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Hamsphere simulates a full blown virtual Ham radio transceiver on you system. It can be operated by licensed and unlicensed DX’ers for free. If you are not having Amateur radio license, they will issue you a “call sign” while registering.

What is so great about this Ham Radio Software Transceiver?

No extra hardware needed, just your PC, a microphone, speakers and you are ready to call CQ on the virtual Ham Radio bands.

You can feel audio on Hamsphere with simulations of occasional band noise and fading, as in a real radio transceiver. The user interface looks like a real HF transceiver

If you are interested in becoming an Amateur radio operator, here is the opportunity to practice it without buying costly amateur radio gear.
Forget about building complex antennas, raising it on high mast, antenna tuners etc. All you need is an Internet connection and Java support.
Voice (SSB) and CW (Morse code) are allowed on most bands. On the lower bands we can turn on/off(noise-free) the simulation.

Digital modes were prohibited on HamSphere earlier, but are now supported on the 30m band. RRTY, PSK31, SSTV etc can be used.

Pre-requisite: Download JAVA

Download Hamsphere (Windows, Mac and Linux )

For more updates @Hampshere

The netstat -a command shows the amount of traffic on the network.

It gives only a basic overview of the active network connections.

As hackers, we are interested in much more finer details. Currports is a light weight and portable application which lists all the open ports and remote connections with

• Process Name
• Process ID
• Protocol
• Local port
• Local Address
• Remote Port
• Remote Address
• Remote Host Name
• Process path
• Process Services etc.

The good thing is that you get detailed information about all the web traffic, to which programs traffic is bound to, the current open ports, protocol (TCP/UDP) etc. If you suspect any unusual network activity, you can close unwanted TCP connections and kill the process that opened the ports. It supports IPv6 ports and can generate reports in HTML and XML file formats for debugging.

Download CurrPorts:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.zip (61.9 KB, 32-bit Win)
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports-x64.zip (81.6 KB, 64-bit Win)

Yesterday I was tinkering the partitions with Microsoft Disk Management in Windows XP.I’m not a big fan of it, but it’s pretty simple with that GUI. I wanted to delete my last partition and salvage some space for Linux, clicked on "Delete logical drive". voila !!! the whole extended partition got deleted !!! so simple !

was wishing hard for an undo there. no way ! all my important files are gone in split seconds.

There came TestDisk for my rescue.

TestDisk is a powerful free and open source data recovery software which supports DOS, Windows, Linux and Mac.

Within minutes all my partitions are recovered,the old MBR was restored.In windows it works in Command Line mode without any eye candy GUI,but it really serves its purpose.

TestDisk can

• Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
• Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
• Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
• Fix FAT tables
• Rebuild NTFS boot sector
• Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
• Fix MFT using MFT mirror
• Locate ext2/ext3 Backup SuperBlock
• Undelete files from FAT filesystem
• Copy files from deleted FAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3 partitions.

Download Testdisk

TestDisk has features for both novices and experts.

TestDisk can run under

1. DOS (either real or in a Windows 9x DOS-box)
2. Windows (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista)
3. Linux
4. FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
5. SunOS and
6. MacOS

It has versions for

• Dos/Win9x, zip
• Windows NT/XP/2000/2003/Vista
• Linux, kernel 2.6.x i386/x86_64
• Linux, kernel 2.4.x i386/x86_64
• Linux i386 RPM
• Linux SRPM
• Mac OS X

TestDisk can find lost partitions for all of these file systems:

1. BeFS ( BeOS )
2. BSD disklabel ( FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD )
3. CramFS, Compressed File System
4. DOS/Windows FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32
5. HFS, HFS+ and HFSX, Hierarchical File System
6. JFS, IBM’s Journaled File System
7. Linux ext2 and ext3
8. Linux LUKS encrypted partition
9. Linux RAID md 0.9/1.0/1.1/1.2
   RAID 1: mirroring
   RAID 4: striped array with parity device
   RAID 5: striped array with distributed parity information
   RAID 6: striped array with distributed dual redundancy information
10. Linux Swap (versions 1 and 2)
11. LVM and LVM2, Linux Logical Volume Manager
12. Mac partition map
    Novell Storage Services NSS
13. NTFS ( Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 )
    ReiserFS 3.5, 3.6 and 4
14. Sun Solaris i386 disklabel
15. Unix File System UFS and UFS2 (Sun/BSD/…)
16. XFS, SGI’s Journaled File System

Download here

The MS-Windows port of the popular Linux tool can be used in Command Line Interface (CLI) of Windows (XP onwards).

