consisting of hacked computers that are infected by malware and can be controlled by the botnet owner without the computer owner’s knowledge. They bots can be used to launch DDoS attacks that causes a website to go offline, sending spam messages, driving fake traffic, clicking advertisements and many more depending on the creativity of the botnet owner. Normally the user won’t even notice that their computer is a zombie bot being controlled because the malware is programmed to stay infected as long as possible bypassing both known antivirus or firewall software and does not damage or change any part of the operating system that may trigger the owner’s attention.

    Some of the ways for an Internet user to get infected by malware turning their computer into a zombie bot is by downloading unknown files, visiting hacked websites and running email attachments blindly. Most of the time a computer infected by a bot malware will not find anything suspicious because it is very light on the system other than taking up the Internet bandwidth. Some bots can even run an invisible speedtest to determine the full speed so that it only uses up half of the bandwidth to avoid any suspicion by the owner.

    Detecting infection associated with bots using antivirus and firewall is ineffective because they are normally made fully undetected through obfuscation before they are spread. A more effective way to detect bot infection is by analyzing the computer’s behavior and here are 6 tools that does that.
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  • 3 Free Online AntiVirus Scanners to Scan for Malware from Web Browser

    Many years ago, it was common to find an online scanner offered by an antivirus company for free which can be used to scan your computer directly from your web browser. As we may think an online antivirus scanner that runs from a web browser does not need to download and install a program, it actually still requires to download an add-on that stays installed and enabled on the browser until it is manually removed by the user.

    Most of the online antivirus scanners do not have the ability to remove or clean any found viruses as it is merely used to detect if there is any active malware on the computer. Although the online scanners are very useful for a quick scan and also to get a second opinion since it doesn’t interfere with the antivirus installed on the system, they aren’t very popular and the number of online scanners has dropped drastically from around 60 to only 3 today.

    Here are the 3 remaining online antivirus scanners that works with the current web browsers. Do note we are only looking at online scanners that work within a browser window and not the many others that need you to download a custom frontend or require any form of separate installation.
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  • Easily Switch Between 5 Different IP Changing Proxy Surfing Software

    There are quite a number of ways to change your IP address probably to protect your privacy by preventing scripts from tracking your surfing behavior, accessing blocked websites such as video streaming sites or even online promotions that are only available for visitors from certain countries. It is also well known that these proxy software can bypass blocked sites in universities and corporate networks. Although you can find a lot of websites publishing new and fresh proxy lists daily, most of the time, half or more proxies from the list are no longer working plus you need to manually scan using a proxy scanning tool to identify the good and bad ones. This is very time consuming and requires an advanced knowledge of computers.

    An easier method is to use VPN which will work out of the box after installing the software (OpenVPN) or using the Windows supported PPTP protocol. VPN is considerably more stable than the public open proxy but most of them are paid services where some providers offer free VPN trial accounts with limitations. Back to proxy, there are a few organizations that maintain a pool of working proxy servers for free and all you need to do is download their portable program, run it and configure your web browser to connect to the program. The portability makes it convenient to save it to a USB flash drive so you can use it on the go.
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  • 5 Free Software to Watch Internet TV from PC

    Most of us have a television at home with limited free channels to watch unless you subscribe to satellite or cable TV that provides a wider ranger of channels. If you didn’t know, it is possible to get free access to thousands of TV channels online from your computer by just installing a software without a TV card or any other hardware other than your computer, web browser and an Internet connection. These software are not sophisticated as it only provides a working TV channel listings and also searching or filtering capabilities. You will however need media player software such as Windows Media Player or RealPlayer to stream the video to your computer.

    If you search on the Internet, you can easily find a lot of software that claims to allow you to watch thousands of TV channels from your computer. After testing more than a dozen of such software, we end up getting non working channels on half of the software while the working ones are mostly shareware that requires a paid license. We’ve tested and compiled a working list of 5 software which you can watch TV from your computer for free.
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  • What is INFO2 File Hidden in Recycled or Recycler Folder?

    Most of us know what the Recycle bin does and how to use it, and its internal workings have changed subtly over different Windows releases. Windows Vista and above now use meta data information to store the selected files and folders in a recycle folder called $Recycle.bin before being permanently deleted. Windows XP and below users will have differently named recycle folders on their drives called either Recycled or Recycler. What’s the difference between the Recycled and Recycler folders?

