Recently I visited WinToFlash website because I wanted to help a friend in creating a Windows installation bootable USB drive. At the bottom of the main page, I noticed a small top10 list of “USB Flash drives speed” that links to UsbFlashSpeed.com. The only website I know of that saves a list of USB speed test results is from Nirsoft made by USBDeview utility. The speed test made by USBDeview is very simple by writing a large file into the USB flash drive, and then reading back the same file to getting the read speed. As for UsbFlashSpeed.com, their USB Flash Benchmark tool called FlashBench works differently by writing and reading 3 times to get an average number on small files from 16MB down to 1KB.

UsbFlashSpeed.com website doesn’t really list “ALL” of the results even though the filter is set to “All. When you do that, it only shows the top 10 of the fastest Flash Drives (Read and Write) and the last 10 benchmarked USB flash drives. If you use the search function, only 50 will be displayed. Taking a look at the FlashBench tool, it is pretty straight forward and easy to use.


FlashBench is a free tool only 51KB in size with two dll files (iotest.dll and Thrift.dll) that must be placed in the same folder. It is portable and doesn’t require installation. Running the benchmark tool shows you the drive being selected to benchmark and clicking the Benchmark button will start the reading and writing process. Once the benchmark has been completed, you will be presented with a link to your online report IF you’ve checked the “Send Report” option.

The fastest USB flash drive currently listed in UsbFlashSpeed.com is Kingston DT Ultimate which is obviously because of the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 specifications. When I benchmarked my 128GB Corsair GTR with FlashBench, I noticed that the read and write performance has degraded, probably due to a lot of reading and writing cycles. I guess it was a big mistake in using it on my WD TV first generation.

[ Visit UsbFlashSpeed.com ]

Is someone monitoring your computer, emails or chat logs? Perhaps even your mobile text messages as well? If you have a secret message that you need to send to someone very often, how are you going to do that without installing any complicated PGP encryption software?

Here’s an idea. How about using a free web service that don’t even require registration to help you keep your messages secure from outsiders reading your messages?


Lockbin is a free service for sending private email messages.

To send secure messages, you need to go through 5 steps.
1. Agree to usage agreement
2. Enter security code
3. Type your private message
4. Type “security word”. It is for the recipient to decode the secure message.
5. Enter your name, email and your friend’s name and email.

The encrypted secure message will NOT be sent to the recipient email address. Your friend will only get a notification saying that you’ve received a secure message which will need a special “Secret Word” to decode the message. Your friend will need to visit a link provided in the email.

To decode and read secure messages, there are 4 steps.
1. Agree to usage agreement
2. Enter security code
3. Enter Secret Word
4. Messages is decrypted if the correct secret word is entered

Lockbin’s cryptographic algorithm uses a Secret Word to encrypt messages. You invent the Secret Word and deliver it to the recipient using a phone, text message, instant message, smoke signals, homing pigeon, or as a last resort… another email.

When the encrypted message is received, it is destroyed from Lockbin’s database, and decrypted in the recipient’s browser, provided that they entered the Secret Word correctly. I tried to retrieve the same message again, it says “An error occured – Try again“.

How secure is this Lockbin’s secure message? It uses SSL, so the HTTP traffic is encrypted. If someone has your email password, they can’t view the secure message because they don’t have the secret word. Screenshot loggers might be able to capture the secure message but it is seldom being used because constant capturing of screenshots takes up a lot of disk space. Lockbin is not perfect but it’s definitely useful.

[ Visit Lockbin ]

When you unplug the AC power from a Microsoft Windows XP-based portable computer, the battery may drain more quickly than you expect. Therefore, the operating system may shut down prematurely.

This problem may occur if one of the following conditions is true:


• The portable computer cannot enter the deeper Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) processor idle sleep states.
This occurs when the USB 2.0 driver leaves the asynchronous scheduler component running continuously. This prevents the processor from entering the deeper ACPI processor idle sleep states, or C-states. C-states save power when the processor is not busy. These states range from C0 to C3 or C4. Typically, an idle portable computer uses the C3 and C4 states to preserve battery power. If an idle portable computer cannot enter or maintain the C3 or C4 states, the battery power drains more quickly. This problem is fixed by installing the download that is available in this article.

