How to add an Additional Layer of Security to Your PC

Recently, I installed Windows 7 and was quite impressed with the UAC tool. Unfortunately, due to lack of proper hardware, I was back to Windows XP within three days.

However the UAC option had impressed me already. I’ve always wanted a lightweight tool that can help protect your system without bringing it to a complete standstill. Was there such a program for Windows XP?

At my sister’s house, the word “windows” is an anathema since my brother in law is a “mac freak”. Even with 1.5 gigs of ram, the system was fast and smooth. When I tried Linux distros like Open Suse and Ubuntu in the past, they were also pretty fast. I was amazed by the fact that these OS’s needed no antivirus software at all.

Windows has always been plagued by bloated antivirus applications and no proper sudo options seemed to exist for Windows and there began my quest for a lighter system with a decent security program.

It was then that I came across a program called “SuRun”. I decided to test it out and so far it is working fine. Here’s a tutorial which I hope will help out beginners.

Before we can install the program, let us look at the “sudo” concept which Linux users are familiar with (that’s the abbreviation for “Super/Substitute User do”). Simply put, Linux does not allow users to run as “root user” (the “admin” equivalent in Linux) for obvious reasons: A super user can do anything including damaging the system files, install any kind of applications and basically mess up the system. But a super user can also install programs, perform maintenance tasks and take care of user accounts. This applies to any operating system.

Certain tasks may require the user to “temporarily” become the “super/admin” user. This requires the user to enter the “root/admin” password. So the user temporarily becomes the “super user”, the task is done (this could be anything from installing certain types of software, system updates etc…) and the user is back to his older normal Joe self. Here is an example of a computer running an Open Suse (Linux distro) update which requires the root password.



 No Linux user ever runs as root (admin) unless really, really necessary. This protects the system from any kind of nasty surprises. Unfortunately, most Windows software can be installed only under an admin account. Surun attempts to give Windows users a “Linux sudo” like experience so that users do not have to log in as admin to install/remove software or perform administrative tasks. You might have realized by now that running as admin all the time will do more harm to your system than good.

Before installing this program, it is recommended to:

a. Set a password for all your user accounts
b. backup your data
c. Create a system restore point

Setting a password for all your accounts (including your “admin” account which can be accessed through safe mode) is very important. Otherwise there is no point installing this program at all. Points b and c are optional and not even necessary (extra paranoia from my part!)

Next step is to download the program from here, then unzip the contents and install it. Check all options.

Your desktop will fade and you won’t be able to access it…Oh no! a virus??…Nothing to panic! it's only the SuRun options.

All the tabs are pretty self explanatory. Please check the options shown in the screenshots for all the tabs. Do not check the "show SuRun settings for experienced users" option". This is for experienced users only. You could try out these settings once you're comfortable with the program.




In the second tab “SuRunners group” choose the “add” option and add your user login or any other desired user login to the “SuRunners group”

 






You will get a notification “Do you want “your user login here” to become a “SuRunners” member?. If you press yes “your user login here” will become SuRunner and will loose the administrator status. Press yes. Note: the screenshot is only an example. Do not add the account titled "Administrator" to avoid any type of problems that may arise.



Now you have become a limited user, but you can become an admin user only if the software requires you to run as admin. Best of all, you do not need to logoff and login again as admin. Neat huh? Click on the “save” and “apply” options. Reboot your system. Now let’s see what happens when I try to run a program (in this case, I’m trying to run the system utility”msconfig”)

Oh noes! “What do I do now?”, “I hate you” etc.? Don’t worry! .You’re a limited user now. Remember?




If you want to run msconfig or any other program that requires admin access, you will have to “whitelist” the program in SuRunner so that you can run it normally. To do that, you will have to know the location of the program. For msconfig, the file is usually located at: C:\windows\pchealth\helpctr\binaries\msconfig.exe. The easiest way would be to use the search function in Windows (Windows key + F)




The SuRunner icon will be a green smiley in your system tray. When you double click on it, it will ask for a password. Use your system/user login password that you use for logging into your computer.  










