PC Tools Registry Mechanic 8

With Registry Mechanic 8 you can safely clean, repair and optimize the Windows registry with a few simple mouse clicks! Problems with the Windows registry are a common cause of Windows crashes, slow performance and error messages. By using a registry cleaner regularly and fixing registry errors your system should not only be more stable but it will also help improve your system performance without expensive hardware upgrades. Learn more about the importance of a clean registry with our registry insight. Registry Mechanic 8 now includes a tune-up your services feature that can be applied to improve system performance, reduce consumption of system resources and provide faster start-up times. This feature is tailored to improve gaming experience, boost performance, enhance security and stop services4 not required for computers that are not connected to a network.

Registry Mechanic uses a high-performance detection algorithm to quickly identify missing and invalid references in your Windows registry. These problems can occur for many reasons including being left-behind after the un-installation or incorrect removal of software, by missing or corrupt hardware drivers, or orphaned startup programs.

With a few easy steps our registry cleaner will scan your entire registry for any invalid entries and provides a list of the registry errors found, you can then choose to selectively clean each item or automatically repair them all. For your convenience and protection Registry Mechanic can also make a backup of any repairs made so that you can easily recover any changes if required.

Don't compromise your registry with the second best!

• World's most popular registry cleaner with over 60 million downloads.
• Recommended by experts and editors as the world's best registry cleaner.
• Clean the registry to fix Windows errors and crashes.
• Registry defrag to optimize your PC for better performance.
• FREE customer support for all users.
• Easy to use. Designed for both expert and novice users.

Safely repair invalid entries in your Windows Registry, which can lead to Windows crashes and error messages. Over time, invalid entries and orphaned shortcuts can accumulate in the registry as a result of uninstalling or incorrectly removing software from your system, having missing or corrupt hardware or software drivers, or deleting files referenced by shortcuts. Registry Mechanic can safely clean and repair invalid entries from your registry with a few simple mouse clicks.

Improve operating system performance and stability by removing orphaned references in your Windows Registry.
Registry Mechanic's ability to streamline your Windows Registry and remove orphaned references can significantly improve your system's stability and performance. Scans your hard drive for invalid and incorrect program shortcuts Registry Mechanic can scan for invalid and incorrect shortcuts in customizable locations on your computer.

A highly functional Scan results screen.
The Scan results screen provides full text search capabilities to allow for rapid problem identification using text strings, and expandable and collapsible problem views. Automatically creates Windows Registry backups with each repair, with the option to restore them Registry Mechanic automatically creates a backup of all changes it makes to the registry, allowing these changes to be restored to their original condition at a later time. On Windows XP operating systems, Registry Mechanic also allows the creation of Windows System Restore points prior to implementing repair changes, as an additional backup measure.

A Registry Monitor feature.
Registry Monitor is designed to assists in keeping your system free of Windows Registry errors. Registry Monitor1 observes your Windows Registry and alerts you when a specified number of changes have been made to key areas of the registry. When alerted, you have the option to run a silent scan. This optional feature can begin monitoring your registry as soon as Windows starts up.

Compacts the Windows Registry for optimized system performance.
Registry Mechanic incorporates a registry compacting feature, which analyzes, rebuilds and compacts the Windows Registry by removing registry gaps and free space, and corrupt keys.

An 'Optimize Your System' feature.
Registry Mechanic implements a system optimization function which, at the click of a button, applies a set of tweaks and patches directly into the Windows Registry that are designed to improve system performance. This feature also includes boot file defragmentation and rebuilding, and sorts and refreshes the Windows Start Menu items list, all of which is designed to improve the efficiency and speed at which Windows starts up.

Ability to conduct an automatic scan at Windows startup, for continued system optimization.
Registry Mechanic can be set to conduct a background scan each time you start up your PC. The Repair function can also be set to run automatically at the end of a scan, thereby allowing you to continue using your system without the need to interact with Registry Mechanic.

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Norton Antivirus 2010

Norton AntiVirus 2010 leverage a new model of security, codenamed Quorum, to attain unmatched detection of new malware and advance far beyond traditional signature and behavior-based detection. Specifically, Quorum takes the greatest weapon cyber criminals have in their arsenal - their ability to generate unique pieces of malware at an alarming rate - and turns that very weapon against them. This is protection for 1 PC for 1 Year.

Limited time offer available only in the United States to students: (i) who attend an educational institution located in the United States; and (ii) who have an email address at their educational institution with the .edu domain suffix.

Norton AntiVirus works quietly in the background, so you can continue using your PC and the Internet without disruption and without having to respond to confusing security alerts. It automatically checks for and installs new threat signatures and product features as they become available throughout your service subscription.

Even if your computer is already infected, Norton AntiVirus is the ideal solution. It detects and removes spyware, viruses, and other security risks during installation, assuring a clean installation and a fresh start. A new, faster scanning engine minimizes the impact on your computer's resources, so you can continue to work or play without interruption.

With Quorum, the very uniqueness of a file and its attributes is what helps us identify it as new malware. More than three years in the making, Quorum tracks files and applications and dozens of their attributes such as their age, download source, digital signature, and prevalence. These attributes are then combined using complex algorithms to determine a reputation. As a file is distributed across the Internet and these attributes change, Quorum updates the reputation of the file. This reputation is especially important when a file is new, likely to be a threat, and traditional defenses are not likely to detect it.

Following on the success of the Norton 2009 release, Symantec has made an ongoing commitment to delivering security products that are fast and light. The Norton 2010 products have maintained an eye on performance, in spite of adding significant new protection technology to the release.

The Norton Insight family of technologies in the new 2010 products uses extensive online intelligence systems to proactively protect the PC and keep users informed of the security and performance impact of files and applications that they encounter in their everyday online experience.

Norton Download Insight - Uses extensive online intelligence systems leveraging reputation to proactively protect your PC. Analyzes and reports on the safety of new files and applications before users install and run them.

Norton System Insight - Provides features and easy-to-understand system information to help keep PCs performing at top speed. Automatic and on-demand application optimization rejuvenates application performance. Provides a view of recent events on the computer, providing the information required to research and analyze PC issues. Performance graphs help pinpoint what's causing a computer to slow down.

