How To Make Your XP Look Like Vista

Tired of your XP? Want to buy Vista? Well, don’t. Vista is still full of bugs and not reliable yet. So what’s so good about it? Most people like the new and pretty looks.
It’s a great idea to mix together the good things from both Windows systems: the reliability of XP and looks of Vista. Lets go over this, step-by-step so you can easily follow.

1.Change the theme. This is probably the most important thing when trying to make your XP look like Vista. You will need a good Vista-ish theme, I recommend VistaXP or YAVFC. You should be able to get some good ones from Deviantart.

But before you can install 3rd party themes, you will need to patch up youruxtheme.dll file. This file tries to stop you from using other themes than Microsoft’s own. Here are the patches for service pack 1 and service pack 2. (If you’re not sure which Service Pack you have, or what it even is, make sure you take a look at this post.)

You can replace the file manually, but the easiest way is to use replacer, which also backs up the old file in case anything goes wrong..

To replace, go to C: \WINDOWS\System32 and look for uxtheme.dll, which should be among the bottom half of the files. Drag it into the replacer window. Now drag the patch which you downloaded into the window and confirm.

To install a theme, download and unzip into the C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes folder.

You’ll also need StyleXP to use the themes.

Now that the hardest part is over, take a deep breath and give yourself the good-old pat on the back.

2. Download the Vista cursor pack. Unzip it to your desktop or anywhere where you can find it later. Now, go to Control Panel -> Appearance and Themes -> Mouse Pointers and open thepointers tab. Click a cursor, press Browse and find the corresponding Vista cursor from the pack you downloaded.

Try Yahoo! Widgets or Thoosje for that Vista signature sidebar.

If you want to, you can also get the TRANSPARENT explorer and internet explorer, which are almost as good as the real ones.

3. A transformation pack is also necessary if you want to go all the way. Basically, what this does, is that it replaces the startup, logon and shutdown screens of XP and makes them look like Vista. You will need to sacrifice some startup speed, but that’s the price.

Here’s a good transformation pack by Windows X.

This is what my XP desktop looks like after a little bit of tweaking:

So, congratulations on your new „Vista“ and make sure you show it off to your friends

10 Reasons Why Firefox and Opera Are Better Than Internet Explorer

I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who uses IE. Because… As most of us know, Internet Explorer sucks. Here’s why:

1. No more ads! IE doesn’t have a decent integrated ad-blocking device. Opera and Firefox, on the other hand, have the excellent AdBlock plugin. Of course, if you like to support a site with a few clicks you can set it to show ads for that site. Bloggers (like me) are ever so happy when they get a click or two. 
2. Fast security updates – Internet Explorer’s security updates come with Microso’s usual once-per-week schedule. By that time, Firefox has updated itself several times already. Fast updates are very important for security as they help to protect browsers from the newest security threats.
3. Reasonable tabbed browsing – Internet Explorer’s tabs are quite a mess. Can’t close them when they’re open and no way to bookmark any at the same time.
4. Accepting certificates – IE shows the finger to all security certificates it doesn’t trust for some reason. Using your company’s solutions can be quite difficult…
5. Web standards – Firefox’s and Opera’s support of web standards is better.
6. Portability – You can take Opera or Firefox with you anytime on a memory stick or flash memory device. Internet Explorer is stuck in your Windows.
7. Only for Windows – IE is only made for Windows. Firefox, Opera and even Safari are all made for several operating systems.
8. Customization – Opera has a heap of widgets to use. Firefox has tons of plugins and themes so you can make your favorite browser work and look any way you like. Try that on Internet Explorer! 
9. Password Management – Firefox and Opera let you choose to delete remembered passwords and Firefox even lets you set one master password to protect the others. IE remains unprotected.
10. Speed – On Windows XP, both Firefox and Opera are much faster than IE7 when several pages are open. Internet Explorer’s speed is better on Vista, but come on – you need Vista for that!

How to: Make 4 fake computer viruses!

Why not have some fun and prank your friends? There are several kinds of fake virus messages you can make. I will discuss 4 of them:

1. Fake error message

This one is by far, the easiest one to make and all you have to do is to make a new text document with notepad, type msg * YOUR MESSAGE and save as anything.bat. As always, make sure that you select All files instead of Text Document.

2. Forced shutdown

This will display a custom error message and start a countdown which will shut down the computer.

Right-click your desktop and create a new shortcut.
Paste the following code into the Location box in the Create Shortcut menu:
shutdown -s -t 30 -c “Your message here“

Replace 30 with the length of the countdown you want (in seconds) and place your custom error message between the quotes. Click next and name the shortcut to something the victim would be likely to click on such as “Internet explorer” or “My Documents”, etc.

Next you’d want to change the icon. Right-click on the shortcut you made and click properties. Find the Change Icon button and click it. Choose a suitable icon for the name you chose earlier.

And that’s all! Now you just have to sneak the shortcut onto the victim’s desktop and run!

Note: to stop it, open Run from the start menu and type shutdown-a.

3. Endless Command prompt windows

This will open up a series of command prompt windows that will never end.
The basic idea is that there are two .bat files that open the other one when opened, so the other one opens the first one again and the windows just won’t stop coming.

How to do this:
1. Fire up notepad and type: start 2.bat
2. Save it as 1.bat (make sure you choose all files when saving it)
3. Make another new text document and type: start 1.bat
4. Save it as 2.bat into the same folder as the other one.

All you have to do to start it is to click on either of them.

