A computer can still work without a mouse but it is very tough to navigate around Windows. You have to know the correct shortcut keys such as Ctrl+Esc to bring up the Start Menu, Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Windows Task Manager, Win + R for Run command and etc… Then the Tab key can be used to navigate between options and Shift+Tab to go backwards.

Browsing a webpage on your web browser without a mouse will be a very painful experience or I can say nearly impossible because you’ll have to hit the Tab key a lot of times to get to the link that you want to access. Not to worry because previously I’ve shared with you on how to move or control your mouse cursor with keyboard using mouse emulator software. That should take care of the problem…

Recently I discovered another method which is able to browse the web with your keyboard! So if you don’t have a mouse and for some reason you can’t set up the mouse emulator properly, you can try this. For Firefox browser only!


Mouseless Browsing (MLB) is a Firefox-Extension (Add-On) which enables you to browse the internet with the keyboard. The basic principle is to add small boxes with unique ids behind every link and/or form element. You just have to type in the id and press enter (there is also an automatic mode available) to trigger the corresponding action i.e. following a link, pressing a button or selecting a textfield.

Mouseless Browsing Features:

Supports numeric as well as character ids; character set configurable

Option to show ids before entire page is loaded

Configurable modifiers to open link in new tab/window/Cooliris Previews

Configuration option to use numpad exclusively for Mouseless Browsing

Configuration options to define for which elements ids should be shown (form element, links, pure image links, frames)

Smart positioning of ids: Ids for image links, textfields, selectboxes are placed in the right upper corner to minimize the impact on the page layout.

Possibility to configure URL specific behavior (black/whitelist)

Configurable shortcuts for all Mouseless Browsing actions

After installing the Mouseless Browsing plugin for Firefox, every link or form element will have a unique number attached to it. Let’s take the example image below. Mark wants to click on the Ads by Google link which has a number 13 attached to it. Instead of hitting the tab multiple times to get there, you can just press and hold the CTRL key followed by number 1 and 3. The Firefox browser will immediately and automatically access or click the link that says “Ads by Google” for you… If you want to open the link on a new tab, use the Alt key instead of Ctrl. To enable/disable the numbers, just press the “.” or “Del” key at the numeric keypad. If the keys doesn’t suit you, it can be changed in the configuration window.

Mouseless Browsing plugin is highly configurable to suit your personal needs and preferences. Nearly everything on the plugin can be customize including how the numbers, shortcut keys, URL rules to disable MLB for certain webpages, and etc.

This excellent Firefox plugin is only 71.5KB in size and it doesn’t increase the memory or CPU usage at all. All I can say about this technique is brilliant and this is the first time that I am seeing something like this. I bet soon programmers would create something similar for other browsers such as Opera, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. Whether I have a mouse or not, I will definitely use this Firefox plugin so I can keep both of my hands on the keyboard and don’t need to reach for my mouse so often.

[ Download Mouseless Browsing Firefox Add-On ]

There are quite a lot of Windows Vista cracks around the Internet nowadays. You wouldn’t know which one actually works. There’s a crack from DR CHANG and it has screenshot proof that his crack works. However, Microsoft very quickly retaliate by releasing an update on “Windows Update – Vista Validation” which makes DR CHANG’s crack unusable. Here are a few methods of activating Windows Vista based on what I read on forums and websites.

1. Time Stopper
2. Bruteforce Vista Key
3. OEM BIOS Emulation for Windows Vista

Here are my thoughts on the Vista cracks available.


1. Time Stopper. Should work but not very well. Most crackers should be able to locate files that needs to be cracked in order to continue using Windows Vista. No wonder Vista time stopper crack has so many versions!

2. Bruteforce Vista Key. Released by Keznews. This is purely luck and very time consuming. When you start the bruteforce, it’ll take 100% of your CPU usage. Imaging letting your CPU usage running at 100% for days! If your computer does not have proper cooling, chances are you might get a fried CPU. Microsoft confirms this but the chances are very slim.

3. OEM BIOS Emulation Toolkit For Windows Vista x86 released by Team Paradox. In my opinion, this is the best crack for Windows Vista so far. It seems that Microsoft has allowed large OEMs like ASUS to ship their products with a pre-installed version of Vista that doesn’t require product activation – apparently because end users would find it too inconvenient. I really give my thumbs up to Team Paradox for figuring out this idea and making it to work. This crack is not a one click crack as you need to follow the instructions provided by Team Paradox. I know sooner or later someone will create a “one click” crack to make the crack process easier for everyone. Well, CLoNY did it! CLoNY released a Vista.All.x86.OneClick.Activator.4st.March-CLoNY on 4th March. It uses OEM BIOS Emulation method except you don’t need to do anything other than running the crack.

Compare cracking Windows Vista with Team Paradox method and CLoNY instructions.

Cracking Windows Vista using Team Paradox instructions
1. Install the Windows Vista x86 edition of your choice without entering any product key during setup. Basically any Windows Vista x86 installation media will do, regardless if it’s MSDN/Retail/OEM/… MSDN/Retail are recommended though.

