Random things in IT

Enable Windows 7 admin shares for local accounts (c$, etc)

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:52:00 +0000

If you are frustrated by the lack of access to admin shares in Vista or Windows 7 here is a reg hack to re-enable those shares. This will allow local accounts (On the host machine) to access admin shares. By changing this registry setting you are DISABLING UAC remote restrictions!

Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System Name: LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy Data Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1

Please be aware that this is a security hole if your systems are not patched (Not to mention zero day attacks). Use with discretion and without blame (Me that is).

From Microsoft:

How UAC remote restrictions work

To better protect those users who are members of the local Administrators group, we implement UAC restrictions on the network. This mechanism helps prevent against "loopback" attacks. This mechanism also helps prevent local malicious software from running remotely with administrative rights.

Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951016/
Other Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_share

Check to see if a VBS script has Admin rights

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:49:00 +0000

Came across a problem today where we were running a VBS script that was obviously designed expecting UAC to be turned off. In looking for a way to elevate the script to Admin before running, I found some code to force the script to run as administrator without having to reghack each PC. It took a combination of sites to get the code, but here it is.

key = CreateObject("WScript.Shell").RegRead("HKEY_USERS\s-1-5-19\")

If err.number <> 0 Then

 Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")

 objShell.ShellExecute "wscript.exe", Chr(34) & _

 WScript.ScriptFullName & Chr(34), "", "runas", 1

End If

If you insert that code at the beginning of your script it will first check to see if the script has Administrative rights (Either through UAC, or XP admin) and if it doesn't it will relaunch the script using runas administrator.

Warning: I haven't tested this in Windows XP. I know that the Check part will work, but don't know about the relaunch.

Reghack to get Run As Administrator in the context menu for .VBS files:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/152967-run-administrator-add-vbs-file-context-menu.html

UAC elevation code:
http://www.winhelponline.com/articles/185/1/VBScripts-and-UAC-elevation.html

Check for Admin rights code:
http://csi-windows.com/toolkit/csi-isadmin

Driver Backup

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:31:00 +0000

If you have ever had to reload a Windows system and dreaded looking for CD's or figuring out what drivers to use, then this is the program for you!

DriverBackup! backs up all of your drivers and gives you a nice .bat file to run to install everything when you reinstall is complete. Haven't tried it yet but next chance I get I will definitely be using this. Oh and it's FREE.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/drvback/

Came across another tool that looks promising.

http://www.slimdrivers.com/

VNC Server for CE 5.0 and up

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:04:00 +0000

If you have ever needed a VNC server on a CE 5 or greater device then efonvnc is for you. It's a basic VNC server with a few basic functions. It has worked well for me and it's free!

http://sourceforge.net/projects/efonvnc/

Fix WinXP Explorer settings not being saved

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:11:00 +0000

Today I came across a problem where the users explorer settings were not being saved on reboot. Settings like Screen resolution, monitor setup, and icon placement. I first made sure he wasn't using a temporary profile. Then I deleted the following registry keys:

HKCU_ software\microsoft\windows\shellnoroam\bagmru

And

HKCU _software\microsoft\windows\shellnoroam\bags

That will force windows to recreate them and should fix any corruption that would have been causing this problem. It would be smart to make sure that the local user has read/write access to those registry keys, but you will find that out when you try to delete the keys :)

Source:
http://www.techsupportforum.com/microsoft-support/windows-xp-support/10283-windows-explorer-settings-not-being-saved.html

Use any webpage as your screen saver FREE

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:29:00 +0000

Looking for free screen savers is a virtual !MINE*FIELD@
Screen Saver sites in general tend to be full of "free" (Shareware != free) and spyware laden screen savers for download. So when I started looking for a free screen saver that would display a webpage, I cringed a little. I did some Google searching and found someone posted the following site on Digg (Yes it is useful once in awhile). This screen saver is FREE and as far as I can tell doesn't include any spyware. I haven't fully tested it, but it seems like a nice simple screen saver that allows you to display any website or anything that can be displayed in IE. Check it out and let me know what you think.

