Shwetanshu's Blog

New Home, New Place, New Address!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Sat, 22 May 2010 18:28:00 +0000

Exams ended yesterday and today was Greh Pravesh of our new home. Mom has named it Apransh. It means nothing but has atleast a letter of all the five family members. Small function was held for only close family and friends. Very happy about it. Its in Indirapuram now, so am no more a Delhi-ite but Delhi aint far. The place is not Delhi, nothing can beat Delhi, but its good too. Its actually almost equivalent to my two most frequently visited places, Select CityWalk and Nehru Place. So distance is not a problem and also i get to drive if i want to goto Delhi for some work or to meet somebody. I have lots of options for eating and shopping. Best Part Nehru place and SelectCity walk are still the same distance as they were from my old home. \m/.

The best thing i like about my new home is that in my room i have got a display case specifically made out to display my Car-Collection. :)

However today was very auspicious day for Greh Pravesh, but we will move in only next month coz lots of itsy bitsy work still needs to be completed.

Got a Job!!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:18:00 +0000

Today i was finally placed. Last in the C-Brigade to get placed along with Pulkit. Both are extremely relaxed now.

Test was held on 21st April. Cleared it. GD was done the same day. Didnt wait for the results of the GD and went home. Akshay informed that me and pulkit have got through. Big relief. Interview was in Noida on 28th. The same day i had my external practical which i got preponed. Got called for HR and Tech after 8 hours of waiting and both lasted for an Hour each. Was given the offer letter today only, my name was called the 2nd last and that time was quite intense. Joining is 4th November, package 2.5 Lacs (no variable), post is Associate Software Engineer. I had told no-one about the interview. After getting selected called Dad first and then mom and then bua and sis.

Looking forward to joining it unless and until in dont get a better job. Will keep trying. :)

How a lost laptop was returned!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:00:00 +0000

This all happened 6 days back. Me and Sandeep (Sandy) were waiting for another friend, Neeti at Great India Place, Noida. There we see an unclaimed bag. Taking in account of our past experiences with unclaimed objects we decided not to to tell police/guards for they simply touch and open the bag.

So to make sure it wasnt a bomb, we waited for it to explode. 45 mins gone, it didnt explode. Good. Then we thought it could be touch sensitive bomb. So we both started throwing stones at the bag. Didnt explode. Good. May be inside stuff is meant to explode on touching it, so i made sandy open the bag (yeah m a true friend). There was a laptop! Now it cant be a bomb, who will make such a costly bomb?? :D

I booted up the laptop, hoping to find some info about the owner. No password for login, nice. As i was about to search for Resume/CV/pix, sandy takes over the laptop and starts searching for porn. He didnt find any, so he was pretty disappointed. Anyways it looked as a new laptop to me coz it was shitty, all the cr@p softwares were there which comes bundled, plus there were not many user files and blah blah. My quest to find the owner landed flat.

So next thing i did was see the service tag. I again made sandy call up Dell CC and tel them about our case. He said we could drop the laptop at any one of the 3 places. All were very very far away. We told them to either tell the owner to contact us or gives us his contact details. He agreed upon the latter. Btw, he turned out to be a She. Also since i couldnt control myself seeing the speed of laptop, i optimised it, the best i could.

We called her and told her about her laptop. She was elated and told that she would pick it up from Sandy's home. Sandy being afraid of Neeti told that she can take it from him at some neutral place. He also said a terrorist look a like friend (me) will also be present. Actually he told her Jehadi-looking-friend will also be there, but no need to be afraid of him. She was a resident of South Delhi, came with her friend the next day to pick her laptop. We told her we just booted her laptop to gain info about the owner. Offered to have a coffee with her but again sandy being afraid of neeti declined. SO my coffee was cancelled too.

So thats how we returned the laptop.

Happy New Year!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:41:00 +0000

Happy New Year to everybody, the year ended with bad, started with bad and looking by the way things are progressing, it will go bad too!

Btw, this blog sux!

My camera and laptop have gone bonkers, shutter in camera and touchpad in laptop, looking at a minimum of 5000 bucks!

Oh, i made 5 new year resolutions, 3 i have already completed, 2 left which will take time to complete.

Removing Shortcut Arrow in Windows 7

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 06:40:00 +0000

Well i use TuneUp Utilities 2009 for various tweaking options. But i was unable to find the option of Removing Shortcut Arrow in Windows 7 though i did it in Windows Vista comfortably. May be i just forgot the option where it was located. Anyways i looked here and there and found a solution.

