CBT Bazar

I recently got a blue screen of death (BSOD) error on a Windows 7 computer. However, upon restarting the computer and adjusting BIOS settings, the BSOD error would still display, but the computer was restarting so quickly that I didn’t have time to analyze the specific BSOD error codes.

In other words, the BSOD screen would only display for a second or so, before Windows 7 automatically rebooted itself. Thus, I couldn’t retrieve the specific error codes needed to diagnose the BSOD error.
Here’s a quick tip for not only those that have gotten the BSOD, but also those who haven’t encountered it.
Start by opening the Start Menu and navigating to the Control Panel. Next, select the System listing within Control Panel to navigate to the System pane.

From the System window, select the option Advanced system settings, located along the left side of the window.

Finally, select the Settings button listed under the Startup and Recovery, Advanced tab of System Properties.

This will launch the Startup and Recovery panel, where you should uncheck the option Automatically restart and click the OK button to apply.

This simple tip will prevent Windows from automatically restarting itself, should a BSOD error occur. Above, it was mentioned that even those that haven’t gotten a BSOD error should uncheck this option…
I did not have this option checked when I got a BSOD error on a Windows PC. Additionally, Windows would not boot into Safe Mode, so I couldn’t access the desktop to toggle Automatic restart off. Thus, Windows kept rebooting itself and queuing the BSOD. In this case, Windows of course, wouldn’t respond to the Start Windows normally option either.
With no CD/DVD drive on the PC to accept a Windows repair disc, I eventually ended up reinstalling Windows via USB drive.
With the Automatically restart option checked off, Windows will stop at the BSOD so that you can note any specific error codes. You can of course restart the PC too, by simply holding the power button down.
Thank you for stopping by the site for today’s post, which offers a simple tip to help diagnose BSOD error codes. If anyone has any Windows BSOD error problems, you can leave a comment and I will try to reply if I have a suitable response or tip. Enjoy!

If you have recently starting using Windows 8, you may have run into an issue where everything starts to run really slow. If you ended up looking at the processes running in Windows 8, you may have noticed a certain process eating up a lot of your CPU.
At least that’s what happened to me on one of my Windows 8 machines. I have installed Windows 8 on several computers and they all worked fine until I installed it on a Lenovo laptop. When I checked the the task manager, I saw that the Device Association Framework Provider Host (daHost.exe) process was taking up almost 90% of the CPU on the system!

If you’re seeing this running on your system, then the issue could be with an out of date driver running on your system. Since Windows 8 is so new, there is still a lot of hardware out there that does not yet support Windows 8 by providing compatible drivers.
You can tell whether it’s hardware causing the problem by going to Device Manager and checking for any yellow exclamation points. You can do this by going to Control Panel and clicking on Device Manager.

Then check for any yellow exclamation points on network cards, display adapters, etc. If you see one, then it’s definitely related to that piece of hardware and you probably need to find a Windows 8 driver. If you can’t find a Windows 8 driver, try downloading the latest version of the Windows 7 driver. Then you can install it in Compatibility mode.

If none of the drivers you are using are working, the only other option you might have until a newer is released is to disable the device. You can do that by right-clicking on the device in Device Manager and choosing Disable.

Of course, you won’t be able to use the device if it’s disabled, but at least you’ll be able to use Windows 8 without the high CPU usage. If you tried all of this or if there is nothing in Device Manager showing a problem, post a comment here and I’ll try to help. Enjoy!

If you like using a mouse to get work done on your Mac or Windows laptop, then you might find it useful to disable the trackpad or touchpad on your system. This is really useful if you type a lot and the trackpad is located in a spot on your laptop that causes it to always pick up slight movements from your hand while typing.
It can be really annoying if you are typing something and all of a sudden the cursor jumps to another part of the document! In this article, I’ll show you the different ways to disable the touchpad on OS X, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Disable Trackpad OS X Mountain Lion

If you’re running the latest version of OS X and you have a bluetooth or USB mouse connected, you can have OS X ignore the trackpad by going to System Preferences and then clicking on Accessibility.

