This tutorial will show how to add programs to Startup so they will be launched automatically after a user logged in (like Skype or Anti-Virus programs do).

Using Windows XP, this was really easy: Just drag the application shortcut of your program to Start -> Programs – > Startup. Using Windows 7,  this folder won’t be shown, but it still exists. Here is how to autostart any program:

• Go to your Startup folder. You can access it by typing “shell:startup” into the search bar in your Start Menu:
  
• Now create a shortcut to the application you want to autostart and put it into the Startup folder.
  
• That’s it basically. Now the application you linked to in the Startup folder will start always after YOU logged in. Other computer users have to do the same thing again!
• After you put the first shortcut into the Startup folder, it will be shown in the Start Menu, so you can easily remove the shortcuts again or place new ones there.
  

If you don’t want or can’t use the search, you can also access the folder by going to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup and replacing <username> with your actual username. Better enter it directly into your address bar since the AppData folder is hidden and you may not see it.

Using a few console commands, you can easily create giant screenshots of Crysis with resolutions of 28800×16200 or more megapixels, which corresponds with 225 times Full-HD resolution!

Here is how to create such enormous screenshots:

• Launch Crysis, select any graphics settings you want and load a savegame
• Open the console by pressing the ` key on English keyboards, ^ key on German ones (below Esc and to the left of 1)
• Type con_restricted 0 and press Enter. This will unlock all the restricted console commands.
• Now use e_screenshot_width and e_screenshot_height followed by the desired number of pixels, I used e_screenshot_width 28800 and e_screenshot_height 16200 for my huge image.
• By default, your screenshot will be saved as TGA file, you can also change the filetype by entering e_screenshot_file_format followed by either jpg, tga or bmp
• Select your fists as weapon by pressing “1″ twice
• Enter cl_hud 0 to disable the HUD
• Enter e_screenshot 1 to take a screenshot. This may take a while, Crysis will render many parts and put them together as one big image later on.
• Your Screenshot will be located in Crysis/Game/ScreenShots/HiRes as a large TGA file. I recommend IrfanView for viewing the picture, most other programs will crash when trying to open such a big file!

I resized my resulting 1.3GB TGA file to 1920×1080 pixels afterwards in order to be able to publish it here, but of course all the cool details are gone that way. Your result may look like this:

Click here for 1080p version of this screenshot. I actually set all graphics settings to Ultra High and have no idea, why the water reflections and stuff are missing… probably gone due to the down-sampling. Don’t take too many screenshots, otherwise all your HDD space will be gone…

Below are some more down-sampled versions of 450 megapixel screenshots. The weird stripes you can see don’t appear in the full-size versions, so I think I have to blame the down-sampling again…

UPDATE: With Chrome 4.0, there are official extensions and a better ad-blocking plugin available! Please check out the AdThwart extension to block advertisements in Google Chrome!

Adblock scripts for Firefox, Opera and even Internet Explorer have been around for a while, but until now, there was no easy-to-install extension for Google Chrome with a similar  functionality. The latest release of Google Chrome, version 3, has added easy support for extensions, and a nice guy called gg3po has developed an extension to disable advertisements on websites.

Here is how to activate that extension:

• Step 1: Prepare Google Chrome
  First of all, download Google Chrome Channel Changer (alternative download), launch it and set the mode to Dev. Then click Update to save the settings.
  
• Step 2: Update Google Chrome
  In Chrome, click on the settings button (on the right side) and select About Google Chrome. The appearing window will check for updates and download them, if available. After the download finished, close Chrome.
  
• Step 3: Enable extensions
  Now right-click on your Chrome shortcut, select Properties. Add “–enable-extensions” (without the quotes) as launch parameter to your Target path.
  
• Step 4: Download AdSweep
  Launch Chrome, now extensions should be enabled (although you won’t see any change yet). Go to http://www.adsweep.org/ and download the Extension for Chrome (not the User Script!) (alternative download). A window will pop up asking you whether to install the extension, click OK.
  
• Step 5: Restart Chrome & start surfing ad-free!
  Now most ads on websites shouldn’t show up any more!

This is how a website looked before and after enabling the AdSweep extension:

If you encounter errors when playing some Painkiller levels or starting a multiplayer game, and the error looks like the one below, there is an easy way of solving it.

[string "../Data/LScripts/Templates/ParticleFX/Environments/SnowEnvironm..."]:1: invalid control char near `char(1)’

[string "../Data/LScripts/Templates/Items/C1L3_korzenie.CItem"]:1: invalid control char near `char(1)’

[string "../Data/LScripts/Templates/Items/C1L3_uapka.CItem"]:1: invalid control char near `char(1)’

First of all, patch Painkiller to the latest version (1.64). If the patching doesn’t work because you don’t have registry entries, download my Painkiller registry entries here.

Then you have to download these template files for Painkiller and extract the archive using WinRAR or any other archiving program into the Painkiller directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\Painkiller). If it asks to replace files, select “yes to all”. Now your game should work perfectly!

In the last tutorial, I explained how to find out your Warcraft 3 CD key. Now I show you how to change the CD key of an installed version of Warcraft 3.

PLEASE BACK UP YOUR WARCRAFT 3 REGISTRY BEFORE CONTINUING!!

You will need this Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne CD Key Changer package.

