Archive for the ‘Microsoft’ Category
Darko on March 28th, 2008
Lately, i’ve downloading lots of FLV files off of multiple websites. I have both K-lite and VLC installed on my laptop, witch pretty much does the trick.
Today, i wanted to play an FLV file in Windows Media Player 11, but as you might have noticed, WMP does not support FLV playback. So here’s what i did:
To play FLV files, we need to have a splitter because of the way it encodes two streams. I chose the FLV Splitter from the Guliverkli2 project.
1- Download the Splitter, you’ll have to register the file manually.
2-Place the “FLVSplitter.ax” file in your preferred directory, i chose c:\windows
3-Launch the Run service, and run the following line:
regsvr32 C:\WINDOWS\FLVSplitter.ax
Congratulation, Windows Media Player 11 now supports FLV playback on your PC
P.S: The Guliverkli2 project provides support for many other file types then FLV, includin: ogg, mov, rm…..Make sure to check it out
Darko on March 21st, 2008
I have used GreatNews: The intelligent RSS reader for over a year, and this application never failed me. GreatNews runs immediately and doesn’t require any special runtime environments.it’s a portable application.
With “Auto-discovery” Adding feeds to GreatNews is very simple, all you need to have is the link to the website and the reader will automatically find all the feeds offered by the website and give you the option to choose your preferred one.
Here’s a list of GreatNews Features(from the official website):
* Channel Statistics shows your top 10 most or least visited channels.
* Use labels to organize your articles. With just a single click, all items with the same label can be listed as if they are under the same folder. You can also use labelsto customize article exports.
* With Search Channels, you can type in stock symbol to track the latest news about the company via Yahoo Company News. Or use keywords to monitor latest blog comments via Feedster, MSN and Flickr
* Support all major feed formats, including RSS 0.9x, 1.0(rdf), 2.0, Atom 0.30 and 1.0. Support popular extensions like dublin core, content:encoding etc.
* Integrated internet browser, with tabs and popup blocking. Working closely with default browser like Firefox.
* With Import/Export wizard, you can import/export all channel subscriptions in a single step.
* Export rss articles to rss 2.0 format. You can also customize the export by selecting channel/group/label, and/or applying filters.
* Bloglines.com integration
Read everywhere at Bloglines.com, but read twice as fast at your desk.
* Full text search with keyword highlights.
* 100% Unicode support. Displays international languages on the same page. Use any languages anywhere in GreatNews, including Search, Label and News watch.
* “Channel Organizer” helps organize channel subscriptions in one place. Use “Find Channel” to locate your subscriptions quickly.
* Support HTTP Conditional GETs and gzip/deflate encoding to reduce bandwidth consumption.
* Track Comment function automatically updates articles with latest comments.
* BlogThis function to post directly to your blogging service. Support popular blogging tools like w.Bloggar, Zoundry and Windows Live Writer.
GreatNews: Official Website - Direct Download
Darko on March 12th, 2008
Since the moment i got my 1 GB Flash Memory stick, i began to gather all the portable applications i can find. Usually these applications are not marketed as portable, but you can easily figure it out by renaming the installation directory and running the application, if it run properly then it’s a portable application.
Here’s a list of free portable applications that every IT guy should have on his flash memory at all time.
PortableApps.com’s has a very nice list of portable application, here’s my favorite:
DesktopApps’s Simple and portable applications:
- menuApp - a menu based application launcher.
- audioApp - for all your one-click muting needs.
- monitorApp - a small system resource monitor.
- imageApp - a digital image viewer.
Windows Sysinternals’s (formerly Sysinternals) portable system monitoring software:
- Process Monitor - real-time monitoring of file system, Registry and process/thread activity
- RegMon - Sysinternals.com - Monitors all modifications on the registry
- DiskMon - Monitors all modifications and traffic on the hard drives
- FileMon - Monitors all modifications and traffic on files
- TcpView - Monitors all traffic incoming and outcoming from the system
All of the following application are 100% portable:
i will keep updating this list, every time i find a new portable application
Darko on March 7th, 2008
What are the $NTUninstall folders?
$NTUninstall is a folder that appears everytime you download on of Windows XP updates. For example, if you download KB924667, a $NtUninstallKB917953$ will appear in your WINDOWS directory.
These folders contains the information on how to remove the update, the same information used by “Add/Remove program” utility.
How to safely delete the $NTUninstall folders?
As i said before, these folders containing the uninstall information of windows updates, to delete them means that you can no longer roll back those updates. Nevertheles, these folders tend to take up space. So if you’re running out of disk space, you might consider deleting that data.
