Hackszine.com: Windows Archives

Archive: Windows

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March 11, 2007

What to Do When Vista Refuses to Help

If you press F1 in an older program on Vista, you're in for a disappointment; the old help format is not supported in Vista. However, Microsoft has made the old Windows Help program available as a free download. - [via] Link

Run Commands As Administrator In Windows Vista

In Vista, if you're logged in as a normal user but need to execute something with administrator privileges, there's a quick shortcut that will let you do just this from the start menu's run box.

Just type the command, say "cmd", into the run box, and then hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter instead of just the Enter key. You'll then be prompted to authenticate, and your command will be executed as administrator. -Link.

March 8, 2007

hdparm for Windows

Back in the day, Linux users ran a utility called hdparm to make sure that their disk drives were operating at the ideal speeds. These days, Linux distributions usually can figure out the best settings for a modern drive, so it's not needed as much. Still, it's a nice tool for probing your hard drive's settings and capabilities, and Aaron Tiensivu has used the Cygwin version to check up on his drive's power management:

If you install Cygwin, or just grab the hdparm.exe executable with the cygwin1.dll, you can figure out if your hard drive/chipset supports DIPM and/or HIPM. DIPM is device initiated power management, and HIPM is host initiated power management. Both can cut down hard drive power usage which in turn can improve battery life on laptops.

You'll need to choose hdparm from the Utils section when you run (or re-run) the Cygwin setup program. Also, if you run it under Vista, be sure to start the Cygwin shell as an admin (right-click on the icon and choose Run as Administrator) - Link

Related:

Cygwin - Link
hdparm - Link

March 7, 2007

Move Windows Special Folders To Another Drive

A common problem that people have in Windows is running out of disk space on the C: drive. Because the C: drive is the default location for user created documents, photos, and music (among others), it's not simply a matter of getting another hard drive. You also need to move all of these special folders to the new disk.

Hackszine reader Naser writes:

You only need some instant wit and one small (yet nifty, I tell ya) tool released by Microsoft called "Tweak UI". With this tool, you can transfer (or relocate) so called special system folders like "My Documents", "CD burning cache folder", "My Music/Pictures" and many others to another drive.

The Tweak UI method should work for most everyone except Vista users. In Vista (and partially in XP) it's a little easier: you can right click on the Documents, Photos, or Music folders, click properties, select the location tab, and move the folder to its new location.

References:

March 6, 2007

Call for Hacks: Windows Tips for Everyone

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Preston Gralla's latest article for PC World provides Windows tips and tricks for everyone, not just the early adopters of Vista:

Whether you've jumped to Vista or are sticking with XP, our tips will make your computing faster and safer--and even a little more stylish.

This is the kind of inclusive view we like to see in the world of Windows hacking.

Preston is the author Windows XP Hacks, across two editions, and is now hacking away at his next Windows Hacks book, which promises to be bigger, broader, and better, covering not only XP and Vista, but pretty much anything you can think of using within, or attaching to, those operating systems.

He can't complete such an immense task on his own, so he needs your help. If you have a great hack (or multiple hacks) you'd like to contribute to the book, let him know. Anything Windows related is game, including any Microsoft software or hardware, so click the Suggest a Hack link in the sidebar or drop him a line directly at preston [at] gralla [dot] com. If your hack is accepted, you'll get geek-cred bragging rights by becoming part of the O'Reilly Hacks community of contributors.

Preston's Windows Tips @ PC World:

February 28, 2007

Run Windows Apps Within Your Mac Desktop

Click To Play

Since its beta release, Parallels has let Mac users run Windows simultaneously with Mac OS X on any Intel Mac, which is a real boon whenever you need that one Windows-specific program you just can't avoid. But the recent Official Update (free for all registered users of Parallels Desktop) offers the ability to bypass Windows altogether and get right to the apps you need. With Coherence mode, you can now launch and run Windows applications directly within your Mac desktop, just as you would any Mac app.

