Have you even been in a situation when you have to block certain websites from your computer for any reason? Well, I am not sure about any body else but certainly I have been many times in such situation. Parents may also want to prevent access to certain websites on their computer so that children can’t get to them from internet.

So what’s the solution?

Aaaah… It’s very simple.

1.) Open “Run” from the start menu (or press WinKey + r). Just copy paste the following path and hit ENTER.

notepad %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Alternately, go to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc and find the file “hosts”. Open that file in Notepad.

2.) When this hosts file is opened in Notepad, at the end of the file you will see something like “127.0.0.1 localhost”.

3.) Under “127.0.0.1 localhost” just add another website URL that you want to block.

For Example:-

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.2 www.rakshitk.com
127.0.0.3 www.whoismadhur.com

4.) Make sure every time you add another website, the last digit of the address 127.0.0.x should not be the same.

5.) Save the file and exit.

So, here you go. Restart your browser if it is opened and changes will take place immediately.

The good thing is that no message, no pop ups nothing will be displayed when someone tries to open a blocked website. Your browser will just fail to open those websites without any error messages.

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Today we will try to play with a system file “msgina.dll”. We will modify that file to enable hibernate button in shutdown box.

Files with .dll extensions are precompiled system files of windows and it can only be modified by software Resource Hacker ( Or, you can get it from here). Also, we have to replace the original system file with the new one. This is a bit tricky.

Windows file protection (WFP) service prevents programs from replacing the critical Windows system files. Program must not overwrite these files because they are used be operating system and by other programs.

Still, it can be achieved by a software called Replacer.

After downloading these 2 softwares, now comes the most important part.

Before you go and start modifying the file “msgina.dll”, it is EXTREMELY EXTREMELY important that you make a backup of the file. Go to your Windows/System32/ directory and you see the file there. Make a copy of it (Right-click, “Copy”) and then store it somewhere else, wherever you like. In case your file gets corrupted, it can easily be recovered by recovery console( A Windows CD is required for this). If this part is not clear, please tell me, I will explain each and every step.

So, now let’s concentrate on modifying the file as per our requirement.

1) Start Resource Hacker and open the msgina.dll file by selecting “File”, then “Open” (or Ctrl + O).
Alternately, you can open %windir%\system32\msgina.dll file into Resource Hacker.

2) Goto Dialog -> 20100 -> 1033.

3) Replace existing code with the following code:-

20100 DIALOGEX 0, 0, 208, 122

STYLE DS_SYSMODAL | DS_SETFOREGROUND | WS_POPUP | WS_BORDER

CAPTION “”

LANGUAGE LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_ENGLISH_US

FONT 8, “MS Shell Dlg”

{

CONTROL “Flag”, 20101, STATIC, SS_OWNERDRAW | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE, 176, 0, 32, 26

CONTROL “Turn off computer”, 20102, STATIC, SS_OWNERDRAW | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE, 7, 0, 162, 26

CONTROL “&Stand By”, 20104, BUTTON, BS_OWNERDRAW | BS_NOTIFY | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 47, 48, 22, 20

CONTROL “T&urn Off”, 20103, BUTTON, BS_OWNERDRAW | BS_NOTIFY | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 93, 48, 22, 20

CONTROL “&Restart”, 20105, BUTTON, BS_OWNERDRAW | BS_NOTIFY | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 142, 48, 22, 20

CONTROL “&Hibernate”, 20106, BUTTON, BS_PUSHBUTTON | BS_NOTIFY | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 79, 94, 48, 20

CONTROL “”, 20108, STATIC, SS_OWNERDRAW | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_DISABLED, 22, 73, 50, 8

CONTROL “”, 20107, STATIC, SS_OWNERDRAW | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_DISABLED, 79, 73, 50, 8

CONTROL “”, 20109, STATIC, SS_OWNERDRAW | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_DISABLED, 136, 73, 50, 8

}

Now, save that file in some other location say, at the desktop. Remember to give the new file the same name i.e. msgina.dll.

Once you are done with modifying the system file and saving it at some other location with the same name, you would need to replace the old file with the new one.

Start Replacer and follow the steps:-

1) Drag the original file into the command prompt window.

2) Hit ENTER

3) Now drag the newly created file (which you have saved to some other location) into the command prompt.

4) Press Y (yes)

5) Restart your computer

That’s it after restarting you will see a hibernate button enabled in the shutdown dialog box.

If you face any problem related to the procedure mentioned above, please feel free to ask me.
DON’T FORGET TO MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF THE ORIGINAL SYSTEM FILE.

My upcoming posts will put more light on Resource Hacker. The things we could do by this great little system files modification utility. Stay tuned.

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