I’ve recently encountered a severe Virus (or should we say, a Worm) called USBWorm. It doesn’t actually destroy any files or cause anything else to crash. But it does the major damage to the User activity.

First of all, let me tell you what happens when this worm has affected your system from any of your friend’s USB Flash Drives or USB Sticks.

• It hides all the hidden files in the System and won’t allow you to select Show hidden files and folders from the Tools -> Folder Options dialog.
• It shows a dialog whenever you tried to run any of Mozilla products after closing them shortly that has the Title: USE IE DOPE! with the Message: I DDNT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE OR ELSE…
• Whenever you tried to browse the websites Orkut and YouTube (even from IE) your browser will be closed immediately and a message is shown as: Orkut is banned you fool. The Administrators didn’t write this program guess who did? Mahahahaa. And it also plays a sound that is of evil nature.

So, how to remove this one? That’s the problem! No Internet Security or Antivirus Product as of now neither detects nor removes this Worm from your system. So, I’ve been very much frustrated and searched in google for the Worm name and found nothing. At last, I’ve tried this keyword: Virus prevents Mozilla and got the first hit that explained me all I need to know about this Worm and it’s ways of removal. You can find that one here.

But the problem is the fixing methods shown in the above site didn’t worked perfectly well so, I’ve decided to provide you the much detailed way in which I’ve successfully eliminated this virus.

1. Get HiJackThis! (it’s free)
2. Run this Program and click on the Do the Scan only button and then immediately navigate to the list item that says “O4 - HKLM\..\Policies\Explorer\Run: [winlogon] C:\heap41a\svchost.exe C:\heap41a\std.txt” and check the box near it and click on Fix Checked button from the left bottom corner. Don’t close the Dialog yet.
3. Open Task Manager by right clicking on the Task Bar and choosing Task Manager or pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del.
4. End the Processes that says svchost.exe in your Computer User Name (Please NOTE that only end the processes that says your computer user name, not the ones that says SYSTEM or NETWORK SERVICE)
5. Go back to HiJackThis! and click on the Main Menu button in the bottom center. Again, go through the step 2.
6. Now, close Task Manager and HiJackThis!. Go to Start -> Run and type: C:\Heap41a. Once inside this, delete all the contents of this folder with Shift + Delete button. (i.e. Don’t send them to Recycle Bin)
7. If you face Access Denied in the above folder when you try to delete something, use the utility called Unlocker which is available for free. After installing Unlocker, just select the files and folders and right click on them and choose Unlocker which opens a dialog in which select Delete as the action and click on the Unlock All button.
8. After the folder is successfully deleted, restart your system and voila, this Problem is gone for ever.
9. Just be careful before inserting any USB Drives given by your friends as none of your Antivirus products will detect it (as of now, I think BitDefender detects it though but still it can’t remove it).

Edit [17th July 2007]

If you are still not able to view the hidden files and folders, please follow the method below to restore that functionality:

1. Open Start Menu -> Run and type REGEDIT and press Enter
2. In the Registry Editor, navigate to My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
   CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL
3. Change the keys CheckedValue and DefaultValue to 1 (Double click on them to Edit)
4. Close the Registry Editor and Open Windows Explorer by pressing Windows Key + E
5. Open Tools -> Folder Options and select View tab and check the Show all files and folders under Hidden files and folders option.
6. You’re Done!

Let me know your comments and suggestions…

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Are you tired of SPAM Emails received in a Day? It seems a hell lot of SPAMMERS are around here.

I’ve been really receiving 100 SPAM Emails per day! Really got sick of it.

Actually after opening the Guest Book feature of my website, I found many spammers are just waiting for that kind of system. Almost I received 50 Emails per day on my Guest Book. This is really getting ridiculous. At least I’ve enabled SPAM Karma for my Blog otherwise, my blog spammers would’ve increased too much.

