Category: Geek Stuff

This post over at istartedsomething.com talks about a (possible) groovy new feature in Windows 7: built-in support for virtual hard drive (VHD) files.

VHD files are the “virtual hard drives” used in Microsoft’s virtualization software, like Virtual PC and Virtual Server. Normally, one installs Virtual PC on a Windows XP or Windows Vista computer, then generates a VHD file to act as a “virtual hard drive” for a virtual computer. You then install Windows XP, Windows Server, or whatever operating system you need on that virtual hard drive. You can then boot up the virtual machine and use it exactly as you would a “real” computer.

Adding native support for VHD files means that you could boot directly into a VHD file without having to run Virtual PC on the computer. This would allow you to run VHD computers at “native speed” without first loading a host OS. Even better, you could have multiple virtual hard drives on a system: you could have a “work” virtual hard drive (with Office, QuickBooks, and whatever else you need to do your job) as well as a “play” virtual hard drive (with games and music files). And if Microsoft’s talk about Windows 7 is to be believed, you could even optimize the “play” VHD for gaming by giving Windows 7 the smallest possible footprint.

There are also huge implications for system administrators, too. With Windows 7, an administrator might be able to make an VHD image using Virtual PC, then push that image out to corporate desktops so that everyone is using the same desktop computer image. Now that would be cool!

Any thoughts about this?

As I mentioned in the “I’m Back” post from the other day, I went to Asheville this past weekend to attend a family wedding. On the drive home, Lisa and I stopped to pee at a convenience store somewhere in the sticks. As I walked in the store, a video game caught my eye. I stopped to look at the screen and saw this:

(Click to enlarge)

There are hundreds of websites out that that have pictures of Windows error messages on ATMs, airport arrival\departure screens and giant billboards (think Times Square).

I’ve always wanted to be able to post my own picture… and now I can!

And BTW, you might notice the EA logo on the side of the console! 🙂

Many folks don’t know that when you delete a file in Windows, that file isn’t really “deleted”.

You see, Windows keeps track of everything on your hard drive using something called a “Master File Table” (MFT) or “File Allocation Table” (if you’re one of the 4 people left still running Windows 98 and the FAT32 file system). When you delete a file, the file’s entry in the MFT\FAT is erased, and the space is marked as “free”. But the actual data is still there, and it will remain there until it’s overwritten by a new file. And even when the data is overwritten, it’s possible for computer forensics types to figure out what files were originally there.

The only real way to “delete” a file in Windows is to take the space where the data was located and overwrite it with random data from 7 to 35 times. Some programs, like DBAN, will overwrite all the data on an entire hard drive, which is good for when you want to donate old computers to charity, and want to be 100% certain that any data on the drives is gone.

But what about securely erasing data on computers that you need to keep using? DBAN will wipe out an entire hard drive – thus rendering your computer useless. What if you want (or need) to securely delete just a few files? What if you work with medical patient information and need a means of completely removing any data files, but keeping all of your other files intact?

I like Eraser. This free, open-source program adds an “Erase” option to Windows Explorer’s context menu. Just select the file(s) you want to erase, then right-click and select “Erase”. Eraser will then overwrite the file(s) using the Guttmann, US DoD 5220-22.M method, or with pseudo-random data. It can also erase Internet Explorer’s index.dat file, “Temporary Internet Files” and cookies, erase free space, erase the contents of the Recycle Bin, erase network files, floppy disks, CD-RW, DVD-RAM and DVD-RW discs, and erase the page (swap) file. Oh, and it works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and DOS! It’s a great little program – did I mention that it’s also free? – and is a quick and easy way to remove any trace of files on your computer!

Self Extracting Archive (SFX) files are archive files (like .ZIP or .RAR files) that have been converted to .EXE files that can run on any Windows computer. The appeal is obvious – if the IT department needs to send out an “emergency patch” for a home-grown application, they can convert a ZIP or RAR file to an EXE file that doesn’t need WinZIP or WinRAR installed. The user doesn’t have to do anything other than double-click the EXE file to extract the contents.

Us IT folk have to put a SFX file together every so often. Most of us have our favorite programs for doing this. I prefer the old, trusty WinRAR. Others prefer WinZIP. Programmers may require something more powerful, like Advanced Installer or a Nullsoft Scriptable Install.

But what do you do when you don’t have access to your favorite SFX creator?

You might not know this, but Windows has one built right in: IEXPRESS.EXE. Click click Start > Run and type iexpress.exe and press the ENTER button. An IExpress installer can extract files only or extract files then run a command. You can also customize your installer with custom titles, EULA screen and final dialog boxes.

