Please follow this email chain between myself and our friend Karl AKA ATA.

—————————————
ME

Here’s the scenario….

Backed up info off old laptop to external HD.

During XP install I saw two identical drives…nuked the first partition and tried to install. XP said no. Nuked the 2nd one…XP allowed the install. JOY!!!

You know where this is going don’t you…..

Anywho…it turns out XP is able to see external USB HD’s and I nuked the MBR on the drive. Do you know of any freebie tools to recover the data on that drive? I have my bosses personal stuff on it and a lot of my own personal stuff too….and the drive states that it needs to be formatted….

HELP ME Obie-ADMIN, You’re my only hope!
——————————————–
Karl

Sorry it took so long ive been in windows mobile hell today.

Do not let it format! Knoppix live cd wll fix you right up.

You will be able to see and copy everything even without the mbr.

Let me know how it goes and if it doesnt work i might have some other apps
———————————————
Me

I bought a tool to recover the drive….but…..I have a BKF file on
there that is corrupted now….any idea of any tools that are freebies
to be able to recover those files? I suppose I can get the bosses CC to
buy a tool to do it…but I’d rather not…..
———————————————-
Karl

What OS is the BKF file from? What os are you restoring to? What is the error message?

———————————————-
Me

Win2k Pro. It is saying that the BKF(windows Backup file) is not valid or something to that effect….

I am running a scandisk on it….we’ll see if it goes. I downloaded a demo of a $ product and I could see the data in the file, but I cannot get at it without paying…..
———————————————-
Karl

Are you restoring to w2k as well? Did you use msbackup or ntbackup to compress it?
———————————————-
Me

NTBACKUP to create it. Tried restoring on Win2k server and XP.
———————————————-
Karl for the win

I’d try to restore on 2k pro but if that doesn’t work check this out:

Backup Exec has the ability to read .bkf files. You can download the trial
version and use it for 60 days for free.

If you go to the “Tools -> Options -> Catalog” menus, there is a check box
labeled “Use storage media – based catalogs”. If you remove the check from
this checkbox and run a catalog job on the bkf file, you should be able to
recover any files that are not corrupted. The catalog operation will take
longer to complete, but you should be able to restore any valid file within
the .bkf, before and after the corruption. Its hard to know how much
corruption there is in the .bkf file, so I wish you the best of luck.

This link will give you instructions on how to import a bkf file into the
program for restore. Before performing step 6. (The catalog operation),
follow the steps above. http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/241600.htm

———————————————-
Grateful Me

Dude……you rock.

We use BE and I never thought of trying it. Thanks to you I was able to restore….get this…..ALL OF IT.

Rock on Detroit….Rock on Chicago…NAPA, it’s the auto parts store. (If you don’t know what this is…do a Youtube/Google search on Wesley Willis)
———————————————–

So what have we learned today?

• 1. NEVER, EVER leave a USB HD attached to XP on install and NEVER, EVER nuke a drive unless you are 10000000% certain you have the right drive.
• 2. Karl rocks and has great ideas.
• 3. NAPA, It’s the Auto Parts Store

–A Grateful Slothman

The title of this question here is a little misleading because you can use this little web app to serve lots of stuff besides quotes, like random ads or words of wisdom.

Get your geek on and swap out scripts and images galore!

Originally we used the free RandomQuote ASP generator to feed our geeky quotes in our sub header above. Have you seen it before?

Pretty cool stuff huh? Now what if I told you the Busted Tee Shirt Ads on the right bar were also served up by this generator?

Result: Different ad and quote ,out of our database, on every refresh!

After tweaking, pushing, prodding (our coder not the program) this proved to work very well and we have been very happy with the results. But after a while we realized that this handy little random generator, complete with a very aesthetically pleasing back-end editing system, (pictured to the bottom) would be perfect to randomly feed out anything our geeky little hearts desired.

You’ll see a different quote, different ad on every page load, and all the same geeky love in front and behind it. You’ll need an .ASP compatible web hosting plan at the very least to get started. Don’t get scared – all this means is that you need a web hosting plan on the side but it doesn’t necessarily have to point to your site. Just a server that supports ASP. This is because the files need to live somewhere on a server with Microsoft extensions. It also needs to give you a few MySQL Databases to make this easier but you can also pull it off with a connection to an Access Database, and with some basic ASP knowledge you can probably modify it to work with an Excel file as a data source as well.

