Ask The Admin

Please update your feed readers non-robots.

2008-08-18T08:20:00.002-04:00

We miss the 300 or so readers who's RSS readers were pointing at our blogger's Atom feed... Please change/update your readers to point to our REAL RSS Feed...

http://feeds.askTheAdmin.com/AskTheAdmin

If you are reading this you are in the wrong place.

2008-08-05T21:17:00.001-04:00

Update your links - we live @ http://www.askTheAdmin.com now on our own servers... See ya over there.

AskTheAdmin is upgrading...

2008-07-29T12:45:00.000-04:00

Some strange things might come and go over the next few days but all of our geeky content will still be here! So just kick back and enjoy the ride!

I will see you all over at Wordpress in less than a week. No need to update your links as the domain will be forwarded for you. Intense Debate is getting kicked to the curb and we have a whole bunch of surprises in store for you out there in Admin land!

Stay tuned...

Microsoft wants you to like Vista so bad they are going to lie to you.

2008-07-29T00:00:00.001-04:00

Wow so Microsoft is going to crazy lengths to prove how great Vista is... By tricking its loyal XP uisers into thinking they are getting a glance at the next release of a Windows Operating System. They called it code name Mojave.

We get to hear all about what really happened, later today... Check it out here

REDMOND, Wash.--After months of searching for ways to defend its oft-maligned Windows operating system, Microsoft may just have found its best weapon: Vista's skeptics.
Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista.
"Oh wow," said one user, eliciting exactly the exclamation that Microsoft had hoped to garner when it first released the operating system more than 18 months ago. Instead, the operating system got mixed reviews and criticisms for its lack of compatibility and other headaches.
To be sure, the focus groups didn't have to install Vista or hook it up to their existing home network. Still, the emotional appeal of the "everyman" trying Vista and liking it clearly packs an emotional punch, something the company has desperately needed. Microsoft is still trying to figure out just how it will use the Mojave footage in its marketing, though it will clearly have a place.
The Mojave project is likely to be just one of many efforts designed to resuscitate Vista's image as well as lend strength to the Windows platform among stepped-up competition from Apple and Google. In an interview Wednesday, Windows unit business chief Bill Veghte told CNET News that he wants to see his unit try new things to get the message across.
"We have a huge perception opportunity," he said, offering a glass half-full assessment of things. "We are going to try a bunch of stuff." [Continue Reading on Cnet]

Boy would I be pissed if I was in this group! How about you????

_TheVistaLovingAdmiN_

Using Google as a password cracker.

2008-07-28T00:00:00.001-04:00

A website we read Hackaday posted this interesting a while back on how to use Google as a password cracker.

If you don't know what md5 hashed passwords are then this isnt for you and you should stop reading (Check back in a bit for a piece of password cracking) or see what they are here.

But if you are like me and need to um recover passwords on a system you have physical access to you know you can dump passwords from the local sam database as hashed passwords.

Using a program like l0pht crack (LC5 to those in the know - more on this later) to decpypher them is time consuming but according to this post you can simply Google the hash - if it is even a fairly common password google will return the answer. How fucking cool is that?

In the following example they use it after a machine was hacked they wanted to be able to login as that user and spy on the enviroment for some forensic goodness.

Usually we're into hardware hacks, but once in a while I run across something that's just too good. [Steven]'s blog was cracked a while back, and while he was doing forensics, he was trying to crack the md5 hashed password for the unauthorized account. Eventually he slapped the hash into Google, and guess that it was 'Anthony' based on the results that came up. Thanks to [gr] (Yes, I know it was on Slashdot a few days ago, but I don't care."

I missed it on slasdot so thanks hackaday.com! This will be a big time saver for me in the future.

_TheHashedOutAdmiN_

Find all your drivers with Double Driver.

2008-07-26T00:22:00.000-04:00

Do you hate looking for and downloading drivers on every re-format?

Well if you can get to your desktop you should be able to run Double Driver and copy your drivers off your machine to a USB stick and then restore them right back into your fresh clean formatted system! We covered something a little while ago for backing up and restoring printers/print drivers.

Combine these two small apps with the Windows Files and Settings Transfer Wizard and you have yourself a powerful tool kit.

With Double Driver you can view which drivers are installed in your system and you can backup the drivers you choose, save and print the drivers list, and more.

Double Driver is freeware. Feel free to use and give this program to anyone you know. Your donation or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Via Lifehacker Via Ghacks]

_TheBackUpAdmiN_

I love my Vista Tablet!

2008-07-25T00:00:00.001-04:00

I wrote some time back about my HP 2710P and how much I really like working on it. Well here we are a few months later and I can safely say I LOVE THIS MACHINE! I was a long standing hater of Vista and now I can see it's key selling points come to life.

I wanted to walk you through a day in the life of my tablet to show you how awesome it actually is.

