MyComputingArt

LAN messaging with XMPP protocol (jabber) to chat or to copy and paste links and texts in rdp sessions

Here is how I satisfied my need to have a LAN messaging program, not really to chat with other users on the same LAN, which I could do, but to copy and paste links or texts between a rdp client and a rdp server when copy and paste from/to clipboard does not work in rdp sessions, for instance with some Android rdp clients.

These are the programs I used:

Openfire 3.9.3 on the "server" (which can be a simple Windows pc): a realtime collaboration server using XMPP/Jabber
Miranda IM 0.10.23.0: a multi-protocol instant messaging client
Xabber 0.9.30b: an Android Jabber client

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Posted by: Z24 | Wed, Aug 27 2014 | Category: /software | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: android, chat, client-server, configuration, howto, jabber, messaging, network, phone, rdp, software, xmpp

Cannot clear youtube history

There was an error while processing your request. Please try again.

youtube error clearing watch history (21k)

If you get this error on YouTube trying to:

remove some or all videos from YouTube "Watch History"
"Clear all watch history"
"Pause watch history"

and you have Video DownloadHelper add-on ...

... this is the solution that works for me:

disable Video DownloadHelper from Firefox add-ons:
restart the browser
try again clearing or pausing YouTube watch history

... and voilà:

Your watch history was cleared.
youtube Your watch history was cleared (19k)

Your watch history is now paused.
youtube Your watch history is now paused (6k)

Posted by: Z24 | Fri, Jul 11 2014 | Category: /internet | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: internet

Cleaning Windows XP

A very few not obvious hints to clean Windows XP and get some free space:

%windir%\Installer
If you manually delete some files or the entire folder you couldn't be able to uninstall the related software via Control Panel.
Since some of them could be orphaned installers, you can find and remove them using MsiZap, a Microsoft utility released with the Windows SDK, but if you want to just download MsiZap go on nerdoftherings.net, then run
```
msizap.exe !G
```
This utility will find and remove orphaned uninstallers, thus free some space (according to somebody it could free tenths of GB, in my case just a bunch of MB).
%windir%\pchealth\helpctr\DataColl
This is the history of your system: see here; thus it can be deleted

Posted by: Z24 | Wed, Nov 20 2013 | Category: /windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: windows, xp

Setting ClearType when fonts are too much thin

With my LCD monitor, a LG 1718S, the characters appear too much narrow on the screen, especially using Excel sheets: I tried all OSD settings but the characters are so much thin that they're almost invisible. I got the best results setting the ClearType effect:
Control Panel, Display, Appearance, Effects, Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts: Clear Type
This way the characters appear a little fatter and they're better looking too.

Normal ClearType

Verdana without ClearType Verdana with ClearType

Spreadsheet without ClearType Spreadsheet with ClearType

Yes, I use light grey background color :)

Posted by: Z24 | Sun, Sep 22 2013 | Category: /windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: configuration, windows, xp

Create a VPN to connect from an Android client to a home Windows XP server

If you want to connect to your home computer using rdp when you are not home and are connected to the internet, you have to open a port on your firewall; changing the standard rdp port on both your server and your firewall increases your security (or decreases your unsecurity); configuring a Virtual Private Network (VPN) increases your security even more, and you can close the rdp port on your firewall: in fact, when you connect your remote client to your vpn, your remote client comes inside your LAN so that you can remote access your server from inside the LAN.

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Posted by: Z24 | Sun, Sep 22 2013 | Category: /windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: android, client-server, configuration, rdp, router, software, vpn, windows, xp

Asus MyPal A686 PDA with GPS

(Updated Jul 24 2011)

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Posted by: z24 | Sun, Jul 24 2011 | Category: /hardware | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: bluetooth, google earth, gps, hardware, pda, phone

Windows Remote Desktop (RDP)

Windows Remote Desktop allows to remotely get a Windows session on a Windows XP/2000/2003 machine on which it is enabled from any machine running the RDP client: the RDP client asks the name of the machine and the user and password and then the client opens a window showing the desktop of the server machine.
I'll show:

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Posted by: Z24 | Wed, May 04 2011 | Category: /windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: client-server, rdp, security, software, vnc, windows, xp

How to get rid of the message asking to restart the computer after installing Windows updates

If you use automatic updates, sometimes you get the tray icon which notifies you that some Windows updates are available, so you accept to download them first, and install them later; then, sometimes the installed updates require you to restart the computer, but you want to postpone the reboot, and every few minutes you get the same annoying popup message requesting you to reboot. How to get rid of this message?
Just run services.msc and stop Automatic Updates service. It's as simple as that.

