Under every operating system out there, including Linux and Macintosh, we must install drivers to make sure our hardware works as expected. While it would be nice to live in a driverless world, much like Google Chrome’s OS is planned to be for their printers, I’m afraid it’s not an option for the mass majority of us. Depending on the distribution of GNU/Linux, you might have to install the drivers manually for your NVIDIA or ATI card, or it might install them automatically for you. If the latter is the case, it might not compile or configure the device correctly so it works for you, which was the case for me when my dad’s motherboard had an onboard NVIDIA video chip. We actually had to manually write out a XOrg configuration script, which sounds about as fun as it actually is. (In other words, no fun at all.)

In Windows, however, it’s nowhere near as nasty as it can be in Linux. Most times, we have pre-compiled drivers that work just by double clicking an executable file, then a simple reboot gets them working. Or in some cases, we have Windows Update provide a (older) driver which will work for everything but most games.

But what if you are doing a remote access into a newbie’s computer and trying to help them? Or if you’re on the job site and you can’t access the remote desktop that you need to work on? In these cases, I’d recommend a device finder, as I call them, but the truth is, they are designed to work in such a way that they can identify the devices in your PC so you don’t need to open them up. This is a time and life saver in helping people out remotely, as well as locally troubleshooting your computer. However, I only know of two programs that know how to do this, and today, I’ll be comparing both of them. Just to give people a heads up before starting into the review, I am testing these on a freshly installed copy of Windows XP SP2 from a Gateway image, but has two cards in the computer that weren’t on the image: an ATI 2400 HD Pro Video card, and a Conexant / Brooktree Corporation Fusion 878A Video Capture card. Neither are uncommon, however, the Conexant’s driver is a hard one to find. It has been updated to SP3, however, no more updates have been done at this point (due to the next update being the ATI Generic driver Windows Update has).

Unknown Devices

Unknown Devices starts out supporting up to Windows Vista, which means it hasn’t been updated to reflect Windows 7, however, it does legacy support all the way back to Windows 95. As you can see above, it not only fully supports both cards, but is able to find information on both of them. It also seems to be completely portable, only needing to be unzipped to a folder and run the executable. As you can see, it was able to find both cards with relative ease. It also has a nifty feature of uploading the device list to PasteBin so you can share that link with someone else or save the list to a file, which will save it as a text file. You can also search the internet based on it’s findings, so you can find your drivers with ease, and offers for you to visit Windows Update, just in case.

Unknown Device Identifier

Unknown Device Identifier, also known as UDI, starts out by supporting from Windows 95 all the way up to Windows 7, as it states on it’s site, and has been tested both on Windows XP and 7 by yours truly, so I can back up it’s claims for the higher operating systems. As you can see see, it did find the cards as well, and if you open the secondary options by hitting the Plus button, it shows you the direct card type. It supports English, French, and what appears to be Chinese, you can also save the results to a file and find the drivers via Google in one of the menus, as well as being able to contact the vendors. Unlike Unknown Devices, you can also print this said list inside the program. However, it will nag you when you close the program to see if you’d like to back up your drivers; if you hit yes, it brings you to the site to buy MyDrivers, a $40 program. Also, UDI also leaves a shortcut to the Huntersoft/Zhangduo site on your desktop after install.

Personal Opinion

Between the two of them, they both detected the cards I had put in the system to test, both of them had the option to save my results, and both allowed me to look up the drivers in Google. My opinion on them is mixed, and they certainly are both fast at what they do. However, if I was to choose one, it would be Unknown Device Identifier since it works up to and including Windows 7. When Unknown Devices gets to that point, I certainly will recommend it over UDI, due to the fact that I’m not interested in buying a driver backup software (as my drivers are all backed up to a CD-ROM).

Recently I found a bug on a WordPress plugin and reported the problem to the developer. However, they were not convinced that the problem is caused by the plugin even though I’ve submitted screenshots along with the description of the problem. So I had to use a screen recording software “SCREEN2EXE” to record a video when replicating the problem. After seeing the video, they finally admitted that it is caused by their script.

Instead of recording a video and uploading it to a server for the them to download, here’s another idea which I just thought of that can simplify the whole process. Why not create an online presentation from my computer where they can just easily connect to my PC and I show them how I replicate the problem?

There are many companies such as GoToMeeting and WebEx that is offering such service but they charge money. Here is Mikogo, a relatively new software that offers online meetings, screen sharing, remote control, file transfer, all these services for free!



