Two months ago, I posted on one interesting network analyzer software called Capsa. This software is distributed by Colasoft and I personally found this software is very useful on analyzing your network. Although I am using the Free Edition, but I found that this software is wonderful especially it provides user friendly graphical interface with some further explanation on those network settings.

With all these capabilities, Capsa is able to assist server guys on analyzing network issues efficiently. In some circumstances, not all the server guys are good with networking knowledge. With the additional tips and explanation provided by Capsa network settings, we can easily setup an analysis baseline on troubleshooting the network issue with the correct and more effective settings.


With Capsa Enterprise Edition, you will be able to capture packets from multiple adapters, and most importantly, you will be able to generate a nice and fancy report in PDF/HTML/MHT format. I personally have experience on analyzing network reports generated by some of the network devices, unfortunately, those report hardly provide meaningful result to non-technical person as those reports really need a network specialist to “decode” it.

Sometimes, you need all these reports as your bullet to get things solve, especially if you want to present this to the top management, definitely you will need something that instant and with the lease effort to prepare. Capsa is doing well on this area. Instead of plugging those numbering and combine those networking information into your document, with Capsa, you can just get the report done by just selecting the option you want it to be appear in the report.

A few days after posting the article, the marketing team from Colasoft contacted me and informed me that they are willing to sponsor a copy of FREE 1 year Capsa Enterprise Edition full license worth $699 to Raymond.CC readers. If you are interested in this giveaway, please first make sure that you’re already a subscriber of our newsletter and then leave a comment in this post, telling us how you are going to use this software to help you or your company on analyzing the network configuration or troubleshooting the network issues. We will choose the winner based on the most creative comment and the lucky winner will be announced next Monday.

The closing date for this event will be on this Sunday, which mean, this Saturday will be your last day to participate in this event. Thanks to Jane Hu from Colasoft for sponsoring this license. If you want to understand more about this software, please visit this website.

Update: There were a lot of good and creative comments. Leslie Francis has been selected as the winner. You will be directly contacted by Colasoft.

If you have an internet account with your ISP, chances are you already have POP3 email account and you check your emails using Outlook Express, Windows Mail or Microsoft Outlook. It is definitely convenient using an email client to download all emails but it pisses me off when someone forward an email containing a huge attachment which takes very long to download. It is even worst when I am at my mum’s place where the connection is slow and unstable… If the connection breaks or time out, I’ll have to redownload all the emails again including the attachments.

If the POP3 email account has a webmail service, I could just log in to the webmail and delete the email message containing big sized attachment. When I delete an email from webmail, I am actually deleting it from my server. So when I run Outlook Express, it will no longer download the deleted email. What if your POP3 email account doesn’t have a webmail service?

Here is a fast and easy tip on how to manually delete an email from your POP3 email account without using any software.


All Windows computer has a Telnet client. I am going to show you how to delete POP3 e-mail using Telnet. Sounds tough right? You won’t think so after you’ve finished reading this article.

1. Go to Start > Run.

2. Type telnet mail.yourserver.com 110. If your POP3 port is different from the default 110, please change accordingly.

3. Telnet would connect to your mailserver at port 110. Once connected, it will show the message +OK Hello there.

4. Now you’ll have to login using the user command. Some pop3 username requires full email address as login and some only username.
Type user username@domain.com
You will now see the message +OK Password required.

5. Type pass yourpassword
If you’ve entered a correct password for the user, you will get the message +OK logged in.

6. You can now type the command list to list all the messages on the server and their sizes in bytes.
You should see a message that says +OK POP3 clients that break here, they violate STD53.
1 2243
2 2841
3 1241188
4 4932
The above image shows that you have 4 emails on the server, they are listed in order from oldest first to newest last.

7. To view any of the email message, use the retr command followed by the message number that you see in the list command. It will return the whole message including all headers. Example, retr 3.

8. To delete a message, use the dele command followed by the message number. Example, delete 3

9. Type quit to end the session.

Tip: If you accidentally deleted a wrong email message, quickly type rset. It will resurrect the email message. When you use the dele command, the message is only marked for deletion and will only permanently delete the messages once you quit the session.

