There were no manifestations of an actual error, in fact, Java applets were as blank as could be, and trying to interact with the Java console in Firefox caused the text to gray out with absolutely no result. All the while, Java’s plugin was listed in the browser’s add-ons, just as one would expect it to be.

My initial instinct sent me hunting through Firefox’s options to ensure that Java was enabled – which it was. I checked the Java control panel in Windows for any potential discrepancies, of which I found none. I naturally turned to Google as well as some Firefox and Java help documents, and came up empty handed.

Losing faith in my ability to use a search engine after a frustrating 30 minutes of seeking an explanation to what I expected would be a common issue, I dove into the programs files. Following a brief session of skimming Java file descriptions, I discovered two little gems: npjpi160_13.dll and npoji610.dll. Sharing a similar name, both are described as plugin files for the Netscape Navigator browser. Sure enough, a peak in Firefox’s plugins folder confirmed that both were missing.

The fix: Ensure that the latest copy of Java and Firefox are installed (watch out for the Yahoo! toolbar during installation). Navigate to Java’s program directory, and in the “bin” folder locate the files named “npjpi160_13.dll” and “npoji610.dll”. Copy both files and proceed to Firefox’s plugins folder, where you’ll paste them.

Assuming you’ve copied the proper files, and that this was the source of your issue, all should be well.

Armed with the file names, I was able to find potential bug recognition at bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase. If you’re still experiencing issues, visit Java’s Help Center for troubleshooting tips, and if necessary, feel free open a thread on our forum.

While it might be a bit overwhelming at first sight, the 5-15 minute learning curve is well worth the time and energy you’ll undoubtedly save.

The Bulk Rename Utility allows you to perform a plethora of bulk file name modifications, all of which leave the files’ extension untouched unless you deploy an edit using the “Extension” section. You can easily add, remove and substitute letters, numbers, date and timestamps and it can all be done in more than a single way in some situations, ultimately leaving the process very open to the user.

You are provided with a preview of all potential and pending changes so you can tinker with and tweak your settings accordingly, though if you make an error it’s easily reversible by tapping CTRL+Z.

As you can see in the image below I’ve managed to alter the text to be appropriately capitalized (4), I requested all underscores to be removed (5), shifted the band’s name from the rear to the front (6) and inserted dashes ” – ” at the designated position (7) to separate the band and song name. The configuration of this took literally 45 seconds or less, if you’re curious.

Once you experiment by using a few features or skim some relevant sections in the help file, the rest should be easy with a bit of common sense.

I’ve personally used this utility to reorganize roughly 2,500 music files in 200+ folders, something I’d been putting off for over a year due to the tedious nature of the whole process, but with BRU it only took me less than a couple of hours (including the learning curve).

Download the Bulk Rename Utility here.

This is nothing new and actually has been a “feature” of Windows ever since XP’s SP2 got released and the Security Center came to exist. It’s nothing new either to have a majority of antivirus suites to become incompatible with brand new operating systems – and Windows 7 is no exception, especially more so in its current beta form.

Upon a bit of investigation you probably made your way to the Windows 7 security provider page at Microsoft’s site and perhaps were let down by the fact that the three “officially” supported AVs are all paid software or that your preferred suite isn’t listed (AVG is listed but not the free version). So, we’ve decided to install and test a variety of the more popular options out there so you don’t have to.

We will start things off by confirming that the supported AVs on Microsoft’s page indeed work:

AVG & AVG Free: Compatible **
(Download)

Kaspersky Antivirus 2009: Compatible
(Download)

Norton AntiVirus 2009: Compatible
(Download)

Eset NOD32: Compatible
(Download)

McAfee Total Protection Beta: Compatible
(Download)

Avast! Home Edition: Compatible
(Download)

Avira AntiVir Personal: Compatible
(Download)

BitDefender Internet Security 2009: Compatible
(Download)

Trend Micro Internet Security Pro: Incompatible

eScan Internet Security Suite: Incompatible

Ahnlab V3 Internet Security 2007: Incompatible

Needless to say, the similarities between Vista and 7 become apparent from looking at the list above. No doubt AV makers have adapted their applications to interact with the OS internal workings better, so they are easily prepared to work with 7.

Besides installing the suites we toyed with them a little and ran quick/full scans. Those apps listed as compatible should be working fine for you unless some bug in the beta OS (or why not, the AV suite compatibility) becomes self-evident.

If you’re curious about any other antivirus, let us know in the comments and we’ll update the article with our findings (if we can obtain the software) and be sure to let us know if your favorite antivirus is now compatible!