The first thing you need to do is go to here and snatch this free package called RandomQ from Expirion.Net:

The directions are fairly simple. Here’s the skinny:

• First copy the files/folders to your (ASP Compatible) web server.
• Then modify the config.asp file to point to your database and give it the correct credentials to do so. Refer to your web hosting control panel to see various details about your DB – you’ll need that info to put into the config.asp file.
• The package comes with a convenient little script that creates all the necessary tables/columns when run against your database. Your DB will need this structure to properly communicate with the application.
• Now open the index.asp file in the /admin folder in your RandomQ directory to see if any errors arise. If they do arise, the problem is most likely with your config.asp file. Be sure it points to the correct place and that the credentials are correct. Next be sure the tables were created properly by browsing thru the database using the web interface usually provided by your web hosting service. If it’s not provided you’ll need to get into some of the graphical database management proggies, provided at MySQL.com, to connect to and be able to view your DB data.
• Once you get the inc_random.asp file to display properly and you can login successfully to the /admin/index.asp file, your in business. All in all, barring any technical issues, this whole process should take no more than 10 minutes.
• Now you have to get the inc_random.asp file to display on your blog, so the only way to accomplish getting information to be displayed cross-domain is with the use of an html iframe as follows (we’ve removed the html open and close brackets so the code won’t get munched by blogger’s server and you’d still be able to copy and paste the code for your own evil doing):
  

iframe src=”http://www.YOURWEBHOST.com/RandomQ/inc_random.asp” vspace=”0″ marginheight=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ hspace=”0″ frameborder=”0″ height=”40″scrolling=”no” width=”100%”.

Make sure you close your open Iframe tag with a /iframe

Now the fun part – put in your data by logging into the RandomQ admin console and get to steppin!

Which of our quotes do you like the best? Got any ideas?

Damn son!! Let us know in the comments! Why are you all quiet and shit?

Oh and thanks to Mike aka Commodore64 for his assistance on this article and a great find on the application as well as implementation of it.

_TheOn2HoursSleepAdmiN_

After figuring out I could edit Blogger blog posts from my mobile I decided to see what I could do with my TiVo while I am away. I went online and did some research. I found this tid-bit from Dave Zatz (Sling Media) and gave it a shot.

Allow me to bring you kids up to speed. Essentially, TiVos are just nicely packaged Linux boxes with TV capture cards, hard drives, and a cutesy visual operating system that everyone has grown to love. It’s nice to know the open Linux spirit is in full swing at Tivo, because the developers at Tivo have happily included an already running, https, port 80 web server!

You heard me correctly, I did NOT stutter. As long as you enabled the transfer option from TiVo online you can access a web server built into your Tivo. To do this all you need to do is simply point your browser at your TiVo’s local IP address using https://…

The address bar would look like this:

https://192.168.0.3/

I simply entered this address into my browser and it prompted me for a username and password. The username to use is always tivo and the password is your Media Access Key.

Your media access key can be found via your tivo interface or on your TiVo.com account.

Now how can you use this information while you are away?

Point your router to forward port 80 and 443 to your TiVo, Now by typing in your routers external IP address from any where in the world you can download your .TIVO files.

I hear you all saying:

They are encrypted and all Admin what good is that? and How does this help me?

Well these .TIVO files are just MPEG2 files with a shiny restrictive layer of prohibitive crap. But, no worries lets get that file cracked open so you can burn it to DVD or move it around at your own will. TiVo to go lets you do some of this stuff but The Admin hates being restricted to, well, anything.

Lets get you Downloading, Stripping and Ripping… (This is for your own access we are not teaching you to be nor advocating piracy…)

Tune back in for part two of our TiVo – download, strip and rip series tomorrow.

_TheTiVoHappyAdmiN_

Hey Kidlings,
Commodore 64 here with a quick how to in photoshop. Have you ever downloaded an image you’d like to use on your website but it was sandwiched on top of some ghastly color which totally doesnt fit with your “flow”? Well here is a quick, no-frills, way to a transparent image that you can set to a background of your choosing.

