DESI DISCO

Must Know Google Android Hidden Secret Codes

2013-04-19T23:19:00.000+05:30

Google Android : Hidden Secret Codes

*#*#4636#*#*

This code can be used to get some interesting information about your phone and battery. It shows following 4 menus on screen:
Phone information
Battery information
Battery history
Usage statistics

*#*#7780#*#*

This code can be used for a factory data reset. It'll remove following things:
Google account settings stored in your phone
System and application data and settings

Downloaded applications

It'll NOT remove:

Current system software and bundled applications

SD card files e.g. photos, music files, etc.

PS: Once you give this code, you get a prompt screen asking you to click on Reset phone button. So you get a chance to cancel your operation.

*2767*3855#

Think before you give this code. This code is used for factory format. It'll remove all files and settings including the internal memory storage. It'll also reinstall the phone firmware.

PS: Once you give this code, there is no way to cancel the operation unless you remove the battery from the phone. So think twice before giving this code.

*#*#34971539#*#*

This code is used to get information about phone camera. It shows following 4 menus:

Update camera firmware in image (Don't try this option)

Update camera firmware in SD card

Get camera firmware version

Get firmware update count

WARNING: Never use the first option otherwise your phone camera will stop working and you'll need to take your phone to service center to reinstall camera firmware.

*#*#7594#*#*

This one is my favorite one. This code can be used to change the"End Call / Power"button action in your phone. Be default, if you long press the button, it shows a screen asking you to select any option from Silent mode, Airplane mode and Power off.

You can change this action using this code. You can enable direct power off on this button so you don't need to waste your time in selecting the option.

*#*#273283*255*663282*#*#*

This code opens a File copy screen where you can backup your media files e.g. Images, Sound, Video and Voice memo.

*#*#197328640#*#*

This code can be used to enter into Service mode. You can run various tests and change settings in the service mode.

WLAN, GPS and Bluetooth Test Codes:

*#*#232339#*#* OR *#*#526#*#* OR *#*#528#*#* - WLAN test (Use"Menu"button to start various tests)

*#*#232338#*#* - Shows WiFi MAC address

*#*#1472365#*#* - GPS test

*#*#1*#575#* - Another GPS test

*#*#232331#*#* - Bluetooth test

*#*#232337#*# - Shows Bluetooth device address

*#*#8255#*#*

This code can be used to launch GTalk Service Monitor.

Codes to get Firmware version information:

*#*#4986*2650468#*#* - PDA, Phone, H/W, RFCallDate

*#*#1234#*#* - PDA and Phone

*#*#1111#*#* - FTA SW Version

*#*#2222#*#* - FTA HW Version

*#*#44336#*#* - PDA, Phone, CSC, Build Time, Changelist number

Codes to launch various Factory Tests:

*#*#0283#*#* - Packet Loopback

*#*#0*#*#* - LCD test

*#*#0673#*#* OR *#*#0289#*#* - Melody test

*#*#0842#*#* - Device test (Vibration test and BackLight test)

*#*#2663#*#* - Touch screen version

*#*#2664#*#* - Touch screen test

*#*#0588#*#* - Proximity sensor test

*#*#3264#*#* - RAM version

How To Root Micromax A110 Easily

2013-01-22T22:14:00.005+05:30

Micromax Canvas 2 i.e. Micromax A110 root by Bin4ry's rooting tool. Thanks to Bin4ry's for this rooting tool. This device was recently rooted and thus enjoys superuser access. The development for this 5 inch dual core processor powered Android Phablet will, for sure, be accelerated with this. The rooting procedure is really easy, and you will follow the given Procedure ---

1. Enable USB debugging on your device. To do that, go to Settings > Development > USB debugging.
2. Connect your device to any PC/laptop. The drivers will be installed automatically.
3. Unzip the root tool you downloaded by given link.

Download Bin4ry's Root tool From HERE

5. A command prompt with weird green letters will pop-up on your screen.
Follow the onscreen instructions carefully. To start off, you willl need to type in a "1" and press enter.
[Note: If you ever want to Unroot your Micromax A110, follow the above steps till you reach this one and then, instead of typing "1", type "x" and hit enter. Follow the instructions that appear on the command prompt after that.]

