Online backup for personal computer

For a while now I have been trying to persuade myself to start using an online backup service for my private documents, pictures, emails etc. The thing is that over the years I have, like most others I guess, built up quite a lot of personal data which it would be impossible to recreate should it be lost.

Until now I have backed up data to from the laptop to an external USB drive. This method works smoothly with the built-in backup software on the USB drive from Seagate. And I will be able to restore data should the disk fail or if I lost the laptop. However, for the most part the external disk with the backup data was, and is, lying just next to laptop. So in case of a break in, a thief would most likely take both the laptop and the usb disk. Or in case of a fire or other such extreme cases both laptop and backup will be lost. The risk is small but the impact, from my personal perspective, is rather high.

After looking online backup I found the following things which was reassuring:

Online backup seems to be a relatively mature market. There are quite a few players, and prices seem competitive. A one year subscription ranges from 50-100 US$.

Security seems to be in adequate . Most providers encrypt data before, while, and after it has been uploaded. Unfortunately, encryption is only protected by password (at least for the solution that I chose) so it's not this double security approach where it's something you have (like a RSA token or PKI) and something you know (the password). However, for my chosen solution, I first have to log in, and then I have to provide a strong password, which is not stored at the service provider, to acutally restore data.

Of the bigger players can be mentioned IDrive, Mozy, Carbonite, Crashplan, and BackBlaze. I read a few reviews and it seems that, a part for some minor differences, they offer pretty much the same service, so one should be pretty safe to choose either one of them.

Here's link to two reviews: From Notebook Review and from Digital Inspiration

I was leaning towards Crashplan mostly because the interface appealed to me and a colleague recommended it. However, I ended up choosing IDrive for the following reasons:

• It's been around for longer than the other players (you don't want your backup provider to go out of business).
• Phone support (when trouble hits it's always nice to be able to call someone...)
• Price was right for my needs (50 US$/year for one computer and 150 GB storage)
• Online browse and restore of files
• Continuous backup and file versioning
• Sufficient security
• Status reports via email

My experience after a weeks use is that maybe it is not the fanciest of interfaces, b

ut it gets the job done. After three or four days I had uploaded my ~25 GB of data over the ADSL connection and I have tested restore of files from the web interface successfully. And email notifications work.

On a final note I can mention that I have been using Dropbox for a while to be able to share files between computers and to be able to reach files online. It's limited to 2 GB in the free edition but it can be highly recommended. It supplements the backup application but it cannot substitute it in my opinion.

Check If Your Antivirus is working Properly

Do you know you can check your antivirus manually in one step that is it working properly or not??? Or is ur antivirus is got infected by viruses???

If you have any doubt on ur antivirus then immediately check performance of your antivirus by EICAR.

What is EICAR???
This is a dummy file for testing and checking performance of any antivirus..... which is detected exactly as if it were a virus. This file is known as the EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test file. 
Naturally, this file is not a virus and not harm ur system. Just it use to test ur AV. When executed, it will display the text "EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!" and exit. It is developed by the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research, to test the response of computer antivirus.
 

How to create an EICAR file???

To create an EICAR test file, open notepad and paste the following line of code..... 

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

Now Save the file with any name using an exe extension; for example, FakeVirus.exe

After creating EICAR???
After creating EICAR file, if your antivirus  detect it as virus and delete it, then your antivirus is working prefectly.


The EICAR test file can be detected by several antivirus like Norton, bit defender, F-Secure, AVG, Antivir etc.  as a virus.
I have tested this on my lappi, and my antivirus(F-Secure) has proved its performance.... 
What about urs????

Stay Safe!!!

Installing a web server on an Amazon AWS free VM

In the previous post I described how you get a free linux VM in the Amazon AWS cloud up and running. This post will describe how you can use it for something practical.

Apt-get is not installed on this Micro Instance VM. So at first I tried to do a manual install of Apache by simply uploading the .tar.gz files to the VM via WinSCP and tried to run the .configure file. This didn't work as a C compiler was not installed on the system. I went on to look for GCC and got that installed and then I could install Apache. For some reason it didn't quite work, though. And also it's mayby a little too much work to get a web server up and running...

Then I stumbled upon the Yum command which is similar to Apt-get and which is actually pre-installed in the VM and is working out of the box.

With Yum, installation is a breeze. Issue the following commands:

#sudo yum install httpd
#sudo chkconfig httpd on
#sudo /etc/init.d/httpd start

The sudo command will not prompt you for a password but will let you execute commands as root. You can't su -root... (alternatively, you can try sudo -i to get a root shell)

If it complains about a missing C compiler, then install it this way:

#sudo yum install gcc

Free linux cloud VM with Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Recently, Amazon announced that you can get a free linux VM for one year in their public cloud solution - Amazon Web Services (AWS). They call it a Micro Instance and it's got something like 1 vCPU, 600 MB of memory, and 10 GB storage, see specs here. You get full access to the VM via SSH but there's no console access as such.

So I decided to give it a try.