Mikogo is a free online desktop sharing tool full of features to assist you in conducting the perfect online presentation. Take advantage of the opportunity to conduct presentations in true color quality across the world with up to 10 participants simultaneously, while still sitting at your desk! Mikogo is completely secure as they are using industry-leading 256-AES end-to-end encryption.

During a meeting, users are able to:

share each others’ screens

change presenters

access remote control

pause transmission

select only certain applications for sharing

transfer files

There are 2 different roles in an online meeting with Mikogo. The person who creates the online meeting and the people who will be joining the meeting. Here is how to create an online meeting with Mikogo.

The person who creates the meeting:
1. Download and install Mikogo.
2. Run Mikogo and at the tray bar, you will see a M icon. Right click on the M icon and select Create account. Enter your name, email address and click Continue. Now check your email to get your password.

3. Right click the M icon at the tray bar and select Start Meeting.
4. Enter your username, password, email and click OK. It will test connection and start meeting.
5. You’ll need to provide the Meeting ID to people who wants to join in the meeting.

The person who will be joining the meeting:
1. Download Mikogo Join Meeting tool. This tool is only meant to join meetings. It is smaller in size and requires no installation.
2. Enter Meeting ID, name and click Join Meeting.

That’s it! It is that simple! Did you notice that there is no router configuration needed? No port forwarding, no IP, and etc. It’s all automated. All you need is the Meeting ID.

Mikogo also has a Firefox add-on which allows you to start or join a meeting even easier. After installing the add-on, a M icon will appear at top right of the Firefox browser. Clicking the drop down button will give you the option to join or start a meeting.

If you wonder how Mikogo is able to provide their software and service for free, that’s because they have several subscription based screen sharing services (www.BeamYourScreen.com, www.Beam2Support.com, www.Beam2Present.com) and their technology is used by other desktop sharing and online collaboration providers.

Currently Mikogo is lacking of communication feature which is Chat or Voice. They do have Mikogo Skype Extras but I think there are more people using Windows Live Messenger than Skype. I am one of them that doesn’t use Skype 😛 Another improvement that I would suggest is the ability to detect whether the meeting will be through LAN or WAN. If a company that is on the same LAN would like to have a presentation, going through Internet will be quite slow.

Some people might want to compare other remote access software such as CrossLoop and TeamViewer with Mikogo but I don’t think it’s fair because those tools are used mainly for providing remote computer support. Mikogo is more for online presentation and online meetings.

[ Download Mikogo ]

KVM is a hardware switch that allows you to use share one keyboard, monitor and mouse on multiple computers depending on the amount of port available on the KVM switch. This is normally being used on server racks where all the servers on the racks are being managed with only one physical keyboard, monitor and mouse. Although KVM switches is able to save you a lot of space by not having multiple keyboards and mouse, but it still involves a lot of cables and can be quite messy if you don’t manage them properly. For normal home users, they would be better off with a software KVM such as Input Director or Synergy which I have covered before. It is pretty neat because all you need to do to switch between computer is just move your mouse pointer to the monitor of the computer that you wish to control.

To get Synergy and Input Director working, you may have to set up the configuration first. However today I found another similar software called ShareMouse where you only need to run the software on the computers that is connected via network and no setup is required to share your mouse and keyboard with multiple computers. It can’t get any easier than this.


ShareMouse is able to support up to 26 computers. Other than able to share keyboard and mouse, it also shares clipboard data (CTRL+C and CTRL+V), transfer files between computers and Mac OSX and Windows cross-platform support.

To get ShareMouse working, first of all the computers must be connected via local network. Then the computers will have to run ShareMouse and it will automatically connect to each other. Now all you need to do is simply move your mouse cursor to the monitor that you want to control.

Video demo of how ShareMouse works

You can access ShareMouse configuration by clicking on the ShareMouse icon located at notification area and select Settings. You can configure quickjump hotkey, panic hotkey, inactive monitor dimming, protected mode to securely prevent unauthorized access by other ShareMouse installations, network traffic encryption, and even changing the UDP port.

You can easily organize the layout of the monitor from the Monitor Manager. For example, if you want to go to the monitor on your left, logically you would move your mouse pointer to the left rather than right, top or bottom. If for some reason ShareMouse wrongly mapped the layout of the monitor, you can re-organize it from Monitor Manager.

