Best Computer Solution

To some, it may appear that computer technicians speak a different language then english. Really, all we do is abbreviate words into letters so they are easier to say and type.

Some technicians even go as far as having a friendly (ego) competition with other technicians. Who knows the most abbreviations is the smartest technician (No joke!).

In this post you can find many of the common abbreviations that most IT technicians use.

RAM = Random Access Memory
This is what your computer uses to store all the data that it requires fast, such as what’s currently being displayed on your screen, or what you are typing into a text document, to what programs you are currently running.

HDD = Hard Disk Drive
A Hard Disk Drive (Sometimes known as a Hard Drive) is where your computer’s long term memory is. This is where all your files are saved.

TCP/IP = Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol are both separate entities. They however make the internet work. TCP is used in making sure data gets to a location properly and intact. It is what checks to make sure the data arrives correct also. IP is really your machines “Address” to where TCP should send the data. All IP addresses should be unique within a network. A common example of an IP address is 192.168.1.1

DNS = Domain Name Server
Domain Name Servers are a real beauty! They are what translates english (domain names) into IP addresses (Computer Language). For example, DNSs will translate http://www.google.com (What we remember) into 209.85.171.100 (What computers know).

DHCP = Dynamic Host Control Protocol.
A DHCP server is a computer that hands out IP address to other computers. This computer makes sure that no 2 computers have the same IP address.

CPU = Central Processing Unit
The CPU is no doubt the brain of the computer. This is where all the calculations, computations and processing occurs inside your computer.

VM = Virtual Memory.
Virtual Memory acts the same as the RAM, except Virtual Memory is stored on the hard drive also.

GFX = Graphics Card
The graphics card is what is used to display all the information on the screen. For video rendering and gaming, it is also where additional data is stored (Such as 3D objects).

BIOS = Basic Input Output System
If the CPU is the brain of your computer, this is definitely the heart. The BIOS is what controls all the data from your keyboard, mouse, screen, HDD - everything about your computer and converts it into digital signals.

POST = Power On Self Test
This is all those funny beeps and burps your computer does when you first turn it on. Your computer is checking to make sure everything is intact and working correctly before it proceeds to load up the operating system.

ADSL (DSL) = Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
This is the way the internet is sent across telephone lines. It uses extremely high frequency (Too high for humans to hear) to get the best broad rate.

FTP = File Transfer Protocol
This is just a fancy way of saying “copying files”. FTP is responsible for transferring say picture files from your home computer, to a website you may have. FTP supports all files types.

HTTP = Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
This is responsible for transmitting HTML (Webpages) to your browser when on the internet. It can also transfer pictures, songs and other file types.

ISP = Internet Service Provider
These guys provide the internet for you!

LAN = Local Area Network
Every computer that is on the same network as you is in your “LAN”, by “local network” it means no routing has to happen to communicate to the remote computer.

WAN = Wide Area Network
The internet is a perfect example of a WAN. A WAN is many networks placed together.

OS = Operating System
Windows is an operating system.

This of course is not every possible acronym. Some may disagree with the way I have explained these too! But that’s ok =), that’s what comments are for!

Popularity: 21% [?]

Posted under General, Tips

Regular Users

Tend to sometimes get the “Error Code 5: Access Is Denied“, or the “Requested operation requires elevation” when using command prompt in Vista.

Command Prompt

There’s an easy way around this however!

Step 1:

Find Command Prompt in your start menu directory (Usually Start>>All Programs>> Accessories>>Command Prompt) and Right Click on it…

Step 2:

Click “Run as Administrator” in the menu. Command Prompt should open up normally, but when you try the same command again, it should work fine!

Running

If you aren’t the Administrator for the computer (You don’t have Administrator rights), then you may have to enter the Administrator’s passwordfor this to be successful.

Popularity: 44% [?]

Posted under General, Security, Tips, Tutorials

So many programs huh?

