Pikopong

Symptoms

1. Everytime you want to view a flash video (from Youtube, CollegeHumour and others), your browser will stop responding. Changing to other browser or updating Adobe Flash wouldn’t work.
2. Using Google Talk in Gmail will also make your browser hang.
3. Google Talk (Windows Edition) would also hang after you started chatting with someone. You can’t also connect back to Google after relaunching it unless you restart your computer.
4. Your volume panel (the one that pops out when you click the speaker icon at the right corner of your desktop) will hang when you want to change your volume level.
5. Skype would also hang and wouldn’t connect back after you’ve restarted the program and the only way you can connect back is by restarting your laptop.

Cause

Most probably because of the sound driver. No one can confirms it yet.

Solution

1. Start Menu > Run > Type ’msconfig’ > OK > Select Startup Tab > Uncheck ‘IDT PC Audio’ > Apply > OK > Reboot PC
2. Control Panel > Sound > Highlight ‘Speakers/Headphones’ > Properties > Select Enhancements tab > Check ‘Disable All Enhancements’ > OK
3. Control Panel > Sound > Highlight ‘Independant (R.T.C) Headphones’ > Properties > Select Enhancements tab > Check ‘Disable All Enhancements’ > OK

Source

1. Windows Client TechCenter

1. Download Qt SDK for Windows at Qt Software and install.
2. Download MySQL Community Server (MSI Installer) from MySQL and install. Make sure you’ve included C header and necessary lib files during the installation (use Custom Install)
   
3. Open Qt Command Prompt from the Start Menu
   
   
4. Run these commands, modify it if you install your MySQL at different path. You just have to set the path to your MySQL library since Qt’s paths will be set automatically based on your installation if you use Qt Command Prompt:
   Setting up a MinGW/Qt only environment...
   -- QTDIR set to C:\Qt\2010.02.1\qt
   -- PATH set to C:\Qt\2010.02.1\qt\bin
   -- Adding C:\Qt\2010.02.1\bin to PATH
   -- Adding C:\WINDOWS\System32 to PATH
   -- QMAKESPEC set to win32-g++
   C:\Qt\2010.02.1\qt>set mySQLDIR=C:\PROGRA~1\MySQL\MYSQLS~1.1
   C:\Qt\2010.02.1\qt>cd %QTDIR%\src\plugins\sqldrivers\mysql
   C:\Qt\2010.02.1\qt\src\plugins\sqldrivers\mysql>qmake "INCLUDEPATH+=%mySQLDIR%\include" "LIBS+=%mySQLDIR%\lib\opt\libmysql.lib" -o Makefile mysql.pro
   C:\Qt\2010.02.1\qt\src\plugins\sqldrivers\mysql>mingw32-make
5. Create new project and put these codes to test your new plugin

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

   #include <QCoreApplication> #include <QtSql> int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {     QCoreApplication a(argc, argv);     qDebug() << QSqlDatabase::drivers();     return a.exec(); }

   Make sure you have QtSql Module in your project configuration file (.pro file)

   QT += sql

   You’ll get these outputs showing that your Qt has supports for MySQL:

   ("QSQLITE", "QMYSQL3", "QMYSQL", "QODBC3", "QODBC")

   What matters is that you have QMYSQL in the output.

Story

I was downloading some movies references from the Internet. I left it to download for overnight since it was a very big file (around 4.48 GB). When I checked it in the morning, I found out that the download stopped working after a few hours I left it. Flashget says it cannot write to the hardisk anymore. Furthermore, the bluetooth suddenly stopped working and I’m having a hardtime running anything. I can’t even shutdown the PC properly as if there’s no memory left even though I’m not running any software at all. After a few times trying, I managed to open Task Manager and it comfirms that something went wrong and every memory I have is being used by something and cannot be killed.

Symptoms

Windows hang, hardisk LED blinking non stop, can’t even shutdown properly, can’t launch any new programs, Bluetooth stopped working and so on

Cause(s)

Who knows, Microsoft said it was the third party antivirus and firewall programs (in this particular case is Eset NOD32) even though that antivirus works fine in other Windows version

Solutions

1. Uninstall Eset NOD32 Antivirus and install something else for your protection.
2. Uninstall Windows 7 and start using Open Source OS such as the almighty Ubuntu Slackware.
3. Install this fix http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979223 (works for me).

It seems that a lot of people asking how to read MyKad using Visual Basic, but since I don’t have the slightest idea on how to code in VB, I started to search around. To my surprise, Xenon (the one who reverse engineered MyKad to get the APDU) actually wrote a small application in VB to read MyKad. So, for those who can’t afford to buy SDK from commercial company, you can download the code here for FREE !

View the discussion
Download the code

For my first post in this blog, I decided to give out an example application to read MyKad which is written in Java. This application has successfully read:

1. Old and new IC number
2. Name
3. Sex
4. Date of birth
5. Birth place
6. Nationality
7. Race
8. Religion
9. Address
10. Photo

Do take note that for the photo part, it is not completely bug free, I’ll fix it when I got time which may not be happening :) There are a few things that I need you take note first:

• Almost 70% codes of this application are not written by me. I’m merely putting pieces together from multiple references in order to read the MyKad.
• Main credit should be given to Xenon who somehow managed to reverse engineered MyKad APDU so that we can read it without needs to pay a single cent for the SDK.
• Don’t expect a perfect code here since it’s my first time writing Java codes after 3 years and I don’t see any needs to upgrade it, at least for now. But you can be sure that it’s working at the time of this post is written.
• Even though it’s written in Java, it can be a guide for you to write in your own favorite programming language.
• This application only reads data from Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara (JPN).

These are the system environments that I use to run this app:

1. JDK 6 Update 2 (JDK 5 should be working just fine).
2. Windows XP.
3. Netbeans 5.5 (you may need to update the GUI Builder Pack to the beta version if you want to edit the GUI, however it’s recommended you use the latest version).
4. A smart card reader, I use Athena (got Linux support). Other brand will do, just make sure the driver is installed correctly.

Follow these steps to read your first MyKad:

1. First thing first, you need to download Windows binary of JPC/SC Java API.
2. Get the Netbeans project file here.
3. You must include jpcsc.jar as the library. You can get the file from Step 1.
4. You must also put jpcsc.dll into your main project folder and if you want to distribute the application, you MUST put it together with your main jar file. You can also get it from Step 1.
5. Plug in your reader.
6. Run the application (either directly or from Netbeans).
7. Insert your MyKad.
8. Wait till the app finished reading it.
9. A GUI will popup presenting your MyKad data.
10. If no data is showing, it is possible that your MyKad chip is spoiled that is if you’ve done everything correctly. It will only take 14 days to get a new one.

If you have any question regarding the Java itself, you can ask in the comment section, but if you got question about the APDU commands, I suggest you read this post by Xenon, the explanations given are very detail. There’s also a simple application made by him to read MyKad written in C.

Screenshot of the interface:

Summarize links of all files in this post:

• Netbeans Project File
• JPC/SC Java API
• Xenon Console App

Stay tune for the Linux version :)

Update 1: Linux version is available here.
Update 2: Read MyKad using Visual Basic