How To Monitor Changes In Your Registry

By monitoring the registry you can see what changes are made when a program is running or is being installed (depending on the program you may even be able to reset trial periods once they expire).

SysInternal’s Regmon is a freeware application that allows you to browse through all the keys in the registry, filtering in a variety of ways to pinpoint specific registry changes. Because you can search and filter, Regmon is also an excellent method for tracking down hard-to-find registry items.

Being able to monitor the registry can also help you catch rootkits, viruses or other spyware. Being able to monitor the registry is very useful.

How To Set A Custom Resolution!

Windows XP allows you to specify a large number of set screen resolutions based on what types of images your display can accept. However, in a few instances, you may want to specify a non-standard resolution.

Instructions

1. Open RegEdit and browse to HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO\ {the address of your primary video card…it often begins with “23A77BF7″}000\

2. The Default Settings.XResolution data value is the horizontal resolution, and the Default Settings.YResolution data value is the vertical. Double-click the Default Settings.XResolution data entry, select the Decimal radio button, and in the Value Data field, enter your desired horizontal resolution. Then do the same with Default Settings.YResolution to change the vertical resolution.

3. Exit RegEdit and reboot your PC.

Force Unresponsive Applications To Close At Shutdown

When it comes to balky PCs, few things annoy us more than the moment when we try to shut down Windows and it tells us it can’t because some crashed application isn’t responding, and that we have to do it ourselves by clicking the End Now button.

This registry hack changes that

1. Launch RegEdit (select Start > Run, type regedit and click OK) and browse to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

2. Find the string called AutoEndTasks. Right-click it, select Modify from the pop-up menu, and change the data value from 0 to 1. (If you can’t find this string, create it by selecting Edit > New > String Value and set the data value to 1.)

3. Close RegEdit and reboot.

There Are Alternatives To RealPlayer & Quicktime

There are alternatives to Realplayer and Quicktime. Real Player boarders on being spyware, there is so much useless software wrapped up along with it. Now users can play both downloaded and streaming tracks, without worrying about the software reporting back on their viewing or listening preferences to Real’s servers. The same goes for Quicktime and all their little tricks as well. There are two programs out there that can play the formats of RP and QT.

Real Alternative
QuickTime Alternative

Remove The Protection On Songs You Download From iTunes

Finally, a way to totally break free of using itunes, read the article below to find out how to remove the protection on the songs you purchased from itunes.

NOTE: You can also download firmware on to your ipod so that it can play mp3s (and play many games like doom,tetris,Gameboy color ect) and enable you to drag and drop songs directly into the ipod without using itunes read here.

Squash the DRM on protected iTunes songs

Sunday, January 28th, 2007 in Hacks

Ok guys, today we’re getting into some juicy stuff.
If you buy music from iTunes then you know how restricted those songs are. You can’t play them in anything but iTunes, you can only play them on up to 5 authorized computers and you essentially can’t play them on anything but an ipod. That just plain sucks. So…

Here’s how you squash the DRM on protected iTunes AAC (m4p) files.

I searched long and hard for this (not really) and after trying a few other solutions that failed miserably I stumbled upon a little program called QTFairUse6 which runs on windows machines and will unprotect your m4p files and update your entire iTunes library with one click. Yes it does work with iTunes 7. Although as far as I know it does not work on macs and thank the lord as far as I know it does not trick iTunes into authorizing a fake virtual machine nor does it require your iTunes password.
One more thing to avoid confusion QTFairUse6 is the name of the program, not the version. It is a port of QTFairUse to iTunes 6 although it works on 7 too. The current version of QTFairUse6 is 2.5.

So ready to get down and dirty (not really.. QTFairUse6 has a nice gui).
1) Download the latest version of QTFairUse6 here
And extract the files wherever you like.
2) Open up the QTFairUse program. For most users the default settings will be fine. If you don’t want to convert all the protected files in your library then select “process just the files I drag into the window” and drag your files.

3) Press convert.
4) The program will not go ahead and unprotect your library (or just the selected files) and update iTunes. It will also back up all your protected files to a backup folder on the desktop so it’s risk free.

You loose no sound quality when yo do this. So it IS better than burning and ripping CD’s (what a waste of time).
Enjoy freely listening to the music you PAID for.

Source

Burn A Video File To DVD With Free Software

No, Nero is not the only solution to burning a video file to DVD. Let’s face it nero is HUGE and if your needs are small and simple Nero isn’t the best choice. There is a free open source piece of software called DVD Flick that can do a lot of the essentials.

Here I will go through the basic process of burning a dvd with DVD Flick

Step 1: Download and install

Step 2: Configure your Project Settings

Click the button labeled Project settings

The General tab: lets you set the size of your target media (i.e., the capacity of your DVD). If you’re burning to a standard DVD-R, you’ll want to keep the default 4.3GB setting. However, you can also set your target size to Dual Layer DVD, Mini-DVD, CD-R, or your own custom target size.

The Video tab: Lets you set the format of your DVD player If you live in North America use NTSC. If you live in Europe or Asia use PAL (If you are lost you can check your DVD players manual to see what format it plays). You can also set the encoding quality in the Encoding profile. If the quality of your authored DVDs isn’t high enough try increasing the quality and check off “Second encoding pass”.

