Recent Posts

3626

Living Room / Re: OS Re-install Tips?

« Last post by f0dder on April 02, 2009, 09:39 AM »

I use a 16GB partition for my System partition - this is solely for Windows and applications, all data, games, temporary files, internet cache etc. is located elsewhere. 16GB might be a bit in the low end, though; I only have 2GB free and I don't have tons of applications installed (OTOH, the ones I have installed are relatively large).

nlite/vlite trimming is a really nice thing, also because it allows you to easily integrate drivers, hotfixes/servicepacks and create unattended setups - saves a lot of time. Always check your tweaked ISO in a virtual machine before deploying, though, since you can end up removing a little too much and getting a hosed install.

3627

General Software Discussion / Re: When was your last BSOD? I'm betting it was a long time ago

« Last post by f0dder on April 02, 2009, 08:53 AM »

PatchGuard isn't stupid, but it's a shame that Microsoft doesn't allow some (controlled!) hooks for it. Your BSOD is because of sandboxie, and thus not something to blame Windows for

3628

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: run an executeable step by step

« Last post by f0dder on April 02, 2009, 08:21 AM »

First, you can't be 100% sure that you're clean - the executable could have downloaded and activated a rootkit, which pretty much renders process explorer & monitor useless.

Second, if you don't want to run Vista, at least consider running under a non-privileged user account. It's more bothersome on XP than on Vista, though. The alternative would be using something like "dropmyrights" on all internet-facing applications (browser, mail client, ...) but that won't stop you from malware if you accidentally(? ) double-click random executables. Dunno about Vista running slow on 1GB ram, but it runs perfectly fine on a laptop with 2GB ram, 2GHz dualcore and integrated intel graphics. I don't game much on that machine, though.

Third, OllyDbg is a debugger. It lets you handle program execution instruction by instruction. It works on individual processes, though, and what you want sounds like systemwide action.

3629

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: run an executeable step by step

« Last post by f0dder on April 02, 2009, 06:03 AM »

You should probably give your system a scan with some antivirus, you might not have caught everything.

A tool like the one you describe would be major bother in everyday life, it's much less agonizing running Vista+UAC - which would have caught it trying to write to system folders and adding itself to auto-startup locations.

3630

Living Room / Re: which is better for hard drive transfers: ide or usb cable

« Last post by f0dder on April 02, 2009, 05:57 AM »

steeladept: no wonder it ran slow if it was USB1 (max 1.5MB/s, so probably something like 1.3MB/s in practice), and with a failing harddisk you might get sector re-reads as well . 10mins for 40gig data sounds a bit on the fast side, though - ~70MB/s for a drive "back in the 40GB days"? Still, a 30-40x speedup doesn't sound unlikely. USB1 is slow!

I find that firewire-400 runs somewhat faster than USB2, even though USB2 does 480mbit - it isn't as good at giving a single device full bandwidth, though. If you have firewire-800, there's probably not much reason to much around with attaching the drive internally.

3631

General Software Discussion / Re: Using noscript to force https ssl links in firefox

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 05:34 PM »

Gothic: might be the same amount of clicks, but while I don't have much of a problem accepting a self-signed cert, I would certainly prefer one that actually matches the domain/hosts used

3632

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: run an executeable step by step

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 09:33 AM »

A debugger is certainly a program to "run an executeable step by step", but what lifeh2o wants is probably more along the lines of an over-zealous program behavioral analyzer/blocker. Something like what, for instance, Kaspersky antivirus offers, but blocking on all file and registry activity instead of just suspicious activity.

If you just want to monitor what happens, check out sysinternals' Process Monitor.

3633

General Software Discussion / Re: Make Firefox 3 load faster

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 09:27 AM »

OK.

Can't say I get a huge improvement here, but it's noticeable - YMMV. urlclassifier3.sqlite and places.sqlite are both ~23MB, and I used the SQLite VACUUM on both a couple of weeks ago.

3634

General Software Discussion / Re: When was your last BSOD? I'm betting it was a long time ago

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 09:19 AM »

The only BSOD I've seen in the last two years occurred when trying to resume from hibernation - most recently last week, and probably once or twice a quarter.  (Always ks.sys...)

-TheQwerty (April 01, 2009, 06:24 AM)

Iirc, ks.sys is related to kernel streaming sound. You wouldn't happen to have a Creative soundcard in that machine?

3635

General Software Discussion / Re: When was your last BSOD? I'm betting it was a long time ago

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 04:43 AM »

A few weeks ago, trying to run EmEditor portable from a USB, saved a simple macro, clicked EmEditor's macro button and <<POW>>.  XP said a hardware problem; could be, I don't know.

-rjbull (April 01, 2009, 04:39 AM)

Was it a BSOD, though, or a critical error messagebox about delay-write error? There's a big difference between the two.

3636

Living Room / Re: Conficker - The Facts

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 04:42 AM »

The people pirating Windows generally use a WGA hack, so they get updates just fine.

How long was the infection window open before a patch was released?

3637

General Software Discussion / Re: When was your last BSOD? I'm betting it was a long time ago

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 01:44 AM »

That sounds plain weird - a crashing usermode program causing a BSOD? Never had that happen O_o

jalbum, the excellent java based image gallery tool can reliably blue screen and reboot my pc.  never figured out why or how.

-mouser (April 01, 2009, 01:39 AM)

Interesting - I didn't think the JVM used any driver components, so it really shouldn't be able to do that

The only usermode crashes I've seen since Win9x have been exploits (and the only one I can remember was something that exploited a GDI "stuff mapped in usermode that really shouldn't be but we did it this way for performance" kinda thing).

