Raymond.CC Blog

Category: Computer

  • UserAssistView Finds Out Last Run Program without Using a Keylogger

    Keyloggers is a very powerful invisible software where it is able to monitor every activity on the computer and automatically sending the logs to the installer without the user realizing it. Have you ever encountered a situation where your friend or a family member wants to borrow your personal laptop just because they are bored? If you’ve protected your personal and sensitive files with an encryption software such as TrueCrypt, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re safe because you may never know if they’ve decided to secretly install a keylogger on your computer to monitor what you do. There are some solutions to keep your PC safe while allowing other people to use your computer such as enabling the Guest account or installing a software such as Returnil that is able to rollback the computer to the way it was with a reboot. However if you didn’t manage to take the precautionary measures, you can still find out a list of programs last run or opened on your computer with UserAssistView.


    Windows stores information about the exe files and links that you open frequently in the UserAssist key in the Registry. The information are encrypted but the small UserAssistView tool created by Nir Sofer is able to decrypt and display the list of all UserAssist entries. All you need to do is run the UserAssistView on the computer that you want to view the last run programs and click on the Modified Time column to sort the results according to the latest date.

    Find Last Run Programs

    If you see a program name that is similar to advanced_keylogger.exe as shown on the screenshot above, then the person who last used your computer definitely cannot be trusted. However it would be a different story if the person is your father, mother or employer 😛 For unknown file names, you can always do a search in Google to find out more about the program. It is also possible to delete the UserAssist entries on the computer with the UserAssistView tool.

    UserAssistView is free, portable and compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

    Download UserAssistView

    Related posts:

  • Free and Simple Keylogger to Monitor Keystrokes in Windows
  • FREE PC Pandora Keylogger Software Registration Key Valid for 1 Year
  • How to Uninstall REFOG Keylogger Without Knowing Master Password
  • TinEye Finds Who is Using Your Image Without Permission
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  • HTML Tutorial: Using Image Map for Faster Page Load and Better SEO

    This is probably my first post about HTML. To be honest I am not really those webmaster that can create a webpage using Notepad because I don’t take the initiative to memorize all the HTML codes. Whenever I needed anything, I simply need to refer to guides and tutorials that is available online or books. Recently Google has announced that website speed is one of the factor for better ranking in search results and like many other webmasters, I too have done some improvements so that the blog and forum loads faster. The first thing I did was to analyze the webpage using the free online page speed analyzer provided by WebsiteOptimization.com and Pingdom.

    Decrease Image Loading

    The report shows that one of the factor that might be causing the page to load slowly is the huge amount image objects being loaded on the page. The translator plugin for WordPress loads 42 small flag images at the sidebar and at first I thought nothing can be done because the plugin is encrypted and asking Taragana to improve on this will surely cost money. Then I remembered that there is a way to make a single image with multiple links on it. After spending some time researching, this is called image map.


    Image map has been around for a very long time but it is not being used frequently. Basically what image map does is you can specify multiple links on a single image using coordinates. All I needed to do was to take a screenshot of the 42 maps and save it as a single image. Then I measured all the coordinates for each flags and assigned permalink + language letter. As a result, from 42 images with 23.5KB to load, it became only 4.72KB with only 1 image. The result file is now 80% smaller and an improvement of 8.2 seconds because of delays due to round-trip latency with an average of 0.2 seconds per object. I also get to save at least few hundred megabytes of bandwidth daily by implementing this one small technique.

    Before using Image Map
    Before Image Map

    After using Image Map
    After Image Map

    As for SEO, many people would question if the Google bot will still crawl on image map links and many answers I got from searching was positive. Google bot will definitely discover the links but may not be for link juice as this is one method on how spammers can create hidden links. If the links are not that important, then you should use image map.

    There are tons of tutorials on how to create an image map that you can find online and I don’t think it is necessary for me to rewrite it again. For demo and examples on image map, you can check out the excellent complete tutorial from OneExtraPixel. That is where I learned how to create image map.

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  • FREE Flash Game: Swords and Sandals 2 – Emporer’s Reign

    Found a free flash game, which is quite nice to play. You’re a gladiator released from your chains in a dark cell and thrust into the arena you must fight for your life, fame and fortune. In this game, you can create your own character, buy weapons and armors, earn gold and experience, and finally enter the arena and defeat your opponents!
    Swords and Sandals crack
    New features to Swords and Sandals 2 compared to version 1 include:
    I. The ability to save up to 10 characters
    II. Greater range of weapons, including ranged weapons
    III. Build your magic ability and utilise spells and potions
    IV. 19 tournaments featuring multiple fights and some of the nastiest bosses ever to grace a colosseum
    V. Hundreds of duels
    VI. New moves including ‘win the crowd’ and ‘psyche up’
    VII. Faster gameplay and full-screen graphics.

