A Little Bit All Over the Place

I’ve run into a few IT-related challenges over the past two weeks.

Fortunately, I’ve not only been able to overcome them, but walked away with a number of amazing software finds in the process.

Those posts are currently pending due to the awesomeness (to me) of getting things organized for public consumption as my mental and lab process notes leave much to be desired.

So since my brain is mush right now here are some appetizers to hold you over.

Last month, Microsoft released a number of updates to their Windows Essentials bundle. The public focus were a host of changes touted in the Photo Gallery and Movie Maker components.  However, they were sneaky and made an update to the Live Writer application.  What updates? Your guess is as good as mine as asking for provision of a “change log” is likely to bring a beating.

• Windows Live Writer 2012 Released – Nothing is new or fixed. - LEHSYS
• Windows Live Writer 2012: Anyone happen to notice this? - LEHSYS Side Notes

LEHSYS’s Larry Henry seems to like WLW and be just as frustrated as me lately.

One thing I have noticed with this new release is that I can make it “fake-crash” very easily while composing.

What do I do?  Simply make the mistake of hitting the delete key too many times and sucking an existing  hyperlink into the delete vortex. Bam! Crash window.

Only it’s a fake-crash. The first time I encountered it I freaked as I had composed a long post and was in fear of loosing my material--well up the the last save point. However I soon learned that it didn’t matter if I clicked the red “X” or “Close program” button, WLW would keep on trucking. No loss occurred and despite the warning, Windows did not attempt to close Windows Live Writer.

I didn’t have this issue before the “upgrade”.  I wish I could somehow roll back to the previous version. Anyone figure out how to “off-line install” older versions of Windows Essentials/Windows Live Writer?

GSD Sidebar:

I did finally find links to the full “off-line” installer for the Windows Essential packages!

• How do I install Windows Essentials while offline? - Install offline - Microsoft Essentials
• Windows Live Essentials 2011 deployment options using offline installer - TechNet - Has lots of command-line arguments for installation help!
• Offline installer for Windows Live Essentials - WLSetup-All.exe - Scott Hanselman
• Deploying Windows Live Essentials 2011 - The Angry Technician
• Install Windows Live Essentials 2012 offline - morganjayp

What I find interesting is that the “wlsetup-all.exe” from the MS site is 131 MB in size and is served from http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/en/wlsetup-all.exe but the one linked in Scott’s original post near the bottom is 134 MB and served from http://g.live.com/1rewlive3/en/wlsetup-all.exe.

So these are different “off-line” WL setup binaries.  In fact, if you look at the path, you can see a “pattern”. On a whim I tried http://g.live.com/1rewlive4-all/en/wlsetup-all.exe and got a good download as well.

Googling that URL template, I found this very helpful post Windows Live Downloads « The Field Guide which details these indicate which “wave” release it was.

• Wave5 = Microsoft Essentials 2012
• Wave4 = Windows Live Essentials 2011
• Wave3 = Windows Live Essentials 2009

I’ll play with these and likely roll-back to the Wave4 WLW version to see how things go.

(The text in the fake blog post above came from the awesome Samuel L Ipsum site. It is one of a number of fantastic alternative Lorem Ipsum generators listed in this post: 30 Alternatives to Lorem Ipsum found by Splashnology. Zombie Ipsum has to be a close second.)

I’ve been taking a lot more digital photos lately since getting a Canon S95. This has led to a new issue which is managing my growing photo library. It is a super joy to shoot with and handles low-light/no-flash captures wonderfully. I haven’t scratched the surface of it’s capabilities but the small format really lends itself to being kept on my person for random shots (examples of photos I took with the S95 around town below no post-process done).

This will probably multiply now that my dear brother has lent me use of his “old” EOS 5D and a super cool set of lenses and Speedlight. I’m a bit overwhelmed with it all. We are planning some nature stalking as we have found we feed off each other when photo-walking together.

He uses Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 which is very high end. Then again he does some amazing photography work and has amassed a tremendous digital library over the years. He is also a Photoshop wiz so it works for him quite well. Dad is making the transition from a old-school 35-mm SLR format guy to the new DSLR world. As such, he is focusing on the transition and uses ACDsee.

