Windows Live Messenger or MSN Messenger is a very popular instant messenger. However, there are many problems that make users inconvenient. One of the problems that a lot of people are facing is whenever they reformat their computer, all their custom emotions that took years to find are gone! Even if you have all your cute custom emotions at your office computer, it is impossible to manually copy the custom emotions to your home computer.

I found out that there’s a CustomEmoticons folder located at C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Microsoft\MSN Messenger\Random ID\ and thought I can just backup the map.dat file and restore it on another computer to get back the emotions, but replacing the map.dat file doesn’t restore the custom emotions. It’s not as easy as it seems! I’ve also read that renaming map.dat file to GIF or JPG will show the emotions but it doesn’t. This is because map.dat file is encrypted.

What about Yahoo emotions? What if you’re a hardcore MSN user and want to use Yahoo smileys on MSN messenger? I am sure Yahoo Messenger emotions can be found on the net but there’s an easier way to import Yahoo Messenger’s emotion to Windows Live Messenger. Here’s a free tool to make backing up Windows Live Messenger custom emotions and importing Yahoo smileys much easier.


EmoticonMadeEasy is a program that allows you to backup your MSN icons, import/export emoticons, import Yahoo Smileys, import images or icons from local machine and convert them into MSN emoticons, and share your emoticons between computers or accounts, or share with your friends. You can export MSN emoticons on a computer to a single file and then import the file into MSN Messenger on the other computers. Also, you can import Yahoo Smileys into your MSN messenger. It is easy, and it is FREE!!

OK, this program does the backup and importing emotions job automatically and easily. One very doubtful thing you have to do before it can backup or import emotion is you have to enter your REAL MSN account login information. I tried searching in website to see what is the purpose of this requirement but I couldn’t find it. I used a packet sniffer to see what is being sent when I enter MSN login name with password and click the Next button. I can only see that it’s sending information to login.live.com. Then I contacted the author of EmoticonMadeEasy and he got back to me the next day with this explanation “If you are using MSN 7.x or earlier version, you only need to enter login name. However, you need both login name and password for MSN 8.x to encrypt or decrypt data files which contain icon shortcut key and name.”

[ Download EmoticonMadeEasy ]

If you’re comfortable in giving out your MSN login information, there’s another simple tool called ConCon Retriever that is able to give you easy access to your MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger content, which includes custom emoticon (smiley), display picture (avatar/ user tile), background, wink, deluxe display picture (mood/meego/muggin) and dynamic background.

What I like about ConCon Retriever is the ability to display all logged in MSN users on that computer and then save a single file that you like to editable image file. ConCon Retriever has a file called ConDecrypt.exe which I think it is used to decrypt map.dat file.

[ Download ConCon Retriever ]

Yesterday one of our forum member solin asked a question on how to delete the LEGACY section at registry. After uninstalling antivirus such as AVG, Avast, G Data and etc, it leaves some registry keys at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\Root\LEGACY_* and also at ControlSet002. I can confirm this because I installed the Free AVG 2011 and after uninstalling it, I found a few LEGACY_AVG* keys at both ControlSet001 and ControlSet002. When trying to delete the LEGACY keys, Windows 7 prompts the error “Error Deleting Key” with the message “Cannot delete LEGACY_AVGIDSDRIVER: Error while deleting key“. You would also see this error even if you are an Administrator of the local computer with UAC disabled.

Although it shouldn’t cause any problems to Windows since the ControlSetXXX are backups, but some users would prefer to keep their computer as clean as possible. Registry is a database and logically if a database gets too big with a lot of junk, the system eventually becomes slower. Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) explains the following:

“ControlSet001 may be the last control set you booted with, while ControlSet002 could be what is known as the last known good control set, or the control set that last successfully booted Windows NT. The CurrentControlSet subkey is really a pointer to one of the ControlSetXXX keys.”

If you still want to go ahead and remove the LEGACY entries, you can either take ownership of the registry key and setting the full control permission or simply run the Registry Editor (regedit) as SYSTEM.

1. Download RunAsSystem, extract and run it.

2. Click the Browse button and look for regedit.exe which is normally located in Windows folder.

3. Click Open and followed by OK which will open the Registry Editor.

4. As you can see from the screenshot below, regedit.exe is now running under SYSTEM account. You can delete the LEGACY entries without the “Error While Deleting Key” message.

You should make a backup of the registry keys that you want to delete by right clicking and select Export. Do note that when you want to restore it back, you cannot run the .reg file directly as you would get the error “Cannot import file.reg: Error accessing the registry”. The solution is to either run the regedit as SYSTEM, and import it from File > Import, or run the .reg file using RunAsSystem.

