Make programs startup on boot on Linux

For all of you who have servers out there, you know a reboot is sometimes unavoidable, and in most modern systems it is as simple and painless as sudo reboot now  or on some other systems sudo shutdown -R now  (I think?!?), anyway, sometimes these machines reboot on their own, maybe a software update went through, or some program thought it funny to send the reboot command, in any case it does happen. And then you get that lovely call from the clients "it's not working" and you can't figure out why the webpage isn't showing but you can ssh into the box fine and the firewall is allowing all the right traffic.  (if ofcourse it is running). So you use the top  command to see if you have some form of malware, and lo and behold you see uptime is 1 hour, the system rebooted and your web server isn't running, you start the web server and there we go problem solved. Which brings us into the reason for this post how to make it run on startup...

Now because I am pretty stupid myself I couldn't just read one tutorial, no, I read them all! and I am going to try and show you the simplest and easiest way of doing it, but first let's discuss runlevels, a deceptively simple concept, that I couldn't wrap my head around. runlevels are basically a state the machine is in, such as state 0. halt. which basically means the system is about to shutdown now. There are usually 7 run levels numbered from 0 - 6 (programmers are iffy about where we start counting), as I already mentioned 0 which means the system is going to shutdown, there is 6. Reboot, which is pretty obvious, it is the state of the machine right before a reboot, it is said to be in runlevel 6. I am going to use Centos as the linux OS here but the ideas apply almost universally. Centos inherits the following runlevels from RHEL:

• 0 — Halt
  
• 1 — Single-user text mode
  
• 2 — Not used (user-definable)
  
• 3 — Full multi-user text mode
  
• 4 — Not used (user-definable)
  
• 5 — Full multi-user graphical mode (with an X-based login screen)
  
• 6 — Reboot

Now I don't think I am going to go indepth of what each one means but here are the basics, when the systems boots into single user no-network, no GUI mode (usually for diagnostics), it runs in level 1 obviously until the shutdown or reboot command is called where it is briefly in either runlevel 0 or 6 before it goes down. runlevels 2 and 4 are not used (these can actually be customised). The machine is said to run in level 3 when it is booted in multi user mode with networking but no GUI, meaning it only has terminals. This is sometime used in Server environments as GUI is computationally expensive and really unnecessary. But for most people when they startup their Centos machine it starts in level 5 which has all the bells and whistles including X server which gives you a pretty GUI to look at.  Now the important thing to know here is that the init process calls services and scripts to start according to runlevels. for example init will call all the services neccessary in runlevel 3 to have multiple users log on. but it won't actually call any GUI services. These it will only call in level 5. Init does its runlevel magic as soon as the system goes into a runlevel. From there it allows the user to start and stop whatever they want. How is this helpfull? well you can tell the system that you want your script to start at whichever runlevel you want, making it really simple to have a custom program run when the machine is booted or hell even as soon as the shutdown command is sent. To do this there are basically two major steps: create the init.d script and add this script to the right runlevels. now for this post I am going to make Tomcat start on boot. (the following assumes you are root or atleast have sudo privileges)

Create init.d script
This is a basic startup shell script that shows the machine how to start your program and where to find it. for tomcat I have the following script.



#!/bin/bash
# chkconfig: 2345 80 20
# Description: Tomcat Server basic start/shutdown script
# /etc/init.d/tomcat -- startup script for the Tomcat servlet engine

TOMCAT_HOME=/opt/tomcat/bin
START_TOMCAT=/opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
STOP_TOMCAT=/opt/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh

start() {
echo -n "Starting tomcat: "
cd $TOMCAT_HOME
${START_TOMCAT}
echo "done."
}

stop() {
echo -n "Shutting down tomcat: "
cd $TOMCAT_HOME
${STOP_TOMCAT}
echo "done."
}

case "$1" in

start)
start
;;

stop)
stop
;;

restart)
stop
sleep 10
start
;;