2. Install the emulation driver.

Run OEMTOOL.EXE, select the OEM BIOS information to emulate (ASUS might be a good choice given the fact that it’s the only OEM for which a complete set of product keys is provided ;)) and hit the ‘‘ button.
Alternatively you can just right-click the ROYAL.INF file and chose ‘Install’ from the appearing menu. This only allows for installing the default OEM BIOS information (ASUS) though and is strongly discouraged unless OEMTOOL.EXE fails for some unknown reason.
When prompted about whether to install an unsigned driver, allow it. (For some odd reason Microsoft didn’t wanna sign this one…;))

3. Reboot your machine.

4. Install the OEM certificate matching your OEM selection during driver installation by running SLMGR.VBS -ilc .XRM-MS
(e.g. “SLMGR.VBS -ilc C:\ASUS.XRM-MS” if you chose to install the default driver and extracted the certificate file to C:\)
Note that this operation might take quite a while depending on your system, so be patient.

5. Install an OEM product key matching the installed edition of Windows Vista x86 by running SLMGR.VBS -ipk
(e.g. “SLMGR.VBS -ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX” if you’re running Windows Vista Ultimate using the default emulation driver) Note that this operation might take quite a while depending on your system, so be patient.
See PKEYS.TXT for a list of OEM product keys published by different OEMs.

6. Run ‘SLMGR.VBS -dlv’ or right-click ‘Computer’ and chose ‘Properties’ to verify your licensing status.

Cracking Windows Vista using CLoNY instructions
1. Install RTM or Retail Windows Vista x86 WITHOUT product key.

2. Once Vista is installed extract the zip files.

3. Excute file “VistaActivator” and follow video instructions. (If Windows ask you select “Allow”).

4. AFTER Reboot Windows will be activated.

Now you decide which one is the best and easiest way to crack Windows Vista activation. I believe it’s only the matter of time when crackers find a way to generate Windows Vista legitimate product key without brute forcing. Microsoft did not make cracking Windows Vista IMPOSSIBLE. Perhaps only tough…

Earlier this year I found a tool called WhoCrashed which is sometimes useful in finding out what is the cause of a blue screen crash. A lot of times a blue screen happens very quickly which you can’t even see what are the error messages and your computer got restarted. The annoying part of using WhoCrashed is you need to have Microsoft Debugging Tools installed or else it cannot analyze the mdmp files.

Nir Sofer, a very experienced developer that released many useful utilities for Windows has came up with a new tool called BlueScreenView. Basically it is a new utility that allows you to watch the details of all ‘Blue Screen of Death’ crashes that occurred in your system.


BlueScreenView scans all your minidump files created during ‘blue screen of death’ crashes, and displays the information about all crashes in one table. For each crash, BlueScreenView displays the minidump filename, the date/time of the crash, the basic crash information displayed in the blue screen (Bug Check Code and 4 parameters), and the details of the driver or module that possibly caused the crash (filename, product name, file description, and file version).

For each crash displayed in the upper pane, you can view the details of the device drivers loaded during the crash in the lower pane. BlueScreenView also mark the drivers that their addresses found in the crash stack, so you can easily locate the suspected drivers that possibly caused the crash. For the fun of it, you can even view a demo of the crash by going to Options > Lower Pane Mode > and select Blue Screen in XP Style.

What I like about BlueScreenView is it doesn’t require any installation and the executable can run straight from a USB flash drive. Oh and you don’t even need Microsoft Debugging Tools installed to use this tool. From my experience, most of blue screen crashes are either caused by bad/conflicting drivers or a faulty hardware. An example is some software such as keylogger requires installing badly coded drivers and it can cause blue screen. If you have a bad RAM, you can also get blue screen and random lock ups.

BlueScreenView works with Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, as long as Windows is configured to save minidump files during BSOD crashes. Currently, BlueScreenView can only read minidump files of 32-bit systems, but it cannot read the dump files created by x64 systems. It’s possible that x64 support will be added in future versions.

[ Download BlueScreenView ]

With less than 5 hours to go, the first kick off for UEFA Euro 2008 will commence! It will be a match between Switzerland and Czech Republic at Basel, St. Jakob-Park. I am as excited as you all are! As always 16 teams will be participating, the best countries of Europe. However, I won’t be at home to watch the first match because I have to be at a customer’s office to perform service pack updates on a server as it had to be done on a non-working hours.

I have no choice but to look for a method to watch the first UEFA Euro 2008 match online using the computers there. I do not want to mess up their computers or take any responsibility when something is wrong with the PC after installing third party software such as TV Ants, SopCast or TVU Player. My best choice would be finding a way to watch UEFA Euro 2008 LIVE online without installing any software and also able to bypass firewalls or proxy restrictions.


I could easily find a lot of websites from Google that is offering live streaming UEFA Euro 2008 but most of them charge money! It’s like a pay-per-view site. I wonder why would someone pay money for that when there are ways to watch UEFA Euro 2008 live for FREE?

