Raymond.CC Blog

Category: Software

  • A Useful Tool to Get an On Screen Volume Level Indicator • Raymond.CC

    A lot of PC keyboards and a good number of laptops will usually have a couple of hotkeys somewhere to control the system volume, either by pressing an ‘Fn’ qualifier key and a number key, or some extra added on buttons. You might even have a nice little dial or slider to handle it for you. Sometimes there will be a function in the provided driver or software that shows the volume level status in a nice on-screen display. But if it isn’t available, you’re stuck with the basic Windows volume control options using the icon in the system tray. My Logitech keyboard has a dial and a mute button but nothing to display this on the screen.

    A neat little program called 3RVX gives an on screen display of the volume level with a number of different looking skins included. There are eight with the program, but extra ones can be added. Not only that, but if your keyboard doesn’t have its own dedicated buttons to control the volume, some hotkeys can be configured for the up, down and mute functions as well as an optical drive eject hotkey.

    The installer is only about 2MB and will require Administrator privileges to install. During idle use (not controlling volume), it uses around 1-3MB of memory which rises another 4 or 5 when the display is on screen. The program does not start itself so it needs to be run first time from the start menu where you will be asked to choose a language. The default skin is a Mac type display (top left) and there will be a volume icon similar to the Windows one in the tray. Unfortunately, the default white icon will disappear if it goes in the hidden items box for the tray icons, it’s still there, but white icon on white background. Right clicking the tray icon or running the program from the start menu will bring up the settings window where you can change the skin amongst other things. Below are six of the default skins.

    The ‘General’ settings tab has options for starting with Windows, playing a sound when altering the level and running a custom sound mixer if you use one. The ‘Display’ tab changes how long and where the display shows on screen. You can change the fade delay and speed, whether to hide the tray icon or the display when programs are in full screen mode and the display position on screen. If you have multiple monitors there is the option to choose which to use for the display.

    The ‘Hotkey Setup‘ tab is already set up to a default of pressing the ‘Windows’ key and scrolling the mouse wheel to alter volume levels or clicking the middle mouse button to mute. Simply select the action to change and click the ‘Key combination’ button and hold down your own selection. Ctrl, Alt, Shift or the Windows keys can be used separately or in combinations with mouse actions or keyboard keys.

    Sadly, at the time I write this, the developers site is ‘down for maintenance’ so no other skins are available from his site. 3RVX is a few years old so I’m not entirely sure if it’s a temporary thing or not. But somewhere like DevianArt has some for you to have a look at. Just extract the zip file and place the folder in the ‘Skins’ directory of the program.

    Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Works fine for me on 64bit Win 7.
    The .NET framework 3.5 is required.

    The Download is still available from authors ‘down for maintenance’ website.

    Online Documentation

  • Prevent USB Autorun Virus Infections with Bitdefender Immunizer • Raymond.CC

    The introduction of the Autorun feature was brought to our Windows systems way back in the day when Windows 95 was around. It was a great idea of allowing things like game and application installs to automatically launch themselves whenever a CD or DVD was inserted into the drive. This is quite a big help to the novice and inexperienced users because they don’t have to do anything to trigger an installer or specified piece of software. The idea behind Autorun is simple with a file called Autorun.inf located in the root of the media containing a command to execute the required program. The inf file is looked for, and if found, is read when the disk is inserted.

    With the invention of USB drives and sticks, the Autorun feature has been the target of attack from viruses, Trojans and other malicious software. This is because of the ease at which the Autorun.inf can be replaced and then pointed to start the malicious executable, and begin the infection as soon as the device is inserted into a machine. The ease at which these viruses can then travel from system to system with the aid of the unwitting user poses a major security risk. It would come as no surprise to anyone that Autorun based threats have been one of the most common forms of infection over recent years.

    Windows 7 has Autorun disabled by default for all devices except those of type ‘Drive_CDrom’ although the slightly different Autoplay function can still be used. Other versions of Windows can also now be patched to behave in a similar way. Even if your own machines might be invulnerable to the Autorun virus threats, it doesn’t automatically mean other peoples PC’s are as well, especially if they are running a pre Windows 7 operating system. Connect an infected USB stick into their PC and it won’t take long for the virus to transfer itself across.

    It still makes some sense then, that if you frequently use USB sticks or portable hard drives, doing all you can to help prevent any Autorun type threats installing themselves on the devices, is important.

    A free utility to help you tackle this problem is Bitdefender USB Immunizer. Although it’s been out a little while, the latest version has had a bit of a GUI face lift and has also added the ability to immunize several devices with ease. The principle is simple; USB Immunizer creates an empty write protected Autorun.inf file on the USB device which prevents any malicious software from installing its own file and therefore nothing can be automatically launched upon insertion.

    The program is a completely portable standalone executable, so simply run it making sure there is a USB stick or hard drive ready to be attached.

    The main window will display the plugged in devices and a red glow to the icon indicates it is not immunized. The green glow shows an already immunized device. Just follow the simple instruction and click on a red device and create the protected Autorun.inf file.

    There is an option by clicking on the ‘cog’ icon in the window, to enable auto immunization whenever a USB device is attached. It’s probably better to leave this option though, and do it on a manual basis in case it immunizes a drive you don’t want it to.

