command prompt

Confessions of a hacker for hire

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , ,

A story on Slashdot yesterday encouraged IT departments to hire a hacker, in spite of the stigma.

I’ve been that guy, and I suspect I’ll be that guy again. I’ve also had to clean up after that guy, so I may be able to add some perspective.
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Some lessons from cracking the compromised Linkedin password database

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , ,

Here’s a blow-by-blow account of a security researcher’s attempts to crack the compromised Linkedin database. This is a very good example of ethical hacking.
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How to quickly find the differences between two Word documents

Dave Farquhar Office, Software , , ,

From time to time, I have to deal with new revisions of familiar implementation guides or other system documentation, and the authors rarely include a changelog in the document. And of course the first question anyone asks about the new guide is what’s changed. That means I have to find the differences between two Word documents.

This week I found myself collaborating on a long-ish document and needing to synchronize some changes. Word’s tracked changes and comments can help somewhat, but generally I find them clumsy and annoying.

If you have five minutes and a willingness to use a command prompt, you can find the differences easily, then work from there.
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There’s a 61% chance the Adobe software you run at work is out of date

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , ,

I read this week that 61% of Adobe Reader installations in workplaces is out of date.

That’s very bad. Very, very bad. Because Adobe Reader is trivially easy to exploit, and there’s more sensitive information to steal on corporate PCs than there is on home PCs.

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Free space in c:\windows\installer

Dave Farquhar Windows ,

I found this trick yesterday for freeing up disk space on tight Windows 7 installs by using an automated tool to purge the C:\Windows\Installer directory. Windows 7 users with monster HDDs won’t have to worry about this, but if you’re running Windows 7 on a small SSD, you will.
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Pipe output to the clipboard in Windows

Dave Farquhar War Stories, Windows , , , , , , , , ,

Besides all the changes to the GUI that happened post-Windows XP, they also made one useful change to the command prompt. When you run a command, it’s now possible to pipe output to the clipboard.

If you’re like me and write a lot of documentation, or you just take a lot of notes while doing computer maintenance, it’s a big boon.

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Windows shutdown command

Dave Farquhar Windows , , ,
Windows shutdown command

Let’s say you need to shut down or reboot your computer from a command line, a batch file, or a desktop shortcut. Maybe you want to shut it down right now, or in an hour. You can do all of that and more with the Windows shutdown command, shutdown.exe.
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Windows 7 programs quit responding? You have a corrupt user profile. Here’s how to fix it.

Dave Farquhar Windows , ,

Windows 7 can suffer from old-age disease, where it thrashes hard drives, programs quit responding, and it generally becomes unusable. I’m beginning to wonder if my main PC might be suffering from this. Microsoft prescribes this cure.

If you’re comfortable with a command line, I can make the solution faster and easier.
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Two commands to fix Internet connectivity

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , , ,

I can think of two times someone has asked me to fix their computer when it has suddenly lost the ability to connect to the Internet. Assuming there’s nothing wrong with the modem or the network card, the problem usually comes down to something messing with either the TCP/IP stack or the Winsock. Security software frequently does this, as does malware. A few years ago, I briefly worked for an ISP that provided a security suite based on F-Secure, and that program was notorious for breaking the Winsock.

Here’s the simple fix.
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How to slipstream IE9 and hotfixes into Windows 7, step by step

Dave Farquhar security, Windows , , , ,

Normally, after you install any version of Windows, you have a ton of patching to do. And that patching takes as long, or longer, than the installation takes, while leaving the system vulnerable to exploits in the meantime. Slipstreaming your hotfixes into your installation media sidesteps those issues, and reduces fragmentation. You get a faster performing system, you get the system up and running a lot sooner, and you save a lot of unnecessary writes to your SSD.

So I wholeheartedly recommend slipstreaming.

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