How my handwriting has changed since Kindergarten

 

 

save username password in putty to auto-login

For some versions of Putty it's as simple as:

putty.exe root@example.com -pw mypasswordforexamplecom

For those using Windows, you can simply create a shortcut and pass in those parameters. For example:

1. Create a shortcut on desktop to putty.exe
2. Rename the shortcut to "PuTTY - example.com"
3. Right-click shortcut and choose Properties
4. Modify the target similar to: "C:\Program Files\PuTTY\putty.exe" user@example.com -pw password
5. You can also use IP Address of host in place of domain host name
6. Click OK

Otherwise, you need to use a public key as explained here : "Creating and Copying Your Key-Pair in PuTTY SSH Client".

Find out the mail server without using any 3rd party tool

Myself being a mail/web solution provider, always juggles with various mail related queries. Infact fond of playing with mail servers. With more than 2 years in the EMAIL hosting business, I am ready to take any task related to Web solutions.

As I provide Push Email service(customized EMAIL solutions) to clients ranging from big Corporate and Multi-National Companies, Small retail vendors and even individuals, I've subscribed to various paid service to track down DNS related stuffs. Where i can get an idea whether Name server has been resolved or not. In short i am completely dependent on these 3rd party paid tools for NS, MX, A, CNAME, AAA, SOA, SRV DNS entries.

One late night i was in Sedan with my personal notebook, on the way to home. Suddenly one of my client pinged on BB Msgr, just to know whether his domain has been transferred to managed server or not. As s/he was in worry, of losing corporate mails during downtime. The moment s/he buzzed I switched on the machine, and clicked on small Internet Explorer icon from the taskbar. Unfortunately it got crashed, due to installation of some wrong unstable pluggin in last update. Err!!! As said earlier, it was my personal small notebook, so using Windows with having single default browser IE (which i hate most. Undoubtedly Mozilla Firefox is every open source lover's 1st choice). Now I was in a situation to either tell my client blindly any thing(which i hate), or to find some really good stuff to let my-self know the exact current status of Name server/MX point status.

After putting lots of pressure and stress on me, I succeeded to recall few set of commands, which i had read couple of years earlier in one Hacking journal. This helped me to find out the mail server address for virtually any domain, without using any 3rd party tool. Here it goes(considering your are having Windows OS):

• Open your command prompt (using win+R and type cmd)
• Type nslookup
• The prompt will change to >
• Type set q=mx (for mail exchange)
• Now type any domain name, you wish to find out server address for, e.g: swatantra.info
• Now look for the MX preference lines.
• These are the ones that list the various smtp/esmtp mail server addresses.. higher the preference no you choose the better.. because they'll work smoother..
• Once you get through, say exit to command prompt, to quit.

Huuh, till date i was using paid service.

How To Make Backup Of Your Registry In Windows

Had you ever forget to make the backup of the registry before making some changes in it, which led to system crash? Every time you need to make changes to your registry, you should make a backup as a precaution. Making a backup is very important and helps the user when he wants to restore the changes he made.

Exporting – Making a Backup

In order to backup your registry, follow  these simple steps:

In Windows 7 / Vista: Open Start menu, type regedit in Start Search and click OK.

In Windows XP: Open Start menu, click Run, type regedit and select OK.

In Registry Editor go to the File Menu and select Export.

Under the export range select All.

Put an appropriate file name and save as file type Registration Files(*.reg).

Importing – Restoring the Registry

In Registry Editor go to the File Menu and select Import.

Now select the registry file(backup) that you made(using above procedure) and it will recover your settings that were before you made changes in the registry.

How to Remove Items from the "New" Context menu

Have you noticed that some applications like Antivirus, WinZip, and others, add some items to the context menu when you right-click on a file or folder?

Apart from above, these software install shell extensions to add applications in the right-click context menu. If you delete the appropriate shell extension in the registry, you won’t get these additional menu items.

I am trying to remove the Open Presentation and Open Drawing items from the Right Click "new" menu.

Note: Make sure you have made a proper backup of your Registry. In case you have mistakenly removed the wrong folder, the backup will come handy in restoring the lost folder.

to remove the New OpenDocument Text from the menu, go to Registry Editor:

HK_CLASSES_ROOT > .odt > opendocument.WriterDocument.1

There you will see the ShellNew entry, remove it. After you do it, refresh your desktop and you won't see the New OpenDocument Text entry anymore. Do that for any of the other filetypes you want to remove.

 

Missing New Text Document Option from File or Right Click Menu

I' ve no idea, when this occurred but due to some technical malfunction, or virus issue or might be uninstallation of any text editor; I lost the option to create a New Text Document from the right click menu as well from the File menu of Windows.