*)
echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"

esac
exit 0

Edit the highlighted part to point to your tomcat installation (or the start and stop scripts of your program)  and then save this as /etc/init.d/tomcat. Then we have one more command to make this script accessible to anyone.

chmod 755 /etc/init.d/tomcat

Now that we have this script we have one more command to run to add it to the correct runlevels

chkconfig --add tomcat 

 To check that the runlevels are correct run 

 chkconfig  --list tomcat

It will produce something like this:

tomcat 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off

Where it shows at which runlevels this script is on or off

 

To test this script you can try

service tomcat start

or

service tomcat stop

or

service tomcat restart 

To have a little bit more control over which runlevels your script runs in, is simple:

chkconfig --level 345 tomcat on

 

This switches tomcat on for levels 3,4 and 5.

And there you go creating a custom init script and making it run on boot.

 

I hope this helps you guys gain a little more control over your machines, if you have any questions, you are welcome to leave a comment or drop me an email.

Happy Hacking

MiniMite

 

 

 

 

How to access the deep web.

The other day I succumbed to my own curiosity and for no particular reason looked up how to access the deep web. I was surprised at how easy it was! And I will tell you how in this post.

But first a warning. Accessing the deep web itself may not be illegal but many, many of the sites there are! The deep web is where you can find drugs, child pornography, hit men, snuff films and many other nauseating sites that are most definitely NOT legal. And many of these sites are monitored by law enforcement agencies around the world to see who visits and what they do. So be careful what you look at! Beyond the very obvious legal and moral ramifications of visiting said unsavory sites there is also the psychological danger of seeing something that you can never 'un-see'.

You still want to see what is going on in there? okay well let us start. First a little bit of an overview, deep web sites tend to have unreadable URL's and end in .onion.  e.g. h87ho876gf08b487634gfo87.onion. Because of some of these sites being illegal they tend to move around a lot, meaning url's can change overnight, and finding one specific site can be confusing and quite hard. The deep web functions as a very very large (much larger than the visible web) peer-to-peer network, much like torrents. So obviously one can't access it with a normal browser a special browser is needed.

I will not go into detail about how to stay anonymous out there or how to stay safe (relative term on the internet), but I do suggest getting something like myIPHide and perhaps MAC address spoofing. But to just access the deep web you need a special browser called a tor browser. you can find one here.

After you have installed your tor browser, you can open it, and it will connect to the tor network. At this point , you can still google stuff, and go on your favourite surface web sites.
Now you want to find a deep web search engine or url repository. There is one on the surface web called the hidden wiki. You can find it here. 
From here you start seeing a listing of funny website names like I described earlier, these are deep web sites.

WELCOME TO THE DEEP WEB!

From here I suggest you either go to the uncensored hidden wiki (here you can get a good overview of the types of sites you can find on the deep web) or you can use a search engine to search for something. DuckDuckGo (first on the wiki listing) is a good search engine.  And that is all you need to know to access the deep web.

as always
Happy Hacking (and be careful)
MiniMite   

How to edit id3 tags of read only mp3 files

So this is the situation, i downloaded some mp3 files and imported them to my iTunes but I couldn't edit its information, it was all greyed out.

I started playing around with the files, and I found that they were all read only, I could go through every files properties and make them editable but this is a very long and tedious process. And like any good hacker out there knows, if you have to do the same thing over and over again, just write a program. And this is what kept me busy today, I wrote a simple program that opens the mp3 file and lets you edit the id3 tags (artist, title etc.) whether or not they are read only, the program can also remove the read only property.

It is called Mp3Tag and can be downloaded here.
Mp3Tag with dotnet installer
Mp3Tag without dotnet installer

You will see that there are 2 download links, one is just the program and the other has the .net 4.5 offline installer included(necessary for the program to run). if you already have .net 4.5 installed on your system, you only need the program, which is a lot smaller download.

