Raymond.CC Blog

Category: Computer

  • GAOTD Setup Keeper Keeps Giveawayoftheday Installer File

    As I was searching to see if there are any other methods available to extract the Giveaway of the day installer from the wrapper other than Giveaway Forever, I found an open source program called GAOTD Setup Keeper hosted at SoureForce. As the name suggests, it helps you keep the Giveaway of the day setup file so that you can reinstall at a later time, such as when you need to format your hard drive and reinstall the software. If you didn’t know, the setup.exe file that you can download from the giveaway of the day’s website perform a check with their server to verify if the software is still within the giveaway period. If the giveaway period has expired, then you won’t be able to proceed with the installation, making the setup.exe file useless.

    So what you actually need to save is the extracted setup installer file rather than the setup.exe file that you’ve downloaded from GAOTD website. This can be done manually by accessing the temporary folder and set to view hidden files but GAOTD Setup Keeper saves you all that trouble by automating it.


    Currently the latest version 3 of GAOTD Setup Keeper is only available in French but it shouldn’t be too hard to use. If you’re unable to run GAOTD Setup Keeper because of missing MSVCR100D.dll file, then you will need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 runtime libraries which is provided together with the program.

    GAOTD Setup Keeper

    Every options is available at the menu bar. There are two options at Telecharger menu. The first one “Le logiciel du jour” is to automatically download the current giveaway of the day software and the second “Le jeu du jour” is to download the current game giveaway of the day. Clicking on either option will prompt you to launch an application (downSoft.exe or downGame.exe) and then displays a window asking you where you would like to save the downloaded file.

    The “Conserver l’install” option is allows you to save the setup installer. First you need to run the setup.exe file that is downloaded from giveawayoftheday.com, and then select the “Logiciel” option from “Conserver l’install” menu. You will then be asked to select the location to save the setup installer. “Ju” does the same thing as “Logiciel” except it is for game. The “Mode hors ligne” allows you to manually specify the filename that you want to save the setup installer. The Giveaway option at menubar brings you to a website that contains the archives of Giveaway of the Day and also the official giveaway of the day website.

    Basically GAOTD Setup Keeper does the same thing as Giveaway Forever, except with slightly more features which is automated downloading of the latest giveaway software and game.

    Download GAOTD Setup Keeper

  • Giveaway Forever Saves Giveawayoftheday Setup Installer File

    If you didn’t know of a website called Giveaway of the Day, basically they work together with software publishers in providing free licenses to shareware for everyone within a 24 hours period. There is a different commercial software being offered for free everyday and theoretically you can only activate the software within the giveaway period. Once the giveaway period has expired, you won’t be able to install the software even if you keep the package downloaded from GAOTD. Most of the installer are custom made for giveaway of the day. So even if the readme.txt file contains the registration key for the software, the registration key cannot be used on the installer that you downloaded from the official website. Other than the 24 hours activation limitation, most if not all of the free license given to GAOTD users are not upgradeable to future versions. Technical support on the software is not provided as well and the software is strictly for non-commercial usage. No matter what, a legally registered or activated shareware is still better than a trial or even cracked versions.

    Activating

    There is a weakness in the giveaway of the day wrapper where it extracts the setup installer of the software to the temporary folder in Windows and you can actually use that setup installer to reinstall the software at a later time bypassing the 24 hours giveaway restriction. I bet most people already knew about it because you can literally find guides on how to do that all over the Internet. Interestingly our forum moderator shared with us a tool called Giveaway Forever which is able to automatically detect the setup installer in temporary folder and save it on your computer in order to install it later.


    Giveaway Forever program is in Italian and allows you to easily grab the Giveawayoftheday setup installer with just a few clicks of a button. First click on the Sfoglia button to browse for the ZIP file that you’ve downloaded from Giveaway of the day’s website. Then click the huge “Genera File per l’installazione Illimitata” button which will automatically extract the zip file, run the setup.exe, detect the setup installer from temporary folder and copies it to Documents folder. Finally click the Vai ai Giveaway button which will open the My Documents folder to access the original setup installer file.

    Giveaway Forever

    Do note that this tool will only work on software that are still in the giveaway period because Giveaway of the Day wrapper does not extract the setup installer to temporary folder when the giveaway has expired.