    This free flash game is only demo. To play in full version, you can either buy the downloadable version or you can play the full version online by subscribing to Playaholics. Sorry guys, couldn’t find any cracks for this game.

    Somehow I could never get to win the competition. Don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

    [ Play Swords and Sandals 2 ]

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  • Merry Christmas Everyone

  • A Utility to Check Popular Browsers History

    Because there is so much choice, most of us will use more than one web browser to browse the internet these days. The problem comes with them all being rather different in the way they store their data files like favourites, login details and what websites you have visited. Using multiple browsers probably also means that the places you visit will be different on each of them, so if you want to remember that useful site and didn’t bookmark it, going back through each browsers history can be a bit of a pain.

    One of the ways to get round this is to use a program to do it for you, and there is a new little utility from SecurityXploded called Browser History Spy, initially released on 29th March, which will show you the website history from the three most popular browsers around at the moment; Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. The experimental Google Chrome Canary builds are also supported.


    The program actually has a portable version and the installable setup in the same zip file which is nice because it gives you the choice, and we all love choice. Simply start the program and you’re ready to go. Like with all of their software, SecurityXploded don’t do boring interfaces, and this one is no exception, good looking, clean and simple.

    When you go to the Firefox or Chrome tabs, the program will automatically be pointing to the default location for the relative history file. If you have your profile stored in a non standard location, you will need to correct this by pointing to the right place. Press the ‘View History‘ button to retrieve the browsers history.

    You will then be presented with the history of the chosen browser, with the URL, website name and the date visited columns listed. Firefox and Chrome also have a ‘Visits‘ column to show the number of times that you have been to the web page. Like Windows Explorer, the data is easily sorted by clicking the title bars. Double clicking any entry will open the link in your default browser.

    In the bottom right of each window is an ‘Export‘ button to save the history contents with either Html or Xml as the output formats. This will export the current window contents only, not all three.

    In the Internet Explorer window, there are a few extra options, such as ‘Remove All‘ or ‘Remove‘ to remove any individual entry.

    The last button is ‘Add URL‘ which pops up a window allowing you the to add a website into the Internet Explorer history.

    Browser History Spy is a very simple tool to use for both novices and techs.

    Compatible with Windows XP, 2003, Vista, Win7

    Website and Download

  • Test Sleep and Hibernation Feature in Windows 7

    Windows 7 supports both Sleep and Hibernate feature which are very useful in getting back into Windows as fast as possible so that you can start working again without waiting for Windows to boot up and reloading all the software that are set to autostart. The Sleep feature is also very convenient to laptop users because closing the lid will instantly put the computer to sleep without having to wait for it to shut down. Basically Sleep/Standby wake the computer up faster but still requires a bit of power to maintain the data saved in RAM. As for Hibernation, everything is saved in hard drive instead of RAM, so it doesn’t require any power at all. The only draw back is its slower to startup but still faster than the normal Windows startup. There’s also a hybrid sleep where it puts any open documents and programs in both memory and on your hard disk. If for some reason you are unable to get the Sleep or Hibernation working in Windows, one of the best way to test is by using PassMark Sleeper.


    Sleeper is a small utility program developed by PassMark Software to help test the ability of PC systems to enter and recover from sleep and hibernation. It is able to detect how many sleep states are supported on your computer and easily test them with a single click of a mouse button.

    Passmark Sleeper

    Make sure you run Sleeper as administrator or else you’ll get an error popup saying “Error setting active power scheme. Could not ensure flag to allow auto-login after sleep is set”. It is normal that a computer doesn’t support all types of sleep states, so just check the “All supported states” checkbox and click the Sleep Now button to start the test. Your computer will then go into the supported suspend types and then auto wakes up in 30 seconds for Sleep and 60 seconds for Hibernate. If the PC doesn’t wake up on the supported states, that means the sleep function is broken and requires further actions to fix it.

    Other than using Sleeper to test the Sleep/Standy/Hibernate features, you can also use it as a command line tool to easily put the computer into sleep. First you need to know that there are 4 sleep states which is S1, S2, S3 and S4 (Hibernate). The command line below will put a Windows computer into hibernation:

    sleeper -S0001 -N 1

    While the command line below will put the computer into S1 sleep mode.

    sleeper -S1000 -N 1

    The four digits after the -S switch is used to determine which sleep state that you would like to use. Each digit should be a 1 if you want to test a sleep state or a 0 if you don’t want to test it. Sleeper is free for personal use and is compatible with Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003 Server, Vista and Windows 7 but requires administrator privileges.