6. Your device will reboot during the process after which Bin4ry will copy some files to your device.

7.When the green letters in the command prompt says Have Fun!, then... Have fun.

8. That means, your device is rooted now and you can enjoy Superuser permissions!

How to Increase the RAM of Micromax A110 Superfone Canvas 2

2012-12-05T18:08:00.000+05:30

Micromax A110 is among some of the top best budget smart phones running Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich Operating System. All the different specifications of this phone is really appreciable. But the default internal storage is somehow not upto mark. Micromax says that the phone comes with 1 GB of internal storage, but many users complains that it has 512 MB of internal storage. If you are also among those who don’t like these phone Internal Storage, then hold it on, here is a great tutorial for you, by which you can easily increase the Internal Storage of your Micromax A110 Android Smartphone. This tutorial will let you to use the memory of your SD card as the default internal memory of your phone. Which means that you can easily use any memory card of any Storage space just upto 32GB.
Please be aware that, to follow these tutorials your phone need to be rooted. If it is not root then follow our previous post on How to Root Micromax A110. After rooting, Let’s get started.

HOW TO USE YOUR EXTERNAL SD CARD AS INTERNAL MEMORY FOR YOUR PHONE

First of all take backup of your device via clockworkmod or any other method which you like.
Now Install any File Explorer, which gives you Root access permission. For this you can use Root Explorer which is free of cost.
Now Open the file explorer (Root Explorer) and browse to /system/etc and find a file named asvold.fstab
Now copy that file to any location on your SD card.
Now rename the original vold.fstab file to vold.fstab.bak Please note that: to Rename that file you need to change the permissions from Read only to Read and write from the top right option.
Download the modified vold.fstab file from here and copy that file to /system/etc
And change the permission to rw-r–r– by long pressing on that file.
Now Reboot your phone and check the storage section of your device.

So, what do you think about this tutorial, Don’t forget to share your views by leaving your comments below…

How To Find the Person Behind an Email Address

2012-08-15T01:18:00.001+05:30

You got an email from a person with whom you have never interacted before and therefore, before you reply to that message, you would like to know something more about him or her.
No worries, Here is a trick to find this.
Open the header of the email message and look for lines that say “Received: from” followed by an IP address in square brackets. If there are multiple entries, use the IP address mentioned in the last entry.
If you are not finding the senders addresse then click on "Show Original".
Now visit this website

Enter the ip address to findout the senders location.

How to Download all your Data from Facebook

2012-08-15T00:37:00.000+05:30

Facebook has a feature to download all your data from your account.By which you can move all your data out of Facebook as a zip file.It will have all your photos, videos, status messages, events and everything else that you may have ever uploaded to Facebook.
The process in demonstrated in the images below.
First go to Account Setting and follow the instructions in following images.

Click on Download a copy

Download Office 2013 Customer Preview

2012-08-08T02:41:00.000+05:30

It's been about three years since Microsoft unveiled a new version of Office, and particularly with Windows 8 just months away from dropping, the software has been well overdue for an upgrade.Microsoft unveiled the latest edition -- Office 2013 (aka Office 15).

Visit Here To Download Office 2013

Enable Hidden Menus in Windows 7 Default Games

2012-08-08T02:04:00.000+05:30

Windows 7 operating systems ship with some addictive games. Chess Titans, FreeCell, Hearts, Internet Backgammon, Internet Checkers, Internet Spades, Mahjong Titans, Minesweeper, Purple Place, Solitaire, and Spider Solitaire are available in games explorer.

As you know, hundreds of free tools available to tweak the hidden settings present in Windows 7 but none of them allow you tweak the built-in games in Windows 7. Today, we have a very handy tweaking tool to tweak games in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Windows Games Tweaker lets you enable the secret Debug menu in Chess, FreeCell, Hears, Mahjong, Minesweeper, Purble Place, Solitaire, and Spider Solitaire games.

With this tool, you can enable the hidden the debug menu and add quick access to easily change appearance of games. For instance, you can enable force save, force load, force win, force win timed, and for lose options in Solitaire game and set hair color, set eye color, set mount color, set head/body, set nose color and set accessory color in Purble Place game.

Using this tool is pretty easy. Just run the Windows Games Tweaker as administrator (right-click on the utility and select run as administrator option), select the game from the list and then click enable to reveal hidden options.