After you have downloaded the programs, you unzip the file and you will finda file called dotnet 4.5 and a folder called Mp3Tag. Double click the dotnet 4.5 file, this will start the installation of dotnet, after you have installed dotnet, copy the Mp3Tag folder to where you want and inside you will see an executable called Mp3Tag.exe, run this and the program will open up, this is what you will see.

Now click on the open button and a open file dialog will open up, select the mp3 file you want to open.

This will open the mp3 file, from here, you can play, edit and even set the read only property of the mp3 file.

After you have edited the information, remember to press update to save the changes to your file.
the next time you open the song in itunes or any media player, it will have your new tags.

And there you have it, how to edit the id3 tags of read only mp3 files.

I am still working on editing more than one file at a time. but will post as soon as its done.

ps. comment on what you struggle with aswell as what you would like to see in this program in the future.

Happy Hacking
MiniMite

How to create a testing ground for your websites

This is for all you aspiring web developers and web hackers. The hardest thing to do is test a website that you wrote before deploying it to the webserver, yes you can run the html files with your browser, but what about php files? or other server side scripts or programs? these are slightly harder to test.
In this tutorial I will show you how to create a server running on your local machine that you can create full website and run them on your local machine. installing a webserver can also help you understand what happens on the other side, how do webservers work and so on. And it also makes it easy to install content management systems like Joomla! and Drupal to test and play with.

First off we will need to download and install server software, we will use the wamp server package that includes the apache server, mysql, php and phpMyadmin. this is basically all you will need to start your own webserver on your computer. you can download wampserver here.

While installing just accept all the default settings. after installation open your browser and in the address bar type localhost it will open up a page like this:

 When you typed localhost it opened up the default page for the website in the apache www directory, you can find this directory if you click on the 'www directory' in the taskbar menu for wampserver:

This opens up a folder on your local computer with 2 php files called: index.php and testmysql.php. You can't open the files from here, because your computer has not associated a program with the filetype, but dont worry you don't need to.

This is the main directory for your sites, remember not to delete these two files, as they are critical to wampserver. but you can create a folder, lets call it mysite, then if you type in localhost/mysite in your browsers address bar, it will open up the default page in this folder, the main page of your site.

I am not going to explain how to write a php or html file but the following site can teach you everything you will ever need to know about writing your own website for free: w3schools

Now the first thing you will want to do is create a database for your site right?
open localhost in your browser, and click on phpmyadmin under tools.

PHP my admin

This is what you will see when you open phpmyadmin. This is your control panel for all databases on the server and this is also where you will create your own database, go to the top right and click on Databases, the following window will open up:

Create new database

Type in a new name for your database and click on the create button, from there just follow the steps, it is all pretty self explanatory.

And there you go, a webserver with a database, on this database you can install a content management system like Joomla! or Drupal, or just use it to store data from your website.



Coming soon: How to create your own joomla site

ps. post any problems you have in the comments, I will see if I can help.

Happy Hacking
MiniMite

Profesional onscreen video capture

As promised here is my post about onscreen video capture, so we all now know how to take proper screencaptures. But how do they make those cool YouTube videos of someone working on their computer?

Well this is what i am going to give you today, a free, opensource tool to record all or just parts of what you see on screen.

Download CamStudio here:

Download the CamStudio software from their website, and run the installer.

Make sure you are connected to the internet while installing, CamStudio may want to download some dependencies.

After installing open CamStudio, a small window will open up, in the top menu bar go to the region menu, there you will see 4 options, 'region', 'fixed region', 'window', and 'fullscreen'.

region: gives you option to select region to capture before recording
fixed region: gives a standard size region that you can place where you want to record.
window: will give you the option to select only one window to capture, regardless of its position or size or what happens outside of it.
fullscreen: captures everything on your screen.

This should be enough to get you started recording your onscreen shenanigans.

ps. there are many programs to capture your onscreen activity, with many fancy settings and stuff, but many of them are not free to use as you wish, CamStudio is. and also it has many features that prove to be very helpful, like annotations, auto panning(window follows mouse movements), and different output formats, different screen resolutions etc.

