Bios password is a type of security protection measure to stop unauthorized person making hardware configuration changes on system devices (Example: BIOS’s allow you to require a password to be entered before the BIOS setup may be accessed) Meanwhile, bios password also use security protection such as Some BIOS’s allow you to require a password be entered before the system will boot. The Bios password information is normally store on a CMOS battery.

You may forget your motherboard bios password.  Here is a tutorial that will guide you through some steps on how to remove or reset BIOS Password.

To remove the bios password on CMOS battery, first you need unplug all the power source and USB cable. Then open the desktop casing as you will need physical access to the motherboard and then find a circular, mostly silver metallic object on the motherboard. This is how you will locate the flat, circular and metallic CMOS battery.

Once you locate the CMOS battery, remove the CMOS battery. Avoid to touch it with your fingers and leave it about 120 seconds. This will flush the CMOS memory which stores the BIOS password and all other configuration. After that, plug back the CMOS battery.

Then all bios password will be clear and the computer will warn you that the CMOS configuration could not be found. Then you can either reconfigure it yourself or restore defaults. Restoring the default configuration should be fine in which devices hardware setting will be set factory default setting. In some cases, if you get weird error messages during boot up now, you will need to go to “Load BIOS Defaults” in BIOS and save the changes to fix them.

You will notice that the BIOS Password has been cleared and you can boot without it. You may reset the BIOS password to something else by going into the BIOS configuration and setting a new User Password (The Supervisor Password controls access to the BIOS, NOT the computer!).

For Laptops -

Dealing with laptops may be sometimes a little bit difficult as they are tricky devices especially it is a new model. If it has a security chip on the motherboard do not worry about it. You either have to physically remove the chip or contact the mfg for the “master” password. If you can boot up off of a cd or floppy try any of these methods:

Create a Win98SE bootable media “or anything that lets you boot into MS-DOS” and boot off of it. When the A :\> prompt appears type debug and press enter. You will then only see a “-”. Type o 70 2E “include the spaces” and press Enter. Type o 71 ff “include the spaces” and press Enter. Type q and press Enter.

Here is a list of common mfg backdoor passwords:

• AWARD BIOS – AWARD SW, AWARD_SW, Award SW, AWARD PW, _award, awkward, J64, j256, j262, j332, j322, 01322222, 589589, 589721, 595595, 598598, HLT, SER, SKY_FOX, aLLy, aLLY, Condo, CONCAT, TTPTHA, aPAf, HLT, KDD, ZBAAACA, ZAAADA, ZJAAADC, djonet.

• AMI BIOS – AMI, A.M.I., AMI SW, AMI_SW, BIOS, PASSWORD, HEWITT RAND, Oder.
• Other passwords you may try (for AMI/AWARD or other BIOSes) – LKWPETER, lkwpeter, BIOSTAR, biostar, BIOSSTAR, biosstar, ALFAROME, Syxz, Wodj gvs.

Here are a few more tips:

• Depending on the manufacturer of your motherboard, it may be possible for you to use what it is called a “backdoor password” to bypass the password problem.
• Remember that passwords are Case Sensitive. The last two passwords in the AWARD BIOS list are in Russian.
• Sometimes the bios reset jumper has a “handle” and is colored a bright color to make it easy to locate. Also, look in your case near the bottom. If it is a manufactured computer then it probably came with a little sticker with the jumpers and the location of the reset jumper.
• Still if all this does not work and you’re really stuck, the PC manufacturer can often give out a “reset password” if you can prove you are the owner. This works with Dell but they usually charge for this service.

Here are some Warnings:

• In rare cases, the battery may be soldered into the motherboard and very difficult to remove. If this is true, you may need to find a jumper near the battery that achieves the same result. If you don’t know which jumper it is, you can test all of them. Unplug (really unplug, not just power off) the computer, and start a methodical change in all the jumpers positions, change one, count to ten, change it back, move on the next. After completing the lot of them (on older motherboards this could take a while) plug the PS back in, and boot up. You may risk damaging your computer with this procedure if you are not careful.
• Some notebooks such as IBM’s ThinkPad become useless when the BIOS password is being tried to reset.
• Don’t just start pulling jumpers on the motherboard. Make sure you know where it was and in what position in case anything goes wrong put it back.
• If you turn your computer on and it makes strange noises or beeps, you should not proceed and should contact the vendor, manufacture or a computer expert.

Twitter is becoming increasingly popular lately. It’s a hub of a lot of people, including bloggers, webmasters and celebrities from all walks of life!

This free social messaging utility which lets you blog in just 140 characters is really changing the way we look at Internet. It has been the birthplace of micro blogging so to say. It has been turning normal people to influencing experts able to affect millions of people!

But what can you do to save your private data contained in your Tweets so that if something happens to the website you will be sure to lose nothing?

