How to: Make 4 fake computer viruses!

Why not have some fun and prank your friends? There are several kinds of fake virus messages you can make. I will discuss 4 of them:

1. Fake error message

This one is by far, the easiest one to make and all you have to do is to make a new text document with notepad, type msg * YOUR MESSAGE and save as anything.bat. As always, make sure that you select All files instead of Text Document.

2. Forced shutdown

This will display a custom error message and start a countdown which will shut down the computer.

Right-click your desktop and create a new shortcut.
Paste the following code into the Location box in the Create Shortcut menu:shutdown -s -t 30 -c “Your message here“

Replace 30 with the length of the countdown you want (in seconds) and place your custom error message between the quotes. Click next and name the shortcut to something the victim would be likely to click on such as “Internet explorer” or “My Documents”, etc.
Next you’d want to change the icon. Right-click on the shortcut you made and click properties. Find the Change Icon button and click it. Choose a suitable icon for the name you chose earlier.
And that’s all! Now you just have to sneak the shortcut onto the victim’s desktop and run!

Note: to stop it, open Run from the start menu and type shutdown-a.

3. Endless Command prompt windows

This will open up a series of command prompt windows that will never end.
The basic idea is that there are two .bat files that open the other one when opened, so the other one opens the first one again and the windows just won’t stop coming.

How to do this:
1. Fire up notepad and type: start 2.bat2. Save it as 1.bat (make sure you choose all files when saving it)
3. Make another new text document and type: start 1.bat4. Save it as 2.bat into the same folder as the other one.

All you have to do to start it is to click on either of them.

The only way to stop it is to wait for the windows to become so numerous that they are a group on the taskbar. Then you can use Close group to get rid of the bastards.

4. Fake Command prompt viruses

These are also a good way to make the victim believe that a worm is gnawing at their hard drive and that they can’t do anything to stop it.

Open up notepad and type @echo off

• To make text appear, type it after an echo tag.
• To have the the commands wait for the user to press any key type pause

(Note: if you write pause >nul it won’t display Press Any key to continue…)

• To have a complete high-speed description of files in the drive of the .bat file, type dir /s
• You can also initiate any other command we covered earlier, such as shutdown, error message, etc.

And why no include all of these in one fake virus?

For example:

I can’t post the batch files here, as sharing .bat files over the internet is illegal.
And remember, everything here is for informational purposes.

How To: Make Your XP Look Like Mac OSX In 3 Simple Steps

 There are two ways to accomplish the OSX look: the easy way – with a transformation pack, and the hard way – manually. I will, of course, show you how to do this the easy way, but if it for some reason doesn’t work for you, email me or comment and I’ll teach you to do it all manually. So here’s how it’s done the easy way:

Step 1: Get a transformation pack.

The best Mac OSX transformation pack for Windows XP is probably FlyakiteOSX. The creator’s website itself is worth the visit, but if it doesn’t load in your browser, get Firefox, and here’s a download link.

Step 2: Install

Run the installer and when you get to the following screen, MAKE SURE you check the box Create System Restore Point. The transformation pack will change a lot of system files and settings and although you should be able to uninstall easily later, you might find yourself in a mess if something goes wrong. This way you can always do a System Restore. Check any other options you want and you’re ready!

Step 3: Enjoy!

After the restart, you should be able to convince all, but the most die-hard Mac lovers that you have an OSX. This is what your desktop should look like now: Like other good transformation packs, this also leaves you a nice Mac OSX shutdown screen: …And a Mac OSX logon screen:

How to: change the start button text on Windows XP

Tired of the boring old “start” button at the bottom left corner of your Windows XP’s monitor? Want something new to replace iit? Well here’s how to change it.

With a few modifications in the Windows Registry, you can replace the “start” text with anything you like. Great for achieving a new, custom look for your Windows XP. So let’s get started.

Warning: this tutorial is more for advanced users, and I'm not
responsible if your system gets messed up. Only attempt the following
at your own risk.

Step 1: Modify explorer.exe

If the warning didn’t scare you enough, then the title of this step probably did. Yes, we are going to change Explorer, the backbone of your Windows XP, but don’t worry. Everything should be safe as long as you follow the steps closely.