The only way to stop it is to wait for the windows to become so numerous that they are a group on the taskbar. Then you can use Close group to get rid of the bastards.

4. Fake Command prompt viruses

These are also a good way to make the victim believe that a worm is gnawing at their hard drive and that they can’t do anything to stop it.

Open up notepad and type @echo off

• To make text appear, type it after an echo tag.
• To have the the commands wait for the user to press any key type pause

(Note: if you write pause >nul it won’t display Press Any key to continue…)

• To have a complete high-speed description of files in the drive of the .bat file, type dir /s
• You can also initiate any other command we covered earlier, such as shutdown, error message, etc.

And why no include all of these in one fake virus?

For example:

I can’t post the batch files here, as sharing .bat files over the internet is illegal.

How to: change the start button text on Windows XP

Tired of the boring old “start” button at the bottom left corner of your Windows XP’s monitor? Want something new to replace iit? Well here’s how to change it.

With a few modifications in the Windows Registry, you can replace the “start” text with anything you like. Great for achieving a new, custom look for your Windows XP. So let’s get started.

Step 1: Modify explorer.exe

If the warning didn’t scare you enough, then the title of this step probably did. Yes, we are going to change Explorer, the backbone of your Windows XP, but don’t worry. Everything should be safe as long as you follow the steps closely.

As explorer is a binary file, we need a special tool to modify it. One of the best ones for this purpose is Resource Hacker. There are of course others that will get the trick done, but we will be using RH this tutorial so I recommend installing it to avoid making mistakes. Install it and let’s continue.

As always before changing anything. you want to back up. So open My Computer and navigate to   and look for explorer. Copy paste it to a safe location on your hard drive.

Now that you’ve backed it up, fire up Resource Hacker and find the same explorer.exe.

When you’ve found and opened explorer in RH, navigate to String Table -> 37 -> 1033. The “start” value is on line 4, after the 578. Change the text “start” to anything you want, making sure you keep the quotes. In this example. I changed the text to xptricks.net.

Press the Compile Script button to make Resource Hacker put together the code. Now click File and Save the script as explorer.exe. into C: \WINDOWS\inf or another C: \WINDOWS subfolder.

Note: make sure you choose Save AS, NOT just save!!

And that’s all for the first step! Now let’s move onto the second one -modifying the registry.

Step 2: changing the registry.

By now, you have a modified explorer sitting in the /inf/ subfolder, so we need to tell Windows to use that one, instead of the original one still resting untouched.

To do this, we need to make just one simple registry modification. To open up the registry, press start (something else soon  ) -> run and type regedit.

In the registry editor window that opens, navigate toHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon and look for the registry entry “shell”. Click it.

Change the explorer.exe to inf/explorer.exe or whereever you saved the modified explorer.

And believe it or not, you’re done! All you have to do now is reboot or log out and bacö in to see the changes. Enjoy your new custom Windows XP start button!

Set Website as Your Desktop Background

Here is an simple but interesting tweak that is applicable on Windows.You can set a Website(Webpage) as your desktop background. The site in background works as a normal site and opens the link in new window.Now u can search all your google querries on your desktop itself.

Steps:

1: Right click your desktop and go display Properties.

2: Select Desktop Tab, Click on "Customize Desktop".

3: In Desktop Items window Select "Web" tab.

4: Click on "New", add ur websites url and complete the wizard.

5: Apply setting and OK.

Making Your Own Internet Radio Station

If you want to set up a broadcast but either don't want to pay the fees for Live365, go through the trouble of configuring your computer for SHOUTcast, or just cannot devote your computer's time and resources to being a dedicated server, there is still an option. You can broadcast from your computer whenever you want, for practically nothing, using only your dial-up connection (or broadband connection if you have it). 

The Radio told here is made using SHOUTcast and winamp. Making your own Internet Radio Station is much easier than u think it to be. Follow the simple steps mentioned in the video.

Steps to make Internet Radio Station:

1. Go to Listen2myradio.com
2. Click on Sign Up.
3. Enter your Username, password, email etc here.
4. After that you have done, you should be able to login. So just login with your username and password
   
5. Go to Radio Installation.
6. Enter your admin and Broadcast Passwords. Its easy of they are same password. Also enter your radio name and URL to whatever you like.
   
7. Click Install.
8. Click on Turn ON/OFF. Turn ON ur radio. 
9. Go to preferences for more detail about your radio.
10. There is your Broadcast address you need later.
11. Now goto SHOUTcast.com.
12. Click on Download/Be a DJ.
13. Now you need to get winamp. So download it from there.
14. After this go back to shoutcast.com to download the plug-ins for your winamp and install it.
15. Then open your winamp and open preferences (Ctrl+P) and click on the DSP/Effects subcategory under the plug-ins.
16. Click on shout cast plugi. Then click Configure Active Plug-in.
17. A SHOUTcast source window will open there.
18. Now for the connection, Go back to your preferences. Copy and Paste your IP and port addresses. Then put your Broadcast password and Encoder to 1.
    
19. Then in Yellowpages tab choose your description and post your radio URL which you can get from again from radio preferences page.
20. Enable Track Title, that help listeners know the track getting played.
    
21. Now Goto Encoder Tab and choose whatever encoder setting your sound card can handle. Remember High rate will give good quality sound.
22. Now  goto input tab and make sure Input device set to winamp.
23. Now finally goto output tab and press Connect.

Your Internet Radio station is set. Go play your best songs on winamp it will be broadcasted to your radio URL and people around the world can listen your best collections. SO enjoyyyyyyyyyyy.............. :)