Raymond.CC Blog

Category: Computer

  • Full Backup and Restore Nokia Contacts, Calendar, Text Messages and Settings

    I bought a Nokia N82 mobile phone on December 2007 for my wife as a Christmas present. It was newly released at that time and comes with a 5 megapixel camera. As usual, when we buy something that is so new in the market, it tends to be buggy. Just like when a new version of Windows is newly released, there are lots of problems and the end users will have to wait for hotfixes and service packs to make the system more stable. Many years back when I want to update the firmware of the Nokia phone, I’ll have to bring it to a Nokia service center and get them to do it. Now, Nokia allows us, the end-users to update the device firmware via Software Updater from our computer.

    The benefits of updating the Nokia device firmware include getting new features, applications, and performance improvements to your device. Before updating the device’s firmware, it is advisable to make a full backup of the phone first in case something goes wrong with the update and you can still restore back your contact, calendar, text messages and settings.


    You can backup Nokia with Nokia PC Suite. Currently the latest version of PC Suite is v7.1

    1. Download the latest Nokia PC Suite, install and follow the instructions on screen on how to connect your Nokia phone to your computer.

    2. Launch Nokia PC Suite and click on the top left icon that looks like a safebox.
    Backup Nokia Phone

    3. Click the icon that says “Back up the desired phone contents to a backup file which is saved on the PC”.
    Nokia Content Copier

    4. Now you can select what you would like to backup from the Nokia phone. There is user files from the phone memory and memory card, contacts, calendar, notes, text messages, bookmarks and settings. You can check all to perform a full backup of your Nokia phone.
    Backup Nokia Phone

    5. You will now get to choose where to save the Nokia backup file. The file name by default will have the current date and phone name with .nbu extension.

    6. Click the next button and the backup will start. When the backup has completed, you will get a window telling you that.

    You can now update your device’s firmware or even reset your Nokia back to its default factory settings. The steps to restore back all your contacts, text messages and etc from backup is nearly the same as back up. Launch Nokia PC Suite, click on the backup icon and select “Restore the desired phone contents from a backup file to your phone”. Backing up mobile phone book or contacts is actually very important even if you’re not going to update the firmware. We never know when we will misplace our phone or even get stolen and cause us to loose all our important contacts. Happened to me once on my PDA and I had a tough time getting all my contacts back.

  • FREE IObit Advanced SystemCare PRO v3 License Key Codes Exclusive for Raymond.CC Readers

    A new Windows does not mean it is error-free and it is fully optimized. During the installation of Windows 2000/XP/Vista, many drivers and software are also installed, leaving lots of useless registry installation. If you’ve been using the same old Windows that came pre-installed a year ago or more without proper maintenance tool, I bet you’ll surely noticed a degraded performance compared to the first time you bought the computer. Manually doing checkdisk and defrag is very basic and not really enough to fully optimize your computer. You will need something better than that.
    Advanced SystemCare PRO license keys
    In my personal opinion, IObit products especially the latest Advanced SystemCare PRO v3 is my favorite and BEST all-in-one system tuning software to keep my computer running like new. I know many of you like this as well so I’ve collaborated with IObit to bring you this special Christmas giveaway that will allow you to turn your Advanced SystemCare FREE to PRO. The difference between the FREE and PRO version is the Free version only has basic PC care and regular update but as for the PRO version, it has registry deep clean, ultimate system speedup, enhanced disk defrag, automated care when PC is idle, scheduled PC care, automated privacy sweep, fast automatic update, free technical support, exclusive system tools and consent for commercial use.

    Get it fast because this offer is only available to first 10,000 activations. First come first serve basis.


    Advanced SystemCare PRO (formerly Advanced WinodwsCare Professional) provides an always-on, automated, all-in-one PC Healthcare Service with anti-spyware, privacy protection, performance tune-ups, and system cleaning capabilities. This powerful and award-winning precision tool fixes stubborn errors, cleans out clutter, optimizes internet and download speeds, ensures personal security and maintains maximum computer performance automatically. The latest IObit Advanced SystemCare v3 comes in two theme which is white or black and it has an improved graphical user interface.

    Advanced SystemCare PRO License Key Code

    Surprisingly, IObit Advanced SystemCare PRO is the cheapest All-in-One system tuning software yet providing the most advanced features if compared with other popular software such as System Mechanic Pro, Tuneup Utilities and etc. Other than that, they even provide 100% money back guarantee within 30 days if you find that it doesn’t work well on your computer. Seriously, you have nothing to loose at all.

    IObit company has gifted and top-flight programmers and systems designers, researching and developing innovative Advanced SystemCare for you. They now have some of the most advanced technologies (Patent Pending) in the industry which is have received very positive reviews from professional publications such as CNN, Forbes, CNET and PC World. I’ve read this article up to here, my guess is you’d like to have the license code for Advanced SystemCare v3 PRO. Simply follow the few simple steps below to get your PRO license.