Download Windows Games Tweaker

Fix: 0xc0000098 Error In Windows 8

2012-07-09T03:01:00.000+05:30

Have you ever faced error like this:
"Windows Boot Configuration Data does not contain valid OS Entry"

Troubleshoot 0xc0000098 Error

Basically you need to performed a chkdsk operation to sort out the issue in such cases. But when I tried this, it doesn’t work at all and I received the following message:

The type of the file system is NTFS. Cannot lock current drive.

1. Boot into safe mode with elevated command prompt.

2. Type DISKPART command. It will launch the Disk Partition utility.

3. Now type the list volume command. It will list the volumes on system. Carefully note the volume for Windows 8. The image shown below is just for convenience of users for applying commands.

4. Moving on, type select volume ### where (### represents the drive number in which your Windows is installed. It’ll select the volume in which you are getting the error i.e. the drive for Windows 8.

5. Finally apply the following command :

attributes volume clear readonly
Applying the above command will fix the basic writing problems with the drive associated.

6. Type exit to leave diskpart utility.

Thus the manual workaround is over. Now its time to check for disk errors, to do that type:

chkdsk /f chkdsk /r

That’s it. Now the Windows will ask you to reboot and on reboot it will fix the issue and make the way for normal boot.

Microsoft Automated Troubleshooting Package

2012-07-09T02:41:00.000+05:30

Microsoft releases various Fix It’s and ATS from Microsoft Automated Troubleshooting (MAT) regularly. These tools help us identify and resolve our Windows problems and issues automatically with a few clicks.

Microsoft Support uses MATS to collect diagnostic information from a Windows-based computer, to analyze the data that is collected for known root causes, and to determine the correct resolution to any issues found. The information that is collected may also be used to automatically perform common troubleshooting tasks or automatically fix known problems on your computer.

As a Windows MAT user, you may have some questions about this service and its usage. For instance you might want to know, Which URLs may be required be configured on a firewall/ proxy if you find that your diagnostic package is not running properly?

The following are the URLs are accessed when you run a diagnostic package:

http://support.microsoft.com
https://support.microsoft.com
https://dcupload.microsoft.com
https://diagnostics.support.microsoft.com
https://dcodews.partners.extranet.microsoft.com
http://microsoft.com
https://microsoft.com

Visit here: Microsoft Automated Troubleshooting Services and Support Diagnostic Platform

Opera 12 Released

2012-06-14T18:28:00.000+05:30

Opera 12 for Windows, Mac and Linux has been released. This is the first major version update, after Opera 11 was released in Dec 2011.

Opera 12 new features:

HTML5 drag-and-drop. This feature will allow you to drag and drop items from your desktop onto the browser with a view to transfer them to online or cloud services.

Opera 12 is now easier to personalize. New themes will now offer you instant makeover and will give your brower new looks.

It now offers 64-bit support. This emans Opera 12 will be faster and more secure. Being able to use your processor in a better way will lead to your getting faster startup times and an overall better Opera experience.

Opera 12 can now access your camera, letting websites snap a picture of you. The next time you need to set a profile picture of yourself, you don’t have to bother uploading a picture from somewhere else. You can let Opera 12 do it instead.

Introduction of Out-of-Process plugins. Some plugins will run out side of Opera, seperately. So if any plugin crashes, Opera 12 will not.

The new drop-down suggestions in the address bar should help you find exactly what you are looking for. URL shortening in the address field is also a lot better.

Hardware acceleration allows Opera 12 to render graphics using your graphics card (GPU).

With this release, Opera Unite and Opera Widgets are removed by default for new users.

How To Backup Bootable USB Drive

2012-05-16T01:54:00.000+05:30

USB Image Tool is a small tool that lets you create image backup of any USB drives with a click. It supports almost all USB drives out there and lets you backup bootable drives as well. Follow the below mentioned steps to create an image backup of the bootable drive and restore the backup using the same tool.

Step 1: Download and install USB Image Tool. It supports both x86 and x64 versions of Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems.

Step 2: Connect your bootable USB drive to the PC and then run the program as administrator. Select your USB drive, select Device Mode in drop-down menu, click Backup button and browse to the location where you wish to save the image backup and finally click Save button to start the process.

To restore the image backup to the USB:
Step 1: Connect the USB drive to your PC, backup all data from the USB and then launch the program.