My favorite online streaming video website is Justin.TV. It is a place to broadcast and watch live video online while chatting with friends. To use Justin.tv you need a PC or a MAC an up-to-date browser like Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari with the latest version of Adobe Flash Player installed.

To watch EUFA Euro 2008 Live on PC without installing any software, simply launch your favorite web browser and head on to www.justin.tv. Make sure you have the latest Adobe Flash Player installed. At the top bar, click the Sports category and you should see a few live channels that are broadcasting UEFA Euro 2008 live for free. Just click on it, wait for a few minutes and it’ll start streaming. The best part is you can even chat and discuss about the current match that you’re watching with other people who are also connected to the same channel.

If you prefer other alternatives such as TV Ants, TVU Player, SopCast, look no further because the only website that you’ll need to visit is MyP2P. Myp2p is a site specialized in schedules for all kind of Sports. You can watch Live Sports by using their schedules. The information they give is fully free. You only need some clients to download and then you’re ready to go. Prepare to watch every single UEFA Euro 2008 for free from 7th June until the 29th June.

Updates are done on MyP2P every minute and every day. Just the real info to watch it live and free on Myp2p! So which country do you hope to win the EUFA Euro 2008?

[ Euro 2008 Live and Free Streaming Schedules at MyP2P ]

Have you ever found an article that’s very useful and wanted to print a copy of it in case the website is no longer accessible or the page has been removed? Printing a webpage is easy by going to File and select Print in your web browser. However, normally a website contains advertisements, images and fancy designs to attract visitors but it’s not good for printing since you have to waste extra ink and paper to print unnecessary things that you don’t need. If you can save ink and paper, it also helps to save your money and the environment as well.

One method is to copy all the text and paste it to a text editor without any formatting to print. Doing this works but sometimes the formatting of the paragraph is all messed up and it is not the original like what you see on the website. I found a very cool website which offers free service to make a print friendly version of any webpage, as well as allowing you to save it in PDF format. You don’t even need to install any software or plugin for this.


PrintFriendly makes printing on the web better. You’ll save paper and ink, plus get great looking documents. Its special algorithm removes advertisements, navigation, and all the junk you don’t want to print. PrintFriendly use best practices in print Typography to format your document for great readability. You can even customize the page that you want to print by removing paragraphs that you don’t need.

First go to PrintFriendly’s website, enter the URL that you want to make it print friendly and click the Print Preview button. Within a few seconds, the print friendly page will be generated. There is a checkbox to remove images. If you see any paragraph that you don’t need, simply click on the paragraph will delete from the preview. You can also undo any changes by clicking the Undo button.

Once you’re done, you can either click the Print button to open the Print window or click the PDF button to generate a PDF file. If you own a website, you can also add a button to allow your visitors easily print the webpage they are in via PrintFriendly.

[ Visit PrintFriendly ]

I’ve never been one that has ever turned a challenge, nor have I ever been one to enjoy taking something as stock. If you’ve never noticed, I love to tweak things until they break, learn from my mistakes, and take a step back from the breaking point next time. A prime example of all this can be looked at during my newbie days in Linux, and I removed the kernel of my Ubuntu 8.04 install… which of course, broke my entire computer system and when I rebooted, had nothing left to use. When I reinstalled 8.04 a few minutes later, I removed a lot of other packages… but never touched the kernel again.

My motto has always been ‘Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you land among the stars‘, and if you ask me, truer words have never been said. We can aim for something solid and miss, and still manage to learn from our mistakes. It is not a failure at all unless we have failed to learn something from our mistakes. And though trial and error, I present to you a list of add-ons that have done me well over my course of the past three years: recommendations, if you will, for both Chrome and Firefox.

Keep in mind, how I’m tabulating this list is Firefox\Chrome, Firefox first, then Chrome.

AdBlock Plus\AdSweep – AdBlock Plus and AdSweep are of the same general idea: blocking ads across the board. I know there’s quite a few ‘noisy’ ads that drive me up a way every time, but this at least tames even them.

DownThemAll (Firefox only) – One of the reasons I don’t use Chrome is the lack of an alternative to DownThemAll. Yes there are other download managers out there, but when DownThemAll is the best one under Linux and you try to use the same software on both systems: you’re up a creek otherwise. DownThemAll is often one of the first add-ons I install just because I’m a power downloader of Linux ISOs. The only other reason? It’s not the default in 99.9% of Linux distros.

Greasemonkey\Built-In Support – If you’ve never used Greasemonkey before, you have been missing a lot. I’m actually planning a list of Greasemonkey scripts for the forum down the road that I’ve found insanely useful, from Facebook to Rapidshare and back again.

StumbleUpon (works for both) – Not so much an add-on as it is a way of wasting time, StumbleUpon has taken over when I’m bored. If you’ve never used it, well, you might want to start if you have the spare time… because believe me, it’s going to take all the time you can think of and then some… it’s actually the reason why this article came out late. If you’d like to follow me, my username’s hellnoire, just like it is on the forum.

