Raymond.CC Blog

Category: Computer

  • Backup Windows Live Messenger Standalone Installer Downloaded from Microsoft

    Ever since Microsoft officially launched their Live products, they no longer provide standalone installer for Windows Live Messenger. This has become quite a pain for some people like me because every time I format my customer’s computer to reinstall Windows, I have to spend an extra 30 minutes just to download Windows Live Messenger using Windows Live Installer. It’s a waste of time and bandwidth!

    Although Windows Live Messenger requires an internet connection, Microsoft should understand that not everyone has fast internet connection and some even have limited amount of bandwidth to use per month. There are Windows Live Messenger standalone installers hosted in free file hosting sites such as RapidShare and DepositFiles but I tell you honestly, I wouldn’t even trust those external links.

    The best is to download Windows Live Messenger from Microsoft and backup the standalone installer for future installation. Here’s how to do it.


    At first I thought it is going to be easy. Just use a packet sniffer to get the link of the Windows Live Mesenger setup file but I was wrong. It is much more complicated than that. Using a packet sniffer will give me a link to download a 16.4MB mu_wlmessenger_random_codes executable (.exe) file. When I tried to run the exe file, nothing appears. It seems like there’s a special way to extract the mu_wlmessenger. After many hours of trying, I still couldn’t figure it out. All I know is it make use of WLSetupSvc.exe to do convert mu_wlmessenger.exe to MSI installation file. (If you know how, please share it with me)

    Since I couldn’t find the direct link to download Windows Live Messenger from Microsoft, I will use Windows Live Installation to download and I am sure the standalone setup file will be cached somewhere in my hard drive.

    1. Download and run Windows Live Installer

    2. Accept the agreement, you can uncheck MSN Home and Help improve Windows Live checkboxes and click Install.

    3. Select Messenger (17 MB) and click Add to installation button. Wait for Windows Live Installer to finish download and install Messenger.

    4. Once Windows Live Installer has finished downloading and installing Messenger, use Windows Explorer and browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\WindowsLiveInstaller\MsiSources
    Windows Installer MSI Sources

    5. You might see a few filenames Install_{random-numbers-letters}.msi. One of it is the standalone installer for Windows Live Messenger and here’s how to check. The file size is around 16MB. You can right click on the file, select Properties, go to Summary tab. At the Subject, it will state very clearly that it is a Windows Live Messenger setup package. You can backup and rename that file to a name that easily identifies it as Windows Live Messenger installer.
    How to get Windows Live Messenger standalone setup

    No more wasting time and bandwidth redownloading Windows Live Messenger or even downloading from untrusted/unknown source! This method will work for all products (Windows Live Sign-In Assistant, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Mail ,Windows Live Toolbar, Windows, Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Family Safety) at Windows Live Installer.

  • NodEnabler vs NodLogin – Which is Better?

    I got an email today from Joseph asking me about NodEnabler and NodLogin. Frankly speaking, I have no idea what are they because I’ve never used ESET products until recently when I found 2 methods to legally get free NOD32 username and passwords. Out of curiosity, I checked out both of the tools and found that it is able to automatically apply licenses on NOD32 Antivirus and ESET Smart Security without patching any files. The best part is the username and password that are being used are real trial licenses. Basically NodEnabler and NodLogin are similar to Kaspersky Key Finder. It connects to a website that contains a database of usable license and then automatically apply it to your registry.
    NOD32 Crack
    Unlike Kaspersky and other antivirus software where it only allows you to activate the trial license once and after that it only accepts commercial paid license. ESET NOD32 Antivirus and Smart Security works differently. Although ESET allows you to apply for a normal 30 days trial license to use it on the installed ESET products, when it expires, you can use another email to re-apply for another 30 day trial license and continue using ESET products with the new username and password. If you purchase a commercial 1 year license, you will also get a set of username and password that is valid for 1 year. NOD32 Antivirus or ESET Smart Security users are really lucky because the licensing system used by ESET are very very lenient.

    Since NodEnabler and NodLogin does the same, have you ever wondered which one works better? Here’s my simple research on both of these tools.


    I will not go into too detail on the sites that it connects to grab the licenses. If you’ve read my article on Kaspersky Key Finder, you should know what tool to use to find out where it connects to.

