Raymond.CC Blog

Category: Computer

  • OSAM a Powerful and Reliable Autorun Manager with Online Malware Scanner

    I am always on the lookout for a good autorun manager tool which checks for automatic programs startup when Windows is booted up. A virus or any kind of malware is designed to stay running in the computer all the time, so it had to add itself to a startup location. During Windows 98 era, it was so easy to check if a computer has a virus or not because there were only a few places to check for startup programs. I can still remember that I only needed to check win.ini, system.ini, startup folder from Start Menu, and regedit Run value. I didn’t even need a software for that.

    However in Windows XP, there are a lot of startup locations which I don’t think I can memorize them all and it’d be better if I have a tool does the job. Moreover, a lot of modern viruses blocks regedit and msconfig. I recently stumbled on an autorun manager called OSAM, which has support of virtually all known methods of automatic loading using the system registry or special folders and also a built-in online malware scanner to check for suspicious autostartup entries.


    “OSAM” (Online Solutions Autorun Manager) is a powerful and reliable tool for controlling the ‘cleanliness’ of components and applications that are automatically loaded or started under certain conditions without user’s consent. OSAM provides an easy one-click way of obtaining detailed information about the components that are run automatically at the system start and can potentially affect its operation.

    OSAM Autorun manager with online malware scanner

    Basically, all types of malicious software that have been around for the last 7-10 years use various mechanisms of sticking to an infected system. With OSAM, you will be able to monitor and control these activities and, which is more important, eradicate the threat on your own.

    Rootkits are one of the biggest threats for end user systems. This malicious software integrates into the system on a very low level and completely hides its presence. The user is often totally unaware that the computer is being controlled by hackers. But that’s not a problem: whether it’s a hidden start of a rootkit driver or other hidden keys, “OSAM” will detect any of these autorun variants.

    OSAM’s built-in malware is able to check if the startup files on your computer are malicious or not by cross checking with their online malware database. If there are files that is not recognized by OSAM’s online malware database, you can easily submit the files to OSAM to have them analyzed for you.
    OSAM Online Malware Scanner

    OSAM also supports generation of two types of report files (text and HTML) with all autoload information. If you’re helping someone to troubleshoot a computer problem that is caused by virus or a bad software, you can ask him to run OSAM, save the report and send it to you for analysis.

    OSAM is free and works in Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. Windows 2008 and the 64bit of Windows is not yet fully supported and Online Solutions are working on it. There is a portable version of OSAM which require no installation which is good to carry around in your USB flash drive and another one that requires installation. The portable version of OSAM is another great addition to my list of virus removal tools.

    [ Download OSAM 4.0 Portable | Setup ]

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  • Easily and Safely Optimize Vista by Disabling Unnecessary Vista Services

    When you install Microsoft Windows Vista for the first time, you will notice that there are many of Windows Vista services that are running in the background that can consume extra CPU power and take up much space in the system memory (RAM) which we do not really need them at all. Logically, disabling services that are not needed should somehow speed up your computer or make your computer more responsive. Optimizing Vista by disabling unneeded services is not something new because computer users has been doing this since Windows 2000 where we can access the Services by running services.msc.

    It surely sounds easy to disable services which we don’t need but there are nearly 200 services entries on a computer running Windows Vista Business SP1. If we disabled the wrong ones, it may lead to many problems like failure in launching some Windows applications, performance problems, security risks or in some cases a total system crash. I wouldn’t advice a novice computer user to mess around with Vista services if you’re not familiar with it or even if you’re referring to guides that BlackViper or Tweakhound created because there are some terms or computer jargon which you may not understand. The best way is to use this free software which I found that is able to safely optimize Vista by disabling unnecessary Vista services.


    Vista Services Optimizer is a free and perfect tweaking utility that can improve your Windows Vista Performance and security with a simple mouse click, by tweaking Windows services in an automatic and a very safe way according to the way you use your computer and which software are installed on your system.

    Optimize Vista Services

    Vista Services Optimizer also enables you to tweak Windows Vista services manually for advanced users who need more control over Windows services in an easy and safe way. Other than that, it also provides you with detailed information about certain services and enables you to query some services information using Google or Yahoo search engine to help you identify some of Windows services function.

    Even if somehow your computer running Vista got messed up because of Vista Services Optimizer, all you need to do is to run the program, go to Rescue Center and use the Express Services Restore. This will undo any changes that Vista Services Optimizer has made to your Vista services configurations.

    Vista Services Optimizer obviously only works on Windows Vista. It supports both 32bit and 64bit version of Vista and requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 with Service Pack 1 installed in order to run. You can easily check if you have .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installed by using ASoft .NET Version Detector, SmallestDotNet or .NET Version Check. Before you start optimizing your computer by disabling Vista services, I’d like to stress out that you should understand what each service means and disable only those which you think your system would not use. Please don’t disable all of them because it’s like you trying your best to save electricity by turning off the main power switch. You’ll end up with nothing but problems.

    [ Download Vista Services Optimizer ]

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  • Extend 200+ Image Support for Windows Picture and Fax Viewer in Windows XP

    Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is an image viewer that is a part of the Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 operating systems. It is based on GDI+ and is capable of viewing images format supported by GDI+, namely, JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF (including animated GIFs), ICO, WMF, EMF and TIFF format files. If you open any of the image format mentioned above in Windows XP, it will by default opened in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

    Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

    Apart from its rudimentary image rotating tool and its TIFF annotation feature, the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer only views, and does not edit images. The viewer program starts up if any of the picture format files is double clicked. You won’t find a shortcut in Windows Start Menu and there is no executable (.exe) file for it. It is implemented as a dynamic-link library file called shimgvw.dll. This program is normally located at “%systemroot%\system32\shimgvw.dll”, and can be run from the command prompt or through a shortcut pointing to “rundll32.exe %systemroot%\system32\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_Fullscreen”

    Although this program superseded part of the functions of Imaging for Windows in previous versions of Windows, it can still be improved by adding 200+ image support.


