Jameser's Tech Tips

Tip #43: Fixing Corrupted Windows Media Player in Vista

2007-03-19T20:29:00.000-05:00

If you are receiving "The specified protocol is not supported" errors in Windows Vista, the following fix should resolve this issue and get WMP11 running again without requiring a reinstall.

1. Close Windows Media Player 11 if it is open...

2. Click on the Start icon, and then click on Computer. In the "Address Bar" at the top of the screen, enter the following:
C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Media

3. You should see a folder named 11.0 Rename this folder to 11.0.bak

4. Restart Windows Media Player and your problematic streams should now be functional again.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions.

Thanks... James...

Tip #42: Tracking System Changes of an Application Install

2006-09-27T19:59:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on monitoring the changes made to your Windows system during the installation of an application. We'll be using a utility called InCtrl5, which was developed by PC Magazine. This utility will allow us to track all filesystem and registry changes associated with an application's installation. Knowing this information can prove helpful if you have an application which will not uninstall correctly, or if you suspect that the install package may be installing spyware or other unwanted programs.

InCtrl5 can be downloaded from here or here.

After you have downloaded and installed InCtrl5, you're now ready to monitor an application's install process. To get started, launch InCtrl5 and you should see a screen similar to the one below.

I'll be using the VideoLan Client (VLC) installer as an example. Select the install program you'll be tracking in the top text field. You may also want to change the path and filename of the resulting report if you don't wish to use the default. After you've made your selections, go ahead and click on the GO! button to begin the installation and analysis. Proceed through the program's install as normal.

After the install has completed, click on the Install Complete button to generate the report.

The resulting report should now contain any registry additions, deletions, or changes, as well as any filesystem changes.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions.

Tip #41: Obtain Whois Information from the Windows Command Prompt

2006-09-07T22:40:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on obtaining domain registration data from the Windows Command Prompt. The whois command is a standard fixture in the Linux/Unix world, but Windows users typically need to resort to web based applications to query Whois information. We'll be taking a look at a small utility called WhoisCL, which will allow you to query whois servers from the Command Prompt as well as from within batch files.

WhoisCL, an application developed by Nir Sofer, can be downloaded from here. Once you have downloaded the application, unzip the WhoisCL.exe file and place it in your path (i.e. C:\Windows). After you have extracted the file, you may want to rename it to whois.exe to make the command easier to remember, especially if you find yourself working on Linux machines frequently.

One nice feature of WhoisCL is the -r switch, which will remove the registrar's cruft from the results you receive.

If you have questions, please leave a comment.

Tip #40: Portable SSL Enabled Web Server for Windows

2006-08-31T17:04:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on setting up a personal SSL enabled web server for Windows. The application and its configuration files can easily fit on a USB flash drive for portable use. This method is not intended to be used as a large-scale web server, but rather as a simple way to transfer files to a limited group of people.

The application we'll be using is called SHTTPD (Simple HTTPD). SHTTPD provides the ability to use SSL connections, run Perl, PHP, or Python scripts, as well use basic authentication. We'll go over configuring the server for authentication, as well as creating our own self-signed SSL certificate for our SSL connection.

SHTTPD can be downloaded from here.

After you have downloaded the Win32 version of SHTTPD, unzip its contents to a directory on your PC, or to a USB flash drive.

To create our SSL certificate, we'll be using a Windows port of OpenSSL, which can be downloaded from here. Download and extract the OpenSSL files to a directory on your machine, and then download this sample configuration file and place it in the same directory as your OpenSSL files.

Open a Command Prompt (Start/Run/cmd), and change to the directory where you've extracted the OpenSSL files. Use the following commands to generate a self-signed SHTTPD compatible SSL certificate:

openssl req -config openssl.cnf -new -out usbserver.csr

openssl rsa -in privkey.pem -out usbserver.key

openssl x509 -in usbserver.csr -out usbserver.crt -req -signkey usbserver.key -days 730

copy usbserver.key + usbserver.crt usbserver.pem

These four commands will create the file usbserver.pem, which you can now copy into your SHTTPD directory.

Now that we have our SSL certificate created, we can move on to creating a password file for authentication. In your Command Prompt, change directories to where you have SHTTPD installed. Use the following command to create a file called htpasswd which will contain the user ID and password you supply:

shttpd -A htpasswd YourServerName userid password

Replace YourServerName with a name you'd like to call your server, and also replace userid and password with your selections.

Finally, we are ready to start up our web server. To launch the server using our SSL certificate and password file, use the following command:

shttpd -d C:\tmp -s usbserver.pem -N YourServerName -P htpasswd

Replace directories and filenames as necessary to match your needs. The -d switch sets the root directory for your server.

The settings you specified on the command line will be saved to shttpd.conf, so the next time you can start the server by simply launching shttpd.

The SHTTPD server runs in the system tray. To bring it to the foreground, right-click on the smiley-faced icon and select Settings. To exit, select Exit SHTTPD.

Your server can now be accessed by going to https://localhost, or https://your.ip.addr.ess If your machine is behind a router, you'll need to set up port forwarding on your router to point to the IP address of your PC and port 443.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment.

Tip #39: Backing Up to DVD Using Free Tools in Windows XP

2006-08-22T17:13:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on backing up a directory or drive to recordable DVD media using free tools. The approach we'll be using will also allow you to span multiple DVDs for larger backup jobs.

The first tool we'll be using is DAR (DiskArchive), which was originally developed as a Linux command line application, but has also been ported to the Windows environment. DAR allows you to create archives of directory structures, while splitting the archive file into multiple files of a user defined size.

The second tool we'll be using is called CommandBurner. CommandBurner is a Win32 utility that can burn files or directories from the Windows Command Prompt.

DAR can be downloaded from here, and CommandBurner can be downloaded from here.

DAR allows you to execute an external application after the creation of each slice of an archive. We'll be taking advantage of this feature, by calling upon CommandBurner to burn each newly created slice.

After you have downloaded and installed both DAR and CommandBurner, you can back up specific directories using the following syntax:
(this should all be entered on a single line)

c:\path_to_dar\dar -c "/cygdrive/T/ArchiveName" -s 4000M -p -b -v -R "/cygdrive/c/DirToBackup" -E "/cygdrive/c/Progra~1/Comman~1/CmdBurn.exe burn /f T:\\%b.%n.%e /l %b.%n /hide /eject; rm -f T:\\%b.%n.%e"

In the above example, you'll need to change the T in "/cygdrive/T/ArchiveName", "T:\\%b.%n.%e" ,and "rm -f T:\\..." to a drive letter where you have space for creating a temporary 4GB file. Also, change "/cygdrive/c/DirToBackup" to the drive and directory you'd like to backup. Notice that DAR requires cygwin style paths, while CmdBurn uses the conventional Windows format.

This single command will create 4GB slices of the directory you specify and then directly burn to DVD, opening the tray for new media after each is burnt. Each DVD will be labeled with the ArchiveName and the number of the backup set, (i.e. ArchiveName.1). The file on the disc will be named the same, but also have the .dar extension.

To view the files contained within your backup set, use the following command:

dar -l /cygdrive/x/ArchiveName

Replace the x above with the drive letter of your DVD drive. If the archive is part of a multidisc set, you'll be prompted for additional discs.

To restore all of the files from the archive, use the command below:

dar -x /cygdrive/x/ArchiveName -R /cygdrive/c/DirToRestoreTo

Replace the x with your DVD drive, and also alter where you'd like to have the files restored to.

For additional information on the many features DAR has available, including compression and encryption, you can consult the documentation available at the DAR site.

If you have any questions on today's tip, please leave a comment.

Tip #38: Capturing Audio To MP3 in Windows XP

2006-08-14T16:41:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on capturing audio in Windows XP as an MP3 file. We'll be using a small utility which provides easy usage from within batch files or in scheduled tasks, as well as when used directly.

The free utility we'll use for capturing audio is called SoundCapture, and is available from here. This utility requires the lame_enc.dll, which can be downloaded from here and then placed in the same directory as SoundCapture.exe.

To use SoundCapture, you'll need to first determine the sound card input you'd like to record from. These differ based on your sound card manufacturer, however typing SoundCapture /? from a Command Prompt will render a list of the inputs available to you. The bitrate, sample rate, title, and duration of the recording can all also be adjusted to your needs using the /br, /sr, /title, and /m /length parameters respectively. The final parameter passed is the name you'd like to call the resulting file.

Once you have determined the input to use, and decided on any optional parameters , you can start the recording using a command similar to this:

SoundCapture /in "Stereo Mix" /br 128 /title "Test Rec" /m /length 30 test.mp3

If your sound card has Stereo Mix as an input choice, you should be able to record anything which is playing through your PC's speakers.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment.

Tip #37: Creating NTFS Hard Links in Windows XP

2006-08-13T20:20:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on creating hard links on Windows XP systems using the NTFS filesystem. Hard links allow you to create an alternate name for an existing file on the same partition.

The hard link itself is simply a reference to an existing file, and points the exact disk location of the original file without actually duplicating the file. The hard link you create can be in a different directory as the original file, or in the same directory using an alternate name, but it must reside on the same partition as the source file.

To create hard links in Windows XP, use the following command from a Command Prompt (Start/Run/cmd):

fsutil hardlink create new_link_name source_file

One of the benefits of creating hard links is that all hard links to a file, as well as the original file, need to be deleted in order to actually delete the original file from the filesystem. So, if you create a hard link to important.doc called hl_important.doc and the original file is deleted, it will still be available by accessing hl_important.doc. If you delete both, then the file will be removed from the filesystem. Keep in mind though that changes to either the original file or its hard links will affect each other. So, if you overwrite important.doc on accident, your hard links will also contain the same overwritten data.

