Archive for January, 2010
Flash Tutorial 4: Fun with the Cursor!
Jan 29th
This tutorial is in action-script 2.0
First, lets make a cursor.
Draw a cursor and turn it into a movie clip.
open up the actions window for the movie clip and place this action-script in it:
this.startDrag("true");
now go into your first frame’s actions window and type:
Mouse.hide();
congratz! you now have a custom cursor!
but, lets do a little more now.
go into your cursor’s movie-clip and make two dynamic text boxes next to your cursor. now, give one box the instance name mousex and the other the instance name mousey.
now, select your cursor image (not the text boxes) and make it into a movie-clip again, so you have a movie-clip inside a movie-clip. in the actions of your new movie clip, type:
1 2 3 4 | onClipEvent(enterFrame){ _parent.mousex.text = _root._xmouse; _parent.mousey.text = _root._ymouse; } |
Now you can see the coordinates of your mouse!
Networking
Jan 23rd
Note: Some things are changed for ease of example.
For this tech tip, we’ll be looking at the different problems/consequences of handling wireless networks as well as looking at the benefits of a wireless network.
If you’re running windows vista then your gateway to the wireless and wired world for networking lays in the the dual computer icon like so: (the icon in the middle, parallel to "Friday").
If you right click on this icon, you’ll get an array of options you can choose. The most important option is the very last one entitled Network and Sharing Center. It will look like so:
The fist thing I would like to highlight is the first choice on the left side menu, View computers and devices option that enables you to see computers and other hardware connected to the network whether wirelessly or hard wired. If you click on the option, a window like the image below will appear:
This allows you to see all devices that your computer sees. This includes other computers on the same network as you (router or hard wire), shared printers, wireless router(s), and other devices. This particular option can be beneficial if you need to quickly know the IP address of your router (you can do this by right-clicking on your router and then selecting properties) or if you want to access your router via web you can right-click and it’ll take you to the necessary web page. If you have more than one computer on the same network you can explore them and share content between the two systems easily and you could also print wirelessly too.
This next part deals with the connections that you can potentially connect to. The networks that my computer picks up on are wifi signals from my router as well as my neighbor’s router. I have the choice to connect to either one if I wanted; however, If I wish to connect to my neighbor’s I would need a password in order to access his wireless internet hence, Security-Enabled Network.
The next part is vital to fixing a common problem encountered by many people that are new to a wireless networking system. If you ever get an error stating that you cannot connect due to previous internet settings for this network, your problem and your solution are in the same place. Example: Let us say that Jon is our best friend so we go over to his house a lot and we do all sorts of things and one of those things is that we enjoy looking for deals online. Jon, one day, decides to purchase a new router and cable modem and decides to set up a 128 bit encryption so no one steals his internet anymore. You help him set it up and later on he messes up on the settings so he resets the wifi router and starts from scratch. You come back the next day, like every other day, and you see how he’s doing along with the wife, kids, grandparents, etc. You try to connect but a window pops up stating that you cannot connect because you have previous settings for this particular wifi system. Your solution is to delete that particular wireless network that is saved on your computer by clicking on the Manage Wireless Networks option on the left hand menu of the Network and Sharing Center. Select the network that is giving you trouble (in this case Jon’s Network) and delete it. Go back to the Connect to a Network option and then select the proper one and enter the correct information and it’ll work like a charm! Note: "Security WEP" isn’t really lime green, it was highlighted to make it known that for these connections you must enter in a password, passphrase, or some type of code.
Setting up an internet connection and be done in various ways but it isn’t always necessary either. Depending on your needs, you can set up a home network with a broadband connection, wireless connection, setting up a router, wireless ad hoc connection, etc. These are all relative to your type of internet connection of course.. So here’s the down low on all of the options. Connect to a Network is the same procedure as connecting to a network through the connect to a network as mentioned previously; however you’ll need to specify wireless, broadband, or dial-up. If you choose wireless then you will follow the same procedure as mentioned before. For Broadband (PPoE), you will need to enter in the username and password that your ISP provides for you and enter in that information. For Dial-Up, you’ll need the phone number, username, and password your ISP gave you in order to connect to the internet. Note: For Dial-Up, you will need to enter some additional information before you setup the connection.
Connection types
PPoE Connection window
Dial-Up Connection window
The next option on our list is to Setup a wireless router or access point. The access point is usually for small businesses so the business can have printer and file sharing via the access point. For most folks, you’ll want to set a wireless router. Windows will provide you with the necessary information on setting up a wireless router and the security that is needed to protect your personal information.