I wake up in the morning do my getting ready thing and take my 2710p off the docking station and put it into my bag. I have the normal battery and a slice that attaches to the bottom of it. Today I roll with just the normal battery. I see about 5 hours of real use from it.

My email and rss feeds are already downloaded to my tablet for easy processing on the train. I walk the three blocks to the B train grab a cup of coffee and jump on the train. I whip out my tablet in tablet mode and fire up FeedDemon and Outlook to sync up again while I am still above ground. For my mobile access I am tethered to my Dopod C730 using HSDPA which gives me awesome speeds (3.5G).

Then I throw her back into laptop mode and answer a few emails with my stylus, research and write a blog post for AskTheAdmin and start collecting data for my next MakeUseOf.com post. I open several web pages and prepare to go under ground.

I have enough work to do but instead decide to fire up an episode of the Simpson's and start my day a little easier. I put on my bluetooth headphones and laugh at Bart and Homer's antics. My Outlook reminder pops up to alert me of my 8:30 meeting in 1 hour.

I review the notes in reminder and prepare for my meeting. By the time I get off the train I am up to speed, entertained and in a relatively good mood fueled by coffee and Simpson's humor.

I get into the office take my tablet to my server room. Check all my backups and servers from the tablet in landscape mode taking everything in. Everything seems to be running smoothly. I grab another cup of coffee and off to my first meeting.

My meeting was in my boardroom with several department heads discussing their new technology issues. I have my 2710p open in tablet mode, OneNote fired up and taking notes. I jot down diagrams and notes to myself. Our head of design hands me a few business cards of new vendors. I put them in front of the laptops built in camera and it scans them into my contacts flawlessly.

After the meeting I transfer the notes and data to my desktop and put her down to charge.

Don't get me wrong all of this could be done on a laptop but I love (is that geeky?) this tablet immensely! It makes everything so much fricking easier. Thanks HP and you to Marco!

Do you guys have some questions about Tablet Edition 2005 or XP? Hit me up in the comments and I will be more than happy to help you out!

_TheTabletLovingAdmiN_

Display the up time of a workstation or server.

2008-07-24T00:00:00.001-04:00

Do you ever need command line access to see how long a machine has been up for? This morning I did. I needed to prove that a machine was up last night at 3 am when a critical process was going down. Someone flucked up and it sure wasn't me! So...

Using one of my favorite command line commands NET I will show you quickly how to display your Windows up-time:

net statistics workstation

This will show you a similar screen to this:

The first line across the top shows when the machine was last rebooted along with some other geeky goodness. Do you have an easier/quicker/more obscure way of doing this?

_TheObscureAdmiN_

Support office 2007 without a copy? Use this live demo to help you through the options.

2008-07-23T01:00:00.000-04:00

I know a lot of you Admins out there in Admin land support products that you don't have installed on your own desktop. Sure you can remote desktop into a machine or fire up a VM but this is so elegant it is a HUGE surprise that it's from Microsoft.

This issue was mine. I support Office 2007 and run Office 2003 for a bunch of reasons. Now walking someone through disabling an add-on or changing some preferences / options can be a real challenge. Especially when I have to keep saying...

"So why don't you tell me what you see on your screen..."

Instead you can fire up this link and launch a free live version of any Office 2007 component. It's actually pretty fricking cool...

Now I can go back to my monotoned voice saying... "Left click tools.... Left click options... Find the preference that say...

Anyone else find this nifty? Have you never ever used Office 2007? Want to give it a test drive? Don't worry about crashing launch it in your browser... But before you get any, snarky "Will this replace my office install for me" questions the answer is NO. This Still is M$ after all!

_The2007AdmiN_

How to get your computer online using your iPhone and 3g magic.

2008-07-23T00:00:00.004-04:00

This information comes to us via Jewdass's comments from LifeHacker. He offered up a step by step guide to getting the most out of your 3G iPhone by teaching us how to tether.

1. Jailbreak your iPhone 3G (or first gen iPhone running the 2.0 software). Install OpenSSH via Cydia.

2. Create an ad-hoc network on your computer. On Macs, just click on the Wi-Fi icon in the menubar and select "Create Network." On Windows, set up internet connection sharing.
3. Join the iPhone to this network via Wi-Fi as usual.
4. On the iPhone, under Settings->Wi-Fi, select the network you have joined to view connection details. Write down its IP address.
5. From the Mac's Terminal, run the following command:

ssh -ND 9999 root@IPHONE_IPADDR

but replace IPHONE_IPADDR with the IP you wrote down in step 4. Login. The default root password is alpine; you should really login normally over SSH and change this.

