Geek Tips

There is a new trend emerging in the field of credit card scamming and it preys upon our efforts to protect our computers.

MacGuard, an entirely bogus piece of software, claims to clean up your system and remove adware, spyware, and trojans. It doesn’t. Not only does the software make no effort to protect your computer, but the companies that sell it are merely scamming your credit card details. MacGuard claims the following:

“Macguard’s high-tech system scanner will search your hard drive for malicious objects such as Adware, Spyware and Trojans, cleaning your files, eliminating the threats, and securing your privacy in just a matter of minutes. Its real rime smart protection will also ensure new threats will not even reach your desktop.”

It is interesting to note that Winiguard claims exactly the same thing … word for word. These are both totally bogus products. Do not visit their sites. Do not click the download links. Do not enter any credit or debit card information.

On the MacGuard site, nothing actually downloads when you click the product’s download link which is a big clue that something is wrong. Fortunately, like most virus vandals out there, they have not figured out how to break in to the unix-based kernel of Mac OSX. On the Winiguard site, a nasty virus does, indeed, download. WiniGuard hijacks your desktop and typically displays exaggerated or false spyware claims to frighten the user into paying for the program. This is digital terrorism, nothing else.

Aside from this, the real scam here is undoubtedly your credit card information. By purchasing this software you are happily giving your credit card numbers and billing information to a bunch of crooks. It is very likely that you will subsequently find additional charges on your credit card. Sadly, ArsTechnica report that more than 30 million people have already been scammed in this way.

Our advice is to avoid purchasing software from a company you have never heard of, or who has no references, or whose web site is vague and imprecise.

We all know that security and viruses are a serious risk when using a computer and especially the internet, but one should not blindly trust a web site just because it is out there. Putting up a website is pretty straight-forward if you know what you are doing. Before buying any software online, check it out with someone trustworthy: Mister Geek, a tech blog or magazine for example. You’ll find out more than you think with a good internet search. As the Roman’s apparently said: caveat emptor, meaning buyer beware. This goes for absolutely everything you purchase online, but even more so for anything claiming to protect you.

If you have found trouble in your computing environment and need advice or action, whether it be XP, Vista, OSX or Linux, please contact Mister Geek and we will be glad to help.

If you are a user of BT’s Business Email Plus Organise & Share service, which is basically just their hosted Exchange, and you have an iPhone, I am sure you will have discovered that BT’s helpdesk have no idea how to get these two working together. Your iPhone must be running 2.0 firmware or higher and you need iTunes 7.7 or later.

1. On the iPhone select Settings then Mail, Contacts, Calendars followed by Add Account…
2. Select Microsoft Exchange






3. In the Email field, enter your email address (e.g. first.last@btconnect.com or firstlast@yourdomain.com)
4. Enter HE in the Domain field
5. In the Username enter the first part of your btconnect.com email address (e.g. first.last) – if you entered an alias under email address in step 3, be sure to use the genuine btconnect.com username here
6. Enter your password in the Password field
7. In the Description field, enter anything you like that makes sense to you
8. Click Next and the iPhone will try to auto-discover your Exchange server settings but because the Organise & Share platform is built on Microsoft Exchange 2003, this will fail and prompt you to manually enter the server name
9. When this happens, enter email.btconnect.com and select Finish

Now open the Mail application on the iPhone and you will see your new account. Don’t worry if it seems to be taking some time to synchronise the first time, that’s perfectly normal.

You may have heard of a booklet or bookmarklet. These are simply snippets of javascript that are saved as bookmarks. They allow you to run a script within the context of the web page you are currently visiting. The following code allows you to perform a site specific search using Google’s search engine. Simply create a bookmark or favourite and replace the address contents with the following code:

javascript:Qr=prompt(‘Search%20site%20for’,”);if(Qr)location.href=’http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:’+encodeURIComponent(window.location.hostname)+’+'+escape(Qr)

Just copy and paste it all in one line, there are no line breaks or spaces anywhere in this script. Give the booklet an appropriate name, I call mine SiteSearch just because it makes sense to me. Now, when you are on any web page, select this booklet and you will be presented with a dialog box asking what to search for. Enter the text you are interested in, hit OK and Google will return the results for that site and that site only. This works with any javascript enabled browser including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