I’ve got a pretty large collection of photo editing and management apps I have been using for some time (that’s another post to list them all!). Primarily I use FastStone Image Viewer which has borne the brunt of my digital image management and basic manipulation work. It’s great but I think I need something a bit more beefy.

I do have Adobe Bridge, although it is a CS4 version. I may just need to learn it. Got a few books on it already in my home library. It is really fast on my system and fairly intuitive. XnView works well and I am learning it also. Of course, I do have Microsoft Essentials Photo Gallery. It is a fairly nice interface and has some nice features, but it doesn’t seem as “serious” as Adobe Bridge or other tools for some reason to me.

Before FastStone’s tool, I had used ImageWalker which was cool as it contained a amazing collection of photo-effects to apply. I eventually turned to PhotoFiltre for that task.

So it was with excitement I stumbled on the updated ImageWalker replacement Diffractor. It is super slick and has just enough editing tools to be handy to use.  I love the interface and while the menu/navigation system takes a while to get used to, once learned it is really fun to use. It even includes a timeline generator view! Definitely recommended for use!

Picasa from Google is pretty neat. It is very fast and operates smoothly. I didn’t feel like installing it (yet) and found (like many Google products) the installation exe could be extracted with 7-Zip. I’m going to spend some time with this application as well.

I quickly found a super-neat photo workflow application called darktable. The problem was that while I could install it pretty easily into my Ubuntu 12.04 build, all my photos were in my Windows OS and while I use Ubuntu and can work in it comfortably, this wasn’t quite how I wanted to do things smoothly. Alas, there is no Windows build (yet?). See this Noupe post Darktable: The free Alternative to Photoshop Lightroom goes Mac OS X for more info.

I found the Open Source photo management application digiKam. Supported platforms include Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OSX and Windows. The screenshots and features look very promising. It does seen to be a bit “crash-y” on my Win7 x64 system…so the search goes on.

Other Canon stuff I probably shouldn’t mess with just yet but am tempted to:

• MagicLantern.fm - Home - software to modify the camera controls and features for Canon EOS cameras
• CHDK - Canon Hack Development Kit to add additional controls and features to select PowerShot cameras

Moving on to another topic, I had recently was banging my fist on a USB flash drive that was presenting some issues. In the process of troubleshooting, I found a few of my favorite USB tools had been updated fairly recently.

• Dev Eject - v. 1.0.24 - lists removable media, allows ejection of devices, and shows files that are open and preventing ejection.
• HotSwap! - v. 6.1.0.0 - Helps with USB device removal..and a whole lot more!
• USB Disk Ejector - v. 1.3.0.3 - Helps with USB device removal in a pleasant GUI/system tray.

Some cool Windows Tweaking utilities I found this past week are:

• Librarian - a powerful libraries manager for Windows 7 and Windows 8.
• Taskbar Pinner - a universal pinner software for your taskbar. Pin a file, a folder, a shell object, or a library to your Windows task bar.

There are a whole lot more tweaking tools for Win7/Win8 over at WinAero. Check out their downloads/software page for more.

I still use Jumplist-Launcher over at Hedgehog's Blog as well. It hasn’t been updated for a long time but still does a great job. Between the jumplist I made with this tool and Winstep Nexus Dock everything I need is pretty much in quick access reach on my Win 7 systems.

Finally, I’m playing with Baralga to get use to trying to better document and track the time I spend working on various projects. It’s a Java-based app so it is quite portable and flexible. I checked out a long list of time-tracking apps and this seemed to fit my needs the closest.

Cheers

Claus V.

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April 1st link-dump

No. No April Fool’s jokes here.  All are refreshingly legit.

• USBDeview – NirSoft tool updated to version 1.60.  Lists all USB connected (and previously connected) to a system.

• WhatInStartup – NirSoft tool updated to version 1.20.  This version now allows you to fine-grain edit startup program triggers.