Even though the windows for your Windows applications are now divorced from the virtual Windows desktop in Coherence mode under Parallels, you'll still want to have your Windows virtual machine running before you launch any programs under Parallels. Otherwise, launching the application will take as long as launching Windows. But as long as Windows is running, launching a specific application is pretty snappy. Just click on its icon in the Dock, as you would any other program, and up it comes.

I've been testing out Word 2007 lately, which now lives right next to Word 2004 in my Dock. As you can see, opening it and getting straight to a new document takes no time at all, and I get my own Word 2007 window, making it look (almost) like a native Mac app. You can also access Windows applications that don't live in your dock by just clicking the Windows Start menu in what now effectively becomes a Windows-specific Dock just above your real Dock. - Link to video download.

February 26, 2007

Extend Vista's Activation Grace Period

Windows Vista has a 30-day grace period before you're required to activate it. This can be inconvenient for people who do a lot of testing and frequent clean installs; even though the MSDN subscription includes several activations, what's the point of activating it on a real or virtual machine that may be running some other operating system in 31 days? Neowin.net explains the official way to get a little extra time in your grace period. Link.

Related

Six Tips for Hacking Windows Vista - Link
"Upgrade" to Windows Vista without a Previous Version of Windows - Link

February 19, 2007

Virtual PC 2007 Released; Why Won't It Use My WiFi Card?

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Microsoft just released Virtual PC 2007, which brings full support for Windows Vista as a guest and host operating system. If you have a wired and wireless connection in your computer, you might find that Virtual PC has ignored the wireless card during setup, but complains loudly about not being able to use that connection when you run a virtual machine.

To solve this problem, get to the network connection properties. In Vista, you can right-click on the network icon in the notification area, select Network and Sharing Center, then select Manage Network Connections. In the window that appears, find your wireless network connection, right-click on it, then choose properties. Check the box labeled Virtual Machine Network Services, and click OK:

Related

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 - Link
Virtual Machine Additions for Linux - Link
VMWare Workstation 6.0 Beta (with Vista host Support) - Link

February 15, 2007

Reduce Vista's CPU Usage under Parallels

When Parallels first started supporting Vista, it would max out one CPU at nearly 100%, even when the virtual machine was essentially idle. With each release candidate, Parallels has improved greatly, and the CPU usage has dropped to about 40% on my (1st-generation) MacBook Pro. Posting in the Parallels Forum, feuerri has found a simple way to reduce this even further:

I just discovered that by changing the Start -> Control Panel -> Power Options in Vista Enterprise (running under build 3150), I was able to reduce the CPU consumption from 37-40% to about 17-20%.

It works for me, and a number of other people have reported success. No word on whether there's a noticeable slowdown with this setting, but there are a few settings you can experiment with and see how it works for you. Link

Related

Parallels Desktop for Mac Forum -- Link

February 10, 2007

Hackszine Screencast: Infect Your Computer on Purpose

Last week, Hackszine fielded a reader request to come up with a way to infect a computer without letting too much heck break loose. This procedure was so much fun that we decided to use it for our first Hackszine screencast. Check it out for a little surprise near the end: I managed to sneak the test malware past the virus protection, but it kicked in as soon as I tried to actually run it.

If you'd like to see a higher-resolution version of the video, give the iPod (640x480) version a whirl.

Related/Featured:

Reader Request: Make Sure Your Anti Virus is Working -- Link
Cygwin -- Link
Avast! -- Link
EICAR test file -- Link

February 9, 2007

Fun with Vista's Speech Command

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Neat, this could be a new type of audio virus, or at least a fun prank like the old days with MacOS speech recognition - get an audio file say "start listening" and then tell Vista to do stuff, from the SANS blog...

On January 30th Sebastian Krahmer asked himself (out loud on the Dailydave mailing list) if Windows Vista Speech Command function could be used by a malicious website feeding a wav file which would speak commands to download malware. The idea is deceivingly simple: the wav file plays through the speakers, the microphone picks up the commands and the Speech Command happily executes them.

