What is svchost.exe and what is it doing?

Many of us wonder what exactly is svchost.exe and what it exactly does as you can see many instances of this exe running in Windows Task Manager. Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). At startup, Svchost.exe checks the services part of the registry to construct a list of services that it must load. Multiple instances of Svchost.exe can run at the same time. Each Svchost.exe session can contain a grouping of services. Therefore, separate services can run, depending on how and where Svchost.exe is started. This grouping of services allows for better control and easier debugging.

To check what services are running under each svchost the most preferred application used is Process Explorer from SysInternals. Using Process Explorer you can do variety of things and verify almost all the processes. Svchost Viewer is an open source application which only concentrates on svchost processes.

It displays all the instances of svchost.exe and there Process ID's on the left pane. Expanding the tree displays the processes running under each svchost.exe. The right pane displays the information of each process selected like amount of memory used, the amount of data written and read by the process. Information about the server selected in the left name.

svchost viewer is a small application around 40 kb and runs on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. It does not need any installation and comes in a exe format. The only prerequisite to run it is .Net Framework 2.0 or higher installed.

Download svchost Viewer

Turn your Windows 7 / 2008 R2 in WiFi Hotspot

Suddenly a friend enters your computer room with his laptop and wants to connect to your machine and get it on network for file sharing, gaming, internet sharing etc. What would you do? What would be the simplest solution? The simplest solution would be turning on the WiFi Router and connecting using WiFi. But what in case you do not have a WiFi Router?

Well, using Virtual Router Manager you can turn your Windows 7 / 2008 R2 running machine into a WiFi hotspot to which other machines can connect easily.

Virtual Router Manager is a easy to setup and easy to use software. It is developed truly in C# and free to use.

Steps for setting up WiFi HotSpot

• Once the installation is complete, run Virtual Router Manager
• Specify the Network Name for yout Hot Spot. Virtual Router Manager gives you the ability to provide any name to your network.
• Specify the password which should be used by other machines trying to connect to your network. The password should be minimum 8 characters.
• If you want to share Internet connection then specify the connection's name under Shared Connection.
• Click Start Virtual Router to start your network.
• If you want to stop the networking, simply click on Stop Virtual Router.

The Wireless Network created/shared with Virtual Router uses WPA2 Encryption, and there is no way to turn off the encryption. This is actually a feature of the Wireless Hosted Network API's built into Windows 7 and 2008 R2 to ensure the best security possible.

Virtual Router Manager smartly displays the peers which connect to your Wireless Network. You can connect any WiFi device to the network right from other Computers to your Mobiles or Media Players.

Additionally you can see the information of the peer (Host Name, MAC address, IP Address) connected or change the icon for specific peer by double clicking specific peer.

Download Virtual Router Manager for free.

Yessss Its Friday - Moto Rush

Here comes another Friday; the day when no one wants to work. Friday starts with F and so does Fun. With this Friday, here comes a cool online flash game Moto Rush.

Moto Rush is all about Motorcycles, Hoverboards, Monster trucks and Bears. You can race in timed or challenge mode and try surviving the Ultimate Race.

From the main screen you can start a new game, continue the existing game or enter the code to unlock the advanced levels.

Its more fun when you unlock all the cups, characters and vehicles in the game. Well the code to unlock all this elements is "Score". Sssshhhhh don't read it loud....
Once you have unlocked all the elements you can simply select New Game and choose the rider and vehicle of your desire. Everything is yours after entering the unlock code.

Once you have decided the Rider and Vehicle, click Race and select the Race Mode. There are 3 race modes available Time Mode, Challenage Mode and Ultimate Race.

Next it will show you the map for your race with checkpoints. Click on the highlighting flag to start the game.

Well its time to race now.... Instructions: Left/Right arrows for tilting. Up/Down arrows for driving

Click here to play this game online

TinEye - Reverse Image Search

There are times when you would want to know where on the internet a specific image is being used and in what manner. Lets say you have your own snap which you want to know which websites have it published and did any website modify it and use it. TinEye does the job for you in this case. TinEye is a first of its kind reverse image search available on internet. It searches the internet for any image using its advanced image recognition and visual search software. Even if the image is modified it finds it and displays it in the results.

