BlueScreenView Determines Which Driver Caused Blue Screen on Windows

Earlier this year I found a tool called WhoCrashed which is sometimes useful in finding out what is the cause of a blue screen crash. A lot of times a blue screen happens very quickly which you can’t even see what are the error messages and your computer got restarted. The annoying part of using WhoCrashed is you need to have Microsoft Debugging Tools installed or else it cannot analyze the mdmp files.

Nir Sofer, a very experienced developer that released many useful utilities for Windows has came up with a new tool called BlueScreenView. Basically it is a new utility that allows you to watch the details of all ‘Blue Screen of Death’ crashes that occurred in your system.
BlueScreenView scans all your minidump files created during ‘blue screen of death’ crashes, and displays the information about all crashes in one table. For each crash, BlueScreenView displays the minidump filename, the date/time of the crash, the basic crash information displayed in the blue screen (Bug Check Code and 4 parameters), and the details of the driver or module that possibly caused the crash (filename, product name, file description, and file version).

For each crash displayed in the upper pane, you can view the details of the device drivers loaded during the crash in the lower pane. BlueScreenView also mark the drivers that their addresses found in the crash stack, so you can easily locate the suspected drivers that possibly caused the crash. For the fun of it, you can even view a demo of the crash by going to Options > Lower Pane Mode > and select Blue Screen in XP Style.

What I like about BlueScreenView is it doesn’t require any installation and the executable can run straight from a USB flash drive. Oh and you don’t even need Microsoft Debugging Tools installed to use this tool. From my experience, most of blue screen crashes are either caused by bad/conflicting drivers or a faulty hardware. An example is some software such as keylogger requires installing badly coded drivers and it can cause blue screen. If you have a bad RAM, you can also get blue screen and random lock ups.

BlueScreenView works with Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, as long as Windows is configured to save minidump files during BSOD crashes. Currently, BlueScreenView can only read minidump files of 32-bit systems, but it cannot read the dump files created by x64 systems. It’s possible that x64 support will be added in future versions.

[ Download BlueScreenView ]

As Rivals Branch Out, SAP Is Sticking to Software

WALLDORF, Germany — Léo Apotheker wants you to know that he is content to run a straightforward software maker that focuses on what it has always done well: writing programs that help companies manage their operations, including payroll, sales and inventory.

Thomas Lohnes/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Léo Apotheker, chief of SAP.

Mr. Apotheker, the chief executive of the German software giant SAP, has watched his leading rival, Oracle, go on a buying spree, snapping up more than 50 companies in the last four years. And Oracle’s latest megadeal, the planned $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems, will thrust the software maker into the computer hardware business.

Giants like Oracle and I.B.M. have been on a relentless mission to persuade companies to buy as much of their computer infrastructure as possible from one place. It is a strategy that has them encroaching on the turf of specialists like SAP.

Many in the technology industry say businesses would prefer to deal with fewer vendors. But Mr. Apotheker does not agree.

“I have never, ever heard a customer expressing the faintest wish for having everything delivered out of one hand,” he said in an interview. “Someone is probably trying to imagine wishes that they would like to hear.”

It is not clear, however, that SAP has a firm grip on what customers really want, either. The company has fallen well behind rivals in efforts to offer a “cloud computing” product, in which customers essentially rent applications and use them online instead of buying the software and maintaining it on their own machines.

SAP also got an earful from customers when it tried to raise prices in the midst of the recession, and it had to temper its stance. The battle, which played out in the news media, left a normally focused SAP looking clumsy and stubborn, said China Martens, who covers SAP for the 451 Group, an independent technology research firm. “That would have never happened in the past,” she said.

Mr. Apotheker, a sharp-tongued manager who took the helm of SAP in May, has the challenge of trying to buff his company’s tarnished image.

SAP is still the leader in the market for business applications. In 2007, SAP led with 10 percent of the $88 billion market, well ahead of Oracle’s 6.6 percent. In crucial segments, like enterprise resource planning, SAP had 22 percent of the market, or almost twice Oracle’s 12 percent. And the numbers should hold relatively constant for 2008, according to IDC, which is still working on its tally.

