I am very used to clicking the “Save and Continue Editing” button whenever I am in the midst of writing an article for this blog. Even though starting from WordPress version 2.1, it already has the auto-save function which happens in the background, it’s still a good practice to manually save because you might never know when it won’t work.

This happened while I was writing an article just now. Suddenly I got the error message “Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 163569 bytes) in /home/…/translator.php on line 0“. At first I thought it was the Translator plugin that was causing the problem. I moved the plugin to another location and still the same error. Later I noticed that I couldn’t get in to any part of Raymond.CC anymore. Forum don’t work, WordPress admin don’t work, not even the blog’s main page!

If all don’t work, it must be a problem on the server side. I did a little searching and luckily I found a solution to fix this problem without submitting a support ticket to my webhost.


The error message “Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 163569 bytes)…” indicates that some PHP scripts needed more memory than PHP was allowed.

You can fix the problem by increasing PHP’s memory limit in either way:

1. Try looking for php.ini file on the root of your site. Mine was located in public_html folder.
Open up php.ini file with any text editor and change the values for memory_limit. By default you should see memory_limit = 8M. Try changing it to 12M. If it doesn’t work, increase it to 16M or even 24M if 16M doesn’t work.

2. If you can’t find the php.ini file, open up the PHP file that requires more memory, and add a line below just after ini_set(‘memory_limit’, ’12M’);
Same thing. Memory can be increased but do try it with 12M first.

3. Final way is to look for .htaccess in your root, and add a line that looks like below.
php_value memory_limit 12M

Good luck in fixing the fatal error allowed memory size error.

Have you ever noticed that when you copy the text contents from a website or anywhere that has formatting and paste it to a new Word document file, it will carry along the formatting? Here is an example that I experience everyday in forum because by default it has Rich-Text Editor enabled. I tried copying a text content from the blog site that has bold and also a hyperlink.

When I paste it in the forum’s rich-text editor reply box, you’d notice that it is pasting the exact same thing with the bold, color and hyperlink formatting included. If you paste it in Microsoft Word, the same thing would happen. This feature is convenient because it allows computer newbies to paste what they see without knowing the HTML or forum BBCode. The annoying part of this feature is sometimes we don’t really need all these formatting. There are two ways which I normally do to paste a copied text without the formatting that is by pasting it to notepad, then select all, copy again and then paste. If it is a short text, I’d paste it to the browser’s URL bar, copy and paste it.

Now I don’t need to go through all those steps to paste a formatted text without the formatting.


PureText makes this simple by adding a new Windows hot-key that allows you to paste text to any application without formatting. After running PureText.exe, you will see a “PT” tray icon appear near the clock on your task bar. You can click on this icon to remove formatting from the text that is currently on the clipboard. You can right-click on the icon to display a menu with more options. The easiest way to use PureText is to simply use its hot-key to paste text instead of using the standard CTRL+V hot-key that is built into most Windows applications. The default hotkey is WINDOWS+V and it can be changed in Options.

PureText only removes rich formatting from text. This includes the font face, font style (bold, italics, etc.), font color, paragraph styles (left/right/center aligned), margins, character spacing, bullets, subscript, superscript, tables, charts, pictures, embedded objects, etc. However, it does not modify the actual text. It will not remove or fix new-lines, carriage returns, tabs, or other white-space. It will not fix word-wrap or clean up your paragraphs.

PureText is a free, small and portable tool that works on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista. Running it in notification area takes only 4MB from your memory and doesn’t lag your computer in any way. The good thing about this tool is it doesn’t replace the paste command (CTRL+V) in Windows, but it gives an extra pasting method with a new hotkey (WINDOWS+V).
[ Download PureText ]

TrustPort is well known for their multiple antivirus engine integrated into one product. Most of the time these multi-engine antivirus top the rank in malware detection but with a price of slowing down your computer. No matter how fast an antivirus engine is, it still requires time to check the files on your computer. When have have a few engines running together, the amount of time required to check on a file obviously increases. TrustPort Total Protection 2012 which uses AVG and Bitdefender engines normally cost EUR 49.95 for 1 year 1PC license but they are offering home users a chance to gain its paid version of the product TrustPort Total Protection 2012 for free! You can also stand a chance to win an XBOX 360 by solving all of the cryptogram.

All you need to do is to play an online game and able to successfully decrypt one cryptogram will win you a free license. The license will be automatically sent to your email address.