Another obvious benefit is that you can create an easier to type "alias" for a deeply nested but often accessed file. To create a link to C:\Deeply\Nested\File.doc on the root of your C drive, simply use:

fsutil hardlink create "C:\newlink.doc" "C:\Deeply\Nested\File.doc"

If you have any questions on today's tip, please leave comment.

Tip #36: Scheduled Boot Up From Stand By in Windows XP

2006-08-10T23:13:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on scheduling the boot up of your Windows XP machine. In order to accomplish this, you'll need to have a fairly recent machine with either ACPI or APM power management enabled in the BIOS. This should be the default for most machines unless you've specifically disabled it. If you find that this tip is not working for you, you may want to consult your motherboard's or PC's documentation to determine what power management options are available to you. Also, it is necessary that your PC be in Stand By or Hibernate mode to "boot" in this fashion.

To wake from Stand By automatically, we'll be using a free utility called, appropriately enough, WakeUpOnStandBy. This is a small utility which allows you to specify the time you'd like your machine to "Wake Up", as well as also giving you the option run an application immediately following the return from Stand By. WakeUpOnStandBy can be downloaded from here.

After you have downloaded the utility, launch the program and you'll be presented with a screen similar to the following:

You'll need to specify the date and time you'd like to wake the machine up, and provide an optional application and its parameters you'd like to run. Then click on Start, and finally click on the Switch to Tray button.

Now if you select Stand By instead of Shutdown when you power off your machine at night, it should be waiting ready to go when you arrive back in the morning.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment.

Tip #35: Writing to Recordable DVDs from XP's Command Prompt

2006-08-08T19:42:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on writing data to recordable DVDs from the Command Prompt in Windows XP. We'll be accomplishing this by using a tool which was originally developed for Linux, but has been ported to the Windows platform. The tool is called growisofs, a burning utility which uses mkisofs to properly format the data for writing to the disc. This functionality is useful for unattended burning from scripts or batch files.

growisofs and mkisofs can be downloaded from here. They should both be placed in the same directory or within your path so that growisofs is able to call upon mkisofs when needed.

After you have downloaded the programs, you can burn to recordable DVDs from the Command Prompt(Start/Run/cmd) using the following command:

growisofs -Z F: -r -J -speed=2 -V label C:\DirToBurn

The -Z parameter specifies this as being the first session of this particular disc. The drive letter immediately following is the drive letter of your DVD burner. The -r and -J generate "Rational Rock" and Joliet directory information. The -V and the following string specify the volume label for the disc. The optional -speed= parameter allows you to manually select the burning speed. Finally, the last parameter is the directory which you'd like to copy to the DVD.

For subsequent multisession burns, use the exact same command as above, except replace the -Z with a -M and change the directory which you'd like to burn a copy of. All other parameters must remain exactly the same as the initial session.

growisofs -M F: -r -J -speed=2 -V label C:\AnotherDir

For maximum compatibility, you should add the -dvd-compat switch to your final session to write a lead-out on the disc.

growisofs -dvd-compat -M F: -r -J -speed=2 -V label C:\Dir

If you have any questions, please leave a comment.

Tip #34: Creating DVDs with Free Tools in Windows XP

2006-08-03T20:32:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on creating DVDs from AVI files, WMV files, and other video file types... The quality of the DVD produced will depend on the source input file, but with a high quality source file the results should meet or exceed those of many point-and-click DVD solutions...

The tools we'll need to produce this DVD are mencoder and dvdauthor... Mencoder is part of the MPlayer package and can be downloaded from here... The Win32 port of dvdauthor can be downloaded from here (0.6.9 is the most current Win32 build at this time)... Since both of these tools were originally developed for Linux, and have been ported to Windows, the instructions given below should work equally as well, if not better, on a Linux box...

After you have downloaded and installed both mencoder and dvdauthor, you're ready to start building your DVD... The DVD created in this example will not have menus or chapters, and should autostart when inserted into a DVD player...

First off, we'll need to transcode the source video into a DVD-compliant MPEG2 format... We'll do this by using the following command:
(Note: This command should all be on a single line...)

mencoder source.avi -ovc lavc -oac lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:
vbitrate=5000:keyint=18:acodec=ac3:abitrate=192:aspect=4/3:
trell:mbd=2:precmp=2:subcmp=2:cmp=2:dia=10:predia=-10:cbp:
mv0:vqmin=1:lmin=1:dc=10 -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd
-vf scale=720:480,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000
-ofps 30000/1001 -o "outputfile.mpg"

The transcoding process takes a relatively long time, even on a recent machine, so you may want to start this in the evening before going to sleep... source.avi and outfilefile.mpg should be changed to reflect your input file, and desired output file... This command also assumes a 4:3 NTSC DVD... If you're converting for PAL, change the keyint to 15, change the -ofps to 25, and also change the scale= to 720:576...

After you have created the DVD compliant MPEG2 file, you will now need to create the DVD structure using dvdauthor, using the following command:

dvdauthor -v 4:3,720x480 -t -f "yourfile.mpg" -o "C:\output_dir"

The above command will generate the file structure for the DVD, as well as build the necessary VOB files from your MPEG file...

And finally, we just need to generate a TOC (table of contents) for our DVD using the following command:

dvdauthor -T -o "C:\output_dir"

Make certain that the output directory you specify in the command above is the same as the previous command...

You should now have a VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS directory in your specified output directory... These directories and their contents can now be burned to a DVD using a burning application of your choice, and the resulting DVD should be playable on pretty much any DVD player...

Please leave a comment if you have any questions...

Tip #33: Instant FTP Server for Windows XP

2006-08-02T21:21:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on setting up a simple and portable FTP server for serving files across a LAN or to a remote user... A few days ago we discussed a SFTP solution which provides a secure pathway for file transfers, however it requires special client software for your remote user to connect... The solution we'll be discussing today doesn't provide any level of encryption, but also doesn't require any special client software to connect to it... You'll need to make the determination as to whether the files you'll be transferring are sensitive in nature, and then choose which solution fits your needs... If the contents of your files are sufficiently encrypted, either solution should suffice...

The utility we'll be using to provide FTP services is called the "Swiss File Knife", a.k.a sfk, from stahlworks... sfk is mainly intended for the processing and manipulation of text files, however one of the "bonus" features of this application is that you can also use it as an instant FTP server... If you download sfk for the purposes of using the FTP server, you'll also definitely want to check out the documentation to discover its many other capabilities... If you carry a USB flash drive, it is a must-have utility to add to your collection...

sfk can be downloaded from here...

After you have downloaded the utility and extracted sfk.exe to a directory in your path (C:\Windows), starting the FTP server is a simple process... Open a command prompt (Start/Run/cmd) and change directories to the location where you'd like to serve up files... Then issue the following command to start the server:

sfk ftpserv

The server can only provide a connection to a single client at a time and does not require any level of authentication... However, it does provide an extremely simple method of transferring large files to and from remote users when a full-blown FTP server may be overkill...

To allow write access to the directory, add the -rw switch to the command... Also, an alternate port can be specified by using the -port=portnumber switch... If your ISP blocks access to port 21, you'll need to use the -port switch to select an alternate port to use... Any port above 1024 is a good choice...

If you are behind a router or firewall, you'll need to configure port forwarding to the machine running the FTP server... If you did not have to change the port the server is running on, users can connect to your FTP server with the following command:

ftp your.external.ip.addy

A connection to a server with a port other than the default requires a different approach... Remote users can access your FTP server using XP's FTP client in interactive mode, then use the open command while specifying your external IP address and your configured port number:

ftp
ftp>open your.external.ip.addy port#

The user and password prompts can be left blank... Use bin to change to binary mode, asc to change to ASCII mode, get filename to retrieve files from your server, put filename to upload files to you server, and dir to show available files...

If you have any questions, please leave a comment...

Tip #32: Using Custom Visual Styles in Windows XP

2006-08-01T18:21:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on applying custom Visual Styles, or themes, to Windows XP... By changing the current theme of your XP desktop, you can achieve the look of Windows Vista, OS X, or other customized layouts while still running XP...

If you'd like to apply a different Visual Style to your desktop, you will first need to patch or replace the uxtheme.dll in the C:\Windows\system32 directory... The original uxtheme.dll provided by Microsoft requires that Visual Styles be digitally signed, so we'll replace the DLL with one which allows unsigned Visual Styles to be installed...

The easiest way to achieve our desired results is to download an already patched DLL... To patch Windows XP SP2, you can download the "UXTheme Patch for Windows XP SP2 Final" utility from here, which is also available elsewhere...

After you have downloaded the patched uxtheme.dll, open Windows Explorer and navigate to the Windows\system32 directory... Now, rename the original uxtheme.dll to uxtheme.bak so that we'll have a backup in the event we need one later... Now extract or copy the patched uxtheme.dll into the C:\Windows\system32 directory...

When copying the patched file, you will get a notice similar to the one below:

Click on Cancel to continue copying in the patched uxtheme.dll...

You'll also receive another alert window asking if you'd like to keep these unrecognized file version, as shown below:

Click on Yes to accept the new uxtheme.dll...

Next, you'll need to reboot your machine for our changed uxtheme.dll to load...

After you return from your reboot, you'll now be ready to find some Visual Styles to install on your machine... DeviantArt has many to choose from, and is where I downloaded the Vista inspired theme below:

Most downloaded themes simply require unzipping the packaged files into C:\Windows\Resources\Themes, but you should check any documentation that comes with the files for any further instructions...

After you have installed your desired theme, set it to be the current theme by right-clicking on the desktop, selecting Properties, click on the Appearance tab, and under the "Windows and buttons" pulldown, select your new theme and click Apply...

Please leave a comment if you have any questions, or if you've found good sources for additional Visual Styles...

