Shutting down in Windows has been the same since Windows 95 which was 16 years ago. All you need to do is click on the Start button and the obvious Shut down menu will be displayed. Because of this, no one really ask how to shut down Windows. If Microsoft placed the Shut down button somewhere that is hard to find, then a lot of Windows 95 users will simply press the power button to turn off their computer which can damage the hard drive.

I’ve downloaded the Windows 8 Developer Preview ISO which is available for free and installed it on my Parallels Workstation 6 virtual machine. I’ve stopped using VirtualBox because there was an incompatibility and I had to make the switch. The Windows 8 installation is quite similar to Windows 7 but the biggest change would be the Start menu. The Windows 8 Start Menu takes over the whole screen rather than just displaying a bar with shortcuts.

When I am done messing around with Windows 8, embarrassingly I couldn’t find the Shut down button! After a bit of effort, I discovered how to shut down in Windows 8.


If you’re at the Start page, you will need to go to Desktop first. Then move the mouse cursor to the most bottom left on the screen where the Windows Start button is without clicking on it.

A menu will automatically appear showing Settings, Devices, Share, Search and Start. Click on the Settings menu.

The settings page will be displayed at the right hand side of the screen. Click on the Power icon and select Shut down.

Alternatively, the old method of bringing up the Shut Down Windows dialog box by pressing Alt+F4 at Desktop still works. I believe many computer illiterate users will have trouble finding the shut down button but then thanks to newer generation computers that is able to properly shut down the computer even if the user presses the power button (lightly, not for a few seconds) on the computer case.

I have to be honest that I am a very traditional guy. If I am used to something that never breaks, I will continue using it until I get so familiar with it that I feel tough to make a change. One example is I still prefer to use my old laptop because it has Windows XP rather than my new and faster Acer laptop or Dell All-In-One desktop because they came with Windows 7 pre-installed. I know as a technology guy I have to keep up with upgrades so I slowly started to use Windows 7.

If you are familiar with Windows Vista, switching to 7 isn’t going to be much of a problem unlike from XP to 7 because so many things has changed! One of the changes which I am not used to is the missing Quick Launch in Windows 7. I normally keep my Quick Launch toolbar in XP very small with only 3 icons and they are Internet Explorer, Firefox and a Show Desktop icon to conveniently minimize all opened windows and programs.

Normally you can easily enable the Quick Launch by right clicking the taskbar, go to Toolbars and select Quick Launch but it’s not there in Windows 7. By default, Internet Explorer is already pinned and I thought I can just pin Firefox and Show Desktop icon and it’ll be done but somehow I just couldn’t pin Show Desktop. After messing around for an hour, I finally managed to pin IE, Firefox and Show Desktop icon together to taskbar but there is a problem where the pinned icons doesn’t look and behave the same as Quick Launch icons when either one of the pinned program is running.

After a lot of testing, I found out that there is no way to make the pinned programs to work like the Quick Launch icons. Then I figured I had to somehow create a Quick Launch toolbar in Windows 7 and I managed to get it right.


1. First, I unpin all default programs from taskbar.

2. Unlock the taskbar by right clicking the taskbar and select “Lock the taskbar“.

3. Right click Taskbar, go to Toolbars and select New toolbar…

4. Simultaneously press Alt+D and type the following path below and then hit enter.

%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\

5. Use the mouse to select the Quick Launch folder shown in the window and click the “Select Folder” button.

6. You should see Quick Launch word appear on the right side of the taskbar. Right click on it, go to View and select Large Icons. Then again right click on the Quick Launch word and uncheck both “Show Text” and “Show title” by clicking on them.

7. Now move your mouse cursor to the dotted lines that is next to the start menu button until it shows the two arrows pointing left and right.

Left click and hold, drag it right to the end past the Quick Launch toolbar and once you see that the Quick Launch icons ended up at the left corner of the taskbar, drag the dotted lines back to the left.

8. Right click on the taskbar and select “Lock the taskbar“.

Now I have a quick launch toolbar that works exactly the same as in Windows XP.

If you didn’t know, you can use a shortcut key WIN+D to show desktop and CTRL+N to open new browser window for Firefox/IE. It clearly looks like Microsoft is trying to remove the quick launch toolbar in Windows 7 but luckily it is still possible to bring it back.