Happy Hacking
MiniMite

How to take profesional screen captures

Okay, so you want to show a friend what amazing thing you just experienced on your computer, you know like this:

Damn what you been doin' bro

You try the builtin windows screen capture, but then you can't obfuscate parts you dont want to share and you also can't select just a single small window you want to capture. btw. obfuscate is hiding parts of an image, like this lovely photo of my mother:

no, this is not really my mom...

This is where the amzing tool Greenshot comes in: you can download it here.

Install and enjoy.


ps. share some cool screenshots in the comments.
pps. a video screen capturing tool coming soon...

happy hacking
MiniMite

How to fix greyed out uTorrent files

So today, as i am sure all IT enthusiasts have experienced, a friend came to me all serious and stressed out of his mind rambling something about his internet wont work on his dads computer. So being the good friend and all I said I would help. I got to his computer and obviously the first thing I do is open a browser and check what happens if I try to connect to the internet, and wadya know, it works... and now the story changes, actually his torrents won't download.

So this is what i found when i opened uTorrent:

So first of all I found that there is still connection, (obvious from the top left corner showing the total up/download speed, and the bigass graph at the bottom).  Now I know that the program itself has connection, and is also somehow (and for some reason)  not allowing the torrents to start, this is also further confirmed when I force start a torrent, this works. But now to figure out why it just greys out the torrents and waits for kingdom come. I start at the usual suspects, the connection preferences, but no, this is all correct. then I see somthing intersting in the left hand menu:

 

The transfer cap, when i opened it, this is what i saw ^^^  (with different numbers though). So then it hit me,  uTorrent just hit its up/download cap, I unchecked the 'Enable Transfer Cap' checkbox and presto, problem solved.

Now my friend can go back to downloading illegal content... :|

Happy Hacking
MiniMite

How to make a CD autorun

Wow, it has been quite a while since i have posted anything on my blog, sorry for that. but i am back now and can't wait to tell you about all the things i have learned. so let us start off with something really simple, something that has baffled me since i started burning my programs to disk. how to make the main program automatically run on your disc when you insert it.

So you have a program that you want to distribute on a disc, but you dont want users to have to open the disc and look for the main program and run it etc. because like all IT proffesionals and hobbyist alike know, end users are really dumb, even with the simple things. so we want windows to show us that nifty "splash screen" to install the product. But first we have to know what windows looks for to create this screen, and also to know what to display on this screen. so when a disc is first inserted to the drive windows scans it for any setup information files, this file tells windows what to do with the disc, like open a specific program. these files have the extension .inf . Like most of you should have guessed by now we are going to make one of those files.

First a .inf file is really just a simple short and small text file with the .inf extension.
-open your text editor like notepad or  Notepad++

-write the following to the file

     [autorun]
  open=example.exe

  icon=example.ico

where "example.exe" is the name of your program to run and " example.ico" is a picture file (.ico fileformat) or icon to be used. *note this is optional.

 -then save the file as a "Autorun.inf" and not "Autorun.txt ." meaning goto saveas and select all file fomats from the dropdownlist and type the full filename with extension.

now that you have created this file you are ready to burn to disc, all three these files eg. "Autorun.inf", "example.exe" and "example.ico" need to be in the root directory of the disc. meaning dont put them in folders.

and there you have it making a program run when disc is inserted.

Happy Hacking
MiniMite

Networked Virtual machines

Well like promised here is some more examples on how to hack inside virtual machines.

After you have installed virtual box and atleast two operating systems you can do a lot of things with them but the most important thing you must know how to do is to put them in the same network and let them communicate. For this tutorial i have used backtrack and windows xp in the network.
before you boot into one of your two operating systems you have to tell virtual box to connect them, and this can only be done before booting.  so open up virtual box and select one os and go into its network settings, on the adapter1 select nat and on adapter 2 select Host-only adapter.

after you have done this you can boot up your operating systems and start your hacking. for starters you must find each of the machines ip addresses for windows you can use the ipconfig command in command prompt and for backtrack the ifconfig command will work perfectly. after you have the ip adresses you can start hacking, for starters you can do a port scan on windows with nmap scanner preinstalled on your backtrack os.
I would suggest switching off the firewall in windows as this can stop alot of your hacking attempts. after you get bored with that you can switch on the firewall and find some more vulnerabilities.