    ImageXtender is a unique free application that teaches your Windows XP image viewer to understand more than 200 image formats which includes such long forgotten formats as *.msp, *.gem. together with really rare ones, such as *.cals and *.dpx. When you install ImageXtender, it builds itself into your operating system (Windows XP), and registers all known extensions pf graphics files so that they can be viewed with Windows XP standard viewer. So, the process of viewing any images won’t differ from viewing image formats available before.

    ImageXtender

    Once ImageXtender is installed, you can run ImageXtender from Windows Start Menu to select the file types which you would like to see in Windows Explorer. All image types are selected by default. Then you can view images in 3 different modes: Preview, Thumbnails and Filmstrip.

    Just launch Windows Explorer and open a folder containing image files, and you’ll be able to view files of available formats in preview mode. Besides, the “Details” section located in the left pane of Windows Explorer will display all file info – its type, size and date of creation.

    To view graphics files in Thumbnails mode, just launch Windows Explorer and open a folder containing image files, then go to Windows Explorer menu and select View-Thumbnails.

    To view images in Filmstrip mode, launch Windows Explorer and open a folder containing image files, then go to Windows Explorer menu and select Filmstrip. Click the image file to view it in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer modes.

    ImageXtender can be installed on Windows XP only and doesn’t support Vista. The picture viewer in Windows Vista, renamed Windows Photo Gallery Viewer, is completely rewritten and is based on Windows Photo Gallery which uses the Windows Imaging Component (WIC). The underlying graphics engine pipeline has been overhauled with support for large and high bit depth HDR images. ImageXtender is truly a nice free add-on which allows you view practically any kind of image file without installing/opening a separate program which is very convenient.

    [ Download ImageXtender ]

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  • FREE Norton Internet Security 2009 Subscription Valid for More Than 1 Year (460 Days)

    Yesterday I’ve shared with you all a trick on how to get free 1 year subscription for Norton Antivirus 2009 so you don’t need to resort to other illegal methods such as cracks or trial reset tool which could possibly make NIS 2009 unstable. The difference between Norton Antivirus 2009 and Norton Internet Security 2009 is the internet security is a complete security application for your computer which includes two-way firewall for intrusion prevention, parental controls and confidential information blocking, antispam, identify protection and much more. In short, the features are equivalence to Kaspersky Internet Security 2009.
    free Norton Internet Security 2009
    So if Norton Internet Security 2009 is your preferred security application to help you keep your computer away from viruses and hackers, here is a trick on how to obtain a free Norton Internet Security 2009 subscription that is valid for more than a year or 460 days to be precise. Just for your information, normally Norton Internet Security 2009 one year protection for 1 PC cost $49.99.


    If you’ve missed yesterday’s article, the concept on how to get a total of 460 days subscription for Norton Internet Security 2009 is the same. I found a total of 4 NIS 2009 OEM installers (3 x 90 days + 1 x 30 days) and another 3 from a nice guy named teels from Korea which would give you a total of 460 days NIS 2009 subscription. Hopefully by then I’ll have other better way which could give extend your subscription period. If you’re unable to uninstall Norton Internet Security 2009, you can use this removal tool by Norton to manually uninstall it.

    Free Norton Internet Security 2009


    LINKS REMOVED DUE TO SYMANTEC REQUEST

    Symantec claims that Norton Internet Security is a “PROVEN” fastest security suite available which I believe it is true. The scanning engine is so light that sometimes you won’t even feel that you have a full security suite installed and running on your computer. It is important that you run Norton LiveUpdate immediately after installation so that you’ll have the latest virus signature and also latest engine. Norton Internet Security 2009 also has a very smart memory management which is able to automatically reduce its memory usage from 30MB+ to 7MB+. I ran a full scan and Norton Internet Security 2009 took 1120 seconds to scan 75029 items which is slower than Norton Antivirus. Also, NIS by default automatically deletes any found threats including cracks and keygenerators but it can be restored from the Quarantine area.

    Do take note that the OEM installer is different from trial because the trial license nags you to every time to buy a license whenever you launch the program from system tray. As for OEM installers, it actually gives you a full subscription period like the 1 year license except with a shorter subscription period. Enjoy the free Norton Internet Security 2009 with 460 days subscription! Also thanks to “teels” from Korea for sharing the additional NIS2009 OEM links with me.

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  • FREE Norton Antivirus 2009 with 1 Year Subscription Without Activation or Product Key

    Norton has been gaining back their popularity with their latest 2009 line of products. Some of the forum members who were a huge Kaspersky fan that had problems with Kaspersky on their computer ended up using Norton because it is very impressive. The last time I tested Norton Antivirus 2009 and I was really impressed with the results. Norton Antivirus 2009 took only 98 seconds to complete a full system scan (21,398 items). It also has a very good memory management which will automatically reduce the memory usage to around 6MB when it reaches 40-50MB. If that’s not enough, Norton Antivirus 2009 comes with Norton Insight which is able to increase computer performance by identifying trusted files that do not require scanning.

    free Norton Antivirus 2009 license
    Normally Norton Antivirus 2009 would cost $39.99 for 1 year subscription on 1 PC, but I am going to teach you how to LEGALLY use Norton Antivirus 2009 for a year without paying a single cent or use any trial reset tool which might be tampered with trojans.


