I was looking for some Firefox extensions and i remembered that i wanted to make a post about some of the best IE7 add-ons i know for people that use Internet Explorer 7.

Well, i searched through my bookmarks and there were some links i saved a while back.

If you want to enhance IE7 and add some nice features to it, first try navigating through the official Add-Ons for Internet Explorer website. Almost 400 are listed there.

The official IEBlog has a post titled Must Have Add-Ons for IE7. That post is a little old but you can check it out.

There is also this article in Computer World that covers some of the best.

Personally, i think that IE7Pro is really great and covers some of the most needed features in IE7, like an ad-block program, tab history and inline searching. If you use IE7, you will love this one.

Sadly, the offering of add-on is nowhere near Firefox but at least there some great ones you can use everyday.

DD-WRT is a third party firmware which is open source. You can install it in different wireless routers. Please check DD-WRT hardware compatibility to see if your router is supported.

There are many advantages when running third party firmware instead of the factory defaults. The first one is flexibility because they allow you to do many things that normally you can’t do with proprietary firmware. The second is better support.

Believe it or not, it is more likely that you can find a solution to your problem in these communities than in the manufacturer’s site.

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I was revisiting some links i had stored in my bookmarks and i saw this one.

This is an article about building a Windows Home Server for roughly $400. It is interesting that Windows Home Server can run in such generic hardware because it not only appeals to many users and enthusiasts, but it can make you home network administration much much easier and useful at this price range.

Here is another cool site devoted to Windows Home Server.

Source: Home Server Hacks

I just read this article in TorrentFreak. It is interesting because many people using eMule get to download server lists from suspicious sites.

Connecting to a bad ed2k server can have some nasty consequences. They monitor your activities and report to anti-p2p outfits. They direct you to non-existent files, corrupted fakes and hide files which others genuinely want to share. Learn how to protect yourself.

Read the article to learn how to avoid this and to get some addresses that are reliable for updating the server lists in eMule client.

Read the full article Source: TorrentFreak

A video has been posted in YouTube. It shows what appears to be a Windows 7 new features demonstration. Windows haters are already criticizing this features in many forums and blogs.

I can say that i’m impressed that, if this is true, Windows 7 will boost productivity a lot. The dual-pane explorer is a “long due” feature i have been asking for.

Also, the virtual drive and the new task manager caught my attention. All of this can be achieve now in Vista or XP just by installing some third party programs, as many people are saying.

But let me say that, when integrated in the operative system itself, the chance for bugs, crashes, unexpected behavior can be practically non-existent. And not to mention that the video shows that these features are integrated really nice.

I hope to hear or read about this a little more to confirm this is actually being done and not just a fake video. If it’s fake, well, it’s the best fake video i’ve seen so far.

Nowadays, overclocking has become more and more popular. Even hardware manufacturers are implementing new and easier ways to get things done.

I have my CPU, RAM, Front-Side Bus and video card overclocked. One if not the most important thing to keep an eye on is operating temperatures, because too much heat can lead to crashes and/or physical damage to the hardware. Not mentioning that this lowers the life span of your equipment.

There are two great tools to read and messure temps. Both are free and can be used to log temperature over time. This is very useful when overclocking and checking for stability.

CoreTemp

This one is the one i use the most because of it logging feature. You can customize read and log intervals so you can keep an eye when stressing the hardware using games or benchmarks.

Website

Real Temp

This one is very simplistic but does what it claims. It offers a convenient logging for basic needs because the maximum and minimum temperature are displayed and constantly updated as long as the program is running. This feature is not better than CoreTemp logging, but can be useful when monitoring over shorts periods of time.

Website Download

It seems that the old way of delivering malware, using bogus audio or video files, is in practice in great scale once more. This, according to McAfee Avert Labs Blog.

Detection of a trojan named Downloader-UA.h was added to the McAfee DAT files several days ago. Since that time more than 360,000 McAfee VirusScan Online users have reported detections, a whopping 32% of those reporting in the past 24 hours alone. Now Downloader-UA.h is not your everyday trojan, this detection covers fake music and video files associated with fastmp3player.com.

When a user attempts to load one of these MP3 and MPG files, they don’t get the music/video they were hoping for; instead they’re directed to download a file named PLAY_MP3.exe. In fact, the MP3/MPG file they downloaded was completely fake, playing no media clip what so ever. [...]

Original Article

Important!: It appears that if you make the slipstreaming in a Vista machine, an unattended setup of XP will stop at the Key Input screen and it won’t accept any kind of key.

I just read in the TechNet forums. I will make some research and i will posts my findings.

Meanwhile, please slipstream SP3 in a computer with XP if you plan to do an unattended setup.

As i posted yesterday, you can download Windows XP SP3 from torrent sites (and now from Microsoft as well) without waiting for Microsoft to publish it in their download center or via automatic updates.

I already slipstreamed it to my Windows XP SP2 media. Here’s a simple guide if you want to do it on your own. This way, you can have your own SP3 media in no time.

You need the following:

• Windows XP SP2 media or disc image. We will use the files in the disc/image and update them with SP3.

• An application to extract ISO files in case you are using the spanish release of SP3 or you have your Windows XP SP2 as an image file. You can use 7-Zip which is free and a great file archiver.

• nLite to make a bootable cd image from the updated SP3 files.

Note: At the end of the guide you will fin a link to download it as a PDF file if you want to print it or take it with you.

1.- Copy/Extract the contents of your SP2 disc/image to something like D:\XPSP2

If you are using a cd/dvd, just select all the files and copy them to a location of your choice.
If you have a Windows XP SP2 disc image file, use 7-Zip or other program to extract all the files to a location of your choice.

2.- Copy/Extract the files from the downloaded SP3 release to something like D:\XPSP3

If you are using the english release of SP3 you need to copy the installer to this location.
If you are using the spanish release, you need to use 7-Zip to extract the files to this location. Open the image file you downloaded and extract its contents.

3.- Run the SP3 installer with a command-line switch to update the files

I use Launch, my own program, to run files with switches. If you don’t want to use Launch, use the Run box in the start menu, but make sure you have administrator privileges.

The command-line switches are:

WINDOWSXP-KB936929-SP3-X86-ESN.EXE /integrate:D:\XPSP2
WINDOWSXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.EXE /integrate:D:\XPSP2

After you run it, the installer begins to update the files in the folder you specified. Wait until it finishes and you should see a dialog that tells you that everything went fine.

4.- Use nLite to make a bootable disc image with the updated files

Open nLite and point it to the folder where the updated files are and click Next.

In the Task Selection window select Create: Bootable ISO and click Next.

In the next window write a label for the disc image or leave it as it is. Click the Make ISO button and choose where to save the disc image nLite will generate. Wait until it finishes and click Next.

Then exit the program.

5.- We are done now

You can now burn the image file to a cd/dvd and use it to install Windows XP SP3 just like you did with earlier versions.

Download the guide as a PDF file. English/Spanish available.