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What's On Your Thumbdrive?
Broue Master asks: "Nowadays, we need to support not only people at the office, but friends, family, friends of the family, family of the friends... you name it! They all run Windows to a degree and there are many tools to help you when assisting. Personally, I have a thumb-drive with removable memory cards. One of them has a small bootable Linux, the other one is filled with ready to use Windows utilities (CPU-Z, Ultra-Edit32), DOS utilities I've been collecting over the years, and Unix-style utilities (ps.exe, kill.exe, and others) ported to Windows, without the need for a layer like Cygwin. I also have a copy of the install files for AVG, Spybot, Sygate and the likes. But, even though I think I have many great tools, I'm sure I do not know about a lot of great others to help diagnose and solve problem. So I ask you, what's on your thumb-drive?"
....we need an open source equivalent to the GeekSquad MRI :)
Sig: I stole this sig.
I have about 6 of em too, got em real cheap from those iraq street shops :)
[the above is ment to be a joke. Don't take it seriously big brother]
And I think I represent most of /. here.
My thumb drive has al-Zarqawi's life works on it.
For me, the key is to load "portable" versions of apps instead of "installable" versions. The point is not only to eliminate the need to install, but more importantly, not to leave traces of your apps behind. It's security and a courtesy. Two excellent sources are:
PortableApps.com
PortableFreeware.com
-Jim Barr
http://jimstips.com/
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
My girlfriend bought me a laptop hard drive in an enclosure. Its 100 GB with a 5400 RPM disc, and supports USB 2.0. I literally store everything on it, from schoolwork to movies to backups of video games. I take it everywhere with me just incase I find some software (say on my school's network) that I'd really like to take home. Or if I need to access my schedule or project documents, or maybe my voice communication client.
So, technically its not a thumbdrive, but it fits in my pocket.
EVERYTHING.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
Firefox- the latest and greatest version. Everyone needs this. Make sure you take it
CCleaner, a Panda Titanium installer (does a nice job of removing stuff), XP's SP2, HijackThis, Macecraft's A Squared, and a variety of drivers and such.
You missed firefox/thunderbird. It's shocking how many people don't have them, and how much grief they put themselves through because they don't.
"So I ask you, what's on your thumb-drive?"
Fingerprints.
--
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment...that says the same thing you're going to post, and you get a redundent. HA! HA!"
Could do a long post... but easier just to point to this /. post that was already up with MANY MANY good links.
Digitial still pictures in color of Linus Torvalds, Kevin Mitnick and Bill Gates.
I don't have much on there... installers for Spyboy and AVG/Avast, CPU-Z, Firefox, Flash player, an Undelete software, FileMon, ProcessExplorer, and the WCG agent that I install when no one's looking. ;)
I've got a 1GB PNY attache and the first thing I put is of course a linux distro (DSL). And some windows utilities, things that can handle ISO images, writing floppy images. But the other half of that is personal stuff. I keep resumes of myself and some family members, my favorite wallpapers, some emulators (Nester, Dgen, KGB, Snes9x) and so on. And of course, a certain video file, with the name and extension obfuscated.
I don't get it.
I use it to transport data from high-bandwidth to low-bandwidth areas, not much more. If my family has computer problems, they typically drop off the entire thing on my doorstep. Making housecalls is annoying because there's always that one little utility or piece of hardware I forgot to bring. My nerd cave is full of wonders, and is appropriately treated with awe.
You don't want to know.
At most, all ive ever needed is spybot with updated defs, the latest def files for norton anti-virus, and a copy of hijack this. Booting from a USB drive is nice in thoery but not every pc supports it so to me its a waist of time. A bootable CD with bartPE works on the old and new and should be all you'll ever need.
Beats me. You'll have to ask the guy who swiped it.
--MarkusQ
are Putty (ssh client and proxy pipe), PSCP (secure copy of files from *nix to/from win), PSFTP (secure ftp), tail, and scite (a nice text editor).
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Process Explorer, Filemon, Autoruns. Some other windows debugging tools too, since I do development on that platform. But those three are generally useful.
See you, space cowboy...
This way, I can satisfy any passing desire to experience Yet Another Stupid Death.
The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
There are a myriad of great tools out there, but personally I have a copy of almost everything from Sysinternals on my thumbdrive. Top of the list are Process Explorer a (overclocked, suped-up, uber, and simply amazing) version of TaskManager. It shows everything you've ever wanted to know about a process but didn't know you could know. In addition, FileMon and RegMon are very helpful for troubleshooting permission problems, and the PSTools kit (psexec, pskill, etc) are also great. They also have a free read-only version of NTFSDOS (and even an NTFS filesystem driver for 95/98. The TCP/IP tools are also very good to have on hand. Best part is of course that they are free, and many have source available.
If you do any Windows troubleshooting, this website is a must-have. No joke.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Trend Microsystems "Sysclean" package. It's just an exe file with the scanning engine, and you download the latest virus def patternfile, and it scans your computer. Very nice; TM I think is the best commercial AV product available.
Sysclean executable:
http://www.trendmicro.com/download/dcs.asp (under "Not a Trend Micro Customer")
Pattern files:
http://www.trendmicro.com/download/pattern.asp
I also carry, in the "Antivirus" folder:
Various utilities I've collected for removing Symantec AV
AVG Free installer (I tried to talk people into TrendMicro, because I honestly think it's better, but if they flat out refused, I'd install AVG for them - less virusy computers on teh intarwebs is a good thing)
vcleaner - avg's somewhat less capable version of TM's sysclean package.
Also:
A series of handy apps, including:
7zip - v313 (the older one seems to have less bloat)
adobe acrobat
Divx codec
VLC Media Player
Firefox
Winamp 2.92
IttyBittyProcessManager
Angry IP scanner
Killbox
MSRDPCLI.exe (MS Remote Desktop Client - for 2000/98 machines)
vbrun60 files
and a folder called "Computer Cleanup", containing:
ad aware personal (plus the latest defs.ref file, available form lavasoftusa.com)
CWShredder (remove cool web search spyware)
Hijack this
ewido setup
LSP Fix (for sneaky spywares that replace something with dns)
WinsockXPFix
BugOff
RegVac
Spybot S&D (plus latest update packs)
Yep.
sig?
I don't have one. I see no need for one. They're very expensive and very small capacity. I'll stick with my case of CDs.
Who died and made you everyone's Windows support bitch? I can imagine how there's a perceived coolness factor of being able to whip out a copy of AVG or Firefox and install it on someone's PC for them, but ... why?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
My Capital One card.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
With the 2GB drives costing so little, it's easy to bring all the tools you need anywhere you go. Some of the basics - All the tools from SysInternals - About 27MB (including RegMon, FileMon, etc...) File Recovery software like Restore File shredding utility SpyBot/Adaware TweakUI SynchBack (Synch and file backup program) AVG - AntiVirus Folder with key XP system files CCleaner Opera/Firefox/Thunderbird
Some of this is a bit redundant, but it is all only 19Mb using UPX.
