FlashGet Followup: Uninstall and Downgrade 3.4

Due to the massive amount of attention that my previous post about FlashGet 3.4 received, I’m now writing a follow-up on how to uninstall it completely, and then downgrade — to either 3.3 or the classic 1.96.

Here’s how you do it.

First, you’ll need a tool called Revo Uninstaller. There are two versions, the FREE and of course, the PRO. For this one, we’ll just need the FREE version — so go ahead and download that now.

Once you have installed Revo Uninstaller, carefully follow these steps:

1. Open up Revo Uninstaller, and then make sure that you are in the Uninstaller tab.
2. Next, find the FlashGet 3.4 icon in the listing window, and then select it.
3. Click Uninstall, and then click YES on the dialog that follows.
4. In the ‘Select an Uninstall Mode’ window, select Advanced, and then click Next.
5. Wait for it the perform the initial analysis.
6. The application’s built-in uninstaller should launch, and then follow the steps of the uninstall wizard.
7. Go back to the Revo Uninstaller window, and click Next. It should now scan for leftover files and other unwanted junk.
8. Click Next again, and then on the next screen, click Select All. Then Click Delete (then YES on the dialog that appears), and then Next.
9. On the following screen, click Select All, and then Delete, and once again YES on the dialog that appears. Click Next.
10. Click Finish, and now the hard uninstall of FlashGet should be done now.

We have just successfully wiped out your system of all remaining files from FlashGot 3.4, now it’s time to downgrade.

Downgrading is pretty simple, just select the version which you want to downgrade to: the modern 3.3 or the classic 1.96. Then, install it, and you should be ready to go! Just remember not to make the crucial mistake — once the update dialog shows up, remember to click CANCEL or NO. You wouldn’t want to go back to that nightmarish version.

I’d recommend you go for 1.96 though, since it’s much cleaner than the modern one and is just as fast — also offers all the same features.

Recently, Riot Games signed a partnership deal to a Southeast Asian game distribution company, which in turn caused the maker of the hit online RPG League of Legends to drop support for Southeast Asian clients. This means that gamers from Southeast Asia will not be able to access the game anymore, since geographical IP mapping will let the LoL servers know of the origin of the client.

What’s more, it’s been a few weeks now and still, there’s no news of the Southeast Asian version of LoL.

But thankfully, since the LoL server checks the origin of the client based on their IP’s geographical address, I’ve found a way to unblock it.

What you’ll need is a software called FreeVPN. What it does is connect you to a virtual private network, which will act as your outgoing server. Think of a VPN as a medium between your PC, and the server (in this case, LoL’s servers), which presents itself as your ISP. In other words, you now connect to the internet by passing through a virtual private network telling the LoL servers that you are from USA.

Here are the steps to unblock League of Legends:

1. Download FreeVPN.
   

   FreeVPN Main screen

2. Install FreeVPN, and then restart your PC.
3. Now, start FreeVPN, and wait for it to finish its initial loading process. Then, select a FREE USA server (alternatively, you can choose to select a paid service if you’ve got extra cash, since doing so will also unlock limits on sites such as Rapidshare, Megavideo, Megaupload, etc.), and hit connect. The connection process should not take more than a minute, but this depends on the speed of your internet connection and the availability of the server which you selected.
4. Finally, once a balloon message on your system tray says ‘Data transfer is now SSL Secure‘, then you’re good to go.
5. Launch League of Legends, and voila! You should be able to play the game now.

Screenshots:

Blocked League of Legends without FreeVPN

League of Legends with FreeVPN

Enjoy playing!

Until it updated today to 3.4…

I mean, take a look at this screenshot:

A Screenshot of Flashget 3.4

What do you see? RIGHT. The one thing everybody hates about absolutely anything on the internet. The new FlashGot screen (though I gotta admit, the new silver-theme is smexy) is riddled with ads. Chinese Ads. Not only that. A Flash-like ad also appears ocassionally on your desktop, that’s right, outside the FlashGet screen.

I personally think this is waaay too much. This is overkill. And did I forget to mention that it also places a couple of Chinese URL links on your desktop?