The features that I really like about ShareMouse is it doesn’t require installation by downloading the portable edition, works immediately by running the software without any configuration, able to easily copy files between computers by clicking the files with your mouse and dragging them to the desired computer even though the Windows sharing permission has not been setup, and most importantly is FREE for personal home use.

[ Download ShareMouse ]

I wanted to post this tomorrow which is the first day of year 2009 but after thinking about it, we should always look forward and not look back. So, another year has gone by and time passes by really fast. When I think about what I’ve done this whole year, I’ve spent a lot of time in work as I have to juggle between my full time job and the commitment of posting something here everyday. Yes I find it tough sometimes but it is all worth it because I know that there are some articles which will help those in need. The giveaways is even better because those security software can help to protect user’s computer so they don’t need to spend extra money in buying software license or service their computer during recession.

Many of you has helped to spread this website to your friends and you’ll be amazed by the amount of visitors I get every day. I believe by sharing with others, you’ll get much more in return. Let’s check out the year 2008 web statistics.

Year 2007 Statistics @ raymond.cc
Visits: 8 million+
Pages: 19 million+
Hits: 375 million+
Alexa: 16000+
Google PR: 4
RSS Subscribers: 12000+

Year 2008 Statistics @ raymond.cc
Visits: 14 million+
Pages: 98 million+
Hits: 1 billion+
Alexa: 7200+
Google PR: 2
RSS Subscribers: 52000+
January and February statistics were not included in the year 2008 stats because it was hosted in another server and there is no way for me to import the webalizer data to awstats.. All numbers in the stats nearly doubled or more except Google PageRank dropped from 4 to 2. I noticed that sometime in the middle of the year, my Google PR went up to 5. I think the reason it dropped to 2 is because the forum was migrated from PunBB to vBulletin which caused thousands of links to become inaccessible. On December 2007, the average daily unique visitors was 36000+ and now has increased to a whopping 70000+!

I have to admit that somewhere at the end of the year I got out of track by writing articles “for” people. It’s not wrong to do that but my style has always been writing what I learned about computers and interesting finds on the web. That has always been the reason why this website ever existed. I will try to always remember my style of writing and hope that it’ll benefit everyone who is reading my posts.

I know it’s new year’s eve and probably most of you are getting ready or resting for tonight’s celebration. If you have the time, please leave a comment letting me know which article I posted in year 2008 that you like most or really helped you in some ways. If I ever been rude, childish or made anyone unhappy, I sincerely apologize for that. I’d also like to thank everyone who has helped to spread this website to others and forum members who diligently helped other users. Here’s wishing you all a very Happy New Year and I wish that year 2009 will be a better year for all of us! CHEERS!

It’s Sunday again, and to those that were expecting a post the last two days, I’m very sorry. I had work and was extremely sore after the shifts, having to do some heavy lifting that I wasn’t used to. However, I am hoping to have some informative posts in the upcoming week, as well as some surprises and you’ll have to tune in all next week to see. But for now, it’s Sunday, the day to relax and lay back. Today’s theme is a kind of ‘odds and ends’ sort of mix.. stuff I couldn’t put in other posts because it was too offbeat or too odd for most genres and couldn’t just fit in one like the others could. At the same time, they are unusual ones and surely ones that will upset and anger… due to the complexity of them, not because they’re horrible games. Now onto these very unusual games…

2H4U (2.8 mb)

Screenshot of a higher level…
2H4U is short for ‘Too Hard For You‘ which is the most suiting name I have ever seen for a video game. It is named this because it is a mix between a Tetris-like game and a wall breaker like Breakout. Did I forget the catch? If you loose either game, it’s game over. It requires good reflexes, coordination, and people that can use both hands should have some advantages. But even if you can use both hands… it’s insanely difficult once you start. I offered this game to one of my buddies who is ambidextrous but even he had one heck of a hard time. It works with Linux and Windows but don’t expect to win. At least it’s more fair then Bastet…

Frets on Fire (34 mb)

The project’s official mascot
Where to start with Frets on Fire? Well, if you like Guitar Hero and you’re stuck with a PC, you can’t play, and you can’t practice as there’s no official Guitar Hero released for PC. There’s a DS version, there’s a PS2/3 version, an Xbox 360 version… every console has it but the PC is left high and dry. Frets on Fire aims to resolve this by being a Guitar Hero clone like no other. It works with Macintosh, Linux, and Windows, and there are a lot of fan-made frets for you to play if you so choose. It’s fun so long as you’re not playing on a laptop, in which case you’d be better playing flash based clones of it.

