Adobe Reader 9 full standalone installation

Adobe Reader 9 is the latest release of this PDF viewing tool. It lets you view, print, search and share Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files using a variety of platforms and devices.


Version 9.1 fixes a security holes in Adobe Reader, related to a buffer overflow issue, and the ability to view FLV and SWF files in PDF documents.



Version 9.2 fixes security holes in Acrobat related to memory corruption, overflow and input validation issues.



Version 9.3 fixes vulnerabilities that could cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.


Version 9.4 resolve issues in Reader and Flash Player.

[Click here to download (AdbeRdr940_en_US.exe - 26.4 Mb)]

Last updated on October 6, 2010.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 download

Internet Explorer 8

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 features:

• Accelerators - Map directions, translate words, email your friends, and more in just a few mouse clicks.
• InPrivate Browsing - A button for disabling the cookie.
• Web Slices - Snapshots of updated website.
• Search suggestions - Get visual previews and suggested content topics while you type in the enhanced
• Instant Search Box.
• SmartScreen Filter - block reported unsafe website.

Direct download links (from Microsoft website):

• Windows XP
• Windows XP 64-bit
• Windows Vista
• Windows Vista 64-bit

For other operating system, please use browse Microsoft website:
Internet Explorer 8: Worldwide sites.

Disable Windows XP Splash Screen

System Properties

To disable the splash screen in Windows XP:

1. Right-click My Computer and choose Properties. (or, press Windows key+Pause key)
2. Click the Advanced tab, and click the Settings button under Startup and Recovery.
3. In the System Startup area, click Edit.
4. After the /fastdetect entry under [operating systems], add a space and /SOS.
   

   [boot loader]
   timeout=30
   default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS
   [operating systems]
   multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" 
    /fastdetect /SOS

5. Click File | Save. Click OK to apply and close the System Properties dialog box.
6. Restart the computer and the splash screen will be gone.

Enable autologon to increase bootup performance

To enable autologon and bypass XP’s prompt to enter a username and password, perform the following steps:

1. Click Start | Run.
2. In the Run dialog box, type "control userpasswords2" and click OK, without the quotation marks.
3. Uncheck Users Must Enter A User Name And Password To Use This Computer and click OK.
4. In the Automatically Log On dialog box that appears, type your username and password, confirm the password, and click OK.

User Accounts Management

Prohibit unnecessary programs from starting with Windows

Reducing the number of programs that start with Windows will make the boot up process noticeably faster and lightening the load on the CPU. To view and remove programs that start with Windows, perform the following steps:

1. Click Start | Run.
2. In the Run dialog box, type msconfig.exe and click OK.
3. In the System Configuration Utility dialog box, choose the Startup tab.
4. Uncheck any item you do not want to start up when Windows boots.

The System Configuration Utility

Solid but easy to memorized password

Composing a solid password is easy. A combination of alphanumeric and symbols, creates one. However, this kind of password is not human friendly. It is usually hard to memorize. Moreover, since a good practice is to have different password for different purposes, it will became more trouble for human.

To create an easy to memorize password, you can use the acronyms of your favourite phrase of music, poetry, quote, or simple sentences. For example, 'Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.' by Albert Einstein could be abreviated as 'measap,bns.'. Or, you can use a combination of small and capital letters such as 'mEaSaP,bNS.'

Now, you have a strong, but, easy to memorize password. However, what about the rule that you should not use the same password for everything. Fortunately, there is a simple trick to use. For example, 'measapbns' is the base password. To use it in Facebook, you can for example precede the base password with 'FB'. So, your password for Facebook would be 'FBmeasapbns' or 'FB-measapbns'.

The technique presented in this article is just a guide, for you to create your own technique in creating a solid but, easy to memorize password. Maybe you can come out with a simpler but better technique, such as replacing some letters with numbers, such as i with 1, or o with 0.

Good luck.

Uncompress files online

WobZIP is an online service for uncompressing compressed file online, from a url without first download the compressed file to your computer. The compressed files will be scanned using an anti-virus scanner, and any infected files will be removed. WobZip works with .rar, .7z, .tar, iso and many other compressed file types.

Link: http://www.wobzip.org

WobZIP interface

How to send email with large attachment

Figure 1: filesfrom screenshot

Email services will usually restrict the size of email (the attachment plus the email content itself) send or receive. For example, Gmail only permit up to 20 megabytes (MB) in size.

