How in the TECH

Ensure your deleted files stay deleted with MooO Shredder

Adam Myers — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:21:35 +0000

Many users may be surprised to learn that a deleted file isn’t actually removed from the hard drive immediately. If you ever wondered why file deletion was so quick while file creation took some time – this is why. When a file is deleted in Windows, and most operating systems behave similarly, it isn’t removed, only the reference to the file is removed. It’s the same idea of looking up the word flabbergast in the index of a book – once that word is removed from the index it makes it much more difficult to find it’s usage throughout the book, but not impossible. Once the reference to the file is removed, the hard drive is free to use the files previously allocated space for future file writes. Until that space on the hard drive is overwritten, the file can be recovered. Not as easily as you may see on shows like CSI, but it is still possible with readily available software.

You can imagine why this may be a problem for some. When a file is deleted, we want it completely deleted; not just de-referenced! Thankfully, there’s an app for that! MooO File Shredder is a fantastic free Windows application that can be used to securely delete files. MooO contains 4 levels of paranoia as it relates to the actual deletion. With each level the number of in the deletion algorithm increases. At the most basic level, the file is overwritten with random data once while changing the file name, size, attributes, and time stamp once. At the most insane of levels, this process is repeated many times over – leaving the original data unrecoverable. Repeating a few of this steps up to 35 times is likely overkill for most anyone, but choices and options are rarely a bad thing.

The process is straightforward and simple. With MooO open and the appropriate algorithm selected from the Method drop-down, just drag and drop the file(s) you wish to shred into the application interface. MooO handles the rest of the heavy lifting for you.

Creating a bootable thumb drive from Windows installation DVD

Adam Myers — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:36:31 +0000

Microsoft was quite proud in their achievement that Windows 7 would be able to run on netbook-class hardware – something Vista truly struggled with. I have to agree with Microsoft’s boasting, as this was quite an accomplishment and the initial reports point to this as fact.

If your netbook came pre-installed with Windows XP, or worse Vista, it might be beneficial to upgraded to Microsoft’s latest offering. As has been the case in every Windows release this decade, upgrading your install is a simple as plopping the upgrade CD/DVD in your drive and away you go. Simple, if you ignore the fact that your netbook came sans a DVD drive! Instead, your only option is to boot and install from a thumb drive. Unfortunately, getting the installation files from the Upgrade DVD to the USB thumb drive is not as simple as a copy paste.

WinToFlash is a free utility that facilitates the process of migrating the installation files from the DVD onto the USB thumb drive all while making the device bootable. Wizard driven and supporting all the recent versions of Windows – including Windows 7, WinToFlash is a snap to use – supply the path to the installation DVD, the path to your USB thumb drive, and click Run. That’s about as easy as any piece of software can possibly be.

Hiding “Libraries” in Windows 7 Explorer

Adam Myers — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:29:37 +0000

Libraries is one of the new features introduced in Windows 7 and typically you will either love it or hate it. Libraries can be thought of as virtual folders on your hard drive. Their contents are composed of specific data types, like music or documents, that are found throughout your entire hard drive. In previous Windows you may have your music files spread throughout multiple folders and drives – with libraries, once configured, you would have a single point of access to all your media.

Ever so slowly, Microsoft is transitioning away from the traditional C:\ and folder hierarchy organizational system. Windows 7 libraries is truly a window to what is to come. I have found that long-time PC users are resistant to this type of change – we, I’m including myself in this group, like to know exactly where our files are on the computer and manage them closer to the file system level rather than in a virtual realm like libraries. It’s a paradigm shift that in all actuality, we’ll likely just have to learn to accept sooner or later.

Unfortunately, Windows 7 pushes it’s Library concept front in center in Explorer whether you use it or not – the links to your libraries are always displayed. With a simple registry tweak, however, the Library listing can be hidden – which suits my minimalist perspective.

Launch regedit.exe from the Windows 7 search box.

Navigate the tree down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\

Delete the key {031E4825-7B94-4dc3-B131-E946B44C8DD5} and reboot.

Checking Firefox bookmarks for dead links

Adam Myers — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:27:08 +0000

The idea of having hundreds of bookmarks in your browser of choice is slowly fading away. Sites that I frequent often and therefor candidates for bookmarking are now read via an RSS subscription in Google Reader. However, there are still a sizeable portion of Internet users who rely exclusively on the browser bookmark system and even though I’m a heavy RSS user, I still do bookmark sites on occasion.

With bookmarks still maintaining relevancy it is shocking to know that most browsers do not contain any sort of functionality to search and eradicate dead links, or sites that no longer exist after you’ve bookmarked them. Instead, the process generally follows the path of clicking on a bookmark made months ago, seeing the page is no longer accessible, and updating or deleting that bookmark. You only know a site doesn’t exist when you need it most. This is messy and generally not a great browsing experience, certainly not on platform that should be considered mature.