    Download Sleeper

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  • Don’t Sleep Prevent Windows from Standby, Shutdown, Hibernate and Restart
  • How To Sleep Less and Have More Energy Than You Ever Had Before
  • Letting a Sleepless Laptop finally Sleep
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  • Test CD or DVD Readability by Running Surface Scan and File Test

  • Check a Users Password Strength with Password Security Scanner

    Whatever you do on your computer these days, it seems you have to create login details for just about everything. Online banking, shopping, social networking, email, forums, the list is endless. The sad thing is, there’s still a huge proportion of users who go online and use very weak passwords, even for services where their money or important personal data is concerned. As bad, if not worse, are people who may use a reasonably strong password, but then use the same one across the board meaning once somebody unscrupulous has that one password, they have access to everything. Believe it or not, I actually know someone who does that very thing, and he ignores my warnings of it being a very bad idea.

    Although you may well be security conscious yourself and have secure and different passwords for every place that needs it, there may be family members or friends that still don’t quite take it as seriously as they should. As we know, passwords like ‘12345’, ‘dog’ or ‘2012’ are not exactly secure. If you want to find out how secure someone’s passwords are without actually invading their privacy, having a useful little tool to audit the passwords and give an idea of how strong or weak they are without revealing them to you, is something that’s worth a look.


    One of Nirsofts many useful utilities is called Passowrd Security Scanner which does just that. It scans the system for passwords from a selection of applications and displays information about those passwords and how secure they are without telling you what they are.

    Passowrd Security Scanner currently scans Internet Explorer 4.0 – 9.0, all versions of Firefox, Windows Dialup/VPN passwords, MSN/Windows Messenger, Microsoft Outlook and Windows Live Mail. It would be good if more software was added to this list in future.

    The program is available as a portable tool or setup installer, but whichever way you choose to use the program, you need to right click on it and select ‘Run As Administrator’.

    The program will start the search for passwords upon startup, this may take a bit of time if there are a lot to get through. Once the scan is complete, you will be presented with several details about each password including; The item name (website, email address etc), the password type and the application it was found in, and the users name. To the right will be a series of columns giving some information about the password including its length and the frequency and type of the characters used.

    A useful column to take note of, is the ‘Password strength‘ one which gives a score based on things like the number of characters, repeating characters and the type of characters. Obviously, 1 would be the lowest and weakest strength, and a score above 45 is considered ‘very strong’ by the program.

    Double clicking on any row will bring up an easier to read window with all the details in a more visually pleasing form.

    It’s worth reiterating that this program will not reveal any passwords, but offers more of a pointer to how secure or insecure a users passwords are and why. A website called PasswordMeter will help assess the strength of passwords and offer tips on how to make them stronger and more secure.

    Passowrd Security Scanner is compatible with 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7

    Website and Download

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  • DomainTZ is Probably the Most Accurate Free Reverse IP Lookup Search

    Webhosting is very competitive nowadays and it can cost as cheap as US$13 per year for a beginner shared hosting package which allows you to host up to 1000 accounts but is limited to very little data transfer, CPU, memory, disk space consumption. If you go over the limits, all your websites under the same account will get suspended until you upgrade to a higher package or wait until the the limit gets reset on the 1st of the month. To cover the cost, some webhosting companies oversells by hosting hundreds or probably thousands of websites under one server. Overselling basically means to sell beyond the means of delivery and this can affect the performance and stability of all the websites hosted under that same server. Unfortunately only the webhost knows the exact number of websites hosted under their servers and probably wouldn’t let you know if you ask them nicely.

    One way you can determine how many websites are hosted under the server is by running a reverse IP lookup search or some people calls it “IP Neighbor”. Most of the time a single IP address is also shared to host multiple websites on a shared hosting. There are a lot of free reverse IP lookup services on the Internet and I find that the reverse IP lookup service offered by DomainTZ offers one of the most accurate results.


    Some reverse IP lookup services shows very little or outdated results. As for DomainTZ, the results are up to date (meaning that the IP address of the website that no longer points to the one that you searched for is removed) and most of the time it has the most listings if compared to competitors. There were a couple of times when I got more results on DomainTools Reverse IP Lookup but some of the domain no longer resolves to the IP address that I was searching for. If you give DomainTZ a try yourself, you will find that the results are generated really fast unlike some that can take up to a few minutes!

