YOUR SOLUTION

Cara Mengatasi Beranda Facebook Yang Tidak Muncul Gambar Atau Tampilannya Acak-Acakan

2012-12-04T14:07:00.000+07:00

Berikut ini cara mengatasai akun Facebook yang beranda atau gambarnya tidak muncul atau keluar. Biasanya facebook kamu tampilannya akan acak-acakan saat di buka di browser laptop, handphone atau smartphone.

Ada beberapa kemungkinan jika Facebook kamu tidak muncul gambarnya atau tampilannya acak-acakan

Tanggal dan Waktu di sistem komputer kamu tidak sesuai dengan Kalender hari ini
Hal ini disebabkan karena ada beberapa provider yang tidak bisa membaca HTTPS Facebook, akan saya jelaskan pada artikel kali ini.

CARA PERTAMA (Ganti Date and Time Sistem Komputer)

1. Untuk mengecek apakah tanggal dan waktu sistem komputer kamu sudah sesuai, tinggal sorot aja Toolbar yang ada di pojok bawah, apakah sudah sesuai dengan tanggal dan jam saat ini. Kalau belum silahkan ubah dan ganti.

CARA KEDUA (RUBAH KONEKSI HTTPS FACEBOOK)

1. Biasanya ketika sudah memasukan dan Login ke facebook tampilan facebook kamu akan seperti gambar dibawah ini

(Klik Disini Untuk Memperbesar gambar)

2. Cara mengatasinya, seperti berikut, silahkan Logout dahulu dari facebook, lalu kamu buka www.m.facebook.com masukan password dan login kamu

(Klik Disini Untuk Memperbesar gambar)

3. Berikut ini adalah contoh tampilan setelah kamu logi dari m.facebook tadi, jika sudah silahkan kamu klik tombol "SETTINGS" yang ada di bagian bawah

(Klik Disini Untuk Memperbesar gambar)

4. Setelah itu silahkan kamu klik "SECURITY"

(Klik Disini Untuk Memperbesar gambar)

5. Lalu kamu ubah "SECURE BROWSING", kemudian klik tulisan menjadi "DISABLE", dan tampilan nya menjadi seperti tampilan dibawah

(Klik Disini Untuk Memperbesar gambar)

6. SETELAH ITU, SILAHKAN klik LOGOUT AKUN KAMU DARI m.facebook.com

7. SEKARANG SILAHKAN KAMU BUKA www.facebook.com dan LOGIN, Agar Tips ini berfingsi silahkan pstikan bahwa Adress bar di browsernya bukan [ HTTPS:// ]

(Klik Disini Untuk Memperbesar gambar)

6. NAH SEKARANG FACEBOOK KAMU SUDAH NORMAL KEMBALI, TAPI INGAT JANGAN MENG-KLIK LINK YANG MENCURIGAKAN YANG ADA DI FACEBOOK, KARENA NANTI FACEBOOK KAMU BISA KENA VIRUS, SOALNYA SECURE BROWSING HTTPS FACEBOOK NYA DALAM KONDISI "DISABLE".

Source : http://10507276.blog.unikom.ac.id/tips-cara.5bu (Thanks)

Babylon Search Removal Instruction

2012-12-03T11:15:00.001+07:00

Description:

Babylon Search (search.babylon.com) is a browser hijacker that replaces your default home page with a search bar. However, creators of Babylon Search insist that it is an add-on for Internet browsers. In fact, it requires user’s approval to be installed inside the computer. It comes bundled when installing other programs that you may download for free. Upon installation of the program, it prompts you whether you want to install it using the default settings or customized version. Most often, Babylon Search will get loaded into the system when selecting default installation method.

However, some may contest that Babylon Search should have provided an option to be removed from the system if needed. Without this component, other may consider it as an adware that withhold itself once installed.
At any rate, if you want to remove Babylon Search browser hijacker and stop getting redirected to search.babylon.com, simply follow the guide below. Using this guide, you may be able to replace the default home page, and search page on the affected browser and delete the Babylon Search entry from the list.

Type	Hijacker
Sub-Type	Add-ons
OS Affected	Windows

What are the Symptoms of Babylon Search Hijacker?

Once this adware is installed, it launches a new tab window when the browser is opened. The page contains a search bar similar to image you can see below.

Follow these Procedures to Remove Babylon Search Hijacker

Procedure 1: Uninstall Babylon Search Hijacker from Windows Control Panel

1. Go to Start > Control Panel
2. Under Programs, click on Uninstall a program. It will open a program and features window where-in you can uninstall, change, or repair installed software.
3. Look for the name Babylon Search Hijacker or any related term. Please note that the adware may change the title anytime. Once found, please select the item you wanted to remove.

NOTE: To represent Babylon Search Hijacker, we used the term 'Unknown'. Be aware that Babylon Search Hijacker may use other names or terms such as the following:
Babylon, Montiera, Funmoods, Facemood

4. Click on Uninstall button to remove the program automatically.
5. If it prompts for confirmation, please click OK to proceed.

Procedure 1: Start Windows in Safe Mode with Networking

Restart your computer in Safe Mode with Networking
- After turning On the power of the computer, just before Windows start, press F8.
- From the selections, choose Safe Mode with Networking. Please use keyboard's arrow up/down to navigate between selections and press Enter to proceed.

Procedure 2: Scan and remove Babylon Search Hijacker files with MalwareBytes Anti-Malware

To remove Babylon Search Hijacker, download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware by clicking on the button below. This tool is effective in getting rid of Trojans, viruses and malware.

1. After downloading, please install the program using the default settings.
2. At the end of the installation, please make sure that it will download necessary updates.
3. Once update has completed. The tool will launch.
4. Thoroughly scan the computer and remove all threats detected by this anti-malware program.

Procedure 3: Manually remove settings created by Babylon Search Hijacker.

If the hijacker was not removed properly during the scan, you can use this guide to uninstall it from the computer. We prepared procedures to remove this unknown search program from various Internet browsers including Internet Explorer 8/9, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

Uninstall Babylon Search Hijacker from Internet Explorer 8:

1. Launch the program Internet Explorer 8.
2. On top menu, please navigate to Tools > Internet Options.

3. It will open the options window; make sure that you are viewing the General tab. Look for the area that says "Search" and click the Settings button.

4. You will see a list of search providers. Select your preferred search provider and click the button Set as default to replace Babylon Search Hijacker.

5. You may now remove Babylon Search Hijacker from the list. Highlight the item and click on Remove button.

For Internet Explorer 9:

1. Launch the program Internet Explorer 9.
2. On top menu, please navigate to Tools > Internet Options.
3. On General tab, proceed to Change search defaults and click the Settings button.
4. You will see a list of search providers. Select your desired search provider and click the button Set as default to replace Babylon Search Hijacker.
5. You may now remove Babylon Search Hijacker from the list.

Instructions to remove Babylon Search Hijacker from Mozilla Firefox:

1. Launch the program Mozilla Firefox.
2. On the address bar, type about:config and press Enter on the keyboard to view the list of preferences.

3. If it display a warning message stating that the action might void your warranty, just click "I'll be careful, I promise!"

4. Type Babylon Search Hijacker (or Root Name Only) in the search box to display the list of references that were altered by the adware. Please refer to the image below.
5. There is no button to remove the preference set by Babylon Search Hijacker. All you need to do is restore it to Firefox's default settings. Right-click on the item and select Reset from the drop-down list.

6. After resetting all affected preferences, you can now restart Firefox.
7. Navigate to toolbar and on Google's Search box, click the arrow down sitting right beside the 'G' logo.

8. Click on Manage Search Engines... from the drop-down list to see all search engines installed in Firefox.
9. Choose your preferred default search provider by placing it at the top most position. Highlight the item and click on Move up until it reaches the first spot.

10. To remove Babylon Search Hijacker from Firefox, highlight on its name and click the Remove button.

Delete Babylon Search Hijacker from Google Chrome:

1. Launch the program Google Chrome.
2. Click on the Wrench icon on top right corner of the browser.

3. Choose Settings from the drop down list. It will open a window containing Google Chrome settings.
4. Find the area that says "Search". This is located in the middle part of the page.

5. Click on Manage search engines. It will show a list of Search engines including the default one.
6. Mouse-over to your preferred search engine and click Make default.

7. Then, to remove Babylon Search Hijacker from Google Chrome, mouse-over to that item and click on the X mark.

Protect your PC from Babylon Search Hijacker or Similar Attack

Turn On Safe Browsing Features

Internet Explorer - Activate SmartScreen Filter

Internet Explorer versions 8 and 9 has this feature called SmartScreen Filter. It helps detect phishing web sites and protect you from downloading malicious files online. To turn on SmartScreen Filter, follow these steps:
1. Please open Internet Explorer.
2. On top menu, select Tools (IE 9). For IE 8, please look for Safety menu.
3. Select SmartScreen Filter from the drop-down list and click on Turn on SmartScreen Filter.

4. Please restart Internet Explorer.

Google Chrome's Enable Phishing and Malware Protection

With Google Chrome's Phishing and Malware Detection feature, you will have lesser risks browsing the web. It will display a warning when the site you are trying to visit is suspicious. To enable Phishing and Malware Protection, please do these steps:
1. Open Google Chrome.
2. Click on the Wrench icon located on top right corner of the browser.
3. Select Settings from the drop-down list.
4. Click on Under the Hood from the left panel.
5. Mark the Enable phishing and malware protection under Privacy settings.

6. Please restart Google Chrome.

Mozilla Firefox - Block Attack Sites and Web Forgeries

Phishing and Malware Protection is a built-in feature on Firefox version 3 or later. It warns you when a page you are trying to visit contains phishing content or an attack site designed to drop threats on the computer. To help you keep safe while browsing the Internet using Firefox, please follow this guide:
1. Open Mozilla Firefox browser.
2. On top menu, click on Tools. Then select Options from the list.
3. Select Security and put a check mark on the following items:

Warn me when sites try to install add-ons
Block reported attack sites
Block reported web forgeries

Secure Your Wi-Fi Network Against Intrusion

2011-07-22T11:03:00.000+07:00

Insecure Wi-Fi is the easiest way for people to access your home network, leech your internet, and cause you serious headaches with more malicious behavior. Read on as we show you how to secure your home Wi-Fi network.

Why Secure Your Network?

In a perfect world you could leave your Wi-Fi networks wide open to share with any passing Wi-Fi starved travelers who desperately needed to check their email or lightly use your network. In reality leaving your Wi-Fi network open create unnecessary vulnerability wherein non-malicious users can sponge up lots of our bandwidth inadvertently and malicious users can pirate using our IP as cover, probe your network and potentially get access to your personal files, or even worse. What does even worse look like? In the case of Matt Kostolnik it looks like a year of hell as your crazy neighbor, via your hacked Wi-Fi network, uploads child pornography in your name using your IP address and sends death threats to the Vice President of the United States. Mr. Kolstolnik was using crappy and outdated encryption with no other defensive measures in place; we can only imagine that a better understanding of Wi-Fi security and a little network monitoring would have saved him a huge headache.

Securing Your Wi-Fi Network

Securing your Wi-Fi network is a multi-step affair. You need to weigh each step and decide if the increased security is worth the sometimes increased hassle accompanying the change. To help you weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each step we’ve divided them up into relative order of importance as well as highlighted the benefits, the drawbacks, and the tools or resources you can use to stress test your own security. Don’t rely on our word that something is useful; grab the available tools and try to kick down your own virtual door.

Note: It would be impossible for us to include step-by-step instructions for every brand/model combination of routers out there. Check the brand and model number on your router and download the manual from the manufacturer’s website in order to most effectively follow our tips. If you have never accessed your router’s control panel or have forgotten how, now is the time to download the manual and give yourself a refresher.

Update Your Router and Upgrade to Third Party Firmware If Possible: At minimum you need to visit the web site for the manufacture of your router and make sure there are no updates. Router software tends to be pretty stable and releases are usually few and far between. If your manufacturer has released an update (or several) since you purchased your router it’s definitely time to upgrade.

Even better, if you’re going to go through the hassle of updating, is to update to one of the awesome third-party router firmwares out there like DD-WRT or Tomato. The third party firmwares unlock all sorts of great options including an easier and finer grain control over security features.

The hassle factor for this modification is moderate. Anytime you flash the ROM on your router you risk bricking it. The risk is really small with third-party firmware and even smaller when using official firmware from your manufacturer. Once you’ve flashed everything the hassle factor is zero and you get to enjoy a new better, faster, and more customizable router.

Change Your Router’s Password: Every router ships with a default login/password combination. The exact combination varies from model to model but it’s easy enough to look up the default that leaving it unchanged is just asking for trouble. Open Wi-Fi combined with the default password is essentially leaving your entire network wide open. You can check out default password lists here, here, and here.

The hassle factor for this modification is extremely low and it’s foolish not to do it.

Turn On and/or Upgrade Your Network Encryption: In the above example we gave, Mr. Kolstolnik had turned on the encryption for his router. He made the mistake of selecting WEP encryption, however, which is the lowest encryption on the Wi-Fi encryption totem pole. WEP is easy to crack using freely available tools such as WEPCrack and BackTrack. If you happened to read the entire article about Mr. Kolstolnik’s problems with his neighbors you’ll note that it took his neighbor two weeks, according to the authorities, to break the WEP encryption. That’s such a long span of time for such a simple task we have to assume that he also had to teach himself how to read and operate a computer too.

Wi-Fi encryption comes in several flavors for home use such as WEP, WPA, and WPA2. In addition WPA/WPA2 can be further subdivided as WPA/WPA2 with TKIP (a 128-bit key is generated per packet) and AES (a different 128-bit encryption). If possible you want to use WP2 TKIP/AES as AES is not as widely adopted as TKIP. Allowing your router to use both will enable to use the superior encryption when available.

The only situation where upgrading the encryption of your Wi-Fi network may pose a problem is with legacy devices. If you have devices manufactured before 2006 it’s possible that, without firmware upgrades or perhaps not at all, they will be unable to access any network but an open or WEP encrypted network. We’ve phased out such electronics or hooked them up to the hard LAN via Ethernet (we’re looking at you original Xbox).

The hassle factor for this modification is low and–unless you have a legacy Wi-Fi device you can’t live without–you won’t even notice the change.

Changing/Hiding Your SSID: Your router shipped with a default SSID; usually something simple like “Wireless” or the brand name like “Netgear”. There’s nothing wrong with leaving it set as the default. If you live in a densely populated area, however, it would make sense to change it to something different in order to distinguished it from the 8 “Linksys” SSIDs you see from your apartment. Don’t change it to anything that identifies you. Quite a few of our neighbors have unwisely changed their SSIDs to things like APT3A or 700ElmSt . A new SSID should make it easier for you to identify your router from the list and not easier for everyone in the neighborhood to do so.

Don’t bother hiding your SSID. Not only does it provide no boost in security but it makes your devices work harder and burn more battery life. We debunked the hidden SSID myth here if you’re interested in doing more detailed reading. The short version is this: even if you “hide” your SSID it is still being broadcast and anyone using apps like inSSIDer or Kismet can see it.

The hassle factor for this modification is low. All you’ll need to do is change your SSID once (if at all) to increase recognition in a router-dense environment.

Filter Network Access by MAC Address:

Media Access Control addresses, or MAC address for short, is a unique ID assigned to every network interface you’ll encounter. Everything you can hook up to your network has one: your XBOX 360, laptop, smartphone, iPad, printers, even the Ethernet cards in your desktop computers. The MAC address for devices is printed on a label affixed to it and/or on the box and documentation that came with the device. For mobile devices you can usually find the MAC address within the menu system (on the iPad, for example, it’s under the Settings –> General –> About menu and on Android phones you’ll find it Settings –> About Phone –> Status menu).

One of the easiest ways to check the MAC addresses of your devices, besides simply reading the label on them, is to check out the MAC list on your router after you’ve upgraded your encryption and logged all your devices back in. If you’ve just changed your password you can be nearly certain the iPad you see attached to the Wi-Fi node is yours.

Once you have all the MAC addresses you can set up your router to filter based on them. Then it won’t be enough for a computer to be in range of the Wi-Fi node and have the password/break the encryption, the device intruding on the network will also need to have the MAC address of a device on your router’s whitelist.

Although MAC filtering is a solid way to increase your security it is possible for somebody to sniff your Wi-Fi traffic and then spoof the MAC address of their device to match one on your network. Using tools like Wireshark, Ettercap, and Nmap as well as the aforementioned BackTrack. Changing the MAC address on a computer is simple. In Linux it’s two commands at the command prompt, with a Mac it’s just about as easy, and under Windows you can use a simple app to swap it like Etherchange or MAC Shift.