HTML Screensaver:
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/djmclean/htmlscreensaver.html

Side note: I wanted to display a nice full screen weather map while in screen saver mode. http://www.wunderground.com/auto/wxmap/

Boot to any device even if the BIOS doesn't like it

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:00:00 +0000

PLoP is a boot manager that can be installed or booted to via just about any boot device, and allows you in turn to boot from any other boot device.

What does that do for you?
Well you can use a boot floppy with PLoP to boot to a USB on an old computer that normal can't boot to USB. You can also boot PLoP off a CD or install it as a boot menu for windows or linux.

It might come in useful if you are wanting to try out the new chrome OS on USB, or maybe just trying to boot from CD on an old computer that can only boot from floppy.

http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html

Thanks Steve for finding this and sending it on!

Lots of Logs

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:40:00 +0000

Linux/Debian:

This entry is one of those notes I talked about in my intro.

I was trying to forward my logs from a firewall that I setup using IPTables to a splunk server, and I ended up learning a good bit about the logging system. I'm sure I have not done things in the most efficient manner but for my purposes it worked well.

First I started logging some things using IPTables. I logged at the info level. As soon as I restarted the firewall the log messages started flooding my console. I logged in with putty and continued from there.

First to forward the logs I edited /etc/syslog.conf
I added:
kern.* @192.168.1.5 (Replace IPAddress with that of the server you are forwarding to)

This will forward all alerts coming from the kernal. You could be much more specific or do a *.* to forward EVERYTHING. See man syslog.conf for more information.

Next I restarted sysklogd:
/etc/init.d/sysklogd restart

That did it. The logs were forwarding just fine to the splunk server.

At this point I was getting all of my logs from the firewall showing up on my console, which made the console basically useless. First I checked my syslog.conf to see if there was an entry that was sending those logs to the console, but there weren't any. So I did some digging and found a few sites that talked about printk. It seems that printk controls what gets sent to your console along with any entries in syslog.conf that may point to your console.

So to fix it I typed:
echo "4 1 1 7" > /proc/sys/kernel/printk

That fixed the info level logs showing up on my console and to fix it for future reboots I edited /etc/sysctl.conf and added:
kernel.printk = 4 4 1 7

I then restarted sysklogd again:
/etc/init.d/sysklogd restart

A strange thing happened though. The alerts weren't showing up on the console or in the log files. I messed around for quite a while and finally fixed the problem by restarting klogd:
/etc/init.d/klogd restart

Update: It looks like depending on the version of klogd, and some other things I'm not yet aware of, when you restart klogd it might reset printk = 7 1 1 7 (Happened on one server but not the other). To fix this run "/etc/init.d/klogd stop" then run "/sbin/klogd -c 4" then run "/etc/init.d/klogd start"

That fixed things. Everything seems to work well now. Check out these web sites for further information and reference.

Information about changing printk
http://old.nabble.com/Suppressing-kernel-%27printk%27s.-td15280888.html

More information about printk
http://www.de-brauwer.be/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=printk

Great information about IPTables
http://www.faqs.org/docs/iptables

Edit PDF files using Open Source tools.

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:44:00 +0000

I recently found out that OpenOffice 3.0 has a PDF Import Extension that will allow a user to import a PDF and possibly edit it. It depends on how the original document was created but it may be of use if you need to edit a PDF document.

After downloading the Extension open OpenOffice, go to Tools, and select Extension Manager. Add the extension you downloaded earlier. Once you have installed the extension, you can open the pdf file using file open. Make sure you change the file type to PDF first. You can open the document in either Draw (The default) or Impress. Once you are done editing the document can be exported back out as a PDF.

PDF Import Extension:
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport

OpenOffice:
http://www.openoffice.org/

OpenOffice Portable (So you don't have to install anything)
http://download.cnet.com/OpenOffice-org-Portable/3000-2064_4-10526815.html

PC Repair Flow Charts

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:18:00 +0000

There are logical steps to fixing PC problems, but sometimes you just draw a blank.
These flow charts might be what you need to give yourself a kick start.

http://www.fonerbooks.com/pcrepair.htm

I came across this site at one of my favorite blogs Lifehacker.

http://lifehacker.com/5350446/computer-repair-flowchart-troubleshoots-common-hardware-problems

Copy it... Period!

