Cannot Execute .Exe Files

I received a call from my friend yesterday asking me about a problem with his laptop. He said that he cannot execute .exe files and his anti-virus (Avast!) said the files are infected with virus. So, I asked him if he has any Firewall.

He said "What is a Firewall?". Now that's a problem. And then I asked him again if he has ran a virus scan recently. He said he did scanned his laptop 2 months ago. I told him to install a firewall and schedule his anti-virus to scan at boot-up time.

After he updated his anti-virus and performed the scan, the .exe files can be executed without any problem. His .exe files have been infected by a virus and everytime he tried to execute it, Avast! will not allow it because it contains the virus. The solution: Perform a scan and boot-up scan.

If you're having this similar problem. Do the above things and install a firewall. It will help.

P.S - If you would like to know more on protecting your computer, visit http://www.chuangcomputer.com/5day

My Domains Were Suspended

Last night my domains were suspended by my hosting company. At first, I cannot check my emails, then I wait for almost one day in case my websites were down. But, after checking my domains, it said something like my domains have been suspended.

So, I sent a support ticket to my hosting company. In less than 4 hours, they responded and said it was a mistake. Now, my domain is back. Thank god!

Joost, An Alternative To TV

I recently installed Joost on my computer and watch an interesting documentary video. It's called 'The First Columbus' on Wall to Wall Channel in Joost. I love Joost because it has so many channels.

If you want to have some laugh, go to the Comedy Channel and watch the Just For Laugh shows. It's entertaining and you'll never run out of shows because there are too many channels to watch and newer episodes and videos will be added regularly.

This is another alternative to TV. Besides Youtube, you can try Joost. Joost is different than Youtube because it provides profesionally made videos for you. Try it now and see it for yourself.

Capture Your Video and Process It For Free!

Now you don't need expensive software to capture and process your video. In fact, you can do it for free. VirtualDub is a video capturing and processing software and what's more, it's free. From VirtualDub.org website:

"VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images."

I used this software to convert my videos to AVI and the quality is good. It's also a simple program and you don't have to take so much time to learn it. If you would like to hardcoded subtitles in your videos, you can also use this software.

If you would like to know more, visit VirtualDub.org

Translatting Web Pages

Did you found a web page that you like but it's on other language that you don't know? Do you have a hard time on translatting it?

I've also encountered this problem once. But it can be solve by using translatting services over the Internet. One of my favourite is http://world.altavista.com where you can trasnlate sentences or web pages for free.

Google also has similar service at http://www.google.com/translate_t and you can do it for free and for Yahoo. it's at http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ .

If you're having a problem on translating a web page, use these services. It doesn't cost you anything. This services might not translate any web pages perfectly, but I think it's better than nothing. Plus it's free.

Sending Large Files

Let's say you want to send a file to your friends. But,the file is too big and you cannot send it as an email attachment. What should you do? Well, you don't have to be so worried about it. There are many file hosting services on the Internet you can use to send large files to anyone that you like.

Rapidshare.com is one of the services. It lets you to store files in 30 days before they remove it (If I'm not mistaken, you can store up to 100 MB per file). Another file hosting services is Megaupload.com and Fileden.com.

All of these file hosting services are free to use. But there are some restrictions and limitations when you're using the services as a free user. However, 30 days is long enough to send large files to your friends.

So, in case you have large files to send and cannot send it through attachment, use file hosting services.

Safe Online Buying Practice Tips

Many people are using credit cards to buy things online. However, there are people out there who want to steal your credit card numbers and use it for themselves. In order to prevent this from happening, you need to know some safe online buying practice tips.

1. Make sure that you've already installed KeyScrambler before typing your credit card number in order to prevent any keyloggers to record it.

2. Make sure you're on a secure website where the connection to the server are encrypted. Look at the URL, 'https' means you're on a secure website.

3. Don't buy anything from spam emails. If the spam emails are selling some Rolex replicas, never buy from them and it's better if you don't open any spam emails.

4. Scan your computer with anti-spyware and anti-virus to make sure you have no keyloggers installed in your computer.

5. Install McAfee Site Advisor to prevent you from visiting phishing websites.

6. Always make sure you're on the correct website before entering the numbers.

These are some safe practice tips that you can apply.

Four Tips To Avoid Spam Emails

Nowadays, only 2 from 20 emails are not spam. The amount of spam emails have become abundant today. Avoiding spam is really important because spam emails may contain viruses, trojan horses or other threats. In this post, I will tell you how you can avoid getting spam emails.

1. Never open or preview spam emails. It could contain something that will notify the senders that you've opened the emails. This will make your email address as a 'live' email address.

2. Search the Google for your email address and try to remove all of it because the spambots could harvest your email address from the web pages.

3. Unsubscribing from spam emails could make your email to become a 'live' email and the spammers will send more emails to you because your email address is 'live'.

4. Update your anti-virus and scan your computer regularly to prevent trojan horses to use your email client to send spam.

Why You Should Disable ActiveX In Your Browser

Enabling ActiveX Control in your browser will make your browser become insecure. It is almost the same as running .exe files in your browser. Therefore, viruses, trojan horses and other types of threats can run in your browser.

According to Symantec Internet Security Threat Report 2007:

During the first half of 2007, 89 percent of plug-in vulnerabilities disclosed affected ActiveX® components for Internet Explorer. ActiveX components accounted for 58 percent of plug-in vulnerabilities in the second half of 2006.

So, disabling ActiveX Control in your browser is a good thing to do to prevent threats from infecting your PC.

Svchost.exe or Scvhost.exe?

Malicious software such as spyware, adware, viruses, trojan horses and much more are software that have malicious purposes. Sometimes, they can disguise themselves to look like a legit processes.

For example, svchost. exe is a process belonging to the Microsoft Windows Operating System and it's essential for this program to run and it should not be terminated. Scvhost.exe is another process that looks like svchost.exe but it does not belong to Microsoft Windows Operating System. It's a W32/Agobot-S virus process and it's a threat to your computer.

If you found this process in your computer, you should remove it immediately.

Therefore, if you found suspicious processes like this one, you need to scan your computer using spyware and virus scanner. I would also like to suggest you to install McAfee Site Advisor in order to protect you from visiting malicious websites in the future.

Happy New Year 2008!

Hello guys,

It's been 10 days since I post something on this blog because I was busy. But now I'm back and will post more often on this blog and more contents. I'm thinking to re-design this blog in 2008 to a more attractive design.

Anyway, enjoy your New Year Celebration and let us hope 2008 will become a magnificent year.

Happy New Year 2008!

Azwan Asmat