Tech & Warez

You have just received a PDF file that you were waiting on. You click on it only to realize it is password protected and you hate it when you do not know the password. Only one thing comes to mind - How to open password protected PDF?

In dire situations and desperate conditions, you just to break the password and access the file. In most cases, the employee who created the PDF is no more with the company or organization. Good news is, you can do it and this is how.

There is software or programs available which you can run on your computer which may be able to crack the password depending on the strength of the password. Some creators make easy passwords and the program can identify it. However this may take a few hours as all possible combination of characters have to be attempted.

There is yet another option. There are advanced professional versions which are better in processing time and show better results. What is even interesting is that they are absolutely legal and genuine. The success also depends on whether it’s a Owner password or User password that you are attempting to unlock.

Most organizations use the password decryption tools that are available. All these are basically Dictionary Search and Brute Force. You can often try a trial version for a start to see if you like it and check if it meets your needs.

Most of this type of software will allow you to save your newly opened file without that annoying password problem.

When it comes to spyware, one of the biggest culprits is free software. Many authors of free software will bundle spyware or adware with the software they are offering for free. The reason they do this is because they are paid a commission whenever a user installs the spyware or adware. This allows them to still make money even though they are offering you their software for free.

Oftentimes, it is not even evident that spyware or adware is also being installed alongside the free software. The author will usually hide the fact deep in the end-user license agreement that nearly nobody reads. This allows the author to claim that the additional install was agreed upon.

The best way to prevent this type of intrusion is to stay away from free software altogether. Since this is not desirable to most people, there are a couple of exceptions to this rule that are usually safe alternatives. One is open source software. The open source community of developers has a very clear motive for developing free software: they believe software should be free - free from cost and free from spyware or adware. The second safe alternative is demo versions of software. Demo versions are free but are also limited in their functionality. The developers of demo version software hope that users will like their software enough to purchase a fully functional version of the software.

Another point needs to be made regarding free programs. Many people use file-sharing software, such as Limewire, to download “free” versions of software that was designed to be purchased. This is not only illegal it is also very dangerous. Oftentimes, spyware, adware, Trojans, or viruses are shared on these networks and are disguised as legitimate software. Since it is expected that software would come as a executable or zip file, it is very easy to confuse someone by using a fake file name. These types of downloads should be avoided altogether.

The temptation of installing useful software that costs nothing can be quite high at times. Unfortunately, this so-called free software usually has a price to be paid. That price can be in the form of intrusive and computer-crippling spyware or adware. Simply practicing caution when choosing free software and understanding the developers motives can help prevent installing unwanted extras with that software.

Spyware is a software program that collects information about you such as browsing habits and preferences for websites you visit. This information is sent back through your Internet connection to a computer designated by the developer and dumped into a database. This information may then be sold to third parties such as advertisers or agencies.

Adware is a software program that will display pop up windows and/or banners as advertisements. They also come in the form of browser toolbars. These may be shown to you whether you are online or not.

These advertisements are not only annoying, but can consume a lot of your computer’s resources making it difficult to accomplish even the simplest of tasks.

Spyware and adware can infect your computer through a variety of channels. The most common infection seems to be through the downloading and installing of free software. Other means could be through email, instant messages, or even websites you visit.

If you are concerned that you may be infected with spyware or adware, the following lists five sure-fire signs that your computer is infected:

Pop-up ads
While many websites use pop-up ads that are built in to their website and not installed on your computer, some adware will use pop-ups as well. The pop-ups that are generated from spyware or adware are usually frequent, occur no matter which website you are visiting, and may even show adult-related content.

Changing of your homepage
Some adware and spyware programs will change your browser’s homepage to a website they want to direct you to. If this happens, and you try to change it back without success, you are infected.

Browser Redirection
Even if your homepage is not changed, there are other ways to get you to visit the website they want you to see. They can cause unexpected browser redirections (you are taken to a different website than you were trying to visit) and place Internet shortcuts on your desktop, usually to gaming, free software, or adult sites.

Browser Toolbars
Many reputable companies develop toolbars that attach to your Internet browser and provide useful tools to aid in your Internet usage - Google and Yahoo are two examples. But, there are also some not-so-reputable toolbar developers as well. If you have a new browser toolbar that you don’t know where it came from and you cannot get rid of it no matter how hard you try, then you are infected.
Severely Decreased Performance

If you have noticed a severe decrease in your computers performance lately, you may be infected. Spyware and adware programs are watching your every move and this eats up a lot of your computer’s resources. They may also be transmitting information about you back through your Internet connection that is hogging bandwidth and slowing your browsing down. Don’t think that your cable or DSL connection can handle this traffic. Nearly all broadband providers have much lower upload speeds than download speeds, which are never advertised.