Windows users: the free SSH client Putty will allow you to accomplish this same step. Don't install Cygwin+OpenSSH as some suggest, that's massive overkill.
6. Configure your browser to use a SOCKS5 proxy server at localhost:9999. Here's more on setting up a SOCKS proxy in Firefox; Adam did it on his Mac in Safari.
7. Surf. I've successfully done web browsing and IRC, anything that supports SOCKS4/5 should work. Haven't yet had success with my Citrix client :(
For the curious: The iPhone is joining your Wi-Fi network, but with no internet access on this network it falls back to using 3G for outgoing packets. ssh -ND creates a local proxy server that relays packets from the loopback address on your pc to the iPhone, which dutifully proxies them out the cellular connection.
Browsing is surprisingly fast, 3G really shows its potential here. It's zippier than doing it directly on the iphone, which I put down to rendering delay.
A more ideal solution of course would be to get the iPhone showing up as a regular access point. I see no reason why this wouldn't be possible, and will be doing some research myself, mostly observing what Unix processes handle this on desktop OS X, and see if they can be compiled from source for the iPhone. In the meantime, the steps to accomplish this are not bad and will definitely serve in a pinch.

Thanks Jewdass and Lifehacker for this one! You made some Fan Boys very happy today!

_TheJailBrokenAdmiN_

Do you hate walking people through router port forwarding setups?

2008-07-22T04:20:00.000-04:00

There is a great website that some of you may know of and others may not have seen it before. We give it AtA's coveted three thumbs up.

Yes Three!

It got us out of many a looooong phone call setting someone up to forward their remote desktop or webserver ports on their brand new (insert brand name here) router.

Go online and Google Portforward.com plus the model of router and the program you want to forward traffic to. Calm down it sounds more difficult then it is.

So if you want instructions for a WRT54G router port forwarding VNC to your desktop you would Google this:

portforward.com + wrt54g + vnc

and you get back as your first search result something like this:

http//www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Linksys...

There your end user can find step by step instructions on how to open the router console all the way down to open the ports! Just don't give this to your paying clients :)

From Their Website:

PortForward.com is proud to offer help setting up port forwarding on your router or firewall. Many Internet users are not aware of how to configure their router or firewall in order to use applications like Peer-to-Peer file sharing (PtoP), Internet Games, Web serving, FTP serving, WebCams, IRC DDC, and Instant Messaging such as AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and MS Messenger.

Our Routers section offers detailed walkthroughs on how to setup port forwarding. These how to guides make it easy to setup your router or firewall for any application you may need.

Routers can be tough to configure. Our Help and FAQ page gives general tips and definitions. These can help if you can't connect to your router, or are unsure of some of the terms on this page. If you do not know exactly what you are doing or are having problems, Start Here.

Try our Common Ports ports page if you need to know what ports are required by a commonly used software application. We will be adding more to this section soon! If you would like to submit ports used by a common software application, please send that information to us using our Comments page.

Do you have another easy solution? Put us on in the comments!

_TheNeedsARealDayOffAdmiN_

Group Policy Tip Of The Week: NAP the world

2008-07-22T02:41:00.000-04:00

In my last Group Policy tip of the week for AskTheAdmin.com, I talked about XP/SP3.

And, I just want to put (quickly) to rest that I was trying to suggest that you should positively avoid it.

Au contrare.

I was simply suggesting that if you haven't done your testing yet, then there IS a possible way to prevent it from being blasted upon your machines without your consent.

Okay, now with that behind us, let's take a second to examine XP/SP3.

Not all of XP/SP3, just one little piece.

First, remember some years ago, how Microsoft drew a little line in the sand and said "Service packs won't have new features." Well, just in case you missed the updated memo -- those days are over. As you'll recall, XP/SP2 was like "XP 2.0." And, even though XP/SP3 doesn't bring a zillion things to the table like XP/SP2 did, it does bring one very interesting, and not-all-that-well-known tidbit to the mix.

The tidbit is already built into Vista clients, and is now backwardly-available for XP/SP3. This piece is the NAP client. NAP means Network Access Protection.

What the heck is NAP, anyway? Well, instead of talking about NAP directly, let's check out an alternate situation that I'm sure a lot of us have had to deal with.

If you've ever had to put a child in public school (or a dog in doggy day care), you know that you need to get your kid (or "fur kid") vaccinated first. Then, you need a certification of health that proves they've actually had the necessary vaccinations. Let's say that when you introduce your kid to this one particular school on the first day, the Principal at the front door of the school looks at the vaccination report, and validates that the kid is really vaccinated (and is likely healthy enough not to infect others), and then permits your kid to come inside the building.

If your kid hasn't been vaccinated, this school will cheerfully give you two options: walk down a specific hallway that has no kids that your child could possibly infect, and meet with the school nurse at the nurse's office to get vaccinated immediately. Or stay outside. Your choice.

Why is introducing new creatures into the environment so harsh? Because we want to maintain a healthy environment for the betterment of everyone in the building. Now, it is perfectly true that just because every kid in the school has been vaccinated doesn't actually guarantee there won't be an outbreak. It just means that certain criteria have been met which meet the baseline of healthy.