Norton Threat Insight - Provides details on threats that have been detected on your PC - including useful information on where it came from (the URL) and when it was initially encountered.

Norton Insight Network - Leverages a cloud-based approach unique to Symantec. Based on the Quorum technology, it takes cloud-based security beyond traditional blacklists and whitelists. It uses a statistical analysis of file attributes based on billions of scans on millions of computers to identify the trust level of a file. This way Norton can identify files to be trustworthy or untrustworthy that would otherwise fall into the grey area of the unknown with only traditional security methods.

SONAR 2 - Sophisticated second-generation behavioral security technology that detects entirely new threats based on their suspicious actions, without the need for traditional fingerprints. Leverages data from the reputation cloud, firewall, network communications (IPS), and file attributes such as location on the PC, origin information, etc., to decide when to detect a program as a threat.

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Mac OSSubscribe Adobe Photoshop Elements 8

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 software now available for your Windows and/or Mac computers, providing automated and intelligent photo-enhancing technology across both of these platforms. Adobe continues to make cutting-edge technology accessible to consumers and photo enthusiastswho want powerful yet easy-to-use tools to tell and share their compelling stories and adventures with their photos. Both versions now include Adobe's famous intelligent photo-editing options that will help you enhance and clean up your photos as well setup and organize all of your photos as well. Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows is ready for download now and Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 for Mac will be available in a few weeks. Adobe is offering some mailin rebates through October 31, 2009 to customers in the United States that make a great reason to obatin this latest version as soon-as-possible.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 combines power and simplicity so you can make your photos look extraordinary, share your life stories in unique print creations and web experiences, and easily manage your photos and video clips.

Twitter confirms major cash boost

Social networking website Twitter has confirmed that it has closed a "significant round of funding".

Co-founder Evan Williams said in a blog post that the site had secured money from five investment firms.

However, he did not confirm earlier reports that suggested the firm had managed to secure $100 million (£62m), which would value the firm at $1bn.

The site, which allows users to write and share 140-character messages, has more than 45 million users worldwide.

The site had previously raised $35m in February in a deal that valued the business then at $255m.

"It was important to us that we find investment partners who share our vision for building a company of enduring value," wrote Mr Williams.

"Twitter's journey has just begun."

Industry watchers have pointed out that the firm still has no way of making money.

However, earlier this month the site revised its terms and conditions to allow advertising on its service.

"We leave the door open for advertising. We'd like to keep our options open," wrote co-founder Biz Stone in a blog.

The new funding has come from new investors Insight Venture Partners and T Rowe Price, as well as existing backers Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Benchmark Capital.

By : BBC

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we are very sorry for the delay fix website : leech.hitechvnn.info . We have negotiated hosting provider and will soon re-open on September 22, 2009
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Acronis True Image Home 2010 PC Backup & Recovery

We are all storing more and more of our media and "stuff" on our computers which only raises the danger of data lose due to a system or hard drive corruption or failure. Acronis True Image Home 2010 is designed to protect your "digital stuff" from viruses, bad code of all types and hard drive failures while remaining easy to setup and easy to use. Backup software has certainly been around for a long time but for those people not an IT pro the software has been challenging to setup and sometimes difficult to use. Acronis True Image Home 2010 changes that as it is both powerful and is easy to use.

Acronis True Image Home 2010 can backup your entire PC including your operating system and all your favorite application and browser settings by creating a mirror image of your hard drive. or you can backup just your important digital files, music, videos, photos and emails. You can backup your drive(s) to other hard drives, networked store devices, writeable CD/DVD ROMs, removable media drives and external hard drives so you have all sorts of flexibility with your backups. Acronis True Image Home 2010 has great features to set it up and then forget it until you need it with automated scheduled backups that will not get in the way of you using your computer. True Acronis True Image Home 2010 can also remove all your data from a hard drive that you are ready to give away or discard.

Protect your digital life with this award winning backup software and know that your "stuff" is safely tucked away!

[Download]

One Last Look: ASRock And MSI Preview P55 Motherboards

Meet MSI's P55-GD80, the company's highest-end P55-based offering, expected to run right around $200. As with many past MSI platforms, this one sports tasteful aesthetic touches, like black and dark blue components, classy, unobstructed cooling on the voltage regulation circuitry, and an oversized anodized-looking heatpipe.

In this preview, we'll explore MSI's flagship in greater depth and then introduce ASRock's upcoming top-end model as well. Representatives from ASRock recently spent the afternoon in our Bakersfield, California lab to talk about P55 plans, pricing, power, and future technologies--I'll give you more detail as we skirt around the company's P55 Deluxe.

But first, let's dive into the P55-GD80, a board we're expecting to be a hit with the overclocking community and will evaluate in greater depth once Intel's upcoming platform officially debuts...

You'll find no surprises here: two legacy PS/2 ports, coaxial/optical digital audio outputs, FireWire 400, plenty of USB 2.0, eSATA (with a powered USB port), dual Gigabit Ethernet jacks, and analog audio connectivity constitute the board's basic back-panel I/O.

MSI's V-Check Points facilitate easy readings if you have a multimeter and want to take your own voltage measurements. To the left of that block, you'll find a bank of DIP switches used to unlock more aggressive voltage options in the board's BIOS.

As with most other P55 boards, the P55-GD80 proffers four DDR3 memory slots supporting dual-channel configurations running at speeds as high as 1,333 MT/s. The slots themselves are color-coded to ensure you install modules correctly.

We've actually spent some quality time with MSI's OC Dial feature, which worked well on the company's 790FX-GD70. OC Genie actually handles the overclocking process automatically by altering Bclk settings in the BIOS through a hardware-based IC. More than likely, this is something mainstream folks might be tempted to play with, but we're pretty confident that power users will choose to set their own parameters. Fortunately, two on-board Direct OC buttons facilitate 1 MHz Bclk adjustments in either direction.

Underneath the Direct OC and OC Genie buttons, you'll find Green Power, reset, and power icons silk screened onto the PCB. Those are actually touch-sensitive buttons that light up when activated, similar to the power button on a PS3. MSI calls the feature Easy Button 2, and we dig it.