ASTEROIDS 3D (5.3 mb)

Asteriods 3D is exactly what it sounds like. A remake of the old Asteroids game in 3D. It is only for Windows, and I suppose it would be a very boring game to some, but to me, I didn’t think it was that shabby. I thought it was rather different to finally have a different way of playing the classic game, however, the controls I found a bit jittery at times. It is precompiled only for Windows, and only works with Windows, but hopefully someone could fork it or set up the classic under Linux.

I’m afraid that I’m starting to run out of games I could recommend, so I was wondering if this should continue or if I should offer a weekly post of USB Toolkit related stuff. Not as fun, I know, but I suppose a bit more suiting for the blog. Comment below and let me know: do you want the Sunday games to continue or not. Thanks.

Links to older Open Source Gaming articles
Week One – First Person Shooters
Week Two – Simulation
Week Three – Remakes of Classics
Week Four – Strategy Games
Week Five – Emulation
Week Six – Racing Games
Week Seven – Puzzle Games

I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year, I hope you enjoy it with your family and friends, and may all your wishes come true for 2010 to bring prosperity and happiness to you. I have a few things lined up this year for this site which is to upgrade the site and forum design to a custom one that looks more professional. The X-Ray project is coming up really good. The coding of the prototype version is out and I am testing it out extensively to make sure it works well without bugs and also adding more features and options. The latest vBulletin v4.0 is also out and I guess the best time to upgrade it is when I change the blog theme so both section will look the same.

As for the daily post, I still don’t think I will be able to cope up with daily postings but I will try my very best. Reason is my time is pretty much stuck with my full time job and also I prefer to test stuff then write it based on experience. I do not want to post something blindly just because I need something to be posted at the blog by 3-4PM everyday.

Another thing is I have 30 genuine Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 license keys that is already activated but unused and I am giving them away. Actually this is supposed to be for Christmas but seeing that IDM has generously sponsored 30 license (the IDM license were sent to 30 winners on 29th December), so I had to delay this one until today. Same thing, leave a comment at the end of this article and I will pick the 30 winners via lucky draw tomorrow.

Thank you all for your continuous support. I appreciate any suggestions or comments on how can I improve this site.

Here are the 30 lucky winners for KAV 2010. You should be receiving an email from me shortly.

Capturing screenshots is something that I do nearly everyday because I always try my best to attach a screen shot so you could understand easier. The phrase “a picture tells a thousand words” is quite true. There are a lot of screen capture software, both freeware and shareware. Most of the freewares is only able to do basic screen capturing but if you want more advanced features such as auto scrolling, text capture, and etc, you’ll have to go for the shareware.

My favorite screen capturing software with basic image editing features has always been HyperSnap. I am sure you all know about Techsmith Snagit, a very popular screen capture software. I’ve tried it and somehow still prefer HyperSnap. It is easy to use and has advanced features as well.

Here’s another one called Solid Capture that worth checking it out. Not because it is a very popular screen capture software, but it is because Solid Capture normally cost $29.95 and there is an offer to get the unlock code to turn the trial version into fully licensed version for free!


Solid Capture is a screen capture toolkit that allows you to take snapshots of anything on your computer screen. These snapshots can then be saved as image files, used with an image editor, exported as text, converted to a PDF document, e-mailed to a friend or co-worker, pasted into a presentation, and more.

Specifically, Solid Capture allows you to capture the following:

Screen – Captures everything on your monitor (full screen). If you use dual monitors, you can capture both screens.
Window – Captures an entire window, multiple windows, or a component of a window such as a panel or toolbar. The window capture function also allows you to capture drop-down menus and sliding menus.
Rectangle – Draws a rectangle of any size around an area on your screen to capture anything within.
Color – Selects and copies any color on your screen to a palette.
Text – Extracts the text from a screen capture.

After you’ve captured what you want, you can choose what you want to do with it. The following are some of the options that Solid Capture offers:

Save to clipboard – Your screen capture can be saved to your clipboard. You can then paste it directly into a document, e-mail, or any program that allows you to paste.
Save to file – You can save your capture as an image file for future use.
Edit – Allows you to import your capture into your default editor for immediate editing.
Print – Allows you to format and send one or more captures to the printer.
E-mail – Lets you easily send captures via e-mail. You can embed your captures in a message, send captures as attachments, or create a PDF and send it as an e-mail attachment.
Create PDF – Allows you to create a PDF using one or more captures.
Copy Text – Copies text in a screen capture to your clipboard to be pasted into a document.
Edit Text – Exports text contained within an image to the text editor of your choice.

