iCopy is a free and open source software that lets you combine your scanner and printer into a powerful, yet easy to use photocopier by only pressing a button. It let you tweak scanner and printer options (eg. brightness, contrast, number of copies) in a simple interface in just a couple of seconds in a small and no-installation-required application.

Features

System requirements

Download from here.

User Account Control (UAC) is a feature introduced in Windows Vista to improve the security of Windows by limiting applications to standard user privileges until an administrator authorizes an increase in privilege level. For instance, you’ll see a notification like this every time you run an EXE file.

While it could be an useful security feature for inexperienced users, there have been complaints that UAC notifications slow down various tasks, such as new software installation when the user sure that the installation file is 100% safe.

To disable UAC, first go to Control Panel\User Accounts, then click on “Turn User Account Control on/off”

Un-tick the check box and proceed by clicking OK

And finally, you’ll be asked to restart the computer, the usual way of how Windows works :-)

After that, you’ll be able to enjoy the level of freedom and convenience you had in Windows XP, of course you must still practice caution and prevent any malicious files from running on your system.

Open up a command prompt:

1. Start | Run | type cmd | Enter
2. Type netstat -aon | findstr “[port number]“
3. Take note of the numbers on the last line. This is the PID or Process ID.
4. Type tasklist | findstr “[PID]“ and this will return the application corresponding to that PID.
5. Once PID is determined, you can now kill it in Task Manager or kill it typing tskill at the command prompt.

For example:

1. I type netstat -aon | findstr “8080″ at command prompt (I’m on a proxy by the way)
2. I see that the PID is 3624
3. I type tasklist | findstr “3624″ to find what PID 3624 is and it points to msnmsgr.exe which is MSN/Live Messenger.
4. I can now kill MSN Messenger from Task Manager or type tskill 3624

First off all, download the plugin from here and extract the content to your root of your UltraVNC folder (defaulted to “C:\Program Files\UltraVNC”). Note: extract to the root of the folder and not the plugin folder (that’s just a container).

Server Configuration
Now on your UltraVNC Server and you should see MSRC4Plugin in the DSM DSM plugin drop down box.

Check Use and hit the Config button.A MSRC4 Plugin Configuration window will pop up.

You will notice that there aren’t any encryption plugin keys present(naturally since we haven’t created any) so make your first key. Select the default 128 bit hit Gen Key.The configuration tool will close after generating the key and this key will be used from now on on every client computer to allow you to view your server running on that specific key-based encryption. You will notice a new file in your UltraVNC installation folder called rc4.key.

Important: Make sure you bring along this key file (rc4.key) along with your UltraVNC or the client will not be able to interact or see the server.

Client Configuration
Copy this rc4.key to your UltraVNC client’s root directory as with the steps in the Server. When you launch your UltraVNC client, check the box called “Use DSMPlugin” and enter your server’s IP address. Click on connect, enter your password.Done!

Here’s a quote from Wikipedia’s entry on quality control of LCDs:

Some LCD panels have defective transistors, causing permanently lit or unlit pixels which are commonly referred to as stuck pixels or dead pixels respectively. Unlike integrated circuits, LCD panels with a few defective pixels are usually still usable. It is also economically prohibitive to discard a panel with just a few defective pixels because LCD panels are much larger than ICs.

I’m not going to bore you with more explanation of what stuck and dead pixels mean (click on the links to check the Wikipedia entries on those), so I’ll get on with the nifty tool which would allow you do easily test your new LCD monitor you just got is free of dead/stuck pixels which is called Dead Pixel Buddy.

It’s a small zip file download which just contains the executable and does not require any installation. Just unzip and run it and an application similar to what is shown below should appear:

A hassle free way to test is just to hit ‘Test Cycle’ and it would cycle through all the colours from 1-6 every 10 seconds (default value, can be changed to whatever you want). Alternatively, you could hit the numbers on your keyboard one by one to go through all of it or by clicking around with the mouse.

Happy testing! :)

Part One
By now you should have VNC installed and you’d be able to connect via LAN. Make sure you register the VNC Server as a system service if you want it to run automatically on Windows start-up.