Meh, I think I’ll try Free Download Manager or Orbit now.

UPDATE: Wow, apparently, FlashGet 3.4 isn’t even downloadable from its website yet! This probably means that only the users who already have it installed received the update. Strange enough, when I uninstall, the uninstaller from first to last was in total Chinese.

UPDATE 2: According to commenter Wommaster, the language on FlashGet 3.4 is Chinese, not Japanese. Thanks Wommaster!

UPDATE 3: I’ve written a guide on how to uninstall it completely and remove all traces of it, and then how to downgrade. See it here: http://kixtrix.com/2010/04/07/flashget-followup-uninstalling-and-downgrading-3-4/

Cydia Crawler

So you have a jailbroken iPod Touch or iPhone. That’s cool. But what’s it without all the jailbroken apps? If you don’t have a WiFi connection at home or anywhere near, and you don’t fancy Cyder either — then CydiaCrawler will soon become your best friend (it already has become mine).

For those who aren’t in the loop, Cydia is the AppStore equivalent of jailbreaking. It has literally hundreds of freely downloadable apps which have either been rejected from the AppStore or are just far too awesome to be there. But of course, to access Cydia, you’ll need an internet connection, and the iPod Touch and the iPhone would have so via WiFi (or in iPhone, 3G and EDGE), and in your case, you don’t have any of those.

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to get your app from Cydia, without WiFi, and install it on your iDevice.Getting the DEB File

The .deb file is the installation file (called the Debian package, a compressed Linux installation package) which we’ll need to download and then put in your iDevice. Your jailbroken device would then take this file, extract it, and install it on its system. Don’t worry, Cydia will take care of all of those when you already have the .deb file.

1. Head on to CydiaCrawler (http://ipod-touch-max.ru/cydia/) and then type in the name of your desired app in the search box (ie “Winterboard”, without the quotes).
2. You will then be taken to the search results page, and you’ll have to scroll down a little. Then look for the search result with the name being Winterboard.
3. Click the link “.deb”, adjacent to the red ‘Download’ word. You’ll then be prompted to download the file, and then save it somewhere easy to access, like your Desktop for example.

Installing the DEB File

Now that you have the .deb file ready, it’s time to install it on your device. You’ll need a tool called iSutal (website/direct), which basically contains WinSCP, Putty, iPhone Browser, iFunBox, VNC, and a Firefox tether hack (which is a pretty dandy software — you can use it to browse the web anywhere as long as your iPhone is connected and has an internet connection). What we need is the iPhone Browser, so go ahead and download iSutal now.

1. Open up iSutal.exe, and click iPhone Browser. Your iDevice should be connected and iTunes recognizes it for this to work.
2. Navigate to /var/root/Media and look for a folder called Cydia, you’ll need to create it if it does not exist.
3. Open the Cydia folder you just created, and then create another folder inside it called AutoInstall. Everything here is case-sensitive, so you need to be really careful.
4. Now, get the .deb file you just downloaded, and drag’n'drop it over to the iPhone Browser window with AutoInstall open. Wait for it to finish copying (the progress is shown at the bottom right corner of the iPhone Browser window).
5. Reboot your iDevice, it would take a little longer to start up this time since Cydia is installing the .deb file you just downloaded.

To make sure that the app is installed and working properly, open up Cydia on your iDevice, tap Manage, and then tap Packages. Scroll down to see if the app that you downloaded is there. If it is, then you’re good to go. If it is there but is highlighted in red, then something’s wrong — usually it’s a missing dependency file. If it’s not there, you’ll need to double-check if you followed the steps correctly and that you dropped the .deb file to the AutoInstall folder on iPhone Browser.

To fix the missing dependency issue (if the package is listed in Cydia but is highlighted in red), go to CydiaCrawler again and open the page for the app that you want. Then, look at the ‘Dependence’ list, and make sure that you have all of those installed by checking on your Cydia’s Packages section. If you’re missing some, you’ll have to download and install individually.

It takes a pretty long process and some getting used to, but trust me, once you’re good at it, you’ll enjoy your iDevice more than you ever did before.

