Dual Boot WinXP SP3 and Ubuntu 9.04 (Linux )

The process of dual booting Windows OS like Vista, XP, 98 etc  is very easy, as the Windows bootloader itself takes care of the process. But if you want to dual boot any Linux and Windows, it’s a gruelling task. So, here is a how-to sheet for dual booting WinXP and Ubuntu 9.04 ( a flavour of Linux).

1. See how I installed WinXP and Ubuntu on different partitions.

2. First, partition your hard drive appropriately to suit the dual booting. There are many ways of partitioning, but the method I used has no problems. IMP: It’s always better to install XP first and then install Ubuntu later. If you’ve already created partitions after XP installation, just use Easeus Partition manager to create free space of 15gb for linux installation. Partitioning hard drive will help you , how to do it.

3.  I partitioned my 40 GB hard drive in  such a way  that, there is XP, XP – Programs, Linux-ext3, fat32, linux-swap partitions. I divided 40 GB as follows.

·         XP– 13 GB ( This is the primary partition, where I installed XP )

·         XP– Programs– 7 GB. ( This is where I install XP software)

·         Linux. ext3 – 10 gb.( ext3 is file journal system just like NTFS/FAT for Windows. This is also primary partition where I installed Ubuntu linux.)

·         fat32– 7 gb.( This is a common partition for both Windows and Linux to share. Linux can read from NTFS systems, but cannot write. So for to write, it has to be a fat32 system)

·         linux.swap– 2gb. (this is linux swap partition required for linux system usage– can be very small partition)

IMP: Once again, install WinXP first and then install Ubuntu. I hope you know how to install WinXP. So I’m assuming that you already installed WinXPsp3 on your system, according to the above configuration. Now get ready to install Ubuntu 9.04.

4. Download the Ubuntu latest version "Jaunty Jackelope", version 9.04 from here. http://www.ubuntu.com/

5. Go to this link and watch the video for partitioning and installing Ubuntu 9.04.

V.Imp: Remember to install the Grub bootloader to the linux partition itself ( not to the XP partition). DO NOT INSTALL GRUB in the Master Boot Record (MBR)!

6. After you finish installing Ubuntu and the Grub bootloader to the Linux partition itself, follow these steps to dual boot linux and xp. As a hint, the option for installing the Grub bootloader comes during Ubuntu installation somewhere in between, with the Advanced option.

7. Download SystemRescueCd. The latest stable version currently is 1.2.3 and is aprroximately 236 MB in size. You can directly download the latest stable version at this link. https://sourceforge.net/projects/systemrescuecd/files/sysresccd-x86/1.2.3/systemrescuecd-x86-1.2.3.iso/download. Also, you can go to the homepage Linux System Rescue CD and follow the download link on the sitemap. After downloading, burn the ISO to a CD using standard ISO conversion tools like Nero, gBurner etc. Make your BIOS to boot from CD and boot the System Rescue CD.

8. Use Linux system rescue CD, to mount the share partition i.e fat32 drive. You have to find the terminal for typing some commands, once you are in. The following commands will let you create the Ubuntu bootloader that can be used with XP.

---

# mkdir /mnt/share

# mount -t vfat /dev/sda7 /mnt/share

# dd if =/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/share/ubuntu.bin bs = 512 count=1

# ls -l /mnt/share

---

sda7 = fat32 partition name

sda6 = linux partition name.

You have to replace these names with your concerned device numberss. To know what are your drive names, use the QTParted to see the device number, or check any other tool which lets you see the drive numbers. Now, there should be a “ubuntu.bin” file on the fat32 or shared partition.

9. Now reboot to windows.

10. Copy the “ubuntu.bin” to the windows drive. For eg. If C:\ is where XP is installed, copy “ubuntu.bin” to C:\ drive. Edit the “boot.ini” file and add C:\ubuntu.bin = “Ubuntu 9.04” to allow the Bootloader to show Ubuntu in the boot options.

