Hemanth's Tech Blog

Windows: Windows 7 install discs are edition-specific—if you’ve got a valid license key, you still need the right disc for installation. The ei.cfg Removal Utility, however, lets you create a new, universal installation ISO for Windows 7.

Although your Windows installation disc may say “Home Premium Edition,” it still contains the other versions (such as Pro or Ultimate) on the disc—it just has a very small file called ei.cfg that tells the disc what version to install. The ei.cfg Removal Utility creates a new ISO of your install disc that ignores this file, thus letting you choose what edition you want when you start the installer.

While this tool is especially useful for computer technicians who have to install Windows a lot, it’s also nice to have for those of us that tend to lose discs often—especially in this day and age of emailed product keys. Now, if you need to reinstall Windows but can’t find your disc, you can just borrow a friend’s—even if it’s an edition that’s different than yours. You just need let the installer know which edition matches your product key (Note: Your disc still needs to be the same kernel as your key (i.e. 32 or 64-bit).

The ei.cfg Removal Utility is a free download, Windows only, and requires a Windows 7 install disc to use. Thanks, Cody Ryan Harrod!

These are the 10 Worst Captchas

From best to worst:

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Last night, Twitter was hijacked by the “Iranian Cyber Army”; while there’ve been no confirmed password leaks or anything of the sort, now seems to us like a great time to change up your passwords. Here’s why:

The Twitter blog reported that the problem was due to compromised DNS records, meaning that the hackers were able to redirect user requests for Twitter.com to their own server—which served up the page in the screenshot above. Although the redirect doesn’t appear to have done anything malicious beyond that—and a DNS hijack doesn’t mean the hackers would have access to Twitter’s database—the hackers could just as easily have set up a fake login page and harvested plenty of passwords phishing-style if they had wanted to. Which is why—even though this DNS hijack appears to have been relatively benign—we think now’s a very good time to do a little password refreshing (which you should already do on occasion, anyway).

This video i made shows you how to get more coins in yoville by using Cheat Engine.

This video i made shows you, how you can do some cool tricks with Google.

Google today launched a new, free DNS service—called Google Public DNS—aimed at making your web browsing experience even faster.

Google Public DNS, then, aims to replace your ISP’s default DNS with a (hopefully) faster, safer, and more reliable alternative. Google Public DNS isn’t the first freely available alternate DNS we’ve seen. Previously mentioned OpenDNS is an excellent DNS alternative (it boasts keyboard shortcuts, parental filters, and more), but—for better or worse—we’re guessing that even more people may be interested in Google’s offering.

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A Microsoft representative confirmed a June 2010 ship date to BetaNews for its Office 2010 desktop suite and the free-for-all-but-probably-very-limited Office Web Apps.

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