Some of you might be using an Internet plan from your ISP which has limited bandwidth. As far as I know, ALL of the wireless broadband in Malaysia allows unlimited usage BUT there is a fair usage threshold where once you go over the limit, your connection speed will be throttled to a very slow dial-up speed. I have a Celcom wireless broadband subscription and they offer two types of plan which is 384Kbps or 3.6Mbps. Both package allows you to download stuff at maximum speed but once you reached 5GB limit PER month, then you’re screwed with a really slow speed. Honestly it doesn’t make any sense to subscribe a 3.6Mbps download speed when you can only use 5GB of the bandwidth per month. The worst part is even the uploading bandwidth is counted to the usage.

At least they now tell us in advanced that there is a fair usage policy because last time they never expose this information publicly and you can only find it in their really long list of terms and conditions page which no one really reads. When you find out that there is a fair usage policy and file a complaint, they blame you for not reading the terms before signing up. For those that are subscribed to an Internet connection package which has limited bandwidth usage, it is important that you keep track of your bandwidth usage. Here’s a free internet traffic monitoring software that works.


iTraffic Monitor is a network monitor and reporting tool. It provides real time graph of network traffic. Detailed stats provide daily/weekly/monthly/yearly stats. Stop watch, Session stats.

Monitor and review your Internet or network bandwidth usage with ease

How fast your internet connection? We can graph it for your review

How much data do you transfer? We show you a real-time graph or numerical display, as well as daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly reports

Requires minimal desktop space and system resources

This is how iTraffic report looks like. It’s easy to read and nothing too fancy or complicated.

iTraffic Monitor is relatively new as this is their first version released on 4/22/2009. A few small bugs here and there such as copying the report to clipboard generates an access violation error but it’s no big deal and hopefully they’ll fix it in their next release. What I like about iTraffic Monitor is it can filter out local network traffic or traffic between specific IP addresses. This is very important for people connected to the internet via a local area network (LAN). Very few network monitors can do this and the ones that do usually is a shareware that cost money.

This software is free and takes less than 2MB memory while monitoring your bandwidth usage. Claims to work on all Windows.

[ Download iTraffic Monitor ]

I never had to download any movies from the Internet because most of the time I watch them in cinemas. Moreover one of my very best friend is working in a shop that is selling pirated DVD movies, so he would hand me some free DVD movies once in a while. The only video I download from the Internet is TV series such as Heroes and I prefer to watch them on my TV. My DVD player can only play VCD and DVD format but not DIVX or AVI files. So to watch the downloaded TV series on my TV, I have to burn the subtitle to the AVI file, convert it to VCD format, and then burn it to a CDRW. It takes hours to complete the whole process.

Then about a month ago I was approached by BolehVPN if I’d like to purchase WD TV, a small hardware that is able to turn my USB drive into an HD media player. Now all I needed to do is to download the video file, copy it to my USB drive and then plug in the WD TV that is hooked up to the TV. I no longer need to go through the tedious and time consuming process anymore.

In DVD disc, we can switch between between multiple language subtitles and I wanted to see if it was possible to do that on an AVI video file. I found out it is possible and in fact there are a few ways of doing it since the support for subtitles on DVD players is getting better and better.


To play an AVI video file with subtitle, all we need to do is to re-name the subtitle file to match the video file name. For example, the video file is Heroes.S03E19.HDTV.XviD-LOL.avi so we’ll need to make sure that the subtitle file name is Heroes.S03E19.HDTV.XviD-LOL.srt. As you can see, the only difference is the extension of the file.

But to add two or more subtitles to AVI video, here is what you need to do. If your DVD player supports multiple subtitle files, you can just add numbers at the end of the subtitle file name. Let’s say the AVI video file is WeddingCrashers.avi.
The default subtitle is WeddingCrashers.srt
The second subtitle is WeddingCrashers.1.srt
The third subtitle is WeddingCrashers.2.srt

You can also replace the numbers with language codes such as EN for English, DE for German, and etc. I am not sure what is the maximum number of subtitles you can place but if I am not wrong, it is 8.

If your DVD player supports only 1 subtitle, then you can merge/join the subtitles using Subtitle Workshop v2.51. Download, install and run Subtitle Workshop. Click on Tools menu bar and select Join Subtitles. Alternatively you can also use the hotkey Ctrl+J to go to Join Subtitles. Click Add button and select the subtitles that you want to join. Now the subtitles will be listed in the window. Simply click the Join button and you’ll be prompted to save the newly joined subtitle file. Make sure that the .srt file has to have exactly the same file name than the .avi file.

There is also a website that provides free online subtitle merging service but it can only support 2 subtitles at a time.