First, you need to create an AWS account (there's a link on the front page..). They need a valid creditcard for that. Then you log into the AWS Management Console. This requires you to register again. They had implemented a rather odd security feature where they call your mobile phone and you have to punch in a pin-number to confirm. I must admit that, for testing purposes, this wasn't the most smooth registration process.

Once into the AWS Management Console you're presented with a number of tabs. The first one is Amazon S3 which is an online file placeholder (i guess like an FTP server). To create your VM, go to the Amazon EC2 tab and click on Launch Instance (see below). This process is fairly simple. It is not quite easy, though, to see exactly which one is the free edition, but I just chose the minimum specs available to be on the safe side. And look for something like linux and Micro Instance.

Firewall rules are easy to configure via the web interface. You can add some pre-defined ports such as mail, web, etc. Port 22 is enabled by default.

A KPI keyset is generated (for authentication purposes) and you can download the .pem file to your local harddrive. They give an example of howto login via ssh from a console and use the generated key. Example:

ssh -i keyname.pem root@vmname.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com

If you use this command will receive a login error as root cannot login directly. So just change 'root' in front of the @ with the, in the error message, suggested 'ec2-user'.

Once logged in you can execute commands as root with the 'sudo' command. It will not prompt for a password. Or alternatively use sudo -i to get a root console. But you can't su - root.

If you want to use Putty to acces the VM directly, then you have to convert the .pem file to a .ppk file. This is easily done using this guide.

To use the .ppk file, open Putty and go to SSH -> Auth and browse to the directory where you stored the file. And then you connect to the VM (saving the profile will save you some time at next login..). There's no password.

The same .ppk file can also be used for WinSCP which is handy for uploading files directly to the VM.

As you have a public DNS name, this can be used to create an eiasier to remember C-name DNS that you can point to the generated machine name.

So far so good. Now there's access via SSH. Then I tried to configure a simple web server. I'll describe that in the next post.

vMotion between firewalls

Currently, I'm setting up a new VMware cluster as the exsiting hardware needs to be retired. The new cluster is in another management zone (and in another vCenter). To minimise downtime I looked at doing vMotion between the two clusters.

What I did was to disconnect one host from vCenter. Then add the host to the other vCenter directly on the ip number. The host was not added to the newly created cluster, only to the datacenter. And then drag and drop VMs between the clusters (EVC was enabled).

There was a couple of things that had to be tweaked before it worked.

vMotion had to be done between firewalls. When doing this, there are two important things to remember:

1. Set the default gatway of the vMotion interface (via vSphere Client)

2. Open inbound/outbound on port 8000 TCP in the firewall 

Furthermore, I encountered another issue. A number of VMs had a vmxnet NIC (it's some old VMs...). When starting to vMotion there was a warning that vmxnet is not supported on target host which is ESX 4 (source was ESX 3.5). However, after vMotion, the vmxnet NIC still worked. I tried to update VMware Tools and virtual hardware version to v7 and that also worked. vmxnet is kept as NIC after upgrade.

Check In How much time your Password can be Hacked

To keep secure our web accounts we always do talk about Putting Strong Passwords, But how you would know that your password is strong or not??

What are Strong Passwords

Normally we say strong password to those passwords which satisfy the following points:- 

• Contains Letters(upper and lower case both), Numbers and Symbols. 
• Also your password should not be a common Password. like 123456, password, iloveyou etc
• According to Microsoft an ideal strong password must contain at least 14 characters. But there are many words in dictionary also which contains no. of letters greater than 14. you should not keep those words as ur password.

But Question Arises:

What is the need of a strong password, How a weak password can be hacked easily??

Though there are many ways to hack passwords but hacking 'weak' passwords is  done usually by Brute Force Method. In hacking Terms this Method is calledDictionary Attack. In Dictionary Attack using Brute Force Algorithm, A software checks all the existing words of dictionary to find the correct password.

Check how much time your password will take to hack using Brute Force

On web i found a site, where it check the that how secure is  your password. It do some simple mathematical calculations to find out time to generate any particular password using brute force.

If you have a strong password, then the time will be probably in Years but for week password it will be only some seconds, hours or some days!!!

So check your password now :)

http://howsecureismypassword.net/

Beware of Hardware Keylogger

Hardware key-logger is a tiny device that plugs in between a keyboard and computer, and  is a very popular way of capturing and storing keystrokes from keyboard to their internal memory. Hardware keylogger are coming with 512 KB upto 2 GB memory. A 512 KB keylogger can store more than 512000 captured key strokes. It can capture data for 3 month with 8 hours working on computer daily. Can you imagine that how many secret information can be stored if the memory is 2GB. 

Advantage of hardware keylogger over Software keylogger:

• Hardware keyloggers are not OS dependents, hence can work on any OS.
• It does not interfere with any program running on the target machine and hence cannot be detected by any software, but software keyloggers are mostly detectable by good anti-viruses.  
• Software keyloggers can be fooled by sending encrypted or fake keystrokes, but in case of hardware keylogger as it is directly inline with keyboard, so cant send fake keystrokes.http://www.techbyte4u.com/
• Hardware can begin capturing from the moment a computer is turned on and are therefore able to intercept BIOS passwords.

