How to disable autorun in Windows 7
By default Windows vista and Windows 7 has the auto play feature turned on. Auto play scans the content of the CD or the portable storage device attached and plays or runs the content automatically. This feature is intended for the novice computer user who may not know how a media CD or a software CD can be used. In the case of a software CD, the file autorun.inf contains the name of the executable that needs to be executed automatically.
However this feature is dangerous since it can also automatically start malicious software contained in a portable storage device such a USB pen drive. Prior to Windows XP service pack 2, autorun was disabled for removable storage devices such as USB sticks and zip drives. In vista and Windows 7, autorun is enabled for all devices.
It is highly recommended that you turn off autorun in your Windows machine. This prevents accidental virus infection where you unknowingly insert a virus infected USB pen drive and autorun starts a virus program. For example, you might take your USB pen drive to an internet cafe to download some text files. The computer at the cafe might be infected and the virus will get into the USB pen drive. Since autorun is enabled on your machine, it will also get infected. Turning off auto run helps in preventing such accidental virus infections.
How to disable autorun in Windows 7
Press Windows key + R to bring up the "Run console". You can also invoke it from Start -> Accessories -> Run menu. Type in "gpedit.msc" without the quotes and press enter.
This will open the Local Group Policy editor. From the left tree menu, expand Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> AutoPlay Policies. Click on AutoPlay Policies as shown below.
From the right side, double click on Turn off Autoplay (or you can right click and select the edit menu). This opens up the following screen,
As shown above, select the "enabled" option and click on apply. It may seem strange, but in Windows 7 you need to enable the disabling of autoplay! Now you no longer need to worry about viruses that automatically gets triggered when you connect a USB pen drive.
How to Run Windows Live Writer on Mac
If there is one software that Microsoft can claim to be exceptional, it is Windows Live Writer. It is the best desktop blogging tool currently available and it is free! So what makes Windows Live Writer so special? Here is a round up of cool features available in Windows Live Writer,
- Almost perfect WYSIWYG blog authoring. Your editor look as if you are writing inside your blog!
- Edit your blog pictures while writing your post. Crop them or apply various styles on them. Embedding pictures in blog posts is super easy!
- Manage multiple blogs at the same time!
- Built in spell checker and an extensible architecture supporting plugins. But the tool itself is so good that I have never used a plugin!
- Best of all Windows Live Writer supports a wide range of blogging platforms (Blogger, WordPress, TypePad etc.)
So for a blogger, Windows Live Writer is the ultimate tool available. Unfortunately it runs only on Windows platform! Now that means the guys who own costly Mac machines doesn’t have a good blogging tool. However there is a way to get Windows Live Writer running on your Mac. The only catch is that you need to buy a license of Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 (which shouldn’t be a problem if you can afford Mac!). Using a virtual machine software you can run Windows inside a Mac machine. Now to use Windows Live Writer, just install it on the Windows running inside the virtual machine!
Running Windows Live Writer on Mac
Step 1 – Download VirtualBox – VirtualBox is virtual machine software(owned by Sun Microsystems earlier and now part of Oracle) which emulates a computer. So it is like a second machine running inside your PC and you can install any operating system inside it. VirtualBox software is available for many operating systems including Mac OS X. You can download the Mac version from here. Install VirtualBox.
Step 2 – Create a Windows Virtual Machine in VirtualBox – Start VirtualBox. From the main screen click on New icon to create a new virtual machine. Choose the guest operating system you want to install (Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7). I would recommend that you install Windows XP since it is cheap and it also requires less memory to run.
Now select the virtual machine memory size based on the Windows version you are installing and also depending on the total RAM you have. For example, if you have total 4GB RAM and you are installing Windows XP, 1GB would be a good choice. Then create a virtual disk. This disk will appear as a normal file with .vdi extension. For Windows XP, I usually give 12GB as the disk size and set it as dynamic so that the space is taken only if needed.
Step 3 – Install Windows on the Virtual Machine – Start the virtual machine you have created from the main menu of VirtualBox. It will prompt you for the boot device. Insert your Windows disk in the DVD drive and select this drive as the boot device. Now install Windows just like you install it in a real machine. The only difference here is that it is getting installed to the virtual disk inside the virtual machine. After installation, the virtual machine will reboot and you will get Windows OS running inside your Mac OS!