Burning tab: lets you set the options for the output format final product (eg. DVD or ISO image).

Step 3: Split it into Chapters if you want

Step 4:click “Create DVD”

NOTE: This can take quite a few hours so it is best to leave it on overnight.

Best File-Sharing Sites

This is a “living” list (which means it will be updated from time to time) of all the best file-sharing sites such as megaupload,Rapidshare ect. for uploading and storing your files for free to a server.

LAST UPDATED: Feb 7 2007

These are in no particular order

KeepVault 25GB (view post to find out more)
www.box.net 1GB
www.esnips.com 1GB
www.megaupload.com 500MB
www.wikiupload.com 5GB
www.yousendit.com 100MB
www.turboupload.com 70MB
www.sharebigfile.com/ 300MB
www.nitroshare.com 100MB
www.primeupload.com 200MB
www.badongo.com 1GB
www.savefile.com 60MB
www.sendspace.com 300MB
www.fupload.com 500MB
www.rapidshare.com/ 100MB
www.Divshare.com 100MB
www.filefront.com limitless so long as upload takes less then 10 Hours to complete
www.updump.com 150MB

Find Songs By humming the bars…

You can always do searching with google trying to find a song using the lyrics. But with these search engines you can hum the bars or enter in a piece of the song if you managed to record a snippit. I tried it out myself and given the circumstances it is pretty accurate

The Web site Midomi lets you find the name of a song by humming or singing a few bars of the unknown tune.

If Midomi doesn’t work you can always try Humming Search, but Midomi is more feature-rich. Its database of music is user-contributed, meaning that the more popular the site gets, the more potentially accurate the search will become. The website also uses an embedded Java applet that works anywhere as opposed to the Internet Explorer-only ActiveX control of Humming Search.

Fake Torrents Uploaded by the MPAA and RIAA

People may not be aware of this but the MPAA and RIAA trick people into downloading fake files so that they can collect your IP addresses. The laughable thing is that most site admins and PeerGaurdian block these trackers but people are still getting caught. Here’s the article.

How to Find Fake Torrents Uploaded by the MPAA and RIAA
Written by Ernesto on January 28, 2007

The MPAA, RIAA and several anti-piracy organizations are constantly trying to trap people into downloading fake torrents. These torrents are hosted on trackers that are setup to collect IP addresses of all the ‘pirates’ who try to download these files.

To make these traps more visible, Fenopy just introduced the FakeFinder. The FakeFinder lists the most popular fake torrents and the latest fake trackers. It also allows you to search for fake torrents by keyword or infohash.

The actual .torrent links for these fake files are blocked, and FakeFinder serves an informational purpose only. It is actually quite amusing to browse through these fake files and trackers. The companies that host these anti-piracy trackers came up with some interesting hostnames like “dirtydevils.cyberbox.com.br” and “bittorrent.isthebe.st“.

Although most of the IPs of these fake trackers are already blocked by blocklist software like PeerGuardian, they still manage to collect the IP addresses of thousands of users who do fall for this trap. Most torrent site admins are aware of these fakes, and remove them as soon as they are uploaded. It is kind of a paradox. On the one hand anti-piracy organizations send thousands of takedown requests to torrent sites, while they upload fake files with similar titles themselves.

Some might argue that downloading a fake file is not really a criminal offense. And yes, it is doubtful if this evidence will hold up in court. However, the job of organizations like the MPAA is to scare people, and that is often enough for them. The first thing they will probably do is send a letter to your ISP saying that you tried to download so-and-so file. And even if they take it a step further, they try to settle before these things are played out in court.

FakeFinder shows that BitTorrent site admins are trying to track down these fake torrents, and it’s a nice way to expose the darker side of anti-piracy organizations like the MPAA.

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How To Crack Password Protected PDF Documents

There are basically two types of PDF protection – the original PDF creator can either restrict opening the PDF file itself or he can restrict others from modifying, printing or copying text and graphics from the PDF file. Here are a few possible workarounds:

When there are Copying or Printing Restrictions..

Say you want to print a couple of pages from the PDF document but the document settings won’t let you do that.

Open the document in Acrobat Reader or Foxit and capture the PDF page as an image using any free screen capture software. If there are multiple pages, you may try SnagIt since it can autoscroll and capture multiple pages of the document in one-go.

If you want to copy just a portion of text from some PDF page, use a screen capture tool with OCR features (like Kleptomania, Capture Text discussed here)

Alternatively, you can invest in commercial solutions like Advanced PDF Password Recovery from ElcomSoft and PDF Password Remover from Very PDF.

(These utilities may not recover the password for you – they’ll just remove the restrictions from the password protected file)

When there are Document Opening Restrictions..

This is a very tricky case and there’s no straight-forward solution to read PDF documents that are password-protected at the Open level.

The software will use methods like Brute Force, Key Search and Dictionary Attack to guess the password. They will try to use all possible character combinations as the password and so the process might take hours or even days and would really depend on your computer’s processing power.

Advanced PDF Password Recovery Professional edition from ElcomSoft is a recommended option. When (if) the password is found, the program shows it, as well as the number of passwords which have been tested, and the program speed.

Legal Issues: – you maybe surprised to learn that these PDF password cracking software are absolutely legal and Microsoft even awarded ElcomSoft a Gold Certified Partner status.

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