Hardware keylogger can be of two types according to its connection type with Keyboard:-

1. PS2

2. USB

Detecting and Defeating Hardware keyloggers:-

 But hardware keyloggers cant always detect like this, they can be inbuilt in keyboard, they can be wireless, or they can be hided through any other way so that you cant see them. So you need to be alert while using a public computer. 

Restart of ESX management agents

This is just a post to remember the commands for restarting the management agents on an VMware ESX server:

#service mgmt-vmware restart

#service vmware-vpxa restart (the HA agent)

Both of these agents can be restarted without affecting VM operation. Restarting them can be a useful step in troubleshooting if vCenter has trouble connecting to a host or if you experience HA errors.

Here's link to KB article

For restarting mgmt agents in ESXi, this can be done via the console menu interface, see link above.

Console-setup - service console tool for network config in ESX4

As of ESX 4.0 U2 a new tool for configuring network in the service console (COS) has been introduced. If you're not too comfortable with CLI then this might come in handy. The tool will give you a numbered menu and you can list and configure nics, vswitches, vswifs, etc.

Here's a link to a VMware KB article that presents the tool.

To run the tool, type console-setup in the COS.

Menu entry 1, 2, and 3 will show the output of esxcfg-vswif -l, esxcfg-nics -l, and esxcfg-vswitch -l respectively.

Menu entry 5 will let you configure your service console without having to remember any of the commands. Pretty neat..

How to remove Autorun.inf Virus

There is a very simple process to remove autorun.inf virus file. Follow the method below...

1. open up a command prompt (i.e. cmd.exe) ; to load it go to Run, type cmd, enter.

2. Now see the Four code lines highlighted below... you have to use them all one by one.

e.g. for f: drive...

F: \

F: \attrib

F: \attrib -s -h -r autorun.inf

F: \del autorun.inf

• First for entering into any drive
• Second, for checking virus's attributes.After pressing enter, you will see all files of that drive. Check for autorun.inf  file in them. 

You should see something like:

    SHR    Autotun.inf        C:\Autorun.inf

• third, for changing file's  to attributes.  Usually this virus has attributes SHR(checked by second line) where S stands for system, H for hide,  R for read-only. So To clear an attribute we use  -  (the minus sign) with attrib. 
• fourth, for deleting virus file.

3. Repeat Second step for all drives of ur system.

Yesterday, I had to extend a number of disks on a VM. There were about seven .vmdk's spread over three different LUN's which were all out of space. In VI3 there's really no good way to increase a LUN (unless you use extend, but don't), so to increase the disk sizes of the .vmdk's, a larger LUN had to be created onto which the .vmdk's could be moved before extending them. The storage guys create a 1 TB LUN for the VM. So, I wanted to use SVMotion to move the .vmdk's one by one to the new LUN. If you start out with a disk that is not the primary, or OS, disk you will get an error (I'm using the GUI plugin from Lost Creations), so you can only move the primary disk. However, when you move that primary disk, all of the .vmdk's attached to that VM will be moved with the VM at the same time and will be placed on the target LUN. So when SVMotioning, all .vmdk's attached to that VM are moved at the same time. Therefore, make sure to have enough space on the target LUN.

In more than one instance, I have experienced a situation where we had issues with managing permissions in both vCenter (vSphere 4) and VirtualCenter (VI3). The issue is that a user loses access rights when a group to which the user belongs is added with less permissions.

An example could be that a given user, 'UserA', has administrator rights at the top level (Hosts and Clusters) and then at a lower level (let's say at Datacenter level), a given security group, Group1, in which UserA exists is given, let's say, 'Virtual Machine User' rights. This will decrease the permissions for UserA on that datacenter to only Virtual Machine User in stead of Administrator - he cuts the tree under himself, so to speak.

The consequence can be that in stead of risking this scenario of suddenly losing access rights when groups are added, then security groups are not used at all, only single users are added. This is not a problem when only a few users needs acces to the vCenter or VirtualCenter. However, if many users need access, e.g. 20-40 employees, it gets rather complex to manage.

To be absolutely sure how these permissions work, I have done a bit of testing on both vCenter and VirtualCenter.

Test cases

First of all, permissions seem to work identically in both versions, that is VI3 (VirtualCenter) and vSphere (vCenter). Furthermore, when permissions are changed in vCenter, then they are applied more or less instantaneously. So if you change or configure permissions for a user that has the vSphere client open, then the changes will appear to the user at the same time while he has the vSphere client (or VI Client) open (this makes it nice and easy for testing purposes, by the way...)

If the administrator role is assigned to UserA at the Hosts and Clusters level, and then he is assigned less permissions at a lower level (e.g. at a given Cluster), then the less permisssions on that lower level will win.