An alternative to send large file, is to host it elsewhere, and send the link to the recepient, to download. Some free file hoster are SaveFile, MediaFire, and RapidShare. What we need to do are first, upload the file to the free file hosting service. Second, grab the file link, and third, email the link to the recepient.

However, we can actually reduce the number of steps to just one, using the free service from filesfrom. Just enter the sender and recepient email addresses, choose file to upload, and click send, in the provided form, as shown in Figure 1.

Change or restore source viewer for Internet Explorer

You can use other editor instead of notepad as the default source viewer for Internet Explorer.

Here is how to do the tweak.

1. Open the registry. Click on Start > Run. Type “regedit” in the “Open” text box. Click OK.
2. Create the key below, if it does not exist. Please refer to Figure 1.
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftInternet ExplorerView Source EditorEditor Name]
3. Set the “(Default)” “Value Data” to the full path of the new editor.
4. Restart Internet Explorer

Figure 1: Registry Editor

I had also found that this tweak is useful if suddenly the source viewer editor path is missing, which results in “My Computer” to be launched instead of Notepad, when I click on “View Source” in Internet Explorer.

By the way, for whatever reason you would like to apply this tweak, editing the registry is dangerous. Please pursue registry backup, before making any changes to the registry.

Disable Windows splash screen

To see the details of the bootup process, we need to disable the splash screen. The splash screen hides the information during the computer boots, such as Windows XP version, files being loaded, system data, and file system check.

To disable the splash screen in Windows XP:

1. Right-click My Computer and choose Properties.
2. Click the Advanced tab, and click the Settings button under Startup
   and Recovery.
3. In the System Startup area, click Edit.
4. Click File | Save. Click OK to apply and close the System Properties
   dialog box.
5. Restart the computer to see the changes.

Enable Windows autologon

This tip is useful for a single user computer. Windows will bypass the Welcome screen, and automatically log a user in.

The Steps:

1. Click Start | Run. Another alternative is to press and hold the Win key, and then press R.
2. Uncheck "Users Must Enter A User Name And Password To Use This Computer" and click OK.
3. In the Automatically Log On dialog box that appears, type the username and password, confirm the password, and click OK.

4 free icon sites

There are thousands of amazing icons that you can download from the Internet. These are some of the free sites.

1. CoolArchive
   
   Host over 4000 icons in 125 categories. All the icons are available in both .ico (for your computer) and .gif (for your web page) formats.


2. All Free Original Clip Art
   
   Over 30,000 Free Clip art Images, such as animated gifs, icons, backgrounds, bullets, clip art, and pictures.


3. IconPlus
   
   A freeware icon site dedicated to creating cool comic book, sci-fi, tv, movie, and other pop culture icons.


4. IconArchive
   
   Contains over 22,200 icons in 800 sets from 198 icon authors.

Backup, sync and secure folders with Toucan

Toucan is a small freeware that allows us to synchronize, backup and secure your data. The GUI is so simple and divided into seven tabs, allowing us to easily find the function that we need.

 There are four synchronization mode for Toucan: copy, update, mirror (copy/update) and equalize.



As for the backup function, Toucan supports complete, update and differential type. The backup file can be in the format of zip or the smaller size 7-zip.



The third feature of Toucan, secure data, use AES-256 encryption via ccrypt. AES is one of the most popular algorithm used in symmetric key cryptography. AES is fast and also require less memory.



As a conclusion, Toucan is not only a good and simple tool for backup and synchronization tasks, but can also encrypt important files and folders.

If you have any other suggestions, please don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Links:

1. Toucan: http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/toucan
2. AES: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard
3. ccrypt: http://ccrypt.sourceforge.net/
4. 7-zip: http://www.7-zip.org/

Desktop screenshot with Lightscreen

Lightscreen is a small and simple freeware to capture your desktop screenshots. It can be executed silently at Windows startup, and stays in the system tray, besides the clock.

Capturing is easy. You can use the gui, or just invoke the configurable hotkey.  Lightscreen supports capturing full screen, window and area. The result will be automatically saved in a directory according to user preferences.



Besides, you can also choose between three different format of the output image. Lightscreen supports PNG, JPEG and BMP.



If you have any suggestion, please leave a comment.

Link: http://lightscreen.sourceforge.net/

Spring clean your PC

Baku is a freeware tool that could be use to clean up your PC. The three main features of Baku are remove unwanted files, remove invalid Registry keys, and remove Most Recently Used (MRU) lists.