With the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 9, nVidia demonstrates just how powerful its ION technology is, and its huge performance impact on netbooks and web browsing overall.

1.) Lifehacker

Lifehacker

Where else will you find great downloads to ‘hack your life‘? Lifehacker.com (part of Gawker Media, which is also the mother network of  Gizmodo, Kotaku, and so on) not only provides you with McGyver tricks to solve or ease up virtually everything about your life, but it also regularly provides comprehensive reviews and first-looks on tons of freewares that you surely won’t want to miss. It reviews freewares on the mainstream, as well as hidden gems that you will probably meet for the first time — all for Windows, Linux, Mac, and even your mobile OS: iPhone, Android, and so on. Since the editors are all geeky in lots of ways, you are assured that the freeware they recommend are up to the standards of top software critics.

2.) Download Squad

Logo courtesy of http://www.mattheerema.com/

Next in the list is DownloadSquad.com. If you’re looking for top quality downloads and tons of software tricks, then you’d want to check out Download Squad. Part of the Weblogs, Inc. Network and the AOL News Network, this clean and green (awesome minimalistic design and neat typography) website offers insights on the best freeware out there, plus tons of web services and mobile software. So if you’ve got a lot of spare time on your hands (and spare bandwidth!), then you should consider putting Download Squad in your first stop.

3.) Freeware Genius

Freeware Genius

Third on the list is FreewareGenius.com. If quality downloads are what you’re are looking for, then Freeware Genius is a site that you’ll definitely love. Pretty much like the first two on the list minus the software tweaks and additional rambles, Freeware Genius spotlights the best freewares and gives quick reviews and summaries of each download. Just scroll down through the clean front page, and you’ll find hundreds of software that you won’t want to miss.

Other sites worth noting:

• Filehippo.com – downloads, plain and simple. No extra reviews, nothing like a blog at all. Basically an index of the most downloaded and searched-for downloads on the net, hand-picked by its staff and slapped on its front page. Filehippo believes in ‘quality, and not quantity‘ of downloads.
• Download.com – CNET’s very own downloads site, Download.com provides reviews and comprehensive analysis of downloads — with ratings from the users and critical reviews from the editors.
• Softpedia.com – very similar to Download.com, Softpedia is basically called ‘the encyclopedia of software’ and lives by the motto ‘updated one minute ago’. Don’t expect it to be full of good downloads though, more than half its program population is made up of crapware, no kidding.

Some people may recommend BrotherSoft.com, but it’s ad-riddled pages makes me dislike it. A lot.

Image courtesy of questionmarc.wordpress.com

SMARTBRO PHILIPPINES USERS ONLY — If you’re a Smartbro user, you may often be frustrated at how slow your browsing speed is. By slowdowns, we mean a tolerable 30kbps to a tricklish 1 kbps. That’s right, there are times when Smartbro reaches a crawling thousand bytes per second only. While proxies don’t necessarily speed up your traffic or magically boost your bandwidth, they definitely help reduce the time it takes to load a web page or an internet resource.

So basically, what does a proxy do?

Proxy diagram courtesy of www.computerrepairmaintenance.com

[A proxy is ] an intermediate server that sits between the client and the origin server. It accepts requests from clients, transmits those requests on to the origin server, and then returns the response from the origin server to the client. If several clients request the same content, the proxy can deliver that content from its cache, rather than requesting it from the origin server each time, thereby reducing response time.

http://www.php-editors.com/apache_manual/glossary.html

So basically, a proxy is a web server which mediates between the client (you) and the target web server (the site you are requesting). Often times, your own connection to the target server is slowed down by unnecessary traffic coming from other users connecting via the same route. A proxy can help by acting as a gateway or alternate route, which you can use to connect to your target. Lots of times, proxies offer a faster access time than your ISP’s default.

Working proxies for Smartbro

The following proxy servers are reportedly working for Smartbro users, and there are claims that they indeed help speed up browsing (I can attest to the first one!):

• proxy.smartwifi.com.ph (port 8080)
• proxy.smartbro.net (port 8080)
• proxy.meridian.ph

Configuring your proxy

It’s pretty easy to configure your proxy, and would take an average ‘net junkie roughly 5 minutes to finish.