The hassle factor for this modification is moderate-to-high. If you use the same devices on your network over and over with little change up then it’s a small hassle to set up the initial filter. If you frequently have guests coming and going that want to hop on your network it’s a huge hassle to always be logging into your router and adding their MAC addresses or temporarily turning off the MAC filtering.

One last note before we leave MAC addresses: if you’re particularly paranoid or you suspect someone is messing around with your network you can run applications like AirSnare and Kismet to set up alerts for MACs outside your white list.

Adjust the Output Power of Your Router: This trick is usually only available if you’ve upgraded the firmware to a third party version. Custom firmware allows you to dial up or down the output of your router. If you’re using your router in a one bedroom apartment you can easily dial the power way down and still get a signal everywhere in the apartment. Conversely if the nearest house is 1000 feet away, you can crank the power up to enjoy Wi-Fi out in your hammock.

The hassle factor for this modification is low; it’s a one time modification. If your router doesn’t support this kind of adjustment, don’t sweat it. Lowering the output power of your router is just a small step that makes it necessary for someone to be physically closer to your router to mess with it. With good encryption and the other tips we’ve shared, such a small tweak has a relatively small benefit.

How to Setup Your Own Powerful Wiki on Your Windows PC

2011-07-15T15:56:00.000+07:00

A wiki is a collaborative web-based writing environment where anybody with an account can create and link articles. In today’s article, we’ll explain how to install and configure MediaWiki without having to read a book.

We’ll start with a quick five minute installation guide, and we’ll cover some administration tips, for example: creating users, assigning them to groups, and how to brighten up your content pages using custom skins.

Original Image by Szeke

Media Wiki Installation

To use Media Wiki, you need to have an apache web server, MySQL database, and PHP 5. You have the option to set them up one by one, however, EasyPHP will take care all the installation with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Head over to their website, download the installer, follow the installation wizard, and you’ll have an environment for running MediaWiki.

At the end of the installation process, you should see EasyPHP appears in your system tray. The system tray short cut gives you access to administrative part of your web server. The first thing that you might want to check is the “Administration” page. This page gives an overview of what running on the web server. If you see this page, this means that you have a working webserver, and you are ready to install MediaWiki.

EasyPHP creates a “www” directory, and it will pick up Media Wiki if you extract its distribution under this folder. If you are a Windows users, you might not be familiar with MediaWiki’s distribution file format, which is a tar file.Don’t worry, simply install 7zip, and use it to extract MediaWiki under the “www” folder. Once you’ve done that EasyPHP will display this folder in the administration page.

Once you’ve done that, EasyPHP immediately deploy MediaWiki, and you’ll see MediaWiki’s homepage link under the Root icon. Click that link, and you’ll see MediaWiki’s installation page.

The installation wizard will walk you through the setup process. You should be fine if you just stick with the default settings that the wizard gives you.

Don’t forget to enable image uploads, if you’re planning to place pictures on your Wiki.

At the end of the installation process, the wizard will generate a file called LocalSettings.php. This file has heaps of settings, and MediaWiki maintains a manual that tells you what these settings mean. Put this file inside the MediaWiki folder that you extracted earlier.

Quick Tour of Media Wiki

MediaWiki comes with a very popular white crisp theme called MonoBook, and there are plenty of other themes for your Wiki. Before we show you how to do that, let’s get ourselves familiar with the standard theme.

There are three important links on this page that you might want to know: “log in/create account” link, “edit” tab, and “Special pages” link. Out of the box, anyone can edit your Wiki, even people who do not have an account in your Wiki. If you want to secure your wiki, add this command into the LocalSettings.php file:

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;

If you want to start editing pages, head over to the edit tab. You might need to learn wiki mark-ups to edit your content. It may be awkward at first, but with enough practice, you’ll find that these mark-ups save a lot of your time.

On the top right hand corner, you’ll find a link to create a new account. Click that link, create a user account, and assign that account to the appropriate user group. If you want to learn more about the user groups, click the Special pages link. The special page gives you access to all sort of administrative tool for your Wiki. You can check for broken pages, add or delete users, and much more, but for today tutorial, we’ll explore three sections: the “login/sign up”page, the preferences page, and the user rights management page.

MediaWiki Users Maintenance

The “Login in/ create account” page lets you create user, and assign them to any user group you have. If you have lots of user, adding them one by one might not be the most efficient way. No problem. User Import Extension let you create multiple users using a CSV file. Download that extension under the extensions folder, and place this command in your LocalSettings.php.

require_once("$IP/extensions/ImportUsers/ImportUsers.php")

All you have to do is prepare a CSV file with all your users in it, and upload the file from the version page.

User ID	Password	Email	User Name
thegeek	s4f3p@assword	geek@htgwiki.com	The Geek

Once you added your users, you can control what each user can do; this is why MediaWiki has a bunch of user groups for us. Head over to the user rights management page, and assign your users to the appropriate user group.

If you want give your users custom priviliges, you can declare those users in LocalSettings.php. For example, this command will create a new user group called trusted that has the same permissions as a “user” group, but with no permission to send email.

$wgGroupPermissions['Trusted'] = $wgGroupPermissions['user']; $wgGroupPermissions['Trusted'] ['sendemail'] = false;

Customising Your Wiki

We just covered the basic features of MediaWiki, now it’s time to show you how to brighten up your Wiki with custom skins, your own logo, and let users upload all sort of file types. Most of this customisation requires you to add a little bit of PHP code into php.ini, or LocalSettings.php file.

You can open the PHP.ini file from EasyPHP system tray shortcut. The upload_max_file_size determines the size of images that you can upload to your wiki, and PHP limits the files to 2 MB. If you need to upload bigger files, give this variable a bigger value, for example, 20 M (20 megabyte).

Media Wiki supports all sort of file types, PDF, Microsoft office, Open Office, but you need to add this PHP code into you LocalSettings.php file:

$wgFileExtensions = array('png','gif','jpg','jpeg','doc','xls','mpp','pdf','ppt','tiff','bmp','docx', 'xlsx', 'pptx','ps','odt','ods','odp','odg');

Head over to the preference page, and you’ll find a gallery of skin for your Wiki. If you’re not happy with these selections, you can create, or better yet, install ready to use skins from MediaWiki’s gallery. Download anything you like, and put it under the skin folder:

C:\Program Files (x86)\EasyPHP-5.3.6.0\www\mediawiki-1.17.0\skins

Once you’ve done that you should see be able to check out your new skin from the preference page. If you happen to have a matching logo with your skins, put it under this folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\EasyPHP-5.3.6.0\www\mediawiki-1.17.0\skins\common\images,and type this command into the LocalSettings.php file:

$wgLogo="$wgScriptPath/skins/common/images/htg-logo.png";

Note: Replace htg-logo with your own logo.

MediaWiki still has plenty of good stuff that we have not covered, but if you have read this far, we hope that you have learned how to host your own Wiki with MediaWiki. Try it out, and tell the other fellow readers what you think about it in the comments section.

Download Media Wiki

How to Migrate from Facebook to Google+

2011-07-15T15:52:00.000+07:00

If you have a lot of time and information invested in Facebook, it’s not easy moving to a new social network. Here are a few tips on moving your information from your Facebook account to your shiny new Google+ account.

Moving social networks isn’t the easiest thing to do, but luckily there are a few tools we can use to migrate pictures, videos, and friends. Wall posts and messages don’t make sense to migrate between networks so we are going to leave those out.

Export Facebook Information

Start by downloading all of your Facebook information. To do that, log into Facebook and go to account settings in the upper right corner.

On the settings tab click “learn more” next to “download your information.”

Enter your password and click continue; you will be sent an email once your download is ready.

Once you receive the email, click the link to download a zip of all of your files.

Extract the files and open the index.html file to verify all your information is there.

Import Photos

Google+ uses Picasa web albums to share pictures. To get started you need to download Picasa from the link below.

Once installed, open Picasa and add the Facebook photos folder you just downloaded to picasa.

Set Picasa to scan the folders once, and then let it do the import.

Once the pictures have finished importing into Picasa, find the albums and select Sync to Web on the right.

A pop-up window will open and ask you to sign in to web albums. Log in with your Google+ account and a second popup will ask you to verify your upload settings. Click change settings and modify the settings to you liking. Make sure you check the box to “use the above settings” otherwise you will be asked every time.

We’d recommend setting your new album visibility to private by default. You will be able to change the sharing settings from Google+ later, and this prevents you from making any embarrassing photos public.

Now go back to Picasa and click sync; your photos will be uploaded in the background.

Share Your Photos on Google+

After your pictures have uploaded, log into Google+ and click on photos in the top banner.

Navigate to your albums on the left.

Open the album you just uploaded and click share album at the top.

The share album button will automatically make your album public and post a link to it in your stream.

If you don’t want the album to be public, you can remove the Public circle and instead add some of your own. This will still make a post in your stream, but it will only be visible to those you have shared it with.

It is possible for someone you shared an album with to re-share that with the public so make sure you only share with people you know and trust.

If you don’t want the album posted to your stream, you can also click the edit button from the main album page which will change the sharing settings without posting the album in your stream.

Import Your Videos

Importing videos is a lot less automated than pictures. To import your Facebook videos browse to your Facebook export you downloaded earlier and there will be a videos folder.

Log into your Google+ account and click on your profile -> videos.

Click upload new videos on the right and drag the videos from your computer to your browser.

Once the videos are done uploading you can name, create, and share the album from Google+.

Import Your Facebook Friends

Go to login.yahoo.com and sign in with your Facebook account or a yahoo account if you already have one.

Confirm access and sign in with your facebook account and then go to address.yahoo.com. Click tools and import from the dropdown.

Select Facebook from the provided options.

After you confirm access to your contacts, the import will happen automatically.

Next export your contacts to a .csv file with the tools menu.

Export your contacts to Microsoft Outlook, confirm the capcha and save the file.

Now login to Gmail, click contacts -> more actions -> import.

Browse to the .csv file you just downloaded and select it for importing.

Specify a new group to import the contacts into, if you chose that option, and the contacts should import without any problems.

Go back to Google+ and your newly imported contacts will show up under find and invite.

Add friends to circles and send invites to them if they aren’t already using Google+.

Download Picasa

How To Diagnose and Fix an Overheating Laptop

2011-07-11T10:12:00.001+07:00

One of the most common issues with aging laptops is overheating, something many people aren’t sure how to fix. We’ll help you figure out what’s causing the heat and how to keep your notebook functioning at a lower temperature.

Overheating computers can cause a lot of problems, from seemingly random blue screens to data loss. You might not even know that it’s the root of your issues, and before you know it you have a burnt-out motherboard on your hands. Let’s go step by and step and see how to deal with overheating computers. We’ll be dealing primarily with laptops, but most of the same principles apply to desktops as well.

Find the Heat Source

Air Flow and Heat Transfer

The first thing you need to do is figure out where the heat is coming from. No air flow means no heat transfer, so figure out where the air vents are. Are they blowing hot air, or is there barely a breeze, even when the fan is overtaxed?

Most commonly, an accumulation of dust in the vents and fans through the cooling channels will be culprit in restricting air flow. Cleaning it out will work best. Turn you laptop upside-down and look at what you’ve got.

Unscrew the fan doors and you should be able to lift out the fan and clean everything with a can of compressed air.

If you find that a fan is spinning erratically, you may want to try lifting the sticker off of the axle and putting a drop of mineral oil to keep it going.

You can also try to look up the part number from your laptop’s user manual or by searching your laptop model number online. Once you have that, you can find replacements pretty easily on eBay and the like.

Dying Batteries

There are plenty of different types of batteries, and many different schools of thought on battery maintenance and life span, but one thing that seems pretty unanimous is that batteries aren’t meant to be stored at 100% or 0% capacity. I know plenty of people who buy laptops and always keep the charger in, never actually using the battery. You can definitely expect to kill your battery’s health this way, since you’re essentially storing the battery when it’s full. Bad batteries don’t just give out really quickly, they can generate heat.

(Image credit: Bryan Gosline)

You can buy replacement batteries pretty easily online, even for laptops that are four years old. You just need to know what model your computer/battery is. If you can’t find one, you may consider using your laptop as a desktop and remove the overheating battery completely from the equation.

Persistent Overheating

If you’ve taken the air vents and battery out of the picture and you’re still having problems, then you might have a more persistent heat issue. Sometimes a dusty hard drive can cause heat problems and data loss. Some laptops just “run hot,” even without a major load on the CPU. Try cleaning out these areas as best you can before you move on to another solution.

Dust under the processor and RAM doors to get rid of any dust and debris. If you’ve got a netbook or a laptop without compartments underneath, things might be more difficult. You should be able to find instructions for getting the back off so you can clean things properly.

(Image credit: fellow HTG author Justin Garrison)

Lighten the Load

If your computer’s heat is related to how much data the CPU chugs through, you might want to manage your processes better. You can use the Windows Task Manager to see what’s most intensive, then use Autoruns to see all your startup processes and trim them down. You can also change the order of the startup processes that are necessary. The staggered loading of software will help balance your processor’s load.

You can install and run Process Explorer to see the files that each process has open and its associated CPU usage over time. This can help you decide what to get rid of and what to spare. We’re also big fans of CCleaner, which allows you to clean history and cache files as well as manage your startup applications quickly and easily. You can free up some much needed space that way and get a little more efficiency out of your OS.

If you want to keep an eye on the temperature of your laptop, I recommend Core Temp for Windows. It’s an extremely light-weight app that won’t pressure your CPU, but lets you keep an eye on your internal temperature.

You can tell it to display the temperature when it’s in the system tray. One of the best features is under the Options menu: Overheat Protection.

Here, you can define a temperature that will trigger your computer to Sleep, Hibernate, or Shutdown. Core Temp also works as a Windows Gadget, though if you’re overheating from CPU-intensive processes, I’d turn Desktop Gadgets off. Another thing you can do is turn that fancy Aero interface off, and you can create a shortcut to quickly toggle it if you can’t live completely without it.

If you’re using Linux instead, you might want to consider a more spartan distro. I’ve personally had a lot of success with Crunchbang; a clean install leaves me with Openbox as a window manager, a nice dock, and some nice desktop effects, along with only 80MB of RAM usage. It’s based on Debian, so there’s a good amount of compatibility with software. If you run Arch, you might want to try ArchBang instead, which is the same thing but built on Arch instead of Debian.

Behavior Changes

Laptop owners have a lot of luxury by not being tethered to a chair and desk. We develop a lot of habits, like browsing in bed, that can actually work against of computers. A lot of laptops are designed with their air vents on the bottom for some ridiculous reason, so setting it down on soft bedding or carpet for prolonged use is a bad idea. You’d be surprised at how quickly the heat can build up. If you this is a habit, you might consider investing in a laptop stand to keep the air flow unobstructed.

CoolLift Laptop Stand

If none of the above methods helped cool your laptop sufficiently, you might consider using a cooling pad, like this:

Laptop Cooling Pad (USB Powered)

The fans will help direct cool air into the underside vents of your laptop. Some even come with USB hubs and other bells and whistles.

If your vents are placed on the sides or elsewhere, but the bottom of your notebook is still really warm, you can try out a thermal (passive) cooling pad.

Targus Thermal Cooling Pad

These are soft pads filled with special crystals that are designed to conduct heat away from the source. You can find thermal cooling pads in smaller sizes, too. I used a 9” one for my old netbook and it did wonders for me.

Sure, these will make your laptop less mobile, but if it helps with overheating then at least you’ll have a laptop that runs.

Repurpose It

(Image credit: mray)

If you can’t use it as a laptop anymore, consider repurposing it. The compact motherboards fit great inside of older and smaller computer cases and cardboard boxes. These kinds of rigs are great for in-drawer HTPCs, closet-servers, or under-the-desk mounted workstations. You’ll have to be a bit more careful if you leave the guts exposed, but depending on the room, it can cut down on dust problems. You can also regulate air flow a bit better and mount some standard computer fans in clever places, like in the back and sides of the drawer or desk.

Another idea is to try running a very light-weight version of Linux, and use it for something that isn’t very CPU-intensive, like a file server. The lack of processor-heavy tasks will keep the temperature low, but you can still get some use out of it. And, if you’re only ditching the battery, then you can leave things inside the case and stick it on a shelf as a head-less (SSH and command-line only) server. The possibilities are endless!