With support for CrossFire and SLI, the first two PCI Express x16 slots on MSI's P55-GD80 are tied to the LGA 1156 interface. With one graphics card installed, the top slot gets all 16 of the CPU's available lanes. With two installed, the slots automatically revert to x8/x8. The third x16 slot runs to the P55 PCH and is wired to operate at x4 signaling rates. Bear in mind that if you populate the third slot, neither of the x1 slots will be usable. Why not? Doesn't P55 include eight lanes of PCI Express 2.0? Yes, it does. But MSI's integrated extras (networking/storage) utilize what's left. So, just keep the slot limitations in mind as you plan your upgrade path.

Two standard PCI slots round out expansion on the P55-GD80.

Several vendors claim to optimize intricate power circuits, switching phases on and off as needed. MSI's implementation (which centers on a relatively-conservative eight phase hardware design) is complemented by an LCD readout indicating exactly how many power phases are being used at any given time.

Given that the Core i5 and Core i7 processors launching next month are 95W parts, we suspect that MSI's decision to go eight-phase, even when competing vendors are deploying as many as 24, is probably a safe bet. We've already taken a pre-production i5 up past 4.1 GHz on this board without any sort of issue. And we know from discussions with Intel that lower phase counts, designed properly, can be just as effective as more complex solutions.

MSI covers its MOSFETs with beefy heatsinks and a substantial heatpipe. This cooling circuit, dubbed SuperPipe, is designed to draw heat away from on-

board components and move it to less-sensitive areas of the motherboard. The heatsink on the left in the above picture doesn't actually rest on vital core logic. Rather, it's in place to help keep power circuitry cooler. We've seen similar designs from other vendors and questioned the necessity of extra cooling on a cost-conscious d

esign. However, at a sub-$200 price, we're willing to test the effectiveness of SuperPipe when it comes time to round up the higher-end P55 platforms.

Most of the features highlighted on MSI's P55-GD80 center on drawing in the enthusiast crowd. However, "True Blu-ray Audio" silk-screened onto the PCB caught our attention, too. So, what does that mean, exactly?

As far as we're able to tell, it's a reference to the integrated Realtek ALC889 audio codec. CyberLink's PowerDVD 9 playback app supports the ALC889 (among four other HD Audio codecs) and offers up to 96 kHz / 24-bit audio playback through eight analog channels. It won't do lossless pass-through, like Asus' Xonar HDAV 1.3 , but there is truth to MSI's claim for high-def support if you're using the right playback application and speaker configuration.

AMD Athlon II X4 620: Quad Core For The Masses At $100

With the recent introduction of Intel’s new LGA 1156-based Core i5 and Core i7 processors, AMD faces even more pressure in the competitive upper-mainstream and high-end market segments. Phenom II is a great processor design, but it can only beat Intel’s growing Nehalem family on price.

However, it was only a matter of time until the firm introduced triple- and quad-core processors that don't include any L3 cache—a perfect opportunity for a comeback of the Athlon brand. Welcome the Athlon II X4, follow-up to the Athlon II X2 launched back in June.


What It Has

The new Athlon really isn’t new, although AMD introduces two fresh core names for it: Propus (for the quad-core family) and Rana (for the triple-core).

The first sample we received is a 2.6 GHz Propus blessed with all the features of the Phenom II, including its 45 nm SOI manufacturing process and four cores with 512KB L2 cache each. The chip also sports all of the extensions you’d want today: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4a, Enhanced 3DNow!, the NX bit feature (or execute disable, on Intel CPUs), 64-bit support, AMD-V virtualization support, and Cool’n’Quiet to lower clock speeds and voltages during idle periods.

Since Propus is based on the Deneb design, all new Athlon II X3 and X4 processors can operate either on Socket AM2+ platforms with DDR2 memory or on Socket AM3 with DDR3. Clearly, the new processors represent an excellent upgrade option for older AM2 systems, especially if you consider the attractive $100 price point.

What It Doesn’t Have

No one should be surprised that $100 won’t buy you a top-of-the-line product, so we have to wonder about the chip’s limitations. The most obvious step down is the cache architecture. All Athlon II processors, including the already-introduced Athlon II X2 chips, lack any L3 cache memory.

Given this, the Athlon II X4 breaks with AMD’s tradition of implementing shared cache memory in unified multi-core processor designs. The L3 omission is the main differentiator between the Phenom II and the Athlon II families, although there are obviously also clock speed differences (lower on the Athlon II side).

However, the stripped L3 cache may introduce an advantage of one sort, as the transistors necessary to realize the Phenom II’s 6 MB L3 cache require power. It follows that the Athlon II X4 shouldn’t perform anywhere near the Phenom II X4’s level, but it could end up being more efficient.

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How To Install Windows 7 Faster Using USB Flash Drive

I’ve tried researching on how to install Windows XP from a USB flash drive before and when I finally managed to do it, the whole process is so unbearably slow that I thought I would NEVER install it from a USB flash drive. Recently there has been many articles about installing Windows 7 from USB flash drive and I’ve decided to give it another try and see if there is any improvement on the speed. Installing Windows from USB has its advantage which is you don’t need to worry if the DVD drive cannot read the disc or if there is any scratches on the Windows installation DVD, and it is more convenient to carry around your USB flash drive rather than a DVD disc. Moreover, a lot of new compact small laptops or desktops doesn’t even have a CD/DVD drive. Other than that, you can even save useful software setups such as Firefox, Windows Live Messenger, 7-Zip, Orbit Downloader and etc into the USB drive so you can install them once Windows installation has been completed.

I will show you two ways (manual and automatic) on how to install Windows 7 using your USB drive.

