Utility & Miscellany

Too many chores this weekend.

Spend last week out of town in a technical conference.

Had a raging bout of the highly contagious and discomforting "Caribou Cold” while there and am still suffering the tail ends of it.

Spent yesterday on my home “workbench” swapping out my system onto a new hard (larger/faster) laptop hard-drive which involved over 14 hours of work (mostly due to having to decrypt the whole-disk encryption prior to imaging it and porting it onto the new drive.

Had hoped to post much more this weekend but was not to be the case.

So here you go, semi-naked linkage.

Utilities

• SuperCopier – One of my favorite specialized file-copy apps. Now active again at version 2.2 beta.
• TinyApps.Org Blog : Formatting partitions over 32GB as FAT32 in Windows XP – Link to the curiously useful fat32format tool.  I suspect this could be useful on portable USB drives.

Forensics

• Forensics: Mounting partitions from full-disk ‘dd’ images – Tip from SANS-ISC Handler’s Diary blog.
• Tools and Links – Lots of linkage to tools and techniques from the Windows Incident Response blog
• JADsoftware – EDD – Version 1.1.0 now released. EDD checks HDDs for encrypted partitions from various whole-disk encryption solutions. See also TechPathways ZeroView, and TCHunt Quickly Find TrueCrypt Volumes – 16 Systems, as well as the File Investigator TOOLS version 2.23
• JADsoftware – IEF – Version 2.0 now out of the “Internet Evidence Finder”.  Really nice and more full-featured tool.  I quickly added this to my collection and tossed the older one.
• Forensics from the sausage factory: Vista Volume Shadow Copy issues – Great tips on how to access and manage the Vista Volume Shadow when inspecting the system.
• Automated Recovery of Multimedia from Unallocated Space - SANS Forensics blog. Good information to know.  Primary information related to NFI Defraser at SourceForge.net
• Somehow that eventually led me to Csaba Barta website and a tool called ptfinder to carve out processes from memory images.

“…ptfinder versions for Windows Server 2008 SP1, 2003 SP2 and Windows 7 beta are developed by me, and can be downloaded here.

The details of the technique can be found here.

Semi-Stealth Windows Live Updates

I’ve been waiting for some time for an update to Windows Live Writer, my blogging platform software. After the information below came out that a new version was available (14.0.8089.726 (previous build was 14.0.8064.206)).  I quickly launched my WLW and used the update tool to get the update. Curiously it said I was still using the latest update.  I manually updated it (successfully) to the higher version noted but still have been unable to find a change-log detailing just what got improved/fixed/updated.

• RELEASE: Windows Live Essentials “Wave 3” updated - Windows Live.
• Windows Live Writer - Windows Live download.

And fresh off my Video-Editing Resource Roundup post going over various builds and different downloads to get Windows Movie Maker installed on your XP/Vista/W7 system now there is this:

• Get The New Windows Live Movie Maker Today! - The Windows Blog.
• New Windows Live Movie Maker debuts, says good-bye to XP for good – Betanews.
• Windows Live Movie Maker Review – Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows.

VHD booting and Virtual PC Stuff

• How to Boot from VHD (VHD booting re-visited.) – James O’Neill’s blog.
• 7 Things about Windows 7 Native Boot VHD – Windows 7 Hacker.
• Windows 7 VHD Native Boot without any Hosting Operation System – Windows 7 Hacker.
• Running Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7 – Virtual PC Guy's WebLog.  Yes you can. Just uninstall “Virtual PC” (the new one) from Windows 7 first (if so installed) before installing Virtual PC 2007 (the old one).
• Windows Virtual PC RC and Jump Lists – Virtual PC Guy's WebLog
• Windows Virtual PC and Undo Disks – Virtual PC Guy's WebLog.  Just some house-cleaning in the new version.
• Windows Virtual PC Blog. Finally found a “official” Microsoft Windows technical blog on Virtual PC. Hope it provides good information.

Windows Technical Bits ‘n Pieces

• Ask the Performance Team : Two Minute Drill: Using PROCDUMP – Ask the Performance Team blog – Nice and clear tips on using the SysInternals – ProcDump tool to dump process information in troubleshooting.
• Dell Now Offering Windows 7 Drivers for Commercial Desktops and Laptops - Windows Experience Blog.
• What order should you install drivers in? – Ed Bott’s Windows Expertise blog.  From Dell, information on just how you should order your device driver installations for maximum impact and compatibility  Good information to keep handy for system builders.

Summer’s over.  Alvis heads back to school tomorrow morning.

Cheers!

--Claus V.