Remove Ads from Utorrent

Scenario : You fire up uTorrent to download torrents. Its a free utility and you like using it but now it comes loaded with all this crap ads and you don’t like it….so what do you do about it ??

Solution : uTorrent is one of the best torrent clients out there, if you ask me but nowadays (actually since sometime now)…it has started to load all this annoying ads (See below). Here’s a way to turn it off….

Batman Arkham City qa_approved_build _january_2011 Error : An Encore

Scenario contd… : You have obtained the highly anticipated game : Batman Arkham City. It is over 14 GB’s in Size. You have fiiiiiiiiiinally downloaded it. You install it…which takes a looooooooooong time. Finally it’s done!!!! Now you try to run it…and what’s this ?? A Message box pops up saying something like “Fatal Error”. Its Hellish, ain’t it ?? What do you do ??

Solution contd…: This is the follow up to my previous post. While the above error appears when you try to run the game, sometimes the error pops up after you have properly run the game and completed a fair percentage of the story-line. You have gone through my previous post but DirectX is already updated and the solution does not work. so what do you do ??  Unfortunately, the answer is simple but not easy.

Bypass ISP’s blocking certain websites.

It all began the day i moved on to hathway as my ISP, it offers me a great plan but there are certain t&c’s which i came to know recently, it blocks access to certain sites….torrent sites before any of you gets any ideas

Just bcos the plan they offer is unlimited, they think that they can block access to torrent sites which might limit our usage. Ifthey thought that they would be able to do that then they are so wrong….there are many ways to bypass that like using Proxy sites, proxy addresses, VPNNetworks but i will share with you one way which is the easiest and which helped me. 

Batman Arkham City qa_approved_build _january_2011 Error

Scenario : You have obtained the highly anticipated game : Batman Arkham City. It is over 14 GB’s in Size. You have fiiiiiiiiiinally downloaded it. You install it…which takes a looooooooooong time. Finally it’s done!!!! Now you try to run it…and what’s this ?? A Message box pops up saying something like “Fatal Error”. Its Hellish, ain’t it ?? What do you do ??

Solution : Yes, This recently happened to me. And trust me…the feeling was really hellish. I had to first of all wait a long time for the download to complete and then wait some more for the Installation to finish and finally when all was said and done and I tried to run the game.

I encountered the error box shown below.

Print Locked PDF files

Scenario : You have downloaded a file from the internet and you liked it and want to print some parts of it. But the print function has been disabled. You try copying the text but even copying is disabled. What do you do ??

Solution : You know how it is, when the pdf files are just about 10 or 15 pages long, you go ahead and print them out to read later on.(That’s a bad habit btw, save paper)

However many times you find that the print function has been disabled. You see, this happens cos the person who created it has password protected the document to disallow certain functions like printing copying. Don’t you hate that ?? I mean if you can open and read the PDF, then you should be able to print it for reference later on. Right ?? (Answer: Right!!! Be with me guys…)

So when I received such a PDF last week that was like this I was determined to find a way to get around it.

Here’s what I found….

MultiColor Screen of Death

Time for Some fun ?? Ok ?? What is the thing which scares even the most hardcore Windows users. It tends to appear at the worst possible times, and whats worse is that, the explanation for its appearance is so obscure that i’m sure that even the people at Microsoft do not know what’s going on. That’s right, a windows users worst fear, i’m talking about … the Blue Screen of Death (commonly known as BSOD).

True, that appearance of BSOD has so much as minimised in Windows 7 but it still does happen. In this tutorial, I’m not going to teach you how to avoid it but turn your BSoD into a RSOD, GSoD, YSoD or pretty much any SoD you wish. Yes, any color you wish.

Why? Just for fun.

How to Create Your Own Customized Run Commands

It all began one day when i was working with a new program and had to browse to its installation directory again and again(I kept closing it!!! *embarassed*) and thought to myself that wouldnt it be better if i could just type a command in “RUN” and run it directly from there.

And this is what i come up with…The Run command on Microsoft Windows operating system allows you to directly open an application or document with just a single command instead of navigating to it’s location and double-clicking the executable icon. However, it only works for some of the inbuilt Windows programs cmd,calc,etc. So, how do you about creating your own customized Run commands for accessing your favorite programs, files and folders? Well, read on…

Remove Lock icon from Windows 7 folder

Scenario : You unshared a shared folder in your Windows 7 and suddenly a Lock icon appears on the folder icon.

Solution : Yes that can be a bummer. I hate it when such things happen. Fortunately, just messing around with the security settings provided me the solution. To remove the Lock icon, here are the steps that I performed :

1. Right click the folder and choose Properties.
2. Go to Security tab and click Edit.
3. Under Permissions for Shared Folder window, click on the Add button.
4. Type in “Authenticated Users” in the field and click Ok.
5. Close all the remaining pop-ups by clicking OK.
6. The Lock icon will be gone.

Simple and Sweet!!! Aint it ??

Reference Thread : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprosecurity/thread/e8347f6f-e835-42e1-8509-eee38f83bb05

Protecting Your USB – retrospection or Summary…call it what you like…

General Scenario : You have had a look at many methods to protect your USB but find it a bit complex and confusing and dont know which methods to implement…

Solution : As always…dont worry...i’ll be there for you…I will give you a sketch of the measures that i had in effect for my PC(I say “had” because thats what i used in my XP system but now i’m on Win7 and don’t require much of them except few) and you can use it if you like it.

