As you can see from my blog, I am a frequent user of time-limited programs (both Shareware and Commercial). However, I am sometimes so busy that, after installing a program, I don’t have the time to evaluate it properly before the trial period is over. This problem is made worse because some developers use very small trial periods – sometimes 10 days or less. If I am away from work for a week, or have to work on an urgent project, it is sometimes impossible to re-install a program and just start again because the program will have made changes to the Registry or written a hidden file somewhere.

I need to thoroughly test a software before making a decision in purchasing it. If the software is going to lack a feature that I need, it will be a waste of money buying a license for it. Sometimes if I find that the trial software is valuable, I’d request the developer to extend the evaluation period for me to test it for another day or two. If the author agrees, it’s great! But if the developer doesn’t reply my email, and I think the chances of me buying the software is higher than 50%, then I’d use this method to extend the shareware’s evaluation period.


Never Expire is a small utility designed to help you run time-limited programs beyond their expiration dates. The program works by changing the system date, running your program and then resetting the date. In addition, you can specify a delay between running the program and resetting the date. This will allow time for the program to load and initialise.

Never Expire comes in both free and commercial version. The commercial version benefits are:
* Program lists can contain up to 10 items.
* No “nag screens” shown at any time.
* Adjust program settings, such as “Exit On Run”
* All future upgrades free of charge, for as long as the program remains in development.
* Unlimited user support

Never Expire official website is gone and it looks like there will not going to be any future upgrades and also user support. The freeware version is good enough. This tool is dated year 1998 but it still works! I can say that it works for “some” sharewares but definitely not all.

Never Expire is quite easy to use. Here are the steps to extend a shareware’s evaluation period using Never Expire.
1. Run noexpire.exe

2. Select Program 2 from the list and click Edit Item.

3. Enter the program name in Title For Item.

4. Click the … button to browse for the .exe that you want to extend.

5. Working directory should be automatically filled.

6. If the program requires to run with extra parameters, you can enter it at Parameters.

7. Set the date back to the day you installed the shareware.

8. Click okay button and when you’re on the Never Expire main screen, select Program 2 and click Run Item button.

I notice that there is a small bug on Program 1. When you try to browse for the program, you’ll get the message “Invalid filename”. Try editing program 2 item and it should work fine. Never Expire technique of extending trial period is different from Trial Reset.

IMPORTANT: Never Expire is not an aid for software pirates. This program is intended to extend the evaluation period of your programs, nothing more. After you have evaluated a program for a reasonable time, you must register or purchase a valid license to continue using the software.

[ Download Never Expire 2.0 ]

Google Chrome gets updated quite very often. You may not have noticed it because Google automatically updates and installs the latest stable version of Chrome. Even Firefox is trying to play the catch up game but I still don’t think they will ever catch up when Chrome is already at version 16 now and Firefox is only at v9. Whatever the case is, have you ever wondered what goes on when Google Chrome is being updated? Will the new version overwrite the old version? Or does the old version gets uninstalled automatically? The answer is the previous version of Google Chrome are kept and not removed. If you check the folder where Google Chrome is installed, you would noticed that there are 2 folders with different version numbers and two chrome executable files (chrome.exe and old_chrome.exe).

Obviously chrome.exe with the newer version number are the most updated Chrome while old_chrome.exe and the folder with older version number is obsolete. One probable reason that the old version is still kept because of rollback purposes but the official Chrome FAQ page mentioned that they don’t recommend you to roll back Google Chrome to a previous version.


The old version of Chrome takes up about 80MB space from your hard drive and it is actually safe to remove the redundant old Chrome files since they are not being used at all. If you want to manually delete the outdated Chrome from your computer, here is how you do it. First you need to enable show hidden files, folders and drive from Control Panel > Folder Options > View tab. Then open the following location with Windows Explorer.

On Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application
On Windows Vista/7: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application

Delete old_chrome.exe file and the folder that shows an older version number. Alternatively, you can use a free and portable tool called OldChromeRemover which automatically detects the obsolete versions of Google Chrome and deletes it when the user press the Y button on the keyboard. OldChromeRemover requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 and also Run as Administrator to work.