Wireless and access point setup
You can manually connect to a wireless network by providing all the necessary information in order to connect to the wireless router. You’ll need the correct network name, the correct security type, encryption type (which is relative to the security type), and the Security Key/Phassphrase.
Manually connect to a Wireless network
The next option is something called an Ad Hoc network setup in which small businesses can be connected to the same network and be able to share info between them easily. The computers must be within 30 feet of each other, however…
Ad hoc network
The next and final option is setting up a network through a workplace. You’ll have to decide whether or not you wish to simply "dial into" your workplace or get through via a VPN (Virtual Private Network). A VPN is defined as a network that connects one or more computers to a large network, such as a business network, using the Internet. A VPN is encrypted, so only authorized people have access to it.
Basics of XHTML Part – #6
Jan 22nd
Today we are going to talk about List types in HTML. There are three lists that HTML supports:
- Unordered Lists
- Ordered Lists
- Definition Lists
Unordered Lists
An unordered List is a list that have bullets in front of the list item (normally little black circles). The Unordered List starts with a <ul> tag and each new item starts with an <li> tag. The syntax is as follows:
<ul> <li>Item 1</li> <li>Item 2</li> <li>Item 3</li> </ul>
The browser output will look this:
- Item 1
- Item 2
- Item 3
You can put unordered lists inside paragraphs, line breaks, links, images, lists, and other non-block level elements. We would use an unordered list if we wanted to create a list that didn’t have any specific order, like a grocery shopping list.
We can also change how the bullets look without using style sheets or inline css. Within the <ul> tag we simply add an attribute called type and add the value we want. Here are the values we can put:
- disc
- circle
- square
Here is the syntax:
<ul type="disc"> <li>Item 1</li> <li>Item 2</li> </ul> <ul type="circle"> <li>Item 1</li> <li>Item 2</li> </ul> <ul type="square"> <li>Item 1</li> <li>Item 2</li> </ul>
The browser output is like this:
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Ordered List
An ordered list is a list that is marked with numbers instead of bullets. The ordered list starts with an <ol> tag and then each list item (like the unordered list) has the <li> tag around the item. The syntax is as follows:
<ol> <li>Item 1</li> <li>Item 2</li> <li>Item 3</li> </ol>
The browser output will look this:
- Item 1
- Item 2
- Item 3
You can put unordered lists inside paragraphs, line breaks, links, images, lists, and other non-block level elements. We would use an ordered list if we wanted to create a list thathas a specific order. A good example would be if you were creating a step by step guide.
Like the unordered list, there is a way to change the list type without using styles or inline css to an ordered list. Here is the syntax:
<ol type="A"> <!--Upper Alpha--> <li>Item 1</li> <li>Item 2</li> </ol> <ol type="a"> <!--Lower Alpha--> <li>Item 1</li> <li>Item 2</li> </ol> <ol type="I"> <!--Upper Roman--> <li>Item 1</li> <li>Item 2</li> </ol> <ol type="i"> <!--Lower Roman--> <li>Item 1</li> <li>Item 2</li> </ol>
The browser output will look like this:
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Definition List
A definition list isn’t really a list but rather a list of items (terms) and each item (term) has a description.
The definition list begins with an <dl> (definition list) tag.
Each term starts with a <dt> (definition term) tag.
Each term description starts with a <dd> (definition description) tag.
The browser output will look like this:
- Item 1
- Description 1
- Item 2
- Description 2
- Item 3
- Description 3
Creating an .iso file
Jan 21st
In this tech tip, we will be looking at the iso files and how to create them and why .iso files are easy and convenient.In this process, I’ll be using a program called poweriso, which can be found here.
Step 1
In order to create our iso image, we need to gather the necessary folders and/or files that will make up the .iso. You want to drag the folders and files into the main window like the image below: Please note that you can insert a disc that already has information on it and compile the cd into an iso file by using the copy function or by saving the information as an iso file as discussed in step 2.
and then you’ll see a few things happening that we want to be aware of. The first thing is the blue bar at the bottom where it says the total size of the contents of the disc, which in our case is a CD that will have 608MB or 86% of that CD to be filled. If we happen to exceed 700MB, poweriso will automatically change to a DVD for storage.