As explorer is a binary file, we need a special tool to modify it. One of the best ones for this purpose is Resource Hacker. There are of course others that will get the trick done, but we will be using RH this tutorial so I recommend installing it to avoid making mistakes. Install it and let’s continue.

As always before changing anything. you want to back up. So open My Computer and navigate to   and look for explorer. Copy paste it to a safe location on your hard drive.

Now that you’ve backed it up, fire up Resource Hacker and find the same explorer.exe.

When you’ve found and opened explorer in RH, navigate to String Table -> 37 -> 1033. The “start” value is on line 4, after the 578. Change the text “start” to anything you want, making sure you keep the quotes. In this example. I changed the text to xptricks.net.

Press the Compile Script button to make Resource Hacker put together the code. Now click File and Save the script as explorer.exe. into C: \WINDOWS\inf or another C: \WINDOWS subfolder.

Note: make sure you choose Save AS, NOT just save!!

And that’s all for the first step! Now let’s move onto the second one -modifying the registry.

Step 2: changing the registry.

By now, you have a modified explorer sitting in the /inf/ subfolder, so we need to tell Windows to use that one, instead of the original one still resting untouched.

To do this, we need to make just one simple registry modification. To open up the registry, press start (something else soon  ) -> run and type regedit.

In the registry editor window that opens, navigate toHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon and look for the registry entry “shell”. Click it.

Change the explorer.exe to inf/explorer.exe or whereever you saved the modified explorer.

And believe it or not, you’re done! All you have to do now is reboot or log out and bacö in to see the changes. Enjoy your new custom Windows XP start button!

How To Speed Up Your Windows XP

Here is what you can do yourself to improve your Windows XP’s performance:

Step 1 : Remove unused software

You probably don’t use half the programs you have installed over time. Removing the ones you don’t need anymore can significantly speed up your Windows XP computer. To remove software:

1. Go to the Control Panel (Start -> Control Panel) and select Add Or Remove Programs. It may take a while for the list to load if you have many programs installed.
2. Going through the whole list, select programs you rarely use and uninstall them, one by one.
3. Restart your computer to see the changes.

Step 2: Use Less Graphics

Do you really need a wallpaper and the fancy animations when opening or closing windows? Disabling animations can increase the speed at which your computer opens and closes windows. To disable window animations:

1. In Control Panel, go to System and select the Advanced tab. Click the Performance Settings tab.
2. In the Visual Effects window, disable all the animations in the box, or simply select “Adjust for best performance” as shown on the screenshot on the right. Press Apply.

In the same Performance Options window, choose the Advanced tab, and press the Change button in the Virtual Memory area. From there you can change the size of your paging file – a file on your hard drive that acts as RAM. By increasing the size of your paging file, you can significantly increase speed, but be warned! Using your hard drive as RAM can cause damage to it, so it’s a good idea to buy a better RAM instead.

Step 3: Clean your Registry

You should regularly clean your Windows XP’s Registry to remove old errors that can clog up the registry. To properly clean the Registry, you need a reliable Registry Cleaner software. There are some free ones out there, but I would not be too comfortable with using them. Instead, buy a trusted registry cleaner program so for a little bit of extra cash, you can feel safe. I would recommend FixCleaner, which in addition to cleaning your registry does a number of other things to significantly speed up your Windows XP.

Step 4: Stop unwanted Startup programs

By disabling programs that are set to automatically open when the computer starts, you can greatly speed up your startup process – the time between turning on the computer and being able to fully use it.

Here’s how to disable Startup programs:

1. Click Run in your Start menu, type msconfig into the box and press enter.
2. Select the Startup tab.
3. Go through the list, disabling programs you don’t need by un-ticking the box left of them. Only disable programs you are sure you do not need, and I recommend not touching the ones in the WINDOWS directory.

Step 5: Clean up your hard drive

Performing a disk cleanup can free some hard drive space and also speed up your computer. To use the disk cleanup tool:

1. Go to Start -> Run and type cleanmgr.exe. Press Enter.
2. It will probably take a while, especially if you have never used this tool before.

