How many times have u installed windows and when you needed to go in to safe mode to clean a virus but then realize that you forgot your Administrator password. This password is normally the password that was set when you were installing Windows XP. Some people would ask, why do I need to login as administrator when the other normal login I use had administrator rights? Well, one scenario I could think off is that when you forgot you own password which you use to login to Windows, one way of resetting it would be to enter safe mode in Windows and using the Administrator account to reset your password.

So what if you forgot that password as well?After all you don’t use that account that often or probably not at all since you rarely go in to safe mode. I was searching the web on how to retrieve my password, besides reinstalling windows, downloading or buying hacking/cracking softwares which I got no idea if it works or not. If I’m not wrong, windows password could be retrieve through the registry or something which I was not able to find a link that showed me how. As far as I know serial keys to windows and office could be found there. BUT, eveni if you could find where the registry is and all, you would need to decrypt it as it is not in anything readable? There you go again looking for a hex editor and wasting endless days trying to know how to use it.

So, my ranting stops here as I have finally found a way to reset my Administrator password without the help of whatever i found on the web which I was almost tempted to do.

The steps are really really easy as well.

1. Go START > Control Panel

2. Administrative Tools

3. On your left you could see a panel, select Local Users and Groups.

4. Then Select on Users, You will then see Administrator and your local computer users.

5. Right click on Administrator and select “Set Password”

That’s all you have to do. Fast and easy and saves you a whole lot of time as you don’t have to reinstall windows or anything. Sadly this only works on Windows XP Pro. Home edition doesn’t not have The Local Users and Group.

So i guess for Windows XP Home users you are left with no choice but to follow this guide;

Can’t Log On to Windows XP?

If that’s your only problem, then you probably have nothing to worry about. As long as you have your Windows XP CD, you can get back into your system using a simple but effective method made possible by a little known access hole in Windows XP.

This method is easy enough for newbies to follow – it doesn’t require using the Recovery Console or any complicated commands. And it’s free - I mention that because you can pay two hundred dollars for an emergency download of Winternals ERD with Locksmith which is a utility for unlocking lost Windows passwords. See here http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/locksmith.asp

ERD is an excellent multi purpose product, but you should know it is not a necessary one if you have a healthy system and your sole problem is the inability to logon to Windows due to a forgotten password. Not necessary because you can easily change or wipe out your Administrator password for free during a Windows XP Repair. Here’s how with a step-by-step description of the initial Repair process included for newbie’s.

1. Place your Windows XP CD in your cd-rom and start your computer (it’s assumed here that your XP CD is bootable – as it should be - and that you have your bios set to boot from CD)

2. Keep your eye on the screen messages for booting to your cd Typically, it will be “Press any key to boot from cd”

3. Once you get in, the first screen will indicate that Setup is inspecting your system and loading files.

4. When you get to the Welcome to Setup screen, press ENTER to Setup Windows now

5. The Licensing Agreement comes next - Press F8 to accept it.

6. The next screen is the Setup screen which gives you the option to do a Repair.

It should read something like “If one of the following Windows XP installations is damaged, Setup can try to repair it”

Use the up and down arrow keys to select your XP installation (if you only have one, it should already be selected) and press R to begin the Repair process.

7. Let the Repair run. Setup will now check your disks and then start copying files which can take several minutes.

8. Shortly after the Copying Files stage, you will be required to reboot. (this will happen automatically – you will see a progress bar stating “Your computer will reboot in 15 seconds”

9. During the reboot, do not make the mistake of “pressing any key” to boot from the CD again! Setup will resume automatically with the standard billboard screens and you will notice Installing Windows is highlighted.

10. Keep your eye on the lower left hand side of the screen and when you see the Installing Devices progress bar, press SHIFT + F10. This is the security hole! A command console will now open up giving you the potential for wide access to your system.

11. At the prompt, type NUSRMGR.CPL and press Enter. Voila! You have just gained graphical access to your User Accounts in the Control Panel.