How to Fix Malwarebytes Error Code 730

2011-07-05T11:47:00.000+07:00

Malwarebytes error code 730 occurs if the database will not load. Reinstall MBAM only if you have tried other steps to fixing MBAM error code 730. Find out what are the steps in fixing the database issue in the MBAM program.

Malwarebytes Error Code 730

When you opened Malwarebytes Anti-Malware or tried updating the database, you may receive an error code 730. Also, you may receive an error message "MBAM_ERROR_LOAD DATABASE". The cause of error code 730 is either the database or the program is corrupted, or another antivirus program has interfered with Malwarebytes. You need to try possible solutions for MBAM error code 730 so you can update or use the program again.

How to Fix MBAM Error Code 730

If Malwarebytes will open but you cannot update the program with error code is 730, the existing database may be corrupted.

Close MBAM program.
Delete rules.ref from C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Malwarebytes\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware in Windows XP

Or delete C:\ProgramData\Malwarebytes\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware for Windows 7 and Vista users.

Open Malwarebytes and you should see the alert box with "The database could not be found. Would you like to download a new copy?".

Click OK to allow the updater of MBAM in downloading the database. When the update is finished, MBAM will open and the error code 730 should be gone.

If MBAM continue to display 730 error code, proceed to add the following files by MBAM in the exclusion list of antivirus program:

mbam.exe, mbamgui.exe, mbamservice.exe, zlib.dll, mbam.dll and mbamext.dll -> the location is C:\Program Files\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware folder.
mbam.sys and mbamswissarmy.sys -> located in C:\Windows\System32\drivers folder.

If you are using Windows XP, add rules.ref in the exclusion list of antivirus program. It's located in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Malwarebytes\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware.

For Vista and Windows 7 users, rules.ref is in C:\ProgramData\Malwarebytes\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

Your antivirus program should no longer monitor the files used by MBAM to operate properly. You should also ensure that your firewall program is not blocking mbam.exe to communicate to the Malwarebytes server.

Reinstall to Solve Malwarebytes Error Code 730

If none of the above solutions helps, then proceed to removing MBAM, clean Windows of MBAM traces and reinstall Malwarebytes with these directions:

If you are using a registered version of MBAM, take note of your MBAM registration ID and license key.
Exit MBAM icon from the notification area or systray in Windows.
Using Add/Remove Program in the Control Panel of Windows, locate Malwarebytes Anti-Malware in the list of installed software.
Click "remove" to uninstall MBAM.
Close Add/Remove Program utility.
Reboot the computer or log-off from Windows when MBAM has been removed.
Download MBAM CleanUp Utility from http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam-clean.exe and open it to start cleaning the computer for remnants of the MBAM program.
- Please note that your browser will immediately display the "Download" dialogue box when you click the link to download MBAM CleanUp Utility. The vendors of MBAM software do not have a custom page for the said utility but a direct download link only. If your browser is configured to automatically run any downloaded files, MBAM Cleanup Utility will automatically open the dialogue box in using the utility. It will not automatically run a cleanup for MBAM program until you click on the "Yes" button.
A reboot is required after using the utility.
Download the new setup file of Malwarebytes from Cnet.com or Filehippo.com to install MBAM again.
Enter your registration ID and license key, if you are a paid customer of Malwarebytes.
Allow it to run and update the program after the install.

If MBAM continues to display error code 730 after trying all the above possible solutions, post the problem and the steps you've done in the support team at http://forums.malwarebytes.org

How To Plan, Organize, and Map Out Your Home Network

2011-07-01T10:44:00.000+07:00

Whether you’re setting up a new home network or overhauling the one you’ve got, planning and mapping out your devices and intended uses can save you a lot of headaches.

(Banner image credit: karindalziel)

Count Your Devices and Plan

(Image credit: Docklandsboy)

When setting up your home network, take a tally of what kinds of devices will be on your network. I’ve got two desktops, three laptops, five phones/PMPs, a printer, an XBOX 360, and a Wii to keep track of. Of course, when we have guests over, I want to make their setup as painless as possible. I also use a repeater to expand my wireless range. Things can get pretty complicated, but knowing what you have and anticipating special cases makes it significantly easier to map out your network. It also helps you decide what kind of networking equipment you need.

Consider Your Router

Let’s start at the top, and work our way down. Your router is arguably the most important device in your home network. Your router’s job is three-fold:

Joining your network to the internet.
Managing your network’s traffic.
Providing basic security.

(Image credit: Horrortaxi)

Whether you’ve got DSL, cable, or satellite, your broadband really only hooks up to one device. If you make that device a router, then any number of other devices can connect and disconnect as they come and go. This allows you to share you internet connection over a wide area.

Now, since you’ve got a bunch of devices that are thirsty for the internet-juice, they need a way to connect. Not only that, but they need their traffic properly directed. Streaming a movie to your gigantic TV only to have it show up on your phone doesn’t work. Your router handles everything appropriately by assigning devices an IP address and forwarding ports and so on.

Lastly, if you’re worried about people stealing your personal information – and you SHOULD be – then you’ll have some sort of security in place. If you’re wireless, then this means requiring a password to connect. In addition, you can enable blocking of ActiveX scripts and other things in your router’s settings. This acts as a basic firewall.

You can see why your routers are an integral component of any home network. Consider turning yours into a Super-Powered Router with DD-WRT.

Wired Devices

(Image credit: orcmid)

How many wired devices do you have? If you have more than four, then you’ll exceed what most routers are equipped with. That means you’ll need to buy a switch so you can plug in more ethernet cables.

Where are your devices and where is your router? Will you need to run ethernet wires across your house to make sure everything gets online? Could you move the router so it’s closer to your devices?

Wireless Devices

Where will your wireless devices see the most activity? If your router is on one side of the house but your bedroom is on the other, then you’ll likely have trouble getting decent speeds when browsing in bed. Can you move your router to a more central location? If you really need a range boost, consider buying a wireless access point. This can be set up to repeat your main router’s signal, and as a bonus you can tether other devices via ethernet, too. If you have an old router lying around, you can put DD-WRT on it and turn it into a repeater for free.

Map It Out

(Image credit: willspot)

Draw a map of your home and try to fit everything. Consider where things should be placed for best range, fastest speeds, and so on. Physically doing a tour and drawing as you go can really make the difference up-front. Believe me, there’s little worse than having everything configured and wired only to find that you forgot your HTPC in the living room. Wireless streaming 1080P from across the house didn’t cut it for me, and I had to redo a good portion of my network.

Connecting Devices

Plugging in wired devices is easy enough, but what about wireless devices? Before we can connect, we need to consider how IP addresses will be assigned to your devices.

Dynamic and Static IPs

DHCP – Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol – is easy. You set up parameters on your router – how many IPs can be given out, what range these addresses should be in, etc. – and your devices will automagically connect and work. The downside? Your computer can have one IP address, but after a restart (or after power-cycling the router), it can be totally different. This makes it difficult to route traffic from outside of the web. If you use Subsonic or Plex while out and about to stream your home music and video, you’ll have to reconfigure your port forwarding settings.

Static IP routing is really tedious on your devices. You basically tell every device which IP it should use, what gateway to go through (HINT: it’s your router’s IP), and what subnet mask to use (again, look at your router’s configuration). This is a time-consuming hassle, but you won’t have worry about shifting IPs.

So which is better? Well, in my experience, it’s both. Yes, that’s right, you can use both simultaneously. What I do is set up DHCP for everything, but manually configure the IP of the two computers that stream or need to be accessed from outside of the network. Odds are, these are going to be devices that are connected to your router via ethernet – the speed of wireless for stuff like this can be ridiculously slow. I also use static IPs with printers, just in case using the printer-name or searching for it over the network takes too long or gets wonky. These manually assigned IPs can be outside of the DHCP’s range of IPs. Devices in my “server” list usually start at 192.168.1.200.

Your laptops and phones will connect as they need and work without hassle. My DHCP range of IPs is between 192.168.1.100-150. The router, itself, is 192.168.1.1, and my repeaters are 192.168.1.10 and 20. My printer is manually assigned 192.168.1.254 – the last available IP (.255 is the network broadcast address) because printing is the last thing I want to do, and it’s pretty easy to remember.

DD-WRT, as well as newer router firmwares, can actually do “Static DHCP” or “DHCP reserving,” negating the need to go through this tedious process. What this means is that you can assign devices (based on their MAC addresses) to certain IPs in your router, without worry of changes. All of your devices can connect via DHCP, but their IPs won’t change because the router knows which devices are connecting. Definitely look into this and take the time to set it up.

An Address Book

Draw a table of all of your devices, splitting them up into one of two categories: clients and servers.

If something is going to be sending information – like your desktop packed with 2 TB hard drives full of movie and music – then stick it in the “server” column. Everything else goes in the “client” column. The one exception to this is wireless printers. They can finicky, so it’s best to treat them as a server, at least when assigning IPs.

Now consider which of you computers you may want to access from outside of the house. If you’ve got a web server or a Linux computer that you remotely control, then make note of it. In the end, write up an address book of all of your devices and which IPs they’ll use (or if they’ll use DHCP) and what ports you need to forward. It’s also a good idea to list each device’s MAC address, in case you need it during configuration or when checking your router’s logs.

(Above image credit: k0a1a.net)

Wireless Security

What kind of security should you use for your home network? I get asked this question a lot, and I almost always say WPA2.

(Image credit: k0a1a.net)

It only takes a matter of minutes to crack a WEP-secured wireless network. Now, while the odds of someone doing this to get access to your network are low – especially if your neighbor’s is wide open – WEP is also more restrictive to what passcodes you can use. Most people I know use their home telephone number – it’s 10 digits, which fits the length and hexadecimal requirement, and is easy to remember. If you don’t know the person’s phone number, odds are you shouldn’t be on their network anyway.

WPA is also fairly easy to crack, but as not all devices are compatible yet with WPA2 (I’m looking at you, old gaming consoles!), WPA can work. You can create long alpha-numeric passwords to make it difficult for others to guess and get in, though it doesn’t help against those who may crack your network.

One of my favorite things to do is name my wireless network something specific, so it’s a clue to my password. Inside jokes work the best, but you may decide to use a geeky reference instead. For example, my wireless SSID could be “AnswerToLifeUniverseAndEverything” and the password would be “fortytwo.” If someone gets the reference, then they get to be on my network, but that’s just out of my benevolence. Just remember, security risks, no matter how minor, are still risks.

For more information, check out Debunking Myths: Is Hiding Your Wireless SSID Really More Secure?

Naming Schemes and File Sharing

(Image credit: tlgjaymz)

Speaking of naming things, a lot of geeks come up with clever schemes to name the computers and devices on their network. At a previous job, all of the office workstations were named after sci-fi AI: Hal, Skynet, WOPR, etc. One friend of mine names his network devices after Greek gods, another after language families. Coming up with a scheme and fitting computers to it is not only fun, but practical. By naming my devices based on their characteristics, I know exactly which computer I’m connecting to. When I see “sarasvati,” I know that’s the computer that has my eBook and music collections. When I connect to “indra,” I know it’s my quad-core rig. When I need to add a new ringtone to my iPhone, I can SSH into “narad”. It’s as much a mnemonic device as it is geek pride.

Lastly, consider what operating systems you have in your home. If all of them run one OS, you probably don’t need to worry about anything. If you’re mixing and matching, however, you’ll have to think of how to share files properly. If you’re using Linux to download and serve files, this means using NFS or Samba. Windows 7 has the new Homegroup setup as well, and Macs can work with Samba as well as their own native AFP.

EDIT: As several commenters have pointed out, this article originally mentioned my printer being on 192.168.1.255 – the network broadcast address. Problems can ensue if a device is leasing this IP, so the mistake has been corrected above.

Planning and putting together a network is big project. Planning and mapping things out in advance can help make it easier to avoid gaffes, and using geeky references can make working the details a lot less tedious.

How To Install and Configure OpenVPN On Your DD-WRT Router

2011-06-28T12:36:00.000+07:00

We’ve already covered installing Tomato on your router and how to connect to your home network with OpenVPN and Tomato. Now we are going to cover installing OpenVPN on your DD-WRT enabled router for easy access to your home network from anywhere in the world!

What is OpenVPN?

A virtual private network (VPN) is a trusted, secure connection between one local area network (LAN) and another. Think of your router as the middle man between the networks that you’re connecting to. Both your computer and the OpenVPN server (your router in this case) “shake hands” using certificates that validate each other. Upon validation, both the client and server agree to trust each other and the client is then allowed access on the server’s network.

Typically, VPN software and hardware cost a lot of money to implement. If you haven’t guessed it already, OpenVPN is an open-source VPN solution that is (drum roll) free. DD-WRT, alongside OpenVPN, is a perfect solution for those who want a secured connection between two networks without having to open their wallet. Of course, OpenVPN won’t work right out of the box. It takes a little bit of tweaking and configuring to get it just right. Not to worry though; we’re here to make that process easier for you, so grab yourself a warm cup of coffee and let’s get started.

For more information about OpenVPN, visit the official What Is OpenVPN? page.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes that you are currently running Windows 7 on your PC and that you’re using an administrative account. If you’re a Mac or Linux user, this guide will give you an idea of how things work, however, you may have to do a little more research on your own to get things perfect.

This guide also assumes that you own a Linksys WRT54GL and have a general understanding of VPN technology. It should serve as a basis for DD-WRT installation, but be sure to check out our official DD-WRT installation guide for an additional supplement.

Installing DD-WRT

The team responsible for DD-WRT has done a great job making it easy for end users to discover router compatibility with their Router Database page. Start by typing in your router model (in our case WRT54GL) in the text field and watch search results appear instantly. Click your router once it’s found.

You’ll be brought to a new page that lists information about your model – including hardware specs and different builds of DD-WRT. Download both the Mini-Generic build and VPN Generic build of DD-WRT (dd-wrt.v24_mini_generic.bin and dd-wrt.v24_vpn_generic.bin). Save these files to your computer.

It’s a good idea to visit the DD-WRT Hardware-specific information page to look up detailed information about your router and DD-WRT. This page will explain exactly what you need to do before and after installing DD-WRT. For example, you must install the mini version of DD-WRT before installing DD-WRT VPN when upgrading from the stock Linksys firmware on a WRT54GL.

Also, be sure to do a hard reset (AKA a 30/30/30) before installing DD-WRT. Press the reset button on the back of your router for 30 seconds. Then, while still holding the reset button, unplug the power cable and leave it unplugged for 30 seconds. Finally, plug the power cable back in while still holding down the reset button for another 30 seconds. You should have held the power button for 90 seconds straight.

Now open up your browser and enter in your router’s IP address (default is 192.168.1.1). You’ll be prompted for a username and password. The defaults for a Linksys WRT54GL are “admin” and “admin”.

Click the Administration tab at the top. Next, click Firmware Upgrade as seen below.

Click the Browse button and navigate to the DD-WRT Mini Generic .bin file we downloaded earlier. Do not upload the DD-WRT VPN .bin file yet. Click the Upgrade button in the web interface. Your router will start installing DD-WRT Mini Generic, and should take less than a minute to complete.

Alas! Your first sighting of DD-WRT. Once again, do another 30/30/30 reset as we did above. Then click the Administration tab at the top. You will be prompted with a username and password. The default username and password is “root” and “admin” respectively. After you’ve logged in, click the Firmware Upgrade sub-tab and click Choose File. Browse for the DD-WRT VPN file we downloaded earlier and click Open. The VPN version of DD-WRT will now begin to upload; be patient as it could take 2-3 minutes.

Installing OpenVPN

Now let’s head over to OpenVPN’s Downloads page and download the OpenVPN Windows Installer. In this guide, we’ll be using the second latest version of OpenVPN called 2.1.4. The latest version (2.2.0) has a bug in it that would make this process even more complicated. The file we’re downloading will install the OpenVPN program that allows you to connect to your VPN network, so be sure to install this program on any other computers that you want to act as clients (as we’ll be seeing how to do that later). Save the openvpn-2.1.4-install .exe file to your computer.

Navigate to the OpenVPN file we just downloaded and double click it. This will begin the installation of OpenVPN on your computer. Run through the installer with all the defaults checked. During the installation, a dialog box will pop up asking to install a new virtual network adapter called TAP-Win32. Click the Install button.

Creating the Certificates and Keys

Now that you have OpenVPN installed on your computer, we have to start creating the certificates and keys to authenticate devices. Click the Windows Start button and navigate under Accessories. You’ll see the Command Prompt program. Right click on it and click Run as administrator.

