I found two tools which provide a wealth of information about an USB Device.ChipGenius(by Chinese Developers at mydigit.cn) and USBDeview (by NirSoft at nirsoft.net).

These tools can be used to identity fake USB Drives and find the Mass Production and Format tools corresponding to the USB Device.

ChipGenius is a USB device chip type detection tool that can automatically query the USB disks, MP3/MP4 Players, card readers, external hard disks and all USB devices.It displays the master chip models, manufacturers, brands, and provide relevant information to their Mass Production Tools. It also displays a variety of useful information such as VID / PID information, device name, interface speed, serial numbers and  equipment versions.

Download

USBDeview is a small utility that lists all USB devices that currently connected to your computer, as well as all USB devices that you previously used.
For each USB device, extended information is displayed: Device name/description, device type, serial number (for mass storage devices), the date/time that device was added, VendorID, ProductID, and more…
USBDeview also allows you to uninstall USB devices that you previously used, and disconnect USB devices that are currently connected to your computer.

VMWare Player 3.0 has some very interesting features.

You can now create VMWare Virtual Machines from within.You don’t have to use VMXBuilder as outlined in this article

It supports Windows XP Mode without Hardware Virtualization.However this does not work on Home editions of Windows 7 and earlier versions of Windows.

VMWare player is faster than VMLite (which is based on Sun Virtualbox).However VMlite runs on all versions of Windows.

VMware Player is the easiest way to run multiple operating systems at the same time on your PC. With its user-friendly interface, VMware Player makes it effortless for anyone to try out Windows 7, Chrome OS or the latest Linux releases, or create isolated virtual machines to safely test new software and surf the Web. VMware Player can also be used to run a virtual copy of an old PC so that you can recycle the old machines you have under your desk or stored in the closet.                                                                                                                  Read More about VMWare Player at http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

According to VMWare Player’s release notes

Windows XP Mode Compatible — Import a Windows XP Mode virtual machine using VMware Player 3.0 and run the virtual machine without being prompted to enter a Windows XP license key. VMware Player enables the Windows XP Mode virtual machine to take advantage of more than one processor, render high-end graphics, integrate seamlessly with Unity, and transfer files easily with drag and drop, and shared folders. VMware Player also has the ability to run concurrently with Windows XP Mode.

1. Download and install Windows XP Mode (you don’t have to download Microsoft Virtual PC) and VMWare Player
2. Start VMWare Player.Go to File-Import XP Mode VM.VMWare Player will start importing XP Mode.
3. You should now see a new virtual Machine called Windows XP Mode in VMWare Player.
4. Just click on Play Virtual Machine to run XP Mode

You can find a detailed guide on running Windows XP Mode in VMWare at Howtogeek.com

When you use XP Mode in VMWare Player , an entry called xpmode.enabled = “TRUE” is made in the configuration file Windows XP Mode.vmx .

This entry works only in Windows 7 (excluding Home editions).In earlier versions of Windows and in Linux Operating system XP Mode is disabled.

ImDisk is a virtual disk driver for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008. It can create virtual hard disk, floppy or CD/DVD drives using image files or system memory. The install package installs a console-mode control program called imdisk.exe and a Control Panel applet. After install is finished, type imdisk without parameters for syntax help or double click the ImDisk icon in the Control Panel. It also adds a menu item in Windows Explorer so that you can right-click on a file to mount it as a virtual disk drive.  The driver, service and control program can be uninstalled using the Add/Remove programs applet in the Control Panel. No reboot is required for installing or uninstalling.

Download Imdisk :      Author Site :       Imdisk Forum

Main features

* It is possible to mount files as virtual harddisk partitions, virtual floppy drives or virtual CD/DVD-ROM drives. All in one driver.

It can also create iso images of CD/DVD Drives and images of Hard Disks and Floppy Drives.

* It is possible to use virtual memory instead of physical files for the virtual disk storage.

* The driver can use virtual memory as storage as mentioned above and pre-load it with the contents of a disk image file. The disk image file is then closed and not modified, all changes are written to the virtual memory section only.