12. Now simply pick the account you need to change and remove or change your password as you prefer. If you want to log on without having to enter your new password, you can type control userpasswords2 at the prompt and choose to log on without being asked for password. After you’ve made your changes close the windows, exit the command box and continue on with the Repair (have your Product key handy).

13. Once the Repair is done, you will be able to log on with your new password (or without a password if you chose not to use one or if you chose not to be asked for a password). Your programs and personalized settings should remain intact.

I tested the above on Windows XP Pro with and without SP1 and also used this method in a real situation where someone could not remember their password and it worked like a charm to fix the problem. This security hole allows access to more than just user accounts. You can also access the Registry and Policy Editor, for example. And its gui access with mouse control. Of course, a Product Key will be needed to continue with the Repair after making the changes, but for anyone intent on gaining access to your system, this would be no problem.

And in case you are wondering, NO, you cannot cancel install after making the changes and expect to logon with your new password.

Cancelling will just result in Setup resuming at bootup and your changes will be lost.

Ok, now that your logon problem is fixed, you should make a point to prevent it from ever happening again by creating a Password Reset Disk. This is a floppy disk you can use in the event you ever forget your log on password. It allows you to set a new password.

Here’s how to create one if your computer is NOT on a domain:

• Go to the Control Panel and open up User Accounts.
• Choose your account (under Pick An Account to Change) and under Related Tasks, click “Prevent a forgotten password”.
• This will initiate a wizard.
• Click Next and then insert a blank formatted floppy disk into your A: drive.
• Click Next and enter your logon password in the password box.
• Click Next to begin the creation of your Password disk.
• Once completed, label and save the disk to a safe place

How to Log on to your PC Using Your Password Reset Disk

Start your computer and at the logon screen, click your user name and leave the password box blank or just type in anything. This will bring up a Logon Failure box and you will then see the option to use your Password Reset disk to create a new password. Click it which will initiate the Password Reset wizard. Insert your password reset disk into your floppy drive and follow the wizard which will let you choose a new password to use for your account.

Note: If your computer is part of a domain, the procedure for creating a password disk is different.

See here for step by step instructions: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;306214&

Source: Tech Trax

Or if you still want to try a software that would change your password you can try Active@ Password Changer. Personally I’ve not tried this software nor am i intending to. So use at your own risk. I found an article on it by Raymond.cc. Good luck trying.

Technorati Tags: , active password changer, administrator password, forgot administrator password, lost administrator password, lost password, reseting password, retrieving password, Windows XP

Here’s something that I found handy, often when facing problems with the computer motherboard, the manual is the first thing I would refer to. Often when you try to fix your friends PC, they would always not have the manual, so you are often left with no choice but to search online for a solution on what these beeps mean. Here’s a good compilation of some commonly use BIOS. The whole article below is taken from Amptron.com

What is a BIOS Beep Code? When you power on a computer the BIOS immediately takes control of the computer and performs the P.O.S.T (Power On Self Test). At the end of the POST the computer will play an audible ‘BEEP’ through either the PC’s internal speaker of through speakers attached to the sound card (if you have a built-in sound chip). If the POST completed successfully without detecting any problems with then system will play a single short beep to let you know the test is complete and the computer will continue to startup and load the operating system.

If during the POST the BIOS detects a problem it will normally display a visual error message on the monitor explaining what the problem is. However, if a problem is detected before the BIOS initializes the video card, or a video card is not present or not detected then the BIOS will play several ‘BEEPS’ through the speaker to let you know there is a problem. Depending on the type of the BIOS you have the BIOS may play beeps in a specific pattern to indicate what the problem is, or play the same beep a number of times indicating the problem. It is very important that you pay close attention to the number and/or pattern of the beeps your computer plays on startup.

Below is a table of the most common AMI, Phoenix and Award BIOS beep codes.