Before we start, make sure you have at least a 4GB USB flash drive. Windows 7 installation files takes up around 3GB of space. The manual way
1. Insert your USB flash drive.
2. Hit WIN+R, type cmd and click OK.
3. Type diskpart and hit ENTER
4. Type list disk, hit ENTER and identify the disk number for your USB flash drive. You MUST be very sure of this or else you’ll be formatting the wrong drive later on. If you have only one hard drive, then normally your USB flash drive will be disk 1.
5. Type select disk 1 and hit ENTER
6. Type clean and hit ENTER
7. Type create partition primary and hit ENTER
8. Type select partition 1 and hit ENTER
9. Type active and hit ENTER
10. Type format fs=fat32 and hit ENTER
11. Type assign and hit ENTER
12. Type exit and hit ENTER
13. Insert the Windows 7 installation DVD disc and copy everything from the DVD to your USB flash drive.
14. Boot up your computer with USB flash drive. You will need to go into your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot from flash devices. If you got it right, the Windows 7 installation should load from your USB flash drive.
The automatic way
There is a software called WinToFlash that does everything above automatically. All you need to do is run the program, set the location of the Windows 7 installation disc and the destination of your USB flash drive.
1. Download the latest version of WinToFlash
2. Extract and run WinToFlash.exe
3. Click the big check button to start Windows setup transfer wizard.
4. Click Next
5. Specify the locations of Windows files and USB drive then click Next. The Windows files path if the drive letter of your DVD drive and the USB drive is the drive letter of your USB flash drive.
6. Select “I Accepted the terms of the license agreement” and click Continue.
7. Click OK to start formatting your USB flash drive and the files will be automatically transferred from your Windows 7 install disc to your USB flash drive.
8. Click Next when finished copying and boot up the computer with USB flash drive. You will need to go into your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot from flash devices. If you got it right, the Windows 7 installation should load from your USB flash drive. Your computer hardware specification plays a part on the time taken to install Windows. I managed to complete installing Windows 7 from USB flash drive with only 17 minutes and my desktop’s specification is Intel Pentium D 2.8GHz, 2GB ram, 7200RPM 160GB SATA hard drive and MSI 945P Platinum mainboard. When I time installing Windows 7 using DVD, it took 22 minutes. So on my desktop computer, it is 22% faster installing Windows using USB flash drive compared to DVD.

Remount Ejected or Safely Removed USB Device Without Unplug and Reinsert

f you’ve requested for the free license of USB Safely Remove, then probably you have tried the new feature which is the “Return Device Back!”. After you had stopped the device, but still did not unplug it, sometimes it is quite useful to return it back into the system. For example if you remembered that you forgot to write a file to the external drive. In order to do it, you have to physically reconnect the device, however sometimes it’s quite inconvenient to do if the device is connected to the rear panel of the computer.

USB Safely Remove claims to be the first Windows program that allows you to return stopped device back and I thought that there isn’t a way to do it without using a software. Thanks to Ed for his valuable tip, we can now remount the ejected USB device with a few simple mouse clicks without reinserting (unplug and insert) the USB device.

Here’s what you need to do to have the “return device back” feature without using USB Safely Remove software.

1. Right click My Computer and select Properties (or you can simultaneously press Win+Pause/Break key). In System Properties window, go to the Hardware tab and then click the Device Manager button. In Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can just click the Device Manager link located at the left hand sidebar when you are at the System Properties window.

2. Click View from the menu bar and select “Devices by Connection“.

3. Find the parent USB Root Hub of the USB device that has a yellow color exclamation mark. Right click on the USB Root Hub and select Disable. Again right click on the same USB Root Hub that you’ve just disabled and this time select Enable.

Voila! The drive letter has been returned back to My Computer and the autorun or autoplay window will appear if it is enabled. Since this can be done in Windows itself, Microsoft Windows development team should consider adding a feature to easily re-enable the drive after ejecting without unplugging and reinserting. This tip has been verified to work on Windows XP, Windows Vista and even the latest Windows 7. No doubt that unplug and reinsert it way faster than this method IF the USB port is easily accessible. If not, this method would save you from bending your back and trying to reach the back of the case.

Thanks Ed for sharing something that took him 2 years to discover!

Re-Enable Brings Back Run, Task Manager, Regedit, CMD, Folder Options and System Restore

One of our forum member tangomouse has created a nice and simple tool called Re-Enable to help us re-enable disabled Task Manager, Registry Editor, Command Prompt, Folder Options and even System Restore configuration that is normally caused by virus. Honestly the tool that I’ve been using to do this is Remove Restriction Tool v1.03 but now the latest version of RRT has grown so much that I’d say it’s a little too bloated. I just needed a simple tool that does the job and doesn’t have all those flashy interface that sometimes I can’t run on a virus infected computer. This project started off to help another forum member but somehow it ended up in Softpedia and now in this blog.

As you can see at the screenshot below, it’s a no brainer to use this tool. All you need to do is put a check on the checkbox that you want to enable and click the Enable button. The disable feature will be instantly enabled or if not, a reboot would do the trick. Please make sure that the computer is free from virus or else the changes made by this tool will not be effective and there is no end to enabling/disabling competition between you and the virus.

Re-enable is coded in .NET but doesn’t need .NET installed because .NET dependencies are included in the program making it fully portable. That is why a single file is in 36.7MB. However if you working on a computer that already have .NET framework installed, then you can just use the 64KB version instead.

This product was last tested in the Softpedia Labs on 1st of September 2009 by Cosmin Anton and they guarantee that Re-Enable Portable 1.0.0.0 is 100% Clean, which means it does not contain any form of malware, including but not limited to: spyware, viruses, trojans and backdoors. Re-Enable is only in version 1 and I am sure that it can be improved with a couple more features without making it too bloated.

[ Download Re-Enable With .NET | Without .NET ]

MetrO Worldwide Public Transport Systems for PDA or Phone

I will be going for my honeymoon next week and I’ve done a lot of research to prepare myself so that I won’t get really lost or waste a lot precious time when I am traveling in Europe with my wife. I will be bringing my Garmin Nuvi GPS along with me so that I know where is my current location. The Point of Interest feature in my GPS is also very helpful in finding nearby hotels, restaurants and etc. Another important gadget that will guide me along the way is my newly bought HTC Touch 3G PDA. At first I wanted to buy a simple and cheap Nokia phone but it lacks of third party software, so I went for a PDA instead. It’s running on Windows Mobile 6.1 and there are tons of software for it.

I know that most Europeans travel around Europe using trains and subways. I don’t want to go there then only learn about it so I looked for a software that can maybe help me find my way in public transport systems in Europe and I found MetrO.

Métro is your free guide on PDA (Palm, PocketPC, iPhone, BlackBerry, Smartphone, Symbian) to public transport systems worldwide with over 400 cities covered now. Other than that, updating the software and city files is easy when you install another software called MétrUp. It is a tool that connects to the free update service and downloads the latest versions of your Métro program & city files. You select which cities you want to update (select only one if your connection to the internet is slow) and the programs check if a new version is available. When it finds one, it downloads the file to your device and automatically update the city. If you already have the latest release, no transfer occurs.