Don’t you find it annoying when starting your computer up when you have about 10 billion programs all fighting for existence at once. This really slows down your computer’s startup time. How many of those programs will you honestly need running when you’re using your computer any way? Some of the most notorious programs for doing this (Just off the top of my head) are:

* Nero
* iTunes
* Toshiba/Acer “Smart” tabs.
* Webcam applications
* Printer Applications.

Really, it is not important what the names of the programs are. Believe me when I say there are many more then that small list. What i’m trying to say here is why would any one that doesn’t burn CDs all the time require Nero to be started up above system startup? It’s just stupid and wastes alot of time and system resources.

Of course most of these “Start With Windows” options can be found somewhere in the options in the various programs. I often find it hard to dig through the options menu, with each application trying to make their software more “user friendly”.

Fortunately, there is a centralized place to do this to practically all programs that startup with windows.

This is not where all startup programs are launched from. There’s about 8 different places to launch programs on startup from, which will be explained in another post. For now, we’ll deal with the most common.

Read on to find out how to do this!

So you want to stop them…

Step 1:

Click Start and then click “Run“. type in “msconfig” into the text field.

Step 2:

You will see various options. I strongly suggest that you don’t change any of these, instead click on the Start Up tab. That will display a list of programs that are currently being launched when you start windows.

Step 2

All that you have to do here is untick the programs that you don’t want to start up when windows boots up. Click “OK” once you have made your selection.

Step 3:

Once you’ve closed everything down, you will more then likely be prompted with this dialog box:

Step 3

It is up to you wether you restart your computer then and there or not. I personally would just leave it and not worry about it any more!

Step 4:

If you got the message from step 3, then you will more then likely recieve this message after you have rebooted your computer:

Step 4

Make sure that you click the “Don’t show this message or launch the System Configuration Utility when Windows starts“, unless you want it to show up each time.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Posted under General, Tutorials

Wouldn’t it be nice of just opening up a file and being able to ee your IP address, subnet mask and all that? Well you can do this now!

Step 1:

Click the start menu and open up “Run”, Vista users can just type “Run” into the search field.

Step 2:

Just simply type “cmd /k ipconfig“.

That’s it!

It will then open up command prompt and execute the ipconfig command.

You can also make this as a shortcut, or as a batch file. Just copy paste this into a text document and make its file extension a .bat and double click it. That will do the same as typing it into run!

Popularity: 65% [?]

Posted under Automation, General, Tips, Tutorials

Some people at the Security and Cryptography Lab at Switzerland’s EPFL have managed to capture the EMF (Electro-Magnetic Radiation) comming from wired computer keyboard. OK, we all know that if we used a wireless keyboard that any old FBI Agent - or hacker could easily catpure the signals being transmitted by the keyboard. But now they have figured out how to capture the pressed keys from a wired keyboard.

What next? They’ll be able to see what I’m doing on my screen too? It’s not that far fetched.

The tests were run in a fairly EMF free zone (There were no other devices around such as monitors, mobiles and other devices that give off strong electromagnetic waves), they were also, but the looks of it were using a unidirectional antenna (A “Tunnel Vision” antenna).

The expirement was tested on laptops with the embedded keyboards, and external USB/PS2 keyboards. They have so far managed to work out 4 different ways to grab our data fom a range of approximately 20 meters.

I believe this is just the start of this sort of technology. Hmmm… this gives me even more of a reason to live inside a faraday cage…

Below is a screenshot of the working software from the video:

Eavesdropper Software

Here’s a picture of one of the larger antenna’s used:

Antenna

There are some videos on this site about this.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Posted under General, Security

Well, there’s no reason why you’d really want to do this, unless you were up to no good, or are a security engineer. But we don’t agree that knowledge is bad, we agree that the people that use it for wrong are the ones to blame =).

So if you will do bad or break the law by reading the following, then it is entirely your own fault! We take no blame.

Any way, what this exploit does is allow any user (Including the Guest account) to get logged on as the SYSTEM account. The SYSTEM account is above even administrator. Once in you can change passwords, see all files etc etc. The problem with this is that it only works on XP, it has been fixed for Vista.

