Don't click 'like' on Facebook again until you read this

Facebook has changed the way people do a lot of things online. For example, you probably notice yourself reflexively clicking "like" on anything your friends post on Facebook, even if it's just to acknowledge you saw it. Scammers are taking advantage of that reflex for a dangerous scam called "like-farming."

What is like-farming?

Like-farming is when scammers post an attention-grabbing story on Facebook for the express purpose of cultivating likes and shares. Based on the way Facebook works, the more likes and shares a post has, the more likely it is to show up in people's News Feeds.

This gives the scammer more eyeballs for posts that trick people out of information or send them to malicious downloads. The big question, of course, is why Facebook doesn't stop these posts before they get too big. And that's where the real scam comes in.

How the scam works

Scammers have found a simple way to fly under the radar during the early phases of their operation. The story they originally post to Facebook has nothing dangerous about it. It's just a regular story that anyone might post. That was the warning from one local Better Business Bureau last year.

Only after the post gets a certain number of likes and shares does the scammer edit it and add something malicious. They might start promoting products or sell the page information in an attempt to get credit card data. In fact, if you go back through your history of liked posts, you might find that some of them have changed to something you wouldn't have liked in a million years. By the way, if you’re not sure how to review your likes, click here for the step-by-step instructions.

So, what kinds of stories do scammers start with to trick people into liking and sharing?

Q&A: Avoid a big tech rip-off

Posts that should give you pause

One popular type of story is the emotional one. You've definitely seen the posts showing rescue animals and asking you to like if you think they're cute. Or maybe it's a medical story where you're asked to like that the person was cured or to let them know they're still beautiful after surgery.

There are also the posts that ask for a like to show that you're against something the government is doing, or that you disagree with something terrible happening in the world. Or maybe it's the ones that say "If I get X number of likes, then something amazing will happen for me" or "I was challenged to get X number of likes."

Basically, any post that asks you to like it for emotional reasons, unless you know the person who created the original post, is quite probably a like-farm post. Of course, emotional posts aren't the only types of post you need to watch for.

Other types of scam posts to avoid

There are a lot of scams on Facebook and most of them can be used for like-farming. A popular one, for example, is a post that asks you to like or share so you can win something cool. These pop up most often when Apple launches a new iPhone or iPad.

You might have seen recently during the huge Powerball frenzy people posting on Facebook saying anyone who likes their post will get a share of their winnings. How real do you think those were?

Just on Thursday, police in Australia warned Facebook users of a like-farming scam that attempted to lure customers of Qantas Airlines.

Thousands fall for Qantas first-class ticket hoax. Here's how to never be one of them

What about brain-teaser posts, such as the ones that have you like or share if you can read the words backwards or solve a tricky math problem? Yep, those are often like-farm posts, too.

It isn't just posts either; it can also be pages. A scammer might set up a page for "I love puppies" or what appears to be a worthy company or organization. It puts up enough content to get a lot of likes, then switches the content to spam and scams. Once you've liked the page, everything new the scammers put up goes on your News Feed and, in some cases, your friends' feeds as well.

How to avoid like-farming

Your best bet to avoid like-farming is to be very judicious about what you like and share on Facebook. Don't just reflexively click "like" on everything. Take a look at where the post is coming from. If it's from someone you don't recognize, it could be a friend of a friend or it could be a complete stranger. It would be good to find out.

Notice the content and whether it promises anything for liking or sharing. If it does, it's a good clue that it's a scam of some kind. The same goes if you feel pushed or pressured into clicking like or share.  Click here for 5 Facebook scams that continue to spread like wildfire.

Don't forget that, in the end, minimizing your likes is more than just a good security measure. It also reduces the clutter in your friends' news feeds, and their clutter in yours, so you can all spend more time seeing the really important posts. That's a win-win for everyone.

Windows 10 100% disk usage in Task Manager

A note to Windows 10 users.
All of a sudden your laptop/computer is operating very slow and unresponsive, this may be caused by your laptop computer thinking its disk usage is 100% full when it really isn’t. To check this open your task manager by right clicking on your taskbar and get more details. In many cases you may see disk usage 100% in red. If this is happening there are many easy fixes. Let me know if I can help.