You can now go to the “SuRunners group” tab AKA second tab and add the required program through the add option. A number of options will be available.

 



If you trust a program, you can use option 3 “automatically start this program with elevated rights and never ask for a password” and then choose “start the program automagically (nice word eh?) with elevated rights”. Msconfig is the system utility and can be trusted. Using option 1 “Guess if the program needs elevated rights” did not seem to work properly for me.

 

Now try clicking on the system clock to change the time. You will receive the error “you do not have the proper privilege to change the system time”. Neither will you be able to install or uninstall any program (oh that sucks big time)

Simple! Right click on your desktop and you will see a new option “control panel as administrator” has been added. Click on that and voila! you will now be able to run the control panel as admin (change the system time, add remove program, whatever you want to do!)

If you’ve got the hang of the program so far, good! If not, just give it some more time and you’ll get used to it. Don’t give up.




Now let’s try running a game (Airstrike 3D) and see what happens.Oh good grief! That’s all Greek and Latin to me……No matter which option I clicked on (Abort, retry or ignore). The game did not work for me.  





As you might have guessed, I simply made SuRun "trust" the application through the second tab and the game ran smoothly!





By this time, you might have noticed by now that the green (SuRun) icon turns red when you run an application as admin.





 Some applications try to play nice with SuRun and politely request you for admin status. I really liked that! One example: the Microsoft Security Essentials Installer:

 

 

When Comodo firewall was updating to the next version, SuRun asked for my password. Good!





Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of some programs. For example: I was trying to install the trial version of the game Deimos Rising. It seemed to proceed for some time and then wham! I got an error. I did not get any error when I ran the installer as "admin". Oh well! no software is perfect


I tried the "Windows Update" option and could not do so since I was not an admin user. It worked properly after I right clicked on the IE icon and choose the option “start as administrator” and clicked “ok”. Now when you go to the windows update site, you will be able to install the updates. Note: It is important that you close your browser window after installing windows update and restart it so that you will be running as a limited user again.

 

I tested this program on my computer which has the following specifications:

Windows XP SP3 professional with the latest updates, 1.93 Gigabytes of ram, Comodo Internet Security (firewall only), surun and no antivirus, antimalware, anti. whatzisname software.

So that’s basically it. Obviously, this tutorial is not perfect since we human beings are not perfect. Please feel free to suggest corrections or other amendments in the comments section below.

How to Convert CSV to TSV files by Batch

A CSV (comma separated values) file is basically a text file containing structured data, where a comma is used to separate or delimit values in each row or record. A TSV (tab separated values) file is similar to a CSV file, except that it uses a tab to separate values.

Both CSVed and TablePad are free applications for manipulating delimitor separated values files. These programs let you open a CSV file and save it as a TSV file, thereby effectively converting from CSV to TSV. But the programs can only convert one file at a time, and currently cannot batch convert all the files contained in a folder in one go.

Until this feature becomes available to the programs, here is an alternative way of batch converting files from CSV to TSV:

Go to Jojoyee.myfil.es and double click CSV2TSV.exe to download the executable (230 KB), rename the file get_file to CSV2TSV.exe.

Or use the VBScript code following the steps below.

Copy the code (highlighted in blue) and paste it into Notepad.
Save the file with the vbs extension (e.g. csv2tsv.vbs)
Double-click on the vbs file to trigger the conversion process.

'This VBScript is for converting CSV files to TSV (tab delimited) files by batch.
'Copy and paste it in Notepad and save the file with vbs extension (e.g. CSV2TSV.vbs)
'Double click CSV2TSV.vbs to do the conversion.
'The converted files will be saved as *.tsv while the original files remain.