First i used this method, and it worked sort of. Shortcut arrow was indeed gone but in place of that a big black box had starting appearing. Now the search for the solution began. I came across three solutions, first two didnt work for me but third one did.

Disk Cleanup. Told me to scan my root drive with this and then uncheck everything except Thumbnails and then click ok.
Changing the color quality. Changing my display settings from 32-bit to 16-bit and then reboot. After rebooting, change the settings back to 16 – bit. It did work but changing and restarting was a hassle for me.
Then i used this. It worked flawlessly!

The third solution is also the solution of the big black box thats is present in place of your desktop icons.

Disabling Google Updater Service

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:24:00 +0000

First of all, typing “msconfig” in the run box is not the way of disabling services. One must always use “services.msc” to disable service.

After executing “services.msc” in run dialog box, a window will open showing all the services that are present in your system. Now one should not play around with them unless and until you have clearcut idea of what you are doing. To have some help about the services, use BlackViper’s guide. Even though its for Vista, i used it for Windows 7 too!

Anyways, service can be set in 4 modes:

Automatic: Services in this mode will start everytime you start your pc
Automatic (delayed): These services also start everytime you start your PC though with a certain delay. eg: Windows Update
Manual: These services start only when the user wants to or uses an application that causes the service to start.
Disabled

Now to change the mode of service, double click on the particular service and choose the appropriate mode. You can also start or stop the service from that dialog box. Disabling the service won’t stop it in ur present session, you either have to manually stop it or reboot. Keep in mind, one service may or may not be dependant upon other services.

Scroll to Google Updater Service, double click on it and disable the service. Also stop the service. This is not the entire solution. After sometime the service will start again automatically even though one has disabled it. To rectify this, Open Control Panel, click on Administrative Tools and then Task Scheduler. Search for google and whenever you encounter that schedule, disable or delete it.

This should stop it!

Bhuvan - Desi Google Earth

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 06:31:00 +0000

A desi version of Google Earth by Indian Space Research Organization. I wont say its good or its bad but its a good initiative. For using Bhuvan, u must have registered on the site and logged in to use it.

At ur end u must have Directx 9. .Net Framework 2.0 is sort of optional. For using Bhuvan, u have to download a plugin. Now there are two choices for the plugin. First is for those who have both .Net Framework and Directx 9 on their system. The size of this plugin is nearly 11 MB in size. Second choice is for those who have only Directx 9 on their system.

After u have downloaded and installed the plugin, u must be logged on their site. After u open Bhuavn from ur PC, Internet Explorer will open taking u to the Bhuvan page where u can use it like Google Earth. yes, this piece of Software works only on IE 6 or greater. This makes me uncomfortable for i have always hated IE from the heart. If that software opened an UI based on IE, i would have been comfortable, for i wouldn’t have known that it was IE based.

Anyways its slow, takes longer than GE to show images, don’t know much about resolution coz it was too slow for me, i couldn’t wait that long. Server is most of the time overloaded. First time i visited that site, i had to refresh the page 7 to 8 times to gain access.

Bhuvan is still in BETA stage and it still has a very loooong time to even be a potential threat to GE. Most important things that it must overcome are is its dependence only on IE and the BW issued which makes it extremely slow. Lets hope it gets better with time.

Avira, Norton, Kaspersky, or Nod32?

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 06:12:00 +0000

I have used all these AV. Out of these Norton 2005 was my first Antivirus, Kaspersky my 2nd, Nod32 3rd and Avira 4th.

Norton 2005 well it came pre-installed with my PC and i was a n00b at that time and i didnt knew any other AV other than Norton, so i had to use it. After this i switched over to Kaspersky.

Of these, i used Kaspersky for the longest time (3years, i think). It worked flawlessly, but recently it started losing files in quarantine and missed some malicious files. I ran an online scan and they were bad code, also i got bored of Kaspersky, so it had to go. Nopw i switched over to Norton 360.

Its detection capabilities were flawless, but no human interaction caused me losing a lot of good files which were false positives. Also there was no way of recovering them. Its UI sucked so i dropped it. Now i switched over to Avira.