1by1 (play MP3s), AriskKey (recover passwords), AutoRuns (enumerate startup tasks), BurnCDCC (burn ISO images), CD (basic CD player), CDex (rip CDs + convert MP3/WAV), Copier (quick scan + print), CWShredder (clean spyware), DComBob (tame DCOM), Discover (force windows onscreen), DupeLocater (find and clean), FileRecovery PC Inspector (undelete), Folder2ISO (make ISO images), FoxitReader (read PDFs), GUIPDFTK (split/join PDFs), HijackThis (find spyware), HJSplit (split/join files), Identify_Boards (identify hardware), IPAgent (show IP), KatMouse installer (due to MS drivers), LCISOCreator (make ISO image from CD), Leaktest (test firewall), Microsoft keygen (people lose things), MultiRes (change res + force refresh), Multi Timer (stopwatch), NoteTab Light (text editor), NTest (test monitor setup), OnTop (pin windows to foreground), Process Explorer (task manager), ProduKey (recover passwords), Registry Commander (virus cleanup), ResHacker (examine executables), Rootkit Revealer (just in case), ShootTheMessenger (turn service off), Shred by AnalogX (simple filer shredder), TedNPad (unicode text editor), TFT (dead pixel locator), UNPnP (tame SSDP), UPX (compress executables), UnitConverter (what it says), utorrent (basic torrent app), VCdControlTool (mount ISO images), Windows 98 generic USB flash driver, WinImp (archive to ZIP, de-archives more), WinIPs (set hardware IPs), Wizmo (create force kill shortcuts), WNTIPCFG (show IP config), WS_FTP95 (basic FTP client), XnView (image browser and effects), XPDite (minor XP-SP1 fix), YACalc (evaluate expressions), XVI32 (hex editor)
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Can the little USB thumb drives be physically write-protected? It would seem to me that mounting them on a potentially virus-infected Windows machine. (ie. any Windows machine) is just asking for trouble. I have a couple of CD-Rs burned (and finalized) with utilities. Maybe I'm paranoid, but if they go into a potentially infected machine, and it turns out to be infected with something nasty, it's a one-way trip. CD-Rs are cheap, my time and data are not.
--- Just another Code-Monkey
'Updates' which has every conceivable update file for Windows 98, Me, and XP, and 'Utilities' which has:
PortableApps.com's list of Apps. (Most notably Firefox.)
Hijack This
The installers for AVG Free, Ad-Aware, and Spybot.
The latest update files for the above three, plus Norton and McAfee. (For those without functioning internet access due to their infection.)
I also have the SP2 update CD, MS' 'February 2004 Update CD' which has updates for 98, Me, 2000, and XP as of that date (good mostly because it has IE6 installer on it that will fix just about any IE6 broken-ness.) And a CD with updates for every Mac OS 9.0 and later.
Plus an 'Ultimate Boot CD', Norton System Works' "Symantec Recovery Disc", a nice Live Windows CD that has some useful utilities on it (and has network access for which I can run Portable FIrefox off the above mentioned thumb drive, and the install folders for every version of Windows from 95 on up. (NOT including 'setup.exe', though. They are only for customers' computers that don't have an intact \Windows\Options\Cabs or \i386 folder, and can't find their original disc.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
... a bunch of cheesy video commercials of some viking dudes complaining about loss of their former jobs, but now glad that they won a battle-of-the-bands.
... DOS utilities I've been collecting over the years, and Unix-style utilities (ps.exe, kill.exe, and others) ported to Windows, without the need for a layer like Cygwin
I used to do the same. Install Windows then a metric bucketload of "utilities" (text editors, Sysinternals programs, ActiveState Perl, ActivateState Python, Resource Kits, etc.) that made using Windows bearable. Like some self-fulfilling prophecy. And back when collecting warez was regarded as fashionable and not adolescent, I'd install even more Must Have programs. Now, when possible, I simply skip the nonsense and install Cygwin.
No emulation layer needed? Maybe. In a few isolated cases, perhaps. But if you're going to run a program, you'd prefer a centralised distribution. And then you'll need a real terminal, you'll need a real shell, interpreters, centralised and consistent documentation, and you'll mostly like needed something like SSH to make it all work. Hell, a full Cygwin installation is comparable a typical Linux installation, and larger than Windows, but for an average user, the base install (coreutils, etc.) with SSH and few other packages will more than suffice. A no brainer compared to collect one-off programs from any number of sources.
The consistency is especially nice in that I can go back and forth from Linux or BSD without blinking (same programs and same manpages, right?), no annoying little problems like CR/LF endings get in the way. And as a bonus, I get a perverse pleasure reading the manpages I wrote for Windows programs.
Putty, a private/public key pair, openvpn, ultravnc, winscp, firefox, and I always have a copy of backtrack on me.
My karma makes buddha cry.
Backups of GPG private key.
That thumbdrive isn't getting plugged in much.
I like music
it's got my current resume, some crap photos, and a game demo. I was going to put more on but I getting paranoid about ID theft. My Next USB drive will have reasonable security built in.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
An Electronic Survival Kit. If there's one thing Katrina taught me, it's that losing your entire life would completely suck. Why not take a few minutes now so that you can get back to normal ASAP?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There are a decent number of flash drives that have a write-protect switch on the side you can switch on and off as desired. I know PNY, Imation, and Mushkin carry them. Probably others as well.
Of course there's documents and the same old portable apps everyone else is listing, but those aren't much fun. I've got SimCity 2000, X-Com, and The Incredible Machine 3 on there, for starts, plus Scummvm and Frotz for my Lucasarts and Infocom adventure fix. And of course there's the basic preloaded Windows games, just in case you're going somewhere they've been removed. Throw in a couple Roguelikes, those few old Windows Entertainment Pack games that work on 32-bit systems, and finally put Cave Story in for good measure.
...but is it art?
fdisk
Funny, I also carry a thumb-drive with a removable memory card slot. It's this generic one floating around online: http://www.supermediastore.com/supermedia-handy-4i n1--usb-20-flash-memory-card-reader-yellow.html
/ )r scan.htm )
i 32/xvi32.htm#download )
p _id=6208 )
o rer.html )h tml )
I think they're a great idea, because I can move with the SD card market as flash memory becomes denser and denser. Speed hasn't been a problem, either. The thumbdrives support USB 2.0 and my SD card seems to be capable of a very decent data transfer rate.
I have a collection of Windows tools on the drive. Not Linux tools, because I can usually accomplish whatever it is I'm doing in the Linux environments I encounter day to day.
Network Tools:
* Raw TCP/IP transfer -> netcat ( http://www.vulnwatch.org/netcat/ )
* SSH/Telnet -> putty ( http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty
* Port Scanner -> SuperScan4 ( http://www.foundstone.com/resources/proddesc/supe
* Classic Port Scanner -> nmap ( http://insecure.org/nmap/download.html )
* Packet Capture and Analysis -> WireShark setup ( http://www.wireshark.org/download.html )
Editors:
* General -> vim 7.0 ( http://www.vim.org/download.php )
* Hex Editor -> xvi32 ( http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xv
Development:
* Tiny C Compiler ( http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/tcc/ )
* nasm ( http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?grou
Misc:
* Lightweight Windows md5sum -> md5summer ( http://www.md5summer.org/download.html )
* Process Explorer ( http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExpl
* MP3 Encoding -> RazorLame with lame ( http://www.dors.de/razorlame/download.php )
* Terminal Emulator -> TeraTerm Pro ( http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002416/teraterm.
