BitDefender solution for flagging Windows 64-bit files as Trojan.FakeAlert.5

Happened with ESET’s NOD32 once when everything was being flagged as Kryptik.JX trojan but this time its BitDefender, they pushed an update file that rendered Windows 64-bit systems useless since many were falsely flagged as Trojan.FakeAlert.5 and moved to quarantine. This might have left many users with a useless non-bootable Windows or other problems. Here is the solution to fix the false alarm by BitDefender which detects important files as Trojan.FakeAlert.5.

The BitDefender products effected were: Home user, BitDefender Business Client and BitDefender Security for File Servers.

All BitDefender 2008, 2009 & 2010 Users With 64-Bit Systems

Download BitDefender Rescue CD that will fix the problem

BitDefender Business Client: False positive Trojan.Fakealert.5 on Windows x64 systems

Read HERE

False positive Trojan.Fakealert.5 on Windows x64 systems – How to fix your BitDefender for File Servers product

Read HERE

BitDefender has a dedicated page for the said problem which can be accessed HERE

KB971033: How to hide and uninstall Windows piracy check update?

Microsoft has just pushed Windows 7 piracy check update, which is also called Windows 7 Activation Technology Update by Microsoft, to Windows Update. It has been tagged as important by Microsoft so if you have set to install important updates automatically, it will be installed without any prompt. This post is about KB971033 update by Microsoft, it will tell you exactly what to look for, how to hide the KB971033 update and how to uninstall the KB971033 update, if it has already been installed. If you don’t want the update, change your settings and hide the update. Here’s what to look for:

For Windows 7 64-bit
Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB971033)

For Windows 7 32-bit
Update for Windows 7 for x86-based Systems (KB971033)

Description of the Update as it appears in Windows Update:
This update to Windows Activation Technologies detects activation exploits and tampering to key Windows system files. These exploits try to bypass regular Windows activation and are sometimes included with counterfeit copies of Windows.

There are some concerns about the said update, it is supposed to block 70 or so methods present for breaking Windows 7’s activation but it will also keep checking in on Windows even if it passes as Genuine the firs time.

How to Hide the KB971033 update?
1. Go to Windows Update by clicking Start, typing Windows Update and running it.
2. Right click on the update “Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB971033)” or “Update for Windows 7 for x86-based Systems (KB971033)” depending on the version of Windows 7 you are running.
3. Click Hide

How to uninstall the KB971033 update?
If you face a problem with the said update or you simply don’t want the way its going to keep checking your Windows, you can uninstall it by following these steps.
1. Go to “Programs and Features” either through Control Panel or by typing it in Start Menu.
2. Click “View installed updates”
3. Look for update KB971033, right click and click Uninstall. Restart might be necessary.

According to user reports, they are not able to uninstall the said update. I am looking into this and the post will be updated accordingly.

Links:
-Genuine Windows Blog entry about the said update
-Description of the update for Windows Activation Technologies/KB971033 information from Microsoft

Display and Highlight Code in your Wordpress blog without any plugins

If you have ever tried to add PHP or some other programming code like CSS, HTML etc. in your Wordpress blog, you will know what happens, Wordpress will run it instead of showing it as code if you put it using HTML editor. There are many Wordpress plugins out there to make the job easier but I wanted the functionality of displaying and highlighting code in Wordpress posts without having to use any plugins.

Wordpress will only show the code properly if characters are used for code elements, see below:

< = &lt;
> = &gt;
/ = &#47;
] = &#93;
[ = &#91;
" = &#34;
' = &#39;

Displaying Code properly without using any Plugin

Its not very simple to use characters instead of the code elements. What you should keep in mind is to always write your post/paste code in Visual mode of the Wordpress editor instead of HTML, it will convert the code elements into characters automatically, displaying it correctly within code tags.

Highlighting Code without using any Plugin

Now the code will be shown correctly on your blog but thanks to easy CSS management in Wordpress, you can add/edit a few lines of code in your theme’s stylesheet (style.css) to highlight the code so it stands out from rest of the post. Edit your theme’s stylesheet either by FTP or within Wordpress Admin area and look for:

code {
font-size:12px;
}

You can edit it to your liking, setting background colour, text colour, border, margin, padding, everything that CSS can do for you. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in comments.

How to remove comment author’s URL from your Wordpress blog?

I recently came across an excellent read about the secrets of comments.php in Wordpress by Gilles Maes at Net-Tuts, and I thought of testing this immediately, how to remove comment author’s URL from your Wordpress blog. Now it is there for a reason, and I do not really recommend doing this but then the quality of some links is extremely low. I usually edit out questionable links from author and allow the comment when reasonable but I can’t imagine doing that all the time and certainly not on a blog with very big audience.

You can also simply remove URL field from comments.php but I won’t do that if I were you, simply because down the line some day you might want to get them back, so let them live in the database but not show if you have a problem with it.

Now in order to remove comment author’s URL, link or website, look for the following code under comments.php of the theme you are using.

<?php comment_author_link(); ?>

and remove _link so it looks like,

<?php comment_author(); ?>

that’s it, you are done. If you are having any trouble then feel free to ask me.

Bill Gates Off to Antarctica

Well, according to his twitter account’s status, he is

“Off to Antarctica, will try to send notes. Another cool TED video is up- Bing map demo http://bit.ly/av5SpI – Blaise does very well…”

What exactly for though, What is he doing in Antarctica? He doesn’t mention that but it seems its the same time of year he went on a cruise with Paul Allen in 2007, made headlines then.