Installing MetrO on your Windows Mobile PDA is very easy. Just download the correct package and run setup.exe which will bring up ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center to install MetrO. Wait, it’s not finished yet because you have manually copy the cities .PDB file to your mobile. You can either transfer all cities which is located in ALL folder or select a few from the list. As for me, I only select the cities that I’ll be in so that I won’t waste the memory space on my PDA and also it loads faster when searching for cities file.

ust put in where you are and where you want to go and the software takes you there. There are a lot of small buttons with no description on it. So make sure you get familiar with the software MetrO before you use it. The best place to learn about how to use MetrO is at the official user guide webpage.

[ Download MetrO ]

2 Free Tools to Recover Firefox Saved Usernames and Passwords

Firefox can securely save passwords you enter in web forms to make it easier to log on to websites. By default the option “Remember passwords for sites” option is enabled but you will still be asked whether to save passwords for a site when you first visit it. Clicking the Remember button will save the login information, Not Now button to ignore it or Never for This Site, that site will be added to an exceptions list and will never prompt you to save the username and password for that site. This feature is available at every web browser and is offered as a convenience but also increases the risk of your login information being exposed.

I normally save most of the usernames and passwords on my laptop because I am the only user and that computer is not shared with anyone else. If the laptop is not stolen or Windows is not hacked, then my usernames and passwords are pretty safe. One big reason I never let anyone touch my laptop is because someone could just run either of the 2 free portable tools to grab all my website passwords. Of course, we can also put these 2 tools to good use such as recovering
the sign-on details when Firefox fails to open.

1. FirePasswordViewer

- FirePasswordViewer is the GUI version of popular FirePassword tool designed to decrypt sign-on secrets stored by Firefox. FirePasswordViewer tool can decrypt and display these secrets on the same lines as the Firefox built-in password manager. The main advantage of FirePasswordViewer is that it does not require Firefox to be running. Also FirePasswordViewer can be used to display sign-on secrets from different profile (other than current profile) as well as from the different operating system (such as Linux, Mac etc) altogether. This greatly helps forensic investigators who can copy the relevant files from the target system to test machine and view the credentials offline without affecting the target environment. The displayed sign-on information can then be saved to a file in standard HTML format which can be used as valuable and quick offline reference.

[ Download FirePasswordViewer ]

2. PasswordFox

PasswordFox is a small password recovery tool that allows you to view the user names and passwords stored by Mozilla Firefox Web browser. By default, PasswordFox displays the passwords stored in your current profile, but you can easily select to watch the passwords of any other Firefox profile. For each password entry, the following information is displayed: Record Index, Web Site, User Name, Password, User Name Field, Password Field, and the Signons filename.

[ Download PasswordFox ]

To protect yourself against these 2 tools, simple enabling and setting a Master password would stop this 2 tools from harvesting your login information. You can do that in Tools > Options > Security tab > check “Use a Master password” and enter the password twice.

Note: Here’s a weird case of false positives. According to VirusTotal, 27 out of 41 antivirus detects PasswordFox as hacktool/trojan but NONE detects FirePasswordViewer as a threat. Now both tool does the same thing, do you think that PasswordFox is infected or a false detection? To me, PasswordFox is a tool that’s more likely to be used by hackers because it can be ran with a command line using a backdoor trojan while the user is using the computer and he won’t know a thing about it. As for FirePasswordViewer, the hacker would have to run the program, click the Show button and then Export the results. You should read about what Nir Sofer has to say about the false detection on his programs.

Review on FortiClient Endpoint Security Suite Standard Edition, the FREE Antivirus by Fortinet

I’ve only heard of Fortinet from VirusTotal as it is one of the antivirus engines that participate in VirusTotal. Fortinet has recently provided a free version of their antivirus program called FortiClient Endpoint Security Suite which is not much of a difference compared to the premium paid version. The only features that is not found in the Standard edition is an antispam protection, central management and logging. For a home user, these features are mostly not needed and the already available features (Antivirus/Antispyware engine, SSL and IPSec VPN clients, Personal Firewall protection, Intrusion Prevention, Web Filtering, Endpoint Application Detection, Endpoint Monitoring and Control, WAN Optimization, Anti-Rootkit Protection, Pre- and Post-Execution Behavioral Analysis, Real-Time Poisoned Webpage Protection, FortiGuard update services) makes it a very complete internet security suite.

I can’t wait to test the free antivirus from Fortinet because it can be installed on Windows server and is offered free of charge to anyone – consumers, small businesses, large enterprises – who seeks comprehensive protection for their laptops and personal computers. If you didn’t know, the free version of Avira, Avast, AVG and Rising is only meant for home usage. If you install them on corporate or educational environment, that is considered piracy and can be fine.
Here’s what I have to say about the free antivirus by Fortinet.

The setup file is only 10MB in size which I’d considered it to be very small if compared to other antivirus. However the first update takes a very long time to finish, perhaps it is downloading the latest antivirus engine and definition. I also like the interface because it is very neat, simple, easy to understand and use. Every main feature is being categorized at the left hand sidebar and there is very little configuration.

You don’t really need a powerful computer to run FortiClient. The system requirements are:

Pentium processor or equivalent

100 MB hard disk space

Compatible Operating System & Minimum RAM

- Windows 2000: 128 MB

- Windows XP 32-bit and 64-bit: 256 MB

- Windows Server 2003 32-bit and 64-bit: 384 MB

- Windows Vista: 512 MB

- Windows 7: 512 MB

After installing FortiClient on a clean Windows XP Professional SP3 with all latest hotfixes, I am seeing a total of 8 processes with 58MB memory being taken up. Running a full system scan with normal scan priority only takes up 30% CPU usage in average. FortiClient took 9 minutes and 38 seconds to complete scanning 21817 items which is also pretty fast. When I ran a full system scan again the next day, it took only 5 minutes and 2 seconds to scan 21815 files. Very likely FortiClient maintains a database of “safe files not to scan” to cut down the scanning time.

