Home Networks... The Basics

We outsource our desk-side support for our remote offices (No, not to India!). Sometimes we get a good tech that knows what they are doing, but then there are other times when I want to bang my head on the wall because there are some basic things that they should know, and they don't.


For instance, I have an open ticket for one of our offices on the east coast. They have two model homes with an internet connection, and they want to set up some extra computers. The desk side technician went out and bought some network switches to split the internet connection up. He plugged the cable modem into the switch then two computers. One computer had access, the other couldn't pull a n IP address from DHCP, so he called me. After him explaining this to me I wanted to reach through the phone and ring his neck!


When you order your high speed, broadband internet connection you are essentially renting an IP address from your internet service provider. If you have a T1 connection, you might have three or four IP addresses to use. This office was a model home in a residential area, so they only have a regular old cable modem. with that cable modem only comes one IP address from the cable company. In order for you to share your internet with this type of setup you need something that can perform Network Address Translation (NAT) to change that one Public IP address into multiple Private IP addresses. You then need to have something on your new private network to automatically assign IP addresses to each machine (or you have to manually set static addresses, trust me, it is easier to have it automatically set).

All of this can be performed with a simple home network router. The router will take that one IP address from the ISP, translate it into a private address, the router will then split that traffic between all of the hosts as well has assign each host an IP address of their own. This sort of setup is very common in SOHO networks, and I am thoroughly surprised that the desk side technicians couldn't figure that out!

So the moral of the story: If you want to share your internet connection with more than one computers at home... GET A ROUTER!!!

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System Restore.... From the Command Line

I had a computer today that reacted a little funny to an install of McAfee Virus Scan. After the reboot it didn't agree with McAfee's OnAccess drivers. Long story short it would give me a BSOD at reboot. I tried Last Known Good, but then it would hang indefinitely. I tried to boot into safe mode (without networking), that was a no-go also, it too would just hang indefinitely. All I wanted to do was a simple system restore!!!

Never fear, Captain Command line is here!

I rebooted into safe mode with command prompt. It booted right up. I logged in and like clockwork, got only the command prompt. I ran the following command:

%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

The system restore GUI popped up and I was able to restore to before the install. Thanks Captain Command line!

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Port Forwarding Mady Easy!

There is a great website that some of you may have seen before and we give it AtA's two thumbs up. It got us out of many a looooong phone call setting someone up to forward their remote desktop or webserver ports on their (insert brand name) router here.

Go online and Google Portforward.com and the model of router and the program you want to forward for. So if you want instructions for a WRT54G router port forwarding VNC to your desktop you would Google this:

portforward.com + wrt54g + vnc

and voila you get back as your first search result something like this:

http//www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Linksys...

There your end user can find step by step instructions on how to open the router console all the way down to open the ports! Just don't give this to your paying clients :)

From Their Website:


PortForward.com is proud to offer help setting up port forwarding on your router or firewall. Many Internet users are not aware of how to configure their router or firewall in order to use applications like Peer-to-Peer file sharing (PtoP), Internet Games, Web serving, FTP serving, WebCams, IRC DDC, and Instant Messaging such as AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and MS Messenger.

Our Routers section offers detailed walkthroughs on how to setup port forwarding. These how to guides make it easy to setup your router or firewall for any application you may need.

Routers can be tough to configure. Our Help and FAQ page gives general tips and definitions. These can help if you can't connect to your router, or are unsure of some of the terms on this page. If you do not know exactly what you are doing or are having problems, Start Here.

Try our Common Ports ports page if you need to know what ports are required by a commonly used software application. We will be adding more to this section soon! If you would like to submit ports used by a common software application, please send that information to us using our Comments page.

Originally Posted on Ask The Admin By Karl Gechlik

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Getting MP3's from Youtube!

Let me tell you a little story. I was listening to the radio when this really cool song came on. It was one of those songs where it sounds really cool, but you can't understand a damn thing the singer is saying. Anyway, I figured out the name of the song by going to the radio stations website right after the song was sung to look at their list of the last ten songs, then going to Frostwire and downloading all ten and listening to each one (The song was Dance of the Manatee by Fair to Midland by the way).

Well the version I downloaded off Frostwire was slightly different to the one I heard on the radio. It wasn't quite as good. It wasn't the quality of the MP3 that was bad, the artist just sang it slightly differently. the version I liked was the radio edit version. So I went to Youtube and looked up their video. The video version was the same as the radio, and that is the version I wanted! I decided to download the Youtube video using my Youtube downloader (You have to add the .flv extension on the end of the file you download for it to work). I converted it to avi format using Freez FLV to Mpeg tool. Once I had it in avi format, I was able to extract the audio using my new I found called Free Video to MP3 Converter! I could have made my life easier and used their Free Youtube to Mp3 converter as well. Anyway, I now have the MP3 version I want and I got it using free software, and a music video on Youtube! Check it out for yourself!

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Bone Crusher Versus Optimus Prime

If you still haven't seen the movie Transformers yet, maybe this clip will inspire you! If you have seen the movie, maybe it will inspire you to go see it again! It is partial a clip of the battle between Bonecrusher and Optimus Prime!

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Bauer-Power Windows XP Bootscreens

I was bored this morning so I decided I was going to design my own Bauer-Power Windows XP Boot Screen! You may also know it as a splash screen. Well I did it!








