F-Secure antivirus boot cd 3.11

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fsceureWhen trying to get rid of a virus it often a good idea to scan using a boot CD, some viruses / rootkits bury themselves so deep that even the best antivirus cant detect them.  Sadly very few CD’s are commercially available, and most often requires regular updates to always have the latest definitions.

A friend of mine Mr. Grøn, Torben pointed out that he had just stumbled across;

http://www.f-secure.com/linux-weblog/2009/09/22/rescue-cd-311/

Now this is interesting, F-Secure is an old player on the AV marked and usually makes good stuff, and it would appear this is no exception.  It is a Linux boot CD that can scan NTFS partitions, and the clever part is that it actually downloads the latest definition files before it begin scanning – clever..  One minor “issue” though, it will rename file extensions to .virus if a file is infected, and this is also true for system files – thus you can ‘damage’ your windows installation and make it non bootable which can be a problem for novice users.

Other than that it offer some extra recovery utilities for pictures etc.  Absolutely worth a look.

Update;
You may also want to give this a spin, I just learned about this;
http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12

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Windows 7 codec

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So you upgraded to Windows 7 but are as always having issues with Codec’s (A codec is the ‘decoder/encoder’ for a video or soundfile in a specific format eg. DivX or Xvid).

Under Windows Vista the Vista Codec pack seemed to work perfectly, but I was reluctant to install it on Windows 7 out of fear to create problems for H.264 (H.264 is now native to Windows 7, which was not the case for Windows Vista).  However in the end I had to (too many things did not work without these codec’s), anyway it turned out that the Vista Codec Pack would not install on Windows 7, it cleverly detected that it was a new OS and pointed out that a new package was available here.

So all in all, my worries was laid to rest and I downloaded Windows 7 codec pack and everything was back to the old working state.

Do you need this codec pack?  Well very likely not, most users can download the VLC player this player has build in most common codec’s and can thus play most video/snd files you get hold of, however if you need to do video conversion etc. then it is a different matter, Windows then need to be able to ‘understand’ the fileformat and this may ofthen require a codec.  The rule should be, try VLC player, if its enough dont install anything more if not install the Windows 7 codec pack or Windows Vista Codec pack (also works for Windows XP).

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Lockhunter – unlock locked files in Windows

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mainScreenshot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A followup to a previous post; https://readmydamnblog.com/?p=674

Under Windows Vista and now Windows 7 I quite often experience problems with locked files, eg. I have worked with a file previously and now want to delete it just to be told that this is impossible as the file is in use, I have not found any explanations to this – my own guess is that it could have something to do with poorly written applications (that does not free files correctly) but this is pure guesswork.

Anyhow, it is very annoying to have to reboot the machine to be able to delete a file, and of cause this is often not necessary – Lockhunter to the rescue..  Lockhunter is a free utility to unlock these locked files, it works like this; you install lockhunter, right click on a locked file and selects “Unlock….”, you will go through a wizard to help unlock the file and viola problem solved you can delete the file.

My previous post on the subject regarded; Unlocker a similar tool, however Lockhunter seem a bit more informative (tell you what process is locking the file) and Lockhunter has a 64bit version.

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Windows 7 installing from a USB pen

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So you have a notebook and want to install Windows 7, how the f… do you do that you think – there is nowhere to insert that damn DVD?!?!

Well why not install via a USB pen?

So grab your USB pen and visit here; http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool

A few things you will need though, 1 USB pen (aprox 5 gb) and to convert your DVD to an ISO file (the latter is rather simple, there are numerous utils that can do this – google it).

An alternative to this is; http://wintoflash.com/home/en/ (should be able to grab the data from the CD/DVD and should work with other versions of Windows as well).

I have not yet tried any of these, but gotten them recommended.

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Network Diagnostics

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Here is a few – not so known – Network Diagnostics tools for you to use when debugging network issues;

From a commandprompt;

netsh diag ping gateway
netsh diag ping dns
netsh diag ping mail

From run in the “start menu”;

hcp://system/netdiag/dglogs.htm
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Windows Vista – stop unscheduled reboots

wurestartvistauj2On a Windows Vista (and likely Win7) box the Windows Updates has gotten this nasty idea to automatically reboot your computer – if for some odd reason it feel like it, now where this may be useful in some sceneries I have had important video conversions disrupted by this exact behaviour. 