    1. Please download and install the latest version of Advanced SystemCare v3 from
    http://www.download.com/Advanced-SystemCare-PRO/3000-2086_4-10399324.html

    2. Once finished installation, open Advanced SystemCare v3 Free, click “Upgrade” button at the bottom left and click “Enter License Now”.

    3. Enter the following license to activate your Advanced SystemCare Professional v3.

    Account Name: raymond.cc
    License Code: AF0B-AF0B-A0FF-6767

    When you install IObit Advanced SystemCare PRO for the first time, make sure you follow the instructions to create a backup of your system and registry in case if anything goes wrong you can still revert back to the original settings. Advanced SystemCare PRO is designed for Windows Vista, XP and 2000.

    Please be informed that the license key code valid for 180 days is exclusive for raymond.cc visitors. If you want to share this with your visitors, please link to this story using the HTML code at the box below rather than copying the IObit Advanced SystemCare PRO v3 license code to your site. You can visit the official Advanced SystemCare Pro website for more information.

  • Disable Program Has Stopped Working Error Dialog in Windows Server 2008

    One of the most important thing when hosting a game server such as Counter-Strike Source is to make sure that the server is able to automatically restart itself when it crashes. It is perfectly normal for a CSS server to experience crashes when it is running a system-intensive mod such as ZombieMod and like all software they might not be free of bugs.

    If you are hosting your game server on a linux or unix server, then you do not need to worry about auto restarting when crash because by default it can already do that via a script file. However for Windows, it cannot auto restart. If you check the srcds.com windows server tutorial, there is a part where it teaches you to create a batch file that monitors the srcds.exe process and if it is terminated, the batch file will run the specified command line to restart the CSS server.

    Sorry to say that the batch file will not work because by default Windows shows an error window when it crashes. It will require someone to click on the “Close the program” button in order to restart via batch file. Here is how to disable the ErrorMode window so that you can use the batch file to auto restart CSS server when it crashes.


    When the game crashes, the srcds.exe process is still running in background because of the error popup that says “srcds.exe has stopped working. Windows can check online for a solution to the problem.”.
    srcds.exe has stopped working. Windows can check online for a solution to the problem.

    If you disable Error Reporting, you will still get a similar error window that says “srcds.exe has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program”.
    srcds.exe has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program.
    To disable Error Reporting in Windows 2008 Server, just run the command below.

    serverWerOptin /disable

    I found another guide from MSDN on how the user can suppress system and application error messages from occurring on an embedded system. The registry location is at the following, by default the value data is 0 and we should change it to 2 to set all messages to invisible.

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Windows\ErrorMode.

    Weirdly even after doing all that, it’s still not enough to disable the error window when the game server crashes. So I continue digging and I found that there’s another important registry key which you need to modify in order to totally suppress the “.exe has stopped working” dialog.” Go to the following registry location and change the value data to 1.

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\DontShowUI

    Now you can run the batch file to monitor the srcds.exe process and it will auto restart when it crashes. I just can’t understand why there are no complete tutorials for running a CSS server. The information had to be scattered around and the server admin had to spend hours looking it up. By the way, there is a free software called ServerChecker which is able to restart your game server if it has crashed. It actually can automatically configure the registry to disable Windows Error Reporting and ErrorMode but it doesn’t support Windows 2008 Server.

  • Download MapSource from Garmin and Install Without CD

    GPS is a topic that I have not touched because I still haven’t got one. A good GPS unit can be quite expensive and I am still waiting when I have saved enough money for it. GPS is very impressive but scary at the same time because the satellites can actually track where I am. Think about it, if the US military uses GPS to hit their target, it is surely damn accurate.

    I do have some experience with GPS because I borrowed from my friend a few times and managed to know how to find a location, updating the unit software and also looking for the latest maps. The menu on the GPS unit is pretty straight forward and easy to understand but the technical part such as putting more than one gmapsupp.img file on the GPS unit or even using the JetMouse keygenerator can be pretty tough and confusing to a novice user.

    Anyway, since I do not have a GPS unit, I am sure I can somehow view the maps in my computer without the GPS tracking capability. I found out that MapSource, a software provided by Garmin is able to create, view and edit waypoints, routes and tracks as well as to find items, addresses and POIs.


    All sounds good and I actually found a link to download the latest MapSource from Garmin’s official website. When I tried to install, I got the error message “Previous MapSource not found! Setup will terminate”. It seems like the file that I downloaded is an update and not the full installation setup. Luckily there is a trick on how to install MapSource without having the original installation CD.