Got the idea?

Well, that's Network Access Protection, or NAP. NAP's goal for your client machines is similar to the example with the unvaccinated kids above.

So, to make use of NAP, your XP clients (specifically, XP/SP3) and Vista clients (any flavor) have a little "agent" piece running upon them. Then, when they try to connect to the network, they need to "prove" how healthy they are (you can define the criteria.) Once proven healthy, they're allowed on the regular network. If they're NOT healthy enough, they must see the Nurse, er, the Remediation Servers to get updated.

What kinds of things might you want to check for? How about if the Firewall is turned on? Are they running Antivirus software? How about the latest version of the definitions? Do they have a registry key set to a specific value? Is software XYZ currently installed and the service running?

All sorts of stuff. Now, the bad news is that the NAP client that ships with XP/SP3 and Vista can't do ALL of these things with the bits in the box. For some of these things you'll need to do some NAP add-ons, so be prepared for that as your starting your exploration.

A quick note if you're going to try to get smarter on this NAP thing on your own. The user interface for some of the Windows Server 2008 components will just say "Windows XP" when what they really should be saying is "Windows XP/SP3." Again, that's because the NAP agent isn't available for anything LESS than XP/SP3. So, do keep that in mind as you're reading and checking it all out.

Soooo.. how do I get smarter in this NAP thing?

If you like the idea of NAP, it's a bit of a mountain to climb to get started.

One of my favorite places to get NAP-tastic is the Microsoft NAP blog here. Updated with NAP-o-rific information.

Also, if you have my new BLUE book, we have a whole chap for NAP. There's a full end-to-end working example for you to try to get a feel for how it works.

http://www.GPanswers.com/books

This is a weekly spot brought to you by Jeremy M of GPAnswers.com

Can I Open The Task Manager Without A Mouse?

2008-07-20T00:00:00.001-04:00

You sure can! If you find yourself mouse-less You can pull up the task manager in any Windows version 2000 or better with...

Control-Shift-Escape

_TheQuickPostin'AdmiN_

Display a Start Up Message in Windows XP before logging in.

2008-07-19T00:00:00.001-04:00

Before someone logs into your machine a message can be displayed. This is meant to inform you that you are being monitored or you are bound by some formal code of conduct.

You can use it to display a message in your absence to remind your buddies you are an all knowing Admin. You can do it pretty easily by displaying what Microsoft refers to as a legal notice at system start up.

GO TO RUN
REGEDIT
Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system]
Change legalnoticecaption"="Legal Notice"
legalnoticetext="AskTheAdmin is watching you."

obviously you can replace Legal notice or AskTheAdmin is watching you with any text you want. The editors over here are pretty sure you can find some ~~Funny~~ Practical uses for this on your, or a public, PC...

_TheAlwaysWatchingAdmiN_

Unlimited free tech support for installing Vista SP1!

2008-07-18T12:48:00.003-04:00

Did you have problems installing Vista SP1? Were you able to finally overcome your issues and get it working?

The boys in Redmond are offering up free Phone, Email and live chat support for Vista SP1.

So if you were having issues with getting this SP to install now is your chance to get some help right from the donkeys mouth...

You might even be able to swing a few other questions at the tech before he offers to transfer you to paid support.

All you need is your Product ID number. Just right click on My Computer-> Properties to find it.

Let us know how it goes for ya if you use it. Or maybe you should be submitting those issues to ATA!

Vista SP 1 Free Support Link

_TheMicrosoftIsGivingSomethingAwayAdmiN_

FREE Full Hard Drive Encryption

2008-07-18T11:24:00.000-04:00

So there you are at Starbucks sipping on your latte, and surfing on their incredibly high priced wi-fi with your brand new Alienware laptop thinking to yourself, "Self! This is a mighty good latte!".

A few minutes later, you slip into a latte induced coma (Work with me here.)

After about an hour or two you wake up with foam and cinnamon all over your face, and a splitting headache, but that isn't the trouble. The trouble is that someone snatched your new Alienware laptop with all of your sensitive personal information (edit: a 24esque - mission impossible attempt in your stories to friends and family. We know how it goes. Que up the theme music).

Stuff like bank information, passwords, etc! No biggie right? I mean you have a pretty good password.

Seriously, who is going to guess banana12 right?

WRONG!

With FREE software available on the internet, you can boot up to a CD and browse files, or even change the administrators password on your laptop. Then all of your sensitive information becomes their sensitive information which they will use to take you for everything you are worth (It's called Identity Theft, look into it).

Well, the bad guys can't get to your information if you take stronger precautions to secure your data. One of the best ways you can do that is with full hard drive encryption. And lucky for you, I have tested a FREE software that can do it.

CompuSec is a free security suite that among many other things, encrypts your hard drive (including the operating system) using a fast 256bit AES encryption. When the bad guys try to look at your files, all they see is a blank hard drive.