To find out the nature of the update in question, simply check Microsoft website, by copy/paste the id into the following link
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=(paste id here)
Ex: $NtUninstallKB917953$ > http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=917953
Now that you know what the update does, you can make your decision on whether you might uninstall it in the future or not. I recommend waiting a couple weeks after installation before making your decision. After that period, if you feel that your system is stable, odds are that you wont need to unistall the update anymore, you are good to go.
I recommend making a backup of everything before deleting.
Now, that you delete the folder, you might want to remove the entry from Add/Remove Programs.
To do that, launch the application and then attempt to uninstall the update.Add or Remove Programs will realize that the backup files already been delete and will automaticly remove the listing.
Darko on January 27th, 2008
Truecrypt is one of the most vital tools that any geek should have.
TrueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention. In plain English, Truecrypt will create encrypted drives that you can mount hide your data and dismount in just a few seconds.
Run the program and click on Create Volume
-Select the “Create a standard TrueCrypt volume”
-Select the path and filename of the new drive
-Selecting the encryption algorithm is a very simple. TrueCrypt Can crypt your data with 8 different algorithms, but any of the algorithms will offer you high level protection. Here’s an interesting excerpt I found about what algorithm to choose:
First of all, if speed is your thing than you need to seriously
consider the container type. File containers will typically be slower
than entire encrypted partitions. A *lot* slower in some cases. This
decision alone will have a much bigger impact on throughput than
algorithm choice.
That said, speed comparisons are going to be system dependant and
arbitrary. Any flat comparison might be misleading. And I think the
differences are going to be so minute in the real world that they’re
insignificant. I’ll offer a specific opinion later on, but first some
examples of why they’re arbitrary.
Key size shouldn’t directly directly impact speed, but it may change
the algorithm’s “rank” among its constituents from a 32 bit to a 64 bit
environment.
Your specific usage can also affect speed. Encryption almost always
takes more clock cycles than decryption. For some algorithms the
difference is more pronounced. If your activity is more “write
oriented” you might want to consider an algorithm with a
better encrypt/decrypt “ratio”.
There’s a lot of other little gotchas that might make one algorithm
perform better than another on your system, and with your usage. But if
you really *must* know which algorithms are considered “faster”…
Rijndael (AES) and Twofish are two of the best performers on a
“standardized” Pentium Pro, in a standardized implementation. Twofish
is slightly faster at encryption, but Rijndael takes the checkered in
key setup. I think overall, Rijndael would be the “winner” in a
standard usage scenario. CAST is not so far behind these two. I’d say
you’d be good with any of the three. On the other end, 3DES is probably
going to be one of the slowest.
FWIW, if you get down to the nitpicking “what if” of the thing, Twofish
is thought to be slightly more secure than Rijndael too.
So select the one you prefer
-Choose the drive size. This depends on the amount of data you want to hold inside the drive. I recommand that before selecting the size, put all the applications and data you want to store on the drive inside a folder and select the size of the drive based on the size of that folder. You might want to have a bit of free space for future modifications. So if the folder size is 20 MB, create a 30 MB drive…..
-Selecting a password is the most important task. You need to have a strong password, that can be immuned to brute force attacks and any kind of decrypting methods. The password should have letters(a b c), characters(!@#) and numbers (1 2 3).
-Now, all you have to do is format the drive
Of course there are many more options you can try but that the quick way to do it.
I should also mention that Truecrypt has lots of command line options and is a completly portable application
TrueCrypt: Official Website
Downloads Page
Direct Links to latest stable version - 4.3a:
Windows Vista/XP/2000/2003
Linux distributions:
OpenSuSE 10.2 x86
OpenSuSE 10.3 x86
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS x86
Ubuntu 7.04 x86
Ubuntu 7.04 x64 (64-bit)
Ubuntu 7.10 x86
Ubuntu 7.10 x64 (64-bit)
Source Code
Darko on January 2nd, 2008
I recently set Windows XP SP2 to Auto-update with me selecting witch updates to install. I usually let windows download and install everything on it’s own, but the purpose of my move was so that i can make a backup of all the updates and burn them on a cd, for future use.
Well, today the updater alerted me that there’s 15 new updates ready to be installed, looking through the list i found the package KB905474, witch is the infamous WGA tool used by Microsoft to determine if the copy is genuine or not. I hesitated to install the package, then said what the heck, what harm could it do. BIG MISTAKE!!!!
