May 10, 2008

Umair Mohsin responds to your queries...
 

Business Management

Q Please suggest a website on Business Management where I can find definitions, concepts and answers to questions, similar to the website Whatis.com for IT.

A If it is just glossaries that you are looking for, you can type 'Glossary Business Terms' in Google, and get thousands of sites offering the same. Check out http://www.powerhomebiz.com/  Glossary/glossary-A.htm.

A better approach to study business management, however, is to subscribe to free e-newsletters of different magazines like www.fortune.com,  www.economist.com,  www.forbes.com,  www.wsj.com and websites of local newspapers.

Downloading Urdu/ English songs

Q From were can I download both English and Urdu songs for my MP3 for free and where I will not be required to submit my ID and personal information?

A Try apniisp.com , or listen to songs online at www.muziq.net.  You can also listen to the hundreds of free radio stations like www.last.fm  or www.freevirginradio.com.

Visit www.live365.com/  or Type 'online radios' as keywords in Google for more information.

Alternatively, you can use P2P networks like Limewire to search for and download songs. However, please remember that this is piracy and is punishable by law.

Data recovery software

Q  I lost my data which was stored in a partition of my hard disk and later formatted the hard disk as well. Is there any possibility of recovering the lost data? Please suggest a few links to free data recovery software.

A The best data recovery software that I can suggest is:

Migo Digital Rescue Premium

http://www.migosoftware.com/   store/digital-rescue.html

This software offers the unbeatable combination of a user-friendly design, a hefty feature set and one the most effective data recovery capacities you will ever see. It even has Deep Scan Support which can search for more locations throughout your operating system and safely recover more files. To date, this is one of the best data recovery software available.

Recover My Files

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

This data recovery programme has an easy interface, a robust features set and is highly effective. With Recover My Files you can, for example, search by keyword, file name or file extension. It can also search by file content, so whether the file extension is labelled as JPEG, jpeg or jpg it can find it. It can rescue over 300 file extension types and is very easy to use. Try the free download offer on the site.

Handy Recovery

http://www.bluesofts.com/ download/798/15199/Handy_Recovery.html

Handy Recovery comes with amazing features set. The programme can recover files damaged by virus attacks, power failures and software faults, or files from deleted and even formatted partitions.

These three are my picks. Other good software in the market include Ontrack Data Recovery Pro And R-Studio 2008.

You can find all of these on the local CDs with CD vendors. Alternatively, you can download trial versions from www.download.com  or from the sites mentioned above.

Multiple queries

Q 1. I have a Pentium 4 PC with 40GB hard drive (with C, D, E and F drives), 512MB Ram, Intel processor 2.60, 2.59 GHz and the OS is Windows XP Service Pack 2. My problem is that from the past few weeks, the memory in my primary C drive is becoming lesser. It has a total of 9.76GB, out of which 5.71GB was free around three weeks ago. But it kept decreasing, and now it has come down to 4.75GB.

I do not install a lot of software in that drive, and I do not save many documents either. I put everything that is downloaded or installed in my D drive, which is working fine. I have tried defragmentation and disk cleanup a lot of time, but it does not work. What can I do?

2. In the past few days, I have noticed that the first two buttons in the right-click menu on the hard drives have changed. Now, when I right-click on any hard disk (C, D, E, and F) the first two menu buttons, that is ‘open’ and ‘explore’ are missing. Instead, there are some strange characters there. Is this a virus? I hardly have any protective software on my system, so I really need one. Please suggest a good, but free antivirus software

A I think you have hit the nail on the head. Most likely, your C:\ drive is being filled with rubbish or worse Spamware. What I suggest is that you format the C:\ Driver and reinstall all software — if you do not have any major documents/software or files. Nothing improves system performance like a full-format, so it is always highly recommended.

However, in case you would like to take the fixing approach, the first thing you will need to do is install three software on your system. AVG Antivirus, AVG Anti-Spyware and PrevxCSI. AVG software. You can download it from http://free.grisoft.com  while PrevXCSI can be downloaded from www.prevx.com . Run complete system scans with all three.

After this, go into Search, Advanced Search and search for files by Size > 1MB. You will end up with all the TMP and files generated by the system that were hogging the space. Some of them are even 700 MB in size. Delete all the extraneous ones especially TXT files (be careful not to delete system files).

Hopefullym this will ensure that your system recovers fully.

After this, install a firewall like ZoneAlarm on top to fully secure your system. Also, ensure that you frequently update the software mentioned above. password forgotten

Q I have forgotten my password for WinRar file. Is there any way to break the password?

A You can try a bruteforce password cracking tool like RAR Password Cracker from http://www.rarpasswordcracker.com/ . You can also Google ‘RAR Password Crack’ for more utilities that will help you recover your password.

Disabled taskmanagaer

Q My taskmanager is disabled and keeps giving me the message, ‘RVHost file can not be found.’ What should I do?

A The taskmanager/registry editor is usually disabled by a class of virii like the Auto.Id or RVHost, etc. To cure this affliction means that first of all you will need to get your system back and to stop the virus from running. This means fixing the task manager. To do this, there are two utilities that we know of that such virii cannot over-come. One is WinTasks from www.liutilities.com  or www.soft32.com/ download_14872.html. This is a more powerful version of Task Manager and will help you find and kill the process which is responsible for these errors.

The Second is AVG’s Anti-Spyware tool which you can find from http://free.grisoft.com/.  Install these on your system first.

After this, search and destroy the processes that have taken over your system (a good idea is to check which process is taking up the most processing speed or memory and kill it).

Once you have done so, you will have to clean your system from the virus infection. For this, you will require an Antivirus software. Software which have worked for us include AVG and PrevX together both of which are highly recommended. Other good ones include AntiVIR, Nod32 and Kaspersky. You can find all of these on local CDs or download from www.download.com.

You can also run online scanners from http://housecall.trendmicro.com  but only after you have killed the processes. Until you have rid yourself of the virus, it will keep restarting and causing problems.

Please note that most of these viruses cannot be killed in normal mode and in all probability you will have to log into Safe Mode to kill them. Try to determine the name of the virus which is causing the trouble and then search online to find which registry entries and files it creates. Delete those after logging into your system in Safe Mode.

After that, merge a .REG file. You can copy one from http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/ attachments/spyware-viruses-etc/2944d1173913897-how-remove-rvhost-exe-malware-anetgames-pkg_0023349.zip.

Just double-click and it will revert most of the entries to default. Hopefully, this time, your problem will be resolved.

Editor’s note:

Many of our readers have requested for Umair Mohsin’s personal email address and his phone numbers. We are sorry but we cannot give out the contact information of our contributors. However, feel free to send us your queries at science@dawn.com,  and we will make sure that Umair gets them.
 

Video screen halved
 

Q I bought a DVD a few months ago, its resolution was fine but when I play it now, the video’s size is halved. Is this player problem? I am using K-Lite Codec Pack and played DVD using both Windows media player 11 and media player classic but the video comes in half screen not full screen also the other half is blank and blinks white light.

A K-Lite Codec Pack is great (even though chock full of Spamware) however, to run DVDs you do not need those Codecs. Try the normal DVD players like ‘CyberLink’ or WinDVD or even ITunes. Update your DirectX files from www.microsoft.com/ directx and find the latest drivers for your VGA card. This will help normalise your windows video again.