‘Blackouts’ and missing icons for users of pirated Windows this week

August 27, 2008 · Filed Under Security · Comment 

‘Blackouts’ for users of pirated Windows

Pirated Windows XP professional user beware, remember the nagging balloon that appear everytime you boot up windows? the Windows Genuine Advantage program Microsoft secretly introduce in SP2? Yes, it is back and this time it is meaner.

Starting Wednesday, users with pirated copies of Microsoft Corp’s Windows XP Professional operating system (OS) on machines that are Internet-capable could find their computer displays going black and with no screen icons visible.

There are 8.6 million users of Win XP Pro in Malaysia and about three million are expected to suffer the “blackouts,” according to Microsoft Malaysia.

To continue working, the user would need to reset the machine’s desktop background. Everything will return to normal. But when 60 minutes are up, the black screen will reappear and the user must go through the whole process again. Source: TheStar

Since this WGA feature is new, I doubt there are any cracks available, the only way to go about the system is to purchase a genuine XP Pro serial from Microsoft. How about downgrading your Windows to Home Edition?

For your information, Windows Vista and Windows XP Home Edition are not included in the latest ‘blackout’ experiment.

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How to Disable Remove Windows Startup Programs Application

January 11, 2008 · Filed Under How To and Online Tutorials · 1 Comment 

Bought a new computer but it appears to be sluggish? This is due to the ’startup’ programs that comes pre-installed with every software. Programmers loves to sneak in a few line of codes that enables their applications to boot up together with Windows, usually these programs runs at the background without our knowledge, thus using up RAM and processing power in turn causing our computer to be sluggish.

Here is a simple tutorial on how to disable these programs from booting up or starting up whenever windows Vista or Xp boot. First, select the ‘Run’ command.

How to Disable Remove Windows Startup Programs Application

Once done, a dialog box will appear and type ‘msconfig’ as shown in the image below. Hit ‘ok’.

How to Disable Remove Windows Startup Programs Application

Another dialog box will appear, select the ’startup’ tab and proceed disabling or enabling the programs that you wants it to boot up together with Windows. Hit ‘Ok’ when you’re done.

How to Disable Remove Windows Startup Programs Application

Restart your comp, the next time when your windows bootup, a dialog box would appear and it says, you have modify some setting… blah blah blah, just check on the only ‘check box’ that say ‘never show this again’ and hit ‘ok’.

That’s all folks, no software needed.

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