    The concept is pretty simple. I found a few OEM versions of Norton Antivirus 2009 and it gives us a 60-90-180 days free subscription period (not trial subscription). You don’t need any product key or go through any activation steps. All you need to do is to spend less than a minute to create a free one time Norton account after installation. By the way, if for some reason you’re unable to uninstall Norton Antivirus 2009, try using Norton Removal Tool to manually uninstall NAV 2009.

    LINKS REMOVED DUE TO SYMANTEC REQUEST

    Do take note that it is impossible to change the language of the interface in Norton Antivirus 2009 from German to English. If you don’t like the German language of Norton Antivirus 2009, you can switch between two 90 days english OEM installer to get the free subscription without limits unless Norton do something about it.

    The difference between the OEM and trial version of Norton Antivirus 2009 is that the trial version has a nag screen that tells you the remaining days for trial whenever you open the program’s interface from the system tray.
    Norton Antivirus 2009 nag screen

    The trial version will also show at the bottom of the program that “Your trial period expires in 15 days” rather than “You have XXX days of subscription remaining”. Enjoy the free 1 year or should I say, “unlimited” subscription of Norton Antivirus 2009!
    Norton Antivirus 2009 status

    There is a Norton Trial Reset tool v1.5 cracked by BOX! which claims to be able to reset an expired Norton Antivirus to 15 / 90 days trial OR convert a 15 day trial to 90 day trial. The Norton Trial Reset tool only be used on Windows 32-bit and Norton Product Tamper Protection must be disabled in order for this tool to work. Some reported that the trial reset tool worked but I’ve never tested it myself. I read from other forums that this tool is able to make Norton products back to the first day of trial period so the trial period will never end. Why use cracks when you now can get free subscription?
    Norton Trial Reset BOX!

    P/S: Since Christmas is coming soon and to me Christmas is about giving, I will be giving out more than 200 license in total for a few security products combined. So check back everyday and this time the free license will be given to the first 100 commenters and the remaining ones will be via lucky draw. If you didn’t know, a new post will be posted here everyday at 12AM Pacific Standard Time (PST) GMT -8.

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  • FREE 1 Year BitDefender Antivirus 2009 Genuine License for EVERYONE

    As far as I know, BitDefender Antivirus is very sensitive and can detect a lot of viruses including those that are not really a virus (false positive). I once installed BitDefender on my computer and a lot of my non-virus files (cracks and keygens) were automatically deleted. Even the ZoneAlarm Pro 2009 keygenerator by SnD which I downloaded earlier was detected as trojan.generic.912879 and automatically deleted!
    free bitdefender antivirus 2009 license key
    The first thing you should do after installing BitDefender is to configure the action should it take when detect a threat because automatically deleting a file by default without a user’s consent is a bad move. Believe it or not, I immediately uninstalled BitDefender Antivirus and never use it again. Don’t get me wrong. BitDefender is good but it’s not suitable for people like me who are constantly downloading and testing “stuff”. It is more suitable for basic computer user that just wants to keep the computer clean from viruses.

    Looks like this week is full of freebies. ZoneAlarm Pro 2009, NOD32 Antivirus, and now free BitDefender Antivirus 2009 license that is valid for a year. The latest BitDefender Antivirus 2009 normally cost $24.95 for a year but it will be totally free if you follow the steps which I am about to show you.


    BitDefender Antivirus 2009 provides advanced proactive protection against viruses, spyware, phishing attacks and identity theft, without slowing down your PC. The latest version of BitDefender 2009 has improved scanning of web e-mail and instant messaging traffic for viruses and spyware, in real-time. It also has new features such as instant messaging encryption and laptop mode which prolongs the laptop battery life.

    FREE BitDefender Antivirus 2009

    If you’re interested to own a legit license for the latest BitDefender Antivirus 2009 that last for a year, just follow the few simple steps below.

    1. Go to this page.

    2. Enter your email address, username, password, and the random captcha code. Click button after finished filling up the form.
    Register free bitdefender antivirus 2009

    3. You are asked to enter 3 Chinese character like what you see at the image below.
    bitdefender chinese word

    4. Go to NCIKU and at the Handwrite Characters, draw the first chinese character at the left box. Wait for a few seconds and you should see a few Chinese words being displayed at the right box. Find for the one that matches with the first Chinese character, click on it and the chinese character will be displayed at the search box.
    chinese captcha
    Highlight, copy the chinese word and paste it to the page at step 3. Continue doing that for the second and third character.

    5. Note down the license key at the next page.
    free BitDefender Antivirus 2009 license key

    6. Download and install the latest BitDefender Antivirus 2009.

    7. When BitDefender Registration Wizard appears, just click the “I want to register the product with a new key” and enter the license key that you received from step 3.
    Register BitDefender Antivirus 2009
    Click Next. You will get a small window that tells you “Your product has been registered. Press ‘OK’ to continue the activation process.” Click the OK button and the next step is to create a BitDefender account. You can either create the account now or later. Since BitDefender version 2008, it can already detect the private trojan that I have.

    8. Click Finish and you now have a genuine BitDefender Antivirus 2009 valid for 365 days!

    So how good is BitDefender Antivirus 2009? I ran a full scan and it took 5 minutes and 44 seconds to scan 16938 items. Not that fast compared to NOD32 and Norton but I’d say that it is pretty fast to scan the whole computer in less than 6 minutes. BitDefender is also well known for it’s lightness in system resource usage. livesrv.exe takes up 4200Kb, bdagent.exe talks up 1356Kb and vsserv.exe takes up 2680Kb. BitDefender only takes up a total of 8MB off your memory! BitDefender Antivirus 2009 works on Windows XP SP2(32/64 bit), Vista(32/64 bit) and Home Server.