The folder is 26.7MB.
porn.
you may want to switch to portaputty, it keeps stuff out of the registry, and in a neat little folder, same directory as the exe
sent from my slashdot browser.
Hey everyone. Well as far as "tools" go on the "thumbdrive" I carry.... PCTOOLS' Registry mechanic and Spyware Doctor for most of my repair situations.. Other than that another MUST is an HTTP Tunnel http://www.nocrew.org/software/httptunnel.html . At my former school they had this draconian firewall that only permitted HTTP traffic through a proxy on port 80. I setup a box with a HTTP Tunnel server on port 80 that redirected the traffic to a SOCKS proxy to break out of it. The motorola phone tools suite to setup a my phone as a dialup broadband connection. Everything else I download over the internet when I need it. Best all.. Googlebear
My thumbdrives are usually empty and ready for use. Mostly they are used for transferring drivers from internet enabled computer to a newly installed computer. Before thumbdrives I used CD-RW's for that purpose and managed to reach maximum write count on several discs. Too bad that I haven't yet managed to make a working bootable thumbdrive that would work on my computers so I still have to use CD-RW's for BIOS upgrades as I don't have any working floppydrives.
- Raynet --> .
How about this... TiddlyWiki a personal wiki for notes. views in a web browser, pure javascript love, as handy as a PDA, and only 300kb of HTML.
Place a curse on Spammers
I have a Sony thumbdrive and I keep similar stuff on it.
AVG, Spybot, Windows Updates, an installer for the mail client we use at work, device drivers, and the like. I'll keep temporary backups of local files for whatever computer I'm working on as well, which has proven a wise choice in the past. I also back up whatever projects I may be working on to the drive in addition to normal server/CD back ups.
More out of the ordinary, I keep a debugger (Olly debugger) that has helped my recover forgotten passwords and such as well as Netcat.
The thumbdrive will also boot a computer with network drivers in DOS so I can Ghost to/from network drives.
Opera 9 (http://www.opera-usb.com/operausben.htm), Openoffice, and i carry everything projects i make with delphi. So everywhere i go, i've got my bookmarks, my .doc(s), .xls(s) and other related files.
oh, and music of course..
lol i even got fallout2 on it for a quick escape into the wastelands :)
...is my iPod. I keep games and DVDRips on it when I go to friends' houses, other than that it's just music.
... it's been invaluable. I take it everywhere with me.
What wouldn't Jesus do?!
Sadly, it still seems that a good portion of the time someone asks me to look at some computer, the computer is an old Windows 95 or 98 box that lacks working USB ports. Atleast it's finally gotten to the point where I can pretty much count on the computer having a CD drive (though I do have issues with slow, fussy, dust-clogged 8 year old CD readers having problems reading my burned CDs) I do have USB thumbdrives, but I mostly use those as a big floppy to move data around between computers, rather than semi-permanent storage of Linux distros and windows utilities.
Another advantage to the CD for things like Damn Small Linux is that you're much more likely to come accross a computer that can boot from CD (pretty common on anything 5-6 years old or newer) than a computer that can boot from USB (pretty much only standard new on PCs from the last 1-2 years or so, if that).
A bunch of stuff from portableapps.com: Portable OpenOffice.org, for working on articles when I'm on the road; Portable NVU, Portable GIMP, and Portable FileZilla, because I got an "omfg EMERGENCY!" request to update a website once and I didn't have any of my usual tools; Portable Sunbird; ClamWin Portable, because you can't trust just any old machine; and Sudoku Portable because you need something to do besides work.
Seriously.
For fixing Windows machines, NOTHING is better than a BartPE CD with the right plug-ins.
Anyone who fixes Windows machines and knows what they're doing has been using BartPE for a couple of years, now.
Boot it up, check the hardware, check the partitions, replace broken files,
and of course copy the important data off to a USB shoebox drive
(or to a CD/DVD if there's a second drive in the machine)
before doing any more serious maintenance. I've had to do that routine a few times.
The old "Linux Bootable Business Card" was a much smaller distro
that fit onto one of those 50MB truncated-small-CD formats,
and had a bunch of repair tools.
And of course thumbdrives can do the same thing,
but you need to be Really Really careful about viruses,
not only because we're reinventing the floppy disk virus vector,
but because one of the times you really need this sort of tool
is when a machine might be infected - CDROMs are really safe.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Truecrypt provides on the fly encryption and plausible deniability (also open source, and can run under windows and linux). And plus I think it would be good to secure data when the device holding that data can be easily lost/stolen.
So far I'm not aware of any of my folks having problems, but it's only a matter of time, and it only takes *one* person whose kid is a gamer or warez kiddie for the virus to get going.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Dude, you're behind the times. Saying "waist of time" is obviously the new hipster lingo. Get it? Ha ha...
*ducks and runs away* (So no, I won't be here all week.)
Pam and Tommy's video. Paris Hilton's video. Riley Mason videos. Bang Bus. Etc.
;-)
Oh.....you meant utilities.....lets see.....
sdelete? Yeah, there you go
Portable Firefox, Portable Ai Robo Form, and school stuff.
Now for the long list of extesions for Portable Firefox that I've got:
DOM Inspector
Show IP
Distrust
AiRoboForm Toolbar
Fire Encrypter
Infocon Monitor
No Script
Foxy Proxy
ClearPrivateData
Fasterfox
DownThemAll
TabMixPlus
IE Veiw
Forecastfox
RSS Ticker
As one can tell, I don't put security at the top of my "Priorities" list.
Version numbers would've been included, but got a lameness filter applied and had to remove them, hahah!!
What? Doesn't everyone keep a backup of their single-player game characters on an old 32MB thumb drive?
GParted LiveUSB
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php/
I recently upgraded my FreeBSD server machine to a Conroe CPU running in an Asus P5B. But I actually had to upgrade the chassis and motherboard before Conroe came out. Because of that, I actually got a P5B that had an older BIOS that wasn't Core 2 ready. So to do the upgrade, I was going to have to to a flash update.
The last time I had to do that, it was to a Dell laptop that dual-booted Windows, and the update only ran under Windows. Before then, it was DOS boot floppies and 'flash.exe'. So I wasn't looking forward to it.
Oh, how things have changed! Asus has a flash update program built into the BIOS and that program supports reading FAT filesystems on thumbdrives!
I hadn't actually used a thumb drive in a few years (since getting an iPod), so I actually had to dig it up from the bottom of a drawer, but it was there (the backup plan was going to be an SD card from the camera and the SD-to-USB adapter), and it worked.
Asus may not be the only ones that support OSless flash updates via USB, but it's the 2nd most convenient BIOS update I've ever had to do (1st place goes to Apple).
I managed to drop mine at a party and when I found it someone had driven their car over it.
resume, DamnSmallLinux, winsock fix, ad-aware, spybot, norton removal tool, geeksquad mri, screenshots of a nub trying to run pwdump2 on one of the lab computers I maintain via a batch file created and downloaded from his personal univ. website. Planning on putting some more of the sysinternal stuff on there too. "Pricelessware" haha.
Funny how I shrugged at the rash of thumbdrives out there, that is, until recently. They keep getting cheaper and cheaper and I kept buying them. I have since, stopped, however, it was only after the 12 step program.
