Torrent Spy's Demise-Quick Resurrection

One of the most popular torrent search engines, TorrentSpy, has met it's end. Officially having closed on March 24, 2008. The pressure from privacy laws, constant threats of lawsuits and other various infringements on the law took their toll. Recently in February of 2007 TorrentSpy was sued by Motion Pictures of America for typical copyright infringement, only the latest of a long line of problems with various companies. TorrentSpy was an online search engine for P2P programs that use data on the torrents to locate files from other users to be downloaded. These types of programs are most commonly used for sharing pirated software, videos, operating systems, and much more.

Although only one pawn in a mass of other engines, TorrentSpy was a large leader in torrent sharing. The business of hosting these types of files constantly places pirating websites in the cross hairs. Even if they are not the specific target of a lawsuit other victims will commonly point the finger towards these services. The cycle will continue until stricter laws are put into place by the US and various other countries to control websites that promote pirating.


The cycle can be be seen by observing a former employee of TorrentSpy, Jason Hughes. Who did not hesitate in starting his own torrent website, movietorrents.info, shortly after the end of TorrentSpy. Apparently the revenue from this type of website is worth all of the hastle and large amounts of media attention for those out for money.

Deleting and Accessing Files in Safe Mode

One utility that all computer users have most likely seen or used in their lifetime on the Windows OS is Safe Mode. Safe Mode is Windows without the excessive components, just what is required to run Windows. The graphics are usually reverted back into a low class VGA, many start up items are excused, and many programs will be inoperable. Safe Mode is great for having no restrictions in making changes to your computer. You can delete, rename, move, and modify more files then on the normal windows operating system.

When you log into safe mode you can rest assured that viruses will be able to be deleted. Along with other malicious programs and remnants of unwanted files. The only obstacle will be locating where they are hiding at, in which you can just use a free program like Spybot or AVG.

All Windows Operating Systems
1. Reboot your computer
2. When it begins to start booting, tap f8 repeatedly until you get a screen similar to the one on the right.
3. Pick the appropriate Safe Mode option.

Safe Mode with Networking is safe mode with whatever your networked with (computers,servers,Internet, etc.) Basically all of the components you are connecting to with an Ethernet cable. (Possibly USB also)

Safe Mode with Command Prompt is self explanatory ;)

Boot Logging will create a boot log when you restart your computer in Safe Mode. The file will be saved in the directory your OS is installed in. The file will be named Ntbtlog.txt.

VGA Mode is when you load into Safe Mode with other graphics drivers. This is infrequently used because 99% of all graphics cards and chip sets will be VGA compatible.

Last Known Good Configuration may help you to revert back to a state before you installed drivers that you may not want. Unfortunately this is not very useful, because if you rebooted at least once successfully with bad drivers installed then the computer will have no memory of the good driver configuration. The system uses the previous start up settings and loads with them instead of the most recent changes before your last restart. Somewhat confusing, but bottom line this boot option probably won't help you solve anything other then driver installation problems.
NOTE: You will boot into normal Windows with this configuration, NOT Safe Mode.

The last two 99% of my readers will not use. Those that will probably know enough not to read about it. The first deals with maintenance towards Domain controllers, and Debugging is analyzing your computer with a secondary computer. Safe Mode is easy to use and can be very helpful in situations with your operating system. You will probably find yourself being directed towards safe mode for troubleshooting at once in your computing career.

How To Shutdown Windows XP or Vista Instantly

Similar to our article on the Windows Task Manager. Users using Windows XP or Vista experience delays in closing programs, and their system. Just like our Windows Task Manager tutorial, there is a similar way of forcing Windows to shut down without wait every time. Follow this simple tweak tutorial and your Windows OS will shut down without hefty delay!

Windows is designed to give programs time to close. This is Microsoft's fail safe to make sure that nothing goes wrong when closing programs and to prevent you from losing information. It's simple why they would do this, they don't want that college student finishing the 3,000 word report at the last minute to lose all his work. Well, more so Microsoft doesn't want anyone to hear about it including their customers. They have done a great job in protecting loss of data and allowing programs to terminate in sequence. Since many users would rather have their computer shutdown/restart on command, including myself, I will provide you with this tutorial. The Windows XP and Windows Vista guides are exactly similar, the only difference is how you get to your registry editor.

Note: Today we will be editing the registry, so remember to be careful and follow what I say closely to prevent any harm to your system. The odds of anything going wrong are around 1/100 if you follow correctly.

Windows XP
1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. Type in Regedit, (Welcome to the Registry!)
3. Collapse, (click the +), HKEY_CURRENT_USER and then collapse Control Panel.
4. Click on the folder "Desktop". Locate WaitToKillAppTimeout in the window on the right of your registry editor. Which is highlighted in the picture to the side.
5. Right click on WaitToKillAppTimeout and click Modify from the drop down. Change the Value Date number to a number between 1,000 and 2,000. Then click Ok. This is the time in milliseconds that Windows waits for applications on shutdown.
6. In the same window as WaitToKillAppTimeout, locate HungAppTimeOut.
7. Once again, right click on this string and click Modify. Change this value from 1,500 to 2,000. NOTE: You now won't have much problems in ending programs normally with Windows Task Manager. HungAppTimeOut's value is the amount of time that your OS will wait on unresponsive programs.
8. Close registry editor, and test it out without closing any programs that don't require you to save anything.

Windows Vista
1. Click Start, then enter in the search box "regedit."
2. Click on the resulting regedit, which should load the Registry Editor.
3. Collapse, (click the +), HKEY_CURRENT_USER and then collapse Control Panel.
4. Click on the folder "Desktop". Locate WaitToKillAppTimeout in the window on the right of your registry editor. Which is highlighted in the picture above.
5. Right click on WaitToKillAppTimeout and click Modify from the drop down. Change the Value Date number to a number between 1,000 and 2,000. Then click Ok. This is the time in milliseconds that Windows Vista waits for applications on shutdown.
6. In the same window as WaitToKillAppTimeout, locate HungAppTimeOut.
NOTE: You now won't have much problems in ending programs normally with Windows Task Manager. HungAppTimeOut's value is the amount of time that your OS will wait on unresponsive programs.
7. Once again, right click on this string and click Modify. Change this value from 1,500 to 2,000.
8. Close registry editor, test it out without closing any programs that don't require you to save anything.

Remember to bookmark us! When you comeback check out our other guides and fine tune your PC using registry editor, and more!