Finally, here are 2 more free software AVIAddXSubs and Sub2DivX, that is able to merge as many as 8 subtitles to your AVI file. After finished merging, you will only have 1 .divx (you can also rename the .divx to .avi) file which is the video file. You don’t need to place the external subtitle file together with the video file because it is already merged into the video file.

You’ll have to try which method works for your video player. Press the subtitle button on your player’s remote control and if it switches subtitles, then it works. If not, try the other methods that I’ve listed in this article.

The popular growing GMail is offering a whoooooping 2659MB and GROWING every second of space for email space.
Now, I don’t have that much email to store, so what can I do with the rest of the space?
I sure hope I can store files in it like how I do it on my Windows Explorer.


Thank GOD there is Gmail Drive!

GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google Gmail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium.
GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google Gmail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your Gmail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag’n’drop files to.

Ever since Google started to offer users a Gmail e-mail account, which includes storage space of 2000 megabytes, you have had plenty of storage space but not a lot to fill it up with. With GMail Drive you can easily copy files to your Gmail account and retrieve them again.
When you create a new file using GMail Drive, it generates an e-mail and posts it to your account. The e-mail appears in your normal Inbox folder, and the file is attached as an e-mail attachment. GMail Drive periodically checks your mail account (using the Gmail search function) to see if new files have arrived and to rebuild the directory structures. But basically GMail Drive acts as any other hard-drive installed on your computer.
You can copy files to and from the GMail Drive folder simply by using drag’n’drop like you’re used to with the normal Explorer folders.

Because the Gmail files will clutter up your Inbox folder, you may wish to create a filter in Gmail to automatically move the files (prefixed with the GMAILFS letters in the subject) to your archived mail folder.

Please note that GMail Drive is still an experimental tool. There’s still a number of limitations of the file-system (such as total filename size must be less than 40 characters). Since the tool hooks up with the free Gmail Service provided by Google, changes in the Gmail system may break the tool’s ability to function. I cannot guarantee that files stored in this manner will be accessible in the future.

[ Download GMail Drive ]

Previously I’ve shared with you a tip on how to obtain genuine license key for Kaspersky AntiVirus which will last you a year. However, the promotion only lasted a few days and it is no longer giving out free license key. As far as I know, many people benefited from this tip and manage to use one of the best antivirus in the world for a year for free. However, there are also people who were too late to know about this tip and didn’t manage to get a free kaspersky antivirus license.

Do not despair. Today I am going to share with you on how to get a free Norton Antibot genuine serial number that will last for 366 days. Norton AntiBot uses Active Behavioral-Based Analysis to stop and remove malicious bots before they can cause damage or steal personal information. It adds an additional layer of security to protect your identity and works with other security products to provide protection against emerging threats.

If you go to Symantec’s website, you’ll find that Norton AntiBot cost $29.99 for a year license but if you follow the steps which I am about to show you, you’re going to get the genuine serial number for free!


Norton AntiBot is a great security tool that adds an additional layer of security to protect you from trojans and bots. Remote Access Tool (RAT) trojans are very dangerous because it is designed to avoid antivirus detection and once you’re infected, your computer is in total control of the hacker. The hacker can capture whatever you type, take screenshot of what you’re doing, have access to your files, and can even command your computer to do certain things such as spamming or DDoS. In short, Norton AntiBot protects your computer from being hijacked.

Features of Norton AntiBot:

Actively monitors your PC’s applications and processes 24×7, so it’s always protected

Removes detected bots and malware and their related components, custom installation files, and registry settings

Protects against emerging variants of bots and other malware threats—without relying completely on signature updates

Has minimal impact on your PC’s performance, so you can continue to work and play normally

Detects malicious software at the deepest levels of your Windows® system in real time to defeat hidden attacks that other products can’t tackle

Includes protection updates as available throughout the renewable service period

Just follow the few simple steps below on how to get your free 1 year Norton AntiBot genuine serial number.

1. Visit this page to get Norton AntiBot serial number. Enter your email address, check the box for “Ich akzeptiere” and click the button that says “Gratis Produktschlüssel anfordern”

2. Now check the email address that you’ve entered earlier. You should get an email from norton.antibot@emea.norton.com with the subject “Norton Antibot“. If you didn’t get it, check your spam/junk folder. The Norton Antibot serial number is in the email.

3. Download Norton AntiBot and install.

4. Run Norton Antibot after installing, press the “Enter Product Key” button and enter the serial number that you got from the email. You must have an active internet connection when entering the serial number. After entering serial number, you’ll get a message that says “Product key has been updated”.

