Find visited urls and cookies of every user in index.dat

When you delete the visited urls and the cache in Internet Explorer after disconnecting your computer from the internet you are safe, right ? Many users think that it is impossible to find out which websites have been visited when they delete the cache and the history. This is not true..

The file index.dat which exists many times on windows xp accounts, to be precise many times for every user, stores visited urls and cookies for instance even though you deleted that information before. Microsoft surely has a good explanation for this, right ? They say it is to speed up Internet Explorer but this sounds somewhat fishy, why would you need for instance the cookies if you have deleted them ?

To find index.dat on your computer you need to do the following (Win xo only). Open any folder, click on tools, folder options. Select view from the tab and uncheck “hide protected operating system files” and make sure “Show hidden files and folders is enabled”. Now search for index.dat and windows will come up with some search results.

It does help to view the file in an normal editor, it won’t show anything. What you need to do to see the list of urls or cookies is to download the sweet little tool Pasco created by Keith Jones. It is a freeware command line utility. Unpack it, copy any of the index.dat files into the bin dir of pasco and fire up the command line mode of windows xp. (Hit Windows key + R, enter cmd and hit enter)

Change to the pasco dir and enter the following command:

pasco index.dat > urls.txt

Pasco creates a text file with all urls that are saved in the index.dat file. You can then view the with every text editor available. The same works with the index.dat that holds the cookies of course.

Ever wanted to know what your kids, husband, wife, friends, co-workers do when they are alone ? Use the index.dat file to find out.

How to remove the index.dat file:

The index.dat file is protected in windows and you will have a hard time deleting it from within.

These data files are used by Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer. You cannot delete a file that is in use by a running program. If you feel you need to delete the file, you will have to shutdown all instances of Explorer and IE. This includes applications that may host the Webbrowser control: Outlook, Messenger, IE, Product Studio, Visual Studio, Help, Windows Media Player, etc. Your best bet is just close everything. When you are left with a desktop and a start menu, you will still need to shutdown Explorer. To cleanly shutdown Explorer: Start->Shutdown->CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+Click ‘Cancel’ (for more info, see this post). You can use Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC, File->Run…) at this point to open a command window. You should be able to go delete the index.dat. I have only tried this on XPSP2, but it should work anywhere.

Another way would be to boot either into safemode or dos to kill the file.

The new Internet Explorer 7 apparently fixes this issue

Reveal Saved Internet Explorer Passwords

It is very convenient to save login passwords for internet sites such as forums, blogs or paysites to login quicker to those websites. That is, it is great until you can’t remember the password anymore but would like to know it again. This could be the case if you want to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox or Opera for instance. Protected Storage Pass View does not only reveal passwords that have been saved in Internet Explorer while accessing protected sites or using the auto complete form but also passwords that have been saved in Outlook Express and MSN Explorer.

All of the passwords are encrypted and possibly hidden in the registry and Pass View automatically scans and displays all the information that it can find in the registry. Internet Explorer passwords are shown next to the url and the username which is all the information one needs to access the site again.

Please note that only the passwords of the user who is currently logged into the system are revealed in this manner. Click here to download protected storage pass view and ie pass view.

IE7 pro Add-on for Internet Explorer

I’m not using Internet Explorer 7 at all but I know some guys who like it so much that they might ditch Firefox for it. The new Internet Explorer 7 has basically the same functionality and expandability as Firefox. You can download add-ons for Internet Explorer 7 to add functions to it. The Windows Marketplace lists more than 550 add-ons for Internet Explorer 7. The major difference that I can see is that Microsoft offers free and commercial add-ons for Internet Explorer 7 while I do not know of a single Firefox add-on that is commercial. (correct me if I’m wrong)

IE7 pro is one of those add-ons that everyone can download for free from its own website or the Windows Marketplace. It adds six new features to Internet Explorer 7, those are: Ad Filter, Super Drag and Drop, Mouse Gestures, Save Page to Image, Quick Switch Proxy and Enhanced Tabbed Browsing Capabilities. Save Page to Image is a very interesting add-on. It makes it possible to save the page as an image and choose from various image formats including jpg and png.