In the command prompt, type cd c:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\easy-rsa if you’re running 64-bit Windows 7 as seen below. Type cd c:\Program Files\OpenVPN\easy-rsa if you’re running 32-bit Windows 7. Then hit Enter.

Now type init-config and hit Enter to copy two files called vars.bat and openssl.cnf into the easy-rsa folder. Keep your command prompt up as we’ll be coming back to it shortly.

Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\easy-rsa (or C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\easy-rsa on 32-bit Windows 7) and right click on the file called vars.bat. Click Edit to open it up in Notepad. Alternatively, we recommend opening this file with Notepad++ as it formats the text in the file much better. You can download Notepad++ from their homepage.

The bottom portion of the file is what we are concerned with. Starting at line 31, change the KEY_COUNTRY value, KEY_PROVINCE value, etc. to your country, province, etc. For example, we changed our province to “IL”, city to “Chicago”, org to “Allklik”, and email to our own email address. Also, if you’re running Windows 7 64-bit, change the HOME value in line 6 to %ProgramFiles (x86)%\OpenVPN\easy-rsa. Do not change this value if you’re running 32-bit Windows 7. Your file should look similar to ours below (with your respective values, of course). Save the file by overwriting it once you’re done editing.

Go back to your command prompt and type vars and hit Enter. Then type clean-all and hit Enter. Finally, type build-ca and hit Enter.

After executing the build-ca command, you will be prompted to enter in your Country Name, State, Locality, etc. Since we already set up these parameters in our vars.bat file, we can skip past these options by hitting Enter, but! Before you start slamming away at the Enter key, watch out for the Common Name parameter. You can enter anything in this parameter (i.e. your name). Just make sure you enter something. This command will output two files (a Root CA certificate and a Root CA key) in the easy-rsa/keys folder.

Now we’re going to build a key for a client. In the same command prompt type build-key client1. You can change “client1” to anything you’d like (i.e. Acer-Laptop). Just be sure to enter the same name as the Common Name when prompted. Run through all the defaults like the last step we did (except for Common Name, of course). However, at the end you will be asked to sign the certificate and to commit. Type “y” for both and click Enter.

Also, don’t worry if you received the “unable to write ‘random state’” error. We’ve noticed that your certificates still get made without a problem. This command will output two files (a Client1 Key and a Client1 Certificate) in the easy-rsa/keys folder. If you want to create another key for another client, repeat the previous step, but be sure to change the Common Name.

The last certificate we’ll be generating is the server key. In the same command prompt, type build-key-server server. You can replace “server” at the end of the command with anything you’d like (i.e. HowToGeek-Server). As always, be sure to enter the same name as the Common Name when prompted. Hit Enter and run through all the defaults except Common Name. At the end, type “y” to sign the certificate and commit. This command will output two files (a Server Key and a Server Certificate) in the easy-rsa/keys folder.

Now we have to generate the Diffie Hellman parameters. The Diffie Hellman protocol “allows two users to exchange a secret key over an insecure medium without any prior secrets”. You can read more about Diffie Hellman on RSA’s website.

In the same command prompt type build-dh. This command will output one file (dh1024.pem) in the easy-rsa/keys folder.

Creating the Configuration Files for the Client

Before we edit any configuration files, we should set up a dynamic DNS service. Use this service if your ISP issues you a dynamic external IP address every so often. If you have a static external IP address, skip down to the next step.

We suggest using DynDNS.com, a service that allows you to point a hostname (i.e. howtogeek.dyndns.org) to a dynamic IP address. It’s important for OpenVPN to always know your network’s public IP address, and by using DynDNS, OpenVPN will always know how to locate your network no matter what your public IP address is. Sign up for a free hostname and point it to your public IP address.

Now back to configuring OpenVPN. In Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\sample-config if you’re running 64-bit Windows 7 or C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\sample-config if you’re running 32-bit Windows 7. In this folder you will find three sample configuration files; we’re only concerned with the client.ovpn file.

Right click on client.ovpn and open it with Notepad or Notepad++. You’ll notice your file will look like the picture below:

However, we want our client.ovpn file to look similar to this picture below. Be sure to change the DynDNS hostname to your hostname in line 4 (or change it to your public IP address if you have a static one). Leave the port number to 1194 as it is the standard OpenVPN port. Also, be sure to change lines 11 and 12 to reflect the name of your client’s certificate file and key file. Save this as new file .ovpn file in the OpenVPN/config folder.

Configuring DD-WRT’s OpenVPN Daemon

The basic idea now is to copy the server certificates and keys we made earlier and paste them into the DD-WRT OpenVPN Daemon menus. Open up your browser again and navigate to your router. You should now have the DD-WRT VPN edition installed on your router. You will notice a new sub-tab under the Services tab called VPN. Click the Enable radio button under OpenVPN Daemon.

First, be sure to change Start type to “Wan Up” instead of the default “System”. Now we’re going to need our server keys and certificates we created earlier. In Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\easy-rsa\keys on 64-bit Windows 7 (or C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\easy-rsa\keys on 32-bit Windows 7). Open each corresponding file below (ca.crt, server.crt, server.key, and dh1024.pem) with Notepad or Notepad++ and copy the contents. Paste the contents in the corresponding boxes as seen below.

For the OpenVPN Config field, we will need to create a custom file. These settings will differ depending on how your LAN is set up. Open a separate browser window and type in your router’s IP address. Click the Setup tab and take note of what IP address you have configured under Router IP > Local IP Address. The default, which is what we are using in this example, is 192.168.1.1. Paste this subnet right after “route” in the first line to reflect your LAN setup. Copy this into the OpenVPN Config box and click Save.

push “route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0″
server 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0
dev tun0
proto tcp
keepalive 10 120
dh /tmp/openvpn/dh.pem
ca /tmp/openvpn/ca.crt
cert /tmp/openvpn/cert.pem
key /tmp/openvpn/key.pem
# Only use crl-verify if you are using the revoke list – otherwise leave it commented out
# crl-verify /tmp/openvpn/ca.crl
# management parameter allows DD-WRT’s OpenVPN Status web page to access the server’s management port
# port must be 5001 for scripts embedded in firmware to work
management localhost 5001

Now we must configure the firewall to allow clients to connect to our OpenVPN server via the 1194 port. Go to the Administration tab and click the Commands sub-tab. In the Commands text box paste the following:

iptables -I INPUT 1 -p udp –dport 1194 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I FORWARD 1 –source 192.168.1.0/24 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I FORWARD -i br0 -o tun0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I FORWARD -i tun0 -o br0 -j ACCEPT

Be sure to change your LAN IP in the second line if it is different than the default. Then click the Save Firewall button below.

Finally, be sure to check your Time Settings under the Setup tab otherwise the OpenVPN daemon will deny all clients. We suggest going to TimeAndDate.com and searching for your city under Current Time. This website will give you all the information you need to fill in under Time Settings just like we did below. Also, check out the NTP Pool Project’s website for public NTP servers to use.

Setting Up an OpenVPN Client

In this example we will be using a Windows 7 laptop as our client on a separate network. The first thing you’ll want to do is install OpenVPN on your client like we did above in the first steps under Configuring OpenVPN. Then navigate to C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config which is where we’ll be pasting our files.

Now we have to go back on our original computer and collect a total of four files to copy over to our client laptop. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\easy-rsa\keys again and copy ca.crt, client1.crt, and client1.key. Paste these files in the client’s config folder.

Finally, we need to copy one more file over. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\config and copy over the new client.ovpn file we created earlier. Paste this file in the client’s config folder also.

Testing the OpenVPN Client

On the client laptop, click the Windows Start button and navigate to All Programs > OpenVPN. Right click on the OpenVPN GUI file and click Run as administrator. Note that you must always run OpenVPN as an administrator in order for it to work properly. To permanently set the file to always run as administrator, right click the file and click Properties. Under the Compatibility tab check Run this program as an administrator.

The OpenVPN GUI icon will appear next to the clock in the taskbar. Right click the icon and click Connect. Since we only have one .ovpn file in our config folder, OpenVPN will connect to that network by default.

A dialog box will pop up displaying a connection log.

Once you’re connected to the VPN, the OpenVPN icon in the taskbar will turn green and will display your virtual IP address.

And that’s it! You now have a secured connection between your server and client’s network using OpenVPN and DD-WRT. To further test the connection, try opening a browser on the client laptop and navigating to your DD-WRT router on the server’s network.

How To Repair Scratched and Damaged Photographs or Scans

2011-06-28T12:23:00.000+07:00

Old photographs seem to collect dirt, scratches, and bad textures as they collect dust in shoeboxes and photo albums. If you’ve taken the task of scanning them, but have found damage and scratches, here’s how to fix them.

While only a miracle (or a talented artist) can repair extremely bad photographs, dust, scratches, dirt, and other damage can be taken care of quickly, and not just in Photoshop. Popular Freeware GIMP and Paint.NET both offer tools that can be used to make bad scans look like brand new photographs in no time at all. Keep reading to see how it’s done.

Repairing Scratches in Photoshop (Video)

The whole problem with dust and scratches is that, even if they aren’t severe, they ugly up a photo and distract from the image itself. While they may not overwhelmingly stand out in this image…

Erased with this method, it’s nearly impossible to tell that they were even there in the first place. Check out the video to see the Photoshop tools in action, or keep reading to learn about the tools you can use in Photoshop, GIMP, or Paint.NET.

Tools for Repairing Images

Clone Stamp Tool: Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.NET

One of the staples of photo repair, the Clone Stamp will sample (copy from) and allow you to paint with other areas of the photograph.

In Photoshop, hold down Alt to select a sample area, then paint it over your damaged areas with your left mouse buttons.

GIMP and Paint.NET work the same way, except you have to use the Ctrl key to sample your image. Simply sample (and resample) and paint over your unwanted image areas to improve your photo.

Photoshop: Shortcut Key (S), sample with Alt + Click
GIMP: Shortcut Key (C), sample with Ctrl + Click
Paint.NET: Shortcut Key (L), sample with Ctrl + Click

Marquee, Lasso Selection Tools: Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.NET

One of the most basic solutions to fixing a photo—copy and paste. The marquee and lasso select tools will allow you to pick pieces of your image, and copy them to cover up your photograph’s blemishes. This is particularly helpful to cover up large areas of scratches and dust, or even large areas containing unwanted objects.

In all three programs, copy and paste are Ctrl + C, then Ctrl + V. You can use the eraser, Clone Stamps, etc to blend the area to the rest of the photograph.

Photoshop: Shortcut Key (M) for Marquee, (L) for Lasso
GIMP: Shortcut Key (R) for Marquee, and (F) for Lasso
Paint.NET: Shortcut Key (S) to toggle between both

Eraser, Brush Tools: Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.NET

Not for the faint of heart, repairing large sections of photographs with the Eraser and Brush Tools is exactly what it sounds like—redrawing the lost and damaged areas. However, for certain situations, the brush and eraser can be helpful, blending copied information into the background, or painting over small spots of dust or dirt. Other than that, you can expect a lot of tedious, slow work with the Eraser and Brush tools in those unavoidable situations when you have to use them and only them to repair images.

In all three programs, simply select the tool and either erase parts of it to your background color, or paint with a foreground color to cover up anything you don’t want.

Photoshop: Shortcut Key (E) for Eraser, (B) for Brush
GIMP: Shortcut Key (Shift + E) for Eraser, and (P) for Brush
Paint.NET: Shortcut Key (E) for Eraser, (B) for Brush

Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush: Photoshop and GIMP only

The tool used in the video, the Healing Brush will sample from an existing part of your image and tie it into the general appearance of the surrounding area, making your brush strokes more invisible to a casual glance. Newer versions of Photoshop have included the “Spot Healing Brush,” which samples the image automatically, with no need to Alt + Click to sample manually. GIMP is sadly missing that particular tool, but does have a serviceable Healing Brush.

Paint.NET does not have this tool in the out of the box install.

Photoshop: Shortcut Key (J) for Healing Brush, sample with Alt + Click
GIMP: Shortcut Key (H) for Healing Tool, sample with Ctrl + Click

Other Helpful tools: Photoshop and GIMP only

While the Eyedropper tool, pictured above center is available in all three programs, Blur and Smudge are Photoshop and GIMP only tools, both reasonable for softening and blotting out damaged parts of photographs.

Use the eyedropper in tandem with your Brush tool to paint colors similar to the colors in your photograph.

Use blur to soften harsh scratches or unwanted textures from scans.

Use the smudge tool to wipe out and cover up blemishes and problem areas in your photograph.

Photoshop: Shortcut Key (R) for Blur and Smudge, (I) for Eyedropper
GIMP: Shortcut Key (Shift + U) for Blur, (U) for Smudge, and (O) for Eyedropper
Paint.NET: Shortcut Key (K) for Brush

While the most helpful tool is certainly the Healing brushes GIMP and Photoshop offer, there’s more than enough image editing power in the other tools and techniques combined to de-blemish those treasured photographs even if you aren’t a Photoshop or a GIMP user. Dive in and give it a shot; editing out those scratches and imperfections in your scans isn’t as tough as it might seem.

How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop

2011-06-28T11:35:00.001+07:00

You might think that it’s a complicated process to remove objects from photographs. But really Photoshop makes it quite simple, even when removing all traces of a person from digital photographs. Read on to see just how easy it is.

Photoshop was originally created to be an image editing program, and it excels at it. With hardly any Photoshop experience, any beginner can begin removing objects or people from their photos. Have some friends that photobombed an otherwise great pic? Tell them to say their farewells, because here’s how to get rid of them with Photoshop!

Tools for Removing Objects

Removing an object is not really “magical” work. Your goal is basically to cover up the information you don’t want in an image with information you do want. In this sample image, we want to remove the cigar smoking man, and leave the geisha. Here’s a couple of the tools that can be useful to work with when attempting this kind of task.

Clone Stamp and Pattern Stamp Tool: Samples parts of your image from your background, and allows you to paint into your image with your mouse or stylus.

Eraser and Brush Tools: Paint flat colors and shapes, and erase cloned layers of image information. Basic, down and dirty photo editing tools.

Pen, Quick Selection, Lasso, and Crop tools: Select, isolate, and remove parts of your image with these selection tools. All useful in their own way. Some, like the pen tool, are nightmarishly tough on beginners.

Remove a Person with the Clone Stamp Tool (Video)

The video above uses the Clone Stamp tool to sample and paint with the background texture. It’s a simple tool to use, although it can be confusing, possibly counter-intuitive. Here’s some pointers, in addition to the video above.

Select shortcut key to choose the Clone tool stamp from the Tools Panel.
Always create a copy of your background layer before doing heavy edits by right clicking on the background in your Layers Panel and selecting “Duplicate.”
Hold with the Clone Tool selected, and click anywhere in your image to sample that area.
When you’re sampling an area, your cursor is “Aligned” with your sample area. When you paint, your sample area moves.
You can turn the “Aligned” setting off by clicking the in the Options Panel at the top of your screen if you want.
Change your brush size and hardness as shown in the video by right-clicking in your image.
Use your lasso to copy and paste pieces of your image in order to cover up any parts that seem appropriate.

Photoshop Magic with the “Content-Aware Fill”

One of the hallmark features of CS5 is the “Content-Aware Fill.” Content aware fill can be an excellent shortcut to removing objects and even people in Photoshop, but it is somewhat limited, and can get confused. Here’s a basic rundown on how it works.

Select an object using your Lasso tool, shortcut key . The Lasso works fine as this selection can be rough.

Navigate to Edit > Fill, and select “Content-Aware,” as illustrated above, from the pull-down menu.

It’s surprisingly simple. After some processing, Photoshop has done the work of removing the object for you. It takes a few moments, and it is not perfect, so be prepared to touch it up with some Copy-Paste, or some Clone stamp action.

Content Aware Fill Has Its Limits

Keep in mind that the Content Aware Fill is meant to be used with other techniques in mind. It doesn’t always perform perfectly, but can give you a great starting point.

Take this image for instance. It is actually plausible to hide this figure and make this image look like he was never there at all.

With a selection made with the Lasso tool, navigate to Edit > Fill and select “Content Aware” again.

The result is surprisingly good, but as you can see, worthy of some touch up. With a result like this one, you’ll have to get your hands dirty with copy-paste to create believable lines in the background. With many photographs, Content Aware Fill will simply get confused and give you results you won’t be happy with.

Additional Touch Up for Bad Background Textures with the Pattern Stamp Tool

For the perfectionist, cleaning up the lumpy looking textures that the Clone Stamp can leave is fairly simple using the Pattern Stamp Tool.