It works the same way the other way around, if UserA has 'Read only' on Host and Clusters and Administrator rights at a given Datacenter, then UserA will have full rights on that Datacenter and read only on the rest of the virtual environment.

If UserA has Administrator rights at the Hosts and Clusters level and at the same time a group to which UserA belongs is added with Read only to the same level - the interesting question is which of the two different permision levels will UserA be granted, Administrator (as a single user) or Read only (as he belongs to the group)?
The answer is that the highest defined permissions defined at a given level for a user will win. In the case UserA will have administrator rights at hosts and clusters level.

Administrators group

Another thing to be aware of is that Windows Administrators on the vCenter server are automatically added as administrators in vCenter. If you do not intend to give all of your Windows admins full acces to your VMware environment, then remove the 'Administrators' group from vCenter (in stead, you can add the local administrator user a an administrator in vCenter, so you have the possibility to log in with a local account should AD fail..)

Security groups or Distribution lists

Only security groups defined in Active Directory (AD) can be used as groups in vCenter. Distribution lists won't work.

Recommendations for managing users

In regards to the use of groups for managing users in vCenter, I recommend that groups are used at the hosts and clusters level (of course, this can vary greatly depending on your setup). For example, you could have three groups:

• VMware admins (Administrator)
• VM admins (Deploy/destroy rights, change VM specs, etc.)
• Windows admins (console access to the VMs, similar to ILO access on physical servers)

Even though a VMware admin belongs to several groups, as long as these are defined at the same level, then he/she will retain administrator rights.

By using security groups, then the VMware admins won't have to manage user administration on the VMware environment. When a user is added to a given group in AD (this should be handled by your user administration department or system), then he automatically gets access to vCenter.

How To update BIOS

All latest Motherboards today, 486/ Pentium / Pentium Pro etc.,ensure that upgrades are easily obtained by incorporating the system BIOS in a FLASH Memory component. With FLASH BIOS, there is no need to replace an EPROM component. Once downloaded, the upgrade utility fits on a floppy disc allowing the user to save, verify and update the system BIOS. A hard drive or a network drive can also be used to run the newer upgrade utilities. However, memory managers can not be installed while upgrading.

Most pre-Pentium motherboards do not have a Flash BIOS. The following instructions therefore do not apply to these boards. If your motherboard does not have a Flash BIOS (EEPROM) you will need to use an EPROM programmer to re-program the BIOS chip. See your dealer for more information about this.

Please read the following instructions in full before starting a Flash BIOS upgrade:
A. Create a Bootable Floppy (in DOS)

•With a non-formatted disk, type the following:

format a:/s

•If using a formatted disk, type:

sys a:

This procedure will ensure a clean boot when you are flashing the new BIOS.

B. Download the BIOS file

•Download the correct BIOS file by clicking on the file name of the BIOS file you wish to download.

•Save the BIOS file and the Flash Utility file in the boot disk you have created. Unzip the BIOS file and the flash utility file. If you don't have an "unzip" utility, download the WinZip for Windows 95 shareware/ evaluation copy for that one time use from _www.winzip.com or _www.pkware.com. Most CD ROMs found in computer magazines, have a shareware version of WinZip on them.

•You should have extracted two files:

Flash BIOS utility eg: flash7265.exe (for example)

BIOS eg: 6152J900.bin (example)

Use the latest flash utility available unless otherwise specified (either on the BIOS update page or in the archive file). This information is usually provided.

C. Upgrade the System BIOS

During boot up, write down the old BIOS version because you will need to use it for the BIOS backup file name.

Place the bootable floppy disk containing the BIOS file and the Flash Utility in drive a, and reboot the system in MS-DOS, preferably Version 6.22

•At the A:> prompt, type the corresponding Flash BIOS utility and the BIOS file with its extension.

For example:

flash625 615j900.bin

•From the Flash Memory Writer menu, select "Y" to "Do you want to save BIOS?" if you want to save (back up) your current BIOS (strongly recommended), then type the name of your current BIOS and its extension after FILE NAME TO SAVE: eg: a:\613J900.bin

Alternatively select "N" if you don't want to save your current BIOS. Beware, though, that you won't be able to recover from a possible failure.

•Select "Y" to "Are you sure to program?"

•Wait until it displays "Message: Power Off or Reset the system"

Once the BIOS has been successfully loaded, remove the floppy disk and reboot the system. If you write to BIOS but cannot complete the procedure, do not switch off, because the computer will not be able to boo, and you will not be given another chance to flash. In this case leave your system on until you resolve the problem (flashing BIOS with old file is a possible solution, provided you've made a backup before)

Make sure the new BIOS version has been loaded properly by taking note of the BIOS identifier as the system is rebooting.

For AMI BIOS
Once the BIOS has been successfully loaded, remove the floppy disk and reboot the system holding the "END" key prior to power on until you enter CMOS setup. If you do not do this the first time booting up after upgrading the BIOS, the system will hang.