If unexpected actions are taking place while using your computer, you may be infected with spyware or adware. By looking for certain behaviors, you can identify whether your computer is infected or not. If you are infected, it is time to find a good quality anti-spyware software package and clean up the damage.

There are so many registry cleaners on the market now, that it can be extremely difficult to choose the one that’s best for your computer. And since Vista is the latest version of Windows, it makes it even more of a tough choice, because it’s got so many new features that your cleaner needs to be up to date to cope with them all. So which one is it?

The fact is that all registry cleaners do the same job - they clean out the registry, which is the central database for your computer. These registry tools are simple pieces of software, which scan through this database and fix any corrupt files that are in there. The registry database is home to all sorts of important files and settings, from your latest emails to your desktop wallpaper. It’s an extremely important part of Windows, which is constantly being accessed and updated when you are using your system.

Because Windows often gets confused with these registry files, it actually ends up making making of them corrupt and damaged. This means that it has to spend longer trying to read them, which makes your computer run slower and slower. To fix this, registry cleaners simply go through the entire registry and scan every file they can find. If they see the file is damaged, they then make sure that they replace or fix it.

There are many different registry cleaners out there, but only a few can work well on Vista. The reason is that since it’s the latest version of Windows, Microsoft actually included a LOT more registry features in it, which means that old registry cleaners would not be able to spot any of the new problems that Vista would get. That’s why the best Vista registry cleaner is one which is constantly updated to cope with all the latest registry problems in Vista.

With this in mind, we always stick to using a cleaner called RegFresh to clean Vista PCs. RegFresh is a relatively new registry tool (only been on the market a few months), but has already created storm online. Because it’s so new, it has some extremely advanced technology which enables it to find more problems than most other registry cleaners, and because it’s brand new, it’s got all the latest Vista problems covered.

Is your computer or browser getting slower day by day? Does your computer hangs or crashes frequently? Do you think registry cleaners will help to speed up your computer? Most people don’t realize or might not be aware about registry cleaners. They just keep trying one after another anti virus softwares and sometimes even antispyware softwares. But the reason behind your problem might not be because of a virus or spy ware. It may have have many different causes.

One of the most common problem is the registry. Very few of us ever check our registry to see if any particular program is running without our awareness. At times, programs run in the computer without showing their presence in the desktop. A good example of this is a virus. Virus are programmed in such a way that it is meant not to show its presence to the user. A good programmer can manually figure out and remove the virus without using any anti virus software because they know where it is present. In most cases, programmers first know the presence of a virus by looking at the registry. So how do we open the registry and deal with viruses?

Registry can be opened with many softwares but the easiest way is by pressing ctrl, alt and delete at the same time. Registry will have 5 tabs but we don’t have to deal with all of them. In the applications tab, all the running programs which a user opens are shown. If a particular program is not responding after we start, we can close it from here by just selecting it and pressing end task. In process tab, we have all the programs running in our RAM. Here the programs may not necessarily be started by the user. Some viruses, malwares, adwares, spywares can be noticed from here and can be closed by selecting it and pressing end task but most of them don’t. But firstly, before dealing with anything in this tab we must to identify each process which is running.

Let’s take some of the examples from my registry and what I do. Firstly, I never deal with process which has the “username” as system, network service or local service. I only deal with the process which has my username. If you don’t know what your user name is, just check it by pressing the start button where you will see log off (your username). That same user name will be mentioned in the process tab in the registry. You just have to check whether that process was something started by you or not. If something looks new to you in the registry and you know you haven’t started that process then before closing the process by pressing end task, it is recommended that you make a quick Google search about the process and know about it. Another thing which I usually check is the “mem usage” in the process tab of the registry. This will show you how much space a particular process is occupying in your RAM. It might be useful to look at that because you might sometimes need to close a particular program if it occupying to much space of your RAM and ultimately making your computer or other process slow.

But these strategies might now always work as sometimes viruses and adwares might be more tricky to not show themselves in the registry. Sometimes, there are empty registry keys in the registry which will make it slower. Or you might have many unnecessary cookies in your browser. So the best solution to this problem is to use a registry cleaner. Once you use a registry cleaner, you don’t have to manually go a check your problem in the registry. I have personally used many registry cleaners but found registry easy to be the best of all as the scan is the fastest and gives you immediate result of your scan. Once you scan and repair the problems with this software, you will feel the difference in your computer immediately.