    It’s worth pointing out that this type of program doesn’t remove threats or kill viruses and will not replace any of your security software, but does a useful task of helping prevent threats that use Autorun to spread themselves. The Bitdefender FAQ also mentions that the created Autorun.inf file cannot be deleted under Windows because of the security measures that have been put in place. You will either need to delete it using a computer running Linux or OS X or reformat the drive.

    Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7 32bit and 64bit.
    FAT, FAT32 and NTFS file systems are supported.

    Website

    Download


    Related posts:

  • Protect Windows From USB Autorun.inf Virus With USB Firewall
  • Stop Windows From Executing Instructions Found In AUTORUN.INF
  • How to Make Windows Autorun USB Flash Drives
  • Disable AutoRun CD in Windows for Better Security
  • Prevent Spread of Viruses through Removable Drives with iKill

  • Use Spyrix Free Keylogger to Monitor a PC’s Activity • Raymond.CC

    Whether you think it might be a good idea or not, sometimes there could be a legitimate case for monitoring what is happening on a PC when you are not physically sitting there in front of it. Some people may call it spying but I guess it really just depends on your point of view. While using monitoring techniques to gather private or confidential information from another person is obviously not something anyone should be doing, there are times when someone is perhaps engaging in certain activities on your PC you are not completely happy with.

    Perhaps you are just worried about your children visiting places on the internet you’d rather they didn’t, or trying to stop them going to parts of the system causing stability or security issues. As a couple of simple examples; a relative came home from work two or three days in a row to find his kids had infected the machine with a rogue antivirus. Needless to say, they wouldn’t, or simply couldn’t tell him what they were doing or where they were going to get infected. Another person I know has several kids and one of them kept disabling the laptop’s security software and obviously no-one was admitting responsibility. Monitoring the mentioned systems could have given a much clearer indication of what was happening, why it was happening and when.

    When mentioning the word ‘Keylogger’, a number of people reading this will raise their eyebrows and think ‘Trojan’ and other malicious software. And they are of course, correct. Malicious keylogger trojans are one of the more common pieces of code that sneak their way onto a computer and log the users actions, such as typing in password or financial details, and sends that information to a remote location. But using keylogging on your own or a friend or relatives PC and having good intentions, with the aim of prevention or education, is more acceptable.

    Spyrix Free Keylogger is one such application that is expressly designed to log a number of activities at regular intervals. User tasks such as keystrokes, applications and windows opened and clipboard activity are all monitored. These actions are also automatically captured and stored as a series of screenshots.

    The installer is only a 2MB download and installs to under 3MB. After installation the program will popup with its settings window. There nine visual skins available, and to be honest, I’m not fond of any of them but the Windows 8 and Charm skins appear to be the best of the bunch for me at least.

    Spyrix Free Keylogger is easy to use and the information is stored and displayed in a very readable format. The columns are; Event which can be filtered in the dropdown box by screenshot, keyboard event or clipboard value. Date and time of the activity can be filtered by a certain date or between two ranges. Window title lists the name of the window, application lists the tracked process name and value is the keyboard input, clipboard contents or name of the screenshot taken. Any captured screenshots can be clicked on in Detail View to expand and text can be copied.

    When the program is minimized, it is sent to the system tray like anything else meaning it will be visible and easily terminated. In ‘Settings’, there is an option to enter ‘Hidden mode’ and hide the tray icon by entering a password. The programs main interface can only then be accessed by pressing the hotkey and entering the chosen password.

    If you want to clear the logs and start logging process again, simply navigate to ‘Users\*yourname*\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Spyrix Free Keylogger\’ and delete the contents of the ‘logs‘ and ‘scr‘ folders. In XP these two folders are located in the ‘Program files‘ folder.

    Spyrix Free Keylogger is works with Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7 32bit/64bit

    Website and Download

  • Enhance the Windows Clipboard with Arsclip • Raymond.CC

    Although the Windows Clipboard is a great idea, even with Windows 7 it’s not what you would call feature rich. Copy something like a block of text or an image, and that’s about it, one piece of data in, the same one out. With the sheer amount of multitasking most people do in Windows these days, how useful would it be to have more than one actual item in the clipboard at once? With Windows alone you’re out of luck, but thankfully there are programs out there to greatly enhance what the Clipboard can do and help make it a much more functional part of your system.

    One such utility to actually bring the clipboard functionality a bit more up to date is ArsClip, which monitors the clipboard and records multiple entries as opposed to just the one Windows offers. It also adds several options to enhance the clipboard even further making it much easier to keep track of and use multiple entries.

    Some of its features:
    – Configurable Hot key to access the program
    – Create new groups using the Permanent Clips menu option.
    – Append and merge clips, either before or after capture.
    – Directly paste the image to an opened image editor or the text to the text editor.
    – Instruct the tool not to copy any non-text item which is larger than specified size.
    – Picture, RichText, File Copy, Unicode, HTML support
    – Form Mode for pasting multiple fields
    – Windows 7 Jumplist support (If you pin the program to the Taskbar)

    Version 4.0.0 of the program was released not too long ago and the website lists some new features including; Expandable Menus, new Clip Menu window for editing clips, drag-and-drop reordering and Menu key/Application key/Delete key support.

    The program actually comes with both the setup and a portable version in the zip file so it’s your choice to which way you wish to use it. Run the utility and it will display an icon in the system tray and will wait for you to send something to the clipboard. By default 15 items will be stored although this number can be increased to 100 items by right clicking the tray icon, going to Configuration >> Clipboard >> History >> And increasing the store number.