Now, what do I keep on mine? Slax - Kill Bill, of course it really has brought me the level of standardization that I need from one computer to the next and it can do all (like many other small distros) the things that I need. I would however recommend something like Truecrypt for ensuring the security of your information. I would also recommend that you back your drive up on a regular basis, these things can be a bit unforgiving.
I could go on and on about the various apps, it really all depends on what you are doing. I do find the following though, very useful: Wireshark (Ethereal), Open Office and the usual suspects, samba, Etherwake, NVU, Thunderbird, rdesktop, various vnc flavors and other well known management utilities.
If I did not emphasize enough earlier, if you are going to rely on these little gems, I think you should always have an identical spare, and additionally, perform a backup on a regular basis. You might want to get creative and build a library of tools which could be easily accessed remotely to keep your drive lean. I would also highly recommend encrypting data you wouldn't want public.
Utils:
Hijack This. Spybot & Ad Aware. Various Virus scanners & fixes. Ghost and TrueImage. MSCONFIG for Win2k machines. Keyfinder. reg files for particular tasks. hosts file to limit access (to myspace!). Windows Disk Cleanup (cleanmgr.exe). IE5 & IE6 install files. IEradicator. CPUZ. Winsockfix. Various standard network drivers for all Windows OSes including USB network drivers. Office updates, various versions. Zone Alarm. Winzip & WinRAR. Some DOS windows unix util ports, i.e. kill.exe to kill processes. Editpad. VNC. WS_FTP. PCAnywhere. MBM5. Prime95. Powertoys for Windows various versions. Process Guard. Microsoft Virtual PC & VMware. Windows Fax installation files for Windows various versions. Panicware Pop-up Stopper Free.
Non-Utils:
Nice PD wallpapers & screensavers. Windows XP wallpaper powertoy. Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition. Google Earth. WinAmp. WinDVD trial version. Various Codecs.
I've probably forgotten an item or two, but that pretty much lists everything I might need beyond specific hardware drivers.
That assumes you give a rat's ass about people who are stupid enough to be running Windows. And who won't let you boot your knoppix disc, which would make the whole issue moot. People like that deserve random crap in their registry! :)
Ok, ok, I'm joking. I didn't know there was a portaputty, but I'm definitely going to get it now. Thanks.
I've been using Linux pretty much exclusively since '98 both at work and at home, and apart from having to be a little bit careful about selecting hardware it's been fairly painless.. Modern distros install easily, even on laptops and with wifi etc... I know lots of people have no choice but to run Windows for a variety of reasons but really, should they still be suffering for it? Are things really so bad for Win users that all this stuff is regularly required? My parents ran XP for a while, and had a couple of virus/spyware issues... they got me to install Linux and can now do everything they did before but without the headaches.. in the three years since switching they have been happy with it and have had exactly zero problems. I know Win95/98 was a frustrating fuckup (and thats why switched to start with) but are things still that bad with XP etc? I take for granted the fact that I can use my computer as just another tool that keeps on running without much special attention or maintenance... it's a shame that it seems lots of Win user can't do the same.
i'm working on a 'portable privacy suite' kind of thing on my 1gb drive. Someone's put together a portable version of Tor for win32, so that's on there. Portable Firefox is on there, with a few choice plugins like Torbutton, Noscripts and Customizegoogle. puTTY is on there, Filezilla is going to go on there soon, and I'm considering a version of PGP/GPG to put on, too. I also plan to put Eraser on.
Last step is finding a cheap/compact roll-up USB keyboard to avoid hardware keyloggers.
I really don't have anything worth hiding, but it's an interesting project. I want to see how workable a very strong "personal security policy" really is.
Does anyone have any other suggestions for software or other modifications? The idea is to keep it fairly simple at it's core.
(the keyboard is kind of pushing it already on the simple front, imo. so is my other idea of getting a micro usb hub and using smaller size keys for subdividing tasks - like having a cheap 64mb drive for my public/private keyrings, one for encryption software itself, one for everything else; then wrapping it all in the rollup keyboard... going to the library and whipping that bad boy out of my pocket and plugging it in all at once. i think the looks alone might be priceless, if i didn't get arrested on the spot...)
A favorite in high school. Teacher would give us a computer lab for Senior Thesis, then leave to go about other business, and we'd all pull out thumbdrives and play networked Doom.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
According to need I usually have an encrypted Mac Diskimage (.dmg) of varying size on my FAT16-formatted USB-Thumbdrives. Thus I can easily transfer data (including any Mac meta-data) safely between Macs, as well as (not quite so safely) anything from most any other PC (as long as they support USB).
.dmg is about the only "utility" I have on my USB-Sticks.
Since I mostly transfer sensitive data between Macs the
sig? Oh, that sig...
Portable OO.o Portable Firefox Portable Gaim PuTTY Various antivirus/anispyware/HijackThis And a small seperate 'casper cow' partition for when i need a full working environment (ubuntu live reads from that partition, giving me a custom ~)
Imation on one and SanDisk on the other. Not quite sure how you would get a linux kernel on them, there just doesn't seem enough room unless the font was really really small.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
You should also bring an Apple hardware catalog.
Because people who need to ask a friend to clean up their pc's full of viruses and ad-ware, shouldn't be using windows.
Nothing. No, really. I use it to transfer files, not as the "Ultimate thing for fixing anything"
I /do/ keep a thumb drive on me, I have an embedded version of DSL on it, but that's not the point. For fixing family & friend's PCs, I loose the thumb drive, I don't want my nice files/apps/utils being infected by whatever crud they've got on their PC, so I use a bootable CD: UBCD4Win, CD-Rs are read-only once burnt, so it can't get infected, and I can boot it and run plenty of nice utils for defragging, checking disks, anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc.
I only plug my thumb drive into PCs I trust, I'd hate to carry viruses, etc. round to other PCs.
UBCD 4 Win
--DanAntispyware: Adaware Spybot Ewido MS Antipyware/ Defender Ccleaner Smitfraud cleaner LSP Fix HostsFileReader Hijack This Antivirus: Norton AV 2003 plus defns AVG Removal Tools for Norton programs Symantec virus removal tools Other: Password finder Password Revealer Nero registry repair tool (for missing CD drives) Windows Keyfinders IPscan Acrobat Winzip Zonealarm Msicleaner Syncbackup free Pagefiledefrag Generic memory key drivers (dumb place to keep them I know) Lots of other utils that sounded good at the time but I havent actually needed them. I keep this stuff on memory stick and CD, plus Barts PE boot CD and ERD boot CD.
(Shameless plug ahoy!)
Finnix, a small sysadmin livecd I produce, can be easily installed on a thumb drive. Boot the CD, and there's a script called finnix-thumbdrive that takes care of the necessary syslinux configurations to install on a thumb drive and make it bootable. Finnix includes a ton of utilities for sysadmins, and boots up pretty quickly.
I always say I'm not familiar with this so-called "Windows" operating system. My PC works with GNU/Linux. If they want to live in computer hell, that's their choice. If they have issues with Windows or an application, I recommend that they contact Microsoft or their respective software vendor. Period.
I foresee interesting problems in your future.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
My USB flash memory (1 gb) is for backup of documents and code only in case my hard disk would crash or something.