11. That’s it! Voila! You are now having WinXP and Ubuntu 9.04 options in your boot screen. If you still want a detailed explanation of the above and other solutions to your problems, check this article. Matthew J. Miller's Article

Technorati Tags: windows,xpsp3,ubuntu,dual boot,install,command

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Work hours in Some Countries! Is it True?

Recently, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development just released a study on the average annual hours worked per worker in 2008. This list shows which countries make their workers tired and which countries are luxurious  and easy at work. The list goes as follows.

S.No	Country	Hours per Year	Hours per Week
1	S.Korea	2301	44
2	Greece	2120	41
3	Poland	1969	38
4	Czech Rep.	1992	38
5	Hungary	1988	38
6	Mexico	1893	36
7	USA	1792	35
8	Italy	1802	35
9	Iceland	1807	35
10	Slovakia	1769	35
11	Portugal	1745	34
12	Japan	1772	34
13	New Zealand	1753	34
14	Australia	1721	33
15	Canada	1727	33
16	Finland	1728	33
17	Switzerland	1643	32
18	Austria	1631	32
19	UK	1653	32
20	Ireland	1601	31
21	Spain	1627	31
22	Sweden	1625	31
23	Denmark	1610	31
24	France	1542	30
25	Belgium	1568	30
26	Netherlands	1389	27
27	Norway	1422	27
28	Germany	1432	27

Source: www.OECD.org    * Countries are OECD member countries.

Courtesy: billshrink

Comment: As you can see these are the average working hours annually and weekly, which is far different from a natural worker doing work every day. So from the above chart, S.Korea, Greece, Poland, Czech Rep, Hungary are HARD workers.Belgium, Netherlands,Norway,Germany are the LUXURY workers you can say. But the whole chart is only an average. There should be the max and min working hours done chart, which could  have given a big difference.

So when asked to comment about these results, the views of the commenter's are vociferous.Some people say that they work twice in USA as shown in the chart. There is unfortunately no statistics for India and China, as they are not member countries of OECD.Some say they work 40+ hrs in Canada. In India and China, this limit extends more than 50-60 hrs a week.

One commenter says that,

1.

The figures are averages. Thus, part time and casual workers, plus annual leave and sick leave will account for the <40 hours per week in most countries.

Comment by Statistics — August 13, 2009 @ 10:35 pm

2.   

Funny, it looks like the major economic powers in the euro zone are also the ones where average work time is the lowest (Germany + France). That proves productive is not a linear function of work time…

Comment by Guillaume — August 14, 2009 @ 6:00 am

So, please comment on how you feel about these values and what kind of working hrs you do!! 

Technorati Tags: work hours,countries,OECD,year,worker

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Increase Boot Speed for Windows Vista or 7

This video tells you how to increase the boot speed of Windows Vista or 7.

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Microsoft’s Viral Ad! Looks Real?

Microsoft Germany has released an ad, very real, but is a hoax. In this ad, a guy in a neoprene suit goes barreling down a waterslide, flies off the end and through the air, travelling a great distance in the air and splashes down in a pool. It’s the MegaWoosh! See for yourself!

How this stunt  is done. Here is an explanation. The stunt man starts down the slide, but a rope keeps him from going too far, the thing that’s airborne isn’t a person, but is instead animation, and the principal character ended up in the pool by dropping off a small ramp. When you add up all together, it looks like a real stunt.

This story is only a few days old and has already captivated millions of viewers around the world. Type the word “megawoosh” into any search engine and you get thousands of hits. Ultimately, it didn’t happen and looks like one of the greatest fakes in the history of World Wide Web.

Technorati Tags: microsoft,viral ad,news

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Gmail! Stop adding contacts automatically

Gmail has now come out of Beta stage after a long period of 5 years along with a other services. But still, it keeps coming with more new features each day.  A week back, I was terrified with the clutter of e-mail addresses in my contacts. Every time I send a single mail to a forum or company, that mail also gets added to my contacts. But recently Gmail, gave choice to its users to stop automatically adding contacts.