    Once data is in the clipboard you can simply view the history by pressing the default Hotkey combination of Ctrl+Shift+Z. A small window will pop up with the history contents of the clipboard for you to select:

    The Clipboard Functionality of Windows increased with Arsclip

    If you are typing in a document just press the number key of the desired clipboard text, or use your mouse / arrow keys, and it will be inserted at the cursor position. To empty the contents of the clipboard partly, or completely, simply right click the tray icon or use the ‘System’ menu in the popup and use the ‘Flush‘ options.

    Another useful function is the ‘Permanent Clips‘ option which allows the creation of strings of text you use often like email or home address, or maybe predefined sentences or paragraphs. These can then be accessed with a similar keystroke from the popup menu or a custom hotkey combination.

    The Clipboard Functionality of Windows increased with Arsclip

    The tray has a few options through the right click which can also be found in the popup menu such as; Program configuration, permanent clips, flushing and editing the Clipboard contents and its history. Left click the tray icon and you will get a thumbnail of what the current clipboard item is.

    The Clipboard Functionality of Windows increased with Arsclip

    There are plenty of configuration options like changing the hotkey combinations, Changing clipboard options depending on the program and altering the formatting of the copied text and many more.

    The Clipboard Functionality of Windows increased with Arsclip

    Hopefully one day Microsoft will get around to making the Windows Clipboard a lot more functional, but until then, something like ArsClip is on hand to make things a bit easier.

    Compatible with XP, Vista and Windows 7 32 and 64bit

    Website and Download

  • Create an HTML Directory Structure with Dir2HTML • Raymond.CC

    Whether you need to do so for your website or yourself, there is quite often a need to create a listing for a particular directory, set of directories or a whole drive. There are very simple ways of doing this but the end results are not exactly pleasing to look at with a simple text based output. A much nicer and more functional way is to create these structures in an HTML directory format. This is an especially ideal scenario if you are using your system as a server or something like a sitemap or index for a website is needed where local directories can be indexed and then uploaded.

    Even if you have no intention of using HTML directory listings for online purposes, creating listings for cataloguing file collections and folders on your hard drives or CD’s and DVD’s still produces something that is much easier to read and navigate around than a standard text file alone. A program called Dir2HTML from Arclab is a freeware tool for Windows that aims to make it easy to convert a standard directory structure into an HTML index file.

    The program has a number of useful options to aid in the creation and customization of the HTML index. Dir2HTML supports recursive folder indexing, selecting a file mask to filter in or out filetypes, create a sub-section for each subfolder and excluding hidden files and folders. Tailoring the output visually can be handled by adding a customized title, altering the font sizes and colours and resizing different areas of the output.

    The program is a small 1.2MB download and is pretty straight forward to use. There is not a portable version available, but this can be easily worked around by simply copying the Dir2HTML folder from ‘Program Files’ and then uninstalling if you don’t want to keep the program installed.


    An index can simply be created by clicking the ‘Select folder’ icon, picking the root folder to index, clicking the ‘Select Output’ button and choosing the location where to save the created .htm file. Then either press the ‘Start’ button at the top to create the file, or click ‘Start and Open Output file’ at the bottom to also view the htm file in your browser afterwards. Depending on the amount of data to process, this can take from a couple of seconds to a few minutes for a whole drive.

    Options such as adding a back-link to add a link to the top-level section, or creating hyperlinks from files are available should you need a bit more flexibility for the index. If you use ‘Link files’, the ‘Link-Prefix’ box will need to be altered from the default ‘./’ if the index file will not be located in the root of the input folder. See the Online Help for a better understanding.

    The colour, type and size of the fonts along with the background may need a bit experimenting with to get the desired results, but it shouldn’t take too long for the way it looks and displays the index is to your liking.

    Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7

    Website and Download

  • Lock, Restart or Shutdown a PC with Auto Lock • Raymond.CC

    Performing time intensive tasks on your computer can be a bit of a bind, especially when you have to physically sit there until the process has finished. Usually tasks which take time, quite often use at least a reasonable amount of processing power. There are quite a few pieces of software that come equipped with a ‘Shut down when done’ button, but what happens if you don’t want to shut down the machine? There are other things you might want to do instead of shutting down the machine, such as simply turning the screen off, or logging off from your account. Or you might simply want to shut the system down after the task has ended and the option to do so is not available directly from the software.

    Sometimes having your PC running longer than you really want it to and not being around should anything untoward happen, could also potentially pose a security risk. Even if you do not want to shutdown a PC after a task has finished, a similar thing might be needed such as restating the PC or logging off in a certain amount of hours and minutes from now. There are a few utilities around to do this kind of thing, but they are often full of other features you might not want. A very easy to use and simple utility is designed to do this and this alone. Auto Lock is a very tiny, compact and portable tool of only 120k so can be placed anywhere you like.

    The program comes with two different ways of performing one of the specific actions. The first is ‘If Idle’ which will wait for the computer to be idle for some specified time. Once the system is idle, the countdown you have specified (default is 10 seconds) will begin and the lock/restart action will trigger if the timer reaches zero. The timer will reset if the CPU becomes active during the countdown. ‘Forced’ mode will simply apply the action at the end of the specified countdown period after pressing the ‘Start’ button.

