Take screenshots easily with ScreenHunter

There are a few ways you can take screen shots of a Windows desktop, tab or open window. One of the methods i used to use frequently was pressing the ‘PrntScr’ or ‘Print Screen’ key of the keyboard, a snap of your entire desktop is instantly taken and saved onto the clipboard, then going to MSPaint and pasting it there on to the canvas. According to your requirement, you can adjust the shot by manual editing, cropping and such. This can take a bit of your time if go for all these steps. And this was what i used to do before i got this software that made screenshot taking so much fun. It had its advantages, but disadvantages cover. Firstly, as mentioned, time was an issue. Secondly, i could not get screens off movies and stuff. Thirdly, I would have to multitask immediately after i take a screen, cuz if i leave it for later, i am bound to forget it and once the system is shut down, that precious moment or whatever you snapped will be history.

CCleaner – The Complete Cleaner

The other day when i was with my computer (as usual), i noticed that it had grown a lot slower and slower and at some instances, it was fairly crashing minimal applications like Internet Explorer, Media Player and at one point (scared me with) the blue screen of death. Of course, the death part didn’t happen. But for the lot of these slowdowns and crashings, if you would have asked someone, you would have got a straightforward suggestion either in, “Get a good Anti-virus program, Bet your whole system is riddled with viruses and trojans” / Or /”Get a spyware or malware suite, that would sort something out”, or (the big thing)”FORMAT your computer!”.

That last part totally isn’t a suggestion i would take in for granted. C’mon, leaving alone formatting, isn’t there a limit to scanning and finding these kinda things?? what if the antivirus/spyware/malware doesn’t find anything? Whatever suite you use, paid or free, updated or not, what if i bet you will find your system in the same slow state. And No. Defragmenting wont help, even if you didn’t think about it. 😉

So let me try and bring the story from another angle.

Recently i have been installing and uninstalling a lot of programs and usually, trying to ‘successfully’ remove the bloatware that comes with new laptops. I noticed that, usually, on after a couple of uninstalls, there would something left back, some memory will still  be taken, it would be an untagged file, an application, a dll, some TEMP files, Browsed pages, history or something. If more and more of those files are left around, the system will usually read through them during the booting/ start-up and that would obviously slow down the process. It also matters in another situation; suppose you are opening an installed program, say a newer version of it. You removed the program (the outdated one) and installed this newer version. This ‘removal’ process will show that the software has been removed, but you do you think that will happen? There will be traces left and it is these traces that we are supposed to remove.

We can do it one way

Manually: For removing history and all by going to INTERNET EXPLORER Options for clearing browsed data, history and stuff; Going to the TEMP directory to remove everything in that directory; playing around with the registry (in the case that you have exceptional knowledge to do so) to remove files and unrelated applications. Now all these takes time and and can be really annoying if you don’t have that time to spend.
So we end up with the other way: Automatic (with this software)

So, on the summary, i want to clean the ‘crap’ out of my computer.

Imagine my surprise when i got a software that does this all, prized along with with the same ‘notorious’ name tag. 🙂

Best Free Antivirus softwares??? None!!!

Last night was the fourth time when AVG Free antivirus started fooling around with me again. It started detecting application executables, as viruses and threats and started disabling them one by one, disabling .exe files with gusto and with such heroism, possibly thinking that it was doing something great. When i saw that my own favorite programs were being scanned and put away into the jail (AVG Vault), i immediately shut down the internet connection before any further intrusions came up, looked at the Virus Vault where all my files were ‘sentenced to death’ and by the look of the great ‘work well done’ by AVG, i knew i would be in deep sh*t if i didn’t do something soon enough. Funny thing was AVG’s own exe was in the bundle of convicts.  :D. A simple restore did the matter of sending the files to their respective spots though, as i hadnt set the files to be deleted immediately after detection (which can be very useful in situations like this), nor did i click on delete/remove all intrusions in the virus vault. As this was the fourth time that this is happening, there was this ‘experience’ which i can say i have. But still it caught me with the same scare.

Immediately i went for the next antivirus and found Avast and Avira in my Softwares collection. A coin toss wasnt needed because one way or the other, the result will all be the same, you end up being screwed and you again switch over.AVG was too stubborn to uninstall through the control panel. So, i used this cleaner software to wipe it out (A review of it is coming soon). After that, i went with Avast. Now its running some scans as normally it should do, and everything looks fine it seems.

But lets face it. What is all this hype and props regarding the ‘BEST’ antivirus software that is FREE? Even though, it doesnt seem to reach the priveledged standards of security from the bigger and better paid software bundles, there are commotions that ‘this is awesome, that one is outta this world’ thing. Come on, what can you expect when you pay nothing and ‘do nothing’ for the cause of the program (read: Open Source). Anyways, let me list a few antivirus softwares that are free and that can be considered as ‘worthwhile’, and when a problem arises, you should scream “NEXTTT!!!”.

Internet over Wireless Not working – SOLVED!

For the past three days, i havent been able to browse the internet from my laptop over my wireless connection to the Access Point. The signal strength and every thing seemed perfect and strong. First i thought that the wireless settings must have gone kaput. I went onto reset it, but it brought no changes. Then, i tried switching off the access point and back on. That didnt help either.

