Before reading this further, please note that the information below is provided for educational purposes only and you take full responsibility for all your actions.

Today I noticed that the UseNet search application from NewsHosting failed to apply the update, but fortunately I managed to find some evidence in the Windows Event Application log:

MsiInstaller,11714,None,Product: Newshosting — Error 1714. The older version of Newshosting cannot be removed.  Contact your technical support group.  System Error 1612.

After trying many things like: uninstalling manually the Newhosting app (which failed!), downloaded then the app from their website hoping that it’ll remove the old application and reinstall successfully, I did some research and found a workaround.

So, this worked for me (don’t forget to do a registry backup before bringing any modifications to it, if you don’t know what you’re doing contact their support first).

1. Opened “RegEdit” as Administrator.

2. Navigated to: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\3FF79ACD9E0B37B4FAD448750FECA00C

*** please note that 3FF79ACD9E0B37B4FAD448750FECA00C might be unique on each system, so basically I had to navigate through each registry key until I found the one which belonged to Newshosting.

3. Once the registry key was identified, I have altered the name of the following registry key 3FF79ACD9E0B37B4FAD448750FECA00C by adding a “minus” in front of it.

For example, the path to the registry key became like this:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\-3FF79ACD9E0B37B4FAD448750FECA00C

4. After the registry key was altered, I ran again the Newhosting app, the update window popped and then the it was successful.

I have tested this only on Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1.

Hope this will help someone.

UPDATE: I sent my workaround to Newshosting Support and they said thanks! Nice guys.

One day I upgraded the iOS on my mobile because of the goto fail bug… iOS 7 pretty much sucks, but that’s some other story. So, I thought it would be a good idea sending some invites to my contact list.

Well, the invitation was sent, but one week later Twitter kindly reminded everyone to join Twitter.

I did some research and found a way to remove the contacts from the Twitter account to stop the spam. Here are some steps for you:

The steps for removing contacts from the Twitter account.

Once you click the “remove” link, you will also have to confirm that you really know what you’re doing.

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