• SniffPass Password Sniffer – NirSoft tool updated to version 1.10. Collects passwords during sniffing. New version now supports NetMon driver as well as a promiscuous mode.

• SmartSniff – NirSoft tool updated to version 1.60. Now able to support user of NetMon driver for captures, a WiFi monitor mode to capture all unencrypted traffic under selected channel, can open NetMon .cap files, added check-box for promiscuous mode state.  More info in this NirSoft blog post: Capture with Microsoft Network Monitor 3 in SmartSniff and SniffPass utilities.  Related: Download details: Microsoft Network Monitor 3.3, and Microsoft’s Network Monitor team blog.

• Sysinternals Site Discussion : Updates: Process Explorer v12, VMMap v2.62, DiskView v2.4 – The update for Process Explorer is particularly beefy.

• Windows Virtual PC Update – Remember to Upgrade Integration Components – Virtual PC Guy’s blog.

• Newsfox NEXT – update for the FireFox feed reader “alpha/beta” release to version 1.0.6.1

• Mailbag: Windows 7 and the Disappearing Desktop Shortcuts - Within Windows.  Neat “hack” to bump the tolerance of Windows 7 to accept higher (than 4) numbers of “broken” desktop shortcuts before automagically cleaning them off without your permission.

• Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder – Tool to collect program keys from your system updated to version 2.0.8 on 03-29-2010.  Curiously, the main page at Magical Jelly Bean Software still lists the older versions.

• The Deployment Guys : USMT Failures Due To Bad Profile List Entries – Great tips for avoiding trouble when trying to migrate Windows profiles using the USMT.  They provide a MDT script to examine and validate some key items before USMT deployment to try to avoid failures.  Even if you don’t use it, the background information is useful.  Related: Reprofiler - A tool for repairing broken userprofile-associations and UserProfilesView – NirSoft; both of which can provide good information about Windows Profiles.

• Windows Live Wave 4 Milestone 2 leaked, screenshots galore – Ars Technica. Looks like Windows Live Writer (and friends) are going to get the Ribbon treatment.  WLW remains my blog posting platform.  However I’m not seeing any remarkable new features that would lead me to seek out the leaked version just yet. Neowin.net - Even more Windows Live Wave 4 screenshots leak  

• Internet Explorer 9: Platform Demos at Microsoft and Platform Preview gives Web developers first taste of IE9 at Ars Technica. Source download and good overview of what the next face of Internet Explorer will look like.  BETA: Internet Explorer 9.0 Technical Preview - Windows Live over at Kurt Shintaku’s Blog also has a nice breakdown of the finer points. All interesting stuff but installation of the preview platform not recommended for mere mortals.  Now folks who have a virtual machine of Windows laying around may be interested…. 

• Visualize Your Network in A Built-in Network Map in Windows 7 - Windows 7 hacker.  Nice little tip on how to use the “advanced” network map feature built into Windows 7 to understand your network a bit more clearly.  While there are many more sophisticated network mapping tools out there, this is a nice baked-in feature to do spot-checks of network connections.

• 3 Unique Bing Search Operators You Will Definitely Love – makeuseof blog.  Three clever ways to use Bing search beyond the groovy background images on it’s search page.

Cheers.

--Claus V.

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Utility & Miscellany

Too many chores this weekend.

Spend last week out of town in a technical conference.

Had a raging bout of the highly contagious and discomforting "Caribou Cold” while there and am still suffering the tail ends of it.

Spent yesterday on my home “workbench” swapping out my system onto a new hard (larger/faster) laptop hard-drive which involved over 14 hours of work (mostly due to having to decrypt the whole-disk encryption prior to imaging it and porting it onto the new drive.

Had hoped to post much more this weekend but was not to be the case.

So here you go, semi-naked linkage.

Utilities

• SuperCopier – One of my favorite specialized file-copy apps. Now active again at version 2.2 beta.
• TinyApps.Org Blog : Formatting partitions over 32GB as FAT32 in Windows XP – Link to the curiously useful fat32format tool.  I suspect this could be useful on portable USB drives.