The situation was that all this was happening just with my laptop; all other computers on the network that have wired connection run perfectly and internet and all are working. Then i realised that the problem was at my end. Upon searching through a couple of forums, i found this awesomely small hint that saved me a lot of trouble. So, here i go logging it in.

Tested and working for Windows XP
>START
>RUN
>CMD – For the command prompt
>netsh winsock reset catalog – To reset the winsock
>netsh int ip reset reset.log – To reset the TCP/IP stack

Reboot your machines for the effects to take place.

This helped me out and it worked well

Thanks to Networking Forums

Video Quality and Compression detail tags – DETAILED!

Ever wanted to know what all those CAM, RIP, XVID and all those tags that came along with torrent files meant? Well, read along to know.

CAM
A cam is a theater rip usually done with a digital video camera. A mini tripod is sometimes used, but a lot of the time this wont be possible, so the camera make shake. Also seating placement isn’t always idle, and it might be filmed from an angle. If cropped properly, this is hard to tell unless there’s text on the screen, but a lot of times these are left with triangular borders on the top and bottom of the screen. Sound is taken from the onboard microphone of the camera, and especially in comedies, laughter can often be heard during the film. Due to these factors picture and sound quality are usually quite poor, but sometimes we’re lucky, and the theater will be fairly empty and a fairly clear signal will be heard.

Most useful Addons for Firefox 3

Addons for Firefox has a great deal of awesomeness (don’t sue me for this, Panda) among them. There are thousands of addons that you can add to the application, based upon the desire and purpose. There are media players, bookmark managers, cookie managers, session savers, enhanced color charters, weather view and all sorts of stuff.

Here a few addons which i think will be really beneficial for that ‘boost’ in your browsing and time-keeping experience.

Check your system (unit) temperatures with HW MONITOR

Recently, when I was, as usual, gaming with a friend on LAN, both of us on laptops (Half Life 2 Death match, CounterStrike Source, Pro Evolution Soccer and all those), he constantly kept saying that the laptop of his was getting hot and he was worried of what levels of temperatures he must be getting (I am not going to mention which brand he was using, that i presume should be left as another debate for another time 😉 ). Anyways, when I checked the machine, temperatures were humongous, to a level where I joked we don’t need our kitchen stove anymore (we can cook on the machine), for which i got a straight stare…OK, corny jokes apart..

That’s when I remembered that I haven’t introduced a software to him. And I did. And so here is that neat little thing that I think you should know too, a little something that lets you know your machine temperatures.

SiW : Another software to know everything about ur PC…

Ever wanted to know what all ‘stuffings’ your computer has. All the motherboard, processor, drives, rams and so and so. Well, yea, CPU-Z is there around and it’s great. I know. But have you ever thought had that feeling that CPU-Z is limited(but still great). To some extent. Have you ever thought of that one click solution to all the information you will ever need about the computer. If so, well, thats where this software comes into the frame.

Play flash videos with FLVPlayer

What do you do when those videos you downloaded from YouTube and other live streaming video sites, renamed with *.flv, does not work in your favorite standard video player. If thats the problem, then here is a solution in the form of a flash video player called FLVPlayer.

Download Videos From YouTube with this neat technique…

There must have been a time when you had seen some really awesome, never can be seen again, outta-the-world-thing on youtube.com or some other live streaming video site. You would have bookmarked them or saved the page and played them again to show your friends and gang. But this can be a problem if it happens that there are so many people who want to see the video and you have to show them everytime by going onto the web over and over again.

Well, this is where this quick little software comes into picture with which you can download those videos.

YouTorrent; The New Torrent in the block.

Everyone knows what torrents are and those who don’t know, must have at least heard of them. We use it almost daily (for me it comes almost automatically when i think to download something) for our movies, songs, games, softwares and other junk. There are a lot of torrent portals and search engines around now and to see the respective seed list you needed to head to each and every torrent site, search for the particular file you wanted, compare the number of seeds and leeches with other sources. This can be inconvenient at times because

CPU-Z : Detect your computer’s hardware with this neat software.

Here is a neat software called CPU-Z, a product from CPUID, that helps you in detecting what all important components you have in your pc like the processor type, model, stepping, southbridge, northbridge, the bios model and version, the motherboard category, the supported chipsets, video processors, the bus speeds, the ram speeds and manufacturing company, slots speeds and such.
Once the program is executed

Sneaky Virus on the loose!!!

A sneaky virus which goes by the name of ‘Mebroot’ is on the prowl. It registers itself in the MBR or ‘Master Boot Record’ and modifies it to snuggle itself through. The MBR is

Fastest Internet Connection In the World!!!

What would you do if you had the fastest internet connection in the world. Yea, you read right. The fastest internet connection…in the world. Well that may be about 40 GBps. And who is the lucky bloke with this connection?
Well its Sigbritt Löthberg, a 75 year old woman. Now you might wonder who this. Well this is none other than the mother of Swedish internet legend Peter Löthberg. Read this