New and Improved Material

Just a pause to empty out the handy-dandy “to-be-blogged” folder.

Windows Tips and Tricks

• How To Block A Computer From Accessing To A Specific Wireless Network - Windows7hacker
• Speed Up Windows 7 Boot Time By Eliminating GUI During Start Up - Windows7hacker
• FREE: AD Info – User friendly Active Directory reporting tool - 4sysops
• Portable PowerShell - Live PowerShell with Karl Prosser
• Highlighter v1.1.2 Released - Mandiant
• Memory forensics on Windows 7 (x86 and x64) and Windows 2008 x64 - Mandiant Blog

Firefox Bits

I’ve been running the Nightly x64 builds of Firefox 4.0b13pre for some time now and it has been very stable.  The fact that there is a developer release version of FlashPlayer for x64 bits helps a lot in the usability factor.  Right now I am still split between using Chromium nightlies for “fun” surfing and Firefox 4.x for my daily web-work commuting.

One of the major challenges with both platforms is finding compatible extensions/add-ons for the new versions.  I’ve had to walk away from some old favorites as they just don’t work at all in the new Firefox 4 world.

That said, I’ve been successful enough to keep productivity and security intact and will post updated extension/add-on lists for both browsers in the near future.

• Firefox 4: recent changes in Firefox - Mozilla Hacks
• ProfileManager - Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog. Hot tip on an alternative tool now that built-in profile manager tool is disappearing in future Firefox builds.  From that post: ProfileManager 1.0_beta1
• mozdev.org - newsfox: installation - new release of NewsFox RSS reader Add-on.
• Firefox 4 Ditches the RSS Button, Here’s how to get it Back - Webmonkey  I can’t begin to share how frustrating it was in FF4 trying to figure out how to get that RSS feed button in FF3 back.  This brought peace to the Valca home and Firefox 4 browsing/feeding.

New Utilities

• CubicExplorer - version 0.90 release- You may recall back from this GSD post why CubicExplorer is still on my watch list.  New version is a bit more refined.  Related build CubicExplorer Portable.
• Windows AIK for Windows 7 SP1 Released - Michael Niehaus’s Windows and Office deployment ramblings blog has a roundup of new inclusions. Download details: The Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7 SP1 - Microsoft source link.
• Updates: ProcDump v3.02, Contig v1.6, TCPView v3.03 and a New Mark’s Blog Post - Sysinternals Site Discussion.
• OutlookAttachView now allows you to search Outlook attachments only in the selected folders - Nir’s Blog.
• New console versions for WirelessKeyView and AlternateStreamView utilities  - Nir’s Blog.  Get the new bits: AltStreamDump and WirelessKeyDump at NirSoft.
• New utility to view/change/delete drive letter assignments - Nir’s Blog. DriveLetterView
• New utility that shows the details of Firefox downloads - Nir’s Blog. FirefoxDownloadsView
• Also updated at NirSoft: ChromeCookiesView and WebBrowserPassView
• CamStudio - Free Screen Recording Software.  Really easy to use and worked great on my Win7 build.  Previously I have fiddled with Jing and also found it clever.
• tintii photo filter - It’s been a long time since I last went looking at this graphic image editing tool.  I was pleasantly surprised to see it updated. If you want to use it with Photoshop, it will cost a bit. However the “standalone” trial version requires no Photoshop installation and is free.  It works great and I find the new interface a great improvement.  Use to fiddle with color tinting of image files.

Piriform is one of a handful of software providers who I want “one-of-everything” when I visit.  Counted up there with Sysinternals and NirSoft as my go-to source for awesome software.  They haven’t been resting and have been hard at work on updates to what should be Windows-required utilities for all sysadmins.

• Piriform Blog - Defraggler v2.02
• Piriform Blog - CCleaner v3.04
• Piriform Blog - Recuva v1.39
• Piriform Blog - Speccy v1.09

Tip: In case you haven’t figured it out yet, once you go to the product download page, just scroll to the very bottom of the page at the Builds header and find the tiny “builds page” link to find the jump to the portable (zip) versions.

Cheers!

Claus V.