A fascinating discussion ensued, George Ou went off to research the concept and, at the risk of spoiling the surprise, here is the result in George's fine words...

Simon says: download backdoor.exe (or using Vista Speech Command for fun and profit) - Link.

More:

Issue regarding Windows Vista Speech Recognition (Microsoft) - Link.
Casey Chesnut trying to defeat the speech hack - Link.
Casey Chesnut attempts to fix speech reco attach - Link.
Disagreement over impact of Vista's analog hole - Link.

February 6, 2007

Use Vista's BitLocker with a USB Key

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Vista's BitLocker drive encryption is available in the Ultimate and Enterprise editions. To use it, you'll need a computer with a supported Trusted Platform Module (TPM), but even if you have one, it may not be enabled properly in your computer (in which case, you'll be waiting on your PC or motherboard vendor to update the BIOS).

You may remember some talk about Vista allowing you to use a USB flash drive on systems that don't have a TPM. It's possible, but you need to dig up an obscure setting to turn it on.

Read full story

February 5, 2007

Get Your HyperTerminal Back

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If you switched to Vista and you tend to hack anything with a serial interface, you probably noticed that HyperTerminal has been removed from the Windows operating system. Only a minor setback: Hilgraeve, makers of HyperTerminal, offer a free (for private use) edition of their product that works just like the HyperTerminal you have come to rely on. Now you can get your serial comms on again! Link

Automate Your Backups

There's a classic horror story that keeps me from sleeping at night sometimes. I've heard it told a few different ways. I've even told the story myself more than once, but Phil's version that he posted yesterday morning was one of the most frightening:

A couple weeks ago a flood hit my apartment/office area and soaked the desktop system, monitors, equipment *and* back up drive (along with a ton of other stuff) - luckily I have a daily back up on a Powerbook. But, of course the Powerbook decided to completely stop working while at our ETSY event before that could be backed up too. Zapping the PRAM revealed the hard drive failed, so the usual steps of Disk Util, TechTool and then finally drive removal and DiskWarrior were attempted - for the most part the drive seems completely dead - there might be a chance to recover some data under linux, or from a data recovery shop, but it's not looking good.

According his latest update, the backup drives dried out okay and appear to be working fine, so I guess that means he's managed to survive the perfect storm, but it got me thinking - how many of us ever keep a regular, daily backup in the first place? I've suffered several near-misses in the past, and I'm still guilty of not keeping good backups.

Never Again
So, February isn't too late for a new year's resolution. Don't go another day without your important files backed up. Let's sit down for 15 minutes, right now, and set up an automated backup system for ourselves. All you need is an external hard disk or a remote server with sufficient storage for a couple copies of your data. Based on Phil's story, you might want to situate your backup system on an elevated surface and not beneath any water pipes.

We're not focusing on a perfect backup solution here, with off-site, fire proof, vault storage. Don't let the nay-sayers stop you with the long list of things that can go wrong with a simple back-up solution, or explanations of how to do it the "right way". In 15 minutes you are going to be significantly more protected from data loss, and this will give you the time you need to relax and find a good price on your fire proof vault.

Read full story

February 1, 2007

Reader Request: Make Sure Your Antivirus is Working

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CWF wrote: "My students are all very innocent and naive users of Windows XP. What I have in mind is to leave them each with a Linux LiveCD or two that they'll be able to use as a rescue disc in case they get malware installing itself. So, the best way to teach this, I think, would be to purposely infect their machines and then go in a disinfect them.

But I'm not at all sure where I could get a virus or a trojan or other malware. Is it possible you could direct me to a source."

You can do this safely and easily with the EICAR test virus. If you download it to your computer, it should trigger a virus alert in most, if not all, virus software. I gave it a try with one of my Windows XP virtual machines, and it caught the file name eicar.com, but not eicar.com.txt. However, when I renamed the .txt file to eicar.com, avast! sprang into action.