Most of the newer models of wireless router has the ability to disable SSID broadcast. At first I thought that all wireless router has this feature but I was wrong. ProLink Hurricane 9000W is one of the wireless router that I’ve configured before and it don’t have the ability to disable SSID broadcast. There are pros and cons in disabling SSID broadcast. Turning off the broadcast of the SSID can only hide your wireless network from casual users, but not determined hackers. Sometimes turning off SSID broadcast can also cause issues in connecting to the wireless router.

Do you want to know how easy it is to discover hidden wireless network? Anyone can do it as long as they have a wireless connection and the software.

**A short note before you read this article: This is NOT a sponsored commercial article. I found this software from a security forum. I’ve tested it and found it really useful. Then I emailed and requested them if they would be able to provide a free license to one of my readers and they agreed.**

There are different types of security technologies to protect your computer. Antivirus is a software that examines files to look for known viruses matching definitions in a virus dictionary. Then there’s firewall, a device which is configured to permit, deny, or proxy data through a computer network. I discovered Sandbox few months ago which allows you to run untrusted programs in a virtual container. That’s why there are bulky all-in-one security products such as Norton Internet Security, McAfee Internet Security Suite, Trend Micro Internet Security Pro and etc, which can tremendously slow down a computer.

Today I am going to write about another type security software which has slight similar technology as Sandbox technology. Sandbox lets you run files suspicious files in a virtual container but this security software virtualize the whole windows system or the whole hard drive. So no matter what you do on the virtualize system, everything will be restored back to the original state after a restart.

Currently this security application is being used by nearly 4 million people in over 50 countries. You MUST check out this powerful security software!

I’ve posted an article about Sandboxie which lets you safely run suspicious or untrusted programs in a virtual space without affecting your computer. Let’s say when you run a trojan in sandbox, you’re temporarily infected and the attacker can still connect to your computer. But once you terminate the sandboxed trojan process, it kills of the attacker’s connections and your system is still safe from infection. Even if you’ve forgotten to terminate the sandboxed process, it’ll automatically be removed once you restart your computer.

Question is, how can you identify whether the suspicious file is a threat or not? If you don’t know how, I will teach you how to use Sandboxie to check if the sandboxed file is a rogue software.

An uninterruptible power supply (UPS), also known as a battery backup is a device which maintains a continuous supply of electric power to connected equipment by supplying power from a separate source when utility power is not available. Usually there is at least 2 output for you to protect your computer and monitor from unexpected power disruption and then there is one USB interface port for you to connect to the computer. I am using APC BACK-UPS RS 800VA 230V, there are 2 surge protection and 4 battery backup outputs.

The USB connection is for the UPS to tell the computer how much power is left on the battery. It is important to connect the UPS to the computer and configure it to automatically shut down the computer when battery power reaches a low level. This way you won’t risk your files being corrupted or even an unbootable system.

Usually there is only one communication interface port on a UPS. Does that mean you can only give backup power to one computer with one UPS? What if you have two or more computers? Yes, you can connect up to 4 computers to the UPS output, but only one computer is able to properly shutdown. The rest will also shutdown BUT it is done without first performing any proper shut-down procedure. This can severely damage the filesystem! Well I thought of a way which makes it possible for one UPS to provide backup power for 2 or more computers and you can shut down all your computers properly when battery reaches low level.

After I posted an article on how to remotely turn on computer from LAN or WAN, I’ve been getting comments and emails asking me how to remotely turn off computer in a LAN or WAN.

Actually Windows XP has a built-in shutdown Windows Remote Shutdown Tool (shutdown.exe) located at Windows\System32 directory. If you run the command shutdown, it shows you that there’s a -m command to remotely shutdown/restart/abort a computer. I tried running the command from my laptop “shutdown -s -m \\pc” to shutdown my desktop and I only get the message “Access is denied“.

Why do I get the access is denied error? To think about it logically, there should be some kind of authentication to remotely shutdown a computer but the shutdown tool didn’t list out any arguments for me to input any username or password.

The best way is NOT to use windows built-in Remote Shutdown Tool. Let’s not crack our heads on this problem when there is a much better tool to do it.

This is another email problem that my uncle has been encountering. He recently bought a new laptop with Windows Vista preloaded in it and whenever he send an email, the time received will be much faster than the current time. He uses Microsoft Outlook to send/receive his POP3 email and Internet Explorer to send/receive email for his Hotmail, Yahoo and GMail. He told me that no that the time on his email is wrong no matter if he send from his POP3 from Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo or even his GMail from Internet Explorer.

I figured since all his email is appearing the wrong time, perhaps he did not set his Windows Date and Time correctly. I asked him to check on that and he assured me that the time on his computer is correct, but when he send emails, the time is few hours ahead!

There are other settings to check if the time or date is still wrong even if the time on the computer is correct.

Registry is very important in Windows because it is a directory which stores information and settings for all the hardware, operating system software, most non-operating system software, users, preferences of the PC and etc. Problem with registry is it can become fragmented over time, occupying more space on your hard disk than necessary and decreasing overall performance. Whenever we install software and uninstall it, most of the time the registry entries being added by the software is not removed. That’s why when you reinstall the software again, you’ll notice that all the settings are still there!

Here is a free, small, popular and pretty good rated Windows registry optimizer that I found which is really easy use. Just one click and it’ll optimize your Windows’ registry.