Tamana - The latest sensation

Some Windows Tips

Reach Run quickly

Here's a quicker way to reach the Run dialog box, if you don't want to go through the Start menu. Just hit the Windows key + R.

Looking for a better screen font display?

Enable ClearType, Microsoft's trademark font display technology, for a drastic improvement in screen font rendering. Right-click anywhere on your desktop. Now select Properties. Under the Appearance tab, click Effects. Check the box for Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts, and in the drop-down menu, select ClearType. Press OK, and apply the change.


Change your mouse pointer scheme

Bored of the same old arrow? To change your mouse pointer scheme, in the Control Panel, select Mouse and go to the Pointers tab. Scroll through the available schemes, pick one that you like and click Apply.


Check that your Windows Firewall is turned on

To make sure your Windows Firewall hasn't been accidentally disabled, go to your Control Panel and click Windows Firewall. Make sure the radio button for On (recommended) is selected. Add exceptions to your Firewall by going to the Exceptions tab and adding the programs that you think should have access to the Internet to the list of exceptions.


Instantly activate your screensaver

In XP, you can put a short cut of your favourite screensaver on your desktop to instantly start your screen saver. Here's how. Go to Start on your desktop and click on Search. In the help box, click on All files and folders. and then type in *.scr. Select your screen saver file and right click. Then select Send To, and then Desktop.


Put your Monitor to sleep

Right click on the desktop and click on Properties. In the dialog box that appears, click on the Screen Saver tab. Click on Power and in the dialog box that appears click on the Turn off Monitor list. Select a time to automatically after which the monitor will be turned off. Click OK twice and you're set.


Using your Windows Key

Your Windows key can be used to for many short cuts. If you want to open your Windows Explorer quickly just press your Windows key and E. If you want to open the Run dialog box, just press the Windows key and R. If you want to open your search dialog box, press your Windows key and F.


Instantly lock your PC

If you have password protected your Windows, here is a quick way to lock it. Press the Windows key and L together.

Change the look of folder icons

If you don't like the look of the folder icons on your desktop, you can change them. Right click on the folder, select Properties. Click on the Customize tab, and under the Folder icons area, click on the Change Icons button. Select the icon of your choice and select OK.

Minimize a Window to your taskbar

If you're tired of using the mouse over and over again to minimize a window, here's a handy tip. To minimize a window using just the keyboard, press Alt, Spacebar and N together.

Display album art in your music folder thumbnails

If your music files are in WMA format, XP automatically picks up the album art and displays it, both in the folder thumbnail as well as in the Windows Media Player display. If your files are in MP3 format, you can download the album art from the Internet and then customize each folder to display it. But this takes a lot of time. A faster way around is to save each image as 'folder.jpg' and put it in the correct folder. Once you do this, XP will pick up that image and use it as the thumbnail for the folder, and also use the image to display in Windows Media Player while playing songs from the album.

How to stop Windows Media Player from accessing your information

You may be uncomfortable with the idea of Windows Media Player collecting your information and sending it to various websites. You can stop this. Go to the Tools menu of Windows Media Player. Select Options and then go to the Player tab. Look for the check box that says "Allow Internet sites to uniquely identify your player?" and make sure it is not selected.

Opening folders with a single click

If you'd rather not have to double-click everything to open it, here's the way out. Go to My Computer, and select Options in the Tools menu. Choose Folder options. In the dialog box that opens, select the check box that says 'Single-click to open an item (point to select)', and click OK.

Making web pages available offline

You may occasionally need to refer to a website, and you may not be able to connect to the Internet at the time. An easy way out of the situation is to go to the Favourites tab in Internet Explorer, and click Add to Favourites. In the dialog box that is displayed, select the Make available offline check box, and press OK.

Love Wallpapers

The Hidden Files Problem

I experienced a peculiar problem this weekend.Actually it all started with the amvo virus in one of my friends computer.I removed the virus for him.The next day,he told me that he cann't see the hidden files even after removing the virus.Then i noticed that the procedure only removes the virus and doesn't turns back the damage it has done.So i had to revert it back manually.This happens not only with this virus but many others too.

The virus changes the registry setting of the hidden files in windows registry so even if u change the option to show Hidden files in the folder options ,you cannot see the hidden files in your system.This is done to protect the virus files which are hidden too.So you need to correct the registry setting to see the hidden files.To do that follow these steps

• Run Registry Editor by typing regedit in run
• In the Registry travase to this path
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
• Then double click the value Hidden in the right hand side pan
• A dialog box pops up asking for the datavalue.The virus would have changed the value to 0 which should be
• 1 - Show hidden
• 2 - Don't show
  

Once you have done this,you can even remove the virus files just by deleting the hidden virus files in explorer itself.

The Missing File Names

When I opened my wallpapers folder today,all my file names where missing in it.First i thought it was an virus and was going for a reformat but i noticed that the filenames where missing only in that folder and other ones where fine.

Then i came to know that it was nothing more than a windows trick.If one presses shift and enters a folder,the filename settings changes in the folder i.e the filenames disappear and it is reverted back by just doing the same.Check these snap shots out..

Missing Filenames in Explorer

Filenames appear's Back

World's Tallest Snowman

The world's tallest snowman or actually a snowwoman was made in Bethel, Maine. The 122 ft snowman with eyelashes made from skis and painted red tires for her lips and trees for arms has been named after the state's senior Senator Olympia Snowe. It's worth mentioning that the previous record of the world's tallest snowman was also set by Bethel 9 years ago. I personally have no idea what they used for the carrot and where they got that giant hat but it doesn't really matter. The snowman..woman looks great.