Still, the worldwide recession forced Mr. Apotheker to lay off employees for the first time in SAP’s history. Revenue from software sales tumbled 37 percent for the first six months of 2009, compared with the previous year. And a stock worth nearly $60 (priced as an American depositary receipt) lost half its value during the downturn and has yet to fully recover.

“The real question is whether SAP can put something on top of what we already expect it to do in its core business,” said Knut Woller, an analyst at UniCredit in Munich.

Instead of the big acquisitions beloved by Oracle, Mr. Apotheker said, SAP will focus on smaller deals and in-house development. The company also plans a 2010 release of its much-delayed effort in cloud computing, called Business ByDesign.

Mr. Apotheker argues that SAP’s software-only strategy positions it as a more neutral player than Oracle and I.B.M., which sell software, services and hardware.

Indeed, consolidation has its downside, said Karl Liebstückel, the head of DSAG, an association of German SAP customers. “It would be desirable enough to get all these services in one place,” he said. “The negative side is that the big companies get a certain pricing power.”

However, some industry players say SAP may eventually be forced to merge with another company as the consolidation trend creates closer ties between software and hardware.

“If Oracle can really make a fast, full package for customers, it will put SAP at a disadvantage,” said Seth Ravin, the chief executive of Rimini Street, a start-up in Las Vegas that services SAP software. “I think it will be harder and harder for SAP to remain independent.”

Though SAP entertained an acquisition overture from Microsoft six years ago, Mr. Apotheker is having none of it today. “It is in the best interests of our customers, shareholders, our employees and all of our stakeholders for SAP to remain a strong, growing, profitable independent software company,” he said.

He added that the board supports him fully. The founders of SAP, who include the company’s chairman, Hasso Plattner, own a 28.7 percent stake, which is large enough to block a hostile deal.

Mr. Apotheker is a German citizen, born in Aachen, but his French-inflected English hints at a more cosmopolitan upbringing. The son of two Jews who escaped the Holocaust, Mr. Apotheker grew up in Antwerp, Belgium, and speaks French with his immediate family and Hebrew with his Israeli relatives.

Within SAP, he earned his stripes by beginning to turn around the company’s foundering American operations in 2002. Slowly, he stopped a staff hemorrhage and increased the focus on Internet-based products, while also running SAP’s global sales and marketing.

A top agenda item now is to finally release Business ByDesign, SAP’s attempt to expand its market to smaller companies through the cloud computing model. SAP has been late to the field, allowing companies like Salesforce.com and NetSuite to carve out significant positions.

“They have bungled the whole cloud computing trend,” said Patrick Walravens, co-director of technology research at JMP Securities. “It has been one mistake after another.”

SAP is also retooling its workhorse, the SAP Business Suite 7, so customers can buy only the pieces of its software that they need.

Mr. Apotheker disputes the notion that SAP is acquisition-shy, and he points to its purchase of Highdeal, a French designer of billing technology for the telecommunications industry, as a case in point. And in 2007, SAP spent $6.8 billion to buy Business Objects, a French creator of software in the red-hot business intelligence field — one of the largest software acquisitions in recent years.

But Mr. Apotheker says SAP prefers to develop products in-house. “We focus on engineering our stuff to the best extent humanly possible,” he said.

Carter Dougherty reported from Walldorf, Germany, and Ashlee Vance from San Francisco.

By CARTER DOUGHERTY and ASHLEE VANCE

Easiest Way to Recover XP and Vista Product Key from Dead or Unbootable Windows

As a computer tech guy, two things that I find very important is the speed of solving a computer problem and also convenience. I don’t want to be wasting the whole day trying to solve one problem and the customer sees me as unprofessional. Convenience in a way I don’t want to tire myself in opening up dirty and dusty computer case, swapping hard drives and etc. Very frequently I had to reinstall Windows for people. One very common annoying problem that I always face is the user lost his license sticker and I had to spend more time in retrieving the genuine Windows product key. There are a few ways to do it and most of them involves me having access to another working computer. For example, taking out the hard drive and fix it to a working machine, load the registry and retrieve the product key. Or I can boot up PCRegedit, load the registry and then decrypt the key from a working computer. All those steps are very time consuming and troublesome.