    Download Giveaway Forever

  • Multiple uninstalls using IObit Uninstaller and the batch function

    All of us at some point need to remove software from our computers which we no longer want or need. Sometimes more than one software install at once. Either that or you are looking at a friend or family members PC and they have tonnes of useless toolbars and other bits of old software which could really do with being removed.

    For many of us, the tool we would turn to without hesitation is Revo Uninstaller, and rightly so, it’s a great tool. But a problem arises with Revo when you would like to uninstall several pieces of software at once. Each one has to be done individually and can be a bit of a bind when there’s a lot to remove. IObit Uninstaller is an uninstall tool similar to Revo but has an added advantage that you can select multiple uninstalls to be performed all in one go called a ‘Batch uninstall’ and this can be a real time saver.



    Although the specific function being looked at, is the batch function, the program has a number of other useful features worth mentioning:

    Standard and Advanced Uninstall modes:
    Standard Uninstall works as the Windows built-in Add/Remove Programs function does, while Advanced Uninstall scans the Windows registry and hard drive for any possible installation leftovers. Now includes a more secure and deeper scan called ‘Powerful Scan’.
    Forced Uninstall mode:
    Locate the software to uninstall manually if you cannot find it in the list.
    Create a Restore Point option:
    You can choose whether to create a restore point or not when using advanced mode.

    IOBit Uninstaller is portable so is handy to keep on a USB stick. Run it to get the main screen:

    As you can see, it’s a pretty familiar looking uninstaller interface with the exception of the buttons down the left which groups the software together into different types, and the function we’re looking for, the ‘Batch Uninstall’ tick box. The ‘Forced Uninstall‘ option lets you manually find what you want to remove if it’s not in the main list.

    Put a tick in the box and the software list will have changed slightly; now there’s a tick box next to all installed software ready for you to select which ones to install in the batch. Tick what you want to remove and click ‘Uninstall.

    Your selected software will now start being uninstalled. If you only want an ordinary uninstall and not the more advanced one that will scan the registry and system for left over traces, make sure to click the ‘Standard’ option. The disable create a restore point tick box will only be available with the advanced option.

    If you’re going advanced, when all the uninstallers have finished, press ‘Powerful Scan’ and after a short wait, a window showing any leftover traces will pop up. PLEASE TAKE CARE and carefully go through the list to see what can safely be removed.

    Once you have selected what you want to remove, click ‘Delete‘ and you’re finished! I have found this option to be a real time saver when looking at someone’s PC and finding it full of junk they never knew they had.

    IObit Uninstaller is compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7 & 8

    Website

    Download IObit Uninstaller

  • Blocking useless search results in Google without plug-ins

    When you search the web for solutions to a potential PC problem, after coming to Raymond.cc of course, it can be very frustrating typing in your search keywords and a large amount of the results are unrelated or coming from a few websites that provide little or no help at all. Wouldn’t it be useful to get rid of those useless results and actually show just the ones that could really help? There are numerous plug-ins and add-ons for various browsers, but if you have use of more than one machine, those plug-ins have to be installed on all of them, fast desktop or slow netbook. Wouldn’t it be easier to block them at the search engine level so you get the same results on any browser and any machine?

    If you have a Google account, there’s a useful feature which has sadly been slightly hidden away and is easy to miss called ‘Managed Blocked Sites’ which does exactly that; create a list of websites that will be blocked from the Google search results.



    Sign into your Google account and click on the following link: Manage Block Sites

    Alternatively, sign in to your Google account, if you’re not already there, select iGoogle in the bottom left, go to the options cog wheel (top right) and select ‘Search settings’.

    Once on the settings page, look down towards the bottom for this:

    Click on the block unwanted sites link and you will be presented with the ‘Manage Blocked Sites’ screen:

    As you can see, a total of 500 sites can be blocked and the process of adding a site to the list is very easy. Enter the address in the box and click ‘Block site’. Simple!

    If you enter a lot of sites, it is recommended to click ‘Download as text file’ and save the list to your computer for future use. To remove a site from the list, simply use ‘Unblock’ or ‘Unblock all’. The next time you perform a search and one of your blocked sites would have appeared in the results, you will see something similar to this at the bottom of the page:

    From now on, your searches should produce a lot more relevant results and will hopefully save you some time and frustration. As this is an account setting in Google the block list will follow you to whichever computer you log in to your account with.