    1. Download the latest MapSource from Garmin.

    2. When finished downloading, if your archiving software such as 7-Zip, WinRAR or PowerArchiver, you can right click on the file that you downloaded and extract. If you’re unsure, you can use Universal Extractor to extract the MapSource installation file.
    Install MapSource

    3. Open the MapSource folder once you’ve finished extracting. You should see a bunch of files and folders. Now run MAIN.msi first, wait for it to complete and then run Setup.exe. Follow the instructions to complete the installation.
    Install Mapsource without CD

    If you do not have any maps installed for MapSource, you would be seeing an error window that says “MapSource could not find any installed MapSource map products. Please install one or more MapSource map products and start MapSource again”. There are some maps for MapSource that costs money and some free. If you want to take a look how MapSource works, here’s a free Australia map. Just download, install and then run MapSource. The Australia map will be automatically loaded in MapSource.

    Note: If you know any free maps for your country, do let me know so I can compile a list for everyone’s convenience. Thanks!

  • Download Official Windows Vista Beta 2 and obtain Product Key

    The below link is to download official Windows Vista Beta 2. You can use any download manager software such as FlashGet to download Windows Vista Beta 2 from the direct link. If you visit the link using your browser, it will prompt you to download an activex from Microsoft site and use their online Download Manager.
    Do take note that the download is pretty unstable and I kept on getting disconnected and would have to retry download nearly every 5 minutes. Perhaps a lot of people already started to download the 4GB Windows Vista Beta 2 and Microsoft servers is not capable of handling too much download requests.

    Windows Vista Beta 2 English x86 or x64
    Direct Link:
    • Windows Vista Beta 2, English 32-Bit Edition
    • Windows Vista Beta 2, English 64-Bit Edition

    Windows Vista Beta 2 German x86 or x64
    Direct Link:
    • Windows Vista Beta 2, 32-Bit-Edition (Deutsch)
    • Windows Vista Beta 2, 64-Bit-Edition (Deutsch)

    Windows Visata Beta 2 Japanese x86 or x64
    Direct Link:
    • Windows Vista Beta 2, Japanese 32-Bit Edition
    • Windows Vista Beta 2, Japanese 64-Bit Edition

    To get your own Windows Vista Beta key, see the instructions below.


    1. Login to your Live account.

    2. Browse to Microsoft Office 2007 ‘Get the Beta‘ Site

    3. Select your Country and click Go
    Windows Visa country

    4. Check the URL after you pressed Go button. It should look something similar to the URL below.

    https://profile.microsoft.com/RegSysProfileCenter/wizard.aspx?wizid=bc6972e5

    -9969-40d5-85fd-2535f3f8d96f&lcid=17417&FU=https://www.microsoft.com/
    betaexperience/scripts/office.aspx?lcid=17417%26Action=download%26Region=
    APAC%26CountryCode=MYS

    5. Ignore the first part of the URL which is https://profile.microsoft.com/RegSysProfileCenter/wizard.aspx?wizid=bc6972e5
    -9969-40d5-85fd-2535f3f8d96f&lcid=17417&FU=
    The important URL that you should take note is https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/scripts/office.aspx?lcid=17417%
    26Action=download%26Region=APAC%26CountryCode=MYS

    6. Copy the second part URL into your browser’s address and change office.aspx to vista.aspx
    Example, https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/scripts/vista.aspx?
    lcid=17417%26Action=download%26Region=APAC%26CountryCode=MYS
    To change the country simply change the code at end of the URL, eg change ‘CountryCode=MYS’ to ‘CountryCode=USA’

    7. It should forward you to the Windows Vista Site that has Windows Visa Beta 2 download links together with your Windows Vista Beta key.
    Windows Visa Product Key

    8. You will also get an email from Microsoft that contains Windows Visa Beta 2 download links together with your Windows Vista Beta key.

    Note: You can get 2 Keys, each one will activate 10 computers. After completing the download, you will need to burn the ISO file to a DVD.

  • Get Your Windows Vista RC1 Key NOW

    If you’ve downloaded Windows Vista RC1 from Microsoft and having problems in getting the serial number to activate Windows Vista RC1, then please continue reading.
    Windows Vista Serial Number activation


    1: Windows live account required(a Hotmail email account that has NEVER used to get Windows Vista serial number)

    2: Visit this link

  • Log in with your hotmail email account that has never used to get Windows Vista serial number
  • You will see a form, fill up the details properly. Make sure you fill a correct email address as you will get your product key at that email address
  • Keep filling up the required forms and clicking “continue”
  • Check your hotmail and you should get an email from MICROSOFT with the subject “Verification E-Mail”
  • Click on the verification link and you will be brought to a page where it displays the Windows Vista RC1 download links together with Product Key

  • Shocking SourceForge Top Downloads

    SourceForge is the world’s largest Open Source software development web site, hosting more than 100,000 projects and over 1,000,000 registered users with a centralized resource for managing projects, issues, communications, and code. SourceForge.net has the largest repository of Open Source code and applications available on the Internet, and hosts more Open Source development products than any other site or network worldwide.
    SourceForge free downloads
    Want to know what projects has been most downloaded at SourceForge? I got quite a shock when I had a look at SourceForge.net’s All-Time top downloads to see what files are most downloaded by people. Even the past 7 days are not much different that then all-time top downloads.