Forensics

• Forensics: Mounting partitions from full-disk ‘dd’ images – Tip from SANS-ISC Handler’s Diary blog.
• Tools and Links – Lots of linkage to tools and techniques from the Windows Incident Response blog
• JADsoftware – EDD – Version 1.1.0 now released. EDD checks HDDs for encrypted partitions from various whole-disk encryption solutions. See also TechPathways ZeroView, and TCHunt Quickly Find TrueCrypt Volumes – 16 Systems, as well as the File Investigator TOOLS version 2.23
• JADsoftware – IEF – Version 2.0 now out of the “Internet Evidence Finder”.  Really nice and more full-featured tool.  I quickly added this to my collection and tossed the older one.
• Forensics from the sausage factory: Vista Volume Shadow Copy issues – Great tips on how to access and manage the Vista Volume Shadow when inspecting the system.
• Automated Recovery of Multimedia from Unallocated Space - SANS Forensics blog. Good information to know.  Primary information related to NFI Defraser at SourceForge.net
• Somehow that eventually led me to Csaba Barta website and a tool called ptfinder to carve out processes from memory images.

“…ptfinder versions for Windows Server 2008 SP1, 2003 SP2 and Windows 7 beta are developed by me, and can be downloaded here.

The details of the technique can be found here.

Semi-Stealth Windows Live Updates

I’ve been waiting for some time for an update to Windows Live Writer, my blogging platform software. After the information below came out that a new version was available (14.0.8089.726 (previous build was 14.0.8064.206)).  I quickly launched my WLW and used the update tool to get the update. Curiously it said I was still using the latest update.  I manually updated it (successfully) to the higher version noted but still have been unable to find a change-log detailing just what got improved/fixed/updated.

• RELEASE: Windows Live Essentials “Wave 3” updated - Windows Live.
• Windows Live Writer - Windows Live download.

And fresh off my Video-Editing Resource Roundup post going over various builds and different downloads to get Windows Movie Maker installed on your XP/Vista/W7 system now there is this:

• Get The New Windows Live Movie Maker Today! - The Windows Blog.
• New Windows Live Movie Maker debuts, says good-bye to XP for good – Betanews.
• Windows Live Movie Maker Review – Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows.

VHD booting and Virtual PC Stuff

• How to Boot from VHD (VHD booting re-visited.) – James O’Neill’s blog.
• 7 Things about Windows 7 Native Boot VHD – Windows 7 Hacker.
• Windows 7 VHD Native Boot without any Hosting Operation System – Windows 7 Hacker.
• Running Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7 – Virtual PC Guy's WebLog.  Yes you can. Just uninstall “Virtual PC” (the new one) from Windows 7 first (if so installed) before installing Virtual PC 2007 (the old one).
• Windows Virtual PC RC and Jump Lists – Virtual PC Guy's WebLog
• Windows Virtual PC and Undo Disks – Virtual PC Guy's WebLog.  Just some house-cleaning in the new version.
• Windows Virtual PC Blog. Finally found a “official” Microsoft Windows technical blog on Virtual PC. Hope it provides good information.

Windows Technical Bits ‘n Pieces

• Ask the Performance Team : Two Minute Drill: Using PROCDUMP – Ask the Performance Team blog – Nice and clear tips on using the SysInternals – ProcDump tool to dump process information in troubleshooting.
• Dell Now Offering Windows 7 Drivers for Commercial Desktops and Laptops - Windows Experience Blog.
• What order should you install drivers in? – Ed Bott’s Windows Expertise blog.  From Dell, information on just how you should order your device driver installations for maximum impact and compatibility  Good information to keep handy for system builders.

Summer’s over.  Alvis heads back to school tomorrow morning.

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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Early Monday morn Linkfest: Utility Focus

Looks like this posting session might stretch into the cold and windy wee hours of the morning.

I just can’t help but share!

Goodness me.