In Windows Vista, if you type telnet in run, you will get the error message “Windows cannot find ‘telnet’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.” To enable Telnet in Windows Vista, go to Control Panel, Programs, Programs and Features, and then click Turn Windows Features on or off. In the list, scroll down and select Telnet Client. Click OK to start the installation.

By the way, the winners for Nero BackItUp 4 and Nero 9 license has just been announced. You can go to this page to see if you’ve won!

Few weeks ago I had a project to create a website for a church. A church’s website doesn’t need to have any complicated features, just static pages for maps and directions, service times, photo gallery, some introductory write ups, etc and this can be easily done using WordPress. The Church already have a Facebook page with a few photo albums that I have to move to the official website. Although it is not something very difficult, but it is definitely very time consuming if I had to manually save every single photo from right click menu and then upload it to the official website.

What I need is probably a web browser extension either for Chrome or Firefox that can somehow help me to easily download and save all the photos to my computer so that I can upload it to the official church website. There seems to be quite a few suggestions but most of them are outdated plugins that no longer works. Finally I found a website called PhotoLive that lets me save photos and albums from social networks like Facebook, without needing access to my account.


PhotoLive works with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE, Opera, and more. All I need to do is drag the bookmarklet to my bookmarks bar or save it as a bookmark to install. Then when I want to download the album from Facebook, I will just need to be in the album page and click the “Download Photos” bookmarklet. A small PhotoLive bar with two buttons (Download Album or Hi-Res) will appear on top of the photos.

Clicking the Download Album button will bring me to PhotoLive’s website and within a couple of seconds will prompt me to download all the photos compressed into a single in ZIP file. If the album in Facebook contains more than 25 photos, PhotoLive will split them into a multiple parts with 25 photos per part.

Downloading photo albums from Facebook using PhotoLive can’t get any easier than this. No need to install third party software and don’t need to use apps that always ask for access to your accounts. The service is 100% private and secure, meaning they don’t save or cache the photos, account information, browsing history, etc.. In fact, the extension doesn’t even retrieve any information other than the photos you select. Very useful and I hope their free service will be available for a long time.

[ Install PhotoLive Bookmarklet ]

Having a webserver on your PC can greatly help you, since you can test out stuff on your local PC. Main reason is you don’t need to wait till files are uploaded to a webhost, if you make changes to files you don’t need to reupload them. You have no restrictions and you have full flexibility. Another reason is when you’re installing plugins or making changes on the script, you wouldn’t want your visitors to see the error codes or distorted layout when things doesn’t go right.

Many years ago when I was just started basic web designing, that is exactly what I did. I registered a free Geocities webspace, use Frontpage to design a HTML page and then upload to Geocities. Since I wasn’t experienced in web designing, I had to do a lot of trial and error to get things right. I really wasted a lot of time reuploading and refreshing the page whenever I made any changes.

Most of the PRO web designers and coders that I know usually have a local webserver to do their thing. If you think installing Apache, PHP, MySQL, WordPress, PunBB, Mambo, Joomla, Drupal and other server application on your computer is tough, you’re wrong. I am going to show you how EASY it is for you to install a local webserver with Apache, SQL, PHP and other applications in Windows.


There are a few brands of free software which allows you to easily install local webserver but I am going to share with you my favorite which is WOS because it’s portable. Good thing about portable is if you don’t run it, it doesn’t run any unnecessary services that takes up your memory and CPP resources.

WOS Portable stands for the three letter abbreviation Webserver On Stick Portable and makes it possible, to run a webserver based on Apache, MySQL and PHP from an USB Stick or any other writable media (harddrive, flash cards etc.) without installation under Windows (98 to Vista).