5. Now you’ll see that your Norton AntiBot has a subscription of 366 days!

When Norton Antibot is sitting at the Windows tray, it doesn’t take up much memory. I’ve also tried infecting myself with Bifrost trojan, and it immediately detected it as threat and even gives me details on what it does to my computer such as Registers executable to survive reboot, executable changed, executes from the filesystem, writes to Windows directory, injects code and executable is packed. In my opinion, Norton AntiBot works better than Trend Micro RU Botted which is still in beta and offered for free.

If you’re wondering why is Symantec giving out free Norton AntiBot serial number, well, actually this free license is meant for people who bought the German ComputerBILD magazine 😛

Thanks Jim for sharing this tip with us!

Few days ago Kaspersky 2009 product was released and I was excited as hell to give out free Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 license key to my subscribers. I have the 30 KIS license keys with me and it’s ready to be given out next week. Nearly 300 applicants has taken part in the draw. What if I tell you that there is no need for me to give the 30 KIS license, and all 300 of you, including the ones that haven’t taken part can now get it yourself for FREE!

Do you all still remember the article on how to obtain free 1 year Kaspersky Anti-Virus genuine license key for everyone which I posted 3 months ago? I am sure it has benefited hundreds, if not thousands of people for this free KAV license. However, the promotion only lasted a few days which wasn’t long enough for more people to get the free license key.

Listen carefully people and BE FAST because here is another trick that allows ANYONE to get free 1 YEAR Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 license key which can be used on 3 computers!


Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 is the all-in-one security solution that offers a worry-free computing environment for you and your family. It has tons of features which is capable of protecting your computer from old, current and future security threats.

1. Go to this page and click the blue link that says “To get free protection, go to the Kaspersky Barclays offer page“.

2. Select your title, enter your first name, last name and REAL email address. As for Online Banking membership number, enter 12 digit number that starts with 2010. An example of the 12 digit online banking membership number format is 201056789112.

3. Now check the email address that you’ve entered earlier. You should get an email from Kaspersky Lab (pleasedonotreply@kasperskylab.co.uk) with the subject “Register with Kaspersky”. If you didn’t get it, check your spam/junk folder. Click the activation link at the bottom of the email.

4. Your default browser will open. Click the Next button to submit your email confirmation ID.

5. Check your email again. You should get another email from Kaspersky Lab (pleasedonotreply@kasperskylab.co.uk) with the subject “Your Kaspersky Activation Code and download instructions”. Note down the activation code. That’s the genuine license key for Kaspersky Internet Security 2009.

6. Download latest Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 8.0.0.357 and install.

7. Follow the instructions and when you get to the part where it ask you to activate the application, click Activate online. Just paste the activation code and click Next. You might need to create an account with Kaspersky as you’re entitled to product technical support. Enjoy having Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 on your computer for 365 days without paying a single cent!

Thanks to Relequestual for emailing and informing me about Barclays Bank customers that uses their online service can get free Kaspersky Internet Security. This Kaspersky key can be used on 3 computers and you get round-the-clock technical support from Kaspersky.

2 years ago, Barclay bank signed a deal with F-Secure for 1.6 million licenses. Now if I am not wrong, Barclay is also paying for every KIS license that is generated from Kaspersky’s website. So be quick and get your free Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 license before Kaspersky and Barclay notice this leak and close it. See, no harm in subscribing to Raymond.CC’s Newsletter because I bring you the best tips and tricks.

WordPress is my favorite content management system because it has tons of very nice free themes and also plugins. If you’re willing to spend money, there are also paid plugins which features some powerful features that are not found in free plugins. Nearly all websites that I host for my customers have been converted from plain HTML to WordPress. Now my customers can log in to their own website and post or edit pages without messing with HTML codes and then uploading to website using FTP.

I recently purchased a new local Malaysian webhosting and transferred some domains there. WordPress installation is fairly easy, just create database, configure the wp-config.php and run the installation script. Should take less than 5 minutes to get WordPress running. However, I encountered a very weird problem that is I kept on getting the error below.

'.__('Already Installed').'

'.__('You appear to have already installed WordPress. To reinstall please clear your old database tables first.').'
');} switch($step) { case 0: case 1: // in case people are directly linking to this display_header(); ?>

ReadMe documentation at your leisure. Otherwise, just fill in the information below and you\'ll be on your way to using the most extendable and powerful personal publishing platform in the world.'), '../readme.html'); ?>

error) ) wp_die($wpdb->error->get_error_message()); display_header(); // Fill in the data we gathered $weblog_title = isset($_POST['weblog_title']) ? stripslashes($_POST['weblog_title']) : ''; $admin_email = isset($_POST['admin_email']) ? stripslashes($_POST['admin_email']) : ''; $public = isset($_POST['blog_public']) ? (int) $_POST['blog_public'] : 0; // check e-mail address if (empty($admin_email)) { // TODO: poka-yoke die('