Sample an piece of your image with your Marquee Tool, shortcut key .

Navigate to Edit > Define Pattern to create a new Pattern from your selection. Click OK to continue.

Click and hold down on the Clone Stamp tool in your Tools Panel until you can select the Pattern Stamp Tool.

Pick your new pattern from the Options at the top of your screen, in the Options Panel.

Then simply right click in your image in order to pick as soft a brush as possible to paint with.

Paint into your image until your background is as smooth as you want it to be, making your painted out object more and more invisible.

If you get lines from your repeated texture, experiment turning the on and off and paint over them.

In addition to this, simple use of the Crop Tool, shortcut , can recompose an image, making it look as if it never had another object in it at all. Combine these techniques to find a method that works best for your images.

Image Credits: Geisha Kyoto Gion by Todd Laracuenta via Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons. Moai Rano raraku by Aurbina, in Public Domain. Chris Young visits Wrigley by TonyTheTiger, via Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons.

How to Automatically Change Your Default Printer Based on Your Location

2011-06-28T11:19:00.000+07:00

Windows 7 has a ton of great features, most of which are really obvious—but there’s also some great features hidden away that you might not know even exist. One of these is that Windows 7 can automatically change your default printer based on which network you’re connected to.

The normal use case, of course, is to switch printers depending on whether you are at home or at work, but this feature is especially useful if you use one of the many print-to-PDF solutions—you can continue to print things even while you aren’t connected to any network.

Note: this does not work for Home edition of Windows 7, and Obviously it only applies to laptop PCs, since nobody carries a desktop around with them from location to location.

Switching Your Default Printer Automatically

Head into the Devices and Printers panel, and then just click on one of the printers, which will enable more buttons on the toolbar. Now you can select the “Manage default printers” button.

In here you can change the radio button to “Change my default printer when I change networks”.

And now you can select a network in the first drop-down, and then select the printer you want to assign to that network in the drop-down box. The neat trick is to select the “No network” item in the drop-down box for anytime you aren’t connected—this is what I use to assign my print-to-PDF as default when I’m offline.

At this point you can see I’ve got my home office network set to print to our printer, and when I’m offline, the default is to print to PDF instead.

Not that I really print very often.

Using the Default Printer

There’s really nothing you have to do—the default printer will switch back and forth depending on the network. For instance, in this screenshot I’m not connected to any network, and my default printer is now set to doPDF.

And now when I connect to my home network…

The default printer immediately changes.

Very useful!

How To Get SSH Command-Line Access to Windows 7 Using Cygwin

2011-06-28T10:45:00.000+07:00

Are you comfortable with Linux/Unix and want SSH access to your Windows 7 machine? Cygwin provides this functionality and gives you a familiar environment to work with in a few simple steps.

We’re assuming you’ve got Cygwin installed and configured. If not, check out our article, How To Use Linux Commands in Windows with Cygwin to get started.

Installing OpenSSH

OpenSSH is what we’ll be using, so if you don’t have it installed, find Cygwin’s setup.exe file and run it.

You can keep all of the same defaults as when you originally set up Cygwin. On the package selection screen, search for “open” and look under the “Net” menu.

You’ll see a package called “openssh”. Click under the “New” column, where it says “Skip” until you see an X appear in the “Bin?” column. Look at the previous screenshot for where to click if you’re confused. Hit “Next” and finish up the rest of the setup process, just like you did last time.

Configuring OpenSSH in Cygwin

Unlike in most Linux distros, OpenSSH won’t automatically configure itself to run and just work. We need to perform a few easy steps. First, right-click your Cygwin shortcut, and click on “Run as administrator”:

This will make sure we have the proper privileges for everything. You’ll see an empty Cygwin window come up.

Enter the following command:

ssh-host-config

You’ll see the script generate some default files, and then you’ll be prompted for whether or not you want to enable “Privilege Separation.” It’s on by default in standard installations of OpenSSH on other systems, so go ahead and say “yes” to the prompt.

You’ll be prompted to create a new account with special privileges. Select “yes” and the script will continue.

Next, you’ll be asked if you want sshd to run as a service. This will allow you to get SSH access regardless of whether or not Cygwin is currently running, which is what we want. Go ahead and hit “yes” to continue.

Next, you’ll be asked to enter a value for the daemon. Enter the following:

ntsec

You’ll see the script give you some information on your system and then it will ask you to create a privileged account with the default username “cyg_server”. The default works well, so type “no” when it asks you if you want to use a different account name, although you can change this if you really like.

Of course, you’ll have to enter a password for this account as well.

Cygwin will show you your password in plain text for verification, so be sure you’re in a secure place. You’ll see some extra info come up and if all’s well, you’ll get a message that says it successfully completed.

You can either restart, or enter the following command to start the sshd service:

net start sshd

Now, you can type “exit” to close this Cygwin instance.

User Configuration of SSH

Next, we’ll create the appropriate SSH keys for your user account. Open up Cygwin normally, and enter the following command:

ssh-user-config

You’ll be asked to create specific keys for your user account, so use what you need. I went ahead and said “no” to the first question, and “yes” to the second.

SSH2 is more secure, so that’s what I recommend to you. After entering a password, you’ll be asked if you want to use that ID to access your machine. Type “yes”.

Next, you’ll be asked to create an SSH2 DSA ID file, if you want to use password-less access. I declined at this step.

That’s it! You’re all configured. If you want to test your configuration really quickly, enter the following command in your Cygwin window:

ssh –v localhost

The –v option stands for “verbose” and gives you all of the details of the process. You’ll be asked if you want to continue connecting, so enter “yes” and then enter your password at the prompt. Remember that when you enter your username, it is case-sensitive!

If everything worked out well, you’ll see a normal bash prompt.

Minor Issues

If you find yourself stuck at any of the configuration steps, make sure that the Windows User Account you’re running has Administrative access. You may get weird errors if you try to run the host configuration as a normal user, so make sure you run Cygwin with admin privileges during that step. If, when you exit, you get a prompt about leaving your batch jobs running, you can hit “no” to terminate them.

Lastly, if you test SSH access from another machine and get an error, make sure that your firewall isn’t blocking access to port 22 (or 23 if you’re using SFTP).

This works extremely well if you like the ability to get SSH/SFTP access to your files on a Windows 7 machine and you also want a familiar shell to do that with. Cygwin mounts Windows drives to “/cygdrive/driveletter” in case you were wondering.

How to Use Linux Commands in Windows with Cygwin

2011-06-28T10:40:00.000+07:00

Windows command-line tools have advanced a lot with PowerShell, but Linux has had a much more usable terminal for many years. Here’s how you can get the best of both worlds with Cygwin, a ‘nix-style terminal for Windows PCs.

In today’s lesson, we’ll explain how to get Cygwin running, but stay tuned for future articles where we’ll explain how to use it for all sorts of different things.

Install Cygwin

Cygwin comes with a normal setup.exe to install in Windows, but there are a couple steps you will need to pay attention to, so we will walk you through the installation.

To keep the installation small while saving bandwidth for you and Cygwin, the default installer will download only the files you need from the internet.

The default install path is C:\Cygwin but if you don’t like to have programs installed on the root of your C: drive you can change the path or make a symbolic link from C:\Cygwin to your program files.

Click next until you come to a download mirror selection. Unfortunately, the installer does not say where the mirrors are located so in most cases you might as well just guess which mirror works best.

After you have selected a mirror, the installer will download a list of available packages for you to install. Here is where things get a bit more intimidating.

There will be hundreds of packages available separated by multiple different categories. If you don’t know what the package is you can leave the default selection and install additional packages later by running the installer again.

If you know what package you need, you can search for it and the results will be automatically filtered.

Once you click next, it will take a little while to download all the selected tools and then finish the installation.

Add Cygwin Path to Windows Environment Variable

After the installation you will have a Cygwin icon on your desktop that you can launch to open the Cygwin terminal.

This terminal starts in the C:\Cygwin\home\<user> folder but that isn’t particularly useful because you probably don’t have any files stored there. You can use all of the basic Linux commands but if you want to get back to your C: drive you have to change directory to /cygdrive/c.

To make Cygwin work in your normal Windows command prompt you need to add Cygwin to your Windows Environment Variables.

Start by opening your system properties with either Win+Pause/Break or right click on computer and select properties.

In the left column click on advanced system settings to open the system properties window we are looking for.

From the advanced tab, click on environment variables at the bottom.

Then in the system variables, locate the path variable and click edit.

At the end of the variable value option, add the Cygwin bin location like so.

;C:\Cygwin\bin

Note: Make sure you add a semicolon to separate it from the other values.

Click OK to close out of the window and then open a command prompt to test out a few Linux commands.

As you can see from the below picture both pwd and ls work in the normal Windows command prompt. You can also see that /cygdrive/c is automatically added to the location.

There is a lot more you can do with Cygwin installed and we will show you some more of the useful tools in future articles.

Cygwin homepage

Secure Your Data Using TrueCrypt

2011-06-28T10:36:00.000+07:00

BitLocker is a hard drive encryption utility in Windows 7 and Vista, unfortunately it’s only available in Ultimate and Enterprise editions and not in XP at all. Today we take a look at TrueCrypt, which is a free utility that will enable encryption functionality to other versions.

TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is a free Open Source disk encryption utility that works with Windows, Mac, and Linux. It allows you to encrypt an entire drive, partition or flash drive and ensure no one can access the data without thhttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=157130567363767396e right password. It provides on-the-fly encryption and after the drive is encrypted you can continue to use everything like you normally would.

Installation is straight forward and it’s recommended to create a system restore point before installing.

Click on the Create Volume button to begin setting the disc up for encryption.

The entire process is wizard driven which makes it easy to use even for beginners. You can encrypt a virtual disk, removable drive, or an entire system drive. There are a lot more steps than what we show here, but the wizard makes all of your choices easy.

You can choose different levels of encryption. There are several types to choose from and each has its unique qualities…but for most users you will be fine with AES.

To complete the process you will need to restart the computer.

The amount of time it takes to encrypt a hard drive will vary depending on the size and speed of the system. In our test we encrypted an entire 320GB drive and it took about 4 hours.

To complete the process a restart is required.

Now anytime you start up your PC you will need to log in using the password you created in TrueCrypt.

If you’re worried about private or sensitive data being compromised, TrueCrypt is a simple and effective free option. If you have a version of Windows or other OS that doesn’t include BitLocker or another encryption feature, TrueCrypt has you covered. It’s a versatile utility as it can encrypt partitions, VHDs, Flash Drives, or entire hard drive like we showed.

Download TrueCrypt for Windows, Mac, and Linux

How To Remotely Copy Files Over SSH Without Entering Your Password

2011-06-28T10:33:00.000+07:00

SSH is a life-saver when you need to remotely manage a computer, but did you know you can also upload and download files, too? Using SSH keys, you can skip having to enter passwords and use this for scripts!

This process works on Linux and Mac OS, provided that they’re properly configured for SSH access. If you’re using Windows, you can use Cygwin to get Linux-like functionality, and with a little tweaking, SSH will run as well.

Copying Files Over SSH

Secure copy is a really useful command, and it’s really easy to use. The basic format of the command is as follows:

scp [options] original_file destination_file

The biggest kicker is how to format the remote part. When you address a remote file, you need to do it in the following manner:

user@server:path/to/file

The server can be a URL or an IP address. This is followed by a colon, then the path to the file or folder in question. Let’s look at an example.

scp –P 40050 Desktop/url.txt yatri@192.168.1.50:~/Desktop/url.txt

This command features the [-P] flag (note that it’s a capital P). This allows me to specify a port number instead of the default 22. This is necessary for me because of the way I’ve configured my system.

Next, my original file is “url.txt” which is inside of a directory called “Desktop”. The destination file is in “~/Desktop/url.txt” which is the same as “/user/yatri/Desktop/url.txt”. This command is being run by the user “yatri” on the remote computer “192.168.1.50”.

What If you need to do the opposite? You can copy files from a remote server similarly.

Here, I’ve copied a file from the remote computer’s “~/Desktop/” folder to my computer’s “Desktop” folder.

To copy whole directories, you’ll need to use the [-r] flag (note that it’s a lowercase r).

You can also combine flags. Instead of

scp –P –r …

You can just do

scp –Pr …

The toughest part here is that tab completion doesn’t always work, so it’s helpful to have another terminal with an SSH session running so that you know where to put things.

SSH and SCP Without Passwords

Secure copy is great. You can put it in scripts and have it do backups to remote computers. The problem is, that you may not always be around to enter the password. And, let’s be honest, it’s a real big pain to put in your password to a remote computer you obviously have access to all the time.

Well, we can get around using passwords by using key files. We can have the computer generate two key files – one public that belongs on the remote server, and one private which is on your computer and needs to be secure – and these will be used instead of a password. Pretty convenient, right?

On your computer, enter the following command:

ssh-keygen –t rsa

This will generate the two keys and put them in:

~/.ssh/

with the names “id_rsa” for your private key, and “id_rsa.pub” for your public key.

After entering the command, you’ll be asked where to save the key. You can hit Enter to use the above-mentioned defaults.

Next, you’ll be asked to enter a passphrase. Hit Enter to leave this blank, then do it again when it asks for confirmation. The next step is to copy the public key file to your remote computer. You can use scp to do this:

The destination for your public key is on the remote server, in the following file:

~/.ssh/authorized_keys2

Subsequent public keys can be appended to this file, much like the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file. This means that if you wanted to add another public key for your account on this server, you would copy the contents of the second id_rsa.pub file into a new line on the existing authorized_keys2 file.

Security Considerations

Isn’t this less secure than a password?

In a practical sense, not really. The private key that’s generated is stored on the computer you’re using, and it is never transferred, not even to be verified. This private key ONLY matches with that ONE public key, and the connection needs to be started from the computer that has the private key. RSA is pretty secure and uses a 2048 bit-length by default.

It’s actually pretty similar in theory to using your password. If someone has knows your password, your security goes out of the window. If someone has your private key file, then security is lost to any computer that has the matching pubic key, but they need access to your computer to get it.

Can this be more secure?

You can combine a password with key files. Follow the steps above, but enter a strong passphrase. Now, when you connect over SSH or use SCP, you’ll need the proper private key file as well as the proper passphrase.

Once you enter your passphrase once, you won’t be asked again for it until you close your session. That means that the first time you SSH/SCP, you’ll need to enter your password, but all subsequent actions won’t require it. Once you log out of your computer (not the remote one) or close your terminal window, then you’ll have to enter it again. In this way, you’re not really sacrificing security, but you’re also not harassed for passwords all the time.

Can I reuse the public/private key pair?

This is a really bad idea. If someone finds your password, and you use the same password for all of your accounts, then they now have access to all of those accounts. Similarly, your private key file is also super-secret and important. (For more information, take a look at How To Recover After Your Email Password Is Compromised)

It’s best to create new key pairs for every computer and account you want to link. That way, if one of your private keys get caught somehow, then you’ll only compromise one account on one remote computer.

It’s also really important to note that all of your private keys are stored in the same place: in ~/.ssh/ on your computer, you can use TrueCrypt to create a secure, encrypted container, then create symlinks in your ~/.ssh/ directory. Depending on what I’m doing, I use this super-paranoid super-secure method to put my mind at ease.

Have you used SCP in any scripts? Do you use key files instead of passwords? Share your own expertise with other readers in the comments!

Exterminate Malware Efficiently with Spybot Search & Destroy

2011-06-22T13:03:00.001+07:00

First we showed you how easily your computer can become infected with spyware, crapware, and other unwanted software and today we’ll show you how to clean your system with Spybot Search & Destroy.
Important Parts of the Installation
As you are installing Spybot Search & Destroy, there are two windows that you should pay special attention to.
Here you can see the Components Selection Window. It is recommended to make certain that “Download updates immediately” and “Security Center integration” are selected.
Note: After installation, there may still be a few minor updates that can be downloaded.

In the Additional Tasks Window, it is definitely recommended to make certain that “Use Internet Explorer protection (SDHelper)” and “Use system settings protection (Tea Timer)” are both selected. This will help give you extra protection for your system.

Scanning for Malware
Once you have finished installing Spybot Search & Destroy and start it for the first time, you will be asked if you would like to make a “Registry Backup” before scanning with the software. It is recommended to make the backup…after all, backups are always a good thing.
As you can see in the following screenshot, Spybot Search & Destroy was already hard at work catching malware while still in the initial setup process right after startup (very wonderful!). Knowing that both of these were malware, we chose to have both processes shut down and deleted.