Tweetbackup is a nice, free web utility able to backup your Twitter account and Tweets in a few minutes! The way it works is really simple. Follow these steps:

• Sign up the service using your Twitter account.
• Tweetbackup will automatically start to backup your Twitter account on a daily basis.

Its main features include:

• It backups your Twitter account, including your Tweets and a list of your friends.
• Easy to use.
• No installation required.
• You can restore your backup ( wait for a few days, the service is being test at the time I write).

The newest contender for the “King of multimedia phones” has arrived and with a bang. The latest model from the Korean company falls in the highest class. It is the most awaited Samsung M8800 Pixon.

DESIGN

• It is said to be the slimmest 8 megapixel camera phone, which it is certainly not. As it is considerably thicker than the iPhone.
• It is 3.2”, with a 240 x 400 (WQVGA) resolution standard for the widescreen and only 262k colors.
• It is a disappointment that it doesn’t deliver 16 million colors as in iPhone, and 64 times less. But at the end, it produces decent pictures even when watching videos.
• A brightness sensor is added to phone which helps taking pictures in sunlight. The videos will not look good, but you will surely be able to dial a number or read messages.
• There are two physical keys given i.e., SEND and END and a small round button given at the center. On the left hand the phone we have hold and shortcut keys with a memory card slot. On the right side camera trigger is given and at the top there is a charger connector.

DISPLAY

• The 3.2” display is capable of showing 252k colors.
• With very good brightness levels and decent contrast picture quality is very good.
• The phone is very responsive as the touchscreen sensitivity is very nice.
• To suit the user taste, vibration intensity can be modified.
• It has a TFT resistive touchscreen.

USER INTERFACE

• The user interface is improved very much. It is quick, responsive, nicely thumbable and essential for hand writing recognition.
• The top bar carries standard readings like signal strength, battery status, network connectivity, ringing profile etc. As far as for the rest of the display concerned, the user can decide what should be there and what shouldn’t.
• There is not a great difference in the structure of the menu in Pixon. The only difference is the added tab at the bottom of the display.
• The main menu displays as 4 x 3 grids of icons. Sub-menus come as lists.
• The java applications can be minimized and run at the background.

CAMERA

• With 8 megapixels the camera is quite good and is convenient to use.
• It has face detection, smile shots, 123 scenes, panorama, macro, white balance, effects and ISO adjustment.
• It is equipped with a weak flash. The flash is not as good as the one of the N82.

MULTIMEDIA

• The media player is not so attractive, it is good. Listening music is enjoyable.
• It visualizes the album art of all songs that are uploaded.
• The loudspeaker sounds very good as both, quality and loudness while listening to radio. To change the experience it has 7 equalizer presets and SRS WOW effect.

OTHER FEATURES

• Bluetooth: Yes v 2.0 A2DP.
• Infrared Port: No.
• CPU: Qualcomm MSM6281, 500 MHz processor.
• Browser: WAP 2.0/Xhtml/html.

If you are looking for a quick solution, here is a simple trick which, in a couple of seconds, is able to hide and mask your files on-the-fly!

• Click ‘Start’.
• In the Search box field type CMD and press Enter.
• In the command prompt, type cd.. This will show you the C:\ Partition.
• Assuming that the picture you want to hide is under C:\  and that its name and extension is image.jpg  type: ren image.jpg image.txt (This is the syntax ren:(your file name and extension)(space)(your file name and the file extension you want to turn it to)
• The command above (ren image.jpg image.txt) will turn your image to a txt file. People trying to open such a file will see unintelligible characters.
• Of course to get the picture back, simply type: ren image.txt image.jpg.
• This trick works for every kind of file.

Google Music is expected to enter market by the end of December 2010. So the wait about how it will look like will soon be over.

Reuters confirming the news said that Google VP is currently holding talks with the major Music labels in order to include digital music download store and cloud based song locker service in the application. There can be some hiccups as Google is yet to finalize a deal with any one of music labels brands.

Also on cards is Google signing a deal for the launch of Android 3.0, code-named Gingerbread. This is expected to launch in fourth quarter of this year. Google had also hired well known music attorney Elizabeth Moody to help then in negotiating the deals with the music labels. But such negotiations take some time to mature in a deal.

Each major label has some strategies and goals for the digital music, and people in the industry are apprehensive whether these music labels can agree to streaming music service viable. The two major disagreements have been on how long the trial period might last and whether or not the credit card details of the customer have to be included in the records before the trial starts.

As per Industry analysts, Google music appears to be as good as Apple’s iTunes 10 and people in the industry are eagerly waiting for the launch of Google Music. For the music labels also this is good news as they have also considered Apple’s stronghold in this industry as an issue.

Apple’s share in this Industry is as big as approximately 70 percent of all digital music sales in the United States and with Google’s entry into this arena is going to mark a start of a new competition. For the Industry dependence on a single player is also not a very good vision for the future.

