Clean Windows

Is your Windows installation looking flaky? Don’t worry – we’ve all been there. With so much interesting free software to download or install from cover discs, it’s all too easy to install one app too many.

Before you know it, your hard drive is overloaded with unused tools that seem to conflict with each other. Windows gets slower and strange messages start appearing, warning of impending doom. Eventually, you have to bite the bullet and reinstall the OS.

At this point you probably vow never again to pollute your PC with strange software – that is, until you run across another tempting beta. One more won’t hurt, will it?

Adding and removing software should be easier than this. Updated versions and programs constantly appear on the horizon, and no one uses the same programs forever. So why do we have to worry about the consequences of installing and uninstalling? It comes down to two very important components underpinning the Windows OS: the registry and the DLL (dynamic link library). Both these components run invisibly behind the scenes, but when they get screwed up, they get screwed up good.

The Windows registry is a database where all the settings and options for the Windows OS are stored. This information – known as keys – used to be scattered in folders all over the place, so there’s an advantage to keeping track of it in a central place such as the registry. However, if the registry becomes corrupted, it can paralyse your entire system and force you to wipe everything.

Although the registry accum­ulates a lot of unnecessary junk that slows down your bootup time, it’s incredibly risky to start deleting stuff from it willy-nilly. Get rid of the wrong key and your favourite program – or even the whole PC – will never again start up in its current form. To get at the registry, run Regedit – choose Start-Run, then type regedit. But again, don’t start messing with it unless you know exactly what you’re doing. You. Have. Been. Warned.

At the very least, it’s a good idea to have a backup before you start making any changes, so when the registry editor is open, click File-Export, choose a name and location for the file, make sure that the “All” radio button is selected, and hit Save. That way, you can reverse any changes you’ve made if you need to, simply by double-clicking on the backup file and clicking on Yes when asked if you want to add the information.

A far less risky and much simpler solution to tidying up your registry is to try out a special cleaning program. I’m keen on EasyCleaner 2.0.

EasyCleaner scans your registry for junk and then allows you to delete it, or dump it in the recycle bin, where it can be retrieved if you later find out it was important.

The other Windows component that can come unglued while uninstalling software is the DLL. If that acronym sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve been asked whether or not you want to delete DLL files every time you’ve uninstalled a program.

In short, DLLs are files containing important pieces of code that can be shared by multiple apps. By sharing this code, disk space is saved and software patches can be made smaller. But this practice has led to so-called “DLL Hell”, where apps start fighting over which version of the file should be used – video editing applications, in particular, are notorious for this.

If you delete shared DLLs while uninstalling a program, you could mess up another app that still needs it to run. As with unnecessary registry keys, unneeded DLLs will slow down system performance. Microsoft’s .NET OS got rid of shared DLLs entirely, allowing multiple versions of the same code to coexist peacefully.

Good idea, but until the Windows platform does the same thing, you’re stuck with trying to figure out what you need. It scans your PC for all DLL files and then removes any unused DLLs from the system directory and puts them into a backup folder.

Because these backed-up DLLs don’t take up much hard disk space, it’s a good idea to hang on to them for at least a few months – permanently would be better – in case some seldom-used application suddenly needs one and you have to restore it.

But what if you’ve already deleted the wrong registry key or DLL, or are worried about doing so? Windows does have a few tools to save your bacon. Unless you’ve specifically disabled this feature, System Restore will regularly create a “snapshot” of your PC’s settings, allowing you to roll back your system to the most recent known safe state. If you’re installing some software you suspect might be flaky, or want to try cleaning up the registry, create a restore point before you start. Choose Start-All Programs-Accessories-System Tools and then System Restore. Here you can create a snapshot or restore from an older point.

Some programs offer a repair option to try and fix the damage from deleted DLLs. In Word, choose Help, then Detect and Repair . And if the worst happens and your system is really ailing, you can try booting into Safe Mode – press when the Windows screen comes up while booting – and choose “Last known good configuration”. It just might be the ticket.

Virtual safety
Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to worry about all this registry and DLL malarkey to start off with? That dream may soon become reality with the advent of software virtualisation. This process separates apps from the OS – the applications think they’re installing into Windows, but they are actually installing into a virtual environment created by the software.

Each program exists as a separate “package” and there’s no way one package can interfere with another. Not only will the virtualisation system allow you to install software without polluting the Windows registry or littering the PC with DLLs, but it’ll let you reset an app to its default state. This means that if you change the user settings and can’t remember how to restore them, you don’t have to reinstall the software.

One of the pioneers of software virtualisation, Altiris, says it will be launching a consumer desktop version of its much-praised SVS (software virtualisation system), which should be available by the time you read this – and, even better, it says that the software will be absolutely free.