Check Places is a Firefox extension that can search for duplicate as well as dead bookmarks in your profile. Once installed, the Check Places link is access from within your Bookmarks dialog. It’s usage is straightforward, as you may expect. Check Places effectively hits every website in your bookmark list and determines, based on the received response, whether the site is valid. The entire process only took a minute or so on my testing of a 175 bookmarks. On the completion of the scan you are presented with the results and at that point you can decide how best to proceed – such as deleting all the dead entries.

Check Places is another example of a Firefox extension that should be included with the native browser.

Create a fresh system image after Windows 7 upgrade

Adam Myers — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:27:14 +0000

Everyone knows you that proper computing practices involve backing up your computer and the important files on it. Unfortunately, those words of advice often fall on deaf ears for one reason or another – the only users who tend to maintain backups are those that have already lost precious files from an experienced computing disaster. It’s a shame but it is the reality we still live in.

Microsoft continues it’s attempt to hammer in the issue of PC backups in Windows 7. After your successful upgrade to their latest release, the Action Center contains 1 message – set up a backup! All versions of Windows 7 contain the functionality of creating a system image that allows for system recovery in the advent of a major crash. Previously, system imaging was only available in the business versions of Windows or from 3rd party utilities such as Norton Ghost.

From the Windows 7 Start Search, search for back up your computer and execute it.

On the left-hand menu click Create a system image.

This initiates the system image Wizard where you answer a few questions, including: where do you want to save the backup and what drives do you want include in the backup. Answer appropriately.

After confirming you answers Windows will begin creating the system image, complete with a progress bar that attempts to detail the time to completion.

With the image creation process complete, Windows will prompt you to create a System Repair Disc. The system repair disc is necessary in order to restore your freshly created image in the future, so it is very important to continue with the second wizard.

The wizard is very straight forward and will require a blank CD to write the information to.

This bootable CD is the gateway to recovery of your system in the future – keep it safe!

Performing clean install of Windows 7 with upgrade media

Adam Myers — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:21:58 +0000

Unless you’ve been on another planet as of late – or a Mac user, you are likely aware that Windows 7 has been released to the masses. While it is true that the majority of the Windows market never actually purchases a retail copy of Windows – rather it comes installed on their new computer, there are enthusiasts such as myself that purchase and upgrade to the latest release at the first moment possible.

In order to save some money many just buy the Upgrade version of Windows which they are legally entitled to use assuming they have a full retail copy of any version of Windows post 2000. However, installing the Upgrade copy requires a pre-existing install of Windows on your hard drive – which is often not the case as enthusiasts tend to format the disk and wipe it clean before installing. With Vista, it was possible to perform a clean install by installing Vista Upgrade twice – the first time to a blank hard drive and then once again over top of the previous Vista install. Cumbersome, but it did satisfy the populace.

Thankfully, Microsoft has made the clean install of Windows 7 with upgrade media a bit easier, or at least a faster success path. Many users, myself included, were able to perform a clean install on a blank hard drive and then activate without any problems. If by chance you are one of the unlucky ones you likely saw the 0xC004F061 error upon an activation attempt. If that is the case, Paul Thurrott has a workaround that I’m going to detail here.

From the clean install performed above ensure that you are fully patched from Windows Update.

Open regedit.exe from the Start Search box and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/

Change MediaBootInstall from 1 to 0 by double clicking on it.

Close out of regedit.exe and open an Administrative Rights Command Prompt – cmd in Start->Search, right-clicking and selecting Run as administrator.

In the Command Prompt window execute slmgr /rearm.

Reboot Windows and then try the Activation Utility once again. Your copy of Windows should now pass the activation process.

Return real-time search results in Google

Adam Myers — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:42:03 +0000

Most users view Google as a simple and easy to use search engine, type in a few keywords in on the sparse search page and click search. Results are returned for your query and ideally you’ve found what you are looking for on the first page. Searching with Google is truly easy but it doesn’t have to be so simple – a vast array of options are uncovered if you click the Show Options link just above your returned results. Here you can return results from just forums and blogs or only content within the last few days.

In an effort to keep the Google interface clean, the designers at Google have hidden all the additional functionality from the main interface and as a result, I’m convinced the majority of users don’t take advantage of it. Now that I’ve perhaps uncovered new metrics to help you hone in on your search let me ask you if you were aware you could retrieve real-time search results in Google? Likely not, as it’s not even a clickable option under Show Options!