Avira, it was probably the best AV i had used. UI was good, scanner was flawless, scan times though a bit longer and a little resource hogger, but it did its job beautifully. The best thing was its Game Mode. The only problem i had was it was somehow hogging my bandwidth. I don't know how but it was. Its own monitor showed me using my full bandwidth although my download speed was 75% of what i used to get. Even DU meter showed me i was using my full BW. Now i started analyzing the reason and Avira was the culprit, so it had to go too!

Then i started using Nod32 and i m happy with it, unless and until someone tells me how to stop Avira from hogging my BW. Firewall is good, detection capability is good, light on resource, scanner is quick.

Waise i m still open to suggestions for Antivirus. Don't suggest Avast or AVG.

Windows 7 Bootscreen missing

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:53:00 +0000

Windows 7 has leaked and i installed it too. Windows 7 Ultimate (leaked). After installing bootscreen went missing. PC booted fine, less than 15 secs, but there was no bootscreen. and then the search for the answer began.

Got a Piratebay link suggesting to rename the grldr to grldr.old and grldr.bak to grldr or something like that. But in my system there were not two grldr files but only one, so search went on. Then after much searching and chatting, someone suggested to run this command, normally, if not working, then open Command Prompt with administrative privileges.

bcdboot %WinDir% /l en-US

U will have your animated Windows 7 Bootscreen back. This might also work for those of u who are reporting that their Windows Vista bootscreen is showing instead of Windows 7.

Metro uses Microsoft Windows!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:27:00 +0000

I have proof, Delhi Metro uses Microsoft Windows at least for the display boards! :D

R.I.P MJ

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:23:00 +0000

Michael Jackson, King of Pop is dead. He died of a cardiac arrest. No matter what he was blamed for, he made great music and thats what matters, rest all is gibberish, since he was proven NOT guilty!

http://www.tmz.com/2009/06/25/michael-jackson-dies-death-dead-cardiac-arrest/

http://www.michaeljackson.com/

The site shows nothing but is all red with MJ in the centre!

Cheetah’s Gaddi

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:47:00 +0000

After some ho-halla and little problems, cheetah bought her very first car, Black Chevrolet Spark Music LS edition on 12th June 2009. Car is zippy to drive, fun. After getting the car, it was time to get Pooja done of it. After that it was dinner time at Metro Walk. As of now i m mostly driving it, though anshu bhai drove it for sometime but still i m mostly driving it!

Pix as usual on Picasa as usual though an unlisted album! :)

Training Starts

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:37:00 +0000

Training at All India Radio in Kingsway At STI started today. First class was good atleast. Hoping the same for other classes!

I m back!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:34:00 +0000

Exams finished, book bank returned, pending work which were getting postponed due to exams almost finished and my 3rd Year Summer Training starts from 8th June at All India Radio. And as of now cheetah is planning to buy a new car. After much thinking, from Alto to Santro to Indica to Chevrolet Spark! Car was already booked on May 31st, Spark Music Edition, Black.

Jaunty is here!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:56:00 +0000

I downloaded iso of jaunty and upgraded the installation on my laptop. Till now i have not gotten the chance to fully use it, but noticeable changes were Amarok 2, OpenOffice 3 and Gnome. Interface is much more snappier. Till now i have only checked Sound and Webcam. Sound is working fine but as for webcam, Cheese crashes everything and brings me back to Login Screen. Also none of my old repositories are working, gotta find new ones. Basically, i have just installed jaunty and that is it!

Arre Buddhha **** raha!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 02:09:00 +0000

That’s what happened at CP Metro Station. After exams we were going to CP. As soon as we got off from the train, an old man sat at the edge of the platform, pulled up his dhoti and started pee-ing. Manga seeing this started shouting, “Arre dekho buddhha m*** raha”! After sometime security guard came and took the oldie with him to the security room. God knows what happened there then!

And nothing can justify what the oldie did!

Pen Drive showing less space!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:24:00 +0000

I have a dell laptop and there is one diagnostic utility which can be run in a variety of ways. I chose to run it through USB. Now what it does is, rather claims, Formats a portion of ur Pen Drive with Fat 16 file system and then it says rest of the space can be regained by simply reformatting the space. Well i couldnt, outta my 8 gig pen drive, only 2 gig was available to me after trying various ways!