    The more astute users will no doubt be aware that waiting for the system to become idle is definitely not foolproof and just because the application you are monitoring has finished its work, the system might quickly start another processor intensive task such as scanning from your security software. Not perfect, but is still useful if you know there is not likely to be any more high CPU usage afterwards.

    The initial action on starting the utility will be ‘Screen Off’ and ‘Lock PC’ when the PC is idle. The main function options are locking the PC, logging off, restarting the system and shutting down the system. The ‘None’ option will only turn the screen off. The ‘Mute system sound’ option can be used when the machine is setup to be locked.

    If you minimize Auto Lock then it will disappear to the system tray and give you the countdown status by hovering over it. A small and simple tool to do a simple task.

    Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7

    Website and Download

  • Sophos Virus Removal Tool Help Finds Missed Viruses • Raymond.CC

    The fact is no antivirus will ever achieve 100% detection with 0 false positive. Even if it does, it won’t maintain at that perfect score in the next test. Therefore you should not fully trust your antivirus but use it only as a reference. One good example is a Remote Administration Tool such as DarkComet encrypted to bypass antivirus detection. I am glad that some of you found and clean the DarkComet infection from your computer using the DarkComet RAT Remover tool when your antivirus failed to detect it in the first place. So if your antivirus says that your computer is clean, don’t think that your computer is definitely free from any malware. It is always better to play safe by using a password manager or a keystroke encryption software to prevent from any possible keylogger capturing what you type on your keyboard.

    Another way to increase the detection rate of malware on your computer is to scan with other antivirus engine. For example, if you have Kaspersky Anti-Virus installed on your computer, you should be using a different brand of antivirus engine to scan instead of using the standalone Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool because both Kaspersky Anti-Virus and Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool uses the same virus definition and scanning technology. Obviously you are going to get the same results.

    One suggestion is to use the free Sophos Virus Removal Tool that works alongside your existing antivirus. The Sophos Virus Removal tool is capable of scanning memory, including system memory on 32-bit Windows, registry, all local hard drives and offers to remove when any infection (viruses, spyware, rootkits, fake antivirus) is found.

    Sophos Virus Removal Tool
    Sophos Virus Removal Tool is similar to Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool where it does not provide real time protection on your Windows computer which is why it will work even if you already have an antivirus software installed. Sophos Virus Removal Tool requires installation and the setup file is at 82.7MB in size. After installation, all you need to do is click on the Start scanning button. When an infection is found, you can click on the Details button to view the infected items and followed by clicking the Start cleanup button to remove the threats. Below is a video demo on how Sophos Virus Removal Tool scan and remove a malware that I’ve infected on my test machine.

    The Sophos Virus Removal Tool creates a log file in the application data or program data folder, depending on the version of Windows that your computer is running. You can find the log file (SophosVirusRemovalTool.log) from the following path: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Sophos\Sophos Virus Removal Tool\Logs\.

    It also comes with command line support that requires UAC elevation by running the SVRTcli.exe file from C:\Program Files\Sophos\Sophos Virus Removal Tool\ folder. There are several command-line options that can be passed to the command-line tool such as -yes to prevent from asking for confirmation before cleanup, -reboot to automatically restart the computer if required for cleanup, -uninstall to remove the tool after scan and cleanup is complete. You can specify the -help option to display the text help for more command line options.

    Sophos Virus Removal Tool doesn’t come with a self auto update feature so you will need to download from the official link below when you need an updated version to scan on a machine that you suspect to have a virus infection. Sophos Virus Removal Tool is compatible with Windows XP SP2, Vista or 7.

    Download Sophos Virus Removal Tool

  • Use UAC Process Analyzer to Check Application Security • Raymond.CC

    The Windows Vista and 7 User Account Control security feature has been around for several years now and most of people will have at least come across it in some form or another. To put it simply, User account Control (UAC) is there to help prevent users getting their system infected with malicious applications and scripts. This is achieved by preventing potentially suspect software from automatically executing itself when it is asking for access to various important system locations such as the ‘Windows’ and ‘Program Files’ folders or the registry. Granting these extra privileges can only be achieved through an Administrator account and standard users will need to provide the administrator’s password for that access to be granted to the protected locations. Changing and configuring a number of Windows own settings can also trigger the UAC prompt as well as installing and removing software.

    Being a system administrator, there may be times when you want to have a closer look at some of the systems running processes. Whether there is an issue with a piece of software currently running, and you suspect it may be connected with the programs access rights, or an unknown process requires a bit more investigation about its integrity and what rights it has, or has asked for. A useful little utility called UAC Process Analyzer can help give you that valuable information about the integrity of a running process. It can also help identify what user account control restrictions are currently in place for the process and whether it is being executed from a trusted location.

    UAC Process Analyzer is a portable application of around a Megabyte unzipped. As you might expect, the program needs to be ‘Run as Administrator’ when starting for non admin users.

    Usage couldn’t be much simpler, select the process to analyse from the dropdown list and click the ‘Analyse’ button. All the relevant security information will then be displayed which requires a brief explanation.

    The filename is the file description name taken from the file details, and ‘File Details’ is pretty self explanatory, being the physical location of the file.

    ‘Integrity Level’ is the amount of access the process has been granted to perform write operations in important system locations. ‘Low’ Integrity means the process can only be granted this level of access after being allowed to by the administrator. A ‘High’ integrity level is obviously the opposite and means a user does not need administrator privileges and will not be prompted for enabled write access to these locations.

