How to Retrieve Clipboard History in Windows

Ever copied a code snippet or text from the web and forgot to paste it before you copied something else? So, wondering to know how to retrieve clipboard history?

Well, all of us will have an experience of something like this where we want to desperately retrieve those information that was once copied to the clipboard. But since Windows clipboard will only remember the last item that was copied onto it, it would seem impossible to recover the information that was copied earlier. However, this problem can be solved using any of the following alternative clipboard managers in place of the default one.

In this post you will find a few such alternative clipboard managers for Windows using which it would be possible to save and retrieve every piece of information that was copied to the clipboard. Here’s a quick list:

1. Clipdiary

This tool is a powerful clipboard manager which will store every piece of information that was copied to the clipboard including text, images or any other file. Clipdiary automatically loads upon Windows startup and maintains a database to store the history of all copied items.

This makes it possible to retrieve the information that was once copied to the clipboard, be it the last hour or the last week. Clipdiary is a shareware tool which comes with a 30 day fully functional evaluation period.

Download Clipdiary

2. ClipMagic

ClipMagic is similar to Clipdiary but includes a few extra features that could seem handy for advanced users. The following are some of the extra features of ClipMagic that are not present in Clipdiary:

• Categorize/organize your clips. You can also create filters/rules for your incoming clips
• You can store/categorize your ideas to research fast
• Assign often used text like email signatures to hotkeys

Download ClipMagic

3. Ditto

Ditto is a powerful alternative to the default Windows clipboard manager which is an open source tool. It keeps track of all the copied items such as text, images and other files so that you can retrieve them whenever necessary. The following are some of the highlights of Ditto:

• Assign hotkeys to frequently used clippings
• Search and organize the clippings based on task or project
• Supports unicode so that you can copy foreign and non-standard characters without any issues
• Get a preview of all the copied items including thumbnails of images just by pressing the assigned hotkey
• Ditto comes as a freeware so that you can enjoy all of its features free of cost

Even though Ditto is a freeware, it is still comparable to the two shareware tools discussed earlier. So in my opinion Ditto is always the first choice. You may still download and try all the three and keep the one that you like!

Download Ditto

I hope you enjoyed this post! Post your feedback through comments. Cheers 

Tips to Enable or Disable Toast Notifications on Windows 8

Windows 8 is among the most incredible and interesting kind ofWindows version from Microsoft. It has visually eye catching design, which is found in modern user interface that is meant for redesigning a number of operating systems, worked out for users. If you have used or seen someone using Windows 8 you could have noticed the toast notifications in this modern version of windows, which simply appears the moment you install or uninstall any application. There are many users who are well versed with the bubble notifications, which were found in the earlier versions of Windows seen via the taskbar. The new application platform in Windows 8 comes with an integrated notification system for installing or uninstalling a number of modern applications.

The Windows 8 style application can employ a number of notifications types including the traditional toast notifications, live titles and lock screen. These can be managed by either disabling or enabling the notification of your application for certain accounts or simply silencing the notifications temporarily so that you are not often bugged by them. Unfortunately, this new version of Windows 8 simply doesn’t carry any notification center, which allows you to view the history of your notifications in just one place. The pop up notification of Windows 8 is very much transient wherein its lock screen application and live tiles portray a more permanent kind of notifications. Well, let’s check out the step by step tips to enable Toast Notifications found in Windows 8 as under:

Enabling Toast Notifications on Windows 8

You have a number of options when it comes to enabling or even disabling the Toast Notifications in Windows 8. This feature is very much beneficial; however, at times it can be annoying while you see them popping up time and again. Hence you have some simple ways to enable and disable the same. Once you have disabled it and after some time want to enable it, don’t get disheartened. Unlike the simple ways of disabling, the steps involved for enabling the toast notifications in Windows 8 too are very much simple. Let’s check them step by step.

Steps for Enabling Toast Notifications:

The users have the option to receive the toast notifications by simply changing the PC settings found over the OfficeScan client PC. This is the place where you have the option of enabling the toast notifications.

Step 1 – If you are keen to enable the same, the first step you need to do is to move the pointer of your mouse at the right corner of your screen just at the bottom side so that you end up displaying the Charms bar.

Step 2 – Once you carry out the first step, it’s time to move to the second, wherein you need to click at Settings and then to – “Change PC Settings” then you will see the PC Settings screen appearing before you.