I’ve planted 21 virus that are currently circulating around the Internet on the test computer and sadly FortiClient only catches 10 out of 21. I noticed that most of the virus that are not detected by FortiClient are from Asian countries such as Brontok and Almanahe.

I’ve also tested FortiClient against my private trojan since it came with a firewall and intrusion detection. First of all, the virus signature cannot detect the trojan. When it comes to heuristic analysis, FortiClient also fails to detect any injection. Then I connected my test computer from my laptop using the backdoor trojan, there was no warning on the intrusion detection. I am not surprised why Fortinet scored so badly in Matousec proactive security challenge.

I also noticed another annoying issue with Fortinet which is I cannot access a shared folder on a local network. When another computer tries to access my shared folder, they get login prompt asking for password when simple file sharing is turned on. I’ve even configured the firewall to “Pass All” which means disabling the firewall, setting the network as Trusted zone and set the security level to Low but still cannot access shared folders. Finally I disabled webfilter and now I can access any shared folders on the network.

I like the fact that the free FortiClient allows anyone to use for free on any environment and also can be installed on nearly every version of Windows including both 32-bit and 64-bit but they should really work hard on improving the virus detection and firewall protection.

[ Download FREE FortiClient Endpoint Security Suite ]

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Advanced Usage of Avira AntiVir Rescue System BootCD

Few days ago I had to deal with a virus that is very very hard to remove. So the best and easiest way to remove it is using an antivirus rescue CD. When you boot up the computer with a rescue cd which is usually a linux live CD, Windows is not loaded and the virus is inactive. This makes it easier for the antivirus to detect and clean the virus. I have encountered viruses that corrupts Windows so badly until you can’t even boot in to Safe Mode, you cannot install any antivirus because it auto terminates it and you can’t pin point where the virus is added to Windows auto startup location as it replaces one of your legitimate Windows system file.

Normally my first choice is to use Kaspersky Rescue CD but I had problems downloading it as I am getting very slow download speed. It managed to download until half way and then time out. Moreover it has been 2 months since Kaspersky Rescue CD last updated and I didn’t want to spend more time downloading the virus definition. I like Quick Heal Native Boot Scan as well but I didn’t want it to auto fix suspicious files that it finds. There is no way to configure it. Finally came Avira which is one of my favorite too. The Rescue CD ISO image file which is only 53MB in size and took only 7 minutes to download. The bootcd was last updated few days ago and I know I didn’t have to spend a lot of time updating the virus definition. When I boot up my Acer laptop with Avira AntiVir Rescue System, everything seems fine and was presented with a simple looking graphical user interface. When I click on any options such as “Remove infected files”, “Try to repair infected files” or “Rename Files, if they cannot be removed”, the whole system hung, and there is no respond at all. Sadly this is a bug that happens to most laptops such as Acer, Dell and HP. If you encounter such problem, here is how you can continue using Avira AntiVir Rescue System without relying on the GUI.
Just boot up the Avira AntiVir Rescue System as normal. Then press the number 1, hit enter and it should start loading vmlinuz and initrd.gz.

When the graphical user interface is fully loaded, simultaneously press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.

That will bring you in to a black colored console screen that looks like DOS. Before you start typing anything, please be informed that the antivirus is programmed to type in German keyboard layout. For example, when you press the – key on your keyboard, you’ll notice that it chances to ß. Refer to the image below on what to type to get what character.

First we need to update the virus definition to the latest version. To do that, type the following command. There are TWO dashes.

antivir --update

To start a full scan, type the following command below. In Linux, everything is case sensitive. The Devices must have a capital D. What the command below does is scan everything on your hda1, tries to repair the infected files and rename the non-repairable files by adding a .xxx extension. You can also substitute the -ren command with -del to auto delete the non repairable files.

antivir -s -e -ren /media/Devices/hda1

When Avira AntiVir Rescue System has finished scanning, you should be able to boot in Windows. You can search in Windows for *.xxx files. These are the files that are non-repairable by Avira. You can get a list of command lines by typing antivir --help but you won’t be able to scroll up to see all the commands. So here are all the commands for your convenience.

Usage is: antivir [options] [path[\*.ext]] [*.ext]
where options are:
--help .......... display this help text (abbreviation: -h or -?)
--scan-mode= applies "extlist", "smart" or "all" scan methods:
extlist scans files according to their filename extension,
smart detects which files to scan from their name/content,
all scans all files regardless of their name or content
--allfiles ...... synonymous for --scan-mode=all
--version ....... show version information
--info .......... show list of recognized forms
--update ........ update antivir
--check ......... used with --update to check for updates
--temp=(dir) .... specify the directory for temporary files
--pid-dir=(dir) . specify the directory for PID files
--home-dir=(dir) location of executable, VDF and key files
-C (filename) ... name of configuration file
-s .............. scan subdirectories
--scan-in-archive files in archives will be extracted and scanned
-z .............. synonymous for --scan-in-archive (scan in archives, too)
--archive-max-size=N, --archive-max-recursion=N, --archive-max-ratio=N
anti DoS feature: do not scan archive content which would
exceed the given file size, nesting level or compression
factor limits on extraction (0 means unlimited)
--archive-max-count=N anti DoS feature: do not scan archive content which
has more than N files in a recursion level
--scan-in-mbox .. scan mailbox folders, too (might be time consuming!)
--heur-macro .... enable macro heuristics
--heur-nomacro .. disable macro heuristics
--heur-level=N .. setup heuristics level: 0=off, 1-3=low-high
-nolnk .......... do not follow symbolic links
-onefs .......... do not cross file systems while following links
-noboot ......... do not check any boot records
-nombr .......... do not check any master boot records
-nobreak ........ disable Ctl-C and Ctrl-Break
-nodef ......... do only check the given file types (eg. *.DOC)
-cf(filename) ... activate CRC check and name the database
-cv ............. calculate CRC over the whole file length (default 16k)
-cn ............. insert new files into the database
-cu ............. recalculate CRC values and update the database
-v .............. scan files completely (slower with possible false alerts)
-nopack ......... do not scan inside packed files
-e [-del | -ren] repair concerning files if possible
[-del] non-repairable files will be deleted
[-ren] non-repairable files will be renamed
-ren ............ rename concerning files (*.COM->*.XXX,...)
-del ............ delete concerning files
--moveto=(dir) .. quarantine concerning files
-dmdel .......... delete documents containing suspicious macros
-dmdas .......... delete all macros if one appears to be suspicious
-dmse ........... set exit code to 101 if any macro was found
-r1 ............. just log infections and warnings
-r2 ............. log all scanned paths in addition
-r3 ............. log all scanned files
-r4 ............. select verbose log mode
-rs ............. select single-line alert messages
-rf(filename) ... name of log file
%d = day, %m = month, %y = year (two digits each)
-ra ............. append new log data to existing file
-ro ............. overwrite existing log file
-q .............. quiet mode
-lang[:|=]DE .... use German texts
-lang[:|=]EN .... use English texts
-once ........... run only once a day
-if(dateiname) .. antivir uses the given ini file
--with-(type) ... detect other (non-virus but unwanted) software, too;
type may be e.g. "dial", "joke", "game", etc,
there is a --with-alltypes shortcut
--without-(type) like --with-(type), but disables this type
--alltypes ...... synonymous for --with-alltypes (obsolete)
--alert-urls=(yes|no) print URL for more detailed information on alerts
--warnings-as-alerts exit with a return code as if a concerning file
had been found when warnings have been issued
--exclude=(file) exclude files or directories from scan
--log-email=(addr) send out scan report by email, too
@(rspfile) ...... read parameters from the file (rspfile)
with each option in a separate line