    The shocking thing is that six file-sharing applications is occupying the first six places in SourceForge’s All-Time Top Downloads! They are eMule, Azureus, Ares Galaxy, BitTorrent, DC++, and Shareaza.
    SourceForge All Time Top Downloads

    Not much difference either on the past 7 top downloads. Although file-sharing applications did not occupy the first six places like the all-time top downloads, but there are 5 file-sharing applications in top 10.
    SourceForge past 7 days top downloads

    Now we know what people download most and what they want.

    [ View SourceForge.net All-Time Top Downloads ]

  • Convert iPhone MOV Videos to Smaller WMV with Windows Live Movie Maker

    If you have been following my blog, you would have read a couple of articles that mentioned my wife using an iPhone 4 phone. Other than using a digital camera to take photos and videos of our baby, she would normally also use her iPhone to do that too. iPhone 4 is capable of snapping photos at 5 megapixels and also 1280 x 720 HDTV video or 720p for a shortname hand. She recently shot a very cute video of our baby which lasted for 50 seconds that she wanted to share it with her close friends in Facebook. I connected her iPhone 4 to my computer via USB cable and copied the video file in .mov format to my hard drive to upload it to Facebook.

    To my surprise that such a short 50 seconds video takes up 62.6MB in size. Although my Internet download speed is 5Mbps, but my upload speed is only 512Kbps which would take approximately 20 minutes to complete uploading IF the line is not interrupted. Even if I am willing to spend the 20 minutes to upload the 62.6MB video to Facebook, I still need to rotate the video 90 degrees to the right so that her close friends can comfortable view the video without having to turn their head sideways…


    Since I am going to edit the video anyway, I thought I might as well convert it to another format making the video size smaller. If you search on the Internet, there are many video editors available and some of it requires me to install Quicktime in order to rotate a .MOV video file. I’ve decided to give the free Windows Live Movie Maker by Microsoft a try since it supports a wide range of video formats such as “wmv, asf, wm, m2ts, m2t, mov, qt, avi, dvr-ms, wtv, mp4, m4v, 3gp, 3g2, k3g, mpeg, mpg, mpe, m1v, mp2, mpv2, mod and vob”

    All I need to do is drag the .mov video file to the right hand box that says “click here to browse for videos and photos”. To rotate the video, I simply click on the “Rotate right” button that is on the ribbon menu. Now to save the mov video to a smaller sized file, I will need to click on the pull down menu to the left of the Home tab in the upper left corner, click Save Movie and select For Email. This option resizes the video’s width and height to a smaller window which also reduces the size of the file.

    Save Movie for Email

    Windows Live Movie Maker took merely 21 seconds to save the movie and the final result file is only 9.38MB in size. It is THAT EASY and FAST! Now I only need 3 minutes to upload the video file instead of 20 minutes. For more information, you can also select “Create Custom Settings” from the Save Movie menu.

    Windows Live Movie Maker Create Custom Settings

    Windows Live Movie Maker doesn’t come pre-installed in Windows 7 and I have to use the Windows Live Essentials 2011 to download it. The Live Essentials installer allows you to install Mail, Windows Live Mesh, Bing Bar, Outlook Connector Pack, Writer, Family Safety, Messenger Companion, Messenger and Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. Make sure you select the “Choose the programs you want to install” when asked What do you want to install? or else your computer will end up having all of Windows Live Essentials programs.

    [ Download Windows Live Movie Maker ]

  • Reset BIOS Password from Windows with CMOS De-Animator

    Any amateur computer technician should know how to reset BIOS password because there are times when they need to access the BIOS and change some configuration such as boot order. The old school way of resetting BIOS password is by taking out the battery from the motherboard and let it sit for 5 minutes, then put it back and power it on. If you read the motherboard manual, they will tell you to switch the jumper to reset all CMOS settings. When it comes to HP computers, it is very different. I’ve tried taking out the battery and left it for a day but still the BIOS doesn’t get reset. There is no CMOS reset jumper on the motherboard as well. From the CMOS itself, you can even configure it to lock the casing and the BIOS access password has an extra security where it will be completely locked out if you specified 5 consecutive wrong password.

    Now, if I don’t set BIOS password, some student will. If I set it, the student will try to brute force it and end up locking the BIOS completely. The only way is to call HP support center, wait for their technicians to come and clear the password for you. If the computer is within the warranty period, then there will be no charges but if the warranty is over, we’ll have to end up paying for it. I recently discovered a free tool that can be used to reset BIOS password from Windows.