    Let’s take one of our friend (ghacks.net) for a test. I entered ghacks.net at the “Enter a domain name or IP address” bar and hit the Enter key. In 2 seconds, DomainTZ shows 9 records of domain names hosted under the same IP address as ghacks.net.

    Reverse IP Lookup search

    You can click on the URL to open the website in a new tab and the whois link to view the domain whois information. A restriction that I found with DomainTZ is it only lists top level domains but doesn’t list subdomains such as de.ghacks.net. When I reviewed DomainTZ two weeks ago, the service was still free and only a simple registration is required to unmask the asterisk from the results. However just last week they started to implement paid subscription to remove the * from the domain names 🙁

    From DomainTZ, I was shocked to find out that a website largeatom.com is also using the same IP address as raymond.cc. After checking with my proxy provider, they explained that largeatom.com used to use the same IP address that is currently being used by raymond.cc but now they’ve shut down the website and didn’t update their A records which is why their domain name is still pointing to this IP address. From this case we also learn that not all domain names with the same IP address are necessarily hosted on the same server. Nevertheless, DomainTZ’s reverse IP lookup is still a very useful service to find out if a shared server is hosting way too many websites.

    Visit DomainTZ

  • Workaround to Fix EXE Association in Windows 7

    Windows by default has an association of EXE files to allow you to run executable programs. We normally don’t need to do mess around with it because wrongly associating EXE extension to another program can be a disaster whereby running any EXE file will run under the program that you’ve associated. If you double click on any EXE program but it doesn’t do anything, then it is possible that the exe association has been deleted from the registry. There are third party tools that can fix EXE association but it doesn’t make sense at all because you won’t be able to run the tool in the first place when it is an executable file… The solution is to either download a EXE .reg fix or the Microsoft Fix it tool which is in .msi extension.

    The bigger challenge that I’ve faced was a rogueware that associates itself with EXE extension. Whenever Windows is booted up, the rogueware is automatically started because Windows loads a bunch of EXE files during startup.


    It is not possible to run any program at all because doing that will triggers the rogueware and blocking the program. Both .reg fix and Microsoft Fix it tools are useless in this case.

    Win 7 home security 2012 has blocked a program from accessing the internet
    Rogueware blocking any programs from running

    Using Process Monitor to monitor the registry changes, I found that this rogueware changes the EXE association to the following:

    EXE Shell Open
    Rogueware is triggered whenever any EXE file is ran

    After spending some time trying to figure out a solution on how can I fix the EXE association when the rogueware is blocking nearly every extension that allows me to run a program, I finally figured out the trick is to run the program from the Windows Task Manager. It won’t be possible to run the Windows Task Manager by right clicking on the Taskbar and select Start Task Manager because the rogueware blocks it but fortunately it is possible to launch the Windows Task Manager from the shortcut key Ctrl+Shift+Esc.

    Once you’ve launched the Windows Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc, click on the File menu and select New Task (Run…).
    Windows Task Manager New Task Run
    Then browse for any program that is able to fix the EXE extension. Terminating the process is useless since running any EXE file will run the rogueware so it is only logical to fix the EXE association first, then only terminate the rogueware’s process. Although the window looks very similar to the Run command when you press WIN+R, but they are actually different.

    Create New Task vs Run
    The difference between Create New Task and Run

    After resetting the EXE association and followed by a restart, everything is back to normal plus the rogueware is no longer active because running any EXE file will not trigger to run the rogueware. Although this solution works for the rogueware that I’ve encountered, but it is still not fool proof because the rogueware can be “upgraded” to block the Ctrl+Shift+Esc hotkey and implement persistence feature to monitor and re-adding the registry key if it is removed.

  • A Possible Trick to Recover Crashed Programs in Windows 7

    I think it’s pretty safe to say that just like everyone else, the people who come and visit Raymond.cc have had their fair share of Windows programs hang or lock-up on them. It seems to be part of computing life these days that you just have to accept. Most of the time once something has decided to crash, there isn’t really an awful lot you can do about. On occasion, you might be lucky if you let the program wait a while and it might actually come back to you, but most of the time it makes little difference.

    The real frustration comes when you might be in the middle of actually doing something that you really don’t want to lose, but most of the time, it’s in to Task Manager, find the Hung program and ending the process. Anything that wasn’t previously saved, has now been lost, leaving you with no idea what caused the crash or why.