Among many nice features in Vista, one of the more annoying is User Account Control (UAC). This is a system gatekeeper, which is a good idea, but UAC just goes too far. It doesn’t just want permission to install software but pops up when adding, removing or renaming any Start Menu folders, or setting the system clock, or various other common, every day, relatively safe tasks. One solution is to turn UAC completely off:

1. Click on Start then Control Panel
2. Click User Accounts and Family Safety and select User Accounts
3. Click Turn User Account Control on or off
4. When prompted by UAC itself, click Continue
5. Uncheck the box and click OK
6. Choose the restart option when prompted

Bear in mind that this method does put your computer at greater risk, especially if you routinely log on as an administrator.

One of the more frustrating problems with Microsoft Windows is its start up performance. It has been a problem since day one really and remains so even with Vista, in fact Vista could well be the worse offender thus far. There are, however, a few things you can do to improve the situation.

Device Drivers
Your computer could be loading device drivers for hardware you no longer use. To save on system resources, uninstall these drivers. Be careful though because a careless choice can cause significant problems. Create a restore point in System Restore Point before proceeding. By default, Device Manager does not show devices that are not currently connected to your system so we start by making them visible and then work in the Device Manager:

1. Open a Command Prompt window (normally found in the Accessories folder on the Start Menu)
2. Type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 and press Enter
3. Hold down the Windows key and press r
4. Type devmgmt.msc and press Enter to open Device Manager
5. Choose View and then Show Hidden Devices
6. Click the plus sign (+) next to each of the branches to examine all of the drivers on your system

Devices that are not currently connected appear with a pale version of the icon. If you come across a device that you are sure you no longer use, right-click on it and choose Uninstall. Then follow the prompts shown on screen to complete the process. When you have finished, close the command-prompt window you opened in step 1 above to re-hide your unconnected devices.

Network Mappings
Once you have mapped a network drive to a letter on your computer, Windows will automatically try to restore that connection every time you log on. Since restoring network connections takes time, you can speed your start up process by dropping the connections you are not using:

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Type Alt-T then D to open the Disconnect Network Drives dialog box
3. Select the drives you want to disconnect and click OK

In the future, if you want to connect a drive only for the current session, make sure Reconnect at logon is unchecked when using the Map Network Drive command.

Start Up Programs
You can free up system memory and recover processor cycles by clearing out some of the programs that start each time you log in. Download Autoruns, a free application from Microsoft-owned Sysinternals to find out which programs are loading on your PC at start up. Autoruns includes a line of description for each entry in plain English and lets you hide signed Microsoft entries, allowing you to quickly narrow your focus to third-party programs. Disabling or deleting entries takes just one click so be careful. You can also consult the Startup Applications List by Paul Collins, which is a searchable reference of common startup items providing a description and classification for each one.

Why would you want to? Well, one of the most useful facilities in the Debug menu is one that lets you change the User Agent. This enables you to tell the website you are using different browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape and Mobile Safari. This is useful for website development testing. In addition, as a result of lazy and inadequate development, some sites are blocking visitors who are not using Internet Explorer. By changing your User Agent you can bypass these stupid restrictions. Anyway, here’s what to do:

1. Quit Safari
2. Launch Terminal
3. Type defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
4. Re-start Safari and the debug menu will be enabled

To disable the debug menu, repeat the process but replace the 1 at the end of the terminal command with a zero.

If you are working with confidential files and you may want to make sure they are erased from your Time Machines backups when you delete them as well as your live file system. It is, fortunately, very easy to do so. Launch Time Machine, then navigate to and select the file you want to erase. Now select the Action menu and choose Delete All Backups of XYZ (where XYZ is the name of the file you are erasing).

One of the neatest new features in Apple OS 10.5 (aka Leopard), is Quick Look. The feature enables you to take a peek at most files from within the Finder window, including images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, email attachments, Microsoft Word and Excel documents. Just select the item and tap the space bar to see a file in Quick Look or press Command-Option-Y to launch Quick Look in full screen mode.

The use of pirated software is illegal. The following procedure is described purely for the purpose of education. Additionally, do not use this crack if you have already tried another, or have used the re-arming technique documented on Windows Secrets. This crack will stop the activation timer, permanently leaving the time left for you to activate your Vista at 30 days. Windows Update will continue to run normally.