Dmidecode reports information about your system's hardware as described in your system BIOS according to the SMBIOS/DMI standard.

Download DmiDecode

Install it, then you have to set the path

open a command line window and type

path=C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\sbin

if it is installed in C:\Program Files\

Three additional tools come with dmidecode:

• biosdecode prints all BIOS related information it can find.
• ownership retrieves the "ownership tag" that can be set on Compaq computers;
• vpddecode prints the "vital product data" information that can be found in almost all IBM computers

Now you can execute commands

dmidecode –t x

where x can be

• 0 – BIOS
• 1 – System
• 2 – Base Board
• 3 – Chassis
• 4 – Processor
• 5 – Memory Controller
• 6 – Memory Module
• 7 – Cache
• 8 – Port Connector
• 9 – System Slots
• 10 – OnBoard Devices
• 11 – OEMStrings
• 12 – SystemConfiguration Options

Do you know your system well? How to post your PC profile on online forums? 

Belarc Advisor is a free nifty application which automatically detects your software and hardware under the hood, without opening the CPU cover. It displays a comprehensive list of Applications installed and allows you to browse through their installation folders at ease.

A detailed profile of your installed software and hardware is created and generates an Html file which you can post it on your website or blog. From HDD SMART status to list of applications, including the last started date.

The major feature are :

• Processor details with primary and secondary cache memory size
• Software Versions & Usage
• Missing Microsoft Security Hotfixes
• Local Drive Volumes and free space
• Installed Memory Modules
• Installed Software Licenses 
• Installed Microsoft Hotfixes

Your system administrator will appreciate the report, as it could help him to easily troubleshoot and resolve any conflicts easily.

From a security point of view, it provides the current system security status, from Antivirus Definitions and Security Hotfixes

Download Belarc Advisor

File size: 2284 KB

Operating Systems:  Runs on Windows 7, 2008 R2, Vista, 2008, 2003, XP, 2000, NT 4, Me, 98, and 95. Both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows is supported.

As per the Belarc website:

“they are in use on well over twenty million computers and are licensed by numerous customers including: AIG, Dana, Kindred Healthcare, NASA, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, Unilever, WebMD/Emdeon, and many more.”

Windows XP Genuine License keys

These keys are .reg files that do modify your registry and make your copy of windows XP genuine. I use these at the moment and they work fine, passes WGA and everything is all good.

To use, simply click or double click one of the files and allow it to edit your registry.

Download link

:http://rapidshare.com/files/174934544/Windows_XP_Genuine_License_Keys.rar

If you cannot boot into safe mode you can try using the Recovery Console in Windows XP. This requires you to have a Windows XP CD. Knowledge Base Article 307654 has directions on how to use it. You do not need to follow the instructions for how to install it. In fact, if you have a problem like the 0×00000024 issue above, you probably can not boot from an installed recovery console anyway.

In brief, to boot from the recovery console in XP, do this:

1. Insert your Windows XP CD
2. Boot the computer
3. Select to boot from the CD. On many computers you have to hit a button to do that. On Dell computers the button is usually F12. On HP it is usually ESC.
4. The computer will work for a while and eventually you get a screen that says “Welcome to Setup”. Hit the R key here
5. If will ask you which installation you want to boot. If you have several XP installations on this computer, select the one you want. Of course, if you have several installations, and one still works, you would not need these steps.
6. Type the administrator password for the installation you need to repair.

At this point, you should be at a command prompt. The commands you can run are very limited and they are often different from what you are used to. If you have disabled the intelppm driver on an Intel-based computer and need to re-enable it, run “enable intelppm SERVICE_SYSTEM_START”.

If you need to run chkdsk you can do it from the recovery console window as well. The C: drive is the boot volume in your Windows XP installation. To run the full check run “chkdsk c: /p /r”

If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can’t access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn’t work for me. Here’s what you do:

1. Click on Start / Run, type ‘msconfig’, then click ‘OK’.
2. Go to the ‘Services’ tab, find the’ Background Intelligent Transfer ‘service, disable it, apply the changes & reboot.

This problem with the Background Intelligent Transfer Service should have been corrected in Windows update Q 314862, part of Service Pack 1.