windows — Preshit Deorukhkar

Dear Mac Mini, Goodbye

July 14, 2008

Today evening, I bid farewell to the best buddy I’ve had for the past nine years months.

Mac Mini

As you can see, the friend is clearly not happy. He’s been a great friend ever since I welcomed him into the house back in November 2007. I’ve learnt so many new things, made so many new friends, all thanks to him.

It was really hard for me to break the news to him. At first, he didn’t believe me. Then when he did, he became a little aggressive and furious at me. The photo was taken when he spurted out the ‘F’ word to me. However, I still do not understand how he got information about the actual reason for his departure. I specifically made sure he did not know the reason. We have a traitor in the house. The security has been breached. Anyway…

So, here I am, pale and weak. Here I lay, without a Mac. I’ll be forced to use my Windows Machine, which, thanks to Santo.sh, no longer bears the default ugly Windows theme. Though theming it does not change anything, it does provide a little relief.

What happens to him now?

Well, I’m pretty confident that the boys down there will make him drink stuff that he’s never even heard of. Tonight, it heads down to Goa, as one of the (in)famous ‘Popats’ joins the Macboys.

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Blaming the OS for your own stupid deed?

June 2, 2008

The Mac OS X is a great OS. It comes bundled with some great hardware built into some fabulous design. The apps available for Mac OS X are far better than their Windows counter parts. So obviously, a lot of people are amazed by it.

The wise owls obviously either decide to go ahead and buy an Apple product for themselves, like this author did, or they decide to stick to their current OS thinking the MicroLord will churn out a better OS for them, yet knowing deep inside that it will be just another resource hungry monster which will render their slightly old hardware useless.

Ofcourse some choose to ride the path which leads to the Open Source Community. Many have chosen to use this and are wonderfully happy with it.

But then, there a separate breed of nerds who hack their way into the Mac OS X to make it run on any hardware. Now, many are already doing this effectively. But when some people decide to try their hand at Mac OS X just because they can, without thinking things out, things get nasty. It is often seen that they do something awfully wrong to their machines and then blame Mac OS X for being crappy OS, obviously ignoring the fact that it was not made to function in the way they intend to.

Take a look at the following conversation I recently had over IM. This dude got hold of a Mac OS X DVD from some source, installed it on his system and then starts blaming it.

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[How to] Removing the ntdetec1.exe virus

January 22, 2008

Today is the world of flash drives. Everyone you know now has a PD ( Pen drive ) and wants you to copy some files off your PC / Mac.

Now, unlike me, if you’re using the oh-so-prone-to-viruses Operating System called Windows, chances are that you might have already come across the ntdetec1.exe virus. Or you will, sooner or later.

Its official name is W32.Ceted and it is a worm that copies itself to all shared and removable drives and spreads when the user double clicks on it to open it. If a system is infected, it creates a folder called ntdetec1 in your System Drive which is NOT visible via Explorer or Command prompt.

Related files:
\ntdetec1\ntdetec1.exe
\ntdetec1\cmrss.exe
\ntdetec1\run.exe
\ntdetec1\shell32.exe
\ntdetec1\drivelist.txt
\ntdetec1\child\autorun.inf
\ntdetec1\child\ntdetec1.exe

Symptoms:
1. Task Manager closes as soon as it launches.
2. RegEdit may be inaccesible
3. Folder Options may be inaccessible

When I scanned using some anti-virus software, Nod32, Symantec AV Corporate, McAfee and AVG failed to detect the files, even in Safe Mode.

To remove it, run the following commands at the command prompt:

taskkill /im cmrss.exe
taskkill /im ntdetec1.exe
taskkill /im shell32.exe

Now, make sure you are in the root drive of your system. For example, if your Windows in installed in C:, make sure your prompt shows C:\>
Now, run the command..

attrib ntdetec1 -s -h /s /d

This will make the folder visible in explorer. Now you can Shift+Delete the folder from explorer.

Also, you might need to delete the following registry key (if it is present)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\ Run\"winlogon" = "C:\ntdetec1\run.exe"

Congratulations, this will remove all known traces of the above worm.

And remember, next time you use someone’s PD, before you access it, goto your command prompt and delete the autorun.inf file if any.

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Dirty little Windows Trick

October 22, 2007

We all have friends. We all love to play pranks. But very few of us actually play pranks on our friends. Here’s a nifty little Windows trick that could easily land people in trouble.

What this trick basically does is, when a person tries to access any particular site via the browser, the browser will instead show up a website specified by you. Say your friend is a frequent visitor to orkut.com. You can very well do some magic so that instead of orkut.com, xxx.com opens up ( No, not xxx.com, I just mean any x site. :D )

This is really a great trick to do in the college/school labs, friends PC or even trick your family. Be careful where you are redirecting users to :P

Requirements:

Windows Administrator privileges
IP of the site you want to redirect the people to
Notepad

First, goto Start >> Run and type in cmd and press enter. In the command prompt, type ping domain.com where domain.com is the site you wanna redirect people too. For eg: google.com or simply use 64.22.110.209

Note down the IP address.

Now, open Notepad and click on File >> Open and navigate to the following path

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

and open the file name hosts

Now, add the following line at the end of the file.

64.22.110.209 orkut.com

( Replace the IP with any IP you like and the domain with any domain you want )

Save the file and exit.

Restart your browser.

( A lot of my readers already knew about it. I knew too. Its just for those who didn’t :| )

[Update]

I forgot to mention that this can also be used to block access to a certain website.

Just add the following line, instead of the one above..

127.0.0.1 sitename.com

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