But software that could be good to have on it, I guess would be 7-Zip, Mozilla Firefox, CCleaner, Ad-Aware, FileZilla.
256mb drive, copied an xp cd to my pc, extracted, used ryanvm pack and the integrator to add sp2 and used bartpe to create a emergency xp install on my drive, so i have an independant xp install to fix anything that may go wrong. added extra tools such as putty, winrar, nlite, imgburn.
portfolio
My thumbdrive is only used for transferring files between my machines at home and those at work. Besides, all the people I "supported" were using digital lifestyle applications (photos, music, movies, dvds) so I had almost all of them buy Macs. Now, the only support calls I get are about simple things like how to make a photo-slideshow into a DVD or what camcorder they should buy.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Let me tell you a trick for those on a restricted windows 'kiosk pc' with no input devices, that want to run putty (which is sadly not in the standard menu). Go in IE (of course only browser available there) to the putty website, click on the putty exe, and you'll get the standard IE menu of what you want to do with the download. Obviously you cannot save it, but you can click the option to run it (at least on the ones I tried). Success! Fame!
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
But my thumb seems to have some mayo on it
mmmm...
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Let's see: Some plays im writing, a screenplay, my screenwriting software, and some essential Windows apps.
No, they don't. I fixed that "hey, I have trouble with my computer, can you quickly drop by and fix it?" problem quite easily: I don't support Windows boxes. Buy a Mac or don't call me. Those who bought a Mac hardly ever have to call, and those who kept Windows boxes eventually found somebody else to harass.
For Macs, if there actually is an issue that some simple troubleshooting steps can't fix (which is quite unlikely), I use DiskWarrior and the Apple-provided Tech Tools Deluxe. Finally, Mac OS X provides a nice "Archive and Install" function which allows you to install a clean version of Mac OS X over a broken version, fixing all problems while keeping user data and dropping files that were installed into the system into a special folder.
No USB thumb drive required.
I recently went to Malaysia and bought myself an iDisk Tiny. It try is small, not much bigger than two USB connectors. I wanted to find someone who sold it in Canada, or the USA, but not much luk yet.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I agree it's a pain sometimes to go to people's houses to fix things, but if you turn it in to a career... it's great. I keep updated versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, MozBackup, AVG, Spybot, Ad-Aware, SpywareBlaser, HiJackThis, KillBox, AIMFix, CWShredder, SmitRemove, Google Earth (or just GooglePack installer these days), Adobe, iTunes, Symcln (can't f'n' stand when Norton products can't even uninstall properly!), and finally the best Matrix screensaver I know of - http://www.nthelp.com/matrix.htm - and I think that's it. Of course there's some funny videos, pictures of cops that have gotten their car stuck (http://www.edlippjr.com/pictures/funny/popo-crash -02.JPG), and the like. No p0rn on the thumbdrive. :)
Do or do not. There is no try. --Yoda
I just use a Mac and stopped working on my friends' Windows boxes. Suddenly my need to carry around all these little utilities just shriveled up and disappeared, like the U.S.'s social program budget.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
a DIVX copy of the original Transformers movie, and photos from my vacation last week.
Take a look at -- http://www.rfc1149.net/blog/2006/08/23/wiping-unus ed-space-in-a-file-system/
Think twice before lending your USB drive to someone even for a short while. And check what
they put on _your_ key.
BartPE is essentially a unique Windows envirnment, requiring it's own 'scripted-install' procedure. You can use it to setup and burn a bootup CD. It includes a utility to upload the .iso it can generate to make a USB stick bootable. But I struggled with it, until I found PEtoUSB 3.0.0.7.
.exe, along with how to set it up in Bart's Nu2menu 'start' menu.
On Bart's site is a plug-in page with a wealth of plug-ins for the 'environment'. This page [http://dirk-loss.de/win-tools.htm] has an even more extensive list, of tools the slashdotter might require, plus links w/ instructions for making any application into a single compressed
For what it's worth my stick of choice is a Creative Muvo TX SE I picked up for about $75, so I always have my toolbox at-hand, since it plays MP3s. It doesn't matter if it is formatted as FAT or FAT16, tunes still play fine. Using Bart's PE, it is simple to make a minimal environment. With applications like Torpark installed, I have no reason to carry a laptop for my purposes, the MP3 play is fine. Note full networking is support in Bart's PE in case you're wondering what boot-up feels like.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
I usually keep a win32 copy of openoffice.org handy; I work in a computer lab, and it's happened more than once that a student from a low budget home comes in with some kind of ODF file that they can't open. The school insists on only using Microsoft Office, so I install OO.org on demand for students who need it. Since I keep documents on my thumb drive, it helps me to access my own work as well.
A properly configured kiosk PC would not allow you to download anything.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I have lots of goodies from PortableApps.com, some basic games, and a bejesusload of MP3s to fill up empty space. Portable Firefox (With FoxyProxy, FEBE, FoxyTunes, StumbleUpon and Sage) VLC Media Player GAIM Instant Messenger (Both Yahoo and AIM) GIMP (Because my school computers dont let me use Photoshop or GIMP)
If they went through the trouble to lock down a Windows PC to the extent of disallowing removable media, but allow IE to launch an arbitrary executable from the Internet, they're criminally incompetent.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
You could just as easily put all those on a CD as well. Howver, what gives my setup character is that I've collected a ton of freeware and free for personal use stuff over the years that I install on all my clients machines (they all use Windows, sad to say). Firewalls, AdAware SE Personal, ClamWin, Spybot S&D, Hijack This!, IrfanView, WinRAR (and I encourage them to register it!), CacheMem 5.11, Easy Burn, X-SetUp free or Pro depending on if they want to register it which they usually do, and a ton of other stuff. It's a tight fit actually. Between the NewOwner folder, my massive collection of drivers, and those service packs, it's a wonder it fits at all. Still it beats trying to get this stuff via dial-up which is what most of my clients, even business (!), are still using.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
First off I'd like to say I have the largest practical thumb drive I could get my hands on. It's a 4gb SanDisk Cruzer Mini. I picked it because of the cavernous 4gb size, the VERY small profile for such a large drive, and the easily visible activity light. A lot of the time I was not able to plug in my old JetFlash 1gb into a machine because the drive was too big. It was long, it was wide, and it was thick. Some computers would not accept it because their USB ports were too close to the edge of the recess the ports were in, or the two ports were too close together and I could not use the jetflash and fit anything into the adjacent port. (a flash drive is useless if you have no mouse!) When they start selling an 8gb, I will have one that week.
Then there is the issue of boot-ability. Options on the mac are unfortunately very limited, because most older mac hardware cannot boot from a USB device, and most new mac hardware can only boot OS X, which due to a bug in the boot code, cannot boot USB. (it hard-resets the USB bus about 10 seconds into boot... doh!) So there is only a very narrow range of slot load iMacs that are new enough to support USB booting electrically, and are old enough to be able to boot OS 9. I have played with this, and it's a neat trick, but it's god-awful slow because those same iMacs also have 12mbps USB. None of the macs with 480 can boot OS 9, and you cannot add a USB HS card to an iMac so there you are.