I tried very hard to look for a linux live CD that can retrieve the license key but I couldn’t find one. But here’s my opinion on the simplest and most convenient way to retrieve XP or Vista product key from an unbootable machine.
Joshua’s Key Reader or Keyfinder. Setting up UBCD4Win could take a while, so here’s a guide on how to create your UBCD4Win livecd.

1. Download UBCD4Win (250+MB) and install it on your computer.

2. Run UBCD4Win.

3. You need to select the source at UBCD4Win. Insert Windows XP installation disc and select your CD drive. If you don’t have Windows XP installation disc but your manufacturer provides a i386 folder in your C drive, then select C:\i386


4. Insert a blank CD, select Burn to CD/DVD and click Build. The whole process should take a while so go have a coffee.

Now to recover Windows product key, all you need to do is boot up the unbootable computer with UBCD4Win. Follow the instructions until you get to a part where it looks like Windows. Go to Start > Programs > System Information > Info. and Diag. Tools > You can either use Joshua’s Key Reader or Keyfinder

A. If you run Keyfinder, go to Tools > Load Hive… and select the Windows folder which is normally at C:\Windows and the genuine Windows Key will be display at the right pane.

B. If you run Joshua’s Key Reader, click the Read Remote Key button. Same thing as above, select Windows folder which is normally at C:\Windows. The Windows Product Key will be shown.

This method confirm to work on Windows XP and Vista 32-bit because I’ve tested it. See, all it took is one CD to do the job. Don’t need to have access on another working computer to decrypt the ProductID, or the hassle of taking out the hard drive and fixing on another computer. I noticed something weird on my Acer laptop running Windows Vista. The product key that is retrieved from the registry hive is different from the license sticker at the bottom of the laptop and I am very sure that the Vista is installed from the recovery partition. Anybody knows anything about this?

Why consumers won't buy tablets

Rumors have it Apple is a month away from announcing a tablet computer. Another tablet, the Crunchpad, is also due for imminent release. These and other fine keyboardless computers get great play on gadget blogs (including our own Crave), but in the real world, I believe this whole category is a nonstarter. Why we keep waiting for the killer tablet computer is beyond me. Few people really want one, especially at the prices that they will have to sell for.

Tablet computers--elegant slates that you operate with a touch screen--are attractive if you're a sci-fi fan. There's something functionally beautiful about a computer that's all screen and nothing else, and where your interaction is directly through that screen, not an intermediary like a keyboard or mouse. And the concept works great on smartphones.

Not really the Apple tablet.

But what you can do with a screen-only computer gets really limited when you expand the device beyond pocket size. There are two big limitations. First, you need a keyboard for doing real work. At least most people do. Perhaps a generation of kids will grow up that are as speedy on a virtual keyboard as they are on a real one, but until then anyone who does more than write quick e-mails and Twitter messages on a computer will want to take a keyboard with them. And typing on the screen, even if you can do it, is an ergo disaster. Either you have to keep your hands up in the air (if the computer is mounted vertically in front of you) or you have to hunch over your screen to see it. Maybe it's the national chiropractors association that's pushing this form factor. See also: Jeremy Toeman at Live Digitally.

While a tablet may be great for browsing the Web and viewing media, it's too big to replace a phone and too limited to carry around as a work computer. People will need their keyboarded Netbooks and notebooks for real work. Tablets, like other tweener devices, ultramobile PCs and Netbooks, are accessories to real computers. You can't do enough on them to justify the price, although they're sure nice to have if you have extra money for a gizmo that sits between your big computer and your phone, both in size and function.

So as an accessory, tablets are too expensive. If Apple releases a tablet in the rumored $700 to $800 price range, it will die. Not because people won't love it and lust for it, but because they won't be able to justify it.