You might find IEXPRESS lacking some of the more advanced features of other installers, but it sure could come in handy in a pinch!

Click here to read more about IEXPRESS at TechNet.

There are two general types of operating system in this world: server operating systems and desktop operating systems. As a rule, server operating systems are built for stability and security, while desktop operating systems – the kind you run on your personal PC – are built for flexibility and accessibility.

As a general rule, you don’t want to run a server operating system on your desktop PC. In fact, the only people that should run a server OS on their desktop or laptop computers are people that write software for servers, Quality Assurance (QA) testers, and certain IT guys that use their computers for testing purposes. But that hasn’t stopped a few misguided people that think it’s “cool” or “edgy” from running a server on their desktop. You know the type – “Look at me! I’m too cool for Windows XP! I’m running Windows Server 2003!”

And so, for the past few years, both myself and most of the posters at the Ars Technica forums have heaped scorn and ridicule upon people that run Windows Server 2003 as their desktop operating system. But then Windows Vista came out. And then Windows Server 2008 came out and changed everything.

As I noted in my News for 03/12/2008 post, many people are finding out the Windows Server 2008 can be easily tweaked to look and feel almost just like Windows Vista, yet Server 2008 runs around 20-30% faster than Vista on the same hardware. I found these numbers intriguing, and did some additional research… which led me to this site, which offers a free guide for tweaking Server 2008 to make it look like Windows Vista. I got myself a free copy of Windows Server 2008 (thanks, Microsoft!) and went to town. I eventually ended up with this:

Yep, that’s Server 2008 running on my desktop PC (click the picture to “embiggen”). It does, in fact, look and act like Windows Vista. But it’s not 20% faster than Vista on my computer… it seems like it’s 40% faster than Windows Vista! In fact, I couldn’t be happier with what I’ve experienced so far. Running Windows Vista on my computer – a circa 2003 Asus P4GE-V motherboard with a Northwood P4 (3.06GHz with HT), 2GB of RAM, a Radeon x1300 Pro video card and three PATA hard drives – was like installing Windows XP on a P133 with 32MB of RAM. But Windows Server 2008 – even with the eye candy turned on – only feels slightly slower than Windows XP on this box. In fact, Server 2008 acts like what I thought Vista would act like on this computer!

Feel free to try this out for yourself – I’m actually dying to find out if it works as well for you as it does for me. Keep in mind, though, that there are a few caveats to running a Windows Server operating system. Some programs are incompatible with Server 2008 (they most likely wouldn’t run under Vista, either). Also, many system utilities – such as disk defraggers and anti-virus apps – will check the operating system when you try to install them, see the word “Server” in the name and refuse to install. In most cases, the reason for this is not technical, but one of greed. Since it’s mostly companies that run servers, and since companies have deep pockets, many vendors offer a “Home” or “Personal” edition of their software for home users and a (much more expensive) “Professional” or “Server” version for servers. Although in most cases the software is exactly the same, the prices sure aren’t.

If you decide to run Windows Workstation 2008 (or are already running it), please leave a comment and tell me how it’s going for you!

I’ve been to lots of Microsoft product launches in my day… and yesterday’s launch of Windows Server 2008 – Visual Studio 2008 – SQL Server 2008 was no exception. Some random thoughts about the event:

The presenter was good. Yesterday’s presenter was young(ish), bald, energetic, slightly goofy, and easy to understand. Which was a huge plus, since Charlotte usually has some English guy that mumbles and stammers (ever seen The Simpsons or Family Guy do an impression of Hugh Grant? He’s just like that.)

The material was pretty good. I don’t know if Microsoft considers Charlotte to be a second- or third-tier market, but most MS events in this area work this way: some guy (and it’s usually a guy) that might (or might not) have good public speaking skills is picked to host an event. He then picks his favorite 800 new features in [product]. He then sets up virtual machine demos for each of those 800 new features. At the presentation, he begins by giving an overview of the new features in [product], then starts the demos. By demo 4, he’s figured out that he can’t possibly do all 796 remaining demos in the time alloted… but instead of choosing his 10 favorite (or the “most important”) features from the remaining demos and carrying them to completion, he’ll try to blast his way through the remaining 796 demos, barely getting 3 steps into some 19 step process. So after demo 4, most of the rest of his demos are like this: “OK, the next cool new feature of Windows Vista is “Previous Versions”… I have a demo here and… OK, here’s what we do… we open a Word document… and delete all the text in it [audience gasps]… we then save the document [audience gasps louder]… OK, so your user has now accidentally overwritten the document, right? Well, we just right-click the document… and click the “Previous Version” tab… and you can see the document’s history… I’m going to pick the version I saved last night… annnnnnddd… annndddd… you’ll have to forgive me, folks, I’ve got 5 virtual machines running on this laptop… Hmmmm.. well, if we had the time, you’d see the same document as before, instantly restored. OK, so on to User Access Control!” It’s annoying – thankfully, yesterday’s event had none of that.