Extract the files from the archive and launch “cdkey.exe” for Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and “FTkey.exe” for Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. In the Window, click “Change CD Key” and enter your new CD key. If you don’t see this button, please scroll down…

What can I do when the “Change CD-Key” button doesn’t show up?

The Warcraft 3 CD key is not stored in the Windows Registry as many other games do, it’s encrypted and saved somewhere in your “war3.mpq” file. In order to change the key, the application needs to know where your installation of Warcraft 3 actually is. When the button isn’t there, you don’t have the right registry entries.
In order to create the registry entries, please download Lescos Warcraft Toolkit. Open “LWT.exe”, go to the “Registry” tab and browse for your “Warcraft III.exe” file. Then click “Make entries”.
Restart the CD key changer tools, the link should be there now.

Avira AntiVir Personal is probably the best free anti virus software. It is free of charge, updates daily, detects almost every virus, troyan, worm or whatever, and is not as annoying as other software as Kaspersky with lots of security warnings, extra firewalls, ect…

The only bad thing is that after every update a popup containing advertisement is shown. This banner is always the same and shown almost every day since AntiVir updates as often as once a day. Here I will show you how to disable the annoying ad banner without having to hack/crack/patch AntiVir.

This works only with Windows XP, perhaps I will find a way for Vista or Windows 7 some time!

Click on Start -> Run… -> type “secpol.msc” (without the quotes) and press enter to open the local security settings.

If you never created any security policies before, you have to set them up first. In order to do that, right-click the “Software Restriction Policies” entry on the left and choose “Create New Policies”. If you did anything in that section before, you can skip this step.

Now the folders “Security Levels” and “Additional Rules” should be there. Navigate to “Additional Rules”, right-click and choose “New Path Rule…”. In the window popping up click browse and navigate to your AntiVir folder (usually C:\Program Files\Avira\AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic) and select the “avnotify.exe” file. Set “Security level” to “Disallowed” if it isn’t already and hit OK.

This tweak forbids the execution of the “avnotify.exe” file which is responsible for the popups. Deleting the file is not possible, AntiVir will crash when trying to access it. This works as long as the filename of “avnotify.exe” is not changed through an update, and if it is, you can do the same thing for the new file.

Thanks to ghacks.net

This tutorial will show you how to shrink your copy of Windows 7 so that it will be as small as 3.8GB and will fit on the 4GB SDD of the Asus Eee PC 700 and 900!

Now follow the steps below to make your own customized version of Windows 7 for your Netbook. This is quite complicated compared to a normal installation of Windows 7, and perhaps there will be an easier way in the future, but until now, this is better than nothing, and you can have the other SDD for all the stuff you want to have on your netbook.

Thanks to Basti756 for this awesome tutorial! See the proof that it is working below:

Get Windows 7

You can download Windows 7 Beta 1 either from the official  Microsoft Windows 7 download site or via Torrent, which should be 100% legal since the official version has been released for public testing. Download torrent file.

Required software:

I wrote a tutorial earlier how to bypass the Windows Geniune Advantage (WGA) check for installing Windows Media Player 11 or Internet Explorer 8 by using a registry hack, but this will go even further and make your copy of Windows look completely genuine so you can even do Windows Updates and use the Office Online templates.

All the software is from CT Forums, so please refer to them if you have questions or there are any legal issues.

You may only use this tutorial and the software provided if you own an original version of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office! Check the legal situation in your country before following this tutorial! I am not responsible for any crimes commited with the information provided!

Download WGA Patcher 2.0

Download Office 2007 Patcher 1.6

Please scroll down for the Office 2007 tutorial. If there are any questions, post them as comments please!

Make Windows genuine for Windows Update

First of all, download the WGA Patcher from the link above or from CT Forums and extract all the files to your hard disk.

Generate Windows XP key

Then open Windows XP Keygen.exe, select “Windows XP Pro VLK” in the Product Family dropdown menu, and click “generate”. In the box below, it will generate a Windows XP license key. Don’t close the program, you will need it later!

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Today I’ll show you how to get the source code of any game that’s made using C#, the .NET Framework and Microsoft’s XNA Framework. Basically, this will also work for all .NET Applications, but for XNA Games it’s more difficult, so I will explain it for XNA here.
I hope you understand and like it, if there are any issues, please comment to help me improving this tutorial!

Warning: You may violate copyright laws in your country if you try to obtain property (in this case source code) that you don’t own! Check your legal situation before following this tutorial! I won’t be responsible for any criminal offence done with the information provided!

Step-by-step tutorial to disassemble the game

Things you need

• An XNA-based game
• .NET Reflector
• Visual Studio 2005/2008
• XNA Game Studio 1.0/2.0/3.0

Decompiling the binary file

First of all, you need a really great tool called .NET Reflector. You can download it from the official website or from my server. The .NET Reflector can look inside .NET binaries (.exe and .dll files) and disassemble the code to any of these programming languages: IL, C#, Visual Basic, Delphi, MC++ and Chrome.

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Today I want to show you how to extract media like ingame music, videos, images and textures from many common games. It’s useful if you want to listen to the sound track of your favourite game even when you’re not playing.

Extracting the media should be legal as long as you own the original game!

Search your game in the game index, navigate to the path specified in your Windows Explorer, then use the application given to extract your music. Good Luck!

If you have any questions, or want more games to be added, please comment!

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