Once Windows is running in virtual machine, Click on the Devices -> Install Guest Additions menu from the VirtualBox. This will install a set of drivers onto the Windows. This will give you full integration between Mac and the Windows running on the virtual machine. You can now navigate seamlessly between them and you can even share folders/files between them!
Also keep your Windows installation up to date by enabling and running Windows Update.
Step 4 – Install Windows Live Writer on Guest OS – Now you can easily download and install Windows Live Writer from the Windows running in VirtualBox. Windows Live Writer can be downloaded from here. Now blog your heart out!
The following screenshot shows Windows XP running on Snow Leopard Mac OS.
The same approach can be taken to get Windows Live Writer running on various Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora.
How do I remove Windows Live Search box?
I had recently installed Windows Live Messenger on my pc at work. Along with it came a pesky toolbar addon called Windows Live Search. This gets attached after the URL box and is irritating to say the least. I prefer to use Google and I don’t need a toolbar!
I thought it should be pretty easy to remove Windows Live Search. It turned out that there is no direct option to remove Live Search! What you can do is to change the search provider. But hey! I don’t want a freaking toolbar!
After a bit of google research, I came to know that there is a registry hack to prevent the Windows live search textbar. Open up the regedit and look for the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\InfoDelivery\Restrictions. Sometimes you may see path only up to Microsoft. In that case add the path Internet Explorer\InfoDelivery\Restrictions. Then add a DWORD under Restrictions named NoSearchBox and set its value to 1.
Orkut Privacy – Keep your scrapbook access private
Recently Orkut is focusing more on the privacy options available for its users. They have announced a new feature while allows you to keep Orkut privacy options. This means that now you can ensure that your scraps, videos, feeds and photos are only visible to your friends!
To enable privacy option, go to your profile and click on "settings" link. Then click on "privacy" tab on the right top. Then restrict the access of your videos, scraps etc. to "friends" only.
But why do you need to take this precaution? The reason is this – Internet has shortage of stalkers and criminals. So it is very important that your personal information is kept private. Also ensure that you add only those people whom you know personally as friends. Otherwise turning on privacy will be of no use!
Many people tend to post private information such as email or phone numbers in the scrap. Some even go to the extend of publishing their address in scraps. So it is better to keep the scrapbook private.
How to select the best web hosting service provider?
Consider this scenario. You have been running one or more blogs/sites on free hosting providers such as blogspot. One day you decide to move your sites to a professional Web hosting provider. But the problem is which one to use?
Web hosting is a very competitive business and hence choosing one is not easy. Hosting providers do all kinds of gimmicks to lure you in. They have even gone to the extend of promoting sites which write negative reviews of other service providers! In this post, I will look at the key factors you should consider before purchasing your Web hosting.
Note that Web hosting is different from domain registration. It is possible to register domain somewhere else than the hosting provider. In certain cases it is better and cheaper to register your site with a different company.
1. What is your traffic requirements? – This is something which you must evaluate carefully. Some Web hosts offer terabytes of data transfer per month, while some others offer only a few gigabytes. If your intention is to host a personal blog and you don’t plan to be an A-list blogger, few gigabytes per month is ok. But if you think you may have more than 1000 visitors per day, go with a service which gives you atleast 1 terabyte transfer per month. Another important factor to keep in mind is that this limit includes your uploads, downloads and user access to the site.
2. Do you need shell access? – Not all Web hosts provide shell access. In fact, very few provide shell access. But for certain things, shell access is a must. For example, consider a case where you want to configure your cron settings or sometimes you may want to install custom software on your server. But even when you have shell access, you may not be able to run all the applications. This is because there could be resource usage limits on CPU, memory etc. For example, Dreamhost provides shell access, but Godaddy doesn’t.
3. Dedicated virtual server or shared hosting? – Web hosting comes in different varieties. You can have shared hosting, dedicated virtual server or dedicated physical server. Dedicated physical server means you have a dedicated machine for your site. This gives maximum flexibility, but is very costly as well. Dedicated physical servers are needed when you have large Web applications which are resource intensive. Dedicated virtual server hosting provides a virtual machine which for all practical purposes behaves like a separate machine. This service used to be costly, but these days it is becoming comparable to shared hosting. Dedicated virtual server protects your site from other sites that are running on the hosting providers network. In shared hosting, resources such as memory and CPU are shared with other customers. Hence depending on the behavior of your neighbors, your site may go down!