    BitDefender products are way too easy for crackers to crack. Normally there is a keygenerator that generates license key for BitDefender products and then patches the HOSTS file to block BitDefender from calling home to check whether the key is legit or not. As for the latest BitDefender 2009, there is a patch that automatically registers BitDefender to work until year 2049.

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  • Free Demonoid.com Account Registration Now Opens – No Invitation Code Needed!

    I know many of you are still looking for a demonoid invitation code to register for a demonoid.com account but you don’t need that for the time being because the free demonoid.com registration is now open! As far as I know, demonoid.com’s registration opened on June, July and also August. Then the free registration has remained closed for nearly 3 months until they re-open again yesterday. I still remembered reading on Demonoid’s website that they will open the registration once or twice per month but looks like they’ve stopped doing that. Or maybe I am wrong and missed the registration opening on August and September…

    Register demonoid

    Anyway, Demonoid registration probably has been opened since 24 hours ago and might not remain open for very long. So quickly register your demonoid account before it closes again! If you’ve missed it, perhaps it’s time for you to subscribe to my newsletter to get informed about future demonoid registration openings.

    It’s very easy to get your free demonoid account. Just head to demonoid.com and on the top right of the page, you’ll see that “User registration. Registrations are open. Click here to register”. Click on the link, enter your username, password, email address, birthday and verification code. Make sure you use a real email address because you’ll need to verify the registration via a link sent to your email address.

    Demonoid invitation code

    Tip: If you’re from India or somewhere else that is getting the error message “Sorry, since the server is too saturated, we can not accept more members at the moment. However, new spots are opened every day, so please, check back later”, you’ll need to use proxy/vpn to access the site. One of the free proxy site that you can use to access Demonoid is Anonymouse. Just select your language (either English or German), enter the website address http://www.demonoid.com/register.php and click the Surf Anonymously button. You can then proceed with the registration.

    Thanks to xje4bv again for another really fast and great discovery! Go here to register your free demonoid.com account: http://www.demonoid.com/register.php

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  • Vista UAC Security Feature in Windows XP with suDown

    User Account Control (UAC) is a technology and security infrastructure introduced with Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. It aims to improve the security of Microsoft Windows by limiting application software to standard user privileges until an administrator authorizes an increase in privilege level. In this way, only applications that the user trusts receive higher privileges, and malware should be kept from receiving the privileges necessary to compromise the operating system. By default the user in Vista is still an administrator but it runs in a low privileged environment and you can elevate your rights only when necessary.

    UAC in XP

    To me, UAC is just a pain in the neck security feature. Even if I am an admin, the UAC nag screen keeps popping out in every changes I make on the system. So the first thing that I do after installing Vista is to disable the User Account Control for my account. To my surprise I received a comment from Vibhanshu asking if there is another UAC tool for Windows XP because SmartUAC is crashing his computer. I think that SmartUAC is a badly coded unstable software, not a rogueware…

    If you’re like Vibhanshu looking for another UAC tool for Windows XP, you can try suDown.


    An old Unix rule is that you don’t use an administrator level (root) account for your everyday work. Unix based operating systems has two utilities to handle these kind of situations: “su” (abbreviation for substitute user) and “sudo” (short for superuser do). You can use “su” to quickly change your active user to another one and execute commands with the other user’s context. The runas command of Windows is quite similar to “su”. The other Unix command “sudo” is a bit different in that it allows a permitted user to execute a command with superuser privileges but with his own context.

    suDown tool is to make using low privileged accounts in Windows XP easier which is an effective security layer against harmful virus, worm, trojan or spyware software. If some malicious program manages to get past your security programs or break in through an unpatched security hole of your web browser, email client or operating system it still finds itself in an unfriendly low privileged environment where the possibilities of replicating and doing harm are quite limited.

    The latest suDown v2.21 requires .Net Framework version 3.5 SP1 installed or the context menu will not appear. Once suDown is installed, you must choose trusted users to add to the Sudoers group. You can do that by right click on My Computer and select Manage. Expand Computer Management (local) > System Tools > Local Users and Groups > Groups. Double click on the “sudoers” group, click the Add button and type in the user name. If you are not sure of the user name, go to Users and the list of users are listed there.

    Add to sudoers group

    There are two ways to run a program with administrator privileges. From right click context menu or command line from cmd. The user account’s password will be required.

    run sudown
    Once the correct password is entered, the suDown client calls the suDown service, which temporarily escalates the user’s group permissions to the Administrators’ Group, but only for the specific program being run. Thus while a user may normally only need basic User group permissions, he can easily use suDown when he needs administrative rights for tasks such as installing a new program, changing system settings, or removing old software. Do take note that you must restart your computer after adding your own user account to sudoers group to take effect. To remove an account from sudoers group, you’ll need go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > right click on Computer Management, select “#sudo Computer Management.lnk” and enter your user account password.

    The difference between suDown and “Run As…” is that suDown launches programs under your account profile – not an Admin account. This means that the launched programs see your Documents & Settings folders, Desktop, Start menu, etc. suDown also caches the password so you don’t have to keep entering it as you would with Run As… The password for the Administrator account can stay secret, as the user needs only his own password to use suDown.