Till next Happy Hacking

Finally some practical hacking.

One of the biggest problems most budding hackers have is the fact that hacking is illegal without written consent from the owner of the other computer. and what business owner is going to let you stuff around on his half-a-million dollar network? nobody! And if you are like me you can't afford much more than a plain simple bottom of the range laptop and snailspeed internet, But there is a solution.

Enter VirtualBox. virtual box lets you install as many os's as your space allows you too on top of your host operating system. For instance you can install and run linux on top of your native windows seven (no need for dual-booting and partitioning your hard drive) that means you can have as much os's running on one computer as you want at the same time! The smart people have already figured out this one, if  you dont know what i am on about, think about it you can use the one operating system to hack the other or a program on the other. and the best part is whatever happens inside a virtual machine can not affect your host os, so you can even try those untested viruses of yours inside one of these virtual machines with no danger to your host os. ( be careful though some viruses don't attack software but hardware, so try not to corrupt your hard drive).
These virtual machines can be connected to each other in a network to simulate network attacks
You can install a server os like ubuntu server, and host a small website (not on the internet) to hack around with.

You can download Oracle virtual box for free at https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Once you have downloaded and installed virtualbox you are ready to install some operating systems some suggested free operating sytems are:
Backtrack which is a free linux based operating system with a twist, it was designed for security profesionals and boasts all the hacking tools that you will need in one package. (but beware it is quite a large download approx: 1.9GB).
Ubuntu  which is also linux based and free but has more of the everyday programs on it.
Ubuntu server same as the desktop version but is of course a server operating system.
For those who like their windows, you can download a cracked copy of windows XP here
Note: you must download the iso image file for each one

From her on it is fairly easy to set up a virtual machine.
open up Virtualbox and you should see a button that says "new" with a blue star at the top of it. click it.
This should open up a welcome menu just press next
Now it will ask you for a name for the VM and what type it is, complete this for this example i am going to run you through the installation of Ubuntu, well call the VM "Ubuntu" (or whatever you want) and you will see that it guesses that you are going to install Linux Ubuntu. Click next
Now it asks you how much of your ram you want to make available to the OS,( don't worry you wont lose the space you gain it back once you close your VM again), the default value is perfect. click next
Now it asks you if you want to create a start up disk, it is basically a virtual disk on your actual hard disk, your host os sees it as a big file and the os you are installing sees it as the whole disk. make sure "create new hard disk" is checked and click next
Now it asks you what type of hard disk you want to make, for now  VHD or virtual hard disk is perfect. click next.
Now the program asks whether you want it to be a fixed size or dynamic re-sizable hard drive, dynamic is perfect. click next
next you can leave location as is, and preferably the size aswell. click next.
click create.
click create.


Now you will see your newly created virtual machine in the left pane, but it still needs an operating system installed, it is like a brand new computer with no software on it.

Double click your VM to start it this will open up a first time use dialog,click next
Now it wants you to show it where to find the os, the default is the CD drive, but next to it is a small file icon, click it, navigate to where your Ubuntu .iso file is and open it. Click next
Now click start, it will start to boot from Ubuntu
when it asks you if you want to try or install Ubuntu, install it
when it asks where, you can erase all data on disk and install Ubuntu (dont worry it wont affect your base system just the virtual drive you created.)
Follow the prompts and youre good to go.


I will in the future give more posts on actual hack attacks using virtual machines but for now you can atleast start enjoying virtual machines.

Happy Hacking!

Want to hide encrypted files in other files?