First we start with simple image of a leaf:Double click the “Background” and then hit enter when the dialog pops up. You should now have a transparency capable layer which is ready to have it’s fat trimmed, the layer name should change from “Background” to “Layer 0″:We then take out our trusty magic wand tool and select the white around the leaf by clicking the white part around the leaf. In this cased I’ve used a tolerance of 80 to produce a decent result. You can play around with the tolerance depending on the image you choose to work with to get the selection border where you need it. In this case, our subject image has a dark shadow. Our tolerance of 80 has allowed the selection form to come in closer to the leaf, eliminating most of the shadow from the inside of the selection border as shown in the following image:Hit delete to produce the following:

At this point you have a choice of filling in your own background color, in photoshop and saving for web as a jpeg, or you can save for web as a transparent gif and apply matting in the intended target’s background color of your choice. In the following example I want to put the leaf on a blue background on my intended destination for this graphic. I do this buy removing the selection I already have by clicking anywhere in the work window with a marquee tool, or pressing ctrl-D for “deselect.” I then go to File menu, Save For Web and save with the following options:

Hit the save button, name your file and give it a home. That’s It. Now this isnt the most professional or precise way of doing this, but if you need a quick easy design flow control with image backgrounds, this is the 5-step, 5-minute move to get you on your way.

Enjoy!
Commodore64 (The one you used to play Bruce Lee on)

The title of this question here is a little misleading because you can use this little web app to serve lots of stuff besides quotes like random ads or words of wisdom.

Get your geek on and swap out scripts and images galore!

Originally we used the free RandomQuote ASP generator to feed our geeky quotes in our sub header above. Have you seen it before?

Pretty cool stuff huh? Now what if I told you the Wicked Tee Shirt Ad’s on the right bar were also served up by this generator?

Result: Different ad and quote ,out of our database, on every refresh!

After tweaking, pushing, prodding (our coder not the program) this proved to work very well and we have been very happy with the results. But after a while we realized that this handy little random generator, complete with a very aesthetically pleasing backend editing system, (pictured to the top,left) would be perfect to randomly feed out anything our geeky little hearts desired.

You’ll see a different quote, different ad on every page load, and all the same geeky love in front and behind it. You’ll need an .ASP compatible web hosting plan at the very least to get started – don’t get scared all this means is that you need a web hosting plan on the side it doesn’t have to point to your site. Just a server that supports ASP. This is because the files need to live somewhere on a server with Microsoft extensions. It also needs to give you a few MySQL to make this easier but you can pull it off with a connection to an access database, and you can probably modify it to work with an excel file as a data source as well.

The first thing you need to do is go to here and snatch this free package called RandomQ from Expirion.Net:

The directions are fairly simple. Heres the skinny:

• First copy the files/folders to your (ASP Compatable) web server.
• Then modify the config.asp file to point to your database and give it the correct credentials to do so. Refer to your web hosting control panel to see various details about your DB – you’ll need that info to put into the config.asp file.
• The package comes with a convenient little script that creates all the necessary tables/columns when run against your database. Your DB will need this structure to properly communicate with the application.
• Now open the index.asp file in the /admin folder in your RandomQ directory to see if any errors arise. If they do arise, the problem is most likely with your config.asp file. Be sure it points to the correct place and that the credentials are correct. Next be sure the tables were created properly by browsing thru the database using the web interface usually provided by your web hosting service. If it’s not provided you’ll need to get into some of the graphical database management proggies provided at MySQL.com to connect to and be able to view your DB data.
• Once you get the inc_random.asp file to display properly and you can login successfully to the /admin/index.asp file your in business. All in all, barring any technical issues, this whole process should take no more than 10 minutes.
• Now you have to get the inc_random.asp file to display on your blog, so the only way to accomplish getting information to be displayed cross-domain is with the use of an html iframe as follows:
  

iframe src=”http://www.YOURWEBHOST.com/RandomQ/inc_random.asp” vspace=”0″ marginheight=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ hspace=”0″ frameborder=”0″ height=”40″scrolling=”no” width=”100%”.

Make sure you close your open Iframe tag with a /iframe

Now the fun part – put in your data by logging into the RandomQ admin console and get to steppin!

Which of our quotes do you like the best? Got any ideas?

Damn son!! Let us know in the comments! Why are you all quiet and shit?