list of return codes:
0: Normal program termination, nothing found, no error
1: Found concerning file or boot sector
2: An alert was found in memory
3: Suspicious file found
100: antivir only has displayed this help text
101: A macro was found in a document file
102: The option -once was given and antivir already ran today
200: Program aborted, not enough memory available
201: The given response file could not be found
202: Within a response file another @(rsp) directive was found
203: Invalid option
204: Invalid (non-existent) directory given at command line
205: The log file could not be created
210: antivir could not find a necessary dll file
211: Programm aborted, because the self check failed
212: The file antivir.vdf could not be read
213: An error occured during initialization
214: License key not found

[ Download Avira AntiVir Rescue System ]

Easily Optimize Firefox SQLite Databases with SpeedyFox Portable

Mozilla Firefox is by far the best feature-rich and fastest browser out there, but with the passage of time it slows down considerably. It will take a lot of time to load during startup, the overall speed will be effected, and browsing Histories will be too slow. This is very common problem and it occurs largely because of fragmentation of databases. Starting from Firefox version 3, the development team has made Firefox to use SQLite databases to store information.

If you go to your Firefox profile folder, you should see a bunch of files ending with .sqlite extension. There are a total of 10 sqlite databases which is content-prefs.sqlite, cookies.sqlite, downloads.sqlite, formhistory.sqlite, places.sqlite, permissions.sqlite, search.sqlite, signons.sqlite, urlclassifier3.sqlite and webappsstore.sqlite. Searching the Internet reveals a lot of guides and even Firefox addons that can automatically “vacuum” or optimize Firefox database but most of them only does it on the places.sqlite database file which is the main culprit for a crawling slow Firefox. It works but wouldn’t it be better if we can optimize ALL of the Firefox databases? Thanks to SpeedyFox we can now do that.

SpeedyFox is a brand new small utility that fixes this problem with a single click! It seems unbelievable but after you optimize your Firefox with this tool, you will get a fresh newly-installed feel because the speed indeed gets considerably faster. You will get up 3 times faster startup speed, browsing history will become faster, and performing operations with cookies will be quicker than before.

Once installed, SpeedyFox automatically detects your Firefox’s default profile. If you have more than one profile, you can select the one you want to optimize from the drop-down menu. All you have to do is select the default profile that you want to optimize and hit Speed Up Firefox button. The optimization process can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour depending on how large your databases are. The whole optimization process is safe as it does not effect your history, bookmarks, passwords, etc.

There are 2 versions of SpeedyFox, the installer and the portable version. I personally prefer the portable version so it doesn’t add any information to the registry and runs from anywhere. It is free and currently only works on Windows. Soon there will be versions that runs on Mac and also support of portable Firefox. Make sure you close your Firefox browser first before clicking the “Speed Up My Firefox” button from SpeedyFox!

[ Download SpeedyFox ]

Integrate Multiple Antivirus Rescue Disk into One Single Disc or USB Flash Drive with SARDU

Antivirus Rescue Disk is one of my must have CD to carry along with me whenever I have any computer servicing job. When a virus infects a computer, it normally makes Windows very unstable, slow and probably even terminate any antivirus or anyspyware software that it finds making it impossible for you to clean the virus from Windows. All I needed to do is to boot up the computer with an antivirus rescue disk, run a full scan and remove any virus that it finds. By doing that, 90% of the virus are normally gone and it should leave me with a Windows that I can boot in and work on restoring the disabled regedit, Windows Task Manager, cmd and etc.

The last time I checked there were about 13 rescue disks, most are free to use and only a few that requires to purchase. There are NO perfect antivirus as different antivirus has different detection rate. I wished I can bring all of the rescue disks with me but maintaining 13 rescue disks and making sure that I always have the latest version and definition is very troublesome and tedious. I tried using MagicISO, EasyBoot and a few more software which I can’t remember to put all the antivirus rescue discs ISO into one single DVD but the software cannot support such feature. So I gave up…

Yesterday I received an email from Davide Costa informing me that he has made a free tool called SARDU that can integrate multiple antivirus rescue disks, a few useful utilities, linux live CDs and also Windows PE. Not only that, the best part is it can be installed in a USB flash drive!

SARDU is short for Shardana Antivirus Rescue Disk Utility. It can handle ISO images of bootable antivirus, some collections of utilities, Linux Live CDs and the most popular distributions of Windows PE. It has been categorized into 4 sections, Antivirus, Utility, Linux and PE.