Have you ever tried to email an application? or maybe you wanted to send personal information via email, but you are afraid that it ends up in the wrong hands?

Sending encrypted information across the internet is called steganography. I have tried out a lot of programs that claim to encrypt data and store it in another file, but all of them have short comings like some can only support small files, others can only encrypt a text file.
I have come across 1 tool that can do all this and more! it is called StegoMagic and you can download it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?mr05s8c2rjxw8bi

How it works:
You first have to unzip the program to a file of your choice like example c:\StegoMagic\.
When you unzip the package you will see three files, two programs "StegoMagic_bin.exe" and "StegoMagic_txt.exe", and also a text file named "instructions.txt"
Copy both the files you want to use to the same folder as StegoMagic, eg. if you want to encrypt and save a file named "info.docx" in another file named "encrypt.txt", you have to copy both files to where StegoMagic is saved. The file names and sizes don't matter.

Read through the text file for complete instructions on how to use it. after you are done you can send your final file to who ever you want to, all they need is the encryption key generated during the process (saved in a text file in the same folder) and they also need StegoMagic to decrypt and view the file you sent them.

If you have ever tried to email an application, you will know that most email clients don't allow this no matter how hard you try to conceal the file, with StegoMagic this won't be a problem, all you have to do is encrypt the application in a text file, or any other file for that matter, then you just send the file and your email client won't even know you are sending a application.

I really hope this post helps you, for more information contact me minimite69@gmail.com

Make your own website

So you want to have your own website? But you don’t even know where to start. Well that is what this post is all about, showing you how you can have your own website.

Firstly there are a couple of things that you will need. You will need to register your domain name for example www.mydomainname.com , there are a lot of companies that will do this for you on the internet, this is really not very expensive depending on the type of domain you want (.com, .co.za, .biz, .org…). Be careful, you have to renew your domain name each year, so as not to lose your domain name. But usually your host (discussed next) will do this for you.

After you have a domain name you must find a company that will host your website for you, this is called your web host or simply just your host. When looking for a host there are a couple of things that you have to look out for, number one is how reliable is your host, how much uptime do they have, simply put the more uptime they have the less your site will be offline.
Secondly what is the amount of Disk space that they offer you, usually websites aren’t really that big, but they can get quite big if and when your business expands Usually a good starting size is about 5 gigabytes .

Thirdly you must check how much bandwidth they offer you. Bandwidth is basically how much data can be transferred to and from your site, think of it as a road, the more lanes are in it the more cars can drive on it. The same with bandwidth the more bandwidth you have, the more people can visit your site. Example: your page is 10MB in size, so every person who visits your site, automatically downloads 10MB of data to view your first page, now say 1000 people visit your site that is already 10 GB so watch out how much bandwidth you have.

You also have to check what is their line speed, this is the fastest that a web browser can download your page. Usually hosts have a very fast internet connection so you do not really have to worry about this.

Lastly you must also see what services they offer, like data bases (If your site needs a lot of updating, like a blog, then I would recommend using databases) and depending on what your site does, can the host’s server (the computer that you save your website on) support client and server side scripting?

After you have a domain name and a host you must start writing your own website. Websites are written in HyperText Markup Language or HTML. This is not a true programming language but a markup language using tags like and
to change the format and layout of your webpage.

After you have Written your website and tested it to make sure all the links work, you have to upload it to your ftp server, (the address and login details should be provide by your host).
And that is it, that is all it takes to get a website.

Below are a couple of links that you might find useful in your web developing.

http://www.mweb.co.za/productspricing/Hosting/uncappedhosting.aspx
Mweb is a host situated in South Africa, that offers a really good Uncapped hosting package. They have uncapped disk space and bandwidth, and also their web hosting packages are very affordable.
http://www.axxess.co.za/hosting-south-african
This is also a very good host in South Africa, they do not offer as much as Mweb, but I would recommend them.
http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
This site will teach you everything you need to know about HTML and other web developing languages, all for free.
http://filezilla-project.org/
Filezilla is a free FTP client to help you with uploading your site to the server.