Just follow the few simple steps below to play the game and win your free TrustPort Total Protection 2012 activation code valid for 1 year.

1. Visit http://www.trustport.com/game/index.html

2. Click on PLAY NOW ON OUR WEB

3. Enter your nickname and a VALID email address (the license key will be sent there), then click on the LOGIN button

4. Click on button that says “CLICK TO DECRYPT” for SAT #01.

5. You will need to decrypt the hidden message by clicking on the alien symbol and replacing it with a corresponding letter from below. Since this is a game and meant for all to win, here I will provide the answer for the first SAT #01 cryptogram which is enough for you to obtain the free TrustPort Total Protection 2012 license.

we must infect all trustport products which secure computers from viruses and other malicious software!

6. Once you’ve finished solving the cryptogram, a Congratulations popup window will appear showing you your points. Click the OK button.

7. Finally, click on the UNLOCKED button and the website will send a genuine TrustPort Total Protection 2012 activation code valid for 1 year. Do check your JUNK/SPAM box if it is not in your inbox. Hotmail’s spam filter marked the message as junk and it ended up in my JUNK folder. The setup installer is a whopping 252MB in size!

Thanks to leofelix for posting this in our forums. Thomasalan also shared that it is possible to use the activation code on TrustPort USB Antivirus. Please visit TrustPort official website for more information on TrustPort Total Protection 2012. I have a feeling that a lot of leechers are going to start leeching the free license to organize a giveaway on their website. Be prepared for a lot of TrustPort giveaways in the coming weeks…

Java software in general and the Java JRE in particular allow you to run applications called “applets” that are written in the Java programming language. You probably have Java JRE installed on your computer because these applets allow you to play online games, chat with people around the world, calculate your mortgage interest, view images in 3D, get real time nba scores, as well as many others.

As with all software, the JRE is updated on a regular basis. Updates are necessary to add new functionalities, to remove programming bugs or to repair possible vulnerabilities. Usually older versions of programs are removed during the install of new versions but Sun (the owner of Java) has somehow decided not to do this. The result is that a number of different versions of the JRE may exist on your computer. These older versions potentially pose a threat to your sense of security due to the possible vulnerabilities or security holes that may exist in them.

Java advises users to always have the latest version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). The latest version is always the recommended version because it contains updates and improvements to previous versions of the JRE. The latest available version is always compatible with the older versions.

But they also tell you that you can keep older versions of the JRE installed, in case you have an applet or an application that still depends upon a previous version. But this warning is quite useless as all applets and applications should be kept updated to ensure a maximum level of safety and security.

JavaRa is a small and simple tool that does a simple job: it removes old and redundant versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

What JavaRa does is to check if your computer has the latest version of Java Runtime Environment (JRE). If the version you have installed has been superseded by a newer version the program will download and install this newer version for you, by running Java’s update program. JavaRa then allows you to remove all possible older versions of this program. This will ensure that the security of your computer is enhanced and extra space on your hard disk is created.

In some instances Java Runtime Environment (JRE) will create logs or temporary files which are not needed in normal circumstances. These files take up space and can be safely removed. JavaRa does this tedious job for you with one click of a button.

[ Download JavaRa ]

I read some interesting post in a forum few days ago about some private software got leaked and the post came with a download link. When I clicked on it, I got redirected to ShareCash.org website which is my first downloading a file from this website. Basically ShareCash.org is pretty similar to RapidShare except it gives people opportunity to make money out of it. The uploader will have to sign up for a free account, then upload the file and share the download link with other people. If anyone wants to download from ShareCash, there are 2 options which is the regular download or premium download. The regular download requires you to complete a survey and finally giving your cell phone number to the advertiser to unlock the download link. As for premium download, it is a paid account where the downloader can download immediately from sharecash without going through the survey.

I had a quick look at the source code, played around with it but was unable find a way to download as a free user without completing the survey. Searched in Google for a solution and some of the methods such as using UserScripts, NoScript and link generators are no longer working. ShareCash.Org sure works very hard to beat all those bypassing techniques.


I really wanted to download that file which I found on the forum and I ended up paying for the Premium ShareCash account so I can download without giving out my cell phone number. Entering a fake or bogus cell phone number doesn’t work because the advertiser requires me to send a text message to a number to confirm my application.