1. Start your PC and enter its BIOS setup
2. Set your system date to 31 December 2099
3. Save and Exit
4. Re-start the PC from the Vista installation CD and follow the normal installation procedure
5. Vista will install and after rebooting your PC, ask you to enter an account name and password
6. Follow the on-screen instructions until the entire installation process completes
7. Shut down Vista and re-start the PC, once again entering its BIOS settings
8. Set the date back to the correct value
9. Save and Exit the BIOS and continue booting in to Vista
10. Download and unzip vistacrack.zip
11. Right click on vistacrack.exe and select Properties
12. Go to the Compatibility tab and select the Run this program as an administrator check box
13. Close the properties window and double-click vistacrack.exe to run it
14. Select Crack
15. The crack process will start and the PC will reboot
16. When Vista loads it will show a warning on the system tray about blocked programs, right click on the system tray icon in question and select to allow the program to run
17. The warning will pop up a second time, click Allow
18. The crack process will open and complete
19. Select Finish

The crack is now done. To check whether it has worked, reboot your computer a final time and do the following:

1. From the Start Menu, select Run
2. Type slmgr.vbs -dlv and click OK
3. Look at the last line of the results window (it can take several seconds for this window to pop up so just be patient), if it says the time remaining is 43200, the crack worked

Remember: the use of pirated software is illegal.

So you want to use your favourite MP3, or a part of it, as your ringtone? Why pay Vodafone, O2 or anyone else for a second-rate offering? All you need is an Apple computer, iLife (06 or 08) and a mobile phone that supports MP3 ringtones (that rules out the Reliant Robin disguised as a Ferrari, aka iPhone!) to which your computer can send files using bluetooth or USB.

1. Open iTunes and find the song you want to use, it can be any song and it does not matter if it is an MP3 or AAC file
2. Launch GarageBand
3. At the welcome screen select Create New Music Project
4. Give it a name (e.g. ringtone)
5. Click create, you will see the default virtual keyboard and a track that is called Grand Piano marked in green
6. Close the virtual keyboard by clicking on the red X in its top left corner
7. Select Track from the menu bar and Delete Track to delete the default track
8. Switch focus to iTunes and simply drag the track from the iTunes window to the GarageBand window
9. Your tune is shown in an orange bar in the track automatically named the same as the song
10. If the track is not placed at point zero on the GarageBand ruler, simply drag it to the left until it is
11. Double-check you have the right song by clicking GarageBand’s play button
12. Take this opportunity to decide where you want to “cut” the track for your ringtone remembering that most phones divert to voicemail after 10-20 seconds
13. Click on GarageBand’s ruler on the point at which you want to start your ringtone
14. Select Edit from the menu bar and Split
15. Click anywhere in the grey area underneath your track, then click on the orange track to the left of the vertical red line
16. Select Edit from the menu bar and Delete, this will delete the portion of the song to the left of where you have just split it
17. Click and drag the remainder of the track all the way back to point zero on the GarageBand ruler
18. Press the GarageBand play button to decide where you want your ringtone to end and make a note of where that point is on the ruler
19. Press the GarageBand play button again to stop playback and click in the ruler at the point you made note of above
20. Select Edit from the menu bar and Split
21. Click anywhere in the grey area underneath your track, then click on the orange track to the right of the vertical red line
22. Select Edit from the menu bar and Delete, this will delete the portion of the song to the right of where you have just split it
23. Select Share from the menu bar and Send Song to iTunes
24. In the resulting pop-up window ensure that Compress Using is set to MP3 Encoder and click Share

iTunes will automatically take focus and start playing your ringtone. All you need to do now is send or copy your newly made MP3 file to your mobile phone and set it as your ringtone. Please note, you are not legally entitled to distribute your new ringtone to anyone else.

