welo

You should be able to use any given image viewer to display the images inside the Archive files if you unpack them. Of course this is not really convenient but might work as a backup solution.

CDisplay uses Comic Book Archive files, which have the extension .cbr or .cbz and are simply renamed RAR or ZIP files, respectively. The files are archives of individual page images with a new extension for convenience. The standard icon for cbr and cbz extension is a comic balloon. The format was made popular by CDisplay but is now used by many other programs designed for reading comics.

source: CDisplay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here is a list of comic readers that support this format with good and short reviews.

List of Comic and Manga Readers - ComicRack User Forum

Seems there is a portable version of CDisplayEx available

Portable Apps

If you like a cute launcher install the portableapps main application to your harddrive.

PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives

Apology accepted - wasn't really that outraged anyway

I agree with you that some users let themselves lure into a false sense of security when anti-virus software is installed.

However, I wonder how well funded all the talking about increased security through Open Source really is. I agree that it is less likely that a developer DELIBERATELY includes malicious code into an Open Source software, but this is not really the scenario that affects the every day user.

The standard 'procedure' of virus/malware attacks is to exploit a program error (aka vulnerability) to infect a system. These program errors were not added by the programmer deliberately, but just happen because software development is a complex process and error-prone.

Those errors can be reduced by skill, focused work, and foremost establishing a quality management process and dedicating enough time and resources to it.

Looking at these aspects of software quality, I agree that Open Source has some advantages, namely that review by externals is possible and encouraged, however, just because it is Open Source doesn't make it better quality software. A software security audit process is a time-consuming task, and just because the source code is available doesn't mean that people actually DO review it. Many Open Source projects lack 'funding' (in terms of not only money but resources aka time and man-power). Of course the same applies to closed-source projects (commercial or not) as well.

I agree that successful Open Source projects (often those backed by one or more commercial companies) DO provide a better environment to ensure software quality.

welo

Just toyed around with Grub the other day. Prepare for a lot of reading. And if this is your first encounter with GRUB or Linux boot loaders in general, well, good luck then..

Have a read here and you will know what might expect you.

It should be easier to download a pre-made bootable CD that allows for the very same. It might not be as elegant but has a view advantages

1. no need to modify the hard-drive and breaking the Windows boot

2. can be taken along with the USB thumb drive to make it work on other computers as well

3. Just download and write the ISO file to a CD.

Start here, and it seems there are several other bootable CDs available that boot specific distros

Boot from USB without BIOS Support using a PLoP Boot Manager CD | USB Pen Drive Linux

Make sure that you really checked all possibilities in the BIOS. Also make sure that the USB thumb drive is plugged into the computer when accessing the BIOS. Does the BIOS list 'removable drives' as an option in the boot order?

How old is the laptop, which model? Can it really be THAT old?

swf is a binary format, generated from a .fla file or other source.

I guess you need a swf decompiler and then an editor for the generated source file, then compile (generate) the swf again.

Check if the swf file uses a config file and allows configuration of the target URL. The file is probably plain text or XML and should be located in the same folder the swf file is in.

But it is completely up to the developer/designer whether to implement this means of configuration or not, a simple banner will most likely not allow configuration via config file.

^

agreed, set the resolution to 640x480!

If you can't get it to work at a decent quality you might want to try using the SVHS-out on your laptop (if available). Read here

Siamect, I agree with much of what you said, but I'm afraid you've got the wrong guy! I guess your critique wasn't necessarily meant to address me in particular, but nevertheless you answered in response to my post. So without getting too pissed and feeling personally attacked, I want to set a view things straight

After all these years I have never met anyone who can support their choice of anti-malware software with any relevant motivation. For ex Kaspersky was successful in some test and sailed ups the number one.Others look at the user interface and think that nice colors mean it is good.

I my posts on this forum I repeatedly stated two things:

1. There is no 'THE ONE' best antivirus solution

2. No antivirus solution catches 100% of malware

My opinion is mostly based on the test results of av-comparatives.org. And while I can't be sure that the test setup there isn't rigged or otherwise manipulated or 'influenced', this test lab seems to apply professional methods and appears to me as a valid basis for a recommendation.