Tip #31: Simple Portable SFTP Server for Windows XP

2006-07-30T20:19:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on providing a small, portable SFTP server for Windows XP for SSH encrypted file transfers... While there are ports of OpenSSH available for Windows machines, we'll be taking a look at a tiny, single executable, SFTP server for Windows...

The utility we'll be using is called the Mini SFTP Server from CoreFTP, and it's provided free of charge from the developers of the CoreFTP FTP Client and Server... The single executable format makes it ideal for carrying around on your USB flash drive...

The Mini SFTP Server can be downloaded from here... There is no install process, just launch the msftpsrvr.exe executable after you have completed downloading it...

After you have launched the msftpsrvr.exe application, you can configure a single User ID / Password combination, the port number on which the server will run, and the directory which will serve as the root path for the server... After you have adjusted the settings to your needs, simply click on the Start button to start the server... If you are behind a router, you will need enable port forwarding to your machine using the port you specified in the configuration...

To connect to your SFTP server, remote users can use a SFTP client application of their choice, including pscp from the PuTTY developers, as well as WinSCP...

After you have run the application once, it stores the values you've supplied into the registry for future use... The registry keys can be deleted if you'd like (HKCU/Software/FTPWare), or you can simply clear the fields of the application prior to exiting the program to clear the registry entries...

To start the server process immediately upon launch (using the values previously stored in the registry), you can add the -start switch to the shortcut or from the command line, (i.e. msftpsrvr.exe -start)...

If you have any questions, please leave a comment...

Tip #30: Creating 3GP Video for Mobile Phones with Free Tools

2006-07-28T08:13:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on creating high quality 3GP files for playback on newer mobile phones... Using free tools compiled for Windows, we will convert DVDs or existing AVI files using two-pass encoding for optimum results...

The free tools we'll be using to convert the video will be mencoder and mplayer from the MPlayer project, FAAC, as well as MPEG4 Tools from the MPEG4IP group... While there are point-and-click applications available for video conversion, I think you'll find that the approach below provides better results and smaller file sizes...

The examples assume you are converting from a DVD... If you are converting an AVI or MPG file, replace "-dvd-device e:\video_ts dvd://1 -aid 128" with the name of your video file...

(NOTE: The following commands should be entered on a single line, even though they may appear multiline on this page...)

Using mencoder, start the first pass of video encoding:

mencoder -dvd-device e:\video_ts dvd://1 -aid 128 -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts
vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=300:v4mv:mbd=2:trell:cmp=10:
subcmp=10:mbcmp=10:autoaspect:vpass=1 -ofps 14.985 -vf scale=320:240 -ffourcc DIVX -o c:\path\out.avi

Next, complete the second pass of video encoding:

mencoder -dvd-device e:\video_ts dvd://1 -aid 128 -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts
vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=300:v4mv:mbd=2:trell:cmp=10:
subcmp=10:mbcmp=10:autoaspect:vpass=2 -ofps 14.985 -vf scale=320:240 -ffourcc DIVX -o c:\path\out.avi

Next, we'll need to strip the audio from the source using the following command... This will consume a lot of disk space, so be certain to have a gigabyte or so available before continuing...

mplayer -dvd-device e:\video_ts dvd://1 -aid 128 -vo null -ao pcm:file=out.wav -af resample=16000,volume=3

Now, we'll need to encode the audio we just extracted into AAC format using faac:

faac -b 64 f4.wav -o f4.aac

Finally, we'll use mp4creator to combine our AVI and AAC files into our final 3GP using the following commands:

mp4creator -allow-avi-files -force3GPCompliance -create=ourfile.avi out.3gp

mp4creator -aac-profile=4 -interleave -force3GPCompliance -create=ourfile.aac out.3gp

mp4creator -optimize out.3gp

The resulting 3GP file should be playable on any device which supports 3GP files, and can also be played in quicktime... Change the vbitrate= in the video encoding commands if you'd like a smaller or larger file...

If you have any questions please leave a comment...

Tip #29: Stateful Packet Filter Firewall for Windows

2006-07-26T18:13:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on replacing the Windows firewall with a kernel mode, packet-filtering firewall... The firewall we'll be using is called WIPFW, and is a Win32 port of FreeBSD's formidable IPFW firewall...

WIPFW will allow us to create detailed firewall rules which determine whether packets are dropped or accepted, as well as optionally logged... These rules can be applied manually while the firewall is running, or configured in the application's configuration file... We'll take a look at both approaches in a moment...

While WIPFW has almost all of FreeBSD's IPFW functionality, it cannot perform traffic shaping or packet redirection yet... It does provide stateful inspection however, and will create dynamic rules on the fly to allow packets through where the original rule specified to "keep state" or "limit"...

WIPFW may not be for everyone due to its rather complicated configuration, but when properly setup can provide a very secure host... The default wipfw.conf provides a basic stateful-inspection firewall configuration, and will log dropped packets which helps troubleshooting which ports you need to open... The generated log files are stored in C:\Windows\security\logs...

To install WIPFW, first download the stable zip from here, and extract to a location where you'd like to permanently keep the configuration and utility files... We'll use C:\Wipfw for the sake of this demonstration...

If you are installing on a remote host, it is important to modify the wipfw.conf prior to installation to allow remote access, otherwise you'll end up needing console access to correct it... It is probably best to configure and explore on a local machine, to ensure the rules are correct before you implement it remotely...

After you've unzipped the files, and modified wipfw.conf if necessary, you can install the service by opening a command prompt, changing to your installation directory, and typing install.cmd... This will install and start the service using the configuration supplied in the C:\Wipfw\wipfw.conf file...

To add temporary rules on the fly, use the ipfw add command from the command line, passing the action, protocol, source address, optional port, direction, destination port, optional port, and any options... The keywords "any" and "me" can be used to simplify making rules... For example to block access to your machine from a malicious IP address, you could add the following rule:

ipfw add deny ip from 86.7.5.309 to me

Or to allow access to your HTTP port from a particular subnet, you could use:

ipfw add allow tcp from 192.168.0.0/24 to me 80

To make any of these rules permanent, simply add the rule to your wipfw.conf file with a rule number and they will take effect at the next reboot... You can also force the loading of the new configuration by launching config.cmd from the C:\Wipfw directory...

For additional information on configuration, you can refer to the documentation, or better yet consult the FreeBSD docs on IPFW configuration...

Please leave a comment if you have any questions... Check back tomorrow for new tips...

Tip #28: XP System Information at a Glance

2006-07-25T16:49:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on adding simple "widgets" to your Windows XP desktop to provide easily accessible information about your system...

Using a free and customizable utility called Rainmeter, we will be able to display current system statistics directly on the desktop... The Rainmeter System Information widget displays current CPU, physical memory, virtual memory, and hard drive usage, as well as current network bandwidth utilization... Rainmeter is also skinnable and provides other widgets for current weather information, news feeds, and other information...

Rainmeter can be downloaded from here, and additional themes can be obtained here...

The screenshot below shows Rainmeter running using the "Lucid Smoked" theme:

If you have any questions, please leave a comment... Check back tomorrow for new tips...

Tip #27: Automating Linux Admin From Windows Over SSH

2006-07-24T17:05:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on performing and automating simple Linux administration tasks from a Windows workstation over SSH... Creating backups, restarting services, rebooting machines, and basically any other simple administrative task can be accomplished securely from the command line in Windows, or from a desktop shortcut...

To accomplish these tasks, we'll be using plink which is a free command line SSH client from the developers of PuTTY... plink allows you to create SSH connections from the command line, very similar to the way you would use the ssh client on a Linux machine... This means that we can use plink from within batch files, as well as pipe and redirect data to and from remote connections...

plink can be downloaded from here...

After you have downloaded and placed plink in your path, you are ready to start creating shortcuts to some simple routine Linux administration tasks... The examples below are just a few of the possibilities, so please drop a comment is you have ideas for additional examples...

Before proceeding with any of the examples, you should probably connect to the server using plink once to add the server to the key cache and also to ensure that you can actually connect to the box... Open a command prompt and type the following, replacing with your user and hostname information...

plink user@host

The first example will be to create and transfer a zipped tarball of a directory on a remote server... This example could also be placed into a batch file to be run as a nightly backup scheduled task... The command is as follows:

plink -pw password user@host "tar czf - /dir_to_be_backed_up" > filename.tar.gz

This command connects to the remote machine, creates a zipped tarball of a directory, and outputs it to STDOUT... In our case the STDOUT is being redirected to a local file named filename.tar.gz... This connection will not prompt for the password as it is being supplied in the plink parameters...

The next command will restart a service on the remote server... We will not include the password in this command, as the root user is most likely required for the service restart... This example assumes you have a Red Hat based distribution, so you'll need to modify to suit your particular server... When the command is run, it will prompt you for your password...

plink user@host "/etc/rc.d/init.d/service_name restart"

The last command will simply restart the server, and will also require that a password be entered:

plink user@host "shutdown -r now"

Any of the above listed commands can be created as a shortcut on your desktop for easy access...

If you have any questions on today's tip, please leave a comment... Check back tomorrow for new tips...

Tip #26: Advanced Windows XP Transparency Techniques

2006-07-23T20:17:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on applying transparency settings to windows in Windows XP at application launch... We have previously taken a look at a method to apply a transparency effect to running applications, but today's tip will allow you to configure shortcuts with the desired transparency level...

We'll be using a utility called AutoHotKey, which is an amazing tool for automating Windows processes and creating useful Windows-centric scripts... I won't get into the details of the many facets of this program, but if you install it for the purposes of this tip, I'd recommend spending a while checking out the help file to discover what it is capable of...

AutoHotKey can be downloaded from here...

After you have downloaded and installed AutoHotKey, you can create simple scripts and save them as .AHK files, which will be processed by AutoHotKey when launched... The small script below will allow you to open Notepad (or any other program) with a transparency level of approximately 75% (192/255)...