'.__("ERROR: you must provide an e-mail address.").'
'); } else if (!is_email($admin_email)) { // TODO: poka-yoke die('

'.__('ERROR: that isn’t a valid e-mail address. E-mail addresses look like: username@example.com').'
'); } $wpdb->show_errors(); $result = wp_install($weblog_title, 'admin', $admin_email, $public); extract($result, EXTR_SKIP); ?>

admin

'.__('Note that password carefully! It is a random password that was generated just for you.').''; ?>

I’ve also tried their Installatron Applications Installer which can automatically install WordPress without manually creating database tables and setting up the wp-config.php file but also getting the same error. I created a support ticket and found out that the solution to fix this WordPress installation problem is VERY simple.


So far I only have experience in cPanel but this server is using Direct Admin. After adding a domain to my Direct Admin control panel, somehow I missed out enabling PHP access for the domain. Here is how to enable PHP access in Direct Admin. If you do not have access to Direct Admin control panel, you can ask the person who is hosting your website or your webhost to do it for you.

1. Login to your Direct Admin control panel.

2. Click the Domain Administration button.

3. A list of domains will appear. Click on the domain that you’re having problems installing WordPress.

4. Check PHP Access and click Save. Now try installing WordPress by running the install.php script. Sometimes a solution can be so simple yet we try so many other confusing methods to try to fix the problem.

The runonce page (http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx) is a page which appears automatically when you run the Internet Explorer for the first time or if you Reset Internet Explorer Settings from Tools > Internet Options > Advance Tab. The purpose of Runounce page is to allow you to customize some of the settings such as default search provider, automatic phishing filter, activate ClearType, language selection and joining Customer Experience Improvement Program.

If you don’t complete the runonce customization page, this page will automatically load each time you open Internet Explorer regardless of what you set as the Internet Explorer’s default home page. So the simple way to get rid of runonce page is to complete the form.

However, there are times when you can’t complete the runonce settings page. The page will either appears blank, or just does not load and ended with an “Error on Page” with a plain blue color page. Sometimes the runonce page loads without problems, but the “save your settings” button will never work and only gives you “Element not found” error. So every time you open IE7, this page loads and nothing will happen.

Update: The RunOnce2.aspx page is no longer available. If you try to access, you might see the error message “Server Error in ‘/’ Application”. The resource cannot be found. Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly. Requested URL: /runonce2.aspx

Here is how to fix this annoying IE7 runonce customize your settings problem.


If you think Internet Explorer problem is not worth fixing, think again. My web statistics software shows that 58% visitors who visits this blog site is still using Microsoft Internet Explorer. Firefox is at 35%. I never abandon Internet Explorer and will fix any problems I found because it is still an important part of Windows.

There is a registry setting which will tell Internet Explorer whether the runonce page has been shown and completed or not. If it has been shown and completed, this page will never be loaded again. If not, it will annoy the hell outta you! To bypass runonce page, edit the following registry values by following the steps below.

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate the following registry subkey, and then click it:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
3. In the details pane, double-click the RunOnceHasShown registry entry and enter 1 in the value data box. Click OK.
4. In the details pane, double-click the RunOnceComplete registry entry and enter 1 in the value data box. Click OK.

Both values RunOnceHasShown and RunOnceComplete value must be set to 1. If any one is 0, the runonce page will start loading again whenever you launch Internet Explorer. Ok, that’s the hard way. The easy way to fix this runonce problem without launching and editing the Windows Registry (regedit) is to use a small tool which automatically does this for you. Simply download and run IE7 Runonce Remover. Click the Remove button and that’s it! You can also use this tool to undo the registry and bring back the RunOnce page.

Now your default Internet Explorer home page will be displayed. By default this page is redirected to MSN.COM. Microsoft should have thought about this problem before creating this page 😛

[ Download IE7 Runonce Remover ]

Most of the recent laptops and netbooks already comes with wireless capability allowing you to connect to wifi hotspots. Previously I’ve written a few guides (XP, Vista, Hotspot) on how to share the wireless Internet connection without a wireless router. Let’s say you have a direct connection to the Internet via network cable and the computer has a wireless adapter. Since your computer is connected via cable, the wireless adapter will not be in use and it is possible to make the wireless adapter to share the Internet connection that you are getting from the cabled connection. This saves you from spending money in buying a wireless router.

However, the steps are quite long are involves a lot of steps. Moreover there are also many different network configurations and the steps that I’ve written might not work for you. Good news is I found a free software called Connectify which is able to “EASILY” turn your Windows 7 computer into a wireless router with only one click. Trust me, sharing an internet connection using your wireless adapter cannot get any easier than this!

