I recently came across a handy script which examines a Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 computer or an Active Directory domain controller to read out the last log on time for each user. By piping the output to a text file, it could be useful for sorting and identifying redundant user accounts.
I found this little nugget of information which may be useful for anyone looking to automatically append the time and date to a text file each time it is edited with Notepad.
According to the Made with Notepad campaign website, it works for versions of Notepad from Windows 95 onwards, and I have tested it on Windows XP Professional (SP2).
Simply start the text file with .LOG and save. From then on, the current date and time will be added to the end of the document each time it is opened in Notepad.
Howard van Rooijen‘s reply to my post about installing the “Energy Blue” theme on a computer running Windows XP Professional got me looking at James Clarke’s blog, where I found a post about the OQO Model 01 ultra personal computer.
I haven’t seen a real one yet but this looks like a cool device – no cut down operating system – just full Windows XP Professional (not CE) on a 1GHz pocket-sized PC with 256Mb RAM, a 20Gb hard disk and a slide-out keyboard. It can also connect to peripheral devices including video (1280×1024 pixels), audio, Ethernet, FireWire and USB (only 1.1 at this time) using a docking cable. For more details, see the OQO website.
Back in February I was at a product demonstration for the Antelope Technologies modular computer (similar to the OQO, but the computer “core” is a hard-disk-sized unit which plugs in to a variety of shells for ruggedised, portable computing). More details of the modular computer are available at the Antelope Technologies website but the OQO looks more like a business tool, whereas I can see the modular computer taking off for industrial/commercial use.
The only problem for me right now is the $1999 price tag (plus options)…
Last night I wanted to create an ISO image of a CD I had previously produced. A few weeks back, Stuart Preston pointed me in the direction of the Lucersoft LC ISO Creator. As Stuart noted, it has such a simple interface that you can’t really go wrong (and it’s only 53Kb in size).
In my post from a couple of weeks back, where I raved about the new Mozilla Firefox preview release, I admitted to becoming a bit of an open source fan of late. Last night I tried out another open source product – FileZilla.
FileZilla is an FTP client for Windows (there is also a FileZilla Server product). It supports both FTP and SFTP, and includes a well thought-out interface with a local site view, a remote site view and details of currently queued files for upload/download.
Using FileZilla, uploading a new version of my website took seconds, with FileZilla launching as many concurrent FTP sessions as my ISP would allow from a single upload request.
It looks like this tool could be a big time saver.
I found an interesting article on the OutFront (FrontPage support) website which gives some practical advice on how to prevent your e-mail address from being harvested and then abused by spammers. Basically, it involves converting e-mail addresses displayed on websites to unicode (for which a unicode converter may be useful). Let’s see if it works…
Yesterday, one of my clients came across an interesting scenario. They use FTP to poll sales data from their retail outlets back to a central location. As part of this process, the polling file is renamed to filename.bak; but what if filename.bak already exists from an earlier poll? The existing NT 3.51 FTP Server network component allows the rename with no problem, but XP’s FTP Server (part of IIS 5.1) does not, producing an error:
550 filename.bak: Cannot create a file when that file already exists
A quick search on the ‘net unearthed Microsoft knowledge base article 309634 . Once I had extracted the mdutil.exe utility from a Windows 2000 CD (see Microsoft knowledge base article 240225) I was able to run the following command:
mdutil set msftpsvc/1/AllowReplaceOnRename 1
A restart of the IIS Admin service was all that was needed then to allow the rename to take place within the polling process.
Microsoft has released the “Energy Blue” theme (used in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005) for tablet PC users. The theme provides new colours, new effects and a new wallpaper, which according to Microsoft “will give your Tablet a fresh, updated appearance”.
The normal setup mechanism will not allow the update to install on non-Tablet PCs, but as hinted by the Windows IT Pro magazine network WinInfo Daily Update, it is still possible to install the theme on a PC running Windows XP Professional. To do this:
Microsoft has published the Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 threat mitigation guide, which identifies security issues in networks that include computers running Windows NT 4.0 and 98, explaining the best hardening strategies that an organisation can use until they are able to upgrade these operating systems.
I’ve been looking at using the AutoPlay functionality in Windows to launch an HTML document each time I insert a USB flash drive. Controlled using a file called autorun.inf, AutoPlay is designed for CDs, but I see no reason why it should not work with other removable media.
There is an excellent overview of the autorun.inf file on the Moon Valley Software website. Although autorun.inf files are easy to edit using a standard text editor such as Notepad, the Moon Valley Autorun.inf Editor is a free download from the Moon Valley Software website, which includes a particularly useful feature to locate and display icon resources within a .DLL.
Using this, I soon had a file which changed the icon and name for the USB flash drive when I inserted it, but I could not get it to automatically launch an HTML document.
After some searching (most notably a TechRepublic post), I discovered that the open command in autorun.inf only recognises programs. Windows 2000 and later recognise the shellexecute command to open other file types, for example:
[autorun]shellexecute=index.html
Once open= is replaced with shellexecute=, the context menu in Windows Explorer recognises index.html as the default action for the device, but for some reason it does not launch when I insert the USB flash drive into either of the PCs I’m using today. I checked out Microsoft knowledge base articles 155217 and 314855 but found the PCs were correctly configured to AutoPlay.
Searching the ‘net brought up a host of utilities (some free, some not) which are designed to extend the AutoPlay functionality, but by far the most useful utility was autorun.exe (a free download from the Tarma Software Research website, not to be confused with Peter Harrison’s AutoRun from the imagespro.com website). I found that autorun.exe would execute the commands in my autorun.inf file, but still not automatically launch when the USB flash drive was inserted.