I even tried using JDownloader, one of the best file host downloader that is able to decrypt captchas and defeat wait time but was unable to download from ShareCash.org using free account with the status showing “online > This file is only downloadable for premium users!”. In my opinion, if JDownloader can’t do it, I don’t think there are any current available methods to download from ShareCash as a free user without going through the survey.

Since I already have a ShareCash Premium account, I thought it would be useful to help out some people that wants to download from ShareCash without revealing their cell phone number. What I do is not really hacking or bypassing the ShareCash download restriction but merely just use my server to auto download with a ShareCash premium account and then subsequently auto upload to mediafire (all this is done with a custom script). Finally I’ll send the mediafire link to you. Do note that all this is done automatically from the server and I do not have access to the files at all. I am just doing you a favor and you are responsible to check if the file is safe or not. Also, be informed that you won’t get a single cent if the link that I help to download is created by you because I am using a premium account and don’t need to do the survey.

Please send your ShareCash.Org download request via contact form. You should already have a ShareCash link that you want to download and you should send that link to me. Then I will help you convert that link into MediaFire. I will not let you have access to my script to prevent from abuse usage.

Previously xje4bv has shared with us 5 free tools to automatically extract multiple zip or rar archives. They are Unpacker, RARZombie, ExtractNow, The Scene Release Unpacker and Scene Unpacker (1.0.0.1). We’re not talking about software to manage zip archives such as 7-Zip or Universal Extractor but rather a simple portable tool that is able extract multiple archive files. For example, if you’ve downloaded many different types of files that is compressed into ZIP or RAR, extracting one by one is going to be a tedious task.

Other than the 5 tools that xje4bv shared with us, there are 6 more free tools that can handle extracting multiple compressed files. They are BulkExtractor, AutoUnpack, ParNRar, ZipALot, UnZipThemAll and QuickZip4. I’ve tested all 11 of them and I am not going to go into details because not even one out of the 11 that satisfies my requirement in batch extracting archive files. To me, a tool to extract multiple zip or rar archives MUST support password because there are a lot of sites that encrypts the archive with password so that people would know where the file originally came from. Or it can be a form of advertisement when another site leeched the download link.


Out of the 11 free batch extracting tools, only a few that can support password. For some, you can set the password in the settings so that it will try to extract with the predefined password and some will prompt you to enter the password when it finds out that the archive is encrypted with a password.

Unfortunately not even ONE can support entering multiple passwords or a password list. A lot of times I just download what I think it’s interesting but never had the time to immediately check the file. So I ended up accumulating a bunch of compressed files with different passwords and I got even lazier to check them out because I knew I had to extract one by one which will take a lot of my time doing just that.

Ah, good news is I found that jDownloader, a very good one-click file hosting downloader tool that is able to handle extracting multiple RAR archive files WITH a password list! I am going to show you how easy it is to extract multiple RAR archives using jDownloader.

1. Make sure your computer have at least Java Runtime Environment v1.5 installed. You can go here to verify the version of Java that is installed on your PC.

2. Download the latest version of jDownloader. If you already have it on your computer, it has an auto update feature to make sure you have the latest version of the program and addons.

3. Extract the downloaded jDownloader and run JDownloader.exe. It should take a few seconds to load and this is normal because it runs on Java.

4. Click Addons in menu bar and go to JD-Unrar > Settings. Go through all the settings there and also enter all the password that you want JD-Unrar to try to extract when it finds a RAR file passworded. Click OK when done.

5. Now again click Addons in the menu bar and go to JD-Unrar > Extract archive(s).

6. Select all the RAR files in a folder (make sure you move all your RAR files that you want to extract in a folder first) and click Open.

7. jDownloader will now extract all your RAR files that you selected and also automatically tries the list of password. If the password is not found, it can prompt you to manually enter the password. It is like brute forcing an encrypted RAR file. Do take note that if you have a long list of password, the extraction time can take very long.

jDownloader is free, portable and is very actively being developed but unfortunately JD-Unrar can only support RAR archive. I know the main coder of jDownloader and will make a request for him to add ZIP support in JD-Unrar. When that happens, it will be the perfect archive batch extracting tool!

Did you notice that Windows will automatically generate crash dumps whenever you get blue screen of death (BSOD)? I’ve gotten lots of them when using Windows 98 but when come to XP, it is nearly flawless and I can’t remember when was the last time I ever got a blue screen. However on my new laptop that comes with Vista, it’s a whole different story because it happened so often and I can’t really remember how many times I got the blue screen. If you’ve never seen a Windows blue screen before, it looks something like what it says below.