A software can be programmed to secretly connect to the internet. This is done in background and is not visible to users unless they know how to check. “Phoning home” is a term that is used to describe a software connecting to its own server probably to send statistical data or even to verify the validity of the license. As useful as it is for software developers, it can also be a threat. Malware such as Remote Administrative Tool (RAT) trojan with reverse connection capability is able to automatically phone home and connects to the hacker giving the hacker full control over the computer.

If you are the adventurous type that downloads and play around with a lot of software especially the dangerous ones such as keygenerators, patches, hack tools, then you must be even more careful to check if it is secretly phoning home. For computer newbies, running a firewall and letting it take care of everything would be the best choice. You can choose the best firewall listed at Matousec which list Comodo Internet Security 4 as the best firewall.

There are many ways to check for application that connects to the Internet and I will share with you the method that I use which can easily help you determine if a specific software is connecting to the internet.


You probably heard about using netstat via command prompt, TCPView from Sysinternals, CurrPorts from Nirsoft but I find them a little difficult to analyze since it monitors and displays ALL applications that connects to the Internet. Sometimes I have downloaded an executable file and I would only want to check on that. The tool to use is Process Explorer.

Process Explorer is a free and portable tool by Sysinternals which is similar to Windows Task Manager but it is way more advanced. The good thing about using Process Explorer to check for connection to the Internet is the ability to easily check on a single or multiple process and not all. Simply double click on any process from the list in Process Explorer and go to the TCP/IP tab. It will show both TCP and UDP connections that is made from the process. The only drawback about using Process Explorer to check for application phoning home is the inability to save the log of connections. Once the connection has been made and closed, it will be removed from the TCP/IP tab.

If you noticed that some software are secretly connecting to the Internet and there is no way to turn it off, you can either use firewall to block the connection or add it to your HOSTS file at C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc so that it redirects the hostname to 127.0.0.1. There is limitation in using HOSTS file because it can only translate from host name to IP address. This is also one method on how software pirates block software from phoning home which checks the validity of the license if they used an illegal keygenerator to activate the software. None of the software above such as Process Explorer, Netstat, CurrPorts, TCPView and etc is able to monitor connections made by rootkit. We should definitely look at some rootkit discovery tools in future articles.

[ Download Process Explorer ]

For most email servers, when it receives an instruction to send an email, the message is sent immediately and it won’t be possible for you to cancel an email that is already sent to the recipient. When an email reaches the recipient’s inbox (which normally takes less than 1 second), the only “probable” solution to cancel the email is to ask the server administrator to manually delete the email but the chances are slim because server administrators normally wouldn’t respond to such request as that would be an intrusion of privacy.

Gmail changes this by adding a very unique experimental feature where you can Undo Send emails. Basically after sending an email, you have a maximum of 30 seconds to cancel the sent email by clicking the Undo link. This is made possible by simply adding a queue before Gmail servers sends the email and not by deleting the email on the recipient’s inbox. You can verify this by sending a test email to yourself and you will notice that the email will only arrive in your inbox when the Undo link is removed. This Undo Send feature is disabled by default and only works on web based Gmail.


To enable Undo Send feature, login to your Gmail account, click the Settings icon located at the top right of the page and select Settings from the menu. Click on Labs tab and look for Undo Send by Yuzo F. Alternatively you can also type Undo Send at the search box to quickly find the feature. Select the Enable button and click the Save Changes button.

By default you only have 10 seconds to Undo the sent email but you can set it to 5, 10, 20 or 30 seconds in Settings. Access the Settings page again and this time at the General tab, look for Undo Send and set the Send cancellation period to 30 seconds so that you have the most time to cancel the email.

After enabling the Undo Send feature, whenever you’ve just sent an email, a notice box will appear at the middle top of the page saying “Your message has been sent. Undo. View message“. Simply click on the Undo link to cancel the sent message.

Unfortunately this only works on the web based email and not on email clients with Gmail’s SMTP. If you close the browser while the message is still in the queue, the email will be sent instantly and there is no way to Undo it even if you managed to re-login to Gmail within 30 seconds.

Early this year I’ve listed top 10 free data recovery software which can be used to recover data from accidental deletion. The reason I listed ten data recovery software instead of one is because not all can do its job properly. Let’s face it. Most freeware developers doesn’t put 100% of their hard work into it because they don’t get paid for doing that. The freeware that they created might be their interest which they create in their spare time or even a promotion to its shareware. So in my opinion, shareware is better than freeware MOST of the time but it has a price to pay.