As for my 4, it lives in my right pocket. I do mac desktop support for a school and having that drive in my pocket saves me hours of time and miles of walking. It contains mostly program tools, scanner and printer drivers, special maintenance scripts, copies of the "combo udaters" for OS repair, documents the school needs like the master addressbook, as well as a good 1gb of free space for data transfers. I also keep a fairly compact 2.5" external FW hard drive in my shirt pocket along with an isight firewire cable (very compact!) for the larger jobs. The firewire drive contains a bootable OS 9, OS X for PPC, -and- OS X for Intel. (it's a triple boot)
I wait for the day they come up with oh say... a 16gb *firewire* flash drive. Kanguru sells FW flash drives, but they are low capacity and absurdly expensive. That would allow me to do with just the flash drive what I now do with the two drives together.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Nowadays, we need to support not only people at the office, but friends, family, friends of the family, family of the friends....
You are not supporting them, you are supporting M$. Why should you make it cheaper and easier for them to surrender their freedom? When you ask them why they use Windoze, they will tell you it's because Windoze is cheap and easy. It's neither. The solution is to quit supporting Microsoft.
The only help I'll give people is to migrate them to free software. I'm not going to waste my time keeping up with all the arcane Windoze patch, AV and firewall nonsense, much less waste all day applying it. The closest I'll come to supporting Windoze is to right size their NTFS partition and let grub point to it, and I'll only do that after the client has run M$'s pathetic defrag software all night to clean it up. If their computer is too far gone for that, they need to take it to a local computer store to have it wiped and reloaded. The free software part is easy, just boot off suitable live CD. A nice touch is to make a fat filesystem and move all of their work to it so they can manipulate it from either boot. People who migrate seldom look back and they require much less "support". Giving the user free software on a non free platform won't solve your support problem directly. Sooner or later, the system preferences will mysteriously revert to the M$ default and M$ style bit rot will take the whole computer down anyway.
My thumb drive is only useful for getting things off Windoze systems. A USB drive is handy for saving out files your friend wants to keep before you send the computer into the shop for a wipe and reload. Thumb drives are useful for getting small files you want from computers you are forced to use.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Of course it is! :) Actually I now recall that it wasn't using kiosk software, but just locked down windows and used ghost images to overwrite anything that happened to it at the end of the day (or at will).
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
whatever files people put on them after they stole my last 2...
Well, yes, they deserve it :) , but the random stuff which i forgot to clarify were IIRC your public and private keys, and server settings, too.
sent from my slashdot browser.
Well... admittedly I do carry some WinXP stuff to help out Windows weenies.
128 megs of malware :)
My web site just has links to a PuTTY executable and an UltraVNC executable. Then I attach to my VNC session over an ssh tunnel and resume whatever I was doing exactly how it was when I last left it.
I suppose you could carry Port-a-PuTTY around to save you a few seconds of tunnel configuration each time.
The music is just there to keep me from forgetting to unplug my USB drive when I'm done.
All I have on my thumb drive is emacs.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
First, you have to deal with the fact that your USB key may not always mount as the same drive letter. I use pstart to take care of this: http://www.pegtop.de/start/. A great little app to give you a consistent environment no matter who's machine you are using.
Next, a unix environment. First, get a bunch of tools (including zsh) from here:
http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/. Some of these don't work (man, df, etc), so you will want to find better versions elsewhere (they do exist! I just discovered a good version of DF from this thread, thanks! Others include dd, ls). Zsh is the killer app from this suite. A nice shell that does not depend on cygwin. You'll need to create two files to set up your environment. All of my unix tools exist in a subdirectory called 'unixtools' on the key disk.
Start with a script (call it startup) to properly initialize zsh to know where your stuff is. You then initialize zsh from pstart using 'unixtools/zsh.exe startup' Note that $UTD will now be defined as your unix tools drive for use in any other sh scripts you want to write:
And of course we need a .zshrc (you need to replace ls with a version I don't recall where is at this moment for DIRCOLORS to work). You can see I have set up some aliases, most notably for gvim (this demonstrates the use of $UTD):
One app I like to use on the USB drive is freecommander. Unfortunately, this program relies solely on its INI file, and does not take parameters for browsing. To fix this, I wrote the following script called 'browse' for launching it:
Notice above that I can actually use a 'shebang' line, thanks to the $ZSHROOT environment set up in our startup script. Very cool! This even works if you install activestate perl on your key disk. I put perl in unixtools/perl. That means that from your zsh, you can do things like './test' where 'test' has '#!/perl/bin/perl.exe -w' as its first line. I think this is very cool!
:) Some other things I have on the key disk, that didn't involve quite the devotion of time:
I should put this all on a web page one of these days
If I'm going out deliberately to fix stuff I'll have CDs of stuff anyway, but a lot of families also have a more recent desktop or laptop around. It's come in handy a few times, so it's been kept. :)
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Portable Firefox (as has been mentioned) and a bootable and under-windows capable version of DSL.
Ever wondered why your hard disk is full? Or what directory is taking up most of the space? When using conventional disk browsing tools, such as Windows Explorer, these questions may be hard to answer. With SequoiaView however, they can be answered almost immediately. SequoiaView uses a visualization technique called cushion treemaps to provide you with a single picture of the entire contents of your hard drive. You can use it to locate those large files that you haven't accessed in one year, or to quickly locate the largest picture files on your drive. http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/
I work in the IT field traveling to customer's houses.
I see all sorts of jacked up computers.. Here's the usual rundown of things that I keep on my drive.
Google Pack Installer - (three free months norton good for getting rid of virsues.)
Norton Intelligent Updater - Used to update defintions for every version of norton. Google it and grab the x86 version(the second on the page.)
Trend Micro Pattern Files - Same thing for Trend Micro, google it.
AVG Free - Something more permanent for cheap bastards.
Spybot and includes files.
Adaware personal and include files.
Ewido - I love you ewido, too bad you run really crappy in safe mode.
Dial-A-Fix - Reregisters dll files neccessary to components like windows update and SSL security. Fixes all sorts of permissions things jacked up by spyware as well. This is an amazing tool, google it and be amazed.
MS Scripting Engine 5.6 - This solves a lot of problems you will have with programs having blank screens, or if system restore is a blank screen, or windows update is blank as well.
XP Winsock Fix - Explicit^Software wrote this great vb script to reset the TCP/IP and WINSOCK stack to default settings. Useful if the internet isn't working, commonly associated with the nasty spyware.
Firefox - Nuff Said.
Drivers - I collect the drivers I need for the things I run into. The biggest collection are HP printer drivers, and linksys drivers for PCI cards and USB drivers.
Hijack This - Merjin software's great tool to give you the rundown on what's running on your computer. You really have to know what your doing with this tool though.
My Music - All my music that I tend to listen to.
Norton Ghost - I keep the install files for my copy of Norton Ghost on my drive, makes moving or replacing drives a snap.
MemTest ISO - Memory Tester.
DFT ISO - Drive fitness test for hard drives. If you know the brand of drive you are testing, use the tester from the manufacturer as they often print out RMA codes and have better tests for their drive. I've gotten free replacement drives this way from Maxtor and Seagate. Both companies which keep my business.
Linux Password Crack - Used to reset XP administrator logins for people that lock themselves out of their machine.
OpenOffice - I don't always have it on there, but good for people who need to do office stuff, and don't feel like being a pirate and recognize good stuff.