In short, Solid Capture not only gives you the ability to capture just about anything on your screen, but also allows you to easily work with your captures.

To get your free Solid Capture unlock code, please follow the simple steps below.
1. Go to this page http://www.soliddocuments.com/registercode.php?product=SolidCapture&appcode=SOFTFREE&locale=9
2. Enter your REAL email address, name and click Register.
3. Check your email and note down the User Name, User Email, Organization and Unlock Code.
4. Download the latest version of Solid Capture v3 and install.
5. Run Solid Capture and select “I already have an unlock code and would like to unlock Solid Capture.”. Enter the exact information and you now have a fully licensed Solid Capture screen capturing software.

Thanks again to ndkj!

There are so many websites and companies claims to offer the CHEAPEST domain names registration services.
Wonder where should you buy domain names from and which is really the cheapest?


I’d recommend Godaddy.com
Check out the low prices below.
Regular TLD Pricing

Country Code TLD Pricing

They accept Credit Card and Check. For people who doesn’t own credit card, no worries as they accept PayPal as well.

Some webhost offers free domain name when you host your domain on their servers.
From experience, I really wouldn’t want them to have control over everything.
For example, my domain raymond.cc was registered and hosted by the same company ExampleWebHost.
Then, I found a cheaper webhost and offers more webspace and bandwidth. It’s fine, I can still change the Name Servers and my domain will still work with the new webhost. However, when my domain name is about to expire, and ExampleWebHost charge a lot for renewal, you might consider looking for cheaper domain registrars. When you found one such as Godaddy.com, and wants to transfer your domain to GoDaddy, ExampleWebHost will give you lots of problems and will delay your transfer. You might even have a huge downtime!

DirectX is a component of Windows operating system that has been included since Windows 95 until today’s Windows 7. According to Wikipedia, Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Whether you think is important or not, Microsoft does not provide a way to uninstall DirectX nor you can update it from Windows Update. The only way to get the latest version is to download the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer from Microsoft Download site.

I found out about a tool called DirectX Happy Uninstall 3 years ago but never really tested it. In my opinion, this tool could be very useful in fixing Windows computers with DirectX problem because it seems to be the “only” software that supports up to DirectX 11 and the latest Windows 7 operating system, including 64 bit (x64).


DirectX Happy Uninstall is a shareware that cost $19.95 but without a usage time limit. Meaning anyone can use the software to backup and restore DirectX from their computer but the 2 most important function Rollback and Install (force) is disabled. Only after entering the correct User ID and Registration Code will unlock all features.

I tried contacting the author of the software if they can provide a free test license but never got a reply. I had to choice but to buy the software license in order for me to test the Rollback and Force Install feature.

The backup and restore feature is very straightforward. Clicking the Start Backup button will start to scan and backup all DirectX files into a CAB file. As for the Restore button, it shows you the list of DirectX backups that you have made and can easily restore by clicking the Restore button again. You can also delete the backups from there.

The Rollback feature works by restoring all original DirectX files from the Windows installation disc to your Windows computer. This way it should logically fix any problems caused by corrupted DirectX files and etc. You will need to insert the Windows installation disc, select the “sources” directory and continue with the process. A reboot is required at the end of the rollback process to fully restore all DirectX files and registry entries. If you don’t have the Windows installation disc, you can download the official Windows 7 ISO from the link which is shared by ted in forum and then mount it to a free drive letter.

One problem that I experience after rolling back the DirectX using DirectX Happy Uninstall is the DirectX Diagnostic Tool (dxdiag) couldn’t run. After checking the file in C:\Windows\System32\ using Windows Explorer, the dxdiag.exe is only 6.04KB in size while normally it should be around 258KB. The dxdiag icon which is supposed to resemble a deformed radiation warning symbol has turned into a default Windows 7 empty EXE icon. Fortunately replacing a working dxdiag.exe file from another computer fixes this problem. If you are unable to obtain a working dxdiag.exe file, running the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer (dxwebsetup.exe) will also work.