Step 2
Once we have our necessary files, we can burn the iso image onto a CD or DVD (depending on the size of the data), insert the proper media into your disk drive and then we need to save the file as an .iso by going to file > save as > <filename>.iso. Once our iso is saved on our hard drive, click on the burn button and then you’ll see a dialogue box appear like the image below:
Using the .iso image that we just saved on our hard drive, if it is not already selected, select the image file, select the drive that you media is in, autodetect the media, burning speed is relative to the job (usually max is fine), and if you wish to verify the data thereafter then check the checkbox and then hit burn! For creating ad burning an .iso it is as easy as step 1 and step 2!
The benefits of having an .iso file is that it is popular for creating an image of a disc, it can be compressed and optimized, and it is very user friendly.
Basics of XHTML Part – #5
Jan 20th
Today we’re going to talk about HTML Tables! Tables were created in May of 1996 as in update to HTML 2.0. Since then, tables were a way for us to layout our websites and/or information in a document. Frames became popular with HTML 3.0, HTML 3.2, and especially HTML 4.0. After Framesets fizzled out tables became the preferred method of website creation.
Now, websites are being created with intricate server side programs and CSS that will write HTML for you. Despite these improvements for website creation, if you just do a simple google search for a website, you’ll see that some are still made using tables. You can read all about the History of HTML by reading the wiki article on it.
Tables is a good starting point to understanding site layout and the flow of the page, so it’s still good to know!
Tables
Tables are defined by creating a <table> tag and then a <tr> and then a <td> So the order is as follows:
- table
- tr (table row)
- td (table cell)
The general syntax for tables is as follows:
<html> <head> </head> <body> <table> <tr> <td>table cell</td> <td>table cell</td> </tr> </table>
| row 1 cell 1 | row 1 cell 2 |
| row 2 cell 1 | row 2 cell 2 |
The example above in the form of HTML would be like the following:
<table border="1"> <tr> <td>row 1 cell 1</td> <td>row 1 cell 2</td> </tr> <tr> <td>row 2 cell 1</td> <td>row 2 cell 2</td> </tr> </table>
Border Attribute
The border attribute is an attribute that will display (or not display) a border around the <table>, <tr>, and <td> tags – basically around all elements of a table. If, for example, you wanted to create a table with no border then you would do the following:
<table border="0"> <tr> <td></td> <td></td> </tr> </table>
You can substitute the 0 for any integer that is wanted. Consider the table example we made before the Border Attribute title. That has a border=”1″.
| row 1 cell 1 | row 1 cell 2 |
| row 2 cell 1 | row 2 cell 2 |
This is the same table but with a border of 5.
Table Headings
Table Headings are defined by the use of <th> tags. These are usually used to title rows/columns in the table and are used in place of <td> to define the cell. Consider the following:
<table border="0"> <tr> <!--Table headings--> <th>Table Heading</th> <th>Table Heading</th> </tr> <tr> <td>Table Cell</td> <td>Table Cell</td> </tr> <tr> <td>This is an example</td> <td>This is an example</td> </tr> </table>
The code above would look like this:
| Table Heading | Table Heading |
|---|---|
| Table Cell | Table Cell |
| This is an example | This is an example |
Cell Spanning
Sometimes you may need a single cell to span more than 1 column or row. For this we use the colspan and rowspan attributes on the td or th tags.
<table> <tr> <th rowspan="2">Name</th> <th colspan="2">Phone Number</th> </tr> <tr> <th>Home</th> <th>Mobile</th> <tr> <tr> <td>John Smith</td> <td>555-1234</td> <td>555-4321</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Bob Jones</td> <td>555-2943</td> <td>555-4929</td> </tr> </table>
The above code would look like this:
| Name | Phone Number | |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Mobile | |
| John Smith | 555-1234 | 555-4321 |
| Bob Jones | 555-2943 | 555-4929 |
Cell Spacing and Cell Padding
Cell Spacing is used to create space between cells.
Cell Padding is used to create space between the cell content and the border of the cell.
Both cellspacing and cellpadding are attributes for the table tag. Here is an example of a table with a cellspacing=”10″:
| Table Heading | Table Heading |
|---|---|
| Table Cell | Table Cell |
| This is an example | This is an example |
and here is a table with cellpadding=”10″:
| Table Heading | Table Heading |
|---|---|
| Table Cell | Table Cell |
| This is an example | This is an example |
Alignment
The align attribute for td and th tags can be used with the values left, right, center or justify, to specify how the contents of the cell should be aligned. Justify spaces the words in the cell so that each line is an equal width. If an align attribute is not used, the default alignment is left, unless otherwise specified by the CSS.