With WOS, you can install the following server software:
– Apache2
– ImageMagick
– MySQL5
– PHP4
– PHP5

There are also optional Application Software which you can install:
– Drupal
– GTD-PHP
– Joomla
– Mambo
– MediaWiki
– Moodle
– OS_Commerce
– OpenDB
– PHPMyAdmin
– PunBB
– TYPO3
– Taskfreak
– WordPress
– knowledgeroot
– xoops

Installation is very easy. WOS Portable can be downloaded using the WOS Mixer (there you can choose which packages you want to have). If you only want to have Apache, MySQL, PHP and WordPress, just check the following and click the Download Now button.

After finished downloading, extract wosportable.zip and run wos.exe from the wosportable directory. I’d advice that you extract wosportable directory to the root of your drive (C:\wosportable) because I encountered error messages when I tried to install from desktop. Choose the language that you want to use, accept the terms of use, and the next screen will show you the packages found and ready to install. Click Install button and it’d start installing the packages.

After completing the installation, WOS Portable status window will appear.

Your default browser will also open with WOS Portable information page. Take note of the URL, it’s your local address! Click on Back on the left to get to the main page. At the main page, it will show you the services that’s running and also packages installed.

Congratulations! You now have a PORTABLE local webserver with Apache, SQL, PHP, and other applications installed in your computer. There is another version of WOS called WOS X. WOS X is the “big brother” of the free WOS Portable. WOS X can do everything WOS Portable can and much more such as easy editing for the PHP, MySQL, htaccess, and Apache settings, remote control WOS X via web browser over a network, integrate more server software with include files and etc… The only requirement of WOS X is you must have a working WOS Portable. Then just extract and copy WOS X contents to the WOS Portable folder.

With WOS, you don’t need to setup a webserver using the tougher way by downloading Apache, PHP, MYSQL, phpMyAdmin and setting up the server manually, defining the php variables and connecting phpMyAdmin with MYSQL. You can also easily install third party application software such as WordPress, PunBB and many more automatically.

Thanks to Frank for sharing this software with me. Frank is a talented GFX guy and he’s the one that made the new forum theme based on this blog.

[ Download WOS Portable II | WOS X ]

Every once in a while, a giant antivirus company will make a huge mistake by flagging a very important file as a threat. As far as I know, Kaspersky once detected explorer.exe as a virus and quarantined the file making the entire Windows desktop, system tray and start menu to disappear! Many years ago, Norton too detected Flash Player as a trojan called PWSteal. Now, it is AVG’s turn to do that. Three days ago AVG detected a critical legitimate Windows file user32.dll as a trojan horse Generic9.TBN.

If you trust your antivirus program too much and quarantined the file, you’ll find that your computer unbootable when the next time you try to start up your computer.

You will end up with an endless loop of reboot with the error “STOP: c0000135 {Unable To Locate Component}. This application has failed to start because USER32.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem“.

For an advanced computer user, fixing this is pretty easy if they have a Windows installation disc, Windows PE disc or Linux LiveCD with them. Just boot in to recovery console and copy the backed up USER32.dll file from \WINDOWS\system32\dllcache to system32 folder. Boot up the computer, AVG should again detect user32.dll as trojan but this time choose ignore. Update the virus signature and the nightmare is over.

This is probably a little old by now but I thought of posting this fix because I got an email from Peter who resides in Belgium requesting me to write a step-by-step on how to fix this problem when the user don’t have a Windows installation disc. Otherwise he’ll have to send it to a local computer store that charges 50 euro to fix this problem.


You’ll need to have access to another computer to download the fix from AVG and burn it to a CD or USB flash drive. If you only have one computer, borrow your friend’s computer or go to your cousin’s place to do it. It’s better than wasting the 50 euro to fix this small problem.

If you’d like to use a USB flash drive (pendrive) to fix the problem. For this to work, the computer that you’ll be fixing must support USB boot function.
1. Click HERE to download this file.
2. Backup all files in USB flash drive. Extract the rescue_en.zip file and copy everything to the root of your USB flash drive. It’d look something like the image below.

3. Run makeboot.bat file and press any key to continue.
4. Connect the USB flash drive to the affected computer and restart the computer. It should boot up from the USB flash drive. If not, please see the user’s manual for you motherboard to find out how to let the computer boot from a USB flash drive.

