Free Partition Wizard for Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Windows 7

Partition Wizard is a Windows based partition manager. Using Partition Wizard you can easily perform partition operation safely and quickly. This could be a great tool for those people who are not familiar with the manual partition or formatting. It also has a Enhanced  Data Protecting technology which keeps your data safe even in case of power outages or hardware failure and the best part of Partition Wizard is that it’s absolutely FREE for Home and Business edition.

Home Edition:

Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager designed by MT Solution Ltd. Partition Wizard Home Edition is designated for home user only. For more details click here: Home Edition

Business Edition:

Partition Wizard Business Edition is optimized for business environment with better performance. For business edition you would have to do one time registration to get a free business edition license. For more details click here: Business Edition

Main Features of Partition Wizard:

1. Support Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows7 (32 bit & 64 bit) operating system.
2. Support RAID.
3. Extend system partition to improve computer performance to maximum.
4. Manage the hard disk to get the best performance of computer.
5.  Create , Delete and Format partitions with simple steps.
6.  Disk Copy to protect or transfer data.
7. Support disk and partition size larger than 2 TB.
8.  Convert partition format from FAT to NTFS.
9.  Partition Copy: Copy the entire hard disk to another one.
10. Copy Disk Wizard: Copy the entire hard disk to another one without windows reinstalling.
11.  Disk Map - Visually demonstrate your disk/partition configuration; preview the changes before applying.
12. Hide/unhide partition, set active partition, etc. - Change partition properties.
13. Explore FAT/NTFS partition

Go ahead and give it a try, you don't have to loose anything for it and let us know if this helped you.

[via: Partition Wizard]

Firefox 3.5.1 Fixes Critical Security Vulnerability

Recently Firefox has released Firefox 3.5.1 which fixes one of the critical security problem.  A crash that was determined which could result in an exploitable memory corruption problem which was reported by a Firefox user zbyte.

Problem Description

This issue happens in certain cases after a return from a native function such as escape() the “Just In Time” (JIT) compiler which could lead to a corrupt state and it could be exploited by any attacker to install malware.

 

Impact on user

The vulnerability can trick a victim into viewing a malicious Web page containing the exploit code and affect the users machine without their knowledge .

Workaround

This vulnerability can be avoided by disabling the JIT in the JavaScript engine which is only for Firefox 3.5 users, earlier versions of Firefox are not affect which do not support the JIT feature.

Steps to disable JIT

1. Enter about:config in the browser’s location bar.
2. Type jit in the Filter box at the top of the config editor.
3. Double-click the line containing javascript.options.jit.content setting the value to false.

NOTE: Disabling the JIT will result in decreased JavaScript performance and is only recommended as a temporary security measure. So I would suggest you to directly update to Firefox 3.5.1

 

Fix

You can click Help -> Check for Updates option to update your browser or it’ll automatically notify you about the update very soon. You would have to restart your Firefox after updating to Firefox 3.5.1

You can even use the given link to download the latest fix : Download Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1

Firefox 3.5.1 also fixes the following issues:

• Several security issues.
• Several stability issues.
• An issue that was making Firefox take a long time to load on some Windows systems.
• Check out the complete list of changes in this version.

I would also request personally all the Firefox 3.5 users and Orkut Sharing subscribers to apply this update as soon as possible.

[ source: Mozilla ]

New in Gmail Labs: Authentication icon for verified senders

Gmail is always trying to improve and work on new ways to protect Gmail inboxes from spam and phishing emails. They have recently come up with a brand new feature in Gmail Labs: Authentication icon for verified senders. Enabling this new feature you can at least be sure you’ll not get any fake emails from eBay and PayPal.

Steps to enable Authentication icon for verified senders:

1. Login to Gmail.
2. Go to the following path Setting –> Labs tab and scroll down to locate “Authentication icon for verified senders”.   
   
3. Select “Enable” and then click “Save Changes”.

4. You are protected..!

Now you will see a key icon next to verified emails that are “supper-trustworthy”. Which is a technical term invented by Brad Taylor meaning 

1. The sender, usually a financial institution, is a target of phishers,  
2. All of the sender's email is authenticated with DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail),
3. Gmail rejects any fake messages that claim to come from this sender, but actually don't. 

As this is usually for a financial institution that’s the reason this feature is limited to just eBay and PayPal for now, however Gmail will try to add more senders in future which would be great and I think most of us would agree on it, don't we ?