    When the ‘UAC Virtualization’ is enabled, this means the process does not have write access to ‘Program files’, ‘Windows’ folders or other core system areas. Writes instead are redirected to the user profile folders where elevated privileges are not required and critical system files have much less chance of be harmed. ‘Disabled’ means full write access is granted for the process.

    ‘Trusted Directory’ is simply used to check whether the application is situated in a trusted location or not.

    The last piece of information tells you if the process has been digitally signed or not and could help determine if the file has been altered from its original state. If a signature is present, clicking on ‘Show information about this publishers certificate’ will display more information about the certificate including issued to and issued by, the serial number, algorithm and thumbprint.

    Compatible with Windows Vista SP2 and Windows 7 32bit and 64bit

    Website and Download

  • Reload Webpages with Soft or Hard Refresh in Web Browsers • Raymond.CC

    Web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera are considered very fast due to the cache. For example, if you’ve previous visited raymond.cc and then when you re-visit raymond.cc from a bookmark or manually typing it in the address bar the next time, you will notice that the webpage loads very quickly, thanks to the web browser automatically loading the files from the local cache for most of the requests instead of redownloading the images, javascripts, CSS and etc. It is possible for the webmaster to configure the expiration date of the cached files so that your web browser will automatically recheck if the files are modified upon reaching the expiration time and will automatically pull the latest version if it is newer than the cache stored locally on your computer. The cache used by web browsers is truly a useful technology to save both time and bandwidth resources for the user and for the server as well.

    We all know that every web browsers comes with a refresh or reload button but do you know exactly what it does when you click on that button? Do you also know the difference between a soft and hard refresh? Well I recently wanted to know the refresh webpage function myself so I’ve done some research and testing to understand more about this.

    If you’ve previously visited a website and the cache files are not expired, visiting the website again by typing the URL on the address bar or opening from the bookmark will load the unexpired files from the local cache on your computer.

    Webpage Cache
    Web browser loads files from local cache

    If you click on the refresh/reload button or press the F5/Ctrl+R hotkey on your web browser, this will trigger a “soft refresh” on the web browser where it will check against the web server to see if the files are modified. If modified, the web browser will pull the latest version of the file and if not modified, the web browser will continue to use the cache version. A soft refresh takes very little bandwidth just to check the HTTP response headers of the files to determine if the files are modified.

    Soft Refresh
    Soft refresh forces web browser to check if the files are modified.

    As for hard refresh, it is a method to force the web browser to fetch all of the files again ignoring the expiration time and bypassing the local cache.

    Hard Refresh
    Hard refresh forces web browser to fetch all files without checking.

    Now that you know the difference between a soft and hard refresh and how it works, here are the commands to perform a soft or hard refresh on different web browsers. There are actually a couple of different methods used for refresh such as Ctrl+R, Shift+F5, and etc but I’ll only show you the standard method so that it is easier to memorize.

    Soft refresh: Click on the Reload/Refresh button or press the F5 key on keyboard. Works on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.

    Hard refresh: Press Ctrl+F5 keys simultaneously. Works works on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera. As for Safari, the only way to force a hard refresh is to press and hold the SHIFT key on the keyboard followed by clicking on the Reload button.

    Logically, most of the time you don’t really need to do a soft or hard refresh unless the webpage suddenly looks broken probably due to some changes being made on the website. If the webpage still looks broken after a refresh, then only you should contact the owner of the website. Some of you reported that the floating social bar at the left hand side overlapping the first two paragraphs. Please do a soft refresh for your web browser to fetch the latest files. That should fix the problem.

  • Easily Batch Rename Files and Folders with Rename Master • Raymond.CC

    Having hundreds of Gigabytes of data is not unheard of for a lot of people these days. The problem comes with the sheer amount of different places where you might have got them. From smart phones and digital cameras, to downloading files off the internet, ripping music and video, or simply receiving files from friends. With all this variation in sources, the inevitable consequence is there will most likely be a huge variation in the way everything is organised and named.

    Whether it’s working with your collections of music, videos, archives or pictures, the chances are you have likely spent far too much time manually renaming hundreds or thousands of files. Removing erroneous numbers or replacing or adding strings to rename files is often required to make everything more readable. To make things far easier and save a lot of time, what you need is a way to rename multiple files and folders at once.

    That’s where a batch renaming utility comes in handy and one such program is Rename Master. While aiming to be relatively easy to use, it also has some powerful functions. Apart from the more standard types of rename functions like add, remove, or replacing selected parts of the filename, Rename Master also supports renaming via the files properties, and also the meta tag or exif information found in most MP3 or JPEG files.

    There are plenty of other features of note including; a built in Explorer type folder browser to locate files for renaming, a thumbnail preview window, auto previewing so you can see what the names will look like before renaming, and an undo function if you do get it wrong.

    The Rename Master download contains both a portable executable and an installer if you wish to keep it on your system. When it is first run, the main window may seem a bit complicated, but the program can be made as easy or advanced as you require and performing even complex renames can be done with a couple of clicks of the mouse. Simply locate and select the files using the upper window, path bar, filter and pop out folder browser.

    As you can see, there are twelve main renaming functions available. All of these have a set of sub functions when you click on them. This is where the programs power lies, and affects things like which part of the filenames are to be altered and what the replacement strings will be.