Step 3 – Once you are done with the second step, it’s time to head on to the third step wherein you need to click over the option called “Notifications”. The moment you click over this section, you are supposed to choose the “On button” so that you enable the Toast Notifications in your Windows 8 based computer system.

Step 4 – This is the final step, wherein you have to choose on the option of “ON” to the three things. These include the “Show App Notifications”, “Play Notification Sounds” and the “Show Application Notifications” on the Lock Screen. The first one is mandatory while the last two are are optional and the choice to enable them is upto you.

Final Word

Microsoft has come up with this feature only in the latest versions of Windows – the Windows 8. However, if you are using operating systems like Windows 7, Windows XP or Windows Vista then make sure you do not have this notification to bug you. In your initial days, you may find a bit difficult doing whole lot of these steps as discussed above, hence it is vital to jot down all these steps in your notepad and start doing it as and when you need them. Doing them several amount of times can enable you to remember the same.

Windows 8 is a new and the most modern kind of operating system and hence different than the previous versions. You need some time to get accustomed to the same before you start using them proficiently. This certainly includes the enabling and disabling of the Toast Notifications.

Windows TCP/IP Utilities

The following are the IP utilities available in Windows that help in finding out the information about IP Hosts and domains. These are the basic IP commands that every beginner in the field of hacking must know!

Please note that the the term Host used in this article may also be assumed as a Website for simple understanding purpose.

1. PING

PING is a simple application (command) used to determine whether a host is online and available. PING command sends one or more ICMP “Echo message” to a specified host requesting a reply. The receiver (Target Host) responds to this ICMP “Echo message” and returns it back to the sender. This confirms that the host is online and available. Otherwise the host is said to be unavailable.

Syntax:

C:\>ping gohacking.com

2. TELNET

Telnet command is used to connect to a desired host on a specified port number. Just like a house having several doors, a host or a server has different ports running different services. For example port 80 runs HTTP, port 23 runs TELNET while port 25 SMTP. Like this there are several ports on a server through which it is possible for a remote client to establish a connection.

For a connection to be established, the port has to be open. For example, in the following command, we are trying to establish a connection with the Yahoo server on port 25.:

Syntax:

C:\>telnet yahoo.com 25
C:\>telnet yahoo.com

The default port number is 23. When the port number is not specified the default number is assumed.

NOTE: If you are using Vista or Windows 7, Telnet feature may not be available by default. To enable it, you can refer my other post: How to enable Telnet feature in Vista and Windows 7?.

3. NSLOOKUP

Many times, we think about finding out the IP address of a given site. Say for example google.com, yahoo.com, microsoft.com etc. But how to do this? There are several websites out there that can be used to find out the IP address of any given website. However, in the Windows operating itself, we have an inbuilt tool to do this job for us. It is called “nslookup”.

This tool can be used for resolving a given domain name into its IP address (determine the IP of a given site name). Not only this, it can also be used for reverse IP lookup. That is, if the IP address is given it determines the corresponding domain name for that IP address.

Syntax:

C:\>nslookup google.com

4. NETSTAT

The netstat command can be used to display the current TCP/IP network connections. For example, the following “netstat” command displays all the currently established connections and their corresponding listening port numbers on your computer.

Syntax:

C:\>netstat -a

Type “Ctrl+Z” to exit.

This command can be used to determine the IP address/Host names of all the applications connected to your computer. If a hacker is connected to your system even the hacker’s IP is displayed. So, the “netstat” command can be used to get an idea of all the active connections of a given system.

NOTE: In order to obtain help on any given command such as its syntax, attributes etc., just type the “command-name /?” to obtain usage details on it. For example, to obtain help on “netstat” command just type: netstat /? and hit enter

C Program to Print its Own Source Code

Ever wondered how to write a C program to print its own source code? Well, here is the source code of a C program that when executed will print its own source code. In other words, the output of this program is exactly same as its source code.

Here’s the program:

#include<stdio.h>

char *program=”#include<stdio.h>%cchar *program=%c%s%c;%cvoid main()%c{%cprintf(program,10,34,program,34,10, 10,10,10);%c}”;

void main()
{
printf(program,10,34,program,34,10,10,10,10);
}

Block or Redirect Unwanted Websites Using HOSTS File

The hosts file is one of the interesting and useful feature of both Windows and Linux operating systems that provides many handy options in addressing network nodes. For instance, you can use thehosts file to block annoying ads, pop-ups, banners, porn sites, or even redirect one website to another.

In this post I will show you how to play around with the hosts file to accomplish some of the above mentioned jobs.