Upgrading your RAM
Jan 19th
Note: All images are clickable and will give way to a larger image in new tab or window depending on your browser settings!
What is RAM and what does it stand for? RAM are two or more chips that allow your computer to start, run, access information from your hard drive, display that information to you, convert those files into information you can access, use, edit, etc… Basically, your computer won’t even run without RAM, you’ll simply get a black screen or your computer may not even start. RAM stands for Random Access Memory. The word random refers to that fact that any piece of information can be returned at a constant time, regardless of location of any data.
Types of Ram:
There are a few types of RAM (random access memory) out there for you to purchase such as DDR (double-data-rate), DDR2 (double-data-rate 2), DDR3, SODIMM (small outline dual in-line memory module), DRAM (dynamic random access memory), and SDRAM (synchronous dynamic random access memory).
All the information above doesn’t specifically refer to the types of RAM. Rather, the information above is about the components of RAM but not the RAM itself. Here’s the break down….
DDR SDRAM:
Double-data-rate synchronous dynamic random access memory – whew, that was a mouth full!
Unlike its predecessor SDRAM which was a single-data-rate chip, this DDR SDRAM had the same general principles of SDRAM, however, it used double pumping without increasing the frequency. What does this mean and how will it help me?! Well, to be perfectly honest, it won’t!
So what do I really need to know about DDR SDRAM?
Well, as of 2009 DDR SDRAM was still being used in some computers and even in mobile devices so there might be a chance that you need to replace an old memory module or you might want to upgrade your ram altogether. If so, you need to identify some key thinks on your RAM chip before purchasing new memory. The first thing you need to know is exactly what type of RAM you’re dealing with. As mentioned above, there is DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 and each has a different pc number. To start, we need to identify our DDR type.
Use the image below of a common DDR2 laptop chip as a reference.
This is the main factor in deciding what ram to buy. DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 will NOT work with each other at all.
Next, we want to identity the PC number which is the next more important thing in your decision making process…
The PC Number is also known as the module number which is just as important as the type of RAM in which you use. You cannot have a different module number than your motherboard is made for and if you’re not sure what your PC number is, contact your manufacture for more information on the type of RAM that your machine uses.
Then, we want to determine the frequency at which our RAM operates on.
Frequency is the same as the PC number (within its own set of limitations, of course). It is important to know at what frequency your motherboard will use your memory.
Another good piece of info to know is that amount of RAM you have as a whole and each chip.
In this case, this particular RAM chip is a SODIMM DDR2 PC2-5300 @ 667 MHz that has 512 MB of available memory. With this information, we should be able to go into your local fry’s electronics, best buy, or any tech store that sells memory modules and be able to successfully upgrade, update, or replace your RAM!
One of these days, I’ll go in depth about RAM and all of the smoke a mirrors associated with computer hardware!
Basics of XHTML Part – #4
Jan 18th
Basics of HTML Part #3 is good to know before continuing on with this tutorial!
Today we’re going to talk about the img tag and the src attribute. This very important because this element allows us to input images in our web page and also input images from another web server or folder on our web server.
The Image Tag
There is something different about this <img> tag is that the closing tag is not </img>. This is known as a self-closing element or an empty element. These empty elements contain attributes only and no closing tag.
The “src” attribute
To properly display an image on a web page, we need the src attribute (which stands for source) which contains the relative or absolute link to the image you wish to attach. Without this attribute we would not be able to display an image because there would be no source.
The syntax for the img element is as follows:
<img src="url" /> <!--The image above--> <img src="http://www.atomicpages.net/images/standard.jpg" />
Se have our basic syntax for the image element and the example provided is points toward the image location which has an image name of “standard.jpg” which is in the folder “images” on “http://www.atomicpages.net”
that has the URL of “http://www.atomicpages.net/images/standard.jpg”.
The image element will place the image where ever the <img> is place. If that happens to be in the middle of a paragraph or in some arbitrary place on your web page, then it will be placed where ever the element is placed in your source code.
The “alt” Attribute
The alt attribute is important to have for a few reasons.