• The USB host controller is unable to turn off.
This typically occurs when devices are removed from a nested USB hub that is attached to the host controller. The host controller does not recognize the device removal. Therefore, the controller is never turned off. This prevents the processor from entering the ACPI processor idle sleep states. This problem is not fixed by installing the download that is available in this article.

• The USB host controller uses the periodic scheduler for USB 2.0 devices.
This typically occurs when devices that rely on the periodic scheduler are attached to the host controller. These may be isochronous (Isoch) devices such as audio devices. Alternatively, they may be interrupt devices such as mouse or keyboard. This problem is not fixed by installing the download that is available in this article.

Note: Various factors can affect the battery life of different portable computers that use different types of batteries. Therefore, you may not notice any improvement in battery life after you apply this update.

Install this update to address an issue where a Windows XP-based portable computer may not have as long a battery life under certain circumstances when certain USB 2.0 devices are connected.
The patch only exists for x86 versions of Windows XP, Service Pack 2.

[ Download KB918005 Update ]

Last year I’ve share with you a tool called AIMFix I found which is able to remove any AOL instant messenger related viruses and even on some non AOL related viruses. It is a small, simple and portable tool which you can just run, and it’ll remove what it finds. In MSN, there are also virus and it’s a quite annoying one. If your friend is infected by the photo virus, it’ll keep on trying to send you photo album.zip file.

There are also other filename such as IMG-0012.zip, rachel.exe, newsXX.zip, Jenny.zip and etc. It is smart enough to send along messages like…

nice new photos of me and my friends and stuff and when i was young lol
picture of me and my friend
look at my new dancing movie
look at me doing the moonwalk!!!
Hey, I met this girl at the store a week ago. Look at the picture I took of her when she was sleeping
hey you got a photo album? anyways heres my new photo album accept k?
Hey wanna see my new photo album?
Lmfao hey im sending my new photo album, Some bare funny pictures!
OMG; just accept please its only my photo album
hey man accept my new photo album.. made it for yah, been doing picture story of my life LOL
dude i just got these pictures off my digital for you! Gimme a moment ot find em and send
My friend took nice photos of me
You Should see em loL
check out my sexy books
HEY lol i’ve done a new photo album
Hey just finished new photo album! might be a few nudes lol…
Wow! look at this old picture i found
Take a look at the new pics already

Not many people are infected by MSN virus nowadays but it is still good to stay alert so you won’t be fooled and infected by it in future. If you know anyone that is infected by MSN virus, here are some tools to help you remove them.


1. MSN Photo Virus Remover

– Create by my friend Michael. It is currently able to detect 2,436 virus. You may need to have an administrator account or to start in Safe Mode to completely remove the MSN Viruses.
[ Download MSN Photo Virus Remover Software ]

2. MSNFix

– MSNFix is a batch file that is able to detect and remove many types of msn virus. Created by a French guy but it has English translation. Download the zip file and extract. Run MSNFix.bat, select language and press R to start searching for MSN virus.
[ Download MSNFix ]

This article will show you how you can easily “teach” people how to create Audio CD from MP3, burn ISO images and burn datas to CD or DVD. The reason I say “teach” is because recently I’ve got a friend telling me that he was unable to burn MP3 using Sonic. I personally never had any experience with Sonic, and I don’t want to download the bulky 1GB Easy Media Creator and install it on my computer just to “show” him how to burn MP3 to audio CD.

What I can do is to suggest to him to download a small, free and portable CD and DVD burning software and then teach him how to burn MP3 to audio CD. It’s small and don’t require installation. He can delete it off after using it! Or he can keep it if likes it… Isn’t that a better idea than me downloading Easy Media Creator or asking him to download Nero?


I found a PORTABLE CD and DVD burning software that the file size is ONLY 2.83MB! If you only use software burner just to burn audio CDs from MP3, backing up data, and burning ISO images, this will be much better compared to those bulky software burners such as Easy Media Creator and Nero. It’s FREE and don’t require installation. The interface is quite similar to any CD/DVD burning software. You can either drag the files to burn or simply right click and add the files or folders to burn.

DeepBurner has 3 versions. Pro, FREE and FREE Portable. Pro is the paid version and it contains a little more features than the FREE version. As for FREE, it requires installation and the FREE Portable doesn’t. DeepBurner Free Portable works straight from removable media, whether it’s a USB flash drive, compact flash card, or even a good old floppy.

