Type the new symbol of the Indian Rupee using Keyboard

With India being a rising power in the global economy, the Government Of India has announced a new symbol for the Indian Rupee. The Indian Rupee will no longer be denoted as “Rs” as it was previously done. It will be replaced by the  new symbol shown below…

When it comes to typing the this new symbol on the keyboard we cannot type it, as no ASCII code has been assigned to the new symbol yet.
For this a special font called “Rupee Foradian” is available. After you download this, it allows you to easily type the Rupee symbol using keyboard.
To do so follow these steps:
1. Download the required font using following link:
Download Font

2. Extract the file using WinRAR or 7-zip  run the installer’s EXE file which will automatically install the font in your system.

You can also just copy the font’s TTF file to your Fonts directory.

3. Now open MS Word or notepad or any text editor to type the Rupee symbol. Select “Rupee Foradian” font from the font list

4. That’s it. Now just like how you type the ‘$’ symbol, you just need to press (~) key which is placed just before the “1″ key or above the “Tab” key and it’ll insert the Rupee symbol in your document.

Readymade Script for Killing a Not Responding program

In my last article I had mentioned aout how to Kill a not responding program directly from the context menu. I got a few comments for that article and some said that they indeed found it useful. One of my friend, however, mentioned that he found the whole process of going into the registry, adding a new entry and tweaking it a bit tedious. He was of the opinion that all that would be too complicated for a naive computer user and they would rather opt for the “conventional” method of restarting the computer.

On thinking about it even I thought that not everyone would take the effort of digging in so deep to make a small (but very useful) change. So for all such people who think that editing the registry are for the geeks here’s the readymade script for adding “Kill not responding task”. All you have to do is download following ZIP file, extract it and run the desired REG file.

After downloading this is what you’ll see.

Just click on it and the hanged program will stop immediately. Hope this will make your work easier.

Click Here to Download.

How to Kill “Not Responding” Programs Directly

Most of us have certainly experienced our PC’s getting hanged at some point or the other. Certain programs all of a sudden stops responding andthe computer screen becomes still. The easiest and the stupidest thing people do in such situations is restart the PC. The other common practise is to press Ctrl+Alt+Del, go to Task Manager, select the culprit program and End Task. But this again is a tedious process espesially if there are more than one programs causing the PC to get hanged.
Today I’m sharing a small tweak by which you can kill the “not responding” programs instantly. All you have to do is add a new key in the registry and then just like “cut, copy, paste” you can kill a not responding program simply by right cliking and selecting from the Desktop context menu.
To do so follow these steps:

1. Go to Start> Run and type regedit. It’ll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell (for Windows 7)
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\Shell (for Windows Vista)

3. Now we’ll need to create a new key under “Shell” key. Right-click on “Shell” key and select “New -> Key”. Give the new key name “Kill Not Responding Tasks”.

4. Now right-click on the new key which we created in step 3 and select “New -> Key”. Give the new key name of command.

5. In right-side pane, change value of “Default” to:

taskkill /F /FI “STATUS eq NOT RESPONDING”

6. That’s it. Now you’ll have “Kill Not Responding Tasks” shortcut in Desktop context menu.

To set its position in the context menu, create a new String value “Position” and set its value to:

Top (To show it at top)
Bottom (To show it at bottom).

Hope you’ll find this useful.

TechQuest is Back…

Hi friends. Well its been exactly two months since the last time something was posted on TechQuest. My internet connection was badly screwed up and I could not even access the internet, forget about blogging.  The only option I had was to frequent cyber cafes and I ended up spending a fortune there. Also I’ve been busy with my college and other projects, so couldn’t devote much time in writing new articles.

Thankfully my internet connection is back and I’m back doing what I like to do the best….sharing whatever little I know. So in the coming days you can expect some articles to come up. So keep checking your mails and once again thanks for supporting me.