The Ad Filter should be useful for all Internet Explorer 7 users as well and Enhanced Tabbed Browsing Capabilities add eight new functions to it like hiding the search bar, enabling crash recovery and opening new tabs from the address bar.

I never used Mouse Gestures and think that this is a pretty useless feature but some guys seem to like it. Super Drag and Drop is very much like Super Drag and Go, the Firefox add-on. The only difference is that the Internet Explorer 7 add-on can’t save images by dragging them some inches.

Internet Explorer 7 users should take a look at IE7 pro and test it for a while. It is a free add-on and can be uninstalled without problems if you feel that you do not need the functionality.

Improve Internet Explorer with IE Surfgear

Tiny text that can’t be changed. Background textures that hurt your eyes. A font color with a low contrast to the background color, e.g. dark blue font on dark background. I guess we all have experienced websites that had a design like this, always thought it was there to hurt the visitor because I could not think of any other reason why someone would do things like that.

IE Surfgear to the rescue. The tiny program adds three functions accessible through buttons to the Microsoft Internet Explorer. Each button resolves on of the problems mentioned above. The first button automatically changes the font size of tiny text (and only of it, normal sized text will remain untouched) on a website to an average one, the next removes background colors of text on a website and the last removes background textures (including colors) that make text hardly readable.

The author was so nice to add a live demonstration on his website where you can try the buttons and see what they do. The buttons should be available right away after installing IE Surfgear, if they are not you have to customize the Internet Explorer toolbar to add them (or only some of them) to it.

Click on Tools > Toolbars > Customize to add the buttons to your toolbar if they are not displayed after installation.

Funny side note. I did find the link to the program at Shell Extension City which is in my opinion a hard to read website with their black background and grey text. Take a look at the before and after (using the buttons) screenshots of the website.

That’s a visible difference, don’t you think ?

Speed Test: Firefox 3 vs. IE 8 vs Opera 9.5

I have not done any tests lately that would reveal the speed of each of the new upcoming browsers. The latest official builds have been tested, they are at the time of the test: Opera 9.5 build 9815/1834, Firefox 3 Gran Paradiso beta 4 and Internet Explorer 8 beta 1. I have been using the Webwait application for this test which monitors page loading times of pages that you select.

All browsers were already in memory and the following pages were each loaded once to avoid cache issues: Digg, CNN, Ghacks and Facebook. The results were pretty astonishing and I’m still thinking that some of the slow loading times might have been caused by a server hickup or a short prob with my Internet connection although I did not see any signs for that on my part. Another possible cause could be add-ons that have are already working in Firefox.

The most astonishing values are two page loading times of Firefox 3. It tool 13.17 seconds to load Digg while Opera needed 5.59 seconds and Internet Explorer 8 only 5.28 seconds. The second huge difference was encountered on Facebook where Opera 9.5 was the fastest browser with a loading time of 1.95 seconds.

Internet Explorer 8 followed with 2.83 seconds and Firefox 3 needed 22.60 seconds to load the page. Firefox on the other hand was the fastest browser when loading my site with 1.9 seconds followed by Opera with 2.38 and Internet Explorer with 4.83 seconds.

The same can be said for the loading time of CNN where Firefox needed 2.94 seocnds, Opera 3.38 seconds and Internet Explorer 8 4.58 seconds.

The only two values that stick out are the Firefox loading times of Facebook and Digg. Anyone here who would like to test the speeds on their connection and post the results in this thread ?

Export Internet Explorer’s Trusted and Restricted Sites

Part of the security concept of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are the zones which define security settings for Internet, Local Intranet, Trusted Sites and Restricted Sites. The settings for Internet and Local Intranet are global settings which are valid for all websites visited if they are not found in the Trusted or Restricted Sites list. Trusted and Restricted Sites can have different security settings which normally means lower security settings for trusted sites and higher ones for restricted websites.

You would for instance add websites like that of your bank, insurance company or even shopping sites like eBay or Amazon to the list of trusted websites while untrusted websites like Altavista would land in the untrusted sites list. The list grows quite a bit if you make use of that feature and primarily use Internet Explorer when surfing the Internet.