** Update 2/12/09:
Added BitDefender Internet Security 2009 to the list. I experienced no compatibility issues whatsoever throughout the installation, updating and scanning process.

Paul Hayes (Ascully.com) was kind enough of letting us know that AVG’s Mail Scanner portion doesn’t go along well with Outlook, causing it to stop receiving email. We will confirm this ourselves later. I tested this using Outlook 2007 and had no problems at all sending or receiving new/old mail via IMAP/SMTP from my Gmail account. Perhaps the issue is more isolated to a specific configuration and it may even be absolutely unrelated.

** Update 2/13/09:
Added Trend Micro Internet Security Pro to the list. Resulted in BSOD (stop 0×18) and screwed up UAC, couldn’t make any alterations from within Windows. I was forced to manually remove the software in Safe Mode (by deleting program data/registry entries).

Added eScan Internet Security Suite to the list. During installer/uninstaller caused the cursor to randomly move on it’s own and caused general instabilities.

** Update 2/16/09:
Added Ahnlab V3 Internet Security 2007 to the list. It required me to run the compatibility wizard for installation and even then the program was very unstable (stopped responding on multiple occasions, especially when applying settings). Also, the Action Center failed to detect any protection while it was installed. Though it installed/uninstalled and allowed me to update/scan successfully, I would not presently use this antivirus on Windows 7.

** Update 2/25/09:
Added McAfee Total Protection Beta (thank you for updating us in the comments). Experienced absolutely no issues, installation/uninstallation were clean and updating/scanning went smooth. If you were bummed about the previously incompatible offer from McAfee, wipe the tears away and get their beta software.

This situation only applies to factory overclocked 7900GT cards and the solution is to either under/overclock the card slightly.

I’m posting about this today because I had forgot about it until recently when I was reinstalling my brother’s computer, upgrading him from XP to Vista after a nice virus he got on MSN. I preferred to modify the card’s BIOS directly instead of just changing the clocks in software with Rivatuner.

To change the clock speed at the BIOS level download NiBiTor, first saving your current BIOS. If you are having trouble you can use GPU-Z for this instead, which I did.

The change is very straightforward, just change the 2D & 3D clock speeds on the main page and then save the file in .rom format as modded.rom. Obviously make sure that the card is 100% stable at the new speeds and corruption free. For flashing use nvFlash, make a clean MS-DOS boot floppy and copy the nvFlash util and BIOS to it, to flash just boot from it and type “nvflash modded.rom”

Those that can afford to buy software generally do pay for it, but I have found the hard way that it isn’t always worth it, and this is becoming truer as time goes on thanks to poorly implemented DRM (Digital Rights Management).

When Microsoft released Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit it was rather pricey, but I still went out and purchased two copies right away – one for me and one for testing. Although I have paid for the software I’m extremely tempted to avoid the genuine activation and simply crack it. But why would I do such a thing for software that I have paid good money for? Well, it’s simple. Because of the large number of people that pirate Windows, Microsoft has felt compelled to punish the suckers that actually buy it.

Hateful DRM practices jeopardize the end-user experience

Every time I change a major piece of hardware I end up with a warning message informing me that I have two days to reactivate my copy of Windows. Okay, that’s not so bad. Just click re-activate then shall we. Hang on, that didn’t work, and now I have to ring the Microsoft support center based on India and try to communicate a 60+ digit code to someone I can barely understand. After that process is done I can finally use my computer again. Yay! Well… at least until I need to change/upgrade something again.

The alternative is to run a 20 second patch that removes the Microsoft activation altogether, meaning that I will never be inconvenienced again when upgrading, an inconvenience I apparently paid good money for. Again, the options: to pay for software that is going to have you pulling your hair out every time you change something, or get it for free without any of the catches.

Over the years the countless re-activations of my computers has not only improved my Indian accent, but also simply become a way of life.

Windows activation reminder

Although I spend much of my time testing out new and exciting graphics cards in the latest games, I rarely get to actually play the games themselves extensively. I’m a huge fan of real-time strategy games and I love the Command & Conquer series. The good old days when Westwood was still around…

Anyway, the recent release of C&C: Red Alert 3 allowed me to get back into the RTS scene and play a few games in-between testing new graphics cards. Unfortunately, having finally stopped and taken the time to enjoy a video game, the experience was far from enjoyable, at least so far.

The first thing I did upon receiving my fresh new copy of Red Alert 3 was to install it on one of my desktop PCs, I chose my work computer since it was powerful enough and I spend most of my time on it. This turned out to be a bad move since EA doesn’t support 64-bit operating systems, at least with RA3 anyway. The game would crash to the desktop after 15 – 20 min of gameplay without fail.