On Firefox,

1. Select Tools from the menu, then Options…
2. On the main selection tab, select Advanced, and then Network on the secondary tab
3. Select Settings… under Connection
4. Choose Manual Proxy Configuration
5. Enter the proxy you have chosen on the HTTP Proxy box, and check Use this proxy server for all protocol, and enter port 8080 on the Port box
   

   Firefox Proxy Configuration Window

6. Hit OK, and restart Firefox.
7. All done! You should now hopefully experience 35-70% faster browsing speed.

On Internet Explorer,

1. Select Tools from the menu and choose Internet Options
2. Select Connections from the tabs list
3. Click LAN Settings
4. Check Use a proxy server for your LAN, and enter your selected proxy on the Address box; enter 8080 on the Port box
5. Check Bypass proxy server for local addresses
   

   Internet Explorer Proxy Configuration Window

6. Hit OK, and restart Internet Explorer
7. All done!

How to revert?

In case something goes wrong and you need to revert, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get back to your default settings.

On Firefox, follow steps 1 to 3. Select No Proxy.

On Internet Explorer, follow steps 1 to 3. Uncheck Use a proxy server for your LAN.

Image by www.mydigitallife.info

If you’re an owner of a warezified Windows 7 and want to check out Microsoft’s latest operating system but can’t find a way to activate it, then RemoveWAT is for you.

RemoveWAT, developed by Hazar and nononsence is a Windows 7 crack that completely removes Windows Activation Technologies from the system so that users can validate the illegal pirated copies of Windows 7 as genuine status (some reported as “Tampered Binary” in MGADiag due to patching), forever and permanently. RemoveWAT supports both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) and all editions of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

RemoveWAT, which has been refreshed to RemoveWAT v1.9, also stops sppsvc service and patches DLL files such as slwga.dll, sppcomapi.dll and systemcpl.dll, where the last one removes the whole Windows activation section from the Control Panel’s System Properties. RemoveWAT also support silent install with /s switch, and can be integrated to Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 installation DVD.

[RemoveWAT] via [My Digital Life]

Image from gadgetscrunch.com

Last week, I got an iPod touch 2G; fresh out of the box, factory defaults. So I loaded up some songs and started listening right away. However, after stumbling across various weblogs and forums discussing the greener grass on the jailbroken side, I decided to give it a try myself. Of course, I ran to some trouble during my first tries, but after a few more I was successfully able to jailbreak my pod.

For all those eager to load up cool stuff on their iPod’s, read on now. The complete and easy steps after the jump.

Before we begin, let me warn you about jailbreaking: JAILBREAKING IS DISCOURAGED AND UNAPPROVED BY APPLE INC., THEREFORE, BY JAILBREAKING, YOU ARE PERMANENTLY VOIDING YOUR WARRANTY. THIS MEANS THAT IN CASE THINGS GO VERY WRONG AND YOU CAN’T RECOVER YOUR IPOD YOURSELF, APPLE STORES WON’T HELP YOU.

So, if you’ve really decided and that you’re ready to do this (and your hands are not shaky!), let’s go.

Please note that this tutorial only applies to iPod touch 2G, running on 2.2.1 Firmware.

Before we proceed to the main jailbreaking part, you’ll (of course) need a list of tools in the process. Here are the tools you need to have before we can proceed;

Tools needed:

• QuickFreedom (http://quickfreedom.com/)
• iTunes 8.1 or later (http://www.apple.com/itunes/)
• Firmware Restore Package (.ipsw file) (Get it here. Select iPod touch 2G (2.2.1/5H11a) on the list and hit Download)
• Your iPod touch 2G, and your USB cable

Now that you have your tools ready, we can now proceed to the jailbreaking proper. FOLLOW THESE STEPS CAREFULLY. If you get stuck in a step, do notify me by posting a comment below.

