AdvancedIdeaMechanics ~ RnD

Find N Mount

admin — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:29:25 +0000

I had a little trouble at work yesterday. A user’s HD showed in Windows7 as RAW format even though I knew that the data was there. She did not reformat or delete anything. This indicated a problem with the partition table.

Anyhow, this program (FINDnMount) let me restore the partition table and mount the drive to retrieve all the data. It is FREE, and only works on the partition tables. This makes it much faster to restore data than trying to use one of those UNdelete programs.

Windows 7 FAT and NTFS only.

More about partition tables ==============================================================

NTFS contains several files which define and organize the file system. In all respects, most of these files are structured like any other user file ($Volume being the most peculiar), but are not of direct interest to file system clients. These metafiles define files, back up critical file system data, buffer file system changes, manage free space allocation, satisfy BIOSexpectations, track bad allocation units, and store security and disk space usage information. All content is in an unnamed data stream, unless otherwise indicated.

Segment Number	File Name	Purpose
0	`$MFT`	Describes all files on the volume, including file names, timestamps, stream names, and lists of cluster numbers where data streams reside, indexes, security identifiers, and file attributes like “read only”, “compressed”, “encrypted”, etc.
1	`$MFTMirr`	Duplicate of the first vital entries of $MFT, usually 4 entries (4 Kilobyte).
2	`$LogFile`	Contains transaction log of file system metadata changes.
3	`$Volume`	Contains information about the volume, namely the volume object identifier, volume label, file system version, and volume flags (mounted, chkdsk requested, requested $LogFile resize, mounted on NT 4, volume serial number updating, structure upgrade request). This data is not stored in a data stream, but in special MFT attributes: If present, a volume object ID is stored in an $OBJECT_ID record; the volume label is stored in a $VOLUME_NAME record, and the remaining volume data is in a $VOLUME_INFORMATION record. Note: volume serial number is stored in file $Boot (below).
4	`$AttrDef`	A table of MFT attributes which associates numeric identifiers with names.
5	`.`	Root directory. Directory data is stored in $INDEX_ROOT and $INDEX_ALLOCATION attributes both named $I30.
6	`$Bitmap`	An array of bit entries: each bit indicates whether its corresponding cluster is used (allocated) or free (available for allocation).
7	`$Boot`	Volume boot record. This file is always located at the first clusters on the volume. It contains bootstrap code (see NTLDR/BOOTMGR) and aBIOS parameter block including a volume serial number and cluster numbers of $MFT and $MFTMirr. $Boot is usually 8192 bytes long.^{[citation needed]}
8	`$BadClus`	A file which contains all the clusters marked as having bad sectors. This file simplifies cluster management by the chkdsk utility, both as a place to put newly discovered bad sectors, and for identifying unreferenced clusters. This file contains two data streams, even on volumes with no bad sectors: an unnamed stream contains bad sectors—it is zero length for perfect volumes; the second stream is named $Bad and contains all clusters on the volume not in the first stream.^[49]
9	`$Secure`	Access control list database which reduces overhead having many identical ACLs stored with each file, by uniquely storing these ACLs in this database only (contains two indices: $SII (Standard_Information ID) and $SDH (Security Descriptor Hash) which index the stream named $SDS containing actual ACL table).^[2]
10	`$UpCase`	A table of unicode uppercase characters for ensuring case insensitivity in Win32 and DOS namespaces.
11	`$Extend`	A filesystem directory containing various optional extensions, such as $Quota, $ObjId, $Reparse or $UsnJrnl.
12 … 23	Reserved for $MFT extension entries.^[50]
usually 24	`$Extend\$Quota`	Holds disk quota information. Contains two index roots, named $O and $Q.
usually 25	`$Extend\$ObjId`	Holds distributed link tracking information. Contains an index root and allocation named $O.
usually 26	`$Extend\$Reparse`	Holds reparse point data (such as symbolic links). Contains an index root and allocation named $R.
27 …	`file.ext`	Beginning of regular file entries.