Here is the website I use

https://www.drivereasy.com/…/100-disk-usage-windows-10-fix…/

do not buy the software suggested here, it is not needed..This is for Tips

Thanks.

Paypal by Prize Live

I have seen PrizeLive, several times already in different PTC ad and in sidebar of some bloggers. Until a friend asked me to sign up and she assisted me on how PrizeLive works.

So here's how it works:
1. Of course, you should have your own account. Click the banner below to sign up:

2. After, clicking the banner you will be redirected to the main page,enter your email address on the upper left corner.

3. Again, you will be redirected to the registration form. Please put on the How did you find us? section "referred by samsoft2012"

4. After hitting the join button, you will receive a confirmation code on your email, check your email and enter the code.


5. Once, verified you can now start earning points, but first, edit your account, and fill up the necessary field. Also fill up the telephone number section to be able to claim your rewards.

6. Download the PrizeBar and you will get 0.25 GC(game credits). Game credits can be used in playing games to earn Points.

7. Go to the forum, and create an introduce yourself thread and gain another 0.25 GC.

8.  Earn points by completing offers, commission from level 1 referrals, owning an offer in the reward section, and by winning in the games we offer. Points can be redeemed in the Rewards section for prizes and gifts. Points can also be converted into Game Credits in order to play Games and to participate in some Contests. 1 point is equal to $1.

9. Log in daily for more offers, more points and GC.

UPDATE: I gained 0.43 points in less than one day.  You can view my profile here. I'll update you how I did it.Click Here to Join.

How to force uninstall a program you cannot uninstall

At one point or another this happens to every computer user in the world: You install a program, find out that you don't like it, or need it, or that it's plain useless for the task you wanted to use it for, and you want to uninstall it. So you open up the Windows Add/Remove tool, click the button to uninstall the program... and find out that you cannot uninstall the program. In this article I will try to explain how to force uninstall a program, that you cannot uninstall using the Windows Add/Remove tool. Before that, however, I will try to explain what happens during installation.

What you need to know to uninstall a program manually

There are several things that happen during the installation of a program. First, of course, is the copying of files to the specified program folder (which is usually somewhere inside the Program Files folder). Also some files such as shared libraries (.dll files) can be copied into a folder inside Program Files called Common Files and some files such as drivers or shared libraries (again) are copied into the ‘WINDOWS\System32' and‘WINDOWS\System32\drivers'folders. After that the installer makes some changes inside the windows registry. The windows registry is a unified place where all the settings for programs and for windows itself are stored. The installer can make changes inside the registry for several reasons. For example if a shared library needs to be registered. Or if certain types of files need to be associated with the program being installed, so that the user could open them (e.g. if you install Microsoft Word, then you will be able to open Microsoft Word documents). After this is done, a key is added to the windows registry in a place where the Windows Add/Remove tool looks for installed programs. During the installation all these operations are logged in a special file (e.g. setup.log), and the installation program usually puts that file inside the application's folder along with the uninstaller. When a user tries to remove a program through the Add/Remove tool, windows looks for the registered uninstaller inside the registry, and executes it. The uninstaller goes through the log file and undoes all the changes done during installation. That is, it deletes all the files that have been copied, all the registry keys the installer created etc.

However, if there is no log file, or if there is no record of the changes made to the registry the uninstaller might fail to uninstall the program, and it will stay there untill it is removed by other means.

So if a program won't uninstall, how do you perform a force uninstall?

Well, if you know how to work with the windows registry, you probably can perform a manual force uninstall.

Before I go into detail about how to do this manually, I'd like to say that this is pretty advanced stuff, and if you're not a power user, then perhaps you should consider using specialized software such as the Perfect Uninstaller which allows you to do this in just a few clicks.

If you are a power user, then let's continue. First, let's see how to remove the program from the list of installed programs. To do that you need to open the registry browser:

1. Click Start and choose Run in the menu (If you're using Windows Vista then press Win+R on your keyboard).
2. Type regedit and hit Enter.
3. On the left side is the registry settings tree, use it to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
4. Inside that key you'll find a lot of keys that belong to different programs. Some are named after the program's name, others as a mix of numbers and letters that makes no sense. Look through each of them until you find one that has the key DisplayName (on the right) with your program's name in it.
5. Notice the key UninstallString - this key points to the uninstall program, and the log file usually resides in the same folder as that program.
6. If you delete the key in which you've found the DisplayName key with the value equal to your program's name, then your program won't appear on the Add/Remove programs list.