Google has now created a new category, "Suggested contacts," that falls under "My Contacts." Anyone who is e-mailed will end up in Suggested Contacts, but users now have the option of letting Gmail automatically move those addresses to their main contact list or not at all. If the user lets Gmail decide, those addresses which a person has e-mailed five or more times will end up in the main contacts list. If that option is not selected, addresses in Suggested Contacts will still auto-complete, Grol wrote.

First go to  Settings ---> Chat on opening the mail. You can see the screen just as below.

Then select the “Only allow people that I’ve ………” option and save. This will disallow people to get automatically added to your contact list.

Click on “Contacts” on the left pane. You should see the below screen under “My Contacts” on the right pane. Click on “View Suggestions”.

Now you can see your “Suggested Contacts” . Check whichever contacts you need to add to “My Contacts” and click the “Move to my Contacts” button on right side. If you click “Ignore” these are not added to your contacts, but these still displayed in your auto-complete options

Technorati Tags: gmail,contacts,mail

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Twitter hacked twice!

As happens to many proven sites, Twitter seems to go offline twice this month. The first distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack happened on Aug 6th, at around 9.05 am ET.  But the micro blogging site became fully operational at around 11.30 am. Second time, it was attacked on Tuesday, Aug 11th. This time Twitter stood up much better to that attack, as the site went down only for 30 minutes.

Facebook and LiveJournal were also attacked in the same way.

"It's a bit like 15 fat men trying to get through a revolving door at the same time -- nothing can move," said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant for Sophos, in a blog post.

A denial of service attack occurs when computers bombard a website with requests for information. Typically hackers can control thousands of innocent users' computers centrally and command them to visit a site that they wish to flood with traffic - making it impossible for other internet users to get through.

Cause:

 Security experts have said that the earlier trouble was likely politically motivated and targeted a single person, a pro-Georgian blogger identified only as "Cyxymu."

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Quote of the Day:
Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.
--Thomas Alva Edison

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Technorati Tags: twitter,ddos,hack,facebook

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Microsoft Update: Aug 11th patches 19 bugs

There are three ways to get something done; do it yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it. Mona Crane

Source: http://quotes4all.net/quote_892.html

[Powered by QuotesPlugin v1.0 for Windows Live Writer]

Patch Tuesday as it is called, according to Microsoft, has come with updates on this Aug 11th patching 19 severe bugs. So users of Windows OS who do not have automatic updates enabled, need to manually update these updates, as many are found to be critical.

The vulnerabilities are found in Windows Media Player, Outlook Express, IIS (Internet Information Server), Office and several other products. Microsoft inherited some bugs from “buggy” code library called ATL (Active Template Library) , about five of them and have been fixed in this patch. Some security professional commented on these patches as “smorgasbord” of updates. Here is a screenshot of the list of updates on Aug 11th.

These as you can see are mostly XP updates. Similarly I think there are Vista updates as well.  According to this article, MS09-037 fixed 5 critical vulnerabilities caused by bugs in ATL. The ATL vulnerabilities  were caused when an Microsoft programmer introduced an extra “ampersand” character to the widely used library.

Another high-profile update is MS09-043, which patches four critical vulnerabilities in Office Web Components (OWC), a set of ActiveX controls that let users publish Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on the Web, then view them within Internet Explorer (IE).

Three of the critical vulnerabilities Microsoft patched Tuesday in ActiveX controls for Office were first reported to the company two years ago, according to the security firm that alerted Microsoft of the flaws. One of the TippingPoint vulnerabilities, found in the ActiveX control used by IE to display Excel spreadsheets, has been exploited by hackers for more than a month to launch "drive-by" attacks from malicious or hijacked sites.