    As a simple example, these next steps will perform a common task of converting a folder full of generically named photos into something a bit easier to identify. Clicking on ’06 : [Replace Name/Phrase]’ will bring up a small window, and select Replace the ‘Entire Name’ from the dropdown‘. The option is there to replace the name, extension or a part of the name.

    Clicking the small play type button brings up a menu containing a number of file, date and tag variables which can be inserted into the filename. Here I select ‘Renumbering’ > ‘Counter’, manually enter the text ‘ Holiday ‘ and then ‘File Date’ > ‘Date Modified Year’. The potential result can then be seen in the ‘New Name’ column of the file display.

    If the new name result is satisfactory, then press the ‘Rename’ button. This example is obviously quite a basic one and much more advanced operations can be carried out by using several of the renaming scripts at once. Longer and more frequently used scripts can be saved for future use with the ‘File’ > ‘Save Script’ option. The Online Help is definitely worth a read to explore and understand what the program is capable of.

    Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7

    Website and Download

  • Detect and Remove DarkComet RAT Malware used by Syrian Government • Raymond.CC

    DarkComet is a remote administration tool that opens an invisible backdoor giving the controller full access to the computer including access to the hard drive, activating webcam and sound capture, keylogging to steal username and passwords by capturing keystrokes and many more. DarkComet is one of the very few free remote administration tool that has been in development for such a long time. About 2 months ago CNN reported that the Syrian government was using a free and publicly available remote administration tool called DarkComet to spy on the supporters of the Syrian opposition. When the coder of DarkComet got to know about this, he quickly created a remover for his own tool to fix what the Syrian government did to the opposition movement.

    Since DarkComet can be downloaded publicly, the server file that is generated from it is obviously fully detected by most if not all antiviruses. So anyone with the intention of infecting another person’s Windows computer will have to make the server file fully undetectable by crypting it to bypas the antivirus detection. What makes DarkComet RAT Remover special is the ability to detect DarkComet’s presence even if it is virtualized, packed, encrypted, compressed or obfuscated.

    DarkComet RAT Remover

    DarkComet RAT Remover is a portable and simple to use tool that is able to detect DarkComet RAT instance by taking a few minutes to scan the memory and offers to cure the threat in just a click of a button. The DarkComet removal tool also shows the process name and the installed location if the presence is found. Since modern Windows operating system such as Windows and 7 has UAC enabled by default which protects third party application from modifying the registry, it is advisable to run the DarkComet RAT Remover as administrator by right clicking on the tool and select “Run as administrator”.

    As you can see from the video demo above, the DarkComet RAT Remover is able to detect the presence of DarkComet but the ability to remove the infection is a bit weak. DarkComet RAT Remover terminates the process but the file and registry entry that makes it auto start with Windows is still intact which means that when Windows is restarted, DarkComet will run again. The persistence installation option at the Module Startup is not even enabled during the creation of a new stub.

    Another powerful option found in DarkComeT RAT that definitely breaks the DarkComet RAT Remover tool is the persistent process option in the Module Shield. When this option is enabled, the server process will automatically restart when it is killed or terminated.

    Perhaps the DarkComet RAT Remover is very useful to detect its presence but shouldn’t fully rely on it to remove the infection until the cleaning function has been polished. The latest version of DarkComet RAT Remover was released about 2 months ago and this file has been constantly being scanned in VirusTotal with the result of a perfect zero (0/42) detection. Rest assured that the DarkComet removal tool is definitely safe without any backdoor being embedded to it that is if you download from the official link below.

    Download DarkComet RAT Remover

  • Make your Dropbox Mobile with DropboxPortableAHK • Raymond.CC

    When it comes to storing and synchronising your data, there has been a large rise in ways to achieve this in the last couple of years. One of the more popular ones is uploading and storing your files with an online service. There are plenty to choose from depending on how much data storage is required. Although there are services that offer more storage space if you need a lot, possibly the most popular and the one I use, is Dropbox. The 2GB or so basic package it offers does me just fine, although I believe this can be increased to around 16GB with some effort.

    Dropbox really can be a very useful application allowing you to access your data and sync files and folders across multiple computers and devices. And because it’s a cross platform service, there are a number of possible ways to do it. Firstly, you can download and install the Dropbox desktop client on all computers that need access to Dropbox, or simply open a web browser and access the online version. If you are on the move, there are iPhone and Android versions available as well. One way Dropbox does’t currently offer is taking your synced account with you in a portable way such as a USB stick.

    Having a portable Dropbox account has a few big advantages such as allowing you not to have to install the desktop application on systems you don’t really want to, which is better for security and privacy reasons. Also, a portable version doesn’t have a limit of one account per machine, it’s one account per folder so multiple accounts are possible. DropboxPortableAHK is an easy to use utility to enable you to do this.

    The nature of the program obviously means it is completely portable, all that’s needed is for you to download the zip file and extract it to a folder or USB stick. Then run the DropboxPortableAHK executable.


    The program is pretty easy to use as it’s a series of screens to go through to set everything up and get the Dropbox portable account working. Screen 2 checks for a current internet connection and allows the setup of custom connections if needed. The standard system method is ok for most situations.

    Screen 3 is for choosing a folder name and location for the Dropbox folder, pretty self explanatory.