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:28:00 +0000

If you have ever dealt with a corrupted hard drive you have come across this problem. You are trying to move files from the old/corrupted hard drive and as you are copying you hit a bad file. The copy job stops leaving you at a loss for what has copied and what hasn't. I have spend many an hour digging through file lists making sure I copied everything I was able to. Well I had that very same problem today and I decided that someone out there must have solved this problem. Sure enough.

Y-Copy is a great free program that will continue to copy files even if one has failed. It keeps a log of files that have failed so you can let the user know what just didn't make it off the drive.

http://www.ruahine.com/download.html

Note: I first found another application that was supposed to do the same thing. It was actually part of the PC Repair System USB Key (That I wrote about before). Encopy is a good app, but I didn't like the interface or the usability as much as I did Y-Copy. There are many more features in Encopy so if you find Y-Copy lacking in options check it out.

http://www.micware.110mb.com/micp.htm

Fix corrupted software installs

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:19:00 +0000

If you have ever gotten caught with an installation that has crashed or have had problems uninstalling an application, this tool might be of some help. Many programs use "Windows Installer" to install themselves, and sometimes during installation or later when you are trying to uninstall you find that the installation information in Windows has been corrupted. This will sometimes keep the program from being reinstalled or uninstalled. The Windows Installer CleanUp Utility will clean out corrupted Installer data allowing you to reinstall the product (It does not remove the program).

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

[Thanks Tim for pointing me to this]

If it's uninstall your having problems with check out the Uninstall Everything article for a great uninstall utility that will remove even corrupt installations.

A couple of FREE data restore utilities

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:23:00 +0000

I came across a couple of new data restore utilities that look very promising.

The first is called PhotoRec. I have seen lots of photo recovery programs but this one is open source and looks to be a very full featured program. I haven't tested it yet but I will definitely come back to this one the next time i'm in need.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

The second is called TestDisk. The feature list is quite impressive, and again it's open source. This one is a hard drive recovery program. It focuses on recovering partitions, and boot sectors. Again I haven't tested it but I like the look of the feature list and will try it soon.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

How to Stop a VM that is not responding AND How to Release files that give device or resource busy

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:05:00 +0000

Just found this posted in the VM forums and wanted to make sure and mark it. Looks like very good steps to take when you are stuck in this situation.

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-2290

Uninstall EVERYTHING!

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:34:00 +0000

Have you ever come across a program that just wouldn't uninstall? Either it threw some error while trying to uninstall, or there was no uninstall to be found. Or what about those programs that say they have uninstalled, but when you look around they have left TONS of files and registry entries. I came across a program that is the answer to all of your uninstall pains.

Revo Uninstaller allows you to run the program's normal uninstall, but then does some special Magic and scans for both files and registry settings left by the uninstaller. So if the program you are trying to uninstall fails, Revo Uninstaller will forcibly delete the program for you. Even if the program uninstalls correctly you will be surprised how many files and registry settings are left lying around.

Revo Uninstaller also comes with a great feature called hunter that allows you to drag a cross hair onto any program that you want to delete (even if it doesn't show up in add and remove programs) and it will forcibly uninstall it for you. There are many other tools packed into this little program such as a start up optimizer and cache cleaner.

Now for the great part... It's FREE! And it can run off a USB drive... That's right you don't even have to install it! So go ahead follow the link and get cracking... Er Uninstalling!

Revo Uninstaller Home Page:
http://www.revouninstaller.com/

First Look by Cnet:
http://www.download.com/Revo-Uninstaller/3000-2096_4-10687648.html

Free Partition Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:05:00 +0000

Windows, and Linux:

Changing the partition sizes can be a pain, especially if you don't want to lose the data on the drive. You could buy something like partition magic, but I recently came across two alternatives that work just as good or better and are FREE. Both can change partitions sizes without needing to format or loose any data that is on the existing partitions.