1. Fill up this form to obtain the Connectify download link. The page mentioned that the link will be sent to the e-mail address but

2. Download and install Connectify. (The installer ConnectifyInstaller.exe is only 1.41MB in size)

3. Select the Internet connection you wish to share (My internet connection is coming from Local Area Connection and Connectify automatically selected it)

4. Choose a name for your new wireless network (You can leave it as Connectify)

5. Choose a wireless passphrase (You will to enter a wireless password that contains at least 8 characters)

6. Press the Internet Sharing button to turn on your wireless network

Now, from your other devices, you can see your wireless network. Choose to join it, and enter the wireless passphrase to connect.

Your wireless hotspot created with Connectify is encrypted with WPA2-Personal (AES) encryption by default and you cannot turn it off. Your security is as strong as the Passphrase that you select.

Although this guide ended up with 6 steps, but in short you only need to download and install Connectify, set the passphrase and click a button. I think I can do that all in less than 5 minutes. Connectify is a real WiFi Access Point running on your computer and it’s not an ad-hoc mode. Any device that can connect to a regular access point, can connect to a Connectify Hotspot, with no special setup or software required. Do note that Connectify is still in beta and some old wifi adapter cannot work. I’ve tried setting up connectify with D-Link DWA-110 and it couldn’t work. But when tested on a built-in Intel wireless adapter, it works perfectly.

Connectify is free and runs only on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 r2, both in either 32 or 64 bits. It is not made for XP or Vista. Most ISP doesn’t allow you to resell your internet connection. However if you are sharing the cost with your neighbor, then I believe it should be fine.

Recently one of my email address has been constantly receiving emails from DHL system, Post Express notification, Post Express Information, United Parcel Service and Post Express Parcel. I started receiving those emails on 9th March and still getting it today. Before we go on any further, please be noted that all those emails are FAKE and containing attachment which are malware that installs fake anti-spyware software on your computer, trying to convince you that your computer has tons of infection and get you to pay them money to register the software. To be honest, I nearly fell for the trick in running the attachment because so coincidentally I was expecting a package from DHL and have signed up for email notification…


From:

ioprt14@dhl.com
supportmip11@dhl.com
upder@ups.com
postmail-usid.3949@greensboro.com
dhltrak11@dhl.com
dhltraki1@dhl.com
postmail-usa.8273@omaha.com
infojs@ups.com
adsupport3@ups.com
dfsupports1@ups.com
adminsuppo2@dhl.com
infoad2@ups.com
infoad22@ups.com
finsup4@ups.com
upder4@ups.com
postmail-int69136@durham.com
postservicese2@dhl.com
supportmo@dhl.com

Attachments:

Post_Express_Label_No.30845.zip
UPS-document.zip
UPS notification.zip
United Parcel Service Notification Letter.zip
United Parcel Service document.zip
UPSnotify.rar
Post_Express_Label_SER.71816.zip
tracking.zip
Post_Express_Label_VID99184.zip
document.zip
DHL_documents.zip
UPS.zip
dhl.zip

Message Body:

Dear customer. The parcel was send your home address. And it will arrice within 7 bussness day. More information and the tracking number are attached in document below.

Dear Customer. Email notification No.4185840. Your package has been returned to the Post Express office. The reason of the return is “Error in the delivery address”. Important message! Attached to the letter mailing label contains the details of the package delivery. You have to print mailing label, and come in the Post Express office in order to receive the packages! Thank you for your attention. Post Express Service.

Dear customer. The parcel was sent your home address. And it will arrive within 3 business day. More information and the tracking number are attached in document below. Thank you. © 1994-2011 United Parcel Service of America, Inc.

I ran all of the attachments on my test computer and found a lot of interesting things happening.

– The executable attachment melts and spits out a document.doc file showing details of delivery parcels

– Secretly download and install Win 7 Anti-Spyware 2011 OR Win 7 Anti-Virus 2011 and shows a fake Action Center. Tries to convince you that your computer has viruses so you’ll enter your credit card details on the software to register it.

– When run Task Manager, a fake Microsoft Security Essentials Alert window opens. If click the Scan Online button, computer restarts and runs CleanThis, World’s leading security solution. There is no way to get back in Windows even in Safe Mode because CleanThis runs automatically before explorer and disabling Windows Task Manager (CTRL+Shift+Esc). The only way to clean this up is by using Antivirus Rescue Disk, preferably Avira or Kaspersky.

– Connections being made secretly to Yahoo SMTP, AOL SMTP, Gmail SMTP, GMX SMTP, Ukraine IP, UK IP.