    Screen 4 is useful if you already have the Dropbox application setup because the data folder can be moved or copied to the portable location which saves downloading it again. The ‘Use previous Dropbox configuration’ option should transfer your account information but I constantly got a ‘No Dropbox path was found…’ error when I tried to use it, so it’s something to watch out for.

    The Addons screen has a number of options including ‘folder Protection’ which will terminate the Dropbox process if you unplug a USB stick while it’s still running, and ‘SyncAndGo’ that will open the Dropbox application, sync your files and then close again. If you don’t want to enable this option permanently, it can be turned on temporarily by holding Ctrl while starting the executable. It is worth having a good read of the online setup instructions for a better explanation what all of the options do.

    Screen 8 is where the Dropbox setup files are downloaded if they haven’t been already, and the icon colour can be changed so different accounts can be given separate coloured icons. The setup zip file to be downloaded and extracted is around 16MB.

    The final screen just has a button to start the Dropbox setup process where you can create an account or enter your details for a currently used one. Once that is done, the portable Dropbox application is ready to use and the chosen colour icon will be displayed in the system tray. Files and folders will then be synced in the normal way of adding or removing data from the Dropbox folder.

    To create a different account, unpack the downloaded DropboxPortableAHK zip file using a different folder name. Opening the setup window again after an account is configured can be done by holding ‘Shift’ when double clicking the executable. Right click the Dropbox tray icon and ‘Exit’ to close everything down.

    Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7 32bit and 64bit

    Website

    Download Page

  • Quickly and Easily Batch Resize Images with Fotosizer • Raymond.CC

    With the resolution of today’s digital cameras and smartphone’s, the size of the photos taken can be massive. Some high quality cameras can output pictures at 6000 x 4000 pixels or more and the resulting file size can be several Megabytes. If you’re a fan of photo sharing websites or social networking and need to upload your photos to sites like Twitter or Facebook, trying to upload one huge picture is going to take enough time, but doing it with a whole holiday’s worth of snaps will take forever unless you have a fast internet connection. You also have to think of the people who are going to view or download these files. On anything but a reasonable internet connection, and a fast mobile device or respectable PC, it could be a rather painful affair.

    The situation is also very similar for web developers and websites, because as well as taking the extra time to upload batches of larger images, how much space being taken up is also a consideration. I’m quite sure there would be a number of visitors to Raymond.cc who would not be too impressed if each page took minutes to load because it contained half a dozen high resolution screenshots! Keeping it reasonable is a must.

    Of course, there are several other reasons why you would want to resize images or change the file format of a number of images or even entire folders. The good thing is, there are masses of free applications around that deal with the converting and manipulation of images and many of you will already have a favourite in mind. Fotosizer is a utility that caught my eye because it seems to have a good blend of usability and functions without being complicated to use.

    As well as performing the resizing and conversion a number of different ways, the program can also change the image quality, alter the DPI settings, retain the EXIF and XMP metadata, and perform a few colour changing or rotating effects. Fotosizer is only a small download of around 1.6 Megabytes and although it doesn’t have a dedicated portable version, can be made portable by extracting the executable with 7zip.


    Everything the program does is contained within the single window so ploughing through multiple windows to get tasks done is thankfully not needed. Adding images is simply a case of dragging and dropping all the required files and folders onto the window or using the add and remove buttons underneath.

    The resize settings are pretty simple to understand. ‘Custom size/Percentage of original’ as the name suggests, allows you to set the desired resolution as an absolute pixel size or a percentage of the original size. ‘Preset size’ has a number of common sizes in the dropdown box including some for iPhone/iPod and Sony PSP. A couple of tick boxes like ‘Maintain aspect ratio’ and ‘Reverse width and height by orientation’ are there to safeguard against producing images out of proportion.

    The three tabs under ‘Optional settings’ offer functions like turning the images into negative or black and white and rotating or flipping the images. The ‘Misc’ tab can change the percentage of the JPEG quality or the print DPI as well as turning on or off the retaining of any metadata in the original images.

    The final area of the main window is for the output format and the destination folder with the option of customizing a filename mask. Fotosizer can save the files in BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG or TIFF formats. The destination folder can be set as the ‘Same as original’ or simply select a custom location.

    The ‘Filename mask’ area is quite a useful little option because there are a total of ten different mask patterns you can enter into the box separated by any chosen combination of custom characters. Dates, automatic numbering, dimensions and filename are included along with a few presets in the dropdown box.

    The process is pretty quick, enlarging 15 pictures from 1024 x768 to 1600 x 1200 and changing the format from JPG to PNG took under 10 seconds on a single core PC. Although Fotosizer is in a crowded area in regards to image editing software, it has a good mix of being powerful enough for most people and easy to use. There is much more powerful software out there, and Faststone Photo Resizer is one such program to check out if you require tons of functions. But more power often means less user friendliness which is why if Fotosizer does everything you want, it’s definitely one to have a look at.

    Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7

    Website and Download

  • Use CloseTheDoor to Identify Your Systems Listening Ports • Raymond.CC

    Malicious software and viruses can be quite cunning in the way they get themselves on to your computer. And if something does get past the security software, it can sometimes be quite difficult to know anything is there because it will sit in the background going about its business. One of the common areas of your PC malware will try to get access to, is the network connection to the outside world, transmitting private information from your system or receiving more malicious code from untrusted sources.