    Well, as usual, Windows 7 might just have an answer to this problem and gives you at least a chance of unfreezing the troublesome program and maybe allowing any potentially lost work to be recovered. This will also possibly offer some clues as to what caused the process to hang in the first place.

    Some of you will already have heard of the Windows Resource Monitor as it’s a pretty well known Windows component for monitoring certain areas of your system. But there’s a rather nifty little feature that’s easily missed which may be able to rescue that hung program.

    The next time you suspect one of your bits of software has frozen of hung on you, go to the start orb and type ‘Resmon‘ into the search bar and press Enter. The Resource Monitor will then pop up. If you aren’t already there, click on the ‘CPU‘ tab.

    If you look down the process list, the frozen program should be immediately visible by showing in red. Right click on it and select ‘Analyze Wait Chain‘:

    You will then be presented with a small process tree. If there are two or more entries in this list, then you may be in luck and there may be a chance of recovery. If not, then sadly it won’t be possible.

    Looking at the chain, the top entry will be your program and any others below will be processes it is waiting on to continue. The simple way of explaining the chain is, however many entries there are, every process is waiting on the one below before it can continue. Ie; If there are 3 entries, the first is waiting on the second, which in turn is waiting on the third.

    Tick the box of the bottom process in the tree and click ‘End process‘. Be aware that if the bottom process in the chain is an important system process, it may end up crashing your system if you end it, so some experience in this area is useful. Windows will terminate the process and hopefully this could unfreeze your program and it may come back to life. If it’s still frozen, and there are still more entries in the tree, try repeating the procedure with the new bottom process and check again.

    Hopefully, before you are left with only the hung program in the tree, it will have unfrozen allowing you to save anything which would have been lost. This solution doesn’t always work, but it still gives you hope that things can possibly be rescued before you give up and reach for the Task Manager!

  • Editing the Places Bar in Windows Vista and 7

    The other day when I was in Windows 7 doing a few things, a file requester came up with the Places bar down the left hand side, and then it suddenly struck me. When I used Windows XP, the Places bar had been customised to make better use of those five shortcuts that are available making them a bit more useful to me. The only problem is, the utility used to do it was that indispensible little tool, TweakUI. As TweakUI is not for Windows Vista or 7, that meant having a look around to see what I could use instead to do the job.

    It was quite a surprise that after a little search, there seemed to be very few tools about to do such a thing and found none for Vista and 7 in particular. Most of the answers that came up for Windows 7 and Vista were to edit the registry manually as the Places bar is only five registry entries, but that really doesn’t seem like the quickest and easiest solution. Then there is the option to edit the Places bar through the Group Policy Editor, but again, that seems like a rather odd thing to have to do just to edit a couple of shortcuts. Also, the Group Policy Editor is not available in versions of Windows ‘Home Premium’.

    Eventually, I came across a few small utilities which claim to do the job, although even the newest one is only from 2008, but thought they were worth a try anyway. And because of their age, they each have one or two little quirks.


    Melloware PlacesBar Editor

    The first one is Melloware PlacesBar Editor, which on the face of it can do everything needed to change the shortcuts to your liking. It also has the option to edit the Places bar for the Office 2000-2007 file requester and add 5 more shortcuts to it as well.

    After you download and install it, the first few times you run the program, it will pop up a ‘Donate’ window and open your browser with a Paypal page to make a donation, it’s a bit annoying but does only do it the first few times.

    The borders around the window seem to go missing now and again in Win 7, and if you go back to the default Places layout, the tool itself defaults to five places with the desktop instead of the originals. Odd behaviour aside, it does seem to get the job done.

    Melloware PlacesBar Editor is compatible with Windows XP & Vista. Win 7 does work but the windows border tends to go a bit awol.
    The Office tab is compatible with Office 2000-2007.

    Website

    Download

    PlacesBar Tweaker

    This places bar Tweaker goes way back to 2004, and as you would expect, has one or two issues with Vista and 7 although the program does work fine for the most part. The issue comes with it not recognising post XP shortcuts like ‘Recent Places’ and ‘Libraries’ and having less Special Folder shortcuts to choose from, but if you aren’t worried about that type of shortcut, this tool is less quirky than the Melloware one although it doesn’t have the Office Places editing option.

    PlacesBar Tweaker is compatible with Windows XP. Vista and 7 do work but as I said, some of the ‘Special Folders’ are not available even when you choose to ‘Restore Defaults’.