Today I discovered a method to obtain PC Tools File Recovery genuine license key which normally cost $29.95 for free. You can get your free license now and have that software in your hand so you don’t have to panic and know what to do when you accidentally deleted important data from your hard drive.


PC Tools File Recover allows you to recover critically important documents, or other files, which have been lost by accidental deletion. These files may be lost by emptying the Recycle Bin, or using other deletion actions that bypass the Recycle Bin altogether. Such actions include Windows Shift-Delete, command line deletion, deleting excessively large files or using applications that delete files without the Recycle Bin.

When a file is deleted from the Recycle Bin, or if the recycle bin is bypassed altogether, the file can no longer be recovered by the Windows Operating system. The content of the file still remains on the drive, relatively intact, until the section of the drive it occupies is overwritten by another file. File Recover identifies the contents of such lost files on the hard drive and allows you to recover them. If a file has been partially overwritten, File Recover attempts to reconstruct as much of the file as possible with the remaining contents. This allows you to salvage at least part, if not all, of that recovered file to continue using it as required.

File Recovery Features

Recovers files instantly from hard drives, floppy drives and other types of fixed media. If you are a home user or a network administrator, File Recover fills a critical gap in your data protection strategy

Rapid scan engine – a typical hard drive can be scanned for recoverable files within minutes

Scan all files and directories on selected hard drives

Search for a recoverable file using part or all of its file name

Utilizing a non-destructive, read-only file recovery approach. File Recover will not write or make changes to the section of the drive from which it is recovering data

Batch file recovery (recovers multiple files in one action)

Works around bad-sector disk areas. Recovers data where other programs fail

Supports standard IDE/ATA/SCSI hard drives, including drives larger than 8 GB

Supports hard drives formatted with Windows® FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file systems

Follow the step by step instructions below on how to obtain the free PC Tools File Recover genuine license key.

1. Visit this page, enter your name and email address and click Request Free License button. It is important that you enter a real email address because the license key will be sent there.

2. Check your email. You should receive an email from PC Tools ([email protected]) with the subject Free File Recover License‏. Note down the Name and License Key.

3. Download File Recover from this link and install.

4. Run File Recover software after installation, click Register button located at the left side of the program and enter the Name and Key which you received from the email.

That’s it! Only 4 simple steps to get the genuine license key for PC Tools File Recovery. One thing I really like about File Recover is it has built-in heuristic file type algorithms for recovering files of specific types (such as .avi, bmp, .cab, .jpg, .xml and etc..). There is one good and bad news about the promotion of PC Tools File Recover. Good news is you get to use a $29.95 data recovery software for free and the bad news is it only last up to 7th September 2008. Well, at least it is better than nothing… Perhaps I’ll find something new and even better before it expires.

Argh, 2 days ago my computer was having problems.
First, I remembered entered a CD-R which I burn but couldn’t read, this shouldn’t happen!
After that, my computer started responding very very slow. I shut it down and stopped using it for a day.
When I boot it up the next day, I get the error message “A disk read error occurred. Press ctrl+alt+delete to restart”. However, CMOS detects the hard drive.
I searched around the internet and forums, and no one had the exact fix for this problem.
Hardware Analysis has the biggest discussion on this problem with 171 replies.


Some fixed it by the following methods and some unable to fix it.
1. Changing IDE cables
2. Change the jumper settings and not using Cable Select
3. Use recovery console and type fixboot
4. Use recovery console and type fixmbr

I first tried fixing it by playing around with the hardwares but unable to fix it.
Then I have no choice but to use software which will risk loosing my datas. I tried running chkdsk but unable to.
I also tried fixboot and nothing happens. Still the same error message. Finally I tried fixmbr and it says successfully fixed my master boot record.
Boot it up, and still unable to boot up to Windows. I boot it up to recovery console but this time I am able to see the C:\ drive.
When I list the directory, oh my, all the unknown/unreadable characters listed out. I know then, my hard drive is corrupted!
I’ve got no choice but to hook it up on another computer, run a disk recovery program to get back all my datas and reinstall Windows.
After reinstalling the Windows, it still has problems. I ran chkdsk and found BAD SECTORS! The nightmare of hard disk.
I formatted my hard disk with low level format with PowerMax from Maxtor FOR Maxtor.
After doing that, I scan my hard disk and voila, everything is okay.