It would be quite redundant to add all websites again if you purchase a new computer, be it a new desktop computer or notebook. A far better solution - besides making the switch to Opera or Firefox - would be to export the zone settings and import them again in the new computer.

All domains are stored in the Registry and what you need to do is export the Registry key from the old computer and import it at the new one. Sounds easy right ? Start by opening your Registry Editor. I do it by using the shortcut Windows R, entering regedit and hitting enter.

Navigate to the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Internet Settings \ZoneMap \Domains and right-click the key Domains. Select Export from the menu and save it to your hard drive. Copy the saved file to the new computer and double-click it there to add it to the Registry. Et voila, you are done.

Don’t install IE7 before Windows XP SP3

The Windows XP Service Pack 3 is available again and many users have already made the switch to protect their system with the latest security updates. If you have installed Internet Explorer 7 before updating the system to the third Service Pack and decided to uninstall it again you might have noticed that the option to uninstall the browser is grayed out and therefor not possible.

The reason for this behavior is that the system would revert back to an older version of Internet Explorer 6 that would not contain the patches applied by the Service Pack. The Windows XP Service Pack 3 updates the version of Internet Explorer installed on the system during installation of the Service Pack.

The only possible way to uninstall Internet Explorer 7 that has been installed before installing Service Pack 3 is to uninstall the Service Pack first and then Internet Explorer 7. Microsoft suggests that users of IE6 should update their system with Service Pack 3 first and install IE7 afterwards. This would ensure that the browser could be uninstalled normally.

I’m sure that not many users will run into this problem but some surely will. An alternative would be to switch to another browser like Opera or Firefox if you do not feel like uninstalling the Service Pack to uninstall IE7 is worth it.

Another Rapidshare Timelimit Hack

Rapidshare.de, beloved for its content and hated for its timelimit. Hacks how to circumvent the time limit have been discovered and been put to rest by updates to its scripts. There is nevertheless a constant strife for additional hacks that remove the time limit and let you download without the waiting time.

A new trick was posted here today. Its fast and easy, all you need to do is follow this three steps:

1. Visit the page of the file that you want to download.
2. Click on free.
3. Enter the following line of code into your address bar and remove everything else

javascript:alert(c=1)

Hit enter. A popup showing 1 should appear. click ok, the window disappears and you have to enter some letters and click start download.

RAPIDSHARE HACKS, Downloads, Tools and Searches

Rapidshare hacks, downloaders for rapidshare, no timelimit, unlimited downloads, free premium accounts. Those are some of the keywords that users are looking for. I thought it would be nice to write a definite guide about rapidshare. Which rapidshare hacks, tools and tricks are working, which are not. Rapidshare imposes a download and timelimit on non premium users of their service. Downloading from Rapidshare is only possible with one connection at a time and rapidshare limits the size of the files that you download to 30 megabytes every hour.

Rapidshare Hacks:

Speaking of Rapidshare Hacks: There is one little rapidshare hack available which sets the timelimit you have to wait to 0. Clear your address bar and add the following line to it “javascript:alert(c=0)”. This sets the rapidshare timelimit to 0 but does not change the download limit. The only way to reset the rapidshare download limit is to make rapidshare.de believe you are a new user. This can be done by either reconnecting to your ISP or by using proxys.
Reconnecting to your ISP is only working if they give out dynamic (changing) IPs to their users, if you have a static IP you will have to use proxies. You can check your ip here. Rapidshare sets a cookie which you will have to delete as well. (In Firefox go to Tools, Options. Select Privacy, Cookies, View Cookies and delete all rapidshare cookies.)

You can try the following commands instead of reconnecting. Open the windows command line (Start, Run, enter cmd, hit enter). Type the following commands, hit enter after each line:

Windows	Mac	Linux
ipconfig /flushdns	let me know	restart nscd daemon
ipconfig /release	let me know	sudo ifconfig en0 down
ipconfig /renew	let me know	sudo ifconfig en0 down;sudo ifconfig en0 up

If your IP remains the same you probably have a static IP that does not change at all. Your only option to avoid the rapidshare download limit is to use proxies and still clear the cookies in the browser that you are using. Do a search on google for “proxy lists” and you will find heaps of websites that offer proxies. Not all of them are working and you will have to verify that the proxy is a) fast enough and b) does not spill your real IP.

