Installing Microsoft Windows XP SP3 Made Easy

I will go step-by-step and will assume you have a clean/Legal XP SP2 Installed. I am very proud as my current installation has not failed in last 1.5+ years. It is not only that XP SP2 is really good in its own ways, there are tricks I've learnt over the years that helps me to keep my OS safe otherwise, my old friends, knows, every 6 months I had to re-install OS no matter which one is taken for example.[Soon you will find a post on that..OS I've installed and my experience with them].
So here it starts, Installing Microsoft Windows XP SP3 Made Easy for everyone... not just for noobs.. :)

1. Get the stand alone installer to keep the whole game simple. I know it is easy for some people to get SP3 via windows update, I think, from an average Indian's Internet access view point, we better get the stand alone installer.
   Google as well as DUMB search engine on Microsoft Download[When I got it, it was ranked 20405 in popularity :P] will not get you this one easily, so here is the direct link.
   http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5b33b5a8-5e76-401f-be08-1e1555d4f3d4&DisplayLang=en
   
   Also maybe in future you can just use the file name or other details mentioned here from the download page.

   File Name:	WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe
   Version: 1	1
   Knowledge Base (KB) Articles:	KB936929
   Date Published:	5/6/2008
   Language:	English
   Download Size:	316.4 MB

   
   

2. While the file is being downloaded, I suggest you start taking backup of your files, in unfortunate event of update failure, you might just love me that I suggested you to take this step.

3. Once the file is downloaded, I would suggest it to move it to your fastest disk drive - it can be the SATA drive you have or the portable HDD or anything that has more than 2 GB of free space to keep things fast[My installation started at 01.28 AM and ended at 01.45 AM with 512MB RAM on T2050 @ 1.60GHz]

4. Close all unnecessary programs and services[stopping services can be a serious problem so as of now if you are not a PRO I would suggest to leave them intact].

5. Remove all the removable drives, not the one on which you have the SP3 ofcourse. I would suggest to use a clean HDD and system i.e. Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware check should have been performed. Also remove any bootable disks from optical drives.

6. Disable the all the Network Adapters and switch off the WLAN if it is on. This is not a mandatory step and it is upto you to follow it or not. However DO NOT forget that you might drop all the protection you have in place in the very next step and you will be vulnerable to any kind of attack... any time.

7. Shut down your Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and Firewall. Yes, I am not drunk this is to not to hinder with SP installation and to improve performance.

8. If you are using a laptop, please make sure you are plugged in and also have enough backup power in case of power loss. The same goes for PC, a decent UPS will do the trick for the PC users though.

9. Launch WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe, if you have downloaded the file from Internet, Windows XP, as a protection measure, might ask you 2-3 times to confirm whether you want to run this file or not. Click on yes without any fear, if something is gonna go wrong..anyways.. it will go wrong.. neither me..nor you can do anything about it.. ) so chill...

10. It will start extracting the files, most probably to the best drive/volume[In terms of performance].

11. Once the extraction is complete, follow the On-Screen instructions to start the SP Installation.

12. It is a pretty simple thing to do though, internally it takes backup of the files to the location which you mentioned at the startup and then updates the system files followed by a system reboot.

13. Yes, you must reboot the system once you have applied the update.

14. Start your Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and Firewall and then re-attach the removable media as well as enable the network adapters.

15. And hoorrrray....we are done...

16. If you face any problem during the setup...you know where you have to look forward to right? aahh..common... not to http://metrix.blogspot.com ... go to Microsoft Support..huh..

Its time guyz : Getting ready for Interviews

May... it has all begun, by mid June you will start getting the idea what is next for you, as students will get the results for their final year and already employed people might start looking at other opportunities outside of their current organizations. so isn't it the right time to start something on Interviews and how to crack them?

I am in process to publish Interview material, Important links, Resume formats and more here as well as in my group [http://groups.google.co.in/group/skynet].

I must thank some of Ex-ESS team members as they have helped me a lot to prepare me for interviews. BTW, many times I get carried away for my previous organization[ESS], 'cause there we had an awesome work culture. Something difficult to find in India, and super difficult to find in Gujarat. As a Gujju, I do understand, by nature, Gujjus are many times money-minded, so much that they want their employees to do 'All Work' and they really don't understand the old sayin' "All Work and No Play makes Jack a Dull Boy". Anywayz, coming to the point, such a freedom and brotherhood we enjoyed, that almost every team member helped each other to crack interview.

And many times, ESS team members were used to go for interviews just for fun. And for a good time we never lost any of the team member. There were two sound reasons for it though, 1.Work Environment, 2. Competitive Pay. I will for sure post on ESS in future, but as of now let me stop here.

