Here is a list of Free Public DNS servers that are a lot better,faster and safer than DNS servers of your ISP.

OpenDNS
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
or
208.67.222.220
208.67.220.222

Google Public DNS
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

DNS Advantage
156.154.70.1
156.154.71.1

Norton DNS
198.153.192.1
198.153.194.1

ScrubIT
67.138.54.100
207.225.209.66

Help :
How to change your DNS
Changing DNS server settings

It is a built-in user account that is run on a Windows OS. It has powers even more than the Administrator account ! Using that account, one can gain complete control over everything. You can kill any stubborn process, make system wide changes etc. But, one cannot log in as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. Windows doesn’t allow this and for a good reason coz malicious programs if run as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM, then it would be nothing less than a disaster!

Why should I become the NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM ?

There are many rare instances when you will need to become the NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM like in case you cannot end a virus process using Task Manager or from command line using taskkill even when the /f switch is used.

How can I become NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM ?

Here is a little trick that allows you to gain system wide access as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM in XP. This won’t work in Vista.

1. You must be logged in as an Administrator
2. Make sure that “Task Scheduler” service is running. If not, start it using services.msc or using command line by typing net start "Task Scheduler"
3. Now, you need to schedule a task using the at command as show below. Here’s the general command syntax.
   
at one_minute_more_than_current_time /interactive file_path

   And here’s an example. Consider that the current time in your system tray clock is 21:21. Here’s the command that you need to enter to run the cmd.exe as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM.
   
at 21:22 /interactive C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe

   You must specify the time one or two minutes more than the current time in system tray clock in 24 hour format.
   
   

   Schedule a task

4. When the time is elapsed, a new Command Prompt appears which is running as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. All programs, GUI programs, commands etc launched from this Command Prompt also runs as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. For example, the Task Manager (taskmgr.exe) started from this Command Prompt can end any process. Be careful while playing around with this trick

Registry editing has been disabled by your administrator

Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator

The command prompt has been disabled by your administrator

Well, here are my first VB Scripts that are damn useful to fix these problems. I did borrow the idea from another similar script. But these scripts have more features.

• RegSwitch
  You can use this to turn on/off registry editing access i.e to block or unblock regedit.
  
• TaskmgrSwitch
  You can use this to turn on/off Task Manager i.e to block or unblock taskmgr access.
  
• cmdSwitch
  Similar to the above two, this will enable/disable Command Prompt access.

All the above scripts first check for existence of regedit.exe/taskmgr.exe/cmd.exe and also log events to the Event Log.

Just run the scripts again to toggle between on and off. The scripts have been tested successfully on XP SP3 and Vista SP1. Please let me know if there are any bugs. You can view the source code of the script by opening it with notepad

Download RegSwitch
Download TaskmgrSwitch
Download cmdSwitch

P.S : These scripts were initially posted by me at Raymond.cc Forum.

1. Open notepad and type the following and save it as “upload.ftp“. You can save it with any name and any extension. Don’t save it as txt file. It works perfectly but others can open and see the ftp username and password easily.
   

   open prashanthpai.com
   username
   password
   cd public_html/downloads
   put C:MySitego.exe
   bye

• First line will make connection to ftp server at prashanthpai.com
• Don’t forget to replace prashanthpai.com with your site name or IP address.
• Enter you ftp username and password in second and third line respectively.
• Next is you’ve got type the path on your server where you need to upload the files. When you login to ftp, usually you are in the root direcrory or ““. In case of linux(like cPanel) the path would be public_html and in case of windows(like Plesk), path will be httpdocs.
• The put command uploads the file. You need to give the full path of the file to upload.
• In the last line, bye command terminates the ftp session.
2. Next you need to create a batch file in the same directory where you’ve created “upload.ftp“. Open notepad and type the following code. Save it with any name with .bat extension like “Auto_FTP.bat“.

   @echo off
   ftp -s:”upload.ftp” >> ftplog.log

   The above batch script will tell ftp utility to load the commands from the file “upload.ftp“. To check the file transaction, a log file named “ftplog.log” is created. You can remove “ >> ftplog.log” from the script if you don’t want the log file.

3. Run the Auto_FTP.bat. Your file will be uploaded to the destination folder on your site

Note: If you want to upload multiple files, you need to change the upload.ftp file code as

open prashanthpai.com
username
password
cd public_html/downloads
mput C:MySite*.exe
bye

Note the mput command instead of put. Change the batch script as

@echo off
ftp -i -s:”upload.ftp” >> ftplog.log

Note the extra -i switch in the above code. This will upload all files from C:MySite having .exe extension.

P.S: This tutorial was first posted by me at Raymond.cc forum.

Create File Templates in XP using TweakUI

Here’s something that lets you have your own file template to make things easier.

1. We can create file templates using the MS Powertoy called “TweakUI”. Most of you are familiar with this utility. Download TweakUI (147 KB)
2. Install and run TweakUI. Select “Templates” in the left pane. Now you can see the available templates. You can delete any already present template or create a new one. If you don’t want to permanently delete a template, you can uncheck the box to disable that from appearing in “New“.


Create File Templates in XP using TweakUI

3. Select “Create” and give the path of the file (template). You can place the file anywhere but you might accidentally delete it. So it’s recommended that you place your template file in any of these directories -
   "C:Documents and SettingsAdministratorTemplates" - just for you
or "C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersTemplates" - for all users

How and why to create file templates ?
Let’s say you need to create a .html file or .C file and every time you create one, you’ll have to type the same ‘structure/backbone’ of the code.

For example, in html file, you need to type the basic tags.

<html>
<head>
<title>Prashanth Pai</title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

Personally, while using C, I prefer to type code in notepad rather than the DOS mode Turbo compiler. Generally, you need to include header files etc in all codes.

#include
#include
#include
#include
#include

main()
{
clrscr();

getch();
}

You wouldn’t have to spend your time typing the basic backbone of code if it is present in the newly created file. That’s why we create file templates. You can create file templates for any application as long as there is valid file association of that file extension to the parent software.

For example, if you work with Flash files (.fla), then you can Open Adobe Flash > Create a new file > Make necessary changes and then save the .fla file and then you can use it as flash file template. The same goes for other softwares like Audacity, SketchUp, AutoIt, Office docs etc.

Note :
There is no TweakUI for Vista. But you can try this. Download the TweakUI setup file for XP. Extract it using 7Zip or WinRAR. Run the extracted executable in Compatibility Mode (XP SP2). TwealUI may not be fully functional in Vista.

P.S: This tutorial was first posted by me at Raymond.cc forum.