    Here is a short video demo demonstrating the advantages of using a low privileged user environment by intentionally infecting
    two freshly installed Windows XP SP2 environment with a well-known malware program. I’ve also tried infecting my own computer with Bha.dll.vbs worm and my system (with suDown installed) was protected from the damages. However, the worm managed to add “Hacked by Pokemon” on my Internet Explorer’s title bar which is not a big deal since there’s no real damage and can be easily removed from registry.

    Symantec is in the midst of developing Norton User Account Control tool but it is not an UAC for XP as it can only be installed in Vista.

    [ Download suDown v2.21 ]

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  • ThreatFire 4 Intelligently Protects Computer Against Known and Unknown Threats

    To be honest, I’ve heard of PC Tools ThreatFire very long ago and I didn’t really have any confidence in this product thinking that this is another “unnecessary” tool since Kaspersky is the only security product that a computer would ever need. All this while I only know that ThreatFire can be installed together with an antivirus product without causing conflicts to provide stronger protection against viruses. If I already have one of the top antivirus (Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009) installed, I wouldn’t want any more security software slowing down my computer.
    Download ThreatExpert
    As I was going through the list of websites that I normally visit everyday, I saw that ThreatFire has been updated to version 4. I had a little time off today because of slight gastric pain, so I decided to check out ThreatFire. Boy I was really glad that I did and also regret that I didn’t review this earlier so I can share with you what is so good about ThreatFire.


    ThreatFire is dramatically different to traditional antivirus software. Normal antivirus products usually need to have first identified and seen a threat before they can provide adequate protection against it. The protection is then provided via a signature or fingerprint update, which must first be written by an antivirus researcher. This creates a large window of time where threats are undetected and can therefore infect your PC even when you have antivirus software installed.

    Free ThreatFire 4

    ThreatFire continually protects your PC against attacks by detecting malicious behavior, such as capturing your keystrokes or stealing your data, instead of only looking for known threats like normal antivirus software. By implementing sophisticated real-time behavioral analysis ThreatFire is able to stop never- before-seen “zero-day” threats solely by detecting their malicious activity. ThreatFire’s patent-pending ActiveDefense technology offers protection against all types of internet threats – both known and unknown – spyware, adware, keyloggers, viruses, worms, Trojans, rootkits, buffer overflows, and other malware. ThreatFire uses its unparalleled protection to hunt down and paralyze those threats that are either too new or too clever to be recognized by traditional “signature-based” antivirus software.

    ThreatFire 4 Features:

  • Comprehensive protection against viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, rootkits, keyloggers & buffer overflows
  • Real-time behavior-based malware detection
  • Immediately shut down destructive processes and quarantine malware
  • AntiVirus engine with signature updates to perform on-demand or scheduled scans of your entire PC for known threats
  • Automatic updates (when opted in to ThreatFire Community)
  • ThreatFire reporting and protection statistics
  • Malware quarantine & removal
  • Rootkit scanner – ability to schedule and customize
  • Advanced custom rules settings, fully configurable
  • System Activity Monitor – view instructive data about all running processes
  • Informative alerts provide guidance on how to proceed; most threats automatically quarantined
  • Free online support
  • Personal and individual use allowed

    • I tried running one of the worst virus that I’ve ever encountered (Almanahe / Alman / JambanMu) on my test computer. ThreatFire immediately intercepted it and auto deletes the virus. This shows that ThreatFire is able to recognized “known” virus using the built-in antivirus.
    ThreatFire detects known virus

    Next, I wanted to test if ThreatFire can detect my undetectable trojan or not. I copied it to my test system, ran it, and amazingly ThreatFire picks it up as a threat telling me that the application has performed an action that is potentially dangerous. All I need to do is select “Kill and quarantine this process”, click the Proceed button and my computer is safe from the trojan infection.
    ThreatFire detects unknown trojan

    OK, ThreatFire works. What about its memory usage? I am sure we all want to have secured computer without compromising its speed. ThreatFire only uses two process (TFService.exe and TFtray.exe) and both process takes up less than 8MB of system memory.
    ThreatFire Memory Usage
    When I double click the ThreatFire system tray icon to show the user interface, a new process TFGui.exe appears taking up 18MB (sometimes more). As long as you don’t open ThreatFire’s interface, and leave it running in system tray, ThreatFire won’t gobble up 18MB of your system memory. Even if it does, closing ThreatFire will release back the used up 18MB memory usage.

    Kaspersky is good but the Application Filtering feature is a little annoying. If you don’t like Kaspersky or somehow having compatibility problems with it on your computer, I’d suggest you to go for Norton Antivirus 2009 + ThreatFire 4. Both of this would pair up pretty well and give you a good protection against malware without slowing down your computer. *Hint* Norton Antivirus 2009 license giveaway = very soon…

    Update: ThreatFire 4 is completely FREE for personal home use. Business users must purchase ThreatFire Pro license.

    [ Download ThreatFire 4 ]

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  • FREE Portable and Powerful AVZ Anti-Viral Toolkit from Kaspersky

    If you visit this site frequently, you’ll notice that I am a big fan of Kaspersky products. They do offer a few free products such as a web based scanner where you can scan your computer for virus but no removal online, a rescue disk that you can boot in to Linux and scan your hard drive for virus using the latest 2009 engine and AVPTool for you to run an on-demand scanning and removal of virus. As for their commercial product, they have Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 and Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 to protect your computer in real-time. They also have enterprise products which I’ve never tested so I can’t tell you much about it…

    I just stumbled on another free tool offered by Kaspersky called AVZ developed by a Russian named Oleg Zaytsev. It started off as an independent anti-viral toolkit but Oleg went to Kaspersky, so now it is Kaspersky’s property. It is said that AVZ malware detection technology is built-in into AVPTool and the latest Kaspersky 2009 but actually AVZ has a lot more extra tools that is not included to the AVPTool and Kaspersky 2009.