Oh and thanks to Mike aka Commodore 64 for his assistance on this article and an great find on the application.

_TheOn2HoursSleepAdmiN_

After a week out of the office at my Mac OsX server training I am totally swamped. Throw in holiday shopping, a new baby and AtA… Whoa boy!

Mint review excerpt- Being the type of guy that burns through money I jumped at the opportunity to review Mint. Mint is a finance tracking and budgeting platform much like Microsoft Money or Quicken. But the main difference is it is Online – if you don’t have a problem adding your banking information to Mint.com you can have access to a complete financial overview from any web browser.
Mint has been in Beta for about 3 months now and is showing somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 early adopters throwing in over 2 billion dollars of their hard earned accounts into Mint’s databases. 2 fricking billion dollars? That’s a lot of moolah…

Smarterchild review excerpt- I have made a new friend. Well actually, I am becoming reacquainted with an old friend. Have you heard of Smarterchild? Smarterchild is an AimBot, an automated assistant that can be added to your instant messenger contacts. It can help you remember things, lookup headlines, find out about local movies, and so on. Now that AIM has been integrated into Gmail this might be a great combination for turning SmarterChild into your virtual Personal Assistant.

• How to Annoy Someone.
• Geeky Holiday Gift Guide
• The FBI are 1337 and will pwn you!
• Uleash The Secret Admin in Vista.
• 5 Ways to Freak someone out.
• Can you keep my coffee warm while I help the end losers?

Please follow this email chain between myself and our friend Karl AKA ATA.

—————————————
ME

Here’s the scenario….

Backed up info off old laptop to external HD.

During XP install I saw two identical drives…nuked the first partition and tried to install. XP said no. Nuked the 2nd one…XP allowed the install. JOY!!!

You know where this is going don’t you…..

Anywho…it turns out XP is able to see external USB HD’s and I nuked the MBR on the drive. Do you know of any freebie tools to recover the data on that drive? I have my bosses personal stuff on it and a lot of my own personal stuff too….and the drive states that it needs to be formatted….

HELP ME Obie-ADMIN, You’re my only hope!
——————————————–
Karl

Sorry it took so long ive been in windows mobile hell today.

Do not let it format! Knoppix live cd wll fix you right up.

You will be able to see and copy everything even without the mbr.

Let me know how it goes and if it doesnt work i might have some other apps
———————————————
Me

I bought a tool to recover the drive….but…..I have a BKF file on
there that is corrupted now….any idea of any tools that are freebies
to be able to recover those files? I suppose I can get the bosses CC to
buy a tool to do it…but I’d rather not…..
———————————————-
Karl

What OS is the BKF file from? What os are you restoring to? What is the error message?

———————————————-
Me

Win2k Pro. It is saying that the BKF(windows Backup file) is not valid or something to that effect….

I am running a scandisk on it….we’ll see if it goes. I downloaded a demo of a $ product and I could see the data in the file, but I cannot get at it without paying…..
———————————————-
Karl

Are you restoring to w2k as well? Did you use msbackup or ntbackup to compress it?
———————————————-
Me

NTBACKUP to create it. Tried restoring on Win2k server and XP.
———————————————-
Karl for the win

I’d try to restore on 2k pro but if that doesn’t work check this out:

Backup Exec has the ability to read .bkf files. You can download the trial
version and use it for 60 days for free.

If you go to the “Tools -> Options -> Catalog” menus, there is a check box
labeled “Use storage media – based catalogs”. If you remove the check from
this checkbox and run a catalog job on the bkf file, you should be able to
recover any files that are not corrupted. The catalog operation will take
longer to complete, but you should be able to restore any valid file within
the .bkf, before and after the corruption. Its hard to know how much
corruption there is in the .bkf file, so I wish you the best of luck.

This link will give you instructions on how to import a bkf file into the
program for restore. Before performing step 6. (The catalog operation),
follow the steps above. http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/241600.htm
———————————————-
Grateful Me

Dude……you rock.

We use BE and I never thought of trying it. Thanks to you I was able to restore….get this…..ALL OF IT.

Rock on Detroit….Rock on Chicago…NAPA, it’s the auto parts store. (If you don’t know what this is…do a Youtube/Google search on Wesley Willis)
———————————————–

So what have we learned today?

