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4251

Living Room / Re: USB Madness With Cooked-Off Ports

« Last post by 4wd on March 15, 2011, 06:37 PM »

A) What is shotgun mode?

-superboyac (March 15, 2011, 06:05 PM)

Also called the Scattergun Approach: Pertaining to fault finding it, basically, means that when you have no idea where the fault lies you do something that changes a lot of things, (multiple component/board replacement, multiple software removal, etc), in the hope that what you do will fix it.

This is analogous to using shot cartridges, (not solids), in a shotgun where you hope that at least some of the shot will hit it's intended target.

Normally if this particular methodology fails you revert to S.O.P. #1, ie. hit it with a hammer.

B) I've never been a fan of USB.  It's convenient and I use it, but I've never been all that impressed with it.  I've always hated the idea of "safely" removing USB stuff.  What's the point of creating this kind of interface when we have to be so concerned about removing it safely.  Why not implement it in such a way so you can pull it out and put it back in   without worrying about it?

Because OS' cache the data they write to USB devices usually, therefore if you were to pull your USB device out immediately after a copy/move operation to the USB device without using Safely Remove, chances are the device may become corrupt.

Safely Remove flushes the caches of any waiting data writes, checks for any program/object locks and then tells you if it's OK to remove it.

4252

Living Room / Re: USB Madness With Cooked-Off Ports

« Last post by 4wd on March 15, 2011, 05:37 PM »

I turned it loose in shotgun mode (because it matched the mood I was in)....

-Stoic Joker (March 15, 2011, 07:43 AM)

How does that line up with:

Warning:
So use it with care and only if you know what you are doing!

 

4253

Living Room / Re: Interesting calming essay about nuclear power plan situation in Japan

« Last post by 4wd on March 14, 2011, 09:01 PM »

Long ago when I lived in Canada, there were gas stations that had hybrid fuels for cars that contained, I believe, ethanol. I've not seen anything like them since.

-Renegade (March 14, 2011, 06:55 PM)

A few years ago here in Australia when Johnny Thicko ran the country, there was much outcry that the petrol found at a lot of outlets contained ethanol.  Ethanol, being cheaper than petrol, enabled the fuel companies to turn a bigger profit on sales because they never told anyone they were putting ethanol in it nor did they drop the price at the pump to reflect the cheaper cost.

Guess who the ethanol manufacturers were friends with?  (Hint: Our dipsh!t PM at the time.)

Nowadays you can get E10 fuel at quite a few outlets, (mostly independent), and it usually costs a few cents less.  What I'd like to see is more availability of Bio-Diesel but unfortunately our stupid Government has nobbled that using increased taxes.  Also the flexi-fuel vehicles that Brazil has bought into considering our rather large reserves of natural gas.

4254

Developer's Corner / Re: Easily Create a USB Portable Version - Cameyo

« Last post by 4wd on March 13, 2011, 11:00 PM »

Application Virtualization - Make your applications portable
how to make every app portable?

 

4255

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by 4wd on March 13, 2011, 05:26 PM »

It's a silly question I know but....other than being a 'netbook', exactly what is it?

And the reason I ask is: Some manufacturers shipped them with a Linux distro, (the AAO AOA110 being a case in point), ie. have you checked the manufacturers site to see if they have one?

4256

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by 4wd on March 13, 2011, 02:10 PM »

xPUD: I ran it from USB thumb drive which was fast and easy but I couldn't figure out how to get my wifi to work. It also seemed to forget everything when I rebooted, losing all settings and customization.

-Deozaan (March 13, 2011, 06:48 AM)

Regarding xPUD, it is not designed to be a full always used OS, it's designed to be an 'instant on' OS, (as you find, eg. in ASUS BIOS'), for netbooks for when you're travelling and you don't want to boot into the full OS.
As such there's really no need to store WiFi settings as they're going to be changing as you move around.

xPUD WiFi works fine on my AAO with the standard hardware: type in SSID and network password and it connects.

4257

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by 4wd on March 13, 2011, 05:19 AM »

Linpus Lite as came standard on the Acer Aspire One AOA110 was fairly speedy even on the dog of a SSD they had in them.

4258

Living Room / Re: England Is Grinding To A Halt.

« Last post by 4wd on March 12, 2011, 05:31 AM »

I don't think you'll have to worry about the UK grinding to a halt because of increased fuel tax......you'll be crashing into things long before that. 

4259

Living Room / Re: Safe use of USB drives? Is there anything like a USB sandbox application?