If your computer is quite old and doesn’t support booting from USB, then you’ll have to use the CD method.
1. Click HERE to download the ISO image.
2. Burn the ISO image to a CDR by opening the ISO image. Don’t burn as file. Refer to this article on how to burn ISO images to CD.
3. Insert the CD into the CD-ROM drive of the affected computer and restart the computer. It should boot up from the CD. If not, please see the user’s manual for you motherboard to find out how to let the computer boot from a CD.

By completing the steps above, Windows should be able to boot up. WAIT! You’re not done yet! There are a few more steps required in order to fix AVG false detection.

1. Once Windows has successfully booted up, update the AVG program (Open AVG User Interface and click the “Update now” button)

2. Go to Control Panel > Folder Options > View tab > UNCHECK Hide extensions for know types.

3. Go to AVG program folder, by default should be in C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8 and rename the file “avgrsx.exe_off” to “avgrsx.exe”.

4. Then rename another file “avgsched.dll_off” to “avgsched.dll”.

That is all. Pat yourself at the back because you’ve fixed the missing user32.dll problem caused by AVG false detection problem. Go buy yourself a nice meal with the 50 euro 🙂

Few years ago one of my friend recommended a customer to me and they are in the real estate business. They were using Microsoft Excel to record down all the property listings and they wanted a website. I could help them develop a CMS website where they can easily key in the property listing to publish it on their website but it’d be double work since they have to maintain the real estate listings in the excel file and the website. So I looked around, tested almost all real estate software and I found one that can do both. You can key in the property details in the software and it has the ability to automatically create HTML files and publish it on the website. How cool is that?

However, the real estate software license is not cheap and it cost EUR 299 or US$429 for a single license and each computer needs its own license (e.g. 4 computers = 4 licenses). As you can see, this software is very very costly but I was stunned to learn that the full commercial real estate software is now offered for free!


Jade Property Suite is software for managing and marketing your real estate listings. The software allows you to generate a complete listings section for your website, to instantly print real estate brochures and flyers and to send PDFs by email. It has a database for your agency listings and contacts that is easy to update, search, match, print, export and web publish. It can be used with a standalone local database or with a shared database in a multi-agent office.

Features of Jade Property Suite 6:

Standalone or networked

Desktop database with easy search and fast data entry

Manage your real estate listings, contacts and enquiries

Publish your property listings to your website

Create personalized emails with full-color details

Print flyers, brochures, catalogs, reports, letters, labels and business cards

Customize to fit your business

Compact and powerful

Easy to install, understand and use

One of the best feature that I really like in Jade Property Suite 6 is the ability to select the property listing that you want to publish to the website. Jade Property Suite has a powerful web publishing system that generates the real estate listings for your website. Your customers will find it easy to locate a property on your website. You will find it easy to maintain. Jade handles everything, from image processing to search scripts and synchronized uploading. The latest version includes the new Animated Zoom makes examining a photo in detail very smooth and fast.

The reason why we do not need to pay for the latest Jade Property Suite 6 is because they want to help all of their existing users get up-to-date. Many users are still using versions 3 and 4 (upgrade cost money) and the software has improved hugely which they want everyone to know that. The best way to spread the word is by removing the cost for this version. So now Jade Property Suite 6 is THE full commercial product. There are no catches. The software can be used indefinitely and on as many computers as you like. There is no obligation to upgrade later. So get it now before this offer expires!

[ Download Jade Property Suite 6 ]

Few days ago there was a newly signed up user in forum requesting for help. Initially his computer had some error messages that pops up during Windows startup and he tried using some third party software to fix it. However it ended up making his computer unable to run any exe programs at all including the icons on desktop. He was very sure that he only changed the ProgramFilesDir value from C: to D: in registry. From what I know, this only changes the default location of Program Files where software are installed but no matter what, we all tried to help him undo the changes he made. I showed him how to run registry editor but he wasn’t able to as he kept on getting the error message “This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action“.