Step 2: Select Device Mode, click on Restore button and browse to the image file that you have previously saved and finally click Open button to start restoring the backup image to the USB drive. That’s it!

How To Create Shortcut Key To Switch To Next Desktop Background

2012-05-16T01:41:00.000+05:30

Microsoft introduced Desktop Slideshow feature with Windows 7 OS and the feature is present in Windows 8 as well. As all of you know, Desktop Slideshow lets you have a slide show of your favorite wallpapers. The feature supports changing of the desktop wallpaper at intervals ranging from 10 seconds to 1 day.

Hundreds of theme packs (set of wallpapers) are also available as free download from Windows personalization gallery. The only problem with the feature is that you need to manually right-click on desktop and then click Next desktop background option to switch to the next background in the slideshow.

Sure, you can set the interval in Personalization window but wouldn’t it be nice if there was a shortcut to quickly switch to the next background in the pipeline, without having to open the desktop context menu.

Of course, when you on desktop, you can press Shift + F10 keys followed by N key to switch to the next desktop background but we have a better solution that automates clicking above keys and lets you switch to the next background with a click.

Windows 7 and Windows 8 users who love to have themes will be glad to know that it’s actually possible to create a shortcut to switch to the next desktop background. Just follow the given below steps to create a shortcut to perform “next desktop background” action.

Step 1: Open your Notepad application and then paste the below code in the Notepad.

set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.SendKeys("^ ")
WshShell.SendKeys("+{F10}")
WshShell.SendKeys("n")

Step 2: Save the file with any name but with .vbs extension. That’s it! You can now do a double-click on the newly created .vbs file to switch to the next desktop background. Users who would like to have a keyboard shortcut need to follow the next two steps as well.

Step 3: Right-click on the newly created .vbs file and click Create shortcut to have a shortcut of the the file on desktop.

Step 4: Do a right-click on the shortcut, select Properties. Switch to Shortcut tab, and then enter a hotkey in the Short Key box. Click Apply button.

That’s it! From now onwards, you can use this new shortcut key to switch to the next desktop background. Good luck!

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Download 180-Day Free Trial Copies Of McAfee Internet Security 2012 And Norton AntiVirus 2012

2012-05-02T01:16:00.001+05:30

Usually, security software vendors offer 30-day trial of the full product. In an effort to protect its users, Facebook is now offering its users to download 6 months trial copy of Norton Antivirus 2012 and McAfee Internet Security 2012 software.

Norton Antivirus 2012 comes with four different layers of smart protection to detect and remove threats from your PC. The newest version of the security software scans your Facebook news feed for suspicious web links and downloads and then warns you. Norton Antivirus also scans your email and instant messages for unsafe links and attachments.
If you are looking for an advanced security software, you should try out McAfee Internet Security 2012, as it provides complete protection against viruses, spyware and malware and also includes two-way firewall. McAfee Internet Security comes all features that you need to safely browse the web. The Quick Clean feature uninstalls unused applications, cached browser files and system junk files to speed-up your Windows.

Anti-spam protection, parental control, and 1GB online backup are some other features available in McAfee. Pre-install scan, removable device scan, and anti-bot protection are the new features available in McAfee Internet Security 2012.

Visit this promo page to download your copy of McAfee and Norton Internet Security 2012 software. These security software are compatible with only Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 operating systems.

Google Drive Launched, Download Now

2012-04-25T00:44:00.000+05:30

Google has finally launched the much awaited and speculated Google Drive, the cloud based file storage service. The service offers 5GB for storage space and client application is available for Windows, Mac, and Android.

Google Drive lets you easily upload files, videos, photos, PDF files, Google Docs and more. In addition to the above mentioned features, there is another cool feature available if you are a Google Docs lover. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive! So, creating, editing or managing your Google Docs is fairly simple job now.

Google Drive offers 5GB of storage for free. Power users can upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100 GB for $4.99/month, and 1TB for $49.99/month. Upgrading to a paid Google Drive account will also increase your Gmail account storage limit to 25GB. Google plans to add more features to the service in coming months. Visit the download page to begin using Google’s new service.

Visit HERE to download the web installer and then run the setup to download and install the program.