Features supported by DeepBurner Free Portable:
1. You can easily create and burn regular data CDs/DVDs
2. AudioCD recording functionality is included
3. Quickly build and burn ISO Images
4. Supports IDE/EIDE, USB, SCSI, and Fire Wire CD/DVD writers
5. Overburn function
6. Buffer underrun technology “Burn-Proof”
7. DAO, SAO and TAO Writing methods support
8. Support for CD-R / CD-RW / DVD-R / DVD+R / DVD-RW / DVD+RW / DVD-RAM
9. Create Multi-session CDs
10. Bootable CD/DVD support
11. Dynamically adjustable drive buffer size
12. High Performance File/Disc Caching
13. Supports Long File Name (Joliet) File Systems
14. Creates ISO (100% DOS/Windows) compatible data CDs/DVDs
15. Supports multiple simultaneous recorders
16. Easy to use wizards help you create any type of burning project
17. The Autorun Wizard makes it easy to create effective autoruns for your CDs
18. You can even easily make your own cover, booklet or case insert
19. Multi-language interface

The few things that you CANNOT do with the FREE portable version of DeepBurner is:
1. Disk-to-disk copy
2. Burn Video DVDs
3. Backup utility
4. Burn photo albums
5. Burning from the command line
6. Drive and media restoration/information utility

After I found DeepBurner, I am not going to install Nero in future if I format my computer. Nero 7 is so bulky and contains so many programs that I don’t use. It’s just taking up my hard disk space and also flooding my registry with entries. While DeepBurner is small and does it jobs pretty well. So if you can “teach” people how to burn audio CD, ISO or data CD/DVD, that means you’ve already know how to do it.

[ Download DeepBurner FREE Portable ]

I got an email from Ramakant, asking me if there are any antivirus that works beyond the 30 day trial period. The reason for trial version is for you to try out the product before buying. If you’re satisfied with it, you can purchase the subscription to continue using it. If not, simply uninstall it and look for a new software. A normal trial version of Kaspersky Internet Security is only valid for 30 days. Once the trial period has expired, you won’t be able to update its virus definition and it won’t clean any virus that is detected on the computer. You are then left with only 2 options. Uninstall Kaspersky Internet Security or spend $79.95 to purchase a 1 year subscription.

I found out that there is a way to get a 90 days trial period for Kaspersky Internet Security instead of the normal 30 days. This will give you more time to evaluate Kaspersky Internet Security.


For the 90 days trial period to work, you must NOT have activated the 30 day trial version. If you’ve already activated the 30 day trial, applying this 90 day trial key will not extend your trial period. The expiration date will remain the same. So I guess this will only be useful for those who have not installed Kaspersky Internet Security before.

To get it, you’ll need to visit a page, enter the voucher code and you’ll get a link to download Kaspersky Internet Security. However, there’s one small problem with the 90 day trial Kaspersky Internet Security. The installer and program interface will be in Dutch, not English. If you want it to be in English, just follow the steps below on how to get your English version of 90 day trial for Kaspersky Internet Security.

1. Go to Kaspersky Netherland page.

2. Enter your Last Name and Email. As for Voucher code, enter sera6r8z.

3. Check your email. You should receive an email from Kaspersky Lab Benelux Registration (register@kaspersky.nl) with the subject “Free Kaspersky product download‏“. In the email, it contains a link for you to download Kaspersky Internet Security.

4. Once you’ve downloaded 24.4MB kis7_nl_digital_lifestyle.exe setup file, extract the file setup. If your computer don’t have any archiver program that can extract the setup file, use Universal Extractor. You should see 4 files after extracting kis7_nl_digital_lifestyle.exe. They are kis.nl.msi, setup.exe, setup.key and Setup.reg. The setup.key is the 90 day trial Kaspersky Internet Security license key.

5. Download latest English version of Kaspersky Internet Security and install. The reason you need to download again is because the previously downloaded KIS is a dutch version and it is slightly outdated.

6. When installation complete, you’ll get a dialog box asking you to activate your copy of Kaspersky Internet Security. Select “Apply existing license key” and click Next.

7. Browse for the setup.key and click Next. Next screen will tell you that license key successfully installed. Voila, your Kaspersky Internet Security is now a 90 days trial period, not 30 days.