* There is an associated user-mode service that can be used to redirect I/O requests to other computers on the network. The computer that actually serves the I/O requests must run the ‘devio’ tool, included in the source package. This tool has been compiled and tested both under FreeBSD and Windows. This makes it possible to boot a system with a FreeBSD Live-CD and run the devio tool on one of the harddisk partitions. That partition can then be mounted from another machine on the network that has ImDisk installed.

* It is possible to change the settings for the ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver so that it starts as part of the Windows boot process and for example automatically creates one or more virtual disks and pre-loads them with the contents of disk image files.

Special note for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7
On Vista and Server 2008 you need to either turn off UAC, User Access Control, or setup the driver to auto-load on system startup. Setting the driver to auto-start is recommended.

Set the ImDisk driver to auto-load at Command Prompt:

or

Set the ImDisk driver to auto-load using GUI: Open Device Manager, View -> Show hidden devices. Under “Non-plug-and-play devices” right-click ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver and select properties. On the “Driver” tab, change start type to Automatic.

In my previous post I had posted about Kaspersky Rescue Disk.It can scan and remove viruses without booting into windows.The main disadvantage of Kaspersky Rescue Disk is that it has not been updated for a long time.(According to http://devbuilds.kaspersky-labs.com/devbuilds/RescueDisk/ it was last updated on 23 Jun 2009 10:05:01)

The virus definitions in this rescue disk are out of date.Even thought the rescue disk has an option to update the virus definitions from the internet, it is not very useful as the updates are not saved.You have to download all the updates each and every time you use the rescue disk.

So I have made a simple Batch File which solves this problem.

Kaspersky Rescue Disk Updater is a Windows Command Script or a batch file which uses KLUpdater to update the virus definitions of the Rescue Disk ISO.

Download Kaspersky Rescue Disk Updaterv1.2

Change-log:v1.2 Downloads only the I386 bases files.The earlier versions wasted a lot of time downloading x64 bases files.

Download Kaspersky Rescue Disk Updaterv1.1.

Download Kaspersky Rescue Disk Updaterv1.0.

1. Extract the downloaded zip file (kasresupd1.1.zip)
2. Copy kav_rescue_2008.iso into the kasresupd  folder.The folder should look like this.
3. Double Click on diskupdt and it will update the virus definitions of the rescue disk.
4. 
5. 
6. 
7. 
8. 
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10. 
11. The updated Rescue Disk will be created as kav_rescue_2009.iso.Burn this iso to a CD.
12. After booting the Updated Rescue Disk you can see that the in built Updater has very few updates to download.

Please post your feedback and suggestions.

Kaspersky Rescue Disk is like an on-demand virus scanner that allows you to scan and remove virus without booting in Windows. When Windows is running, virus are active and sometimes it is tough to remove them. So the most effective way of removing virus is when they are inactive.

This is one of the safe ways to remove viruses from a computer without the risk of getting infected.All you have to do is just boot from the Kaspersky Rescue Disk and you can scan and remove threats from an infected computer without the risk of infecting other files or computers.

1. Download Kaspersky Rescue Disk from here http://devbuilds.kaspersky-labs.com/devbuilds/RescueDisk/.Currently the filename of the iso is kav_rescue_2008.iso
2. Burn this ISO image to a CD, insert it into the infected system’s CD-ROM drive, enter the PC’s BIOS, set it to boot from the CD and reboot the computer.
3. The interface takes some time to load.Once everything is loaded you will be presented with a screen like this.
4. Select the partitions you want to scan and click on Start Scan.

Microsoft has released Windows XP Mode for Windows 7, a virtual machine package for Windows Virtual PC containing a pre-installed, licensed copy of Windows XP SP3 as its guest operating system. Windows XP Mode is pre-installed with integration components and pre-configured to allow user to run the virtual machine immediately right after installed, to provide backward compatibility for legacy productivity software with seamless access from host desktop capability.

Both Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode is available for download from official Windows Virtual PC homepage at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx or from Microsoft Download Center (Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode).

Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 makes it easy run many of your productivity programs that run on Windows XP on Windows 7. It uses virtualization technology such as Windows Virtual PC to provide a Virtual Windows XP environment for Windows 7.Windows XP Mode provides a 32-bit virtual Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (SP3) environment. This download includes a virtual hard disk (.vhd file) with Windows XP SP3 pre installed. Client virtualization software, such as Windows Virtual PC is required to use Windows XP Mode. Windows Virtual PC requires processor capable of hardware virtualization, with AMD-V™, Intel® VT or VIA® VT turned on in the BIOS.

The main disadvantage of this is that Windows Virtual PC requires processor capable of hardware virtualization, with AMD-V™, Intel® VT or VIA® VT turned on in the BIOS.

If your processor is not capable of hardware virtualization then you cannot use Microsoft Virtual PC to use Windows XP Mode.

However you can use VMlite a virtualization technology based on Sun VirtualBox to run XP Mode on your Windows 7 computer irrespective of whether your processor supports Hardware Virtualization or not.

VMlite can also run XP Mode in Windows Vista.

Download VMlite here http://www.vmlite.com/index.php/products/vmlite-xp-mode

Download XP Mode from Microsoft

Download the complete How to Guide with screen shots here http://www.vmlite.com/index.php/products/vmlite-xp-mode/howto-guide

VMLite XP Mode creates a virtual Windows XP environment in Windows 7 so that you can run your older applications.Through seamless integration,you can install such applications and invoke them directly from Windows 7 Start Menu!

VMLite XP Mode runs like Microsoft’s XP mode, but does not require virtualization support from hardware (it takes advantage of Intel® VT-x or AMD-V™ if available). Neither does it require advanced Windows 7 options.

VMLite XP Mode Features

• Provides similar functions as Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode from Microsoft
• No requirement for hardware-assisted virtualization, namely, it runs without VT-x or AMD-v
• Provides seamless integration with host desktop to run applications from Windows XP virtual machine
• Host files can be accessed from within the XP Mode virtual machine easily
• Control-C/V can be used to copy files and other contexts between host and vm, between different vms.
• Support 3rd party virtual machine images: VMDK, VHD, VDI, HDD
• Runs on any PC with Windows XP and above as host operating systems
• High performance, XP Mode boots in 20 seconds
• Supports XP, Vista, Windows 7, 2003 server, 2008 server as guest, for example, you can run Windows 7 on XP to have similar integration features
• Supports Virtual Application Mode – if you start a vm application from host Start menu, this program is launched within a special context, called “Virtual Application Mode”, where My Documents, My Desktop, and other special shell folders will be redirected to the host. For example, if you launch XP Mode Word from host Start menu, you will see green borders, and when you save a new document to My Documents, it will be actually saved to your host My Documents folder.

Veoh.com is one of the most popular video sharing websites.Unfortunately all videos cannot be viewed completely in the browser.You can only watch a 5 minutes preview.To watch the complete video you need to download the Veoh Web Player.This application downloads the entire video to your computer.Unfortunately Veoh Web Player  works only in Windows Operating System.I had earlier posted an article on Downloading Veoh videos without Veoh Web Player in Ubuntu .However the method outlined in that post no longer works now.

Hold-Tube.com is an online service from where you can download videos from Veoh,Youtube,Metacafe etc.

1. Go to Veoh.com and open the video of your choice
2. Under the Video there are 2 boxes Embed and Link
3. Copy the contents of the link button.
4. Go to Hold-tube.com and paste the link and click on Download.
5. The download links will appear at the bottom of the page.You can either download in flv format or mp4 format.

There are other ways of downloading videos using the hold-tube.com service as listed at http://hold-tube.com/page/how-download-videos.php. However the greasemonkey script and the bookmarklet do not always work properly with Veoh.com

The main advantage of Hold-Tube.com is that it is an online service and is independent of the OS and the browser.

When you boot a normal Windows Vista/7 DVD,you are presented with two options , Install and Repair.The repair option loads the Windows Recovery Environment .Windows RE is new for Windows Vista/7 and completely replaces the recovery console in Windows XP. In this environment you can repair a computer running Windows Vista/7.This recovery environment has very useful tools like System Restore and Startup Repair.