Some programs create new entries in the registry to store their configuration options, these entries can usually be found in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software or in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE - look for the program name or the name of the company that made the software. Don't delete Microsoft though - that contains Windows settings as well.

Next we have to find all the files that have been copied. Open the folder in which the uninstall program should be, and look for files which are named uninstal.log or setup.log or something similar. The list of files that have been installed is inside this file, you can open it in your notepad and find all of the files that have been copied onto your system. Delete the files and you'll get rid of the program almost fully.

Again, I'd like to stress that if you're new to the windows registry and all of this stuff, and if you don't feel like experimenting with your computer, then, again, please consider using either the Perfect Uninstaller or similar software, I do not want to be responsible for breaking your computer.

How to recover a corrupt BIOS

Solution 1: Boot-block BIOS

Modern motherboards have a boot-block BIOS. This is small area of the BIOS that doesn't get overwritten when you flash a BIOS. The boot-block BIOS only has support for the floppy drive. If you have a PCI video card you won't see anything on the screen because the boot-block BIOS only supports an ISA videocard.

Award: The boot-block BIOS will execute an AUTOEXEC.BAT file on a bootable diskette. Copy an Award flasher & the correct BIOS *.bin file on the floppy and execute it automaticly by putting awdflash *.bin in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

AMI: The AMI boot-block BIOS will look for a AMIBOOT.ROM file on a diskette. Copy and rename the correct BIOS file on the floppy and power up the PC. The floppy doesn't need to be bootable. You will see the PC read the floppy, after about 4 minutes you will hear 4 beeps, this means the transfer is done. Reboot the PC and modify the CMOS for your configuration.

Solution 2: Get a new BIOS chip

1. Contact your motherboard manufacturer to see if they sell BIOS chips. Some motherboard manufacturers send them for free.
2. Contact a company that sells pre-flashed chips, like Unicore Software, FlashBIOS.ORG, BadFlash or BiosWorld

Solution 3: Hot-swapping

Note: I'm not responsible for any damage this method may do to you or your computer !

1. Replace the corrupt chip by a working one. The best option is to take the working BIOS chip from a motherboard which has the same chipset although that's not absolutely necessary. It just has to give you a chance of booting into DOS. Before pulling the working BIOS chip out of it's original motherboard, set the System BIOS cacheable option in the BIOS to enabled.
2. After you have put the working BIOS in the motherboard with the corrupt BIOS boot the system to DOS (with a floppy or HD).
3. Now replace (while the computer is powered on) the working BIOS chip with the corrupt one.
4. Flash an appropriate BIOS to the corrupt BIOS and reboot.

Note: Use a flasher from MRBIOS. They are known to work best. You can find them at ftp://ftp.mrbios.com

Solution 4: (for Intel motherboards)

1. Change Flash Recovery jumper to the recovery mode position (not all products have this feature)
2. Install the bootable upgrade diskette into drive A:
3. Reboot the system
4. Because of the small amount of code available in the non-erasable boot block area, no video is available to direct the procedure. The procedure can be monitored by listening to the speaker and looking at the floppy drive LED. When the system beeps and the floppy drive LED is lit, the system is copying the recovery code into the FLASH device. As soon as the drive LED goes off, the recovery is complete.
5. Turn the system off
6. Change the Flash Recovery jumper back to the default position
7. Leave the upgrade floppy in drive A: and turn the system on
8. Continue with the original upgrade

Guide to Changing the Windows XP Product Key

Step 1 : Click on Start and then Run


The main reason you might want change the Windows XP product key is because your key is pirated or otherwise incorrect but you don't want to reinstall Windows XP to activate your new legal product key.

Note: I created this step by step guide in addition to my original How to Change the Windows XP Product Key Code guide. There are several very specific steps in this process, many of which involve editing the Windows Registry, so this visual tutorial should help clear up any confusion.

Changing your Windows XP product key should take you less than 15 minutes.

The first thing you need to do is click on Start and then Run....

Step 2 : Open Registry Editor

Now that the Run application is open, type regedit and then click the OK button.

The regedit command will open the Registry Editor application, used to edit the Windows Registry.