Using a Kaspersky License Key Viewer, I found that the Kaspersky license key (setup.key) expiry date is on 4/30/2009. However, it is a trial key which has a 91 subscription days.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to test if I can reuse the 90 days trial license key. I changed my computer date to 2009 and ran KIS. KIS immediately tells me that it has expired. I then tried to apply the setup.key file and it detected that the key has expired. It says “Attention! Your evaluation period is over. Protection of your computer has been disabled. To enable protection, please click here to purchase.” Even after a complete uninstall and then reinstall, I still couldn’t use the 90 days trial key. I suspect that Kaspersky Internet Security has recorded the trial expiry date somewhere in the registry.

No matter how smart a software is, crackers will always there to dig up the flaw of the program’s security. There is a person by the nickname Gr0uND ZYr0 aka De-EvIL has created a simple batch file that can restore Kaspersky trial.

After a complete uninstall, I ran Kaspersky resetter batch file. Then I reinstall KIS and it allowed me to re-use the 90 days trial license key! I believe Kaspersky knows about this flaw and who knows, maybe they’ll fix it when the next build or version is out…

Better safe than sorry. That’s what I always tell my clients. I remind them very often to backup their important files at least once a week because something will go wrong someday and we don’t want to be in the situation where we loose all our important data. Imagine a company with 100 over employees and the accounting file server hard drive crashed. For personal computer, what about all those precious personal photos of your children growing up?

I guess we all know the importance of keeping backup files of our most important information but let’s face it, how many of you actually implements a good automated backup system? I can honestly tell you I do not have a proper backup system. I only do it when I feel like it.

If you’re looking for a good backup software to help you automate backing up files, you should give Backup4all because I am going to share with you a trick on how to get license registration code for free which can be used on the latest version of Backup4all.


Backup4all is a backup software for Windows. It protects your valuable data from partial or total loss by automating tasks, password protecting and compressing it to save storage space. Using Backup4all you can easily back up to any local or network drive, backup to FTP, backup to DVD, or other removable media (such as USB HDD or flash drives). Backup4all is the best backup solution for desktop and laptop computers, for your business or personal use.

Backup4all comes in three editions: Professional, Standard and Lite. The free license is for the Lite edition which normally $19.95. Although the lite edition has limited-functionality, it is good enough to backup your files and I believe most of us can live without these extra features. You can check here for Backup4all feature metrix. One of the feature that I really like in Backup4all is the free backup plugins. A backup plugin is actually an XML file that contains information about the specific application it was created for. This allows Backup4all to recognize exactly what to back up from your computer in order to have that application’s configuration files and other data backed up.

Here is how to get the free license for Backup4all Lite.

1. Visit this page, enter your full name, email address and click Submit button.

2. Check your email and open the email from info@backup4all.com with the subject Backup4all Lite Registration Key‏. Note down the registration name and registration key.

3. Download latest Backup4all b4asetup.exe and install.

4. Run Backup4all, go to Help > Register… Go to Register tab and enter the registration name and registration key at the appropriate boxes and click Register button.

Voila! A fully licensed Backup4all Lite commercial software for free! If you prefer to use the Standard or Professional feature, you can upgrade at a cheaper price without paying the full price. This key should work on all future version of Backup4all 3. Go ahead and start backing up your files.

P/S: I also found a way to get Genie Backup Manager 5.0 Professional free license code but I don’t think I will be writing an article about it. Reason is Genie Backup Manager version 5.0 is really obsolete as the latest version is already at version 8! I won’t share stuff which are old and useless with you. But if you want to have a look, go here.

There are a lot of giveaways pending at raymond.cc because many software developers contacted me to do a review of their software and they are willing to provide a couple of free licenses to be given away here. If you have been here long enough you would have noticed that I never like to simply do a quick review based on what is stated on the software website. Testing and reviewing a software is very time consuming and is not just installing on my computer and checking a few options that is on the program. It is impossible to think of ALL the logics in just a few hours so I will need to search the web to find if there are any common problems/bugs and user’s concern/questions.

Nearly two months ago I reviewed KeyScrambler, which is a very effective security software that is able to defeat all of the keyloggers including the low-level ones by encrypting the keystrokes allowing the keyloggers to capture only random characters. I was so satisfied with the extra added security that it provides to my computer that I went and bought the Premium edition to use it on my laptop. I also like the fact that it is a lifetime license where you don’t ever need to pay for an upgrade. I did contact KeyScrambler to provide a couple of Premium product keys for free but did not get a respond then. Somehow they got to know about my article and they searched for my email which was swallowed by their spam filter. Qian (“Chen”) Wang happily sent me 5 KeyScrambler Premium product keys worth $44.99 each to be given away here.


