Last week, i was called to fix a machine which had XP installed in it. As usual, i tried to look into the symptoms. The behavior i observed was, whenever i tried to execute a shortcut( or Double click a short cut) to open an application, nothing happens. None of the applications opened.
Surely i figured out, that the system was affected with some kinda virus. And when i didn't want to continue looking at the symptoms of that virus and when i came to know that data backup was not needed, i just went ahead with a clean reinstall of the Windows.
But the cool part which i figured out later is, how to identify if our executable( ie .exe ) files are affected with a virus.Because some of the apps act weirdly sometimes.It could be a failure in the app code, that might cause the app to stop working or it could be the virus.And usually most of the viruses target the .exe files on your system.
Here is an easy way to find out, if your system is really affected with that kinda virus or not.
1. Open Start -> Run
2. Type in cmd and press 'Enter' ( go to the command prompt )
3. goto your windows folder.
Mostly this action need you to key in the following commands
- cd \ 'press enter'
- cd windows or cd winnt 'press enter'
- cd system32 'press enter'
- setup 'press enter'
If you get a popup window saying " Please go to Control Panel to install and configure system components" then your .exe files are not affected and you can be sure that your system is safely away from those harmful viruses.
If you get something else... or nothing pops up... then you better get your AntiVirus updated.
This method can also be used to check your computer, even without an antivirus available.
SystemCheckup without an Antivirus
Turn Off Desktop Cleanup Warning in XP
Windows xp always shows this ballon popup, which suggest you for a desktop cleanup. When you run this cleanup wizard, it removes your unused desktop shortcuts or files and places them into a unused folder.
But most of the times, this balloon is irritating and i want my desktop to be like the way it is..
I have a quick fix for this...
1.Right Click on the empty space on your desktop,
2.Goto> Properties
3. select the desktop tab
4. Click on the Customize Desktop button
5. Under General tab you will be able to see desktop cleanup
6. Uncheck the Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days checkbox...
7. Click ok>Apply>ok and you are done..
8. Your windows will not complain to you anymore about your desktop
Embedded Translator in Chrome
I'm starting to like Google Chrome these days...Today i discovered a new feature of Google chrome.. thats the embedded Google Translator which is available with the latest version of chrome browser.
- Select the Tools
menu - Select Options
- Select Under the Hood tab
- Uncheck the Offer to translate pages that aren't in the language i read checkbox
Ways to download videos from Youtube and other video streaming sites
There are lot of tools available to do the job mentioned above. You can use softwares, websites or addons to get the video. I would like to mention a few things to make it easier.
Softwares: Youtube Downloader or Vdownloader are some famous softwares that would help you download streaming videos. There are many other softwares, but I prefer not to use one.
Websites: Keepvid is a good website where you would paste the Youtube URL and you can choose between the mp4 or the flv format of the video to download.
You can also try this:
Prefix the youtube url with the word 'kick'
For example, this www.youtube.com/(something)
becomes, www.kickyoutube.com/(something)
and it'll take you to a page where you can download the video in several different formats like 3gp, mp4, avi, flv, etc.
The options are good, but it works only for Youtube.
Addons: Video DownloadHelper is what I would recommend to download videos from any video sharing site (I assume you're a Firefox user). It's a great addon with lot of options like 'quick download' and 'download and convert', to name a few.
Sites and softwares constrain to only some video streaming sites, not all. So there is still a traditional method of pulling out the videos from cache of your browser.
Windows users:
Goto C:\Documents and Settings\
You can sort the files in the Cache directory in the order of 'Date Modified' or 'Size' to get the video on top. Identify the video and rename it to (something).flv
Linux users:
It's a cakewalk. Allow the video to buffer and goto /tmp directory. You'll find the video there, with the thumbnail image (if the codecs are installed)
Mouse Tricks
Everyone would be familiar with the most important user interface component of a computer... the mouse.
Now a days, its common for every mouse to have a wheel in it. The wheel as everyone know is used for scrolling up and down a document... This wheel has many other functions when it comes to a browser. Lets see what other functionality does this wheel has
1. Tabbed Browsing.
Every browser today supports tabbed browsing, whether its IE 8 , Mozilla , Opera or the google chrome... The wheel on your mouse can act as button. When you want a link to be open in a new tab, you just have to click on the wheel. The wheel is like a third button on your mouse.
Now you need not have to right click and then select the Open Link in New Tab option from now...Just go clicking the wheel.
2. The second trick is a cool one, just try holding the shift key on your keyboard and then try spinning your wheel( or scrolling) , you actually go forward and back depending on the direction you spun. This works in both IE and Mozilla.
3. One more trick with the wheel...In a situation where you have opened up multiple tabs say around 25 tabs open on your tab bar, you will have to go and click on the arrow button at the left or right end of the bar to scroll in correspondingly. Rather than doing this, you can actually move the mouse pointer on the tabs open and spin the wheel to scroll back and forth , This feature worked in mozilla firefox
Try it out... when you are bored to click on the back and forward button in a browser.