Antivirus

Avira AntiVir Rescue System

BitDefender

Dr.Web LiveCD

F-Secure

GDATA

Kaspersky ‘Kav Rescue CD’

Panda Safe Cd

Utility

Floppy win98SE

Gparted

NT password

Parted Magic

System Rescue CD

Ultimate Boot CD

Linux

Austrumi

Damn Small Linux

Puppy Linux

Slax

Windows PE

LiveXP

MegalabCD

WindowsPE

UBCD4WIN

VistaPE

The first time you create a universal rescue disks ISO or to your USB flash drive can be time consuming because you need to download around 2.6GB of ISO images if you want to integrate all ISO that is supported by SARDU. After that, the whole process is very simple, thanks to SARDU for being a “smart” program that automatically recognizes the ISO image that you place into the ISO folder.
Here’s a simple guide on how to use Shardana Antivirus Rescue Disk Utility to create a bootable USB flash drive containing multiple antivirus rescue disks together with Linux LiveCDs, utilities and Windows PE.
1. Download the latest version of SARDU.
2. Extract SARDU to a new folder and run sardu.exe
3. To download the ISO image, simply click on the name in the program and your default web browser will open with the link to download the latest ISO. Save the file to the ISO folder where sardu.exe is located.
4. When you’ve finished downloading the ISO files, close sardu.exe and reopen sardu.exe. You will notice that SARDU has automatically put a check on the checkbox if the ISO image is found. If the checkbox is grayed out even though you think you’ve downloaded the file, then most likely you’ve downloaded the wrong one. The file has to be in ISO format, not ZIP or EXE.
5. You can either click on the “Crea ISO” button to compile all the ISO images into a single ISO to burn it to a DVD or click the “Crea USB avviabile” button to install it to your USB flash drive.
6. When you have your SARDU USB flash drive or DVD ready, boot it up and you should get a multiboot screen like the image below.

The advantage of installing SARDU on USB is you can do incremental updates so you don’t need to go through all the steps again every time you want to update a single ISO image. If you’re afraid that you will be facing computers with old motherboards that cannot support booting USB, you can always use PLoP.

Although the program’s user interface is in Italian, I’d say that it is still quite easy to use. Anyway, the author of SARDU informed me that he is making a structure to read language.ini for multilanguage support. We can expect an English translation soon…

SARDU is truly a gem! I just did a Google search on SARDU and it’s weird that not even a single blog out there has mentioned about it but I am very glad to be the first to share it with you… I wished I’d have known about SARDU earlier so me and I believe some of you can reduce the usage of CDRs on burning different rescue disks.

[ Visit SARDU's Official Forum Thread ]

Guide for Making Full Windows Backup to Network Share Using Clonezilla

Norton Ghost by Symantec is my favorite disk cloning and imaging software because it’s easy to use but unfortunately the software cost money. Although the Norton Ghost software protection against piracy is not really that strict and I can use it on any computers, but I don’t want to risk getting caught using it illegally at customer’s place. Macrium Reflect is also another good Ghost alternative and the free version works well but we have to install the software in Windows and run it from there in order to create a full backup. The Macrium Live CDs can only be used to restore images but not for creating backup.
I’ve heard of Clonezilla before and it seems to be quite a hit because it is free and also clones computer pretty fast compared to other linux disk cloning software such as Partimage. I remembered testing Clonezilla last year but somehow didn’t really got it to work but today I had a little bit of free time and I was destined to get it to work. Well I am glad I did and was surprised that Clonezilla can make a full backup of my desktop computer with a very good speed. I am going to share with you on how to create a full backup of computer A and save the backup image to computer B via network. Why network? Because I don’t want to go through the hassle of unplugging the hard drive and connect it to another computer. This tutorial requires you to have a little knowledge on networking and user accounts.
You can either use Clonezilla Live CD or USB whichever is convenient for you. Making a Clonezilla Live CD is easy as you only need to download the ISO image file and burn it to a CD. To make a Clonezilla Live Bootable USB, the easiest way is to use Live USB Helper. Do take note that Live USB Helper requires the ZIP version of Clonezilla, not the ISO version.

Remember, this tutorial is based on a scenario to create a full backup of Computer A to Computer B. Before we can start the backup process, we’ll need to share a folder on Computer B first and assign a user to have write access to the folder. Once you’ve done that, follow the steps below.

1. Boot up Clonezilla Live on the computer that you want to backup.

2. Hit enter to select the default “Clonezilla live (Default settings, VGA 1024×768)”

3. Choose your language and hit Enter.

4. Hit enter to select the default “Don’t touch keymap”

5. Hit enter to select Start Clonezilla.

6. Hit enter to select device-image. This selection will allow Clonezilla to save your hard drive or partition into an image file.

7. Select “samba_server” and hit Enter. This option is if you have another computer on the network which is running Windows and you want to save the backed up image to that computer’s shared drive.

8. Hit enter to select dhcp. If you are able to connect to the network and use the Internet by plugging in the network cable or using wi-fi, then 99% of the time you already have DHCP service running.

9. Enter the IP Address of the computer (Computer B) where you want to save the image to. You can also enter computer name.

10. Hit the tab button twice until the Cancel option is selected. Then hit Enter.

11. Enter a user account that is valid on Computer B that has permission to access the shared folder.

12. Enter the directory where Clonezilla image will be saved to. This is the name of the folder that is shared. For example, /images and hit Enter.

13. Hit enter when asked you to enter password.

14. Now type in the user’s account password followed by Enter.
If you’ve entered a correct user account and password, it’ll show a list of file system disk space usage. Hit Enter again.

15. Hit enter to select Beginner mode.

16. You can now select if you want to backup the whole hard disk or just partition. To save local disk as an image, select savedisk and hit Enter.

17. Input a name for the saved image to use and click OK.

18. If you only have one hard disk, Clonezilla will automatically select the drive for you. Hit Enter to continue.

19. Hit Enter to continue.

20. Final confirmation. Press Y on your keyboard and hit enter.

Clonezilla will now start creating the image and simultaneously transfer it to Computer B shared drive. On a 100Mbps network, Clonezilla is showing a rate of 200MB/min. The whole processed of creating a full backup image of my Windows XP computer and saved it to another computer finished in just 7 minutes! Clonezilla is really impressive! This is only one example of how to use Clonezilla to make a backup image of a computer. You can also do disk to disk cloning and multicasting. By the way, the image file will be saved in gzip format, an open source file compression program. So you can extract the image file using any ZIP extractors to access the files.

[ Visit Clonezilla Website ]

Note: Been a very busy weekend. I will now start to compile all the entries for the BitDefender Internet Security 2010 and choose the winners by randomly shuffling the list. Sorry for the delay.