Tze Chuen’s Weblog

Previously, my downloads can only reach 15k/s MAX on my third world country 512kbps “broadband” (TMNet StreamyX). Now, it can reach three times that speed comfortably. Keep up the good work uTorrent.

Interested?

Forum thread - http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=31998

Download link - http://download.utorrent.com/beta/utorrent-1.8-alpha-8205.upx.exe

Installer weighs in at only 257KB.

I’ll let the screenshot do the talking.

Download the latest beta here:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Before you put this tip to test, please make sure you know how to:

1. Burn a CD Image (.iso file)
2. Boot from your CD/DVD Drive
3. Think of an excuse for resetting your gf’s password

Pictured is the bios page for changing the boot sequence of my crap ass pc (that I only spend time with 2 months a year).

Your bios will probably look different than the one pictured above, if they looked the same then you should consider upgrading.

OK MOVING ON……

So apparently you need to reset or change your windows account password because…

• You magically forgotten about your password
• Your gf is locking your pc because you are spending too much time on it
• You woke up 10 years into the future from your frozen sleep, not knowing who you really are and the only clues are buried within your password-locked pc

Fret not chumps. I have tested this method on both XP and Vista installations and it worked fine.

Sure, there are other methods out there that can help you reset your password, but I feel those take too many steps to achieve the same goal.

Also, some methods require you to be LOGGED IN to reset/change your password. Those methods will be totally useless when you can’t even access the computer.

***

So, are you ready!?

First, download Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) from

http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=5&front_id=12

Or click here to download version 3.2

Burn it to a CD or DVD.

Reboot your PC and boot from your TRK. You should see a bunch of texts on your screen - Don’t panic! If you’re a linux savvy dude then operating TRK is a piece of cake for you.

After TRK is fully loaded, you will be shown a “command prompt” and this is where the fun begins. Here you need to know which account that exists in your Windows installation that you wish to hack. If you don’t know the account username then your best bet is to reset the password for Administrator.

EDIT: You can execute “winpass -l” to find out the list of usernames in your Windows installation!

The account username can be found out by running Task Manager and looking at the list of processes. Your account username should be there in the user column. But then again, you’re probably locked out of your account so you won’t be able to find out your account username ;D

Now, let’s try to reset/change your account’s password.

type “winpass -u Administrator”

OR

“winpass -u [your account username]” (without the quotes and brackets)

TRK will then proceed to search for the installations that exist in your PC. When you’re prompted just type the number of the windows installation. If you only have one installation like I do in the picture above, don’t bother typing in anything, just hit enter and it should do the trick.

You will then be prompted if you want to disable SYSKEY. I have no f**king idea what’s that but TRK assures you there’s no need to do so and even warns you that if you turn it off in Windows 2000 then you could be in deep shit.

Just hit enter with nothing keyed in and move on.

Boom! TRK asks you to enter a new password. But in most cases the best way to hack into an account is to reset the password. To reset the password, just type * (this is an asterisk A.K.A SHIFT+8) and hit enter.

TRK does its shit and the password should be RESET! Reboot your PC and see if the trick worked!

To reboot, just type reboot and hit enter or you can be old fashion and hit the reset button. Make sure you remember to eject your TRK cd/dvd before you boot into Windows.

Till the next tech tip, I hope you found much use with this one. ;)

P/S: I hold no responsibility if your PC decides to explode. Please state your gender in comments before you ask for help (Just kidding!)

Pic: WOW QTRAX IS AMAZING IT LETS YOU PLAY SONGS AND SURF THE WEB I DIDN’T KNOW THAT!!!

If you’ve been itching to know how to access ALL mainstream/default Windows and Mac formatted hard disks on both platforms, you sir have come to the right place. I’ve done my research and have been using this solution for a few months now on my external hard disk, which is a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 500gb.

This tech tip is pretty much noob-proof because it doesn’t involve any system hacking - it just involves installing a few apps.

This tip has been fully tested to work under Mac OS X 10.5, however it should work fine in older Mac OS X’s. You just have to install the appropriate app version.

First, let’s look at how you can take FULL control on NTFS partitions from your Mac.

This is actually very simple. Install the following apps in order.

***

1) MacFUSE - http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

look for MacFUSE-Core-10.5-1.3.1.dmg if you’re using Leopard, and MacFUSE-Core-10.4-1.3.0.dmg if you’re using Tiger.

2) NTFS-3G - http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/

the latest blog post should provide you the latest version with download link, i.e. the latest version is 1.2129 at time of writing

***

The installation for both of these apps should be plain simple and straightforward.

Whoa-la! After installing both these apps you should be able to Read and Write data onto your NTFS partition!

Pictured here is a NTFS partition (duh!)

Notable Limitation of the NTFS-3G partition: deleting stuff will not move them to the Trash, you will be prompted to permanently delete them.

***

Now on to Read/Write support for Mac volumes on Windows.

As of date, there is no free alternative for such capability, one software that I have fully tested for the past few months is MacDrive by Mediafour (http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/). However, it doesn’t come cheap. Retailing at $49.95 USD, you might wanna think twice before deciding wether you want your hard drive to be in NTFS or HFS. I think you already know the answer.

Notable Limitations of this software: You HAVE to soft eject your HFS+ Journaled volume before you try to mount it with MacDrive. Else, you will have trouble mounting it. Also, if you got Daemon Tools installed, make sure it’s updated to the latest version because older versions seems to have conflict with this software, that can prevent your volume from mounting.

Pictured here is a HFS+ Journaled volume mounted in Windows XP (it should also work in Vista according to MediaFour).

Any questions? Feel free to post in comments and I’ll try to help.

Also, if anyone finds a better/free alternative for the MacDrive solution feel free to post in comments as well.

P/S: If you’re wondering why my hard drive is so empty. It’s because I was playing with the diskutil command in Terminal, trying to split my partitions into two. The command did the job well, so well that it wiped my data ;(