Access Facebook on any Mobile Without the Internet In India

2012-04-12T03:28:00.000+05:30

Facebook India has partnered with Fonetwish to bring Facebook on every mobile phone without requiring any apps or even the Internet.

You dial the *325# number, then enter your Facebook username and password and you are in. You can then send number based commands to access various features of Facebook, chat with friends who are online, add new people to your friends list, and more.

Fonetwish says that this service is currently available for Airtel, Aircel, Idea and Tata Docomo users in India.

It may be too much work to read your Facebook news feed stories one by one but this is a good option to quickly update your Facebook status or for chatting with friends who are online. The price is reasonable too – you just have pay a subscription fee of 1.00 per day for unlimited usage.

Download Wikipedia Articles for Offline Reading

2012-04-12T02:52:00.001+05:30

Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia, provides database dumps of all their wikis that one can download for free and thus access the entire Wikipedia content on computers that are not connected to the Internet.

The database dumps are frequently updated and include every single article that’s available on the main Wikipedia website. The dumps are available as .xml.bz2 files that you can easily open on your computer using the free and portable WikiTaxi software.

WikiTaxi ships with an importer that will first un-compress the Wikipedia database files (.bz2) and then converts them into a .taxi file format. Now you open these .taxi files inside WikiTaxi just like the way you open .doc files inside Microsoft Word. If you are running low on space, the original Wikipedia dumps can be safely discarded.

For More Details and Download Wikitaxi Visit HERE

Save any Web Pages as PDFs in Chrome

2012-04-12T02:39:00.000+05:30

Open any web page inside Google Chrome, press Ctrl+P to open the Print dialog and change the destination printer to “Save as PDF.” Hit the Print button and the current web page will instantly download as a PDF document. Simple!

You neither have to install any software on your computer nor any extensions in your browser because Google Chrome itself acts as the PDF writer.

This is especially useful for downloading PDF copies of web pages that involve transactions or session data – like the checkout page on a shopping website – because you often cannot pass such pages to any online PDF conversion service.

One more thing. You can also use Chrome’s PDF engine to convert your local image files, text files and any local HTML web pages to PDFs – if you an open a file in Chrome, it can convert the file to PDF.

YouTube Saved: Download YouTube VIdeos & Extract Audio

2012-04-12T02:13:00.000+05:30

Most users like to download videos from YouTube and keep in their hard disk, to be able to play them without having to connect to internet.YouTube keeps changing its API from time to time due to which the old YouTube downloaders stop fetching the downloadable link of YouTube videos. If you are in search of a new YouTube downloader that lets you not only download video, but also extract audio in AAC and MP3 formats, try YouTube Saved out.

It is a small application that allows you to download videos from YouTube both in video and audio formats. Using YouTube Saved, you no longer need to manually convert downloaded YouTube videos into audio format; just specify the source link of YouTube video, choose the output format, and it will start extracting audio from the defined video. It is an ad-supported application and displays ads inside the main interface. During installation, it attempts to install ViralTube Toolbar, so make sure that ViralTube Install option is disabled in installation wizard.

Once installed, it will display the option to select the desired media type for your device. You can choose to, either Download videos to your device from YouTube, or Download music to your device from YouTube.

Download Youtube Saved From Here

Bing Desktop for Windows 7

2012-04-12T01:41:00.001+05:30

Bing Desktop delivers the beauty of the Bing homepage to your Windows desktop each day. Plus, get easy access to the Bing search box right from your desktop. Turn your searching into doing with Bing.

Bing Desktop is a 1.4MB download from Microsoft, that will on a daily basis, deliver the beautiful Bing images directly to your Windows computer and set them as wallpapers. Apart from this, the application displays a neat looking Bing search box in the center of your desktop, allowing you quick access to search on the web.

Download Bing Desktop from HERE

Install windows 8/Windows 7 From USB

2012-03-04T03:24:00.000+05:30

Requirements:

USB Flash Drive (Minimum 4GB)
Windows 8 or Windows 7 installation files(iso or an Installation Disk)

Follow the below steps to create bootable Windows 7/Vista USB drive using which you can install Windows 7/Vista easily.