I am gonna start posting stuff on here as well as in my group, however I would request you guys n gals to actively provide feedback and improve the material I post here including resume formats, general interview questions, company specific interview questions, HR Cracking style, Personality development stuff, Soft Skills development guide, Practical Sessions and more.

Expecting a lot of input from your side...here I stop...:)

Bad Bad Bad News...Microsoft withdraws its hostile bid

As a shocking news, I got to read this article, Ballmer's e-mail to staff on Yahoo, I was so damn happy when the announcement was made about the hostile bid, I was jumpin... dancin.. rollin.. on floor.. and then.. suddenly...thud.. something hit my face..and that's the e-mail that says... to Y!.. from Steve Ballmer... withdrawing the bid. I feel bad..really bad..the whole world is drowning and I don't see any rescue boat around..aah.. it is so sad...and..yet another thunk..comes and.. I think..hey.. it isn't that bad. It seems good infact. Though I really would have embraced the idea of Microhoo with love and all the warm feelings, however here is another side which other experts have identified about the deal.

In this takeover, one thing I was really afraid of was.. cultural clash, and trust me guys n gals, I've seen what happens when you do this kindda fusion, apart from other issues you have to manage people and their perception. Also many people will feel insecure and might just quit and many of brand loyals will also walk out, uprooting one of the major agenda Microsoft has to get hold of engineering talents of Y!. Also I was wondering, the money involved is so much, Microsoft can take down so many other small and profitable companies[When Wallstreet opens on Monday... what will happen to Y!'s stock? I am worried ..my friends..]. Anywayz, things are different now, for Y! it is must to survive and do something to turn around the scenario they are going through. 'cause if they can't do it, I can see, sooner or later. Microsoft or someone else, will feast on Y! and we all will say... RIP..Amen..:D

Important Tips against phishing attacks from Official Google Blog

A nice read on Official Google blog about how to keep yourself safe from Phishing Attacks.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-to-avoid-getting-hooked.html

Bang Bang.. on Google..

Hey ..all.. it's been a while since I've banged Google.. n that's not fair..right guys? so here it is in a short n sweet style.... the overview..

- Orkut, the No. 1 Social Networking site in India, has gone crazy with Google's OpenSocial [yey.. I love Orkut and you can find me over here]. I was thinking.... now what shall I call Orkut.... FaceKut? Or Orbook? :D

- Gmail's crazy AJAX patches are now over the edge, I dunno which one makes my IE 7 frown upon, but lately... I am getting lots of Operation Aborted errors.

For a change, Google has started acting on some bugs, not like old days when it took them years to fix the simple things like this, the one I mentioned here[Gmail-Gtalk April Fool?] is fixed but I dunno whether this is causing the Operation Aborted errors or not?

Yet Another Gmail Bug surfaces

It seems Google is facing tough time making its email service truly world class. While it is being marketed and bundled with Google Apps, for biggies, Gmail still is a big question as a reliable product. It some times just don't know how to get along with the right things. anyways this time it was some crazy thing with their spam filter[Did you notice, lately few emails are landing to your inbox] which started rejecting some legitimate PayPal service emails resulting in Denial Of Service for customers. It stopped users from getting confirmation emails, setup new A/Cs or reset password on PayPal.

According to officials, the problem affected a very limited number of users, poor those guys on whose servers the patches got deployed for initial testing I suppose. Anyways the issue was closed immediately and customers are happy again now...but for how long? till the next patch comes...right? :D

[Source : http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9923338-7.html]

Blogger's made a poo poo..

Recently, a funny.. ..kindda..video found on YouTube by bloggers and they started doing it..front n back and every other angle they could manage on Microsoft and how uber-shit this video is and how dumb the maker of the videos are and all sort of blog-dung you can imagine. Check out the video here.

and as it turns out to be as, the video was an internal spoof made by Microsoft and somehow it managed to reach the web and this holy-crap disaster for Gizmodo[Internal Microsoft Vista Video is as Painful as Videos Get], Engadget [Microsoft burns our eyes with Vista promo video], CrunchGear [Don't shoot the messenger: Microsoft internal promo video about Windows Vista is hard to watch.] Personally I have been using and endorsing Engadget since a long time... and now I feel like a jack-*** yeah yeah.. I know..but you know..what makes me laugh? How dumb these guys are who believed that this Video can be a promo Video for Vista? As we all know, Microsoft is one of the best player when it comes to market the stuff[Freetards needs to learn a lot but lately I've seen a creative momvement in that arena too], anybody remember the sexy...Office XP advert of old times? :D

Source : http://www.news.com/8301-10787_3-9920713-60.html

Google is ready to penetrate deep...The Web..dude..The Web..