Then scroll down to Mouse and Trackpad and check the Ignore built-in trackpad when mouse or wireless trackpad is present box.

Disable Trackpad on Windows

In Windows 7 and Windows 8, there are a couple of different ways you can disable the trackpad depending on how your system is configured. The first way you want to check is to see if there is a special button on the keyboard or switch on your laptop to disable the trackpad. For example, this is the key on a Dell laptop. You have to press the Function key and the trackpad button to enable/disable it.

If you don’t have the button or the switch, the next way to disable the touchpad is to go to Mouse properties from Control Panel and check if there is a Device Settings or Touchpad tab.

Click on the Disable button and you’re good to go. If you don’t see the Device Settings tab in Mouse Properties, that means you don’t have the proper drivers installed or the full software for the trackpad. Go to the manufacturers website and download the full driver package.
Lastly, you can open up Device Manager from Control Panel, expand Mouse and other pointing devices and then disable the touchpad if it is listed there.

Everything is the same when disabling the trackpad in Windows 8 also. Of course in Windows 8, your trackpad may not even work unless you have the latest drivers! Synaptics still hasn’t released a Windows 8 generic Touchpad driver yet, so keep an eye out for that if you have a Synaptics touchpad on your laptop. Enjoy!

It been years, we have dealt with many virus problem which appeared on our test machines and others sent by our readers of this blog like you. In case of virus infection most of the users start to panic but really its not like sky is falling when you recognize your PC is infected by some malware or Trojan, by taking the right steps and with some third party tools like Ultra Virus Killer [ Free Tool ]  you can always get back all your data and your computer back in working state.
We have reviewed many tools since the starting of this website which helps you repair your PC after virus infection, Ultra Virus Killer is one such tool which helps you not only repair  your computer infected with a virus but it is also a good power control manager which provides complete control in your hands with its simple but power interface which lets you sneak in various important sections of your computer.
Ultra Virus Killer is one such tool which was primarily designed to deal with all kinds of virus infection on any windows based computer but later on more features got added into it to make it system booster so that it can handle various daily tasks on windows system to make it more useful to use on daily basis to speed up any windows computer.
When I started installing Ultra Virus Killer, it first prompted a terms of agreement which clearly specified that the program publisher will not be responsible if some thing goes wrong with windows after using this tool, I would say there is nothing wrong this tool can do as it is designed to repair windows by default.

All the options in this tools are shown in one windows and navigating among these options were also quite easy, as every time you want to come out to main screen you will need to press the Welcome Screen button which never goes away.

As you can see on the tool home screen – it has multiple modules which deals with different settings and configuration in windows like.
Process Manager – Which shows you all the process running in windows and also tells you the publisher name so that you can easily identify the executable in case it belong to some virus or suspicious program on your PC.

It does allows you to kill the unknown or harmful process running on your computer, you can also explore the Process Properties in case you want to know details about a process like which publisher and which directory and more info as you can see in the image below.

Memory Modules – This section tells you how much memory is being used by which program and process running on your computer.

You can delete a memory module in case you find a suspicious process behind it.
Autorun Manager – It is another useful section which tells you what all is running before windows get booted up and running, so that you can check if there is a virus or malware in autorun in windows running, you can check the autorun properties as well.

Windows Services and Drivers – Some viruses and malware may create and install them as services so that they keep running in hidden modes as services and make the damage to your computer, you can find them in this section of the tool.

You can also stop or start a services or remove it under this section as shown in the image below.
Delete or Replace a File – Some times you may find a file on your PC that is infected with a virus but you are not able to delete it from windows, you can delete and get rid of the file using this tool.

Run UVK Scripts – There are times when you can a little on your windows are most of the options to fix the system are either limited or disabled. In such case you can run UVK Script which are written in such a way that you can fix your pc by clicking a button in this tool. You can either decide to run a full system script, full maintenance script to fix your computer.