The published test results contain information about the test procedure, how they should/could be interpreted and in what ways they are limited or prone to misinterpretation.

This is what I wrote to someone on the board in a PM just a view hours before your post.

Antivirus software has detection rates of 98% and up, but only for KNOWN MALWARE. That is malware that has been reported to the antivirus labs as such and then be added to virus definition database.

Attackers release new malware every day, and your PC might be vulnerable to those for the time period until the signature of this specific malware is added to the database.

All respectable antivirus solutions include measurements that fight such 'unknown' malware, but don't come anywhere close to the 98% detection rates mentioned for 'known' malware. Rates are maybe at 50%ish.

And while browsing only respectable websites will protect you from most of the attacks, you might still come across a website one day that has been hacked and unknowingly distributes malware.

Your antivirus sofware should pick up the intruder after a few hours or days, when the malware has been added to the database. This is why you should still run a weekly system-scan even if your AV shield/guard is running all the time.

In the case of an infection it is a good thing to gather information about that specific malware to evaluate the potential damage it might have done. In most cases it will be rather harmless and not pose a thread to internet banking and such.

I also recommend to get one or two additional antivirus scanners that can run as on-demand scanners (meaning not as a pro-active shield/guard process that runs all the time and might conflict with your main AV software).

The easiest to handle is ESET NOD32 free scanner. http://download.eset.com/special/eos/esetsmartinstaller_enu.exe It only allows for full system scans, but this is enough as a second scanner.

Malwarebytes Anti-malware is a well-respected malware scanner, also 'on-demand'.

Third choice is Hitman Pro which uses a different technique and allows for very fast system scans.

Since none of these three solutions run permanently they will not slow down your system at all when not in use.

Avira has one of the best detection rates (both for known and unknown malware) but is a bit tricky to setup without shield/guard. I use it as my primary AV. But I don't necessarily recommend changing from Avast, since there is no 'THE BEST' antivirus solution IMHO and most of the well known AV programs are comparable (with the exception of AVG!)

I also posted a fairly long comment in December 2009 comparing three tests/reviews related to some popular anti-virus choices on the TV board.

A word on AVG

I discourage its use since its reputation as the best free antivirus solution are long over, and I've seen several tests where detection rates are below average (for a start check out av-comparatives). I assume that AVG's effectiveness further suffers from exactly this popularity which makes it a favorable target for malware - this is the opposite of 'security through obscurity', and why Windows and Internet Explorer are more often the target of attacks then other browsing platforms.

Other solutions that repeatedly show up in the bottom range (on av-comparatives) are: Sophos, Norman, Trend Micro, Kingsoft.

Disclaimer

The test results published on av-comparatives.org do have limitations, the major one I've spotted so far is that they don't include techniques like behavioral blocking, therefore probably underrating some tools in the pro-active tests.

Futhermore, the choice of malware samples will influence the outcome, this is where some regional tendency might come into play (Avira is German-based, av-comparatives is Austrian-based). I haven't found any obvious criticism of av-comparatives on the net yet, but it is often cited as respectable lab/source (together with av-test.org that didn't publish test results when I last checked)

I am no security expert, and I know there are much more knowledgeable people in this field, maybe some even on this forum. I will appreciate and encourage any substantiated criticism to my statements posted here. The reason I keep posting is that I don't see many well-informed posts on this topic and I really believe that I can help people obtaining a better level of knowledge than they had before.

peace

Next time just reboot again and everything is back to normal, at least this is my experience with Windows 7.

Only happened with me 1 or 2 times after a power failure and I never bothered to check if only the screen resolution was set to fail-safe settings or more settings were affected.

Don't worry about the wasted RAM, will be hardly noticeable in your case.

But I still don't agree with most of the opinions here labeling 64bit as 'exotic' and prone to driver issues. 64bit is a non-issue with current hardware and is very recommended for systems with 4GB and up!

welo

(Btw, no need to quote the whole post again, clutters the thread </teachermode> )

Might be a false alarm. Upload the infected file on the CD to virustotal.com. It will check the file against 40 antivirus engines.

However, 3 major antivirus engines reporting an infection should not be taken lightly!