    AVZ is an anti-viral toolkit for system analysis and recovery. It’s main purpose is similar to Trojan Hunter or Ad-Aware which is meant to remove “malwares” but not “viruses”.
    AVZ Antiviral toolkit
    AVZ enables you to automatically or manually locate and remove spyware and AdWare programs and modules, rootkits and other software tools intended to conceal running processes, files or system data from the operating system, network and e-mail worms, various trojan applications including password stealers, malware downloaders, Trojan-Spies, and Backdoors (tools allowing remote control of a computer), trojan dialers, keyloggers and other means of tracking user’s activity.

    The toolkit contains special feature that automatically repair the most typical registry modifications performed by malicious software. Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, Desktop settings, Policies, executable files startup parameters and others may be recovered using this tool. The repair operations are rarely performed by antiviruses, and quite often, after a piece of malware is deleted, the system remains corrupted.

    AVZ also has a feature called AVZGuard which is used to block critical operations in the system. When AVZGuard is enabled, no application can launch, change the registry, kill a process, etc.
    Enable AVZGuard
    It is highly recommended to enable AVZGuard before system cleanup – it prevents malicious software from recovering its files, registry items, etc. There are times when it is nearly impossible to kill a malware process because whenever you kill it, the malware immediately spawns another new process. With the help of AVZGuard, the malware can no longer spawn a new process. If you need to run a cleaner tool when AVZGuard is enabled, you can do so by running the application as trusted from AVZ.

    Unlike Kaspersky Rescue Disk and AVPTool that doesn’t have a update feature, AVZ has a built-in updater for us to easily update the malware definition database. There are many other useful utilities in AVZ, so do check it out. AVZ is another great addition to my list of virus removal tools in my USB flash drive. It is small, portable, really works and most importantly, FREE.

    [ Download AVZ v4.30 ]

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  • NoVirusThanks is a Free Multi-Engine Anti-Virus Files Scanner

    Sometimes Antivirus scanner reports that a program is infected with a Virus or Trojan, even when the program is not really infected with any malicious code. This kind of problem is known as “False Positive” or “False Alert”, and it’s quite a common problem nowadays. As far as I know, when a tool or software got wrongly flagged as a threat, it is a long and tiring process for the author of the tool to get the virus makers to “fix” the false positive problem.

    NoVirusThanks

    If you downloaded a tool from the Internet and your antivirus tells you that it is a virus, you can double confirm it by scanning the file with multiple antivirus program. However, installing multiple antivirus in your computer is not advisable as it can cause problems such as slowdown, conflicts, unbootable Windows and etc. What you can do is to scan the file online by uploading it to NoVirusThanks, a free multi-engine antivirus file scanner that supports a total of 23 antivirus. If you’ve heard about VirusTotal, Jotti Malware Scanner, VirScan, Virus.org or VirusChief, then NoVirusThanks would be an alternative to those multi-engine online file scanners.


    NoVirusThanks.org is a site that was born in 26/6/2008 with the intent to offer to users free services that will help them to prevent a computer virus infection and to identify possible viruses in their computer. One of their main free service is to allow you to scan suspicious files for possible presence of virus, worms, trojans and any other kind of malware using several Anti-Virus engines.

    NoVirusThanks
    NoVirusThanks file scanning with multiple antivirus engines is totally free and independent service. The virus definition signatures are automatically updated every 6 hours. It supports detailed results from each antivirus engine and also advanced details of file analyzed. At the result page, it has BBCode support where you can copy it to forums.

    NoVirusThanks currently supports the following antivirus engines:

  • a-squared
  • Avira AntiVir
  • AVG
  • Avast!
  • BitDefender
  • ClamAV
  • Comodo
  • Dr.Web
  • Ewido
  • F-PROT 6
  • G DATA
  • IkarusT3
  • Kaspersky
  • McAfee
  • NOD32
  • Norman
  • QuickHeal
  • Panda
  • Solo Antivirus
  • Sophos
  • TrendMicro
  • VBA32
  • VirusBuster

    • NoVirusThanks also has an uploader software (NVTUploader.exe) that allows you to directly send files from your system, using Graphical Interface, using the Windows “Send To” context menu, or drag and drop to its Online Malware Scanner. It also has support for commandline. (example: C:\NVTUploader.exe c:\sample.exe). NoVirusThanks uploader tool can only upload a maximum file of 4MB but the website supports up to 20MB.
    NoVirusThanks Uploader

    NoVirusThanks has an option for the uploader to select “Do not distribute the sample” from advanced options. VirusTotal used to have this feature but was removed because the antivirus developers said that it is only used by malware developers to avoid detection by AV engines. Another special feature that other multi-engine online file scanner doesn’t have is “Binder Detector“. A “Binder” is a program that generally is used to bind (join) 2 files together, example: one is the virus and the other one is the real program, when the joined file will be executed, generally is executed also the virus (hidden) together with the real program, so you will be infected without knowing it. Binder Detector is a program developed by NoVirusThanks that is able to detect if a file is joined/binded with a possible malware.

    Do that note that NoVirusThanks.org is not a substitute for any antivirus software installed in a PC, as it only scans individual files on demand. These results DO NOT guarantee the harmlessness of a file. One of the best method to detect whether a file is a malware or not is by analyzing it in a online virtual sandbox ThreatExpert.