First, this alt attribute will display the text if a visitor on your web site has images turned off or they are using a text-only browser. This will accurately tell the user what they are missing if the page cannot load the images. Note: the alt attribute is not used as an image description or a summary of what the image is or what it is about.
Second, the alt attribute is good to have for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Web bots that crawl your web site cannot see the images.
Third, the addition of the alt attribute will make your web page W3C compliant and your web page will validate when checked by the W3C HTML Validator.
Here is an example of useage for the alt attribute:
<img src="url" alt="Alternative text" /> <!--Example--> <img src="http://www.atomicpages.net/images/standard.jpg" alt="Standard Hosting" />
“height” and “width” attributes
Height and Width attributes can be used in the place of inline css or css in general. These attributes specify the dimensions of the image. These attributes will usually come after the src attribute. The syntax is as follows:
<img src="url" height="in px" width="in px" alt="" /> <!--Example--> <img src="http://www.atomicpages.net/images/standard.jpg" height="148" width="300" alt="Standard Hosting" />
The height and width attributes define the image size in terms of pixels (px) without you having to write px after the integer.
Alliteratively, you can use inline css to define an images dimensions like so:
<img src="http://www.atomicpages.net/images/standard.jpg"
style="height:148px; width:300px; alt="Standard Hosting" />
Images and Links
In Basics of HTML Part #3 we discussed links and anchors. We can actually combine links and images to make clickable images that will take us to a larger image or another place on our web page.
Consider the following code:
<img src="http://www.atomicpages.net/images/standard.jpg"
height="148" width="300" alt="Standard Hosting" />
This will correctly display the image we want; however, if we wanted to make this image one that was clickable then we would do the following:
<a href="http://www.atomicpages.net/hosting.php"> <img src="http://www.atomicpages.net/images/standard.jpg" height="148" width="300" alt="Standard Hosting" /> </a>
This would make the image clickable and once you clicked on the image it would take you to http://www.atomicpages.net/hosting.php If we wanted to use an image that would link to another image or a larger image then we would do the following:
<a href="url to different/larger image"> <img src="url to image you want to display" height="" width="" alt="" /> </a> <!--Example--> <a href="http://www.atomicpages.net/images/standard.jpg"> <img src="http://www.atomicpages.net/images/standard-small.jpg" height="74" width="150" alt="Standard Hosting" /> </a>
Reformatting your Hard Drive
Jan 17th
We’re going to be looking at how to reformat and partition your Hard Disk Drive (HDD) using Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Windows 7. Since these two OS have disk management software embedded in the OS, there is no need for third-party applications such as Partition Magic or Norton’s Parted Magic software.
Step 1
To open the management portion of Vista or 7, right click on the computer icon on your desktop, type compmgmt.msc command in run or DOS, or if you’re using the new start bar design, you can right click on computer and choose manage.
Any way you do this, you will have to click "Yes" to the User Account Controls (UAC) in order to proceed into the management services.
Step 2
You’ll want to navigate to Disk Management on the left hand side menu and wait for all of your drives to load.
As you can see from the image above. There are three Hard Drive Partitions, one for C:, E:, and D: (which is an external HDD plugged in via USB). C: has 73.53GB of space on it, E: has 1021 MB of space on it, and D: has 149.05GB of space on it. Let us say for the sake of argument that E: partition is in FAT32 format and we want it to be formatted in NTFS….
A brief history of NTFS and FAT 32… NTFS is called the New Technology Filing System and FAT is called the File Allocation Table.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| File Compression built in | Is more complex than FAT32 |
| Saves Disk space by arranging cluster sizes more efficiently | Slower writing speeds than FAT32 systems |
| More stable | |
| It supports Disk Quotas, allowing you to choose the amount of disk user on a per user basis |
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Faster disk writing speeds than NTFS | Less stable |
| Easier to manage | Poor disk space management |
| More user friendly | Doesn’t support file compression |
| Has a 137GB limit for ATA drives | |
| Slows down as you will up the drive. |
All in all, NTFS is the way to go. A small sacrifice in disk speed is well worth the reliability of the NTFS format. FAT32 is outdated these days anyhow, flash drives and some external HDD are formatted in FAT32 and most new computers are formatted under the NTFS system. As an example of the FAT32 format’s inability to save disk space, think of a 1KB text document; NTFS will save it and put 2KB on the disk as a backup, whereas FAT32 will take that 1KB and turn it into 32KB with 31KB not in use.