Menu Viewer – Right Click To Get Thumbnail Of An Image

Today I’m shaing a free utility, Menu Viewer, that brings up a thumbnail view of an image when it is right-clicked. These days with everyone having a digital camera, we take random pictures of each and every ocaasion and after a period of time it becomes difficult to remember which image was stored where and when.

Using Menu Viewer you can just right-click an image and get its thumbnail view in the context menu. Not only that it also shows useful information like resolution and dimension of the file. Double clicking on the preview mode will open the actual image as usual.

Menu Viewer is compatible with almost all image formats such as BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF and even some rarely heard format types like DDS,HDR, ICO, IFF, JBIG, JNG, KOALA, LBM, Kodak PhotoCD, MNG, PCX, PBM, PGM, PPM, PhotoShop , Raw Fax G3, SGI, Sun, RAS, TARGA, WBMP and many more. All you have to do is just download, install and you are ready to use it directly. Menu Viewer is a tiny software, it occupies only 700 KB, but yet a useful utility that will definitely enhance the context menu functionality for more effective viewing of your favourite images.

Get Back Your Lost Pendrive or other USB devices

These days USB devices or pen drives like they are commonly called, have become an essential tool in our daily buisness, be it in college or at work. Thinking of losing a pendrive that has some important data or your work material can give you a nightmare. Today I’m sharing with you a software that can help in tracing your pendrive, if it ever gets lost.
USB Lost and Found is a free tool to keep your USB drive away from unauthorized users from using/keeping your USB drive. It works on Windows 2000/XP/Server/Vista.
USB Lost and Found has two methods of telling unauthorized users to return it. The first method is the Message method. If you lose your pendrive and someone else tries to use it they get a message box on their computer screens that tells them to return it, along with your contact information, and denies access to the USB drive.

The second method, which only comes with the Pro version, is called Lock Down. Lock Down immediately locks the user’s computer when the USB drive is accessed, covering the whole screen and denying access. When the computer is in lockdown mode, hotkeys such as Alt+F4 and Ctrl+Shift+Esc don’t work. Only Ctrl+Alt+Del would work and you can shutdown/restart/logoff your computer.

When you’ve installed the lockdown protection on your USB flash drive, you can continue accessing your USB flash drive with any of the following methods below.If you want the Lock Down feature, you’ll have to purchase the PRO version of USB Lost and Found. In my opinion, the lock down feature might work well for a naive user but not on more experienced users. If the computer has autorun turned off or security products such as USB Firewall or iKill installed, USB Lost and Found will not work. Some antivirus may even warn and stop the autorun.inf from your USB flash drive.

So the best thing one can do is use the free version and add our own custom message like,”This USB drive is lost! Please contact: +91XXXXXXXXXX so that I may get my USB drive back! Thank you so much!”. You can also give your Email ID instead of your phone number and hope that there are kind and honest people in this world that would return your USB flash drive to the respective owner.
Click Here To Download USB Lost and Found.

Remove “Sexiest Video Ever” Scam in Facebook

Few weeks before, a fake video titled “Candid Camera Prank [HQ]” and messages which said “this is without doubt the sexiest video ever! ” were doing the rounds in facebook. Many users were bombarded with such messages on their wall or friend’s profiles. The post is accompanied by a picture which appears as a movie thumbnail picture of a woman with a short skirt on an exercise bicycle.

When you click on the video, Facebook user will be required to allow the application the permission to access user’s public information, post to user’s wall, and access to user data any time. Once permission is granted, a “Thanks for the confirmation! You can continue to the video now” message is display. However, when user clicks on Continue button to view the video, user is prompted to update the out-of-date FLV player.

User is then instructed to download and install a file named VLCsetup.exe. This VLC setp file is ofcourse fake which attempts to fool user to believe that it’s installing VLC (VideoLAN) player and it infects your PC with a malware or adware called Hotbar.

Here’s a video demo by WebSense on what’s happening when users click on the Sexiest Video Ever link.