BIOS Update Tips
note:
1.Make sure never to turn off or reset your computer during the flash process. This will corrupt the BIOS data. We also recommend that you make a copy of your current BIOS on the bootable floppy so you can reflash it if you need to. (This option is not available when flashing an AMI BIOS).

2. If you have problems installing your new BIOS please check the following:

Have you done a clean boot?
In other words, did you follow the above procedure for making a bootable floppy? This ensures that when booting from "A" there are no device drivers on the diskette. Failing to do a clean boot is the most common cause for getting a "Memory Insufficient" error message when attempting to flash a BIOS.

If you have not used a bootable floppy, insure a clean boot either by

a) pressing F5 during bootup

b) by removing all device drivers on the CONFIG.SYS including the HIMEM.SYS. Do this by using the EDIT command.

Have you booted up under DOS?
Booting in Windows is another common cause for getting a "Memory Insufficient" error message when attempting to flash a BIOS. Make sure to boot up to DOS with a minimum set of drivers. Important: Booting in DOS does not mean selecting "Restart computer in MS-DOS Mode" from Windows98/95 shutdown menu or going to Prompt mode in WindowsNT, but rather following the above procedure (format a: /s and rebooting from a:\).

Have you entered the full file name of the flash utility and the BIOS plus its extension?
Do not forget that often you will need to add a drive letter (a:\) before flashing the BIOS. Example: when asked for file name of new BIOS file which is on your floppy disk, in case you're working from c:\ your will need to type a:\615j900.bin, rather than 615j900.bin only.

Use Headphone as Mic

If you want 2 talk wid sum1 but you dont have microphone... dont worry you can do it by using your headphone...

I know its hard to believe but its possible.....coz mostly headphone and microphone has some similar circuit with some minor changes.

How 2 make it possible:

Use headphone as mic is very simple and similar as we use mic.

Simply plug the headphone wire in microphone's slot. and its done!!

Pros: 

• Only one earphone of ur headphone will capable to carry ur voice.
• Sound quality and volume will be lower.
• It works only 85% times.
• You have to speak some louder and closer to earphone bud.

Lets Test it:

1. First plug your headphone wire in microphone's slot.

2. Now open sound recorder and start to record the sound......go to run, type sndrec32.exe

3. now speak in one of the ear bud.... and check in sound recorder if voice is going or not.... if not then try with second earbud of your headphone. One earbud will work mostly.

Enjoy

Speed up Windows xp

Since defragging the disk won't do much to improve Windows XP performance, here are 23 suggestions that will. Each can enhance the performance and reliability of your customers' PCs. Best of all, most of them will cost you nothing.
1.) To decrease a system's boot time and increase system performance, use the money you save by not buying defragmentation software -- the built-in Windows defragmenter works just fine -- and instead equip the computer with an Ultra-133 or Serial ATA hard drive with 8-MB cache buffer.

2.) If a PC has less than 512 MB of RAM, add more memory. This is a relatively inexpensive and easy upgrade that can dramatically improve system performance.

3.) Ensure that Windows XP is utilizing the NTFS file system. If you're not sure, here's how to check: First, double-click the My Computer icon, right-click on the C: Drive, then select Properties. Next, examine the File System type; if it says FAT32, then back-up any important data. Next, click Start, click Run, type CMD, and then click OK. At the prompt, type CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS and press the Enter key. This process may take a while; it's important that the computer be uninterrupted and virus-free. The file system used by the bootable drive will be either FAT32 or NTFS. I highly recommend NTFS for its superior security, reliability, and efficiency with larger disk drives.

4.) Disable file indexing. The indexing service extracts information from documents and other files on the hard drive and creates a "searchable keyword index." As you can imagine, this process can be quite taxing on any system.

The idea is that the user can search for a word, phrase, or property inside a document, should they have hundreds or thousands of documents and not know the file name of the document they want. Windows XP's built-in search functionality can still perform these kinds of searches without the Indexing service. It just takes longer. The OS has to open each file at the time of the request to help find what the user is looking for.

Most people never need this feature of search. Those who do are typically in a large corporate environment where thousands of documents are located on at least one server. But if you're a typical system builder, most of your clients are small and medium businesses. And if your clients have no need for this search feature, I recommend disabling it.

Here's how: First, double-click the My Computer icon. Next, right-click on the C: Drive, then select Properties. Uncheck "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching." Next, apply changes to "C: subfolders and files," and click OK. If a warning or error message appears (such as "Access is denied"), click the Ignore All button.

5.) Update the PC's video and motherboard chipset drivers. Also, update and configure the BIOS. For more information on how to configure your BIOS properly, see this article on my site.

6.) Empty the Windows Prefetch folder every three months or so. Windows XP can "prefetch" portions of data and applications that are used frequently. This makes processes appear to load faster when called upon by the user. That's fine. But over time, the prefetch folder may become overloaded with references to files and applications no longer in use. When that happens, Windows XP is wasting time, and slowing system performance, by pre-loading them. Nothing critical is in this folder, and the entire contents are safe to delete.