Now lets expand this control over the Internet. To control your PC over Internet you’ll have to;

1) Know your IP address. If you’re on a static IP then all’s well, if you’re given a dynamic IP by your ISP then you will need;
a) take note of your IP whenever you leave home.
b) register with any of the numerous free dynamic DNS services. What this service does is offer a service to keep a domain name linked to a changing IP address on those who are on dynamic IPs via a dynamic update client that runs on your local computer and updates the dynamic DNS service site. Logging into the site will give you your ip.

2) Permit traffic on the SSH port 22 on the server (the pc you want to control) and if you’re on a router you need to port forward the VNC traffic to your server in which VNC Server is listening. How this is done depends on which firewall and/or router you are using. eg. in Windows XP SP2′s Firewall, go to Start | Control Panel | Windows Firewall | Exceptions tab | Add port | port name SSH, port 22, TCP.

If you’re behind a router or your bridge-modem is in router mode, you’ll need to forward TCP port 22 to the server. This means that any traffic coming in through port 22 (the SSH port) will be passed through the router and directed to the server. Here’s a useful site detailing on how to port forward on popular routers.

This is what port forwarding looks like on my Linksys AM300 modem/router.

Part Two
Because access to a VNC Server allows access to your whole computer, security is of upmost important. VNC is inherently unsecure, thus the need to encrypt the traffic moving between both machines (client and server) as encryption in VNC is only used when the initial connection (when you login). Once connected, all VNC data is unencrypted, and a malicious user could snoop your VNC session with a number of scanning programs available that will scan a subnet looking for PCs listening on any ports which VNC uses.

The purpose of VNC + SSH is to remove this security risk. SSH, or the Secure Shell, allows secure (encrypted and authenticated) connections between any two machines running SSH. The wide variaty of connections supported by SSH include file transfer protocols, TCP/IP port forwarding, terminal sessions et cetera. SSH is capable of using a number of encryption algorithms like AES-256, TripleDES, and-so-forth (I think that’s enuff tech jargons to throw around). By tunnelling VNC over a SSH connection, you will be able to acces the host and have all traffic strongly encrypted.

Getting & Installing OpenSSH
There’s two ways to go about this. You can either get the standalone installation file of OpenSSH here or download Cygwin and grab the relevant OpenSSH packages. Cygwin is a powerful *nix API emulator which has many uses that can replace the usual cmd.exe of our windows. What this means is it allows *nix programs/binaries (or bin) to be run in Windows. Maybe a tutorial for this will be up next on the power of Cygwin.

After downloading Cygwin, hit the Set-up exe file. Cygwin is actually an installation and update utility that retrieves the bin packages from the Internet. As you can guess, the package we’re interested in is called OpenSSH and can be found in the Net category. After Installation is complete you need to add Cygwin environmental variables to your server to add the OpenSSH service and point to the bin file. Do this by right clicking on My Computer | Selecting Properties | going to the Advanced tab and hitting the | Environment Variables button and;

1. Add the variable CYGWIN and ntsec tty by using the Add button.

2. Add C:\cygwin\bin (or whatever your installation directory is, for me it was C:\Program Files\Cygwin\bin) to the at the end of the existing line of the PATH environment variable by using the Edit button. (Warn: Don’t remove the existing lines, just append this line to the end of the line or you’ll screw your paths)

3. Configure OpenSSH on Cygwin by typing ssh-host-config at the prompt with the following answers;


“Privilege Separation?” Yes
“Create local user SSHd?” Yes
“Install SSHd as a service?” Yes
“CYGWIN = ” enter ntsec


4. We can now start the SSH daemon (thats service to you Windows folks) by either typing net start sshd within Cygwin, typing cygrunsrv.exe -S sshd or simply rebooting the machine. You can check if SSH is runningby by typing netstat -a in the command prompt and look for the line with ssh. To stop the SSH service type net stop sshd

Connecting to VNC thru SSH
Adjust the VNC server settings.

1. Select allow loopback connections on the VNC server.

2. Create a local forwarded tunnel using the command ssh -p 5900 admin @60.49.120.110 -L 5900:127.0.0.1:5900 command to forward port 5900 (the default VNC port if you haven’t changed it to another, if so replace this with your specified value instead) on the client where the public IP of your router is 60.49.120.110. The loopback interface address (that’s 127.0.0.1 to you) must be used.