Keen Internet users may notice the &tbs=qdr: near the end of your Google search results URL when using the time-filter search. The characters immediately proceeding the colon are your date filter, such as d for day, s for seconds, or w for weeks. While Google doesn’t promote the real-time search functionality – mainly because it still is a work in progress – the feature can be unlocked by manipulating the search string URL. A n10 would return all results scraped within the last 10 minutes.

Unfortunately this can be cumbersome to achieve. That’s why Steve Rubel has come up with a javascript bookmarklet to accomplish the same thing quite easily.

Adjusting Windows 7 Aero Peak display delay

Adam Myers — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:12:37 +0000

Microsoft has released Windows 7 and one of the useful features, that I find at least, is an addition to the Aero display framework introduced with Vista – Aero Peak. Aero Peak is actually an expansion of the Show Desktop quick launch icon in previous Windows iterations. When initiated, Aero Peak will display just the outlines of all open application windows which allows you to quickly peak at your Desktop. Aero Peak is activated by hovering to the right of your clock on your tray of the taskbar.

If you get into the habit of using this new feature you are likely to grow annoyed with the latency delay before Peak fires. Here’s how you can tweak the delay and it involves the Windows Registry.

Open regedit.exe from the Start Menu search or run box and navigate to the following registry entry from the left-hand tree view.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

On the right-hand side look for the key DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime – if it doesn’t exist, like in my install, it can be created by right-clicking in that window and choosing New->DWORD Value.

Double-click on the key and change the value to the delay time you wish in milliseconds, ensuring that you are in decimal mode and not hex. A setting of 0 is no delay which is what I use. You’ll need to log off and on to apply the change.

Removing third party system services from Windows

Adam Myers — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:04:13 +0000

Windows System Services are background processes in Windows that are either vital for running certain applications or Windows itself. Typically they require no user interaction to perform their role and as such, they are usually configured to start automatically upon system boot. If you’ve ever looked in Task Manager for the list of running processes, Windows System Services are identified by the name svchost.exe and owned by the user SYSTEM. By and large, most of the system services are provided directly from Microsoft but other vendors are just as likely to introduce their own. If you have any anti-virus software installed, that manufacturer likely has a few background processes registered to execute on your system in the background, without your interaction, for example.

In a perfect world, when software is uninstalled properly by the user all remnants are eradicated from the system. Veteran users of Windows know that this is rarely the case. There can be cases where the vendor uninstall routine fails on you, leaving your system in a quasi-clean state. It happens more than you can imagine and is one of the reasons Windows begins to stumble after using the same install for a long time. In these situations, you may find yourself with system services that are of no use. Launching the Services control panel – Win+R and then services.msc – will display all the services registered to the system. However, this interface does not provide any way to actually de-register or delete the process entry. To do that requires a bit of Command Prompt magic.

Open an Administrator Command Prompt with Start->Run->cmd or typing cmd in the Vista/Win 7 search box, right-clicking on the result and choosing Run as administrator.
In the resulting black Command Prompt window the command to delete a system service is: sc delete
The service name can be determined from the services.msc application above. Located the desired service and double click on it to open up it’s Properties. Look for the line labeled Server name. Here you can see I want to remove the service name McTaskManager.

The full command for step 2 would then be sc delete McTaskManager. That’s really all there is to it!

Expand shortened URLs to the real address

Adam Myers — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:36:02 +0000

URL shortening services became wildly popular a few years back. Users could take a long and complicated website link and pass it to a service like Tiny URL that would condense the link and essentially make it portable. The short address could then be passed more easily through email and forums where a longer address would likely get split across multiple lines of the document – it would be too long for to display on a single line of the document basically. Today, you are more often likely to come across the shortened URLs on Twitter where the 140 character limitation exists. Services like bit.ly allow users to pass sites over Twitter without impacting the hard limit of 140 characters.

Tiny URL and bit.ly, amongst many other knock-offs, fulfill a need quite well but at the same time, they are a slap in the face of security. Security conscious people preach and stress to users not to click on links blindly. Because the shortening services effectively cloak the destined webpage, you aren’t aware of where you are going until you are already there – and then it may as well be too late if the destination is an affected virus-ridden website. Admittedly, to most, this is an over-paranoid approach to web surfing but it still bears mentioning to me. However, thanks to Firefox, their is an extension for this!

Long URL Please is a Firefox add-on that automatically expands shortened URLs transparently; meaning the tiny URL is replaced with the full address within the originating webpage. Long URL Please is simple and it’s options reflect as much. You’re given a few methods of modifying the link and the way it displays in your browser but that’s relatively it. Still, it’s a very useful add-on to me as I like to know generally where I’m headed to when I want to click on these types of URLs.