1. Plug-in your USB flash drive to USB port.
2. Open Command Prompt with admin rights. Use any of the below methods to open Command Prompt with admin rights.
Type cmd in Start menu search box and hit Ctrl+ Shift+ Enter.
Or
Go to Start menu > All programs > Accessories, right click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

3. When the Command Prompt opens, enter the following command:

DISKPART and hit enter.
LIST DISK and hit enter.
Once you enter the LIST DISK command, it will show the disk number of your USB drive. In the below image my USB drive disk no is Disk 1.

4. In this step you need to enter all the below commands one by one and hit enter.

SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your disk number)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT FS=NTFS Quick
(Format process may take few seconds)
ASSIGN
EXIT

Don’t close the command prompt as we need to execute one more command at the next step. Just minimize it.
5. Insert your Windows DVD in the optical drive or mount an iso image to the virtual drive and note down the drive letter of the optical drive and USB media. Here I use “J” as my optical (DVD) drive letter and “G” as my USB drive letter.
6. Go back to command prompt and execute the following commands:
J:CD BOOT and hit enter. Where “J” is your DVD drive letter.
CD BOOT and hit enter to see the below message.
BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 G: (Where “G” is your USB drive letter)

7. Copy Windows DVD contents to USB.

Now You have a bootable USB. Only thing you have to do is change your boot device as USB in boot menu

Windows 8 Consumer Preview (Beta Ver.) Launched

2012-02-29T22:31:00.001+05:30

Microsoft Corp.launched the first test version of Windows 8, to gather consumer feedback on the new operating system

Windows 8, which isn't expected to be released commercially until late this year, is designed to position Microsoft in the fast-growing tablet market dominated by Apple Inc.'s iPad and devices that run Google Inc.'s Android software.

Microsoft, once the dominating global software developer, has failed to gain traction in the smartphone and tablet markets. Windows 8 is critical to Microsoft's mobile future, and represents the most dramatic overhaul of the operating system since the release of Windows 95, 16 years ago.

Windows 8 will be flexible enough to accommodate tablet devices and smartphones, as well as more traditional PCs that rely on keyboards and mice. The software has gained attention for the dramatic changes to its user interface, which was originally used in Microsoft's mobile operating system Windows Phone 7.

The launch will reduce Microsoft's dependence on its 30-year partnership with Intel Corp. Instead, the operating system will support ARM processors, which are used in virtually all tablet computers and smartphones, in addition to the previously supported x86 microprocessors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview From Here

Installation:
The Consumer Preview setup will check if your PC can run Windows 8 Consumer Preview and select the right download. The setup also includes tools to create bootable flash drive.

All users must use NF32V-Q9P3W-7DR7Y-JGWRW-JFCK8 product key to activate Windows 8 Consumer Preview. If it asks for a key.

Complete Guide to Convert Physical Computer Into Virtual Machine (VMware, VirtualBox & Virtual PC)

2012-02-19T05:07:00.000+05:30

Virtual Machine software like VirtualBox, Virtual PC, Parallels, VMware etc, provide the utility of not only running multiple virtual environments on the host system, but also allow creating and configuring the machines as per the requirements. The Virtual Machine software are designed keeping high-end usage requirements in mind, and therefore, such applications are authorized to gain complete control over all the installed hardware and software components.
While machine virtualization utilities are widely used to run disk images of operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux distributions, they don’t allow converting the physical into a virtual machine in order to use the entire system on other platforms in a virtual environment. Today, we look at the the simplest way to convert the local machine to virtual machine, and then configure and run it on other systems using virtualization software.

Amongst the virtualization software available out there, VMware Workstation is considered to be the most powerful machine virtualization application, enabling users to run both x86 and x64 OS editions as guest machines. Although it’s a paid utility, it offers a free VMware Player to run the pre-configured guest systems on host computer. VirtualBox, on the other hand, is a completely free virtualization software, letting users create, configure and run Virtual Machines on their systems. VirtualBox supports virtual hard disks and OS images created using VMware, and therefore, it can seamlessly run the guest machine configured via VMware. In this post, we will guide you through the process of creating a VMware Disk of local machine, and then use it on VMware, Virtual PC and VirtualBox.

First off, you need a conversion tool that can turn your local machine into virtual machine. VMware provides a free utility called VMware vCenter Converter for physical to virtual machine conversions. It has the ability to create a VMware Disk image of the entire system, including installed drives, local drives, configured hardware and software components, installed applications and more.