MyWOT (works for both) – If you want to know the #1 thing that keeps me safe from unsafe browsing, my answer would be common sense. #2 would be MyWOT. It is seriously one of the things that I would love to see built INTO the browser, so we don’t have to worry about people falling pray to social engineering so easily. This might not stop it completely… but it certainly covers about 99% of the bases that common sense should be able to cover the rest!

Ubiquity (Firefox only) – Ubiquity is now a dead experiment Mozilla put out a while back that was simply one of the best add-ons for Firefox if you asked me. You could drop a Google map into an email or use Firefox just by using words… it was one of a kind and while discontinued at this point, I do wish it would be one that Mozilla would breath life into again.

ReadItLater (works for both) – If you like saving your tabs to read at a later date, this might just be the answer you are looking for. At least, until you’ve filled this up and need to clear it out… which believe me, I have a nasty habit of doing. Yesterday’s post was because I actually decided to go though it…

And these are just some of the add-ons I use day-to-day. Believe me when I say I use a lot more then what I’ve got listed here, and if you have any suggestions or would like to offer a better replacement to one of them, please share it in the comments below. I do have one final thing to share before I conclude this post, and that’s that Raymond would like to pass along that the graphs will only be up by tomorrow. I hope you all have a good day now and happy Canada Day to all fellow Canadians!

Before continue reading today’s article, I’d like to warn you that this is for advanced users and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you CAN damage your DVD drive and will void your warranty. Did you know that it is possible to edit the read and write speed for a certain DVD writers? I didn’t know that it was possible until today.

I found a tool called Media Code Speed Edit (MCSE) which is able to make your DVD writer read and writer faster. For some DVD writers, the read speed can be increased up to 50%-100% with riplock patch. If you have LiteOn, Benq, PHILIPS, HP, LG, NEC, newer PIONEER, Cyberhome, Gigabyte, Samsung and Artec DVD writers, you have a good chance to play with MCSE and speed up your drive.


MediaCodeSpeedEdit allows you to change the write speed for your media and to add new media codes to your firmware by renaming an already available media code. The new media code name can be entered manually or can be imported from the DVD Identifier media code output to be sure that no special characters are lost. This kind of media code renaming will remove the original media code name from the patched firmware, so it is no longer supported by the firmware.

Real adding of additional media code names would mean to shift and extend all internal media code tables or patching all media code scanner for all supported firmwares, which would be a quite complex task. So don’t do it if you don’t know what you’re doing.

MCSE basically hack or edit the firmware for your DVD writer and then you flash the hacked firmware to update your DVD writer to support faster read or write speed. If you don’t know where to get your DVD writer’s firmware, you can search in Google or head to Media Code Speed Edit forum to get help. The below steps would give you an idea how MCSE works.

1. Download the firmware you want to modify

2. Start MCSE

3. Load the firmware file by clicking the load button

4. To increase the read speed, simply click the increase read speed checkbox. A greyed out checkbox means this feature is not available for your firmware

5. To increase the write speed, double click the media code you want to change and select the write strategy you want to use instead. This is a bit of trial and error

6. To teach the firmware a new media code name, select an unused media code of the same media type from the list, e.g. a -R media name if your new disk is a -R media, and rename it by modifying the Media Name/Ext/Rev fields on the right. Instead of manually renaming, you can also import the media name by clicking the import button and following the displayed instructions. Click the set button when done. The original media code will not be supported by the firmware anymore

7. With some firmwares you can directly modify the write speeds using the write speed checkboxes and clicking the Set Speed button. Greyed out checkboxes mean this feature is not available

8. Save the firmware

9. Flash the modified firmware as usual

10. Reboot

If you want to buy a new DVD writer, it’s no longer necessary to pay more money to get a faster reading and writing speed. Just refer to the list of supported DVD writers, buy one of the cheap one and increase the read & write speed with MCSE! How geeky is that?

P/S: Using patched firmware might damage your drive and will void your warranty. The use of MediaCodeSpeedEdit is at your own risk. Although MCSE supports a lot of DVD writers, I did not have the chance to test this because both of my QSI and PIONEER DVR-108 DVD writers are not supported by MCSE. If it could, I’d have tested it as I have full faith in this program because it is constantly being updated since November 2004.

[ Download Media Code Speed Edit | MCSE Website ]

For non-ESET fans, please bear with me for one more day because today’s article will be again about getting free ESET license. I’ve previously shared with you on how to get a free 3 months and 6 months ESET NOD32 Antivirus license. Today will be about getting free ESET Smart Security username and password with 3 months subscription. The difference between the 2 ESET products (NOD32 Antivirus and Smart Security) is that Smart Security has a personal firewall and antispam together with the same antivirus and antispyware protection delivered by NOD32 Antivirus. However, it doesn’t come with other fancy features such as game mode, parental control and web safety such as LinkScanner by AVG or SiteAdvisor by McAfee. Surprisingly the price for 1 user ESET Smart Security license valid for a year is also the most expensive compared to other Internet Security suites.

The steps to get the free ESET Smart Security username and password again requires you to go through proxy. Since many of you had problems tunneling through open proxy, I will introduce you a few more tools and sites that can help you find a working china open proxy more easily. To get your free ESET Smart Security username and password valid for 3 months, just follow the steps below.