DirectX Happy Uninstall does a pretty good job in restoring DirectX back to the original state but I find that it is a risk to purchase DirectX Happy Uninstall since you can’t really tell if you are definitely having a DirectX problem and there is no money back guarantee if DirectX Happy Uninstall doesn’t fix the problem.

[ Download DirectX Happy Uninstall ]

I’ve spent many hours, practically the whole day testing and writing my review on Avira few days ago. When I tried to save the article in WordPress draft, the page went blank (so coincidentally there was a downtime on this site) and I wasn’t able to retrieve what I wrote by clicking the back button. So the whole review was gone and I had to rewrite. It might be a little simple but the main points are all there.

I’ve been recommending Kaspersky to nearly everyone that I know if they are willing to fork out money to purchase an antivirus license. It’s pretty obvious that I am a big fan of Kaspersky because there are so many articles and tips on Kaspersky. However for some people that couldn’t afford to spend money on antivirus, I’d definitely recommend them to go for Avira AntiVir because based on so many antivirus test results, Avira mostly grab one of the top spots in detecting malwares. Trojan and cryptor programmers always face a headache to find a method to bypass Avira detection because every time they find a method bypass it, after a while Avira learns to detect it. So for the first time, here is my unbiased review on Avira AntiVir to share with you all on what I think about Avira.


I used Avira AntiVir Premium v9 for testing because I was able to easily get a genuine license valid for 3 months from this promotional page.

The difference between the Premium and Free version is the Premium version has extra features such as WebGuard, AntiDrive-By, RescueSystem, Enhanced email protection, and fast premium update servers but I think I can live without those extra features since there are replacements for them.

WebGuard = WoT
AntiDrive-By = Files are scanned anyway by the real time AnVir Guard when finished downloading
RescueSystem = Can be downloaded manually from Avira’s website
Enhanced Email Protection = Don’t need it if you are not using a POP3 email client
Fast Premium Update Servers = The personal update servers are also as fast as the premium servers

The Avira Premium installer (33MB) is considered small if compared to Kaspersky (50+MB), Norton (70+MB) and BitDefender(50+MB). After finished installing, the first thing I did was to update the program. Updating the virus definition and program the first time took merely 1 minute and 11 seconds because the update size was 8MB and I was downloading at 110+KBps.

Next I tested the scanning speed. A complete system scan took 5 minutes and 45 seconds to finish scanning 64398 files, 9744 directories and 195 archives.

When the scan has been completed, I ran a complete scan again for the second time and Avira also scans nearly the same amount of files and directories. A clean Windows 7 already takes 5 minutes to scan, I am sure that the scanning time will be increased by a lot if I scan my 1.5TB backup hard drive. Unlike Norton where it maintains a list of files that can be trusted which greatly reduce the scanning time.

During scanning, an avscan.exe process will launch and its memory usage kept increasing from 55mb to 67MB. However, the memory usage for avguard.exe drops to 16MB and finally goes down to only 1MB when the full system scan finishes. CPU usage is averagely around 30% but never goes above 50%.

As for the memory usage, only the real-time guard process (avguard.exe) and on-demand scanner process (avscan.exe) seems to be taking up quite a lot of memory. Avira is able to bring down the avguard.exe’s memory usage to 700K but of course when you start to use any programs again, the memory of the avguard.exe increases. As for avscan.exe, this process only runs when you start scanning any files and the memory usage surely goes more than 50MB.

I planted a total of 23 malwares on the computer, 22 of them are virus and 1 is a private version of trojan which is undetectable by most antivirus. Avira manage to detect all 23 malware as threats.

Avira is really good in terms of detection and the load that it puts on the computer is acceptable. To me, Kaspersky still takes the first place for “paid” antivirus and Avira takes the first place for “free” antivirus.

[ Avira AntiVir Premium | Avira AntiVir Personal ]

As a technical support guy, one of the most common problem that I normally see on a user’s computer is that they install more than one antivirus software on their computer. Using more than one antivirus should logically give a better detection but this is not the case because they could conflict with each other during scanning and detection. There are also cases that a particular antivirus is not compatible with the setup and causing weird problems. Fortunately the solution is pretty simple and all you need to do is uninstall the antivirus and install a different one which hopefully would work better on the system.

Antivirus are complex software that installs drivers, services and comes with codes which protects itself and the registry from unauthorized modification by malwares. The proper way of uninstalling an antivirus is from the Windows Control Panel but there are times when the uninstallation process fails halfway which leaves you stuck. You cannot reinstall or uninstall and the antivirus is unusable. Antivirus companies are aware of this problem, hence they created removal tools/uninstallers which will force the uninstallation of the antivirus software.


