Me and the Computer

There are some issues you may encounter when you are installing Adobe CS5 Collection. The installer will run and accept the serial number. But it will abruptly end saying - Inconsistency in Installer Database . What happened here is that the file were Adobe keeps the list of programs got corrupted. To fix the problem go to: C:\Program Files(x86)\Common Files\Adobe Then look for the caps directory. Delete this directory and reinstall Adobe.

AVG is one of the free anti-virus software you can download off the Internet. It is easy to use and good at detecting computer viruses. But today I have a reason to dislike this software. This morning I received a message from the software that the latest update is ready. So I clicked update. And then it told me that I need to restart my computer. I clicked Allow Restart. After the computer restarted, it no longer boots properly. I kept getting an error that a DLL file was missing and then the OS restarts. I could not even remedy the problem by loging into Safe Mode. I ended up reformatting my hard disk and reinstalling the OS. And now I have not yet installed all the software that were originally there because it would take me the whole day and I would get nothing done. Ugh. AVG!

Ideally you should have one hard disk for your OS (Operating System) and one hard disk for your data. But if you only one hard disk it is extremely important that you divide it into two partitions. The Reason for this is that your OS may crash. And the only fix would be to format and reinstall your OS. You can't do this without losing your data if they reside on the same partition. So as a rule, always...always make atleast two partitions if you only have one hard disk. If only I can remember that rule. Ugh.

Most of the new motherboards that comes with a built it RealTek Audio HD have microphone problems. I recently, bought one that suffers this problem. So I checked the headphone jack and it works perfectly fine. But when I checked the microphone and it doesn't work. So I opened my PC to make sure that everything is plugged correctly on the motherboard. And every was perfectly okay. So what seems to be the problem? The Solution 1. Your motherboard should come with a software to manage the audio input and output. Find the program RealTek Audio HD Manager . 2. Select the Mixer Tab . 3. Look at the RealTek Audio Input Section. I don't know why they do this but the Mic is set to mute by default. 4. Turn the Microphone settings on. 5. Check the RealTek Audio Output section. 6. Make sure the Front and Rear Volume are not set to zero. 7. Make sure the Front Pink In and Front Green In volume are not set to zero. 8. The Rear Blue In, Rear Pink In, and Rear Gre...

Sometimes you may encounter a problem where a certain email account could not send or receive an email. The usual error message you get is that the email account is over it's allotted quota. This problem usually occur when you have set a limit as to how many megabytes of email an account is allowed to store. But there are some problems wherein you check your server and the account has not even reached its quota yet. The real problem when this scenario occurs is that the maildirsize file has somehow become corrupted. To verify, try to change the quota of the problematic email account. When you finally confirm, you will get an Invalid maildirsize file error. Solution: 1. Login to your server using your FTP or Cpanel>File Manager. 2. Navigate to yourdomain.com/mail/emailaccount 3. Delete the maildirsize file. Your mail server will automatically recreate it. 4. Try sending and receiving email using the account again.

This is just one possible solution if you are finding that you're PLDT MyDSL keeps getting disconnected. The current standard modem for PLDT MyDSL is Xyzel P-### series. You will notice that it has three LED lights as its indicator. 1. DSL LED 2. Ethernet LED 3  Power LED Some of you may encounter a situation that on certain hours your Power LED turns red and your DSL LED keeps dying. But then after a few hours the Power LED finally turns green and your Internet connection becomes stable. For a long time I thought this problem was caused by the DSL server dying in the main office or because of too many subscribers, the network becomes strained  due to overcapacity.  But apparently, this was not the case. I found this out when I unplugged all the cables (rj45 and rj11) connected to the Zyxel modem except for the power. I discovered that the Power LED was still red. So that means the problem has nothing to do with being connected to the PLDT server. I disco...

Some of you might think its funny but I know a few people who think that computer viruses are actual virus just like common colds. Indeed it is the casual computer users who are the most vulnerable victim of computer viruses. So if you are a casual computer user and not really a technical person, how can you better protect yourself? The best way to protect yourself, aside from downloading anti-virus software, is to know what you are up against. Unlike real viruses that spread through human contact or proximity, computer viruses spread when a computer user runs an infected program. That means, they are practically harmless as long as you don’t run them. Here are some precautions that could help you better protect yourself: 1. Don’t run and Scan any program you are unfamiliar with 2. Scan any program you download from the internet 3. Scan any storage device that is shared to you like USB Flash drives, hard disk, and floppy disks (if you still have them but I don’t if ever ...

You might encounter Yahoo Messenger hanging after you successfully login. Or it my automatically shutdown. The reason for this is that Yahoo Messenger is dependent on Internet explorer to display some of its windows. Your Internet Explorer might have been corrupted so a reinstall of Internet Explorer should fix this problem.

One of the symptoms that you are infected with that Conficker virus is that you can not access security websites like Mcaffee, Systemantec, Comodo, and AVG. So how do you remove this virus when you can't access anti virus websites? Solution: 1. Go to the Command Prompt. You can do this by clicking on Start > Run 2. Type in cmd then click the ok button 3. In the command window type in ipconfig /flushdns This will clear cached dns records 4. Or you can stop the dns cache service by typing net stop dnscache 5. Download the Conficker remover from this site http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2009-011316-0247-99 6. Disconnect from the internet and run the virus remover. 7. If it did not seem to remove anything, run your PC in safe mode then run the virus remover again. 8. When the program is finished it should give you a report of the processes that where stopped, the files that were clean, and the registry entries that were corrected. If th...