CLI Tips

Always on the lookout for arcane but useful CLI tips I found these this past week:

• Run cmd.exe as Local System in Safe Mode – TinyApps blog. Great tip from Miles on how to load a command-line window (cmd) session in LocalSystem Account while in Safe Mode. That is something that isn’t normally possible. From Miles’ more thorough accounting in his post:

Here are the combined steps (which assume you are booted into Safe Mode):

1. Add a key to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal named lscmd or what have you.
2. sc create lscmd binpath= "cmd /K start" type= own type= interact
3. sc start lscmd
4. A new cmd.exe window will open with LocalSystem privileges. When you are finished, close the window, delete the registry key you made, and delete the service: sc delete lscmd .

• Batch Files, Task Scheduler and PSTools – and a EULA? - Ask the Performance Team. I love Sysinternals tools and they work great. However you may have noticed that some tools launch (for the first time run) on a system by popping up a EULA to clear first. If you are trying to fire them off via a batch-file or Task Scheduler, they might fail due to the need to accept the EULA first.  The Performance Team provides two clever workarounds.  One involves dropping some registry keys to show that the EULA was agreed to, prior to executing the file.  The other involves passing the Sysinternals tool a –accepteula argument as well.  They note this may or may-not work on all tools.

Clearly Chrome (with a Foxy tease tossed in)

GSD commenter “comment gravity well” has been keeping me on my toes with Chome/ium lately!  I had teased that I had found two neat new Chrome/ium related items this week and was reminded in the process that I had to go back and check progress on some other related items I hadn’t spent time with lately.

• Chrome Privacy Guard (CPG) - Die Milchtüte - (freeware) – Mini utility that strips out the unique ID from each installed build of Chrome on a system. Most users of Chrome don’t know about this feature or if they do, could care less.  Some however would like a little more privacy and to be free of this “feature” for Chrome.  Source-code available from site for inspection. From the developer’s description:

…I wrote a small tool that automatically deletes the unique Client ID before each run of Google Chrome.

People that never close their browser will obviously not benefit from that tool. In the future you should always start the included ChromePrivacyGuard.exe instead of the original Chrome executable. This tool scans the "Local State" file inside the Chrome directory and removes all informations regarding the Client ID and afterwards automatically starts Chrome.

In any case you should also disable the option inside Google Chrome to allow it to send statistical data to Google.

• UnChrome - (freeware) – An alternative tool to remove the Unique ID from Chrome.  Closes source and you get a pop-up ad for the developer’s other software offerings as well.  Your choice.  Spotted via Download Squad.

• Iron - (freeware) – This German build of Chrome/ium is for privacy (though not an anonymizer) fans in that it strips out not only the Unique ID from Chrome, but a host of additional concerns and “features” that Chrome brings with it. “comment gravity well” also adds that it has some rudimentary ad-blocking as well.  I’m going to have to play with this one a bit.

• Greasemetal - an Userscript Runtime for Google Chrome – Adds some additional custom functionality to Chrome.  Not quite at “Add-on” level like one would think of with Firefox, but some of the scripts can add some additional features.  Your mileage may vary.

• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 3.1 Beta 2 Released - PortableApps.com – Just in case you wanted to see what all the fuss was about with Firefox 3.1b2 but didn’t want to hose or risk damage to your existing 3.0.x installation.  This is a safe way to test and play.

USB Tools and Utilities

I love a good utility to help with USB devices.  I’ve found some new ones and am reposting some oldies but goodies!

• PAR – EjectUSB - (freeware) – Clever little utility that assists you in automatically shutting down any running programs that might tie into a USB device and then eject the USB device in question. From the developer’s description:

Designed to be a simple utility to close all programs running from a specified drive or folder and then attempt ejection if a drive was specified. Extended functionality includes flushing the file cache, closing Explorer windows and removing registry entries and Recent Document shortcuts referencing the specified drive or folder.

