No system is an island - Using Windows And Tech Step By Step

Roboform is an automated application to fill web based forms and it can be easily installed as an add-on to browsers to manage and fill forms efficiently.

To install it,go to this add-on link for Internet Explorer.

The same link can be reached by selecting Tools > Manage Add-ons > Find more add-ons in Internet explorer.

Click on the download link and save the setup.




Once done,launch the roboform setup.





In customizing the setup,select the option 'Install adapter that allows Roboform to work in Firefox',this will install roboform in Firefox as well.

Now comes the important part of entering a master password which controls access to all the stored data in roboform.




Make sure that a good easy to remember password is used here.



Once the setup is complete,the roboform add-on will show up in Internet Explorer as well as in Firefox.

All done installing roboform.

In earlier posts,I had shown how Windows Vista can be setup as a SSH server.

Now,let's see how we connect using ssh to this configured server.

For this,any ssh client will do,Putty is highly recommended and it is free.

Get the entire pack of Putty for Windows which supports most of the connection types from here.

Install it with administrative privileges and launch the Putty terminal.



Enter the IP address or the host name of the system that you will connect to using Putty.Since we want to access via ssh,the option SSH is selected as connection type,note that port number automatically changes to 22 once this is selected.

Once the IP/host name along with the connection type is entered,it is better if we save this as a session so that going forward we can simply load this session.Here,this is saved as AVP-BOX.

To connect,hit OK.

The following warning message should show up when connecting for the first time :



This ideally should come only when you are connecting to the remote system for the first time because the subsequent logins will have the physical address of the system (the network card which accepts the connections) cached in the client machine's registry.

This warning also pops up after say a network card of the server is changed thereby changing the original physical address which needs to be cached again on the client system.Anything apart from this can be a potential MITM attack scenario.

The login prompt will ask for the user name and password (ideally administrative privileges),once correctly entered the prompt shows up and you are now managing a remote system via ssh using Putty.



To close the connection,type exit at the prompt.

Enjoy.

Windows Vista task manager is greatly improved.It comes with useful additional features of managing services and also of file tracking based on the services running.This proves helpful if we want to manage services directly and see their application/system files from task manager instead of going to (Start > Run > services.msc) routine.

Launch task manager (Right click on taskbar and select Task Manager or by Start > Run > taskmgr).Click on Services tab and this will show a list of services (stopped as well as started).Those services whose PID columns are blank instead of a number are the ones that are stopped or simply see the Status column.

Suppose I want to start the service netlogon.



I will right click on service and select Start Service,this will now start showing a PID as the service is now running.

Tracking down a service is also quite simple,right click the service whose info is needed and select Go to Process.
Here I use EvtEng service to track down it's process and then use that process info to see where the files are really located for this.



This will track that service to it's associated process which helps us to know which application or which system function is owning that process and hence the service.



Once the process window is opened with the tracked process,right click on Go to File which will open the actual path of application along with the highlighted file that owns the process.



This is a great way to troubleshoot errors where you can't seem to know which process is doing what but tracking its files will give a clear view on how to go about fixing it.

Hope this has been an informative post.

Peace.

We all dislike junk emails or unsolicited emails that offer free stuff.
Windows Mail has some useful features that allow control over junk emails that we receive.

Have you ever found that sometimes emails sent by friends/acquaintances end up in junk email folder in Windows Mail?

This can be easily prevented especially if the email address is of a person that you had sent an email earlier to.

We will configure Windows Mail to never allow emails sent from a particular address to be marked as junk,the important condition being that this email address was actually replied to by us earlier.

Let's take a look on how to use the various options related to junk emails filtering in Windows Mail.

Open Windows Mail (Start > Run > winmail)
Go to Tools > Junk Email options and then Safe Senders tab.Check the box that displays "Automatically add people that I email to safe senders list".





By default,the junk emails filtering in Windows Mail is set to low.This can be changed from the tab Options.



Do note that the more aggressive the filtering is set to,the greater will be the probability that non-junk emails will be marked as junk.

One option that we need to be particularly cautious about is the deletion of junk emails.If that is set,then any email marked as junk will be permanently removed instead of even going to the junk email folder.This can be troublesome if useful emails are flagged as junk,best bet will be to leave the option as it is.

Now let's take a look at domain wide filtering.
Any email ending with a same domain name like @spammers.com can be blocked if we add that domain in blocked senders list.

To do this,click on the Blocked Senders tab,then the Add button and enter a domain name.