« Last post by 4wd on March 12, 2011, 02:05 AM »

USB Switch (free software):
http://www.trinit-so....de/en/usb-waechter/

-SKA (March 12, 2011, 12:10 AM)

That's only to control what devices can be connected by the looks - it won't actually stop someone running nasty program X if it happens to be on an allowed device.

OK, just installed it and all it seems to do is block new unrecognised USB devices from being installed.  After that, any type of access seems to be allowed.

4260

Living Room / Re: Safe use of USB drives? Is there anything like a USB sandbox application?

« Last post by 4wd on March 11, 2011, 10:25 PM »

WRT AutoRun, one of the latest Windows updates, (KB971029), disables it completely for USB with XP onwards.

Could they all have their schedulers set to copy their data files to folders on a remote PC to which users had read-only permissions, so users could get the data off that, without being able to affect the originating PCs?

-rjbull (March 11, 2011, 04:32 PM)

Conversely, can Security/Group Policy be used to set USB drives to write-only so there's no chance of reading anything off of them?

4261

Living Room / Re: XP multiuser default login

« Last post by 4wd on March 09, 2011, 09:43 PM »

Forgot to mention, I haven't tried to send a password into the prompt yet because I completely forgot  
I was just testing with two non-password accounts but I just tried it with a password and it worked.

-4wd (March 09, 2011, 11:56 AM)

That would seem to imply you are in the right place.

Damnit I wish I had time to play with this (office has me pinned to the wall).

-Stoic Joker (March 09, 2011, 06:31 PM)

Using GetDesktopWindow() I seem to get a consistant handle of 0x00010004, (IIRC), for the Welcome screen, now if I could only work out how to get the icon objects on it....

Of course, using the Classic logon would probably be a lot easier, just needing to send a load of key codes...but, naturally, my friend would rather use the Welcome screen  

UPDATE: OK, bearing in mind I'm just playing in a VM and are stuck with 4:3 modes, the Welcome screen user icons are remarkably consistent in their positioning, (only tested up to 3 users so far).
The centre of the icons are located 60 pixels right of the screen centre and have a horizontal spacing of ~80 pixels, this is from resolution 800x600 -> 1280x960.
So given the location of the first icon, (using a simple lookup table), the position of those below can be calculated fairly easily.

Given the target is a two user system, this is pretty much solved only needing to be tested with wide screen modes to see if the spacing is significantly different.

In all cases the handle for the screen is 0x00010004, if I knew which process was responsible for placing of the icons it might be possible to make it a bit more intelligent.  I thought it was logonui.exe but I can't seem to get the GUI resources it might be using.

4262

Living Room / Re: England Is Grinding To A Halt.

« Last post by 4wd on March 09, 2011, 09:32 PM »

No offence but frankly, if it caused 50% of the cars currently on the UK roads to not be on the road, that would be a Good Thing.  

4263

Living Room / Re: XP multiuser default login

« Last post by 4wd on March 09, 2011, 11:56 AM »

What about testing for the logon window name, sending the u/p directly to the appropriate fields, and then posting the LBM message directly to the windows message queue?

-Stoic Joker (March 09, 2011, 07:01 AM)

That's only going to work for Classic logon though isn't it, (where you type in a user name)?

Pretty sure my friend's only interested in using the Welcome screen.

Forgot to mention, I haven't tried to send a password into the prompt yet because I completely forgot 
I was just testing with two non-password accounts but I just tried it with a password and it worked.

If you elevate your application to LOCALSYSTEM privileges, everything is possible...

-f0dder (March 09, 2011, 07:17 AM)

I'm running it from gpedit->Windows Startup script so it already has SYSTEM privileges, (I believe), or is LOCALSYSTEM a little/lot different?

4264

Living Room / Re: XP multiuser default login

« Last post by 4wd on March 09, 2011, 05:48 AM »

Yes, it'll be interesting to see - however that was one of the strange things I found when I was trying to get the WiFi Detector working.

For some reason I was able to interact with the initial Welcome screen, (ie. putting a tooltip on it), but not with any subsequent Welcome screen after the user logged off even though the program was started at logoff, (or after logoff using the AT command).

I would of expected not to be able to interact with the Welcome screen at all.  Even AutoIt isn't designed with this kind of thing in mind but it still did it, (on the initial Welcome screen anyway).

So my thinking is if I can get a tooltip on the Welcome screen, which I shouldn't be able to, then getting the mouse to move should be easy....FLW.

Anyway, if I come up with something I'll let you know.

UPDATE: Well it works, I can get it to logon after a delay using AutoIt to click on an area - now I just got to work out my ratios so it'll work with different resolutions.  Probably have to use a look up table of some kind depending on number of users vs offsets.