There are more than 100 brands of antivirus today and most of the major brand provides the uninstallers. Downloading and collecting all uninstallers that you can find is quite a hassle but it is required because of my job.

Thanks to Uninst.RU, they have consolidated all of the antivirus uninstallers and named it AV Uninstall Tools Pack. All you need to do is download the 50+MB ZIP file and extract it to your computer or to a USB flash drive. It currently has 38 uninstallers plus 1 very useful tool called Windows Installer Clean Up Utility.

avast! Antivirus Removal Tool

AVG Remover Utility

Avira RegistryCleaner

BitDefender Uninstall Tool

BullGuard Uninstaller

CA Internet Security Suite Uninstaller Tool

Dr.Web Remover

eScan Removal Tool

ESET Uninstaller

F-PROT Remover

F-Secure Uninstallation Tool

G Data AntiVirus Cleaner

K7 Security Product Removal Tool

KAV Removal Tool

Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware Cleanup Utility

Max SpywareDetector Uninstaller

McAfee CleanUp Tool

Microsoft Security Essentials Uninstaller

Norman Uninstaller

nProtect Security Platform 2007 Remover

Outpost Clean

Panda Uninstaller

PC Tools ThreatFire Removal

Prevx Removal Tool

QuickHeal Removal Tool

SPAMfighter Remove

SUPERAntiSpyware Application Uninstaller

Symantec – Norton Removal Tool

Trend Micro

Verizon – Radialpoint Security Uninstall Utility

Vexira Uninstall

VIPRE cleaner

VirusBuster Clean

Webroot

Windows Live OneCare Cleanup Tool

Zondex Guard EraseAv

ZoneAlarm – Check Point Install Utility

Run the Autorun.exe and you will be presented with a simple graphical user interface with Russian language by default. You can click on the English at the left hand sidebar to change the language to English. Clicking on any of the titles will provide further information on what specific products are supported and also the operating systems. Click the OPEN link will open up the folder to the uninstaller which you have to manually run.

AV Uninstall Tools Pack doesn’t have advance features such as auto detecting the installed antivirus on your computer and recommending the correct uninstaller but it is still a very useful time saving pack. This tool pack is currently planned to be updated in monthly basis. When I extract the tools pack, Avira found that the CA Desktop DNS Migrator (DNA_MIGRTR-UNST.exe) uninstaller contained a virus or unwanted program which I am sure is a false detection.

[ Download AV Uninstall Tools Pack ]

I only have a couple of add-ons or extensions installed because Firefox is already a memory hogger. They are Google Toolbar, LastPass and Lazarus. The features that I find very useful in the Google Toolbar is Translate. It enables me to easily translate words or even the whole webpage from a foreign language to English. Other than that I can easily access my Gmail by clicking on the Gmail icon and also to view pagerank of a site. There are also many other useful features such as the spell checker and bookmarks. So far whenever I update Firefox to the latest version, the Google Toolbar is definitely compatible with it.

However, since the Mozilla Firefox team is following the Google Chrome footsteps in releasing major version number updates much faster, for the first time the Google Toolbar is unable to keep up the compatibility with Firefox 5.0. If you click on the Update Firefox button at the Firefox Software Update window, the next thing you will see is the notification of Incompatible Add-ons Found with Google Toolbar for Firefox listed there. Clicking the OK button will proceed with downloading Firefox 5.0. During the update process, Firefox again will show that the Google Toolbar is incompatible.

Clicking the Check Now button is pretty much useless for now because Firefox will tell you that it is unable to find updates to your incompatible add-ons.

Go to the Add-ons Manager and you will find that there is no way to force Firefox to enable the Google Toolbar.


There are three solution to this problem. First is to wait for Google to update the toolbar so that it is compatible with Firefox 5.0.

If you don’t want to wait, you can either downgrade to Firefox 4.0.1 by downloading from this official Firefox download link or install an add-on called “Add-on Compatibility Reporter“.

The Add-on Compatibility Reporter add-on will force the incompatible add-on to work with Firefox. All you need to do is install the add-on, restart Firefox TWICE (first time is to install the add-on and second time is to disable the compatibility restriction), and the disable incompatible add-ons will be automatically enabled. It is that easy and nothing else needs to be done. I can verify that the incompatible Google Toolbar works fine with Firefox 5.0. Try it at your own risk if you cannot live without Google Toolbar and you want to use Firefox 5.

