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Recently, I have encountered a couple computers having the same problem – Windows XP taskbar not showing opened windows and applications. This is probably caused by some viruses or trojans. I did a virus scan with NOD32 and it found and removed some viruses. However, the problem remains. I then used Malwarebytes (which I have mentioned earlier in this post), hoping that it can fix the problem. Malwarebytes found some trojans too but not able to fix the taskbar.

After searching on the Internet, I found a script that can fix the taskbar automatically. After running the script, your taskbar is restarted and you can see the opened windows again. You can download the “Fix Windows XP Taskbar Script” here.

P.S. Thanks to the person who wrote this script for the benefit of the world.

Are you having a virus scan every time you are booted into Windows and the scan is showing hundreds of infections? Are you having a pop up next to the clock telling you that your system is infected and you need to download their antivirus software to clean it? Is there the phrase “Virus Alert” next to your system clock? You are probably having Micro Antivirus 2009, Antivirus 2008 XP, or something with a similar name installed on your system. Whatever the name is, these are all fake warnings and they pretty much act in the same way. They pretend they are legitimate virus scanners and try to trick you into paying them.

Disable Startup Services

To get rid of these infections, the first step is to prevent them from starting up. You can control startup program and services in System Configuration.

1. Click the Start button, and click Run…
2. In the Run box, type msconfig and press OK.
3. The System Configuration box comes up, click on the Services tab.
4. Check “Hide all Microsoft services”.
5. In the remaining list of services, uncheck all entries.
6. Click on the Startup tab.
7. Uncheck all entries and click OK.
8. Restart your computer

Once you restarted your computer, your system should be in a more functional state. If not, then you can always boot into safe mode.

Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware

The next step is to scan your system with an antivirus program. However, I have tried using popular commercial scanners such as Kaspersky and NOD32. But neither of them can completely remove this type of infections. The most effective scanner dealing with this type of infections is Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware. I have used it on a number of systems and it removed the infections successfully and fixed the registries. Some infections would disable your task manager, display properties, and remove the Run, My Computer, and other items in your Start menu. Malwarebytes can revert these change automatically in the registry.

1. Download Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware software from their website.
2. Install it on your computer.
3. Once it starts up, just perform a quick scan.
4. Once the scan is done, click on “view results”.
5. Then click on remove.

After the scan, you can now restart your computer to see if you are still getting the fake infection warnings. You may also want to try scanning your computer with NOD32 or Kaspersky at this time for viruses that Malwarebytes couldn’t catch. In the end, you can enable your startup services again in System Configuration.

Joomla is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) today. It is fully featured with a lot of plugins and enhancements. Its setup is so easy with just a few clicks. Because of its popularity, its getting quite a bit of attention from hackers. If your Joomla site is getting hacked, fixed, and getting hacked again the next day, then you may have forgotten the last step of installing Joomla.

Htaccess.txt

When you upload the Joomla files to your web server, there should be a htaccess.txt file included in the root directory. If you open up this file in a text editor, you should see that it contains some rewrite rules to block out some common exploits. However, leaving the file as htaccess.txt won’t put it in effect. To put it in effect, you should rename the file to “.htaccess” without the quotes. Note that there is a period at the beginning of the filename. This indicates that the file is a hidden file. You should also make sure that the file is read only.

After you have completed the last step of the Joomla installation, your website should be more secure and less likely to be a target to the hackers.

Once in a while, you may have to repair your Windows due to system file corruptions. Windows repair is useful in some cases where you are stuck in a login loop or you receive some error messages at startup. Windows repair is done by booting from the Windows installation disc and choosing Repair after the installation process searches for existing OS on your hard drive.

IE Shortcut Duplicates IE Shortcut

However, after repairing Windows, you may experience difficulty starting up Internet Explorer from the shortcut icon on the desktop. When you double click on it, it will simply creates another shortcut icon instead of launching Internet Explorer. This problem is probably due to the installation of different version of IE during the repair process. Before the repair, you may have already updated your IE to version 7. When you repair Windows, it is IE 6 that overwrites it. This will give you the problem mentioned above.

To resolve this, you can manually download Internet Explorer 7 from Microsoft’s website and reinstall it. Once it’s done, you should be able to fire up Internet Explorer from you desktop again. You can download Internet Explorer from the link below:

Download Internet Explorer 7

One of the most important data to backup before formatting your hard drive is the downloaded emails. If you are using Outlook (not Outlook Express) to check your emails, then there is a simple way to backup your emails, calendar, contacts, tasks and notes. All you need to do is to make a copy of the .pst file which is usually named Outlook.pst by default. This .pst file contains all the information you have downloaded and created inside Outlook, except for the email account settings (which you can write them down and re-enter them for your new installation).

Where is the .PST File?

The .pst file is usually stored under your user account’s directory. In Windows Vista, it would be like this.

C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst

If you are unsure, you can always check in Outlook by clicking “File”, then “Data File Management…”. You should find the path under the filename column.

So copying the .pst file is a safe way to keep your emails and if your Windows is not accessible, you can simply plugin your hard drive to a working machine and copy over the .pst file.

Restoring .PST File and Fixing Your Contacts

Restoring your emails is easy. Before you do that, make sure you have run Outlook once so that it creates the Outlook.pst file first. Then you can copy over the .pst file that you have backed up and replace the empty one. The next time you start Outlook, you should be able to see all your old emails. Remember to add your email accounts to Outlook since the .pst file doesn’t contain your email account settings.

However, there is one flaw to fix. Assuming that you have saved some email addresses in the Contacts, if you try to compose a new email and insert an email address in the “To” field from your address book, you will receive an error. To fix this, all you need to do is to re-create the address book.

Click on “Tools” > “Email Accounts…” > Select “View or change existing directories or address books” > Click “Next” > Remove the current “Outlook Address Book” and add a new one > Click “Finish”

After completing the steps above, you need to restart Outlook and then click on “Contacts” once. After that, you should be able to insert email addresses from your contact list when composing an email.

If your computer says that it has connected to a wireless network but failed to grab an IP address, then it is possible that the wireless security key saved in Windows is messed up. This is very likely the case if your computer were used to connect successfully and all of a sudden it fails, while other computers are connecting fine. Then you may want to try deleting the saved profiles from Windows. To delete the profiles, please follow the steps below, assuming your are using Windows XP:

1. Go to control panel, and double-click on network connections.
2. Right click on your Wireless Network Connection icon.
3. Click on Properties.
4. Click on the Wireless Networks tab
5. In the Preferred Networks section, you should see a list of saved profiles. Select the one that is not working and click Remove.
6. Click OK to close the box.

Now, if you try to connect to your wireless network again, you should be asked to enter the wireless key. Make sure you enter it correctly and you should be able to connect. Please note that the above steps assume that you are using Windows’ default wireless utility.

Removing Wireless Network Profiles

If you need to find out your WAN IP for any reasons (maybe you are hosting a game and trying to get your friends to connect to you), what is the quickest way to do it? One way you can do is to login to your router and check on the status page and it should tell you what the WAN IP is. But what if you have forgotten the password to login?

One quick way to check is simply go to a website that checks your IP address. You can try www.checkip.org and www.ipaddress.com. These websites will tell you right away what your current WAN IP is. Some will tell you more info such as where the IP is from and which organization owns the IP.

This is one quick and easy way to find out what your WAN IP is without worrying about touching your router configuration. If you are a tech, this is one solution if you don’t have login access to your client’s router.