Fairly Realistic

Gmail Notifier with Https

Originally uploaded by superic.

I’ve been using Gmail as my primary email for a few months now. Recently Google came out with an application called the Gmail Notifier. This little app is great because it sits in the task tray and every two minutes or so it checks to see if you have any new messages. If you have any new messages waiting you can double click the icon and it will open your mail in the default browser. The only problem I have with this is when your mail opens it does not use secure protocols. The browser displays your mail with regular Http rather than Https and a 128bit certificate.

This was actually a pretty easy fix (if you consider it to be broken, as I do). If you follow these steps you should be able to change your Gmail Notifier application to use Https (a secure certificate).

1. Download XVI32, a freeware hex editor and then unzip the archive
2. Make a copy of gnotify.exe which is probably installed in C:\Program Files\Google\Gmail Notifier (by default). We are going to edit a copy just incase something goes wrong.
3. Open XVI32 and then open the gnotify.exe copy within the hex editor
4. Do a search for “http://” - there should only be one instance of it. When you search (CTRL + F) be sure to check the radio button to search for a “Text String.” The search should place the cursor at the Hex address: 0×5E53C
5. With your cursor at the above address, type the following string over the existing characters: “https://gmail.google.com/gmail” The new Url is one character longer (due to the Https) but that is okay because there is room at the end of the Hex string. Reference the above screen shot to see exactly how the edited string should look.
6. Save your changes in XVI32 and then go to Windows Explorer and attempt to run your newly edited gnotify.exe. If it crashes then you added characters where there could not be any. If it runs but cannot check your mail (it will give you some type of connection error) then you did not enter the Url properly or did not enter it in the correct location. I tried several different variants of the Url and it must be exactly as above.

Good luck Remember, if you screw up…you made a copy of the original exe. Otherwise you can download and install a new copy. If you have any problems post a comment here.