1. First we need to look for open proxy that belongs to China. Here are 3 sites (Roinstrument, XROXY, Pass) that contains china open proxy. I’d suggest you to copy all the china proxies ip address and port to a text file with the format IP:Port (eg: 202.188.0.133:80) per line.

2a. Open proxy usually don’t last long so you’ll have to test them. One of the easiest and fastest way to test the proxies is by using an online proxy checker. Just paste a the list of proxy addresses which you’ve created in step 1 to the form and click the Check Proxy! button. When finished testing, the good working proxies will be listed at the end of the page.

2b. If you have a list of proxies and not categorized according to country, here is a free and simple tool called Country Detector where you can load the proxy list, and it’ll produce a new list with country code next to the proxy address. The ip-to-country database is very old, you might need to download the latest database and then replace the GeoIP.dat file which is in the same location as CountryDetector.exe.

3. Once you have a working china open proxy, run Proxifier. Go to Options > Proxy Settings…

Click Add button, enter the proxy address and port. Next you need to select the protocol of the proxy. If the online proxy checker tells you that it is a “good socks 4 proxies”, then select SOCKS Version 4. Now click the Check button. You might want to enable SOCKS 4A extension if the testing fails. Once you get the message “Proxy is ready to work with Proxifier”, proceed to next step. Otherwise keep testing until you get a working proxy.

4. Open http://www.eset.com.cn/trial/ess_ac_90/ and click the yellow colored button.

5. Enter your name, email, confirm email again and click the button.

Note down the 24-digit activation code which can be used to convert it into a working ESET Smart Security username and password valid for 3 months.

6. If you’ve already installed ESET Smart Security, skip this step. If not, disable Proxifier, go to Australia’s NOD32 website to request for a 1 month trial license. Just enter your email address and hit the Submit button. Check your email and you should receive an email from noreply@eset.sk with the suject “ESET Smart Security – Trial License”. Note down the 1 month trial ESET username and password. Download the latest ESET Smart Security here and install. Enter the ESET username and password when requested. If you’re using a 64-bit Windows operating system, you have to download this installer instead. During installation, check “Setup update parameters later” when asked to enter your ESET Smart Security username and password.

7. Now download ESET Activation Tool. This ESET Activation Tool is an official program by ESET to activate/convert the 24 digit serial number into a genuine ESET Smart Security username and password. Re-enable Proxifier and run essact.exe. Make sure the first option “Activate with Activation Code” is selected. Enter your name, email and the 24-digit activation code. The name and email in the activation tool is not important so you can enter anything. If you got it right, you should see the message “Activation succeed, the Expiry Date is:2009-MM-DD”

8. Now launch ESET NOD32 Antivirus, click the Setup icon on the left hand side and then click Username and Password setup. You should only see the NOD32 username with the password hidden. To view the hidden password, download Asterisk Logger. Extract, run astlog.exe and voila! the ESET Smart Security password is revealed! I’ve tested the 3 months free ESET Smart Security username and password on NOD32View and the license can be used on both NOD32 Antivirus and Smart Security.

Important Note: This ESET Smart Security offer page logs the IP address, browser cookies and also email. In order for this to work, you must use a china proxy that has never been used to request the 24 digit ESET Smart Security activation code. The 24-digit code generated is based on your email address. Entering the same email will always give you the same code.

If you still can’t get the free ESET Smart Security username and password after trying for hours and about to throw your keyboard, try searching for Super GetValID V2 by Denniz / MasterSteven. It is only a vbs script that is able to connect to 25 websites, grabs all valid ESET Smart Security username and password, and automatically registers ESS to use the license. Super GetValID V2 is WAY better than NodLogin or NodEnabler because it connects to 25 sites simultaneously and the chances of all sites failing is very slim.

Thanks Kino for helping me to confirm on the offer restrictions.

Rogueware or commonly known as fake antivirus is a kind of scareware that misleads users into paying for fake or simulated removal of malware or that installs other malware. Once your computer is infected with a rogueware, it will either secretly download more real viruses to your computer which is kinda rare nowadays or it simply simulates that your computer is infected and offers you to clean it by buying the software. Although the simulated ones don’t seem to be really a threat to your computer because it doesn’t drop more malwares to your computer but it cripples your computer and nags the crap out of you until you give up and just pay them the money. Some rogueware is even programmed to defeat or disable antivirus or antispyware programs.

I have previously written about a free tool called Remove Fake Antivirus that is able to detect some rogue antivirus and clean them from your computer. Here is another similar tool called RogueKiller by Tigzy which in my opinion is more powerful in detecting and disabling Rogueware.


RogueKiller is a free and portable tool written in C++ which scans the registry, running processes and terminates the malicious ones. The good thing about RogueKiller is it only disables the rogueware and doesn’t delete any files on your computer. It is best to leave the deleting job to an antivirus or antispyware software because they have a more extensive database in recognizing malicious files. RogueKiller doesn’t have a fancy user interface and all you see is a blue colored command prompt window awaiting for further actions.