AMI (American Megatrends International) BIOS Beep Codes.
AMI BIOS uses beeps of the same length and pitch. The error is displayed as a number of beeps. For example, 4 beeps indicated a timer failure

Award BIOS Beep Codes Award BIOS uses beeps of varying duration. A long beep will typically last for 2 seconds while a short beep will last only 1 second. Award BIOS also uses beeps of different frequency to indicate critical errors. If an Award BIOS detects that the CPU is overheating it may play a high pitched repeating beep while the computer is running.

Phoenix BIOS Beep Codes Phoenix BIOS uses beep code patterns to indicate problems. In the table below the ‘-’ indicates a brief pause between beeps.

Example: 1 - 1 - 2 would sound like BEEP <pause> BEEP <pause> BEEP BEEP

Technorati Tags: ami bios, award bios, beep, bios, bios solution, code, motherboard, phoenix bios, trouble

So the other day I was installing Flash player for Ubuntu 7.10 using the Add/Remove. Then when you reload a page with flash elements, it would show you that there isn’t any flash player installed. I tried installing it again and again, using Add/remove and the Synaptic Package Manager which didn’t work as well.

What I did then was to install manually by downloading the tar.gz file from Adobe’s site and installing it my self through the terminal.

Here’s the steps:

1) Unzip/extract the tar.gz file (you can do this through the terminal or through GUI)

2) Open the terminal and access the folder, by default its name would be “install_flash_player_9_linux”

3) Type “./flashplayer-installer” to run the installation file, this will install the flash player for your current user profile. I personally use “sudo ./flashplayer-installer” to install it for all user.

4) You will then get the following text display

Copyright(C) 2002-2006 Adobe Macromedia Software LLC. All rights reserved.

Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux

Adobe Flash Player 9 will be installed on this machine.

You are running the Adobe Flash Player installer as a non-root user.
Adobe Flash Player 9 will be installed in your home directory.

Support is available at http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/

To install Adobe Flash Player 9 now, press ENTER.

To cancel the installation at any time, press Control-C.

NOTE: Please exit any browsers you may have running.

Press ENTER to continue.

5) If you choose to install without “sudo” things would be a lot easier as you will be brought to this screen and all you have to do is type “y”

Adobe Flash Player 9 will be installed in the following directory:

Mozilla installation directory = /home/gnomeboy/.mozilla

Proceed with the installation? (y/n/q):

6) If you use “sudo” this will be the following text that will be display. All you have to do is to locate the firefox folder manually.

Copyright(C) 2002-2006 Adobe Macromedia Software LLC. All rights reserved.

Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux

Adobe Flash Player 9 will be installed on this machine.

You are running the Adobe Flash Player installer as the “root” user.
Adobe Flash Player 9 will be installed system-wide.

Support is available at http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/

To install Adobe Flash Player 9 now, press ENTER.

To cancel the installation at any time, press Control-C.

NOTE: Please exit any browsers you may have running.

Press ENTER to continue…

Please enter the installation path of the Mozilla, Netscape,
or Opera browser (i.e., /usr/lib/mozilla):

by default, my firefox is install in “/usr/lib/firefox” sometimes you might see 2 other folder in the /lib directory, those folders are “mozilla-firefox” and “mozilla” in this case just install the plugin in “firefox” and “mozilla” or alternatively you could try all but there would definately be one folder which doesn’t allow you to install. After you install the plugin in the firefox folder there will be another line asking you if you like to have another installation, just say “y” and install in the other folder.

Do not worry if you can install in “mozilla” or “mozilla-firefox” because it’s normal. So far it would normally install in at least 2 folders if there is 3, or in 1 folder if there’s on 2. I’m not too sure of the reason why, but it works.

This bug has also been reported at ubuntu forums and would be patched soon I guess, since they already made the change/fix to Ubuntu 8.04. According to them :

Adobe updated the flash plugin. Due to their license, we must download and install their file. This breaks the Gutsy package. We have TWO choices:

1) Don’t update the package and have a broken package that no-one can use (aside from the more technically minded)

2) Update the package and have a package that everyone can use, except for konqueror users.