    Website

    Download

    MadDog PlacesBarEditor

    Although this last utility actually predates Windows XP (2001) it is actually the one I prefer of the three because it’s simple to use, portable and apart from one tiny issue, works great. The one issue I mention is when you click on ‘Test’ you don’t actually get a requester with the Places bar on it! It doesn’t have the Office Places bar option, but if you don’t need it, this little tool is super in its simplicity.

    The MadDog PlacesBarEditor is listed as XP compatible although I have tested it on Vista 32bit and Windows 7 64bit with no stability issues at all.

    Website & Download

    All three utilities will probably need administrator privileges so you may need to right click on the icon and select ‘Run as Administrator’. If you encounter any unforeseen problems running these tools and can’t get the default Places bar back, open the registry and delete the comdlg32 key by right clicking on it and selecting ‘Delete’ at the following location:

    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies]

  • Automatically Check Broken Links in WordPress

    Normally a blog or a tech website contains a lot of links to external websites because we embed the download links of useful third party software or online services to the posts. As time goes by, it is normal to find hundreds or thousands of links broken due to some of the reasons such as the owner of the website moved to a new domain name, changed permalinks, or the owner simply decided to pull the plug. When a person accesses a broken link, they would either get a 404 Not Found, Server Not Found or a shows a page that has nothing to do what the article says. The 404 not found error would mean that the website is still accessible but the page that you’re trying to access is not available. What you can do is try to access the root of the domain and try searching for the new updated link. As for the server not found error, it means that you cannot even access the website at all probably due to temporary outage or the website is no longer available.

    If you have a website, you may want to consider making sure that the internal and external links on your website are not broken or least don’t contain hundreds of them. Logically a website that contains a lot of broken links would only meant that the website is low in quality and not properly maintained. Although Google has never admitted penalizing websites with many broken links, but I have personally experienced this twice when I upgraded from PunBB to vBulletin and removing the translation plugin in forum which caused hundreds/thousands of broken links. The traffic dropped drastically in just a couple of days and could take months/years to recover if you’re lucky.


    One way to check for dead links in WordPress is to use a plugin called Broken Link Checker. By using this plugin, the checking of links are done automatically at server side which is way better and faster than running a software such as Xenu’s Link Sleuth on your computer that requires to crawl your website first to get the links.

    Broken Link Checker is very powerful yet it is easy to use. After installing and activating the plugin, it will start to detect all links from your posts and pages, then proceed in checking the links. The configuration options are pretty straight forward. You get to set how often you want to recheck the links, sending email notifications when detected broken links, where to look for broken links, what kind of links to check, amount of time to check before flagging it is broken, server load limit and even the ability to check FileServe, MediaFire, YouTube and RapidShare links.

    Check Dead Links

    Once finished scanning, go to Tools > Broken Links to view all the posts/pages that contains the broken links. The Broken Links page shows the URL that is broken, status, link text and the source. As you can see from the screenshot below, this blog contains 503 broken links and 1150 redirects out of 8649 links.

    Broken Links Checker

    I can easily edit the URL, unlink or set it as not broken by moving the mouse cursor to the broken URL. I can even perform bulk actions by selecting multiple checkboxes and then select the actions from the drop down menu.

    So far I’ve cleaned up most of the broken links on the blog and will start verifying the redirects. Actually the redirects are harmless but there are some that redirects the link to a page that has nothing to do with the original link. So it is best to use the unlink option for such situation. Next is to find a solution to check for broken links in vBulletin which can be quite a challenge because there are over 200,000 posts in the forum!

    Download Broken Link Checker for WordPress

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  • Hide your Drives from Explorer but not from Windows

    Over the years, I have seen many people play with parts of their Windows installation when they don’t really know what they are doing. If there is a data or ‘D:\’ partition, sometimes they will go there and delete things which perhaps are part of a Windows file or image backup, or maybe driver files. Wouldn’t it be great if you could hide all the data on the drive, so the data that should not be touched, can’t be touched by the novice user?

    There is obviously a very easy way to get round this, which is to remove the drive letter from the partition completely. It does have one or two drawbacks; one is that Windows 7 system image and file backup cannot backup or restore involving a drive with no letter. Another issue is you cannot use the hidden drive for read or write operations in Windows. Most partitioning software will remove the drive letter completely for you and Raymond mentioned it some time ago. Look HERE if you would like a better idea out how to do that.


    The best solution would be that you can hide the drive and its letter while still being able to use it just like you can if it’s fully visible. Thankfully, there is such an option in the Windows registry which allows you to hide any logical drive letter, and it will be hidden in Windows Explorer but can still be accessed through the command prompt, the Run box and by typing it into the Address bar.