The older attachments are already detected by most antivirus but as for the latest one which I’ve just received, only 18 out of 41 antivirus detects it as trojan. Some of the famous antivirus brand such as Avast, AVG, Comodo, Panda and F-Secure missed it. I believe the person who created this is not going to stop any time soon because I can see that every newer version has improved infection logic and typing errors (typo) corrected. Antivirus is not going to fully protect your computer if you’re one of the earlier person to receive the newer version of malware. You can either immediately delete the email or simply submit the sample to antivirus computer. Most antivirus has a built-in feature to directly upload the suspicious file to the analyst.

Spy Sheriff is one nasty spyware. If you search Spy Sheriff, one of the top result you will get is “SpySheriff – Spyware Remover and Protection Suite”. It claims to be a spyware remover and protection suite but what you don’t know is that the creator itself tries to sell their own products by secretly installing multiple spywares on your computer. When you get infected by Spy Sheriff, it actually drops many types of spyware into your Windows.
I was infected by Spy Sheriff few days ago and it wasn’t really impossible to remove. I believe there might be many variants of Spy Sheriff spyware because I searched around for removal techniques and never really found one that is able to 100% cleaned my version of Spy Sheriff spyware.


How do I know if I am infected by Spy Sheriff?
The most obvious is when you run your Internet Explorer, instead of bringing you to your default website which is usually MSN, it loads C:\secure32.html instead.

Another thing is you would see 2 different types of messages at your traybar.
1. Your computer is infected! Windows has detected spyware infection! Click here to protect your computer from spyware!

2. Your computer is infected! Windows has detected spyware infection! It is recommended to use special antspyware tools to prevent data loss. Windows will now download and install the most up-to-date antispyware for you. Click here to protect your computer from spyware!

For your information, Windows currently doesn’t have the capabilities to detect any spyware infection. So the detection is fake.

3. Spy Sheriff so called Spyware Remover and Protection Suite is automatically installed on your computer.

4. Upon being infected by Spy Sheriff spyware, my MSN Messenger no longer working.

All the trojans and viruses it comes loaded with send messages of your systems status and personal information to possibly hundreds of servers around the world.

In the above screen shot some of the malware packaged with Spy Sheriff are trojans sending SMTP [port 25]/email traffic to spf-jail1.us4.outbloze.com, mail*.messagelabs.com, mx.bol.com.br [Brazil], mx.centre.ru [Russia], and many other exotic black hat hacker locations around the world.

I’ve created a Spy Sheriff auto cleaner based on the Spy Sheriff spyware that I was infected. I’ve only tested this cleaner on Windows XP english version.

Please follow these directions and in the posted order.
1. Close all running programs such as your Internet Explorer and so on…
2. Download haxfix.exe and install.
3. Run HaxFix from Start -> Programs -> HaxFix and Press “2” to “Run auto fix“. It should automatically restart your computer when auto fix is completed.
4. Download Auto Cleaner/Removal for Spy Sheriff spyware
5. Double click “Run This Cleaner.bat” to start the cleaning of Spy Sheriff.
6. It should only take 1-2 seconds to remove Spy Sheriff from your computer.
7. Once completed, again, restart your computer manually.

Note: If this auto cleaner doesn’t work for you, just leave a comment below and let me know how you got infected by Spy Sheriff. I will do my best to update the cleaner based on your Spy Sheriff spyware infection.

Good luck in removing Spy Sheriff spyware!

It is always good to provide your visitors a method to contact you on your website if they have any question. In my opinion, it is better to provide a contact form rather than openly publishing your email address because it is easier as your visitor don’t need to login to their email address and also not everyone get to know your email address, thus reducing the amount of spam that gets in your email.

The better way is of course to provide live chat to your visitors. They get to easily ask question and maybe get an immediate reply if the operator is online. There are many powerful but expensive and complicated live support shareware scripts such as Live Person, Kayako SupportSuite and etc… If we are not offering any customer service, we probably only need to integrate a simple live chat on our site.

I found 3 live chat widget which you can easily integrate live chat to your website, blog, and even myspace within minutes!


Here are some advantages of having live chat widgets on your website.
– Instant communication to anyone who visits your website
– Visitors don’t need to download, install or sign up to chat with you
– Able to chat with people who don’t want to give you their IM contact.

1. Meebo Me Widget

I guess most of you all should know what is Meebo by now. meebo.com is a website for instant messaging from absolutely anywhere. Whether you’re at home, on campus, at work, or traveling foreign lands, hop over to meebo.com on any computer to access all of your buddies (on AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber) and chat with them, no downloads or installs required, for free! Meebo Me was launched somewhere around August 2006 and it allows people to contact you and see when you are online whenever they visit your site by putting a meebo me chat window right on your own home page. When logged into meebo, you can chat with all of your visitors in real time.