[ Download Add-on Compatibility Reporter ]

I’ve got this question posted in forum many times so I thought I should write an article on this problem. When they try to install Windows XP, they got the problem of not able to find any hard disk drives installed. The hard drive is detected in BIOS and also start up POST but not in Windows setup. Here is the exact error message.

Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk-related hardware configuration is correct. This may involve running a manufacturer-supplied diagnostic or setup program. Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3.

This problem happens when you have SATA hard drive and you have RAID/SATA mode configured in BIOS. There are 2 ways of fixing this problem.


First method is to change the SATA Mode to IDE in BIOS. My computer BIOS is Phoenix AwardBIOS 6.00PG and I can change the SATA Mode to IDE by going to Integrated Peripherals > SATA Devices Configuration > SATA Mode [RAID] and change to [IDE].

Now I am able to install Windows XP as normal.

If you’re unable to change RAID mode to IDE or disable SATA in BIOS, then you need to download SATA RAID drivers from your motherboard manufacturer’s website, extract the drivers to a floppy disk and then insert the floppy to your computer during Windows XP installation.

As you can see at the image below, it clearly states that the SATA RAID driver is for floppy driver.

Insert Windows XP CD and boot it up. You should see a message that says “Press any key to boot from CD…” Simply hit any key and it’ll start to boot from CD. Pay attention to the next blue colored windows setup screen. When you see a message that says “Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver…” at the bottom bar, immediately hit F6 key.

After loading some files, you will come to a screen that says the following:

Setup could not determine the type of one or more mass storage devices installed in your system, or you have chosen to manually specify an adapter. Currently, Setup will load support for the following mass storage devices(s):

< none >

* To specify additional SCSI adapters, CD-ROM drives, or special disk controllers for use with Windows, including those for which you have a device support disk from a mass storage device manufacturer, press S.

* If you do not have any device support disks from a mass storage device manufacturer, or do not want to specify additional mass storage devices for use with Windows, press ENTER.

Enter floppy drive with SATA drivers and press S. It will present a list of drivers which it read from the disk earlier. Select the appropriate driver and continue the Windows XP installation. The setup will continue and this time it will recognize the SATA hard disk drive in your PC.

This problem is quite common nowadays compared to last time because a lot of computers now are using SATA hard drive with better motherboards that has RAID.

One of the most important feature in a web browser is bookmarks. There are more than 182 million websites on the Internet last year and it’s growing every year. Memorizing every single website that you’ve been to is nearly impossible. So the bookmark feature in web browser provides an easy way for us to record or save the link so we can get back to it at another time.

There are so many web browsers available today such as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Chromium, Flock, Konquerer, Opera, Safari, SeaMonkey, XBEL and each browser has its own method of saving bookmarks. One would normally end up using more than one browser. As for me, I use Firefox for my daily web surfing, Internet Explorer for my online banking and Google Chrome for testing purposes when something doesn’t work as normal in Firefox and IE. Problem with using multiple web browsers is the annoyance of importing bookmarks from other browsers.

All my bookmarks are saved in Firefox and now I wanted to transfer them to Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. I found a very useful free bookmark convertor that can transfer bookmarks and favorites between web browsers.


Transmute is the ultimate bookmark converter. This amazing, cross-platform utility will convert, synchronize, sort, organize and remove duplicates from your bookmarks and more.

Transmute is really easy to use. If you want to transfer from Firefox to Chrome, just select Firefox as Source and Chrome as Target. If you want to backup the bookmarks from a browser, just check the “Backup collection” checkbox. You can also expand the Options to configure if Transmute should transfer the bookmarks to a new folder or overwrite your current favorites on the target browser.

There are 2 versions for Transmute which is the free and PRO version. The free version of Transmute offers converting and transferring bookmarks from all major web browsers, easy to use interface, automatic, portable and cross platform (Windows, Linux, Mac OSX) usage. The PRO version offers all the features that is in the free version plus bookmark web services, profiles, advanced control, duplicate removal, customizable sorting and command line support. For a normal computer user that just wants to transfer bookmark from one web browser to another, the free version will do.

What I like about Transmute is it’s free, easy to use and portable. You would need to have Microsoft .NET Framework install in order to run.

[ Download Transmute ]