Once the local machine is converted into VMDK file, you can use it on other operating system including Mac OS X and Linux variants. The application presents a simple conversion wizard that guides you through the process of selecting the local system components, target locations and target VMware workstation/player (virtualization variant) on which you wish to run the converted VMDK file. It supports a wide range of source third-party images including Microsoft Hyper-V, Virtual Server, Virtual PC, Parallels, Norton Ghost, Acronis, Storage Craft and more. The application also provides a central conversion management console to help you organize and monitor local and remote machine conversion instances. Additionally, it performs sector-by-sector data copy operations to clone the selected disks. The disk cloning process is unobtrusive, and it doesn’t prompt users to confirm the copying actions while converting the local machine into virtual VMware disk image.

To get started, launch VMware vCenter Converter (download link given at the bottom of the post), and click Convert Machine on toolbar.

This will start the Conversion wizard. The first step is to select the source type of machine (physical or virtual machine) that you want to make. It supports selecting the current machine (physical machine), VMware Infrastructure virtual machine, VMware Workstation, Hyper-V Server, and other third-party virtual machines. Since you need to convert the current machine to virtual machine, select Powered-on machinesource type from drop-down menu, and then enable This local machine option.

You can view the details of selected machine by hitting View source details. It shows name of the selected machine, machine type (virtual or physical), installed OS on selected machine, RAM size, Volumes layout, Total system size and other system-related information. After verifying the target physical machine, clickClose followed by Next button.

In next step, it will ask you to specify the destination type and VMware product. Choose VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine option as destination type, and select the target VMware product (VMware Workstation, VMware Player, VMware Server or VMware Fusion). Once done, enter the virtual machine name and select the location where VMDK file is to be saved. If you’re planning to use the converted physical machine on other systems, it’s recommended to save the VMDK file on external hard disk. However, to run the virtual machine on local system, you may choose any location on hard drive.

Once preliminary settings are configured, it presents a local machine explorer to let you choose the folders and drives that are to be included in VMDK file. Here, you can exclude the local drives, and configure system components’ settings including Processors, Networks, CPU Throttling level and more.

Once done, hit Next to view the physical to virtual machine conversion summary.

Clicking Finish will start the conversion process. You can stop the conversion and delete the task from toolbar. The main window shows the details of tasks which are being performed. It will create a VMX (VMware Virtual Machine Configuration) file along with VMware disk image file to help you quickly launch the converted physical machine in VMware Virtualization software.

Once the physical machine is converted into virtual machine, move to system where you want to run the converted physical machine. Launch the VMware virtualization software (VMware workstation, VMware Player, etc), and open the VMX file to boot the OS of converted physical machine.

Since VirtualBox supports VMware VMDK container format, all you need is to specify VMDK file that contains the virtual machine while creating a virtual machine to run it. For this, launch VirtualBox and hitNew on toolbar.

This will open Create New Virtual Machine wizard. Specify the name of virtual machine, operating system and then its version. If you’re creating Windows 7 virtual machine, just enter Windows 7 and it will automatically set the default OS Type.

The next step deals with setting the maximum amount of physical RAM that can be used by virtual machine. Specify the RAM size and hit Next.

Now, instead of creating a new hard disk, choose Use existing hard disk option to specify source location of converted physical machine disk (VMDK file). Once selected, hit Next.

The Summary page lets you verify the virtual machine configurations. Now, hit Finish to create a virtual machine.

Once done, select the newly created virtual machine, and hit Start on toolbar to launch the OS of your converted physical machine. You can change the default virtual machine configuration from Settings such as network type, processor, maximum video memory, boot order, audio driver, shared folders etc.

Microsoft Virtual PC is another widely used virtualization software that allows running multiple guest operating systems simultaneously. Although the latest version supports only Windows 7, it presents a simple wizard to create Windows and Linux-based OS virtual machines. Unlike VMware and VirtualBox, it supports VHD format, and doesn’t allow users to use virtual machine disks in other container formats to run guest OS.

If you used VMware vCenter Converter to create virtual machine disk of physical machine, you probably want to convert the VMDK (converted physical machine) file into VHD format, so that it can be used with MS Virtual PC. StarWind offers a free application that allows you to convert numerous virtual disk formats. Using StarWind’s V2V Image Converter, you can convert a VMDK (fixed and dynamic) disk image into VHD format. Not only does it convert between Virtual Disk formats, it also enables you to convert VMDK and VHD file into IMG format. The application performs sector-by-sector copy operations to clone an entire source virtual machine format into user-defined container virtual hard disk format.

