About 10 years ago when most people are still using dial-up and broadband is only available in Klang valley, I was one of the lucky user that is staying in an area which is within the broadband coverage area. I remembered I was paying a lot monthly for using dial-up connection and was really happy when the broadband package is cheaper than what I paid, faster connection and I can use it 24 hours a day without limit. I had a question in mind which is if I have both dial up and broadband connected, would Windows use the bandwidth simultaneously or only use one of it? If Windows only uses one of it, which connection would it use and why?

I found out that it has something to do with the Windows Routing Table. It is possible to switch between the connections by changing the route and setting the lowest metric value for the default route. To do that, Windows comes with a command line route.exe utility which I would say it may not be easy to use for people who do not understand IP routing table.
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There are a few popular online service which I am sure you have heard of such as VirusTotal, an online virus scanner that scans the file you upload with multiple (40+) antivirus and ThreatExpert, an online automated threat analysis which analyzes the file that you upload on check on what it does when it is ran on the computer. I personally use ThreatExpert a lot because I prefer to know what the file is doing rather than putting my full trust on the antivirus which sometimes gives us false detection. Other than ThreatExpert, I have previously mentioned CWSandbox, Anubis, Sunbelt Sandbox, Norman Sandbox and Comodo Instant Malware Analysis.

Here is another another online sandbox called Joebox to add in to the list of file behavior analyzers. JoeBox has been around since early 2008 and it is updated and improved periodically. 3 days ago JoeBox has been updated to 1.5.5 that fixes bug on big html files, added file written and key value queried section, increased HTML layout and fixed virtual machine guest time update bug.
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I personally think that keylogger is the most scariest threat. Imagine all your passwords being captured and the person who installed the keylogger is able to access all your password protected websites such as your emails, paypal, online banking and etc. One of the most effective method to counter keylogger is by using Zemana AntiLogger.

Zemana AntiLogger is one of the security products that I’ve recommended and will continue to recommend to everyone. The last time I tested Zemana AntiLogger and it was able to block virtually ALL keylogging, webcam capture and screenshot capture methods from different trojans. A year has gone by and again I’ve tested Zemana AntiLogger with 2 keyloggers (one of it uses rootkit method and the other advertises that it is completely invisible bypassing antivirus and firewall) and 1 trojan crypted with incognito which by bypassed many antivirus and internet security products. Zemana AntiLogger was able to detect injection on both of the keyloggers and the trojan while successfully blocking the installation of those dangerous files.

Zemana has collaborated with Softpedia to offer everyone FREE license for Zemana AntiLogger ONLY FOR TODAY. Hurry and grab your license as soon as possible.
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Few days ago I was trying to help a friend troubleshoot a computer problem using teamviewer. For some weird reasons when I gave him the direct link to download the Teamviewer QuickSupport module, Windows Live Messenger gave me an error “The following message could not be delivered to all recipients” message.

I thought that MSN blocked the link because there was an .EXE extension which can be unsafe so I tried uploading to MediaFire which the download link contains only random letters and numbers without the extension, but it still got blocked. I also remembered very clearly that I tried on Rapidshare but it was blocked too. Finally I had to ask him visit teamviewer.com and click on the “Join a Session” button to download the quick support module.

I googled and found some people also had the problem of MSN blocking Mediafire links. I really thought that this is the case but after doing more research, it appears to be different and MSN doesn’t hate or intentionally block MediaFire links.
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Sniffing packets of a software is one of the reverse engineering method to find out what data is being sent and received. Packet sniffing is mostly done by more advanced users and most of the time, hackers themselves. Many years ago when I was in the 8th-wonder team, our leader of the clan ad4 used packet sniffer and discovered that anyone can change a person’s ICQ details without logging in to that user account. He created a simple tool which is able to change the details of any ICQ account, unfortunately one of the clan member masta abused the tool and ICQ found out about that exploit and fixed it within 24 hours.

Other than that, it is also useful to check if a program is harvesting any sensitive data from your computer. If you do not have a firewall, you wouldn’t know if the program that you installed is connecting to the Internet or not. The most popular packet sniffer that is free today is Wireshare (last time was called Ethereal), but I’d like to introduce a different one called oSpy which has the capability of even decrypting encrypted SSL packets.
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I’ve been using Pingdom for at least 3 years already because they provide really good service and also the 1 minute checks from locations all over the world. I used to have problems sending SMS as notification and Pingdom’s support team fixed the problem really quick plus they even compensated more SMS credits to my account. I’ve always been using the Basic account because that is the cheapest plan they had back then. It’s pretty much a waste since I only have one blog site to monitor when the basic account offers checks on 5 websites.

My Pingdom account has just expired end of February and was billed $119.40 for a new invoice. I’ve just paid few thousand dollars for a years’ dedicated server at NetDepot and is really feeling the pinch for fork out another hundred bucks for a monitoring service. Moreover Adsense has stopped serving ads to this website and the revenue that is generated from other advertising companies is barely enough to cover the cost of this server. So I canceled my Pingdom account temporarily and thought that maybe I will re-sign up again at a later time when I have enough funds.

To my surprise I found out that Pingdom has started offering FREE accounts along with 20 SMS but limited to only monitor ONE website. Pingdom Free account is fine with me because I only have 1 website to monitor and can save money.
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The 20 winners of WinBootInfo has been chosen. Please refer to the screenshot below for the list of winners. WinBootInfo license is attached to a computer based on hardware ID, so you will have to install WinBootInfo first, run it and select “Click here to enter the key you already purchased…”. A new window will open that shows your hardware fingerprint. Note it down and wait for WinBootInfo management to contact you first. Then only send them the hardware fingerprint when asked to so that they can generate your unique key.

Thanks to MagicAndre1981, I found out that Windows 7 has a tool called Microsoft Windows Performance Toolkit which is included in Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. Windows Performance Tools are designed for analysis of a wide range of performance problems including application start times, boot issues, deferred procedure calls and interrupt activity, system responsiveness issues, application resource usage and interrupt storms. This is something similar to WinBootInfo but basic computer users will find that it not as easy to use and understand.
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