So lets go back to our scenario then, the bad guy got your laptop, but you encrypted it using CompuSec... The joke is on him! Actually, that isn't true, he now has your $4000 Alienware laptop, but at least he doesn't have your personal information and you won't end up on Dateline's "To Catch an ID Thief."

Posted By El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power

Amazing Tool: How can I get a dropped screw out of my server case easily? I got the Magic Stick...

2008-07-18T00:00:00.003-04:00

John wrote in that he dropped a screw into his HUGE server case as he was about to seal it up. Now who wants to take it apart again just to get that stupid little screw?

It sure looks like the good fellows over at ThinkGeek are in our heads because they have a solution (yet again... these guys rock!)

And its only $4.99!

A magnetic stick with a led light on it! I have dubbed it "The Magic Stick". It has become an essential part of my admin tool-kit.

AtA also gets a small cut of every Magic Stick sold via these links.

So to those of you in Admin land trying to send some dough our way for our planned upgrades good looking out in advance.

If it fell in there you should be able to get it out with this Magic Stick! (Edit: I got the magic stick...what what...sorry had to do it.)

It has happened even to the best of us. You're installing that new rack mount server - hovering over a tight space, you're putting in your last rack screw as it gently slips, falling down into a maze of wires and metal brackets. Doh! Now you'll have to walk back down to the second floor just to get a single screw to finish the job.

That is, unless you have the LED Magnetized Telescopic Rescue Stick at the ready. It can easily swoop down and rescue your rack screw from its terrible misfortune.

The Rescue Stick is shaped and sized like a standard pen, making it super convenient to carry or toss in your toolkit. A quick pull extends it to over 2 feet, allowing you easily reach whatever needs rescuing. The built-in LED turns on automatically when the stick is extended, perfectly illuminating those dark corners and crevices where small parts love to hide.

The magnet is even strong enough to lift screwdrivers and other metallic objects as seen in the image below...

3 x button cell batteries (included)
Acrylic transparent head complete with magnetic strip and White light LED
Auto LED 'on' when the stick is extended
Closed length = 6.25" (extended = 26")
Get your magic magnetic led stick here.

_TheEverSoSavvyAdmiN_

I have hundres of files to rename help me Admin!

2008-07-18T00:00:00.002-04:00

Yes, we know you have taken a million digital photos over the last year, on your fancy shmancy new camera. And we also know the summer is in full swing. Being the geek that you are, you could not just leave your pictures named digital_image_13456.jpg ...

We just couldn't have that now, could we?

Oh, how well we have got to know you.

Wayne from Florida wants AtA's help to create a script that will batch rename his purty pictures.Today is your lucky day Wayne - we are going to point you to some FREE software our good friend Daniel at HackYourDay blogged about.

The software is called Batch File Renamer (clever eh?) from Cerebral Synergy.

Daniel says:

Here’s one software that productivity nuts will love. If you’ve ever needed to catalog files, change extensions, add something to a filename in large batches you know the suffering that is “right click, select, type, enter” done over and over and over again. If you need a tool that can simply edit filenames, rename extensions and so on in a very powerful, customizable way, read on!...

I set out to find some sort of tool because I need to catalog files in batches of 100 about every two days. I get a batch of stuff in txt format and I need to do the following operations.

I need the files to be in the following format [ID - Number.txt]
I also need them in this format [ID - Number.html]

Practically this means that I need “032 - 001.txt”, “032 - 002.txt” and so on (all the way to 100), also in .html format and I need to be able to customize all of this because for the next batch I will need “033″ at the beginning.

Doing a Google search and trying a lot of free software that popped up I finally found Batch File Renamer. Not a fancy name, not a fancy program, but it gets the job done better than I’ve seen with other apps. First, head over to the Cerebral Synergy download page, scroll down and download Batch File Renamer.

He was able to change file extensions, mass change file names and it comes with all sorts of other free geeky options!

Check out Daniel's article at HackYourDay here and the Free Cerebral Synergy download is here.

_TheRenameThisAdmiN_

GMail says 451 4.5.0 SMTP protocol violation, see RFC 2821. What the hell does that mean?

2008-07-17T00:00:00.000-04:00

My mailserver pretty much told me to go fluck myself this morning when I was trying to send out some email. It looked like emails to any gMail account was returning the following error message:

Delivery failed 5 attempts: MyEmail@gmail.com

Body of message generated response:
451 4.5.0 SMTP protocol violation, see RFC 2821 23si6651713hsd.10

I went and checked out RFC 2821 like a good admin and checked each of the points. I had a abuse account, a postmaster account... But I was not an open relay to begin with. WTF?

This happened shortly after an upgrade from iMail 2006 to iMail 10.01 (2008). I checked my settings and then rechecked my settings. I had enough and called into IPSwitch Support. Strangely I got one of the lead developers on the phone who worked with me. After a few hours of him poking around my production mail server he kinda shrugged his shoulders and gave me a

"Man I have no idea."

