Month: March 2008

How to Disable User Access Control (UAC) in Windows Vista

User Access Control (UAC) is the feature of Windows Vista that requires the need to always confirm administrative actions by typing in your password. If you disable this then your account can be configured to run with administrative privileges all the time like you could do in Windows XP. This results in you not having to type in your password all the time to do administrative functions on your computer like installing programs. Here is how to disable UAC:

  1. Launch the MSconfig app by opening up the command prompt and typing: msconfig
  2. Select the Tools tab.
  3. Select the Disable UAC option.
  4. Click the Launch button to execute the command line which will disable UAC.
  5. Reboot the computer to put the changes into effect.

Windows Vista Logo

Free Photo Web Hosting With Adobe Photoshop Express Beta

Adobe has just launched a new beta photo web hosting service called Adobe Photoshop Express which is similar to Flickr. What sets this service apart form the others is that it offers online photo editing capabilities so that you can edit your photos after you upload them. You also get 2GB of free storage space. When you create an account with the service you can get your own unique URL similar to http://whatEverNameYouWant.photoshop.com. It’s a very nice and polished service and worth taking a look.

Here is the link to the Adobe Photoshop Express service: https://www.photoshop.com/express/

Adobe Photo Express

MD5 Password Cracking

A lot of computer systems and applications use standard MD5 hash algorithms to store passwords. Using a straight unsalted MD5 hash of a password in order to store it securely used to be acceptable a few years ago but a recent technique similar to rainbow tables allows someone to recover the password by comparing the MD5 hashed password against a pregenerated list of known MD5 hashes of words. So all anyone has to do is compare your MD5 stored hash against this known list of MD5 hashes and they can then crack your MD5 hash to determine what your password string is. Here are a couple of good online searchable databases of MD5 hashes:

You can also try a Google search. Just take your MD5 hash and use that as the search term in Google. There is a pretty good chance that someone has already cracked the MD5 password and posted the results on their website which Google has indexed.

Hand Holding a Key

AdobePDF.dll Error When Installing Adobe Acrobat in Windows XP x64

When installing Adobe Acrobat whether it be the standalone installer or part of a larger collection such as “Design Studio”, you may get an error about 2/3 of the way through the installation. The error complains about not being able to find the AdobePDF.dll file on the Windows Vista CD. This file is not on the Vista CD but is in the Adobe Acrobat installer files. You need to find the Adobe Acrobat installer files directory and locate data1.cab. Within that will be a file named AdobePDF.dll_64. Copy that to your desktop and rename it to AdobePDF.dll and point the installer to that location. The installation should then proceed normally.

Adobe Acrobat