Deadliest Computer Viruses Ever Known - 1

Melissa Virus

Origin

On 26 March last year as a few half-hearted flurries of snow danced across the unlovely suburban landscape of northern New Jersey,David Smith drew the curtains of the small garden apartment he shared with two cats called Rockabilly and Eggnog. It was late on a Friday afternoon. Soon the nation's offices and factories, its government departments and much of its civil infrastructure would be closing for the weekend. The timing was critical for Smith's purposes.

At 30, single and employed on an irregular basis as a computer programmer, Smith met most definitions of a nobody. Admittedly, he dressed smartly and kept in shape, but his outward personability was more than negated by what one of his friends called 'the personality of bread mould'. His love life, as far as anyone knew had been fairly unremarkable. There was only one girl, somewhere in the past - a willowy blonde whom he seemed to have genuinely fallen for. Her name was Melissa.

Smith settled down in front of a personal computer. It was one of several that he owned. Later, when things became hot, he would have to smash it up with a garden spade, and throw the pieces into a rubbish skip. But this afternoon, as the big East Coast cities of New York, Boston and Washington began to empty, his fingers moved smoothly over the keyboard.

He entered cyber-space using a stolen access authorisation that had been issued by America Online, the giant internet provider, to a customer in Florida called Scott Steinmetz. This allowed Smith to use Steinmetz's e-mail address, slrvrocket@aol.com, which he proceeded to do, to devastating effect.

A few clicks of the mouse took Smith to an internet chatroom - an electronic forum where subscribers can exchange messages on a topic of mutual interest. The chat-room he chose was called alt.sex, one of many sites devoted to the appreciation of pornography. There, Smith posted the deadliest computer virus the world has ever known.

It couldn't have been more than a few minutes before someone, somewhere out in the vastness of the internet, visited alt.sex, saw Smith's message - which purported to contain free access codes to other internet porn sites and opened it. And with that single click, the virus was free to fulfill its purpose - to spread, multiply and contaminate.

Later, investigators would decipher its name from the computer code that Smith had written. He had called the virus Melissa.Except that the chaos that followed would far exceed Smith's wildest imaginings. Within 24 hours, the computer systems of some of the biggest corporations on earth would be paralysed; Nato and the Pentagon would move on to a heightened security alert in the belief that cyber-terrorists were launching a global attack; and millions of computer users around the world would wake up to find their machines had been 'Melissa'd'. And in the days that followed, the biggest, most desperate manhunt in the history of computer crime would lead investigators, step by step, through a strange, barely charted electronic universe to the faded grey front door of David Smith's home in New Jersey.

Early next month Smith, who admits planting the virus, will be sentenced at the New Jersey Superior Court on charges of interfering with public communications. He faces up to 45 years in jail, and could, in theory, be fined $900 million - a sum approximately twice the value of the damage he is estimated to have caused. His case has been followed obsessively by internet aficionados, and studied by almost everyone with an interest in the security of computer systems. Yet a year after Smith's assault, the big questions remain unanswered: who is he? Why did he do it? And where is Melissa?

How it works

The Melissa macro virus propagates in the form of an email message containing an infected Word document as an attachment. The transport message has most frequently been reported to contain the following Subject header

Subject: Important Message From Where is the full name of the user sending the message. The body of the message is a multipart MIME message containing two sections. The first section of the message (Content-Type: text/plain) contains the following text. Here is that document you asked for ... don't show anyone else ;-) The next section (Content-Type: application/msword) was initially reported to be a document called "list.doc". This document contains references to pornographic web sites. As this macro virus spreads we are likely to see documents with other names. In fact, under certain conditions the virus may generate attachments with documents created by the victim. When a user opens an infected .doc file with Microsoft Word97 or Word2000, the macro virus is immediately executed if macros are enabled. Upon execution, the virus first lowers the macro security settings to permit all macros to run when documents are opened in the future. Therefore, the user will not be notified when the virus is executed in the future. The macro then checks to see if the registry key "HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Office\Melissa?" has a value of "... by Kwyjibo". If that registry key does not exist or does not have a value of "... by Kwyjibo", the virus proceeds to propagate itself by sending an email message in the format described above to the first 50 entries in every Microsoft Outlook MAPI address book readable by the user executing the macro. Keep in mind that if any of these email addresses are mailing lists, the message will be delivered to everyone on the mailing lists. In order to successfully propagate, the affected machine must have Microsoft Outlook installed; however, Outlook does not need to be the mailer used to read the message. This virus can not send mail on systems running MacOS; however, the virus can be stored on MacOS. Next, the macro virus sets the value of the registry key to "... by Kwyjibo". Setting this registry key causes the virus to only propagate once per session. If the registry key does not persist through sessions, the virus will propagate as described above once per every session when a user opens an infected document. If the registry key persists through sessions, the virus will no longer attempt to propagate even if the affected user opens an infected document. The macro then infects the Normal.dot template file. By default, all Word documents utilize the Normal.dot template; thus, any newly created Word document will be infected. Because unpatched versions of Word97 may trust macros in templates the virus may execute without warning. Finally, if the minute of the hour matches the day of the month at this point, the macro inserts into the current document the message "Twenty-two points, plus triple-word-score, plus fifty points for using all my letters. Game's over. I'm outta here." Note that if you open an infected document with macros disabled and look at the list of macros in this document, neither Word97 nor Word2000 list the macro. The code is actually VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code associated with the "document.open" method. You can see the code by going into the Visual Basic editor

Impact Users who open an infected document in Word97 or Word2000 with macros enabled will infect the Normal.dot template causing any documents referencing this template to be infected with this macro virus. If the infected document is opened by another user, the document, including the macro virus, will propagate. Note that this could cause the user's document to be propagated instead of the original document, and thereby leak sensitive information. Indirectly, this virus could cause a denial of service on mail servers. Many large sites have reported performance problems with their mail servers as a result of the propagation of this virus.