If you happen to be looking at your pc while the update is in progress you will see a warning, stating that the computer will reboot in 10 min and you can then choose to delay this up to 4 hours, but if you have set a large conversion of video files in motion – then you are likely watching a good movie instead and will come back to a computer laughing at you via its loginscreen.

Anyhow, it’s a simple thing to fix once and for all, you just have to do a bit of registry tweaking;

wrebootreg

Create this key;
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers=1

 And Windows will behave after a reboot (that mean no more unscheduled reboots caused by Windows Updates)..

If you are lazy, then this blog offers a small utility to modify the registry for you 🙂
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/prevent-windows-update-from-forcibly-rebooting-your-computer/

Problem solved…

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KB936181 Windows Update problem

I just had the pleasure of fixing a computer with an update problem, it would not install KB936181 no matter what was done..

I found this guide on some page;

How to fix the KB936181 Windows Update problem:
Click Start -> Run, type cmd and click OK
  1. Type ren %windir%\System32\msxml4.dll msxml4.old, and press Enter
(Ignore any errors stating that the file could not be found)!
Next, type exit, and press Enter
  2. Now, simply visit the official Microsoft KB93618 download
link and manually download and install the update
  3. Restart your computer and if all goes well, your
KB936181 update issues should be history.

 This sounded quite sane, so I decided to try it…  However after renaming the file I tried to run the update and got the three options 1) Modify 2) Repair 3) Remove, and I decided to go for the remove option, after this I reran the advertisement from the update server (SCCM WSUS) and viola it installed without a glitch.

As the user said, what a stupid update 😀  I could not agree more..

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Keyboard shortcuts for Windows.

Every now and again you tend to forget which keyboard combination it was you had to press in order to minimize a window or what ever clever thing you need to do, this is especially a nuisance if your mouse somehow is not working.

Well Microsoft kindly enough has a page listing the shortcuts for you;
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449/en-us

or click more for a transcript here…

Read more

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Shadowcopy schedule log errors

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Have you ever tried enabling Shadow Copy on a server drive?  Shadow Copy (in this “Shared folders” variant) is a poor man’s backup/version control, it will allow you to restore previous versions of files deleted via shares.

Technical info on how it works;
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc785914(WS.10).aspx

A more lo tech approach here (visual demo);
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/docs/ShadowCopiesSharedFolders.swf
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/overview/scr.mspx

shadowcopy2

Image1

Anyhow, once implemented Shadow Copy will begin to “backup” data via a Scheduled Job if you so choose (the scheduled job is added to the scheduled tasks in the control panel automatically). 

However, when I looked in the logfile for scheduled jobs (see image1) there was mention of an error (which is odd as the schedule is created by the system and as such should be correct);

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"ShadowCopyVolume{eeacaa88-d521-11da-a3c1-00170859ede5}.job" (vssadmin.exe)
31-08-2009 12:00:00 ** WARNING **  Invalid working directory..
The specific error is:  0x00000003: The system cannot find the path specified.

Now this was odd because the Shadow Copy backup worked without a glitch and files could be restored, so why the error!?  Well a bit of digging around brought me a step closer to the truth, but sadly not all the way (I now know how to fix it, but not why the errormessage appears).. 

It would appear that the error is related to the “Working directory” in the scheduled task, and the suggestion was to clear the “Working directory” field in the scheduled job – does it make sense? well not really, working directory pointed at “%systemroot%\system32” which equals “C:\windows\system32” and this folder DO exist but never the less it did the trick – no more errors in the SchedLgU.txt file.

shadowcopy1So the task is easy, simply delete the folder “working folder” in the scheduled job, normally called “ShadowCopyVolume{……….” and the errors are gone.  Is this really nessesary?  Nope, not at all it’s purely cosmetic, the job works even with the error message, so it’s only if you get annoyed by error messages in you log files.

 

 

 

 

 

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