    Related posts:

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  • Disable AVG Search-Shield From Blocking Active Threats WebSite
  • How To Search and Download MP3 using Google
  • Search Multiple Search Engine At The Same Time

  • Check your PC’s temperatures with Open Hardware Monitor

    Ever had, or seen a PC or laptop shut itself down for no reason? One of the most common causes of sudden shutdowns is an overheating component in your machine; usually the CPU. Anything from a cooler clogged with dust, to a faulty CPU fan can be the problem. But how do you find out this could be the problem without pulling your PC or laptop apart to find out?

    This is where a tool like Open Hardware monitor comes in. It simply reads the data from the monitoring sensors present in just about all systems to give you valuable data about such things as; CPU, motherboard and graphics card temperatures and fan speeds, system voltages, load and clock speeds, hard drive temperatures and SSD reads / writes and condition.



    The amount of information shown by the program will vary depending on your hardware.

    The program is portable, so download it and extract the zip file to the folder of your choice, then run the OpenHardwareMonitor.exe. Administrator rights are needed for all the sensor information to be available, so if you need to, right click the OpenHardwareMonitor.exe, and select ‘Run as Administrator’.

    Firstly, the program will start with two information columns; ‘Value’ is the current reading for the given sensor and ‘Max’ as you would expect, is the maximum recorded value while the program is running.

    Have a look at the CPU temperature information in more detail;

    There may be a second set of CPU temperature values:

    You might think the two different sets of CPU temperatures in both images would be the same, but as you can see, this is often not the case. CPU core values will nearly always be higher, and can be by as much as 15 °C or more, for one very good reason; the core values are taken from sensors inside the CPU core itself. The other value is taken from a sensor on the processor die. Although the core readings are accurate, the single temperature is the more important, because this is the number that AMD and Intel use to measure at which point the processor’s thermal throttling will come into play and when it will shut itself off to prevent damage.

    If your maximum, or even current CPU temperature (not core) is over 60 °C and you don’t have a purposely overclocked system, it could be a cause for concern and further investigation is definitely a good idea. Just about all processor models have different maximum allowable temperatures, even different revisions of the same CPU, but the lower end of this limit starts at around 60 °C so it’s generally a good idea to keep any CPU under this number.

    Although your motherboard should warn you if there is a problem with the CPU fan, it’s still worth checking as the numbers are at hand. If you only have one fan listed here, and it shows a name similar to ‘Fan #1’, that will be the CPU fan. All fans operate at different speeds, but as long yours is at least in the high hundreds, the fan should be fine.

    If you have found your CPU temp is getting high, it might be time to power off the machine, unplug it, and have a look inside. PLEASE don’t poke around inside your PC if you are not sure what you’re doing or don’t feel comfortable at the idea. Ask somebody more experienced.

    You might well find the CPU heatsink is rather clogged up like the example below:

    Cleaning the dust and rubbish off of the cooling components should help to lower the temperatures to far more acceptable levels, and eliminate any stability problems which it may have been causing. Also check for clogged up air vents or fans on the case itself as good airflow plays a part in cooling your system as well.

    On a side note, graphics cards are able to run their processor (GPU) at far higher temperatures, and as a result 70-90 °C is not uncommon and even 100 °C and above is not completely unheard of. Bear that in mind if you have a graphics card temperature reading in the Open Hardware monitor window.

    Apart from the large amount of information Open Hardware Monitor gives you, it does have a few other useful features like a nice graph to measure values over time, which can be enabled by going to the ‘View‘ menu and clicking on ‘Show Plot‘.

    Another feature is a handy desktop gadget which can use any value from the main window by right clicking on the value and selecting ‘Show in Gadget’. To enable the gadget, go to the ‘View‘ menu and click on ‘Show Gadget‘.

    Open Hardware Monitor is open source software and is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows XP, Vista and 7. Version 2 or above of the .NET Framework is required. There is also a version available for Linux, see the website for more details. The software is still in beta, but has so far proved very stable.