What is a hosts File?

The hosts file is just like any other computer file that is used by the operating system to map hostnames and domain names on to their corresponding IP addresses.

In other words, when you type “google.com” on your browser’s address bar, your computer will look for the hosts file to see if it contains the corresponding IP address for the domain name you typed (google.com). In case if no entry is present in the hosts file, the request is then passed on to the DNS (Domain Name System) server to obtain the IP address.

hosts File vs. DNS

When it comes to resolving the hostnames, the hosts file is given the first priority over the Domain Name System. In most cases, the hosts file remains unconfigured on the operating system and hence the DNS is used by the computer to resolve the domain names to their corresponding IP addresses.

However, if the hosts file is found to contain a valid entry for a given hostname or domain name, then this is picked up and used by the operating system.

Where is the hosts File Located?

Windows: In case of the Windows operating system, the hosts file is located at:

%systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

NOTE: In most cases this should be: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Unix/Linux: In case of Linux it is located at:

/etc/hosts

How to Block a Website?

To block a specific website, all you have to do is just add a new entry for that site in the hosts file. I would prefer to backup the original file and create a new one instead of modifying it. So, if something goes wrong, you can just delete it and restore the original one! Well, here is a step-by-step procedure on how to create a new hosts file on Windows:

1. Go to “My Computer” and you should see the “Menu bar” on top. In case of Vista and Win 7, just click “Alt” to unhide the “Menu bar”.
2. Now in the menu bar, click on “Tools -> Folder Options”. In the “View” tab uncheck the option that says: “Hide extensions for known file types” and click on “OK”.

1. Open a new text pad (New Text Document.txt) and rename it to: hosts. You will get a pop-up message with a warning. Just click on “Yes”.
   Please note that the renamed file hosts should not have any extension such as 
   

   hosts.txt

   .
2. Open the hosts file using the notepad. Now let us assume that you want to block the sitesFacebook and Youtube on your computer. For this all you have to do is add the following lines to your hosts file:
   127.0.0.1       facebook.com
   127.0.0.1       www.facebook.com
   127.0.0.1       youtube.com
   127.0.0.1       www.youtube.com
   Each entry should be placed on an individual line. The IP address and the hostname should be separated by a space or a tab. In this way, you can block any given website by just pointing it to the IP address 127.0.0.1.
3. Navigate to %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc. Here you should see the original hosts file, rename it to hosts_bak. Just copy and paste the new hosts file that you have created. That’s it. You’ve now successfully blocked those websites from loading on your computer.
   If you are using Vista/Win 7 you may have to take ownership of the original hosts file before renaming it.

How to Redirect a Website?

Suppose you want to redirect Friendster.com to Google.com, all you have to do is just add the following lines to your hosts file:

74.125.236.72       friendster.com
74.125.236.72       www.friendster.com

Here 74.125.236.72 is the IP address of Google.com. To find out the IP address of any given website, just go to command prompt and ping it. For example: ping google.com. You should get a ping response that displays the IP address as shown below:

From now on, whenever you type “friendster.com” on your browser, you will be redirected to “google.com”.

How does a hosts File work?

Whenever you block a website using the hosts file, you point it to the IP address 127.0.0.1 which in fact is the IP address of your own computer. In other words, the IP 127.0.0.1 points to your own computer and doesn’t exist outside.

So, whenever you type the URL of a website for which an entry is present in the hosts file, your computer will load the IP as 127.0.0.1 instead of the actual one and tries to establish a connection with this IP address (127.0.0.1) but fails. As a result the website doesn’t load at all.

The redirection of the website works by pointing the domain name of one website to the IP address of another website (as configured by the hosts file) instead of its original IP address. So, whenever you type friendster.com, it is pointed to Google.com’s IP address and thus, the Google page loads up instead of the actual page from friendster.com.

How to Block the Annoying Ads?

I have found a great solution to keep all the annoying ads, banners, pop-ups and other parasites at bay by using a pre-configured hosts called MVPS hosts file. This hosts file contains a long list of entries to block all those annoying ads and pop-ups that usually load while you are surfing the Internet. You can also receive regular updates on this to stay up-to-date. You can download MVPS hosts file from the link below:

Download MVPS hosts

If you are playing around with the hosts file and something goes wrong, just delete the hosts file itself and rename the original file from hosts_bak to hosts. This should bring back everything to normal. I hope this post on hosts file will help you block unwanted websites on your computer. Waiting for your comments.