    [ Visit NoVirusThanks ]

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  • Java Remote Desktop Controls Remote Computers Across Different Platforms

    Usually when I need to remotely access a computer that is running a different operating system, I’d go for TightVNC or UltraVNC because it is free and can support multiple operating systems. There are a lot more of other remote connection software such as CrossLoop, TeamViewer, LogMeIn, VNC and etc but here’s one that is worth taking a look because it can support many operating systems. It is good to have another alternative because you may never know that one day you’ll have to stop using VNC and switch to another software.

    As you can see at the image below, it is possible to remotely control a Windows Vista from Mac OSX using jrdesktop.
    JRDesktop


    Java Remote Desktop (jrdesktop) is an open source software for viewing and/or controlling a distance PC. Besides screenshots, keyboard and mouse events transfer, jrdesktop includes many additional features such as file transfer, data compression, color conversion and etc. jrdesktop uses RMI (Remote Method Invocation) with SSL/TLS to establish a secured connection between the viewer and the server.

    jrdesktop remote access linux to windows

    Since Java Remote Desktop (jrdesktop) runs on Java, it can remote access across different platforms. That means you can use Windows to connect to Mac OS, Linux to Windows, Windows to Linux, Mac OSX to Vista, and etc.

    jrdesktop Main features:

  • Screenshots, keyboard and mouse events transfer
  • Control functions : Start, Stop, Pause and Resume, view only, full control
  • Screen functions : full screen, custom size, scale, …
  • Data compression (with level selection)
  • JPEG quality compression (with level selection)
  • Color quality (full colors, 16 bits, 256 colors, gray color)
  • Clipboard transfer (texts and images only)
  • File transfer
  • Connection infos : duration, transferred data size, speed
  • Authentication & encryption
  • Multi-sessions

    • To run Java Remote Desktop, just download the package from the link at the end of this article, extract and run jrdesktop.jar file. If you get an error saying “Could not find the main class. Program will exit.”, you will need to run the jrdesktop.jar using command line.
    Could not find the main class. Program will exit.
    Go to Start > Run and type cmd to launch command prompt. CD to the jrdesktop directory and type the following command.

    java -jar jrdesktop.jar display

    There are a bunch of other commands that you can use to:

    1. Start jrdesktop server using default parameters (local machine with port 6666)
    java -jar jrdesktop.jar server

    2. Connect to (view) local machine
    java -jar jrdesktop.jar viewer

    3. Start multihomed server using port 8888, admin as username and pwd as password with secured connection (ssl)
    java -jar jrdesktop.jar -p:8888 -u:admin -d:pwd -s -m

    4. Connect to (view) 192.168.1.2 using port 8888, admin as username and pwd as password with secured connection (ssl)
    java -jar jrdesktop.jar -a:192.168.1.2 -p:8888 -u:admin -d:pwd -s

    The way jrdesktop sends a file across is a bit different compared to other remote access software. You won’t a dialog box where you can browse for the file that you want to send but instead it sends what is in your clipboard. Let’s say you want to send a file called Nero-9.0.9.4_esd_asknet.exe. Just right click on the file, select copy and then go back to jrdesktop and send. Alternatively, you can also use the shortcut key CTRL+C to copy a file to clipboard.

    You need to have Java installed in order to run jrdesktop. If you don’t have, just head to Java.com to install the latest Java Runtime Environment. To connect to a computer in a network from outside, you’ll need to configure port forwarding. It might not be the best if compared with several other popular remote access software but it has its own advantage which is able to control remote computers across different platforms.

    [ Download Java Remote Desktop ]

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  • An On-Demand Windows System Folder Changes Monitoring Tool

    Is your WINDOWS SYSTEM directory growing bigger and bigger, whenever you try out some new Windows software? Or you know that virus usually copies and hides itself inside Windows folder and need a tool to monitor for Windows directory changes? Previously I’ve written about a very good and small tool called Tiny Watcher which can take snapshot of important parts of your Windows system; then it tracks changes (every time you log in, or whenever you want to). When a change is detected, you are notified.

    Here is another similar tool called Syslog which is portable, free and is very similar to Tiny Watcher. It has less configuration than Tiny Watcher and can be used by both computer newbies and experts. All you need to do is run the small program, enter a comment and it takes merely a few seconds (6 seconds on my laptop) to scan for changes in Windows folder.


    Syslog is a small tool that keeps track of any changes that occur in your Windows System directory. Upon first run, it creates a database, using the current content of the directory. The next time you run it, it will compare the database to the current content and show you which files have been added or removed.

    Monitor Windows Folder with Syslog

    If you want to view back the old logs in Syslog, you can click the small Log icon at the menubar and the syslog.log file that has old changes records will open. It will show you the date, comment and also changes in Windows folder. That is all in Syslog, no complication settings or options. I would advice you to run Syslog at least once a day because if you don’t run it for a long time, there would be a lot of changes and it’d be tedious and time consuming for you to check every changes.

    The last time Syslog updated was on 29 may 2001. Syslog is an old tool but a good tool. It does what you need it to do and does not fail. Its small memory footprint is nice compared to some which take more of your processing power. I’ve tested Syslog on Windows Vista, the first run to create the database was successful but when you run it the second time to compare the database, Syslog crashes! As for Windows XP, Syslog works flawlessly. How I wish the author could update this tool to support Windows Vista.