Here I use spamcompany.com for illustration.This will block any email with that domain name in reaching the inbox.Individual addresses can also be added to the blocked senders list.

Many times,we get junk emails with a specific country code like .ru or .za and so on.This too can be blocked by blocking the top level domains (TLD).

Go to International tab and hit Blocked Top Level Domain list.



This will show all the possible TLDs,select as required and click Ok.(I have set .ru as a blocked TLD in this case.)

Feel free to play around with the junk email settings in Windows Mail,they are pretty much flexible and easy to configure.

Hope this has been an informative post.

In my earlier post on fixing the Invalid Update Control CTF error which pops up while upgrading the definition files in AVG antivirus,I had shown how to delete the .ctf files and then upgrade the definition files to make the error go away.

Instead of doing the same set of tasks,why not make a simple batch file which will does all the steps described? All that we need to do then is run it when the error shows up.

To make a simple batch file for this,open any text editor like notepad (Start > Run > notepad.exe)

Type the following commands there :

cd \
cd c:\ProgramData\Avg8\update\download
del *.ctf




This is for Vista where the AVG ctf files reside in ProgramData symlink.

The batch file will go to the root drive,from there change the directory to ProgramData\AVG8\update\download and delete all the files with extension *.ctf.

For XP,the only change will be the path :

cd \
cd C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\avg8\update\download
del *.ctf




Once done,save the text file with a .bat extension and a sensible name with Save As type All files.

You will see that the icon changes to that of a batch file.



That's it.

Run the batch file when you get the AVG error and see the charm of a basic batch file :)

Peace.

Laptop users have some common tasks because of their mobility.

Connecting laptop to a monitor,switching wireless radio on or off,charging the laptop are some of the most common of them.

Everytime these tasks need to be done,laptop users need to go to Control Panel and change settings which can be cumbersome after a while.

Is there any way these tasks can be carried out from a single dashboard like interface?

And this is where Windows Mobility Center steps in.

Using the center is easy,simply go to Control Panel > Windows Mobility Center or press Windows key + X to open it in a jiffy.



From a single interface of Windows mobility center,laptop users can :

1.Connect laptop to external display.
2.Charge their laptops and select power schemes.
3.Turn wireless on or off.
4.Adjust sound properties.
5.Control brightness.
6.Sync files.

This helps a lot in increasing productivity,don't you think ? ;)

Peace.

Part II :

Configuring ssh as a service on Vista

In the previous part,we installed Cygwin with openssh package on Vista machine.

Let us now get into the more fun part - configuring the service.

To configure openssh,launch Cygwin with administrator privileges (Right Click on icon and select "Run as administrator").

The command prompt of Cygwin is a bash shell by default.Type at the prompt :
ssh-host-config



This will kick off the process of generating public and private keys,make a user for openssh service and finally install the service.

The complete configuration of openssh is stored in /etc/ssh_config file (C:\cygwin\etc\ssh_config by default).

While installation if permission errors come up,best workaround will be to use chmod to change permissions on the particular path/folder/file to full read/write access (chmod 777 does the trick).



Once the keys are generated,the next configuration step is that you will be prompted to install sshd as a service and along with that a system user with password to run the above created service.

Hit yes and let the configuration run it's course.You will need to enter a password twice to proceed further.



A new user for the Cygwin ssh service will be added,the corresponding file where that will be saved is /etc/passwd (C:\cygwin\etc\passwd).You can take a quick look at that file from Windows command prompt if interested,use "type passwd" at command prompt to display the file contents :

C:\cygwin\etc>type passwd
SYSTEM:*:18:544:,S-1-5-18::
LocalService:*:19:544:U-NT AUTHORITY\LocalService,S-1-5-19::
NetworkService:*:20:544:U-NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService,S-1-5-20::
Administrators:*:544:544:,S-1-5-32-544::
Administrator:unused_by_nt/2000/xp:500:513:U-BOX\Administrator,S-1-5-21-94990715
2-3035104239-382405881-500:/home/Administrator:/bin/bash
AVP:unused_by_nt/2000/xp:1000:513:U-BOX\AVP,S-1-5-21-949907152-3035104239-382405
881-1000:/home/AVP:/bin/bash
Guest:unused_by_nt/2000/xp:501:513:U-BOX\Guest,S-1-5-21-949907152-3035104239-382
405881-501:/home/Guest:/bin/bash

Finally,the message that host configuration is complete will be shown.This marks the end of configuration of ssh service on Vista.