Step 6: Defragment your hard drives

Defragmenting your drives can make a big difference in your computer’s speed. Defragmenting places files physically closer on the hard drive, making it easier and faster for the hard drive to read these files and write new ones. It is a good idea to defragment your hard drive regularily, so it alway stays optimal. I posted a tutorial for an automatic defragment link here: http://www.xptricks.net/windows/xp/2008/01/cool-xp-tips-tricks-automatically-defrag-drives/

There are also a number of commercial defragment programs available, which are more powerful than the Windows tool and come with a wide variety of features. If you don’t want to spend any money on this, I would recommend Auslogics  Disk Defrag, which is a great, free tool.

Here’s how to defragment your hard drives using the built-in Windows tool:

1. In My Computer, right click on a drive you want to defragment.
2. Click Tools and select Defragment
3. Click the Analyse button first, which will analyse your hard drive and see how fragmented it is.
4. Once the report is finished and the system finds it necessary to perform a defragmentation, press defrag. This will take a very long time, but you have to be patient.

Step 7: Use a PC optimization tool to do the rest

There are a hundreds of other ways to improve your computer’s speed and performance but it is impossible to list all of them here or go through them manually. To fix them, you can either purchase a separate tool for each one, which will end up costing you a fortune, or buy an All-In-One optimization program that will do all the dirty work and fix errors behind the scenes for you. Going through all the steps mentioned above will definitely speed up your Windows XP, but running a  professional tool even after following these manual steps will increase performance even further.

This is why I recommend that you purchase a trusted, reliable solution to fix computer problems for you. I recommend using FixCleaner, because it will fix all of the problems that you can’t manually, and save time on many by fixing them automatically.

FixCleaner has a clean, easy to use interface that lets you fix your PC’s problems even if you did not understand any of the procedures above. Unlike most other tools, FixCleaner is Microsoft Certified, which means that Microsoft has approved the software and that it is safe and reliable. You can download a free tool that will check your computer and produce a report on how much it can be optimized.