There are 3 versions of KeyScrambler, Personal, Professional and Premium. The Personal edition only supports Firefox, Internet Explorer and Flock browsers. Meaning only keystrokes typed in those 3 web browsers will be encrypted but any other software such as Opera, Windows Live Messenger, Skype or etc will be in clear-text. The Professional edition supports slightly more applications and finally the Premium edition has the most support. You can check out the apps supported by KeyScrambler from this link.

As an added test, I tested KeyScrambler Premium against Invisible Keylogger Stealth which is a driver based low level keylogger that cost $99. As you can see from the screenshot below, the Invisible Keylogger Stealth captured only random characters when it is supposed to be “test by raymond.cc”.

The latest KeyScrambler 2.8.1 works with the latest Firefox 5.0 even though the changelog only mentioned support for Firefox 5 Beta. After using KeyScrambler Premium for nearly 2 months, I’ve noticed 2 problems so far which is the encrypted text ends up on the textbox rather than the real text and hitting the backspace solves the problem. Explorer.exe sometimes will crash where Windows will automatically restore it.

If you would like to win this excellent KeyScrambler Premium lifetime license, all you need to do is leave a comment. The winner will be randomly selected in 48 hours, announced at this page and will receive an email from me containing the KeyScrambler Premium product key.

Update: The 5 lucky winners are Hardy, Joe, Joe Shu, E K and John. You should be receiving an email from me shortly. Congratulations!

Thank you all very much for your kind birthday wishes. Although not many of my friends remembered my birthday, but getting 152 wishes from yesterday’s post was a record! I am deeply touched because you all don’t know me in real life but are willing to write a comment to wish me well. With that, I am not going to let you all down and will continue to post what I know even if I am busy with my job.

Whenever I finish installing Windows, there are some software that I will surely install. They are Adobe Reader for reading PDF files, PowerArchiver for extracting ZIP/RAR files, Winamp for playing audio and video files, Microsoft Office for opening excel, word and powerpoint files, hexeditor of editing executable files, and etc… The more software we install on a computer, the slower it becomes.

What if I tell you that there is a software which is able to help you preview 100 over file formats from Windows Explorer or Microsoft Outlook even if you don’t have the original software installed? Imagine previewing PDF files without Adobe Reader, opening ZIP files without WinZIP, playing audio without winamp or media player and etc… Check it out!


Explorer View is an instant file viewer for more than 100 file types, including: a Powerpoint viewer, Visio, DWG viewer, Excel, PDF, AutoCad and many more which works inside Windows Explorer.

The big feature of this utility is the Preview Pane that will preview images, documents, HTML and even audio files. In the case of documents, the whole file is located instantly into the preview pane so that you can browse through the contents. You can also print the file directly from the preview pane, and copy selected text to the clipboard. Explorer View brings up the standard viewing buttons for image preview such as flip and zoom. Audio files bring up a set of standard player buttons. This means that you can conveniently check a text file without having to load up Word, or organise your music collection without the need to start your player. It’s the simplest, safest and quickest file viewer you can ever use!

There are 2 versions of Explorer View. Explorer View for Windows Explorer and Explorer View for Microsoft Outlook. Explorer View for Windows Explorer allows you to view the file’s content from Windows Explorer. As for Microsoft Outlook version, you can preview email attachments inside Microsoft Outlook. This useful universal file viewer it is a shareware. Each cost the same price which is $29.95. As usual, I am here to help you save your hard earned money by showing you how to legitimately get a genuine license on both ExplorerView for Windows Explorer and Microsoft Outlook for FREE!

To get free genuine license for Explorer View for Windows Explorer

1. Visit this page, enter your first name, last name, Email address, Secure Code, check the agreement and click Register button.

2. Check your email and you should receive an email from sales@getdata.com with the subject “GetData software updates and support registration”. Note down the key. The key has a format which looks like XXXX-XXXX-XXXX.

3. Download Explorer View for Windows Explorer and install.

4. Launch Explorer View for Windows Explorer after installation. You should see a new tray icon appear. Right click and select Activate.

Make sure Activate Online is selected and click Next. Enter the license key that you received via email and click Next. You should get a dialog window that says “Activation Succeeded. Thank you for activating your software.”