Option Explicit
Dim objWsShell, objFSO, objShellAp, objFolder, objFile, objFileTSV, objResult
Dim strPath, strLine, strNewLine, strNewFileName
Dim TotalFilesConverted, FileNameLength
Set objWsShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set objFSO = CreateObject("scripting.filesystemobject")
Set objShellAp = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
Set objFolder = objShellAp.BrowseForFolder(0, "BATCH CONVERSION FROM CSV TO TSV FILES" _
& vbLf & vbLf & "Select a folder containing CSV files for the conversion.", 0, 17)
If objFolder is Nothing Then
msgBox "No folder is selected for conversion of CSV files."
WScript.Quit
Else
strPath = objFolder.Self.Path
objWsShell.CurrentDirectory = strPath
End if
TotalFilesConverted = 0
For Each objFile In objFSO.getfolder(strPath).Files
If UCase(Right(objFile.Name, 4)) = ".CSV" Then
objResult = objWsShell.Popup("Converting " & objFile.Name & " ...",3,"")
FileNameLength = Len(objFile.Name)-4
strNewFileName = Left(objFile.Name,FileNameLength) & ".tsv"
Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(objFile, 1)
Set objFileTSV = objFSO.CreateTextFile(strNewFileName)
Do Until objFile.AtEndOfStream
strLine = objFile.ReadLine
If instr(strLine,Chr(34)) =0 Then
strNewLine = Replace(strLine,",",vbTab)
Else
Call LineQuote(strNewLine)
End if
objFileTSV.WriteLine strNewLine
Loop
objFile.Close
TotalFilesConverted = TotalFilesConverted +1
objFileTSV.Close
End If
Next
If TotalFilesConverted =0 Then
MsgBox "No CSV files are found for conversion in the folder."
Else
MsgBox CStr(TotalFilesConverted) + " Files Converted from CSV to TSV."
End if

Sub LineQuote(strNewLine)
Dim LineLength, Linepos, blnQuote, Quotepos
LineLength = Len(strLine)
Linepos =1
strNewLine =""
blnQuote = False
Do While Linepos <= LineLength
Quotepos = instr(Mid(strLine,Linepos,LineLength-Linepos+1),Chr(34))
If Quotepos =1 Then
If Linepos < LineLength Then
If Mid(strLine,Linepos,2) = Chr(34) & Chr(34) and blnQuote Then
strNewLine = strNewLine & Chr(34)
Linepos = Linepos +2
Else 'one quote
If blnQuote Then
      blnQuote = False
Else
      blnQuote = True
End if
Linepos = Linepos +1
End if
Else 'last character
Linepos = Linepos +1
End if
Elseif Quotepos >1 Then
If blnQuote Then
strNewLine = strNewLine + Mid(strLine,Linepos,Quotepos-1)
Else 'not Quote
strNewLine = strNewLine + Replace(Mid(strLine,Linepos,Quotepos-1),",",vbTab)
End if
Linepos = Linepos +Quotepos -1
Else 'Quotepos =0
strNewLine = strNewLine + Replace(Mid(strLine,Linepos,LineLength-Linepos+1),",",vbTab)
Linepos = LineLength +1
End If
Loop
End Sub

What this code has considered for converting a csv file:

Fields are separated by commas in csv files. Each record is one line terminated by a linefeed or a carriage return. Fields with embeded commas are enclosed with double-quote characters. Fields with embeded double-quote characters are enclosed within double-quote characters, and each of the embedded double-quote characters is represented by a pair of double-quote characters. Fields with leading or trailing spaces are enclosed within double-quote characters. Fields with embeded line breaks have not been considered.

How to Stop the Pesky Interference from Laptop Touchpads When Typing

Here’s how to get rid of a nuisance that can be a real bother. It is easy to accidentally brush a laptop touchpad when typing and that means the cursor goes flying off somewhere with all sorts of unwanted results. If you are using taps to indicate clicks, you may even inadvertently open a program.

There are several ways to deal with this problem. You can disable the touchpad while typing and then re-enable it when you are done. Some laptops even provide a button to do this. Or you can disable and re-enable the touchpad in Control Panel or Device Manager. However, these all-or-nothing methods can be tedious and don’t suit many people.

There is also free software for disabling the touchpad. One program was previously discussed at Gizmo’s Hot Finds.