Not so reassuring...

Not at all. I started sending test messages to other accounts on the web and I was not seeing any issues. Again I said

WTF? Why is Google hating on me?

Then I noticed it. There was a footer at the bottom of my email that was in my AskTheAdmin.com account, and I had eliminated that footer almost 3 years ago. I asked the tech support dude about it and he said it would live in a file called trailer.txt in the iMail root folder. I deleted it and WHAMO!

Gmail was listening to me again.

A very grueling few hours with loads of people making up excuses on how they need to email people on gMail for work... YEAH RIGHT! Did you think I wasn't working on it?

Don't you have some TPS reports that need to be filed on those new cover sheets?

_TheTimeToGoHomeAdmiN_

How to Rip DVDs with ImgBurn.

2008-07-16T00:00:00.002-04:00

A previous article explains how to use the awesome VLC player to rip a DVD to an MPEG-1 file. Technically, it gets the job done, but there are other options. Storage is dirt cheap so why not retain the full image quality and size as well as all the menus, languages, subtitles and bonus material from the original DVD. Using ImgBurn you can rip the entire disc to an ISO file and then use the VLC player to watch the DVD just like you had the physical disc in your drive.

After downloading and installing ImgBurn, a wizard will offer a few choices.

The one you want to choose is Create image file from disc.

Before we start ripping, we need to prevent ImgBurn from splitting the file into multiple parts since we want to end up with a single ISO file of the entire disc. Go to Tools > Settings and click on the Read tab. Under options, change the value of File Splitting from Auto to None. Click OK to go back to the main screen.

The main screen shows everything you would want to know about this disc. Under Destination, click the folder and navigate to a location where you want to store the image file. Be sure you have enough space. Look in the window on the right, the value for Size is how many bytes the disc contains (this disc is 4.6 Gigs).

When you are ready, click the button at the bottom with the green arrow. The ripping process will begin and the screen will give you a progress indicator including the estimated time remaining.

Go do something else while this runs, it's going to take a while. A dual layer disc can hold more than 8 Gigs and you should rip at the lowest speed you can bear for best results.

When it's done you will have a file called 'Name of the disc'.ISO.

Now, start VLC player and select Open > File. Navigate to the ISO file and select it. VLC player will start playing the file and the result will appear just like you were playing the physical disc.

Now you can enjoy the full quality and functionality of the DVD without having to lug around all those discs.

ImgBurn is a very powerful piece of software that does a lot of other things, including burning image files to disc, and it is completely FREE (I know the Admin loves free). It runs on all versions of Windows, including Vista and all 64-bit versions of Windows.

One thing ImgBurn will NOT do is rip encrypted discs (discs with CSS and/or Macrovision). For that task you need a tool called DVD Decrypter.

The developer of DVD Decrypter is no longer working on the software due to issues with the Macrovision corporation and the obvious DMCA violations the product allows. It wouldn't be proper to advise you on how to rip protected material or commit DMCA violations, but if you do happen to obtain a copy of DVD Decrypter, you will see that its interface and operation is very similar to that of ImgBurn.

Is there a free way to quickly remove duplicate files from my computer?

2008-07-15T00:01:00.001-04:00

Some time duplicates are good things like in this image on your left. (feeling patriotic today?) But most of the time in the tech industry dupes are bad.

Today we got a question about how to kill duplicate files with different names quickly.

We immediately thought of one of our favorite old command line applications that was sitting on my shared application folder... Somewhere

We got a question from one of our readers:

Hi AtA,

Can you recommend me a program that will scan for duplicate files? I have a external HDD with multiple files with similar name, example:

filedocument.doc 2KB

filedocument-1.doc 2KB

filedocument-2.doc 2KB

Thanks,

Keep up the good work on AtA

We have been using this little application called Finddupe since Windows 98! Its free and works wonderfully! It's chock full of command line geeky goodness. Delete duplicates, compare directories, do a test run and much more. Recover your lost space from gigz of ~~the same porn with different names~~ Duplicate MP3's. Check out this info on the application and a download link below:

Finddupe is a tool for quick detecting of duplicate files on a hard drive under Windows. Duplicate files can be just detected, hardlinked, or deleted.

Deleting duplicate files
When working thru somebody else's photo collection, or MP3 collection, this tool is useful for deleting the files that are duplicate. Depending on how the media is organized, there can be a lot of duplicate files in a collection.

Freeing hard drive space
Sometimes its intentional to have certain media in multiple places. By running finddupe, and hard linking the identical files, you can keep the files in multiple places, while only having one physical copy on the hard drive.

Detecting changed files for backup
Finddupe is useful for detecting which files have changed and need backing up. Simply back up the media, and then run finddupe to eliminate those files in the copy that are already contained in a previous backup.