It seems that because we have no control over Adobe, the ball is in konqueror’s court and they need to patch. (If their users plan on using flash)

A third solution, if possible, would be to see if Adobe keeps older versions of flash available for download and update the package to pull that.

Technorati Tags: bug, firefox, flash, flash player, gutsy, ubuntu 7.10

Here’s a little something I found while listening to a podcast the other day.

Open Firefox and type this in the address bar “about:mozilla” and you’ll get this:

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced.
But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird.
The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire
and thunder upon them. For the beast had been
reborn with its strength renewed, and the
followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15

and for those who do not know yet you could enter Firefox’s config page by typing “about:config”

you could tweak and set how much memory you want Firefox to use and etc, lots of stuff. Might do a small tutorial on how to tweak Firefox to have faster browsing in future.

Technorati Tags: config, easter egg, firefox, secrets, tweak, Web Browser

Took me a while to make this post as I wanted to really test through the features before writing a review on it, else it wouldn’t really be a review right? A little introduction on what is Ubuntu, Ok so we all heard about Linux right? Some may not really have an idea on what Linux is. Most people who aren’t too tech savvy would assume that Linux is the all black screen with just text, well sadly we have gone passed that era (though there are options to have that again). There is now graphical user interfaces, for example KDE, Gnome, Xfce, and many more. So Linux is an Open Source operating system which is FREE!.

There’s 2 ways to get Ubuntu Linux, you could either download it from here, or order a CD from here. Free delivery but may take a while. My CD came pretty fast though, considering it came from the UK and last I remember when I sent back a mail from the UK it took a good 3-4 weeks. Oh yea they would only send the desktop version and not the server version, I guess if you’re running a server you won’t have slow internet connection to download? maybe that’s the logic.

Here’s the picture of what came in the package, a sticker and 2 CD’s one for 32 bits and the other for 64bits processor.

Ubuntu from my point of view is really easy to use, there are 3 ways that I know how to install Ubuntu.

1) Installing Ubuntu without formating your hardisk and that means you get to run windows and Linux at the same time with no hassle of keeping a partition for Linux. You could do this by installing Wubi. I don’t think I need to give a guide on how to install as the screen shot in site gives a pretty clear picture on how to install it. Not to mention there’s only a few steps to install which takes like a few minutes if you do not count downloading it. Wubi would be installed as a folder on your selection partition of your hard disk and uninstalling it is just as easy as any other Window’s application.

2) The other way to have Linux (any distro) running on your PC along with Windows without having to reboot your PC is through VMware which is a virtual machine. I’ve not tried it yet…so no comment, check out the site or google for some guides.

3) Installing through the CD that you got or downloaded from the official Ubuntu site. The live CD is pretty useful and is real cool (at least that’s what I think). If you have installed Linux in the past I’m sure you have faced many problems like hardware not recognize or unable to boot and many other weird problems. I personally only tried a few version of Red Hat and although it worked on my older PC which ran on a Geforce 2 MX, I had more trouble installing it on a newer PC which ran on a new nforce chip motherboard and a Geforce FX5200 card. It seems that there’s quite some issue with fx series card not too sure why it’s not that supported. Anyways installing it through the live CD enables you to see if your hardware works fine with that distro and also you get to play around with it before installing it. Which is pretty much like Knoppix, good thing about live CD’s is that you could do backing up and restoring lost or corrupted files if your hard disk fail to boot or has some windows file that is corrupted.

The default desktop environment for Ubuntu is Gnome but you could always try Kubuntu which is a KDE base enviroment or Edubuntu, Gobuntu and etc. I would suggest either Kubuntu or Gnome for starters, as it’s alot easier and Kubuntu is pretty similar to Windows, whereas Gnome look a bit like a Mac.

Here’s how the desktop would look like with a Gnome environment.

So far, I would say the installation and running Ubuntu through Wubi is pretty smooth. There are some problems where my CPU resources would be sucked up a lot by Firefox not too sure why, but it was reduced when I patched the kernel and installed the adobe flash player manually. Was told that the Gnash flash player has a bit of problems so if possible uninstall it and install the one from adobe. I’m not too sure if the “Macromedia flash player” is updated in the Add/Remove Application as Macromedia don’t really exist now.