But why not use the easiest method of all? The method I prefer is simply to use the settings that are already available right there on the PC. The procedure varies slightly, depending on the make of touchpad that you have, but it is similar for the commonly found hardware. It involves just one trip to the Control Panel to configure the touchpad settings and then you are finished.

Configure touchpad properties from the notification area

If there is an icon for your touchpad in the notification area (system tray), right-click it.
Choose “Properties” to open the Mouse Properties dialog.
On the top right of the Mouse Properties dialog should be a button for your make of Touchpad. (This button may be missing in virtual machines.) Alternatively, there may be a button "Device Settings". Click the button that applies for your system.
A new window will open. Highlight the touchpad listing and click the button “Options”.
A window for configuring the touchpad settings will open. It will vary slightly from one make of touchpad to the other but will be similar.
Click "PalmCheck" or "PalmTracking" or similar. See the examples of the windows for two common touchpads below.
Adjust the slider to the desired sensitivity.
Click "OK" or "Yes" or similar.

Not all systems will have a touchpad icon in the notification area. You can still configure the settings from the Control Panel.

How to open Control Panel settings for the mouse

In Windows XP, these are the steps:

Open the Start menu
Click “Control Panel”
Select “Printers and Other Hardware”
Click “Mouse”
The “Mouse Properties” dialog window will open
In Windows Vista and Windows 7:

Open the Start menu
Enter “mouse” in the Search bar (without quotes)
In the Control Panel list, click “Mouse”
The “Mouse Properties” dialog window will open
Next follow the steps 3-8 given above for configuring the touchpad from an icon in the notification area.

How to create a Multi episode DVD with DVDStyler

Hey folks, after looking through the Best free DVD Authoring Software Article, I noticed a few people state the problems with the technicalities of using DVDStyler. I personally have used this application on a number of occasions now to put TV series that I have either transferred from VHS, or been lucky enough to download from somewhere onto DVD with a full menu. It took a little bit of a learning curve for me, but it really isnt that difficult, and gives alot of flexibility.

So for those who want to get to grips with this piece of software, here is a PDF I made that will guide you through making your project, through to burning when!

http://www.techsupportalert.com/pdf/beevs-dvdstyler-tutorial.pdf

For the tutorial, I used version 1.7.4.2. which runs from my liberkey. Thanks for your time, and I hope you can put the tutorial to good use.


How To Locate The Best Free Radio Stations Streaming Classical Music

There's a goldmine of quality stations streaming classical music, that can be tapped for free, through the Internet.


Useful Ways of Locating Stations Streaming Classical Music:
ClassicalWebcast.com provides a brief directory of selected classical music radio stations with brief descriptions of what to expect, along with bitrates (as an indication of sound quality) and live links to the online players.
ClassicalDJ has a similar but more extensive list which can be searched by geographical region (continent) - especially useful if you don't have a particularly strong Internet connection and need to find stations broadcasting close to home.
Or, if you like to search around for yourself, try the advanced search engine from Radio Beta.

Selected Stations Streaming Classical Music:
BBC Radio 3 can be accessed in good quality audio through the BBC's excellent Listen Again iPlayer service which lets you stream, on demand, any of the last week's radio programs for free from anywhere in the world (in addition to listening to live radio broadcasts or downloading  podcasts). As well as programs of live concerts and recorded music (including Jazz and Contemporary), you can often find interviews with artistes, such as in the weekday magazine program, In Tune.
One long-running daily series is Composer of the Week, in which Donald Macleod deftly explores the lives and works of all sorts of different composers.
Discovering Music is a weekly educational feature examining renowned works in detail with copious musical illustrations, played live to a schools audience; alongside some on-demand video streams, the Discovering Music Listening Library contains a collection of .mp3 files of past programs to download.
Another popular weekly is CD Review with its Building a Library spot, which examines the recorded performing history of individual works in some detail. Audio quality may be higher if you listen live, but is generally very good (at 128-192 kb/s).
ABC ClassicFM - Across the globe, the ABC - Australian Broadcasting Corporation - also has a long history of high quality broadcasting. Its ABC ClassicFM station also provides a ListenAgain service in addition to live streaming. One interesting initiative from ABC is classic/amp - a growing archive of modern classical music by Australian composers which you can listen to on demand. The only slight disappointment is the limited quality of the somewhat boomy online audio (64 kb/s) radio.
(More top English language stations to follow.)