Gparted:
Gparted is both free and open source (those two things are not always the same). It's part of the Linux GNOME protect. So if your into Linux this is a great tool for you, and if your into Windows it's also a great tool for you too! You see it supports NTFS, FAT, and FAT32 (Standard windows file systems). You don't even have to be a Linux guru, just use GParted Live. GParted Live can be booted from a CD, USB, or even PXE. You boot up the system and walk through a few easy steps and your done! I have used this twice already and its really great! It has a nice GUI and seems to work really well.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

EASEUS Partition Manager:
This is a Windows only tool I recently came across on Life Hacker (A really great Blog). I haven't used it yet but it installs into Windows and looks very easy to use. It's free for personal use, but not business. It does have a very reasonable unlimited licenses for businesses though and that version supports Windows2003.

http://www.partition-tool.com/

Best background manager ever

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:48:00 +0000

Background Switcher is a wallpaper manager that can be used with multiple monitors. It's freeware and it is by far the best wallpaper manager I have ever used! It connects to flickr, phanfare, smugmug, picasa, facebook, and yahoo! image search. Oh, and of course can be directed at a folder (or a list of pictures) on your computer. It allows you to have different images on each monitor, and will switch images at an Interval of your choosing. It can also display the images in several modes including full screen, thumbnail mosaics, 4-picture montage, or snap shot scrapbook. Background Switcher is a really amazing program with many many options, and I would suggest it to anybody.
http://www.johnsadventures.com/software/backgroundswitcher

Bart is a life saver...

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:21:00 +0000

BartPE Is something I have been using for a couple of years now, and it is one of the best and most useful tools that I have in my collection.

Basically it's a Live CD for Windows. It is similar to WindowsPE but is very hackable/customizable. I use it to boot up computers that are having problems booting into Windows off the hard drive, and recover data or get a backup image of the drive. I also have many different Network tools and other tools loaded onto the "Live" version of windows so I can pop it into a computer and have a whole list of tools at my disposal. Now, I know that there are other "security tool" Live CDs out there already, Knoppix is a really good one, but this is Windows so it's easier (for non Linux geeks) and gives you more flexibility in a Windows world.

Barts out of the box is pretty basic (it has a simple custom shell), but there are several add-ons that will make it look and act just like windows. There are several sites that are dedicated to plugins for Barts. There are also several spin offs that use Barts as a base, but have there own system of plugins and setup. You can also create your own plugings from normal windows programs.

All in all Barts is VERY powerful and VERY useful. I might add some more posts going into some detail about how I have my CD setup, but to get started check out the links below.

Main BartsPE site:
http://www.nu2.nu/

Plugin Sites:
http://oss.netfarm.it/winpe/ (Check out XPE!)
http://www.drowaelder.de/winpe/PEIndex.htm

http://www.911cd.net/forums/ (Take a look at the plugin section)

Spin Offs:
http://reatogo.de/REATOGO.htm

Help:
http://www.911cd.net/forums/
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/help/english/

Dial-a-fix easy push button fixes for Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:51:00 +0000

I stumbled upon a really great utility called Dial-a-fix the other day. I was having problems with windows update not running and I started to do a little searching. There are several things that Microsoft suggests to fix problems with windows update, but Dial-a-fix does all of them with a click of a button! It also fixes problems with SSL, and HTTPS. There are also some real gems buried underneath in the tools section of the program. In the tools section you will find an options to reinstall Internet Explorer, and several other great tools! That feature has already saved me once... Here is the official description of the program:

Dial-a-fix is an advanced utility for 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows written by DjLizard in Borland Delphi 7 that repairs various Windows problems, such as:

* Windows Update errors and problems with Automatic Updates
* SSL, HTTPS, and Cryptography service (signing/verification) issues
* COM/ActiveX object errors and missing registry entries
* and more.

http://wiki.djlizard.net/Dial-a-fix

Dvd Ripping

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:22:00 +0000

Life Hacker has posted the Five Best DVD Ripping tools and I thought it was worth pointing out. They have some really good ones on the list, easy to use and powerful.

http://lifehacker.com/380702/five-best-dvd-ripping-tools

PC Repair System on a USB thumb drive

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:03:00 +0000

Here is another great collection of utilities... It was created to be a PC Repair toolkit that would fit on a 32MB usb drive so it doesn't take much space... It has TONS of really great apps and they all are portable so they can run off the network or off a usb thumb drive. Here is the list of utilities in the collection.