How to speed up your Windows 7 pc

As complex and daunting as this might seem it is really not that hard to do. but let us first take a look at what makes your PC so slow in the first place. The biggest contributor to this ongoing hassle, is memory, or the lack thereof . Usually when our PCs slow down to where we want to pick it up and throw it out of the window (which will not solve your problem!) we take them to some or other computer shop where they ask you a lot of money to do what you can do yourself, if you only knew how.

1. But how you ask, well first you can go through your programs and delete the programs that you no longer need.

• Go to the start button on your desktop (usually bottom right of the screen).
• On the right look for "Control Panel" open it. The control panel will open up.
• Look for "Programs" or "Uninstall a Program". The uninstall programs  window will open.
• Go through the list and look for programs that you no longer need or don't use 
• Select "Change/Uninstall" from the top of the window ( Be careful, once its deleted you cannot get it back!)

Follow these general rules to stay safe when deleting programs:
If you do not know the program DON'T delete it!
Only delete programs that YOU have installed yourself, and you know you won't need it any more!
You can also clean up some more space by doing the following

• Go to Windows Explorer also called My Computer.
• Right click on your default drive, usually "C"
• Click on "Properties" at the bottom of the drop-down window
• This will open up the properties panel for that drive. Select the "Disk Cleanup" button on the general tab (it should open up in this tab when you open the properties)
• The "Disk Cleanup" window will open. Make sure all the check boxes are ticked and click on "Clean up system files"
• It will ask if you are sure that you want to delete all of these files, click on "Delete all".

2. After you have done this you must clean up your system registry, for this you will need a external program. I always use CCleaner from Piriform, you can find it here: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/standard  

• Download and install the cleaner
• Open CCleaner from the desktop shortcut automatically created.
• Once it has opened, cllick on "Registry" on the left hand panel
• Click on "Scan for issues",  the program will now scan for registry problems.
• If it has finished scanning you will see a whole list of errors and problems found in the right hand panel, don't worry what they are just click on "Fix selected issues..."
• A popup window will appear asking you if you want to backup your registry, this is only a precaution so that you can recover your registry as it is before you fixed it. If you select yes, you will be prompted to save a backup file on your hard drive.
• After this another popup window appears, this just gives you a  information on individual problems, but just click on "Fix all selected options"

3. Now that you have cleaned your registry you must do a full virus scan on your computer, this is done in your Anti-Virus programme, if you do not have one yet, I strongly reccomend you get one NOW!
You can get a free one here: http://free.avg.com/za-en/free-antivirus-download
Just download and install this antivirus on your computer and you are safe. Now that you have a antivirus you must open it and run a full scan on your computer, if problems are found your antivirus should fix the problem on its own.

4. Your computer should now be considerably faster but I still reccomend defraging your system, this should also speed up your computer. Open the properties panel of your default drive (See above). Go to the tools tab and click on "Defragment now...". Once the defrag window opens click on the drive you want to defrag (usually "C" drive) so that it is highlighted, next click on "Defragment now". your drive will now be defragmented.


Well your computer should now be considerably faster. The above are things that you should not only do when your computer  is slow, but it is good housekeeping to do this atleast once a month.

Download videos from youtube

I have always wondered how people can download videos from YouTube, but i could never find the correct software for the job.

The other day I read a article on how to speed up your Internet download speed and came across a very nice bit of software that really works. it is called Internet Download manager. You can find here
http://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/

Installing :

• Download the executable from the above link, click on "try Internet download manager"
• When the download box opens click on "open" or "run" depending on your browser. 

Internet download manager should configure itself correctly and then you can start using it (you don't need to open it before browsing it runs in the background of your computer.)

Now go to YouTube and when you watch a video you should see a small notification from idm in the top right hand corner saying "download with idm" click on this and idm should download the file for you.


Idm will manage all your downloads from the Internet, and also it should speed up most of them.