All that you will need for this exploit is access to command prompt (Or really, to execute commands, which can be done easily), and access to the at command.

Now, for the record, I’m logged on as “Administrator” for this tutorial.

Logged on as

Step 1:

Click “Start” >> “Run“.

Step 1

Step 2:

In the Run command Textbox, type “cmd” to bring up the Command Prompt window.

Step 2

Step 3:

In the Command Prompt window type:

at time /interactive “cmd.exe”

Where time is the time plus one minute. So in my example the time is 4:16PM, I typed into the Command Prompt Window:

at 4:17PM /interactive “cmd.exe”

Since 4:17PM is one minute after 4:16PM.

Step 3:

If you get the error “Access is denied” then you’re out of luck. The network administrator has disabled the at command.

Step 4:

Close Command Prompt and wait…

…

When the time that you set has come, you will see another Command Prompt Window come up.

You will notice that the title is no longer “c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe” but instead “c:\windows\system32/svchost.exe“.

This is good!

Step 4

If it hasn’t come up then go back to step 1.

Step 5:

Almost there, this is the fun bit!

Without closing the new Command Prompt window, press Ctrl+Alt+Del and bring up task manager.

In the processes tab you will see a process called “explorer.exe“. Right-Click that and select “End Process Tree” from the menu.

Step 5

Everything should now dispear, including the start bar, everything! Except for one thing… The Command Prompt window.

Step 6:

Simply type “explorer.exe” into the Command Prompt window and press enter. The start bar, and everything else should return.

Step 6

Step 7:

Once everything has come up, click on “Start“. You will notice something very awesome…

Step 7

You are logged on as SYSTEM! You have full system rights too (To that local computer).

Enjoy!

Popularity: 31% [?]

Posted under Hacking, Security, Tutorials

After using Windows XP for who knows how many years, many of us computer users are used to just clicking on Start then Run.

This is not the case in Windows Vista though. We can only speculate why Microsoft took it out by default.

Sure, you can type “Run” into the search field in the start menu… but who seriously can take the time of day to do that? That’s extra work, and extra work is something we don’t agree with.

There’s a few short steps you can follow to get the Run menu back to where it belongs.

Step 1:

Right click on the start icon and select “Properties” from the list.

Step 1

Step 2:

In the “Start Menu” tab click on the customize button.

Step 2

Step 3:

In the new window that pops up, scroll down until you see the checkbox “Run“. Simply tick it, then click “OK” on all open windows.

Step 3

Step 4:

Press start and have a look at your new Run menu =).

Popularity: 29% [?]

Posted under General, Tutorials

Have you ever forgotten the password to one of the accounts on your computer? You wish there was some way to get back into it to get back all your files and settings?

Well you’re in luck today!

Just follow these steps, and you’ll be back in in no time:

Step 1:

Click the start menu and open up “Run”, Vista users can just type “Run” into the search field.

Step 1

This will open up command prompt.

Step 2:

To get a list of the users currently on your computer just type “net users” into the command prompt screen.

Step 2

Or in my case:

Step 3:

From here you can change the password easily. Here’s an example:

net user administrator *
net user “John Doe” *

Or in my case:
net user “Slyke” *

Step 3

You will be asked to enter in your password twice.

You won’t be able to see what you’re typing (Not even the password mask stars come up). So make sure you get it right, twice.

Step 4:

Here’s a screen shot of what it will look like if you’ve done everything correctly:

Step 4

Step 5:

Logoff and then try to login with the account that you just changed the password for!

Popularity: 59% [?]

Posted under Hacking, Security, Tutorials

So your the only user on your computer and you want to have the security of your own password, but you don’t want to have to wait for all your startup programs to launch when you first boot up. You wish there was just some way to have your computer startup, load all your programs, but be secure so that it does it all in the background of the login screen and you don’t have to wait for it.

Paying something like $50 for a program such as Tweak UI is just out of the question, wouldn’t you agree? Well, luckily for you, you can do this for free! Just follow the next couple of steps in this post and you will have your dream in no time.