3638

Living Room / Re: Conficker - The Facts

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 01:40 AM »

Sorry guys, I hadn't had enough morning coffee when I typed that post - I was thinking of a transparent proxy rather than one of those manual proxies

3639

Living Room / Re: Conficker - The Facts

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 12:41 AM »

Even with a proxy, you'd still be doing the DNS lookup locally - it's only the HTTP connection to the server that's going through the proxy.

3640

General Software Discussion / Re: When was your last BSOD? I'm betting it was a long time ago

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 12:38 AM »

MSVC compiler somehow crashed, bsod followed. So, no, for me the reputation is still valid

-Gothi[c] (March 31, 2009, 09:30 PM)

That sounds plain weird - a crashing usermode program causing a BSOD? Never had that happen O_o

I've had a few BSODs over the last years, but most have been from my own driver code - that's hardly the fault of Windows. The other crashes have been because of nvidia drivers, and have been limited to boot-time BSODs - ie., because nvidia fscked up a driver release and somehow made it incompatible with my gf8800... can't remember the last time I've had a BSOD while my system was running.

3641

Living Room / Re: What's the Best Diet? Eating Less Food.

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 12:35 AM »

I'm a sugar addict and a caffeine fiend. I've managed to coke around 30 days without addiction coffeeding. But I always end up back on the street with something sugary.

I usually eat relatively healthy, but my problem has always been portion sizes. I always have a sugar craving a few hours after a meal if I eat a "normal" size portion...

3642

Living Room / Re: Conficker - The Facts

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 12:32 AM »

Going to HTTP://ip.number.here often won't work, since the site won't get the "Host: domain.name.com" HTTP header they expect. You'd have to put the IPs in your hosts files, but that file is probably used by DnsQuery() and thus the method is going to fail because Conficker's patching.

3643

General Software Discussion / Re: Make Firefox 3 load faster

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 12:26 AM »

edbro: loading FF is only part of the story - what you really need to compare is browsing around, having lots of tabs open (and stuff like opening all the links from "view unread posts" in background tabs, then surfing the main tab while the background tabs are loading.

Putting portable FF on the ramdisk probably also meant you put a pretty clean install on the ramdisk? That means no huge & fragmented *.sqlite files, and not a lot of internet cache files?

3644

Living Room / Re: Conficker - The Facts

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2009, 12:21 AM »

DMZ = bad (come on, how bad is it to do manual port forwards?), dictionary password = bad.

3645

General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2009, 02:34 PM »

kartal: does it have 64- and 32-bit installers, or a combined one-size-fits-all? If the former, obviously grab the 32bit package. The latter, mail the developer

3646

General Software Discussion / Re: Using noscript to force https ssl links in firefox

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2009, 11:53 AM »

f0dder -- everything is (relatively) easy to do with self-signed certificates.
my comment was about the expense of purchasing NON-self-signed wildcard certificates.

-mouser (March 31, 2009, 11:47 AM)

OK

I don't know what the costs are (but probably not cheap) - and I do find it unfortunate that it's such a money machine for the CAs, especially considering how little checking some of them do.

But could you (or gothic?) please make the DC cert a wildcard one, or at least make one for www.doco ? That way FF would bitch less

3647

General Software Discussion / Re: Using noscript to force https ssl links in firefox

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2009, 11:33 AM »

mouser: can't you do self-signed wildcard certs?

Anyway, since the site runs at www.donationcoder.com (and going withouyt www prefix redirects to www.doco), wouldn't it be better to make the cert for www.doco, if you can't make it for *.doco ?

3648

General Software Discussion / Re: Using noscript to force https ssl links in firefox

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2009, 11:22 AM »

I partially agree

IMHO verification is at least as important as encryption.

Perhaps self-signed certs should be allowed without hissy-fits, but there should be a clear visual distinction between self-signed and verified. Problem is that regular users would probably understand even less of that than they do now...

It's unfortunate that there's so many problems with SSL. But technical flaws aside, imho the biggest problem is the careless attitude of some of the CAs... apparently it's way too easy to do a bit of social engineering and get certs that you really shouldn't have.

PS: the security error says the cert is only valid for donationcoder.com - I assume that means it, technically, isn't valid for www.donationcoder.com ?

3649

General Software Discussion / Re: Make Firefox 3 load faster

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2009, 10:07 AM »

Does it make page rendering faster too?

(I'm content with loading time).

-dantheman (March 31, 2009, 09:47 AM)

Nope, it doesn't - except if your page rendering time, for some reason, would be dependent on disk I/O . This could happen if you have the habit of opening a lot of tabs at the same time. But that wouldn't really be rendering time that's improved, but simply firefox not stalling, waiting for disk I/O for the internet cache.

I find that actual rendering speed in FF is just fine, some people like reducing the "initial paint delay" but I'm not a fan of that.

As for using portable FF, it might give some (small?) amount of additional loading speed, since there's a whole bunch of stuff in the firefox program files folder. I find that with internet cache and profile on the ramdisk, a "cache-hot" startup of FF (ie., not the first start after a computer reboot, but shutting down firefox and re-opening) takes a bit less than a second.

3650

General Software Discussion / Re: Make Firefox 3 load faster

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2009, 09:29 AM »

I dunno if you gain that much from also moving the FF application files to the ramdrive - moving your profile includes addons and such, but I do find that this (and the internet cache) on ramdisk speeds up things wonderfully