    Website

    Download Open Hardware Monitor

  • Hide Sender IP Address in Email Headers

    When you send an email, the email is most likely traceable because the email server automatically embeds the sender IP address into the headers. The email headers are normally hidden and not revealed by default. To view the email headers in Gmail, click the down arrow next to Reply icon and select Show Original. A new window will open showing the message headers. Most of the popular email service offered for free such as Hotmail and Yahoo shows the sender IP address in headers but weirdly not for Gmail.

    As some of you may already know, Gmail doesn’t seem to reveal the sender IP address and Gmail help page stated that “Gmail may hide sender IP address information from outgoing mail headers in some circumstances.” It is true that when you send an email from gmail.com at your web browser, the sender IP address is not included in the headers but when you use Gmail’s SMTP to send out emails from an email client software, then it embeds the sender’s IP in headers.

    Gmail Email Headers

    I recently needed to use a SMTP that does not include the sender IP address and after looking around, I found 7 companies that offers secure anonymous email service.


    Prices below are taken from a 1 year subscription package that allows SMTP usage.

    4SecureMail $39.99 (United States)
    Neomailbox $49.95 (Switzerland)
    Hushmail $49.98 (United Kingdom)
    CounterMail $59 (Sweden)
    Mutemail $69.95 (Bahamas)
    Privacy OffShore $93 (Holland, Hong Kong, Czech Republic, Malaysia)
    AnonymousSpeech $106 (Servers constantly moving in different countries and are always outside the US and UK)

    I’ve used Mutemail many years ago and never had problems with it. I wanted to sign up again but for some reason their payment processor WorldPay kept on declining my credit card. So I ended up with Hushmail. I think it is a good deal because it’s one of the cheapest and it comes with a 10GB storage space and 20MB attachment limit.

    Well the reason I needed a SMTP server that does not reveal the sender IP address is because I wanted to hide the server’s real IP address to prevent DDoS attacks. The current IP address mapped to raymond.cc is only a proxy and not the real IP. Problem is the forum was using an internal PHP mail() function to send out emails which leaks out the server’s real IP address in headers. Now that I’ve configured the forum to use Hushmail SMTP, the emails that are sent by the forum no longer shows the server’s real IP address.

    vBulletin SMTP Email

  • FavBackup: A useful tool to backup and restore personal browser data

    There are plenty of web browsers available to use right now, and one of the problems is keeping all of the browser data you wouldn’t want to lose backed up in case of a PC failure, crash, or a virus. Things like bookmarks, history, extensions, passwords, preferences and a number of other things can be a nightmare to remember should anything happen to your PC. FavBackup is a useful tool which can save all the data already mentioned and more besides, so all your settings are ready to be restored at the click of a button should disaster strike.

    FavBackup supports the following browsers: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari and Flock. It is also portable so can be executed from the location of your choice and doesn’t need to be installed.


    To use FavBackup, download the executable and double click to run it, simple….

    The interface is pretty easy to navigate and use. Click on the tab of the required function and then on the browser icon to begin the process. To create a backup, simply select the ‘Backup’ or ‘Full Backup’ tab. The full backup is the same as selecting all options in the backup tab, apart from it will backup all user profiles if you have more than one. You will be presented with an options screen according to the browser you want to backup.

    Choose what data you want to back up by using the tick boxes, and then select a ‘Backup location’ folder to save the backup file to. A different drive to the one your Windows installation is on would be a good idea, just in case. If you have more than one profile, select which one one to process, or choose a custom profile if that is how you are set up. Click ‘Next’.

    After a short while the process will finish and a .DAT file will be created where you chose to save the backup.

    The ‘Full Backup’ option is even easier to use as you only have to provide a ‘Backup location’ and nothing else as everything the program can handle, is backup up automatically.

    As you might expect, the restore process is quite simply a complete reversal of the backup option:

    Click ‘Restore’ and select the required browser icon.
    Click on the ‘Backup location’ and point to the folder your .DAT file is located.
    Choose what to restore with the tick boxes and finally,
    Check the profile is going to the correct target profile.
    ‘Next’ will complete the restore.

    If all has gone to plan, all the settings will now be restored and your valuable browser bookmarks and passwords will now be back where they belong.

