How to Connect Wifi in Windows XP

• Make sure you are in a place where you adequate wireless signals and your laptop supports it.
  
• If the connection that you want to connect to appears in the Windows Wireless Connection Manager then click on connect in order to connect to it, or else you can click on “Refresh network list” to scan for available wireless signals.
  
• Run the Wireless Network Setup Wizard to scan for new networks.
• Once your network is found, give it an SSID name if you want so that you can easily recognize or connect it later without scanning.
  
• Choose the “Encryption” (WEP or WPA) which is set as per the network provider and enter your passkey. (Ideally this should be usually WPA because it is harder to decrypt and thus more secure). Enter the Network Key
  
• In the Wireless network properties window, set any properties of the connection if you would like to. If you are a newbie, I suggest you to skip this step.
  
• A new dialog box should appear with Connecting message.
  
• Once done you are now connected to the wireless network.

Security Tip : Never use public wireless internet to access your personal and confidential information like Paypal, Bank Accounts, etc.

• Cannot delete file: Access is denied
• There has been a sharing violation.
• The source or destination file may be in use.
• The file is in use by another program or user.
• Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

What you do normally is you will try to reboot your system and delete the files. And one of the biggest vexations that you will encounter if you are a Windows user but thankfully, there is a freeware to solve this problem.

So how to delete undeletable files?

IN order to delete an undeletable file, you need to download this handy little utility called Unlocker which as the name says, unlocks any process that is linked to the file that you want to delete. The best part is that the tool is linked to the context menu of your explorer. So you dont need to start a new application to do the process.

With the Unlocker software, you only need to right click on the stubborn folder or file, and select “Unlocker”. If the file or folder is locked then a window will appear with a list of processes locking the file or folder. Select the locks and click Unlock and you are done.

1. Simply right click the folder or file and select Unlocker
2. If the folder or file is locked, a window listing of lockers will appear
3. Click on Unlock All. (This will remove the handler process which is using the file)
4. Now you can easily delete that file like you normally do.

Another good thing about the feature is that the process is linked to windows explorer and closely monitors your explorer activity. SO any time a file is not deleted due to some error, the unlocker window automatically pops up for the rescue.

Have you got a hard disk formatted using the FAT32 file system? You may find that you cannot copy huge files or documents to that particular drive. So how would you resolve that, and transform the file system onto NTFS? Here is a quick guide.

The FAT32 is the file system, which most external drives and USB drives are usually shipped with. Fat32 is an older File System used with Windows 98 which can’t handle files larger than about 4 GB in size — that indicates most full-length or BluRay or DVD movies and anything really large, like a virtual machine or databases. When trying to copy a file, you may get an error just like the following:

It’s well worth observing that FAT32 operates just great  virtually any Operating system, but NTFS is normally read-only on Linux system or Macintosh OS X.

If you’ve got a heap of files on the drive and don’t have enough free space to move them around, you can simply convert the file system directly to NTFS. Just open up an Administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking and choosing Run as Administrator, and then you can type convert /? to see the syntax for the convert command.

In our example, the drive letter is F: so this is the exact command we would use:

convert F: /FS:NTFS

The conversion process usually takes quite some time, particularly if you’ve got a big  drive.

In case you do not have a very big amount of data on the drive, the most effective thing would be to copy that data from your drive to elsewhere, format the drive, thereafter copy the data back. All you’ve got to carry out is right-click on the drive and choose Format.

And then select NTFS in the file system drop-down.

Finish the format, and copy your data back. Nice and easy.

Determining the Variant

Thought most of these viruses does the same thing, but there may be variants of each of them. For example one variant might save itself in the “windows” directory where as the other might save itself in “windows/system32/” directory.

It is not a hard task to do if you have a couple of tools up in hand. I recommend Hijackthis, Super Spyware Removal and UnhackMe. Hijackthis and Super Spyware Removal are free of cost, where as UnhackMe is free to try.

Generate the log using Hijackthis (I may write a complete tutorial on this later) to find out where the virus has hidden itself.

Enabling Task manager

Most of these kinds of viruses directly affect your task manager and folder options. If you find your task manager not working then use the following registry to

Download this Registry file to enable Task Manager

The Final Cleansing

Now scan your computer with UnhackMe for any rootkits. You may be incited to check and verify each start up service and programs that are tied in with Windows Startup. I advice that after the scan completion you restart your computer and scan it again.

Now make a complete system scan using Super Anti Spyware. This is a great application and is updated almost daily with new malware definitions and over all, its free. It can also be used to restore msconfig utility, task manager, folder options etc that might have been denied access by the malware.

Use a better antivirus, AVG works great for me.

Now follow these steps here at How to protect your computer from autorun viruses to ensure you don’t get any such viruses and malware again

Though Windows Vista and Windows 7 allow you to format a drive with NTFS with ease, Windows XP only allows you to format with FAT and FAT32. However this simple trick you let can format with NTFS in Windows XP if you want to and access it at better speed (or probably compression too if you want).
Open Device manager (Right Click on My Computer Icon and Properties, Click on Hardware Tab and then device manager and open it.)

Search for Disk Drives in the Tree and Select your USB Drives Properties (Right Click, Do i need to say ?)

Under Policies Tab select Optimize for performance. Now this will allow you to format USB Drives with NTFS file system.

Now to format your USB drive, right-click the drive and select format. You will find the NTFS option there now.

There is a lot of advantage in using NTFS over FAT File System if you are using these drives for connecting them to computers. The drawback is other devices (mp3 players, DVD players) may or may not support.

Autorun virus are widely seen these days here right in USB thumb drives, external hard disks, PCs and Laptops. People find it very difficult to remove autorun virus. Well I must admit that it is very difficult for a non IT person to work out for a solution for those viruses because they disable almost everything the task manager, registry, folder options and sometimes access to the internet as well. Before going into how to deal with these viruses, I would first like you guys to make sure your PC is well protected to avoid these viruses and malware.

Follow my guide and I can assure you that this will help you prevent autorun viruses to a great extent.

Update Your Protection Software

Well most of you use a paid antivirus I guess like Norton or McAfee. If yes them make sure that they are updated always. I see about atleast 20 viruses, spyware and malware definitions daily when I update so I recommend to keep things updated regularly. For those who can’t buy these we have many freebies for the rescue.

Disable Autorun for External Drives

External media like USB and CD/DVD Drives make use of autorun.inf file to start an application as soon as the drive is initiated. Most of the malware programs create a copy of this file to auto start themselves on the clients PC. And we never don’t need this feature do we? (Only if you are damn lazy to click your mouse)

To get to the configuration screen for this setting, go to Start Menu \ Run and type in:

gpedit.msc

In Group Policy window. You should select Administrative Templates \ System in the tree view:

You will see an item in the right side pane called “Turn off Autoplay”

Double click the item, and set the radio button to Enabled, and change the “Turn off Autoplay on” to All Drives.

Autorun Virus Removal Tools and Anti Spyware Tools

There are many Autorun Virus Removal Tools and malware removal tools available now for free. Personally I recommend these (based on their priority how much useful they are)

Super Anti Spyware (freeware)

Unhack Me (fully functional Evaluation)

Autorun Eater (Free)

Icons Arrangement

I arrange my icons by “Type” and then “sort them by groups” so I don’t click an application thinking it to be folder. Simple yet effective. Isn’t it ?

Right Click to Explore

Make it a habit to Right Click and Explore rather than double clicking the Drive Icon so that you don’t autorun a drive explicitly.