UVK Tools – You can use this tool to check a file for virus infection using the popular services like Virus Total and other online tools without you requiring to visit the website of these tools, and its really helpful with this tool as some times the internet browser may not be working perfectly on your PC.

UVK System Repair – This sections deals with all the fixes that can be done by the tool to make sure that internet related settings, DNS Settings, Registry Settings – Winsock and group policies etc could be on the right path.

Apart form all the above section two other interesting sessions of this tool are UVK System Booster and UVK Immunisation – former allows you to run windows fast and effectively and later allows you to immune your windows to protect it from future virus and malware infections.
UVK System Booster

UVK Immunization
 

Final Conclusion

After going through all the options, feature and functions provided by this tool, this seems to be one of the best free tools you should install it on your computer to fight with virus infection and also for regular windows speed up and management of services and processes.

This project lets you conveniently connect any computer with USB ports directly to a simple, traditional connector the 9-pin RS-232,It converts the electrical signals from a USB<–>serial TLL convertor to the RS-232 standard. So in a nutshell,it converts a USB port into a standard but basic serial port.
The voltage level adaptor is a MAX3232 from Maxim. This industry-standard part comprises two transmitters and two receivers, ideal for our USB<–>serial convertor, which itself offers the four fundamental signals of an RS-232 standard port, namely TXD (Transmit Data), RTS (Request To Send), RXD (Receive Data) and DTR (Data Terminal Ready).

In this Tutorial we create a sim card reader kit..
Overview:

Name	Description	Data Sheet	Qty
PCB	Printed circuit board		1
J1	SIM card holder	FCI 7111S2015X02LF	1
X1	3.579545 MHz ("colorburst") crystal	Generic	1
X1	DB-9 female connector w/solder cup	Norcomp 171-009-203L001	1
IC1	CMOS Hex inverter	74HC04N	1
IC2	7805 (TO-220 package) or 78L05 (TO-92) 5V regulator	78L05	1
Q1	NPN transistor, EBC pinout Such as PN2222 or 2N3904	PN2222	1
C1	0.1uF ceramic capacitor	Generic	1
C2 C3	18-22pF ceramic capacitor	Generic	2
C4	100uF / 6.3V capacitor (or higher!)	Generic	1
LED1	Green or red 3mm LED	Lite-On LTL-1CHG or similar	1
D1	Power diode	Generic 1N4001	1
D2 D3	5.1V Zener diode	1N5231B	2
R1	1/4W 5% 1Meg resistor Brown Black Green Gold		1
R2, R7, R8	1/4W 5% 1.0K resistor Brown Black Red Gold		3
R3, R4, R5,R6	1/4W 5% 10K resistor Brown, Black, Orange, Gold		4
FTDI	6 Pin header		1
BATT	9V battery clip	Generic	1

Than Go To Next Step.

If you have upgraded your Laptop from Windows Vista/XP to Windows 7 some of us will find our laptop batteries not charging. I’ve been the unfortunate to have two laptops (Dell and an Acer) do the same. While there is no official word from Microsoft about the problem, there has been a lot of Microsoft Technet forum users complaining of this issue and there are couple of fixes one can try before replacing the batteries or A/C power adapters.

1. Uninstall and Reinstall Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery
Reinstalling the “Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery” has solved the problem for some of the users. To do so,
1. Start – Control Panel – Hardware and Sound – Device and Printers – Device Manager.
2. Expand Batteries
3. Right-click “Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery” and click Uninstall.
4. Now, click Action menu and select “Scan for Hardware changes”. This should identify and reinstall the component.