7.) Once a month, run a disk cleanup. Here's how: Double-click the My Computer icon. Then right-click on the C: drive and select Properties. Click the Disk Cleanup button -- it's just to the right of the Capacity pie graph -- and delete all temporary files.

8.) In your Device Manager, double-click on the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers device, and ensure that DMA is enabled for each drive you have connected to the Primary and Secondary controller. Do this by double-clicking on Primary IDE Channel. Then click the Advanced Settings tab. Ensure the Transfer Mode is set to "DMA if available" for both Device 0 and Device 1. Then repeat this process with the Secondary IDE Channel.

9.) Upgrade the cabling. As hard-drive technology improves, the cabling requirements to achieve these performance boosts have become more stringent. Be sure to use 80-wire Ultra-133 cables on all of your IDE devices with the connectors properly assigned to the matching Master/Slave/Motherboard sockets. A single device must be at the end of the cable; connecting a single drive to the middle connector on a ribbon cable will cause signaling problems. With Ultra DMA hard drives, these signaling problems will prevent the drive from performing at its maximum potential. Also, because these cables inherently support "cable select," the location of each drive on the cable is important. For these reasons, the cable is designed so drive positioning is explicitly clear.

10.) Remove all spyware from the computer. Use free programs such as AdAware by Lavasoft or SpyBot Search & Destroy. Once these programs are installed, be sure to check for and download any updates before starting your search. Anything either program finds can be safely removed. Any free software that requires spyware to run will no longer function once the spyware portion has been removed; if your customer really wants the program even though it contains spyware, simply reinstall it. For more information on removing Spyware visit this Web Pro News page.

11.) Remove any unnecessary programs and/or items from Windows Startup routine using the MSCONFIG utility. Here's how: First, click Start, click Run, type MSCONFIG, and click OK. Click the StartUp tab, then uncheck any items you don't want to start when Windows starts. Unsure what some items are? Visit the WinTasks Process Library. It contains known system processes, applications, as well as spyware references and explanations. Or quickly identify them by searching for the filenames using Google or another Web search engine.

12.) Remove any unnecessary or unused programs from the Add/Remove Programs section of the Control Panel.

13.) Turn off any and all unnecessary animations, and disable active desktop. In fact, for optimal performance, turn off all animations. Windows XP offers many different settings in this area. Here's how to do it: First click on the System icon in the Control Panel. Next, click on the Advanced tab. Select the Settings button located under Performance. Feel free to play around with the options offered here, as nothing you can change will alter the reliability of the computer -- only its responsiveness.

14.) If your customer is an advanced user who is comfortable editing their registry, try some of the performance registry tweaks offered at Tweak XP.

15.) Visit Microsoft's Windows update site regularly, and download all updates labeled Critical. Download any optional updates at your discretion.

16.) Update the customer's anti-virus software on a weekly, even daily, basis. Make sure they have only one anti-virus software package installed. Mixing anti-virus software is a sure way to spell disaster for performance and reliability.

17.) Make sure the customer has fewer than 500 type fonts installed on their computer. The more fonts they have, the slower the system will become. While Windows XP handles fonts much more efficiently than did the previous versions of Windows, too many fonts -- that is, anything over 500 -- will noticeably tax the system.

18.) Do not partition the hard drive. Windows XP's NTFS file system runs more efficiently on one large partition. The data is no safer on a separate partition, and a reformat is never necessary to reinstall an operating system. The same excuses people offer for using partitions apply to using a folder instead. For example, instead of putting all your data on the D: drive, put it in a folder called "D drive." You'll achieve the same organizational benefits that a separate partition offers, but without the degradation in system performance. Also, your free space won't be limited by the size of the partition; instead, it will be limited by the size of the entire hard drive. This means you won't need to resize any partitions, ever. That task can be time-consuming and also can result in lost data.

19.) Check the system's RAM to ensure it is operating properly. I recommend using a free program called MemTest86. The download will make a bootable CD or diskette (your choice), which will run 10 extensive tests on the PC's memory automatically after you boot to the disk you created. Allow all tests to run until at least three passes of the 10 tests are completed. If the program encounters any errors, turn off and unplug the computer, remove a stick of memory (assuming you have more than one), and run the test again. Remember, bad memory cannot be repaired, but only replaced.

20.) If the PC has a CD or DVD recorder, check the drive manufacturer's Web site for updated firmware. In some cases you'll be able to upgrade the recorder to a faster speed. Best of all, it's free.

21.) Disable unnecessary services. Windows XP loads a lot of services that your customer most likely does not need. To determine which services you can disable for your client, visit the Black Viper site for Windows XP configurations.

22.) If you're sick of a single Windows Explorer window crashing and then taking the rest of your OS down with it, then follow this tip: open My Computer, click on Tools, then Folder Options. Now click on the View tab. Scroll down to "Launch folder windows in a separate process," and enable this option. You'll have to reboot your machine for this option to take effect.