    XP has a utility to take care of this without going through the registry in the form of the popular tool TweakUI, but it’s not for Vista and 7. That’s where a little tool called Nodrvman comes in, because it is compatible with XP, Vista and 7 32 and 64 bit. It also hides the drives for all users where TweakUI only does so for the currently logged on user.

    Nodrvman is available as a setup file or portable zip file, but if you are hiding the drive letter from someone else, it makes sense to use the portable one. Download and extract it, then run the Nodrvman.exe to start. Accept the license and you will be presented with the main screen:

    The interface is pretty simple. Tick the box for the corresponding drive to hide it, untick if it’s already ticked to unhide a currently hidden drive.

    Binary and Decimal are the values that the program will enter into the registry key to hide the selected drive(s). No need to touch those.

    ‘Save Changes’ will commit the values to the registry and ‘Reload settings’ will reread what’s in the registry key already.

    ‘Set / Change Password’ is an interesting option because enter a password and every time you run Nodrvman it will ask for it. You cannot run the utility and make any changes without knowing what the password is. This isn’t particularly secure though, as it took me all of a few seconds to find the registry key where the password is stored and delete it. Good enough to keep out the average user though.

    After you have hidden / unhidden what you want, click ‘Save changes’ and you will be prompted to either log off or restart Explorer. If you know how to restart Explorer, fine, otherwise it will be easier to log off and back on again.

    When you log back into Windows and open an Explorer window or file / folder requester, the drive(s) will no longer be there

    In the below example, drives C: and E: are going to be hidden, yes you can even do this with the C: drive as well although maybe not a great idea. Tick the C and E tick boxes in Nodrvman and click ‘Save changes’.

    Restart Explorer or log off. When you get back they’re gone…

    Type C: or E: into the Address bar or Search box and the hidden drive will still be fully accessible. A useful solution which leaves drives fully functional but at the same time keeps them away from users who sometimes don’t know that the files they may be moving or deleting are important and shouldn’t be touched.

    Website

    Portable and setup install versions are available.

    Download Nodrvman

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  • Hide user accounts from the Windows XP Welcome screen
  • Prevent Spread of Viruses through Removable Drives with iKill
  • How to Make Windows Autorun USB Flash Drives
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  • AdwCleaner Search and Delete Adware, PUP, Toolbar and Homepage Hijacker

    Some of you may not be feeling comfortable in using Toolbar Cleaner because it comes with adware in the installer itself. Moreover it lists all plugins, BHO, and toolbars found on the web browser rather than displaying only potentially unwanted programs. A wrong decision could cause you to lose some of the legitimate plugins which you will have to manually reinstall again. Leofelix has suggested another adware cleaner for web browser that is called AdwCleaner. It is created by Xplode and it doesn’t have an official website for the tool but is officially hosted at a French website called Général Changelog Team.

    AdwCleaner is a free and portable adware cleaner that claims to delete adware, PUP (Potentially Unwanted Programs), toolbars and homepage hijackers. If AdwCleaner works as claimed, then it is much more powerful compared to Toolbar Cleaner.


    As a test, I’ve installed Babylon Toolbar, SweetIM and Complitly through a third party software installation on a Windows 7 system that has Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 11, and Chrome 18 installed. Safari and Opera are not included in the test because they are not vulnerable to being hijacked by adware. I noticed the default homepage and search engine are being modified (hijacked), with toolbars appearing after the address bar.

    I ran AdwCleaner and it presents me with 3 main buttons which is Search, Delete and Uninstall. The Search button will look for any known adware by AdwCleaner and displays the log file after finished searching. By default the log file is saved to C:\ drive and you can investigate the detected services, files, folders, registry, and web browsers that contains entries of adware.

    AdwCleaner

    Now you can click the Delete button to start removing the found traces of adware. Please make sure that you’ve saved all your work and close any running programs before clicking the Delete button or else AdwCleaner will automatically terminate the running programs before cleaning and restarts your computer when the cleaning process has been completed. A report will open when Windows is started showing you the item that has been successfully deleted.

    Firefox and Chrome is totally clean from the adware while Internet Explorer’s search is still being hijacked by searchcompletion.com. Another gripe that I have against AdwCleaner is it changes the Internet Explorer default home page to Google.fr which is the France version of Google Search and everything is in French. Would be much better if they change it to Google.com and we will automatically be redirected to our country’s Google Search. I would say that AdwCleaner does a much better job than Toolbar Cleaner but there’s still room for improvement.

    AdwCleaner is supported in Windows XP, Vista, 7 versions both 32 & 64 bit.