AVRO Klassiek stations - If you like listening by genre without any commentary, some of the AVRO Klassiek streaming radio stations may appeal. No advertisements or chit chat, just a constant stream of complete recordings of an interesting repertoire and good performances. There's a choice of five stations, including 'Baroque', 'Classical movie music', 'Religious music', 'Operetta' and a 'Best of...' compendium. The individual stations are readily accessible from the list on ClassicalDJ : just click to download a live link to your desktop (or wherever) and open in your favourite media/music player (reviewed here), which will also display summary info on the music being played.

European Radio Stations:
Listeners comfortable with languages other than English may also enjoy some excellent European radio stations like:

Swiss Radio
Radio France
Radio Bartok (Hungarian)
YLEn Klassinen (Finnish)
AVRO Klassiek (Dutch) - see also above
More live European stations listed here and here.

Other Online Classical Music Stations:
AccuRadio is a customizable service which has a classical channel divided into several sub-channels to help you find bits of music you like. It seems to be at least partially financed by providing product links on Amazon.
All Classical from Portland, Oregon, USA has a live stream and some on-demand programs in crystal clear sound. Distractingly chatty though...
ClassicFM is a popular commercial UK station with a DJ style approach - think pop radio conventions applied to classical music.
(more to follow.)
NB: To listen to these online streams you'll need to have the necessary codecs installed. You may also like to listen via an online audio or multimedia player, such as Foobar or the KMPlayer, which conveniently text what's being broadcast.

How to Stop Vista Objecting to Programs at Startup

Oh the joys of Vista.

One of its many "charming" characteristics is that it will fail at startup to run certain utilities you have installed.

It does this for your protection but when you have deliberately and consciously installed a program and it won't run, it is a total pain.

The classic example is the wonderful free "Everything" search program. After you install "Everything" Vista will simply not automatically run the program at startup. Instead it issues a warning message. The only way to start the program is to do it manually.

However Mark Wittels, one of our regular site vistors,  has found a way of getting around the problem. Here's what he suggests:

Often, when you use a third party program in Vista such as "Everything" or "Secunia PSI"  which is set to start on boot, Vista's user account control' (UAC) will block the program because it can't get a response from you to elevate access privileges. This requires you to unblock the program in response to an information balloon that appears.

The simple way to avoid this annoyance is to use Vista's "Task Scheduler" to start the program.

1. Stop the program from running at startup

You can do this by using the  "Options" or "Settings" dialog in the program you have installed and unchecking the appropriate box. If this is not available (some software uses the Registry for this purpose) an excellent program to perform this function is "Autoruns" (available from Microsoft at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx). I don't like to use 'msconfig' because it has its own nag screen which appears at startup after you make changes.

2. Run the program as a scheduled task

Click on Administrative Tools->Task Scheduler Expand the folders in the left hand pane (Task Scheduler Library). To add a new folder, highlight a folder (example Windows) and click on Actions->New Folder and give it a name.

In the right hand pane or in Actions, click on Create Basic Task (if you are an advanced user you may click on Create Task, which offers considerably more control over the task).

In the dialog box, enter a name and description, if you want a reminder, and click Next Enter a trigger, in the case of startup click the radio button 'when the computer starts' and click Next Click the radio button 'start a program' and click Next.  Enter the full path name of the program or browse to find the .exe file, click on it and click Next.

TIP: If you want to enter an argument and don't know what it might be, right click on the program desktop shortcut and select 'Properties'. The argument will be shown in the 'target' block.

The final screen will show the details of the task. Click on finish and you are done.

How to Adjust the Visual Settings in Windows 7 for Best Performance

Many PC users are not aware of the host of visual settings that are available in Windows 7. There are many animation effects, transparency settings, menu fades, and so on. In slower machines, these can be a drag on system performance. Also, not everyone is enamored of a lot of busy visuals.