What I like about Meboo Me is I can customize the color of my chat widget, leave offline messages when I am not online, and even send files. There are also a bunch of 3rd party applications that I can run together with visitors such as games, shopping, communication, news and etc. Offline messages can be bad because you can be bombarded with messages. The only way to disable Meebo Me offline messages is by disabling Meebo Me Widget.

To create Meebo Me live chat widget, head over to MeeboMe‘s website, enter Widget title, display name, select widget size and color theme, and click Next. At the next screen, you’ll either have to login or register for a new meebo account (if you don’t have one). At the final page, you’re given a code which you can copy and paste into your website html where you’d like the widget to appear. Once you’ve done that, sign in to meebo and you get to see the visitors on your site and start talking with them.

2. Google Talk chatback badge

Google Talk chatback badge is pretty new, simple and nice. It only shows a nice Google Talk bubble with your online status. If the operator is online, the visitor is able to click on the link that says “Chat with NAME”. Then the operator will receive a link to accept the chat request. When you’re chatting with your visitor using Google Talk Chatback, you are actually using Google Talk Gadget (the web version of Google Talk). It doesn’t work directly with Google Talk desktop version though.

Once you logged in to your Gmail account using the link above, you are able to edit your nickname, title and choose to show your status message or not. You will then have to copy and paste the given code into your web page where you want Google Talk Chatback badge to appear.

3. Hab.la

The third and final one is Hab.la. Habla doesn’t have its own chat or web client. Once you’ve added the code on your website, you’ll notice a small bar appear on the bottom right of the page. It will either show “not available” or “click here to chat”. The operator will have to add hab.la to any Jabber client such as meebo, trillian, pidgin or iChat. There is nothing to configure and customize. So if you have a dark colored website, most probably the bar is not very visible for your visitors.

There you have it. 3 free and easy ways to chat with visitors on your website. Perhaps one day I shall implement a live chat on my website to chat with you guys…

I’ve been using Firefox 3 since Release Candidate 1 (RC1) right up till the final stable version which was released a week ago. The BETA version was released much earlier but I did not test it because it is usually very unstable and used for testing purposes only. As for Release Candidate, it is the final stage before a full release. After installing Firefox RC1, it worked perfectly with no crashes and I noticed that websites loads faster than Firefox 2. The only problem was the incompatible extensions which doesn’t effect me much because I only use FlashGot.

Although the new Firefox 3 is able to load up website much faster than previous version of Firefox, there is still a way to speed up and optimize Firefox 3. I was skeptical at first, so I made a full backup of my Firefox profile, tuned Firefox 3 with a click and website loads EVEN FASTER!


If you type about:config at the Firefox URL bar, a bunch of advance settings will appear. It’s not easy knowing which one to change will improve Firefox’s performance but you can find them on lots of Firefox related websites. Instead of manually changing the settings one by one, here is a very useful free software that is able to optimize the latest Firefox 3 with just a click.

FireTune for Mozilla Firefox v1.x / 2.x / 3.x was developed for an easy and fast optimization of your browsing experience with Firefox. It is based on a collection of popular and well working optimization settings used and tested by the experts. Usually you have to optimize Firefox manually, which can be time consuming and difficult for the novice user. FireTune helps you here – it includes all the performance optimizations. The only thing you must do is: make your selection. FireTune does the work for you.

According to your specific computer speed and internet connection speed, FireTune will optimize several internal settings of Firefox for better performance. FireTune does NOT modify the Firefox executable, or any other Firefox binary file. Everything can be undone easily provided you saved your original profile configuration file with FireTune’s profile backup feature before. Details on what exactly FireTune does can be found in the FireTune help file.

The simple way to tell whether Firefox is faster after optimizing is to follow these instructions.
1. Clear the Cache of Firefox and close Firefox
2. Open Firefox, go to http://www.numion.com/stopwatch/ and do a speed test on http://www.neowin.net/. Note down the time taken to completely load the website.
3. Clear the cache and close Firefox.
Note: I’d advice you to go through step 1-3 a few times to get an average of load time before optimization.
4. Tune your Firefox with FireTune.
5. Start Firefox again, and repeat the speed test on http://www.neowin.net/
6. Compare the displayed result with the result from the test before the optimization

The developer of FireTune noticed a speed improvement of 2.05 seconds – the load time was 9.47 seconds before optimizations, and 7.42 seconds after optimization. I’ve tested it myself and also noticed a speed improvement of an average of 2-3 seconds. I visit many website and forums everyday and it could definitely save a lot of my time. Actually I’ve heard about FireTune long ago but never tested it. I am glad that I have now… If you are using the latest Firefox 3, I strongly recommend you to tweak, tune and optimize it with FireTune.

[ Download FireTune v1.2 ]