To get free genuine license for Explorer View for Microsoft Outlook

1. Visit this page, enter your first name, last name, Email address, Secure Code, check the agreement and click Register button.

2. Check your email and you should receive an email from sales-support@getdata.com with the subject “GetData software updates and support registration”. Note down the key. The key has a format which looks like XXXX-XXXX-XXXX.

3. Download Explorer View for Microsoft Outlook and install.

4. Launch Microsoft Outlook after installation. You should see a ExplorerView button at the menu bar. Click the ExplorerView button and select About. At the About dialog box, click the Activate button.

Make sure Activate Online is selected and click Next. Enter the license key that you received via email and click Next. You should get a dialog window that says “Activation Succeeded. Thank you for activating your software.”

Get it quick! I have a feeling that this offer wouldn’t last long after I’ve posted it out. Enjoy and good luck!

If you are using the default password manager that is built-in to Firefox, you would notice that logging in to websites such as PayPal and Citibank doesn’t prompt you to remember the password. However it seems to work on other websites. Well this is not a bug but it is just the web browsers respecting the autocomplete=”off” code that is on the HTML. Many years ago I’ve shared a tip on how to force Firefox to save password on websites such as Yahoo Mail and Hotmail using a bookmarklet which I can confirm that it is still working today. All you need to do is paste a long string of javascript to the address bar and hit Enter before logging in and the web browser will magically prompt you if you would like to save the password. Below is the HTML source code of the Paypal site that has autocomplete=”off” added to the login form.

If for some reason you don’t want to use the bookmarklet or it doesn’t work and want this feature to be permanently removed, making Firefox to always ignore the autocomplete=”off”, this is how you do it on Firefox 4. It was much easier to do this on Firefox 3 because of the naked nsLoginManager.js file but Firefox 4 has packed all of the .js files into one omni.jar file.


You can refer to my previous article on how to edit files inside omni.jar by first deoptimizing it and then changing the extension from .jar to .zip which will allow you to edit the files in omni.jar.

Once you have done all that, go to components folder and edit the nsLoginManager.js with your favorite text editor (I would recommend Notepad++). Press CTRL+F which will bring up the search box and type _isAutoCompleteDisabled followed by hitting the enter key. The whole code should look like the screenshot below.

Now all you need is to change the value from true to false which I have circled in red. Make sure that the semicolon is still there after the false. Save it and rename the omni.zip back to omni.jar. For best performance and optimization, make sure you re-optimize the jar file by using the –optimize switch with optimizejars.py. As you can see at the screenshot below, I am now able to save my PayPal password on Firefox 4.

Do note that you probably need to go through the whole process of editing the nsLoginManager.js file whenever Firefox 4 gets updated. If you’re using LastPass to manage all your saved passwords, then you do not need to worry about this because by default LastPass does not respect AutoComplete=off. You can either enable or disable that from the LastPass Preferences window. I hope to have the LastPass review with (surprise) posted as soon as I can.

Every new version of Acrobat Reader that is released by Adobe seems to be slower and slower.
I’ve used Adobe Acrobat Reader since v4 and it was fast. When it gets to v5, the loading speed is still fine.
But when it gets to v6 and v7, the loading speed is quite ridiculously slow!

Good news, because I’ve found a software that is able to speed up your Adobe Acrobat Reader launch time.



Adobe Reader SpeedUp
Adobe Reader SpeedUp is a simple application that was created to help make the loading time of Adobe’s Acrobat/Reader software bearable for everyday use.
Adobe Reader SpeedUp only needs to be used once (a process taking only a few seconds) and then your ‘Reader will be transformed forever. There are also some tweaking options available.
“w00t!”, as the young kids say.

** I’ve tested it and it really works. It will disable plugins that most of us don’t use and thus, speeds up the loading time. Very useful and it’s FREE. 😀

[ Adobe Reader SpeedUp Website | Download Adobe Reader SpeedUp ]

I remembered once seeing this sentence at a website that says “nearly everyone and their DOG knows about AVG and is testing the latest AVG FREE version 8 right now”. I believe that is very true because I have a friend who is 50 over years old and he once “suggested” AVG to me… He is a business man and not even a computer literate person. That proves how successful AVG’s marketing is.