    Download NodLogin NodEnabler
    The latest version of NodLogin is v9.7. It is created by UlisesSoft. NodLogin is able to detect whether NOD32 Antivirus or ESET Smart Security installed on your system, then grabs a list of working username and passwords from his own website at ulisessoft.info and automatically insert it to the ESET product via registry. When scanned with 37 types of antivirus, 18 of them including NOD32 itself detects NodLogin as a Autoit threat.
    Download NodLogin 9.7

    As for NodEnabler, the latest version is 2.81 and it is created by Damian666 and Nodster under The Damned Crew nick. It is also able to detect whether NOD32 Antivirus or ESET Smart Security is installed on your system, and then connects to a well known 3rd party website called nod321 that is updated daily with fresh username and password. It grabs the username and password, verifies them and auto insert it to the installed ESET product via registry. When scanned with 37 types of antivirus, only 4 antivirus detects NodEnabler as a threat. Installation is simple, just run the setup and click Just Do It! button.
    Download NodEnabler 2.81

    To me, both works perfectly but if you ask me which is better, I’d say NodEnabler because it doesn’t rely on a self maintained NOD32 username and password database. If one day the creator of NodEnabler decides to stop this project, this tool could still work if NOD321 website is still around and ESET software still reads the username and password from the same registry location. As for NodLogin, it connects to its own server which needs to be manually updated and maintained by UlisesSoft. I’ve checked the database that is used by UlisesSoft and the username & password data are dated 9 days ago. If the database is not updated, NodLogin will only download old and expired NOD32 username and password.

    There you have it Joseph, my reviews on NodEnabler and NodLogin. The original untouched NodEnabler or NodEnabler is not a threat and doesn’t damage your computer IF you got it from the right source.

  • Website Changes and Deus Ex Human Revolution Giveaway

    The last time I changed the design of this website was on January 1st 2008 which was more than 3 years ago. It was based on the free Illacrimo theme but modified to suit what I wanted to display. Having the same design for such a long time can get a little boring and unproductive for me. Moreover I have also been getting comments on the fonts being too small and hard to read especially when the computer monitors today is more than 20″ in size.

    Few months back I’ve changed the forum design from the default vBulletin skin to a new skin called Aesthetica and gotten a lot of positive comments. So I went ahead and quietly developed a very similar design for the blog. It was ready for quite some time but did not want to switch to the new theme because I was having the busiest time during that period. I thought that there is no point switching to a new design that may dazzle some of you but end up with no new articles. So I waited….


    Now that I am pretty sure that I have more time to be on the computer learning new stuff and sharing with you, I’ve decided to activate the new theme for this blog. Here are the changes:

    1. New theme
    – Theme is custom made and still requires optimization such as CSS sprites so that it loads faster. Fonts are bigger and more readable. Need to sort out the category because last time I grouped all articles into Computers.

    2. Social bar
    – Some of you that want to +1, Like or Tweet the articles that you find interesting, you can now easily do so from the social bar that is located at the left hand side.

    3. Disqus comment system
    – I switched to Disqus because I wanted only logged in users to post comments. Allowing guest to comment will only bring in spammers and trolls which are a waste of time reading and deleting them.

    I hope you all like this new design and appreciate any comments on how to improve it further.

    Other than the on-going Advanced SystemCare PRO 4 giveaway, I will be giving out one copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution game worth $49.99 today and the lucky winner will be randomly picked after 2 days (48 hours). All you need to do is be a “verified member” in our forum to participate in the draw.

    About Deus Ex: Human Revolution Game
    You play Adam Jensen, a security specialist, handpicked to oversee the defense of one of America’s most experimental biotechnology firms. But when a black ops team uses a plan you designed to break in and kill the scientists you were hired to protect, everything you thought you knew about your job changes.