Those who see the “Sexiest Video Ever” video on their facebook walls, do not click on the links or allow the Facebook application to run.
For users who have installed the Hotbar, most anti-virus software can remove and clean the Hotbar. Just scan the computer with up-to-date anti-virus. The Hotbar may add an entry in Add and Remove Programs or Programs and Features of Control Panel, Uninstall that. In addition, it’s also recommended to change the password for Facebook.

Facebook Hack: View Photos/Private Album of Any Profile

Those who use Facebook know that to view someone’s profile, he/she has to be in your friend list. By default you cannot view a user who is not in your friend list, unless ofcourse if they change their sharing settings accordingly. If you try to view their profile you will get a message saying “XYZ only shares some of his profile information with everyone”. This also means that you cannot see their private photos and albums. Well…that’s not true anymore.

Almost a month ago a javascript was discovered that allows anyone to view anyone’s private photos and album without being their friend. All they have to do is go to the user profile page and paste the following javascript below at the address bar.

javascript:(function( {CSS.removeClass(document.body,%20′profile_two_columns’); tab_controller.changePage(“photos”);})()

This hack might not always work and you may will get an error message saying “There are no photos to display. Photos of XYZ may not have been tagged, or may not be visible due to privacy.” This happens especially when the user already has set the setting to allow “EVERYONE” to view photos & videos of the user or has no photos & videos uploaded at all.

This method may not last  long as once the concerned authorities comes to know about it, they will soon try to rectify it. Anyways you can try this method while it lasts.

Fortunately for those who are concerned about their privacy being intruded, there’s a way to get through this. You can configure a stricter privacy setting for your Facebook profile. It will be shown in my next post tomorrow. So keep reading.

How to Disable Autorun Feature

In one my previous posts, I had mentioned about a freeware called Media Desktop that helps you to access your USB device directly from the desktop. I got several comments asking me as to why we need such a software when you can already access your USB device by the autoplay option, prompting you to choose an action, in Windows. There are two reasons to this.

Firstly, the autoplay feature pops up only for the first time that you insert your USB device. Once you close a window that displays the contents of your USB device, you can’t access it again directly from your desktop.

Secondly, the autoplay feature in windows is faciliated by the autorun.inf file that exists in your USB device. As already mentioned in many other blogs and forums, it is always advisable to keep the autorun feature disabled in your PC. The autorun feature, which is actually for the convenience of the user, gives viruses, trojans and other malicious stuffs a backdoor entry to your PC without the user having any idea about it.
So for all those who are still not aware as to how to the disable Autorun feature, follow these steps and Autorun feature will no longer be executed automatically.

1. Go to Start> Run and type regedit
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER> Software> Microsoft> Windows> CurrentVersion> Policies> Explorer

3. There you’ll find a value “”NoDriveTypeAutoRun”. Double click on it and set the Hex value to “ff” or the Decimal value to “255″.
4. Refresh the registry editor (press F5) and you’re done.

Change Mouse Settings for Left-Hand Users

By default, most computer mouses are desinged for the convenience of right-hand users. They are designed in a way that the index finger, being the more powerful digit, is used for the left-click button and the right-click button, which is rarely used, is done by the middle finger. Left hand users might however find this difficult and most left handers I know, are forced to use the mouse right handed.

For all those lefties who aren’t aware, a small change to the mouse settings can help you convert the mouse to suit you.

To converting to Left Hand Mouse in Windows..

• Go to Start Menu.
• Click on Settings and select Control Panel.
• Double click on the Mouse icon to display the Mouse Properties.
• Select the Buttons tab and click on the check box marked “Switch primary and secondary buttons” to set the mouse buttons up for left-handed use.
• Click OK or press Enter.

Note that the buttons of the mouse now gets reversed. If you’re operating from Windows 95, 98, ME or Windows 2000, you’ll be prompted to make a selection (Right-handed or Left-handed) from the Buttons tab, instead of a checkbox. Just click and select accordingly, and you’re done. Hope all the lefties out their find this tip useful.