    FavBackup is compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Win 7

    Website

    Download FavBackup

  • GetWindowText Copies Text from Control Boxes

    Not sure if you still remember on programs that allows you to copy text messages from dialog boxes? I have previously listed a total of 7 free programs that can do that but unfortunately some of the links are no longer valid. Here is another one called GetWindowText created by the same developer of the popular Q-Dir file manager. GetWindowText was first released on September last year and has been in continuous development until today.

    GetWindowText is free and portable. In order to use it to copy the text from control boxes, run the executable file, left click on the question mark icon and hold it. Then drag the mouse cursor to the box that you want it to read. The text that is read will be instantly displayed at the GetWindowText window. It can read almost all text from Edit, Static, Groupbox – Controls, etc. One unique feature is GetWindowText supports directory trees (SysTreeView32), combobox, and list views (SysListView32) to read the entire contents. Try reading the left navigation bar on Windows Explorer and you will see that all contents are copied.

    GetWindowText

    GetWindowText runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating system.

    Download GetWindowText

    Related posts:

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  • Keyboard LEDs Displays Caps Lock, Num Lock and Scroll Lock Status on Screen

    Although I am a satisfied user of Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, I bought a Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 few months back because I was looking for a keyboard that is shorter in width because I don’t have broad shoulders. The Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 is quite small in size because the number pad is separated. Since I don’t use the number pad a lot, disconnecting it saves a lot of space and allowing me to put the mouse nearer to the keyboard so that I can easily reach the mouse without stretching to the far right.

    Using a new keyboard takes a bit of time to get used to it because the layout is a bit different plus some of the keys such as PrintScreen, Insert, Home and End are at a different place which requires the function key (Fn) to activate them. After using it for a few days, I just don’t feel comfortable using the Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 even though it comes with a Comfort Curve keyboard design that encourages natural posture. I gave it a friend and on the same day he called me up saying that the keyboard doesn’t have caps lock, num lock and scroll lock indicator light which can be annoying when he finished typing a sentence and then only noticed that everything is in capital letters. Thankfully there are free software that can allow you to see the current state of keyboard locks on the screen.


    Keyboard LEDs is a freeware that displays the status of keyboard locks through a small icon in the system tray or on the floating window over your screen. The floating window can be moved by pressing and holding the left click on your mouse.

    Keyboard LEDs

    The Keyboard LEDs settings window allows you to customize how you want it to look. It is also possible to change the keyboard status of NumLock, CapsLock and ScrollLock through the settings Window itself. Keyboard LEDs takes up only 768K of memory usage and works on Windows XP/Vista/7 both 32-bit and 64-bit.

    Keyboard LEDs Settings

    Download Keyboard LEDs

  • Benchmark your system with Auslogics Benchtown

    Benchmarking your system can be a fun and interesting way to see how fast your PC hardware performs compared to other users around the world. It’s also handy to help spot any areas where potential performance is not what it perhaps should be. For years Futuremark had been the daddy when it comes to benchmarking software with their 3D Mark and PC Mark suites. The free versions are a bit limited in their operation, but Futuremark does have a massive online database of scores from 1,000’s of users to compare with.

    Auslogics Benchtown has actually been around for several months, but it is really in more recent weeks the software has been made a lot more accurate with its scoring system and the Benchtown website now has close to 1,500 results to look through for comparison. Benchtown can give you scores for your core system components; CPU, Memory, Hard drive, 2D grapihics and 3D gaming graphics.


    To get started, download and install the software, don’t forget to untick the Auslogics toolbar and Ask start page options, and then run it.

    The main window is pretty clean with just the ‘Rate now’ button to start the benchmark and a couple of others down the side. ‘System Information’ will obviously give you a bit of a rundown of your current hardware specs:

    ‘Program Settings’ allows you to only run specific tests or change the hard drive to test. All tests need to be performed to get a full score which is acceptable for the online results. Note the ‘Estimated time’. PC Mark can take an hour or more so this is a lot quicker!

    Click ‘Rate now’ to start the tests. There will follow a series of screens, some of which will have ratings graphs and some with 2D or 3D graphics.

    After the tests have completed, Benchtown will then present you with a final overall ‘Ausmarks’ score and the individual scores for each test.