As the Context Menu is totally controlled by Registry entries. So I decided to troubleshoot it.

After exploring net few moments, I found lots of ways to restore this and tried almost all of them. Among working ones, few were easy to use I am posting them here.

Option 1 - Download the registry key fix:

• Downlaod the registry fix: notepad.zip and save it to your desktop
• Inside the .zip archive you will find notepad.reg
• Double-click on notepad.reg and select Yes to import the information into your registry
• Log out of the computer and log back in (no need to restart)

Option 2 - Create your own registry fix file:

• Copy everything between the stars ***** into your clipboard.

***** Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt] "Content Type"="text/plain" @="txtfile" "PerceivedType"="text" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt\OpenWithList] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt\PersistentHandler] @="{5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt\shell] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt\shell\open] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt\shell\open\command] @="notepad.exe %1" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt\ShellNew] "NullFile"="" *****

• Click on Start (or Windows Button in Vista)
• Click on Run...
• Enter notepad.exe and hit Enter
• Paste the contents of your clipboard into your notepad document and save it as notepad.reg.  If you haven’t disabled "hiding file extensions" or you don’t know what that is, follow the instructions in Option 1
• Double-click on notepad.reg and select Yes to import the information into your registry
• Log out of the computer and log back in (no need to restart)

Option 3 - Make entries in Registry:

• Click on Start (or Windows Button in Vista)
• Click on Run...
• Enter regedit and hit Enter It will open the editor


• Navigate if the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt\ShellNew\NullFile exists ? (Notice DOT before txt)
• If it doesn`t exist,create it. Just right click in the right hand pane of the ShellNew key,
  and select New/String value, then type: NullFile

Option 4 - Make manual entry for text type from user interface (easiest one):

• I was missing the option from Windows File Toolbar too


• I opened My Computer > Tools > Folder Options > File Types. Windows had lost file associations for TXT files.



• I entered TXT in the File Extension field opted Text Document as Associated File Type and clicked OK.  

how to change autosearch default site

type regedit from start > Run and go to
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl]

find the string value "provider" and change the value to
"provider"="google" or value data to http://www.google.com/search?q=%s

Remove unwanted entries from the Right Click menu

A context menu is the little menu which pops up when you right click on files, folders or icons. e.g., right click on a desktop icon and if you have Anti-virus installed it will have 'Scan with ... Anti-virus' as a choice. The first step to getting rid of these entries involves opening the programs in question and looking through their options to see if you can unselect any 'integration' or 'context menu' options they have. If that fails, and the program absolutely insists on being an intimate part of your Windows, you can edit the registry as follows:

1. Before we make any changes in the registry, and even though you should have a full System Restore and/or Registry backup already, back up the registry keys which will be affected in this tweak:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder]

2. Do this by opening Regedit, find the relevant sub-folder, right-click on it and select Export. Make sure the "Selected Branch" option is selected under Export Range, then enter a descriptive name and save it somewhere safe. Do that for each one of the four sub-folders above. If anything goes wrong, instead of firing up System Restore or restoring the entire registry you can double-click on these files and everything is quickly fixed.

3. Now, go to the following sub-folders and delete references to programs you know have set up offending context menu entries. For example, in my system under [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers] I found the key Symantec.Norton.Antivirus.IEContextMenu which I deleted. The first volley in the war against the invasion of my menus by Symantec. Here are all the places you should look in:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\OpenWithList]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers] 4. As you're removing all the unwanted program entries, you should see the effects immediately - no reboot required. Remove an entry from the [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers] subfolder for example and open Explorer, then right click on your hard drive name and you should see the corresponding program you removed in the registry is gone from the context menu too. When you're done, you should see the default context menus devoid of the added rubbish. If any of the programs whose context menu entries you've removed start displaying strange behaviour, restore the registry entries you backed up previously, or just reinstall the program. As long as you only delete program entries and none of the default Windows entries, all the normal context menu items will still remain.

What is svchost.exe

I always wonder why on earth there are nearly a ton processes running with the name svchost.exe. What are they?

What Is It?

According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe(Generic Host Process for Win32 Services) is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. It cannot be stopped or restarted manually. This process manages 32-bit DLLs and other services. At startup, Svchost.exe checks the services portion of the registry and constructs a list of services that it needs to load. Under normal conditions, multiple instances of Svchost.exe will be running simultaneously.

Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability… but the problem is that you can’t launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born.

Svchost.exe groups are identified in the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Svchost

Why there are so many svchost.exes Running?

If you’ve ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows… so they are separated out.

Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.

What Can I Do About It?

You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don’t absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.

The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe instance… we’ll cover that below.