USEFUL RUN COMMANDS

To Access…	Run Command
Accessibility Controls	access.cpl
Accessibility Wizard	accwiz
Add Hardware Wizard	hdwwiz.cpl
Add/Remove Programs	appwiz.cpl
Administrative Tools	control admintools
Adobe Acrobat (if installed)	acrobat
Adobe Designer (if installed)	formdesigner
Adobe Distiller (if installed)	acrodist
Adobe ImageReady (if installed)	imageready
Adobe Photoshop (if installed)	photoshop
Automatic Updates	wuaucpl.cpl
Bluetooth Transfer Wizard	fsquirt
Calculator	calc
Certificate Manager	certmgr.msc
Character Map	charmap
Check Disk Utility	chkdsk
Clipboard Viewer	clipbrd
Command Prompt	cmd
Component Services	dcomcnfg
Computer Management	compmgmt.msc
Control Panel	control
Date and Time Properties	timedate.cpl
DDE Shares	ddeshare
Device Manager	devmgmt.msc
Direct X Control Panel (if installed)*	directx.cpl
Direct X Troubleshooter	dxdiag
Disk Cleanup Utility	cleanmgr
Disk Defragment	dfrg.msc
Disk Management	diskmgmt.msc
Disk Partition Manager	diskpart
Display Properties	control desktop
Display Properties	desk.cpl
Display Properties (w/Appearance Tab Preselected)	control color
Dr. Watson System Troubleshooting Utility	drwtsn32
Driver Verifier Utility	verifier
Event Viewer	eventvwr.msc
Files and Settings Transfer Tool	migwiz
File Signature Verification Tool	sigverif
Findfast	findfast.cpl
Firefox (if installed)	firefox
Folders Properties	folders
Fonts	control fonts
Fonts Folder	fonts
Free Cell Card Game	freecell
Game Controllers	joy.cpl
Group Policy Editor (XP Prof)	gpedit.msc
Hearts Card Game	mshearts
Help and Support	helpctr
HyperTerminal	hypertrm
Iexpress Wizard	iexpress
Indexing Service	ciadv.msc
Internet Connection Wizard	icwconn1
Internet Explorer	iexplore
Internet Properties	inetcpl.cpl
Internet Setup Wizard	inetwiz
IP Configuration (Display Connection Configuration)	ipconfig /all
IP Configuration (Display DNS Cache Contents)	ipconfig /displaydns
IP Configuration (Delete DNS Cache Contents)	ipconfig /flushdns
IP Configuration (Release All Connections)	ipconfig /release
IP Configuration (Renew All Connections)	ipconfig /renew
IP Configuration (Refreshes DHCP & Re-Registers DNS)	ipconfig /registerdns
IP Configuration (Display DHCP Class ID)	ipconfig /showclassid
IP Configuration (Modifies DHCP Class ID)	ipconfig /setclassid
Java Control Panel (if installed)	jpicpl32.cpl
Java Control Panel (if installed)	javaws
Keyboard Properties	control keyboard
Local Security Settings	secpol.msc
Local Users and Groups	lusrmgr.msc
Logs You Out Of Windows	logoff
Malicious Software Removal Tool	mrt
Microsoft Access (if installed)	msaccess
Microsoft Chat	winchat
Microsoft Excel (if installed)	excel
Microsoft Frontpage (if installed)	frontpg
Microsoft Movie Maker	moviemk
Microsoft Paint	mspaint
Microsoft Powerpoint (if installed)	powerpnt
Microsoft Word (if installed)	winword
Microsoft Syncronization Tool	mobsync
Minesweeper Game	winmine
Mouse Properties	control mouse
Mouse Properties	main.cpl
Nero (if installed)	nero
Netmeeting	conf
Network Connections	control netconnections
Network Connections	ncpa.cpl
Network Setup Wizard	netsetup.cpl
Notepad	notepad
Nview Desktop Manager (if installed)	nvtuicpl.cpl
Object Packager	packager
ODBC Data Source Administrator	odbccp32.cpl
On Screen Keyboard	osk
Opens AC3 Filter (if installed)	ac3filter.cpl
Outlook Express	msimn
Paint	pbrush
Password Properties	password.cpl
Performance Monitor	perfmon.msc
Performance Monitor	perfmon
Phone and Modem Options	telephon.cpl
Phone Dialer	dialer
Pinball Game	pinball
Power Configuration	powercfg.cpl
Printers and Faxes	control printers
Printers Folder	printers
Private Character Editor	eudcedit
Quicktime (If Installed)	QuickTime.cpl
Quicktime Player (if installed)	quicktimeplayer
Real Player (if installed)	realplay
Regional Settings	intl.cpl
Registry Editor	regedit
Registry Editor	regedit32
Remote Access Phonebook	rasphone
Remote Desktop	mstsc
Removable Storage	ntmsmgr.msc
Removable Storage Operator Requests	ntmsoprq.msc
Resultant Set of Policy (XP Prof)	rsop.msc
Scanners and Cameras	sticpl.cpl
Scheduled Tasks	control schedtasks
Security Center	wscui.cpl
Services	services.msc
Shared Folders	fsmgmt.msc
Shuts Down Windows	shutdown
Sounds and Audio	mmsys.cpl
Spider Solitare Card Game	spider
SQL Client Configuration	cliconfg
System Configuration Editor	sysedit
System Configuration Utility	msconfig
System File Checker Utility (Scan Immediately)	sfc /scannow
System File Checker Utility (Scan Once At The Next Boot)	sfc /scanonce
System File Checker Utility (Scan On Every Boot)	sfc /scanboot
System File Checker Utility (Return Scan Setting To Default)	sfc /revert
System File Checker Utility (Purge File Cache)	sfc /purgecache
System File Checker Utility (Sets Cache Size to size x)	sfc /cachesize=x
System Information	msinfo32
System Properties	sysdm.cpl
Task Manager	taskmgr
TCP Tester	tcptest
Telnet Client	telnet
Tweak UI (if installed)	tweakui
User Account Management	nusrmgr.cpl
Utility Manager	utilman
Windows Address Book	wab
Windows Address Book Import Utility	wabmig
Windows Backup Utility (if installed)	ntbackup
Windows Explorer	explorer
Windows Firewall	firewall.cpl
Windows Magnifier	magnify
Windows Management Infrastructure	wmimgmt.msc
Windows Media Player	wmplayer
Windows Messenger	msmsgs
Windows Picture Import Wizard (need camera connected)	wiaacmgr
Windows System Security Tool	syskey
Windows Update Launches	wupdmgr
Windows Version (to show which version of windows)	winver
Windows XP Tour Wizard	tourstart
Wordpad	write