;Hides the AutoHotKey System Tray Icon When Launched
#NoTrayIcon
;Run the Application, Don't Display Yet, and Assign PID to "ThePid"
Run Notepad.exe,,Hide,ThePid
;Allow WinWait to Detect Hidden Windows
DetectHiddenWindows, On
;Wait for the Application to Become Active
WinWait ahk_pid %ThePid%
;Set the Transparency to ~75% (192/255)
WinSet, Transparent, 192
;Show the Window Now
WinShow
;Make the Application the Active Window
WinActivate

The comments in the script should explain the purpose of each line... After you have created and saved the AHK file to your desktop, you can double-click the icon to launch the application with the transparency effects applied... You can also change the icon to the source application by selecting the shortcut's Properties and clicking on Change Icon...

Another effect I've found to be quite cool is to apply the transparency incrementally, so the application appears to fade in from invisible to fully opaque... The script below demonstrates this technique:

;Hides the AutoHotKey System Tray Icon When Launched
#NoTrayIcon
;Run the Application, Don't Display Yet, and Assign PID to "ThePid"
Run Notepad.exe,,Hide,ThePid
;Allow WinWait to Detect Hidden Windows
DetectHiddenWindows, On
;Wait for the Application to Become Active
WinWait ahk_pid %ThePid%
;Set the Transparency to ~75% (192/255)
WinSet, Transparent, 0
;Show the Window Now
WinShow
;Make the Application the Active Window
WinActivate
;Loop Up To 255 (Full Opacity) For A Cool Effect
Loop, 255 {
WinSet, Transparent, %A_index%
}

By looping through the transparency levels, we can achieve a nice fade-in effect, which should take around 1 second with a fast PC...

If you have any questions on today's tip, please leave a comment... Check back tomorrow for all new tips...

Tip #25: Mouse Gestures for All Windows Applications...

2006-07-23T10:20:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on adding the ability to use mouse gestures in any Windows application... If you're not familiar with mouse gestures, they are a method of controlling an application using simple gestures drawn with your mouse... Once you have been exposed to and get used to using them, it can be difficult to live without them...

If you've used mouse gestures in Firefox for any period of time, you've probably experienced a time where you inadvertently attempted a gesture in another application, and wished it worked everywhere... Fortunately for us mouse gesture addicts, there is a free utility which allows you to use mouse gestures from within any application...

The application we'll be using to provide system-wide mouse gestures is called StrokeIt... This unfortunately named utility provides global gestures accessible to any Windows application, as well as the ability to create custom gestures for specific applications... There are several predefined gestures and applications installed by default which may be modified or deleted...

StrokeIt can be downloaded from here...

After you have downloaded and installed StrokeIt, you'll probably want to make some adjustments to suit your needs... Clicking once on the StrokeIt system tray icon will bring up the Command Editor dialog, which will allow you add or modify programs... You can also adjust overall preferences by selecting Edit/Preferences from the Command Editor menu... One option I would suggest is to check the "Only enable StrokeIt in configured applications" and then manually add any applications that are not included by default... The StrokeIt forums are a good resource for help configuring applications and troubleshooting problems...

Please leave a comment if you have any questions, and check back tomorrow for new tips...

Tip #24: Extending Windows Clipboard Functionality

2006-07-21T17:32:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on extending the clipboard functions in Windows XP / 2000, allowing you to retain multiple items on the clipboard for future access...

Windows only allows you to capture a single instance to the clipboard, so we'll have to use a third-party application to accomplish copying multiple items... The application we'll be using to accomplish this is called Ditto... Ditto is a free extension to the Windows clipboard which allows you to store and access multiple clipboard items... Items copied to this clipboard are persistent and searchable, so copied items will be available after a reboot... Images copied to the clipboard will display a thumbnail of the image in the selection list...

The latest version of Ditto can be downloaded from here...

After you have installed Ditto and copied a few items to the clipboard, you can launch the "Quick Paste" list by pressing Ctrl+`... This keyboard combination can be modified in the program's options, so if Ctrl+Shift+V or another combination feels more comfortable to you, you are free to change it... With the "Quick Paste" list displayed, simply double-click on the desired item to paste it into your application... Items can be individually deleted, or if you want to delete all items in the list, you can select all items with a Ctrl+A then press Delete...

There are many more settings to explore in the Options panel, so experiment to see which available options can be modified to suit your needs...

Please leave a comment if you have any questions, and check back tomorrow for new tips...

Tip #23: Secure Backups Over an Insecure Protocol

2006-07-20T21:12:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is closely related to yesterday's tip on context menus, as well as the tips on Encryption and Using Curl for file transfers... What we'll be doing is combining these elements to create an extremely easy-to-use and secure method to backup important files with two clicks via a context menu...

We'll be creating a very simple batch file to perform each of the three steps involved in this process... First we'll encrypt the contents of the file, then transfer the file to an FTP server, and finally delete our local copy of the encrypted file, while leaving the original file intact... After we've created our batch file, then we'll configure Windows Explorer to provide a "Secure Backup" function via a context menu... I'll be assuming that you already have AxCrypt and curl already installed...

The batch file looks like this:

@echo off
set ftp_server=ftp://yourserver.com
set ftp_user=youruserid
set ftp_pass=yourFTPpassword
set ax_key="Top Secret Encryption Passphrase - Keep the Quotes!"

echo Processing %1...
echo Encrypting %1...
"%ProgramFiles%\Axon Data\AxCrypt\1.6.3\AxCrypt" -b 2 -c -e -k %ax_key% -n %1.axx -z %1
echo Transferring %1...
"curl" -T %1.axx -u %ftp_user%:%ftp_pass% %ftp_server%
echo Removing Local %1.axx...
del %1.axx
echo Finished...

Copy the above text into notepad and save it as securetransfer.cmd... For the sake of this demonstration, I'll assume you're placing it in "C:\Windows"...

You will need to modify the "set" variables at the top of the file to reflect your server, FTP user id, FTP password, and a decent passphrase for your encryption... Also if your AxCrypt was not installed to the default location, or curl is not in your PATH, you'll need to modify those lines as well...

Now that you've modified the batch file with your settings, let's put it into action... For detailed instructions on creating a context menu item for all files, please check yesterday's tip as I won't go into detail again in this tip... But, to summarize:

1. Open regedit (Start/Run/regedit)
2. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/*/shell
(not shellex... If you don't have this key, read this...)
3. Right-click on shell and select New/Key...
(We'll call it securebackup)
4. Single-click on your new key, securebackup, then double-click the (Default) in the right pane... In the Value Data field, enter "Secure Backup"... This is the text that will appear in our context menu...
5. Right-click on securebackup and select New/Key... You must call this one Command...
6. Single-click on Command, then double-click the (Default) in the right pane... In the Value Data field, enter -> C:\Windows\securetransfer.cmd "%1"
Don't forget the quotes around the %1, or filenames with spaces in them will not work correctly...

Now, if you close regedit and open Windows Explorer, you should have a new context menu item , "Secure Backup", for all file types... Right-click on any file to ensure that the menu item is available... If the values in your batch file are correct, as well as the paths to AxCrypt and curl, your files should be encrypted and subsequently transferred to your FTP server when this context menu item is selected... This also works if you select multiple files by Control or Shift clicking items... These files can be downloaded from your FTP server at a later time and decrypted with AxCrypt using the passphrase you supplied in the batch file...

If you have any questions, or any ideas for improvement, please leave a comment... Check back tomorrow for all new tips...

Tip #22: Creating Context Menus for Explorer in Windows XP

2006-07-19T21:02:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on creating context menus for all file types in Windows Explorer... This will allow you to run any program on your PC against the file or files you have selected in Explorer... The example we'll be using today will use Notepad as the target application, but you can use any application you choose... Tomorrow's tip will apply these context menus towards a more practical purpose...

Open regedit(Start/Run/regedit)... If you haven't backed up your registry in a while, you should probably do that now... To back up your registry, simply select File/Export from the menu bar... Make certain that the "Export Range" at the bottom of the Export Registry File window is checked on "All", then select a filename to save your registry to... A good choice is the date you're backing it up, (i.e. 2006-06-29.reg)...

Now that we've backed up our registry, we'll need to expand HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT... We're looking for the folder labeled "*", which should be the first subfolder listed... The "*" is a wildcard that matches all file extensions... Click the "plus" next to the "*" folder to expand it... If you see a subfolder under "*" labeled shell, not shellex but shell, you can skip to the next paragraph... If you don't have the shell key, we'll create it now by right-clicking on the "*" folder and selecting New/Key from the menu... Name the new key shell...

Now, with our new shell key, we'll need to add another key for our context menu... Right-click on the shell folder, and select New/Key... Give this key a meaningful name for our context menu, such as opennotepad...

Next, single click on opennotepad (or whatever you named this key)... In the right-hand pane, you should see the default string labeled (Default)... Double-click on this (Default) string... In the Edit String dialog, give the title for this context menu as you'd like it to appear when a file is right-clicked... I'll use "Open With Notepad"...

Now, we need to let the system know what program we'd like to execute when our context menu is selected... Right-click on your "opennotepad" subkey, and select New/Key... Name this new key Command...

Now single-click on the new Command subkey so that it is highlighted... Then double-click on the (Default) string in the right hand pane... In the Value data field, enter the name of the command you'd like to run when this item is selected from your context menu... We'll use notepad.exe %1... The %1 is the filename of the file you're right-clicking on in Explorer...

Finally, test your new context menu by right-clicking on any file in Windows Explorer... You should now have a context menu item entitled "Open With Notepad" (or whatever you named yours) and it will launch the file in Notepad if selected...

Please leave a comment if you have any questions, and check back tomorrow for all new tips...