• USB Disk Ejector - (freeware) – Nice, simple and works the majority of the time. Provides a “real-world” GUI window that offers up a clear image and description of the USB device you are trying to eject.  Helps (but isn’t perfect) about cleanly ejecting USB devices without some of the hangs that sometimes occur using the Windows USB ejection method. For stubborn cases keep reading this section for a better alternative. I use this one almost daily as I have a number of USB storage devices connected to my work system and was often ejecting the wrong one!
• AutoRunGuard - (freeware) – Neat little batch-file/executable combo that allows you to set your system to auto-scan an attached USB drive for virus/malware (and then some).  Really cool and not nearly as challenging to use as you might think. More at this recent GSD post: Grand Stream Dreams: USB Security: AutoRunGuard, Encryption ...
• USBDeview - (freeware) – NirSoft application that lists all USB devices currently and historically connected to your computer. Lots of detailed log information. Must carry application.
• USB drive letter manager – USBDLM - (freeware) – Neat little sysadmin’s friend that (with a bit of INI file modding) can force USB devices to use a particular drive letter, or range of drive letters. It has a few more bells and whistles, but that pretty much covers it. Not a regular tool, but folks who do network drive mapping might find it useful and handy.
• Desk Drive - (freeware) – Blue Onion software helps you mange your USB devices by allowing quick access to your inserted USB storage contents.  When running Desk Drive adds a desktop icon pointing to the drive.  When the device is removed, the shortcut goes away. Perfect!
• USB Image Tool - (freeware) – Use this neat tool by Alex’s coding playground that simply and easily creates images of USB flash drives.  From the website:

Features

• create image files of USB flash drives
• restore images of USB flash drives
• compressed image file format
• show USB device information
• manage favorite USB images
• command line utility
• USB Safely Remove - (freeware) – Amazing tool that not only gives you “real names” for USB devices so you can remove them correctly and accurately, but it also provides detailed information on what process/files are keeping a USB device from ejecting and the ability to close/terminate that process first, set custom autorun scripts to execute before the device is ejected (say make a backup), command-line support, eject memory cards (and not the reader device), and remove “phantom” memory card drives, and a host of other tools. Awesomeness for USB device wrangling. Giddy-up!

Windows Live Writer – Update

Yep. Most everyone’s favorite blogging tool has just gotten another update.  This might be the last before it goes “gold”!

• Windows Live Writer 2009: Release Candidate - Windows Live

I can’t tell much of a difference between this one and the previous version I was using. The link has a change-log of sorts, but most of those features I either wasn’t interested in using, or thought they already had something similar going already  I still dislike the lightened color-bar customizing. It is way too washed out an effect than the previous versions.  I also am bummed I can’t seem to customize the toolbar nor am I offered a quick-pick for font-color changing. However, minor quibbles aside, it’s still the strongest blogging tool out there (IMHO) and I use it exclusively for all posting.

NirSoft Updates

If it’s from Nir, it’s all good! Here are the updates on particular utilities that interest me.

• PingInfoView version 1.20 -- Great tool that allows Pinging to multiple host names/IP addresses.  Updates include New column: % Failed, and new options: Beep On Failed Pings and Put Icon On Tray.
• RegFromApp version 1.15 – Allows monitoring and generation of RegEdit .reg file from Registry changes made by a monitored application.  Multiple updates include automatic stop when the process that you inspect is terminated, remembers that last sort in select process dialog-box, added new command-line option: /AttachProcess, automatic save to .reg file and exit when the inspected process is terminated (/AutoSave in command-line)
• WirelessKeyView version 1.20 – Use this tool to recover lost WEP/WPA keys stored by Windows Wireless Zero Configuration service.  This update allows extraction of the wireless keys from an external instance of Windows XP (in Advanced Options) which could be useful to investigators or sysadmins.
• WirelessNetView version 1.12 – More wireless fun that monitors wireless networks in your area.  Now provides a new option: Beep On New Network.
• MozillaCacheView version 1.16 -- - Great and handy tool that simply and effectively displays the cached files of Mozilla/Firefox browsers. Nir does some deep under-the-hood repair work on this one and has added a 'Hide Missing Cache Files' option as well as fixed a serious bug in that for some systems, MozillaCacheView didn't display all cache files. Oops!  Now all better!

Happy Holidays!

--Claus V.

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