    Deux Ex Human Revolution giveaway

    Key features:

  • The long-awaited return of the award winning franchise that blends the best of Action and RPG: the perfect mix of combat, stealth, hacking, and social gameplay.
  • Play as Adam Jensen, a mechanically augmented agent: customize and upgrade your character with more than 50 unique augmentations that support your style of play.
  • Deadly weapons: Over 20 available weapons, each with their own customizable elements.
  • Fight enemies including dangerous thugs, augmented special operations soldiers, advanced robots; and engage in epic boss battles.
  • Live the reactive and dangerous world: your choices will have consequences in the game’s world.
  • Play in an open-ended world: there are always multiple solutions to every challenge.
  • Engage the unique Cyber Renaissance setting: discover a unique world that blends near future and Renaissance elements.
  • Travel the world: visit multiple unique locations across the globe each with their own design, story and gameplay elements.
  • Become involved in vast global conspiracy: unravel the story — discover who you can really trust.
  • Decide humanity’s future: the decision you make and the actions you take will lead to an ultimate decision on mankind’s future.

    • Do take note of the minimum system requirements to play Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

    OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7
    Processor: 2 GHz dual core
    Memory: 1 GB RAM (Windows XP) / 2 GB (Windows Vista and Windows 7)
    Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8000 series or ATI Radeon HD 2000 series or better
    DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c
    Hard Drive: 8.5 GB

    I already have the Deus Ex: Human Revolution game as gift in my steam account. Once the winner has been drawn, I will send the gift over either to your email or steam account if you already have one. You can get more information about the game from the official Deus Ex website.
    Free Deus Ex Human Revolution Game Giveaway

  • One of the Best Image Compression Software FILEminimizer Pictures is Now Free

    Received an email from balesio a few days ago that FILEminimizer Pictures is now free for personal and home use! It used to cost €24.95 for a single user license but now anyone can just download the software, install it and start reducing the size of huge photos. A cheap camera for beginner nowadays can already go up to 10MP which will result in the photo size being really huge. For a user that doesn’t know much about computers, they would obviously waste time and bandwidth in uploading the original uncompressed photo to Facebook.

    With FILEminimizer Pictures, I believe anyone would be able to reduce the size of photos on their computer because all it takes is just a few clicks. Run the software, add the photos that you want to compress and click the optimize files button. Can’t get any easier than that. It is also very effective in the sense that it is able to make a photo size 98% smaller and still look beautiful without even knowing what values to use for Bits Per Pixel, quality factor and etc on some image editing software.

    This latest version of FILEminizer Pictures 3.0 comes with an integrated uploading of optimized images directly to Facebook. This saves you the trouble of manually running your web browser, log in to Facebook and then upload the photos.

    best software to make photos smaller

    If you didn’t know, you can also compress images by right clicking on the image files and select FILEminimizer from the context menu. Currently it shows 2.x which I think the programmers at balesio forgotten to update it to show 3.x instead.

    Although the website just said it’s free, but during the installation, the License Agreement window clearly stated that it is intended exclusively for private use on a single workstation and may not be used for commercial or professional purposes. To be honest, FILEminimizer Pictures is what me and my wife normally use to make photo files smaller.

    [ Download FILEminimizer Pictures ]

  • BIOS Master Password Keygenerator for Locked Out BIOS

    I used to work in a educational facility where there are hundreds of HP computers to manage. One of the biggest headache I face there was preventing the computer hardware such as RAM from being stolen. The computer case has a small hole where I can use a small padlock to prevent the case from being opened by unauthorized person but for some reason the management didn’t want to buy the locks. Fortunately there is a built-in function where I can lock the casing from the BIOS and logically I have to set a password on the BIOS to prevent the users from accessing the BIOS to unlock the case.

    One problem solved but another problem surfaced which is the HP machine only allow the user up to 3 chances to enter the correct BIOS password before the BIOS itself is locked out, preventing the password which I’ve set earlier. The only way that I can get the BIOS unlocked is to call HP to schedule an on-site service and that cost money. If you searched in ebay, there are people selling service in bios password removal for a fee and I thought that surely there are keygenerators for that. I searched harder and found Dogbert’s article on BIOS password backdoors in laptops.


    When a computer or laptop is locked out, you will be presented with a scary “System Disabled“, “Password check failed. Fatal Error. System Halted” message with numbers. Take note of the number because that piece of information is very important to generate the BIOS backdoor password.

    System Disabled

    All you need to do is to note down the numbers and then go to this page to download the correct key generator based on the brand of your computer or laptop. Enter the numbers on the program, hit enter and the master password will be displayed. Then boot up the computer that is locked out and just type in the password which will instantly unlock the computer.