The first thing you should do after running RogueKiller is press the number 1 on your keyboard to start scanning for any active rogueware on your computer. A log file by the name RKreport.txt will be created and saved to the same location as RogueKiller for reference. If you see a sentence “Registry entries found!! Choose the mode 2 for deletion” after it has finished scanning, press any key to continue followed by pressing number 2 on your keyboard to start the disinfection process. The suspicious files will be copied to the RK_Quarantine folder while the original file is still available at the original location.

As usual, other than just talking about the feature of a software, I prefer to test it and make sure that it really works. I downloaded a FakeRean sample that runs under the name “Win 7 Security 2012″ and ran it on my test system. It tells me that it found infections and kept on asking me to register the software to clean it.

Even Action Center shows that Win 7 Security 2012 is turned off and clicking the Turn on now button will prompt me to purchase the full version or manually activate the program. This Action Center is actually fake and runs under the rogueware’s process. Once the rogueware process is terminated, I am able to access the real Action Center.

The worse problem is whenever I run any executable (.exe) file, it is blocked and the Win 7 Security 2012 Firewall Alert window will show, again asking me to activate the program. It does seem like there is no way I can use any tool to clean up this rogueware.

Fortunately there is a solution to run RogueKiller to attempt disabling this rogueware. Simply right click on RogueKiller and run it as Administrator which will have higher privilege than the rogueware bypassing the infected exe file association. After running a scan and delete in RogueKiller, Win 7 Security 2012 is instantly disabled. I also tested RogueKiller against Cloud AV 2012 and the rogueware doesn’t even stand a chance against RogueKiller. Other than disabling rogueware, RogueKiller can also fix HOSTS file, proxy, DNS and shortcuts. Definitely a keeper!

Download RogueKiller

I have heard about RegFromApp tool for quite some time but never really tested it because I am a very happy SysTracer user. SysTracer is able to take snapshots and then perform comparison to show the differences on the files, registries and applications. As for RegFromApp, the name itself sounds like it only monitors the registry which I think is not complete since I also need to monitor for file changes. Nevertheless, I am always a big fan of tools created by Nir Sofer so here is my review on RegFromApp.

After testing RegFromApp, the methodology is actually quite different from SysTracer because RegFromApp attempts to inject to a process and then monitors the registry changes in real time. Unlike SysTracer where I had to take the first snapshot, make the changes and then taking another snapshot to compare the differences.


There are two ways to monitor with RegFromApp. The first is to inject it into a process that is already running and the second method is to select the file that you want to monitor and then run it from RegFromApp. One important note is if you have UAC enabled, you should run RegFromApp as administrator so you will be able to trace processes that are ran under administrator. The registry changes will be outputted instantly on the RegFromApp interface. You can then save the entire Registry changes into a .reg file by using the ‘Save As’ option.

One possible problem that I’ve discovered when testing RegFromApp is that you may not be able to directly monitor for registry changes on installation setup files. Reason is when you run a setup file, it actually extracts a couple of real installation files to the temporary folder and then use them for installation. Here is an example scenario where I ran gbooks.exe from desktop to install Google Books Downloader. After clicking the Next button once, gbooks.exe process is no longer active and is bring replaced by 11659nua.exe and 11659nua.tmp at temp folder. So in order to monitor the installation registry changes on gbooks.exe, I will have to inject RegFromApp to both 11659nua.exe and 11659nua.tmp process from two different instances.

The same goes to a malware that has melting capability. When you run the malware, it creates a copy of itself into a deeper location where it is not easily seen and then the newly created malware starts to make changes on your registry by automatically adding itself to startup. RegFromApp is useful but only for certain situation. It is free and works from Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

Download RegFromApp

HyperUpload, a website that I always upload my files to. It’s very similar to RapidShare, but somehow I prefer to use HyperUpload.
Although RapidShare says that they doesn’t have limit in hosting your files,they still have to clean up their drives from time to time, so they will delete files that have not been accessed for 30 days or longer.
If you want your file to stay forever, you’ve just gotta pay to be their Premium user.
I’ve just tried downloading a file that I uploaded 3 months ago in HyperUpload and the file is still there for me to download!

RapidShare offers hosting of 100 MB per file and HyperUpload only offers hosting of 10MB per file.
I really don’t understand why a person can upload 100MB of file but can only download 30MB per day? It’s like a way to make people to sign up for their Premium-user in RapidShare.
As for HyperUpload, it didn’t say anything about download restrictions.

There’s another advantage in using HyperUpload.


The process of uploading your files to HyperUpload become more simple.
With the new program “HyperUploader”, developed by their programmers you may upload all data with one click.
It’s enough to click on the any file with right mouse button and choose “upload to hyperupload”.

And the other way is to open the program and choose the file by yourself.

The features are evident – you don’t even need to open your browser and may upload anything you want right from your computer.
This program contains no adware or spyware and so tiny that you would overlook it’s download.