Finddupe is a command line program. If you don't know what a command prompt under Windows is, you may have to do a bit of learning before attempting to use this program. The command prompt is not DOS (before-windows), although it looks and acts a lot like that, and people unfamiliar thing that it is dos. Please don't ask me for help if you don't know how to use command line based programs - learn about that first.

finddupe command line options

finddupe [options] [-ref] <filepat> [filepat]...

-hardlink
Delete duplicate copies of file, and replace duplicates with hardlinks to other copy of the file. Works only on NTFS file systems, and with administrator privileges. (The C: drive under XP is almost always NTFS, and most people log in as administrator)

-del
Delete duplicate files

-sigs
Pring computed file signature of each file. The file signature is computed using a CRC of the first 32k of the file, as well as its length. The signature is used to detect files that are probably duplicates. Finddupe does a full binary file compare before taking any action.

-rdonly
Also operate on files that have the readonly bit set. I use this feature to eliminate shared files in large projects under version control at work.

-bat
Do not hardlink or delete any files. Rather, create a batch file containing the actions to be performed. This can be useful if you want to inspect what finddupe will do.

-ref <filepat>
The file or file pattern after the -ref is a reference. These files will be compared against, but not eliminated. Rather, other files on the command line will be considered duplicates of the reference files.

filepat
File pattern matching in finddupe is very powerful. It uses the same code as is used in jhead. For example, to specify c:\** would indicate every file on the entire C drive. Specifying C:\**\foo\*.jpg specifies any file that ends with .jpg that is in a subdirectory called foo anywhere on the hard drive, including such directories as c:\foo, c:\bar\foo, c:\hello\workd\foo and c:\foo\bar\foo.

Example uses

If you have a previous backup in a directory tree on c:\prev_backup, and just copied your work files to a directory tree on c:\new_backup, you can remove any files that are in the previous backup with the following incarnation:


  finddupe -del -ref c:\prev_backup c:\new_backup

If you have a large photo collection on c:\photos, and you wish to replace duplicates with hard links, you can run:

    finddupe -hardlink c:\photos

Note that this only works on NTFS file systems (such as the C drive under Windows XP). It won't work on FAT file systems, like the ones used on most external hard disks or USB flash drives.

If you just want to know which files are common between two directory trees, you can run:

    finddupe -bat work.bat -del c:\media\** c:\media2\**

This will create the file "work bat" with file delete commands in it. The '-bat' option tells finddupe to not do anything, but rather store the actions to a batch file. This allows you to review what finddupe would do before taking any action. The '**' tells it to recursively do all the files.

So it does what it says and it gets rid of your dupes! What do you guys use for this? Anything or do you suffer?

_TheDuplicateAdmiN_

Windows Quick Tip: Set up keyboard shortcuts for your most used icons.

2008-07-14T15:27:00.001-04:00

It’s very annoying and counter productive for your hands to leave the keyboard as you use your mouse to click, click, clickity click click away at something. Join the ranks of power users to add keyboard shortcuts for every computer task you do. Yup Any Task!

Built into Windows is the ability to let you assign a keyboard command to any shortcut icon. Just right-click the shortcut you want to assign a Shortcut to, click Properties, and click in the ‘Shortcut key’ field. Then press the combo you want to assign to launch the shortcut.

Also, did you know that the Windows Key-R launched the Run box and Windows Key-E opens Windows Explorer? Consider yourself more productive!

And of course you remember AtA's lock your computer dumb fast with Windows Key-L.

Are you feeling that productivity boost?

_YourProductiveAdmiN_

Why is my computer so slow?

2008-07-14T04:29:00.000-04:00

If you are the type to enjoy sites like "AsktheAdmin" then I'm willing to bet you are the person the family calls when they have a computer problem. I think the problem I get most often is "Why is my computer so slow?" Well, there are a number of reasons your pc experience has started crawling at a snails pace, I'll try to cover some of my basic ways to get your machine back to the days of snappy response.

First what we need to realize is when people say their machine is slow they generally mean their overall user interface experience....ie Windows. We're not talking rocket science or trying to factor the number of cells in the human body, this your Mom's PC, or Grandma's...or the guy next door that just wants to get email and check on the weather for the weekend. So fairly simple PC setups that have grown tired from use such as loading applications or surfing the web. For these scenarios (and others more complex) I have some simple methods to get things cleaned up and running smoothly:

Start Up
Clean Up
Memory

First things first; many people don't realize that when Windows starts up there are a number of hidden little programs that plant themselves at startup to run automatically. Now this is usually done "to help the user out". How? Oh, well if I run my program EVERY time you start your PC then the 1 or 2 times a month you actually need to use it it will be ALL READY to go for you. Nice huh? Not exactly. Most "helper" apps such as these put unnecessary load on your machine and when speed is a premium, we need to address them.

