Use RAM Wisely Part 2

Continuing from previous post, in this post will provide you some general advices for making better use of RAM. Now you've might have learned how to use Task Manager efficiently. Here are some additional tweaks for you :

Reduce the number of colors :

The 32-bit color scheme in takes up a great deal of memory than 24-bit color scheme or 16-bit color scheme. People using computers for only primary business purpose and applications such as word processors and spreadsheets, you most likely won't notice a different between 16-bit and 32-bit color, so going with 16-bit color is a good idea. To change color depth , just right click anywhere on the desktop, click Options. And in the Settings tab , modify the value of Quality drop down box to 16 or 24-bit color value.

Reduce the number of desktop icons :

Remember every icon on your desktop uses up memory. So deleting unused icons on the desktop is a good idea. Run the Clean Desktop Wizard, which will automatically delete icons that you don't regularly use. Right-click on the Desktop and choose Properties, click Desktop, then click Customize Desktop and finally click Clean Desktop Now.

Adjust For Best Performance :

A quick setting that can dramatically increase your desktop's speed is to go for best performance option. You can set this option by right clicking your My Computer then Properties. Then click advanced tab and then Performance Settings. Select "Adjust For Best Performance" under Visual Settings.

Turn Off Unnecessary Services in Windows :

Turning off unnecessary services in Windows XP can greatly reduce your exploit risk, while improving system performance. Unnecessary services just take up a great deal of RAM and decrease system performance. Here is a quick way how to turn off any service in Windows XP. Goto Start and then Run . Type services.msc . You will see a window consisting of various services running in your system. To disable any service, just right click the service name, select Properties and Click Disabled under Startup Type option. Various services which are disabled on my system are :

Alerter
Application Layer Gateway Service
Error Reporting Service
Help and Support
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing

Note: Consult this list for more details.

Conclusion :

Therefore we see that instead of buying more RAM, we can efficiently use the RAM we have. We just need to optimize our system for that. Follow some tips and tricks, we can get the system back on track.

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Use RAM Wisely Part 1

Better use of RAM is the only way to improve system performance. You should try these set of tips before you buy more RAM.

Except money, RAM is the only thing which you always want more. No matter how much memory you have, you could always use more. The quickest way to better XP performance is to install more RAM.

But you can speed up XP by making better use of the RAM you already have in your desktop. Let's look at some of the possible hacks we could use for our purpose.

Make Better Use of Your Memory with the Task Manager

One of the major area for which memory is used is paging. A certain amount of this is normal, but if you use a paging file too much, or if even your paging file can't handle the memory load, you'll run into system slowdowns and problems.

The best way to monitor your memory performance is by the Task Manager's Performance tab. To run the Task Manager, press Ctrl+Alt+Delete, then click on the Performance tab.

Charts that report on paging file use and the tabular material below it are the most important parts. They give you the detailed view of the current usage of your memory.

Here's how to use the information on the tab to make better use of RAM:

If the Total Commit Charge exceeds the Total Physical Memory, you probably need more RAM. When the Commit Charge is regularly higher than the Physical Memory available, it means that you have to regularly use a Page File, which slows your system down. Buy more RAM; it will boost system performance. The best option for you.

Before running a memory-intensive application, use the Processes Tab to identify memory-hogging applications, and close them down. The Processes tab of the Task Manager lists every process and program in use and shows the total amount of memory each uses. Click twice on the Memory Usage heading on the tab to reorder the list of programs and processes so that those that require most memory show up at the top. Close down programs that you don't really need before running a memory-intensive application.

If the Peak Commit Charge is frequently at or near the Limit Commit Charge, you need to increase your memory. When this occurs, it means that your PC is frequently out of memory or close to being out of memory. Either add RAM or increase your Page File size.

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HOWTO : Rapidshare to Rapidshare Remote Upload

Some days ago, I posted notification about the changes Rapidshare had implemented in its point system. Those who are unaware of it might read it here.

On the morning of 16th July, I got information from my friend Siddharth that he had phished some Rapidshare accounts. He gave me one account to try with. I just logged on to Rapidshare.com using premium account and saw the site from the premium accounts' eyes for the first time. I checked if there were any points left in the account so that I can extend it. There were already 8000 points in it. The account was about to expire, so I decided to see if I can find any exploit in the premium service of Rapidshare.

I saw that they give you points if a premium user download your files which is greater than 3 mb.

Subject to the condition is that the file is at least 3 Megabyte in size and the downloader has generated not more than 3 RapidPoints in the last hours. Premium users can generate for you up to 255 points per day.