It seems that this problem is caused by sharing your Hard disk with CD ROM on the same IDE cable.
Explanation by Davy Dane.
When connecting HD and CDROM/CDRW/DVD etc. to your computer you should follow these standards.
Don’t connect a HD and CDROM/CDRW/DVD to the same IDE port.
Connect the HD to IDE 1 and Connect the CDROM/CDRW/DVD to IDE 2 unless
You have an SATA HD then you can connect the CDROM/CDRW/DVD to IDE 1 but still never connect a HD and CDROM/CDRW/DVD on the same IDE port.
I believe there are now new DVD drives that run at 100 speed (DMA 5). If you have a 100/133 Speed HD and a 100 speed DVD drive then it’s ok to connect to the same IDE port.
When setting jumpers on HD and CDROM/CDRW/DVD drive always set the master to “MASTER ONLY” and the slave to “SLAVE”.
NEVER CHOOSE “MASTER W/ SLAVE (even if you have a slave)” or “CABLE SELECT” or “32 GB LIMIT”.
Make sure you have the correct speed cable on your HD. You need a 133 speed cable on your HD. It’s the thinner cable with the coloured end. The thicker cable for your CDROM/CDRW/DVD only runs at 66 (DMA 4).
One way of checking the speed of your HD is by going to the device manager/IDE Controllers right clicking on the channel and choose advanced settings. Your HD should be set to DMA 5 or DMA 6 (primary IDE). If it’s DMA 4 then you have the wrong speed cable connected to your HD.
Plug the Black end connector of your cable in your “MASTER” and the grey middle connector in your “SLAVE”.
Never plug the middle grey in the MASTER.

That makes sense doesn’t it? 😉

That’s not the end of my computer problems. I tried reinstalling Windows again after low level format, and it kept on giving blue screen during installation. I took off the unneeded hardwares such as Network Card, Sound Card, etc… one by one and tried installing the Windows.
Finally, i had 3 RAMs, 512 on slot 1, 256 on slot 2 and another 256 on slot 3. I took off slot 2 and 3 and tried installing Windows and this time no problem. I used a tool Memtest86+ and ran test on my RAM, and yes indeed there are problems with my 2nd and 3rd ram.

Here’s the memory test i conducted:
Test 1: Slot 1 – 512MB + Slot 2 – 256MB (stick 1)
Result: Got error on Slot 2

Test 2: Slot 1 – 512MB + Slot 2 – 256MB (stick 2)
Result: Got error on Slot 2

From the 2 test above, looks obvious that both my 256MB RAM has problems.
But wait, there is another test to conduct.

Test 3: Slot 1 – 512MB + Slot 3 – 256MB (stick 1)
Result: NO ERROR. (Can you believe that?)

Test 4: Slot 1 – 512MB + Slot 3 – 256MB (stick 2)
Result: No ERROR. ( I can’t believe it too!)

My conclusion is, the Slot 2 on my mother for RAM is damaged. And, for desktop PC, I would use FAT32 rather than NTFS on drives that contains Windows Operating System. I don’t want to go through all that again…

Davy Dane did said that “Most people think this has to be a HD problem but that’s not true. I had this problem when I had a bad VIDEO CARD, RAM, and MODEM before.”
I think he’s probably right too. The bad memory might have given wrong information on bad sectors. DUH!

Update: I tried to use Slot 1 and Slot 3 to install Windows XP and doesn’t work. I can only stick with 512MB of memory for the time being…

I was trying to install Gamer XP v4 yesterday, a heavily modified Windows XP for gamers, and I got an error message like the one below.

“An error has been encountered that prevents Setup from continuing.
One of the components that Windows needs to continue Setup could not be installed.
Manifest Parse Error : Invalid at the top level of the document.
press OK to view the Setup log file.”

When I press OK this is what I get:

Error:
SXS.DLL: Syntax error in manifest or policy file ” D:\I386\asms\52\POLICY\MSFT\WINDOWS\NETWORK\RTCDLL.MAN” on line 0
***
Error:
Installation Failed : D:\I386\asms. Error Message : Manifest Parse Error : Invalid at the top level of the document.
***
Fatal Error
One of the components that windows needs to continue setup could not be installed.
Manifest Parse Error: Invalid at the top of the document.