A few people know about the Start Up folder in their Program files folder, which is a simple way to get programs to launch at start up. Most often though, the "helper" apps hide in the registry where the average user is less likely to find them or remove them. For these situations I recommend using a Start Up Manager program. Windows has it's own built right in called "msconfig" that can be launched from the RUN command, but I have found freeware alternatives that in my opinion do more and are easier to use. One such program is "Starter" by a group called CodeStuff.

Their website was not available at this writing, not sure what the story is there, but you can find it all over the web including on Snapfiles: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/starter.html.

This program will show all the applications that launch at Windows Start up. Do you really need Adobe running on every start? How about Office? Yahoo Toolbar?

The great thing about these StartUp Managers is that they allow you to disable rather than just delete an application. You might find something cryptic and think "What the heck is that? Delete it" only to find it was part of your antivirus or printer program. Disabling allows you to reboot and try out if you are missing any functionality when in doubt. I always choose to disable and then in a few months I'll go back and delete it if nothing is "missed".

Use a StartUp manager to stop unneeded applications from hogging your system resources and slowing things down.

Now that we have removed all the unnecessary applications from launching at start up the next thing to review is "Clean Up". This doesn't always yield faster response but it's a general good practice and may help performance. What happens is over time all your temp files and cache gets loaded up, and there is no process to clean things up. Enter CCleaner: http://www.ccleaner.com/.

This great little utility (affectionately called "Crap Cleaner") will clear up those areas as well as do a number of other things to help tidy up the PC. Getting and running this program with the defaults is more than enough to get things cleaned up, I'll let you experiment with all the other features this little gem can accomplish.

The last item I like to check is how much system memory is installed. Memory is relatively cheap and I find that sometimes the basic consumer level PCs have barely enough to run.

Now I have to admit, for all the PCs I've built, fixed and loaded I still get confused by memory. You may not have this issue but a tool I like to use is a free program provided by Crucial (http://www.crucial.com) called Crucial System Scanner: http://images.crucial.com/drivers/CrucialScan.exe or run it on-line here: What I like about this program is that once run it will tell you what you have installed, what configuration and if you have the ability to increase the memory. No more "cracking the case" just to see how many memory slots are there or if they are all used! Sure, Windows can tell me if 1 gig of ram is installed, but it doesn't tell me if that equates to 1 gig ram chip or 2 512mb ram chips. Of course the Crucial tool is going to show you the Crucial brand memory equivalent of what you can upgrade with, but now that you have the information you can choose whatever brand you want should you decide to upgrade. (AskTheAdmin recomends Crucial memory and gets a few cents for every purchase you make through this link here.)

So there you have it - 3 simple things you can use to help get your (or your Mom's) PC back to a more snappier pace. Load them up on a thumb drive so you can take them with you for "field visits" like Thanksgiving or Easter....

Have other tools or practices to share? Let's hear about them in the comments....

Stop Windows From Nagging You To Reboot After Automatic Updates!

2008-07-13T00:00:00.001-04:00

We've all seen it, and we are all annoyed by it.

We are particularly annoyed when we have 20 windows open and are multitasking like monkeys in a banana tree (that doesn't make any sense does it?).

Anyway, that annoying prompt can be turned off with a little thing called Group policy. The cool thing about group policy is you can apply it to one machine using local a local policy, or many machines at once through an OU in active directory. Either way, it is setup the same.

Hit your Startmenu
Click Run
Type gpedit.msc
Then click OK.
Select local computer policy
Computer Configuration
Administrative Templates
Windows Components
Windows Update
Re-prompt for Restart with Scheduled Installations.

Check the box that says enabled, and set the time interval between prompts in minutes. If you want to not be bothered by the prompt at all, check the box that says disabled.

Just remember some patches and updates won't take effect until after a reboot, and if you're like me you don't reboot very often which could leave yourself vulnerable.

After you have made you settings to your liking, click Start > Run and type gpupdate /force for the changes to take effect. Or you can take the easy way out and reboot.

Written By Guest Contributor El Di Pablo

Murphy's Laws of Computing

2008-07-12T00:00:00.001-04:00

I was given this by my first manager in an IT gig. I came across it again during a late night search trying to solve a downed production server without going into the office...

Long story short... I glanced at the list below, got to number 10 and a light bulb popped over my head.

I hate consultants and I hate tech support. Hope this brightens your a day - and let me know if you know the REAL author.

Murphy's Laws of Computing

When computing, whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.
When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it?s probably obsolete.
The first place to look for information is in the section of the manual where you least expect to find it.
When the going gets tough, upgrade.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite malfunction.
To err is human...to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human, it is downright natural.
He who laughs last probably made a back-up.
If at first you do not succeed, blame your computer.
A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.
The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions.
A computer program will always do what you tell it to do, but rarely what you want it to do.

_TheMurphyHatingAdmiN_