Before discovering that it was an incompatibility issue with the 64-bit operating system I uninstalled the game and then re-installed it on the same system to no avail. The crashes to the desktop persisted and I was forced to play on another computer. I got another hard drive, installed Windows XP on it, and re-installed RA3 once again. It worked, and flawlessly too, which was all good news. I spent much of my spare time over the next few weeks playing it online.

C&C: Red Alert 3 is one many current EA titles that uses SecuROM DRM

The computer that I had installed it on needed a motherboard change (testing related issue) so I swapped out the board for a new one. Windows XP booted up, I installed the new drivers and away I went without an issue, at least until I tried to fire up RA3 again. Other games like Far Cry 2 worked like a charm. Not Red Alert 3, though. Instead the game pretended to load and then hit me with an error explaining that the game had been installed too many times.

Despite the fact that I had not re-installed the game on this PC and had only changed the motherboard, it refused to load. Therefore I had to sign up for EA support, which was a pain in the arse, and just another one of those inconveniences you shouldn’t have to go through when paying full price for software. Anyway, EA got back to me, slowly, and once I sent them all my details they informed me that I had been given 1 more activation and after that it was pretty much all over, even if I uninstalled the game.

So here I am, with a game that I paid $60 for ($95 AUD), and if anything goes wrong with the hardware in my current system or I want to upgrade it in a year’s time, I may have to purchase another copy if I want to continue playing.

I have been reading about these kinds of DRM problems for some time now, but had never encountered them myself other than the Vista activation shenanigans. So, I understand that this is nothing new and probably something that many of you have already been dealing with, but it is still a load of BS!

Anti-DRM logo by Alfredo Rezinovsky.

Several people have commented here since this post was made over a year ago and admittedly without any scientific or extended tests, we still recommend you to stay away from the ZoneAlarm + Vista combo.

Original post (October 9, 2007):
On a follow-up to my post yesterday about basic security programs you should be running under Windows XP, ever since I upgraded to Vista I revisited those program choices which for the most part remained the same with the exception of the free ZoneAlarm firewall…

In general, Windows Vista’s security is tighter and services such as Defender are more integrated into the OS. During the first couple of months, AVG’s anti-virus did not like Vista and it was common to find certain programs not working correctly until updates were released, even more so security suites that have to deal more directly with the core of the OS. ZoneLabs makers of the ZoneAlarm firewall took its time until the program was ready for Vista and it wasn’t until recently that it was made available on its free form as well (not part of the paid full suite).

Well, in short the experience I had with the latest build of ZoneAlarm for Vista was horrific. I noticed slowdowns and strange behavior from the OS that simply wasn’t there before. In other words, a far cry from the seamless integration and speed seen with the XP version.

If you come from XP and want to install ZoneAlarm in Vista… just don’t do it.

The good news is that Vista’s built-in firewall has proven sufficient for me so far though it does not feature outbound traffic monitoring. It’s time to look for an alternative full-featured free firewall if you are running Vista.

Free Trial: 60-Day Trial of Microsoft Office Project

Free eBook: The 7 Things that IT Security Professionals MUST KNOW!

Now Microsoft is expected to unleash the first public preview of Windows 7 at their Professional Developers Conference this week. Some details have leaked already, but nothing to share just yet in terms of UI elements except for this PDC wallpaper that all computers at the conference are using (courtesy of istartedsomething). I have been using it for the past few hours and I had to recommend it. Nice colors, blends well and is a bit flashy (Vista style) without being too distracting.

For some of us, upgrading to Vista has been somewhat of a relief. The rest of Windows users still using XP have probably either gone back to the silver boxy Windows or relied on official or third party patching for getting the job done. Unfortunately last time I checked (a couple of years ago), even the most elaborate skins for popular applications like WindowBlinds lack the finish and subtlety I require.

But don’t despair. My advice, use some of the Microsoft-made themes that replace the original blue theme and make for a much better impression than the built-in silver or green themes.

Previously available themes include:
Royale
Royale Noir (by far my favorite)
Zune theme

Now also available (thanks to Sizzled Core), the Windows Embedded theme that uses a strong blue but still looks quite good IMO.

Notice neither of these require UxTheme.dll patching or other workarounds.

Click here to download the patch, unrar it into the games installation directory at: \Game\Localized\Video and then run remove.intro.crysis.warhead.bat

The only thing it does is renaming all files beginning with “Trailer” so you might as well just delete them all and be done with it ;)