23.) At least once a year, open the computer's cases and blow out all the dust and debris. While you're in there, check that all the fans are turning properly. Also inspect the motherboard capacitors for bulging or leaks. For more information on this leaking-capacitor phenomena, you can read numerous articles on my site.


Following any of these suggestions should result in noticeable improvements to the performance and reliability of your customers' computers. If you still want to defrag a disk, remember that the main benefit will be to make your data more retrievable in the event of a crashed drive.

Boot Winxp Fast

Follow the following steps

1. Open notepad.exe, type "del c:\windows\prefetch\ntosboot-*.* /q" (without the quotes) & save as "ntosboot.bat" in c:\
2. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "gpedit.msc".
3. Double click "Windows Settings" under "Computer Configuration" and double click again on "Shutdown" in the right window.
4. In the new window, click "add", "Browse", locate your "ntosboot.bat" file & click "Open".
5. Click "OK", "Apply" & "OK" once again to exit.
6. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "devmgmt.msc".
7. Double click on "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
8. Right click on "Primary IDE Channel" and select "Properties".
9. Select the "Advanced Settings" tab then on the device or 1 that doesn't have 'device type' greyed out select 'none' instead of 'autodetect' & click "OK".
10. Right click on "Secondary IDE channel", select "Properties" and repeat step 9.
11. Reboot your computer.

Create One-Click Shutdown and Reboot Shortcuts

First, create a shortcut on your desktop by right-clicking on the desktop, choosing New, and then choosing Shortcut. The Create Shortcut Wizard appears. In the box asking for the location of the shortcut, type shutdown. After you create the shortcut, double-clicking on it will shut down your PC.

But you can do much more with a shutdown shortcut than merely shut down your PC. You can add any combination of several switches to do extra duty, like this:

shutdown -r -t 01 -c "Rebooting your PC"

Double-clicking on that shortcut will reboot your PC after a one-second delay and display the message "Rebooting your PC." The shutdown command includes a variety of switches you can use to customize it. Table 1-3 lists all of them and describes their use.

I use this technique to create two shutdown shortcuts on my desktop—one for turning off my PC, and one for rebooting. Here are the ones I use:

shutdown -s -t 03 -c "Bye Bye m8!"

shutdown -r -t 03 -c "Ill be back m8 ;)!"

Switch

What it does

-s

Shuts down the PC.

-l

Logs off the current user.

-t nn

Indicates the duration of delay, in seconds, before performing the action.

-c "messagetext"

Displays a message in the System Shutdown window. A maximum of 127 characters can be used. The message must be enclosed in quotation marks.

-f

Forces any running applications to shut down.

-r

Reboots the PC.

Identifying your WWN id's via ILO

For the storage department to be able to zone up one or more LUNs to a given ESX host, they need three pieces of information:

• ESX host name (FQDN)
• WWN id's of the HBA's
• If new LUN, then the size of the LUN. If you're zoning existing LUNs, then they need to know the storage group that the host should be added to (this can be done by providing hostname of one or two existing hosts that already have that zoning).

The WWN id can be identified both from the VI client (Configuration -> Storage Adapters) and from the service console. But this can only be done after ESX has been installed.

Sometimes, it can be useful to be able to fetch WWN info before the host has been installed. This way, the storage department can begin zoning right away.

To identify WWN id's from ILO

• Log into ILO either directly or via the blade enclosure
• Go to the Information tab of your server
• WWN id can be found under the info box for your HBA (see screendump below)

How Do U See Hidden Files, Using DOS

at command prompt just type
dir /ah

if the list is too long u can use
dir /ah/p/w

Howto: Installing VMware tools in a Linux VM

Installing VMware tools in a Linux VM take a few more steps than on a Windows VM. This is done the following way (tested on VMware Workstation 7 and Ubuntu Desktop 9.04 VM appliance).

• install the guest OS (click here to see if guest OS is supported)
• to exit the gui to simulate no X server: sudo service gdm stop and then alt+f1 to get console
• right click the VM and choose install/update VMware tools. This will connect the cdrom with the VMware tools ISO file (if files are not already available, they will be downloaded) but you still need to mount the cdrom manually: sudo mount /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom (if folder don't exist, create it first)
• copy the tar file to /tmp folder and untar it: tar -xvf VMware-tools-vXX.tar.gz
• ls to the untar'ed folder and run vmware-install.pl: sudo ./vmware-install.pl
• start the gui: sudo service gdm start or simply startx
• verify that VMware tools are running: sudo ps -auxwww 'pipe-symbol' grep vm (look for /usr/bin/vmtoolsd and you will also find the balloon driver vmmemctl). You can also check if the vmtools startup script has been put into the startup folder /etc/rc0.d/

link to VMware KB article on installing VMtools (alternatively this KB article)

Update 2011.10.28: When installing VMware tools in Linux Redhat Enterprise 5.6 the installation failed as it needed gcc and some kernel developer packages. I ran the following commands and then reran the tools installation again after ./vmware-install.pl:

yum install gcc
yum install kernel-devel
yum install kernel-xen-devel

Differences between Windows Server 2008, SP2, and R2

So what are the differences between win2k8, win2k8 SP2, and win2k8 R2? These naming conventions and differences between versions are a constant cause for confusion. So here's the short take:

Win2k8 was first released with SP1. Later on came Win2k8 SP2.