I thought that maybe the Gamer XP was corrupted and somehow was not suitable to install on my computer. I tried searching if anyone had the same problem as me during installing Gamer XP but none had this problem. I started to think that maybe I did not burn the ISO image correctly because I was doing a fresh clean installation.


From Microsoft Knowledge Base, it stated that this issue may occur if the file that is on the Windows XP CD-ROM is damaged. I checked the Gamer XP CD that I burnt and it has a little scratch. I took a new CD-R and burn the Gamer XP ISO image again. This time I am able to install without problems.

So if you have this error message, just try another CD, I would say most of the time will work.

Hard drive bad sectors can cause your operating system to be unstable and also data corruption. If a sector that already contains data becomes damaged, you will need special software to recover the data. Today I am just going to teach you how to repair damaged or corrupted ZIP archive. Whether it’s from bad sector, or from your friend who didn’t transfer the ZIP archive completely to you, or even from a bad and old floppy. Usually a corrupt Zip file gives the error message “Cannot open file: it does not appear to be a valid archive“.

If you do a simple Google search on “repair zip file”, you’ll find a lot of relevant results but most of the ZIP repair utility on the first page are shareware. You have to buy their utility to repair your damaged ZIP file. Having a bad ZIP file is already bad enough, asking you to pay to repair the damaged ZIP file is not going to make the situation any better! So here I am, trying to make your situation better by introducing you to a FREE Zip repair utility.


Object FIX ZIP is a program for repairing Zip archive files. It can reconstruct a specified Zip file by creating a new Zip archive while recovering the contents of the faulty Zip file where possible. This software is designed for testing, fixing and processing of corrupt or unusable ZIP archive files that are partially damaged or not completely downloaded.

Only 4 steps are required to perform a repair on the damaged or corrupted ZIP archive.
1. Select 1 more more ZIP files to check.

2. Select an action to perform on the damaged ZIP archive. Every action is checked by default.

3. Third step will display the recovery progress. Nothing to do here except pressing the “Next” button.

4. Final step lets you view the repaired ZIP archive or extracted files. If you’ve missed a ZIP file to repair, you can click on the “Repair (an)other File(s)” button.

Object FIX ZIP supports all version of Windows including the new Windows Vista and it’s FREE! Repairing damaged or corrupted ZIP archive file MIGHT work and not 100%. Let’s say for example you have a ZIP file that’s 80% damaged. If there are a lot of small files and not 1 huge file in that ZIP archive, chances are you can still get back some of the small files. So don’t give up. Always try because you might never know you can get back the file that is most important.

[ Download Object Fix Zip v1.6 ]

Till today I do not have any news of the MSI 955X Platinum motherboard that I’ve ordered because my old motherboard failed.

All my datas are stored in my 250GB and 200GB Maxtor hard drive and I need to use them for my work!
I leave my computer on almost 24/7 when my computer is working fine and I know the lifespan of the hard drive will be shorten. I’ve already had 2 hard drive failures and lost a lot of data. Certainly don’t want that to happen again.
I think I will invest in two 3.5″ hard drive external enclosures. I can connect it to my notebook or my future computer via USB2.0 or Firewire. Whenever I don’t need to access the hard drives, I can just power it down.

I called up my friend who is working for computer hardware supplier. He let me have a look at the enclosure that he has and it looks nice! The casing is made up of aluminium which keeps the hard drive cool.
Weirdly, there is no brand on the box and the casing. I thought it was some cheap OEM 3.5″ hard drive external enclosures. I searched around the internet from the model number and found that the brand is ArrowMicro.



Features
• Model#: HD6-U2FW (USB 2.0, Firewire Interface &IEEE 1394A 3.5″ Hard Drive External Enclosure)
• Support USB 1.1 on Window 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP and Mac O/S 8.6 or above
• Support USB 2.0 on Window 98SE/ME/2000/XP and Mac O/S 8.6 or above
• Support MAC OS 8.6/9.X/10.X
• USB 2.2/IDE compliant:
-Integrated USB transceiver
-High speed (480mbit) and full speed (12mbit) support
-USB suspend/resume, remote wake up support
• Fits all 3.5-inch hard disks
• Support ATA PIO modes 0-4: ATA interface operation mode is automatically selected during device initialization or manually programmed with configuration date
• support UDMA modes 0-4 operation
• Bootable: The computer can be booted directly from this enclosure, forthe purpose of switching OS and system backup. BIOS support bootable function required.
• 40x time faster than USB 1.1
• Support 40-pin IDE interface
• Easy to replace and assemble ATA device
• USB 2.0 and 1.1 compliant
• Up to 480mb/sec
• Support up to 300GB Hard Drive
• Plug and Play hot swapping
• Superslim, lightweight and portable