I use instantly notified that my windows XP copy is not genuine, now remember folks, i’m working on an HP compaq nx9010 with “Designed for Windows XP” sticker on the front and a Windows xp serial number on the back. Well, apparently the serial number has been blacklisted and now i was stuck with this stupid popup offering me to “become genuine”.
At this point i had two options:
1-Right click the WGA tray icon, and select “change notification settings”, then select “Don’t notify me again”, and “Yes I know this voids me from product support”
2-Stop or delete the whole WGA tool
Well, needless to say i opted for the second choice and here’s what i did
Start > Run > regedit > go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify > delete the WGALOGON folder and restart
After restarting everything returned to normal and i’m happy to announce that i’m back downloading updates
Darko on January 2nd, 2008
Have you noticed any of the following symptoms on your computer:
A new toolbars in your Internet Browser that you didn’t install
Your browser has been crashing without any justification
Your browser home page has changed on its own
…Then you most probably have spyware/adware on your PC
Spyware can be easily installed on computer simply by surfing through the web, witch leaves lots of system vulnerable to their attacks. They can be used to track user behavior online, redirect users to specific websites, launch ads directly in the desktop.
Spybot Search & Destroy searches the computer for +100000 different type of adware and spyware that hijacked the system.The application is well supported and updates are constantly available.
In edition to the ability of scanning computers for malware, Spybot has a function called Immunize that will help prevent any future attack by blocking all possible exploits.
Spybot is a dangerous tool, as good as it is, it can have some very destructive side-effect, this tool should be used by people who know what they’re doing, and please don’t take any action that might not fully understand it’s implications. With that being said i believe that this is a very important tool that every real geek and every IT person should have with him at all time
Spybot Search & Destroy: Official Website
Spybot Search & Destroy 1.5.1.15 : Direct Download
Spybot Search & Destroy Latest Update to install Offline : Direct Download
Darko on December 29th, 2007
It’s been a long time since I downloaded Free Download Manager for free, back then it was just simple download manager with some “Good Enough” features, witch were pretty impressive at the time. FDM has come a long way since then, with the release of it’s 2.5 version, it now includes a Bittorrent Client to download your torrents,a Flash video downloader to download video from Youtube, Myspace and others just by copy/pasting the link to that page. Not only that, the program will convert the downloaded multimedia file to AVI, MPEG-1 MPEG-2, MP3, MP4, WMV and FLV.
You can also use the program to upload files to Wikifortio.com. I think that this feature still needs some adjustments, while it integrates very well with Microsoft outlook, it will only upload the file temporarily, for a specific amount of time (1 month max.). nevertheless
I also should mention to of my favorite features in FDM, the Media preview witch will show you the downloaded part of your media files, and the Community opinions witch contains other people opinion about some downloads and let’s you know if something has flagged something you’re downloading as Malicious. I believe this feature has lots of potentials to grow while the community using FDM grows.
With this, i recommend that you download Free Download Manager, try it on your own and share with us your experience.
Free Download Manager: Official Website
Free Download Manager 2.5: Direct Download
Darko on December 27th, 2007
I always wanted a simple application that would let me collect notes and search through them. I’m not looking for something sophisticated, I only need a program that I can run, paste or write the note and close or minimize to tray without having to save. I found exactly what I’m looking for in Note Taker 2.1.
Note Taker automatically saves everything your write into it, and can be minimized to tray, it’s maximum memory usage reached 3200 K during the my testing period.Plus I can simply press CTRL-F to be able to search through the auto-saved notes.
This is a tiny application (113 KB) that can really increase your productivity.
GoodSoft.be Official Web site
Note Taker WebPage
Note Taker 2.1: Direct Download (113 KB)
Darko on December 27th, 2007
This tutorial will guide you through the process of creating an unattended Windows installation CD with the latest hotfixes, drivers, DirectX, IE7, WMP11, Office 2007 and any other software that you would like to include on the CD. Remove useless components, apply tweaks and system hacks for the highest possible performance and productivity.
Don’t miss the video version of this tutorial where you can actually see the whole process of creating a fully customized, unattended installation CD and the result tested and running in VMware Machine.
Requirements:
- nLite 1.4
- Net Framework 2.0
- WinXP CD
1. Copy the entire content of your WinXP CD in some local folder.
2. Install .Net Framework 2.0 and nLite.
3. Choose your preferred language on the first screen:
4. Tell nLite where are your WinXP files. Select “Browse” and navigate to the local folder you created in step 1:
5. Choose what you want to do. You can choose only one operation, all of them, or any combination. For example, you can choose to create an ISO and skip the rest:
6. Service Pack: Slipstream a Service Pack into the installation. Just download SP2 for WinXP and nLite will do the rest. If you integrate SP2 you will not need SP1 because SP2 supersedes it.