According to this blog post at Official Google Webmaster central, Google has been exploring the idea to bypass HTML forms and it seems they have done significant progress on the front... so now Google will be able to...search beyond the forms i.e. if a form is looking for some simple answers Google will be able to bypass it and go to the next page, by evaluating the form and filling in random data. I wonder though...how they will bypass CAPTCHA? The blog post has mentioned a lot many sweet things about how they respect robots.txt[A standard file, which is configured by webadmin to tell web crawlers like googlebot, to direct what to search and what not to search on their site]. And somehow.. that tells me... is it just limited to text or they do crawl it and then sell it to the highest bidder? :P..Think..man..Think..

Did gmail made you pull your hair on 16th April?

Lately.. Gmail has been making news around the globe, let it be the news in middle east due to some caching issue, one guy saw 30+ other people's mailbox, or the scripting attacks but this time they have some thing new.. Gmail's IMAP services faced some technical glitches and lot of customers[ofcourse Google Apps, don't worry..none of the enterprise class customers:D]

one of the angry customer said,
"A huge, if not number one selling point for moving one of our companies over to Google Apps was Google's robust network!" complained one user. "Now that we have migrated over, it seems we are abused children who do not deserve an explanation for why the service we pay for is taken offline. Perhaps it is time to find a new e-mail host."

Now this might stop jumping monkey of SalesForce.com?.. hopefully.. as they are the latest clowns in the google apps bandwagon.

Find the whole story : http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9920715-7.htm

Like Gmail? Join the team then...

Yes interesting..isn't it.. a product that has been the part of your life since a long time and here is the golden opportunity to join the team.

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/join_the_team.html

More info at : http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/were-hiring.html

After MacBook Air, Vista Gets Hacked

Few days back in my post I mentioned that MacBook Air was the first one, of the three competing notebooks at CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, now the bad news has come... :D not so bad though.. I had this feeling that this is what is gonna happen... poor Vista put its defense down when using some clever JavaScript was applied on a page having a Flash movie. Anywayz, I hope that soon the patches will come out and yes, if you are interested in more you know where to go...right...? here.. ofcourse..

Orkut enhances the Search with Auto Complete

I don't know how many of Orkut users use the nice Search that they provide on top right corner. I use it a lot, to find old friends, sometime a community and sometimes just to see how good it is.. :D today, I saw something nice has happened to the good ol' search. When I started typing, it came to life[common..its just a code..] and started suggesting me possible results of the Search. It was smart enough to look in to my friends list first and get me their details, and show in a nice overlay[check the pic below]. I really liked the concept, very simple but effective. Anywayz, that's all as of now. And yeah, if you wanna read more about it, here is the official blog entry, check it out : http://en.blog.orkut.com/2008/03/continued-search-for-better-search-in.html

Microsoft Discloses 14,000 Pages of Coding Secrets

Surprisingly(Not so much though after EU's stand against M$), Microsoft has disclosed 14K pages of documentation that describes underlying protocols for Office 2007, MOSS 2007 and Exchange Server 2007. According to news, this is just a first phase of 3 phased plan. Microsoft will gather feedback from the developer community till June, and then the final version of the documentation will be published.

For detailed news check out this link : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/08/microsoft_posts_protocol_documents/

Google Announces Google App Engine

On the FAQ Page they have answered the question, What is Google App Engine?

Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain: You just upload your application, and it's ready to serve your users.
You can serve your app using a free domain name on the appspot.com domain, or use Google Apps to serve it from your own domain. You can share your application with the world, or limit access to members of your organization.
App Engine costs nothing to get started. Sign up for a free account, and you can develop and publish your application for the world to see, at no charge and with no obligation. A free account can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month.
During the preview release of Google App Engine, only free accounts are available. In the near future, you will be able to purchase additional computing resources.

Now that is interesting ... isn't it? Only thing.. that I might not like is it is on Python... and that is 'cause I don't know how to code in Python. If you are interested, then hurry up as the invitation is limited to first 10,000 developers as this is a preview release and I've seen Google's launch cycle... and maybe..in a year or two.. you can expect the Beta..:D naah.. I am sure Beta will come soon... just wait n watch, this is something new Google has brought on table and smells like the beginning of the new Era or web based application development is on its way.. BTW...how about an online Visual Studio?... I would take that one for sure.. :)

BTW, Appspot.com didn't work for me..if it is working for you, please let me know...