    In fact, they have no real differences and you will have have either folder at the root of your drive. What determines whether you have Recycled or Recycler is actually due to which filesystem is present on your hard drive. If it’s a FAT32 Windows partition, you will get Recycled and if you have NTFS, you’ll have Recycler. Some people might even have both of the folders because they’ve previously converted their drive from FAT32 to NTFS. Likewise, it’s not uncommon for users of Windows 7 or 8 to come across Recycler on an external hard drive which has previously been plugged into a system running XP.

    recycler folder in the c drive

    When you delete a file in Windows XP’s Explorer or My Computer, the file immediately appears in the Recycle Bin. This is what you see, but actually there is something going on in the background. The complete path and file or folder name is stored in a hidden file called INFO2 which is inside the Recycled or Recycler folder. This file is very important because if INFO2 becomes corrupted or removed, normally anything currently in the recycle bin could be lost lost unless you try to use a piece of data recovery software to get it back.

    Let’s do a small test to understand better what happens.
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  • 6 Utilities to Copy Files from Scratched or Damaged CD

    Discs are one of the best media that can be used for backup purposes because they are relatively cheap today. A CD-R can store up to 700MB of data while a DVD-R contains 6 times more space than a CD-R. Moreover, writing your files to discs as backup does have another advantage where the data are read only. This means that if you insert the disc onto any computer, no one including powerful virus such as Almanahe that infects executable files is able to modify or delete the files that are written to the disc.

    The only problem with CD and DVD disc is it don’t last forever and also it’s sensitive. If the disc has your finger print or small scratches because of bad handling, chances are old disc players can’t read the disc properly. As for most modern disc players, it has error correction and can usually read through fingerprints as scratched surface. That is why some players seems to get stuck on some discs while it plays perfectly on another.

    However, if your disc player is unable to read your disc and you need to get back your data or photo from there, here are a few tools that you can use to try to get back your data before taking chances in some weird unorthodox methods such as using toothpaste, banana skin, candle wax or even flushing it in toilet bowl that may just damage the disc entirely!
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  • How To Crack Programs Yourself with Offset Comparison Tool

    Software cracking groups have been around for a long time. Many people will think that they are unethical because they are defeating the software licensing system to illegally reset a trial software (shareware) or turn it into an fully functional program without having to purchase the license. One may wonder the reason for doing this but most of the time it is not for monetary gain but as a challenge to know how “it works” and to gain more knowledge through unpacking, debugging and analyzing the program. The cracks that are being released to the public are a proof of concept for a specific version and they don’t normally re-crack it again when a new version of the program is released.

    Knowing how to crack a program using an available ready made patch, keygenerator or cracked files does not earn yourself the title “software cracker”. Only if you are able to think out of the box and figure out how to bypass the software protection yourself, then you consider yourself as a software cracker. Unfortunately it is nearly impossible to have someone to teach or coach you on how to crack programs other than learning it yourself from cracking tutorials that can be found in YouTube.

    Before checking out the advanced cracking tutorials, we can show you a very basic and logical method on how to crack programs yourself based on an old patch that does not work with the latest version. For example, an offset patcher for a program called ViceVersa Pro v2.5 build 2512 released on 3 July 2013 by Nemo from team SnD will not work for the current version 2.5 build 2513 (notice the difference in the build number). The patcher reports “wrong filesize or already patched!”

    Wrong Filesize or Already Patched

    It is possible that the software protection isn’t updated to prevent the patcher from working, but the patcher did not work with the latest version because the program was recompiled, moving the location of the bytes that the patcher supposed to change and failing the CRC32 check. Here is how to detect which bytes are being changed by the patcher and how to re-create a new patcher that could work for the latest version.
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  • How to Customize U3 USB Smart Drive to Become Ultimate Hack Tool

    Have you ever wondered if it is possible to automatically and silently hack into a computer to steal important data or plant a backdoor by just inserting a USB flash drive? It was possible on Windows XP computers by using a U3 smart drive due to the weak built-in security on the operating system. A U3 smart drive by SanDisk or Memorex looks exactly the same like any other normal USB flash drive except it comes with an additional emulated read-only CD-ROM partition along with the removable storage disk drive. Plugging in a U3 smart drive will show up 2 drive letters in Computer rather than just 1.

    U3 Smart Drive Letter

    The original purpose for a U3 to have an emulated CD-ROM on a USB flash drive is to automatically run applications such as the U3 Launchpad which is similar to the Windows start menu when the U3 smart drive is inserted to a computer using the Windows AutoRun feature. This is similar to inserting a software installation disc to a computer and an installer menu will automatically appear. To turn your U3 USB smart drive into an ultimate hack tool, all you need to do is modify the content on the emulated CD-ROM such as the autorun.inf to instruct Windows to automatically run your payload instead of the U3 Launchpad when the drive is connected to a computer.
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