    BIOS master password keygenerator

    Obviously you have to run the keygenerator on a computer that you can boot in to Windows. If you don’t know which pwgen to use, it is also safe to try all of them until you find the one that matches your laptop. Recently Dogber has even included a python script to generate master password for Sony laptops. You can get that by going to the main page of Dogber’s blog. This guy is a genius!

  • Hack Hotmail using XSS exploit

    Hack Hotmail XSS exploit
    That microsoft’s code is not always secure, is very clear again with this XSS exploit. This is not the first XSS exploit that has been found, others have been found.

    Sixteen year-old Adriaan Graas from The Netherlands informed Microsoft last week about an XSS (cross site scripting) exploit he found in Hotmail. The exploit allows hackers to steal cookies from their victims and obtain full control over their inboxes without the need of knowing their passwords.

    The idea is simple. When you are logged-in into Hotmail, a cookie is created which allows you access every time you are in it’s domain. Since the cookie is not IP-bind (how is this possible? – microsoft) we are able to fake the cookie, when stolen. Then use it to login. This all does mean that we do not have to know the password or even the email address of the victim. Trough XSS we can insert an piece of javascript code that will send the cookie to a webserver with an log script. This can be written in PHP, ASP, CGI practically anything you want. The cookie can be faked with Proxomitron.

    Read more…

  • Decoding Percent with Numbers Encoding (%20) in URLs

    Today I will be posting a short article because I didn’t know I would be so tied up with the Live Support that I launched yesterday. Some of the cases were really tough but still managed to helped a few users and I am feeling really good about it. Anyway, have you ever noticed that there are times you’ll see weird characters such as %20, %3A and etc in webpages especially in URLs? These characters are called percent encoding and the 2 characters after the percentage sign actually represents a “reserved” character. Let’s do a simple test here if you don’t know what I am talking about. Open up Internet Explorer, type http://www.google.com/” in the URL and hit enter. Make sure you add a double quote after the slash. You will instantly see that the double quotes is being converted into %22.

    Percent in URL

    Two days ago I received a copyright infringement notice and was asked to reply with the following subject RE%3A%20Copyright%20Infringement%20Notice%20ID%3A%20XXX%2DXXXXXXX or else my email would be treated as spam. I have done research on this before but I did not save the website that provided simply decoding to the percent encoding characters. When I really needed it again, I had to spend time looking up on the same thing that I’ve researched before. I am posting this out so I know where I can look it up in future and also hope that you guys can learn something new too.


    There are 20 reserved characters including space ! * ‘ ( ) ; : @ & = + $ , / ? % # [ ] that has to be encoded only under certain circumstances. You can refer to the table below to manually convert the percent encoding to a character.
    URL encoding
    Surely I am not going to memorize all those hex codes, so here is a website that has an online tool for automatic URL Encoding and Decoding.

    Simply enter the percent encoded URL to the form and hit the Decode button. Voila, the decoded text shows immediately.
    Decode Percentage Encoding URL

  • Automatically Lower, Optimize or Reduce the Memory Usage for Any Running Program at Interval

    Nowadays modern computers comes with high memory, from 1GB to 4GB and some even up to 8GB! Although powerful computers with high memory theoretically can multitask a lot of software together, but let us say if you load a firewall, an antivirus, Firefox browser, Nero Burning ROM, Adobe PDF Reader and a few more resource hungry software, you will feel that Windows starts to perform very slowly even if you still have a lot of free memory. Some of the symptoms are clicking the start menu and it is slow to appear, Windows Explorer takes a while to load and etc. That’s the reason why I don’t turn on the antivirus real-time file scanner even if I have 2GB of memory.

    One of the biggest problem is using Firefox. I use it everyday and the hungry Firefox monster really eats up a lot of memory after using it to browse the web for a period of time. From the image below, it shows that it takes up 126MB but there were times that it can go up to 200+MB.