Download OldChromeRemover

I have to be honest that my favorite CD burning software is Nero 6. I got to know about it when I bought my first CD burner and it come with an OEM version of Nero. Then at every major update, Nero kept on adding new features and eventually it got so bloated that the size of the installer for Nero 9 is nearly a whooping 400MB! Well I am currently using Nero 9 because I have an original license and didn’t want it to go to waste. Of course I didn’t go ahead with the full installation as I selected Custom install and only install the necessary components that I need.

Nero has always been a shareware meaning it cost money if you want to use it (leave the keygen and crack out of this). For those that cannot afford Nero and not into piracy, there are several free disc burning software such as ImgBurn, BurnAware, CDBurnerXP and DeepBurner which works well too. Good news is if you want to use Nero to burn your disc and you don’t have the money, you can still use Nero because they’ve started to offer Nero 9 free version.


The free version of Nero 9 is called Nero StartSmart Essentials. It was originally bundled with hardware such as a PC or burner and cannot be purchased separately. The features included are specifically chosen by the hardware manufacturer to assist the user in better experiencing and enjoying their hardware product. Now Nero has put it for everyone to download. The size of the installer for Nero 9 free version is only 55MB compared to the full version which is nearly 400MB. Obviously a big part of Nero 9 full version has been stripped off.

From the Nero 9 free version description, it says that it contains simply data burning and disc copying features for CDs and DVDs. Additional features and functionality are available with an upgrade to Nero 9 full version. I’ve downloaded and tested it, you can only burn data, copy disc, erase and analyze disc from Nero 9 Free. That’s it! I cannot rip audios to MP3, cannot burn MP3 to audio CD and etc.

Honestly I can’t see why is there any reason to use the new free Nero 9 StartSmart Essentials because it really lacks of basic features which can be found in other disc burning software that are free. Unless like I said earlier, you’re a big fan of Nero and that’s the only burning software you’d use. During Nero 9 Free installation process, you’ll be prompted to install Ask Toolbar so make sure you are aware of it and don’t blindly click Next.

[ Download Nero 9 Free ]

The Nero 7 Premium official download is finally here.



Nero 7 Premium enables you to experience your digital media in completely new and innovative ways. With the addition of a Nero Home – media manager, you can now have the complete PC and TV experience. Whether you want to access your media files from the comfort of your living room, or complete digital media projects on your PC, Nero 7 Premium is all you need.

Nero 7 Premium now offers both the PC and TV media management experience for a complete solution. With over 18 new and updated applications in ONE powerful piece of software, Nero 7 Premium is truly the only partner you need for today’s digital home.

The download size of Nero 7 Premium is around 100MB compared to Nero 6 Reloaded which is only around 30MB.
Looks like this is a big time update Nero burning software.

[ Download Site Nero 7 Premium | Direct Download Nero 7 Premium ]

The right-click button on your mouse can provide you with quick access to some great productivity functions within Windows. For example, when you installed an antivirus software, you can easily scan any suspicious file by simply right clicking on the file and select Scan. This saves you from manually launching the antivirus program and then locate the file to scan.

I found a collection of shell extensions that is useful to me and am sharing it out because it might be useful to you too. It also includes a very useful utility to fix any icons on your computer if it wrong/old icons are displayed.


Shell Tools is a collection of free Windows shell extensions and utilities. This package contains updated versions of their old shell extensions FontLoader, FileNote, RegisterEx, CopyURL and new ones, including nice control panel that allows you to control all the extensions in one place.

After you have installed Shell Tools, you need to open Shell Tools control panel to enable some functionality you want to use. By default all Shell Tools modules are disabled. That means after installing Shell Tools additional functionality in Windows will not be available until you enable some Shell Tools modules whose functionality you need. To open Shell Tools control panel, click Shell Tools shortcut from Start Menu > Programs > Moon Software.

Currently Shell Tools has 5 shell extension modules:
1. Copy Filename and Filenote – Copy filenames of selected items to the clipboard and allows you to add comments to files by creating text file that has the same name as selected file and opening it for editing in text editor (Notepad or another). If such text file already exists, it will be opened for editing.