    [ Download Syslog v3.2 ]

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  • Speed Up Computer with IObit Advanced WindowsCare Professional 2

    It is nearly impossible to maintain Windows speed and stability even for computer experts after using it for months/years and installing a lot of useless software. Just take Windows registry for an example. It is a huge database and whenever we install a software and later uninstall it, there will definitely be some entries left over. There are other factors that causes slowdown and we don’t even know about it. Previously I’ve shared with you on how to get the full version of Fix-It Utilities 7 Professional but it is a little outdated to tune up your computer system.
                   IObit Advanced WindowsCare Professional            IObit Advanced WindowsCare Personal
    Instead of using the old Fix-It Utilities or formatting your hard disk drive to reinstall a clean version of Windows, you can try improving the speed of your computer with Advanced WindowsCare 2.


    Advanced WindowsCare Personal is a comprehensive PC care utility that takes a one-click approach to help protect, repair, and optimize your computer. It provides an all-in-one and super convenient solution for PC maintenance and protection. All work will be done with 1 click and 1 minute. This fantastic program is available free of charge. Compared with its nearest competitor, Advanced WindowsCare Personal provides the more essential and practical formula for Windows: Removing Spyware and Adware, Preventing Security Threats, Privacy Protection, Fixing Registry Errors, Temporary Files Cleanup, Startup Cleanup, Repairing Windows, Speeding up System and 1-click Mechanism.

    Advanced WindowsCare 2 Professional

    Only 3 steps are required to diagnose your computer for problems and also solutions to fix them.

    Step 1: Open Advanced WindowsCare Personal Edition.
    Step 2: Click the SCAN button and Advanced WindowsCare Personal edition will scan your PC for possible errors and necessary fixes.
    Step 3: Review the scan results and click REPAIR.

    Other than fixing your computer problems, it can act as a system information software. It is able to display information about your computer’s Operating System, Processor, Mainboard, memory, drives, display, network, sound, keyboard and USB controller.

    I did a small comparison between the Professional and Personal version of Advanced WindowsCare 2 registry cleaner and here is what I got. The professional version (Registry Cleaner) found 1705 problems and personal (Registry Fix) found only 799 problems. The Startup Manager is also very useful because it is able to automatically determine if the startup item is dangerous or not based on Sysinfo.org database. It also has the ability to protect your computer against spyware and adware. Just check Spyware Removal and it will scan and remove any spyware/adware found on your computer. Other than that, it can also prevent spyware from being installed in your PC through immunization (like what SpyBot does).

    The comparison test on PC performance and health between its competitors shows that the Professional version of Advanced WindowsCare scored the highest with 97 and the Personal edition takes the second place…

    Compare computer optimization software

    I am quite surprised to see that even the free version of Advanced WindowsCare can beat TuneUp Utilities, System Mechanic, Norton 360, Registry Mechanic and etc. Well, most of Advanced WindowsCare competitors has gone through a major update so we don’t know which is the best now. Nevertheless, I still think that the Advanced WindowsCare 2 Personal is able to easily help us speed up our computer.

    Instead of letting you use the freeware version of Advanced WindowsCare 2, I manage to find a working and genuine serial number for Advanced WindowsCare 2 Professional for free without paying $29.95. This promotion is meant for Germany CHIP magazine readers and it doesn’t do online IP address check like AdMuncher. Just use the registration info below to activate the program. Enjoy!

    Account Name: chip.de
    License code: 85A945ED1F1A3DE3

    [ Download Advanced WindowsCare Professional ]

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  • How to Terminate Full Screen Game or Software Process when Hang

    The only computer game that I play is Counter-Strike Source, commonly shortened to CS:S or simply CSS. My desktop computer is powerful enough to handle the game but once in a while when I am playing the game half way, the game would just hang, sound is looping and nothing happens when I move the mouse or type anything on the keyboard. Weirdly, only the Counter Strike game hangs but my computer is still working fine. I know that my computer didn’t hang because when I press either the Num Lock, Caps Lock, or Scroll Lock keys at my keyboard, the LED light for the following keys would turn on and off.

    I’ve tried pressing Alt+Tab to switch between Windows, Alt+F4 to close the active program, Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Windows Task Manager, Ctrl+Alt+Del to launch Windows Security dialog box, but NOTHING worked! The only way is to hard reboot the computer by pressing the reset button at the computer case. Hard resetting a computer is never good because it can damage the hard drive and cause data corruption.

    Now I’ve figured a way to automatically terminate the game by pressing a shortcut key when it hangs.


    Actually it is pretty simple and doesn’t require any advance level of computer knowledge. First you need to know what is the process name used by the game. Let’s take Counter Strike Source as an example. You can check the process name for the game by right clicking the CSS shortcut and select Properties. Go to the Shortcut tab to view the Target. As you can see, CSS process is actually hl2.exe (half-life 2).
    Counter Strike Source Process Name

    Now you need to create a batch file that will kill the hl2.exe process when you simultaneously hit a combination of shortcut keys. Open Notepad (Start > Programs > Accessories > Notepad), and type the command line shown below.

    taskkill /IM hl2.exe

    You should replace the hl2.exe with the target of your game that you want to kill. Save the text file as killcss.bat or whatever you want to call it as long as the extension is .bat and not .txt. When you run the killcss.bat file, it should be able to close the game. Now we will assign a shortcut key to run the batch file.

    Right click the killcss.bat file and select “Create Shortcut”. A new file named “Shortcut to killcss.bat” will appear. Right click at “Shortcut to killcss.bat” file and select Properties. Click at the Shortcut Key blank area and type any key of your choice. If you type the letter “L”, it will automatically assign Ctrl + Alt + L as the shortcut key to run the killcss.bat file.

    shortcut key at desktop

    One very more important rule is that the .bat file MUST be placed at desktop for the shortcut key to take effect.

    When the game hangs in future, I just need to hit Ctrl + Alt + L key to kill the game so I can restart the game without hard resetting my computer.

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