    Reduce Software Memory Usage

    I know that there’s the “Ultimate Firefox Optimizer” which can reduce the memory usage from hundreds of megabytes (MB) to a few hundred kilobytes (KB). It is amazing but I’ve never used it nor posted it on this website because it doesn’t have an official website which makes it unreliable. Scanning it on Virustotal (36 antivirus) and 13 antivirus detects it as adware. Even Kaspersky’s Virus Analyst Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky confirms that it is an adware.

    Here’s an even better solution on how to reduce the memory usage for any running programs.


    Minimem is a memory optimization solution to run modern applications on not-so-modern computers. Initially developed for Firefox only, Minimem now can reduce the memory footprint of any application. It runs in the background and can be set up to optimize as many processes as you’d like, using a very intuitive graphical interface. Unlike other memory optimization tools, it gives you full control over what applications you want to optimize, when and how often.

    Optimize Application Memory Usage

    It optimizes memory by removing as many non-necessary memory pages as possible from the selected processes. It does so at regular intervals which can be user-defined as well and every 30s by default. This then optimizes your applications which can load those pages back whenever they need, and makes your overall system perform much better whenever it is memory limited.

    Minimem remembers all of your settings; it is hence recommended to define once your processes to optimize and memory reduction period if you’d like to not use the default one, and then set Minimem to auto-start with your system. Its use will then become transparent to you and it will just do its job silently. Applications that are best to optimize for memory are typically office applications, typically word processors, and web browsers. On that last front Minimem has been tested to be extremely efficient with Firefox, the application it was originally designed for. Minimem does not replace your task manager and you should use this task manager if you’d like to analyse how much memory your various processes take; just press Ctrl-Shift-Esc to open it.

    Firefox reduced memory

    Yay! Minimem reduced Firefox’s memory usage to 12MB and it does that every 30 seconds! The best part is I can select a few more running application to automatically optimize the memory usage.

    [ Download Minimem ]

  • Snappier New Tab in Firefox by Disabling Animation

    Today we are seeing a lot of animations and effects integrated into operating systems and third party software to provide a more visually appealing feel to the user. Obviously we won’t want to go back to the Windows 95 era where the graphical user interface is so boring and I get sleepy by just looking at it. However, too much effects and animations gets on my nerves as well. For example, minimizing or maximizing a folder that is already opened in Windows 7 can be nice as it doesn’t put on any extra load on the system. Although I do have that few milliseconds to spare, but I personally prefer things to work snappy.

    If you haven’t noticed, there is animation when you open a new tab in Firefox. It is obviously there to make the browser more visually appealing. If you are like me that prefer things to be snappy, fortunately there is an easy way to disable the Firefox new tab animation.


    Type about:config at the URL bar and hit enter. Click the I’ll be careful, I promise button. Type browser.tabs.animate at the filter bar and hit enter. Simply double click on the browser.tabs.animate to change the value from true to false.

    Disable Firefox Tab Animation

    This change takes effect immediately without restarting the Firefox browser. You should now feel that opening a new tab is slightly faster when the animation is disabled.

    As a test, I captured the the action of opening tab in Firefox with HyperCam and extracted every frame from the video. As you can see from the screenshot below, there are 4 frames that shows the animation when opening a new tab in Firefox.

    Disable Firefox Animation

    After disabling the animation, I did the same by recording the screen and extract every frame from the video. I couldn’t find any frames that shows half opened tab.

  • Search download mirrors for better download speed

    I was trying to download the latest version of Nero v7.2.7.0 few hours ago and the download speed was unbearably slow at 5-7kbps. The filesize of Nero v7.2.7.0 is 129MB which means it should take like so many hours to complete downloading the file. I felt that it’s not worth to leave my computer on to download at 5-7kbps when my download speed is 1MBps.

    Nero’s download page only offers me to download by FTP or HTTP but doesn’t have other mirrors located at other country.
    Nero slow download speed

    Here’s a tip on what you can do if you’re trying to download a very large file but the download speed is very slow.