Lets get started!

Step 1:

Go to your desktop and right-click any where that has no file, so that it brings up the default right-click menu.

Select “New” from the menu, then select “Shortcut“. “Shortcut” is located just under “Folder“.

Step 1

Step 2:

Windows will now ask you to specify the location for the shortcut.

Copy and paste the following into the location. If you wish to type it, please note that it is cAsE SeNsItIvE.

%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation

Make sure there are no trailing spaces at the beginning or end of the line.

Step 2

Click “Next” to continue”

Step 3:

Change the default name for your shortcut from “rundll32.exe” to anything that you want. I called mine “Lock“.

Step 3

Then click “Finish“.

Step 4:

Now double click on your newly created shortcut and it should lock your computer. It will not log you off.

Just type your password back in on the logon screen and you will see! If it comes up with an error, then delete the shortcut and go back to Step 3.

Step 5:

Right-click on your shortcut and select “Cut” from the menu.

Step 6:

Click on the start menu and then go to “All Programs“. Find a folder in there called “Startup“, right-click on it and select “Open“.

Step 6

Step 7:

Now, right-click any where in the “Startup” folder and select paste. You will see your shortcut be placed in there.

Step 8:

Click on the “Start” menu and select “Run“.

Vista Users can type “Run” into the search field in the start menu if it isn’t present.

Step 9:

OK, so, if you’re using Windows XP you have to type “control userpasswords2” as the run command and click “OK”

Step 9

Vista users do the same:

Step 9, Vista

If the security window comes up in Vista, just click “Continue“.

Step 10:

You will see a window come up called “User Accounts“.

Uncheck the tick box that says “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer“.

Then click “Apply“.

You will be asked to enter in the password twice for your username.

Enter your password and click “OK“.

Step 10

Click “OK” again on the user accounts screen.

Step 11:

That’s it! You’re done! If you want to test this, restart your computer. You will see it load up, then it will bypass the logon screen, loggin you on, then it will lock your computer still loading up all your startup programs!

Popularity: 69% [?]

Posted under Automation, Security

Why Defrag?

When you defrag your hard drive, it puts all of the pieces needed to run your programs in a close proximity to each other. When you delete programs on your hard drive, you can leave empty spaces where data of the program or file were inserted during its life on your computer. When you install a program, the computer seeks out the first available cell to place the data. The computer could be saving the data at the beginning, middle and/or end of your hard drive. This forces your hard drive to hunt all over the place when trying to access all the data for the program and putting them together to run your application. When you defrag your machine, all the program’s pieces will be moved so that they are all in a sequence. Your hard drive will run more efficiently when access program.

How to defrag?

OK, so, I’ve convinced you that you wish to degfrag? Well follow these basic steps, and your computer will be defragged in no time!

Step 1:

Click “Start” and Navigate to “Control Panel“.

Step 1

Step 2:

Find “Administration tools” and open it.

Step 2

Step 3:

Double Click on “Computer Management“. Once the computer manager is open, select “Disk Management” from under the “Storage” section in the left pane.

Step 3

Step 4:

Right click on “Disk 0” in the bottom middle pain and select “Properties” from the list. You will see the properties window for “Disk 0” shot up. Please note that “Disk 0” is the hard drive that Windows boots off. You can defrag any hard drive you want.

Step 4

Step 5:

Select the “Tools” tab and then press “Defrag Now“.

Step 5

Windows Vista users may experience the following message:

Step 5, message

If this is the case, just click “Defragment Now” and proceed to step 6.

Step 6:

Vista Users:

Vista users simply have to tick the hard drives that they want defragged, then press ok.

The defragmentation will run in the background and you will be notified when it has been completed.

Windows XP:

Windows Xp Users just have to press the “Defragment” button.

Step 7:

Go make yourself a coffee and eat scons now! Depending on the size of your drive, the fragmentation severity and the last time you defragmented your hard drive, it could take between 10 minutes to several hours.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Posted under Computer Maintenance