4. Unlimited Emails, Unlimited Databases, Unlimited Domains? – These days a lot of Web hosts provide unlimited email accounts, databases and domains. For most us, unlimited doesn’t mean much since we probably need a few databases and domains. But before you purchase hosting, do check these. This is important since some of the providers charge you for additional domain hosting!
5. Server uptime requirements? – It is rare that you have 100% uptime for shared hosting. But some providers do achieve over 99.99% of uptime. If your site is critical enought that you can’t have even a minute of downtime, go with a provider who offers 100% uptime. But that is rare and in my opinion, go with a provider who is honest when something goes wrong (for example – dreamhost).
6. Server software requirements? – Some hosts don’t allow custom software installation. In that case ensure that the software they have on their server is what you need! For example, not all hosts provide Ruby on Rails support. It may not be easy to find out the server software versions from the hosting providers site, but take that extra effort to find it out!
7. Stick with direct hosting providers – A lot of Web hosting providers out there are resellers. This means that you get really cheap hosting service at the cost of reduced price. But I don’t recommend it. For example, I have seen 100MB bandwidth per month offered for $3/month. This is not worth it as you soon run out of bandwidth! So my advice is to stick with well known direct Web hosting providers.
8. Server robustness – This is the ability of the hosting server to survive sudden increase in traffic. This is very common when you get noticed at slashdot, digg or reddit. Some servers go down under this traffic, while some don’t. It is not easy to find this out beforehand. Research on the Web hosting providers if you think you might get a lot of attention among social bookmarkers!
Now even after evaluating all these parameters, you might end up with a Web host which is unreliable. In such a case, switch as early as possible and you may even be able to get a refund. This is another important reason why you should register your domain separately with a well known domin registrar (like godaddy or enom).
Also after you have decided on a host, look for deals. Sometimes deals can be found on the homepage, sometimes you will have to hunt for the coupon codes on internet. For example, if you use my coupon WEBSTUFFSCAN when you sign up with Dreamhost, you get a discount of $40!!
Here are some of the good web hosts I am aware of,
Godaddy
DreamHost (Recommended)
Globat
Hostgator
Happy Web Hosting!
how to improve Windows Vista performance – top 10 methods
Last week I wrote a post on how disabling search indexing can boost Windows vista performance. In this I will look at various methods which you can use to drastically Windows Vista performance.
Ok. You just bought your brand new laptop which comes pre-installed with Windows Vista. But unfortunately your new laptop performance looks worse than your pretty old laptop! Is there any way to improve it?
Well, as an operating system, Windows Vista is stable and I think it is just a matter of tuning to get it performing. Before I go into the methods, here is a word of advise. Get your machine atleast 1GB of RAM since Vista is really memory hungry!
1. Remove all junk software from your PC – Most of the online stores (Dell for example) bundle a lot of software when they sell a Windows Vista installed laptop/pc. You don’t need many of these software and hence removing them can substantially boost Windows Vista performance. First thing to do when you get your PC/Laptop is to remove everything except the bare minimum you need!
2. Disable Windows Defender – One of the biggest complaints about Windows operating systems was its vulnerability to viruses. To address this issue, microsoft added a lot of stuff into Vista, essentially making it bloated and cumbersome. Windows Defender is one such feature. If you are a power user who knows what can cause virus infection or security problems you don’t need Windows Defender.
To disable windows defender, go to control panel->administrative tools -> services -> windows defender and stop it. Also change the startup type to manual.
3. Disable UAC (User Access Control) – This is one of the most annoying features. Whenever you click on anything which affects system configuration, a popup comes up asking whether you want the operation to be executed! Of course, I want that, that is why I clicked on it! For a power user this is the first thing to disable.
To disable user access control, go to control panel->user account->turn user account control off.
4. Use ReadyBoost to extend RAM – If you have below 2GB or below, you can use readyboost feature of Vista to improve performance. For this, you will need a high speed USB 2.0 memory stick (flash drive). Vista will use this as an extension to RAM. This improves system performance and also reduces load on harddisk there by extending its lifespan.
5. Reduce graphics and other UI features – Windows Vista by default has a pretty jazzy user interface. If you are a power user, you rarely bother about these UI features. Disabling these features will dramatically reduce load on your processor and memory. This is one method sure to speed up your experience on Windows Vista.