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you’ve seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the Stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters.

Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical information:
*** STOP: 0x0000007E (0C0000005, 0x81C908A2)
Collecting data for crash dump …
Initializing disk for crash dump …
Beginning dump of physical memory.
Dumping physical memory to disk: 50

The memory crash dump are usually saved in C:\WINDOWS\Minidump and C:\WINDOWS\MEMORY.DMP. I remembered many years ago when I took computing course, one of my lecturer told us Windows crash dump are very hard to analyze and we actually have to pay Microsoft to do that. I don’t know how true is that but researching on how to analyze crash dumps with Microsoft Debugging tools did show that it is not easy. Fortunately here is a tool called WhoCrashed that is able to read Windows crash dumps and roughly tells us what is causing the blue screen crash.


WhoCrashed shows the drivers which have been crashing your computer with a single click. In most cases it can pinpoint the offending drivers which have been causing misery on your computer system in the past. It does post-mortem crashdump analysis and presents all gathered information in a comprehensible way. Normally, debugging skills and a set of debugging tools are required to do post-mortem crash dump analysis. By using this utility you do not need any debugging skills to be able to find out what drivers are causing trouble to your computer.

Before start using WhoCrashed, you’ll have to make sure that Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows has been installed. The first time you click the Analyze button, it’ll ask you to select the path to the Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows (usually in C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows) or you can download the installer by clicking “Download the required file from Microsoft site now”.

On my Acer laptop that has Vista installed, WhoCrashed is able to determine that the crash was likely caused by usbvideo.sys. It also did advice that the crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Likely the culprit is another driver on your system which cannot be identified. Looks like I am back to square one. So is analyzing Windows crash dump useless? Not really, on some cases it might be able to help you pinpoint the cause of the problem but definitely not all the time. One example is many years ago I was testing an exploit called IGMP nuke which is able to crash Windows XP machines by causing blue screens, lockups and automatic reboots on XP computers that don’t have SP2 installed. When that happens, Windows will create a crash dump file and I am very sure you’re not going to find any clues on what caused the crash after analyzing it.

WhoCrashed Home Edition is free and works on Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/2008. Resplendence Software also have a PROFESSIONAL version that cost $34.95 which can analyze crash dump on remote computers on the network and on a local dump directory of your choice. It also gives more detailed analysis of crash dumps and license not limited to use at home only.

[ Download WhoCrashed ]

Did you know that using keyboard shortcuts can save time and effort compared to only using mouse? If you can use both keyboard shortcuts and mouse, it can really speed up. Not speed up your computer but speed up what you do on the computer. One of my mentor taught me this when I just started to use the computer. At first I find it very troublesome and slow because I am not used to it. But now, I never regret taking the time to learn and memorize keyboard shortcuts. Not only that, I even look like a geek who is really into computers when I use keyboard shortcuts infront of my customers.

All operating systems and a lot of softwares has keyboard shortcuts. You can either go to the official website to hunt for the keyboard shortcuts, or you can just go to one website that has a database of keyboard shortcuts for your convenience.


KeyXL is the largest online database of keyboard shortcuts in the world. Their keyboard shortcut database is searchable by software program and covers all the major operating environments including Windows, Macintosh, Linux and browser-based applications.

The people at KeyXL are constantly adding new programs to their keyboard shortcuts database. There is a form for you to add a new application to the KeyXL keyboard shortcut database. However, I wonder why isn’t there a form for us to conveniently submit keyboard shortcuts to them? For example, I checked the list of keyboard shortcuts for Windows XP and I couldn’t find CTRL+SHIFT+ESC. Press this 3 keys simultaneously will launch Windows Task Manager.

A great idea and website but hopefully they’ll have more complete shortcut keys for an application.

[ Visit KeyXL Keyboard Shortcuts ]

Some virus are very destructive or badly coded until it affects Windows stability. One of the worst thing that could happen is you’re unable to boot in to Windows and not even Safe Mode. That makes it harder for tech people to troubleshoot the problem and ended up in reformatting the hard drive to reinstall Windows. Last year I written a guide on how to clean or remove virus when you can’t boot in to Windows using Hiren’s BootCD.