2. Show Hidden Files command in folder background menu. This is a quick way to toggle global Windows Explorer’s Show Hidden Files option, that is otherwise buried deep inside folder options window.

3. FontLoader – Add Load/Unload/Install/Uninstall commands to context menu of font files (TrueType, OpenType and TrueType Collections supported). Windows Vista UAC is supported.

4. CopyURL – Copy different information from one or more selected favorites items (internet shortcuts) to the clipboard. You can customize the commands to make up your own copy strings.

5. RegisterServer – Will add Register Server and Unregister Server commands to context menu of DLL, OCX and EXE files that export DllLoadLibrary and DllUnloadLibrary functions, allowing you to register/unregister COM servers with ease, by right-clicking.

Other than shell extensions, Shell-Tools also comes with a very useful tool called “Fresh Icons“. Fresh Icons (FreshIcons.exe) is a tiny utility program to refresh icons in Start Menu/Desktop/Windows Explorer if wrong/old icons are displayed.

You may have noticed that sometimes when you change icon of a program shortcut, Windows still displays the old icon, even after restarting computer. Or when you change a program associated with a file type, associated files still display old program’s icon. That is because Windows caches program icons to improve performance – extracting icon from a program every time icon is drawn takes too much time, so they extract once, store it and then draw from stored cache. When you run Fresh Icons, it tries to send Windows a message that it should rebuild its icon cache and if that happens, usually old icons are discarded and you will see right icons magically appearing.

Useful to me, and I hope it’s useful to you too!

[ Download Shell Tools ]

In Windows XP, many times we, the computer technicians are faced with Windows that is unbootable because some of the important file such as boot.ini, ntldr and etc are mysteriously missing. Unfortunately rescuing Windows XP from the recovery console by booting up with the installation disc requires some knowledge such as fixmbr, fixboot,. However if you did it wrongly, you can make the whole partition go missing and you would then have to lie to your customer that a virus has wiped out everything just to save your own skin.

When it comes to Windows 7, one of my favorite built-in tool that can be found on Windows 7 is the System Recover Options. Any Windows 7 user is able to boot in to that environment by pressing the F8 key when starting up the computer. Upon seeing Advanced Boot Option, select Repair Your Computer and it will bring you to System Recovery Options. It allows you to easily and automatically fix problems that are preventing Windows from starting. Other than that, it also has System Restore, System Image Recovery, Windows Memory Diagnostic and Command Prompt.

As useful as it is, the Advanced Boot Option can be easily wiped out when Windows bootloader is erased or replaced. As an alternative, Windows 7 offers users to create a system repair disc which allows you to access the System Recovery Options when the Windows bootloader is gone.

Some branded computer comes with Windows 7 installation disc even though the computer is pre-installed with Windows 7 but they never provide a System Repair Disc. You are responsible of creating that yourself and keep it with you at all times in case if the computer fails to start up. For more users that are more experienced with computers, they will know the importance of having a Windows 7 System Repair Disc created. However when your computer is in trouble and people tells

NeoSmart has provided downloads to Windows 7 System Recovery Disc in ISO image format for both x86 and x64 via torrent. This is useful if you would like to attempt to repair a Windows 7 computer startup problem but do not have access to a working Windows 7 computer around you. Here is how to burn the ISO image to an empty disc if you don’t know how. I personally do not like downloading from torrent because our Malaysian ISP implements bittorrent throttling which slows down the download speed. For everyone’s convenience, I have uploaded Windows 7 System Recovery Discs 32bit and 64bit to free file hosting. Do note that the Windows 7 System Recovery Disc cannot be used to re-install Windows 7 but it is meant to repair Windows 7.

[ Download Windows 7 System Recovery Disc 32-bit | 64-bit ]

Martin from gHacks.net has started an experiment and invited his ten most read blogs to take part in it. What he want to create is a blog feed dependency list which shows the top ten read blogs of all participating blogs. He started this by pinging and notifying the ten blogs that he read the most asking them to do the same.

I am honored to be one of his top 10 read blogs and I will do the same. However, I don’t have top 10 read blogs as I only have 8. I visit other blogs from time to time but I visit this 8 blogs everyday.