Kaspersky doesn't provide a detailed description of Trojan.Win32.Vilsel.tkj other than it was reported on 19 Feb 2010.

Since your PC was heavily infected I wouldn't rely on a single antivirus software alone (here: Kaspersky) to clean your PC. Others would even recommend a reinstall.

Get Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Hitman Pro, and one of the free on-demand scanners (e.g. ESET NOD32 which is available as a downloadable version).

Malwarebytes is an often-recommended scanner with a very complete malware database.

Hitman Pro is very fast and uses a slightly different approach for scanning (upload to a PC cloud)

NOD32 has good detection rates and is available as a convenient install version that can be updated and re-run, however, it only allows full system scans.

If you don't have a full version of Kaspersky installed I recommend Avira Antivirus, which includes real-time protection even in the free version and has one of the best overall detection rates.

Forget about AVG! If you haven't removed it yet I recommend to do so, but AFTER running full-scans with Malwarebytes, Hitman Pro, and Eset. Then install Avira (or another respectable antivirus solution) - uninstalling AVG might cause issues on infected PCs.

Don't be lazy. You might run into more troubles.

welo

Thanks. This basically confirms what I've said before about 32bit Windows: Windows will not be able to use all of the 4GB RAM due to limits in 32bit architecture (meaning NOT Windows' fault!)

In your screenshot more than 512MB are 'hardware allocated'. This can mean two different things

1. Your video card doesn't come with it's own dedicated memory but uses 'shared memory', that is cutting off some megabytes from the main memory (RAM).

OR

2. Your video card comes with 512MB of dedicated graphics memory, but due to inner workings of the 32bit architecture this limits the maximum addressable main memory space to 3.5GB. Meaning that for the system (driver) to access the video memory it maps 512MB of address space into the main memory, effectively leading to 512MB of system memory being unusable because of a 'lack of address space'.

If (1) applies then in your case 32bit is fine for your system, you don't 'waste' any RAM.

If (2) applies then you waste about 0.5GB RAM that Windows cannot use/address.

Not sure it is worth switching to 64bit even in case (2) applies. As stated before, 64bit Windows will use slightly more memory than 32bit Windows, therefore minimizing the 'gap' further.

If you are an office user I wouldn't bother much, if you like to open several applications at the same time the extra 300-500MB might be valuable to you.

welo

Btw, here a semi-official explanation of that matter from Microsoft:

All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP/7) have a 4GB

address space (64-bit versions can use much more). That's the

theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go.

But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you

have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.

That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not

perating system and applications. The amount you can

use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can

range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around

3.1GB.

Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual

RAM itself. If you have a greater amount of RAM, the rest of the RAM

goes unused because there is no address space to map it to.

source: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-CA/w7performance/thread/5818e83e-9c21-4557-8af1-576621ee44fa

Instead of taking the battery out, can't you just hold down the 'power' or 'on' button until it turns off...

Pulling the battery is a sure way to f^(k your hard drive...

LOL oh man thanks. I feel like I should have "dumb ass" written on my far-head. I didn't even think a/b that. So accustomed to going to the Start in lower left corner to shut off. Geeze.... I guess my "practice" of thinking out of the box failed. :-) duhhh

Btw, next time you run into this problem try just pressing the power button once. If your system is still responsive and just the keyboard messed up, it might as well trigger the shutdown process. Try it once and give it a minute or two. Go to Control Panel -> power options, Advanced tab and configure Windows to shutdown when pressing the Power Button.

welo

Just try this:

Left-click on an icon on the desktop once. Then left-click somewhere on the desktop background. Then hold the shift key and click on any other desktop icon. You will see that all icons between the one you had clicked before and the current one will be highlighted. Does this match the behavior you observed?

My point: Might be the SHIFT key that got stuck.

However, a stuck key should not crash your PC or make it unresponsive - but who can tell for sure?

A stuck key can sometimes be 'unstuck' by pressing it repeatedly - remember that there are two shift keys, actually three if you include the 'caps lock' - if the caps lock gets stuck you should see the caps LED light up.

Does the harddisk LED still light up? That would indicate that the system is still working.