However, Hiren’s BootCD only has F-Prot and McAfee dos based antivirus, which I personally think that it is not strong or smart enough to detect and remove some viruses. The only antivirus program that I can put my trust on is Kaspersky.

Good news is Kaspersky has started offering Rescue Disk to scan and remove virus on computer without the need of booting in to Windows.


Kaspersky Rescue Disk offers a safe way to remove viruses from a computer without the risk of getting infected. Boot from the Kaspersky Rescue Disk to scan and remove threats from an infected computer without the risk of infecting other files or computers. All you need to do is the download the ISO file, burn the ISO image to a CD, insert it into the infected system’s CD-ROM drive, enter the PC’s BIOS, set it to boot from the CD and reboot the computer.

Here’s the detailed step-by-step on how to use Kaspersky Rescue Disk.
1. Download Kaspersky Rescue Disk ISO.

2. Burn the ISO with your CD/DVD burning software. If you don’t have one, you can use ImgBurn. You can follow the guide on this page on how to burn ISO to a CD using ImgBurn.

3. After finished burning Kaspersky Rescue Disk to CD, insert the CD to your CD/DVD-ROM, and boot up your computer with it.

4. You will get a screen that looks like below. Hit the ENTER key to start booting the Anti-Virus using linux.

5. Once everything is loaded, the latest Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 will load. Simple check the hard drives that you want to scan and click Start scan.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 or Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 allows you to create your own Recue Disk. Open KAV or KIS, click SCAN, choose Create Rescue Disk. Just follow the instruction and you will have your own made Rescue Disk. However, the rescue disk that you create from Kaspersky is different from the one that you download from Kaspersky website. The one that you create from Kaspersky software is designed to restore system functionality after a virus attack that damaged system files of the operating system and made it impossible to startup and to be used only on the computer that it was created on. Using the disk on other computers could lead to unforeseeable consequences, since it contains information about the parameters of a specific computer.

As for Kaspersky Rescue Disk that you download from Kaspersky website, it is like an on-demand virus scanner that allows you to scan and remove virus without booting in Windows. When Windows is running, virus are active and sometimes it is tough to remove them. So the most effective way of removing virus is when they are inactive.

[ Download Kaspersky Rescue Disk ]

Whenever Windows is not working properly, most of the time the first thing that I will do is to boot into Safe Mode and see if the problem still persists. If a Windows that will only boot into its safe mode typically has a major problem, such as disk corruption or the installation of poorly configured software or driver that prevents the operating system from successfully booting into its normal operating mode.

Windows in safe mode will have reduced functionality, but the task of isolating problems is easier because many non-core components are disabled (turned off). Safe mode typically provides access to utility and diagnostic programs so a user can troubleshoot what is preventing the operating system from working normally. Safe mode is intended for maintenance, not functionality, and provides minimal access to features.

Although Safe Mode is very useful for troubleshooting computer problems, it can also be used to bypass some security software that autostarts in normal Windows. An example is if you installed an internet monitoring software which restricts your children to use the computer an hour a day, your kid can simple boot in to Safe Mode and use the computer the whole day… There are times we need to disable Safe Mode for extra security.


At first I found a software called NOSafeMode which claims to be able to disable F8, disable Safe Mode and disable Advanced Boot Options in Windows NT based Operating Systems (Including Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista). It is a simple tool of less than 60KB in size, portable, does not hack or modify the operating system files or registry and can disable ALL keys during boot process so the system boots without any interference. I don’t know whether this tool truly exist or not because I couldn’t find any image or screenshot for NOSafeMode and it cost €19.95. If you have any information on NOSafeMode, please share it with me.

As for the free method, you’ll have to modify your registry, so just follow the steps below on how to disable Safe Mode.

1. Go to Start > Run
2. Type regedit and click OK
3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot
4. Expand SafeBoot by clicking the + sign and you should see 2 keys with the name Minimal and Network.
5. Rename both of the keys to something else, example, Minimal to MinimalX and Network to NetworkX.

Now if you try to boot in to Safe Mode, doesn’t matter if you select the normal Safe Mode, or Safe Mode with Networking or Safe Mode with Command Prompt, the computer will auto reboot or get a blue screen of death (BSOD).