If you are curious what we’re talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the “Show processes from all users” box:

Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP Pro)

If you want to see what services are being hosted by a particular svchost.exe instance, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt in order to see the list of services.

   tasklist /SVC

The problem with using the command line method is that you don’t necessarily know what these cryptic names refer to.

Checking in Task Manager in Vista

You can right-click on a particular svchost.exe process, and then choose the “Go to Service” option.

This will flip over to the Services tab, where the services running under that svchost.exe process will be selected:

The great thing about doing it this way is that you can see the real name under the Description column, so you can choose to disable the service if you don’t want it running.

Using Process Explorer in Vista or XP

You can use the excellent Process Explorer utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals to see what services are running as a part of a svchost.exe process.

Hovering your mouse over one of the processes will show you a popup list of all the services:

Or you can double-click on a svchost.exe instance and select the Services tab, where you can choose to stop one of the services if you choose.

Disabling Services

Open up Services from the administrative tools section of Control Panel, or type services.msc into the start menu search or run box.

Find the service in the list that you’d like to disable, and either double-click on it or right-click and choose Properties.

Change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to immediately stop it.

You could also use the command prompt to disable the service if you choose. In this command “trkwks” is the Service name from the above dialog, but if you go back to the tasklist command at the beginning of this article you’ll notice you can find it there as well.

   sc config trkwks start= disabled

How to Move Scrollbar from Right to Left in Mozilla Firefox

By default Mozilla Firefox shows the scrollbar on the right side. While left-handers want to show the scrollbar on their left side.
I'll show you a way to move the scrollbar from Right to Left in Mozilla Firefox as shown in following screenshot: Go step by step:

1. Open firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll confirm, click on I’ll be careful, I promise! button.
2. Now type layout.scrollbar.side in the Filter box. It’ll show a single entry “layout.scrollbar.side” in the results window.
   
3. Either double-click on this entry or right-click on it and select “Modify“. Now change its value to 3
   
4. That's it. Now Firefox will always show the scrollbar on left of the screen.
N.B : If your OS language is viewed right to left, then the scrollbar will be shown on left of screen. So if you want to show it on right of screen, then change value to 2 instead of 3 in Step 3.

How to make CON folder in Windows

It was the most discussed topic I ever heard about windows.

There were lots of discussions, gossips, bets and tons of mails roaming around about "Creation of CON folder on windows OS"

I'll give you very simple one liner command to create the same.

Step 1: go to command prompt (Start > Run type cmd and enter, short key Win+R)

Step 2 : you'll get any path and prompt where cursor was blinking. Write cd\

Step 3 : type in mkdir \\.\c:\con

Step 4: you can check in cmd prompt by dir \\.\c:\con

Step 5 : delete the folder by rmdir \\.\c:\con

CON is reserved name in windows, that's the reason you neither can create nor delete the con folder using normal procedure. You have to have these smart tips to do so.

This is applicable with all the following names: CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, LPT9

Reason : these are window's inbuilt 'Reserved Device Names'

How to Enable - Disable USB Port

To disable the access to USB port, in windows XP and 2000, follow the steps below
1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate, and then click the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor

4. In the right pane, double-click Start.
5. In the Value data box, type 4, click Hexadecimal (if it is not already selected), and then click OK.
6. Quit Registry Editor.

To re-enable a disabled port, follow these steps below

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate, and then click the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor

4. In the right pane, double-click Start.
5. In the Value data box, type 3, click Hexadecimal (if it is not already selected), and then click OK.
6. Quit Registry Editor.

Always Show SideBar in Mozilla

In Firefox, the vertical scrollbar disappears when content fits inside the viewport. This makes several layout types shift position, typically by 10 to 20 pixels.

You can make the vertical scrollbar visible all the time. Read the instructions below:

Always Visible Scrollbar

like Internet Explorer.

1. Open the HTML Editor/ Text Editor or Notepad

2. Copy & Paste following code snippet

   :root { overflow-y: scroll !important; }

3. Save this file with name userContent.css in following path

C:\Documents and Settings\[Windows Login Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[profile name (random string of 8 letters, a dot (.) followed by some more letters)]\chrome\

4. Restart Firefox

IP Addresses

To keep all of these machines straight, each machine on the Internet is assigned a unique address called an IP address. IP stands for Internet protocol, and these addresses are 32-bit numbers, normally expressed as four "octets" in a "dotted decimal number." A typical IP address looks like this:

216.27.61.137

The four numbers in an IP address are called octets because they can have values between 0 and 255, which is 2^8 possibilities per octet.

