Heya,

In this post, I am going to share a simple solution, yet not known by many.  I had a personal experience of having it with McAfee 2009 Total Protection & Windows Blinds (6.0).

My McAfee went through some unrepairable error for which the only solution was a REINSTALL. Since I had enough of McAfee, i decided to uninstall it and install Kaspersky AntiVirus 2009. However as everyone knows, KAV is a very “rigid” type of an Antivirus. It requires that it is the ONLY Antimalware app. on a particular PC. When I started to install it, it refused & said that “McAfee is there, I can’t install !”, even though i had uninstalled it. I googled for a McAfee REMOVAL TOOL and it saved me :) It can be downloaded from here.

Another alternative is also available, if you don’t want to google removal tools. In my case I came across another application. Windows Blinds and it refused to get removed and showed “”Could not open INSTALL log”.

The Steps required are -

1. First try to clean uninstall it again using windows Installer Clean Up utility, it’s available at Microsoft.
2. Once downloaded and installed, go to “C:\program files\windows installer clean up”, there you will find a file msicuu.exe.
3. Run this and see if windows blinds is listed in the box. If so, select it and click on remove.
4. Restart computer.

However, I don’t know why I did not see Windows Blinds in the dialog Box, so i downloaded this. It’s the authorized tool from Stardock Inc. themselves. After all, The Creator of the Application knows best ;)

By,

Ahmad Shumayal,

Admin.

Google's morphed logo for Gandhi Jayanti

A hour ago, I was surprised to see Google’s logo with Gandhiji’s photo there, when I went to Google out for something that I wanted. At first sight, I was confused that for what reason is that picture over there? Then I remembered of Gandhi Jayanti and realized why it is over there :)

It is not a new thing for Google to morph its logo at such ocassions, and the most recent change was the “11″ instead of “l” in the logo as Google was celebrating its 11th Birthday!

Google's 11th Anniversary

The Gandhi logo of Google, was activated at all the country specific TLDs of Google right after 00:00, when the date turned to be 2nd October – the birthday of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi :D

Just found some useful info to share with you all!

Get high-quality Traffic via Direct Navigation Marketing

Direct Navigation is a way of browsing on the usenet, where the users reach the site they are looking for, without the help of search engines or links from other directories or pages. Direct Navigation traffic is also called type-in traffic as the users type the term in the address bar followed by a “.com” which takes them to the relevant site. Those domains which the users type-in, which redirects them to the relevant sites are known as “generic domains”.

If you’re  a site owner, then Direct Navigation traffic is what you must be looking for! It will give you targeted, high-quality traffic for your site…This traffic tends to convert visits much better into sales or paying customers!

There are many Direct Navigation Marketers out there, but the one that I found good was Elephant Traffic…

Elephant Traffic is a marketplace where the domianers -  the ones who own generic domains, & the advertisers – the ones who want traffic via the domainers’ domain meet.
The advertiser can search for generic domains relevant to their site and contact the domainer to redirect it to their site, and the domainers get money from the advertisers for the same!

Today I got introduced to an adware – Quickheal Cleaner, the way it was installed on the PC was quite intresting…

I was going to watch a movie today, which I had downloaded yesterday from P2P netwroking sites (torrents). When I opened the movie with Windows Media Player (as it was in .wmv format), it said that the codec required to play the movie has to be downloaded. I downloaded it and installed it, then what I noticed was that the file “Quickheal” wasn’t a codec it was a program. Then it ran automatically, started some sort of scanning (like Windows Defender does) & started giving out warnings & alerts again & again, that the PC is having a lot of threats + internet attacks + Trojans + whatever malicious you could think of… (LOL)

This behaviour itself proved to me that this Quickheal Cleaner was an Adware, (I had had such coincidences before) I googled for Quickheal Cleaner & found that what I had thought is true, it is an Adware…

Now, how do I get the PC back to normal? I googled that and found some softwares called “Quickheal Cleaner Removal Tool“. But I couldn’t trust those softwares either. I got other ways of manually removing it, but they seemed time-consuming…At this point of time, running Windows Restore  & restoring the PC to an earlier time seemed most probable thing to do, and the most easiest also.

Thank God, that the adware hadn’t deleted the System Restore points (deleting the restore points is common for trojans). After the System Restore, the PC was normal again. Then to convince myself, I opened that movie file with GOM Media Player & I learned that it was a fake video file binded with an Adware as GOM Player just showed some green & white horizontal lines moving over the screen for 5 seconds :P

So if you ever come across anything called Quickheal Cleaner, don’t even think to install it, unless you want your PC dumped with fake alerts (they are really irritating) & ads :D

This site – AreMySitesUp.com – provides its users with the data of their site’s uptimes and downtimes. There are two types of memberships @ aremysitesup.com, they are: 1.Free Membership 2. Premium Membership. The free membership plans has all the basic services of the site whereas the premium membership extends the flexibility & support. The premium plan supports RSS Feeds Checks & reports, Twitter Integration, Premium Support & Keyword Search.

I’ve signed up for the free plan of this service to monitor Hacker’s Lane! Let’s see if they do what they have said… :D