    CMOS De-Animator is a service utility which allows you to invalidate the checksum of your system’s CMOS memory, resetting all settings to default and clearing any stored BIOS passwords (if any) upon re-boot. There is no graphical user interface and all you need to do is just run the executable file. You will only get confirmation message to begin or exit, error handling messages and a success dialog box upon successful operation. There are 2 versions, the 32bit and 64bit so make sure you use the correct version according to your Windows operating system.

    CMOS De-Animator reset bios password

    Although it did mention that no administrator privileges is required, but you may want to run it as administrator if the BIOS password did not get reset. I’ve tried it on my Dell 1909 all-in-one computer and it worked perfectly. Both the supervisor password and user password has been cleared leaving me able to access the BIOS without entering any password. I am not sure if CMOS De-Animator will work on HP computers or not because I currently do not have access them but I will update once I’ve tested it.

    NOTE: Some antivirus flags this tool as a threat (trojan, malware, dropper, downloader) since this tool is capable of bypassing password protected BIOS. I am not surprised at all and am confident that they are false alarm. You should not even download it if you always listen to your antivirus.

    [ Download CMOS De-Animator ]

  • Uninstall Microsoft Office 2007 in Vista and XP

    When you buy a new branded computer or laptop from HP, Dell, Compaq, Acer, chances is the manufacturer has already helped you to install Microsoft Office 2007 trial version valid for 60 days. After 60 days trial period, you have to either buy the full license or you can’t continue using it. One of my customer who uses his laptop in his work place wanted to remove the preinstalled Microsoft Office 2007 that has expired but he wasn’t able to. I tried to uninstall from Programs and Features but got the error “Setup error – The language of this installation package is not supported by your system.” I’ve also tried running Microsoft Office diagnostics and nothing happens.

    Microsoft has provided an article on how to uninstall the 2007 Office system if you cannot uninstall it by using the “Add or Remove Programs” feature. The steps is very long and involves searching and deleting a lot files including registry keys. Fortunately I found a small tool called Remove Office 2007 that is able to strip out Microsoft Office 2007 when the standard uninstall process wont work.


    Remove Office 2007 is only 128KB in size and is able to remove only only Office 2007. I’ve ran this tool on my customer’s computer and it was able to uninstall the pre-installed Microsoft Office 2007. All you need to do is to click the OK button and it will do the rest.
    Uninstall Office 2007
    Do take note that this tool automatically restarts the computer when it has finished deleting all the services, files and registry that belongs to Office 2007. After reboot, your operating system will try to look for the Office MSI installer again. Canceling the setup will take care of it.

    Remove Office 2007 doesn’t have a close button where you can close the program if you don’t want to uninstall office. You’ll have to launch Windows Task Manager (right clicking the Taskbar and select Task Manager), and kill the RipOutOffice2007.exe process. A useful tool that is going in to my USB flash drive which I bring along with me when I service computers.

    [ Download Remove Office 2007 ]

  • Trace Google Adsense Check Location Without DHL Tracking Number

    Google Adsense pays publishers in a few methods which is through western union, check or direct deposit. For Malaysians, we can only opt for Western Union or Check either through courier or local postage. Although Western Union is much easier and convenient where you can get cash by filling up the form but I prefer to receive the payment through check so that I can keep a nice record of the original receipt as a proof of income for taxation or any application purposes such as credit card, loan and etc.

    Normally I would receive Google Adsense check on the first week of the month. If the 1st of the month falls on a Friday or the weekend, I will only receive the check on Monday or latest on Tuesday. However for this month, I felt that there’s a little delay in receiving my Adsense check because today is already the 5th and as far as I know DHL is very efficient. If you log on to your Google Adsense page, in the My Account > Payment History page shows the DHL tracking number if you click on the details link for Payment issued. I am not sure when Google actually prints out the DHL Tracking Number in your payment issued page but I know it’s usually later in the month. I just found out that even though Google haven’t provide the DHL Tracking Number, you can still trace where is your Adsense check.


    Log in to your Adsense page, go to My Account > Payment History and click on the details link for the latest “payment issued”. Note down the “Payment Number” which is in all numbers and paste it in DHL’s website below.

    http://track.dhl-usa.com/TrackByRef.asp?nav=TrackRef

    For the shipment pickup date range, enter the Payment Date in your Adsense Payment Details for “From” and today’s date for “To”. Leave the rest blank and click the Track button.

    Track DHL Adsense Check

    From what I can see on the DHL tracking, my Adsense check is actually on the way and I would probably receive it either today or latest tomorrow. Most important thing to learn here is your Adsense Payment Number is actually the same as DHL’s Reference Number.

