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The 'Alternate' (Alt) key of my friend's notebook keyboard got stuck. So, when he presses A, the computer accepts it as Alt + A. The immediate solution that I can think, is to disable the key.

I find that it's not hard to disable a key. Here's how to do it:

1. Download MapKeyboard from download.com (27KB only)
2. Uncompress it, then open the MapKeyboard.exe (not installation is required)
3. A virtual key board will show up.
4. Click on the key that you want to disable. For my case, I click on RAlt to disable right Alt key.
5. Then at "Remap selected key to:", select "Disabled".
6. Finally, click "Save layout" and reboot the PC

If you failed to start the program, you will need to install Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0.

I think this can be useful, especially for some gamers who would like to disable the Windows key for you-know-what reason.

Besides disabling a certain key, the program can map keys as well.

Hope you find it useful too.

Windows XP: I was trying to start my apache web server but it seems like some other application has stolen my port 80. I never had this problem before.

After a few searches I learned a few commands that helped me to identify which process that actually listening to port 80.

1. Go to command prompt (Start > Run > cmd)
2. Type in: netstat -aon
3. You will see a list of IP numbers, port numbers and the process ID (PID).
4. Look for the row with 127.0.0.1:80 and remember the process ID.
5. Open up Task Manager (Start > Run > taskmgr)
6. Go to Process tab, click View > Select Columns...
7. Tick PID (Process Identifier)
8. Search the process that has the same process ID shown in netstat and you will find the culprit!

For my case, it's the Skype that occupied my port 80. I later found out that it can be disabled in the options menu.

A traveling friend told me that she's not able to view any websites with Firefox or MSN. Even MSN messenger is not working. The strange thing is skype is working properly.

What could possibly cause that? A search in Google leads me to another person with the same problem. He failed to get any good answer from the respondents.

A test to ping google.com failed. But a test to ping google's IP address works! It must be domain name server (DNS)!

Her PC was configured with DNS from Malaysian internet service provider (ISP). I told her to remove those DNS servers to make the internet works as usual again.

If you are facing the same problem, refer to this article to remove DNS: How to configure TCP/IP to use DNS in Windows XP