You can specify the image to be searched by uploading an image or providing the URL to the image and TinEye would look over the internet and provide you the results.

If you see the search results in the snapshot above you will see that it found 2 results for the image provided. The 2nd result has the image cropped but still TinEye searched it and showed it.

To explain it better, check the results when Monalisa's image is searched using TinEye.

Amazing results, aren't they??

Firefox Extension

TinEye has come up with a Firefox extension to make image search easy. Installing the extension adds "Search Image using TinEye" to the right click context menu whenever an image is clicked.

Click here to download Firefox extension for TinEye

Find sites similar to the one you are viewing

Whenever we are looking for something we need on the internet we tend to Google for the topic we are looking for and Google does it well to provide us a list of sites. We choose one site and start browsing it. Getting a list of sites which provide the similar information or say competitor sites for the current site using search takes a long time.
SimilarSites.com as it says provides alternatives for any sites. Just type in the URL and hit Search and it looks on the web for all Similar Sites and gets you the list.

Similar Sites has come up with an experimental add-on for Firefox which makes searching similar sites simple.

Other than searching similar sites the toolbar has following capabilities:
1. Email Notification for Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail or any other POP3 mail.
2. Weather Forecast
3. Online Radio Player

Not a must have add-on but good to have for Firefox. Click here to Download the add-on for Firefox.

Google says NO to IE6 from 1st March 2010

After the recent attacks by China on Google it was traced that the problem was with IE6. IE6 was introduced long back when Netscape used to lead the browser market. Entrance of IE6 which was distributed for free with Windows killed Netscape's market and Netscape nearly vanished from the browser market. There was no competition to IE6 as it shared almost 99% of the market share. I feel this was the reason why Microsoft let it as it was and never improved it further. It was only when Mozilla jumped in the browser market smartly working on the security part of the browser which challenged Microsoft to enhance Internet Explorer's security.

Microsoft came up with newer version of Internet Explorer viz. IE7 and IE8 totally leaving IE6 buggy and full of flaws. Microsoft is still providing support for IE6 on the base that it still holds up around 20% of browser market share. I think Microsoft still wants people to use Windows 95 if they are not ready to upgrade whereas they should always ask their customers to upgrade. Atleast when the product is totally buggy.

After whatever happened with China, Google has decided not to provide any support for Google products on IE6 and want people to upgrade to latest browsers.

Google has decided to phase out support for IE6 on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor from March 1, 2010. According to Google after 1st March 2010 certain functionalities within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in IE6. Later in 2010, Google will start to phase out support for IE6 for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google has already started displaying message in Google Products for these old browsers explaining the change and asking users to upgrade their browser.

Copy To and Move To on Right Click Context Menu in Windows 7

When you select a file/folder in Windows Explorer and click Edit on Menu bar you find options for Copy To and Move To which is a great way to move or copy files to a destination folder. But selecting a file/folder, clicking Edit and then Copy To and Move To takes too many clicks (atleast for people like me who want to save on their clicks).

How easy it will be if I can get these options when I right click any file and folder. Just a single click and you are there.

Well, there is a registry tweak to add Copy To and Move To links to Right Click Menu Context as Windows 7 was designed to have it only in Explorer Menu Bar. Just follow the simple steps below to get the links in Right Click Context Menu:

Click Start, type regedit and press Enter

In the Regedit window traverse to

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Allfilesystemobjects \ shellex \ ContextMenuHandlers

Click on Edit Menu and create a new Key name Copy To

Select the newly created key from the tree list

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Allfilesystemobjects \ shellex \ ContextMenuHandlers \ CopyTo

Double-click Default and set its Value data to: {C2FBB630-2971-11d1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}

Similarly, create a new key named MoveTo, in the following branch:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Allfilesystemobjects \ shellex \ ContextMenuHandlers

Select the following branch:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Allfilesystemobjects \ shellex \ ContextMenuHandlers \ Move To

Double-click Default and set its Value data to: {C2FBB631-2971-11d1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}

Exit the Registry Editor

Thats It!!! Now whenever you right click any File or Folder you will find Copy To Folder and Move To Folder options on the Right Context Menu.