Step 3
Let us say we want to reformat our E: partition from FAT32 into NTFS. First things first, we need to click on the drive in question, in this case the E: drive. Then we want to right click on the E: drive or the windows that represents its free space, size, etc… The highlighted areas basically…. Select the format option.
You have the choice of renaming the HDD if you desire, and can also change the file system to NTFS, — duh — FAT32, or FAT (you don’t want!). You can also choose to perform a quick format which isn’t recommended because, well, you’re rushing a change of the file system on a HDD, you don’t want to rush that do you? You can also enable file and folder compression as well, this will add time to the procedure of course.
Upon clicking OK, windows will prompt you saying that everything on this partition (or HDD if it’s a complete drive) will be erased and once the process is started cannot be undone or stopped without some consequence. Back everything up on that particular drive if you’re reformatting a partition and if you’re reformatting a whole HDD, back up the files that you wish to keep because once they’re gone, they’re really gone and no file recovery software, system restores, etc… will recover the files. Naahhh!! I’m just trying to scare you all!! You can find software that will recover files and such, but it will cost you! If you lose some files that you want to recover, click on any of the three links below!!
Ending stubborn processes in DOS
Jan 15th
Ever had that process that wouldn’t go down without a fight? You’ve tried relentlessly to end the process through task manager with no success… You see End Process Tree and you said, “Oh well, might as well since I can’t do anything else” and you click it. Next thing you know you get the infamous Blue Screen of Death and your computer crashes. You start your computer in safe mode (just to be safe) and hope all is well but it does it again… Such a tool exists that is as powerful as administrative control if not more…. Behold the power of DOS!!! Also called cmd, command prompt, run (which is incorrect), and DOS (Not denial of service, that was the 80s). Let’s say for instance that you want to kill notepad.exe in dos. Open the command prompt (cmd) or open run and type cmd.
So you get this fancy – or lack thereof – black box with a stoic blinker and an archaic C:\> You think to yourself, “what am I doing here?!” There’s a purpose behind this, I assure you! The command for killing a task in cmd is cleverly called “taskkill” (minus the ” and “, of course). Note: If you type taskkill/? it will give you more information on taskkill command and any other command that you type e.g. cmd/?, ipconfig/?, winver/?, etc… I strongly recommend that you type this before proceeding, unless you happen to know the proper syntax.
As we can see, there are many choices that we can use and each serves its own special purpose in terminating a process. Our first example will be terminating notepad.exe using it’s Image Name (IM).
Step 1
Open Notepad.exe and open cmd.exe
Step 2
Type taskkill/? for the example to see or continue reading….
Our proper syntax will be the following: taskkill /IM notepad.exe and the process will terminate with a success or failure message and then the PID. In order to kill a process and all child processes started by that process, we can use a different syntax, example: taskkill /IM notepad.exe /T and if we want to forcefully kill a process (which you might have to use) our example would look like taskkill /F /IM notepad.exe /T
For the sake on example, let us say that we don’t know the image name but we do know the PID or we want to kill multiple processes without typing each IM. In vista, go the view > select columns > Process ID
XP users should also have a PID option. Example syntax:
taskkill /F /PID 5644 /PID 2216 /PID 1253 /T this will kill the following PID: 5644, 2216, & 1253 with a forceful termination and terminating all child processed started by it’s parent process.
rundll32.exe is out of control!
Jan 13th
Have you ever experienced sluggish computer performance and checked your task manager (taskmgr.exe) so see if it was a service or process that was out of control or not running? In you search you find, to your dismay, you see that you have about a thousand rundll32.exe processes open and now it’s sapping all of your CPU power and all of your RAM! (In windows vista, you’re only supposed to have two rundll32.exe running at any given time and usually the same for XP). You have no idea where the process is being started from and you want to find out and see if it is a virus or not. If you’re running XP then I have some bad new for you. To my knowledge, you cannot see the command line of the source file that’s causing all of this drama; however, if you have vista then you can simply go to the view tab and pick the select columns icon. Scroll down to the bottom and select the command line option check box.
When this check box is selected, you will be able to see the command line version of the specific location of that process and what rundll32.exe is actually executive (exe).
If you do have this problem and you trace the problem back to internet explorer, then you need to install ie to the latest edition or you may need to reinstall completely. If, however, your problem is not traced back to ie then do a Google Search on that particular process in question (be sure to add the file extension e.g. taskmgr.exe, system.sys, etc) and you can review opinions through a google search.