So, frustrated with these spammers, I thought a Spam filter for my Outlook (the internal one isn’t that much powerful and tiresome manual) and started searching for one. At last I found the greatest Spam Filter software I’ve ever seen… SPAM Bully.

One of the amazing things about Spam bully is it’s completely automatic. After installation, it trains itself from your Outlook Emails and then starts it’s good servant job. Occasionally when you caught a SPAM that isn’t caught by Spam Bully, just a click on SPAM button in your Outlook Toolbar does the magic of learning that Email (not just flagging the from Email ID as Outlook does) and prevents future Emails of that kind. The same goes for Non Spam emails caught as SPAM by Spam Bully. Just click on the Not Spam button on the Outlook Toolbar and it learns it again (not just flagging again).

One of the greatest feature of this for me is Zero Memory footprint. That is, it doesn’t consumes Memory as it doesn’t runs as a separate server (like other Anti-Spam/Anti-Virus softwares does). It just installs a toolbar in your Outlook/Outlook Express and everything happens within Outlook/Outlook Express.

Fully amazed by the features, I went on to buy it. It’s just 29.95 dollars for a Year. Another coolest feature I can say! It’s damn cheap.

Got Outlook or Outlook Express on your computer for checking Emails? Get this cool Spam Filter immediate now.

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I’ve recently encountered a problem when I tried to manage both of my GoogleTalk (GTalk) ID’s (aspauljoseph, sapauljoseph). Not able to login in both of them at the same time. Either I need to use GoogleTalk for one and Gmail for another. Now, while googling, I found a nice solution that easily met my requirements.

GTalk by default has an option of allowing more than one instances of the program. All you need is to pass an extra switch to the program that enables this option. Now, if you’re familiar in editing a short cut or creating a short cut, just do so for the Google Talk short cut and add /nomutex at the end of Program string. If you don’t know, read on:

To edit existing Google Talk shortcut:

1. Right click on the Google Talk shortcut and choose Properties.
2. Go to Shortcut tab on Google Talk Properties window.
3. On the Target Text Box, add in the /nomutex to the end of the line so that it looks like below (or you can simply copy and paste the below syntax and replace the original if the installation path is same).“C:\Program Files\google\google talk\googletalk.exe” nomutex
4. Click on OK.

To create a new shortcut for Google Talk:

1. Right-click on the desktop or anywhere you want to place the GTalk shortcut.
2. Select New on the right click context menu and select Shortcut.
3. Copy and paste the following line to the text box when prompted to type the location of the item:“C:\Program Files\google\google talk\googletalk.exe” /nomutex
4. Click on Next.
5. Give the shortcut a proper name such as Google Talk or Google Talk Multiple or Google Talk Polygamy.
6. Click OK until you are done.

By using the above technique, the number of times you double click on the short cut will create the number of instances of Google Talk allowing you to login multiple. Just make sure you don’t check the Remember my Password option as it will try to login the same account everywhere.
Go and have Fun…

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I’ve recently got an invitation from my close friend Sankar Anand for an internet service called IMified.

It’s really the wonderful service I’ve every seen.

It basically creates an Buddy for you to add in your Instant Messenger and once added provides a list of services which you can manage by sending messages to that buddy from your instant messenger. It’s really wonderful.

For example, this Blog Entry was actually posted here using the IMified.

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I’ve recently faced a problem when I tried to synchronize my Reference folder from my Laptop to my Desktop. There are nearly 1000’s of files in there and I can’t simply overwrite it which leads to duplicates if there is any name changes in the Files. This really killed me a long time.

But at last, I found a perfect solution to these problems. It’s Beyond Compare a quality software product from Scotter Software which does amazing things like magic.

It supports a wide range of features as follows:

• Compare Text Files (including color highlighting for program text files)
• Compare Folders, Zip Archives and FTP Sites
• Supports Network Drives and Network Compare
• Merge Code Changes (just like a Version Control System. )
• Compare Program Output (awesome feature)
• Display Filters
• Session and State saving and retrieval

and much more can be found here.

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