The blogs that I read the most in alphabetical order:
Digital Inspiration
Download Squad
gHacks
IntelliAdmin
Mess with MSN Messenger
Petri IT Knowledgebase
Sabahan.com
TorrentFreak

For those who has a blog or web site, you can too do the same by writing an article, list down your top 10 read blogs and trackback this article so that I know where to look and gather your top read blogs. I think it’d be interesting for me to also discover new interesting websites from you.

The people at PC Tools must be mad! Just yesterday I shared with you a way to obtain free PC Tools Privacy Guardian license and today I found another way to get a free 1 year genuine license for PC Tools Internet Security 2009. They are just giving away whatever they have before Symantec starts to own them. However, I believe that they are in the right track of promoting their products. If they didn’t do this, they wouldn’t be so popular today and on the way of selling the company to Symantec.

Usually an Internet Security suite software is an all-in-one security software that can protect your computer against virus, spyware, hackers, spam and etc. It is also usually more expensive than the normal antivirus software because antivirus software only protects your computer against virus. PC Tools Internet Security 2009 software normally cost $59.95 for 3 computer user license but here is how you can get it for free!


PC Tools Internet Security 2009 is a comprehensive security suite that offers complete protection to your computer by combining PC Tools’ award winning Anti-Spyware, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam and Firewall protection into an all-in-one, easy-to-use product.

PC Tools Internet Security 2009 Features:

PC Tools Internet Security Suite offers powerful anti-spyware, anti-virus, firewall and spam protection in one application.

Detects, removes and blocks all types of spyware, adware, viruses, Trojans, worms, keyloggers and other online threats.

FREE friendly support for all customers.

Frequent updates ensure that you are always protected against the latest known threats.

Protection from hackers, intruders and other unauthorized software or network attacks.

Spam filtering for protection against unsolicited email.

Intelligent automatic protection makes it simple to use for novices but configurable enough for expert users.

Follow the few simple steps below to obtain your free 1 year PC Tools Internet Security 2009 genuine license key:

1. Go to http://defilter.co.uk/ web proxy page.

2. Enter the URL http://www.pctools.com/internet-security/free/promo/PCADVISOR0809/ at the bar where it says Web Address and click Go.

3. Enter your first name, last name, e-mail, address, city, country, zip, random code and most importantly the Promotion Code as LE8ATR and click the Request Free License button. Make sure that you’re entering a working email address because the license key code will be sent there!

4.Once you see the message “Thank you for requesting your FREE license for Internet Security v2009, Your free license code will be e-mailed to you shortly.”, check the email address that you’ve entered at step 3. Open the email from PC Tools (sales@pctools.com) with the subject “Free Internet Security License”. Note down the name and license key.

5. Download latest PC Tools Internet Security 2009 and install.

6. After installation, restart your computer, run PC Tools Internet Security 2009 and click the Register button. Enter the name and license key. Voila! A fully registered version of PC Tools Internet Security 2009!

A few important note. You have to access the promotional link via web proxy because it checks the IP address or else you will see a page with the error “Please enter the full website address listed in your magazine or promotion.” If you’re from United Kingdom, you can directly access the promotion link without web proxy. Although it did ask you to install PC Tools Internet Security 2009 from the cover disc that accompanied your recent magazine purchase because the latest version downloaded from PC Tools website will NOT work for this, I can confirm that it works.

This free version of Internet Security includes 12 months technical support and runs on Windows Vista 32-bit, XP and 2000. Enjoy!

Since Windows 95, there is a registry entry “MenuShowDelay” where you can make the Start menu expands automatically and instantly when the cursor is on the menu. During my teenage years when I was working part time at a computer shop building desktops, my boss made sure that I added this registry entry to every computer that is being sold so that it seems to work faster. In today’s Windows 7, the MenuShowDelay registry entry still works on most programs that has the normal menu bar, but definitely not on the Start menu since Windows 7 no longer comes with the classic Start menu.