[ Download HyperUploader ]

For people who are familiar with how Zemana AntiLogger works, there is an alternative software called DataGuard AntiKeylogger. It is developed by MaxSecurity Lab, the same company that develops NextGen AntiKeylogger which I have reviewed nearly 6 months ago. AntiKeylogger software doesn’t rely on virus signature updates and file scanning like the traditional anti-virus programs do. It simply detects if the method used in logging keystrokes are being activated and either automatically blocking it or offering the user to allow the action. It is easier said than being done because there are more than one method of capturing keystrokes, with some of them are private unknown method.

From the official DataGuard AntiKeylogger’s website, it claims to provide protection against keystroke logging, clipboard capturing, capturing text from opened documents and windows, hidden screen capturing, DirectX based keyloggers, kernel level keyloggers and keyboard filters through its cutting-edge heuristics methods to detect and disable all types of potential keyloggers using analyze of its activity. As good as it sounds, I am actually more interested in putting DataGuard AntiKeylogger Ultimate to the real world tests rather than believing what it says.


I re-image my test system to a clean Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit with all latest updates. I used a 32-bit platform to perform the test because DataGuard AntiKeylogger can only support 32-bit. I then installed the latest version of DataGuard AntiKeylogger Ultimate v4.1 and followed by a restart. All protections by default so I can directly start installing keylogging tools to test if DataGuard AntiKeylogger is able to block them.

The results are either FAILED or PASSED. FAILED means that DataGuard AntiKeylogger wasn’t able to block the keylogger and PASSED means protected.

Keyloggers
1. Invisible Keylogger Stealth: Failed

2. All In One Keylogger
– Textual Logging: Failed
– Visual Logging: Failed

3. Revealer Keylogger Pro Edition: Failed

4. REFOG Keylogger: Failed

RAT Trojan
5. Blackshades NET
– Live logger: Failed
– Keylog manager: Failed
– Screenshot manager: Passed (Refer image below)
– Webcam Manager: Failed
– Audio Manager: Failed

DataGuard AntiKeylogger replaces the screenshot capture by BlackShades with some blur image

6. Cammy
– Webcam capture: Failed

7. CyberGate
– Webcam capture: Failed
– Remote desktop: Passed
– Audio capture: Failed
– Keylogger: Passed

8. DarkComet
– Webcam Capture: Failed
– Sound Capture: Failed
– Remote Desktop: Failed
– Online Keylogger: Failed (Refer image below)
– Remote Keylogger: Failed

DarkComet is still able to log keystrokes when DataGuard AntiKeylogger protection is active

There are actually a few more keyloggers to test but I gave up seeing that DataGuard AntiKeylogger failed most of the tests. If you wonder what DataGuard AntiKeylogger actually protects since it failed most of the real world test and I believe it is made based on simulation testing tools. I’ve tested DataGuard AntiKeylogger against simulation test programs made by Zemana (KeyLogger, ScreenLogger, ClipBoardLogger, WebCamLogger) and Firewall Leak Tester (Anti-KeyLogger Tester AKLT) and it managed to block all of it.

In my opinion, Zemana Antilogger is far superior than DataGuard AntiKeylogger. The last time I reviewed Zemana AntiLogger, it is able detect ALL keylogging, webcam capture and screenshot capture methods from different trojans, and it can also detect process injection and startup addition without putting any noticeable load on the computer. Moreover Zemana can also run on 64-bit.

Nevertheless, a free lifetime license of DataGuard AntiKeylogger worth $59 for possible future use is still valuable. To request for your free license, head on to Techno360′s review on DataGuard AntiKeylogger page and click on the “giveaway page” link located near the end of the article. Entering a username and email at the giveaway page will instantly generate your unique license key.

[ Visit DataGuard AntiKeylogger Webpage ]

Antivirus Rescue Disk is one of my must have CD to carry along with me whenever I have any computer servicing job. When a virus infects a computer, it normally makes Windows very unstable, slow and probably even terminate any antivirus or anyspyware software that it finds making it impossible for you to clean the virus from Windows. All I needed to do is to boot up the computer with an antivirus rescue disk, run a full scan and remove any virus that it finds. By doing that, 90% of the virus are normally gone and it should leave me with a Windows that I can boot in and work on restoring the disabled regedit, Windows Task Manager, cmd and etc.

The last time I checked there were about 13 rescue disks, most are free to use and only a few that requires to purchase. There are NO perfect antivirus as different antivirus has different detection rate. I wished I can bring all of the rescue disks with me but maintaining 13 rescue disks and making sure that I always have the latest version and definition is very troublesome and tedious. I tried using MagicISO, EasyBoot and a few more software which I can’t remember to put all the antivirus rescue discs ISO into one single DVD but the software cannot support such feature. So I gave up…

Yesterday I received an email from Davide Costa informing me that he has made a free tool called SARDU that can integrate multiple antivirus rescue disks, a few useful utilities, linux live CDs and also Windows PE. Not only that, the best part is it can be installed in a USB flash drive!


SARDU is short for Shardana Antivirus Rescue Disk Utility. It can handle ISO images of bootable antivirus, some collections of utilities, Linux Live CDs and the most popular distributions of Windows PE. It has been categorized into 4 sections, Antivirus, Utility, Linux and PE.