After spending a few hours trying to help and without any success, then I started thinking maybe this problem is caused by another factor which I’ve encountered before in Windows XP. Somehow a virus managed to corrupt the .exe association in registry causing the user unable to run any programs. I used TeamViewer to remotely connect to his computer and tried running this command “assoc.exe=exefile” in command prompt which should fix the problem but don’t know why this command has been denied. I checked his user account and he is an administrator. I then tried to use DougKnox‘s EXE registry fix but that failed too because I wasn’t able to import the .reg file since it requires regedit.exe. I also converted the .reg file into .exe file which can imported into registry without using regedit and that too didn’t work.

After 2 days, I am glad that I finally managed to fix the problem.


It turns out to be a corrupted .exe association and the reason those steps I taken didn’t work is because the Windows Vista registry location for exe association is different from XP. Obviously using the XP fix cannot work on Vista!

When you have a corrupted exe association, you definitely cannot use any registry editor to fix it because it is impossible to run it in the first place. So here are a few methods you can try:

1. Run command prompt and type assoc.exe=exefile (If you get access denied error, try step 2)

2. Download this .reg file and run it. Make sure you right click and select Save As. (If you cannot import the .reg file because Windows cannot find the registry editor, then try step 3)

3. Open command prompt and type the following command REG IMPORT vista-7-fixexe.reg. Make sure you’ve already CD to the directory where the .reg file is. (If you have problems getting this to work, try step 4)

4. Download the EXE compiled version of the registry file above and run it. Although it doesn’t make sense to run this exe file since most of the exe files are blocked, but this is the one that fixed the user’s computer. (If this couldn’t fix it, try step 5)

5. Microsoft Fix It has an automated way to fixing the exe association problem. Simply download this MicrosoftFixit50194.msi file and run it.

If done correctly, it should fix the problem instantly and no reboot is required. Now I will always remember that whatever works in XP doesn’t necessarily works on Vista and 7.

I’ve been using Firefox 3 since Release Candidate 1 (RC1) and what I really like about the new version is the improvement in time required to load web pages. Loading any websites seems to be much faster. However, the memory usage problem is there. Three weeks later came Firefox Release Candidate 2 (RC2) and I immediately downloaded and installed RC2 because it is suppose to fix more bugs.

I started to experience real big problem with Firefox 3 RC2 that is intermittently crashing of the browser. I thought this is normal because it is still under testing and not a final stable release. Within a week, Firefox RC3 was released and it is the last RC before the final release. Updated to RC3, still the same crashing problem. About a week later, Firefox 3 final was released and I immediately updated my Firefox to the latest version hoping that the crashing problem would be fixed.

Unfortunately even the final “stable” version of Firefox 3 is still crashing intermittently. Waited for nearly 2 weeks, but still no updates. This crashing problem is really annoying because it is intermittent and there is no way to replicate the problem. Firefox 3 can crash when opening a site with flash, opening a new tab, closing tab, filling up forms and etc… I’ve got really fed up with the problem and I had to find a solution.


Sometimes I’d get a screen that says “firefox.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost. For more information about this error, click here.”

Clicking the more information link shows that there is a problem with mozcrt19.dll at offset 00006c6c. Sometimes it is caused by other DLL files.

And sometimes Firefox 3 crash is caused by ModName unknown at offset 0521001d.

There are times that Firefox 3 just crashes and closes itself. Immediately after that Mozilla Crash Report window will show asking me to report the problem to Firefox developers.

Firstly, I uninstalled Firefox and deleted Firefox folders in Program Files. I then install a clean version of Firefox 3 and use a new profile. After using it for a while, Firefox 3 crashed again. It clearly shows that there are problems with Firefox 3 because I’ve already done a clean installation and using a new profile.

I tried using the latest Opera but somehow I am not used to it. Some of the shortcut keys and mouse clicks are different. One example is I need to simultaneously press CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT CLICK to open a link in a new tab. As for Firefox, it only requires CTRL + LEFT CLICK to open a link in a new tab… Another problem is some of the websites doesn’t display correctly in Opera.