Few Tips to keep safe from Computer viruses
Readers of this blog ...Today i wanna give you few tips to Safe keeping your desktops and laptops from all the viruses that are wildly waiting to attack your computer with their vulnerablities.
Good to know that these days the viruses don't get shipped with the Cd's or dvd's. And thus it leaves us only to the counter-attack the viruses that are in your pen drives, memory sticks or the memory cards.
I would like to present you the few basics at first and then proceed with the method to prevent viruses from attacking your PC.
- Firstly as everyone suggests...install a good antivirus on your pc or laptop. Norton, McAfee, Avg, Eset Nod32 any one of them will be fine.
- Keep updating your antivirus software regularly.
- Before opening your pendrive do a scan of the pen drive with the antivirus scanner.
- Delete all the files that would be shown as affected.
But as the days go by, and the technology grows... reducing the physical size but increasing the capacity of the pen drives. These days its common to have 2gb, 4gb, 8gb and 16gb pendrives.
Few years back we used to get hard disk of these sizes.
Scanning few mega bytes would not take much of the time, but these days when you have a 8 gb pen drive filled with your office files and you take to a cybercafe near your place for a print out and the guy there starts a scan on the whole pen drive... Believe me its gonna eat up lots of your minutes.
I experienced this when my friend brought the designs of our t-shirt in his 8gb pen drive to the shop where we had gone to give the order, and the guy there started scanning it.
We just required a single file from the pen drive. And in this age where impatience is the new life, its not agreeable to waste time scanning the whole pen drive.
So whats the alternative to scaning the whole pendrive.
Yeah I do have an alternative, But prior to it, let me take you on a walk through, of how the viruses from the pen drive affect the PC's on how so they spread.
When you insert your pendrive into the usb , the windows searches for the drivers and are automatically installed and it displays that the device is installed and ready to use
In the next step it searches for the 'autorun.exe' or "autorun.inf" file which lies inside every pendrive. This is a hidden file which will be in the pendrive by default from the device manufacturer .This file contains the various calls to other files. The windows by its default behaviour runs this autorun file.
So now if there are any virus scripts or any programs like trojan horse, malwares etc... they wil be inside your pendrive. The virus writter just need to edit this autorun file and put a line of code into it so that whenever autorun is called ,it automatically calls the virus script which runs in the background and thus it starts affecting all your files.
And this will happen everytime you plug this pendrive into your usb drive in any of the systems.
- So my first tip is to disable the autorun in your windows.
This is done by editing the groups policies. Go to start > run > type 'gpedit.msc' and press ok
A group policy editor window will popup. As shown below.
Now in this window there are two configurations the computer configuration and the user configurations.When you click on these the right side partition will show various options which can be enabled and disabled.
Now we need to browse through the path computer configuration> Administrative templates > System . Now scroll down in the right partitions and you will find an option saying turn off autoplay. As shown below.
Double click on the Turn off Autoplay, you will get a popup window as shown below. here the default option would be selected saying its not configured. Change it to enabled and also select All drives in the drop down menu.
Now press Apply and Ok.
Now you need to change the settings in the user configuration. Its very similar to the above process . Go to the path user configuration > Administrative templates > System > Turn off Autoplay . enable it for all the drives.
as shown below.
Press ok and you are done with it. Close the window.This also has a side effect. For example if you insert your favourite movie DVD. It now doesnot autorun with your DVD software. you need to browse the cd and manually select the files that you want to play.
2. The first one was good to prevent the virus from spreading.But the virus file is still in your pendrive. Usually the name of the virus file will be very similar to your folder names inside the pendrive. You open your pendrive and there is a virus file inside the pendrive ... something like 'New folder'. And you accidently doubleclick on this folder thinking it was your folder but it was actually 'New folder.exe' which runs the virus file.This again affects your computer.
So in this step we will change the folder options such that it shows all the hidden folders.
You go to start > control panel > folder options
In the Folder option window, scroll down and select 'Show hidden files and folders'
3. the third and the last step is to untick the check box saying 'hide the extensions of known files type'. It is just next option below the show hidden files option .This will display the extension of every file in the system. You will feel the difference when you open your mp3 folder where the name of the song is suffixed with .mp3
Now its easy to distinguish between the original 'New Folder' and the 'New Folder.exe'.
Thus after the step 2 and 3 the folder options should look similar to the image below.
Apply it and click on Ok and your are ready.
Thus now you need not be scared that you double clicked the drive as soon as you insert it into the usb drive and the virus will start to spread.
After opening the pendrive you just need to browse only the folders that you know are free of virus and now you dont accidently click into any of the unknown file. You can just delete the New folder.exe file now and similarly other hidden files.
Now you can put your pendrive anywhere , in a cybercafe and you don't need to worry that your pendrive is affected and you need to scan he whole memory now. Just right click and open the pendrive and only copy the files and folders that you created and the rest can be deleted.
Thus you dont need to waste time scanning , you need not waste time thinking that you opened the pendrive without scanning.
This method is safe only if there are few files.
And when every folder is affected in the pendrive, then you obviously need to have a good antivirus scanner to clean all your files or delete the virus.