    An important area of concern on networks is watching for unauthorized access on the TCP and UDP ports. Unauthorized open ports are a major security risk and leave the system prone and vulnerable to attack. A number of Windows programs and services listen on the network for incoming connections, but any other non essential connections need to remain closed as a precaution which helps to avoid anything sneaking in under the radar.


    Some Firewalls can give you an idea which ports are open and what processes are currently listening for a connection, and the DOS command ‘netstat’ can also give you a rough idea, but it’s not in a particularly user friendly format. CloseTheDoor is a utility designed to display all TCP and UDP ports that are currently listening for connections and the connected processes and services. There are numerous options available for dealing with processes which you think might not be desirable. ClosetheDoor is available in installable or portable 7zip versions and needs no adminstrator rights to function.

    Identify Your Systems Listening Ports with CloseTheDoor

    The programs main window lists all processes and services current listening for incoming connections on the system. All relevant information is also listed including; the network interface and listening ports, the protocol (TCP/UDP v4 or v6), the associated process and its ID, any connected services, and information like company, product and description relating to the executable file. Malicious processes will often have no description or product information so this could be something to keep in mind when looking at the list.

    The good thing about this little utility is there are a lot of helpful web resources built into the menus to help you gather as much information as possible about the process or port in use. Right clicking an entry will bring up a menu giving you three main options for dealing the process.

    Identify Your Systems Listening Ports with CloseTheDoor

    They are for opening a folder at the process location, terminating the process or listing and manipulating the connected services. Any service can be stopped, disabled or uninstalled so this option needs to be handled with care. As you can see from the menu, there are a number of options for you to gather more information about the port or process from a Google search or Wikipedia. The Port Authority Database will give more details about the port. Checking the usage statistics of the port can be useful because a sudden surge in activity could possibly mean a new piece of malware is attacking multiple systems.

    There is a lot of helpful information and shortcuts to commonly used system tools available in the menu’s:

    The ‘File’ menu allows for the export of the results into a CSV file, and there is an option to display a brief summary of all the listening endpoints for each connection.

    Identify Your Systems Listening Ports with CloseTheDoor

    The ‘Tools’ menu allows for quick access to (component) Services, Task Manager, Network Connections, MSConfig, Regedit and Local security settings. ‘Commands’ will open and export Network statistics, Task Statistics and Environment variables into a text file.

    The ‘Internet References’ menu gives quick access to several website links covering a number of important topics that deserve further reading. There is comprehensive information concerning ports and their numbers, services information from Black Viper, Firewall and TCP/IP help from Microsoft and even GRC.com’s ShieldsUp! for checking the security vulnerabilities of your connection.

    Identify Your Systems Listening Ports with CloseTheDoor

    Because of sheer amount of help and information available at the click of a button, and it’s small and compact nature and effectiveness, CloseTheDoor is certainly a worthwhile addition to any USB toolkit.

    Compatible with Windows XP, Vista, 7 (Requires .NET Framework 3.5)

    Website

    Download Page

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  • Examine Malware Affected Systems with ESET SysInspector
  • Change the Listening Port for Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection

  • Alter File Modified and Creation Dates with BatchTouch • Raymond.CC

    As you probably know, whenever a file or folder is created or there are modifications made to it, the details of the current time and date are recorded in the file information and can be seen when you view details of the file. There is another date and time stamp recorded which is the ‘File Accessed’ information that changes when a file is touched. This though, has never been completely accurate as a lot of software doesn’t update the information properly, and also increases writes to the drive a fair amount. As a result the file accessed attribute was disabled by default in Windows Vista and 7.

    Although it might not happen often, occasionally there may be situations where you want to change the creation or modification date and time of a particular file, folder or group of them. There can be many reasons for this such as making a uniform time and date in a folder when all the files inside have a wide range of dates. Or you could simply be sending a number of files to somebody and don’t wish for them to know the exact date when the files were created.


    Doing such things as this through Windows can be quite a tricky affair, so it’s easiest to use a third party utility to get the job done. BatchTouch is a fairly simple program which handles the task of making it easier to change the creation and modification date and time attributes for multiple files and folders all at once. BatchTouch only comes as a portable application in a zip file which just needs to be extracted to the chosen location. The ‘BatchTouch Lib’ folder needs to be retained.

    Alter File Modified and Creation Dates with BatchTouch

    To add files and folders into the program, simply drag and drop them on to the window. A number of filter tick boxes are on hand to exclude various types from the list, so if you want to change the files and not folders or perhaps hidden files, untick the option before dragging the items onto the window.

    The file modified and created dates can both be changed together or each individually. Both time and date can be changed to either the current system date/time, an absolute value if you want to specify one or an offset which will either add or subtract the value required from the originals. There are a couple of logical limitations on file dates allowed such as the modified date cannot be older than the creation date, and the creation date cannot be newer than the modified date.

    There are also a few extra one click functions in the ‘Special’ menu such as updating all items to the newest or oldest one in the list or setting all entries to their assossiated modified or created dates.

    Alter File Modified and Creation Dates with BatchTouch

    When you are happy with your selection, press the ‘Go’ button. A confirmation box will be displayed with a warning that the operation cannot be undone. If you are not 100% sure it’s always worth testing on a few unimportant files or a backup first.

    Compatible with Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Server 2008. There is also a separate Mac version available on the website.

    Website

    Download