Here is how to configure the settings to your own liking (some settings will be missing in systems that do not support Aero):

Open the Start menu
Right-click Computer
Choose “Properties” from the context menu
In the left panel, click “Advanced system settings”
In the Performance section, click the “Settings” button
The dialog box shown in the figure below will open
Make sure the “Visual Effects” tab is selected
Remove or add checks to items according to your preference
Click “OK” and “OK”
If you don't mind typing long words, you can get right to step 6 by entering "SystemPropertiesPerformance" (without quotes) in the Start search bar.

An alternative to making individual selections is to use one of the options listed near the top of the dialog box. You can let Windows choose what’s best for your system, adjust for best appearance, or adjust for best performance.

Here are some possible effects to disable for better performance:

Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
Animations in the taskbar and Start Menu
Enable transparent glass
Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show shadows under windows
Slide open combo boxes
Naturally, this and all the other possible settings are a matter of personal choice. Also, how performance is affected depends on the nature of your particular system.

How to Backup the Windows Registry

In simple terms the Windows Registry can be thought of as a file containing an extended inventory of all your PCs hardware and software.

When Windows starts up it consults the Registry in order to know how to relate to your specific hardware and software.

It's a file that's essential to Windows. If it gets corrupted Windows won't be able to function properly.

And it does get corrupted; rather too often actually. That's why it's good practice to have a backup copy.

Easy, you say, I'll just copy the file to another location.

In Windows 95, 98 you can do just this. The Registry consists of two files system.dat and user.dat located in the Windows folder and you can simply copy these to another folder to create your registry backup. ME adds a third file, classes.dat, but it too can be simply copied.

This simple approach won't work with Windows NT and later versions as the Registry files are locked by the system and can't be easily copied.

Windows addresses this by providing automatic backup of the Registry as part of the automatic System Restore feature. This feature is enabled by default when Windows is installed.

If you have left the System Restore feature enabled on your PC then your Registry is automatically being backed up. If it gets corrupted Windows will automatically try to recover it from previous restore points.

However, many users, me included, turn the System Restore feature off as it is a notorious disk space hog. Once turned off, your Registry is no longer being backed up.

Thankfully, there are a number of utilities that will back up your Registry. One of the best is also free. It called ERUNT.

ERUNT (Emergency Recovery Utility for NT) will backup the Registry for all Windows systems from NT onwards. It also allows you to recover from backup either through a special recovery program or through the Windows Recovery Console.

And it's fast, very fast.

With ERUNT it's also possible to set up automatic Registry backups using the Windows Scheduler.

As a bonus, ERUNT includes another utility NTREGOPT that allows you to defragment your Registry. To be frank, I've never myself seen any performance improvement from registry defragging but then again it does no harm either.

ERUNT is easy to use but it's not intended for raw beginners. Raw beginners will most likely have System Restore enabled anyway so they won't need to back up their Registry.

How To Extract Audio Out of Video Files Losslessly and Fast

When you want to save the audio stream from a video, there is only one way to do it right: demux. Demuxing means splitting up the different streams from a file. This way, you keep the streams in their original quality and it is very fast (less than a minute for 90 minutes of video).

So please, next time you want to save audio from a YouTube video, do not convert it to mp3 or use a website to give you a link. Download the video in the highest quality possible with tools such as Video DownloadHelper, then extract the audio.

A very good tool to extract the audio is Pazera Free Audio Extractor: it supports almost every format possible, and it can go through a batch of files with no problem. To demux, choose the "Try extract original audio stream" option from the drop-down list of Output Format. If the audio stream is too big (.wav file for example) or in a format that is not supported by your mp3 player (.ac3...), you can ask Pazera Free Audio Extractor to convert it directly for you.

Now you know how to properly handle that task, whether you want to save a track from a concert DVD or get sounds from a video for a remix. You can download Pazera Free Audio Extractor on this page: http://www.pazera-software.com/products/audio-extractor/. No installation is required, just unzip the download and run the executable.