Most of my problems with Ubuntu are pretty much related to Firefox taking up my CPU resources, and also its wise to install your graphic card driver manually as the pre-detected driver wouldn’t be as good as the one you downloaded from the manufacturer’s site. I was also told that Nvdia card’s have supports Linux more, not too sure how true is it but I know I still have problems with my FX5200 on my desktop, and no problems on my ATI Radeon x700 on my notebook.

I crashed my OS once by installing too many programs and there the dedicated space that I made for Wubi was around 4/5GB not too sure. I would recommend you go higher if possible and if you would want to install more games/applications. I was trying to install KDE environment and didn’t have sufficient space, the installation stopped and somehow was a bug or error somewhere which didn’t allow me to remove the installed files. I thought rebooting the PC might help but when I tried to relogin it wouldn’t let me and would give some pop up on I logged in less then 10 seconds and something…so yea, the only option for me to login was console mode which I do not know how to remove what I installed.

What I then did was uninstall Wubi and it would give you an option to save your settings which has your caches files in Ubuntu and the default application (not the ones you install later). Restoring the saved settings is easy as well, just copy and paste over the new file. I’m liking Ubuntu so far and it’s A LOT easier then other distro that I’ve tried, but I’m still playing around with Fedora 8 which gave me a big headache and somehow still seem pretty unstable even after patching.

The other thing I notice about Ubuntu is that it takes up pretty much power on my notebook compared to Windows. I was running it on my notebook without a power point and my battery didn’t last as long as it used to. I found this article on the power consumption of Ubuntu which might be interesting to read if you are interested. There’s a comparison made with beta version of Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) and the other older versions.

These power tests are just intended to be a brief look at Ubuntu’s average power consumption over the past six Ubuntu releases during the past two and a half years. It is also important to note that all of these tests were done from a single Intel Centrino laptop. Depending upon your hardware, the power performance may differ. While the power efficiency is improving in Linux, it is being outweighed by more and more processes running on the Linux desktop. These tests were done from a stock configuration. If you’re running Ubuntu 7.10 on a mobile device you can maximize your power efficiency through Intel’s PowerTOP, eliminating extra processes, and other performance tweaks. In a future Phoronix article we may look more in-depth at maximizing your mobile Linux power performance.

Source: Phoronix

More on Intel’s PowerTop

I also found a site which I kinda like, System76 sells computers which comes with Ubuntu ready, They got some information on why should you use Linux as well. Oh yea Ubuntu stickers can be obtain there…for FREE! again, lots of free stuff.

So summarize what I think about Ubuntu, I would say it’s a pretty good distro to start out if you are switching from Windows to Linux and so far I love it and will be using it, also will try to figure out how to solve my crashing problems on fedora. Try it I would say, you are afraid you don’t know how to partition and all that, install Wubi makes life so much easier. Oh yea…and for those who says, I do most stuff on Windows and Linux doesn’t support my programs, there is always a way to run windows base application including games on Linux and one way is through Wine. Linux has a Photoshop like application too called GIMP which some claim is almost as good as Photoshop, may not be all that powerful but the basic n advance features are there. There’s msn for Linux, dreamweaver like programs, blue fish or Quantra Plus and other many more free application. Good thing now that Gnome and KDE programs could work with each other compared to last time where some programs were environment dependent.

Technorati Tags: ati, blue fish, distro, edubuntu, geforce, gimp, gnome, gobuntu, kde, knoppix, kubuntu, Linux, open source, phoronix, photoshop, quantra, red hat, system76, Ubuntu, vmware, wine, wubi, xfce

So Gmail announced last month that that will be upgrading to web 2.0

We have also been fanatical about speed. Even on a fast Internet connection, it can take a second to request and render a new web page, and when you read a lot of mail, these seconds can accumulate to hours waiting for email to load. We’ve spent a lot of time profiling all parts of the application, shaving milliseconds off wherever we can, and figuring out workarounds for some pretty deep-rooted issues with the current browser implementations. Some of the most common actions should be faster now. For instance, we prefetch messages in the current view, so when you open an email your browser doesn’t have to talk to Google’s server; it just displays the message. These techniques really shine on newer browsers and computers. Using an alpha version of Safari 3 on a MacBook, we’re seeing sub-200ms times when opening messages—pretty quick.