    Download AdwCleaner

  • .NET Framework Setup Verification Utility

    With more and more software developed and compiled in C# programming language, it would only mean that the user will require .NET Framework installed in order to run the application. Windows XP which was released 11 years ago and it doesn’t come with any .NET Framework pre-installed while Vista comes with .NET Framework 3.0 and Windows 7 with .NET Framework 3.5. Currently the latest .NET Framework has already reached version 4.0 and we will be expecting version 4.5 when Windows 8 is released. Some users prefers not to use software that requires .NET Framework thinking that installing .NET Framework will slow down their computer but the fact is .NET Framework will NOT slowdown your computer.

    However the biggest problem with .NET Framework would be having multiple versions installed because it doesn’t mean that you don’t need older versions of .NET Framework when the latest .NET Framework 4.0 is already installed. There are some programs which are hard coded to run on a specific version of .NET Framework so it is best to have all .NET Framework 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0 installed for full compatibility. When you fail to run a program that requires .NET Framework, then you will need to first verify if the .NET Framework installed on your computer is corrupted before reinstalling it which can actually cause more problems than fixing it. One easy way to achieve that is to use .NET Framework Setup Verification Utility.


    The .NET Framework Setup Verification Utility by Aaron Stebner is a very small and portable tool at only 272KB in size that you can use to verify the presence of files, directories, registry keys and values for the .NET Framework that is installed in your Windows computer. The latest version of .NET Framework Setup Verification Utility is able to automatically perform a set of steps to verify the installation state of the following .NET Frameworks:

    .NET Framework 1.0
    .NET Framework 1.1
    .NET Framework 1.1 SP1
    .NET Framework 2.0
    .NET Framework 2.0 SP1
    .NET Framework 2.0 SP2
    .NET Framework 3.0
    .NET Framework 3.0 SP1
    .NET Framework 3.0 SP2
    .NET Framework 3.5
    .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
    .NET Framework 4 Client
    .NET Framework 4 Full

    Only the .NET Framework that the utility detects on the computer will be listed for verification so you won’t be seeing all of the above versions of the .NET Framework on the program. To verify the install state of a .NET Framework, simply select the version at the drop down box and click the Verify Now button. If the current status shows “Product verification succeeded”, then it means no problem but if you get a failed message, then you can consider reinstalling the .NET Framework version that has failed the verification.

    Verify .NET Framework

    You can also click on the View Log button to see what files and registry are being checked and what errors it encounters while verifying a product which is very useful in troubleshooting a corrupted .NET Framework.

    Download .NET Framework Setup Verification Utility

    Related posts:

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  • Solver Scrabble Generate Words from Letters to Assist in Draw Something Game

    A lot of people I know are hooked to the game Draw Something where you can draw on your screen based on the word that is given to you and let your friends guess what is it that you’ve drawn. Guessing the drawing correctly will earn coins to both drawer and guesser. Each player takes a turn in drawing and guessing which makes it fair but there are quite a number of players that likes to guess but doesn’t put much effort when it comes to their turn to draw. They can draw really crappy drawings that is impossible to guess, or they simply write the answer on screen. You can either swipe them off to delete them from your game or use a cheating tool such as a word generator from Solver Scrabble to generate possible answers from the letters that are given to you.


    All you need to do is key in the letters into the box in Solver Scrabble’s website and click the Get Words button. Words are instantly generated from the letters given by you and displayed at the same page after an automatic refresh. The words are categorized into numbers of letters which is very helpful for Draw Something game. Here is an example of a pretty bad drawing which I can’t tell what it is.

    Draw Something

    I entered all 12 letters into Solver Scrabble and received 7 words which are possible answers for the drawing. With a bit of common sense by referring back to the drawing, I am guessing that the answer could be octagon.

    Build Word from Letters

    Correct! An octagon is a shape with 8 angles and eight sides.

    Draw Something Correct

    I’ve seen some Draw Something players even managed to get up to 90 over turns and to be honest I don’t think you can even get that far with a scrabble word finder, builder or generator because it cannot generate words from names of popular artists such as Bieber, cartoon characters such as TinTin or even country like Finland. Nevertheless, at least it can surely help you guess some words from really bad drawings sometimes. I have tested a few other online websites that offers the generation of words from letters and I can say that Solver Scrabble always offer more words when compared with its competitors.

    If most of the time you are not familiar with the words probably due to English is not your first language, another tip to help you draw better is to search the word that is given to you in Google Images.

    Visit Solver Scrabble