There are normally 3 types of users. The first one is they want everything to be fast and don’t need the unnecessary eye candy animations. Second one is they don’t care about it and the third one is they find it hard to keep up with the controls. As good as I am in controlling Windows using the keyboard more often than the mouse, I actually find it hard to type using the on-screen keyboard in my android smartphone. Anyway, if you find it hard to navigate around with the menus and submenus because it automatically expands after hovering the cursor on it, you should set it only open the submenus via mouse click. In fact, I even find myself clicking on the menus itself to expand the submenu because the two seconds pause to auto expand seems to be a little too long for me.


In Windows 7, there is a setting that can disable the auto opening of submenus when you pause on them with the mouse pointer. Right click on the Taskbar and select Properties. Go to Start Menu tab and click the Customize button. Scroll down and somewhere in the middle you will find an option that says “Open submenus when I pause on them with the mouse pointer“. Uncheck it and click OK. Now submenus at the Start Menu will no longer automatically expand until you click on them.

If you use Tuneup Utilities, you should find an option to specify how long before a submenu automatically opens when you hover over it with the cursor in Firefox. Once you select the Open menus only via mouse click option, the submenus at Firefox will only be expanded when it is clicked.

By using SysTracer, I found that Tuneup Utilities creates a user.js file at the Firefox profile folder and adds the following line:

user_pref(“ui.submenuDelay”, 65000);

Basically the ui.submenuDelay is an independent setting for the Firefox menu speed. If ui.submenuDelay is missing, Firefox automatically refers to the MenuShowDelay speed. The MenuShowDelay can be configured at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\ in Windows Registry. If you set MenuShowDelay to 0, the submenu will be opened instantly. To delay or configure the submenu to open on mouse click, set the value to a really high number such as 65535. The MenuShowDelay also works on Opera, Internet Explorer and Safari but not on Google Chrome.

As for Firefox, do take note that the ui.submenuDelay or MenuShowDelay will only work if the mouse cursor is on the “expand arrow button” when Firefox is on a single button menu. If you enable the menu bar by right clicking on empty section of the Tab Strip and check Menu Bar in the pop-up menu, then it works on all menu.

Only a few days ago Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 beta has been leaked out in the internet and today Microsoft has officially announced it as beta and allowing users to download from Microsoft site to test it out. Please note that this is only an official beta and not “final” release version of Windows Media Player 11.

Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP offers you unmatched choice and flexibility for your digital media. You can easily manage your libraries of digital music, photos, and video on your computer; explore a new world of music through the integrated URGE music service; and connect with mobile devices so you can have your digital media collection wherever you want it. Requires Windows XP.


If you use Windows Media Player to access a favorite online store, some are not available for this beta release. The following stores are available in the Windows Media Player 11 beta release: Audible, FYE, Live365, Movielink, MSN Music, Napster, Passalong, Puretracks, URGE, Wal-Mart, and XM Radio.

[ Download official Windows Media Player 11 beta ]

Note: Got stuck with Windows Genuine Advantage(WGA) check during installation? Check out this post.

I have two things to share with you all today. First is I have 20 WinBootInfo license to giveaway, well I wanted to give them away yesterday together with the article but the author of WinBootInfo only got back to me today that they’re able to give out 20 licenses. Secondly, the promotional page for the free 1 year Trend Micro Internet Security 2010 is gone and if you visit the page, you will get a page that says “Not Found. The requested URL /iomega/en/ was not found on this server”. Fortunately I still know of a way to download it but you have to be fast because this method will not last very long.

As for those that would like to take part in the WinBootInfo license draw, just go to the end of this post and write a comment.


If you didn’t know, Trend Micro Internet Security 2010 is a security that contains antivirus, antispyware, firewall, unauthorized change protection, web threats protection, spam filter, parental controls and data theft prevention. The promotion page links to the installer which gives you a full 12 month trial. Even though the promo page is no longer available, but the direct download link to the 149MB TIS175_IOMEGA.exe file is still there. You can download the installer for 12 months Trend Micro Internet Security 2010 from the link below.

http://www.trendmicro.com/ftp/products/tis/TIS175_IOMEGA.exe

I’ve just tried installing and got a full 12 months subscription. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that Trend Micro does not blacklist the embedded serial number.

