Re/enable regedit in Windows XP

Regdedit is the heart of tweaking you computer. But sometimes when you open it via Start => Run => regedit, we get the very popular and irritating error 'Registry editing has been disabled by your Administrator, even though you edited the registry just yesterday with no problem . There are three solutions to this problem. I would recommend the first way for newbies, and the other two ways for a little advanced users. Note:You just need to perform one method to enable the registry.

The easier way
To enable the regedit, just download this little software from here, by comGenius, that will enable your registry within seconds. You just open the software select "Enable regedit(Registry Editing)" from the drop down menu, press perform and Proceed restart and you are done.

The second way
From Group Policy Editor
Go to Run –> gpedit.msc
In the left hand menu, go to User Config –> Administrative Templated –> System.
Now In the right hand pane, select “Prevent access to registry editing tools”. It will probably be not configured or enabled. If it’s enabled, disable it and if it’s not configured, first enable it, apply settings and then disable it. Most probably the settings have been applied instantly. If not, then run gpupdate in command prompt to apply the group policies.

The third way
Go to Start –> Run, copy and paste the follow in the Run box and press OK.

REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

The effects are usually instant. If not then you should see the results after restarting your computer.


 
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Gfail- What to do at such times?

Recently Gmail, Google's free online mail service, had gone bust due to "Unexpected side effects of some new code that tries to keep data geographically close to its owner caused another data center in Europe to become overloaded". This resulted in tremendous breakdown in the productivity of the internet crowd. Chances of such a thing happening again is next to nil, but it cannot be ruled out either. So what must one do if such a thing happens?

• Use a desktop e-mail application:
  While Gmail couldn't be accessed via its online interface, it could still be viewed with desktop e-mail applications like Microsoft Outlook or the free Mozilla Thunderbird. These are softwares that download your e-mail messages to your hard-drive, so that you can view it even if you go offline.
  To use your Gmail e-mail account in Outlook, you must first make sure POP3 support is enabled in Gmail, and then you can add it to Outlook. For that login to your Gmail account and go to settings => Forwarding and POP/IMAP
  .
  
  1. Log in to your Gmail account.
  2. At the top of any Gmail page, click Settings.
  3. In the Mail Settings window, click Forwarding and POP.
  4. In the POP Download section, select Enable POP or all mail or Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on.
  5. Click Save Settings.
  6. In Outlook, on the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
  7. Click Add a new e-mail account, and then click Next.
  8. Click POP3, and then click Next.
  9. Under User Information, do the following:
     
     1. In the Your Name box, type your full name the way you want it to appear to other people.
     2. In the E-mail Address box, type your e-mail user name followed by @gmail.com.
  10. Under Server Information, do the following:
      
      1. In the Incoming mail server (POP3) box, type pop.gmail.com.
      2. In the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) box, type smtp.Gmail.com.
  11. Under Logon Information, do the following:
      
      1. In the User Name box, type your full e-mail address, including @gmail.com.
      2. In the Password box, type your password.
      3. Select the Remember password check box.Note You have the option to have Outlook remember your password by typing it in the Password box and selecting the Remember password check box. Having Outlook remember your password means that you won't have to type your password each time you access the account; however, it also means that the account is vulnerable to anyone who has access to your computer. Use strong passwords that combine upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Weak passwords don't mix these elements. Strong password: Y6dh!et5. Weak password: House27. Use a strong password that you can remember so that you don't have to write it down.
         
  12. Click More Settings.
  13. On the General tab, under Mail Account, type Gmail.
  14. Click the Outgoing Server tab, and then select the My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication check box.
  15. Select Use same settings as my incoming mail server.
  16. Click the Advanced tab, and then under Server Port Numbers for both Incoming server (POP3) and Outgoing server (SMTP), select the This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL) check boxes.
  17. Change the Outgoing server (SMTP) port number to 465.The Incoming server(POP3)port number should change automatically to 995 when you select the This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL) check box.
      
  18. Click OK.
  19. To verify that your account is working, click Test Account Settings. If there is missing or incorrect information, such as your password, you will be prompted to supply or correct it. Make sure your computer is connected to the Internet.
  20. Click Next, and then click Finish.
• Use Google's own offline Gmail
  Google recently rolled out the feature for viewing mails offline. You could acess the mail by this wa also. Follow these steps to get started:
  
  1. Click Settings and click the Labs tab.
  2. Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
  3. Click Save Changes.
  4. After your browser reloads, you'll see a new "Offline^0.1" link in the upper righthand corner of your account, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don't already have it.
• Acess Gmail via Mobile
  Gmail can be accessed by mobile. So you may download the Gmail application from here, and access your mails easily.
• Keep hard-copies of important mails
  This is the most tried and tested way. Any important mail in your account. Take a print out and stash it in your file and keep it away

These are my tips. With one of these methods you can access Gmail if any other method doesn't work. So share more thoughts with us. Comment!

