How to Make a Hidden Folder

Create a new folder on your hard drive.

When you name it, hold down "Alt" and press "0160" this will create an invisible space so it will appear as if it has no name.

Right click on it and select "Properties" select the tab "customize" and select "change icon" scroll along and you should see a few blank spaces.

Click on any one and click OK when you have saved the settings. The folder will be invisible to hide all your personal files.

What Is a Hacker?

What Is a Hacker?

The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term ‘hacker’, most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to become a hacker, though, only two are really relevant.

There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.

The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term ‘hacker’.

There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.

The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.

If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about crackers.

Exclusively from : http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

Check DirectX Version Installed, and Fix DirectX Problems

Understanding DirectX

DirectX has many uses in Windows. It allows developers to standardise certain video display and audio files - this makes them easier to run on different types of PCs.

DirectX is supposed to be backward compatible. So, if a game was written for DirectX 8, it should run if you have DirectX 9 installed on your PC. However, a game written specifically for DirectX 9 will generally not run on DirectX 8 or earlier. DirectX also has smaller incremental releases such as DirectX 9.0c (which has small but important differences compared to versions 9.0, 9.0a or 9.0b). A program written for DirectX 9.0c will generally not work with with versions such as 9.0a. That small letter at the end is important.

If you have an older version of DirectX and a program needs a newer release, you will often see errors like:

• Unable to find file d3d8.dll, ddraw.dll or d3d9.dll
• Cannot intialize dinput9.dll
• This application has failed to start because d3d9.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem.
• dplay.dll has performed an illegal operation
• Fatal Exception error in dplayx.dll
• Access violation error in DirectX file D3D8.DLL
• A required .DLL File, D3D9.DLL, was not found
• Black/empty screen display
• Looping audio, pulsing sound or no sound at all

To fix most of these problems, all you need to do is make sure that you have downloaded the latest version on your system.

How do you check which version of DirectX is on your system: click the Start menu, then choose Run. In the box type dxdiag and press Enter on your keyboard. A new Window will appear and your version of DirectX will be listed at the bottom.

If you have an earlier version of DirectX installed on your system and install the latest version, you will see little difference in available space on your hard drive following the installation. However, DirectX 9 will overwrite any earlier versions and you cannot 'officially' remove it. There are many third-party utilities that may perform this task - this can help if your installation was corrupted. Search Google for 'DirectX Uninstaller'.

One annoying part of the DirectX active download available from Microsoft's site is that you can't save the files you downloaded. If you want to install the DirectX package on another PC, you'll have to download it each time. One solution is to get the 'redist' version - all files are downloaded in one package (rather than an active download). See above for download links to this package.

Operating system notes: you can't update DirectX on Windows NT. The latest version available for Windows 98 or Me is DirectX 8.1. All other releases of Windows should use the DirectX 9 update listed below :

Download DirectX 9.0c (Full Package)

About:Blank - adware pest removal

Here's the problem - Internet Explorer seems to have decided that the home page About:blank is what will greet you every time you open a new browser window. You try to change it back but either your Internet Options are greyed out or you change the page back, only to find next time you start Internet Explorer the dreaded About:blank has returned.

There are many possible causes for this behaviour and most are evil. One possible cause is a virus, but this is not very common. The most likely culprit is an adware/browser hijack program - in particular, CoolWebSearch.

The symptom that identifies the CoolWebSearch or a close variation is that About:Blank appears as the address, but in the background a window pops up stating that spyware, adware or something similar has been found on your system. CoolWebSearch is a browser hijack program - it takes over your home page, and keeps changing it back. Its purpose is to show you advertising, or flog you an over-priced piece of software to fix the issue CoolWebSearch has created. The About:Blank change is a trick designed to confuse users - regrettably, it is very successful!


The simplest way to remove the About:Blank adware is to use a specially designed tool and clean up your system. Step one is to flush out all the temp files on your system: Cookies, Temporary Internet Files and Temp files (you can do this via Internet Explorer's Tools-Internet Options or for a more thorough clean, use a privacy eraser tool. Next up, get a copy of CWShredder. This should kill CoolWebSearch and allow you to change your home page from About:Blank, plus it will kill those pop up windows.

If these options don't work, you may need a more in-depth tool .

The About:Blank deception is devious enough already - it may be altered in the future, so keep an eye out for other programs that contain it (main sources: free programs with adware files) - and stay clear. Finally, consider adding an anti-adware tool to work next to your anti-virus software.

Fix Flash player installation problems

How to:

• Fix the Youtube error message 'Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player'.