Tip #21: Customizable Command Prompt for Windows XP

2006-07-18T17:40:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on replacing the Command Prompt in Windows XP / 2000 with a new and sleeker alternative... We'll be checking out Console 2.0, a free Command Prompt replacement from Marko Bozikovic...

Console 2.0 is essentially a customizable Command Prompt, which allows you to tweak just about every aspect of the application... Fonts, colors, cursors, and backgrounds can all be changed to suit your taste... Other features you'll find useful as well are tabs, adjustable transparency, simple copy and paste, and the ability to add other shells such as bash or plink(PuTTY)...

Console 2.0 can be downloaded from here...

A screenshot of Console 2.0 is shown below:

If you have Cygwin installed on your machine, you can add the ability to open a bash prompt from within Console 2.0... Select Edit/Settings from the menu, and select Tabs from the left-hand column... From here, you'll be able to add new shell configurations for opening in tabs... Click on the Add button, then change the Title to Bash, and set the Shell to C:\cygwin\cygwin.bat... The next time you launch Console 2.0, you'll be able to select Bash from the File/New Tab menu...

Another nice feature is that if you have Plink available on your machine, you'll be able to set up a SSH session from within Console 2.0... While in the Settings dialog, add a new shell and set the Shell parameter to plink.exe svrs.ip.addr.ess, i.e. plink.exe 123.123.123.123...

If you have any questions, please leave a comment... Check back tomorrow for all new tips...

Tip #20: Remote Help for Family, Friends, and Clients

2006-07-17T17:26:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on providing remote assistance for Windows XP and 2000 users... Hopefully this tip will allow you to save time and money (gasoline: cha-ching!) by allowing you to provide PC help for family and friends without actually having to leave your home or office...

We'll be setting up and using the SingleClick (SC) version of the UltraVNC remote control software... While Windows provides methods for Remote Assistance from within their operating system, I think you'll find that UltraVNC SC provides an easier to use and more powerful application, while also being free... Also, UltraVNC SC is only ~160kB and does not require an install for your clients... Once connected to a client seeking assistance, you'll be able to control their desktop, transfer files to them, as well as carry on a chat conversation...

To start off, we'll be creating a customized version of SingleClick, which will allow you to provide company/support branding, and also tailor the application to use your local machine as the host for the VNC connection... To do this, we first need to download the base files which we'll need to modify... They are downloaded as a file called custom.zip and are available from here...

After you have downloaded the custom.zip file, extract its contents to a location where we can modify the files... The files we'll be focusing on for this article are logo.bmp and helpdesk.txt... The icon files, background.bmp, and rc4.key files can be modified if you wish, but changes are not necessary for the purpose of this demonstration...

Now that we have the files extracted, lets make some changes to the logo.bmp... Open the file in MS Paint, or an image editing program of your choice... It is important that after any changes, the file be saved as a Windows bitmap, with a maximum of 256 colors, and retain the size of 196 by 181... Although modifying this file is not absolutely necessary, it is the easiest method to provide some degree of customization... Our modified logo is shown below:

Now save your logo.bmp and let's move on to the next step, which is modifying the helpdesk.txt file... This file can be opened in notepad, and the following changes applied...

First, at the very minimum we'll need to change the HOST block near the top... You'll want to change the displayed IP address to your externally accessible IP address, and leave the port :5500 at the tail end... You may also want to want to change the line that says "Internet support" to "Double-Click Here For Remote Support" to provide better guidance for your users...

The second HOST block outlining an encrypted connection can be removed entirely for this demonstration... Encrypted connections are advisable, but are outside the scope of this article... For more information on encrypting your VNC connections, you can refer to the documentation at UltraVNC...

The remaining blocks should all remain, and can be modified to suit your language and purpose... You should be able to determine the intent of each block based upon its initial contents... They are all basically there to provide instruction to your end user... You'll most likely want to make some further changes after your first custom build, so you can always go back to further modify these comments...

Now that we've modified our files, we'll need to rezip them so we can upload them to UltraVNC's server... Use your favorite (7-zip?) Zip utility to create a standard zip file containing all of the files that were in the original custom.zip, including your modified logo.bmp and helpdesk.txt...

Now go to the UltraVNC SC Creator Tool website here... Fill in the top form using the User ID of "foo" and the Password of "foobar", and in the Upload File field, browse for the new zip file you just created, then click on Submit Query... The website will generate a file named "custom.exe" for you to download for distribution to your clients, or to place on your website for family and friends to access...

Okay, now you should have your own customized SingleClick UltraVNC application... Go ahead and launch it once to ensure that it appears like you had intended... If not, make necessary adjustments and resubmit to the Creator Tool website...

Now that you have your client application built, you'll need to install UltraVNC on your machine so that you can answer your "calls for help"... You can download the UltraVNC application from here... After you have downloaded it, install it...

What we'll use to accept the incoming connections is the UltraVNC Viewer in Listen Mode... To launch the viewer in Listen Mode, click on Start/All Programs/UltraVNC/UltraVNC Viewer/Run UltraVNC Viewer (Listen Mode)... You'll now have an icon in your system tray, and the application is now waiting for inbound connections... When someone is trying to connect to your Viewer application, you will informed of the user's IP address and asked whether you would like to accept the connection... If you accept, you will have full control over the client's desktop, as well as have the ability to transfer files back and forth... Simply close the window when you are ready to terminate the session... To discontinue accepting inbound connections, right-click on the system tray icon and select Close TrayIcon...

Also, if you are behind a router or firewall, you'll need to make sure that you have port 5500 forwarded to your host machine where the viewer is installed...

If you have any questions on today's tip, please leave a comment... Check back tomorrow for all new tips...

Tip #19: Transferring Files via FTP Using "curl"

2006-07-16T20:18:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on transferring FTP files from the Command Prompt in Windows XP...

While Windows XP/2000 contains a command-line FTP client, it can be difficult to set up this application for unattended batch files and scripts... We'll be taking a look at a utility call curl, which was specifically developed for this purpose... It is yet another utility whose roots are in the Linux/Unix arena, but has been ported to the Win32 environment...

The Win32 port of curl can be downloaded from here...

After downloading and installing the utility, it can be used from the command line or added to virtually any script or batch file... From the Command Prompt, use the following syntax to transfer a file to an FTP server:

curl -T filenametoupload -u user:password ftp://yourFTPserver

The -T parameter specifies the "upload file", and the -u parameter allows you to specify the user name and password for this account... You can also consult the man page for additional parameters and options for this powerful utility...

If you have any questions please leave a comment, and check back tomorrow for more tips...

Tip #18: Mapping FTP & WebDAV to a Drive Letter in Windows

2006-07-15T10:15:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on mapping an FTP account or a WebDAV account to a drive letter in Windows... If you do not currently have an FTP or WebDAV account, you can sign up for a free 1GB WebDAV compatible account at box.net...

The utility we'll be using to map to a drive letter is called NetDrive from Novell... NetDrive can be downloaded from here, or can be found by Googling for NetDrive...

Once you have downloaded and installed NetDrive, launch the application and you should see a Window similar to the one below...

Now, click on the New Site button in the lower left corner, and you'll receive a new window prompting for server information... You can give the connection a meaningful name, and then enter the name of the server you'll be connecting to... For Box.net, we'll be using "https://www.box.net/dav"... Then click Finish...

Now, unclick "Anonymous/Public Logon" and enter your account's credentials... You may also make changes to the Server Type and Drive at this point... Finally, click on the Connect button...

Congratulations... You should now have a drive letter assigned to your WebDAV or FTP account, and it is now accessible from Windows Explorer or a Command Prompt... You will be able to treat this newly mapped drive as you would any other local or network drive...

Please leave a comment if you have any questions, and check back tomorrow for new tips...

Tip #17: Image Resizer PowerToy for Windows XP

2006-07-13T20:15:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on how to implement easy-to-use image resizing for Windows XP...

The application we'll be taking a taking a look at is one of the Microsoft PowerToys for XP, called Image Resizer... Image Resizer is a small utility which will allow you to resize one or multiple images to several predefined sizes, or allow you specify a custom size... The application is also integrated with Windows Explorer, so you can resize images with a simple right-click...

The Image Resizer PowerToy can be downloaded from here...

Once installed, you can right-click on any image in Windows Explorer and select the Resize Pictures context menu, as shown below...

After you have selected the Resize Pictures menu, select from one of the predefined sizes, or enter a custom value if desired... This application will create a new file with the size appended to the end, "Filename (Size).jpg"... If you'd rather replace the existing file, click the Advanced button and select "Resize the original pictures (don't create copies)" checkbox...

Multiple images can be resized simultaneously by selecting multiple images in Explorer before opening the Resize Pictures context menu...

Please leave a comment if you have any questions, and check back tomorrow for new tips...

Tip #16: Using Windows XP's Network Shell a.k.a. "netsh"

2006-07-12T17:38:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on how to use the Network Shell, netsh.exe, which is included with Windows XP and 2000... The Network Shell utility allows you to view and modify network interfaces, routing tables, firewall rules, and TCP/IP settings... We'll be going over just a few of the more useful functions of the shell...

First off, to use the commands below, open a command prompt (Start/Run/cmd)...

Enter the following command, all on one line, to display your current network settings:
netsh int ip show config
The displayed information is similar to what you'd get with an ipconfig, showing address, DNS and gateway settings...

Next, the following command can be used to set an adapter to a static IP address... This might be useful to place in a script where you need to change your address to join a different IP network on your physical network...
netsh int ip set address "Local Area Connection" static 192.168.1.10 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1 1
The last four numbers are the IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, and gateway metric...

If you set your IP address manually, you'll probably also want to set your DNS as well... This is done by:
netsh int ip set dns "Local Area Connection" dns "Local Area Connection" static 192.168.1.1
The 192.168.1.1 being the primary DNS server...