4265

General Software Discussion / Re: Win32DiskImager problems ...

« Last post by 4wd on March 08, 2011, 11:12 PM »

Obviously you were holding your tongue the right way this time 

4266

General Software Discussion / Re: Win32DiskImager problems ...

« Last post by 4wd on March 08, 2011, 08:59 PM »

Try version 0.1, (downloadable here), as reported here by people with the same problem.

Wrote some img files to USB ok. When I write img files to a 16GB SDHC card, I get a write error - Not enough disk space. Tried various img from 53MB to 6GB with no success. SDHC is not faulty. Help please, any suggestions?

Same here... getting same error on 2gb micro SD... downloaded version (0.1) and all worked well.

4267

Living Room / Re: XP multiuser default login

« Last post by 4wd on March 08, 2011, 04:29 PM »

Thanks for the answers folks.

<Technogeek warning> 
@SJ: Well actually, the problem with the WiFi Detector is it wouldn't run on subsequent logons, (initial was OK), and I don't believe that will be a problem here because I'm pretty sure it's only for the initial machine power on logon that it's required.  I'll have to ask him.

Thanks for reminding me SJ, if I can get it to just send mouse movements, LMB click, put a password in the keyboard buffer and then exit then it should work.  Test for mouse movement during timeout will signify someone's driving the machine and cause it to exit.

Hard part will be working out the location of the logon icons, a fair bit of trial and error, but maybe work it out for one resolution and then possibly use a ratio for other resolutions.

Fun, fun, fun - back to the AutoIt blackboard.

4268

Living Room / XP multiuser default login

« Last post by 4wd on March 08, 2011, 07:37 AM »

Hi all, I have a friend with XP Pro who wants to set up another user on his system so there's a choice when the Welcome screen pops up but also have it log in as one of the users after a suitable delay.

eg. You get to the Welcome screen with a choice of UserA or UserB but if there's no input after 30 seconds then it'll default to UserA.

Is that possible under Windows?

I know you can set a automated login but there's no way to delay it AFAIK.

Or is it possible to set a login using a specific user account via the boot.ini menu?

That way you get your delay but skip the Welcome screen.  Just had a quick look but couldn't see any relevant parameters.

4269

Living Room / Re: Win 7 XP mode

« Last post by 4wd on March 08, 2011, 05:10 AM »

The "need" is a BigFish game they already have a license for -- Luxor 2, I think --

-oblivion (March 08, 2011, 02:10 AM)

If it's the same game as this, (and the screenshots look the same), then I downloaded the demo, installed it and played the first level fine on my Win7 HP x64 machine.

4270

Living Room / Re: $1,000,000 Bet That Apple Pulls from Retail

« Last post by 4wd on March 07, 2011, 10:42 PM »

More fun and games from Ruslan Kogan: TradeLeaks.com

4271

General Software Discussion / Re: Temporary Toggled Port Blocking

« Last post by 4wd on March 07, 2011, 12:59 PM »

It took a while, but I've found the thread I mentioned, and it has a solution as well

-Ath (March 04, 2011, 03:13 PM)

Looked, but it seems like most download links there have been removed?

-Hyphen (March 07, 2011, 12:37 PM)

There are no download links, it's attached to the third last post.

4272

Living Room / Re: Win 7 XP mode

« Last post by 4wd on March 07, 2011, 04:18 AM »

Don't forget VMLite XP Mode which uses the XP Mode installation image you download from Microsoft.

4273

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands

« Last post by 4wd on March 05, 2011, 01:35 AM »

Yoohoo!  nudone!

Looky what we got for you

4274

Post New Requests Here / Re: Password protect folder using right-click context menu

« Last post by 4wd on March 03, 2011, 07:06 PM »

Wouldn't it be easier to set a decent password on the account and, (IIRC), then answer Yes to Make all my files private?

And don't lose the password.

4275

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows7 user administration question

« Last post by 4wd on March 03, 2011, 05:19 PM »

Right click.

Go to Properties.

Security Tab.

Click Advanced.

Owner Tab.

Edit.

-timns (March 03, 2011, 01:46 PM)

Using TakeOwnership is a little easier.

ie. Right click -> Take Ownership

Ownership changes from Administrators to current user.

BTW, it's not recommended you do this on any Windows system folders, (Users, ProgramData, Program Files, Windows, etc), you'll most likely FUBAR the system.....I know, I've done it

I am on Windows7 64bit

-kartal (March 01, 2011, 05:22 PM)

Home, Pro, Ultimate, Enterprise?

Single user system?

Multi-user with only one admin, (you) ?