Posted by: Z24 | Wed, May 04 2011 | Category: /windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: howto, windows, xp

How to associate username and SID

To know which is the username associated with a known SID (Security Identifier), open the registry (regedit.exe) at this location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.

Registry editor with SID keys (62k)

Each SID key has a ProfileImagePath string whose value is the user path which contains the username.
To know which is the SID associated with a known username, select the ProfileList key and search the username.

There is also a SysInternals command-line utility which shows the SID associated with a known username:

C:\>psgetsid Z24

PsGetSid v1.43 - Translates SIDs to names and vice versa
Copyright (C) 1999-2006 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

SID for WAM2\Z24:
S-1-5-21-1993962763-2139871995-725345543-1003

or the username associated with a known SID:

C:\>psgetsid S-1-5-21-1993962763-2139871995-725345543-1003

PsGetSid v1.43 - Translates SIDs to names and vice versa
Copyright (C) 1999-2006 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

Account for WAM2\S-1-5-21-1993962763-2139871995-725345543-1003:
User: WAM2\Z24

Posted by: Z24 | Wed, May 04 2011 | Category: /windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: command-line, howto, windows, xp

How to restore user profile

While I was logging on from a remote console through RDP I've got a message telling me that the user profile is damaged. I was able to log on and I lost all the settings: desktop, menu and all the settings of the various applications, as if my user had just been created; that means, the user registry was corrupted and it has been replaced with the default user registry.

Event Viewer reported these error messages:

DETAIL - The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. for C:\Documents and Settings\Z24\ntuser.dat

Windows has backed up this user's profile. Windows will automatically try to use the backed up profile the next time this user logs on.

Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off.

I don't know what would have happened logging off and on again (the original profile would have been restored automatically?), by the way I recovered it this way:

I created a new user, just to be sure to be able to logon if something went bad
I rebooted into linux
I copied the user registry file C:\System Volume Information\_restore{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}\RPyy\snapshot\_REGISTRY_USER_NTUSER_S-z-z-zz-zzzzzzzzzz-zzzzzzzzzz-zzzzzzzzz-zzzz to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\ntuser.dat:
the x's in the restore path are hex digits and yy is a number: the exact restore path where to look in should be the one with the most recent date and time before the date and time of the unsuccessful logon, i.e. yesterday's date if the error happened at today's first logon;
S-z-z-zz... is the user's SID (see how to associate username and SID);
and USERNAME is the username
I also copied the file _REGISTRY_USER_USRCLASS_S-z-z-zz-zzzzzzzzzz-zzzzzzzzzz-zzzzzzzzz-zzzz from the same path to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows\UsrClass.dat

At the next logon my windows settings and my applications settings came back!

Posted by: Z24 | Wed, May 04 2011 | Category: /windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: howto, windows, xp

Launching control panel dialogs from command line

It is possible to directly open the control panel configuration dialogs writing commands in the Run dialog or in a dos prompt window:

control command in Run dialog (10k)
control admintools: open Administrative Tools
control date/time: open the Date and Time properties
control desktop: open the Display properties
control color: open the Display properties and go to Appearance tab
control folders: open Folder Options
control fonts: open the Fonts properties
control infrared: open the Infrared properties
control keyboard: open the Keyboard properties
control mouse: open the Mouse properties
control netconnections: open Network Connections
control telephony: open Phone and Modem Options
control printers: open the Printers properties
control international: open the Regional Settings
control schedtasks: open the Scheduled tasks
control userpasswords: open the User Accounts properties
control userpasswords2: open the Advanced User Accounts properties
control: open the control panel

If the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon disappears, the control command can help:
control hotplug.dll: open the "Safely Remove Hardware" window

Every *.cpl file in the Windows directory can be opened with the control cplfile command:
control vp7dec_settings.cpl: open the On2 VP7 Decompressor Settings, if VP7 codec is installed.

Moreover, some cpl files accept two arguments:
control cplfile[,[@first][,second]]: the first argument indicates the function (if a cpl file controls multiple functions), the second argument indicates the tab of the window to display.
control main.cpl,@0,2: show the 3rd tab of the mouse properties (main.cpl controls mouse and keyboard, @0 is for mouse properties, 2 is the 3rd tab)
control main.cpl,@1,0: show the 1st tab of the keyboard properties (@1 is for kbd properties, 0 is the 1st tab)

Posted by: Z24 | Wed, May 04 2011 | Category: /windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: command-line, windows, xp

Accessing and changing the registry from outside Windows

Problem: I got myself locked out of my pc
Solution: access the registry from outside Windows and change the account lockout settings