To enable Safe Mode back, just rename MinimalX to Minimal and NetworkX to Network. I know that this solution is not perfect because if the person knows about this trick, he/she can simply modify the registry to re-enable back Safe Mode. However, it does give some level of protection against an average computer user (or non raymond.cc readers 😛 )

If you’re not comfortable in modifying your system’s registry, I found a very small free tool called Enable/Disable SafeMode which allows you to enable or disable SafeMode. Basically it does the same thing as the above which is modifying the SafeBoot keys. You can also set an application-password to prevent unauthorized access to this tool.

Very easy to use as the tool is pretty much self explanatory. Actually if you can create a Limited User account, you wouldn’t need to use this registry hack because a limited user cannot even access the registry. So this is a solution to those that for some reason don’t want to create a Limiter User.

[ Download Enable/Disable SafeMode ]

WEP password can be easily cracked (in fact it’s 100% crackable) using BackTrack Linux. Actually it is only easy if your computer’s hardware (especially the wireless adapter) is compatible with BackTrack, running the correct commands plus the target is close enough so you can get a good signal strength. I’ve shown my brother that it can be done and recently he told me he purchased a device that can crack WEP. The device is easy enough to use without worrying about hardware compatibility and running the proper commands.

As far as I know, one of the easiest way to crack WEP is doing it in Windows using AirPCap together with Cain and Able software but AirPCap is very expensive and cannot be found in Malaysia. So I went and check out the device sold in Lelong.com.my (a Malaysian auction website) which cost around US$80 and bought it out of curiosity.


When I got the device, the image below is how it looks like and everything is in Chinese! Heck I’m a Chinese and I can speak a couple of Chinese dialects fluently but embarrassingly I can’t read Chinese characters 😛

Doesn’t really matter because the menu only has a couple of selections and I can navigate around with the arrow keys and the center OK button. From the manual, I found out that this device that can crack WEP password is actually a wireless router!

As a test, I set the WEP password in my router as 1234567890 with 64bit encryption.

By selecting the third option in the device menu, the LCD screen shows Scanning Aps… After about a minute, a list of detected access points are shown. Simply select an access point with WEP and pressing the OK button, ANTCOR will start sniffing and collect IVs. When AntCor is placed near my wireless router, it manage to crack the 10 character WEP password within a few minutes after collected a few millions IVs.

For testing purposes, I tried sniffing other wireless access points but was unable to crack probably due to low signal strength.

Bad
1. Very slow (requires millions of IVs)
2. Requires decent wireless signal strength.
3. Everything in Chinese
4. Powers only by AC (would be nice if I can use battery)

Good
1. Affordable (I won’t say cheap because BackTrack is free)
2. Easy to use (plug and play crack)

For experienced computer users, they are better off with BackTrack but for basic computer users that don’t even know how to boot up a computer with a linux live disc, ANTCOR would probably make them feel l33t (a hacker slang for “Elite”).

After I finished solving the Show My Webcam problem on Windows Live Messenger 2009 yesterday, I wanted to do a topic on McAfee SiteAdvisor. So I downloaded the latest McAfee SiteAdvisor, installed it and bam, my webcam stopped working again. This time I got the message “We couldn’t start your camera device. Please check that your camera is not currently in use by another program, and then try again.” when I tried to show my webcam. I am very sure that my webcam is not being used by any other software. Then when being invited to start sending webcam, I got the error “Messenger is not available right now. Please try again later. (0x8ac70202) or (0x8AC70013) after accepting the invitation.

I didn’t spend too much time solving this problem because I immediately knew that it is surely caused by McAfee SiteAdvisor since the problem started after I installed SiteAdvisor. If you have both McAfee SiteAdvisor and Windows Live Messenger 2009 installed, please take the following actions until a patch is out from McAfee because there are some incompatibility problems.


The workaround is pretty simple. All you need to do is to disable McAfee SiteAdvisor from monitoring msnmgr.exe but there is no option to do that. You’ll have to manually go to C:\Program Files\McAfee\SiteAdvisor\ and look for the file sasets.ini. Open the sasets.ini with notepad or your favorite text editor, locate the section titled [msnmsgr.exe] and change the value to 0 (1 means enable and 0 means disable). Refer to the image below for a clearer explanation.

Save the file and close it. You can either restart your computer for changes to take effect OR simply terminate and reopen Windows Live Messenger 2009. Yeah it’s frustrating that Windows Live Messenger 2009 has so many bugs and incompatibilities but no worries, I’ll slowly help you all to look for solutions and workarounds to make it work rather than downgrading back to MSN 8.5. According to Wikipedia, Windows Live Messenger is no longer beta and the latest version is Build 14.0.8064.206 released on 12 February 2009. You can head on to http://messenger.live.com/ to download the latest Live installer (wlsetup-custom.exe) which can automatically update your Messenger if it detected there’s an update.