The schwag was… Attendees received copies of Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and the CTP of SQL Server 2008 (with the option to get the full version when released). This is nothing to sneeze at, of course… it’s several thousand dollars worth of free software. But there were no t-shirts, no pens, no notepads. Heck, I was even expecting to get a bunch of ads and “special offers” from the “launch partners” in a plastic bag along with the software. But no – all I got was the software, held in place by a rubber band:

That is exactly what was handed to me. Man, is MS getting cheap or what? They also sprang for “breakfast”, which was a paper bag with a blueberry muffin, orange, apple, granola bar and “fun size” Baby Ruth and Milky Way bars. People in larger cities reported that they got their breakfast in “nifty insulated plastic lunch bags” (like this). I just got a damn paper bag!

The Server 2008 license is interesting. The Windows Server 2008 license is technically valid for only 1 year. It is not timebombed in any way, and our presenter said that Microsoft has no problem with anyone using this software for as long as they want, provided that they don’t use it on a production machine. So why the “1 year EULA limit”? It’s apparently because if they gave away shrink-wrapped copies, they’d have to have everyone fill out a 1099 form and pay tax on it. This way, MS can claim that it’s a “demo version” and the value is therefore zero. What’s surprising is that our presenter told us all this straight-up. MS is basically thumbing their noses at the Treasury Department, and is plainly, out in the open, telling everyone that this is a tax dodge!

The Charlotte Convention Center is weird. Charlotte’s new light rail system has a line running directly through the Convention Center. The smoking decks are right next to the rail lines… as in, I could have spit on a passing train if I wanted to. The trains run on electricity, and there are some high-voltage tracks out there… so there are signs out in the smoking areas warning people to NOT jump the rail in case of fire, but instead of go back inside the building and exit on 2nd Street. I know this sounds snarky, but I’ve always heard that the last thing you want to do in case of fire is go back inside a burning building. Hmmmm.

The Westin is funny! When you take the College Street exit from I-277, you’re dumped onto College, which is a one-way street. I normally pass the Westin Hotel’s parking deck to park at a lot directly across from the Convention Center. This time, I opted to park at the Westin (which turned out to be a good move, as the lot I would have parked in was full, and it’s giant pain in the ass to get back to the Westin deck). Anyway, as I stood waiting for the elevator in the Westin parking deck, I noticed some business cards in a holder mounted just above the call button. The cards said “You are parked on level…”. Westin has cards with the parking level printed on them, so you can remember where you parked when it’s time to leave. It’s a nice touch… only the name of my parking level was…

Sweet! Westin named their parking deck after a bowel movement!

One of the interesting things about Linux is the license that governs its use: the General Public License (GPL). Under the GPL, you are free to take Linux and customize it to your heart’s delight, as long as you release the source code of your changes to the public. I could, for example, buy a bunch of PDAs from a Chinese manufacturer and take a version of Linux, strip it down to the bare essentials, and load it on the PDAs. As long as I give the source code out to anyone that wants it, I can legally sell these “jimcofer.com PDAs” all day long.

Network appliance maker Linksys released several routers in the early 2000s that used Linux as their firmware (firmware is the term used for “operating systems for devices”. Almost anything electronic has a firmware, and many devices – like CD\DVD drives, motherboards and routers – have firmwares that can be updated as new features or bug fixes become available).

A group of folks got the source code from Linksys and created DD-WRT, a free, open-source firmware that added a lot of interesting features not commonly seen in consumer-grade routers. In time, DD-WRT either branched off or directly inspired many similar firmwares, like HyperWRT, OpenWrt, X-Wrt and Tomato. Tomato is a free, open-source project that adds many of the same features as DD-WRT, but with a user-friendly interface.

I’ve replaced the wireless router at my home several times. The first was an early Linksys 802.11b model, which worked fine but seemed a bit slow, so it was replaced with a Microsoft MN-700 802.11g model. This worked OK, but had a bug (common to home routers) that caused it to stop responding after using Bittorrent for a few days. This router was replaced with a Gigabyte 802.11g model that I loved; sadly, this router gave up the ghost after a couple year’s good service. This was replaced with a D-Link model that was nothing but junk. The D-Link rebooted several times a day, sometimes as many as 10 times in a row.