7. Hotfixes, Addons and Update Packs: Add hotfixes and/or update packs to your installation. Any addons for nLite that you add here will be installed silently during Windows Setup also.
How to get all hotfixes after SP2:
* Use RyanVM Post SP2 Update Pack.
* Install WinXP. Run Windows Update and write down all the required hotfixes. Download them manually from Microsoft.
* Windows Updates Downloader - let this program download all hotfixes for you.
* Information about the hotfix releases could be found here: MSFN, TheHotfixShare and SoftwarePatch
* Windows Media Player 11: Download WMP11 Integrator and the WMP11 installer. Use WMP11 Integrator to slipstream WMP11 into your WinXP CD before making any changes with nLite. Once WMP11 is slipstreamed you can proceed with nLite.
* Internet Explorer 7.0: Just download IE7 and slipstream the .exe with nLite.
* Office 2007: Work in progress!
* Addons: Download more than 350 addons for nLite from WinAddons. These .cab addons will be installed silently during Windows Setup.
Video Tutorial Video tutorial: Slipstream Windows Media Player 11
Video Tutorial Video tutorial: Slipstream Internet Explorer 7 with nLite
Video Tutorial Video tutorial: Integrate addons with nLite
8. Drivers: Integrate drivers into the installation. Browse to some .inf files and nLite will do the rest. Thanks to http://driverpacks.net/ you can create an installation CD with drivers for almost any piece of hardware. During setup Windows will only use the drivers required and will ignore completely the others. Unused drivers won’t be copied on your hard drive.
Video tutorial: Integrate drivers with nLite
9. Components: Select the components you want to remove from the installation. Make sure to read the short info before removing components especially those in red. Check the Components Removal Example to get an idea about the most important components you should not remove.
By clicking on Advanced you will be given the opportunity to keep some specific files. For example you can remove “Command Line Tools” but you can preserve ping.exe, ipconfig.exe, etc. which are part of this component by adding them to the Keep Box:
Power users could ignore the Compatibility Wizard:
10. Unattended: Set personal settings in advance so you don’t have to during the installation like Users, CD-Key, Regional settings, etc. Here you can also add Windows themes:
Video tutorial: Unattended installation CD with nLite
Adding themes: you’re using some neat Windows theme and want it on your CD as well? Here is an example how to slipstream Luna Element 4 and set it as a default theme:
Video tutorial: Integrate themes with nLite
11. Options: You can pretty much ignore the General tab and go directly to Patches:
* Maximum unfinished simultaneous connections (TCP/IP patch): Set it to 100 or 1000 for max P2P performance.
* USB Port Polling Frequency (Hz): Increase for smoother USB mouse movement. Not for wireless mice or any other USB device, use with caution! Works on Logitech MX, MS IntelliMouse Explorer 3, Razer Viper and possibly others.
* Unsigned Themes Support (Uxtheme Patch): Set it to enable and you will be able to use a 3rd party themes (from DeviantArt for example).
* SFC (Windows File Protection): Set it to disable to stop the automatic recovery of replaced or deleted system files and folders. Although it might sounds like a useful feature, it’s highly recommended to disable it. The duration of your installation will be reduced drastically.
Video tutorial: Patch Windows with nLite
12. Tweaks: this is pretty much self-explanatory. Apply your favorite registry tweaks and configure Windows Services. Once Windows is installed all your tweaks will be applied, no need of post-install tuning.
It’s possible to configure the services as well.
Here you will find an excellent Windows Services Guide.
13. Bootable ISO: we’re almost ready. Once created just burn on CD the ISO or test it in a virtual machine. You can burn the ISO with nLite or your favorite CD/DVD burner like Nero for example. It’s recommended to use rewritable media (CD-RW or DVD-RW) to avoid media loss in case you’re not happy with your WinXP copy and want to create another one.
Video tutorial: Create a Bootable CD with nLite
Video tutorial: Burn ISO files with Nero
Video tutorial: Test ISO in VMware Machine 5.5 – shareware
Video tutorial: Test ISO in Virtual PC 2004 – freeware
Video tutorial: Test ISO in VirtualBox 1.5 – freeware
Copyright: Rado@WinAddons