To optimize system configuration for maximum performance, go to control panel->performance information and tools->advanced tools (on the left menu)->adjust the appearance and performance of windows->Select Adjust for best performance radio button and press Apply.
6. Remove unnecessary startup programs – You might have couple of startup programs configured. Remove all the unnecessary programs to reduce startup time and to improve overall system performance. Anti-virus programs are notorious for reducing system performance and increasing harddisk load.
You can check out startup programs using regedit command (use with caution!). Find all the startup programs under computer->HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software->Microsoft->Windows->CurrentVersion->Run. (User can also use Windows Defender for this)
7. Disable unncessary services - Your system might have a lot of services which you may not need. But identifying them may not be very easy. Open up control panel->administrative tools->services and stop/disable services. Some of the services I disabled are Windows Search, Windows Defender, Windows Cardspace etc.
8. Disable Windows Search Indexing – As i have written earlier, disabling Windows Search indexing may improve performance substantially, especially when you have a new system.
9. Monitor tasks running – Monitor your task manager regularly. Look for any processes which hogs memory/processor resource. Also monitor for programs which may be accessing harddisk frequently. Find out the real use of resource intensive processes and if not required, remove them.
10. Buy a new PC/ upgrade RAM – If your system performance is still low, you probably need to buy a new PC to run Windows Vista. Also remember to have atleast 2GB RAM for optimal performance!
Boosting Windows Vista Performance – disable search indexing
I recently bought a new laptop with Windows Vista pre-installed. It is a dell machine and I had to spend around one hour to remove all the junk. This machine has 2GB RAM and surprisingly I saw that the harddisk light is lit almost continuously. My earlier old laptop with Windows XP had much better performance even though it had only 1GB RAM. Also the internet access (using a USB mobile network – Reliance NetConnect) was also much slower in Windows Vista.
I was wondering what the heck is going on! You buy the latest stuff and it appears everything goes back in time. Then I decided to find the real problems behind this performance issue in Windows Vista.
Here is the first important tip. Disable File Search Indexing (which includes processes – SearchProtocolHost, SearchFilterHost and SearchIndexer) in Windows Vista to substantially boost performance. This is a windows service which runs in background always accessing harddisk and network resources. If you disable this, windows search may not be accurate, but that is something I don’t care.
Disbling Windows Search Service is simple. Open up Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Service. Find a service named Windows Search. Stop this service and change its startup type to manual. If you want, you can manually run the service when you are not using your system.
Once I disabled this, I found that harddisk access reduced substantially and also my internet connection was running in top speed.
You can also explore Google Desktop Search which seems to be gentle when it comes to system performance.
Organize multiple mail accounts with Google Mail Fetcher
Gmail is one of the most popular email services out there. In a short time it has overthrown hotmail, yahoo etc. Why did this happen? Simple – Gmail is very user friendly and offers unmatched feature set.
Organizing mails with Gmail is easy. Google provides a couple of features for this.
1. Use filters/labels – I use filtering and labels to organize mails in virtual folders. This way I ensure that only critical mails end up in my inbox.
2. Use POP3 access – You can configure Outlook or other email clients by enabling POP3 access. This is useful when you need offline access to your mails.
3. Use Gmail Mail Fetcher – This is the most useful feature I found. Using this, you can aggregate mails from other sources such as your official mail. For this to work, your mail provider also must support POP3 access.
Gmail mail fetcher can be configured from Settings->Accounts->Get mail from other accounts. Following is a sample screenshot. You need to know the username, password and POP3 server address to configure your external account.
Please note that this is of no use with accounts such as Yahoo mail which doesn’t support POP3 access.
How do I insert Adsense tags inside WordPress posts?
You can easily add Adsense units to a WordPress blog by editing the template files. But the problem with this approach is that you will not get any control on the individual posts. For example, sometimes you may need a referral ad to be inserted in a specific post.
Now if you directly insert Adsense tags in your post, you will find that they are changed to garbage by tinyMCE editor. Even if you turn off tinyMCE, Adsense units won’t work! This is due to the post content processing by filters.
There are numerous Adsense plugins for WordPress available out there which lets you add Adsense units inside a post. But in this post, I will look at a different plugin. It is called “Script Enabler”. This plugin allows you to embedd script tags inside a post by disabling filter processing on script tags. The advantage here is that after enabling this plugin, you can simply copy paste the Adsense ad unit code into your post!