    When you click ‘Compare with friends’, the Benchtown website will open where you can create an account if you wish and submit the scores. Don’t want to create an account? No problem, just browse the already submitted results to see how well your system hardware has performed compared to others.

    Auslogics Benchtown is compatible with XP, Vista and Win7 32 bit & 64 bit

    Website

    Download Auslogics Benchtown

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  • Measure DirectX 11 Performance with Unigine Heaven Benchmark

  • Colorblind Assistant Tells Name of the Color from Mouse Pointer

    Color blind don’t really mean that the person can’t see colors with their world only in black and white. As I am born with color blind, there are many times when I can’t determine the name of the color accurately. Hence I researched how can I tell the name of the color when I see one on the computer. All I need is a color picking tool which is able to give me the hex code of the color and then look up the name from Name That Color website. Thankfully the website is still there but most of the time I find that it gives me very detailed color name such as Glacier, Trout, Bunker, Bluemine and etc, when all I need is a general name such as light blue, dark blue…

    I found a free tool called Colorblind Assistant that instantly picks the color from the mouse pointer, providing me with a written name of the color, as well as other useful data such as RGB values and bar graphs, brightness and saturation. What I like about this tool is it gives a general color name.


    Colorblind Assistant runs on top of all Windows and has a small zoom pane to allow you to accurately point to the color that you want using the mouse cursor. The name of the color will be displayed instantly together with the numbers RGB numbers and hex code.

    Colorblind Assistant

    Would be great if there is a hotkey just like most color picker tool that allows you to capture the details or temporarily freezing/locking the program from updating. Colorblind Assistant takes up only 512K of memory usage which is less than 1MB. Colorblind Assistant is compatible with all Windows operating systems although it is recommended to use it on Windows XP, Vista and 7.

    With Colorblind Assistant, I won’t go around telling people weird color names anymore…

    Download Colorblind Assistant

  • BluetoothView Detects Nearby Enabled Bluetooth Devices

    I have always been a huge fan of free tools developed by Nir Sofer. One of his latest tool is BluetoothView that claims to allow you to monitor the Bluetooth activity around you. Basically BluetoothView periodically tries to detect any discoverable Bluetooth devices in background and then logs it in the program Window with information such as Device Name, Bluetooth Address, Major Device Type, Minor Device Type, First Detection Time, Last Detection Time, and more. You will also receive a balloon notification when a new Bluetooth has been discovered. Since most modern laptop comes with Bluetooth, you should be able to use BluetoothView with the standard Bluetooth stack of Windows XP/SP2, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.


    First you need to turn on Bluetooth on your computer and then run BluetoothView. It will instantly start to scan for any nearby devices with Bluetooth enabled.

    BluetoothView

    There are restrictions in BluetoothView which is it cannot detect the device if the discoverable mode is turned off and the Bluetooth range distance is pretty short since most devices uses Class 2 that has up to 5-10M range. As a test, I placed all 5 devices with Bluetooth enabled at the next room and BluetoothView and the No Detection Counter number starts to increase which means that none of it can be detected. So, technically what Nir Sofer suggested that you can easily know when they come home and when they leave or detecting when your neighbors/friends/family members are coming even before they knock on your door is not really that possible.

    Download BluetoothView

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  • Fix Spooler service errors if you have used a Lexmark printer

    Lexmark printer drivers and software have long been known as a bit of a pain if you no longer use the printer and want to use something else for your printing tasks. With most other printer software this isn’t a problem, just go to Add/Remove and uninstall. Unfortunately, some Lexmark software doesn’t completely remove itself from Windows and leaves behind a bit of data in the Spooler service. This may mean you get an error similar to the one below (or an error 1068) when trying to use the replacement printer and software:


    The error points to the fact that the Spooler service cannot start because a Lexmark ‘LexBceS Server service‘ is still being looked for, and it isn’t there because there is no Lexmark software left on the PC. The Spooler will not start until it is told not to look for the missing Lexmark service.

    In Vista or 7 click the start orb, type ‘cmd‘ into the search box.
    Right on the cmd icon and select ‘Run as Aministrator‘.

    In XP click start, click run, type cmd and press Enter or go to ‘All Programs’ then ‘Accessories’ and then click ‘Command Prompt’.