• 1. NEVER, EVER leave a USB HD attached to XP on install and NEVER, EVER nuke a drive unless you are 10000000% certain you have the right drive.
• 2. Karl rocks and has great ideas.
• 3. NAPA, It’s the Auto Parts Store

–A Grateful Slothman

This is not a joke, I repeat, this is serious business! I found this while surfing around on Digg, and thought this was one of the most interesting “features” I have ever seen.

According to Microsoft’s Support website, if your computer starts playing classical music such as “Fur Elise”, or even more modern hits like “It’s a Small, Small World” this is cause for concern.

From Microsoft Support:

During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play “Fur Elise” or “It’s a Small, Small World” seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer’s BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have drifted out of tolerance. This is a design feature of a detection circuit and system BIOSes developed by Award/Unicore from 1997 on.

They go on to say that if you encounter this problem, it is time to get your computer into the PC Doctor to have it checked out. Though it may seem like a virus, it could very well be a serious hardware problem.

- El Di Pablo

So it looks like Microsoft has heard us belly aching and now has released a fix. I will not be applying it until I either see more issues or read otherwise. Here is the information – you decide:

You receive an access violation error and the system may appear to become unresponsive when you try to install an update from Windows Update or from Microsoft Update
View products that this article applies to.
Article ID : 927891
Last Review : May 24, 2007
Revision : 10.0
Technical update: May 22, 2007
Microsoft has released a Microsoft Security Advisory on this problem for IT professionals. The security advisory contains additional security-related information about this problem. To view the security advisory, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/927891.mspx (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/927891.mspx)

Note This article discusses the MSI component fixes only. This fix is one component of a two-part fix that includes a Windows Update client software update. These updates will be deployed automatically using Windows Update in May 2007 and June 2007. However, some customers may select to manually install these updates. To fully address the unresponsive system issue, both this fix for MSI must be installed and the Windows Update client must be updated to version 3.0. When you install the MSI fix and the new client, process-monitoring tools may still show CPU usage at near 100 percent. However, the system should still be responsive and should not lock up. If another task requires CPU cycles, they will be shared. However, if the system is idle, MSI will use the full cycles that are available to complete in the shortest time. If another task is running at the same time as MSI, the system may run slightly more slowly. However, the computer should still be responsive. Remember that you must install the MSI fix and the new client to address unresponsive or locked systems. It is expected that process-monitoring tools may still show CPU usage at near 100 percent, but computer unresponsiveness is not expected. If you watch the process monitor, you may still see CPU usage at near 100 percent during some scans if the computer is otherwise idle. This is expected behavior.

Important Many instances of the Svchost.exe process may be running on a Windows-based computer. These Svchost.exe processes control certain tasks. The software update that is described in this article is only designed to address the problem that is mentioned in the “Symptoms” section. Other problems that you experience with Svchost.exe may require alternative resolutions or troubleshooting steps.

_TheResolvingAdmin_

I love using Experts Exchange: an online forum to find technical information that is usually buried elsewhere. I have never purchased a login from them and have a free account. If you search they will sometimes give you an answer without paying, but as soon as you click a link BANG pay up.

Check out this site:
http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2005/12/how-to-get-free-technical-support-for.html

All the content is good but the last comment did it for me. Use Google to search for your query and then view the cached page from google! Voila! Free information galore.

Thanks GeeksAreSexy!

They certainly are…
-=AskTheAdmiN=-

This is an oldie and a goodie. Using NT Offline Password and Registry Editor from http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/. This small boot floppy or cd is fantastic and I have been using it for many years to reset peoples forgotten local passwords on laptops and even to gain admin access of Windows XP.

After you create your Boot Floppy or Boot CD you are ready to restart your machine with the disk in the drive. If your machine does not automatically boot to the disk you may need to adjust your BIOS settings (if you can).

For most users you can hit the enter key for the defaults… Password Reset… Edit user data and passwords…

Now you will have a list of users to change… If you select the default it is the administrator. Change the password to * this will blank it out. Save your changes then reboot.

Log into windows with the administrator account and a blank password! If you see the home logon screen with no icon for the administrator simply click control alt delete and type in your credentials!

Voila!

_ThePasswordCrackingAdmin_