Microsoft Corp. has already warned users that hackers are exploiting an unpatched, critical bug in a company-made ActiveX control, putting people running Internet Explorer at risk. It also confirmed that it has known about a bug behind widespread Internet Explorer (IE) attacks for more than a year, but defended its security process against critics.

Technorati Tags: microsoft,update,security,ATL

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Replay Music! Record Online Streaming Music

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. Mark Twain

There are so many online streaming music applications like rhapsody.com, pandora.com, last.fm etc to name a few. All these can be used to listen online music free, some for US users and some for International users. But the tragedy is, the copyright issue prevents these websites from allowing you to download the music.

For this, there is a particular application called Replay Music. You can download it from here. Replay Music Download. But this is a trial version, which does not allow to record more than a particular number of songs. So for this, you can download a cracked version Replay Music 3.45 from TPB (www.thepiratebay.org) or use the torrent link below.

Repaly Music 3.45 Cracked Torrent

Once you download and update the crack, you can use Replay music for any number of songs.

So, what is this Replay Music? You can check the description from the original site itself. Replay Music Description (or) take a look at the snippet below.

So, if you want to record online streaming music from any website or application, this is application you need to have. I tested it on pandora, rhapsody, last.fm, raaga.com etc and it worked perfectly. All you have to do is, start this application before you listen to any online streaming music website or application and click on the record button.

Though it automatically loads the music tag information like the song, artist, album, genre etc, sometimes it does not. Then you can manually, insert these details using the “edit track” button below. 

 

Technorati Tags: replay music,music,online,streaming,record

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Rhapsody! Play song continuously without buffering problems

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Quote of the day:
Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows. - David T. Wolf

---

I have already suggested a tip on how to play some streaming applications without buffering problems. You can check the article here. Drop out or Buffering problems. But still I face problems here and then now. So here is a trick for Rhapsody to play your song continuously.

Well, if you don’t know what rhapsody is, you can check the download here. Rhapsody. Rhapsody is a music player where you can find millions of songs to play. But this player is to be downloaded first, which is for US users only. So there is a work around, if you’re a non-US user. Download HOTSPOT shield or use any working US proxy and download the software. After downloading the software, you can register an user account with a valid email address. But there is a limit for free users, of 25 songs per month. So if you want to listen more songs, you need to create more accounts. That simple!! So that ends the Rhapsody introduction.

But now the problem is, sometimes with low bandwidth connection like mine of 192 Kbps, you cannot hear the complete song without breaks. So there is no option to change the buffer size or cache for the full song to download completely. So the only option is to play you desired song and pause it. When you pause and wait, the song buffers completely and later, when you play again,  you can hear the song at one go or completely. This is the only way I found how to listen to a song without break-ups or interruptions.

Technorati Tags: rhapsody,music player,buffering,problem,song

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Format Factory 2.0! Free Software to Convert VCD/*.dat TO DVD/*.vob

I recently received some marriage cds of my sister and my mom told to join all these cds into a dvd, to play on TV. The problem is that all the videos in cds are in *.dat format and to convert into a video dvd, i need some tool to convert them to *.vob or any other video DVD supported format. Initially i searched hard for many tools, but most are premium or buy tools for which I have to  pay.

Then I came across a very decent tool, known as Format Factory. It saved my struggles. It is FREE and converts many different formats to mp4,3gp,mpg,avi,vob etc. It supports i-pod, i-phone file formats.

The important thing is it supports conversion of *.dat format to *.vob format, just for our regular use, where it is helpful in converting VCD to Video DVD. It has other features like support for audio, picture conversion, like support for conversion to ringtone files of *.aac and to icon files like *.ico. There are also other advanced tools like audio and video joiner, where you can join multiple audio or video files to one single file. You can download the software from here. Download Format Factory 2.0.

I tried to convert 3 files of 1.1 GB in *.dat format to *.vob format. It just took only 22 min to do that. Also the memory usage of the application is very low, in case, you are worried about performance.

