Tech Salsa

It happens most of the times we just like to listen to the audio of a video file and add it into our music library. This is not a problem any more as this can be done using many tools available and of course without using them as well.

We can easily convert the video to audio by following methods:

1.    Using an application AoA Audio Extractor that can convert AVI, MPEG, MPG, FLV, DAT, WMV, MOV, MP4, and 3GP to MP3, WAV or AC3 format.

•    This tool 3.8 MB in size, is free, easy to use and is not a demo.
•    It gives you a preview of the movie (that prevents us to run each time to see which file is it) and we can also change the bit rate of the audio file. [Read the rest of this entry...]

My PC was working all fine until I figured out that Group Policy gpedit.msc was not opening on my system. I wanted to open the Group Policy editor for some work and I was shocked to find that not only the gpedit.msc, even the other commands with msc extensions, were not working like services.msc, devmgmt.msc, compmgmt.msc etc.

Then I tried opening the editor by double clicking the gpedit.msc inside the system32 folder and I got the same error “Access is Denied”. What was strange was that I was accessing the editor from my Administrator account only.

I tried following things:

•    The first suspect is, of course, Virus, thus I scanned my whole system with the updated Anti Virus but it didn’t find any. [Read the rest of this entry...]

There are so many types of computer viruses in this world that removing them and finding a specific solution for each of them is a big ask. One such virus that screwed me is regsvr.exe classified as a W32.Imaut worm.

It has become a daily routine that when I plug my pen drive in my college systems (full of all kinds of viruses), it gets infected by the viruses instantly. Though the Anti Virus I use (Symantec) successfully detects and remove them but I feel that I should discuss the steps to remove regsvr.exe virus.

What the regsvr.exe virus does?

•    This worm creates folders and a registry entry to enable its automatic execution at every system startup.

•    This worm also creates a scheduled task to enable its automatic execution at a specified date and/or time.

•    It also creates Autorun.inf file for its auto execution. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I like playing games a lot and last time while playing Counter Strike when I tried to join an online server there was a problem while connecting to the server. This is a common problem faced by most of us who like to play Counter Strike online.

I knew the server address to connect but when I entered the command in the game console there was error like

Connecting to 122.163.180.205:27010
Retrying 122.163.180.205:27010

And the game stuck at retrying the server again and again. [Read the rest of this entry...]

My Antivirus (Symantec) and I are good at finding any virus or any suspicious file and removing it successfully. I am able to remove any virus from the system or a pen drive without any tool and have been doing it for a long time now but there are several files that we feel suspicious and do not know what to do.

Sometimes it also happens that (at least it happens to the basic users of the computer) they download a file and is rated a threat by their Anti Virus but in reality the file was genuine and clean.

Thus for those users who do not know whether a file is suspicious or not, there is an online utility known as ThreatExpert that will analyze the file for viruses and worms and will report it back [Read the rest of this entry...]

We like listening to music and also enjoy downloading it from internet, don’t we? Websites that provide us with the direct links to download the music or the song is liked by us while there are several other sites that do not allow us to download but to enjoy it online.

I came across a useful tool that will enable us to save or record the streaming sound or Internet Radio that we are listening. The idea behind the tool is that it lets us save whatever we hear from our computer speakers. Yes of course we will have to listen to it completely.

There are several tools available that allow us to save the music being played from internet through Sound Card of the PC but what I found most helpful [Read the rest of this entry...]

We all like surfing the net a lot (it’s my one of the favorite activities as well ) and happens to us that we come across some really interesting flash animation that we wish to view again. There can be many flash animations like Flash game, Flash Advertisements, Flash Tutorials, Flash Movie etc and we can’t save them just by right click as there is no option of doing so.

Well no more need to load the page again and again as we can easily save that “Shockwave File” in our computer’s hard disk. We can use following steps for Internet Explorer, Firefox or any other browser.

For any Browser:

•    Under View tab click on Page Source option.

•    Press Ctrl + F to find swf file by typing .swf in the box and [Read the rest of this entry...]

Never thought that this can be a problem but it is true that one of our readers wanted to know what to do when System Restore does not open.

You can also open system restore by typing %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe in Run box (try running this command before trying following steps).

So to keep it short and specific, here are the steps:

1.    Check if the System Restore is enabled or not [Read the rest of this entry...]

One of our readers was facing this problem that he was unable to start the printer spooler services and an error pops up saying: “Spooler subsystem app has encountered a problem and needs to close”.

First let’s see what is Print Spooling?

In Print Spooling documents gets loaded into a buffer that is usually an area on the disk and the printer uses them from the buffer at its own rate. Spooling also lets users place a number of print jobs in a queue instead of waiting for each one to finish before specifying the next one.

Cause:

The cause for this is that a either a third-party printer driver or a service is preventing us from initiating the spooler service. [Read the rest of this entry...]

It may happen to any of us that in spite of having a good configuration and powerful PC our system may hang when we run an application or a full screen game. This happened to me when I was playing Counter Strike (I enjoy playing many other games as well) the game hanged, sound started looping and nothing was working.

I tried hitting several keys like Ctrl + Alt + Del, Alt + F4 and Windows button but nothing seemed going my way. I was left with no other option but to restart my PC using the cabinet power button. I am actually not in favor of this as the improper shutdown can corrupt our data and can cause many other problems.

So I have found a useful way to kill the process that it is worth sharing here. [Read the rest of this entry...]

OMG!! You have accidentally deleted a file that you wish to use further, instead of another that you actually wanted to delete. What’s more you have emptied the recycle bin as well! This is the common thing faced by almost all of us some or the other day.

Wondering what to do when Windows have no option to restore it? Well after the efforts of computer experts, no more worries. But before knowing the solution it would be worth noting that when we delete a file, Windows actually delete the reference to it and not the file [Read the rest of this entry...]

Some days ago my PC got extremely slow and started taking a lot of time to boot. Then I thought to start a chkdsk scan at the next startup and to my surprise I found that there were Bad Sectors in my hard disk.

What are Bad Sectors?

Bad Sectors on the drive is the Physical Damage done to the Disk that prevents the use of the disk sector for data storage. These can be caused due to the read/write head that comes in contact of the disk. The data stored on the bad sector can’t be read any more.

Before performing some techniques it would be useful to know that Bad Sectors can never be removed completely from the disk but can be reduced to certain extent. There are many tools available on net like “Zero Filling” but they are all useless. [Read the rest of this entry...]