After enabling Remote Desktop access to access from my notebook to my pc through my wireless LAN, I was playing around with account locking settings to defend from possible brute force attacks coming through the WLAN (supposing the attacker cracked the WPA-PSK password): I set the lock so that after two failed attempts to login the account would be locked until the administrator (me) unlocks it manually.
I wanted to adopt such a security measure for RDP access only, but unfortunately the account lockout policy is valid for any login attempt, being it local or remote.
Then, as a slight security measure, I also disabled the administrator user (my user is already an administrator and an attacker should also find a valid username).
I mistyped the password twice and I got myself stuck: administrator and guest were disabled and my account was locked.
After rebooting, at the logon screen there were no more users, so that the "To begin, click your username" sentence on the left sounded like a joke, having absolutely nothing on the right.

The solution was obvious:

try to access and change the registry from linux (I have dual boot)
manually restore a previous version of the registry

I solved using Offline NTPassword & Registry Editor, an offline regitry editor on a boot disk; I made the floppy, rebooted and then I started looking in the registry the affecting keys, but it was not necessary: there's a feature to edit the accounts, and that allowed me to enable the administrator.

I also found dumphive, a useful program to dump the registry hives to text files.

Instead on www.beginningtoseethelight.org there's plenty of Windows NT, 2000 and XP low level settings and hacks, I would say "all about the registry": for instance, where and how users and passwords, including account statistics and policies, are stored and encoded in the SAM hive of the registry, and a schematic explanation of the registry structure; and don't miss the other sections of the site, they're enlightening too.
About the second option, there's a Microsoft article that explains how to manually restore the registry to a previous state.

Posted by: Z24 | Wed, May 04 2011 | Category: /windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: system recover, windows, xp

Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake 32 bit on Windows XP with Qemu, Qemu networking, Linux applications in Windows using X server

With this little tutorial I will explain what I did to:

install Qemu and its accelerator kqemu
create an image file where the guest operating system will be installed
install and then run Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake 32 bit as a guest operating system
connect from Windows host to Linux guest with qemu redir option
connect from Windows host to Linux guest and connect from Linux guest to Windows host using tap driver
run seamless Linux applications in the Windows graphical environment using an X server

See full post ...

Posted by: Z24 | Wed, May 04 2011 | Category: /windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: client-server, linux, qemu, virtualization, windows, xp

Panorado Flyer

Panorado Flyer
License: freeware for private use
Author: Karl Maloszek
Install: yes
Size: 250 KBytes (114 KBytes installer)
Requirement: Windows with COM support

Panorado Flyer is a compact program that gathers GPS coordinates from Google Earth and writes them into images EXIF information.

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Posted by: Z24 | Wed, May 04 2011 | Category: /software/windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: freeware, google earth, gps, images, software, tools, windows

Running Windows XP in Xen from its own partition

Some months ago I made some experiments with Xen and I succeeded to install and run Windows XP as a guest using Xen 3.0. In that case Windows was located in a single file and was installed through Xen. My purpose now is to make Xen running an already installed Windows from its own partition. Just to be more specific, this is my machine configuration:

Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 is located on a SATA disk, set as first boot disk
Windows XP is located on a EIDE disk, set as second boot disk
Dual boot is made by grub

I want to log into linux and run my existing Windows XP from its own partition on the EIDE disk.

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Posted by: Z24 | Wed, May 04 2011 | Category: /linux | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: grub, linux, ubuntu, virtualization, windows, xen, xp

Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 amd64 and Windows XP in Xen 3.0

I am coming from a bloody week of wrestling against packages, bugs and "make world"s trying to run Xen in Ubuntu 6.06 amd64 on an AM2 3800+ and to make a Windows XP Pro domU.
I searched on the web some resources that would explain how to run Windows on Xen and I found some very good tutorial that unfortunately don't fit exactly my configuration and my purpose. These are the sites I took as a basis for my setup:

These are all the steps I did and the problems I encountered during this Calvary :-) (I come from Windows with a little linux/unix background):

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Posted by: Z24 | Wed, May 04 2011 | Category: /linux | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: linux, ubuntu, virtualization, windows, xen, xp

Remove XP Pro or Win Server 2003 bandwidth limit

Run Group Policy (gpedit.msc) and go to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Network -> QoS Packet Scheduler and change "Limit reservable bandwidth" to "Enabled" with a value of 0%. By default it appears disabled but read the description and you'll discovered it's enabled with a value of 20%.

Posted by: Z24 | Sun, Dec 16 2007 | Category: /configurations/windows | Permanent link | home
Tagged as: configuration, windows, xp