If this doesn’t solve the problem try the following:
2. Reinstall Battery
Close all the running applications and any open files to avoid any data loss.
1. While the laptop is still powered ON and connected to A/C power. Close the laptop lid and unplug the battery.
2. Open the lid and pull the A/C power off. This should power off the laptop.
3. Close the lid again and plug the battery back in.
4. Open the lid again and connect the power adapter and turn on the laptop.
This should get battery charging! If still no good, then contact the hardware vendor. I’ve managed to fix my both laptops with the above procedure.

Source: Windows Reference

With a lot of more modern computers using SSD’s (Solid State Hard Drives), one question I often get asked is if you need to defragment a SSD. That’s a good question because up until now, pretty much everyone has defragged their computer at least once.
So why do we defragment a hard drive in the first place? Well, I won’t go into super detail here since you can read about it online, but basically it’s because spinning hard drives taker longer to read data that is “fragmented” or stored in multiple locations on the hard disk. Since spinning hard drives read and write data sequentially, it will take longer for the hard drive to read a file if parts of the file are located on different parts of the disk as compared to being located altogether in one unit/space.

So defragmenting a normal spinning hard drive can be useful depending on the size of your drive, the number of files you have stored and the size of those files. Now the question becomes is defragmenting useful if the hard drive has no physical moving parts?

Well, the answer to that question is pretty easy once you understand the difference between an SSD and a HDD. An SSD is basically non-volatile flash memory, which you are probably used to using in your digital camera, etc. An SSD is fast because it randomly accesses memory instead of sequentially like an HDD. SSD’s are great, but there is one huge caveat that most hard drive manufacturer’s never mention about SSDs and that’s their lifespan.
Because of the way they are built, an SSD wears down every time they are written accessed. If you have read reviews of SSDs before, you have probably read about how an SSD will get slower if you benchmark it after completely filling the drive and then erasing it. With a HDD, you would never have that problem. Most people mistakenly think SSDs are safer than HDDs because they have no moving parts. This is not true. Flash memory has a very finite lifespan and the more it is used, the more quickly it will fail.
So back to the question of defragmenting. When you defrag a hard drive, especially a SSD, it will end up causing tons of small write accesses, which will reduce the lifespan of the hard drive. And since data is not being read sequentially, it doesn’t matter if the file is stored in a hundred different places, the performance will remain the same.
So, no, you should not defrag an SSD. And performing one will actually reduce the life of your drive. All of the SSD manufacturer’s know of this problem and they have come up with an optimization technique with the use of the TRIM command.
Currently, with HDDs and SSDs, if you delete some data on the hard drive, the operating system does not actually remove the content from the disk, it just deletes the pointer to the address and therefore “deletes” the data. That’s probably why you’re heard of secure delete or government security file deletion, which actually overwrites the deleted data with gibberish so no one can use advanced tools to read data later on.
This issue of data not actually being deleted is what causes the lifespan of SSDs to be reduced. If the drive knew which areas of memory didn’t contain any important data, it could simply re-use it for new data. The TRIM command is supported by the latest SSDs and will optimize the hard drive so that it reduces the number of writes/deletions and therefore extends the life of your SSD significantly.
If you’re in the market to buy an SSD, make your choice very carefully. You want a hard drive that supports the TRIM command. Some of these include:

• Intel X25-M and X18-M G2 G2
• Indilinx Barefoot
• SandForce SF1200 / SF1500 Force
• Samsung RBB
• Samsung 470

There are a lot of other SSDs that support the TRIM command, but you have to check with the manufacturer. Note that Windows 7 natively supports the TRIM command for hard drives that support it, so you don’t have to do anything. Older versions of Windows do not support the TRIM command. In the case of Windows XP and Vista, the OS cannot even tell the difference between an SSD and a HDD, so it’s best to turn off the Disk Defragmenter.
You can also use third party programs that support TRIM to run on systems not running Windows 7. If you don’t believe everything I’ve said, then you can check out this post from a more reliable source that details exactly why it’s not a good idea to defrag a SSD:
http://www.oo-software.com/en/docs/whitepaper/ood_ssd.pdf