I actually have higher hopes for the Crunchpad due to its Web focus and its lower price. But even then, at the rumored $400 price point, I still believe it's too dear for real human beings on a real budget, and it will reportedly lack local resources (storage) to make it a workable solution in a world of spotty connectivity (see also: Silicon Alley Insider). Geeks might like it, and buy them as living room couch Web-surfing computers, but for families looking to address real technology needs, a Netbook like a $200 Acer Aspire One offers a better bet: it has a real keyboard, its own storage, and you can take it on the road and do real work on it, like a notebook computer or a Netbook.

Of course, you'll probably be able to plug a keyboard into any of these yet-to-be-released tablets (see the Always Innovating tablet Netbook), but you'll pay extra for the hardware and it'll mean more gear to keep track of and prop up on your desk.

For specialized applications, tablet computers can and do work. The Aeryon spybot uses a tablet computer to control it. And in the consumer space, Amazon's Kindle, a tablet by form factor even though it has a vestigial keyboard, works because it but does things no other device can do at all: it can buy books instantly, almost anywhere, and display them on a screen nearly as easy to read as a printed page.

I love beautiful and elegant tech toys as much as any other geek, but geek love isn't enough to make a real market. Tablets need to cost a lot less and do a lot more before they establish a foothold in the consumer market.
by Rafe Needleman

FREE 1 Year Dr. Web Antivirus Genuine License Key Worth $30 for EVERYONE

Finally, I am able to use the word EVERYONE in a freebie post because here is a promotion by Dr Web and they are giving out free 1 year antivirus genuine license to each and everyone one of you. Some of the impressive feature found in Dr.Web antivirus is FLY-CODE. This is new feature of Dr.Web 5.0 which is a universal decompression technology that allows detecting viruses disguised by means of packers unknown to Dr.Web. Just like other top antivirus, Dr.Web also has a unique non-signature detection technology called Origins Tracing that has also been brought to a new level in Dr.Web 5.0. It has already proven its efficiency during epidemics that caused data losses to a large number of customers of other vendors. Other than that, it can detect spam-bots, scans virus in email, automatic updating and etc.
free dr.web antivirus serial number
Dr.Web Antivirus normally cost 21,84 EURO for 1 user valid for 1 year but it’s free for a limited time. If you wish to get your personalized genuine license for Dr.Web Antivirus v5 valid for one year, just follow the simple instructions below. Best part is this license can also be used on Dr.Web anti-virus for Windows Mobile. Get it FAST before this offer expires!
1. Go to this page registration

2. Click the button at the bottom to go to the next step.

3. Enter your name, valid email address, age and again click the red color button on the right. It is advisable to use Hotmail or Yahoo because Gmail seems to have problems.

4. You can enter anything in the box that has asterisk and click the button on the right.

5. Check the email that you entered in step 2 and you should get an email from public@drweb.com.cn with the subject containing Chinese characters. Note down the 16 digit product key. If you didn’t get any email, you should check your junk/spam folder.

6. Download the latest version of Dr.Web Antivirus v5 and install.

7. During installation, Dr.Web will ask for license key file. Select “Receive key file during installation” and click next.

8. On the registration step 1 window, click “Obtain a license key file”. At step 2, type in the 16 digit OEM serial number and click Next. Step 3 just click Next. Now provide your user information to register yourself as Dr.Web customer and click Next. Finally it will verify your serial number and generate a key file drweb32.key.

Alternatively you can also go to this page http://buy.drweb.com/register/ to generate your Dr.Web key file based on your serial number.

Dr.Web Antivirus v5 for Windows takes up around 46MB of memory during idle when Windows has just been booted up and it increases whenever it is working. If you are using Vista/7, you shouldn’t worry about that because it the OS itself has the ability to clean up memory. A big part of the memory usage is taken by the spidermail module which is used to scan for viruses in emails. You can disable it if you do not use Outlook or any POP3 email clients. Right click on the Dr Web icon at the notification area, SpIDer Mail > Settings. At the Scan tab, uncheck Load at start.

Dr.Web is definitely better than Vexira in terms of virus detection because it detected every virus that I drop in to my test computer. Dr.Web Antivirus runs on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista 32bit only. Thanks to my_immortalize and collapse@Doctus for “sharing”. I hope this time I “credited” the right person.