Just select the folder where you want to Copy or Move the files and click Copy/Move depending on what option you clicked.

Bloggers Choice Awards - Vote for GeekyPage

GeekyPage is on Bloggers Choice Awards. If the stuff on this blog helps you or interests you please vote it to make it a success at Bloggers Choice Awards. Take out some time for registering yourself and voting for the blog. Vote it under Categories: Best Blog About Stuff and Best Geek Blog or any other Category which you feel suits the blogs content.

Click her to vote for this blog

Thanks!!!

Mark articles to read them later in Firefox using Read It Later

While surfing internet we come over many articles which we find interesting but are not in a situation to read them at that moment. Obviously we cannot remember the URL's of all the articles we come across and hence the only option with us is bookmarking such articles. Read It Later for Firefox helps us with not bookmarking such articles and adding them to Firefox for temporary time till they are read.

Getting started with ReadItLater

Download and Install ReadItLater for Firefox

Read It Later needs you to create an account as you can sync your Read It Later articles between different computers or devices using Firefox and Read It Later. Registration is simple and takes 2 mins. You only need to provide a username and password. No filling up huge forms which are annoying. Use the same login details on each computer or mobile device to keep the articles in sync.




Adding articles to Read It Later
Just click the Read It Later icon in the Address Bar to add the article to your list.

View the articles added to Read It Later List
Click on the icon on the top right side of Firefox to view the list of articles added to Read It Later. You can see the Reading List, Currently Reading items, Reading Archive of all the items read till date using Read It Later and see the Items using their Tags.
Reading list can be sorted using Newest items, Oldest items, Title of the articles and sites to which the items belong.
If you reading list goes long and you are looking for a particular article you remember the title for, then you can easily search for the article using the search box provided.
You can mark the articles as read once you are done reading them to move those articles to read archive.


Google Reader Integration

Read It Later can be integrated with Google Reader making it easy for you to mark the Google Reader feeds to be added to your Read It Later list.

To enable Google Reader Integration go to Read It Later Option, click Applications and select "Show Read It Later button in Google Reader". That's it; you should be good to use Read It Later in Google Reader now.

Offline Reading

If you want to do some reading while away from an internet connection, on the plane or train, Read It Later  downloads your pages before disconnecting. Even when you lose your connection, you'll still be able to access all of your pages. To enable Read It Later to download web pages for Offline Reading go to Read It Later Options, click Offline and select "Automatically make all saved pages available offline".

Stay in Sync
The best part about Read It Later? Your list goes everywhere you do. You can access your list from multiple computers and even non-Firefox browsers. Read It Later even remembers your position in each article, so you can start reading on your computer, get up, grab your phone and pick up exactly where you left off.


Save All Tabs
If you are used to opening many tabs in Firefox right click your tab bar and click "Save All Tabs for Later" to add all the open tabs links to the Read It Later list.

3D effects to Firefox Tabs with FoxTab

FoxTab gives your Firefox Tabs a totally refreshing and 3D look. Remember what Aero's does when you switch between open windows in Windows 7 and Vista. FoxTab gives you Aero style tab management + gives you the ability to change how tabs should be displayed when you switch between them.

Get started with FoxTab
Download and install FoxTab for Firefox

Once you have FoxTab installed click on the FoxTab icon near Address Bar to change the way tabs switch and other options.

From the screen which opens you can change the look of tab switch, see the recently closed tabs and your top sites.

Select the way you want your tabs to be displayed from the bottom right corner. Change the 3D angles of the tabs using "Choose your 3D view". Change the background color by selecting the existing colors or choose a custom color from "Choose Your Theme". Switch between Top Sites, Recently Closed tabs and Opened tabs from Top Left corner.

Add sites to Your Top Sites

Launch your Top Sites window is the list of your preferred sites. You can easily add any site you visit to the list of top sites by right clicking anywhere on the window and selecting "Add to Top Sites". Adding sites to Top Sites gives you the ability to choose from all the added top sites and get into one easily.

FoxTab really changes the way you use Firefox to give it complete 3D look. Now its more fun using Firefox. Thanks to the FoxTab team http://www.foxtab.com/