Every machine on the Internet has a unique IP address. A server has a static IP address that does not change very often. A home machine that is dialing up through a modem often has an IP address that is assigned by the ISP when the machine dials in. That IP address is unique for that session -- it may be different the next time the machine dials in. This way, an ISP only needs one IP address for each modem it supports, rather than for each customer.

If you are working on a Windows machine, you can view a lot of the Internet information for your machine, including your current IP address and hostname, with the command WINIPCFG.EXE (IPCONFIG.EXE for Windows 2000/XP). On a UNIX machine, type nslookup at the command prompt, along with a machine name, like www.howstuffworks.com -- e.g. "nslookup www.howstuffworks.com" -- to display the IP address of the machine, and you can use the command hostname to learn the name of your machine.

As far as the Internet's machines are concerned, an IP address is all you need to talk to a server. For example, in your browser, you can type the URL http://209.116.69.66 and arrive at the machine that contains the Web server for HowStuffWorks. On some servers, the IP address alone is not sufficient, but on most large servers it is -- keep reading for details.

Screw SmartFTP, Filezilla, CuteFTP! ... You don't need them!

Here's a little known *secret* way to replace all those FTP programs.

Go to Start > My Computer.

on the Address field type: "ftp://YOURUSERNAME@ftp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD" hit enter.

e.g. ftp://username@ftp.example.com

You should get a pop up.

Enter Your Password and click Log On.

You should now have access to all the files on your server! Just like an FTP program! You can upload files to it.

 

It is actually built into Windows explorer and when IE detects the FTP protocol it jumps over to windows explorer. The FTP client built into windows is actually fairly limited but it is pretty useful for a quick transfer when you do not have access to a FTP client.

However, Windows explorer does not support all FTP servers. If you use FireFox you can actually get a cool little plugin called FireFTP which I use a lot and like FileZilla it's 100% free and can import your Filezilla profiles.

Smart FTP is a very cool FTP client but no longer free, FileZilla is good but a little limited. My personal preference is CuteFTP Pro. For those who want a convenient browser based FTP client FireFTP is pretty handy.

How to block/unblock a website on your computer

If you would like to block/unblock a website from being viewed on your Windows computer, follow these steps:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

First backup thehosts file. Open hosts file with notepad. At the end of the line you can see as per below.

127.0.0.1       localhost

Append the following line at the end

127.0.0.1       BlockSitename.com

# replace the BlockSitename.com with the site name that you want to block.

then go to Start->Run-> type ipconfig /flushdns

Note: That will only stop the domain name to go to the website but if you know the IP address of the site from DnsStuff or NetworkTools then you can browse the site.

Toshiba Laptop BIOS Recovery

Toshiba laptops aren’t like most laptops where you can remove the BIOS battery and let it sit for a few hours to reset the BIOS. So what do you do? There are three forms of BIOS password removal being used currently by Toshiba:

1. Parallel port wraparound connector
2. Shorting a jumper, with power and with no power
3. Challenge/Response code

Method 1. Printer Dongle Method:

Works with Portege, Satellite, Satellite Pro, Tecra and Libretto Laptops of the following model numbers :
100(1xx) 200(2xx) 300(3xx) 400(4xx) 500(5xx) 600(6xx) 700(7xx) 1000(1xxx) 2000(2xxx) 3000(3xxx) 4000(4xxx) 7000(7xxx) 8000(8xxx)
(A15-S 127) (1415-S 173) SERIES & Some DVD Models
The “xxx” above means that each x can be any number, i.e. 1xx could be 101, 103, 111, 112 etc.

• First cut a plug from an old DB25 printer cable, and open the casing of the plug. This is how the pins look:


• Now connect:
o Pin 1 to Pin 5 and to Pin 10 ( go from 1 to 5 and from 5 to 10)
o Pin 2 to 11
o Pin 3 to 17
o Pin 4 to 12
o Pin 6 to 16
o Pin 7 to 13
o Pin 8 to 14
o Pin 9 to 15
o Pin 18 to 25

It should look something like this:

Plug it in and bootup

METHOD 2. Shorting a jumper:

In order to clear a BIOS of Compal manufactured units you need to use the NO POWER method, units manufactured by Inventec need to be to be POWERED ON to rest the BIOS.

To reset Compal units:

1. Turn off the POWER
2. Remove the battery and power cord
3. Peel back any black mylar (if any) covering the jumper
4. Using a flat screwdriver, short the jumper by connecting the two jumper points
5. Reset the computer and verify the BIOS has been reset, if not then repeat steps

Inventec units can skip steps 1 and 2

METHOD 3. Challenge/Response Code:

The challenge/response code method consists of matching a Challenge code ( power the machine up,press ctrl,then tab,then ctrl, then enter) generated on your machine and matching a Response code generated by Toshiba and calling a Toshiba Tech Support Agent.