Step 3 : Navigate to the WPAEvents Registry Subkey

Before Continuing: Please be aware that changes to the Windows Registry are made in upcoming steps. Take great care in making only the changes described. I recommend that you backup the registry keys you're modifying in these steps as an extra precaution.

First, locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder under My Computer and click on the (+) sign next the folder name to expand the folder.

Continue to expand folders until you reach the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Current Version\WPAEvents registry key.

Click on the WPAEvents folder once.

Step 4 : Click to Modify the OOBETimer Registry Value

In the results that appear in the window on the right, locate OOBETimer.

Right-click on the OOBETimer entry and then click Modify from the menu that drops down.

Step 5 : Select Part of the OOBETimer Value

The screen you should see now is the Edit Binary Value window with OOBETimer in the "Value name:" field.

As part of the process to change your Windows XP product key, you'll need to deactivate Windows XP. Deactivating Windows XP is accomplished by changing the value of OOBETimer, something you're about to do.

Select any part of the OOBETimer value by double-clicking on it.

Note: I've distorted much of the hexadecimal series for OOBETimer in this and other screenshots but you'll see several letters and numbers on your computer.

Step 6 : Change the OOBETimer Value

Enter any value you want over the selection you made in the previous step.

Note: The OOBETimer value just needs to change - it doesn't matter what it's changed to. As you can see in the screenshot above, I changed the first part of the value to 11 from FF.

Click the OK button to confirm the change.

Step 7 : Close Registry Editor

As you can see, the OOBETimer value has changed.

You can now close Registry Editor. We're done making changes in the registry.

Step 8 : Click on Start and then Run

We're now going to open another program via a command.

Click on Start and then Run....

Step 9 : Open the Windows XP Activation Wizard

Now that the Run application is open, type the following command exactly:

%systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a

Now click the OK button.

Note: In the command above, the only space is between "exe" and "/a". Also, all of the o's are letters - there are no zeros in the command.

This command opens the Windows XP Activation Wizard where we'll change the XP product key.

Step 10 : Choose the Telephone Activation Option

You should now see the Let's activate Windows window.

Choose the Yes, I want to telephone a customer service representative to activate Windows radio button and then click the Next button.

Note: You won't actually be activating Windows XP via the telephone at this time. This is just the step you have to take right now to get to the area where you can change the Windows XP product key.

Important: If you don't see the screen above but instead see a message notifying you that Windows XP is already activated, you may not have properly changed the OOBETimer value in which case you should start this process over.

If that still doesn't work, which is not uncommon, you should try changing the Windows XP product key with Winkeyfinder, a popular free product key finder program that can also change the XP product key. I like this manual process better since there's nothing to download but if it doesn't work for you, give Winkeyfinder a try.

Step 11 : Click the Change Product Key Button

Click the Change Product Key button at the bottom of this window.

Note: Don't fill out anything on this screen since this is part of a Windows XP activation process, something you may or may not be doing after your product key is changed.

Step 12 : Enter the New Windows XP Product Key

Locate your valid Windows XP product key and enter it here.

After entering the product key, click the Update button.

Note: The product key in the screenshot above is not a valid Windows XP product key. It is provided for example only.

Step 13 : Wait While the New Installation ID is Generated

After updating your Windows XP product key, the Windows XP Activation Wizard will generate a new Installation ID which will be used to activate Windows XP.

This screen is only momentarily displayed. If you don't see it, don't worry. It probably just happened too quickly to notice.

Step 14 : Reactivate Windows XP

Now that your product key is changed, you'll need to reactivate Windows XP.

You should now be seeing the Activate Windows by phone screen. This is one method of activating Windows which you're more than welcome to use.

If you click the Back button, you'll see that you have the option of activating over the Internet - a much easier and faster way to activate Windows XP assuming you have an Internet connection on the computer.

If you'd rather postpone activating Windows XP until a later date, you can click the Remind me later button on this window or choose the No, remind me to activate Windows every few days radio button on the main activation screen.

Step 15 : Confirm Reactivation of Windows XP

After activating Windows XP, you can verify that activation was successful by repeating Step 8 and then Step 9.

The Windows Product Activation window that appears in place of Step 10 should say "Windows is already activated. Click OK to exit."