Category / Regulars

All posts which are not featured in the sliding header. This will be used to make sure featured posts are not shown twice on the home page.

by Nirupam Biswas

Importing iTunes playlist ino Winamp, Windows Media Player or any other player.

I don’t like iTunes much, but I still use it, to syncronise my iPod Shuffle. I have hand-picked the songs on my harddrive and created a playlist in iTunes, which I sync with my iPod. The problem is, due to iTunes’ inability to save its playlist in anything but a cryptic XML or text format, it cannot be imported into any other player. I have now chanced upon a simple method to do that.

Open your intended target player (e.g. Winamp). Select all the songs in iTunes that you want to add to target player’s playlist (press Ctrl+A after clicking on any song entry in iTunes, to select all the songs). Now left click on any of the selected song in iTune and drag (while keeping your mouse button still pressed) to the playlist of the target player. Now all these songs have been added there!

by Nirupam Biswas

Convert any exe file to assembly language.

If you have MS Visual Studio C++ 6.0 installed in your system then you have an exe to assembly language converter. This is named DUMPBIN.exe. You can find this awesome utility at Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Bin folder. If you had chosen the default location then you will find this Microsoft Visual Studio folder in C:\Program Files.

To disassemble suppose The_EXE_File_Here.exe then copy it to that folder and open CMD (by typing cmd in Run… under Start Menu). Now use CD “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Bin” to goto that folder. Now type in

dumpbin /disasm /out:Disassembled.txt The_EXE_File_Here.exe

The disassembled code will be stored in Disassembled.txt in that folder.

It has still more features.

1) Use the command

dumpbin /imports /out:TheImportsList.txt The_EXE_File_Here.exe

to get a list of dll files The_EXE_File_Here.exe depends on. The list will also have the names of all the callable functions in those dlls. To get the list of the dlls ONLY the use /dependents instead of /imports.

2) Use the command

dumpbin /headers /out:HeadersInfo.txt The_EXE_File_Here.exe

This will print all the details about The_EXE_File_Here.exe‘s internals like the no. of sections it has, checksum, etc. and many statistics on the exe file.

3) Use the command

dumpbin /rawdata /out:RawDump.txt The_EXE_File_Here.exe

It will print the full code in binary along with ascii translations.

4) To get know about all the switches use

dumpbin /?

by Nirupam Biswas

N-queen problem solving code in C++

To know what is this N-Queen problem is go here. My code can be complied using any ANSI complaint C++ compiler. I successfully compiled it using g++ and MS Visual C++ 6.0. I point I would like to mention is that when I ran this program for N=10 then it occupied 600kB when compiled using Visual C++ 6.0 and it took around 2300kB! I have to tried to keep memory requirement under check. It has respectable processing speed.

Get the code from applegrew.pastebin.com. For some reason the previous post of this code got deleted from pastebin. If you encounter such problem again then post a comment here. I will repost the code.

by Nirupam Biswas

Making folders invisible in Windows – The easy way.

My friend Kaustubh suggested an ingenious way hiding your folders in Windows. The method is easy to follow for any user. I have modified it a bit to make the folder completely disappear. It will be right in front of you but u will not be able to located it, unless you have been told that there is a folder there. See below for example.

Locate the folder in the screenshot below.

Did u find it? See below.


Now did u find it? U can open the folder like any ordinary folder, i.e. by double-clicking it.

The method:-
1) First rename the folder. (Right-click on the folder and choose ‘rename’ or select the folder and just press F2 on ur keyboard.) You must rename the folder to blank but Windows doesn’t allow you to name your files or folders just blank. Hence u need to name ur folder with a character which appears to be blank but it is not a blank. Confused? Well just follow me.
a) Select the folder and press F2 on your keyboard.
b) Make sure NumLock of your keyboard is on. (You do this by making sure that the LED corresponding to your NumLock is glowing).
c) Now press Alt on your keyboard and while keeping it pressed, type 255 on your NumPad. NOTE: You must use the number keys on your NumPad to type in 255 not the number keys on the top row of the alphabet keys.
d) Now press Enter key on your keyboard.

2) Now after making the file name to disappear, it is time to make the icon disappear.
a) Right click on that folder and then left click on Properties.
b) Now left click on Customize.
c) Left click on Change Icon button.
d) A new dialog will pop-up. Scroll the icons list and choose the blank icon. (There are 4 blank icons.) Refer the picture below.


e) Now click on OK. Click on OK in the following dialog too.

Now u have an invisible folder! Enjoy!