Changing registration information in Windows XP or Vista
It is possible to change the “registered to” information in Windows XP/Vista. This may be required if you typed in something nasty in these fields and then want to change it later. On my machine, registration information looks like the following. You can see this information by pressing Windows key along with break key (Win+break).
To change these values, you need to modify entries in Windows registry. Please be careful while making these changes as any mistake could render your machine unusable!
1. Open registry by typing “regedit” on command prompt.
2. Open folder “My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version”. You will see the following entries on the right side.
3. Double click on the entry to change and type in new values.
4. Close “regedit”. You should see the new values when you take the system properties again (Win+break).
How do I create PDF files in Microsoft Office 2007?
When Office 2007 was initially released it had builtin “Save as PDF” option. But later it was removed from Office 2007 due to legal objection from Adobe. This is strange since other office products such as StarOffice and OpenOffice do have an “export to PDF” option.
Does this mean you have to buy Adobe Acrobat just to convert your office documents to PDF? Acrobat is much more than a document to PDF converter and it costs about $449 for a single user license. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t pay that much money just to convert my document to PDF!
Luckily Microsoft provides “Save as PDF” as a separate download. Download this addon (about 934KB) now as it may not be available in future. Note that like other products, you need to do a “genuine office” validation before download.
Another option to convert your word documents is to use online PDF conversion tools. PDF Online is one such tool which supports formats such as DOC, RTF, PPT, XLS etc. Remember, it is never a good idea to use this for confidential documents!
Dreamhost enables cron jobs on Web panel
Dreamhost is a good hosting service and I have been using it for a while (not this site). One of the cool features of dreamhost account is the ability to create scheduled cron jobs using a shell account. This required a bit of “linux” knowledge like using the command “crontab -e”.
Not anymore! Dreamhost panel now contains an option to setup cron jobs directly. Check out the following screenshot from the Web panel,
But it is not perfect yet. One problem I came across is that the jobs setup using “crontab -e” doesn’t appear on the Web panel.
Adding sitemaps just became easier – enable auto discovery!
It was not long ago that major internet players Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! agreed on a common sitemap protocol. This allowed webmasters to provide an XML file indicating the structure of the Website.
One of the problems with sitemaps was that you needed to submit it to each search engine separately. For Google, this meant creating your own Webmaster tools account and then adding your sitemap XML there. With so many search engines out there it was a chore.
But not anymore! Google, Microsoft, Ask and Yahoo! again joined hands to enable something called auto discovery of sitemaps. You just need to add a reference to the sitemap in robots.txt and all the search engines will automatically pick that up! Now that is what I call a cool idea!
In your robots.txt file, just add
Sitemap: http://www.yousitedomainname.com/sitemap.xml
How to access Myspace or meebo – Help! it is blocked at work / school
One of the frequent mails I get these days are from people asking how to access Myspace when it is blocked by firewall at office or school.
Here is the big disclaimer: If it is blocked, it means that you are not supposed to access the Website. Especially at work, if you use one of the methods listed here and get caught, you might loose your job!
Now admins employ two types for firewall blocks.
The first type actually blocks a fixed set of sites. In this case you can use any proxy sites available on the net and surf. Or you can setup your own proxy by getting a hosting account.
The second type actually blocks sites based on the content it has. Things are pretty hard in such a case since even when you go through the proxy, the content still gets filtered.
Now if you are really desperate, you can checkout my Top 10 ways to access banned Websites. Some recent proxy servers are given in the comments section.
How do I redirect WordPress feed traffic to FeedBurner feed?
You can encourage blog readers to subscribe to the FeedBurner feed by providing auto discovery mechanism and also by providing a linked Feed icon.
But even after modifying auto feed discovery to point to FeedBurner feed, sometimes visitors will still be using the default WordPress feed. This happens when they directly type in the Feed URL or when the feed reader uses the default WordPress feed URL.
Now this is something which you want to discourage. There are mainly two reasons. First, you want to see the actual subscriber count. Secondly, you may want to leverage FeedBurner monetization.
What you need is a WordPress plugin which will redirect default WordPress feed traffic to FeedBurner feed. FeedBurner plugin written by Steve Smith (Ordered List) is the best one I think.
Installation is as simple as copying the plugin and then configuring your FeedBurner feed URL. You can also customize your comment feed URL.