To change to, or revert back to DHCP, use the following commands:
netsh int ip set address "Local Area Connection" dhcp
netsh int ip set dns "Local Area Connection" dhcp

Firewall settings can be set from the command line using netsh as well... In the following command, we'll be providing access to an application, and limiting incoming connections to a single IP address (enter all on one line):
netsh firewall set allowedprogram "C:\PathToProg\program.exe" "AliasWeGiveIt" ENABLE CUSTOM 192.168.1.155
This will allow network access to the program, and limit access to only the IP address we have given...

To disable this access, use the following command:
netsh firewall set allowedprogram "C:\PathToProg\program.exe" "AliasWeGiveIt" DISABLE

Enabling access as shown allows you to script and schedule network enabled applications, while limiting timeframes and allowable clients... You can view the current firewall configuration with
netsh firewall show config...

Finally we'll take a look at how to reset your TCP/IP to it's original settings when the O/S was first installed... This command should only be used when your TCP/IP is totally destroyed, and a reload seems to be your only option... Sometimes spyware removal can leave your TCP/IP stack in this unusable state...

netsh int ip reset reset.log

This will restore TCP/IP functionality and log the changes made to reset.log...

Further commands for netsh can be discovered by running netsh in interactive mode... This can be entered into by simply typing netsh at a command prompt... Once in the shell, type help for availables commands/contexts...

If you have any questions, or other interesting uses for netsh, please leave a comment... Check back tomorrow for new tips...

Tip #15: Unix Utilities for Windows XP

2006-07-11T20:46:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on installing Unix/Linux utilities for Windows XP/2000... Whether you've been using Unix commands for years ( and silently curse as you type "ls -l" at a Windows command prompt), or if you'd like to become familiar with some basic Unix commands, you'll be happy to know that many of these utilities have been ported to run natively on a Win32 system...

While Cygwin is an obvious option for Unix power-users, these individually available GNU utilities will provide the same basic functionality at a Windows prompt...

The individual packages can be downloaded from here... The Core utilities package includes the file, shell, and text utilities, which should cover a majority of your command line needs...

Once installed, you'll need to add the path to the utilities to your PATH environment variable... To do this, click on Start/Run, and enter sysdm.cpl... This will bring up the System Properties Dialog... Click on the Advanced tab, then the Environment Variables button... In the System Variables pane, scroll down to "Path" and double-click it... At the end of this line, type the following:
;C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin
The semicolon is important as it separates the individual elements of the Path variable...

Now that you have added the GnuWin directory to your path, Unix commands can be executed on the command line and run natively on Win32 without any emulation layer as shown below:

If you have any questions, please leave a comment...

Tip #14: Adjusting Window Transparency in Windows XP / 2000

2006-07-10T17:07:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on how to adjust the transparency of an application window in Windows XP... By adjusting the transparency of a window, you'll be able to see the contents of any windows beneath, as well as the desktop...

Windows 2000 and XP have the built-in ability to display variable transparency, but do not provide a method to adjust transparency levels for standard applications... We'll be using a free and extremely lightweight utility called Vitrite... Vitrite uses very little resources, and allows you to adjust the transparency for any Windows application...

Vitrite can be downloaded from here...

After you have downloaded and installed Vitrite, you can adjust individual window transparency by pressing Control+Shift+(number from top row of keyboard), for example Control-Shift-1 = 10% visible, etc... Control-Shift-0 returns the windows back to 100%...

Another cool feature of this utility is that you can make a window always stay on top by pressing Control-Shift-+... Pressing this combination again causes the windows to revert back from its "Always on Top" state...

Click on the image below to see an example of Vitrite in use:

Please leave a comment if you have any questions, and check back tomorrow for more tips...

Tip #13: Displaying Folder Size Information in Windows Explorer

2006-07-09T19:57:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on displaying the size of the contents of a folder directly in Windows Explorer... This makes it easy to narrow down which folders/directories on your hard drive are using more space than you'd like...

Since Windows XP does not include this functionality in the operating system, we'll be using an open source Explorer extension called, appropriately enough, Folder Size... This extension allows you to add a column in Explorer's details view so that both file and folder sizes are shown... Folder Size calculates the folder sizes in the background as a service, so as to minimize any performance hit created by the application...

Folder Size can be downloaded from SourceForge here...

Once you've downloaded and installed the application, you'll need to configure Explorer to make use of it... Open Explorer/My Computer and change to details view by selecting View/Details from the menu bar...Your initial details view should look similar to this:

To add our new column, right-click on any of the column headers, deselect "Size" and select "Folder Size" as shown below:

After you've made the changes listed above, your details view will look similar to this:

Once you've become accustomed to using Folder Size, you'll wonder why this functionality was not included in XP, and it will become difficult to live without... To use this format as the default for all your folders, once you have it configured as you'd like it you can select Tools/Folder Options/View/Apply to All Folders from Explorer's menu bar...

If you have any questions, please leave a comment...

Check back daily for new tips...

Tip #12: Visual Task Tips for XP's Taskbar

2006-07-08T13:47:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is a visual enhancement for Windows XP's taskbar... Using a free utility, you'll be able to display a visual representation of the running application when hovering over the running program's button on taskbar...

This utility is called Visual Task Tips, and is available for download from here...

After you have downloaded and installed the utility, you'll notice that when you hover over your running programs in the taskbar, a miniature image of the window is displayed above it...

To adjust the size of the displayed task tip, you can scroll up or down with mouse's scroll wheel while the preview image is being displayed...

Please leave a comment if you have any questions, and check back daily for all new tips...

Tip #11: Simple File Encryption for Windows

2006-07-07T18:22:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on symmetric file encryption for Windows... Symmetric encryption requires only a single "key", or password, to encrypt as well as to decrypt... While this method of encryption is not as secure as asymmetric encryption (separate keys for encrypt & decrypt), if a strong passphrase is selected it is very robust... Tying into yesterday's tip, once your files are sufficiently encrypted you can safely store them on a remote server...

Windows XP provides a method of encrypting folders or drives called EFS, or Encrypted File System... This approach to encryption is tied to the currently logged on user, and as such if someone has physical access to your machine and is able to logon as your user, any encrypted files will be accessible... We'll be taking a look at something a little more secure, simple to implement, and allows transmission of the files with the encryption intact...

The utility we'll be using today is called AxCrypt... AxCrypt is a free application, is compatible with all recent versions of Windows, and uses 128-bit AES for strong and reliable encryption... The application integrates with Windows Explorer to provide a somewhat seamless approach to encrypting your data...

AxCrypt can be downloaded from here...

After you have downloaded and installed AxCrypt, you should notice that it has added a context menu in Windows Explorer... If you right-click on any file or folder, an AxCrypt menu is now available... We'll go through the process of encrypting and decrypting a file, but to further understand and explore its advanced features you should read the documentation that is installed with the application...

To encrypt an existing file, right-click on the file and select "Encrypt" from the AxCrypt context menu... This will encrypt the original file and replace it with an encrypted version... If you'd rather keep the original as is, and create a copy for archival or distribution, select "Encrypt to copy"... To create a self executing copy which can be distributed to someone who does not have or use AxCrypt, you can also select "Encrypt copy to .EXE"...

After you have selected "Encrypt" from the menu, you will be prompted to enter a passphrase to use as a key for the encryption process... The strength of the encryption is relative to the length of your passphrase, so be creative and try to use a passphrase of at least 20 characters... You will then need to verify your passphrase to ensure that you have entered it correctly... For our purposes, you can ignore the other options in this window and click "OK"...

You should now have an encrypted version of your file, which now has a filename of the original with .axx appended to it... While this is convenient to remember the name of the encrypted file, you can safely change the file name to obscure the contents of the document... When AxCrypt decrypts the file, it will revert to its original name... For example if you have a file called FinancialData.xls.axx, you can rename it to 2006BeachPhotos.axx... When decrypted the file will revert back to FinancialData.xls...

Now that we have our encrypted file, let's double-click on it to open the document... You will be prompted for the password with which it was encrypted... After entering the password, you have the option to "Remember this for decryption"... If you mark this checkbox, you will no longer need to enter a passphrase for this file, or others with the same passphrase, until you reboot or logoff... You'll appreciate this option if you created a long password... If you'd like to clear the passphrase from memory, you can right-click on a file and from the AxCrypt menu, select "Clear Passphrase memory"...

To decrypt a file back to its original self, right-click on the file and select "Decrypt" and enter your passphrase... The file will return to its original state, complete with original name...

If you have any questions, please leave a comment...

Tip #10: Creating an FTP "Drive" in Windows Explorer

2006-07-06T16:34:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on adding an FTP "drive" to Windows Explorer... Adding an FTP site to Windows Explorer will allow you drag & drop, copy, delete, and edit files as though your space on the FTP server was another local drive... If you don't currently have access to an FTP server for file storage, you can search on Google for "free hosting" to find a host who will provide FTP space free of charge...

An important thing to keep in mind before proceeding with this tip is that you shouldn't place anything on your FTP account that you wouldn't want others to see, such as personal or financial information... After ensuring that the data you'll be placing on the server is not confidential, is sufficiently encrypted, or is intended for public consumption, let's begin...

First, start by opening Windows Explorer by clicking on Start/My Computer...

Next, click on Tools/Map Network Drive from the menu bar at the top of the window...

For our purposes, we are not concerned with the Drive or Folder assignment... We will instead be clicking on the link at the bottom of the window that says "Sign up for online storage or connect to a network server" which will in turn launch the "Add Network Place Wizard"...

On the first screen of the wizard, click Next to continue... On the following screen, click on "Choose another network location' and then click Next...