Microsoft Outlook maintains a nickname list that is used by the automatic name checking and completion features. The nickname list is automatically generated as you use Outlook. If the nickname cache becomes corrupted, Outlook may not be able to identify recipients, may offer incorrect recipients when automatically completing the e-mail address, or may send the message to the wrong person. Additionally, if one of your contacts changes their email address, Outlook will continue to remember their old address indefinitely. Use this procedure to reset the Outlook nickname cache in MS Windows XP:

1. Quit Outlook
2. Click Start and then Search
3. In the left-side panel of the Search Results window, click All files and folders
4. In the All or part of the file name text box, type *.nk2
5. In the Look in selection box, select Local Hard Drives
6. Click More advanced options and click the Search hidden files and folders check box
7. Click Search
8. Once found, right-click the appropriate NK2 file (most probably “Outlook.NK2″) and select Rename
9. Rename the file to Outlook.bak and then press Enter
10. Close Windows Explorer
11. Launch MS Outlook

Outlook will now generate a brand new nickname cache.

Apple OS 10.5, aka Leopard, was released last Friday and is full of new features. The best review we have seen is from John Siracusa, it is very deep and covers pretty much everything there is to know. For a higher level quick and slick overview, check out Apple’s guided tour. As with any software, particularly operating systems, there are some bugs. One or two of them are significant including a Windows-esque blue screen of death in some upgrade circumstances. Unless you are in a position to do a clean erase and install, our advice is to wait until Apple has had time to offer patches or verified procedures to correct these problems. REMEMBER: When attempting any kind of upgrade or fresh installation, mirror your startup disk to an external drive before doing anything!

Linux is a relatively lightweight operating system and can be run quite effectively from a USB flash drive. This can be very useful when trying to retrieve files from a PC with a corrupt OS or boot sector. Most PCs manufactured in the last couple of years will allow you to boot from a USB device but you may have to enter the computer’s BIOS to enable this functionality. This tutorial enables you to install, boot and run Ubuntu Linux 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon from a USB flash drive. In addition to installing Ubuntu to the USB device and then booting from it, this also enables you to automatically save your changes and settings back to the flash drive and restore them on each boot using a second persistent partition.

You will need:

1. Ubuntu 7.10 ISO image
2. DVD Burner
3. Blank writeable DVD
4. 2GB USB flash drive
5. The computer on which you are working must have internet access

Throughout the following instructions, replace X with your drive letter:

1. Grab the Ubuntu 7.10 ISO image and burn it to a DVD
2. Insert the CD and your USB flash drive
3. Reboot your computer into Ubuntu from the CD
4. Open a terminal window and type sudo su
5. Type fdisk -l to list available partitions. Note which device is your flash drive (example: /dev/sda). Throughout these instructions, replace x with your flash drive letter. For example, if your flash drive is sdb, replace x with b.
6. Type umount /dev/sdx1
7. Type fdisk /dev/sdx
8. Type p to show the existing partition and d to delete it
9. Type p again to show any remaining partitions (if partitions exist, repeat the previous step)
10. Type n to make a new partition
11. type p for primary partition
12. type 1 to make this the first partition
13. Hit enter to use the default 1st cylinder
14. Type +750M to set the partition size
15. Type a to make this partition active
16. Type 1 to select partition 1
17. Type t to change the partition filesystem
18. Type 6 to select the fat16 file
19. Type n to make another new partition
20. Type p for primary partition
21. Type 2 to make this the second partition
22. Hit enter to use the default cylinder
23. Hit enter again to use the default last cylinder
24. Type w to write the new partition table
25. Type umount /dev/sdx1 to ensure the 1st partition is unmounted
26. Type mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n ubuntu710 /dev/sdx1 to format the first partition
27. Type umount /dev/sdx2 just to ensure the 2nd partition is unmounted
28. Type mkfs.ext2 -b 4096 -L casper-rw /dev/sdx2 to format the second partition
29. Remove and re-insert your USB flash drive
30. Type apt-get update
31. Type apt-get install syslinux mtools
32. Type syslinux -sf /dev/sdx1
33. Type cd /cdrom
34. Type cp -rf casper disctree dists install pics pool preseed .disk isolinux/* md5sum.txt README.diskdefines ubuntu.ico casper/vmlinuz casper/initrd.gz /media/ubuntu710/ (ignore any cannot create symbolic link errors)
35. Type cd /home/ubuntu
36. Type wget pendrivelinux.com/downloads/U710fix.zip
37. Type unzip -o -d /media/ubuntu710/ U710fix.zip
38. Restart your computer, set your BIOS or Boot Menu to boot from the USB device and reboot again.