I could revert back to Firefox 2 but I am so used to the speed in loading websites with Firefox 3. I remembered that the most stable version I used for Firefox 3 was RC1. What I did was I downloaded Firefox 3 RC1 Portable, extracted to my hard drive, copied my local profile to the portable version and voila, I am using Firefox 3 but no crashes. This is my temporary solution until the developer of Firefox fix the crashing problem. The local Firefox profile is usually installed in C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.???\ Just copy the contents of that folder (except the cache directories) to the FirefoxPortable\Data\profile directory.

I know that I will be exposed to security risk when using Firefox 3 RC1 but crashing few times a day is very annoying, unproductive and gets on my nerves. I have Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 and it should protect my computer from any malicious codes that is vulnerable to Firefox 3 RC1.

Update: I noticed that an Add-on {972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd}:3.0 is causing the crash. The weird thing is I don’t even have any add-on installed! I went to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\extensions and found a folder {972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd} with a install.rdf file inside. I removed the folder and so far it’s not crashing for me “yet”.

[ Download Firefox 3 RC1 Portable ]

This article is not about hacking or cracking people’s Windows Live Messenger or Hotmail password. It’s a very useful way to gain your customer’s trust when helping them setup Outlook Express. Let me explain a scenario to help you understand better. My customer Outlook Express crashed. After fixing and restoring Outlook Express, it can now run but all his old emails and his email configuration is lost. To set up Outlook Express to receive his Hotmail emails, I’ll need to enter his Hotmail email address and his password. After complete setting up his Outlook Express, it’ll automatically tries to download folders from Hotmail.

In a few seconds, I get another prompt asking to re-enter user name and password for Hotmail server. My customer re-enters his user name and password, but the same thing happened again. I click cancel and got an error message saying “Access to the account was denied. Verify that your username and password are correct. Bad Password“.

I am 100% sure that my customer doesn’t remember his Hotmail password. After trying a few different password, still couldn’t log in. I also couldn’t help him reset his Hotmail password because he couldn’t remember his secret answer to his secret question. Later, I noticed something and figured a solution to recover his Hotmail password.


I noticed that he has Windows Live Messenger and when I run it, it has his Hotmail address and password saved! Both the “Remember me” and “Remember my password” is checked. There are many MSN password retrieval software but I like this Windows Live Messenger Password Recovery the most because it doesn’t reveal ALL of the saved password. If I am the customer, I wouldn’t feel good that the technician that came to fix my computer saw all the username and passwords that saved on my computer. It feels like me typing my password and someone is looking at me doing it.

This Windows Live Messenger Password Recover will only reveal the password when you type the correct email address that’s saved on that computer. If you leave the filter blank, it won’t return any email or password combination.

What I did was, run Windows Live Messenger Password Recover program from my USB flash drive, ask my customer to type his Hotmail address at the filter, and click on the Check button without me looking. If he gets it right, he’ll get a notification saying “Password found. Remember not to misuse the program.”

My customer was so happy and thankful because not only he can receive his Hotmail from his Outlook Express, he was able to remember his Hotmail password without feeling that I know his password too. I believe that it’s important to let your customer trust you.

[ Download Windows Live Messenger Password Recovery ]

I’m sorry for vanishing without a trace for nearly a month, and I’ll like to explain what happened. I took a vacation, a trip down to see my girlfriend in Chicago and celebrated the fifth year we’ve been dating. I took a break from writing on the blog, but did visit the forum as often as I could. And on the major plus side, I managed to rid Windows Vista off my girlfriend’s computer and gave her Windows XP, as most people that have used Vista have faced issues, and those that have been lucky enough not to get those issues, have heard of them.

I also picked up a computer while I was in the States, a beast of one. It’s a new i5 computer, with a 64 bit processor, meaning I can now develop and test 64bit compatible applications. And I decided to start my return to blog writing with giving one of my favourite freeware’s Professional version a spin!