  • FREE ESET NOD32 Antivirus v2.7/3.0/4.0 Username and Password with 6 Months Subscription for EVERYONE

    ESET security products such as NOD32 Antivirus and Smart Security are like one of the easiest program to use for free without buying a license or cracking it. You can request for the free trial username & password and when it expires, you can request another one. Unlike Kaspersky, once the trial has been activated and expired, the trial can never be activated the second time unless you use the illegal Kaspersky Trial Reset tool. There are also websites that offers lists of NOD32 username and password for free but with very short subscription period.

    Free nod32 username and password

    Last week I’ve shared with you all on how to obtain a 3 months free ESET NOD32 Antivirus username and password. Guess what, today I’ll share with you on how to get a 6 months free NOD32 username and password. The process is a little long but I think it is worth it because I am sure you get to LEARN something and also how to get a 6 months NOD32 license for free. I’ve been researching on this for the past 4 days until late night to get it right, my eyes are so tired that they are twitching all the time but I am glad that I got the steps written down to share it with you all.


    1. First, you need to find a working open China proxy and set it to your web browser. Roinstrument is a good proxy server list website that lists the well-known proxy. Look for those with “cn” beside the proxy which means it is a China proxy server. Here is how you set your web browser to use the open proxy.
    Internet Explorer: Go to Tools > Internet Options > Connections tab > LAN settings > Check Use a proxy server for your LAN. Enter the proxy address and also the port.
    Firefox: Go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Network tab > Click Settings button > Select Manual proxy configuration and enter the proxy and port.

    2. Go to http://tq.360.cn/trail-c.html. You should see a page that looks like the image below.
    Free NOD32 username and password
    Enter the 4 digit code shown at the image and click the button below. You will then get a 24 digit activation code. (By clearing your browser’s cookies and cache, you can get new 24 digit activation code. Otherwise it’ll keep on generating the same 24 digit serial number) Remember to remove the proxy from your web browser once you’ve got the 24 digit activation code. The 24 digit activation code has a 5 days shelf life. If you don’t activate it within 5 days, the activation code cannot be activated anymore.
    free nod32 username and password
    If you get a page that says “ESET NOD32防病毒360专用版半年免费试用仅面向于中国大陆地区用户，请检查您是否使用代理服务器。”, it means that the open China proxy that you’re using is not working.

    3. Go to Australia’s NOD32 website to request for a 1 month trial license. Just enter your email address and hit the Submit button.
    free eset smart security username and password
    Check your email and you should receive an email from noreply@eset.sk with the suject “ESET Smart Security – Trial License”. Note down the 1 month trial ESET NOD32 Antivirus username and password.

    4. Download the latest ESET NOD32 Antivirus here and install. Enter the NOD32 username and password when requested. If you’re using a 64-bit Windows operating system, you have to download this installer instead. During installation, check “Setup update parameters later” when asked to enter your ESET NOD32 username and password.
    NOD32 set update parameters later

    5. Now download ESET Activation Tool. This ESET Activation Tool is an official program by ESET to activate/convert the 24 digit serial number into a genuine NOD32 username and password. The problem in using the ESET Activation Tool is it verifies your IP address. If you’re not from China, you won’t be able to convert the 24 digit serial number into a usable NOD32 username and password. You will keep on getting the error message “Activation failed, please try again later. Error Code:62” when trying to activate. We couldn’t use China proxy because the tool itself doesn’t support using proxy. The solution to this problem is to use either Proxifier, ProxyCap or WideCap to tunnel the ESET Activation Tool through China proxy server. This will make the tool think that we’re in China trying to activate the 24 digit serial number.

    6. Extract the downloaded ESET Activation Tool and run essact.exe. Make sure the first option “Activate with Activation Code” is selected. Enter your name, email and the 24-digit activation code. The name and email in the activation tool is not important so you can enter anything.
    ESET Activation tool
    If you got it right, you should see the message “Activation succeed, the Expiry Date is:2009-MM-DD”

    7. Now launch ESET NOD32 Antivirus, click the Setup icon on the left hand side and then click Username and Password setup. You should only see the NOD32 username with the password hidden. To view the hidden password, download Asterisk Logger. Extract, run astlog.exe and voila! the password is revealed!
    Reveal ESET NOD32 username and password

    Do take note that most open proxies are not stable and sometimes it’ll cause the page not to load properly or even the activation tool to work. Just keep on refreshing/trying and I am sure you will get it. The 6 months ESET username and password works on NOD32 Antivirus version 2.7, 3.0 and surely for the upcoming 4.0.

    Some of you including sunkumar think that the article that I written yesterday was useless but if you do not have this knowledge, you will NEVER get to activate the 24 digit serial number to convert it to a genuine 6 months NOD32 username and password unless you ask a friend from China to do it for you or use a China VPN which costs money. Enjoy the free ESET NOD32 Antivirus username and password that will last you 6 months!