Simple ways to download Youtube videos

Youtube, the popular video-sharing site, hosts a very huge number of videos. But one of the huge minuses of Youtube is that it does not allow users to download the videos. Hence users need to download videos using many other methods. Like you may use Internet Download Manager, which shows a Download Video button when video plays. The following two methods are one of the simplest methods to download youtube videos.

Suppose I am watching president Obama's Inauguration speech, and I want to download it. So first get the url. Taking this example, the url is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjnygQ02aW4.

Ok now edit the url so that pwn or kick comes before youtube. Eg.
http://www.pwnyoutube.com/watch?v=VjnygQ02aW4 or
http://www.kickyoutube.com/watch?v=VjnygQ02aW4.

Now if you put pwn you will be redirected to a new page giving you the download links in .flv and .mp4 fornat. If you had put kick, the options of formats to download are plenty. There is also 3gp included. Have Fun!!

Use proxy to avoid deetection of your IP address

If you are into things like torrents, most of the material you may be downloading, may be illegal. Even sometimes when you visit sites that, you know, you don't want others to know about, your IP address gets recorded. In this way anybody can track you down. So as a solution you may use proxy sites. But the more reliable one would be to use a proxy software.

We have given free proxy softwares in our previous post. You may see them here. These softwares have been tried and tested and yield the most excellent results. They are absolutely free, but they display a small ad at the top of the page.

Know any free proxy software or site? Please comment to let s know.

Google toolbar autoupdate-Oh the irritation!

Google toolbar, the toolbar from google, like most other Google products has this feature of auto-updating. The irritation when after it updates and show pop-ups like that of Auto-fill when FireFox starts up, especially on my 256MB RAM is disgusting. There isn't still a solution for this. Even if you end the GoogleUpdate.exe from the Windows task manager it will again start on its own in a couple of seconds. And like always Google has a reply for this as well:

Excerpts from markcarey.com-

There are lots of good reasons to auto-update the toolbar. For example, about two years ago, a security company found a potential security issue with the toolbar. The toolbar team went into a non-stop quest to find and fix any security issues. With auto-update, we were able to deploy the fix to toolbar users before anyone but the security company knew about it in the first place. So we want users to be informed that the toolbar auto-updates, but I think that in general it can be a very useful feature to auto-update.

bateman_ap, I think that the toolbar team took care not to enable any extra options (e.g. pop-up blocking) if the toolbar upgrades--let me know if you find otherwise, and I'll pass the feedback on. The upgrade does have a lot of useful features that I think people would like (it took me about 10 minutes to really want the new version instead of the old version), and I'm not aware of any features that went away, so I hope people will explore the new version for a little while before assuming that the upgrade is for the worse somehow.

However enabling the auto-update has its own share of good. It makes your software and ultimately your PC safe from the latest security threats. So what do you think of it?

Why update drivers

Updating drivers. You must have heard it from that geek next door, that computer guy who speaks in a Martian language and many others in general.So why should we update our drivers?

First of all let us see what drivers are- Drivers are pieces of software that you recieve whenever you buy any hardware or upgrade it. Drivers are pieces of software that translate the code language of the hardware to the language of the computer. It is just like an interpreter, that a VIP uses when he travels to a foreign country.

So why should we update drivers?

1. The compatibility view
   Updating drivers lets your hardware remain compatible to the ever changing development of the internet. Suppose you have a graphic card, and you want to play a multiplayer online game, that is based on browser. If your card does not have the required driver, you will not be able to play it, because your card is not compatible with the game.
2. The security angle
   Although not http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifmuch still the security is increased when you update the driver. Any security exploit that would have been present in the previous driver or by some error in the hardware will be patched up.
3. The social angle
   And as always it is good to boast (if you are a geek that is) that you have all the latest drivers installed.Ha!

So you must always update drivers. There are softwares that check your computer for current version of your driver and look online for its update, if there are any. Some of them include RadarSync and DriverMax. (Both are free)