 

Technorati Tags: format factory,video,audio,conversion,joiner,splitter,mp3,vob,dat,3gp,mobile,ipod,iphone

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FreeRapid Downloader 0.8.2! Easy download from file hosting services like Rapidshare , Megaupload etc.

You must be knowing about torrents and file hosting services by now. Most of the web traffic these days revolves around these topics. You can download free music, movies, software and what not, using these two techniques. For torrents I would prefer, www.thepiratebay.org and www.torrentz.com ( a torrent search engine) which are quite nice to download free music, movies and software. Well, if you are new to torrents I’d suggest there is nothing hard to know about it. Read my article on www.utorrent.com here - http://www.techlikes.com/2009/07/utorrent-182-optimum-speed.html. You just need to download this utorrent client and you’re ready to go.

Well, there is another topic called file hosting services like rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, uploading.com, ziddu.com where you can download files like music, movie, software files directly without the hassle of website interfaces. Hmm. the problem is, most of the file sharing services need to have premium accounts, otherwise you are asked to wait a few second to few minutes before you can download the file.

Now comes, the easy part , a tool called FreeRapid Downloader. Download from here. You can download from any file hosting service with ease, using this tool. Start FreeRapid donwloader.

You just need to visit the file location on the file hosting service like rapidshare.com, megaupload.com etc. , just copy the url or link , and hola! the link gets copied to the clipboard of FreeRapid downloader.

Click on Start and your download starts. The review of the author can be seen here. Review on freerapid downloader. More screenshots here.

Technorati Tags: filehosting service,rapidshare,megaupload,ziddu,uploading,utorrent,freerapid downloader,torrent

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Windows 7! Show Desktop Icon

If you think, there is no “show desktop” icon in Windows 7, don’t worry there is a solution. By the way, if you want to know the default, it’s just at the bottom right hand side corner, beside the clock. When you move your mouse over it, you can have a peek at the desktop. (AeroPeek)

But what if you want to have the XP style. Hmm, there is a solution for that. Just copy the below code to Notepad and save it as “Desktop.scf”, to a folder e.g temp1 created on the desktop or anywhere else.

• Now right click on taskbar and select “Toolbars – > New Toolbar…”

=============================Start Copy============

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=imageres.dll,105
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop

=============================End Copy=============

• It'll open Browse dialog box. Select the folder which you created on desktop e.g temp1 and click on "Select folder" button.
• It'll immediately add that folder to taskbar.
• Now right-click on taskbar and select "Lock the taskbar" to unlock it.
• You'll see a placeholder to drag the new toolbar.
• Right-click on the toolbar placeholder and uncheck "Show Title" and "Show Text" options.
• If you want to increase the icon size, right-click on the toolbar placeholder and enable "View -> Large Icons" option.
• Now, drag the “pinned toolbar” to the right, untill the “desktop” icon comes as first.
  Now lock the taskbar again.

The “105” in the above code represents the “show desktop” icon. Now you’ll get a “show desktop” icon on the desktop. Drag the icon to the taskbar. That’s it ! It’s done. You’ve the look of XP. Enjoy!

Update:   There is a little problem with the above steps.  I have updated the post.

Technorati Tags: windows 7,desktop,icon

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Windows 7, Vista ShutDown Faster!

You may be facing a problem with bootup and shutdown, if you’re using Win XP or Vista. Well, Windows 7 boasts an increase in performance in both these areas, but I found trouble with shutdown speed. The bootup speed is good, compared to XP or Vista.

So here are the tweaks for faster shutdown of Windows 7. [Warning: I applied these tweaks on my PC, and had no problem, but for your computer apply at your own risk]

1. Do not clear the pagefile at shutdown.

• Open the regedit tool. Start ---> type “regedit” in the search box.