Simply start the service by typing "net start sshd" at the Cygwin console.



Behold,you now have a working ssh server on Windows Vista.
To connect to this ssh server,we need a ssh client like Putty.Check out here on how to go about connecting to ssh server.

Hope this has been an informative post.

Setting up any system as a server requires two things :

1.Installing the particular service on system
2.Configuring the service post installation so that the system acts as server.

SSH (secure shell)is a remote login protocol that encrypts data between communicating machines.It is originally used in Unix machines but we can use the same on Windows.

I will demonstrate the use of a free software Cygwin to configure a Vista box as a SSH server.

This post will be of 2 parts :

1.Installing ssh services on Vista.
2.Configuring ssh after installation.

Part I :

Installing Cygwin on Vista

Get the setup of Cygwin from here.
To get Cygwin running,administrator rights will be needed.Copy the setup file downloaded in a folder (like C:\cygwin_setup),double click the exe after that.

This will bring us to the setup wizard for Cygwin,keep defaults and continue till the page that asks for packages that need to be installed.







Since we are interested only in ssh,Cygwin has a package openssh under Net section.Drill down to Net and select openssh package.



The selected package alongwith base packages for Cygwin will be downloaded (the default directory where it will be installed is C:\Cygwin,it can be changed from setup screen if required).

Installation will kick off with packages getting downloaded (this may take a while for slow internet connections).



Once complete,the installation complete screen will pop up.

Now we configure ssh on Vista in part 2 of this post.

Internet explorer 7 comes with Microsoft live search as it's default search engine.Needless to say,like many other features in Windows,this can be customized too.

Let us say that we want to set default search engine to Lycos.Making this customization is very straightforward courtesy Microsoft.

Here is how :

1.From IE7 search engine box,select the Find more providers option.



2.This will launch a Microsoft web page which has most common search engines listed.



3.Select the search engine you want to set as default(Lycos in this case),most of the major search engines are listed,there is a "Create your own" option too,feel free to try that out.
Once the search engine is selected,there will be a friendly popup box,click on Add Provider and check the box that mentions Make this my default search provider.



4.All done,check IE 7 search engine space and you will find that the default search engine has been changed to one that was selected,Lycos in this case.

Peace.

Internet connectivity often fails,this can be highly disruptive when in middle of a critical task like say doing an online transaction.

Is there any way we can keep a track of our internet connection being stable especially before say performing an online transaction like online booking of an order?

There definitely is a way to do that from our computers,simply make a batch file and use a continuous ping command to keep pinging any website till you can see that there are no timeouts,if you see considerable request timed out messages,get in touch with internet service provider to get it fixed immediately.

A batch file is something that can execute commands in bulk without much human interaction,like a batch of jobs.A .bat file in Windows world is typically a file with commands that simply run once the file is run.

A ping test is used to check if a given computer can communicate with other computers or the outside world (like internet websites).
Seeing replies from the hosts/sites being pinged is a good sign,a sign that connection is active,any other error message means digging deeper to find out why.

I use a ping batch file that is run before I make any critical transactions online because even a small disruption might mean that your online transaction is halted or timed out which is not a pretty situation to be in.

Suppose you used credit card to make payment,then before actually checking out your online shopping cart,the website times out or even worse you click more than once making multiple payments.Of course online charges can be reversed but prevention is always better than cure]

Now let's bring ping command and batch file together to make something cool.
Open a new text document (Start > Run > notepad),here we will make a ping batch file with infinite count (that is unless we terminate the ping ourselves).

Let's say we ping a popular website like yahoo.com.To make a batch file,type :
ping yahoo.com -t (-t means keep pinging till stopped).



Now the important part is saving the text file (File > Save As) with a .bat extension as shown :



Make sure that Save as type is All Files and not the default .txt type,name the batch file something suitable and save it with extension .bat

That's it,you now have your very own simple batch file which on double clicking will keeps pinging until you stop it.Press Ctrl-C and hit 'y' key to stop pinging and close the batch file.



Isn't automating basic tasks like this a great time saver?

In one of my earlier post on opening a new tab in Firefox,I demonstrated how to use a double click within the browser to launch a new tab.

Just like many things in technology,there are other ways of getting the same result.
If you want to launch a new tab in Firefox without a keyboard shortcut,simply double click on the blank area next to an open tab.



This will launch a new blank tab in Firefox,keep repeating the procedure to open as many tabs as needed.It is fast too!

Hope it has been an informative post.