Connect to the VNC server over the SSH tunnel
To complete the procedure, start the VNC viewer on the and point to the server at 127.0.0.1:0:5900. At this point, the connection is forwarded from the client machine to the VNC server over SSH and you should receive the VNC authentication prompt. All network traffic is transparently encrypted by the SSH tunnel.

Troubleshooting Checklist
Since this involves multiple setups and an unususally long guide, here is a brief troubleshooting checklist should you run into problems.

1) If you can SSH from the server to the server (SSH locally) = SSH server is functioning.
2) If you can SSH from a computer over LAN to the SSH server = IP and LAN connection is functioning.
3) If you can SSH from a computer over WAN (i.e. on the other side of the NAT router) to your SSH server, then you know that the router’s port-forwarding is working.

The same rules apply to VNC.

Securing UltraVNC is much easier but that’s for another article. :)

Well, if your data is fairly important, one way to check for for discrenpencies – to avoid kicking yourself in your butt later on – is to use MultiComp which is an application, that can compare two collections of files comparing files byte-by-byte and reports whether they are identical. You can use it to compare files in any location, either on permanent disk or removal media but more often than not, I use it to verify a CD that I’ve burnt.

The steps are pretty straightforward and the interface is instintive. It involved selecting a source and destination of file(s) to compare and hitthing the start button. MultiComp will then read the CD and compare it to the original files, reporting any mismatches in the output box. If all went well, there should be no messages.

Download from here.

if your data is extremly important then you would want to use MD5 types of programs but more on that in our next installment.

Sporting a similar interface to Windows Update, Microsoft Update not only is able to do the job of finding updates for Windows but also for other Microsoft software on your computer such as the Office suite or Visual Studio if you’re into software/web development using Microsoft technologies.

Once installed, Microsoft Update integrates into the standard Windows Automatic Update which most users would have been prompted to enable once you have Windows set up and running. There aren’t any additional settings or changes once it’s installed so there’s no added complexity, if you’re worried on that. ;)

Unfortunately, not long after installing it, my laptop started freezing up for prolonged periods on start up (which was extremely annoying since it reduced my battery life by a lot). I originally blamed WGA for it, but the problem recurred after I removed WGA and found the symptoms listed in the MS knowledgebase.

If you have installed Microsoft Update and are experiencing these symptoms, you could either persevere with it, disable it or install the hotfix listed here. I decided to disable it instead of installing the hotfix, so I can’t say for sure the hotfix works, but disabling it does. Here are the steps, followed by the screenshots:

1. Go to the Microsoft Update page.
2. Click on ‘Change settings’.
3. Scroll down the page, check ‘Disable Microsoft Update software and let me use Windows Update only’ and click on ‘Apply changes now’ button.

If you do decide to disable Microsoft Update but still want to keep your MS Office up to date, you can use Office Update instead. ;)

Clueless about what was the real culprit, I did a google and finally came across a program called “ProcessExplorer“. This useful utility is similar to the good old “Windows Task Manager” but it has some extra goodies that allow me to drill down to another level to see what programs are making use of the generic system processes like explorer.exe and svchost.exe, and even to kill it on the spot. This actually helped me to identify the culprit – Automatic Update was the service that took away all my CPU resource and I’ve eventually set it to “Manual”.

Other than that, there are plenty unique capabilities of ProcessExplorer for handling leaks, troubleshooting, and provide more insight into the way Windows and applications work. What’s more, the installation of ProcessExplorer is effortless (it doesn’t need installation at all, to be precise), and it also supports the latest Windows Vista.

ProcessExplorer can be downloaded here, and for your reference, please checkout the screenshot above for comparison between conventional Task Manager and ProcessExplorer.

Microsoft’s flagship product – Windows Vista and productivity suite Office 2007 were officially launched in Malaysia at Lowyat Plaza today. It was pretty grand and in fact the atmosphere was greater than I expected.

If you want to see more, I’ve posted some footage here, hope you guys enjoy it :)