    Type sc qc spooler and press Enter. You will then see the Spooler service information:

    Look at ‘Dependencies’ and see if there is anything listed apart from RPCSS. HTTP may be listed there as well, that’s OK. Looking at the screenshot, you can see the Spooler service is still depending on a Lexmark service called ‘LexBceS’ so will throw up the cannot start service error.

    Type sc config spooler depend= RPCSS (note the space after =) and press Enter.

    You should then get a success message. This means the Spooler service now only looks for the presence of the ‘Remote Procedure Call’ (RPCSS) service which is the default behaviour.

    Type net start spooler and press Enter.

    After a short delay, the Spooler service should start meaning the error has now been rectified and you will now be able to use your non Lexmark printer.

    Whether you have had this problem or not, if you have owned a Lexmark printer but don’t use it now and no longer have the related software installed, it still might be worth checking for the existence of the ‘LexBceS Server service‘ dependency to prevent any potential issues related to this in the future.

  • Official D-Link Device or Products Online Emulator

    D-Link are very well known for their networking products and I personally own a router, USB wireless adapter and an IP camera of that brand. The IP camera that I have is a pretty old one without a built-in webserver. All it does is capture and stream images without fancy features such as Dynamic DNS, motion detection, and auto sending captured images to an email address or FTP. So whenever I am not around for a couple of days, I will have to connect the IP camera to a Windows computer and set it up with a third party software such as webcamXP in order to receive notifications when a motion is detected.

    Although it works, but I find this method flawed because if there is a power failure, the computer will instantly shut down and will not auto startup when the power is restored. Other than that, I do not like to waste electricity because the computer has to be turned on 24/7 until I get back home. Fortunately the newer range of IP cameras by D-Link comes with a complete system with a built-in CPU and web server that transmits high quality video images for security and surveillance. It even has motion detection and notification via email feature built-in which means the IP camera can work independently without a computer connected to the camera.


    As good as it sounds, it would be better if we can take a look at the product’s control panel before buying because we don’t want to end up paying for something that doesn’t work like what we think it should. In Malaysia, I don’t think there are any computer shop that allows you to open up the new product box to test it before buying.

    Thankfully D-Link has a free online emulator or simulator for some of their devices which includes the IP camera DCS-930L that I am thinking of buying. Currently there are 187 D-Link devices on the list. All you need to do is click on the model number and the demo control panel will open. It gives you a good idea on how to configure the device before buying it. Some of the simulator are screenshots while others are in HTML web page.

    D-Link Emulator

    After testing the demo of D-Link DCS-930L IP camera control panel, I am more confident to buy it and configure the auto email notification upon detecting a motion without connecting a computer to the camera and using a third party software to perform the actions.

    Visit D-Link Product Emulator/Simulator

  • Gender Guesser Predicts the Gender of an Author

    People tend to write with consistent styles. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you should know how do I normally write my articles and the usual grammatical mistakes that I make. Even if I were to buy unique articles and post them under my name, some of you could detect that the article is definitely not written by me. Even if there were bloggers that writes very closely to my style, the level of technicality in research is definitely different.

    Other than that, the words that are used in an article can disclose identifying features such as determining an author’s gender. There is an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, that can predict the gender of an author. The analysis is based on how many feminine and masculine keywords being used to determine if the author is female or male. Hacker Factor, the same company the sponsored FotoForensic’s website has implemented the algorithm and named the service Gender Guesser so that we can all use it for free to estimate the gender of an author.


    All you need to do is paste a writing style sample that contains at least 300 words into the blue box and providing more words would more accurate. Click the Analyze button and the verdict is displayed instantly, thanks to Javascript. You may have noticed that there is two genres which is Informal and Formal. Formal writing includes fiction and non-fiction stories, articles, and news reports. Informal writing includes blog and chat-room text. (Email can be formal, informal, or some combination.) You should view the results based on the appropriate type of writing.

    Gender Guesser

    So far I’ve analyzed 5 of my latest articles on Gender Guesser and all 5 came up as MALE. Interestingly, when I tried analyzing one of my female friend’s blog (mistyeiz.com), most of it came up as FEMALE. While Gender Guesser may seem to have given quite an accurate result, but it is still not 100% and the results should be not interpreted as “fact”.

    Visit Gender Guesser