The tweaks mentioned below are for speeding up Windows XP.

• Disable boot virus detection:This feature is available for some motherboards. If enabled it will scan your boot sector for virus infection every time you start your system. As boot sector viruses are rare now, it is safe to disable it. Disabling it will also speed up the boot process.

  To find out if you have it look in the ‘Advanced BIOS features’ section of your BIOS.

• Change Boot Sequence:For most PC’s the boot sequence is first set to CD-ROM and then to Hard drive. You can speed up your boot time by setting your OS-loaded hard drive as the primary boot device.

  I suggest to disable other boot devices such as CD-ROM and Floppy.

  Just remember to set CD-ROM as your primary boot device when you need to re-install Windows.

Continue reading ‘Faster Windows’

Live Comment Preview is a cool plugin for Wordpress. It supplies users with a live preview of the comment there are typing on a blog.

Comment on this post to see the plugin on action.

Download Live Comment Preview

I just received 12 spam comments completely from different ip addresses. I receive atleast two in a week.

The spam comments keep coming even after marking them as spam. I hate SPAM!

Search Meter is a WordPress plugin that records what your visitors are searching for on your blog. It helps you keep your blog focused on what your visitors want to read. It does this by keeping track of what your visitors are searching for.

If you have a Search box on your blog, Search Meter automatically records what people are searching for and whether they are finding what they are looking for. Search Meter’s admin interface shows you what people have been searching for in the last couple of days, and in the last week or month. It also shows you which searches have been unsuccessful.

If people search your blog and get no results, they will probably go elsewhere. With Search Meter, you will be able to find out what people are searching for, and give them what they want by creating new posts on those topics.

I think that this is a necesary plugin for every blog in the world.

For more info on the plugin click here

Download Search Meter

Y!TunnelPro,one of my favorite Yahoo! Messenger tools,provides enhancements and protection for users of Yahoo! Messenger. This includes enhanced privacy settings for all aspects of Messenger, boot code filtering, visual enhancements and full integration into Yahoo! Messenger.

Since the time Y!Tunnel was first introduced it has evolved from a simple tool to filter chat room annoyances to the program chat users rely on for enhanced privacy, SPAM filtering, and integrated enhancements.

One of my favorite Y!TunnelPro features is Super Iggy Bin which extends the functionality of Yahoo! Messenger by allowing you to ignore an unlimited number of users. Additionally the Super Iggy Bin allows you to ignore users using wildcard matches in order to automatically block users with similar names.

Y!TunnelPro also features several chat room enhancements like enhanced chat room chooser,adverisements disabling and automatically retrying to join a room when full.

In addition to the new connection manager Y!TunnelPro now includes several features to enhance your chat experience such as auto-completion of user names, SPAM Challenge user verification for instant messages, additional SPAM blocking, updated activity and diagnostic log windows, an all new auto update module, and major additions that integrate with Yahoo! Messenger.

This is one of my favorite softwares that I recommend you to download and use.

Download Y!TunnelPro

The contents of a meta keyword tag is used to help define the important keywords of your web page. Find around 20-25 keywords that relate to your site.

Now finding good keywords is not easy. Luckily there are a few free keyword tools.

• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Good Keywords
• Digitalpoint Keywords

Diskeeper is one of the best defragmenter tools I have seen for Windows. After installation it will replace Windows default defragmenter tool.

Diskeeper offers many features that Windows Defragmenter does not have, such as simultaneous defragmentation operations.

After analyzing your drives Diskeeper will report its health and status in the ‘Job Report’ tab.

The first time I analyzed my C drive, Diskeeper reported its health as ‘Critical’ because of the following reasons:

• the Master File Table (MFT) was 99 percent of the total MFT size
• the volume was heavily fragmented

It suggested that I use ‘Frag Shield’ to resize the MFT size to the recommended size.

After resizing the MFT, Diskeeper reported the health status of my C drive as ‘Healthy’!

Diskeeper also supports Boot-Time defragmentation which is useful when you want to defragment the paging file and MFT.

Another useful feature is ‘Set it and Forget it’ which will automatically keep fragmentation on your drives at a low level.

I now use Diskeeper regularly so that my computer stays as healthy as possible.

Download Diskeeper

Windows Live Messenger is the next-generation MSN Messenger. Windows Live Messenger has new Vista look and added some new features such as PC-to-PC calls, sending offline messanges to other Messengers and much more.

However, current Windows Live Messenger is only opened to beta testers and required an invitation to sign in. For curious MSN Messenger users, here I show you how to download, install and sign in Windows Live Messenger beta, without Microsoft invitation step by step.

• Download a copy of Windows Live Messenger installer. Here’s the link to download Windows Live Messenger.
• Now, we need to use a “downgrader” to bypass it. Download and install MSNP13 Downgrader.
• Go to C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger and double-click MSNlaunch.exe to launch MSNP13 downgrader and Windows Live Messenger at the same time.

  

• The MSNP13 downgrader will bypass the Windows Live Messenger beta tester check and sign you into the MSN instant messenger network.That’s it!

Source: Liewcf

This is one of the best plugins I have found for wordpress. The plugin adds a Useronline feature to WordPress.

You can also use it to find out which all bots are online at a particular time. The currently supported bots are Google, MSN, Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Altavista, AllTheWeb, Inktomi, Technorati, Yahoo and many others.

You can download the plugin from here

In January 1986 the first ever computer virus was unleashed via floppy disk, and 20 years on the problem is still very much a nightmare situation for the average PC user.

Though it’s origin is still disputed it is thought the virus, known as Brain, was coded by two Pakistani programmers named Basit and Amjad who designed their virus to affect every 360kb floppy inserted into the drive. Four years later a company called Symantec launched the now hugely popular Norton Antivirus.

Within two years the number of malicious programs had increased by 420% to 1300, this was probably helped by creation kits like the Virus Creation Laboratory which was also released in 1992.

Some of the more memorable viruses since then include 1999’s Melissa virus, which executed a macro which sent copies of itself to 50 people in the users Outlook address book, the Love Bug which deleted MP3, MP2 and JPG files as well as sending usernames and passwords to the author and 2004’s MyDoom worm which affected businesses, banks and the British Coastguard.

Today there are more than 150,000 malicious programs and over 25 major companies specialising in anti-virus software for the Windows platform alone.

Continue reading ‘Computer Virus celeberates its 20th Birthday’