On the next screen, we'll be entering the name of the server we're connected to, for example ftp://ftp.somehost.com...

On the next screen, uncheck "Log On Anonymously", enter your User Name, and click on Next...

On the following screen, supply a name for this connection if you'd like to change it...

On the next and final screen, check the "Open this network place when I click Finish" box, and then click Finish...

You'll now be prompted for your password for this site...

After you have successfully entered your password, the contents of your FTP folder will be displayed, and can be accessed in the future by selecting your site from your "My Network Places"... You should now be able to edit, delete, and add files and folders without the need of a third-party FTP client...

If you have any questions, please leave a comment...

Tip #9: Monitoring Windows Network Activity

2006-07-05T21:43:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on monitoring network activity on Windows XP... Our main focus of monitoring this activity is to ensure that the applications accessing the internet are only programs that we are aware of, and have "authorized" via firewall rules... After any virus, spyware, or adware cleanup, it is also a good idea to make certain that nothing was missed or reinstalled after the cleanup which is still accessing the network...

While Windows XP ships with a few utilities for displaying current network connections and process information, it lacks a realtime monitoring application... The application we'll be using today is a freeware utility from SysInternals called TCPView... While there are other more powerful monitoring and packet-capture applications, I prefer TCPView for it's simplicity and portability... It does not require an install, and can be run directly from a USB flash drive...

TCPView can be downloaded from the SysInternals website by clicking here...

After downloading the archive, unzip the files to a location of your choice and launch the Tcpview.exe program... The window displayed should look similar to the one shown below...

The display will show all processes with TCP and UDP endpoints, the protocol in use, the local address and port number, the remote address and port number, as well as the connection's current state... To view only connected endpoints, uncheck "Show Unconnected Endpoints" from the Options menu...

As new connections are created, the background of the line item will turn green until the next refresh cycle... Items that change state from the previous refresh will be displayed with a yellow background, and recently destroyed connections will appear with a red background...

To view detailed process information on a specific item, right click the desired item and select "Process Properties"... The full path and command line for the application will be displayed...

Finally, to terminate the connection of a listed item, you can simply right-click on the item and select "Close Connection"... This option is only available for processes with connected endpoints...

If you have any questions on today's tip, please leave a comment...

If you have a topic that you'd like to see covered in the future, please send me an e-mail: jameser@gmail.com...

Tip #8: Virtual Desktops for Windows XP

2006-07-04T13:03:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on creating virtual desktops for Windows XP... Anyone with experience using a Linux based PC already knows the value that virtual desktops offer, and now XP users can take advantage of some extended desktop "real estate" as well...

Everyone should already be aware of and familiar with what your PC's desktop is... It is the primary "window" of your operating system upon which your icons and applications are displayed... What virtual desktops allow you do is to have 4 desktops running concurrently, each running seperate applications and processes for the current user... You can use one desktop for web browsing, one for e-mail, one for a programming IDE, and so on... The purpose of each window is totally up to you...

The application which makes this possible for Windows XP is a "PowerToy" released by Microsoft called Virtual Desktop Manager, and it is available for download here...

Download and install the application using the default path and options when prompted... Upon completion of the installation, the toolbar needs to be enabled on the Windows taksbar by right-clicking on the Taskbar, selecting Toolbars from the context menu, and then checking the Desktop Manager option...

Once installed and enabled, your taskbar should look similar to the image below...

Clicking on the number of a particular desktop immediately changes to that desktop... To move an application from one desktop to another, simply change to the desired desktop and click on the program's button on the taskbar... To display all four desktops simultaneously, click on the green four-pane icon on the left side of the Desktop Manager toolbar...

If you have any questions on today's tip, please leave a comment...

Tip #7: Duplicating a Website Using GNU's wget

2006-07-04T01:11:00.000-05:00

Occasionally you come across a utility that was originally developed for Linux/Unix, and you are extremely thankful that someone took the time to extend the application to the Windows platform... GNU's wget is an example of just such an application... (Thank you Heiko Herold!)

Linux users are probably already aware of the power of wget, but to briefly summarize, wget is a command line tool for retrieving data from the intenet... Even though the concept of the application is simple, the capabilities and features are seemingly endless... Basically, any URL (a web page, an FTP file, etc.) can be easily captured and saved as a local copy... It is indispensible for use in non-interactive internet access in scripts and batch files...

The Win32 port of wget can be downloaded here... The application is distributed as a zip file, and can be unzipped into C:\wget for this example... For linux versions, you should be able to apt-get, emerge, yum, etc. the most recent version...

For today's tip, we'll be using wget to download an an entire website for offline viewing, for distribution or demonstration to clients, or to save as a browsable archive... I think that it's important to mention that this process should not be used on extremely large sites... Okay, with that out of the way lets proceed...

Start by opening a command prompt (Start/Run/cmd) and changing directories to the location where you installed wget...
cd \wget (or wherever you installed to)

There are a few parameters we'll need to pass to allow us to get all of the data we're trying to mirror, as well modify the links within the documents to point to the local copy instead of the original internet location... I'll explain each after the command below:
wget -r -H -k -Dwhateversite.com,www.whateversite.com www.whateversite.com

The -r switch tells wget that we'd like to recursively go through the site gathering files... This is the main switch that will provide the mirroring effect we are looking for...

The -H switch tells wget to "span hosts", meaning to grab files which are not located on exactly the same domain we specify... This is necessary to grab files from domain.com as well as www.domain.com... It is very important to use this switch in combination with the -D switch, which specifically defines the domains we will be gathering files from... Using the -H without the -D could result in downloading content until your drive fills to capacity... For our -D we'll be using the www and non-www domains...

The -k switch causes the downloaded files to have their links replaced with relative links which point to the local copy you've made... Without this switch the files would be exact replicas and try to link to their original internet locations...

The final parameter to be passed is the domain you are seeking to copy... It should be one of the domains listed in your -D switch...

Upon completion, you should have a new directory called www.whateversite.com, containing all files from the site, with corrected links to point to the relative location in your archive copy...

If you have any questions, please leave a comment...

Tip #6: Recovering Deleted Files

2006-07-03T11:43:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on recovering deleted files from your hard drive... Accidentally deleting files is something we all try to avoid, but it can happen on occasion... Emptying the recycle bin before checking its contents, performing a Shift+Delete on a file or folder, or deleting a file from the command line can all render your data invisible to XP, and seemingly lost forever... This can be quite upsetting if the data in question was something you've spent a lot of time working on... Fortunately, your chances for recovery of deleted data are actually quite good, especially if you take immediate action...

Windows XP does not ship with any application for assisting you in recovering your data, so I would recommend using a free application called Restoration (mirror)... This program is very effective at recovering deleted files from your hard drive... The application does not require installation either, so it is a handy application to carry on a USB flash drive as well...

Below is an example of recovering files using Restoration:

Simply select the drive you'd like to restore from in the pulldown menu at the upper right, then click on the "Search Deleted Files" button... After the search is complete, select the files you'd like to restore and click on the "Restore By Copying" button...

It is important that you try to restore your files either to another drive or partition, so as to avoid overwriting information on your source drive... So if you only have one drive/partition, try to restore the data to diskette, USB flash drive, or a network drive...

Hopefully you'll never need to put today's tip to use, but if you ever need to undelete files, now you'll be prepared...

Tip #5: Network Troubleshooting with PathPing

2006-07-02T12:59:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is on network troubleshooting with pathping, a command line utility included with Windows XP...

pathping is somewhat of a hybrid of the ping utility and the tracert utility... ping is typically used to determine whether network connectivity can be established with a host, and also to obtain statistics on the time taken to receive the response back from the host... tracert will display information on the hops, or interconnections used, to connect to a particular host...

pathping, however, will display statistics on the hops used to arrive to the host, and also provide response time information on each step of the connection... By finding where and if packets were lost along the route, you should be able to determine the exact location of the source of any network problems with a remote machine...

To use pathping, open a command prompt (Start/Run/cmd) and use the following command:
pathping whateverremotehost.com

The response should look similar to this:


Tracing route to google.com [64.233.187.99]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
 0  DESKTOP [192.168.0.101]
 1  192.168.0.1
 2  10.XXX.XXX.XXX
 3  68.XXX.XXX.XXX
 4  68.XXX.XXX.XXX
 5  68.XXX.XXX.XXX
 6  68.XXX.XXX.XXX
 7  72.14.197.54
 8  66.249.95.253
 9  72.14.236.26
10  72.14.236.175
11  216.239.49.226
12  64.233.187.99

Computing statistics for 300 seconds...
           Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
 0                                           192.168.0.101
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
 1    0ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  192.168.0.1
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
 2   10ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  10.XXX.XXX.XXX
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
 3    9ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  68.XXX.XXX.XXX
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
 4    8ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  68.XXX.XXX.XXX
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
 5   10ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  68.XXX.XXX.XXX
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
 6   24ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  68.XXX.XXX.XXX
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
 7   24ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  72.14.197.54
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
 8   24ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  66.249.95.253
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
 9   49ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  72.14.236.26
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
10   51ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  72.14.236.175
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
11   51ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  216.239.49.226
                               0/ 100 =  0%   |
12   48ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  64.233.187.99

Trace complete.

The application will then display the route taken to reach the host, and then it will check the response times for each hop along the route... Some routers and firewalls are configured to not respond to ICMP requests (the protocol used by ping and pathping), so hops with 100% loss can safely be ignored as long as hops further down the line appear up...

pathping can prove invaluable as a tool for detecting networking and latency problems, especially in VOIP and video situations where dropped packets and high latency can cause problems...

Tip #4: Print To PDF

2006-07-01T13:34:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is about a simple utility which allows you to print color PDFs... The application is called PDFCreator and is available for free... Any Windows program that provides print functionality can use PDFCreator to generate a PDF file, and you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on Adobe Acrobat...

