Basic Steps to secure your wireless router and network..

Incidents of Unsecured Wireless Routers at Residences and Colleges being misused for sending out Terror E-mails and stealing useful data esp. financial are on rise every day.

Many of us use Wireless Routers at our homes for Personal Broadband connections. The devices get configured in an unsecured mode by default and may thus be misused easily. The wireless signals may be accessible for upto 60-70 ft outside your premises and any person within this range can potentially break into your network.

A few essential practices for securing your router are as listed below. The actual process of setting these options will be different for routers of different makes and you will need to refer to documentation specific to your model for configuring these.:

1. Change the default Password for your Wireless Router. Most routers have a factory set username of admin and a similar password. Please change the password.

2. Enable Wireless MAC Address Filtering, also known as Access Lists. Please permit access only to the MAC addresses of yours and your family members’ devices. Deny access for other devices.

3. Set “Disable SSID Broadcast”: This ensures your SSID (network name) is not visible to unauthorized users.

4. Enable WPA or WPA2 Encryption (Wireless Protected Access). In case this is not supported, please use WEP: Set a good passphrase and never share it with others.

5. Keep the wireless router away from exteriors of your residence and turn it off when not in use.

Amazing woman

IE7 File>New Tabs, Save and Tab disabled..

OK, I could do away with the tabs, but then that is all that mattered when I upgraded to IE7.

All of a sudden the tabs disappeared and was left wondering what went wrong. No simple solutions from googling worked this time.

Alas it occured to me!  A quick try to find some malware helped me. NOADWARE software worked its charm and killed one W32.Mydoom worm. Again went back to IE Tool>I. options>TAB Settings—reset to default.

Try first, if at all anything goes unsual with your Windows XP.

No!, NOADWARE people do not pay me

Welcome!

VistaDrive.exe !?

Many people including myself find the VistaDrive.exe sitting in the background application service of their Task Manager. Many believe this is a virus, others a spyware, but I believe it is a dumb dodo like application annoying and bothering many who dont remember why and where this application came from.

A detailed search in registry found me this uninstall string.

(copy and paste command below in Run command box of windows)

rundll32.exe advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection C:\WINDOWS\INF\Vdrive.inf,uninstall

Seems this software is developed by one KelCorp Software co.

On googling ‘KelCorp’ found this -

http://vistadrive.software.informer.com/

It is an XP Disk Drive Icon to Vista Drive icon replacement program
which IMHO doesnt do much good. Best to get rid of !

rediff product complaint

http://www.consumercomplaints.in/complaints/rediff-shopping-c33008.html

New Generattion ‘Holistic’ AV

Technorati Tags: Rudra, Anti, Virus, India, Madras, antivirus

Color Psychology – Do different colors affect your mood?

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html

Computer Restarts! issue

Found the Following Question on many internet forums in many different words. I have evolved to a systematic approach towards finding resolution to this problem and following is a humble attempt for other computer users who might as well need it someday..

Computer User says –

“Some times when i am working on the computer it will either reset randomly or shut down why is this ?

This usually occurs when i am on the computer talking to people, running a scan, or even on the internet. I resently got the computer made and i had this problem before to … is there anything that i can do to resolve this problem ?”

 

The technician me -
“Your problem needs closer inspection, and depending on situation may need one or multiple options mentioned herein. This is a kinda brute force method for troubleshooting assembled pc and/or laptop hardware problem.

Solution 1 -
Removal of any Virus or Worm or Trojan through a tool like NoAdware. The problem description shows signs of W32 Worm. Download small tool like Stinger Mcafee for scanning and cleaning this and its variants

Solution 2 –
Resetting the BIOS of PC or Laptop to default or safe state.
This will ensure resetting to a safer processor speed and stable memory timings too.
(Warning!-Tampering BIOS settings without proper knowledge may have unpredictable results, and permanent processor or memory damages in the shortest time or longer runs of the computing hardware)
Keep pressing Del or Shift F10 or F12 to enter BIOS input screen within 3-8 secs after you press power switch of your computer. Sometimes due to longer memory test it may take time so have patience too. Once you get to the BIOS screen you may or maynot be asked for entering a master supervisor passord, which you may or maynot know. You will need to figure out where the individual setting for Load Defaults (different BIOSes have different wordings order so try to tally with your logic) is either in the main menu or some submenu of the BIOS. Once you do the same depending on the BIOS model the BIOS interface will prompt you for only save setting comfirmation or save and restarting the Default setting.

Solution 3 -
This includes professional checkup from a PC or Laptop Hardware personel. Check list would ideally be in the following order
a) The power cord if faulty or the laptop battery, the SMPS for irregular voltages can be serviced or replaced if found faulty.
b) The Memory, the Processor Fan speed and the processor itself, the Mainboard also if needed.”

Hopefully this is the ideal solution for the layman…

Savage Harvest 1981

Savage.Harvest.1981 was a good movie that had an impact on my mind as a kid. Being school going Indians we remember having seen it more due to the no-brainer subject of lions attacking humans…really an interesting movie even today for kids to watch and be fascinated by the beasts of the beasts of jungle.

It is really hard to find a copy of the same as there are very few the world over. See IMDB database link here for more info. If anyone wants a VHS2DVD2AVI RIP file please find here…click over > THIS. < to download the movie torrent. For the newbies a torrent can be opened with a bittorrent client such as uTorrent and subsequently the enitre file can be downloaded. Huge files such as videos need Broadband or ADSL Connections with huge MBs to spare. Better still unlimited download packs..!

Santa Singh

In a remote village in India, people bashing up ‘Gajodhar the tailor’ for hiding away for long with their cash advance and cloth material.

SantaSingh passing by stops the bike and takes matter in hand as if to do final justice. Beats him to near death. Alas people stop him wondering what makes him this angry. Santa says “bloody…ran away with my measurements”