For those that have never used Revo Uninstaller, Free or Professional, you do not know what you are missing. I’ve been using it for a long time, and remains one of my programs I recommend to anyone who asks. It’s a very powerful, free uninstaller that I’ve used many a time to uninstall applications that I’ve installed to test or other applications that have needed uninstallation for the new versions. Recently, within the past two years, VS Revo Group updated their website, and offer now the Professional version which has more features then their Free by a lot. The Free version only works on 32 bit version of Windows, as well as a basic cleaning program and junk cleaner/ browser cleaner. However, after demoing the Professional version, it’s extremely hard to look at the Free version and consider it “just as good”.

The Professional version of Revo Uninstaller offers different skins built in, a Backup Manager, a file recovery section, much like Recuva, an “Evidence Remover” which would be a secure deletion along with more advanced versions of the same cleaners the free version has. The other thing I’ve noticed is how much faster it is at removing programs then the Free version, but that might also be due to the fact that I’m also on a more powerful PC.

Revo Uninstaller Pro is usually $39.25 for a single computer, but I’ve contacted Revo Group and they’ve kindly provided two free licences of Revo Uninstaller Pro for Raymond.cc readers. There are only two rules to the giveaway. The first thing that you have to do is subscribe to the blog, if you haven’t already. And the second is the easy part: comment on this blog post. After you’ve done both, all you have to do is wait until Sunday, September 12th, which I will draw the two winners and announce them then. Best of luck to all whom enter!

EDIT: Due to unforseen down time, I’m extending the giveaway one more day to be drawn on Monday the 13th. This is your last chance to enter, so don’t be late!

I’ve only heard of Fortinet from VirusTotal as it is one of the antivirus engines that participate in VirusTotal. Fortinet has recently provided a free version of their antivirus program called FortiClient Endpoint Security Suite which is not much of a difference compared to the premium paid version. The only features that is not found in the Standard edition is an antispam protection, central management and logging. For a home user, these features are mostly not needed and the already available features (Antivirus/Antispyware engine, SSL and IPSec VPN clients, Personal Firewall protection, Intrusion Prevention, Web Filtering, Endpoint Application Detection, Endpoint Monitoring and Control, WAN Optimization, Anti-Rootkit Protection, Pre- and Post-Execution Behavioral Analysis, Real-Time Poisoned Webpage Protection, FortiGuard update services) makes it a very complete internet security suite.

I can’t wait to test the free antivirus from Fortinet because it can be installed on Windows server and is offered free of charge to anyone – consumers, small businesses, large enterprises – who seeks comprehensive protection for their laptops and personal computers. If you didn’t know, the free version of Avira, Avast, AVG and Rising is only meant for home usage. If you install them on corporate or educational environment, that is considered piracy and can be fine.

Here’s what I have to say about the free antivirus by Fortinet.


The setup file is only 10MB in size which I’d considered it to be very small if compared to other antivirus. However the first update takes a very long time to finish, perhaps it is downloading the latest antivirus engine and definition. I also like the interface because it is very neat, simple, easy to understand and use. Every main feature is being categorized at the left hand sidebar and there is very little configuration.

You don’t really need a powerful computer to run FortiClient. The system requirements are:

Pentium processor or equivalent

100 MB hard disk space

Compatible Operating System & Minimum RAM

– Windows 2000: 128 MB

– Windows XP 32-bit and 64-bit: 256 MB

– Windows Server 2003 32-bit and 64-bit: 384 MB

– Windows Vista: 512 MB

– Windows 7: 512 MB

After installing FortiClient on a clean Windows XP Professional SP3 with all latest hotfixes, I am seeing a total of 8 processes with 58MB memory being taken up. Running a full system scan with normal scan priority only takes up 30% CPU usage in average. FortiClient took 9 minutes and 38 seconds to complete scanning 21817 items which is also pretty fast. When I ran a full system scan again the next day, it took only 5 minutes and 2 seconds to scan 21815 files. Very likely FortiClient maintains a database of “safe files not to scan” to cut down the scanning time.