As for WinBootInfo, you get to know what actually happens during Windows boot and what process is taking up a long time to start that makes Windows bootup time slower. It is a tool that has made for boot tracing process easier with nice looking graphs and tree view. To get in the draw, leave a comment and I will randomly pick the 20 lucky winners tomorrow.

Recently I’ve had to run into a huge problem: I’ve had to fill in an online form, in PDF format, and submit it back online in, once more, PDF format. This was to re-apply for my school that I’m going to be going to in September so I can learn about databases for my second and last year of schooling. I thought this to be extremely foolish, and arse-backwards, seeing as I could also mail it in as well, but I wanted it there sooner then that. So I had to find ways to work around this PDF limitation.

The first thing I personally decided to do, was download a demo of a PDF editor, called Infix PDF Editor, which was linked to the forum a while back for review. Sadly, at that time, I did not do a review, so I was stuck using the trial which did the job well but saved a watermark on the output. Seeing as it was at the exact spot that I needed to put ‘ITDBAS’, I decided to keep looking for some good solutions. What follows are some free solutions that I used to get this working as planned.

One of the best solutions I came across came in the form of a PDF reader from a company I have already used before: Nuance PDF Reader. For those that have never heard of Nuance, they are the creators of Dragon Naturally Speaking, a brilliant program that converts speech to text. One of the nice things about Nuance’s PDF Reader is that it uses OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, which Raymond has talked about in the past. Personally, this leads me to believe, as well as in testing, that it is extremely powerful, especially for free of charge.

But for those that know me, know that I use Sumatra PDF Viewer, so to install a different PDF reader is rather foolish to me, even if it does have a killer option. So I tested two online options and was rather impressed to find that NitroPDF, a competitor to Adobe Reader, offered a free service to convert PDF-to-Word (DOC or RTF) format. It does require an email address for NitroPDF to send you the converted file, and the files are deleted off their servers shortly after you’ve downloaded it. Personally, I find it to be pretty slow, but it does do a great job, and considering the amount of traffic already headed it’s way, I’d take care in using it. It would be my second choice only to the option presented below.

My final option was another online converter, known as PDFOnline. Unlike NitroPDF’s version, you can upload directly to the service and have it convert, and provide you with the instant DOC format once it is done. It is impressively fast and allowed for me to convert the PDF to a format I could edit quickly, though it was also the dead of night when I tested it. So to say the least, it has it’s perks. I haven’t had any complaints with it yet, and I will be honest: I was rather surprised to see that it saved the tables fine for me to type into, for my registration form. With it’s help, I was able to send off my registration form for my second year and final of studying. Hopefully this information will come in handy for people in the future, because you never know when you have to edit a PDF file. I was actually asked recently about how to edit a PDF file for free via email, and for that patient reader, I say thank you for waiting, and I hope this resolves your issue!

– Nuance PDF Reader – (18.1mb)
– NitroPDF to Word – (requires email) –
– PDFOnline –

About a year ago I tested 13 different antivirus rescue CDs to find for the best to use because I don’t want to waste my time using one that is slow with low detection rate. During that time AVG Rescue CD is not free and it cost a whopping $149.95 for 1 user license with 1 year subscription. I wonder if anyone really purchased it because it is so expensive when there are more than 10 other rescue CD.

AVG has recently changed their shareware Rescue CD into freeware, meaning anyone can use it to scan and clean virus infected machines without owning an AVG license. If you don’t know what is a rescue CD, it is a Live CD mostly used to recover a computer when the system cannot be loaded normally or will not allow normal operation, such as after an extensive or deep-rooted virus infection.



AVG Rescue CD allows you to either install it on a CD with the ISO image file or to USB which uses grub boot loader. To install to USB, you will need to extract all the files into the root of your USB flash drive, and then run makeboot.bat file to make the USB flash drive bootable. Insert the CD or USB to the infected computer and go to BIOS and set the boot priority to CD/USB.