Microsoft All Set to takeover Yahoo!!! Sends a 3 weeks ultimatum

Hooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy............. After a long period of time, I am so damn happy about something SEXY...that's gonna happen.. Microsoft has sent a letter to Yahoo! Board of Directors saying[aah..ok...very politely..] giving them 3 weeks ultimatum to decide to not to be... or not to be [:D]..yeah either way they are going to be the part of Microsoft[aaahhh..sorry..googletards...did someone show you the big Middle one? :D]. Here is the press pass form Official Microsoft Web Site : http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/apr08/04-05LetterPR.mspx and the CNet news link : http://www.cnet.com/8301-13515_1-9912232-26.html.

And yeah, I can assure you...lots of freetards will start whining on this but hey.. what I can do.. except showing them.. :P..you know what..right? :P and yes... for me... I would love to see Google CXXs start shedding tears on Internet freedom and how Microsoft is a big risk for innovation..and blah blah blah..and as the saying goes..Barking of Dogs will not frighten elephants...

On a serious note, I am not sure why... but I have this feeling, there are alternatives to this situation like some interruption might come maybe Google will take over Y![That will be nice though...really.. ;)] or some monopoly lawsuit might come up... let's hope for the best....

UPDATE: 19:01 10-04-2008

There is a rumor about... Microsoft teaming up with News Corp. to do the RIP of Y!, check out this article at news.com Microsoft and News Corp. lock arms for Yahoo bid?

Gmail's Spam filter taking a vacation...

Nowadays I am facing these strange mails directly going to my inbox, i wonder is Gmail's Spam filter taking a vacation?Is this only me or there are many others? :D Btw... according to some of my friends.. they get Spams in Gmail...everyday..buh buh..

Announcing Google Weblogs (beta) - Nice April Fool Trick from Google

Nice try guys... but I guess.. it works on on Freetards.. ;)

Never thought that this will happen so soon...

An article on Slashdot says :

"Zone-H have recently posted the statistical breakdown of the collected website defacements from the last few years. Surprisingly, in 2007 more Linux servers suffered a successful attack than all versions of Windows, combined. Similarly, more Apache installations were successfully attacked than all IIS versions combined. A day after posting this data, Zone-H have questioned the appropriateness of continuing to operate the archive. Despite the valuable information that can be gleaned from the service, it may soon be lost to the world. The natural successor to the now-defunct Alldas archive of defaced websites, Zone-H's archive maintains records of over 2.6 million defaced sites but may be shut down due to the continuous accusations of impropriety leveled against them any time they disclose and mirror a reported defacement."

FlashGet or TrojanGet - Beware FlashGet Users

I have been using FlashGet since I started working at ESS. One thing about this little bandwidth sucker.. is it ...works... 100% and makes the network admins cry if you know how to configure it and what exactly should be done to improve your share of bandwidth in a given network.[BTW, If your network admin is a really smart guy/gal then it is almost impossible to suck all the bandwidth of your network], Now coming to the point, one of my friend pointed out this post from a forum, that reveals a dirty secret about FlashGet 1.9.xx.

According to the article here, the flaw was pretty basic, but worked like a charm for the smart guy who hacked the developer's website and put the malicious automatic update files on the Server itself. And then FlashGets, around the world downloaded the files according to the update files, which were various trojans. I am so damn happy I never upgraded my FlashGet as I hardly get time to make huge downloads now and mostly I get everything done via Opera.

The major problem here is, the flaw still exists in FlashGet, if someone can change the config file locally, FlashGet will download the new files accordingly... and I am sure someone will figure it out how to do it and yeah, I am really happy that I did not recommend this software to one of my colleagues who was desperately asking for a Download Manager.

Gmail-Gtalk April Fool?

Google is at large... patching their popular mail service with latest security updates and what not. However after recent patches I've observed certain behaviors, now as long as I know there is a thumb rule to avoid while planning your application security i.e. never screw up your features to provide better security modal, rather improvise on the implementation front and provide Feature + Security.

This time Google has baffled me, I don't know whether it has to do anything with a recent news leak in middle east, where some caching at ISP Side, allowed a user to see some other user's A/C data, or maybe it is to prevent some niche XSS attacks crafted against the Search Giant's mail service. Personally I use Gmail all the times as I find it quiet faster, lighter and most importantly superior than its counter parts, so I have multiple A/Cs on Gmail. One of them is widely user with Friends while another is strictly for business purposes. On both of them chat is enabled so I don't have to rely on Gtalk whenever I need to chat. I saw this strange thing few weeks back, if on a single computer, I login to one A/C say A/C A, at first my chat will be enabled, the moment I launch A/C B, the chat applet in A/C A will die and will start working for A/C B, if I do a page refresh in A/C A, then A/C B chat will be gone with the wind. Now I know many of Gmail lovers will start jumping saying.. oh..its a feature.. you don't know..and blah blah blah... for me...ITZ A BUG....