  • Backup Files from Dead Windows to FTP

    Did you learn how to setup FTP server yesterday? If yes, then this is sort of like a continuation of yesterday’s tutorial. One of my client’s place has hundreds of computer and it’s pretty common for their computer to be infected by virus and resulting in an “unrescuable” system which requires to reformat and reinstall Windows.

    Their worst nightmare is hearing me telling them that the Windows on his/her computer is totally corrupted, can’t be fixed and the hard drive must reformat to reinstall Windows. They are only afraid of loosing their important documents and files on their computer. I’ve always advised them to backup their daily work to server because you may never know when your computer can’t be booted up but they’re lazy to do that.

    Actually I could just tell them that I don’t know how to rescue the data from the unbootable system and just reinstall Windows. Being the nice guy that I am, I’ve decided to “try” rescuing their data before reformatting and reinstalling Windows.


    The manual way of backing up data from a dead system is to take out the hard drive and connect it to a working system as secondary drive but I try to avoid doing that first. I always do the software way first. If that fails, I’ll do the hardware way.

    Download UBCD4WinThe best software way I can think of is to boot up the dead machine with Windows PE (pre-install) environment CD. The best Windows PE CD I know is Ultimate Boot CD for Windows from UBCD4Win. UBCD4Win is a bootable CD which contains software that allows you to repair, restore, or diagnose almost any computer problem. UBCD4Win is based on Bart’s PE and all software included are freeware utilities for Windows. In short, Windows PE is Windows in a disc. You can run Windows directly from CD without having a hard drive. I always carry UBCD4Win in my CD case with me.

    With UBCD4Win, I can use any of the methods below to backup files from an unbootable Windows. First, I boot up the system with UBCDWin. When I get in to Windows PE, I can either:
    – Plug in a USB flash drive and backup
    – Plug in USB external hard drive and backup
    – If computer has CD burning capabilities, burn data to CD
    – If network is supported, backup data to server/computer.
    – Backup to FTP using built-in FileZilla Client

    My customer told me he doesn’t have an external hard drive and only has a 256MB USB flash drive. Computer does support CD burning, but the data that he wants to backup is more than 15GB. That leaves us with 2 remaining methods which is IF UBCD4Win is able to load the network drivers, then I can copy his data to a server’s shared drive or to a local FTP server. I tried accessing a file server but I got the error message “SERVER is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. Access is denied.“.
    You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. Access is denied
    I tried accessing a workstation nearby but still got the same error message. I don’t know why I couldn’t access any computers on the network… The final option is to try connecting to a local FTP server. I ran FileZilla client, typed in the FTP server IP address, username, password and port, hit the Quickconnect button…. AND IT CONNECTED! My customer was so happy and he quickly copied all his important data to the FTP server.

    At first I only know the first 4 methods and I got to know about the FTP method when I discovered that UBCD4Win has FileZilla client. Then I remembered many months ago I helped them setup a FTP server in their network. So I figured I can use FileZilla client to connect to the FTP server and transfer files there.

    If you’re interested to have the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, follow the steps below on how to create the disc.
    1. Download and install UBCD4Win

    NOTE: Step 2 and 3 is optional. Always check in UBCD4Win forums to see if the Net Drivers update is required or not.
    2. Download the latest UBCD4Win Net Drivers v2.02 for supporting more than 500 types of NIC. This step is optional.
    3. Delete the C:\UBCD4Win\drivers\Net folder and extract the latest UBCD4Win Net Drivers v2.02 (UBCD4WinNetDriversV202.exe) to C:\UBCD4Win\drivers folder.

    4. Launch UBCD4Win from Desktop or Start Menu.
    5. Insert original Windows XP CD to CD/DVD ROM and select the source. To confirm that the source is correct, click on Source from the menu bar and select Check.
    Windows XP Source Check
    6. If your computer can burn CDs, select Burn to CD/DVD and click Build button. If can’t, select Create ISO image and once it has complete creating the ISO image, copy it to a computer that can burn CDs and burn it.

    To boot up computer with UBCD4Win, you need to go BIOS and set the boot sequence. Once the computer is being booted up with UBCD4Win, you’ll see a blue colored screen. Select Launch “The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows” and it will start loading…
    Launch Windows PE

    When asked “Network support is not start yet. Do you want to start network support now?” Click Yes.
    Enable Network Support

    You can run FileZilla client by going to Start -> Programs -> Networking Tools -> FileZilla.
    Run FileZilla from UBCD4Win

    Enter Address as IP address of the FTP server, username, password and port and click Quickconnect.
    Connect FTP using FileZilla

    If all methods above doesn’t work, the final option is to take out the hard drive and plug it in to another working computer as secondary disk. Boot up Windows and a new drive will appear. Depending on how the security is being configured on the dead Windows, you might be able to access the user’s application data such as Desktop, My Documents…