Linksys Firmware - Many linux firmware upgrade files for Linksys Routers and devices. WRT54g Versions 5 and 4 were buggy at times until you upgraded the firmware. Especially version 5. Sometimes the router was just plain defective.
SymNRT - Removes all versions of norton, there is also rnav2003 that removes below a certin point. Useful for when norton gets borked and ruins how the machine works.
Windows Updates - All critical sercurity patches, and a script that fires them off in proper order and silently.
SP2 - Big enough to list on it's own.
Windows Installer Cleanup Utility - Used to stop programs that constantly install themselves over and over and over and over and get really annoying.
There are many others, and I'm sure I've left out a few, but I think these will help everyone out.
John Walsh once found me while looking for some other kid. He was not amused.
Firefox Portable
Thunderbird Portable
OpenOffice Portable
Gaim Instant Messenger Portable
Virus scanners: McAfee Stinger, ClamWin, and Avast!
Foxit PDF Reader
TrueCrypt Encryption System! Plausable Deniability!
CyberShedder File Shreder
VLC Media Player
uTorrent File Sharing
Damn Small Linux embedded
http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98. php
Ditto. I and all my family members u se Mac's so no reason for that junk. The only thing I have on my "Thumb Drive" aka iPod Nano is my Music and Podcast collection.
There is an interesting entry on Bruce Schneier's blog about a program called USBDumper. It runs somewhat invisibly in the background. Whenever someone inserts a USB thumbdrive into the computer it silently copies all of the contents to a directory. It could be a useful backup solution, or....(insert imaginative idea here). The program and full source are available.
Try: none
None of the business, friends, family, etceteras that I know are dumb enough or poor enough to run linux or windows. The hundreds of people I support are smart enough to be running Mac OSX on their various Macs ranging from G3s, G4s, G5s to intels.
Either an install of applejack on the target system, or an OSX system + utilities on a bootable ipod, or a bootable system CD/DVD or FW/USB target mode connected to the laptop are all I need (pick one). Who needs a thumbdrive?
I've been upgraded to "bad"!
Hmm. Lessee.
.pdf file containing the names and numbers of people who give a shit. (Yes, it's blank)
A text file containing my own IT Manifesto... a few excerpts:
"While it probably wouldn't take too long to fix your PC, I find the suggestion that using cousin Frieda's bridal shower or a calm Sunday brunch as the time for some IT support (pro bono, no less) as somewhat of an inappropriate time for such requests."
"Until you realize that your wireless router is not a piece of furniture, and that the PC is not a receptacle for cold coffee, I see no purpose in enabling such behaviors by restoring your systems to functioning condition."
"The immediacy of the problem from your point of view does not translate into immediacy of action from mine."
Of course, this usually meets with scowls and epithets. So I have a backup:
A single
I keep my SSID and WEP keys on my thumbdrive. It makes it very easy for my guests to get on my network, because all they have to do is cut & paste.
No, I will not work for your startup
"And of course thumbdrives can do the same thing,
but you need to be Really Really careful about viruses,
not only because we're reinventing the floppy disk virus vector,
but because one of the times you really need this sort of tool
is when a machine might be infected - CDROMs are really safe."
My Thumbdrive is also of the removeable type (SD Cards), and each SD Card has a Read Only Switch. Which I use when running tools on a infected computer. Of course if I want to copy stuff too it, I run "BartPE ReaToGo", and copy it from their. Not proof against viruses, but scanning the files I need does minimize the risk before transfer.
A few stupid videos, some music, a couple of shellscripts (one for work, one left over from apt-zip) and a Subversion repository.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
On my 2G flash drive I have Debian installed on an encrypted filesystem. That way I don't have to use that Windows shit and I can have a relatively secure system with all my settings just the way I like them.
I want my Cowboyneal
When I'm not at school, I'm acting as a lowly tech. This is the library I have found most useful over a few years.
Malware
-Adaware
-Hijack this
-spybot S&D
-lspfix
-WinSock XP Fix
Antivirus
-Avast
-Nod32
-AVG
-Mcafee standalone
-varius fsecure cleaners
Drivers
-ATI/Nvidia Omegas
-nforce chipset
-via chipset
-various other common
Progs
-Firefox
-Thunderbird
-7zip
-Winimage
-adobereader
-java jre offline
-getright
-Azureus
-foobar2000
Codecs
-xvid
-klite
-extracted dvd css codecs
Other
-Putty
-Winscp
-md5sums
-magic jellybean
-varius keygens
-cygwin
-vlc player
so you can take your crap anywhere?
> Are things really so bad for Win users that all this [system diagnosis / disk repair] stuff is regularly required?
...2000.
:/
HELL, YES!!!
My sister is practically a textbook example of the shit that Win users have to put up with. After she got her first PC (lovingly purchased then set up in her bedroom by Yours Truly) she was happy with it for a brief time, mainly due to the pure novelty of it. Eventually, though, she began to complain about performance and reliability issues (mainly Illegal Operations and BSODs).
When she let some salescritter talk her into buying the M$ upgrade to Windows 98 (first edition) she asked me out of curiosity if it would improve things on her system. My answer: no, No, NO!!! Installing that upgrade will only make things worse, not better! (She hadn't upgraded the system's hardware accordingly, and wasn't willing to spend the necessary money for it.)
Ironically, she would later save up enough money to purchase a new PC on her own, one that came with Win98 pre-installed. That machine turned out to be just as fucked up as the previous one! Later she let yet another (or maybe it was the same) salescritter persuade her to buy the upgrade to the newest version of Windows -- the Millennium edition! (Cue mass groaning.) Needless to say, that fucked up her system even worse. Still later, she shelled out even more dollars to get the lastest upgrade for Windows
[oblig. "Wayne's World" ref.] Turn it off, man, turn it off!! It's sucking my will to live!!! OHHH, THE HUMANITY!!!
By this time her system was so completely hosed it wouldn't even boot up anymore. Only then did she call me in to have a look at it -- and all I could tell her was bad news. The hard drive was corrupted to the point where it wouldn't function as a bootup unit, and fixing the boot sector might not do any good: Windows itself could have been fucked up as well, and that may have been caused by malware infiltrating the system through her Internet connection.
When I recommended that she erase the hard drive, reformat it then reinstall everything, she said, "You know what? The computer's out of warranty, anyway. You can have it." Her PC had simply become more trouble than it was worth.
No thanks to Micro$oft, of course, whose tentacles-throughout-the-system architecture and integrated web browser creates more security holes than a double-barrel shotgun fired at butcher paper. Last I heard, my sister's live-in boyfriend got her a newer PC with WinXP preloaded. *That* system's fucking up on her, also.
Oh, well, the world is a carousel -- and here we are again....
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
youtube.com
NOW!
Those are the kind of 'locked down' machines I like. Often, I encounter training labs set up like that (putty + terminal services client or VNC = freedom) but not kiosks. I'll have to watch for that :).
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
I log in with my usb thingy :)
I could randomize the key files every day, without bothering to remember stuff!
I have one for backup, if one gets lost, I log in with the other and simply randomize new keys.
But there's one flaw: Sometimes it's hard to find cheap ones (even if low capacity is not a problem).
Tor, Privoxy, OpenVPN, TrueCrypt, and shred.
Two simple batch file to back up my thumb drive. One for the full drive. Another for just some critical files.