In my opinion, the latest AVG 8 is a bit bloated and not as light as the previous version 7.5. In fact, many software has started to add more and more feature in every major release and that makes it bloated. If you’re using AVG FREE 8, I’d suggest you to switch to another one which I’ve tested and found to be better than AVG. Also, recently more and more Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 key that gotten from Barclay’s promotion has been blacklisted. You could switch to this antivirus if you want…


RISING Antivirus 2008 is developed by a Chinese software company in Beijing. It protects your computers against all types of viruses, Trojans, Worms, Rootkits and other malicious programs. Ease of use, Active Defense technology, Patented Unknown Virus Scan&Clean technology and Patented Smartupdate technology make RISING Antivirus ‘ install-and-forget ‘ product that lets you focus on what you really want to do.

RISING Antivirus Free Edition is a solution with no cost to personal users for the life of RISING Antivirus 2008 while still provides the SAME level of detection and protection capability as Rising Antivirus 2008. RISING Support centre will also provides technical support for Free Edition users. RISING expects more users can enjoy Lion-strong security protection.

I’ve tested Rising Antivirus free edition on my desktop test system with a few trojans. Some are public versions which is detectable by most antiviruses and some private which can only be detected by certain good and powerful antivirus such as Kaspersky. When Rising AV sees the virus, it doesn’t immediately notify me that it has found a virus. Only when I try to run it, Rising File Monitor Alert appears telling me that it has found a virus and giving me the option to clean, delete or ignore the file. This is good because it doesn’t constantly scan in background which will slow down your computer. It can detect all public version of trojans that I try to copy to the computer.

Next, I tried scanning a private version of trojan with Rising Antivirus but it did not detect anything. I was a bit disappointed, thinking that this is like any other free AVs out there that doesn’t have a good proactive engine. When I run the private trojan, it did not infect my system! I suspect that Rising Antivirus somehow blocked the threat. So I disabled all Rising Antivirus auto-protect, and ran the trojan again. Now the system is infected. I re-enabled auto-protect and ran Hidden Process Detection. It detected a hidden process which spawned by the trojan. I ran a scan on the memory and boot records and it was able to detect and remove the private trojan. I AM IMPRESSED! As you can see, although Rising Antivirus did not have the virus definition to identify the private trojan as a threat, but it can somehow block it from infecting the computer. Even if it is infected, it can detect hidden process and remove it from memory.

Is Rising Antivirus a bloatware? Here are the process that I’ve identified which belongs to Rising Antivirus.
ravtask.exe – 676K
ravstub.exe – 3411K
ravmond.exe – 8192K
ravmon.exe – 2048K
ccenter.exe -1652K
All 5 processes above takes up about 15MB from memory. Since most of the computer nowadays come with at least 1GB of RAM, you wouldn’t really feel that Rising Antivirus is hogging on your computer. It is not heavy in system resource usage nor light. Moderate would be the best word to describe Rising Antivirus’ system resource usage.

Rising Antivirus can run on Windows 98 up to Windows Vista 64 bit. The system requirements to run on non-Vista computer is Pentium3 500 MHz, 64 MB of RAM and a standard VGA 24-bit true color. As for Windows Vista, Pentium3 1 GHz CPU, 512 MB of RAM and a Standard VGA 24-bit true color.

[ Download FREE Rising Antivirus ]

The lucky winner for BitDefender giveaway has been announced. Those that did not win, please do not despair as I have something even better this time. So far I’ve given away Norton Antivirus, Kaspersky and BitDefender license to my subscribers and I will continue doing that. I hope that I am able to give something at least once or twice per month. As an appreciation to my subscribers, I will be giving out PC Tools Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus genuine serial number license to 10 lucky subscribers this time. Yes, TEN! This means the chances of you getting it has been increased to 10 times!

Spyware Doctor is not only one of the most popular spyware removers on the market (with 500,000+ downloads per week) but also one of the most highly awarded! It has won a total of 57 awards and counting! Think about it. If a software can win that much awards, it must be good.

Here’s how to win Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus to protect you from spyware and virus for 365 days.


To be eligible for this lucky draw, you must meet 2 conditions.

1st Condition: Must be Raymond.CC daily newsletter subscriber. If you are not a subscriber, here is how you can subscribe.

– Enter your email at the top right hand side and hit the subscribe button.

– Next, you need to enter the random text characters and hit the Complete Subscription Request button. Finally, you need to check your email inbox for a verification message from FeedBurner’s “confirmations@emailenfuego.com” and click a link listed in this message to activate your subscription. If you got it right, you should see a message that says “Email Subscription Confirmed!” at your web browser.