Your PC switching to screensaver mode after some time actually shows that the PC has not completely crashed. Can you check your screensaver settings, just curious if it is enabled and what is the activation time setting and the screensaver type. (Right-click the desktop background, Properties, switch to the Screensaver tab).

Might also be that the keyboard controller is damaged.

The easiest way to clean a keyboard without opening anything up is using compressed air. Might be not that easy and cost effective to get by in Thailand, but wanted to mention it anyway.

welo

What operating system are you using?

Here is a guide for Windows XP that matches your setup (Internet Connection coming in on LAN port, share internet via wifi to another computer)

How To Share Internet Connection in XP Without Wireless Router » Raymond.CC Blog

(Once it is working you should enable a strong encryption better than WEP)

You state that you cannot enable Internet Connection Sharing on Notebook A. What exactly is not working.

I agree that a wireless Access Point (prices start at just below 1000 THB, 'better' brands from 1500 THB) might be the better solution. You just connect the AP to the LAN cable and you can then connect both notebooks via WLAN to the AP.

EDIT: Just noticed that the linked Access Point is actually a wireless router. Prices don't differ much between bare Access Points and wireless routers, since hardware production costs are the same. Most wireless routers should have an option to run as bare AccessPoint. It is recommended to disable the router part to avoid creating cascaded network/router setup.

However, if the owner limits you to one IP address then you will actually be required to setup a router.

welo

I am interested in how much memory Windows can use on your PC (due to the 32bit limit).

I would be thankful if you could post your system memory values.

Go to TaskManager (CTRL-SHIFT-ESC), switch to the performance tab and start the 'Resource Monitor' (Button). A new window will pop up - switch to the 'Memory' tab and check the 4 values at the bottom

Available (basically the free memory)

Cached (cached resources aka 'superfetch')

Total (memory usable by windows)

Installed (installed memory in your PC).

Please also include the value for 'Hardware Reserved' from the graph in the same dialog.

Thanks!

welo

I wonder about this myself, too.

My thinking so far: Battery life-time is related to a maximum number of recharge cycles - meaning after an average of x recharge cycles the battery will die, this should be in the several hundreds. Otherwise battery life time seems to depend on other aspects as well, such as overheating, complete discharge (both bad), etc.

So I've read that the laptop electronics should take care of not overcharging the battery when constantly on AC. I remember reading a view years back that there were actually Laptops that would constantly discharge and recharge the battery while on AC -> bad. Not sure what a correctly working laptop will do nowadays, can it keep the battery charged without adding to the recharge cycles count? It seems yes.

Still, after doing a quick search on the internet it seems that removing the battery when on AC for a longer time period is recommended. Even though you will loose the feature of the battery working as a UPS (if power fails or somebody trips over the power cable )

I've read diverging opinions on the effects of completely draining the battery - some said it is bad, some say you should to do it at least every view weeks and it keeps the battery healthy.

To add to the confusion, you have to distinguish between Nickel-metal Hydride (NiMH) Batteries and Lithium-ion (Li-ion) Batteries. I guess laptops nowadays have Li-ion, but I'm too lazy right now to verify this with Google.

All the iphone and Nokia clones I've had the chance to get a closer look at (that is about 4-5 phones) had a horribly crappy camera optics - even in broad daylight pictures would get blury and distorted, no matter how many million megapixels it supposedly had. I'd go as far as giving the camera the label 'unusable'.

And the most recent experience with a Nokia phone clone (one with no keyboard and only touch screen): called a automated phone service (one like 'press 1 for...') and couldn't proceed because the onscreen keyboard would disappear after the connection was established! There was no obvious way to get it back, and trying to navigate through the menu to trick the phone into displaying the onscreen keyboard took too long and the phone service would cut the connection before.

And be sure these are not the only two problems I've found.

Stay away!!

All Core 2 Duo CPUs sold within the last 2 years are 64bit for sure! As well as all currently sold Desktop and Laptop CPUs from Intel and AMD (except the Intel Atom in netbooks).

Intel started introducing 64bit support back in 2004/5(!) with the later Intel Pentium 4 Desktop CPU models, and in late 2006(!) for mobile CPUs with the Core 2 Duo 'Merom'. (source: wikipedia)

The OP stated the exact CPU model - P9400 - a quick google search easily proofs that this model supports 64bit, as do actually all 35 Core 2 Duo mobile models listed on the Intel website.