I decided to get a new router, but this time I’d do some research. We have VoIP service at home from a company similar to (but cheaper than) Vonage. VoIP requires upstream bandwidth, and if I have Bittorrent running, callers frequently can’t hear my voice as all of my upstream bandwidth is being sucked away by Bittorrent. So I needed a router that would do Quality of Service (QoS), a technology whereby data packets are assigned a priority based on certain characteristics, and some data packets may be delayed (or dropped altogether, if necessary) to allow other, more important, packets to be delivered.

My research led me to the Linksys WRT54GL, a router that Linksys makes especially for home enthusiasts.

To upgrade to Tomato, set up the new router, then download the latest version of the firmware from the project page. Next, log in to the router’s admin panel and navigate to the “upgrade firmware” page. Select the appropriate Tomato firmware for your router model and click the “Update” button. In around 2 minutes, simply reload the admin page. If everything has gone well, you should see something like this:

You then configure the router basics, just as you would with any model. Although Tomato’s interface takes a bit getting used to (especially with its advanced features), it’s easy once you get the hang of it. I also appreciate many of the “Web 2.0” type aspects of the UI. For example, one of Tomato’s most popular features are the bandwidth graphs. As you might guess, these graphs show you how much bandwidth you’ve used; the neat thing is that the graphs update in real time, so you can see at an instant where your bandwidth is going. Many other features that normally require you to reload a typical router’s admin page are handled dynamically in Tomato. And you can also sort most things in any way you’d like. For example, on the “port forwarding” page you can sort the forwardings by name, IP address, or port range – which is handy in situations where you need to forward a lot of ports to different computers.

But the Tomato’s best feature – the one that the geeks love – is QoS. Setting up QoS isn’t easy or intuitive, even with Tomato. But once you get everything set up, it works beautifully. I’ve had Bittorrent uploading at the maximum rate, then gotten a phone call. The caller reports that I sound just fine, and I can actually watch my Bittorrent program slow down as BT packets are dropped in favor of VoIP packets:

My QoS configuration. In the screen cap above, I have given highest priority to any data coming from the MAC address of my PAP2 phone adapter. After that, priority is given to DNS packets and basic web browsing. HTTP traffic of greater than 512kb (a.k.a downloads) is then given priority, with Bittorrent traffic getting the lowest priority. Remember, QoS only drops or slows down packets if necessary, so if I’m not getting a phone call or surfing the Internet, BT operates a full speed.

Tomato also has the ability to update not just one, but two DDNS providers. So if you use a dynamic DNS update service like DynDNS or No-IP and you use OpenDNS, you can have Tomato update both services as your IP address changes. In fact, when\if you go to set up OpenDNS in the DDNS page, Tomato will ask if you want to use OpenDNS’s DNS servers permanently; just click “OK” and the static DNS entries will be added to your router’s configuration automatically. It’s a nice touch!

There are some nice features for wireless users, too. You can change the amount of power applied to the antenna in Tomato, which makes your wireless network more powerful and helps eliminate “dead spaces” in your house. A router running Tomato can also act as a wireless client if necessary. Tomato can even scan the area for other wireless networks:

This feature isn’t, strictly speaking, necessary. But it’s really cool to be able to scan wireless networks without having to go downstairs and get on Lisa’s wireless desktop.

I can’t tell you how happy I am with Tomato so far. It’s only been a few weeks, but online life is just so much easier with Tomato. I no longer have to use my Bittorrent client’s scheduler to slow down upstream bandwidth during “calling hours”, nor do I have to dash across the room to slow it down manually when a call comes in. Everything “just works”. It’s sad that it’s taken this long, but now that I’m here I won’t go back to the “old way”.

If you’re in the market for a new router, make sure that it’s compatible with Tomato – even if you don’t plan on making the leap any time soon!

Do you use both an Outlook Calendar and a Google Calendar? Maybe you’re required to use an Outlook Calendar at work, but use a Google Calendar at home or with your mobile phone. Maybe you’ve wanted the ability to synchronize the two…

Now you can! Just download Google Calendar Sync and you’ll be on your way! You can choose to have two-way synchronization between the calendars or only one-way only (from Google Calendar to your Outlook Calendar, or from your Outlook Calendar to your Google Calendar only).

It’s from Google, it’s free, and it works.

If you use Firefox, you probably know (and love) the built-in spellchecker. However, it has one tiny failing: by default, it only checks spelling in large forms (such as the body of an email on a webmail form). It won’t check smaller items like the subject lines of emails or online comments. If you’d like to enable spellchecking in smaller forms, just check out this post over at Download Squad. Here’s the skinny for people already familiar with about:config…

1. Open up the Firefox configuration window by typing about:config in the address bar.
2. Type layout.spellcheckDefault in the filter box.
3. Change the value from 1 to 2.