Gmail also claimed that whenever more of the senders will be added we would automatically see the super-trustworthy key icon appear by those senders too. Do let us know what do you think about this new feature.

[Source: Gmail blog ]

How to Speed Up Firefox 3.5 Startup on Windows

End of last month Firefox 3.5 was released after that it captured more then 2% of the market and still counting. However many users counting me in found that Firefox 3.5 took long time in starting up. Usually it should take around 2-3 second, but if it takes more then that then you may be experience a bug in Firefox 3.5.

 

 

Reason of slow startup in Firefox 3.5

For security purposes on Windows Firefox 3.5 has to pull data from certain files randomly. Which could lead to slow startup in Windows. These flies involves scanning some temporary folders looking for bits normally added by OS and other applications. It also looks under the subfolders to increase its randomness where it hits the unexpected slow startup.

Workaround to solve this issue

So the main cause of the issue is that if you have many temporary files or folders it leads to slow startup. So by deleting these temporary folders and internet temporary files which is generated by Internet Explorer you can improve the startup time.

To clean temporary folders you can open these folders as follows and delete all files.

Note: Some files might be in use. So check them before deleting them.

On Windows:

C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Local Settings\History
C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
C:\Documents And Settings\*user*\Local Settings\Temp
C:\Documents And Settings\*user*\Recent

On Windows Vista / 7:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
%TEMP%

You can also delete Internet Temporary Folders by going through these steps:

1. Go to Control Panel.
2. Open Internet Options.
3. In the Browsing History section, press the Delete button
4. Check all the options and press Delete.
5. That should do it.

I have personally tried these steps and it gave significant improvement not only for me but for other users as well. We would have to do these steps till this bug gets fixed which should be available with Firefox 3.5.1, expected in coming few weeks.

[Source: Mozilla Links ]

Gmail Password Recovery Via Text Message

So you forget your Gmail password and want to get it back, try out recovering your password via text message which has been recently added in Google account . This is a new technique to recover your password which I don't think any other email service providers uses it.

Now sometime its easy to hack an account if the password recover system is only depends on birth-date and a security question like “What is your pet name?”, which can be guessed out easily if we know someone.

However things changes and email provider has to check their security vulnerability and have to fill up the loop holes. So its always a good thing to add as many password recovery options to your Google Account.

Steps to turn-on the recovery password via text message:

1. Sign in our Gmail account.
2. Select 'Change Password Recovery Options’.
3. Click on “Add a mobile phone number”
4. Select your “Country”.
5. Enter your cell phone number
6. Click “Save”.

Steps to get a new password:

Next time when you forget your password just follow these steps

1. Go at password-assistance page.
2. Enter your “Username”.
3. Click “Submit”
4. You will receive a text message with a recovery code  and a mail in the secondary email id.
5. Using the recovery code you can get a new password or by checking your secondary email and click the link which Google has sent you.

The advantage of using text message recovery is that you don't have check secondary email account or even leave the page. Just check the text message, use the recovery code and you are done. Let us know what do you think about this new password recovery option by leaving comments.

[Via: Official Gmail Blog  ]

New in Gmail Labs: Back to Beta

Finally Gmail peels off its beta tag and has come out of it’s beta version. It has been more then 5 years now that Gmail has been in beta, which I think is the longest time ever a product has been kept in beta version. Now Google has made a benchmark for keeping products in beat version which I think no one can compete it .

Jokes apart, lot of people are happy with this huge move which Google has made. Gmail is not the only product which has been moved out the beta version other Google Apps has also followed it.

Google Apps out of  beta version:

1. Google Calendar
2. Google Docs
3. Google Talk
4. Gmail

If you have been using Gmail for a long time and can’t digest to loose the gray “BETA” label under Gmail logo then you bring it back from Gmail Labs: Back to Beta.

Steps to enable Back to Beta:

1. Login to Gmail.
2. Go to the following path Setting –> Labs tab and scroll down to locate “Back to Beta”.  
   
3. Select “Enable” and then click “Save Changes”.

4. You are back to beta

Coming Soon:

Google has also announced that they would be coming up with few other Google Apps features in coming months or so.

• Enhancements to Apps reliability
• Mail delegation
• Mail retention

Though the beta tag is out they would continue their journey to improve their products. Let us know what do you think about coming out of the beta version. Will you miss it or its for good.

[Source: Gmail blog ]