Upon successfully booting up the AVG Rescue CD, it will auto mount the windows partition on the system and then checks for active internet connection. You will be prompted to update the program if an active internet connection is detected. There are 3 options, Online, Office and Download. Online lets you directly download the latest virus definitions and program updates to use only for this time. As for Offline, if you have previously used the Download option, then you can specify where should AVG look for the definition file. Finally, the Download option allows you to download and save the definition to your USB flash drive or computer hard drive for future Offline use.

When you are done updating, go back to the main menu and select the first option Scan. You won’t have a nice graphical user interface on this AVG Rescue CD. During scanning, you will only see a black command prompt screen with a lot of text. To abort the scan, you can press Ctrl+C

AVG Rescue CD contains other utilities such as a Linux File Manager called Midnight Commander, a Registry Editor that allows you to load the Windows registry, Ping to test network connectivity and TestDisk for data recovery. I’ve tested a full scan on a Windows XP partition that contains 20288 files and 2341 folders with 3.58GB in total. It took 14 minutes and 45 seconds to complete scanning which in my humble opinion is quite slow. This is a clean Windows XP without anything on it. If the computer contains a lot of files, it will surely take hours to scan.

In my opinion, the best would be installing AVG Rescue CD on a USB and then use the Download option to store the latest program updates and virus definition on the USB. If you use the bootable CD, you can still plug in your USB flash drive containing the definition and then select Offline which will remount the partitions to allow you to load the files.

AVG might be a bloatware in Windows but when it comes to a Rescue CD, this is no longer a factor to stop us from using it. Lets not forget that AVG Rescue CD used to cost a lot of money before and is now free. You can use it when you want to and it doesn’t need to be installed in Windows.

[ Download AVG Rescue CD ]

A lot of people has been asking for the cracked version of Legitlib.dll to enable them to install the new Windows Media Player 11 Beta without having the original Microsoft Windows installed.
Crackers put them up on free hosting such as RapidShare and MyTempdir but the file will be removed within few days time due to complains. In fact, no one dares to put the cracked legitlib.dll file on their own domain because they can get into real serious legal problems with the multi million dollar Microsoft company.
Instead of using the cracked version of legitlib.dll, you can also searched for patch that is able to automatically crack the legitlib.dll file or if you’re good in bytes and bits, you can use a hexeditor to edit the bytes.


Whiterat, a member of the cracker group TeamICU has released a patch that is able to crack the legitlib.dll file automatically.
The legitlib.dll patch by Whiterat can be obtained at any TeamICU official distro which is mostly FTP.

You can use Web2FTP to connect to any TeamICU distro FTP and download the legitlib.dll patch. If you don’t know how to do it or missed the article that I wrote on how to use Web2FTP, you can view the article here.
Just enter the Server name or IP, Port, Username and Password at the Web2FTP. When you’re connected, navigate to /2006/05.may/ and search for the file microsoft.windows.media.player.11.patch-icu.zip. Click on the filename and make sure that it’s highlighted, then click on the image to start the download.

For your information, most of your browser does support FTP. Meaning you can use your browser such as Internet Explorer to download, upload, delete and perform some other actions on FTP server.
This is the syntax of FTP URLS on your browser.

ftp://user:password@host:port/path

The instruction to patch the legitlib.dll is nearly the same as replacing the cracked legitlib.dll except it requires 1 extra step that is to run the patch and click on the patch button.
1. Download the official Windows Media Player 11 Beta
2. Extract wmp11-windowsxp-x86-enu.exe using PowerArchiver or WinRAR and you will see a new folder named mpsetup.

3. Extract and copy the Patch.exe from the microsoft.windows.media.player.11.patch-icu.zip to mpsetup folder.
4. Run Patch.exe and click on the Patch button.

5. Run setup_wm.exe from the mpsetup folder.

Another way is to crack it yourself by hex editing legitlib.dll file.
1. Use any hexeditor such as WinHex.
2. Load legitlib.dll file into WinHex.
3. Search for the Offset 000198EC. The current value is EB.

4. Change the value EB to 7C by typing over the current value.
5. Press CTRL+S to save the cracked legitlib.dll

Note: Cracking the legitlib.dll is definitely against Microsoft law. This information is only for your knowledge and you use it at your own risk.