Now the funny point is they didn't mentioned which premium user. That premium user can be me itself downloading my own files and then extending my account when I reach 10K mark. But for that I have to download a 3mb file 255 times a day !!!!

Now that would really create a mess of my internet connection.

Then I decided to trick Rapidshare server. I checked other features of Rapidshare account and came across a wonderful (and seriously exploitable) service called "Remote Upload".

Why not use Rapidshare's this feature to download my own files? Rapidshare does not log from where the file is being downloaded. I just checked to see if this was really working.

I copied a url from my own account, put my premium account user id and password in the form :

http://userid:password@rapidshare.com/files/xxxxxxxx

I feeded into the remote upload box the above url. Just as I pushed "Add", an alert told me that I cannot add a Rapidshare url.

Please do not add RapidShare URLs. Remote Upload cannot be used for RapidShare links.

So Rapidshare didn't allow remote uploads if the file belongs to their own server. But I was not at ease at any moment. I just fired http://tinyurl.com and wrapped my rapidshare url using the tinyurl service. I again feeded the url to Rapidshare remote upload service and bingo!!!!!!!. It worked this time. Rapidshare downloading my own files and also giving me points for. Yeah !!!!

So you can see that Rapidshare programmers are dumb enough that they made such silly mistakes that even a n00b can exploit.

You must try this tweak before Rapidshare catches it.!!!!!!!

Update : Rapidshare has banned all such methods of Remote Upload.

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BitTorrent - Make Your Machine A Torrent Tracker

One of my friend referred me to an article where I was amazed to see the power of P2P model. The title of article revealed itself to me.

"Dropping 22TB of patches on 6,500 PCs in 4 hours: BitTorrent"

What they did was to use bittorrent to deploy the patches. By this, there was no need of buying more servers nor there was any need felt to increase the bandwidth.

Therefore this article is dedicated on how make your own machine a BitTorrent Tracker.

Server :

The server will consist of Ubuntu with all the typical applications of LAMP. We need to have Apache with MySql and PHP so that we can install a tracker such as phpMyBittorrent on it. Though the installtion can also be done on any Windows machine, still I would recemmond you to install Ubuntu.

In the tracker software, I would create several different categories based on the target systems that I would use. For example, there would be Windows XP, Windows Vista, Office 2007, etc. categories. Each category would have its own RSS feed.

Main Steps For Server :

1) Download phpMyBittorrent from here.
2) Extract the downloaded zip file to the www folder of Apache.
3) Open the URL "http://localhost/html/index.php"
4) Follow the instructions.

Client :

At the client side, you can use any torrent client like uTorrent, BitTorrent, or BitTornado. You can make the torrent from uTorrent which has an option to make torrents. Then upload that torrent to the server and start seeding it.

Conclusion :

I think that this type of a delivery system has great potential. You could even use it across slow bandwidth links or to deploy other software, not just patches.

This is a project that I am hoping to spend some time on over the next while but I am looking for your input/suggestions now so that I can hopefully avoid some pitfalls later. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

CrunchBase Information

BitTorrent

Information provided by CrunchBase

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Deadliest Keylogger - Hardware Keylogger

Everyone might be aware of the keyloggers. The small piece of software that records the sentences and commands that the user inputs into the computer. It is used to steal personal information, including the user's name, account number, PIN and email address. Well, not always, but most of the time, it is easy to detect the presence of keylogger on some foreign or shared computer. Therefore, by restricting yourself from using some confidential information on shared computer, you can protect your important documents.

Now what about your own computer? Well you use latest and updated antivirus and antispyware, you protect your system with smart password, you monitor each and every outgoing connection. Still, you can be hacked !!!!! And the hacker is a small nifty device called hardware keylogger.

A hardware key logger is a small piece of hardware which is usually inserted between the keyboard port and the keyboard. The hardware key logger then records all user keystrokes to it's internal memory. These devices have memory capacities between 8Kb and 2MB. Sitting between your keyboard and its port, this tiny plug-in device records every keystroke typed on any PC computer.

It can record and retrieve everything typed, including emails, chatroom activity, instant messages, website addresses, search engine searches and more .

Features Of Keylogger :

1) Easy to use. No new software to install or learn. (software free device)
2) Installs in seconds, just plug it in.
3) Can be unplugged and information retrieved on another PC.
4) Uses no system resources.
5) Excellent real-time backup device.

Price :

Hardware Keylogger ranges from $129 to $299. The price depends upon the encryption technology used by the keylogger.