Once the initial setup process is complete, you will see the main Home Window. From here you can choose which action you would like to perform. For our example, we decided to “Search for Updates” just in case anything else was available (recommended).

As you can see, there were extra updates available for the Immunization database, the Tea Timer service selected during the install process, and an English language descriptions file. Once you have finished downloading any available updates, click on “Exit” to close the Updates Window.

Once the Updates Window has closed, you will be returned to the main Home Window. Now is a good time to go ahead and Immunize your system. Here you can see the amount of Immunization that is available to be applied (Unprotected versus Protected). Click on the “Green Plus Sign Immunize Button” to apply the Immunization. This not only helps your installed browsers, but also boosts your Hosts File as well.

After the Immunization is complete, you can see the shift in numbers from “Unprotected” to “Protected”. Now it is time to start scanning for malware. Click on the “Search & Destroy Button” on the left side of the window.

To start scanning, click on the “Check for problems Button”.

Once scanning has started, you will be able to easily track the progress using the color bar and numerical counter at the very bottom of the window. You will also be able to see which type of malware Spybot Search & Destroy is searching for at any given moment beside the numerical counter.
While scanning our example system, you can see that Spybot Search & Destroy was building a list of the malware (amount and type) that it had already found.
Note: Spybot Search & Destroy will take a while to complete the scan, so be patient. The wait is well worth it!

Once Scanning is Complete
After Spybot Search & Destroy has finished scanning for malware, it will list the number of problems found in the lower left corner of the window. In the main part of the window, you can see the compiled list of what has been found.

Clicking on the “Plus Sign” beside each entry will allow you to see information about each item found (i.e. Registry value, File, Location). The great thing about the compiled list is that you can go through to check for false positives (if any) and deselect those particular entries. You can be very specific in what is or is not removed (very nice!).

Removing the Malware
Once you have checked over the compiled list, click on “Fix selected problems”. You will then see a confirmation window asking if you want to continue. Select “Yes” to start removing the malware.

There will be a large green checkmark beside the entry for each item of malware on the compiled list that was successfully removed. If some of the malware discovered is in active use at the moment, you can choose to have those items removed when you restart your computer. Select “Yes” to activate this option.

Once you have clicked through the confirmation window shown above, you will see the following message window providing details about the number of problems fixed. If there are problems that will be fixed during a reboot, those will be shown as well and you will be asked to restart your computer. Select “OK” to restart.

Malware Removal During a Reboot
If you have malware that is being removed during a reboot, Spybot Search & Destroy will also conduct a whole new scan as well during the process in case any malware tries to reestablish itself during restart. Your system will not finish restarting completely until the scan is complete, so you can expect to see a black screen.
Note: This scan will likely take longer than the regular scan to complete, so if you have something else to work on or a book to read while waiting, feel free to do so. Spybot Search & Destroy will let you know when it is finished.

As you can see from our example, part of the malware did try to reestablish itself during the restart but was easily caught by Spybot Search & Destroy. To remove any malware problems found, select “Fix selected problems”. Once you have clicked “Fix selected problems”, your system will then finish restarting.
On our example system, the processes caught trying to reestablish themselves had startup entries that created repeating momentary popup windows with messages showing that they were failing to load. So it is recommended to go ahead and do another restart at that point. Once your system has restarted, sit back and enjoy how clean your system has just become!

Conclusion
While Spybot Search & Destroy is not the fastest anti-malware software, it is very meticulous and efficient in eliminating malware from a computer system. So this is definitely a recommended anti-malware app to have around.
Download Spybot Search & Destroy (version 1.6.2)

How To Easily Access Your Home Network From Anywhere With DDNS

2011-06-22T12:12:00.001+07:00

Whether you’re hosting a web page or running a Minecraft server, it’s a pain to keep track of IP addresses. Using a free dynamic DNS, you can turn 174.45.19.242 into mygeekydns.dyndns.org and be free from changing IPs.

DDNS

Dynamic Domain Name System services can be found in many places online for varying costs, but they all work more or less the same way. We’ve talked about DNS before – mainly when mentioning OpenDNS, Google’s Public DNS, and NameBench – but, essentially, DNS servers are like address books which convert IP addresses into host names. As you can imagine, this makes the web much easier to work with.

Getting your hands on a .com can be tough and expensive, but if you have your own server you can sign up with a dynamic DNS service. Signing up will get you a simple hostname, and by configuring your router, your ISP-assigned ever-changing IP will be updated automatically. No more looking up and writing down IPs!

There are a few different DDNS services out there, such as FreeDNS and No-IP Free, but we’re going to focus our article on DynDNS. Why? Well, it’s one of the more popular services, they have really great uptime and support, and I’ve never had to mess with it in the 6 years that I’ve been using it. They all more or less work the same, though, so if you decide to go with another provider, you should still be able to follow along or figure things out.

Signing Up WIth DynDNS

Head over to DynDNS.com.

Click on Services & Pricing.

You’ll see a more detailed group of options appear.

Click on DynDNS Free, since we want a free account. You’ll see a page come up that asks you to pick a hostname. You’ll also see a list of possible suffixes for your free hostname.

Be sure to click “Your current location’s IP address” or manually enter the IP address of your home’s router in the appropriate box. If you have a mail server configured with a different name and need to add an MX record, be sure to check the box. If you have no idea what that means, you’re safe to skip it. Click “Add To Cart” when you’re done. On the next page, you’ll have to create an account.

Check and make sure your hostname is the correct one. Fill out the details for a new account, check the “I Agree” item, and uncheck the “Subscribe to DynDNS.com newsletter” item. When you’re all set, click “Create Account” and you’ll see a confirmation page come up.

Click on the link in the email to confirm everything. You should then be able to log in to DynDNS.com.

Under My Services, you’ll see a link for “Add Host Services.” That’s the one we want, so click it and you’ll see a host services list come up.

The hostname you previously chose should be listed, so just click the “Checkout to Activate” link.

You’ll see one more step where DynDNS advertises their pro package and where you can remove your hostname if you want to change it. Click the “Proceed to checkout” button. Note that the price here is still $0.00.

And, you’ll see yet another confirmation screen. Luckily for us, this is the last one, so just click the “Activate Services” button, and you’re all set!

You can log out of DynDNS.com, and you really won’t have to log back in. Any important notifications like account expiration will be emailed to you.

Configuring Your Router

DynDNS’s free account requires at least one IP update a month, otherwise your hostname will expire automatically. Since your IP is changing anyway, this really shouldn’t be a problem. Most routers have a built-in method of updating to popular DDNS services, ours included, so the next step is logging into your router’s admin page.

Depending on your router’s software, look under either Advanced, Tools, or Setup. You’re looking for an entry like “DDNS,” or “Dynamic DNS.”

Click the above image to view it full size.

The Server Address field should be your provider’s main site. Again, most routers will have pre-configured entries for DynDNS and other popular services. The hostname should match what you chose earlier, and then enter your DDNS account’s username and password.

Depending on your router, you may see a “Timeout” or “Force Update Interval” option. If your IP has not changed, your router will update the IP anyway after this interval of time. Since DynDNS requires an update at least once a month, you can enter 29 days (or 696 hours). Save your changes, wait for your router to reboot, and you’re done!

If you have port 80 forwarded to a web server, pop in your DDNS address in a browser and you should see your web page. If you see the login page of your router, you may want to try it from an outside source, or you may have to check your router’s “remote administration” settings.

Using a Client

The vast majority of routers have built-in support for DDNS, especially because it’s becoming increasingly popular for home users. However, if yours doesn’t, you can run a DDNS updating client on a computer in your network. It’s best to have it running all the time, or at least often enough that it catches any IP changes on your router and updates properly. There are hosts of clients for all operating systems. Check out DynDNS’s Supported Clients page to see what software they support and how to configure everything properly. If that’s not enough, FreeDNS has a prodigiously populated list of more clients.

What Can I Use This With?

Now that you have access to your computer from anywhere, let’s take a look at some of the awesome things you do from outside of your network now!

Access your Linux computer via SSH
Use SSH remotely in Windows with Cygwin
Enable Remote Desktop in Windows 7 and Vista, and VNC in Ubuntu
Remotely control your PC with Android or your iOS device (great when you’re out of range of Wi-Fi)
Wirelessly sync/share your music collection with iOS/Android
Turn your Ubuntu PC into a web server
Steam video to iOS with Airvideo, to Android with VLC, or to both with Plex.
Start your own Minecraft server

There are plenty more we haven’t listed, but anything that offers functionality over your network is now accessible from outside of it easily! Just make sure you set up Port Forwarding in your router so that you get access to the right computer.

Have some ideas of your own? Want to share you own setup? Prefer a different DDNS service? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Enable ActiveSync & Windows Mobile Device Center Synchronization on Windows 7 x64 and x86

2011-06-16T11:31:00.002+07:00

Windows 7 RC x64 or x86 do not ship with ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC). If you require ActiveSync & WMDC functionality on your Windows 7 computer, this article will show you how to install and active it.

Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) is the new name for Microsoft’s ActiveSync which originally came out with Windows Vista. It is designed to synchronize various content including music, video, contacts, calendar events, web browser favorites, and other files between Windows Mobile devices and the Microsoft Windows operating system.
If you're after ActiveSync for Windows Server 2008 x64, try our other article: Enable ActiveSync & Windows Mobile Device Center Synchronization on Windows Server 2008 x64
Windows 7 x64 and x86, did not ship with ActiveSync (WMDC), however it was supposed to download all the required bits automatically in the background. Sometimes this does not work, at least it didn't work properly when I tried it on Windows 7 RC. Therefore, synchronization would never work out of the box. This is particularly frustrating if you're the type of person who likes to work with the latest Windows 7 versions (in this case Windows 7 RC).

Enable ActiveSync Synchronization on Windows 7

Actually this part is pretty easy, simply download the latest version of Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) for Windows 7 from the Microsoft website (at the time of writing the latest version was 6.1). Follow this link to Download Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1. If this link doesn’t work any longer, try visiting the Microsoft website and follow links to the Windows Mobile sections.
At the time of writing there wasn't a Windows 7 x64 or x86 version of the download, so simply use the Vista x64 or x86 version of the WMDC (ActiveSync) download as well as the correct language for your Windows 7. Don't worry that there isn't a Windows 7 version just yet, it will still work perfectly.

Install Windows Mobile Device Center (ActiveSync) on Windows 7

After you download (x64 or x86 version) and install the updated software on your Windows 7, you will find that a new program option is now available to you from the All Programs menu as well as a Windows Mobile Device Center icon on the desktop.

If you start Widows Mobile Device Center and plug in your mobile device, synchronization functionality for your Windows 7 should now be re-established.

Conclusion

This article has shown how to install and enable ActiveSync (Windows Mobile Device Centre) functionality for Windows 7, which was mysteriously omitted from the Release Candidate (RC).

References

Enable ActiveSync & Windows Mobile Device Center Synchronization on Windows Server 2008 x64
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/help/synchronize/device-center.mspx

KWord

2011-06-06T10:57:00.001+07:00

KWord is an intuitive word processor and desktop publisher application. With it, you can create informative and attractive documents with pleasure and ease.

Content-based documents made easy

The content-oriented approach

KWord is designed to make including content in your documents (images, charts and shapes, for example) effortless. Resize and rotate your content and the text will wrap round it seamlessly – just as it should.

Change and re-arrange to your wants and needs

Child-friendly too!

With a clean and responsive interface, be free to add, move and remove anything you like. Get rid of all those confusing buttons and toolbars other word processors force you to use, replace them with the new, “Format” panel, and even the children can create attractive documents without help!

Forget your worries with embedded documents

Include important data easily

No need to struggle to include that spreadsheet or chart you want to demonstrate to the office, or distribute it as a separate file – just embed it into the document like anything else. Even resize or rotate it as naturally as you would a picture!

Little to lose, much to gain

KWord includes all the features you would expect from a modern word processor and more – styles, word count, page count, easy zooming and the comprehensive print preview to name a few.

Scribus - Open Source Desktop Publishing

2011-06-06T10:26:00.000+07:00

Scribus is an Open Source program that brings professional page layout to Linux/UNIX, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp 4/eComStation and Windows desktops with a combination of press-ready output and new approaches to page design.

Since its humble beginning in the spring of 2001, Scribus has rapidly evolved into one of the premier Open Source desktop applications. Encouraged by professionals and beginners alike, the Scribus Team, supported by a large and constantly growing number of enthusiastic contributors from all over the world, is dedicated to develop and improve “one of the most powerful and useful open-source projects out there” (TechRepublic). Scribus is now completely cross-platform and runs natively on Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp 4, eComStation and Windows.
Underneath a user-friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK colors, spot color support, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.

Download Scribus
Download Scribus

Windows XP Stop Messages

2011-05-30T11:16:00.000+07:00

Stop Messages

When Windows XP detects a problem from which it cannot recover, it displays Stop messages. These are text-mode error messages that report information about the condition.

Stop messages, sometimes referred to as blue screens (BSoD), contain specific information that can help you diagnose and possibly resolve the problem detected by the Windows kernel.

This list describes these messages and helps you understand and interpret them.

This list is NOT exhaustive or meant to resolve EVERY error.

This list of messages is a guide to individual messages and their possible causes and resolutions... Having a basic understanding of these error messages enables you to communicate with your technical support professional more effectively too.

With all these Stop messages, you can pretty much assume someone else has encountered the problem before you. That is why tying in the error message into www.google.com , posting a notice for help on a relevant newsgroup and entering the stop code into the "Microsoft Knowledge Base" can yield help just when you need it!

Here is the (long) list:

Stop 0x0000000A or IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

The Stop 0xA message indicates that a kernel-mode process or driver attempted to access a memory location to which it did not have permission, or at a kernel interrupt request level (IRQL) that was too high. A kernel-mode process can access only other processes that have an IRQL lower than, or equal to, its own. This Stop message is typically due to faulty or incompatible hardware or software.

Possible Resolutions:

# A Stop 0xA message might occur after installing a faulty device driver, system service, or firmware. If a Stop message lists a driver by name, disable, remove, or roll back the driver to correct the problem. If disabling or removing drivers resolves the issues, contact the manufacturer about a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, and CD mastering tools.

# A Stop 0xA message might also be due to failing or defective hardware. If a Stop message points to a category of devices (video or disk adapters, for example), try removing or replacing the hardware to determine if it is causing the problem.

# If you encounter a Stop 0xA message while upgrading to Windows XPl, the problem might be due to an incompatible driver, system service, virus scanner, or backup. To avoid problems while upgrading, simplify your hardware configuration and remove all third-party device drivers and system services (including virus scanners) prior to running setup. After you have successfully installed Windows XP, contact the hardware manufacturer to obtain compatible updates.

Microsoft KB articles:

Troubleshooting a Stop 0x0000000A Error in Windows XP
STOP 0x0000000A Error Message When You Change from AC Power to DC Power
STOP 0x0000000A Error Message When You Fast Switch Between Users
STOP 0x0000000A Irql_Not_Less_or... During Windows XP Upgrade
STOP 0x0000000A Windows XP restarts when you try to shut down your computer
STOP 0x0000000A Computer automatically restarts after upgrade to XP

Stop 0x0000001E or KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

The Stop 0x1E message indicates that the Windows XP kernel detected an illegal or unknown processor instruction. The problems that cause Stop 0x1E messages share similarities with those that generate Stop 0xA errors in that they can be due to invalid memory and access violations. This default Windows XP error handler typically intercepts these problems if error-handling routines are not present in the code itself.

Possible Resolutions:

# Stop 0x1E messages typically occur after installing faulty drivers or system services, or they can indicate hardware problems, such as memory and IRQ conflicts. If a Stop message lists a driver by name, disable, remove, or roll it back to correct the problem. If disabling or removing applications and drivers resolves the issue, contact the hardware manufacturer about a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, and CD mastering tools.

# If the Stop message mentions the file Win32k.sys, the source of the error might be a third-party "remote control" program. If such software is installed, you might be able to disable it by starting the system in safe mode. If not, use Recovery Console to manually delete the system service file that is causing the problem.

# Problems can result from system firmware incompatibilities. Many Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) issues can be resolved by updating to the latest firmware.

# Other possible causes include insufficient disk space while installing applications or performing certain functions that require more memory. You can free up space by deleting unneeded files. Use Disk Cleanup to increase available disk space. From Recovery Console, remove temporary files (those with .tmp file extensions), Internet cache files, application backup files, and .tmp files generated by Chkdsk.exe or Autochk.exe. You can also choose to install additional applications to another hard disk with more free space or move data files, paging files, and so on.