I’ve planted 21 virus that are currently circulating around the Internet on the test computer and sadly FortiClient only catches 10 out of 21. I noticed that most of the virus that are not detected by FortiClient are from Asian countries such as Brontok and Almanahe.

I’ve also tested FortiClient against my private trojan since it came with a firewall and intrusion detection. First of all, the virus signature cannot detect the trojan. When it comes to heuristic analysis, FortiClient also fails to detect any injection. Then I connected my test computer from my laptop using the backdoor trojan, there was no warning on the intrusion detection. I am not surprised why Fortinet scored so badly in Matousec proactive security challenge.

I also noticed another annoying issue with Fortinet which is I cannot access a shared folder on a local network. When another computer tries to access my shared folder, they get login prompt asking for password when simple file sharing is turned on. I’ve even configured the firewall to “Pass All” which means disabling the firewall, setting the network as Trusted zone and set the security level to Low but still cannot access shared folders. Finally I disabled webfilter and now I can access any shared folders on the network.

I like the fact that the free FortiClient allows anyone to use for free on any environment and also can be installed on nearly every version of Windows including both 32-bit and 64-bit but they should really work hard on improving the virus detection and firewall protection.

[ Download FREE FortiClient Endpoint Security Suite ]

I’ve been having problems with my computer since nearly 2 week ago.
Auto restart, bluescreen, lots of errors during startup scandisk and etc…
Checked each computer hardware very closely and everything was all right except my motherboard. I am currently using a MSI K7T266 Pro2.
I even had UPS to have stabilize power supply, not sure why it failed. I guess when it’s time is up, it will eventually spoil. Or should I say, bad luck?


If I need to buy a new motherboard, I’d need to change the processor (cpu) and memory (ram) as well because the new motherboard is not going to support my old AMD Athlon XP processor and Kingston DDR memory. Phew, the whole thing is gonna cost me a lot.

Looked around the few well known motherboard makers such as Asus, Abit, MSI and Intel and I’d still prefer MSI.
I’d like to buy MSI 955X Platinum motherboard which is the latest and best they have but it cost a bomb!
The second best MSI motherboard is 945P Platinum, and it cost half the price of 955X Platinum. I don’t think I need 955X Platinum because I won’t be using two built-in LAN (RJ45) and a few extra features.
Check out this cool motherboard that has 3 x ATA133 HD connectors and 4 x Serial ATA connectors. I really need the ATA because I have 3 ATA hard drives.

I might go with Intel Pentium D 2.80Ghz and 1GB PC5300 of Corsair Memory.

Overall, it’s going to cost me around RM2000+ for this 3 piece of computer hardware. It’s worth it because of the speed and *touch wood* if there’s nothing wrong with the hardware, it will last me at least for another 3-4 more years.

Do let me know if you think I should get other brand of motherboard, processor or memory.

Windows Media Player 11 is really a huge improvement over Windows Media Player 10. Managing your library is made easier by using graphics all over around. It comes together with Windows Vista, but now it has also been leaked for Windows XP.

There is a Windows Genuine Advantage(WGA) check during installation, but there are workarounds on how to bypass WGA in order to install Windows Media Player 11.


First method…
1. Follow the steps in this post to crack your WGA validation
2. Download Windows Media Player 11 from either one of the links below.
TurboUpload
RapidShare
9Down
Alfa-Soft
EnFull1
EnFull2
EnFull3
.Torrent
3. Run mpsetup.exe to start Windows Media Player 11 installation.

Second method…
1. Download Windows Media Player 11 from either one of the links below.
TurboUpload
RapidShare
9Down
Alfa-Soft
EnFull1
EnFull2
EnFull3
.Torrent
2. Extract the installer mpsetup.exe using WinRAR or PowerArchiver and you will see a new folder named mpsetup.

3. Download cracked version of legitlib.dll from either one of the link below and replace the original legitlib.dll in mpsetup folder.
MyTempDir (Password: www.alfa-soft.tk)
RapidShare
4. Run setup_wm.exe from the mpsetup folder.

This is what your new Windows Media Player 11 will look like once you’ve successfully install it.

Looks cool eh 😉