To do that you can simply add the proxy to your connections menu and try it out. Lookup your ip and see if the page loads fast. If you recieve errors or you see your real IP you have to find another proxy.

Rapidshare Tools:

Tools provide some additional features like managing the downloads, changing proxies, simultanious downloads by using more than one proxy and much more. Let us take a look at some of the rapidshare tools:

Rapidshare Link Grab Helper, the password for the rar file is “webxposed.de”. A pretty basic rapidshare tool. Add a rapidshare link, add a proxy, click grab, enter the image verification code, sent the rapidhare direct link to flashget.

Rapget, supports not only rapidshare.de but many other file hosting services like megaupload.com for example. The program has more options, it allows you to select a proxy list that it uses automatically while downloading from rapidshare or the other services. It offers simultanious rapidshare downloads, you can set timeouts, schedule downloads and paste links from files or the clipboard.

Grabber, looks similar to the rapidshare link grab helper with some additional options such as proxy and link checking.

Rapidleecher, offers basic functionality. Copy links, use proxies, enter image verification, get real download link and download the file.

Rapidshare Searches:

You need links to download files from rapidshare. One common method is to use google to search rapidshare.de by using googles site search command.

site:rapidshare.de RAR

This would search rapidshare.de for every link / page that includes the word rar.

You can also search google for sites that index rapidshare downloads, I won´t get into detail about those sites because they mostly link to illegal downloads. Try the search string “rapidshare links” for example.

Rapidshare Free Premium Accounts:

Rapidshare sometimes promotes free premium accounts. Head over to this rapidshare link to check if they currently offer free premium accounts.

Ten Windows Keyboard Shortcuts I cannot live without

When I’m helping friends and family members who are not that tech savvy with their computers I always notice that they do not use keyboard shortcuts. Instead of doing the plain old CTRL C, CTRL V to copy and paste selected text they use the mouse to do that. Thinking about this for a while I thought it might be useful to list ten Windows keyboard shortcuts that I cannot live without.

It hopefully might help some users who are starting to work with Windows and probably even some users who rely on the mouse to do everything in Windows. But before I start I would like to explain the reason why I’m using keyboard shortcuts in certain situations and not the mouse.

The main advantage of a keyboard shortcut is speed. Take the copy and paste example. A user who is using the mouse marks the text that he wants to copy, presses the right mouse button, selects copy from the list, moves to the new document where he wants to paste it, right-clicks the mouse again and selects paste.

Using keyboard shortcuts instead makes the right-click part of the process obsolete. Lets start with the Ten Windows Keyboard Shortcuts I cannot live without.

• CTRL C / CTRL V: This one is obvious and probably the most used keyboard shortcut in the world. CTRL C copies whatever is currently marked and CTRL V pastes the contents again. (C for Copy, V for Verbose)
• CTRL A: The copy and paste shortcuts work well with this one. CTRL A selects all.
• ALT F4: Closes the active window
• F3: This one opens the Windows Search.
• ALT TAB: Switches between open applications.
• CTRL P: Opens the Print Screen dialog.
• F2: Rename the active item
• CTRL ESC: Displays the Windows Start Menu.
• SHIFT DEL: Deletes the item immediately without moving it into the trashbin
• TAB: Move to the next control, excellent for forms.
• Spacebar: Checks a checkbox, presses a button if on a button, selects an option if on an option
• Return, ESC: Those are single shortcuts. Return is used perform the active command while ESC cancels the current task.

Those are my ten. Remember it’s only for Windows and not specific applications like Firefox (I would definitely have mentioned F11 then for example). If you find different Windows shortcuts noteworthy let me know please.

Rapidshare Happy Hours

Rapidshare have implemented a new captcha for some time that asks the user to enter four out of x letters that have a cat (others have a similar looking picture of a dog with a smaller head) in the background. This new captcha is confusing to users and many have decided that it is not worth the trouble.