* DCoT Menu
* Active@ ISO Burner
* AutoCompress
* Brute Benchmark
* CCleaner
* CDmage
* DriveImage XML
* Double Killer
* DTaskManager
* encopy
* Eraser
* ERUNT
* explore2fs
* File Assassin
* Filemon
* Hash
* HDDScan
* ICE ECC
* LC ISO Creator
* LSASecretsView
* NTREGOPT
* Patcher
* PMMon
* ProcessExplorer
* ProduKey
* Regmon
* Restoration
* Roadkil’s CommTest
* Roadkil’s Disk Image
* Rootkit Revealer
* SequoiaView
* System Information for Windows
* TweakUI
* Universal Extract
* Virtual CD Control Panel
* What Changed?
* Why Reboot?
* WirelessKeyView

Get it here:
http://dailycupoftech.com/usb-drive-systems/3/

Log Me In FREE!

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:47:00 +0000

Have you ever wanted a free web based computer remote control product? Well here it is...
https://secure.logmein.com/products/free/

Whats the catch? Well the only thing I can find is that it's an upsell... They give you a trial of the PRO version and then assume that when it's over that you will be so use to the PRO features that you will pay for them... The free one however has plenty of features for me...

Update:
I wanted to circle back around to this post and add some new findings. First off thanks to dwproctor for the info on Team Viewer. I really love it, and I have started to use it for remote support of friends/family (Free version is For personal use only). Also you can install the free version and use it for a more permanent connection to a PC like logmein. You must use their client app however, so it lacks logmein's easy web interface.

I have also come across (thanks Trista) another great remote support web product. Join.me is a really quick web based conferencing software. It works great as a quick remote control app. You can have the user run (No install needed) the very light weight application and gain full remote control of the users PC. The client is web based so no install needed on either end. http://join.me

All items above have iOS (and possibly other) apps (Logmein, Team Viewer, and Join.me)

ANT the network utility

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:35:00 +0000

I came across a really nice network utility the other day. Well it's more of a collection of network utilities. Most everything in ANT can be done via regular command line but it's just nice having access to them via a click of a button. ANT includes these tools:

# Network Port Scanner
# Share Scanner
# TraceRoute
# Ping Utility
# NetStats
# Advanced DNS Utility
# ARP
# Route Configuration
# Adapter Configuration
# IP Configuration
# IP Availability
# Command Test
# Whois Client

And best of all it's FREE! After you install it on a computer you can run ANT from the .exe file alone, so you could keep it on a USB stick or out on your network for quick access.

http://www.dreamsyssoft.com/advanced-net-tools/

It's about TIME

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:29:00 +0000

Linux/Debian:
To view the current Date/Time type "Date". If you time is wrong and you want it to set automatically use NTP. NTP is the time protocol that computers use to synchronize their clocks with others on the network/internet.

The main package is ntpdate, and the server that ntpdate looks at for syncing is "/etc/default/ntpdate".

After making changes to "/etc/default/ntpdate" don't forget to restart the service by typing "/etc/init.d/ntpdate restart".

If you want to change the current time right away using a time server type "ntpdate [time server]", make sure to turn off ntpdate service first "/etc/init.d/ntpdate stop".

If your timezone is wrong use tzconfig to change the timezone.

LINKS
NTP:
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/25

More Advanced info on NTP:
http://www.crazysquirrel.com/computing/debian/ntp.jspx

Remote Desktop Hack for Windows Vista

noreply@blogger.com (Travis) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:51:00 +0000

Microsoft Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate:

I just found a hack that will enable Multiple sessions on Remote Desktop for Windows Vista! Just like the Windows XP hack it will allow more then one person to be logged into the computer at once (Through Remote Desktop). That in itself is great but here is the REAL kicker (If you own Windows Vista Home Premium anyway), this hack will also enable Remote Desktop for Windows Home Premium (Which is sorely lacking thank you!)

Thanks to everyone that made this Hack Possible (None of whom are me!)

Side Note:
If you are using the Windows Home Premium link (By the way it should work for all of the versions) when running the batch files the syntax is:
batchfile.bat [Multi] [Blank]

Add Multi if you want the Multiple session hack and use Blank if you want to also enable the use of Blank passwords (I don't recommend this unless you know what your doing).

http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?Itemid=152&id=1220&option=com_content&task=view