1. Download and open QuickFreedom.exe from its website listed above.  You should be presented with a screen similar to this one:

Image by proudofmylife.net

2. Next, you should check if you have LIBusb installed by checking if there’s a green checkmark next to ‘LIBUSB – Installed‘. If you don’t have it, click ‘Install LIBUSB‘.

3. Browse for the Firmware Restore package you downloaded from the link above by clicking ‘Browse…‘. It should have the file name ‘iPod2,1_2.2.1_5H11a_Restore.ipsw‘ (without the quotation marks).

4. If you’ve successfully completed Steps 2 and 3, hit ‘Next‘.

5. On the next screen (pictured below), tick the ‘Install Installer‘ and ‘Use Custom Boot Logo‘ (optional) checkboxes. In case you want a custom boot logo, click change, and then select the logo that suits you best.

Image by proudofmylife.net

6. Now we’re ready to create the jailbroken firmware. Click ‘Next‘. On the next screen that appears, click ‘Create Firmware‘. The process of creating the hacked firmware takes around 5-10 minutes, which could take longer on slower PC’s. After it’s done, you’ll be notified that a ‘Custom Firmware.ipsw‘ has been created and put to your desktop. Click ‘Next‘ when this happens.

7. Now that we have the jailbroken firmware, we’re now going to prepare your iPod for jailbreaking. This process is called ‘pre-jailbreak’.

8. First, you need to put your iPod to DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode. Connect your  iPod to your PC (close iTunes if it shows up), and turn your iPod off, then hold the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons together for 10 seconds (timing is critical). After the 10-second mark, release the Sleep/Wake button but keep on holding the Home button for a few more seconds (around 8 ) or until your computer detects that your iPod is now connected via a beep or on-screen notification.

9. You’ll know that you’re in DFU mode if your iPod display is totally blank, and your computer detects that it’s plugged in. Now, if all’s set and that you’re in DFU mode, click ‘Start Pre-jailbreak‘ on the QuickFreedom screen.

Image by proudofmylife.net

10. During the pre-jailbreak process, QuickFreedom will do a power-cycle on your device and your iPod screen will turn white. Once this is done, you are ready to do the jailbreaking with iTunes.

11. Fire up iTunes, and wait for it to detect that your iPod is in recovery mode. Now, click your iPod, and then while holding the Shift key, click ‘Restore’. This will open a file dialog looking for the firmware file. Point it to the ‘Custom Firmware.ipsw‘ file located in your desktop.

12. iTunes will extract the ipsw, and then load it up your iPod’s system — installing the jailbroken firmware. This can take a considerably long time, depending on your computer speed. You’ll know that the process is complete when your iPod reboots normally and displays the SpringBoard (the home screen, now with the ‘Installer’ and ‘Cydia’ icons), and your iTunes prompts you to name your iPod.

13. Congratulations! You have successfully jailbroken your iPod touch 2G. You can now use Cydia to download jailbroken apps and extend the functionality of your iPod beyond the limit that Apple has set. Enjoy!

Reference materials used on this tutorials were taken from proudofmylife.net, quickfreedom.com, and appleiphoneschool.com. Mad props to the guys back there!

Image by IceFrog.com

Yesterday, May 15 2009, I read on a circular bulletin released by Garena at Friendster.com that IceFrog has left Dota-Allstars.com. Shocked and somehow intrigued by this news, I decided to visit IceFrog’s Blog to see his official statements on this issue. Here’s what he said:

As a result of some differences, I am no longer affiliated with the dota-allstars.com website. I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone over there the best of luck in the future.

Source: http://www.icefrog.com/content/dota-website-news

However, on another part of the same post, IceFrog confirmed that this does not mean that he will discontinue development of DotA. In fact, he stated that he plans to continue development for at least 2 more years.

On another part of his post, IceFrog said that he is planning to start a new community for DotA, this time under his administration. Because of this, he is looking for people who can help him in all ends of foruming, including technical support, programming, web development, and graphics design.

Could IceFrog leaving Dota-Allstars.com have a great impact on the community? Or could IceFrog’s new community benefit members much more than Dota-Allstars.com did? We hope we’ll hear from him soon.