Raymond.CC Blog

One of a new problem that you will experience in Windows Vista and Windows 7 but not on Windows XP is the screen going black for a few seconds and then comes back on with a popup notification telling you “Display driver stopped responding and has recovered. Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.” From the message it does seemed like the driver has crashed and most of the time neither upgrading nor downgrading the driver will fix the problem. If you search for this error in Google, you will probably end up with hundreds of threads to read and with some really ridiculous suggestions such as reformatting your computer, sending back the graphics card to manufacturer, etc.

The good news is you don’t have to go through that because SilentBob420BMFJ has already went through all the hard work which he finally found a workaround that fixes the problem and shared it in NVIDIA forums. Thanks to FunkY for finding that as well and posting it in our forums to help BigGuy.

Rootkits are probably one of the most powerful malware because of its capability to hide its presence from normal methods of detection. You won’t see the process listed in Windows Task Manager, nor you can see the file from Windows Explorer even if you set to show protected operating system files from Folder Options. This can be achieved through installing and loading kernel-mode drivers which allows the malware to run with higher privileges. The good thing about running 64-bit Windows today is you can only install digitally signed drivers and obviously drivers used by rootkits are not signed unless the signature itself are stolen. Remember Stuxnet which uses stolen JMicron and Realtek certificates to allow installation on x64 machines.

Rootkits are indeed scary and if you think you’ll be safe with a 64-bit if Windows, then you’re wrong. Another type of malware called Bootkit which installs itself in Master Boot Record area to patch the kernel digital signature validation check, allowing unauthorized kernel-mode rootkit to load. So here you go, a rootkit that is able to infect both 32-bit and 64-bit computer.

Christmas will be here in less than 24 hours, and to be honest I didn’t want to spend most of my time today and tomorrow on the computer doing research. This is time when I should be thankful for what I have, what I am and celebrate the birth of Jesus in a non commercialized way with my family. I also did not plan to have a Christmas giveaway because I am already doing that the whole year round. However seeing that I still have a couple of licenses left which must be activated by end of this year or else it would expire and gone to waste, it would be much better to just give it out in a first come first served basis rather than a lucky draw.

Here are the list of software licenses which some of the are computer games that are available for the giveaway:

26 x Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0 (1 year, 1PC)

6 x Revo Uninstaller Pro

5 x Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2012 (1 PC, 1 year) < - Sponsored by shashireddy

2 x Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 < - Sponsored by luffy

1 x Deus Ex: Human Revolution Game

Surely you have seen some software (such as X-Ray) requires .NET Framework to run and hated the idea to install something to run something. The good thing about .NET Framework is it comes with a lot of code which can be called without the programmer rewriting it from scratch. This makes it easier and faster to code a software. Think of it like Adobe Flash Player where it is required to play flash animations, or Java Runtime to run JAR packaged software. In fact these common frameworks (.NET, Java, Flash) are the first thing that I would install on a customer’s computer after installing Windows so that they won’t call me up to complain why they couldn’t play online games, view YouTube videos, run certain programs and etc.

.NET Framework 3.5 comes pre-installed in Windows 7 and the latest version is .NET Framework 4. If you go to Windows Update, you would see it listed under Optional and wondered if it is necessary to install and will .NET Framework 4 slow down your computer? I would “guess” no and wouldn’t tell the whole world about it because I don’t have concrete proof on that. So I have decided to run a couple of benchmark tests to see if .NET Framework 4 will slow down your computer.

I got to know about a free software called Mouse without Borders from the ShareMouse comment posted by slorkluk. Basically Mouse without Borders is another software that is similar to Input Director, Synergy and ShareMouse where you can use a single keyboard and mouse to control multiple computers by moving the mouse pointer from one screen to another just like they are connected to each other. The good thing about having so many alternatives is we get to choose which is more suitable and works best for our setup. You can view the embedded short video introduction on Mouse without Borders.

To get Mouse without Borders working, you will have to install the application on every computer that you want to connect. It has a limitation of controlling only up to a maximum of four computers which I think is probably enough for most people. I have 2 desktops with 2 laptops in my study room and very seldom I need to turn them all on at the same time.

One of the most annoying thing that a computer gamer would have to do when they reformat their hard drive to reinstall a clean Windows is they risk losing their game profiles and saved games. After spending a lot of hours playing the game to reach the level that you are in now, it would not be wise to start all over again. If the game itself provides a method to backup and restore the saved games, then it is all good. However there are still a lot of games out there that doesn’t offer you a convenient way to backup and restore your saved games.

This is when SaveGameBackup.net comes to play. The main purpose of this free portable tool is to allow you to effortlessly backup and restore game saves with just a couple clicks. Currently the latest database 65 which was released on 12/19/2011 supports up to 1379 games. You can view the complete list at this page.

Every time you select or deselect an option and check or uncheck a checkbox on a software or even on Windows, the settings is either saved to a file or to the registry. Either method will allow the settings to be remembered so that the next time you run the software, it is set the way you want it to be. This process is normally being done silently without showing the user visibly what it does in background, and that is actually what a software is meant to do, simplifying jobs.

Have you ever wondered how does some people manage to trace or detect what files are being modified or changed? Software reverse engineers are able to analyze the binary code using a debugger such as OllyDbg to see what it does without even running the software but it is not easy to use a debugger. The next option is to use a software called SysTracer to track file and registry changes in your computer.