Conclusion :

Hardware keylogger is the deadliest keylogger I've ever came across. By formatting your computer, you can relieve yourself from software keylogger but what about the hardware piece if you are not able to spot it ?

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Make USB Drive Work As RAM

Windows Vista is a resource hungry operating system developed by Microsoft. In my honest opinion, if you don't have minimum of 1 GB RAM, don't go for it. But applying my simple hack, you can use any Flash drive, SD Cards, CF Cards as the memory option for the computer.

Till now, Microsoft’s windows had Page File options for the memory requirement of the computer, so that the computing can be done at cheaper rates and that too without installing the physical memory i.e RAM.

However, with the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft has introduced a new technology called ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost is a disk caching technology first included with Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. It aims to make computers running Windows Vista more responsive by using flash memory on a USB 2.0 drive, SD card, Compact Flash, or other form of flash memory, in order to boost system performance. This feature can be used to use secondary storage devices such as cards to be used a memory option.

There are many benefits of using Flash Drives or Cards -

1) Faster than access time of virtual memory in harddisk.
2) Cheaper than physical RAM.

Steps to activate this feature on you system -

1) Open My Computer.
2) Right Click on the Removable Disk Drive and select Properties.
3) Click on ReadyBoost Tab option.
4) Enable the feature by selecting the option and allocate the amount of space you want to use as memory.



But things to be noted before using this feature -

1) Vista requires atleast 512 MB RAM as minimum requirement. Though it runs decent 1 GB, you require this amount of memory.
2) There is a minimum data transfer rate required to activate this feature. If your device is not giving the option of ReadyBoost then it means that it doesn’t clear up the minimum data transfer rate required by ReadyBoost technology.

I think this post will prove beneficial for all the Vista users.

Update : Some blog readers are reporting that ReadyBoost Tab is not visible in their system. Make sure the service "Readyboost" is turned on in services.msc. Also check the service
properties\dependancies and make sure everything it needs is also on.

CrunchBase Information

Microsoft

Information provided by CrunchBase

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Learn How To Add Feeds In Orkut

An RSS Feed is a tool that is dynamically generated summary of websites or information which changes when the website or information changes. The simplest way of adding feed is first to find the the RSS source, the web address for the feed and then add it to the feed reader. For example, the feed of this blog is http://feeds.feedburner.com/techcone.

But if you are using Orkut, there is no need of feed reader. You can use Orkut Feed reader to fetch your feeds and keep you updated.


To this, open home page of your profile and click "edit" in "Apps" section on left hand side.

Then click "My Feeds". And in the URL section, add the desired feed. And that's all.



For example, adding url "http://feeds.feedburner.com/techcone" will subscribe to feed of my blog and you will always be updated of the changes in the blog. You can subscribe to my blog and always remain updated.

Whenever you want to check updates of my blog, just click feed of my blog in your homepage of Orkut and you will be notified of latest posts.

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Make Orkut Free From Google Ads

Internet is a vast place for people like us who like to surf from one site to another. Social networking sites are just one more place to surf. These sites such as Orkut, MySpace, Hi5 or FaceBook have penetrated so deep into our lives that the moment we start surfing, we logon to these sites first.

Orkut is one of social networking sites owned by Google. Though it's only popular in Brazil and India, but for some reason, Alexa says Orkut is the 9th most visited site in Ireland.

One thing which I have been annoyed of lately is the Google Ads shown by Google in the community homepage as this one.


But applying my hack you can free yourself from these ads in a cool place like Orkut.

Hack

First and foremost requirement of this hack is that you should be using Mozilla Firefox. This Open Source piece of software is best software I've ever came across.

Fire your Firefox and proceed to this addon link -> AdBlock Plus . According to their developers

"Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them."

Click "Add to Firefox" and install the addon for your browser. Next step is restart your browser. Now everyone must be thinking how this can be called a hack when it comes to just installing a simple addon. Wait!!!


Whenever you want to block an ad, just right click it and click "AdBlock Image". But clicking all the ads inside Orkut is an impossible task because for that you have to search each and every community. But ever noticed that what is common with all these ads, their command format is

http://www.orkut.co.in/AdsIframe.aspx?xxxxxxx

This page is responsible for generating the Adsense code and placement of ads on pages.

Follow the next step and block all the Google ads. Right click any Google ads and click "Adblock Image". A box will popup and just enter "http://www.orkut.co.in/AdsIframe.aspx" . Bingo !!! You will blocked that main page which generates the ads.

This way you can block all the ads in Orkut. Liked the hack, I'll be waiting for your precious comments.

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