Download it, install it, and you'll be ready to start cranking out high quality PDF files...

PDFCreator basically creates a new printer on your machine... From the application that you'd like to generate a PDF from, simply print the document and select PDFCreator as the printer you'd like to print to:

You will have the option to add Title, Date, and Author information to your PDF file...

And finally, you will be asked for the location and filename where you would like to save your PDF file to..

Pretty simple, and very helpful when you need to generate PDFs for distribution or archiving...

Tip #3: Creating Flash Video with Free Tools

2006-06-29T22:47:00.000-05:00

Today's tip is a start-to-finish how-to on creating Flash video for displaying embedded video on your website... Using freely available tools, you can create videos for your site that will be viewable by anyone who has a Flash enabled browser (which is just about everyone)...

First, let's run through the tools we'll need to complete this...
1. Mencoder - Part of the MPlayer package... Select a mirror under "Windows releases"...
2. FLVMDI - FLV Metadata Injector... For injecting metadata into our video so Flash will play it...
3. The SWF files to embed in your web page:
FLVPlayer_Progressive.swf (right click and SaveAs)
clearSkin_3.swf (right click and SaveAs)
And finally, we'll need a source video to work with... I'm going to demo with a short clip from archive.org...

Step 1: Convert Your Video to FLV (Flash Video)
Download and install MPlayer/Mencoder... Next, open a command prompt (Start/Run/cmd) and change directories to where you installed it...
cd \Program Files\MPlayer

Now use the following line to convert an existing file to the FLV format:
mencoder "infile.avi" -o "outfile.flv" -of lavf -oac mp3lame -lameopts br=32 -af lavcresample=22050 -srate 22050 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=flv:vbitrate=340:autoaspect:mbd=2:trell:v4mv -vf scale=320:240

That should be all on one line, and that is one long command... We'll go through it to highlight the important bits... The "infile.avi" should be replace with the path and name of the file you are trying to convert... The quotes are needed if the path has a space in it... The "outfile.flv" is the path and name of the output FLV file you are creating... The "-oac mp3lame" through the "-srate 22050" specify the codec to be used for audio compression, as well as the bitrate and sample rate of the audio to be created... The "-ovc lavc" through "...v4mv" specify the codec to use for video compression and bitrate, as well as some options for motion estimation... The final "-vf scale=320:240" says to rescale our video to be 320 by 240 resolution...

After you run this command on your source video, you will then have the FLV video file to embed in your web page... But it's not quite ready yet... It needs metadata added to it if you want the Flash Player to be able to play it...

Step 2: Add Metadata to Your FLV File
We need to do one more step to the FLV before we release it to the masses... We will add the FLV metadata to it using the FLV Metadata Injector... (see above under required tools...)

After you have downloaded and extracted FLVMDI, change to the directory you extracted it to and type the following:
flvmdi whateveryourfileiscalled.flv
That's it... flvmdi will add the necessary metadata and we'll be ready to go to the next step...

Step 3: Place the Necessary Files on Your Webserver
Okay, now you'll need to upload the FLV file you created, as well as the FLVPlayer_Progressive.swf and clearSkin_3.swf to your webserver... It is probably preferable to place all the files in a single directory for this example...

Step 4: Add the following block of code to the page you'd like to embed the video on...


<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#v..."
width="320" height="240" id="FLVPlayer">
<param name="movie" value="FLVPlayer_Progressive.swf" />
<param name="salign" value="lt" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="scale" value="noscale" />
<param name="FlashVars"
value="&skinName=clearSkin_3&streamName=yourfilename&autoPlay=false&autoRewind=false"
/>
<embed src="FLVPlayer_Progressive.swf"
flashvars="&skinName=clearSkin_3&streamName=yourfilename&autoPlay=false&autoRewind=false"
quality="high" scale="noscale" width="320" height="240" name="FLVPlayer"
salign="LT" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
</object>


The key things you'll need to change in this block are the two locations for width and height, and the two locations for the basename of your FLV file... The streamName should not inlcude the .flv extension... Also, make certain that the src and streamName point to the correct location if your html document is not in the same directory as your FLV and SWF files...

Step 5: Enjoy Your Video
If done correctly, your FLV video should now be viewable on your site... The example below shows the resulting video...

Please post in the comments if you have any ?'s...

Tip #2: Speeding Up Windows XP Boot Time

2006-06-29T17:03:00.000-05:00

After a while of use, (weeks or months), your Windows XP install may seem to boot up a little more slowly than it did when it was new or freshly reloaded... The following 3-part tip will show you how to speed up your boot time, and get your machine back to it's faster booting old self...

Step 1: Cleaning the Registry
The first thing you should do is scan your registry for errors or references to files that are no longer there... After installing/uninstalling numerous applications, some may leave remnants behind in the registry and slow down your boot time...

As always, anytime you are doing anything with your registry, you should back it up... To back up your registry, simply click on Start/Run/regedit, and then select File/Export from the menu bar... Make certain that the "Export Range" at the bottom of the Export Registry File window is checked on "All", then select a filename to save your registry to... A good choice is the date you're backing it up, (i.e. 2006-06-29.reg)...

Once you have backed up your registry, you are now ready to clean it... The program that I use is EasyCleaner from ToniArts, as I have found it be the most reliable...

Assuming you have downloaded and installed EasyCleaner, launch the application and click on the Registry button in the upper left corner of the application, then click on the Find button... The application will now search your registry and display a list of all the errors it encountered... After it has completed scanning, click on the Delete All button to remove these entries from your registry...

Exit the application and reboot your machine... You should notice it booting slightly faster if you had numerous registry errors removed...

Step 2: Cleaning the Prefetch Directory
Windows XP uses a directory where it stores "prefetch" information for the executable files on your machine... These prefetch files help to speed up the launch time of individual applications.... The problem is that over time, the prefetch directory builds up entries for files which no longer exist, or which are infrequently used...

Removing the prefetch files is a simple task... Simply click on Start/Run then type "prefetch" and hit ENTER... This will display a listing of all the files in your prefetch directory...

To delete these files, simply select Edit/Select All from the menu bar, and then press the Delete key... Answer "Yes" to the "Are you sure..." prompt... (Make certain you are in the prefetch directory before doing this!!!)

Now reboot again...

Step 3: Defragmenting Boot Files
If the boot files for your machine become fragmented over time, it will affect the boot time... To defragment the boot files, perform the following steps:

Open a command prompt by clicking on Start/Run/cmd and pressing ENTER...

You can now defragment the boot files by using an undocumented switch for the defrag.exe application, as follows:
defrag -b c:
This command will defragment only the boot files on your PC, and should only take under a minute...

After the command completes, go ahead and reboot your machine one more time...

Summary:
Following these steps should help to decrease the amount of time it takes for your XP machine to boot up... Please ensure that you have your registry backed up prior to following these steps... And always back up your data...

Please leave comments if you have any ?'s...

Until next time...

Tip #1: Checking POP3 Mail via Telnet

2006-06-27T21:23:00.000-05:00

This is tip #1 of what I hope to be many... I'll try to add at least one per day, so please check back frequently for new postings...

Scenario: You are not at your main PC and need to check your POP3 mail... Granted there are websites which allow you to check your POP3 account via your browser, but that's just kind of taking the easy way out, and you may not trust some random webserver with your POP3 password...

With this technique, you'll be able to check your mail from pretty much any internet connected PC...

First open a command prompt on a Windows box (Start/Run/cmd), or open a shell on your linux box...

Next step is to connect to your POP3 via telnet using the following command:
C:\> telnet pop.yourmailserver.com 110
It is important to not leave off the 110, otherwise you'll be connecting to the server's telnet port (which shouldn't be open anyway)...

Once connected, you'll receive a prompt similar to the following:
+OK
That's it... That's all it will say, "+OK"... If you don't get this response, perhaps you have the server name incorrect, or neglected to add the port 110 at the end of your command...

Okay, now that we're connected, we'll need to let the server know who we are, via the following command:
USER yourusername (then hit ENTER)
You should then be greeted again with the ambiguous "+OK" prompt...

Next, we need to authenticate with the server, using the following command:
PASS yourpassword (then hit ENTER)
You should again receive the "+OK" prompt... Notice that your password is visible through this method, so you may want to hit ENTER a few times so it scrolls off the top of you screen... (You'll get -ERR prompts if you do , but they should not affect this process...)

Okay, now you're connected to your mail server, so let's proceed to check our mail... The following commands allow you get information on the number of messages you have waiting, as well as retrieving all or part of each messages content...

First, let's see what we have waiting for us with the following command:
STAT (then hit ENTER)
This command will give you the statistics for your POP3 box... The format is:
+OK 33 245667
The +OK means the server acknowledged your request, the 33 is the number of your messages waiting on the server, and the 245667 is the total number of bytes for all of your messages...

LIST (then hit ENTER)
This command will list all of the messages waiting in your account, and also display the size of the message. Example output:
+OK
1 2344
2 4567
The first number is the number of the message, and the last number is the size of the message...

Now let's take a look at one of our e-mails...
TOP 1 5 (then hit ENTER)
This command tells the server to display the first 5 lines of message #1... The header for the message will also be displayed so you can determine its origin...

Now, let's say we want to read the entire message for message #1... Use the following command:
RETR 1 (then hit ENTER)
The entire contents of message #1 will be displayed...

Okay, let's delete a message now... Use this command:
DELE 1 (then hit ENTER)
The message should now be deleted from the server...

Once you have checked your mail, you may now exit the POP3 session by issuing a QUIT command...
QUIT (then hit ENTER)
This should drop you back to your command prompt...

These are basically the same your steps any mail client uses to access, display, and retrieve mail from a POP3 server, and now you should be able to achieve the same results from any machine and any location...

Please leave comments if you have any ?'s...