Industry analysts are no doubt optimistic about this news but they are also apprehensive keeping in mind Google’s track record in selling.

Question about whether Google’s entry into this Industry is going to give boost to the new start ups is worth pondering over.

With the cut-throat competition between Apple, Google and Amazon it is difficult to say whether players like for the likes of Spotify, Rdio and MOG will be able to make a mark for them in the industry or will they be left struggling.

NVIDIA has updated its lineup of mobile graphical processing units (GPUs) with the addition of GeForce 400M series. Features of 400M series includes seven new processors as follows: GTX 470M, GTX 460M,GT 445M, GT 435M, GT 425M, GT 420M and GT 415M.

There will be several noticeable differences between the GTX and GT series however there will not be much of difference amongst the GT series.

400M series is stated to support stereoscopic 3D video. There is good news for 3D TV owners because 400M GPUs include NVIDIA 3DTV Play software. This feature enables 3D content playback on compatible TVs.

Of all the features available on the 400M series, the best is the addition of NVIDIA Optimus. This technology switches off the GPU when it’s not doing any high end graphics processing so as to conserve the battery power. As such the longevity is achieved without compromising the performance of the laptop.

Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba are all stated to support the GeForce 400M GPUs.

If you are a Twitter user you know only too well how difficult it is to stay up to date with all the twitters which are released every minute. You can follow pretty easily all the twitters released by your friends and people you have decided to follow.

But if you want to enlarge your view to the whole Twitter community to know what’s how in the Internet it can become quite a task! Search Twitter is a great search engine which works in real time. It means that it manages to index and show a twitter as soon as it is posted on a Twitter personal page! All results are ordered by time, from the twitter released few seconds ago the one released a few days ago.

I gave Search Twitter a try and I have to say that I am very impressed. As a matter of fact it showed me a twitter released just 10 seconds ago! Incredible! You can also purge the results by language or just click one of the most used queries to see what’s hot among twitterers.

The reason behind Google instant is the research result that people read much quicker than they type, taking 300 milliseconds between each keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds to glance at the other parts of the page. This means that it’s quite possible that you can scan the results page while you type.

The journey is definitely not easy,the technology of “Predicted Query” is definitely cutting edge. Google has surely pushed the limits of the technology and infrastructure to serve global users

The official Google Blog talked about the main features of Google Instant, the  search enhancement add-on as ..

How Google Instant works

When you start to type a search, Google Instant automatically will show results for a popular search that begins with those letters. So even before you have finished typing it searches and shows a whole set of predictive results. The result changes with every keystroke you put.  The Google instant algorithm tries to predict the rest of the query based on popular queries typed by others.

The Predicted Query

For example, if  you type “New” into Google, an algorithm predicts that the user is searching for “News” (the predicted query) and therefore displays search listings and ads for technology. Those results will continue to show unless the next letters that the user types lead to a different predicted query like “Newton”.

The predicted text is instantly shown in the search box (in light gray), and search results and ads are also shown automatically.

Adwords talks about a slight change in the logic how impressions will be counted now, but there is no change in serving advertisements as they say.

Happy Googling

]]> http://www.techieask.com/2010/09/google-instantget-predictive-search-results-before-you-finish-typing/feed/ 0 http://www.techieask.com/2010/09/tricks-downgrade-from-expensive-editions-to-basic-editions/ http://www.techieask.com/2010/09/tricks-downgrade-from-expensive-editions-to-basic-editions/#comments Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:50:43 +0000 eeshwari http://www.techieask.com/?p=3687

If you want to downgrade from the expensive editions of Windows 7 to the basic editions then you can use this downgrade procedure in Windows 7.

• Click Start.
• In the Search Box, type regedit and press Enter.
• Navigate to this registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ Microsoft\ Windows NT\CurrentVersion
• In the right pane, click EditionID and ProductName and give them the value which corresponds to a lower Windows 7 edition. Here is an example:

Windows 7 Home Premium (downgrade from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 7 Home Premium)
EditionID: HomePremium
ProductName: Windows 7 HomePremium

• Start your Windows 7 installation by inserting your Windows 7 Disc.
• Now, Select Upgrade as type of installation. Follow the instruction on the screen.
• Reactivate your operating system.

iPadpeek is just the right tool to check that out. A very simple interface,just like an open iPad with  all the standard buttons (non functional though) will open up, put the URL of the site you want to check. That’s it. It will load and give you an exact view of how the site should look like in an iPad.

How does Techieask look like in an iPad

You can browse through all the pages, just like in the normal browser and check every page of any site.

Try iPad Peek and see how does a website looks like in iPad or find out the iPad browsing experience.

]]> http://www.techieask.com/2010/09/ipadpeekhow-a-website-looks-like-in-an-ipad/feed/ 0