Win2k8 R2 is the new version of the OS that introduces several new features. It has the look and feel of Win7, it is only x64 bit, and Hyper-V Quick migration (~VMotion) is introduced.

There's no SP2 installed on top of win2k8 R2. R2 is a clean install or you can upgrade from SP2 to R2. In any case, the SP2 will disappear and it will only be called R2.

The reason for pointing this out is that it was a bit different with win2k3. Here, you installed SP2 and then you installed R2 on top of SP2 and the result was win2k3 SP2 R2 - so service pack and R2 at the same time.

I found this comparison somewhere and I quite like it (not quite sure how correct it is, though..)

Windows Vista SP1 ~ Windows Server 2008 SP1

Windows Vista SP2 ~ Windows Server 2008 SP2

Windows 7 ~ Windows Server 2008 R2

Firefox Speed Tweaks

Yes, firefox is already pretty damn fast but did you know that you can tweak it and improve the speed even more?

That's the beauty of this program being open source.
Here's what you do:
In the URL bar, type “about:config” and press enter. This will bring up the configuration “menu” where you can change the parameters of Firefox.

Note that these are what I’ve found to REALLY speed up my Firefox significantly - and these settings seem to be common among everybody else as well. But these settings are optimized for broadband connections - I mean with as much concurrent requests we’re going to open up with pipelining… lol… you’d better have a big connection.

Double Click on the following settins and put in the numbers below - for the true / false booleans - they’ll change when you double click.

Code:
browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs – true
network.http.max-connections – 48
network.http.max-connections-per-server – 16
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy – 8
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server – 4
network.http.pipelining – true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests – 100
network.http.proxy.pipelining – true
network.http.request.timeout – 300


One more thing… Right-click somewhere on that screen and add a NEW -> Integer. 

Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0”. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. Since you’re broadband - it shouldn’t have to wait.

Now you should notice you’re loading pages MUCH faster now!

Speed Up Your Browsing Of Windows 2000 & Xp Machines!

Here's a great tip to speed up your browsing of Windows XP machines.. Its actually a fix to a bug installed as default in Windows 2000 that scans shared files for Scheduled Tasks. And it turns out that you can experience a delay as long as 30 seconds when you try to view shared files across a network because Windows 2000 is using the extra time to search the remote computer for any Scheduled Tasks. Note that though the fix is originally intended for only those affected, Windows 2000 users will experience that the actual browsing speed of both the Internet & Windows Explorers improve significantly after applying it since it doesn't search for Scheduled Tasks anymore. Here's how :

Open up the Registry and go to :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace

Under that branch, select the key :

{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}

and delete it.

This is key that instructs Windows to search for Scheduled Tasks. If you like you may want to export the exact branch so that you can restore the key if necessary.

This fix is so effective that it doesn't require a reboot and you can almost immediately determine yourself how much it speeds up your browsing processes.

How To Improove Windows Xp Performance (no Program)

Here are some tweaks that make a big difference on overall system performance under a Windows XP environment.

*Note* Please backup any registry keybefore editing it!   (Regeditmenu - File - Export).

1) The Kernel

Accessing the kernel from the hard disk is usually the default on any operating system. You can set it to automatically load in the system's RAM at the boot and get better performances.

First open the Regedit tool (Start Menu - Run - regedit.exe). 

By using the icons in the left panel, 

navigate to HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management (by clicking the + sign near each and expanding it).
In the right panel you can see the values assigned. 

Double click the DisablePagingExecutive to edit that field and change it to 1. Be sure to make the change in decimal.
This will make all drivers and kernel to run from system's memory.
 

You can also edit LargeSystemCache value and change it to 1 in decimal. This will improve kernel access time.

Then you can edit IOPageLockLimit field. Change it according to these rules:

- 4000 if you have 128 RAM or less
- 10000 if you have 256 RAM installed
- 40000 for more

This will change the number of bytes for input-output operations and will increase system performance.

2) Boot

To improve boot times edit the following value:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\SessionManager\MemoryManagement\PrefetchParamete rs with Regedit like in 1).

Change this value from 3 to 5 in decimal. This will improove boot time with 5 to 20 seconds depending on your system's speed.

3) Shutdown

There are some tweaks that help your computer to shutdown faster.

a) automatically end any task running (Caution: this will disable any confirmations like "Do you want to save document X before closing?")

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop using Regedit and edit the AutoEndTask key. Set it to 1 in decimal.

b)cool.gif make the open applications close faster at shutdown

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop and set the WaitToKillAppTimeout and HungAppTimeout keys to 1000. Make these two changes in the HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop too.

c) make any service close faster

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l and set the WaiToKillServiceTimeout to 1000.