Monday, October 29, 2001		Downloads of the week

The Intel® Application Accelerator is a desktop-based software package designed specifically to increase the performance of applications and computer systems running Intel® Pentium® III or Pentium® 4 Processor. This is achieved by use of several methods. First, the Intel® Ultra ATA Storage Driver Technology increases the performance of the Input/Output subsystem transfer rate, greatly enhancing the system speed. Second, for Pentium® 4 processor-based systems running Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP only, an overall additional performance enhancement is realised for Windows 2000 - based applications through use of the Intel® Advanced Caching Technology. Software installation is flexible and fully automated for Windows ’98, Windows ’98 Second Edition (SE), Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 Professional, and Windows XP Home Edition and professional operating systems. In order to use the Intel® Application Accelerator, the following system requirements must be met — Intel® Pentium® III or Pentium 4 Processor, Intel 800-Series Chipset Family, Minimum 16 MB physical memory, IDE hard drive, Microsoft Windows ’98, Windows ’98 Second Edition (SE), Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 3.0 and higher), Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home Edition, or Windows XP Professional. However, it does not support the following OS: Any Version of Microsoft Windows 3.1, Any Version of Microsoft Windows’95, Any Version (including service pack) of Microsoft Windows NT 3.51, Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and Windows 2000 Data Center, Microsoft Windows XP Server, Windows XP Advanced Server, and Windows XP Data Center, Linux, UNIX, BeOS, MacOS, OS/2 (any version) and DOS. This can be downloaded from http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa

The Windows registry continues to gobble up HDD space in many ways. Over time it can swell to a size that is not proportionate to the applications you have. This can slow down your system performance. Usually, after a couple of installations or deinstallation of different software products, the registry becomes full of nagging file references pointing to where the files were, but are no longer there. With the help of Registry Healer you can clean up the windows registry from invalid references to non existing files and folders. Registry Healer scans the registry for orphan file/folder references, finds these files or folders on your drives (if they’re moved from their initial locations) and corrects the registry entries to the located objects. Also, if your registry still has links to file(s) of deleted applications, Registry Healer will find these invalid entries and give you the option to delete them. So your Windows registry will be always clean and correct. Registry Healer has two modes: the Expert Mode with closely registry correction control and the Easy Mode with simple one-mouse-click control and with default the most convenient settings. The user can switch between modes from the main menu -> Tools -> switch to Expert/Easy Mode menu item. Also the Registry Healer group in the Programs menu contains two shortcuts: run Registry Healer in Easy Mode and run Registry Healer in Expert Mode. The program scans the registry and then gives a list of invalid paths in the registry. When it finishes scanning a list of the all found invalid registry entries and suggested corrections will appear. here you can select registry entries that you want to correct. By default all entries are selected for correction (they have crosses in box at left side). Browsing the tree you can select or unselect some registry entries. Only selected items will be corrected! You may use the Select All Items or the Deselect All Items buttons to assist in your selections from the tree. After expanding an item you can see the all available corrections for corresponding registry entry. If there is no found file or folder matches then an item has only two available corrections: Delete the entry (no matches found) and Leave the entry without changes. If there is one or more found matches for a registry reference then an item contains also these suggested corrections and default correction is set to one of them (green). Usually the program chooses the most appropriate correction. But sometimes if you sure that it is wrong then you can choose another correction from the expanded list. Also if you think that there no any preferable corrections in the list then you can edit a registry key manually. The freeware version of the program has some functions limited. For instance, you can select and correct 10 invalid path entries at a time. But even then it is a good registry cleaner utility. Download from www.zoneutils.com

With the Spam Punisher, you can uncover the spammer’s ISP and automatically generate complaints. This is how it works. Launch your e-mail client. Select SPAM message (SPAM is unsolicited usually commercial e-mail message) that you want to process and choose File-Save As... command from menu. Save it to any location (example: c:\ spam.eml). Next launch SPAM Punisher. Press [Open] button and select previously saved SPAM message. After opening SPAM message you can see full message text (including message headers). Message route drop-down box at the bottom of the message text contains information about real route of the message (by IP). Entry point of message is marked as [1] - ***.***.***.*** and it is selected by default. Do not change this entry point when you are processing SPAM message for the first time. Press (Check this IP) button, check IP dialog appears on the screen. Then connect to the Internet and press [Check] button in this dialog. SPAM Punisher will connect to online IP database (this may take up to a minute). After download is finished you can see the results If the download was successful press [Close] button. Now you can see contact information of spammer’s ISP (Internet Service Provider). Contact information usually contains e-mail, phone, fax as well as postal address of the ISP. For your convenience SPAM Punisher automatically generates template of e-mail abuse if the contact information contains e-mail. To open this e-mail message press [Send abuse] button below the results window. If nothing happens when you press [Send abuse] button, SPAM Punisher automatically saves e-mail abuse template to the directory where you saved source SPAM message. This file is named abuse000.eml. To open this message in your e-mail client just drag and drop this file to Drafts (or Outbox) folder of your e-mail client. Press Reply All button (if you are using Outlook Express as your default e-mail client). Then press Send button. When ISP receives your message he will check if this SPAM was sent through his mail system. If it does, he will take appropriate measures (For example, close Internet access to spammer, so he will no more annoy you. ISP’s usually don’t like spammers). ISP will send you notification if it is necessary. Though SPAM Punisher is commercial program available for a price, the author has written a special freeware version for Lockergnomes. You can download it from http://biosolutions.hypermart.net/spamp10b.zip

— Raman Mohan