For the past days we have been hearing about the Conficker worm which is supposed to go live April 1. But the date passed and nothing happened. Yet today something is wrong with the Internet. Websites that would have been normally up could not be accessed. Upon investigating further I found these http://www.secuobs.com/revue/news/79101.shtml , http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/040309_Registercom_Falls_Prey_to_DDoS_Attack , and http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=91639 . A Denial of Service attack is when hackers attack servers where the addresses of websites around the internet is kept. What happens is that you cannot view the website though it is up because your internet traffic is being redirected somewhere else. Nothing much we can really do about it, except to wait for those responsible to fix their DNS servers.

So I quickly dropped what I was doing and went over to their place. When I got there I found this Windows XP PC that keeps getting redirected to the login screen after logging in . I asked if they have another working computer. Like always, I searched the web to find if someone else have already encountered this problem. Sure enough I found that the problem was being caused by a virus. The author said it was being caused by a virus called BlazeFind. Here are the steps I did to solve the problem: 1. I went to the problem PC and then I booted it using Windows XP CD. 2. I went to the recovery console, what I needed to do was go to C:\Windows\system32\ 3. to do a COPY USERINIT.EXE WSAUPDATER.EXE unfortunately when I looked the USERINIT.EXE was missing 4. so I went over to the other working Windows XP PC to copy its USERINIT.EXE file. But the problem is I could not copy it to the problem PC because Windows XP Recovery Console won't detect the USB drive. 5. So what I...

Lately I have been testing a graphic intensive Flash program. I keep running into a problem. At some point in the program the Flash Player would lag or suffer a hiccup. I went to other websites to see if my I was the only one experiencing this. I was not the only one. 1. I found that this maybe caused by a graphics card driver not being installed. So I reinstalled the graphics card driver and it seemed to solve it a bit. But this is not really the end of the story. 2. Flash can also lag if there are too many objects being instantiated in the Flash program. Especially if they are being created inside a loop. This causes Flash player's memory consumption to grow thus causing a lag. But try to run other Flash programs and see if they lag. Because often it is the programmers fault why Flash lags. He probably did not develop the Flash program optimally. Update August 2009: Okay guys, you may be wondering if this problem only occurs because you are using Windows, Mac, or L...

A couple of people has sent me alternative solutions to solve this popup.adv.net and mtn5.goole.ws problem. I am surprised that this malware still bothers a lot of people since I have already solved this problem using the steps outlined here . One of the solution suggested is to modify the file hosts which you can usually find at c:\windows\system32\drivers directory What you then do is open it with a notepad and place the following entry: 127.0.0.1 popup.adv.net 127.0.0.1 mtn5.goole.ws Then save the file. And then when you browse again you will no longer get the ads. Except, some of you will now have popups that have "page not found" messages. It's not an elegant solution and I would not recommend it. Another reason why this solution is bad, is that yes you are able to block the malware ads from displaying, but your PC will still be infected and your DNS setting is still screwed. What you got by doing the above solution is really a false sense of security. So...

I usually have no problem dealing with trojans and malwares but this one proved to be the hardest one yet. Because it operates in ways we don't expect. Usually trojans operate within your PC but what if the exploit is hosted somewhere else on the web. Woah! This took a week. Thanks to the people who commented on this blog. I could not figure out this solution without all of you who bounced your ideas here.   Anyway, lets get rid of it . 1. In the Windows menu go to Start>Run 2. Type cmd 3. This will fire up the command window 4. Type ipconfig /all 5. This will display the actual configuration of your LAN card. Pay particular attention to the DNS entry. In my PC I got three entries: 0.255.122.15 85.255.112.156 1.2.3.4 Two of these entries are not correctly formed while 85.255.112.156 is the DNS address of the exploiter. A proper DNS entry given by your ISP should look something like - 58.69.254.143 6. Type ipconfig /release 7. Then ty...

Last time we talked about blocking popups from popup.adv.net and wtn5.goole.ws . Thankfully Firefox has already solved this problem. Update your browser to 3.0.4 version to make it go away. But in case another malware is irritating you. You can use the NoScript add on for Firefox. To Install: 1. Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox 2. Right now NoScript is the first add on you will find there. 3. Simply click on "Add to Firefox" button to install. 4. In case you did not find it, simply do a search for "NoScript". 5 . After installing it you will need to restart your browser. What this Add on does is to strictly block Javascript, Flash, Java, and other plugin on all web sites. You will have to right click on the NoScript bar to find several options to unblock the site you are viewing. You can find more information from NoScript's official website. However I don't recommend this solution because - you may have blocked the adware doe...

Hello everyone. I have finally found a way to stop this adware/malware without using any third party browser add on. You can find the article I wrote here -> The Final Solution . Please be sure to read it so you can finally rid yourself of this problem. Read also the comments on this post where others have generously shared their solutions. - Temujin There is something terrible happening on the web today and it has gotten more rampant this week. Unfortunately Microsoft, Mozilla, Google, Opera, Apple, and Adobe has no permanent solution for it at the moment. If you visited several legitimate website and an ad from popup.adv.net and wtn5.goole.ws keeps popping up when you click on a link or image, then you have been a victim of " Clickjacking ". No anti-adware or malware program can remove this strain because it appears that it isn't actually in your computer. In fact, I have tried using a newly formatted computer and still this illegal advertisements keep poppi...

The newer installation files of PHP for Apache in Windows throws an error. Cannot Load phpapache2.dll To solve this problem 1. Go to your Apache installation directory 2. then go to the conf subdirectory 3. Look for httpd.conf and open it with notepad. 4. Replace LoadModule php5_module "c:\php5\php5apache2.dll" with LoadModule php5_module "c:\php5\php5apache2_2.dll" instead. Then restart Apache. Take note that my PHP installation directory maybe different with yours. My PHP installation in this case is C:\php5. Make sure to replace this with your own installation folder location.