If I remember right (could be wrong) if you click the Start icon in the lower left edge of your display, then "position" the mouse cursor over My Computer, then "right" mouse click, then click on Properties, it will tell you what type of CPU you have and I think whether it's 32 bits or 64 bits. Otherwise running CPU-Z will do the job.

No. The only information related to 32/64 bit in this dialog is that that the system will be reported as 'Microsoft Windows XP 64bit' if running the 64bit edition of Windows XP. On the 32bit edition of Windows XP no 32bit or 64bit tag shows up, no matter whether the CPU supports 64bit or not.

Easy to check for a live system...

Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) Version Identification

Windows may have been preinstalled on your computer. These installations are referred to as OEM installations.

To determine whether you have an OEM installation of Windows, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

2. Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.

3. Click the General tab.

4. Locate the number that is displayed under Registered to.

This number typically contains 20 digits. If digits 6, 7, and 8 contain the letters "OEM", you have an OEM installation of Windows.

For example, the following sample Product ID number indicates an OEM installation:

12345-OEM-6789098-76543

source: MSDN, How to Determine the Version of Windows XP in Use

Here my collections of links on how to migrate an existing Windows installation to a virtual machine. There is actually a wiki entry on this topic on virtualbox.org (first link)! The main point is that if you 'prepare' your Windows LIVE install prior to making the snapshot you will have it easier later on. (This is actually not a virtualbox issue but a general 'problem' when migrating Windows to new hardware/a new PC)

I never did the actual migration since the idea came up AFTER 2 or 3 months of using Windows 7. But the topic was interesting enough to do some research - I still have my old Windows XP hardware image on my backup drive... Hm...

Migrate_Windows - VirtualBox

Convert Physical Windows Systems Into Virtual Machines To Be Run On A Linux Desktop | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

How to Convert a Physical Hard Drive to a Virtual Machine | Microsoft Musings

Migrate_Windows - VirtualBox

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproappcompat/thread/113c3f94-5e24-435d-8521-8fcfe852451d

howto convert existing windows xp into a virtual machine virtualbox - Google Search

Btw it is absolutely legal to activate your Windows on the virtual machine if you don't use the original installation any more AFAIK. Only exception are Windows OEM versions which are tied to the hardware. Unfortunately OEM licenses are very popular and wide spread.

Neo's SafeKeys implements various methods to confuse key loggers while 'typing'. It requires the user to drag'n'drop the resulting password to the input mask.

I always thought drag'n'drop is basically a copy/paste operation and will be logged? But obviously it isn't, I don't think the developer has made such a simple mistake...

welo

EDIT: removed my original message because I hadn't read the article to the end

If possible bring your laptop and test the box at the shop and see if you are OK with the picture quality.

Just as crossy said, you might be a bit disappointed even though it should be OK for movies - just remember that a TV has a screen resolution of about 768x576, and TVs usually cut away from the border. And there are other issues related to analog signal conversion. Expect smaller text on your windows desktop to be very blury and hardly readable. Make sure you set the screen resolution on your laptop to the lowest possible (usually 640x480 or 800x600).

For 900 THB you still have the option of buying a cheapo DVD player with DIVX/MPG4 support from BIGC/Tesco/etc, and watch movies from a USB thumb drive. Image quality will be better than with the converter box!

Pros: better image quality, remote control, do the cabling only once not every time you want to watch.

Cons: Cannot play all (downloaded) movies (but most), PC more versatile in terms of supported software (e.g. use as music jukebox)

Have fun!

A Lan cable connection will not make it any more secure. No matter which way you connect, you will share a network with all users in the cafe, thus allowing attacks on your PC and sniffing network traffic.

Just check if the Cafe uses a strong encryption (basically NOT WEP but WPA) - though even using WEP will only allow unauthorized users to break the encryption and then do basically the same kind of attacks they could do by just paying a view baht and join the network 'officially'.