You will now have a USB flash drive running Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon that will automatically save your changes, restoring them on boot. If you have trouble getting Ubuntu to boot, your memory stick may have a corrupted Master Boot Record (MBR). To repair the MBR of your USB device, at the terminal type sudo apt-get install lilo followed by lilo -M /dev/sdx (again replacing x with the letter of your flash device).

To capture a screen image in Apple OS X, you have two options. Firstly, to capture an image of your entire screen, select Command-Shift-3. You will hear a camera click sound and a PNG file will be created on your desktop containing the image. To capture a particular section of your screen, select Command-Shift-4. Your cursor turns in to a crosshair, now just click and drag your mouse to select the part of the screen you want to capture. When you let go of the mouse button, you will hear the same camera click sound and, as above, a PNG file will be created on your desktop containing the captured image.

When using groups in the Address Book, you may want to see which contacts are not assigned to any of your groups. This is a pretty convoluted method but until Apple provide a smart group option in Address Book to accommodate this requirement, you can do the following:

1. Backup your Address Book by selecting File then Backup Address Book
2. Create a new group and call it anything you like (I suggest “Z”)
3. Select all of your contacts and drag them in to this new group
4. Click on your first existing group (let’s pretend it is called Group1) and select all of its contacts (Command-a)
5. Click on the Z group and you will notice that only the contacts you have just selected are highlighted
6. Press Tab once to switch focus to the Name column
7. Hit the Delete key and then click the Remove From Group button

At this point, you have a group called Z which contains all your contacts except those listed in Group1. Repeat steps 4 thru 7 for all your remaining groups and you will end up with group Z containing only those contacts not assigned to any other groups.

To quickly cycle through open applications in MS Windows, hold down Alt and repeatedly press Tab. Just let go of all keys once the desired application is highlighted. Similarly, in Apple OS X, hold down Command and repeatedly press Tab. Another option in OS X is to use Expose. Press F9 to invoke it and then just select the desired window with your mouse. However, if you have Spaces enabled in OS 10.5 (aka Leopard), Expose will only show you open windows in your current Space whereas the Command-Tab method will cycle through all applications across all Spaces.

One of the most irritating things I find about Microsoft Office XP is its insistence on automatically customising all the menus based upon how often you use each command, leaving all the other menu options hidden under those infernal double-arrows. To turn this off and have your MS Office XP applications show their full menus all the time, open any Office application (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), and select Tools then Customize. Now select the Options, check the box marked Always show full menus and hit the Close button. Those hideous double-arrows will never be seen again.

If you ever used a System 7 Mac, you will probably remember the character palette. Just like the character map in Windows, you can find all sorts of symbols that are not easily reproduced on a keyboard. Strangely, this feature seemed to have disappeared in OS X. However, it does still exist, it is just not a standalone application any more, now it is really a component of each application. You can find it in the Edit menu of nearly all applications and it is called Special Characters. You can also launch the character palette using Command-Option-T.

When a dialogue box appears, there is usually one choice highlighted and pressing Enter will just accept that default choice. You may like to be able to select different options in the dialogue box using Tab and Shift-Tab as you can in Windows. To enable this functionality open System Preferences, select Keyboard & Mouse and then the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Now select the All controls radio button and you will be able to Tab navigation in all dialogue boxes.

It is pretty straightforward to take a screenshot and bring it into a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. But that is longer than necessary, you will end up with an additional file on the desktop and the website in your presentation will not update automatically. A more dynamic way of doing this involves loading the website into your presentation but unfortunately, this only works with Keynote and not PowerPoint. To accomplish this, you simply drag the small icon that is on the left side of the url in your web browser over to the Keynote presentation. You can then be sure that your Keynote presentation will stay current no matter when you show it. Even if you do not have internet access, it will simply show the latest downloaded version. One other small caveat to note is that this only works with Safari and Camino, so no Firefox.

What are known as shortcuts in Windows environments are called aliases in Apple OS but, frankly, the process of creating them can be a pain. When you use the Make Alias menu item or Command-L shortcut in Finder, it creates the alias in the same folder and adds alias to the name. You then have to move it around and rename it. However you can create an alias while dragging it to another folder. You simply have to hold down Command-Option while dragging it. An arrow will appear showing you that you are indeed creating an alias and not moving the original file. This is faster not only because you will not have to subsequently move the alias but also, Finder does not add alias to the title so you do not have to rename it.