• Navigate to, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ Session Manager\ Memory Management.
• In the right pane search for ;

Data Type or Type: REG_DWORD

Value Name or Name: ClearPageFileAtShutdown

Value Data or Data: [0 = Clear Page File Disabled / 1 = Clear Page File Enabled]

(Enter ‘0’ if you want faster shutdown).

If this entry is not there, create one.

This tweak, reduced my shutdown time from 1.5 min to .15 secs. Ooops! Isn’t that real fast. Want to know the full configuration of my computer. Check this article  of my blog. uTorrent 1.8.2- Optimum Speed. Mine is Intel Pentium D 2.66 Ghz, D101 GGC motherboard, 1.5 GB DDR1 ram, 120 GB hard disk.

2. Reduce the waiting time to kill a service.

In the regedit tool, navigate to, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SYSTEM / CurrentControlSet / Control.

Select "WaitToKillServiceTimeout" on the right pane.

Right click on it and select Modify. The default value is 20000. Setting it to a lower 4 digit value, (say 5000) will make your PC shutdown faster, but you could end up losing data, so use this tweak judiciously.

Technorati Tags: windows 7,shutdown,faster,regedit,registry

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Windows Live Writer! Blogger

I’ve been blogging in Blogger for the last 1 year and was creating, editing my blogs using the options provided by Blogger. Though  we have features like Edit HTML, Compose, Preview etc inside Blogger, it is really a tough time blogging inside Blogger.

Then, when I downloaded Windows Live Messenger (WLM), there was an option to download Windows Live Writer (WLW), a blogging tool. First, I didn’t give much attention to this tool, but later I found this to be a very useful tool.

Advantages of Windows Live Writer:

• Easy and intuitive interface.
• Easy to add a Blogger account. All the configuration of your Blogger template are downloaded when you create an account.

• Preview directly what your post looks like while you are creating a blog post.

• Import all your blog posts into your WLW. See an animation of how i imported my posts into WLW.  File -----> Open

• Save your draft locally or on Blogger. Publish directly to Blogger.

• Include custom tags (Labels in Blogger) or tags from custom tag provider like Technorati, Live Journal etc.
• Set preferred time when you want to publish your blog.
• Plug-in support. One good plug-in I use, is the Related Post plug-in.

Technorati Tags: blogger,windows live writer,post,blog

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Windows 7! Libraries – A new feature…

Everyone who worked on Vista and XP, find a problem of opening, frequently finding or saving to some commonly used folders. Every time, you need to manually go through all the directories to open or save to folders. Well, Windows 7 has come up with a nice feature to stop this tiresome work with a concept called “Libraries”. The use of this feature can be extended to “search” functionality as well. But the most advantage I found is, when saving web pages to a commonly used folder. In Win XP, i had to pass through all the directories and then reach my destination. Now in Win7, just click on the Library and the file saves to the default save location. So here are the steps to use the Libraries.

• Open MyComputer (or) Explorer.
• On the left side, you see Libraries.
• To create a new Library, right click on Libraries and New ---> Library.

Once the Library is created, you can include the commonly used folders to that library. To include a folder in a library, there are many ways.

Just right click the library and select properties.

• Click on “Include a folder…” button  to include a folder of your choice.
• If you add multiple folders, you can select a default save location, using “set save location” button.
• The locations of the folders can be external hard drive, network, USB flash  drive, removable media (CD or DVD) etc. But the folders will only be visible if you have access to them.
• Also if you delete a library, only the library get deleted and NOT THE FILES OR FOLDERS.
• If you delete the default libraries, you can get it using “Restore default libraries”

You can also include a folder in a library, by right clicking a folder and selecting “Include in folder” and choose the library you want.

Now if you want to save a webpage or document, choose the save location as the library you want and the page gets saved to the default folder of the library.

Problem: One problem i faced is, when i choose an alternate folder to save, than the default folder, the save location automatically takes me to the first folder in that particular folder. So, instead of saving to the required folder, i end up saving to a subfolder in the required folder.

Technorati Tags: windows 7,libraries,folder

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