One solution is to wait for the so called Rapidshare Happy Hours which allow downloading without filling out the captchas and no waiting time if the servers can handle the download. Rapidshare Happy Hours are active between 0:00 - 18:00 UTC+1 on Mondays to Fridays and 0:00 - 14:00 UTC+1 on Saturdays and Sundays.

If you are a heavy Rapidshare user you might find the Firefox add-on Happy Checker useful which notifies the user when the Rapidshare Happy Hour is active. I think that it should not be to hard to memorize the Happy Hour times and download from Rapidshare in those times only without installing yet another Firefox extension.

Reinstall Windows Xp in Unattended Mode

Sometimes you feel like reinstalling windows Xp, but you think of all the softwares and application installed on your computer. You will then be required to reinstall all of them.
Now there is a way to reinstall windows Xp, where in you can keep all the installed application and all the personal settings. Its simple and easy, just follow these steps.
Before moving ahead, make sure that CD-Rom in NOT your first boot device.

1. Login to Xp and Insert you Windows Xp disk in your drive.
2. Go to Command Prompt, and go to the drive(eg:- d:> assuming D is your CD drive.)
3. Then go to i386 folder(d:/i386>) and then type in the command prompt “WINNT32 /unattend”.
4. You will then see a setup starts running, which reinstalls the Windows on your computer, without harnessing your installed application and settings, and the too in unattended mode.

This is the method of reinstalling Windows in Unattended Mode. We have already seen the installing fresh copy of Windows Xp in Unattended Mode.

Hello guys, It’s Readers Query time again. This time one of our reader faced a problem of missing Boot.ini file. The computer was not able to boot because it was not able to find the proper location of the boot files, thus creating a problem. But for this simple reason, you cannot format your computer, and when you know its just a small file. What can then be done?
Usually when this file is deleted, it automatically rewrites a new file, and this booting the system. But in this case, it was not. Whats the solution then ?

Well, to this problem what can be done is booting XP from a external device, be it Floppy, Pen drive or even a Disk. You just need to copy the booting files into these devices, and all is then controlled by XP.
You need to have a second computer, in case your computer is down too. But if it is healthy and doing good, prepare a copy NOW !!!

Firstly format your device like Floppy, or Pen drive in a FAT File system, and then copy “ntldr” and “ntdetect.com” files from the i386 folder of XP disk. Then you need to copy your Boot.ini file to the drive to make it bootable.
If in case you need to write the whole code of this file, Follow this small tutorial for the same.
That’s it You can then boot your computer from any external device.

Editing The Boot.ini File

Boot.ini file is an initialization file, but editing it for some people has been a bad experience. In this post i will let you know the codes and their meaning and also how to edit them easily. By default this is hidden in Xp, but in case of win 98, it can be searched.
To access the file in Xp :-

• Right click on My Computer and select Properties.
• Go to the Advanced tab and click Settings in Startup and Recovery section.
• Click Edit and you will see the Boot.ini file opened in a notepad.

Now File says something like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect

The First line [Boot loader] just states the Booting Process.
timeout=30 is the time that will be provided to you to select from the list of OS’s installed. This works only in case you have multiple OS’s installed. It can be reduced easily, but make sure you give enough time to react upon it. 10 Seconds is the appropriate time.
The third line says multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect. multi(0) tells us the IDE on which the drive is attached to. Usually its Primary only. disk(0) shows the number of Hard disks mounted. rdisk(0) tells us from which disk it is booting. In case of SCSI drives, it might not show up. partition(1) tell that on which Logical partition the OS is installed on.
After that it says “Microsoft Windows XP Professional” that is the name that shows up on the OS selection page. You can put your own name there as well.
This was the editable part of Boot.ini file.
Now in case if you delete the file accidentally then you need not worry, you don’t need to create the file again. Xp will create a file of its own, and your system is safe.
But in case if someone edits it and puts in the wrong information, then it you system will find the file but not the correct path. So that might harm your Computer.
So, this was a small post on Boot.ini file and its editing. IF you got anything more to say or add, Do Comment.