Package Includes
• HD6-U2FW Case,
• Driver CD,
• Case Stand,
• USB cable,
• IEEE 1394 Cable,
• External Power Adapter

Specifications
• USB 2.0
-Complies with Universal Serial Bus Specification Rev. 2.
-Complies with ATA / ATAPI-6 Specification Rev 1.0 (PIO mode 0~4, DMA mode 0~2, UDMA mode 0~5).
-Supports 16-bit multiword DMA mode and Ultra DMA mode interface (Ultra 33 / 66 / 100 / 133)
-Genesys GL811E Chipset

• 1394 Link (Firewire)
-Fully interoperable with IEEE-1394(1995) and IEEE 1394.a-2000 compliant
-Support for SBP-2 target agent
-Fully ATA/ATAPI-6 compliant
-Supports IDE PIO modes and DMA modes and Ultra DMA modes up to UDMA100.
-Genesys GL711 Chipset

Last time RapidShare would host your files as long as your Premium account is still valid but now they’ve changed the rule. The rule of files not being downloaded longer than 90 days will be automatically deleted is now effective for Premium accounts too! I think they’ve implemented this rule for Premium accounts is because they have too many premium account users and files are flooding RapidShare’s hard drive space really fast.

The way to avoid your files from being automatically deleted is to download it yourself when there is no download for nearly 90 days. If you have a lot of files, it is going to be tough to keep track of the last download time from Premium Zone. Good news is, the creator of RapidGrab and The Grabber, Team CodeMasters, has created a tool that is able to extend your files life in RapidShare. I also found another simple DOS tool that is able to generate lists that shows you which files are about to expire in RapidShare.


Rapid Refresh downloads very small part of your files from RapidShare so that it will set a new expire date.

You can download files selectively, just critical files or all. You can import links from clipboard or from Premium Zone. Importing links from clipboard is useful for keeping RapidShare files alive that are uploaded by other people. Unfortunately, if you don’t have a RapidShare Premium account, this tool won’t work for you.

[ Download Rapid Refresh ]

Another DOS tool that I found doesn’t really have a name. I can only identify it as RS90(Maybe it means RapidShare 90 days expire?)

RS90 generates lists sorted by the date of last download. This gives you a clearer picture of which files that are hosted in RapidShare is about to expire soon. RS90 can support up to 3 RapidShare Premium accounts but do take note that RS90 doesn’t extend the expire date.

It is advisable to place RS90 folder at the root of your drive such as C:\RS90 then run RS90.exe. If you’re running RS90 for the first time, you’re required to enter the RapidShare Premium account login details. You won’t need to enter your login details the next time when you run RS90.exe. Your login details are saved as CLEAR TEXT in RS-Data.ini. Meaning anyone can open the RS-Data.ini file and see your RapidShare Premium login details. Just becareful of that…

[ Download RS90 ]

Hope these 2 tools are able to help you to keep your files hosted in RapidShare servers as long as possible.

I started using RapidShare premium account about 4 months ago because I download a lot of stuff from RapidShare everyday. Actually I didn’t need to buy the premium account because I can always disconnect and reconnect my ADSL connection to obtain a new IP address from my ISP and continue downloading the next file. That is all right if I need to download only a few files but it will be a BIG problem if I need to download 50 files or more everyday from RapidShare.

So I decided to try out RapidShare premium for a month which cost only 6.99 EUR and I also get 8000 points. With 8000 points in hand, I can easily get another 2000 points to extend my RapidShare premium account for another 30 days. That’s a pretty good deal for testing out RapidShare premium account.

Once I got the RapidShare premium account, immediately I went searching for ways to automate downloading from Rapidshare. I found Orbit and it was able to act as a download manager for RapidShare without problems.

If already have a download manager installed (such as FlashGet) and don’t want to install Orbit, then here’s an alternative on how you can easily download multiple files from RapidShare.


gRapid allows premium users of RapidShare to automate downloading of files without having to attend to them. It relies on Java and GNU Wget to process downloads from a file containing Rapidshare links, one on each line. It can perform simultaneous downloads of any number you may desire.