Digital Image Watermarks Could Combat Trademark Theft

Technology from one of Germany’s renowned Fraunhofer Institutes could help companies protect pictures of their products from being stolen by groups trying to promote cheap imitations. Fraunhofer Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute (Fraunhofer IPIS), one of 58 institutes within the huge applied research group, had developed digital image watermark technology and a Web search system to hunt down trademark violators on the Internet, the group’s spokesman Michael Kip, said. “Next month, we will have our first user,” Kip said. “We can’t mention the name yet.” The system lets companies with popular brands, such as Cartier International SA or Sony Corp., embed watermarks in their pictures and, with the help of a Web search system, track down trademark violators. The watermark technology makes slight changes in the color, contrast or brightness of a picture. The changes, made in tiny areas across the picture, are invisible to the human eye. “The watermarks essentially change the relation of pixels,” Kip said. “The watermarks themselves can’t be changed even if the picture is enlarged, reduced, cropped or changed in some other way.” The search agent scans the Internet for the watermarked images and lists Web sites carrying them, allowing owners of the images to confirm their authorized use. The software required to embed watermarks is already available and relatively ease to use, according to Kip. But the search agent, he said, is more complex, requiring individual configurations. Pricing information was not available. Earlier this year, Fraunhofer IPIS unveiled a watermark system to help curb the sharp rise in online music piracy. The system is designed to track pirated audio files in peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. Watermark technology targeting music piracy has also been a focus at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, the creator of the MPEG-1 Layer 3 algorithm, later shortened to MP3, which has inadvertently helped enable the illegal copying of music content. The institute developed watermark technology of its own, which it spun off into a new company, MusicTrace GmbH. In March, the spin-off delivered watermark technology to Optimal Media Production GmbH for a new service aimed at curbing online music piracy.

Blog Readers Vulnerable To Embedded Malware

Reading blogs could cause your computer to catch a virtual cold, said a leading security expert Wednesday at the Black Hat USA conference. Internet users who employ Web-based services such as Bloglines or Web browsers such as Firefox to read Web site feeds and blogs are vulnerable to embedded malicious code that can install spyware, log users’ passwords, scan PCs and corporate networks for open ports and more, said Caleb Sima, chief technology officer at SPI Dynamics, a Web application security company. So far, only a few proof-of-concept attacks against blog readers from Google and Yahoo have occurred, Sima said, though he believes that more are on the way. “The only reason we haven’t had a lot of problems yet is because no one has really thought of it,” he said. According to Sima, software and services used to download feeds transmitted via the RSS or Atom formats can unwittingly download and execute JavaScript code buried within the text. JavaScript is a scripting programming language that has become popular as a way of providing rich interactivity to Web sites. But it can also be employed by hackers to take over users’ computers, sniff for vulnerabilities and more. “The possibilities are limited only by how creative you are,” Sima said, who calls the technique “feed injection.” Sima said this type of attack is a variant of cross-site scripting, a popular way of attacking Web sites by entering HTML or JavaScript commands instead of text, which can cause errors and disable the site, leaving it open to hackers. Seemingly random strings of characters such as “

Microsoft Will Release Ipod Rival This Year Options

Microsoft confirmed it will ship competitive offerings to Apple Computer’s tremendously successful iPod and iTunes digital music products sometime this year. In an e-mailed statement, the company said that under a new brand, called “Zune,” it will deliver “a family of hardware and software products” that will “bring together technology and community to allow consumers to explore and discover music together.” The company has set up a Web site,

http://comingzune.com

where users can sign themselves or friends up for a newsletter providing information about Zune. The site features animation set to a song called “Us” by Regina Spektor. Microsoft did not give specific information on exactly how the new products will work together, but said it plans to help build a community for connecting customers to new music and other entertainment in addition to offering new hardware and software. “It’s probably safe to say that this project will place Microsoft in path with iPod/iTunes at some points, but Zune is a much broader, holistic project,” the company said via e-mail. Microsoft also declined to say whether it will design and sell the hardware itself, as it does with its Xbox game consoles, or use a third party. However, Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group said the company will indeed design and sell the initial Zune hardware, which he said will be “a music player with a large video screen.” Microsoft also will allow third parties to license Zune technology so they can offer their own hardware as long as it is consistent with the original user experience. Enderle also shed some light on what that experience may be. According to him, Zune will be “artist-driven,” so recording artists will have a lot of freedom in designing the user interface for their music. But until Microsoft fully reveals Zune, which he expects the company to do in September, October or November, it’s hard to tell exactly how users will interact with Zune, Enderle acknowledged. Speculation has been brewing for some time that Microsoft was planning an iPod “killer,” but the company had remained mum on the subject until Friday.

Hamachi servers

Hi

Hamachi is the piece of software that is called VPN. now you all must be wondering that what does VPN stand for. well its called”virtual private network“.now what is VPN, it means that you can create a virtual LAN using your internet connection and yes then ypu can play games just like LAN and share files.

This software can be obtained from www. hamachi.cc.

for all AOE II fans who want to play with my network join this hamachi server

user:firezen3
pass:1234