I searched all over the net, here and there tried everyday formatting the drive with FAT16, FAT 32, exFAT, NTFS but to no avail. Windows default storage manager showed the rest of space as UNALLOCATED but couldnt perform any action over it! Disappointed, i tried one last thing. I had Paragon Partition Manager v9 on my system. I quickly installed it and tried to format the rest of the space!

It worked. I deleted all the space on my pen drive, reformatted it in one single drive with NTFS and my pen drive was back to normal. Now i always have had problems with NTFS in pen drives, so i formatted it with FAT 32 and its working fine till and and as of now.

As usual, never give up easily in matters of computers, there’s always a solution waiting to be found out even if its simple as eating! :)

Sachin is the BEST!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 06:57:00 +0000

I m a Hindu atheist who respects hinduism very much but i m an atheist or an agnost. I believe in only 4 GODs: Sachin Tendulkar, Mark Shuttleworth, Bill Gates, Google and Linus Torvalds, though i very much hate Microsoft but still its one of my dream companies to work in, name one person whose it isnt?

Anyways, Richard Hadlee recently said that Sachin is the best, which brings me back to the point that Sachin is the GOD.

Been Busy, a hell lot!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 06:13:00 +0000

First it was fest (march 2nd and 3rd) and helping a friend in something different from the league. Well fest did keep us busy, very busy and the other thing too! Was event head of some shitty event which went pretty well, better than i expected. It was on first day of the fest, next day i was busy too. But had a good night sleep that day!! 13 hours of uninterrupted sleep!

Then after the fest, my friends have been bugging and begging and praying to me to go to Nahan with them for once in a lifetime college trip! I was not interested so denied them stating the truth but they didnt agree, then i stated another truth that i m scared of height but they didnt agree to this too. So eventually i had to go! And i thank Pulkit for this trip! We had been a college trip since we became friends and it was pulkit's sole determination which made the trip possible.

After Nahan Trip (9th March - 11th March), settled, it was time for mom-dad's marriage anniversary on 16th March (26th). Then this was over, there were some tensions in the personal front of some of my best friends including mine. Still nt over, but will manage through this turmoil.

I also got some of the best and worst compliments that a friend could ever get, and some of the best things said by others to me! In all this has been a mixed month for me. Also, one of my god has been performing marvelously, Sachin Tendulkar in NZ.

Hoping this month finishes without any much further trouble! NAd i have exams from 2nd April!

940510 is back to haunt us!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:48:00 +0000

Be careful before updating ur Windows Vista. If u have accidentally updated this and 940510 has been installed, and IFF u still havent rebooted ur PC, u still have time to undo the damage.

Search for wgaer_m , include hidden files, system files, non-indexed locations, each and every drive... u will mostly find two executables (exe) and some more files with the same name... delete all of them.

If u have rebooted ur PC, better reformat it!

Dell Customer Care

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:44:00 +0000

Yesterday, after almost 3 months of me buying my laptop, my webcam has started working correctly, both in Vista and in Ubuntu. Actually, drivers installed, software installed. Now when i started it, it worked perfectly fine. Since i dont use it much, i never started it again.

After sometime, i felt the need to use it again. I opened it, it didnt work. Thought it must be driver proble, so installed them again and then it started working. Next time i rebooted, it again died on me. This went on for almost 6 weeks. Then i decided to format my laptop, since i thought OS might be at fault too. But it never worked. So i had to isntall all drivers again. I install bluetooth drivers, now i didnt know that it had FIRMWARE UPDATE too, so it updated firmware and then my bluetooth died too.

So i write Dell CC a long mail, very long mail, telling them all the troubleshooting things i did and problems i was facing. So Dell called me up (looked like a call from US/UK), said they will send an engineer tomorrow with replacement parts. At night, someone from Delhi confirmed the time. Next day, the engineer came at the allotted time and everything was replaced within half an hour. So now everything works fine!!

Unlike Compaq/HP, of which i used to have a Desktop, there engineers were so dumb, i called them twice at my home, firstly they were never on time and then they never had a clue how to fix the prob, so their ultimate solution was Format it. Maybe the things might have changed now, it was almost like 5 years ago. Probably this is what refrained me for going for a HP/Compaq laptop.

Western Digital is also similarly very good. They come to ur home, and u have to just give them the faulty disk in a bag/properly packed and they will then courier you the replacement in a week.

But DELL's Customer Care is simply awesomer than the awesome!!!