# The problem might be due to a memory leak caused by an application or service that is not releasing memory correctly. Poolmon (Poolmon.exe) helps you to isolate the components that are causing kernel memory leaks. For more information about troubleshooting memory leaks, see Microsoft Knowledgebase articles Q177415, "How to Use Poolmon to Troubleshoot Kernel Mode Memory Leaks," and Q298102, "Finding Pool Tags Used by Third Party Files Without Using the Debugger."

Microsoft KB articles:

STOP 0x0000001E Error Message During Windows Setup
STOP 0x0000001E KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED Error Message from Aspi32.sys

Stop 0x00000024 or NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM

The Stop 0x24 message indicates that a problem occurred within Ntfs.sys, the driver file that allows the system to read and write to NTFS file system drives. A similar Stop message, 0x23, exists for the file allocation table (FAT16 or FAT32) file systems.

Possible Resolutions:

# Malfunctioning SCSI and Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) hardware or drivers can also adversely affect the system's ability to read and write to disk, causing errors. If using SCSI hard disks, check for cabling and termination problems between the SCSI controller and the disks. Periodically check Event Viewer for error messages related to SCSI or FASTFAT in the System log or Autochk in the Application log.

# Verify that the tools you use to continually monitor your system, such as virus scanners, backup programs, or disk defragmenters are compatible with Windows XP. Some disks and adapters come packaged with diagnostic software that you can use to run hardware tests.

To test hard disk or volume integrity

Method 1:

1. In the Run dialog box, in the Open box type:

cmd

2. Start the Chkdsk tool, which detects and attempts to resolve file system structural corruption. At the command prompt type:

chkdsk drive: /f

Method 2:

1. Double-click My Computer, and then select the hard disk you want to check.
2. On the File menu, click Properties.
3. Click the Tools tab.
4. In the Error-checking box, click Check Now.
5. In Check disk options, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box. You can also select the Automatically fix file system errors check box.

If the volume you are checking is in use, a message asks whether you want to delay disk error checking until the next time you restart your computer. After you restart, disk error checking runs and the volume chosen is not available to run other tasks during this process. If you cannot restart the computer due to the error, use safe mode or Recovery Console.

If you are not using the NTFS file system, and the system partition is formatted with the file allocation table (FAT16 or FAT32) file system, long file name (LFN) information can be lost if hard disk tools are started from an MS-DOS command prompt. A command prompt appears when using a startup floppy disk or when using the command prompt startup option on multiple boot systems that use FAT16 or FAT32 partitions with Microsoft Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 (OSR2), Microsoft Windows 98, or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) installed. Do not use tools meant for other operating systems on Windows XP partitions!

# Nonpaged pool memory might be depleted, which can cause the system to stop. You can resolve this situation by adding more RAM, which increases the quantity of nonpaged pool memory available to the kernel.

Microsoft KB articles:

Troubleshooting Stop 0x24 or NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM Error Messages
STOP 0x23 (or STOP 0x24) When restarting PC after installing PC-Magic Encrypted Magic Folders

Stop 0x0000002E or DATA_BUS_ERROR

The Stop 0x2E message indicates a system memory parity error. The cause is typically failed or defective RAM (including motherboard, Level 2 cache, or video memory), incompatible or mismatched memory hardware, or when a device driver attempts to access an address in the 0x8xxxxxxx range that does not exist (does not map to a physical address). A Stop 0x2E message can also indicate hard disk damage caused by viruses or other problems.

Possible Resolutions:

# Stop 0x2E is typically due to defective, malfunctioning, or failed memory hardware, such as memory modules, Level 2 (L2) SRAM cache, or video adapter RAM. If you added new hardware recently, remove and replace it to determine if it is causing or contributing to the problem. Run diagnostics software supplied by the system manufacturer to determine if the component has failed.

# Stop 0x2E messages can also occur after installing faulty drivers or system services. If a file name is given, you need to disable, remove, or roll back that driver. Disable the service or application and confirm that this resolves the error. If so, contact the hardware manufacturer about a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for backup programs, multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, and CD mastering tools.

# Hard disk corruption can also cause this Stop message.

# The problem might also be due to cracks, scratched traces, or defective components on the motherboard. If all else fails, take the system motherboard to a repair facility for diagnostic testing.

Stop 0x0000003F or NO_MORE_SYSTEM_PTES

The Stop 0x3F message indicates one or more of the following problems:

# The system Page Table Entries (PTEs) are depleted or fragmented due to the system performing a large number of input/output (I/O) actions.

# A faulty device driver is not managing memory properly.

# An application, such as a backup program, is improperly allocating large amounts of kernel memory.

Possible Resolutions:

# Stop 0x3F messages can occur after installing faulty drivers or system services. If a file name is given, you need to disable, remove, or roll back that driver. Disable the service or application and confirm that this resolves the error. If so, contact the hardware manufacturer about a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for backup programs, multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, and CD mastering tools.

# The system might not actually be out of PTEs, but a contiguous memory block of sufficient size is not available to satisfy a driver or application request. Check for the availability of updated driver or application files and consult the hardware or program documentation for minimum system requirements.

# Another cause is excessive demands for system PTE by applications. This situation is more common in server environments. Windows XP Professional provides a registry entry, SystemPages, that you can use to increase the number of PTEs allocated.

Caution:

Do not edit the registry unless you have no alternative. The registry editor bypasses standard safeguards, allowing settings that can damage your system, or even require you to reinstall Windows. If you must edit the registry, back it up first...

To increase the number of PTEs allocated in the registry

1. In the Run dialog box, and in the Open box, type: regedit

2. In the registry editor, navigate to the subkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management.

3. Double-click on PagedPoolSize and SystemPages to view the value for each entry.

4. If PagedPoolSize is not zero, assign a value of 0.

5. If SystemPages is not zero, assign a value of 40000 for systems with 128 MB (or less) of memory, or 110000 for systems with 128 MB to 256 MB of memory. For systems with more memory, do not increase the SystemPages value above 110000 without contacting Microsoft technical support.

6. Click OK, and then close the registry editor.

7. Restart your computer.

Stop 0x00000050 or PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

The Stop 0x50 message indicates that requested data was not in memory. The system generates an exception error when using a reference to an invalid system memory address. Defective memory (including main memory, L2 RAM cache, video RAM) or incompatible software (including remote control and antivirus software) might cause Stop 0x50 messages.

Possible Resolutions:

# If you added new hardware recently, remove and replace the hardware to determine if it is causing or contributing to the problem. Run diagnostics software supplied by the hardware manufacturer to determine if the component has failed.

# Stop 0x50 messages can also occur after installing faulty drivers or system services. If the file name is listed, you need to disable, remove, or roll back that driver. If not, disable the recently installed service or application to determine if this resolves the error. If this does not resolve the problem, contact the hardware manufacturer for updates. Using updated drivers and software is especially important for network interface cards, video adapters, backup programs, multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, and CD mastering tools. If an updated driver is not available, attempt to use a driver from a similar device in the same family. For example, if printing to a Model 1100C printer causes Stop 0x50 errors, using a printer driver meant for a Model 1100A or Model 1000 might temporarily resolve the problem.

Microsoft KB articles:

STOP 0x00000050 PrtSeqRd deferencing null device object
STOP 0x50 Error starting Windows after connecting a scanner

Stop 0x00000077 or KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR

The Stop 0x77 message indicates that a page of kernel data requested from the paging (virtual memory) file could not be found or read into memory. This Stop message can also indicate disk hardware failure, disk data corruption, or possible virus infection.

Possible Resolutions:

# Stop 0x77 messages can be caused by bad sectors in the virtual memory paging file or a disk controller error. In extremely rare cases, depleted nonpaged pool resources can cause this error. If the first and third parameters are zero, the stack signature in the kernel stack is missing, which is an error typically caused by defective hardware. If the I/O status is 0xC0000185 and the paging file is on a SCSI disk, check for cabling and termination issues. An I/O status code of 0xC000009C or 0xC000016A indicates that the requested data could not be found. You can try to correct this by restarting the computer. If a problem with disk integrity exists, Autochk, a program that attempts to mark bad disk sectors as defective so that they are not used in the future, starts automatically. If Autochk fails to run, you can manually perform the integrity check yourself by following the instructions to run Chkdsk provided in "Stop 0x00000024 or NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM" earlier in this list.

# Another cause of Stop 0x77 messages is defective, malfunctioning, or failed memory hardware, such as memory modules, Level 2 (L2) SRAM cache, or video adapter RAM. If you added new hardware recently, remove and replace it to determine if it is causing or contributing to the problem. Run diagnostics software supplied by the system manufacturer to determine if the component has failed.

# The problem might also be due to cracks, scratched traces, or defective components on the motherboard. If all else fails, take the system motherboard to a repair facility for diagnostic testing.

# Problems that cause Stop 0x77 messages can also cause Stop 0x7A messages. For more information about Stop 0x7A messages, see "Stop 0x0000007A or KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR" later in this list.

Microsoft KB articles:

Troubleshooting Stop 0x00000077 or KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR

Stop 0x00000079 or MISMATCHED_HAL

The Stop 0x79 message indicates that the hardware abstraction layer ( HAL) and the kernel type for the computer do not match. This error most often occurs when ACPI firmware settings are changed. For example, you might install Windows XP on an x86-based computer with the firmware ACPI enable option enabled and later decide to disable it. This error can also result when mismatched single and multi-processor configuration files are copied to the system.

Possible Resolutions:

# A Stop 0x79 message occurs when the system is using out-of-date Ntoskrnl.exe or Hal.dll files. This can occur after manual repairs that involve copying incorrect files to the system. This error also occurs when using mismatched files, such as copying a multiprocessor HAL on to a system using a single-processor kernel (or vice versa). The kernel and HAL files for single-processor and multiprocessor systems are stored on the Windows XP Professional operating system CD using two different file names. For example, the single and multi-processor versions of the kernel, named Ntoskrnl.exe and Ntkrnlmp.exe respectively. Setup copies either Ntoskrnl.exe or Ntkrnlmp.exe to your system as Ntoskrnl.exe. In Recovery Console, you can use the Copy command to copy the correct HAL or kernel files from the CD to the appropriate folder on the hard disk.

# If you experience Stop 0x79 messages after changing firmware settings, restore the original settings used during Windows XP Professional Setup.

Because systems that use the ACPI HAL ignore IRQ assignments stored in firmware, you can only manually change IRQ settings for non-ACPI (Standard PC HAL) systems. Some x86-based provide the option to toggle ACPI functionality. To disable or re-enable ACPI, you must change firmware settings and reinstall Windows XP. Because of the numerous registry and system file changes required, you must run Setup again (an upgrade installation does not work).

Stop 0x0000007A or KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR

The Stop 0x7A message indicates that a page of kernel data was not found in the paging (virtual memory) file and could not be read into memory. This might be due to incompatible disk or controller drivers, firmware, or hardware.

Frequently, the cause of this error can be determined from the second parameter, the I/O status code. Some common status codes are:

# 0xC000009A, or STATUS_INSUFFICIENT_RESOURCES, indicates a lack of nonpaged pool resources

# 0xC000009C, or STATUS_DEVICE_DATA_ERROR, indicates bad blocks (sectors) on the hard disk

# 0xC000009D, or STATUS_DEVICE_NOT_CONNECTED, indicates defective or loose data or power cables, a problem with SCSI termination, or improper controller or disk configuration

# 0xC000016A, or STATUS_DISK_OPERATION_FAILED, indicates bad blocks (sectors) on the hard disk

# 0xC0000185, or STATUS_IO_DEVICE_ERROR, indicates improper termination, defective storage controller hardware, or defective disk cabling, or two devices attempting to use the same resources.

Possible Resolutions:

# Stop 0x7A can be caused by bad sectors in the virtual memory paging file, disk controller error, virus infection, or memory hardware problems. In extremely rare cases, depleted nonpaged pool resources can cause this error. If the first and third parameters are zero, the stack signature in the kernel stack is missing, an error typically caused by defective hardware. If the I/O status is 0xC0000185 and the paging file is on a SCSI disk, check for cabling and termination issues. An I/O status code of 0xC000009C or 0xC000016A indicates that the requested data could not be found. You can try to correct this by restarting the computer. If a problem with disk integrity exists, Autochk, a program that attempts to mark bad disk sectors as defective so that they are not used in the future, starts automatically. If Autochk fails to run, you can manually perform the integrity check yourself by following the instructions to run Chkdsk provided in "Stop 0x00000024 or NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM" earlier in this appendix.

# Another cause of Stop 0x7A messages is defective, malfunctioning, or failed memory hardware, such as memory modules, Level 2 (L2) SRAM cache, or video adapter RAM. If you added new hardware recently, remove and replace it to determine if it is causing or contributing to the problem. Run diagnostics software supplied by the system manufacturer to determine if the component has failed.

# Check the hardware manufacturer's Web site for updates to disk adapter firmware or drivers that improve compatibility. Verify that your disks and controller support the same set of advanced features, such as higher transfer rates. If necessary, select a slower transfer rate if an update is not yet available. Consult your hardware or device documentation for more information.

Important

- You can install disk controller drivers not present on the Windows XP Professional operating system CD by responding to the following prompt shortly after starting Setup:
- Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver.
- Press F6, and when prompted, provide the appropriate storage controller driver (ATA or SCSI) supplied by the manufacturer.

# The problem might also be due to cracks, scratched traces, or defective components on the motherboard. If all else fails, take the system motherboard to a repair facility for diagnostic testing.

# Problems that cause Stop 0x7A messages can also cause Stop 0x77 messages. For more information about Stop 0x77 messages, see "Stop 0x00000077 or KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR" earlier in this list.

Stop 0x0000007B or INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

The Stop 0x7B message indicates that Windows XP has lost access to the system partition or boot volume during the startup process. Installing incorrect device drivers when installing or upgrading storage adapter hardware typically causes stop 0x7B errors. Stop 0x7B errors could also indicate possible virus infection.

The second parameter is very important because it can indicate whether the 0x7B Stop message was caused by file system issues or problems with storage hardware and drivers. Values of 0xC000034 or 0xC000000E typically indicate:

# Disks or storage controllers that are failing, defective, or improperly configured.

# Storage-related drivers or programs (tape management software, for example) that are not fully compatible with Windows XP Professional.

Possible Resolutions:

# During I/O system initialization, the controller or driver for the startup device (typically the hard disk) might have failed to initialize the necessary hardware. File system initialization might have failed because of disk or controller failure, or because the file system did not recognize the data on the boot device.

# Repartitioning disks, adding new disks, or upgrading to a new disk controller might cause the information in the Boot.ini file, or Boot Manager, to become outdated. If this Stop message occurs after installing new disks to your system, edit the Boot.ini file or adjust the Boot Manager parameters to allow the system to start. If the error occurs after upgrading the disk controller, verify that the new hardware is functioning and correctly configured.

# Verify that the system firmware and disk controller BIOS settings are correct and that the storage device was properly installed. If you are unsure, consult your computer's documentation about restoring default firmware settings or configuring your system to auto-detect settings. If the error occurs during Windows XP Professional setup, the problem might be due to unsupported disk controller hardware. In some cases, drivers for new hardware are not in the Windows XP Professional Driver.cab library, and you need to provide additional drivers to complete the Windows XP setup successfully. If this is the case, follow the hardware manufacturer's instructions when installing drivers. Periodically check for driver and firmware updates.

# Hard disk corruption can also cause this Stop message. For more information about checking hard disk integrity, see the instructions provided in "Stop 0x00000024 or NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM" earlier in this list.

# Problems that cause 0x7B errors might also cause Stop 0xED errors. For more information about 0xED Stop messages, see "Stop 0x0000007B or INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE" later in this list.

Microsoft KB articles:

- Troubleshooting STOP 0x0000007B or 0x4,0,0,0 Error
- STOP 0x0000007B Error After You Move the Windows XP System Disk to Another Computer
- STOP 0x0000007B Error Message When You Restart Computer
- STOP 0x0000007B Caused by Missing [SysprepMassStorage] Section on Windows XP sysprep Images
- STOP 0x0000007B Error Occurs When You Press F6 to Load Drivers During Unattended Windows Setup

Stop 0x0000007F or UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP

The Stop 0x7F message indicates that one of three types of problems occurred in kernel-mode:

# A condition that the kernel is not allowed to have or intercept (also known as a bound trap)

# Software problems

# Hardware failures

Possible Resolutions:

# Stop 0x7F messages are typically due to defective, malfunctioning, or failed memory hardware. If you added new hardware recently, remove and replace it to determine if it is causing or contributing to the problem. Run diagnostics software supplied by the system manufacturer to determine if the component has failed.