Do you (or anybody else) know of a similar way to find large files easily under Linux? I have a feeling that some combo of find, grep, and maybe du could be used - maybe some custom Perl/Bash scripting. I could really use a tool like this - something that I could point at a directory and it would spit out a tree'd recursive listing of sub-dirs and their sizes. Then, when you find something interesting, pass it a different argument set and get a listing of the files and sizes instead. Right now I am simply using du and some grep, but I don't have the time yet to spend hacking something together...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
They never notice it or have any idea what it is for, but if you need to use it to fix their computer, it is already there (and they are more likely to be using firefox)
Bottles.
My thumb drive has Microsoft Defender (used to be MS Antispyware), Avast, OpenOffice install files, updates to Microsoft Office XP, 2000 and 2003, WGA hack (even if you have an official copy of windows, its a pain in the ass), and copies of Bejeweled 2 and Majhong Towers (for my use). I also keep video drivers for nVidia and ATI, nForce motherboard drivers, the drivers to my wireless network cards, and Nero (its amazing how many people throw out their Nero CDs). Lastly, I have every single song for the church and several sermons on it. Oh, and also copies of Sunday Plus, as a computer is always breaking and having to go grab a spare computer and load it up for services.
pwdump, lc5, superscan, ethereal,eraser, cain and abel, netstumbler, and I think I'm forgetting something.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
I recently got a 2 gig ATP toughdrive which I use to hold my communications(IM, email, IRC, and RSS), commonly needed basic apps, and a pile of apps for finding and fixing most problems, in particular in network issues where usb is the best way to ge apps on there anyway.
Miranda IM, doesnt need any files outside of the base folder to operate, so my IM client, RSS feeds, gmail, and IRC, as well as all their logs, are on my USB drive. Quite nice to have a single log file between many computers with this. Miranda also supports other plugins so you can tailor it to what you like.
Firefox, winrar, winamp, adobe acrobat, daemon tools etc
Video codec packs, divfix
P2P software, (bitlord & revconnect)
spyware removal tools(a number of various automated utilities I keep relatively up to date, as well as hijack this & a # of other similar things to find problems manually)
putty, a port forward testing app, a couple port scanners, process explorer
partition magic, easy recover pro, win 2k resource kit, winternals admin pak
NTFS DOS, damn small linux
I also have a bit of spare space yet, which I use to drag around the most recent week of the daily show, or to drag specific media around to show to someone.
Obviously this works a lot better with slow mechanical CDs or DVDs than with flash memory cards, which are a lot faster. It doesn't hurt to put in some canary files - filenames and content you can easily search for - though of course the slurpware could obscure the name or put its booty into an encrypted format that you can't see.
And there *are* non-malware reasons for a system to automatically copy the contents of any small USB memory drive that's put in it - it's helpful friendly applications that are designed to sync the contents of cameras or MP3 players or whatever without bothering the user with some popup GUI interface. Whether that's a good idea or not is a separate question from whether somebody's decided it is and sold one.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Maybe she should invest some of that time and money into learning how to use a computer instead. If she keeps fucking it up that bad, she probably wouldn't even be able to operate any other type of OS.
unless you are paid really well to do windows support... why are you doing it ? ;)
some time ago, i was doing free windows support for friends and such. i am not doing it anymore - as a result it is much easier for me (even though now i am partially doin free linux support. but at least a need for support is very, very rare), so my thumbdrive contains a couple of latest software packages for linux - mostly for my own usage, some pictures, some music... i don't have to stuff it up with recovery software, i am free to use it for my own needs
Rich
..you insensitive clod!
You absolutely need to read this! Don't miss it if you are supporting friends, family, friends of the family...
t ml
http://www.sromero.org/linux/pringao/techslacky.h
porn. and lots of it!
Darik's Boot and Nuke. Run it once, and you'll never be asked to fix your friend's computer again.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
If there's something physically wrong with a drive you can't do better. As a bonus, the purchase price funds all those free aps over at Gibson Research.
Feeling so good natured I could drool
I come across lots of machines that can't install WGA and/or can't install Windows patches. I have a USB drive with MS tools, patches and helpfiles to force machines to install WGA and patches normally.
I have a spiffy radio in my car, that takes a thumb drive, so I keep a bunch of MP3s (Music and podcasts) on my thumb drive. I also have a little paperwork that I did over the weekend, on my laptop.
7 Zip Open Office FileZilla FTP software Asterwin (you wouldn't believe the number of people that have saved passwords that they forget especially on e-mail and dialup setups.) Unstopable Copier Gadwin Printscreen Acrobat 7 Open source CD and DVD burning software Spybot Picassa2 My Story 3 Gimp Scribus Inkscape Many others but those are my favorites.
An Electronic Survival Kit. If there's one thing Katrina taught me, it's that losing your entire life would completely suck. Why not take a few minutes now so that you can get back to normal ASAP?
Step 1: Take the money that you might otherwise foolishly spend on a thumbdrive. Spend it on a inflatable rubber raft, so that the next time you're surrounded by floodwaters, you don't drown.
Step 2: Whenever you see the drowned body of a Slashdot geek floating by, loot him for all his thumbdrives! Then go to his bank, and withdraw all his money! Laugh manically (just 'cause!).
Step 3: Profit!!!
I get that you are going for... humor? yeah, you are going for humor here but I want to respond anyway.
I can get a half gig thumbdrive for $15. What kinda raft are you gonna get for that?
When you are told to evacuate, then you should evacuate. No need to wait for the flood waters to surround you. Of course, you'll need a little gas money and cash for a hotel, so start saving today. Think of it as an impromptu in-state vacation.
By the way, how are you going to get money from a bank by using an encrypted thumbdrive?
Firstly, I formatted mine with the syslinux mkdiskimage tool to make it have ZIP drive geometry to fool those brain dead BIOSes (I still can't understand why there seems to be absolutely no quality requirement for BIOSes whatsoever and after all these years certain simple things like USB-HDD booting support still are uncommon at best.) Of course I installed syslinux on it.
Of the bootable tools, I have some DOS disk images that mainly just get used for BIOS flashing these days, a copy of Finnix (manually installed, not via that script,) Partition Magic 8 because I just haven't found anything else I feel quite satisfied with, Memtest86+, a small linux disk image that does nothing but start up and run Prime95, and the chainloader com32 module so that I can have the usb drive boot the harddrive if the user doesn't select anything to boot within the given time period (kind of like the way those windows install cds have a "press a key to start windows installtion" or whatever.)
I keep a current copy of my resume, generic software used to help family and friends get set up with this or that (such as a copy of Exact Audio Copy with some configuration profiles included) and some software for use when I'm away, such as a copy of Opera since so few places have a semi-modern version (if any) and which lets me use my own configuration instead of what some weirdo decided was normal (I've seen setups where the systems were configured to show every single item in basically the opposite location of where it originally was.) I even have some other stuff to help me out when working on something or other such as a copy of PuTTY (so I can SSH to my home) and even the Windows version of Prime95 just in case. Heck, I've thrown VirtualDub and G-Spot on there for good measure even.
I've seen things where they put a thumb drive inside a swiss army knife type of thing. Well, for me my little cruzer micro on my keychain IS a swiss army knife.