If your PC is secured (Updates, Firewall, Antivirus software) and your internet banking uses SSH encryption for communication (look at the address bar for shttp://.. pretty standard nowadays) you are safe. The communication channel between your PC and your bank will be encrypted, and even other PCs on the local network (LAN) cannot spy on it.

The main attack vector for internet banking is

1. installing spyware on your PC that will transfer username/password and other details to the attacker. Even then it will require more sophisticated methods since most internet banking solutions implement additional security checks (e.g. transaction codes)

2. Phishing attacks. Trick you into entering your security credentials and transaction codes into a fake banking website.

Keep your PC clean of malware/viruses! Protect your PC from infections via USB thumb drive, one of the most common ways of malware infections in Thailand.

HTH

welo

64bit adoption is very good with Windows 7, and you should have no troubles finding 64bit drivers for your laptop if it is a recent model (<1 yr).

With older hardware it might be an issue, just check whether there are 64bit drivers available on the manufacturer's support page or not.

Going 64bit has pros and cons - you can google for 'windows 7 32bit vs 64bit' and you will find tons of information and opinions, this will not necessarily help you make a decision afterwards.

The main discussion is about the maximum amount of RAM that the OS (Windows) can use. 32bit is limited to a 4GB address space, whereas 64bit goes far beyond that (2^32 vs 2^64 - it's not just double, we're talking about terrabytes here!).

However, due to the inner workings of the OS, 32bit Windows can actually use only about 3.3GB - starting with SP3 Windows XP (as does Vista and Win7) will REPORT all available memory (e.g. 4GB), but will still not be able to use all of it.

So the point is that you are not using your laptop to its full potential (that is the 4GB of RAM)

However, to further complicate things, 4GB is not necessarily a strong indicator for going 64bit. The problem is that 64bit Windows will use more memory by default due to 64bit being the smallest amount of data chunk that it handles, as opposed to half the size with 32bit Windows (VERY SIMPLIFIED, not absolutely sure my explanation comes close to the real technical facts, but it is undisputed that 64bit Windows WILL use more RAM than its 32bit counterpart).

So the actual difference in available RAM on a 4GB system between 32bit and 64bit Windows 7 might be less than those 0.7GB.

Since you are using a laptop it is also not very likely that you will upgrade your RAM in the future.

Other aspects of the 32bit vs 64bit discussion are very similar and won't actually aid in your decision making process.

Some programs will run faster on 64bit than on 32bit, especially those that do a lot of calculations (encoding, encryption, etc), but only if they are actually optimized for 64bit. Some 32bit programs might actually run slower on 64bit Windows than on 32bit. That said, more and more software companies provide 64bit versions of their software, and just in a view years time (1-2yrs) there will be no question whether to go with 64bit since computers will have more than 4GB of RAM and software will target 64bit as default platform.

64bit will offer slightly better security, since most malware is designed for 32bit systems. Of course 32bit code/programs do run on 64bit Windows, so most malware does as well, but the more nasty ones that install device drivers to hide themselves (root kits) will not work. This is called 'security through obscurity', for the very same reason less popular software like Mac OSX, Firefox, etc are more secure than there more popular counterparts like Windows, Internet Explorer, etc

Any more questions?

Some info on the VGA to Composite adapter that Crossy mentioned.

This is not just a cable but a small box, because the VGA signal needs to be converted!

You will find (and maybe be offered) simple VGA to RCA cables at a (much?) lower price that will NOT WORK!

The problem is that with a cable like this you'll get the connectors to match, however, the VGA signal from a computer (RGBVH) is very different from the composite video signal that your analog TV expects. This cable will only provide a physical connection, but not convert the signal. Hence it will NOT work.

So why do these cables even exist?

There are scenarios where these cables work. Either if the TV actually does support the VGA signal for input (very rare in analog consumer TVs, I doubt yours is one of it), or if the laptop is able to output a composite video signal on the VGA output (read here). I doubt the latter is very common or standard, but I might be wrong.

Furthermore, I think projectors usually do support this since they 'understand' VGA signals in general (and mostly have VGA input anyway).

source (and images): How To Connect a Computer To Your TV (Page 4 of 4): TechLore

Audio should not be a problem at all, just get 3.5mm stereo TRS to Cinch cable.

@David006

What's a db connector?