# Running the CPU beyond the rated specification, known as "overclocking," can cause Stop 0x7F or other error messages due to heat buildup. When diagnosing problems on overclocked systems, first restore all clock and bus speed settings to the manufacturer recommended values to determine if this resolves the issues.

# The problem might also be due to cracks, scratched traces, or defective components on the motherboard. If all else fails, take the system motherboard to a repair facility for diagnostic testing.

# Stop 0x7F messages can occur after installing incompatible applications, drivers, or system services. Contact the software manufacturer about possible Windows XP specific updates. Using updated software is especially important for backup programs, multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, and CD mastering tools.

Microsoft KB articles:

STOP 0x0000007F Errors - General Causes
STOP 0x0000007F Computer Turns Off During Text-Mode Setup if it is too hot
STOP 0x0000007F During Setup on Hewlet Packard Pavilion 7840

Stop 0x0000009F or DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE

The Stop 0x9F message indicates that a driver is in an inconsistent or invalid power state.

Possible Resolutions:

# Stop 0x9F messages can occur after installing faulty applications or drivers or system services. If a file is listed by name and you can associate it with an application, uninstall the application. For drivers, disable, remove, or roll back that driver to to determine if this resolves the error. If it does, contact the hardware manufacturer for a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for backup programs, multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, and CD mastering tools.

# For information about troubleshooting standby and hibernate mode issues, see KB article Q266169, "How to Troubleshoot Problems with Standby Mode, Hibernate Mode, and Shutting Down Your Computer in Windows 2000."

Microsoft KB articles:

Troubleshooting a Stop 0x9F Error in Windows XP
STOP 0X0000009F Computer hangs at shutdown or "Cannot find enough resources"

Stop 0xBE or ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY

The Stop 0xBE message indicates that a driver attempted to write to read-only memory.

Possible Resolutions:

# A Stop 0xBE message might occur after installing a faulty device driver, system service, or firmware. If a Stop message lists a driver by name, disable, remove, or roll back the driver to correct the problem. If disabling or removing drivers resolves the issues, contact the manufacturer about a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, DVD playback, and CD mastering tools.

Microsoft KB articles:

STOP 0xBE Qwestdex Dex Toolbar not totally compatible with Windows XP

Stop 0xC2 or BAD_POOL_CALLER

The Stop 0xC2 message indicates that a kernel-mode process or driver incorrectly attempted to perform memory operations in the following ways:

# By allocating a memory pool size of zero bytes.
# By allocating a memory pool that does not exist.
# By attempting to free a memory pool that is already free.
# By allocating or freeing a memory pool at an IRQL that was too high.

This Stop message is typically due to a faulty driver or software.

Possible Resolutions:

# A Stop 0xC2 messages might occur after installing a faulty device driver, system service, or firmware. If a Stop message lists a driver by name, disable, remove, or roll back the driver to correct the problem. If disabling or removing drivers resolves the issues, contact the manufacturer about a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, DVD playback, and CD mastering tools.

# A Stop 0xC2 messages might also be due to failing or defective hardware. If a Stop message points to a category of devices (such as disk controllers, for example), try removing or replacing the hardware to determine if it is causing the problem.

# If you encounter a Stop 0xC2 message while upgrading to Windows XP, the problem might be due to an incompatible driver, system service, virus scanner, or backup. To avoid problems while upgrading, simplify your hardware configuration and remove all third-party device drivers and system services (including virus scanners) prior to running setup. After you have successfully installed Windows XP, contact the hardware manufacturer to obtain compatible updates.

Microsoft KB articles:

How to Debug Stop 0xC2 or Stop 0x000000C2 Error Messages
STOP 0x000000c2 Computer with ATI FURY MAXX hangs after upgrade to Windows XP STOP 0x000000c2 After you install IomegaWare
STOP 0xC2 Bad_Pool_Caller When you upgrade from Windows 2000

Stop 0x000000CE or DRIVER_UNLOADED_WITHOUT_CANCELLING
_PENDING_OPERATIONS

This Stop messages indicates that a driver failed to cancel pending operations before exiting.

Possible Resolutions:

# Stop 0xCE messages can occur after installing faulty drivers or system services. If a driver is listed by name, disable, remove, or roll back that driver to confirm that this resolves the error. If so, contact the manufacturer about a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for backup programs, multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, DVD playback, and CD mastering tools.

Microsoft KB articles:

STOP 0x000000CE in Dxapi.sys Error on Blue Screen
STOP 0x000000CE When you stop SFU 2.0 NFS Client Service on Windows-XP Based Computer

Stop 0x000000D1 or DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

The Stop 0xD1 messages indicates that the system attempted to access pageable memory using a kernel process IRQL that was too high. Drivers that have used improper addresses typically cause this error.

Possible Resolutions:

# Stop 0xD1 messages can occur after installing faulty drivers or system services. If a driver is listed by name, disable, remove, or roll back that driver to confirm that this resolves the error. If so, contact the manufacturer about a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for backup programs, multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, DVD playback, and CD mastering tools.

Microsoft KB articles:

STOP 0x000000D1 Error Message When You Turn Your Computer Off
STOP 0xD1 Error Message When You Start Windows XP
STOP 0xD1 Second Mylex AcceleRAID SCSI Controller Causes Error Message
STOP 0x000000D1 WRQ AtGuard Program causes error message in Windows XP

Stop 0x000000EA or THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER

A device driver problem is causing the system to pause indefinitely. Typically, this problem is caused by a display driver waiting for the video hardware to enter an idle state. This might indicate a hardware problem with the video adapter or a faulty video driver.

Possible Resolutions:

# Stop 0xD1 messages can occur after installing faulty drivers (especially video drivers) or system services. If a driver is listed by name, disable, remove, or roll back that driver to confirm that this resolves the error. If so, contact the manufacturer about a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for backup programs, multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, DVD playback, and CD mastering tools.

Microsoft KB articles:

STOP 0x000000EA ErrMsg Running Video-Intensive Programs
STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER

Stop 0x000000ED or UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

The kernel mode I/O subsystem attempted to mount the boot volume and it failed. This error might also occur during an upgrade to Windows XP Professional on systems that use higher throughput ATA disks or controllers with incorrect cabling. In some cases, your system might appear to work normally after you restart.

Possible Resolutions:

# If using higher throughput ATA disks and controllers, those capable of data transfer rates above 33.3 megabytes per second, replace the standard 40-pin cable with an 80-pin cable. Using an 80-pin cable is optional for transfer rates up to and including 33.3 megabytes per second, but is mandatory for higher transfer rates. The additional grounded pins are required to avoid data loss.

# Some firmware enables you to force higher transfer rates even when you are using the incorrect cable type. Your firmware might issue a warning but allow the startup process to proceed. Restore the default firmware setting for ATA cable detection.

# Problems that cause 0xED errors might also cause Stop 0x7B errors. For more information about 0x7B Stop messages, see "Stop 0x0000007B or INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE" earlier in this appendix.

Microsoft KB articles:

STOP 0x000000ED Error Message When Volume on IDE Drive with Caching Enabled Is Mounted

STOP 0x000000ED UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME Error Message

Stop 0xC0000221 or STATUS_IMAGE_CHECKSUM_MISMATCH

This Stop message indicates driver, system file, or disk corruption problems (such as a damaged paging file). Faulty memory hardware can also cause this Stop message to appear.

Possible Resolutions:

# You can use Driver Rollback or System Restore from safe mode, to restore a previous driver. You can also use Windows XP Professional recovery features such as the Last Known Good Configuration startup option, Backup, or Automated System Recovery to restore a previous working configuration. After restoring from backup media, you might need to reapply service packs or hotfixes, depending on when the backups were made.

# If the Stop message names the specific file, try replacing it manually with a fresh copy from the Windows XP Professional operating system CD using safe mode or Recovery Console. For systems using the FAT16 or FAT32 file system, you have the option of using a Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition Emergency Boot Disk to access the hard disk.

If the original file from the operating system CD has a file name that ends with an underscore (_) character, you cannot use the file until it is uncompressed. The Recovery Console's Copy command is ideal for copying compressed files because it detects and expands them. If you do not specify a destination file name, you must rename the expanded file with the correct extension before using it. From safe mode or Recovery Console, you can use the Expand command to uncompress and copy a file to a destination location. In Recovery Console, the expanded file is given the correct name after being copied to the destination location. For more information about the Copy or Expand commands, see Windows XP Help and Support Centre.

Microsoft KB articles:

STOP C0000221 Unknown Hard Error
STOP 0xc000026C or Stop 0xc0000221 Unable to Load Device Driver Error Occurs When You Start Windows XP

I hope this article on XP Stop Messages was useful?

Easy presentation in Windows 7

2011-05-27T15:54:00.000+07:00

With Windows 7 it has become easier than ever before to do presenations. By using a simple keyword shortcut you can switch between projector view and laptop view and other screen you might have connected to your computer.

To use the presentation tool in Windows 7, hit the Windows button and P.

Now you can select which output you want to use, if you need more customization to this you can acces the mobility center by pressing Windows button + X.

Cisco Router Port Forwarding

2011-05-26T15:22:00.000+07:00

This recipe shows how to configure a Cisco router to forward traffic received on one IP address and port to another IP address and port. On DSL routers in New Zealand this process is commonly known as port forwarding. The process is also sometimes described as NAT or PAT
To cut a long story short, this is the process you want to use if you have a Cisco DSL router, and have an internal mail or WWW server.
There are two steps to getting the port forwarding to work:

Allow the desired traffic into the router.

In the cookbooks on this WWW site, access-list 101 is usually used to control what is allowed into the router from the Internet. You need to add an entry for your traffic just above the current permit entries. A modified access-list to allow SMTP (tcp port 25) and HTTP traffic (tcp port 80) might look like:

interface Dialer0
...
ip access-group 101 in
...

access-list 101 remark Traffic allowed to enter the router from Internet
access-list 101 deny ip 10.0.0.0 0.255.255.255 any
access-list 101 deny ip 172.16.0.0 0.15.255.255 any
access-list 101 deny ip 192.168.0.0 0.0.255.255 any
access-list 101 deny ip any host 255.255.255.255

! This allows inbound SMTP traffic.

access-list 101 permit tcp any any eq 25

! This allows inbound HTTP traffic.

access-list 101 permit tcp any any eq 80
access-list 101 permit udp any eq isakmp any eq isakmp
access-list 101 permit tcp any any eq 1723

Tell the router where to forward the traffic to.

Substitute <inside ip address> for the IP address of your server.

! Forward SMTP traffic.

ip nat inside source static tcp <inside ip address> 25 interface dialer0 25

! Forward HTTP traffic.

ip nat inside source static tcp <inside ip address> 80 interface dialer0 80

Configuring Windows Server 2003 to act as a NAT router

2011-05-26T13:15:00.001+07:00

More years ago than I care to think about, IP addresses were handed out to companies on an indiscriminant basis. As the popularity of the Internet increased, IP addresses soon grew to be a scarce commodity. Internet service providers began to strictly limit the number of IP addresses that they would lease to companies. This presented an interesting challenge.

A PC has to have an IP address in order to communicate with the Internet, but there weren’t enough IP addresses left for every PC to be given one. The solution to this problem was a technology called Network Address Translation (NAT). Today, NAT is alive and well, and more popular than ever. In this article, I will explain what NAT is and how you can configure Windows Server 2003 to act as a NAT router.

What is NAT?

So what is NAT? Network Address Translation, or NAT, is a technology that uses a router to share an Internet connection among the PCs on your private network, even though those PCs do not have a valid public IP address. There are both hardware and software NAT routers. In this particular situation, we will be configuring a Windows Server 2003 machine to act as a software based NAT router.
As you probably know, a router’s primary purpose is to regulate traffic flow between two networks, and a NAT router is no exception. The server that you will use as a NAT router must have two network interface cards (NICs) installed. One of these NICs will connect to the Internet and the other will connect to the private network. PCs on the private network will then send HTTP requests to the NAT server via the server’s private network connection. The server will then retransmit the request over the Internet on behalf of the client. When the requested Web site responds, the response is sent to the NAT server, which in turn forwards it to the client who made the original request. The client never communicates across the Internet directly.

IP Addressing Considerations

As I explained in the section above, a NAT router acts as a gateway between your private network and the Internet. The server that is acting as the NAT router must have two NICs. One of the NICs is connected to the Internet. This NIC must be assigned the IP address that was given to you by your Internet Service Provider.
The other NIC connects to your private network. As I mentioned, NAT does not expect you to have valid IP addresses on your private network. Instead, you are basically free to pick an address range at random. There is the off chance that the range that you pick might already be in use by a popular Web site, but I have only seen someone pick an address range that caused problems once. If you want to use an address range that is guaranteed not to interfere with anything on the Internet, you can use the 192.168.x.x address range.
After you pick an address range, I recommend setting up a DHCP server so that it will assign addresses from your chosen address range (the DHCP term for an address range is a scope) to the workstations on your network. You must however statically assign an address to the NIC on the NAT server that connects to your private network. For example, if you chose to use the address range 192.168.1.0 to 192.168.1.99, then you might consider assigning the address 192.168.1.0 to the NAT server. You could then use the 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.99 address block as your DHCP scope.
While you are configuring your DHCP server, there are a couple of other considerations that you need to make. As you may know, DHCP allows you to optionally assign a default gateway and a DNS server to workstations along with an IP address. When doing so, you must set the default gateway address to match the private network address that you assigned to your NAT server.
You have a few different options when choosing which DNS server address the DHCP server should assign to the workstations on your network. If you don’t have your own DNS server, then the best thing that you can do is to just use the IP address of your Internet service provider’s DNS server. If your network is running Active Directory though, then you already have a DNS server and you should use its address. It doesn’t matter if your DNS server is authoritative for your domain or not. Simply point the workstations to it. You can then set up a forwarder on the DNS Server so that any unresolved queries get forwarded to your ISP’s DNS server.
The advantage to pointing clients to your own DNS server rather than to your ISP’s DNS server is that doing so will provide your users with better performance. Your DNS server is local, so queries reach the server more quickly than they would reach a remote server. Furthermore, your DNS server has a built in cache so that popular Web sites do not have to be resolved each time a user visits them.

Setting Up NAT

Begin by selecting the Routing and Remote Access command from Windows’ Administrative Tools menu. When you do, Windows will display the Routing and Remote Access console. Locate your server (just below the Server Status). There should be a big red dot to the left of the server, indicating that the server is currently inactive. Now, right click on the server and select the Configure and Enable Routing and Remote Access command from the resulting shortcut menu. When you do, Windows will launch the Routing and Remote Access Server Setup Wizard.
Click Next to bypass the wizard’s Welcome screen. You will now see a screen that’s similar to the one that’s shown in Figure A. This screen allows you to select various configurations for Routing and Remote Access (RRAS). RRAS can be configured to do just about anything that you want, but Microsoft has included several templates to make the configuration process easier for common deployment types. Select the Network Address Translation (NAT) option and click Next.

Figure A: Select the Network Address Translation (NAT) option and click Next
The next screen that you will see, shown in Figure B, is a rather important one to pay attention to. The screen gives you the choice of selecting a network interface that is connected to the external network (usually the Internet) or to select a demand dial interface. In case you are wondering, demand dial is a feature that allows Windows to establish a dial-up connection when ever external connectivity is needed. For the purpose of this article, I am assuming that you have a broadband connection to the Internet. Additionally, I am assuming that the NIC that the broadband connection comes in through has a static IP address assigned to it. You will have to select that network interface.

Figure B: Select the NIC that connects the server to the outside world
Before you click Next, you should notice that there is a check box that allows you to enable a firewall for the connection. I recommend always selecting this option. The firewall will keep unwanted traffic out of your network. If you need to grant external users access to some service on your network, you have the option of configuring port forwarding to pass packets through the firewall to the desired network resource.
After you enable the RRAS firewall, click Next and you will see a screen asking you to select the network that will have shared Internet access. Although the dialog box uses some weird wording, it is basically just asking you to select the NIC that is attached to your private network. Make your selection, and click Next, followed by Finish to complete the process.

Conclusion

In this article, I have explained how you can use a NAT server as a way of sharing an Internet connection among the users on your network. I then went on to explain how IP addressing should be configured and how to configure RRAS to act as a NAT router.