Normally advanced computer user that are very familiar with Windows don’t need an antivirus program to keep their computer away from virus. Even if their computer got infected by virus, they are able to pin point where the virus is and manually remove it. You see, a virus somehow needs to auto run when Windows is booted up and frankly speaking there are quite a lot of launch points and memorizing each ones will turn you into a big time geek. So we rely on utilities that can do that and thankfully there are quite a lot of free tools that can analyze programs that startup with Windows. Here is another one called Silent Runners which I find quite interesting because it is written in VBScript. Do take note that this tool is only for the experienced because there is no nice graphical user interface. Analyzing autoruns is already a tough job to some and having no GUI at all makes it even harder.

The purpose of Silent Runners is to identify the programs that start up with Windows. Silent Runners is not an anti-virus, an anti-trojan, or a spyware scanner. It only pinpoints how programs start up and it does not scan the system to identify every trace of malware. The text file it creates can be removed for study or stored as a benchmark.


The output file summarizes everything the script thinks you should know. It will report any non-default value it finds anywhere it looks. A default value is something that’s put there by Microsoft when Windows is installed. For instance, in every Windows installation, the default shell is explorer.exe. If the script finds explorer.exe listed as the shell, it won’t add that to the output file.

However, it doesn’t mean that everything in the output file is suspicious. The script which is based on its limited code couldn’t figure out if certain things were suspicious or not, so it put it in the output file so you could go figure it out. Under some circumstances, the script will alert about suspicious data. It will do this by prefacing the entry in the output file with the symbols ! or H and an explanatory note will be placed in the report footer. Still this does not mean that the PC is infected but you should take a closer a look at that line.

There are virus that are coded in vbscript and one example is the Solow worm. Your antivirus program should notify you that a malicious script is trying to run when you double click on the “Silent Runners.vbs” file. Just make sure you allow or authorize it to run or else it won’t work.

Silent Runners is free, portable and it runs under Windows 95, Windows 98 (Standard Edition and Second Edition), Windows Me (Millennium Edition), Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home/Professional, Windows Vista and 7.

[ Download Silent Runners ]

You might notice the option “Remember me” when trying to login to a website or forum.

The popular “Remember Me” feature seen on a lot of websites is basically used to keep users logged into the website even after they’ve closed the browser so that the next time they revisit the site, they won’t have to manually login again. When you enable Remember Me, the persistent login cookies are stored with your browser and the length of time that you’ll be logged in depends on how long the web developer decides to set. This is all happening between your browser and the server without you noticing it.

I am a registered user in most of social bookmarking websites and I had to manually login every week because the Remember Me feature only keeps me logged in for a week. I do not want to flood my Firefox password manager, so I decided to manually extend the browser’s cookie expiration date so that I don’t need to login every week.

Here’s how I extend Firefox and Internet Explorer cookie expiration date.


I only extend the cookie expiration date on websites that are NOT important to me. Meaning if my account got stolen or hacked, I don’t mind registering another one.

– For Mozilla Firefox browser.
You can use an excellent Firefox extension called “Add & Edit Cookies – Cookies Editor“. After installing Add N Edit Cookies, in your Firefox, go to Tools and select Cookie Editor. Locate the site that you want to extend the auto login period, and click Edit button.

Set the expire date to a future date and save it.

[ Install Add N Edit Cookies Firefox extension ]

– For Internet Explorer browser.
You can use a free tool called “IECookiesView” from Nirsoft. IECookiesView is a cookie viewer/manager for Internet Explorer. When you run IECookiesView, it will list out all your IE cookies. To edit the IE cookies, you first need to select the website on the top window first. Then you will see the Keys that appear at the bottom window. Right click on the key and select Edit The Cookie’s Content.

Set the expire date to a future date and click Modify Cookie button.

[ Download IECookiesView ]

Before you decide to extend your browser’s cookie expiration date, please take note that cookies are vulnerable. A persistent login cookie is equivalent of both a valid user name and password into 1 file which can be easily stolen. Other user accounts won’t be able to access your browser’s cookie but I’d always be on the safe side and only extend cookie expiration date IF I am the only person using the computer. Better safe than sorry!