    You can use FileMirrors, a website maintained by HeadLight Software, the developer of GetRight to search for mirrors of the file.
    At the top right of the page, you can search for the file if by just typing the filename.
    For example, I tried searching for Nero-7.2.7.0_eng_no_yt.exe at FileMirrors.
    Nero slow download speed

    I easily got more than 10 locations and was able to find a file mirror that maxed out my download speed at 100kbps.
    Nero slow download speed

    Hope this helps 🙂

  • Solution for MP3 to Audio CD skipping problem

    Both my PC and laptop has DVD-RW drive which I can use it to burn mp3 to audio cd. I usually use my laptop to burn and never had any problems with it.
    Suddenly, one fine day I wanted to burn my mp3s to audio CD to listen in my car. Everything went as normal but when I played the audio cd in my car’s player, a few songs had the skipping problem. It doesn’t skip the whole song, but it skipped a couple of second. I thought the audio CD might be scratched. I took out the CD and the back layer looked perfect. I poped in a different audio CD, and it played fine. Meaning, it can’t be my car’s audio player.

    Then I tested the CD on my Hi-Fi set at home and also my laptop and computer. All 3 had the same audio skipping problems for a few second at the same track. Ok, it’s quite obvious at that time it’s the audio CD’s problem.
    I took out a new CD-R and burned the mp3 to audio cd at the slowest speed. Tried it again, and still had the same audio skipping problem. I listened to the MP3 on my laptop and the whole track played perfectly.
    I got a shocked and thought that it might be the problem with my laptop’s DVD-RW drive.
    So test whether the problem is on my laptop’s DVD-RW drive, I tried burning the same mp3 on my PC’s DVD-RW drive.
    Installed the latest Nero7, burned the same mp3 at the slowest speed and still had that audio skipping problem!

    It’s getting frustrating because I am wasting a lot of CD-Rs and they are not the cheap type. I usually buy the high quality CD-R Imation so it can play on any player. But then, it could be that batch of CD-Rs that is causing the problem. I took out a usable CD-RW and burn the mp3 to audio cd, problem still exist.
    I thought to myself that it might be the mp3 problem. Perhaps the person who converted from audio cd to mp3 didn’t do a good job. So I tried burning other mp3 to audio CD on my laptop. SH*T! Some of the tracks skipped for a few second!


    Now I am able to rule out that it’s not my DVD-RW drive, CD-R or CD-RW media disc, or or my car’s audio player. Again, I gave it a thought and thinking it might be the operating system’s problem. I reinstalled a fresh clean Microsoft Windows XP Professional on my computer and immediately installed the latest Nero7 without installing anything else. If I still have audio cd skipping problem this time, it’s definately Nero7 that is causing it. Right on the money, the new audio cd still skips!
    I remembered that when I was using the old Nero 6, I never had any problems in burning from mp3 to audio CD.
    So I uninstalled Nero7 using Nero General Clean Tool, and installed Nero 6. This time I burn the same mp3 on the same batch of CD-R on my computer, NO MORE audio skipping problem! I am still not convinced why the latest Nero 7 is causing this problem! I did another test which is uninstalled Nero 7 on my computer, installed Nero 6, and tried burning mp3 to audio CD on my PC. Tested the audio CD and certified no problem!

    Solution to audio cd problem when burning from mp3 to audio CD, switch back to the latest Nero 6.
    Another temporary solution is, to use Nero 6′s latest mp3PRO.dll file on Nero 7. I will show you how to do it step-by-step.
    1. Download the latest Nero 7.2.0.3b
    2. Download Nero 6 latest mp3PRO.dll
    3. Extract the downloaded mp3PRO.zip and you will get the file mp3PRO.dll version 2.0.4.8
    4. Copy mp3PRO.dll to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\AudioPlugins (Depending where is your Program Files, just change the drive C:\)
    5. You can either overwrite the file, or backup the Nero7 mp3PRO.dll by renaming it to mp3PRO.bak

    Now you should be able to burn mp3 to Audio CD using Nero 7 without having the audio skipping problem.

  • Remove iolo System Shield 3 Internet Security Services After Uninstallation

    Two months ago I shared with you a tip on how to obtain 1 year iolo System Shield 3 Internet Security license for free. It is a full security suite that includes antivirus, firewall, antispyware, system guard, and system optimizer. The offer is still working but unfortunately not many users liked it since it uses a lot of memory and there are some compatibility problems with Vista.

