Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Firefox Tweaks

This post will list various Firefox Browser Tweaks I have run across to make your Firefox experience much more enjoyable. I welcome feedback from anyone to would like additions to this post:

Increasing the Number of Tabs on Screen
You’ve probably noticed when you open ten or so tabs that FF shrinks them to a certain width but they still don’t all fit, requiring you to scroll the tab bar or use the list arrow at the far right to list all the open tabs. One solution to this little problem is to decrease the width of the tabs still more while still allowing them to be wide enough to actually read. You should have the hang of about:config by now, so I’ll shorten my explanations from here on. Double click on the “browser.tabs.tabMinWidth” entry, replace the default value 100 by typing another value, such as 75, click “OK,” and then restart. This should allow 12 tabs before scrolling is need. Obviously, you can lower the value more, but eventually you won’t be able to read the tabs. (BTW, if you care, entering a 0 disables scrolling.)

Preventing Accidental Tab Closure
Speaking of tabs, have you ever clicked on one but accidentally clicked on the X and closed it? Rats! You can prevent this from ever happening again with a little tweak that removes the X from all tabs except the active page. Double click on the “browser.tabs.closeButtons” entry, replace the default value 1 with one of the following: 0 (displays a close button on the active tab only); 1 (default, displays close buttons on all tabs); 2 (displays no close buttons); 3 (displays a single close button at the end of the tab bar; FF 1.x behavior). You’ll probably want to type 0. Now just click OK and restart.

Turning on “Pipeline” to Speed Up Page Loading
This tweak turns on “Pipeline,” which make items on a page load simultaneously instead of one at a time. First, double-click on the “network.http.pipelining” entry and set it to true; second, set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to true; third, set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to something like 30, which means that FF will make 30 requests at once (see next paragraph for explanation); and fourth, right-click anywhere, select “New > Integer,” enter the name nglayout. initialpaint.delay, and set its value to 0. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. After a restart, you should see a marked increase in speed. FYI, you might not want to exceed 30 for step 3 at the risk of getting banned from various servers by being mistaken for a “DoS (Denial of Service) attack” (not to be confused with my beloved old DOS). This is a type of attack on a network that is designed to bring the network to a crawl by flooding it with useless traffic. Many DoS attacks, such as Ping of Death and Teardrop attacks, exploit limitations in the TCP/IP protocols. For all known DoS attacks, there are software fixes that system administrators can install to limit the damage caused by the attacks. But, like viruses, new DoS attacks are constantly being dreamed up by low-life (excuse me) hackers.

Tweaking Download Manager
FF’s Download Manager (Tools > Downloads, or Ctrl+J) has its pros and cons. A marked con is its annoying habit of popping up with its messages. Here are a few tweaks that you can use according to your preference. Each requires a restart.

  1. If all you want is a short message telling you a download is complete, set browser.download.manager.show-AlertInterval to something like 500 (milliseconds, i.e., a half second) instead of 2000 (2 seconds).
  2. By default, DM pops up immediately when you download, which is annoying with small downloads. Set browser.download.manager.openDelay to something like 30,000 (30 seconds) which means that DM will appear only when a download exceeds 30 seconds.
  3. Normally you have to close DM manually, another nuisance. To have it close automatically, double-click browser.download.manager.closeWhenDone to set it to true.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Windows Steady State - Lockdown Software from Microsoft

Windows® SteadyState™ 2.5 is now available on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Whether you manage computers in a school computer lab or an Internet cafĂ©, a library, or even in your home, Windows SteadyState helps make it easy for you to keep your computers running the way you want them to, no matter who uses them.

Windows SteadyState runs on genuine copies of Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, and Windows Vista Starter. And, Windows SteadyState is offered free of charge to Windows Genuine Advantage customers!
To Download Click Here!

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Antivirus XP 2008 Manual Removal Instructions

This is how I got rid of Antivirus XP 2008. It is different than the XP Antivirus 2008 most sites refer to.

First you need to stop the program from loading on startup. This is what you do to stop it:

Run msconfig, Go to Startup tab

Uncheck lphc35dj0e1an
Uncheck rhc75dj0e1an

Click apply, then ok, Restart computer

Then you need to delete the main files this program uses. Delete the following files:

C:\windows\system32\lphc35dj0e1an.exe
C:\program files\rhc75dj0e1an\rhc75dj0e1an.exe

This should remove the program from your system but you probably still have a warning message displayed as your wallpaper in Windows and the virus removed the ability to change the wallpaper or your desktop settings.

To restore ability to change your desktop settings and select a different wallpaper and screen saver do the following:

Start, run

type Gpedit.msc

Navigate to User configuration, Administrative Templates, Control Panel, Display

Right click on Remove Display in Control Panel
Click on Properties and select Disabled

Do the same steps to change the following attributes to disabled:

Hide Desktop Tab
Prevent changing wallpaper
Hide Apperance and Themes tab
Hide Settings tab
Hide Screen Saver tab

You should now be able to use your computer normally and change the wallpaper to something other than the warning message Antivirus XP 2008 set it to.

Went to MalwareBytes.Com and downloaded and scanned with free tool

Also went to filehippo.com and downloaded:
1. CCleaner
2. Spybot Search and Destroy
3. SpywareBlaster

Ran Combofix (This rocks!...but you have to be careful. It is a sharp knife)

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

How to stop Word from using Reading View

If you would like to stop Word from opening in the Reading View mode then:

  • Click the Office Logo button at the top left of the Word 2007 window
  • Click the Word Options button at the bottom of the dialog box
  • In the left pane, click Popular
  • In the right pane, uncheck the box that says "Open email attachments in Full Screen Reading view"
  • Click OK

How to disable the Insert Key

On a laptop, especially - but also on some compact desktop keyboards - it's way too easy to accidentally hit the Insert key and find yourself typing over what you already typed - ouch! There are times when it comes in handy to be able to overtype, but if you never use it, you can prevent this from happening by disabling it.
For most programs, this registry edit works:
In your registry editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Keyboard Layout
In the right pane, right click an empty space and select New and then Binary Value.
Name it Scancode Map
Double click it and in the Value Data field, add these values:00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0002 00 00 00 00 00 52 E000 00 00 00
Close the registry editor and reboot the computer

To disable the Insert key in Word 2003, do the following:
Click Tools Customize
Click the Keyboard button at the bottom
In the Categories box, scroll down and click All Commands
In the Commands box, click Overtype
In the Current Keys box, highlight Insert, then click the Remove button at the bottom.
Close all the dialog boxes

Note that in Word 2007, overtype is already disabled by default.