• Check the version of Flash Player installed on your PC

• Fix common Flash Player installation errors

Understanding Flash Player

Adobe's Flash Player is needed to access certain types of content on the Web. Generally, you will need the latest version installed on your computer to properly access Flash content, including videos on Youtube.
That's all well and good, but we are guessing the reason you are here is that something has gone wrong. Either Flash seems to install but the content is still not showing, or no matter what you did, Flash wouldn't install on the official Adobe site. Sadly, these are very common issues.
The most frustrating error appears at sites such as Youtube where you see 'Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player. Get the latest flash player.' In most reports we have seen of this Youtube error, it is nothing to with Javascript being turned off, but the Flash Player itself.


Why does the installation on Adobe's site fail?

Well, it could be a range of issues. Here are some common ones:

- Security software is interfering with the installation
- User rights are not set at the correct level
- There is an unknown bug on the Adobe site
- For some reason, the Flash ActiveX files are not properly registered on the system (common in Internet Explorer 7 and Vista)
- There is some other Windows Vista or Internet Explorer 7 issue
- ActiveX controls or security levels in Internet Explorer are set in a way that prevents the installation
- The protected zone in Windows Vista is causing the problem
- Something is wrong with the existing version of Flash on your computer. It is probably corrupted and this is preventing the proper installation of the latest Flash player.
- For the Youtube error 'Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player', this is mainly due to a corrupted installation of the Flash Player.

Solution to all of the above : get the standalone Flash Player installation file (links are at the top of this page). There are two types: one for Internet Explorer, the other is for Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape.


Something seems to have gone wrong
Okay, you downloaded the standalone installation and the Flash Player is still not working properly. Did you run the installation file you downloaded and close all open windows - including your Web browser? Silly as it may seem, some people forget these steps. Otherwise, it may be an older or corrupt version of Flash that is causing the issue.

Solution: Adobe - and many of our visitors - advise you to use the Flash Player uninstall tool (see the top of this page). Restart your computer and try running the standalone installation file again.


Determining what version of Flash is on your system
A highly frustrating aspect of Flash is that sometimes you think you have installed one version, yet you are being told something different on various web sites. You need to cross check two things. Most issues relate to Internet Explorer, so we'll deal with it here. This is going to be a marathon - stay in there...

Start Internet Explorer and from the menu click Tools-Internet Options. Click the General Tab, followed by the Settings button about half-way down the window on the right. Now click the View Objects button. You should see an option called 'Shockwave Flash Object'. Right-click on the file and choose Properties. Finally, click the Version tab. Now go to Adobe's version check (this link opens in a new window). Do the two version numbers match and are they the latest version? If yes, you should be OK to view content. If not - or there is still a problem - use the Flash Player uninstall tool (see the top of this page) and try reinstalling the player.


http://www.softwarepatch.com/network-security/flashdownload-security.html

Create your own autorun CD or DVD

It is easy to create an autorun CD or DVD for Windows and all it takes are a few files (which we've supplied for free). The technique can be used to open other file types, but HTML is used for a reason: it is the most commonly supported by Windows (most PCs have a Web browser) and it is flexible. You could use it to open other files, such as a Powerpoint presentation, but it would require the end user to have Powerpoint or the Powerpoint viewer on their system.

The autorun zip file we've prepared contains everything you need to autorun a CD and open a HTML file. So download a copy - it's tiny and free - see above for the download link.



So why can't an autorun open a HTML directly? It is because a Windows autorun can only open an application (program) not a data file (eg HTML). You cannot tell an autorun to directly open a HTML file. Try it, and nothing will happen. To get around his problem, we are using a .bat file which Windows will treat as a program. This special file will then open the HTML file.

Assembling the CD
Download and copy the files to your root directory of the CD. These are: autorun.inf, autorun.bat and index.html. You can put all sorts of files on the rest of the CD. They won't affect the autorun. You can test the autorun by burning the three files to the root directory of a test CD-R. Open the CD drive and close it again. Viola, you have just created your own autorun HTML CD. You should change the contents of index.html to whatever you need. The index.html supplied is only a test page.

Changes you can make
The autorun can open any type of file and display any message you want. To make changes, open Windows Notepad (do not use Word, WordPad or other Word processors). Now open the autorun.bat file from within Notepad. The order is important, if you double-click the autorun.bat file, it will try to run. So open NotePad and select File-Open and choose the autorun.bat file. You'll see four lines of code.

The first line after @echo (remember the space) will appear as a comment in the autorun launch Window. This comment will be seen very briefly by your end-users. It can be changed to anything you want, but since it only appears for a second or less, don't make it too wordy. If you wanted to say 'The CD is loading now...', the first line of code will look like:

@echo The CD is loading now...

The second line of the code tells the .bat file to open to your index.html file. If want to open a file by another file (eg readme.txt), then it would read:

@start readme.txt

Make sure you leave the last two lines untouched (@cls and @exit) - they must always appear last. Save the changes and you are done. That that's all you need to create your own HTML autorun CD.