Connecting Two Computers!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:01:00 +0000

I m writing here how i connected my Laptop (d0rK) and Desktop (Sylar). Necessary things required before beginging are:
1) Two Computers with Windows Vista (since the ones i used, both had vista)
2) Crossover cable (Not the straight one, but crossover)
3) Ethernet Ports on both the PC
4) Both the computer should have same workgroup, if u have not changed it in any of the PC, both will be having the same value!

Now the things i did:

1) Connect both ur PC with each other with the help of crossover cable through Ethernet Ports. Doesnt matter if they are on/off. Just connect them.

2) Now click on Start>>Network>>Network and Sharing Centre>>Manage my Network Connections on any one of the PC.

3) Right click on ur LAN Connection (must have something ethernet written below that LAN connection) and click on Properties.

4) Double Click on TCP/IP v4.

5) Click on Use the following IP Address.

6) Enter the following settings:

    IP Address         : 192.168.1.20
    Subnet Mask      : 255.255.255.0
    Default Gateway : 192.168.1.1

7) U can leave DNS settings and Click on OK, Click on all OK that u encounter henceforth.

8) Repeat steps 2 to 7 in the other computer as well. But instead of IP address as 192.168.1.20, write 192.168.1.21

NOTE: U may vary IP address from 192.168.1.3 to 192.168.1.254 depending on the one you like or u want! I have just given examples here.

9) For sharing of files, Click Start>>Network>>Network and Sharing Centre. In this turn the follwoing to ON:
    a) Network Sharing
    b) File Sharing
    c) Public Folder Sharing
    d) Printer Sharing (if u will be sharing printer)
    e) password Protected Sharing (turn this option off if u r witnessing security related errors while sharing)

10) For how to share Files and Folders, see here.

Related: Diffference between Crossover Cable and Straight Cable

Sharing Drives Betweeen two computers!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 11:06:00 +0000

Open My Computer
Right Click on the Drive that u want to share and click on Properties.
In the Properties, click on Sharing tab.
Click on Advanced Sharing and, then in the new window that opens, Select Share this Folder.
Click on Permissions.

If there is EVERYONE in the Group or Usernames or any other name that you want to grant permission for sharing, select that name, and then select appropriate permissions and OK everything.
Else, click on ADD>>Advanced>>Find Now and then select the username and then select name that you want to grant permission for sharing, select that name, and then select appropriate permissions and OK everything.

Now u r ready to share ur drive. No need to install softwares or do registry editing.

My Rigs!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 11:00:00 +0000

My Rig, Desktop, Sylar, as it stands now:
Intel C2D E4600 @ 2.4GHz
Intel Original DG45EC Motherboard
Compaq 17" CRT (5.5 Years Old as of writing this post)
4GB RAM (2x1GB Transcend, 2X1GB Kingston)
XFX 8600 GT GFX Card
Seagate 320 GB + 500 GB Hard Disk (7200 RPM)
Sony DRU 190A DVD RW & Samsung s201D DVD RW
ATP3 2.1 Speakers
Cooler Master 500w SMPS
Cooler Master 120mm Extake Fan (Rear Chasis)
Unbranded 80mm Intake Fan (Side Chasis)
APC 650VA UPS

Installed OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (Primary OS) & Microsoft Windows 7

My Laptop, d0rK is a Dell Inspiron 1525 with 3 GB RAM and 250gig HDD. OS installed are Windows Vista Ultimate and Ubuntu 8.10. Primary is none since i switch between both very frequently.

As in case of Sylar, people don't realise the importance of a good SMPS, Fans and UPS. No i m not arguing/explaining it either.

Removing Network Connections from Desktop!

shwetanshus@gmail.com (Shwetz) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:52:00 +0000

There was some Network Connections icon on my Desktop which just refused to delete. Tried everything, right-clicking it, dragging it to recycle bin, using delete key on the keyboard, various tweaking utilities, desktop personalization but just couldnt delete it.

Then began the search for deleting over www and i fouind it on first result only!

Here;'s what u got to do:

1. Start regedit.exe.
2. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > explorer > Desktop > NameSpace
3. Look for the key:
{7007ACC7-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E} OR {992CFFA0-F557-101A-88EC-00DD010CCC48}
and delete it.
4. Exit regedit.exe
5. Refresh your desktop by right-mouse clicking a blank area on your Desktop and selecting "Refresh".

It worked for me.

I have VISTA ULTIMATE.