Antivirus

Avira AntiVir Rescue System

BitDefender

Dr.Web LiveCD

F-Secure

GDATA

Kaspersky ‘Kav Rescue CD’

Panda Safe Cd

Utility

Floppy win98SE

Gparted

NT password

Parted Magic

System Rescue CD

Ultimate Boot CD

Linux

Austrumi

Damn Small Linux

Puppy Linux

Slax

Windows PE

LiveXP

MegalabCD

WindowsPE

UBCD4WIN

VistaPE

The first time you create a universal rescue disks ISO or to your USB flash drive can be time consuming because you need to download around 2.6GB of ISO images if you want to integrate all ISO that is supported by SARDU. After that, the whole process is very simple, thanks to SARDU for being a “smart” program that automatically recognizes the ISO image that you place into the ISO folder.

Here’s a simple guide on how to use Shardana Antivirus Rescue Disk Utility to create a bootable USB flash drive containing multiple antivirus rescue disks together with Linux LiveCDs, utilities and Windows PE.
1. Download the latest version of SARDU.
2. Extract SARDU to a new folder and run sardu.exe
3. To download the ISO image, simply click on the name in the program and your default web browser will open with the link to download the latest ISO. Save the file to the ISO folder where sardu.exe is located.
4. When you’ve finished downloading the ISO files, close sardu.exe and reopen sardu.exe. You will notice that SARDU has automatically put a check on the checkbox if the ISO image is found. If the checkbox is grayed out even though you think you’ve downloaded the file, then most likely you’ve downloaded the wrong one. The file has to be in ISO format, not ZIP or EXE.
5. You can either click on the “Crea ISO” button to compile all the ISO images into a single ISO to burn it to a DVD or click the “Crea USB avviabile” button to install it to your USB flash drive.
6. When you have your SARDU USB flash drive or DVD ready, boot it up and you should get a multiboot screen like the image below.

The advantage of installing SARDU on USB is you can do incremental updates so you don’t need to go through all the steps again every time you want to update a single ISO image. If you’re afraid that you will be facing computers with old motherboards that cannot support booting USB, you can always use PLoP.

Although the program’s user interface is in Italian, I’d say that it is still quite easy to use. Anyway, the author of SARDU informed me that he is making a structure to read language.ini for multilanguage support. We can expect an English translation soon…

SARDU is truly a gem! I just did a Google search on SARDU and it’s weird that not even a single blog out there has mentioned about it but I am very glad to be the first to share it with you… I wished I’d have known about SARDU earlier so me and I believe some of you can reduce the usage of CDRs on burning different rescue disks.

[ Visit SARDU’s Official Forum Thread ]

One and a half year ago I introduce a free utility called CPU-Z which is able to give you comprehensive information on your CPU, as well as chipset and memory. Very useful for computer technicians if they need to identify the CPU, motherboard and memory on a particular computer. Until today I always have the latest version of CPU-Z on my thumb drive and I bring it along whenever I go servicing.

Today, I’d like to introduce you 2 more FREE utility which is able to give you CPU information and also BIOS information by DMI (Desktop management Interface). A very good alternative if you somehow do not like CPU-Z.


hiyohiyo, a Japanese and owner of Crystal Dew World website, is the developer for CrystalCPUID and CrystalDMI.

CrystalCPUID is a CPU utility which is similar to CPU-Z. It supports Windows Vista/2003/XP/2000/NT4/Me/98/95 x86/x64.

As you can see on the image above, it is capable of giving you every bit of information about your CPU. Clicking on function from the menu, you can get CPUID, Cache, BIOS, System, Chipset, PCI Device information. If you’re those people who loves and dares to overclock, there is tool such as Intel SpeedStep Control, AMD K6/K7/K8 Multiplier/Voltage Change, VIA CyrixIII/C3 Multiplier Change and MSR Editor/MSR Walker. All those features are at your OWN RISK! You know overclocking is dangerous and not necessarily good for your hardwares.

CrystalDMI is another FREE utility which is able to obtain BIOS information by DMI (Desktop management Interface).

As far as I see, this utility is somehow similar to CrystalCPUID but it’s more for advance user. Not only it shows your BIOS information, it can also give you:
– BIOS Information
– System Information
– Base Board Information
– System Enclosure or Chassis
– Processor Information
– Memory Controller Information
– Memory Module Information
– Cache Information
– Port Connector Information
– System Slots
– OEM Strings
– BIOS Language Information
– Physical Memory Array
– Memory Device
– Memory Array Mapped Address
– Memory Device Mapped Address
– System Boot Information

Very useful utility and it’s free. Would recommend any computer technician to have this with you. Save you the trouble in opening up the computer casing just to find out what motherboard, cpu and memory the user is using.

[ Download CrystalCPUID and CrystalDMI ]

I found a very new Linux distro called XpressLinux born on October 26, 2006 that’s similar to Windows XP. It might be the perfect distro for a die-hard Windows user who wants to try Linux or have a dual-boot system. Below are the few reasons why I said the above statement.