Unfortunately when you boot an unattended Windows DVD(which contains autounattend.xml), you are directly taken to the installation routine.There is no option to launch the recovery environment.So if you want to repair a computer using an unattended Windows DVD,just follow the steps given below.

1. Boot from unattended Windows DVD
2. You are directly taken to installation routine(probably the disk management step)
3. Press Shift+F10 to launch the PE command Prompt
4. Type cd recovery
5. Type recenv.exe

Thats it.You now have your recovery environment from where you can repair your computer.

LiveLinux USB Creator (formerly uSbuntu) is a free software for Windows that allows you to create a bootable Live USB key with a Linux on it.It supports many flavours and distros of Linux.It is written using AutoIt and the source code is freely available.The best thing about this software is that it offers an exclusive option of automatic virtualization using portable virtual box to directly run Linux in Windows without any configuration nor installation.

There are 5 steps in the interface and they are self explanatory.A detailed guide on each step is given here http://www.linuxliveusb.com/how-to.html.Each step has traffic lighst(red,orange and green) which indicate the status of the particular step.

Virtualization of USB Drive

Step 4 of interface has option called Enable launching of LinuxDrive in Windows .This downloads portable VirtualBox(66 mb) and automates the procedure given in one my earlier posts Boot your USB Drive in VirtualBox to run Linux in Windows without any configuration or installation.

After all the steps have been completed execute Virtualize_This_Key.exe located in the VirtualBox folder on your usb drive to start the portable virtualbox and boot from the usb drive.

Download LiveLinux USB Creator

LinuxLive USB Creator is currently supporting these Linuxes :

• Ubuntu / Kubuntu / Xubuntu 9.10 & 9.04 Desktop CD
• Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10new
• CentOS 5.4new *
• Debian Live 5.0.2 Gnome/KDE/LXDE/xFcenew *
• Damn Small linux 4.4.10new *
• Puppy Linux 4.3.1new *
• Toutou Linux 4.1.2new *
• Gparted Live 0.4.6-1new *
• Clonezilla 1.2.2-31new *
• Fedora 11 (KDE / Gnome) Live CD
• Kuki 2.8
• Mint 6 & 7 Main Edition
• Crunchbang 9.04 Standard & Lite Editions
• Super OS 9.04

Screenshots :- http://www.linuxliveusb.com/en/screenshots.html

The direct download links to the Windows 7 operating system purchased online have been leaked. The installation files of Windows 7 is hosted on the server on domain msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net owned by Digital River, one of the delivery partners for Vista and also the brain behind Windows Marketplace e-commerce store .

Note:You cannot activate Windows 7 until you buy Windows 7 and get the product key.

You can use Windows 7 legally without activating  only for 30 days.

Here are the download links.

Home Premium x86:
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65732/X15-65732.iso
Home Premium x64:
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65733/X15-65733.iso
Professional x86:
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65804/X15-65804.iso
Professional x64:
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65805/X15-65805.iso

After downloading the ISO you can burn it to a DVD using your CD Writing Software like Nero or IMGBurn.

Alternatively you can Install Windows 7 Directly from HardDisk without using any secondary Media

You can also install Windows 7 from your USB Drive using either of the following tools

• Microsoft’s Bootable USB Creator
• WinToFlash

Update:The above download links are only for Home Premium and Professional Edition of Windows.However the ISO contains all editions of Windows 7.The edition which is installed is determined by a small file called ei.cfg in the ISO.By modifying this file you can convert your HomePremium or Professional edition to any other edition.This can be done by using a tool called Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher.Alternately you can create a universal Windows 7 disc “universal disc” that will prompt the user to select an edition during setup.This can be done by using a tool called ei.cfg Removal Utility .This tool just removes the ei.cfg file from the ISO.

Both these tools can be downloaded from http://code.kliu.org/misc/win7utils/

So you don’t have to download both HomePremium X86 and Professional X86.Download any one and use the ei.cfg Removal Ultility to create a Universal Disc which can install all editions of Windows 7.