To begin, install StarWind V2V Image Converter, and launch it to specify the source VMDK container file. On the main interface, it asks you to specify the complete path of source image file you want to convert. Just enter the complete path of VMDK file, and then click Next.

Now, specify the output image format from the list, and click Next.

In this step, just specify the target location where VHD image is to saved.

Clicking Next will begin the conversion process. The time it takes to convert the VMDK file to VHD format depends upon the size of VMDK file.

Once VMDK image is converted into VHD file, launch MS Virtual PC to start New Virtual Machine wizard. After entering the name of virtual machine and allocating maximum amount of physical RAM, select An existing virtual hard disk option, and hit Next.

Now, specify the converted VHD image file and click Next to begin creating virtual machine.

MS Virtual PC falls somewhere in between the power of VMWare and simplicity of VirtualBox. However, it supports only a limited number of virtual machine additions, so you may face some technical issues while using the converted physical machine in MS Virtual PC. When it comes to running Virtual Machine with converted physical machine image file, you have several options at your disposal, but considering that VMware natively supports VMDK container format, we recommend using a VMware virtualization software to get the best performance from the VM disk image. In order to further boost the guest OS performance, you should install all essential virtual machine additions and other OS-specific tools.

Download VMware vCenter Converter from Here

Retain Clipboard Items After System Reboot Using ClipboardZanager

2012-02-19T04:37:00.000+05:30

ClipboardZanager is a clipboard manager. It lets you easily manage the Windows clipboard and save multiple items at a time, including text and images. What makes it different from other clipboard tools is its ability to retain clippings after the system reboot, allowing you to easily recover and use the clipboard data. Read past the jump for more.

The main interface of the application has options to change the number of copies to keep in the clipboard memory. If the number of copied items goes above the specified limit of copies, the first item will automatically get deleted from the list. Other options include start ClipboardZanager with Windows logon, keep the copied data for reuse at the next startup, and change the hotkey to bring up the on-screen clipboard manager.

The clipboard manager can be accessed using the specified hotkey. Items can be added to the clipboard manager simply by using the Ctrl + C hotkey. In order to paste an item from the list, open the manager, double click on the required item, and then use the default paste command (Ctrl + V) to paste it.

Download it from HERE

Instant Eyedropper: View any color codes

2012-02-02T02:25:00.000+05:30

Instant Eyedropper is a system tray based application with a memory foot print of only around 1.2 MB, which allows you to view color values and automatically copy the values to clipboard in multiple formats, without having to access any interface.

After installation, the application is available in the system tray. The way it works, is that, to view the code of any color, left-click on the system tray icon and drag your mouse on top of any item on your desktop to view its color. A small window will popup along side the cursor, displaying the code of color in real-time. The popup window also has a pixel magnifier to locate the exact color you want.

Right-click the system tray icon to change the format of color values. Instant Eyedropper supports HTML, Hex, Delphi Hex, VB Hex, RGB and HSB color codes.

Select Options from the right-click menu to change startup behavior, Resolution of the pixel magnifier to specify number of pixels to show in the popup window, and specify the format style of color codes.

Download Instant Eyedropper from here

UndoClose: Reopen Recently Closed Folders And Apps With Hotkeys

2012-01-29T03:41:00.000+05:30

One of the most useful tab-management features of modern browsers is opening recently closed tabs using Ctrl+Shift+T hotkey. It certainly saves the time one would’ve spent sifting through browsing history to find and open closed tabs. In contrast to browsers, Windows 7 manages folders and application windows differently; despite storing recently opened programs and items in Start Menu, it doesn’t support bringing them up again using a hotkey.Here is a tool undoclose that will make this easy.
UndoClose supports two hotkey combinations; Ctrl+Shift+F and Ctrl+Shift+A, to open last closed folder (in Windows Explorer) and application, respectively. The hotkeys can be used multiple times. For example, if you close VLC Player, Notepad and iTunes, press Ctrl+Shift+A hotkey three times to launch VLC Player, Notepad and iTunes again.
Download Undoclose from HERE