A few things you need to have before using gRapid.
1. Java
2. RapidShare Premium account
3. RapidShare links input into a text file called in.txt

If you have all the above, you can start downloading rapidshare links by running the command line:
java -jar gRapid.jar PremiumLogin PremiumPassword in.txt 8

PremiumLogin is your RapidShare Premium username and PremiumPassword is your password. The in.txt file would be used as your downloads list (one rapidshare link per line). The last number “8″ is the number of simultaneous downloads you would like to queue. Simply put, if you have 10 links in “in.txt” and 8 as the last number, then 8 copies of Wget would be running simultaneously to service the downloads, and as soon as one finishes, the one of the remaining 2 would kick in. My download speed is only 1024KBps and one connection is already using up all my download bandwidth. Unless you have a very fast connection, you can specify more numbers of simultaneous connections.

To see the progress of the download, just check the log file “wget-log.txt“. It shows you the download speed, download percent and also the file size.

Downloaded files can be found in Downloads folder inside gRapid folder. Currently there is no way to change it because it’s hard coded. Another thing is gRapid doesn’t warn you if links provided in the input file (in.txt) are not present, i.e. not found on Rapidshare or deleted, etc. To check RapidShare-URLs for availability, just use RapidShare Link Checker.

Here’s a very important RapidShare configuration for gRapid to work. Even the author of gRapid don’t have this information on his website. You must make sure that RapidShare “Direct-downloads” option is being turned OFF / uncheck.

By default Direct-downloads is uncheck. This option can be found by logging in to your RapidShare premium account and click on the Options button.

If the Direct-downloads is checked, you’ll get an error message saying “Exception in thread “main” java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space” after a few minutes of downloading.

Oh and by the way, gRapid is open source. Open Source = FREE.

[ Download gRapid ]

When UAC was introduced in Windows Vista, it sucked, PERIOD. Symantec came to the rescue by releasing a tool called Norton User Account Control which will replace parts of the Windows Vista UAC system. The good thing about Norton UAC tool is it allows you to whitelist programs so that you will not be prompted by the UAC warning on the allowed software. However the Norton UAC tool was never publicly released nor updated to work with Windows 7 maybe due to Microsoft decided to fine tune and polish the UAC in Windows 7.

UAC in Windows 7 isn’t any better either. As a power user, I find UAC really annoying and it is the first thing that I disable after installing Windows 7. The only reason I kept the UAC enabled on my test system is because I want to simulate normal user’s computer when I am doing research or testing some software. Don’t get me wrong, UAC does help a bit in protecting the computer although a lot of malware already comes with UAC bypass mechanism. If you would like to keep UAC enabled but run some programs without the UAC prompt in Windows 7, here is a software called UAC Trust Shortcut where it allows you to disable User Account Control for a specific application, by defining a trusted shortcut.


I had to test the UAC Trust Shortcut software extensively to fully understand how it really works. After installing UAC Trust Shortcut, a UAC Trust Shortcut Tray Manager will be added to Windows startup and sits in notification area. It doesn’t really do anything other than providing a convenient way for you to start the service and trusted shortcut creator.

To create a trusted shortcut, right click on the UAC Trust Shortcut tray icon and select “Open UAC Trust Shortcut 1.0″. A window will appear where you can add the name of the program that you want to whitelist, browse for the program and click the Add now link. The trusted shortcut will be added to Desktop and you can now run the program from the trusted shortcut without getting the UAC prompt. As easy as it seems, there is actually an additional step where it must be done or else the trusted shortcut will always prompt the User Account Control warning.

You need to manually start the background service (tracer.exe) from the UAC Trust Shortcut Tray Manager (which requires the UAC elevation) every time you restart, or log off Windows. This is only required once in every Windows session and then you can launch as many trusted shortcuts you want without getting the UAC prompt. The tracer.exe is the important main process where it needs to be running in order for any software that you want to run without the UAC prompt. Be informed that you should not attempt to run the tracer.exe directly from C:\Program Files\ITknowledge24\ or else you will get an endless loop of launching the program when you run any shortcut that invokes. I found that the UAC Trust Shortcut tool doesn’t support command line arguments and it doesn’t work with batch files as well which I thought I could call a program with arguments.

UAC Trust Shortcut is free and works on both Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit. Just make sure you download the correct version or else the setup will fail to install.

Download UAC Trust Shortcut