First of all, i had installed Panda USB Vaccine (Method 3) so that took care of auto run of viruses from my pen drive and from an external pen drive on my PC. The only problem i faced with that was that i could not implement Method 1 or Method 2 which i wanted to.

I also had USB Safely Remove installed because it not only resolves those “device is locked” scenarios but also because of an added less known feature – the ability to run scripts on connection and removal (This features are also available in Zentimo). I had modified its settings to run the enable write-protect script (Method 4) on connecting a new device and run the disable write-protect on removal. Also i used to keep the disable write-protect script on my desktop in case i want to copy some files to the PD (I still do!!!). On a related note, I hope all of you have made use of the Free Zentimo Lifetime License Promo.

Note : After reading this method you might feel that you can carry the scripts on your PD and running it when connecting it to external PC via autorun, there is a chance that it might not work and give you a false sense of security. And if it does work and then you might forget to run the disable script and  it will pose a problem to the external PC User…..however if that IS your intention, then full steam ahead

I troubleshoot people’s PC problems and hence carry a PD with a lot of portable and useful tools which i use to troubleshoot people’s infected PC. I would not be copying anything from their PC and would not want anything to write itself to my PD, so i use the ” fsutil trick” on my PD (Method 5).

Since i’m not using USB Safely Remove or Zentimo on my Win7, i have created a batch file to make sure that i do not encounter that “cannot safely remove hardware as it is currently in use” error (Method 7). Till now, i have not had to use it (Touch Wood!!!).

This constitutes my summary of Protecting Your USB….mind you that this was not only the arrangement that i used on my XP but also the customisations i currently do on the PC’s of clients for whom i do a fresh install of XP and it does work…..atleast for most of them…after all Stupidity has no cure  :)  :P.

With this, i have covered most of the issues regarding protecting your USB….If i find more i will surely update this..I hope that you all found this useful…Post soon….Stay Sharp!!!

Protecting Your USB – 7 : Missing Safely Remove Hardware Icon

Scenario : At times your Safely Remove Hardware Icon is missing or disappeared from the system tray.so how to safely stop and unplug your USB device ?

Solution : Up until now we covered protection from virus as part of our “Protecting your USB” series, now we move on towards other problems that you might encounter when using your USB.

Now, When you face the above problem, most of the times people don’t bother to search and restore the icon but simply pull out the device. Easy while it may be, it may result in corruption of data cos unknown to you there may be many processes taking place in the USB in the background, like indexing or scanning. So if it has worked for you uptil now don’t think that it will always and it may result in data corruption. so here we will discuss ways to solve this little problem.

Method 1 : Shutting down the computer is one of the ways to safely stop and unplug your USB device, but obviously too stupid!!

Method 2 : Whenever you encounter this problem the first thing you should do is check whether you have set taskbar properties to hide the icon, by “mistake” obviously *coughcoughbraindeadcoughcough*.

You can do so by right clicking the taskbar and selecting properties. Click on “customise” under “notification area” and set the value of “safely remove hardware icon” to “show icon and notifications”.

Method 3 : Still no go ?? well this is a temporary fix for it. Go to Start, Run, type in the following line and click OK( case sensitive command ).

RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL HotPlug.dll

Note that this will bring up the “Safely Remove Hardware” dialog which you can use to stop the USB device that you want to unplug and not restore the icon, hence temporary fix.

You can also prepare a batch file…Paste the following  lines in Notepad and save as “.bat” file  :

RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL HotPlug.dll

Double-click the batch file to execute.  You can even create a shortcut to this batch file and place it where it is easy accessible for you.

Method 4 : Method #3 can’t be remembered always as to type in everytime you are in a similar scenario. You can also try the following steps :

• Right Click on My Computer.
• Select Manage.
• Select USB Mass Storage Device under the USB Controller.
• Right Click and Disable it.
• Remove your USB drive and Enable it again

Note : If you forget to Enable it again, then you won’t be able to use any of your USB drives unless you enable it again.

Method 5 : Here’s a way on how you can totally avoid the whole data corruption scenario. This method removes your dependency on the Safely Remove Hardware icon

1. Open My Computer
2. Right click on the USB flash drive and click Properties
3. Click on the Hardware tab and select the removable drive from the list
4. Click the Properties button
5. Click on the Policies tab. Here you will see two values :

Optimize for Quick removal

This setting disables write caching on the disk so that you can disconnect this drive without using the Safely Remove Hardware icon.

Optimize for Performance

This setting enables the write caching on the disk so as to improve disk performance. To disconnect this drive, you should use the Safely Remove Hardware icon so as not to hurt your USB drive.

Summarizing, You should set it “optimize for quick removal” if you want to avoid your dependency on the Safely Remove Hardware icon or selecting “optimize for performance” will bring back your icon.

Note though that it does not seem to work for everyone.

So this completes my list of solutions of what to do when the Safely Remove Hardware icon disappears from the system tray. Hope this helps, Still you need any sort of help, feel free to ask in the comments. Stay sharp !!!!