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Accelerate Hard Disk Drive to Speed Up File Transfer

2009-11-28T08:20:00.003Z

Is it possible to accelerate your hard disk drive to speed up file transfer? At first I didn’t know it was possible because thinking that Microsoftmight have utilize the best code to have the fastest speed in file copying.

Ponder on this statement:

Is it possible to download files better than with non-resumable Internet Explorer? Or defragment a hard-drive faster and more optimal than with Windows’ defrag utility? Is it possible to edit images better than with Windows’ Paint? Or edit text documents better than with Notepad? What about repartitioning hard-drives? Is Windows’ fdisk always up to the task?
Windows has been designed to be a heavily third-party improvable operating system. While this may sound absurd to some, it is true in every respect. Let’s ponder on this affirmation for a second or two. What would Microsoft have to gain from making Windows the perfect operating system? Sure, they could hire a few more thousand programmers to write every gadget and application you could ever desire, but would it be worth it? It would primarily stiffle application development on their platform and bring about antitrust lawsuits. Not a desirable state indeed. Therefore it should not be too big of a surprise that things which you consider normal and efficient, eventually turn out to be heavily improvable.

Now I’d say YES, it is possible to accelerate your hard disk drive to speed up file transfer. It has been tested and proven to save you 15-25 seconds in copying a 700 megabyte file on the same physical hard-drive compared to normal Windows file copy method.

Here’s what you need to speed up file copying.

BurstCopy is the hard-drive accelerator that significantly increases file transfer speed. By taking full advantage of the DMA support provided by your hard-drive, and using dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times, BurstCopy will significantly reduce the time you spend waiting for files to transfer.

Other than speeding up file transfer speed, it has extra features that Windows should have long ago. If you met any errors during copying files in Windows, the transfer will be terminated. If you’re copying thousands of small files, you know which has been copied and which haven’t. With BurstCopy, any errors that you may typically encounter will not terminate your transfer. A friendly window will inform you of the error, and allow you to choose the appropriate action (skip, retry, abort).

You can also use BurstCopy to pause file transfer process and resume when you’re ready to. It is a known fact that file transfers can slow down other applications that try to use the hard-drive. Using BurstCopy’s pause and resume functions, you can temporarily suspend transfers, while your other programs get exclusive access to the hard-drive. This will for example be useful when you have a long transfer under way, and you need to start a large program. You could just pause the transfer while the program starts, and then resume it.

Another incredible feature that BurstCopy claims to have is it is able to reduce hard disk noise during file transfer. If your hard-drive is typically noisy during file transfers, you will be happy to find out that there is a great reduction in generated noise during BurstCopy transfers. This is a direct result of the methods used to increase the transfer speed and comes at no performance expense. I have no idea how they did it but they have the technology.

BurstCopy is truly a gem! I wouldn’t depend on Windows file copying method from now on. We all know how important a hard drive is because we’d loose all our important files if the hard drive fails. Taking care of your hard drive is important!

[ Download BurstCopy ]

10 Commercial Disk Imaging Software Features and Backup/Restore Speed Comparison

2009-11-28T08:14:00.000Z

To me, hard disk imaging is one of the most important thing to do after I’ve perfectly finished setting up a computer system the way I wanted. It is the best way of restoring the changes back to the way it was and also the best way to clone multiple computers with same hardware. I’ve always been using the good old Symantec Ghost for DOS version to do all that and only recently I’ve been using Macrium Reflect full edition on my new laptop because it was sponsored by Macrium.

Since Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition DOS version has never failed me, I never wanted to try out other products including the famous Acronis! However, many years has gone by and I believe the technologies that they used must have improved a lot. Will Symantec Ghost still remain as my favorite disk imaging software? Well I wanted to post this 2 weeks ago but was caught with Norton 15 being released and then Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Suite. Do note that I am only comparing shareware disk imaging software and the free ones are not included in the list. I hope that this comparison will be able to help you decide which disk imaging is worth buying.

Here are the list of disk imaging software that I have tested:

1. Acronis True Image Home 2010 (build 6.029) – Website
2. Active@ Disk Image v3.34 – Website
3. DriveClone Pro v7 – Website
4. Macrium Reflect v4.2 Build 2028 Full Edition – Website
5. Norton Ghost v15 – Website
6. O&O DiskImage Professional v4.1 Build 47 – Website
7. Paragon Drive Backup v9 Professional Build 8681 – Website
8. R-Drive Image v4.6 Build 4601 – Website
9. Windows 7 built-in Disk Imaging
10. StorageCraft ShadowProtect Desktop Edition v3.5 – Website

The testing was done on my desktop computer:

CPU: Intel Pentium D 2.80GHz
Mainboard: MSI 945P Platinum
Memory: 2GB DDR2
Hard Drive 1: 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s (Windows 7),
Hard Drive 2: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s (Backup Location)

I wasn’t able to fully test Active@ Disk Image because the recovery disk feature is not available in the trial version. I emailed them to request for a full version to review but never gotten any reply from them.

Ghost 14 didn’t support Windows 7, so I waited for Ghost 15. When Ghost 15 was officially released last week, they said that they currently do not have any free copies available for the press. So I went ahead and paid $69.99 to purchase a full version for testing.

After finished testing Ghost 15, I then found out Paragon has recently replaced their Drive Backup Professional 9 with Backup & Recovery 10 Suite. I’ve requested for a full trial version and they seemed to be quite reluctant to provide me with a version that I can fully test on. I’d very much like to test and include Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Suite in the review, but unfortunately I do not have the funds to buy the full version. If they ever provide me with a full version, I will surely update this review.

Macrium, O&O and StorageCraft happily provided me with full version for testing without any delays. I managed to “find” the full version of Acronis, DriveClone, Paragon 9 and R-Drive so I didn’t have to contact them and can’t tell if their support is good or not.

All disk imaging software includes mount/unmount image, verify/validate image, scheduler for automatic creation of backup disk images, raw imaging (sector to sector), and support for Windows 7. So I will not include this 5 features to the comparison table below.

Features Comparison (Click to open image at new window)

Features Explanation:
1: Boot Menu = The imaging software adds the program to Windows start-up boot menu allowing you to run the software for backup/restore without booting in Windows or using the Rescue Disk.

2. Constant Backup = Able to automatically create non-stop backup every X minutes
3. Virtual Environment = Risk free environment for testing of new software or visiting websites with potentially dangerous content.
4. Restore to Different Hardware PC = In another words, it’s called Universal Restore. You can restore the backup image onto another computer without having the same hardware.

Disk Imaging and Restoration Speed (Click to open image at new window)

Here are some notes on the tests and rules of disk imaging:
- The disk imaging backup process is tested with default settings.
- Acronis Online Backup is not available for all countries yet. First 25GB cost $4.95 per month or $49.95 per year. Ever 5GB storage increment cost $0.79 per month or $9.49 per year.
- You can create a full image backup on the Windows where you’re logged on.
- You cannot perform full restoration on the Windows you are logged on. Restoration can only be done with Rescue Disk or Boot Menu where Windows on the hard drive is not loaded.
- Macrium has finally added the ability to create image backup using Rescue Disk but only for Windows PE v2.1.200 and above only. It’s a little buggy because the Rescue Disk backup compression doesn’t seems to compress as good as Macrium running in Windows and it also takes more time.

From the test that I’ve done, I can easily see that there is an obvious winner and that is Acronis TrueImage Home 2010! Acronis is able to backup and restore with very fast speed and also packed with a lot of features that cannot be found on other disk imaging software. Most importantly, the price is reasonable and doesn’t cost ridiculously expensive like its competitors. StorageCraft has the best backup and restore speed with a lot of features but it’s the most expensive.

Test Open Port Forwarding for Your Router or Computer

2009-11-22T12:53:00.001Z

A lot of people are using routers nowadays because most of us have more than one computers and sharing an Internet connection using router is better than using a switch with a computer acting as a server. When you have a router, it also pretty much acts like an outer layer of firewall because a hacker could only see the router and not directly to the computers in the network. That explains why a lot of trojan nowadays supports reverse connection to solve this problem. If you have a computer that connects directly to the Internet using an ADSL modem or switch, then there’s no need port forwarding.

In fact, there’s a lot of internet applications such as uTorrent, Limewire and etc that uses requires an open port to listen for incoming connections. If you’ve configured port forwarding for uTorrent, you’ll notice that the download is faster. Every software requires a unique open port that is not being used. Some software has fixed port number and some allows you to set a custom port number. Few days ago one of my friend called me to help him check on his CCTV because the person who sold him the CCTV system could not get the port forwarding working which means my friend could not access his CCTV from outside.

To some people, setting up port forwarding can be a daunting process. I’d say that some people find it tough because most the software itself is not capable of telling you if the port forwarding works or not. So you don’t know if it is a software, operating system or router problem which makes you checking every thing and eventually end up screwing it up even more.

Here is how to test if your port forwarding works or not. If you search in Google for “test open port” keyword, you’ll find a few sites which allows you to enter the port for testing. One of the example is CanYouSeeMe.org. It can only check for open ports on your computer. YouGetSignal is another web based open port tester which allows you to check on other people’s computer.

These web based port checkers works but in order for you to properly test if a port is open or closed, a program must be using the port on your system and accept incoming connections. Even if the port is not blocked by your router or firewall the test will still fail if nothing accepts the incoming connection attempt. Meaning that if you’ve opened a port 5000 for uTorrent but uTorrent is not running, the port testers will tell you that the port is closed and cannot be reached.

The best method to test for open port or if you’ve configured port forwarding correctly is to use Simple Port Tester. This program will open the port, listen for the connection and help ensure a proper and reliable test as to whether or not your port forwarding is working.

As you can see that Simple Port Tester is able to verify that the port 5938 is open. As for port 80 which says “Address in Use”, that’s because my router is using it. At the right pane, it does show that the port 80 is online and can be reached even though at the left pane shows Failed. Simple Port Tester is free and runs on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, Win 7. You can grab the portable version of Simple Port Tester if you’re a tech guy like me.

[ Download Simple Port Tester ]

Remove Fake Antivirus and Fake Antispyware Automatically

2009-11-22T12:47:00.000Z

Fake or rogue antivirus has been around for a long time and they are still not giving up trying to cheat computer users. Normally this is how you will “suddenly” have a rogue antivirus or antispyware installed without you even knowing it. You visit a website and you get a warning message that is very convincing and looks like its coming from Windows telling you that you have a virus/spyware. You click on a button and it will auto install. Here comes the worst part, it then downloads viruses to your computer and the rogue antivirus will find the virus. If you want to clean the virus using the fake antivirus which you just downloaded, you’ll have to purchase the software license.

This is ridiculous isn’t it? Your computer is actually free from virus but after being tricked into installing a fake antivirus, your computer now has virus and very likely you’ll be purchasing a license for a fake antivirus. Some of the rogue antivirus are very hard to remove or uninstall. Fortunately we can automate the whole uninstallation process with this simple small portable tool called Remove Fake Antivirus.

It is very easy to use Remove Fake Antivirus. All you need to do is run the program and click the Start button. Currently Remove Fake Antivirus v1.32 is able to remove 27 types of fake antivirus and antimalware.

1. Cyber Security
2. Alpha Antivirus
3. Braviax
4. Windows Police Pro
5. Antivirus Pro 2010
6. PC Antispyware 2010
7. FraudTool.MalwareProtector.d
8. Winshield2009.com
9. Green AV
10. Windows Protection Suite
11. Total Security 2009
12. Windows System Suite
13. Antivirus BEST
14. System Security
15. Personal Antivirus
16. System Security 2009
17. Malware Doctor
18. Antivirus System Pro
19. WinPC Defender
20. Anti-Virus-1
21. Spyware Guard 2008
22. System Guard 2009
23. Antivirus 2009
24. Antivirus 2010
25. Antivirus Pro 2009
26. Antivirus 360
27. MS Antispyware 2009

For testing purposes, I’ve installed Antivirus Pro 2010 on my computer. Then it reports that there are 33 useless and unwanted files on my computer. 21 are critical privacy compromising content, 9 contains medium privacy threats and 3 are junk. At first I thought they were real virus but when I randomly uploaded 3 files to VirusTotal to have it scanned with 41 different antivirus, surprisingly no threats were detected! To remove Antivirus Pro 2010, I ran RemoveFakeAntivirus.exe, waited for a few seconds and after a reboot, Antivirus Pro 2010 has been removed.

Although Antivirus Pro 2010 gave fake reports, but I am pretty sure that there are some fake antivirus that will drop in real trojan/virus/worm on your computer. Be sure to scan your computer with a reputable antivirus such as Kaspersky, Norton, Avira or BitDefender after removing the rogue antivirus with Remove Fake Antivirus. I personally believe the list of supported rogue AVs will most likely continue to grow if Olzen manage to get more samples of the fake antiviruses. Olzen, the author of Remove Fake Antivirus is 26 years old and he’s from Malaysia too!

[ Download Remove Fake Antivirus ]

Uninstall Programs Packaged with Windows Installer in Safe Mode

2009-11-22T12:40:00.000Z

Whenever you install a software in Windows, most of the time it will come with an uninstaller that allows you to safely remove the program from your computer. This is because software nowadays are very complex and requires registering of OCX or DLL files, registry changes, dropping of files in appropriate places and etc. There are many types of installers and one of the popular one is Windows Installer and Kaspersky uses it to pack their software for users to install and uninstall.

If you’ve installed a software and suddenly Windows has stopped working, the logical way is to boot Windows in Safe Mode and then try to uninstall. Safe mode is a troubleshooting option for Windows that starts your computer in a limited state. Only the basic files and drivers necessary to run Windows are started. Unfortunately by default you can’t uninstall a software that is packaged with Windows Installer in Safe Mode. If you try to uninstall, you will get the error “The Windows Installer service is not accessible in Safe Mode. Please try again when your computer is not in Safe Mode or you acn use System Restore to return your machine to a previous good state.”

There is a Windows Installer (msiserver) service in Services and if you attempt to manually start it in Safe Mode, you should get an error that says “Windows could not start the Windows Installer service on Local Computer. Error 1084: This service cannot be started in Safe Mode.”

To start the Windows Installer service in Safe Mode so that you can uninstall programs, all you need to do is add a new MSIServer registry key. Simply follow the step-by-step instructions below:

1. Hit Win+R, type regedit and click OK.

2. Navigate to the following location in registry editor:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\

3. Right click at Minimal and select New > Key and name it as MSIServer

4. The (Default) data for MSIServer should show (value not set). Double click on (Default) and type Service in the value data. Close the Registry Editor.

5. Again hit Win+R, type services.msc and click OK.

6. Look for Windows Installer on the list, double click on it and click Start.

You can now uninstall programs that is packed using Windows Installer in Safe Mode. Alternatively, you can also do all the steps above by typing two command lines below in command prompt or at the Run window.

REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\MSIServer" /VE /T REG_SZ /F /D "Service"
net start msiserver

As you can see the first command line is pretty long which I don’t think many people are willing to memorize it. Remember, editing the Windows registry is a risky business and you can end up with more problems rather than fixing it if you do it wrongly. Hence, I’d personally prefer to learn how to do it the long way.

Monitor Internet Bandwidth Usage with iTraffic Monitor

2009-11-22T12:27:00.001Z

Some of you might be using an Internet plan from your ISP which has limited bandwidth. As far as I know, ALL of the wireless broadband in Malaysia allows unlimited usage BUT there is a fair usage threshold where once you go over the limit, your connection speed will be throttled to a very slow dial-up speed. I have a Celcom wireless broadband subscription and they offer two types of plan which is 384Kbps or 3.6Mbps. Both package allows you to download stuff at maximum speed but once you reached 5GB limit PER month, then you’re screwed with a really slow speed. Honestly it doesn’t make any sense to subscribe a 3.6Mbps download speed when you can only use 5GB of the bandwidth per month. The worst part is even the uploading bandwidth is counted to the usage.

At least they now tell us in advanced that there is a fair usage policy because last time they never expose this information publicly and you can only find it in their really long list of terms and conditions page which no one really reads. When you find out that there is a fair usage policy and file a complaint, they blame you for not reading the terms before signing up. For those that are subscribed to an Internet connection package which has limited bandwidth usage, it is important that you keep track of your bandwidth usage. Here’s a free internet traffic monitoring software that works.

iTraffic Monitor is a network monitor and reporting tool. It provides real time graph of network traffic. Detailed stats provide daily/weekly/monthly/yearly stats. Stop watch, Session stats.

Monitor and review your Internet or network bandwidth usage with ease
How fast your internet connection? We can graph it for your review
How much data do you transfer? We show you a real-time graph or numerical display, as well as daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly reports
Requires minimal desktop space and system resources

This is how iTraffic report looks like. It’s easy to read and nothing too fancy or complicated.

iTraffic Monitor is relatively new as this is their first version released on 4/22/2009. A few small bugs here and there such as copying the report to clipboard generates an access violation error but it’s no big deal and hopefully they’ll fix it in their next release. What I like about iTraffic Monitor is it can filter out local network traffic or traffic between specific IP addresses. This is very important for people connected to the internet via a local area network (LAN). Very few network monitors can do this and the ones that do usually is a shareware that cost money.

This software is free and takes less than 2MB memory while monitoring your bandwidth usage. Claims to work on all Windows.

[ Download iTraffic Monitor ]

Fix Windows Task Manager With Missing Tabs and Menu

2009-11-22T12:14:00.000Z

Many of you should be familiar with Windows Task Manager. Since Windows 98, the combination of Control+Alt+Delete key is the probably only thing to do when a program hung. You are presented with a “Close Program” window to terminate the application that is not responding or you can just hit the same combination again to soft reboot the computer. In NT based Windows, pressing the hotkey would directly invoke the Task Manager. The Task Manager is a program used to provide information about the processes and programs running on a computer, as well as the general status of the computer. It can also be used to terminate processes and programs, as well as change the processes’ priority.

As useful as it is, there’s a very weird feature built-in to the Windows Task Manager and it makes some users thinks that their Task Manager has an error or corrupted. The normal Windows Task Manager comes with a few tabs such as Applications, Processes, Performance, Networking, Users and it also has a menu bar such as File menu, Options ,View, Windows Shut Down and Help. If you’re not careful, you could end up with a Task Manager WITHOUT the tabs and menu bar.

So far I’ve seen this question being asked 3 times in forum by LunarWolf, yexist and gwa-53 reporting the same problem and I thought I should write an article to inform everyone that the Task Manager is not corrupted or caused by virus when you see such behavior.

Normally when you press the Alt key it should highlight/select the File menu which shows the menu bar. An example is the latest Windows Live Messenger 2009 which by default the menu bar is not shown and you can make the menu bar appear by pressing the Alt key. However, this won’t work in Windows Task Manager when the menu bar and tabs are missing.

To fix this problem, all you need to do is to double click at the edge of the Task Manager and the menubar with tabs will re-appear.

Yeap this is a really weird feature of the Task manager and I bet many users don’t even know about this. Not sure why Microsoft implemented this because I could never find a chance or any reason to use the compact version of Task Manager.

Reliance Popular Hacks

2009-11-21T16:53:00.000Z

Hi, I'm Back with a tutorial for reliance gprs hack. First you have to implement these settings--

APN-- rcomwap

IP-- 97.253.29.199

PORT--8080

HomePage--- www.google.co.in

For reliance message hack--

Now on SMS SETTINGS

1>Service centre No:- +919863002222
2>Validity period:- Maximum
3>Message type:- Text
4>Reply path:- Off
5>Delivery report:- Off

Note:- Your balance Must be Zero......