Source: Gmail blog

honestly I’ve not really notice much difference in my gmail in terms of speed. It still takes a while to load on certain days. Maybe it hasn’t been implemented yet? I don’t know but my enthusiasm is starting to hype up with more web 2.0 stuff that is happening around.

More stuff on “open” issue from google. We heard of Open Social now Open Platform for mobile Devices.

A broad alliance of leading technology and wireless companies today joined forces to announce the development of Android, the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. Google Inc., T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola and others have collaborated on the development of Android through the Open Handset Alliance, a multinational alliance of technology and mobile industry leaders.

This alliance shares a common goal of fostering innovation on mobile devices and giving consumers a far better user experience than much of what is available on today’s mobile platforms. By providing developers a new level of openness that enables them to work more collaboratively, Android will accelerate the pace at which new and compelling mobile services are made available to consumers.

Source: Google Press

So Open Social for mobile phones now? Would be real interesting if there would be widget that would work on hand phones and could be synchronize with our desktop. kind of like a PDA -> PC but for this case it’s a phone not PDA.

Technorati Tags: gmail, gmail blog, google press, mobile devices, open platform, open social, Web 2.0

After a long break I’m back and probably have set my mind to set my path in web design and web related stuff. It’s such a waste to have no backup of what i had previously, the server crashed and lost most of my data including the backup of everything (which was saved on the server) and not on my computer. I know I know..I can be really smart to do such thing.

I’ve been out-dating my self with slacking and procrastinating, till I didn’t really hear about web 2.0 till a couple of months ago. It seems to me that web 2.0 is getting more obvious to the eyes now, Youtube, MySpace, Facebook and many more sites. Event WordPress has ajax now.

According to O’Rielly

I love this video on web 2.0

Downloaded a few tools last nite mootools and jQuery but I’ve tried them out yet will review it when I got the chance. No promise. Also last night I was reading something on Open Social and watching this video.

here’s link to Google’s Open Social page,

Social networks have seen that next wave, and have started opening up developer APIs to enable third-party innovation on their websites. This is a great thing, but it has also led to a growing number of APIs which a developer must learn. So we took a look at the state of the web and asked how we could make development easier for both websites and developers. Out of that exercise came OpenSocial.

OpenSocial is a set of common APIs that will work on many different social websites, including MySpace, Plaxo, Hi5, Ning, orkut, and LinkedIn, among others. In addition, this allows developers to learn one API, then write a social application for any of those sites. Learn once, write anywhere, if you will. And because it’s built on web standards like HTML and JavaScript, developers don’t have to learn a custom programming language.

Perhaps most interestingly, we will see social capabilities move into new contexts. OpenSocial will also work in non-traditional social contexts, such as on Salesforce.com and Oracle. With a common set of APIs, it will be even easier to extend social functionality. Beyond the many fun and entertaining social applications we already have seen, we think we’ll see a number of social applications emerge in business contexts.

Source: Open Social blog

If you watch the video there’s a pretty interesting demo on the collaboration of the companies and how these widgets and other developers of web application can really make more powerful application that would serve the need of people around, not to mention making socializing a step ahead of what it is now today.

More reading material;

MySpace joins Open Social

Naveen’s blog on Facebook vs Open Social

Marc Andreessen report on Open Social launch

Tech Crunch News on Facebook not brief bout Open Social

Technorati Tags: , ajax, facebook, hi5, jquery, linkedin, mootools, myspace, ning, o'rielly, open social, orkut, plaxo, Web 2.0, wordpress, youtube