Baku's first feature - search for unneeded files - is great for searching and remove empty folders, 'History' folder contents, 'Recent documents' folder contents, 'Temp' folder contents, temporary internet files, and cookies. Besides, it will also searches for Windows log files, shortcuts to missing files and folders, and user specified file types. Baku will also implements the standard DOD 5220.22-M, in order to make sure that the deleted data will not be recovered.

As for the registry, Baku's second feature could be used to removes unused and obsolete keys, including ActiveX/COM, Application Paths, Fonts, Help files, Icon files, Sound files, Uninstall Programs and Windows Installer. Baku will automatically backup the registry before any changes are made.

The last optional feature of Baku is the MRU lists cleaner using heuristic based scanning. MRU lists supported by Baku includes Media Player, eMule, Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce and WinZip.

Besides the three main features of Baku, Baku could also be used to backup and restore not only the entire system registry, but also the system device drivers.

link: http://pmcchp.com/baku/index.html

10 symptoms of virus infected PC

These are the 10 symptoms, showing that your PC might had been infected by a virus — Good for those PC that run no antivirus software (Do you ever need one) in background.

1. Your PC run slower than usual.


2. Loading of programs slower than usual.


3. Some of your files are missing.


4. The size of some of program files are expanding.


5. Crashes occur very often.


6. Problem in saving and opening Word documents.


7. Appearances of strange messages.


8. Some of the devices suddenly fail to work.


9. Other PCs on the network experience the same problem with your PC.


10. Very frequent access to the hard drive, even when you are not running any program

If your PC ever experience any of these symptoms, perhaps you should start to diagnose your PC for virus.

Please note, however, that virus is not the only reason for these symptoms.

Sometimes, the time might had come for you to dump your PC for a new one.

Disable Error Reporting Notification in Windows XP

When a severe error occurs in a program, Windows XP will usually halt the program, and then Windows XP ask whether you want to send the error messages to Microsoft. However, you can actually disable this annoying features.

To disable this feature:

1. Bring up the System Properties dialog box. (In case you don't know how to display the dialog box, please refer to How to display the System Properties dialog box)
2. Click on Advance tab.
3. Click on Error Reporting.
4. Click on Disable error reporting.

2 Ways to Display the Windows System Properties Dialog Box

There are multiple ways to display the Windows System Properties dialog box.
Here are some of the ways:

1. Click on Start -> Right Click on My Computer -> Click Properties.
2. On the keyboard, press and hold the Windows key (usually located besides the Alt key, which is usually located besides the long Space Bar key). Then, while holding the Windows key, press the Break key (or, the Pause key). Those keys usually located on the top right of the keyboard.

note: Some notebook may require you to press and hold the Fn key in order to access the Pause or Break key.

Portable defrag tool 2

In the previous article, I had shown you a portable defrag tool, called Defraggler. This article will show another portable defrag tool called JKDefrag.

JKDefrag a freeware by kessels, is a portable disk defragmenter and optimizer for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/2008/X64. It means that you can put it inside floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows.

The backup process is automatic, and JKDefrag is very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies.

There is also an advance GUI made available by codestuff. It enables users to easily use JkDefrags powerful defragmentation operations, schedule defrags, perform system file defrag operations on startup, as well as set a wide spectrum of defrag options.



Links:

JKDefrag: http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/index.html

JKDefrag GUI: http://www.download.com/JkDefrag-GUI/3000-2401_4-10768896.html?cdlPid=10847787

Sending big files

Ever wonder how to send big files to your friend?

Try www.pipebytes.com. You can send any size of file, without any software install. Of course, you will need the web browser.

Your friend could start downloading the file as you are uploading.

Pipebytes claims that this service is time saving and secure. The transfer will started as soon as your friend starts the download process, since Pipebytes does not store the file. Pipebytes will only act as a data transfer pipe, that allows users to directly transfer files between peers.

However, in case of interrupted transfer, resume is not supported. One solution is break the file into small chunks, before sending using Pipebytes.

Another problem is, that you can only send file to one person at a time.

About the "secure" term, I think if we are on a corporate network (even home network), the system administrator (parents) could potentially intercept the data. As

In spite of all that, Pipebytes provides a free, real time, ad supported service, for users to transfer big files to one friend, without saving the file in the server, initially.

Happy transferring.