  • Drive Speedometer Monitors Hard Drive Read and Write Speed

    The overall computer’s performance doesn’t depend on just the CPU or RAM alone. You can have the a lot of RAM with the fastest CPU but if you have a hard drive that is not capable of keeping up with the speed, the whole performance gets degraded. Many years ago, whenever I help someone to build a computer, I would make sure that they would at least get a 7200RPM hard drive instead of the “standard” 5400RPM. It cost slightly more but the speed improvement is noticeable. As for now after installing Corsair Force SSD hard drive on my laptop, I find it hard to tolerate the slowness of 7200RPM hard drive that is on my desktop 😛

    When your computer is performing very slowly but you find that the CPU usage and memory usage are not hitting the roof, then most of the time it is your hard drive that is being maxed out. One very good tool to confirm that is by using Drive Speedometer. Drive Speedometer is a simple and small utility created by Shane from PcWinTech (the same author who created CleanMem) that lets you monitor your hard drive’s read and write speed.


    Drive Speedometer effectively shows you the current read and write speed of your hard drive. As you can see from the screenshot below, the SSD hard drive on my laptop has an excellent 71MB read and 56MB write.

    Drive Speedometer

    But when it comes to the normal 7200RPM hard drive, it maxed out at a pathetic 10MB read and 10MB write.

    Drive Speedometer

    This is a very simple straight forward program that uses the Windows performance counters to pull the information. If Drive Speedometer doesn’t work, probably you have Windows performance disabled and you can easily re-enable it back by running the provided enable_performance_counters.reg file.

    [ Download Drive Speedometer ]

  • Remote Control Computer using Web Browser with ThinVNC

    I received an email from Mariana asking me to review about a HTML5 remote desktop access tool they just released. It definitely sounds interesting because HTML5 is upcoming major update for HTML standard and one example is you can view YouTube videos directly from the web browser that supports HTML5 without using Flash player anymore. To remote control a computer using VNC, normally there is a server and a viewer(client) module. However by simply using ThinVNC, all you need to do is install the server module and you can access the remote computer from anywhere using just a web browser that supports HTML5. Currently Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera are HTML5 compliant. Internet Explorer users would have to wait until IE9 to enjoy the HTML5 support.

    ThinVNC takes advantage of the latest web technologies like AJAX, JSON and HTML5 canvas to deliver a high-performance Remote Desktop access over the web, using HTTP and SSL protocols. Without the need for any plugin, add-on or any kind of installation on the client side, ThinVNC is the optimum way to ensure that you can connect to your remote computer from any place.


    Installing and setting up the ThinVNC server is very easy. After installation, run ThinVNC and you will see an interface that looks like the screenshot below.

    ThinVNC remote access with browser

    At the General tab, you get to set whether you want to allow anyone to connect or restrict it using authentication. By default both user and password is admin. Finally you can click the Start Server button to instantly allow connection. The checkbox for Auto-start is to allow the server to start automatically, not the software. If you want ThinVNC to auto run whenever Windows is booted up, then click on File at the menu bar and select Install as Windows Service. At the HTTP tab, you get to define the port and also to use HTTP or HTTPS protocol.

    For a client to connect to the ThinVNC server, fire up any HTML5 compliant browser such as Google Chrome and type in the IP address followed by the port, for example http://192.168.1.1:8080 and hit enter. Then type in the server’s computer name and click Connect. You will then be prompted to login by entering username and password. There is a top bar which you can enable/disable control, show cursor, pause, refresh screen, scale, 256 color for faster and smoother control and disconnect.

    Remote Access computer with browser

    ThinVNC also has a presentation mode to show your desktop or selected application windows to people over the LAN or Internet. It allows to create a presentation ticket and invite others to connect to your presentation, each using a different userid/password combination created ad-hoc. To access the ThinVNC Presentation Manager, you will have to right click on the ThinVNC icon at the notification area and select Start Presentation. Then you get to add the e-mail address of whom you want to invite to the presentation and select the application that you want to present. The server must be started in order to start the presentation mode or else the option will be grayed out.

    ThinVNC Presentation Manager

    I tried using TightVNC viewer to connect to ThinVNC server and it’s not possible. When you connect, it would say connection established and ends up with Connection closed. Of course no one would use the VNC viewer anymore if you can directly connect through a web browser but just wanted to test the possibilities. Another problem I discovered while testing ThinVNC is the scaling when using Firefox and Opera browser. If you click on the Scale button, the mouse cursor doesn’t get updated according to the new scale and causing the mouse clicks and movements to be inaccurate.

    ThinVNC is definitely very useful, fast, easy to use and it’s free for non commercial usage. However it is still lacking of some advanced features such as file manager, chat and support for other operating systems. The ThinVNC server supports Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/Win 7/Windows Server 8.

    [ Download ThinVNC ]