    After uninstalling iolo System Shield 3 Internet Security, you will find that the uninstaller does not complete removes iolo System Shield 3 from your computer. Try running Windows Task Manager and you will still find ioloServiceManager.exe process running taking up nearly 10MB of your memory.
    uninstall iolo service manager
    Although it only shows one iolo process that is running, but in fact there are 4 iolo services running in background. There will also be some files leftover in C:\Program Files\iolo folder which you cannot delete because the files are still in used.

    I’ve tried searching for an iolo removal tool but they don’t have one. No worries about that because I will show you how to safely remove the iolo services from your computer.


    Just follow the simple steps below on how to clean up iolo after uninstallation.

    1. Go to Start > Run, type services.msc and click OK.

    2. A Services window will appear. Scroll down and look for iolo FileInfoList Service, iolo Product Update Service, iolo System Guard, and iolo System Service. Double click on all 4 services, and set the Startup type as Disabled.
    disable iolo services

    3. Restart your computer.

    4. Download Total Service and Driver Control (TSDC), extract and run TSDC.exe

    5. TSDC will start to enumerate services and drivers. When it’s done, click the OK button. Select the iolo services and click the Remove button. Do that on all 4 iolo services.
    delete iolo services

    6. Restart your computer.

    7. Go to C:\Program Files\ and delete the whole iolo folder.

    Now iolo service has been totally removed from your computer and theoretically freed up some memory. iolo should be aware of this issue and fix their uninstaller to remove the leftover services. Be careful when using TSDC to remove drivers from your computer because the last time I did that, it corrupted the driver registry and I couldn’t reinstall the driver. Finally I found out that I had to delete the UpperFilters and LowerFilters to fix it.

  • Create, Backup, Restore and Manage Google Chrome Profiles

    I guess you should know what is Google Chrome is by now. If not, Google Chrome is a web browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier. When Google announced Google Chrome to the world, everyone started writing about it in their websites and forums which is why the reason you don’t see it here. I’ve tested Google Chrome myself and find that the interface is simple and easy to use, doesn’t take much memory and fast. Google Chrome is very suitable for basic computer users who just want to surf the web.
    Google Chrome Icon
    Google Chrome is like Firefox that supports profiles. Any changes you make while using Google Chrome are stored in files so that they can be used the next time you run Google Chrome. These changes can be obvious, like your home page, bookmarks, username & passwords and etc. They’re all stored in the same location, called profile. These files by default are kept separately from the program files that Google Chrome uses to run, which don’t change. This means that you can uninstall Google Chrome without losing your settings.

    It is possible to backup your Google Chrome profile and restore it on another computer, or create a multiple profiles when the browser is used by a few people.


    Google Chrome Backup is a small tool to create, backup, restore and manage Google Chrome profiles. The profile holds personal data like history, bookmarks, etc. Everything is done with one click. Latest version also supports Chromium, which modified version of Google Chrome, for portable use.

    Backup Google Chrome

    You need Google Chrome installed in order for this tool to work. It supports 0.2.149.27 version of Google Chrome or Chromium, but also newer builds. To use chromium please select a path within the Google Chrome Backup.

    When you backup a profile, this tool will save everything from profile folder to a single filename chrome_FOLDERNAME_DATE.gcb. According to Online TrID, the GCB file is actually a ZIP compressed archive which means you can open it with your favorite archiving software such as WinZIP, WinRAR, and etc.

    Google Chrome Backup tool also allow you to easily create separate profiles in Google Chrome for other users. This way, you don’t need to be afraid of your family members snooping on the sites that you’ve been to… Just right click on the new profile, select Create Shortcut.
    Create shorcut google chrome profile
    You will notice that there is a new icon at your Desktop which your family members can use it to run Google Chrome in a clean profile.

    I did a very big mistake when testing this tool because I did not read the manual. So I’d like to warn you and hope you don’t do the same mistake as me. I backed up a Chrome profile and saved it in Desktop. Then I clicked the Add Existing button thinking that should be how I can restore the backed up profile. I browse the Desktop path and click the Add button. Now, a Google Chrome icon with the name Desktop appears in the backup tool. When I delete the profile that is saved at Desktop, everything in my desktop is wiped out! Luckily Recuva managed to recover 90% of the deleted files… So be very careful whenever you want to delete a profile. Make sure you know where is the profile location first by right clicking on the profile icon and select Details. It is important that the profile you want to delete should have a folder by itself.