2nd Condition: Leave a comment with the email address you’ve used to subscribed to Raymond.CC’s newsletter. This is to inform me that you want to be in this draw.

The 10 lucky winners will be announced on 1st of May 2008.

Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus is a top-rated malware, spyware & virus removal utility that detects, removes and protects your PC from thousands of potential spyware, adware, trojans, viruses, keyloggers, spybots and tracking threats.

Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus Key Features:

Comprehensive Malware Protection

Constant Real-time Protection

Advanced Detection and Removal Technology

Comprehensive Malware Protection

Protection against zero-day threats – Behavioral Heuristic Detection

Advanced Rootkit Detection

Works silently in the background with low CPU usage

Automatic and silent Smart Updates

Most internationally awarded anti-spyware product

In my opinion, I think that Spyware Doctor has been flying under the radar all this while. When talk about antivirus or antispyware programs, we only think of big names such as Norton, Kaspersky, NOD32, BitDefender, Spybot, Ad-Aware and etc… I’ve tested Spyware Doctor myself and it is really good in terms of detecting and blocking trojans, spywares and viruses. I tried to infect my computer with a private version of trojan but the OnGuard protection is smart enough to detect and block it. Not only that, Spyware Doctor with Antivirus only takes up 4MB memory when running in background.

Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus works on Windows 2000, Windows XP(32bit) and Windows Vista(32bit). 64-bit is not yet supported. Your system must have at least 1 GHz processor with 256 MB of RAM Memory for XP or 1GB for Vista. As for hard drive space, 100MB of free hard disk space is sufficient. There are Spyware Doctor cracks but it will be unusable whenever a newer build is out. As for Spyware Doctor serial number that is pirated, don’t even think about it because it validates the Spyware Doctor serial number online. So just subscribe and participate in this lucky draw which might just win you a free Spyware Doctor with Antivirus genuine serial number license!

Recently I got to know about a software called TweakPrefetch which is able to do exactly what the name of the software and that is tweaking Windows Prefetch and also Superfetch. Honestly, I’ve heard of it and briefly know that it has something to do with caching to speed things up in Windows computer but never really bothered to research further on it. After reading the article about Prefetch and Superfetch in TweakPrefetch’s official website, I found that it is quite important to know what is it all about especially if you have a SSD drive.

Basically Prefetch is available in Windows XP, Vista and 7 while Superfetch only available in Vista and Windows 7. These two functions aim to reduce applications startup time as well as the operating system boot time by preloading it in memory. The author of TweakPrefetch claims that prefetching in Windows XP is better left at its default value and the same goes to superfetch on Windows Vista and 7. However if you are a gamer, have a solid state drive (SSD) or the system has less than 2GB of RAM, then you might want to consider tweaking prefetch and superfetch to improve the overall performance for your system.


Solid state drive is already fast enough and prefetching doesn’t help a bit in increasing performance. Hence, disabling prefetch and superfetch can extend the lifespan of the unit. As for gamers, some may noticed random in-game framerate drops which can be possibly caused by the caching process and disabling prefetch can prevent that from happening. As for systems with less than 2GB of RAM, you are able to reduce memory usage by disabling prefetch since it uses a considerable amount of system memory for this function.

TweakPrefetch makes it all easy to configure prefetch and superfetch. The simple user interface displays the options clearly on how you would like to tweak the prefetch and superfetch for your Windows system. You can either enable the fetching for applications only, boot only or the default applications & boot only. Do note that disabling of Prefetch, Superfetch and its service can only done when Advanced Controls is selected from the Options menubar.

If you are not sure on which option to choose or dare not take the risk, click on the Tools from the menubar and select Configuration Wizard. This is a helpful wizard which will help less experienced users to find the optimal Prefetch and Superfetch settings for their system and needs. All you need to do is select what kind of hard of hard drive is on your computer and then select the main computer usage. Click the Detect button and it will show you the recommended settings.

If you feel that your computer is sluggish after tweaking the prefetch, you can always revert it back to the default “Application & Boot” from the program. TweakPrefetch is free and requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 or newer to run.

Download TweakPrefetch

The first version of Messenger 8 Beta branded as Windows Live Messenger 8 has been spotted on the internet. Version 8.0.0328 features a lot of graphical improvements, from display picture borders to replacing toast boxes. Noticeable updates in this version: