Category Archives: Hacking Tutorials

How to safely uninstall Linux when Dual boot installed with Windows XP?

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When asked to most of the users “How will you uninstall Linux when it is Dual Boot installed with Windows XP?” The common answers we got was “Start windows XP and format Linux Partition“. Well they were half correct, you do have to format the linux partition but what about the grub loader? The grub loader will still be showing you the option to boot Linux during the start up and by mistake if anybody goes for booting linux, the system will not find any linux on your machine and it will restart. so what can you do in this situation?

There is a simple procedure to uninstall or delete linux completely and safely by following a step by step procedure illustrated below and it is tested by me .

Requirements:
You need a windows 98 startup disk or windows XP installation CD.

How to do it:

1. Reboot your laptop with windows 98 start up disc or Windows XP CD and type the command “fixmbr”.

2. Above command will repair ur bootloader and rewrite ntldr which will replace grub loader of Linux and now you can see only Windows XP in the boot menu.

3. Now Boot up in Windows xp.

4. Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management

5. Go to Disk Management under “Storage”

6. Select your Hard Disk and then the linux partition.

7. Delete the linux partition this will delete linux and grub.

8. Thats it done now boot your laptop or desktop normally it will be booted by default in windows xp.

If you have any problem in the procedure given above leave a comment here…

Reboot Linux using simple fork()

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We all know that the simplest function in Linux is fork(). The fork is used create a child process which is an exact copy of the calling process (parent process). You might be thinking how can such a simple function reboot a linux machine. Well I must tell you that the program I am going to discuss today uses only this fork  function and can force a Linux Server which can serve as many as 100 computers to get rebooted. I have tried this on my College’s Linux Server which Serves more than 200 computers at a time and I was lucky to get out of this situation.

Warning: I am not responsible to whatever happens to your computer after exceuting the following program on your computer.

I have written a simple C Program whose source is as follows:

#include<fcntl.h>

int main()
{
int i;
for(i=1;i<=300;i++)
{
printf(“%d”,fork());
}
return(1);
}

- Open the Linux Shell.
- Write the above program in your vi Editor and save it as reboot.c
- Now compile the program using following command:
gcc -o reboot reboot.c
- Now to execute the program type the following
./reboot
and press Enter.

Explanation: In the above program, I have used a loop of 300 iterations. In the first iteration it will execute the fork command which will create a child process which is the exact copy of the parent process i.e. the child process will have the same code as the parent process and it will execute simultaneously with the parent process. So in the next iteration both parent process and the child process will execute fork command which will in turn create child processes with the exact copy of their parent processes and this process of creation of child processes will be in the power of 2 i.e. after the first iteration the total number of processes will be 1 parent and 1 child = 2 process. After 2nd iteration the number of process will be 1 parent and 3 child = 4 process. And this will continue to double and at the end the total number of processes will be 2300 which is quite a big number. If you try to calculate this value in your calc it will take atleast 1 hour. So when you will execute the above program your linux machine will get overloaded and will be forced to reboot.

I executed this program in college’s Computer Lab and all the computer got hanged and after 1 or 2 mins a Global message was displayed that “Linux server is going to Reboot”. Since nobody knew what had happened I could get away from that situation. Hope that my lab faculty don’t read this Article.

Latest(2009) Hack for Free Airtel GPRS

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Note: New Proxies for free Airtel GPRS have been posted here.

After a Lot of research we have found another hack for free Unlimited GPRS for Airtel live users. The new trick for Airtel free internet is as simple as installing a software on your Cell phone. Actually the trick is to install a Mobile Web Browser called Teashark or Ucweb on your Cellphone.

Follow the steps below for unlimited mobile browsing.

1. Download Teashark browser(for MIDP 2.0 handsets only) from here or from wap.teashark.com if you are using mobile browser.

2. Install the browser and select Airtel Live as the access point and start browsing absolutely free (Don’t worry airtel won’t charge you).

Note: If Teashark browser doesn’t work then go for Ucweb browser which can be downloaded from here. They also have many features like built-in download manager,search function,email service and also page saving options.

Booting Windows XP with USB Flash Drive

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Almost everyone who has worked with computers for any length of time at all has run into at least one situation in which a problem left a PC unbootable. What if you could return the machine to a bootable state just by inserting a USB flash drive though? Believe it or not, it is actually possible to install a bootable copy of Windows XP onto a flash drive and then boot a PC off of the flash drive. From there, you can use applications that you have installed on the flash drive (anti virus, anti spyware, disk repair, etc.) to fix the PC’s problem. In this article, I will show you how.

What’s the catch?

As with most cool new techniques, there are a few catches. For starters, not every PC is capable of booting from a USB flash drive. For the most part, computers manufactured within the last two years are generally able to boot from a flash drive. Older systems may require a BIOS update, or might not be able to boot from a flash drive at all.

Another catch is that not every flash drive will get the job done. The primary factors that limit your use of a particular flash drive are capacity and speed. Technically, speed isn’t really a limiting factor, but booting Windows will be painfully slow unless you use a flash drive that supports USB 2.0.

The flash drive’s capacity is actually a limiting factor though. Surprisingly though, there are size limits on both the upper and lower end. Your flash drive can’t be too large or too small. There isn’t really a documented minimal size for a flash drive. You just need something large enough to hold Windows XP and a few applications. As you probably know, Windows XP normally consumes over a gigabyte of disk space. Later I will show you how to use a free utility to trim the excess fat off of Windows XP and make it a whole lot smaller. Even so, I still recommend that your flash drive be at least a minimum of 256 MB in size.

As I mentioned, there is a maximum size for the USB flash drive that you can use. Currently, USB flash drives exist in sizes of up to 4 GB, and 8 GB flash drives are expected to be available by the end of the year. As nice as it would be to have 8 GB to play with, the flash drive that you use for this project can be no larger than 2 GB. The reason for this is because you will have to format the flash drive using the FAT-16 file system, which has a 2 GB limit. Presently, you are stuck using FAT-16 because most computers will not recognize a flash drive as being bootable if the drive is formatted with anything other than FAT-16.

Preparing your Windows installation CD

One of the requirements for creating our bootable USB flash drive is a Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installation CD. If your Windows XP installation CD doesn’t already include Service Pack 2, then you will have to make a CD that includes Service Pack 2 through a technique called slipstreaming.

Other requirements

In addition to your Windows XP installation CD, there are a couple of other things that you are going to need. For starters, you will need the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. You can download this tool for free.

Another utility that you are going to need is Bart’s Preinstalled Environment Bootable Live Windows CD / DVD, or BartPE for short. You can download this utility for free from the BartPE Web site.

In addition to the software requirements, you must verify that the PC that you will be using to create the Windows deployment has 1.5 GB of free hard disk space (minimum) and supports booting from a USB device. I also strongly recommend that the PC be running Windows XP Service Pack 2. Prior to Service Pack 2, Windows XP sometimes had trouble interacting with USB storage devices.

Formatting the flash drive

Now that you have all of the prerequisites taken care of, it’s time to actually start setting up our flash drive. The first step in doing so, as strange as it sounds, is to format the flash drive. Windows will actually let you format a flash drive in the same way that you format a floppy disk. However, formatting a flash drive in this way will not work for this project. Furthermore, using Windows to format a flash drive directly has been known to destroy some types of flash drives.

Instead, you must format the flash drive by using the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool that you downloaded earlier. To do so, simply open the utility, select the device followed by the FAT file system option and click Start.

Once the device has been formatted, you must make it bootable. To do so, you must copy the BOOT.INI, NTLDR, and NTDETECT from the root directory of your PC’s boot drive to the flash drive. These files are hidden by default, so you will either have to configure Windows Explorer to show hidden files (including protected operating system files) or you will have to open a Command Prompt window and use the COPY command to copy the files.

If you choose to use the Windows Explorer method, then open Internet Explorer and enter C: into the address bar so that you are looking at your local hard drive. Next, select the Folder Options command from the Tools menu. When the Folder Options properties sheet opens, select the View tab. Now, just select the Show Hidden Files and Folders and deselect the Hide Extensions for Known File Types and the Hide Protected Operating System Files check boxes. Click OK to continue.

Booting from the USB flash drive

Now that you have formatted your USB flash drive and installed the boot files onto it, the next thing that you must do is to configure your PC to allow you to boot from the flash drive. This is all done through the computer’s BIOS Setup. I can’t give you specific instructions for this part, because every computer is different. I can give you a few pointers though.

You can access your computer’s BIOS by pressing a specific key immediately after you turn the PC on. The key varies, but it is usually either [F1], [F2], or [Delete]. Once you are in the BIOS Setup, you should verify that all of your computer’s USB options are enabled. This might include things like support for legacy USB devices or support for USB 2.0. If there is a time out setting for USB devices, you should set it to the max to insure that the system doesn’t time out while waiting on the USB device to boot.

Next, find the section on boot device priority. Normally, a USB flash drive (which is usually listed as USB-HDD, but may be listed as a removable device) will have a very low boot priority. If the USB flash drive’s boot priority is lower than the hard disk (listed as HDD) then the only time the computer would ever boot off of the USB flash drive is if the system were to fail to boot from the hard disk. You must therefore rearrange the boot device priority so that the flash drive has a higher priority than the hard drive.

Configuring Windows

Now that we have finally made it through all of the prep work, it’s time to start setting up Windows. As you have probably already guessed, the process of installing Windows to a flash drive is quite a bit different from your normal, run of the mill installation. There are a couple of reasons for this.

For starters, a full blown Windows XP deployment takes up over a Gigabyte of hard disk space. When you are installing to a flash drive, disk space is a scarce commodity. Even if you have over a Gigabyte of space on your flash drive, you probably don’t want to use it all on Windows. It would be nice to have room to install a few applications. Therefore, you need to trim the excess fat off of Windows.

The other reason why the installation process is so different from the usual Windows installation is because Windows Setup is not designed to install Windows to a flash drive. You therefore have to configure Windows using an alternate method.

The PEBuilder utility that you downloaded earlier can take care of both of these issues. PEBuilder is designed to create a build of Windows XP (or Windows Server 2003) that does not take up as much space as a full blown installation. Once you create this new build, you can copy it to the flash drive. For right now, I will show you how to create a basic Windows build and copy it to the memory stick. Unfortunately, it’s rather difficult to install applications once Windows is up and running. Therefore, after I show you how to create a basic Windows build, I will show you how to create a build that includes some applications.

Begin the process by opening PEBuilder. When you open PEBuilder, you will see a screen similar to the one that’s shown in Figure A. Simply enter the path to the Windows installation files (the ones from your Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installation CD). Next, verify that the Create ISO Image and the Burn to CD check boxes are not selected and then click the Build button. PEBuilder will now create the new Windows build.

Figure A
You must use PEBuilder to create a Windows build that will work with a flash drive.

Now, it’s time to copy Windows to the flash drive. To do so, you will have to use a special batch file that’s included with PEBuilder. Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to c:\pebuilder313\plugin\peinst. Now, insert an empty flash drive into the computer’s USB port and then execute the file PEINST.CMD. You will now see a menu appear as shown in Figure B.

Figure B
PEBuilder uses a batch file to install Windows onto a flash drive.

Type 1 and press [Enter] and you will be prompted to enter the path to the build that you have created. Enter C:\pebuilder313\BartPE. Now, type 2, press [Enter], and you will be prompted for the target path. Enter the drive letter that Windows has assigned to your USB flash drive. After doing so, the menu is updated as shown in Figure C. The menu now displays the source path and the destination drive. Type 5 and press [Enter] to install Windows to the flash drive.

Figure C
Use menu option 5 to install Windows to the flash drive.

Installing applications

Now that I have shown you how to create and install a basic Windows build, I want to talk for a moment about how you can add an application to the build (prior to creating it). The PEBuilder program comes pre-configured to support a number of common Windows applications, but does not come with the applications themselves.

The reason why installing applications can be a little bit tricky is because most Windows applications modify the Windows registry. The build that you are creating is basically a collection of installation files, and the build itself does not contain a registry (the registry gets created when Windows is installed onto the flash drive). As such, PEBuilder uses a sort of registry emulator.

If you go to the C:\PEBUILDER313\PLUGIN folder, you will see sub folders for a number of different applications. If you open one of these application folders, you will see that the folder contains an INF file and a FILES folder. The INF file contains all of the information that would normally go into the registry, and the FILES folder stores all of the program’s files.

To see how this works, let’s install an application that I’m sure most of you are familiar with; Nero. Begin by installing Nero onto the machine that’s running PEBuilder, as if you planned to run Nero locally on that machine. When the installation completes, copy all of the files from C:\Program Files\ahead\Nero to C:\pebuilder313\plugin\nero burning rom\files. In this particular case, the nero burning rom folder is the folder that has been set aside for the Nero application. The Files sub folder is intended to store Nero’s system files.

Now, you must take care of Nero’s registry entries. To do so, go to the C:\pebuilder313\plugin\nero burning rom folder and open the PENERO.INF file using Notepad. As I explained earlier, the INF file in an application’s folder is used to store the application’s registry entries. For Nero and all of the other applications that PEBuilder predefines, the INF file is pre-configured. You just have to make a few changes that are specific to your system.

In this particular case, the PENERO.INF file is designed to support both Nero versions 5.x and 6.x. Initially, the lines for both versions are commented out. You must therefore determine which version you have and then remove the semi colon from the beginning of the lines that apply to that version. If you look at Figure D, you can see how the two versions are separated.

Figure D
An application’s registry entries are stored in an INF file.

Once you uncomment the appropriate lines, just replace “Your Name”, “Your Company Name” and “Your Serial Number” with your name, your company’s name, and your Nero product key. Save the file, and your set to go. The next time that you click the Build button, Nero will be included in the build.

Putting XP in your pocket

Running Windows from a flash drive isn’t an exact science. Sometimes the process just doesn’t work and there is no good reason why. As more PCs start to support booting from USB devices though, USB boots should become more standardized, and the technique should become more reliable.

10 ways to Tweak your Linux Boot Process

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Linux rarely needs to be rebooted. But when it does, it’s often slow to boot. Fortunately, there are ways to speed things up. Some of these methods are not terribly difficult. (although some, unfortunately, are). Let’s take a look.

#1: Disable unnecessary services

Depending upon the use of the machine, plenty of services won’t be needed. Using Linux just for a desktop? Then you won’t need sendmail, httpd, and many other services. If your server is only a Web server, you can shut off many services as well. To do this, you can go to the Administration menu and take a look at the Services entry. Just deselect all of the services you don’t want to start.

#2: Disable unnecessary kernel modules

If your desktop is wired to the Ethernet, you don’t need to have a wireless kernel module loaded. This task is a bit more difficult and will require a kernel recompilation, which is not the easiest task to undertake. To do this, you will need the kernel sources. Then, follow the standard steps for compiling a kernel. The difference is that you’re going to go through your system and disable all of the modules you don’t need.

The best way to find out what kernel modules currently install and run on your system is to install Bootchart. Not only will this give you a good list of modules, it will illustrate for you what is happening during your system boot. You can also issue the command chkconfig –list | grep 3:on to find out what services are running. Once you know what loading modules you don’t need, you can remove them during a kernel recompilation. While you’re at it, compile the kernel to exactly match your architecture.

#3: Use a lightweight window manager instead of GNOME or KDE

I plug smaller footprint window managers for a reason — they drastically reduce graphical boot time. Instead of having to wait that extra 30 to 60 seconds for GNOME or KDE to boot up, why not wait two to 10 seconds for Enlightenment or XFCE to boot up? Not only will they save you boot time, they will save your memory and the headache of dealing with bloatware.

#4: Use a text-based login instead of a graphical login

Most of my Linux machines boot to run level 3 instead of run level 5. This will halt at the text-based login, where I only have to log in and issue startx to start my desktop of choice. The graphical logins do two things: increase load times and create headaches trying to recover from an X windows fubar.

#5: Use a lighter-weight distribution

Instead of loading the heavyweight Fedora, why not try a Gentoo, Arch, or Puppy Linux? The boot times for these smaller distributions are far faster than the more bloated Fedora (and even Ubuntu). Of the larger distributions, OpenSuSE claims to boot the fastest, but I have not personally tested this. Between the latest Fedora and Ubuntu, Ubuntu blows Fedora’s boot times away (and that is out of the box).

#6: Use an OpenBIOS

If you’re savvy enough to upgrade your PC’s firmware, you might consider migrating to an open source BIOS. One caveat to using open firmware is that it allows Linux to actually initialize the hardware as it boots (instead of relying on the BIOS). On top of that, many open BIOSes can be configured to meet your machine’s specific needs. If you don’t go the open BIOS route, you can at least configure your BIOS to not search for a floppy drive that’s not there or to boot directly to the first hard drive (instead of the CD drive first).

#7: Avoid dhcp

If you are working on a home network (or a small business network) where address lease isn’t a problem, go with static IP addresses. This will keep your machine from having to call out to a dhcp server to get an IP address. If you take this approach, make sure you configure your /etc/resolve.conf to reflect your DNS server addresses as well.

#8: If you can spare it, get rid of hotplug

Hotplug is the system that allows you to plug in new devices and use them immediately. If you know your server won’t need this system, delete it. This will cut down on boot time. On many systems, hotplugging consumes much of the boot time. Removing hotplug will vary depending upon the distribution you use. NOTE: udev has, for the most part, replaced hotplug. But if you’re running an older distribution, this does apply.

#9: If you are REALLY daring, you could give initng a try

The initng system serves as a replacement for the sysvinit system and promises to drastically decrease boot times in UNIX-like operating systems. If you would like to see the initng system in action, you can give the Pingwinek livecd a try.

#10: Use a hack with Debian

If you’re using Debian, there is a simple hack you can use to switch your startup scripts to run in parallel. If you look at the /etc/init.d/rc script, you will see: CONCURRENCY=none around line 24. Change this line to CONCURRENCY=shell and you should see a reduction in boot times.

That’s about it. Of course there are always more and better hacks out there. But the above should mostly cover everything. The good news is that you’re most likely already running Linux, so the burden of boot times is generally eased by the infrequency of reboots.

15 Tips to Improve your Linux Experience

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The beauty of Linux is in users ability to do large amount of customization to have a unique user expereince. So today we will look in to some tips for a “better” Linux experience. The term “better” here is relative, because what works for me might seem a distraction for some or plain annoying to others; some of this “tips” might appeal to beginners, while advanced users might find it too easy. Hopefully some of these tips will be helpful to some of you.

1) Turn on your computer remotely by sending “magic network packets” to WakeOnLan supported network cards. This can be very helpful if you run a server at home but only access it occasionally. There is no need for you to have the server running all the time.

2) If you dual boot with windows, accessing Linux file system from your windows installation might be important for you. There are three windows applications that can help you do this: Explore2fs, Ext2 Installable File System, DiskInternals Linux Reader.
3) Similarly to have read/write access for Windows NTFS file system, you can use NTFS-3G. Most recent popular Linux distribution has NTFS-3G installed out of the box.

4) Share a single mouse and keyboard with multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, with support for copy and paste. Thanks to Synergy, the most popular free KVM software switch out there.

linux1

Synergy in action.

5) Recovering data from damaged media can be handled by several Linux tools including some LiveCD, specifically built to help recover data. Parted Magic, Ubuntu Rescue Remix, SystemRescueCd, Foremost (data recovery), Ddrescue.

6) If you are a blogger like me and enjoy using desktop client over web editors, you will find these clients useful: Gnome Blog, Drivel Journal Editor, BloGTK, Thingamablog, Bleezer, QTM.

7) If you are a webdeveloper/designer, you will often find yourself testing a website across many platforms and browsers. IEs4Linux is a great painless way to check how IE browser will render your website. You could use services like browsershots, but I had mixed results with them.

8) Does your iPod miss iTunes? Here are three itunes alternative which will do most of what your iTunes would do, not an exact replacement; but does the job: Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox.

9) Follow multiple files by creating multiple windows in your console with the help of MultiTail, also known as tail on steroids.

10) Use Terminator to split your screen space with many terminal windows, both horizontally and vertically.

11) For even better control over your terminal display and customization and complex functions, GNU Screen is a much better choice over terminator; however terminator serves only one purpose.

12) Use RSIBreak to help prevent Repetitive Strain Injury. RSIBreak will force you to take short break, depending on your configuration, so that you don’t over-work yourself.

linux2

RSIBreak

13) If you find yourself working on a dumb terminal (hello sysadmins) or prefer working on terminals, you will find newsbeuter to be an excellent RSS reader for the console.

14) I know some will disagree with me on this, but conky is an excellent compliment to your desktop experience. If properly configured, it can add a lot of value to your desktop environment. Check out this very creative conky setup and read about it here.

15) Do you do podcasts? rootprompt has a great article with huge resources for both Linux podcasters and listeners.

19 Secrets about Windows XP

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You’ve read the reviews and digested the key feature enhancements and operational changes. Now it’s time to delve a bit deeper and uncover some of Windows XP’s secrets.

1. It boasts how long it can stay up. Whereas previous versions of Windows were coy about how long they went between boots, XP is positively proud of its stamina. Go to the Command Prompt in the Accessories menu from the All Programs start button option, and then type ‘systeminfo’. The computer will produce a lot of useful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type ‘systeminfo > info.txt’. This creates a file called info.txt you can look at later with Notepad. (Professional Edition only).

2. You can delete files immediately, without having them move to the Recycle Bin first. Go to the Start menu, select Run… and type ‘gpedit.msc’; then select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Poking around in gpedit will reveal a great many interface and system options, but take care — some may stop your computer behaving as you wish. (Professional Edition only).

3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter ‘rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation’ in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That’s it — just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that’s not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.

4. XP hides some system software you might want to remove, such as Windows Messenger, but you can tickle it and make it disgorge everything. Using Notepad or Edit, edit the text file /windows/inf/sysoc.inf, search for the word ‘hide’ and remove it. You can then go to the Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel, select Add/Remove Windows Components and there will be your prey, exposed and vulnerable.

5. For those skilled in the art of DOS batch files, XP has a number of interesting new commands. These include ‘eventcreate’ and ‘eventtriggers’ for creating and watching system events, ‘typeperf’ for monitoring performance of various subsystems, and ‘schtasks’ for handling scheduled tasks. As usual, typing the command name followed by /? will give a list of options — they’re all far too baroque to go into here.

6. XP has IP version 6 support — the next generation of IP. Unfortunately this is more than your ISP has, so you can only experiment with this on your LAN. Type ‘ipv6 install’ into Run… (it’s OK, it won’t ruin your existing network setup) and then ‘ipv6 /?’ at the command line to find out more. If you don’t know what IPv6 is, don’t worry and don’t bother.

7. You can at last get rid of tasks on the computer from the command line by using ‘taskkill /pid’ and the task number, or just ‘tskill’ and the process number. Find that out by typing ‘tasklist’, which will also tell you a lot about what’s going on in your system.

8. XP will treat Zip files like folders, which is nice if you’ve got a fast machine. On slower machines, you can make XP leave zip files well alone by typing ‘regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll’ at the command line. If you change your mind later, you can put things back as they were by typing ‘regsvr32 zipfldr.dll’.

9. XP has ClearType — Microsoft’s anti-aliasing font display technology — but doesn’t have it enabled by default. It’s well worth trying, especially if you were there for DOS and all those years of staring at a screen have given you the eyes of an astigmatic bat. To enable ClearType, right click on the desktop, select Properties, Appearance, Effects, select ClearType from the second drop-down menu and enable the selection. Expect best results on laptop displays. If you want to use ClearType on the Welcome login screen as well, set the registry entry HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Control Panel/Desktop/FontSmoothingType to 2.

10. You can use Remote Assistance to help a friend who’s using network address translation (NAT) on a home network, but not automatically. Get your pal to email you a Remote Assistance invitation and edit the file. Under the RCTICKET attribute will be a NAT IP address, like 192.168.1.10. Replace this with your chum’s real IP address — they can find this out by going to http://www.whatismyip.com — and get them to make sure that they’ve got port 3389 open on their firewall and forwarded to the errant computer.

11. You can run a program as a different user without logging out and back in again. Right click the icon, select Run As… and enter the user name and password you want to use. This only applies for that run. The trick is particularly useful if you need to have administrative permissions to install a program, which many require. Note that you can have some fun by running programs multiple times on the same system as different users, but this can have unforeseen effects.

12. Windows XP can be very insistent about you checking for auto updates, registering a Passport, using Windows Messenger and so on. After a while, the nagging goes away, but if you feel you might slip the bonds of sanity before that point, run Regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/Advanced and create a DWORD value called EnableBalloonTips with a value of 0.

13. You can start up without needing to enter a user name or password. Select Run… from the start menu and type ‘control userpasswords2′, which will open the user accounts application. On the Users tab, clear the box for Users Must Enter A User Name And Password To Use This Computer, and click on OK. An Automatically Log On dialog box will appear; enter the user name and password for the account you want to use.

14. Internet Explorer 6 will automatically delete temporary files, but only if you tell it to. Start the browser, select Tools / Internet Options… and Advanced, go down to the Security area and check the box to Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed.

15. XP comes with a free Network Activity Light, just in case you can’t see the LEDs twinkle on your network card. Right click on My Network Places on the desktop, then select Properties. Right click on the description for your LAN or dial-up connection, select Properties, then check the Show icon in notification area when connected box. You’ll now see a tiny network icon on the right of your task bar that glimmers nicely during network traffic.

16. The Start Menu can be leisurely when it decides to appear, but you can speed things along by changing the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/MenuShowDelay from the default 400 to something a little snappier. Like 0.

17. You can rename loads of files at once in Windows Explorer. Highlight a set of files in a window, then right click on one and rename it. All the other files will be renamed to that name, with individual numbers in brackets to distinguish them. Also, in a folder you can arrange icons in alphabetised groups by View, Arrange Icon By… Show In Groups.

18. Windows Media Player will display the cover art for albums as it plays the tracks — if it found the picture on the Internet when you copied the tracks from the CD. If it didn’t, or if you have lots of pre-WMP music files, you can put your own copy of the cover art in the same directory as the tracks. Just call it folder.jpg and Windows Media Player will pick it up and display it.

19. Windows key + Break brings up the System Properties dialogue box; Windows key + D brings up the desktop; Windows key + Tab moves through the taskbar buttons.

How to recover Orkut password?

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Orkut is the highly successful social networking site in Brazil, India, and Pakistan. Orkut is much more famous than any of the other social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in these third world countries. The Orkut demographics show the penetration of this social networking tool with above 51% from Brazil (http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#MembersAll.aspx ). Developed by Orkut Büyükkökten  and later bough by Google, this social networking tool is growing far greater than any one else.

With its popularity grows the need of hacking into some ones Orkut account. We are getting so many comments on several pages in this website on how to break into an Orkut account; how to break Orkut password etc.  As always our humble reply, we don’t endorse hacking. We will not help anyone out to break into Orkut account nor provide any help if they have forgotten the passwords.

One thing people forget is that Orkut just like any other web based service store the password in encrypted format and just not possible to figure out the password even with the help of employees who are working there. How is it possible? Without going into technical details, let us explain things in a simple way.

When you register for a web based service you provide the password; one thing most trusted websites does is that it encrypt the password provided by you. The encryption is not reversible ie no one can decode the string back to the original format.

Suppose you have the password “MyPassword” this password is stored in the Orkut (or any other server) in encrypted format… something like – MyPassword => khkjhd877e8q78e8634but3874@63. There are several encryption techniques available like MD5, SHA etc. These encryption algorithms are not reversible ie you can convert MyPassword to khkjhd877e8q78e8634but3874@63 but khkjhd877e8q78e8634but3874@63 can’t be converted back to MyPassword.

When ever you enter the user name and password, the website convert your password into Md5 or sha or what ever it is and cross check.  So not even an Google employee can retrieve your password. Well, it can be reset.

Orkut passwords could be compromised only if you are

  • Using a computer with a keylogger installed
  • Using a computer affected with some Trojan or virus
  • Using other websites where you have used the same password and which is not encrypted

So next time before thinking about hijacking the girl friends Orkut account, remember it’s not that easy.