IE Reset

admin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 23:03:58 +0000

Here is a handy batch file that will delete all activex objects and Temporary Internet Files from IE. This is tested and working on Windows7 with IE8.

WINDOWS ONLY – NO INSTALL

Download IEreset.bat

Outlook Cleanup

admin — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 01:35:17 +0000

Can’t create file: xxxxx.doc

This error creeps up in Outlook 2007 and 2010. By default, Outlook stores email attachments in a temp file before unleashing them on your file system. If an attachment with the same name is opened 99 times, the software has trouble writing to the temp folder. Hence, the error above. Use this script to clear out the temp file and restore functionality to Outlook. Nothing can be done about the terrible ribbon UI though (or can it?)

Download OLK_PURGER.BAT

written by Inferno666

(don’t worry, fully virus scanned and verified etc ….)

LocalAppLog

admin — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:36:46 +0000

Need a quick way to get a list of all locally installed apps? Voila! I present LocalAppLog. It is a powershell script that automatically creates an excel spreadsheet with the following: Name, Publisher, Uninstall command, and install date. Pretty Neat! Maybe someone can use this to automatically send an email with the .xls file to yourself. Anyway…

WINDOWS ONLY

Powershell reqd. so that means Vista/7 or XPsp3 with manual Power Shell install.

D0wnload LocalAppLog

(You may need to Right Click –> Save target as…)

Host File Updater

admin — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 03:32:18 +0000

If you know about the power of a host file, then you can appreciate this little utility. It grabs the hosts file from :

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt

and replaces the one on your host with it.

OR, just add 67.55.108.167 google.com to your co-worker’s hosts file and ask them a really hard question!

j/k! Just grab this utility and it makes the internet experience safer for less tech savvy users.

LINUX ONLY

This is a shell script, so remember to

# chmod +x Hosts Updater.sh

first! Then ./Hosts Updater.sh to run.

Download HostFileUpdater

Net Agent

admin — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 03:18:34 +0000

I was mucking about in the Linux command line, and I wanted something to join WiFi networks from the command line (I accidentally deleted the widget from Ubuntu, and didn’t know how to re-add it). So, here is a quick script that scans local SSIDs and lets you join right from the command line. Tested on Ubuntu Narwhal.

LINUX ONLY

REQUIRES PYTHON TO RUN

Download NET AGENT

Melatonin

admin — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:10:50 +0000

Download

Source

I was tired of being the last one out of class

because I had to wait for my Mac to write 4GB

of RAM data to the hard disk. So, I wrote this

little AppleScript app to help it sleep faster.

In addition to the faster sleep benefits, it also

recovers disk space equivalent to your amount of RAM.

More info on Apple sleep modes can be found here :

Sleep Mode Info

Folder Map

admin — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:08:56 +0000

Download

Source

FolderMap lets you see what files are in any

folder on your Mac. It also saves a list of

them to a text file on your Desktop. It is

useful when rebuilding your computer, since

I always forget at least 2 or 3 of the apps

in my Applications folder. You can also choose

to list just files or files and subfolders.

Thanks to Ron Fleckner for the initial AppleScript.

LittleFoot

admin — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:01:43 +0000

Download

Source

LittleFoot is a BitTorrent Client for OS X

that is designed to be as simple as possible.

It has a tiny memory footprint, and the

TorrentEngine was written in Ruby. The

GUI uses AppleScript and is modular to

interact easily with the OS and other programs.

Enjoy this program free, and leave me some

feedback!

Thanks to William Morgan for writing the TorrentEngine aka RubyTorrent.

SysLog Collector

admin — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 16:51:15 +0000

This script gathers Windows 7 application and system logs and BAM! 7-zips them for the user. Just have them send you the file evt_logs.7z that appears in the folder where they ran it from. NO INSTALLATION REQUIRED.

Download Event log collector

Credits:

I did absolutely no work on this (it was found here :

http://forums.avg.com/us-en/avg-forums?sec=thread&act=show&id=94155)