    [ Download Google Chrome Backup ]

  • Downloading Torrent Made Easy By Converting it to Executable

    When I first heard about BitTorrent, I immediately went to the official BitTorrent website to try to understand how it works. Somehow it seems a little complicated compared to Peer-2-Peer. P2P such as limewire is way easier because all I need is a client, search for what I am looking for and then download. Everything is done from the P2P client.

    As for Torrent, I need to find out which bittorrent client suits me the best, what are the tracker sites I can use to search, what are seeders, peers, leechers, and finally how to optimize the bittorrent client in order to obtain the best download speed. Bittorrent is already very popular but there are still people asking me how it works.

    Yesterday one of my friend who isn’t so good in computers wanted to download OpenOffice but he somehow he wasn’t able to download from the direct link. Another alternative to download OpenOffice is by using BitTorrent but the problem is he has never used BitTorrent. Instead of complicating him more, here is how I easily got him downloading OpenOffice using BitTorrent.


    Torrent2Exe is a free web based service that can convert a .torrent file into an executable file. You usually have to install a client on your PC to download files shared with BitTorrent. However, you’ll do perfectly well without the client if you use Torrent2exe. What I did for my friend was I converted the OpenOffice.torrent file into an executable file and send it to him. He then runs it and it will automatically start downloading. How simple is that? If you still don’t get it, see the steps below.

    1. I go to OpenOffice.org to download the OOo_2.4.0_Win32Intel_install_en-US.exe.torrent file.

    2. I then upload the OOo_2.4.0_Win32Intel_install_en-US.exe.torrent file to Torrent2exe to have it converted to an executable file. The converted executable filename becomes t2e.exe

    Convert Torrent to EXE

    3. I send the t2e.exe to my friend and he runs it.

    4. OpenOffice starts downloading.

    Easily download torrent

    You can either upload the .torrent file from your computer or specify the URL of the torrent file to have it converted to executable. I found a small problem on the URL function. When the URL of the torrent file contains reserved or excluded characters such as ] [ = ? & < > etc, it will show a 404 Not Found error when it tries to convert the torrent file to exe. When this happens, you’ll need to manually change the escape sequence to normal characters.

    For example, Little_Voice_%5B2007%5D.torrent. You will need to replace the %5B and %5D to [ and ] respectively. You can refer to the chart below to know which escape sequence is for which character.
    decode escape sequence

    Very simple isn’t it? If you have a website or blog and you offer downloads via torrent, you can provide both torrent file and executable file for you visitor’s convenient. I am sure basic computer users would appreciate it.

    [ Visit Torrent2Exe ]

  • Latest Windows Genuine Advantage Validation v1.5.526.0 Cracked

    If you’re using a cracked version of Windows Genuine Advantage Validation v1.5.512 to get your Windows Update and download from Microsoft Download Center, I believe it will soon not work for you because Microsoft has updated their Windows Genuine Advantage Validation file to version 1.5.526.
    I believe the one line of Javascript code you enter before using Windows Update is no longer working.


    To check your version of Windows Genuine Advantage Validation:
    1. Go to C:\Windows\System32
    2. Look for the file legitcheckcontrol.dll
    3. Use your mouse to right click on the file and select Properties
    4. Click on the Version tab and you will see the version number of your Windows Genuine Advantage Validation file.
    Windows Genuine chAdvantage Validation 1.5.526

    eth0, a cracking group has been releasing cracks for Windows Genuine Advantage Validation also started working on the new crack very quickly and now they have Windows.Genuine.Advantage.Validation.v1.5.526.0.CRACKED-ETH0 releasing to the public.

    Just extract the LegitCheckControl.dll to your C:\Windows\System32, overwrite the original LegitCheckControl.dll when prompted and you will now have a cracked version of Windows Genuine Advantage Validation which enables you to use Windows Update and also downloading from Microsoft Download Center. It’s that easy!

    [ Download Windows Genuine Advantage Validation v1.5.526.0 Crack ]

    Note: Using cracked version of Windows Genuine Advantage Validation v1.5.526.0 is against Microsoft antipiracy law. This information is only for your knowledge and you download at your own risk.