Now you too can have a custom, Bauer-Power boot screen for you Windows XP box. You will need Style XP to change your current boot screen to the new one though (It's only $19.95 if you don't already have it). Here is the link to download my bootscreen: Bauer-Power Boot Screen

NOTE: When I tested the download, since I have 7zip installed, the download manager wanted to save it as a zip file. If you have a similar problem, change the save as box from what ever format to "All Files".

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Padlock Lock Picking Using A Paper Clip

I found this interesting video from the guys at free-lock-picking-guide.com in my travels across the internet. It shows you how to pick a pad lock using nothing more than two paper clips. This is the sort of thing you used to only see on Macgyver. I hope you take notes, and enjoy!

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Generate your Own Rainbow Tables

So you want to be a hacker huh? I was watching Transformers this last Sunday, and the really hot NSA Security analyst threw out a really cool buzz-word "brute force". Brute forcing passwords are okay when the passwords are extremely weak. If the password is 8 characters or more with upper and lower case, special characters and numbers, you are looking at trying to crack that password using brute force in about 8-20 years!

No, you need something a little faster than that. Attacking a password hash using rainbow tables is where it appears to be at now days. There are places you can go to download some rainbow tables. One place I found was at rainbowtables.shmoo.com, where they offer free rainbow tables via bit torrent. When I tried to download them, my bit torrent tracker said it would download in 8 days (I hate bit torrent by the way).

So why not make your own tables? Well, look no further, you can download WINRTGEN and generate your own tables. This still takes a lot of time. I am generating one table to pen test the ms-cache password on my domain computer (I will blog about that later) using Cain and Abel. I started generating the table at around 10:00am yesterday, now it is about 2:30pm, and it is only at 61%. Needless to say, you better pack a lunch, or go make some coffee. If you are wondering, WINRTGEN will generate rainbow tables to attack the following hashes: LM, FastLM, NTLM, LMCHALL, HalfLMCHALL, NTLMCHALL, MSCACHE, MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA1, RIPEMD160, MySQL323, MySQLSHA1, CiscoPIX, ORACLE, SHA-2 (256), SHA-2 (384) and SHA-2 (512) hashes.


You can download WINRTGEN by itself, or you can download Cain and Able and it comes with it. I'll let you guys know how well my tables worked against my cached password (And I use a strong password).

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Adding Calendar functionality to Mozilla Thunderbird

AskTheAdmin recently added a new writer named Phil. Phil is a systems administrator out of the UK, and works in a mixed Windows/Linux environment. He also runs his own blog called TwistedEthics.com. He posted this interesting tip on integrating a calendar to Thunderbird. Enjoy!

In a business environment, people who switch from Microsoft Outlook to Mozilla Thunderbird often miss having the calendar/task features in Outlook. Fortunately, you can add Calendar and Task functionality to Thunderbird with the Lightning add-on.

• Go to the Lightning download page
• Right click on the download link and Save As… (If you don’t, Firefox might try to install the add-on itself.)
• Open up Thunderbird and click on Tools > Add-ons
• Install the Lightning file you just downloaded
• Once you’re done, restart Thunderbird, and start using your new Calendar feature!
• If you need Holiday calendars, you can get them here

Originally Posted on TwistedEthics.com By Phil

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Transformers: Episode 10

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Transformers: Episode 9

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Transformers: Episode 8

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Transformers: Episode 7

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Transformers: Episode 6

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Transformers: Episode 5

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Transformers: Episode 4

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Transformers: Episode 3

Okay, I might as well finish up the first season...If I can find all of them. Here is episode 3:

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eBay Sniper Firefox add on!

Now I've been using this gem for a few years now with great results.

The add on is called Biet-o-Zilla, but I am not 100% sure that it is still under development, but I know it works.

The only place I could find it was here.

It's a foreign language site, but you can click on the install on the right side to download the XPI file.

Here's what it looks like:


How it works is this:

Go into the settings and add your eBay account information, you can test it to make sure it works.

Enter in the item number in the right section, then the section where it says for your bid, then click on the last minute(you can set the amount of time before the auction ends the bid is placed in the settings)button. I set mine for 15 seconds before auction end because when I had it set lower, the bids were not accepted by eBay and I lost out on a few items much to my dismay.

At the specified time, the bid will be placed and hopefully you win!

Now one caveat.

Firefox and BOZ needs to be open and you need an internet connection for this all to occur. This is not a service, rather just a sniper app for you.

I know personally I've bought an $800 Canon Rebel for $570 with it and a set of $1200 ice hockey goalie pads(I do have a hobby besides the internet! ;-) ) for $167!

Play around with it and happy sniping!

PS: The buttons look funky on the image because the skin I have for Firefox messes with the way the buttons look.

Originally Posted on Ask The Admin By The Slothman

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Fun with Ophcrack

I posted a list of some good password crackers many moons ago, then more recently I posted a video from some young hackers over at The Fixed where they show you how to crack a password using the Rainbow tables over at Plain-Text.info. Then I got to thinking to myself, "Self...There has to be other methods for achieving the same goal." Then I thought, "Aha! I already have a list of some good password crackers, why not try one out."


Enter Ophcrack from stage left. Ophcrack uses, basically the same time-memory trade-off using rainbow tables as Plain-Text.info. The installation is easy, and even lets you download Rainbow tables during installation (Be patient, this takes a long time). Once installed with the necessary rainbow tables operating Ophcrack is a snap!

If you look at the video that I posted from The Fixed, the guys use CIA Commander, which costs around $250 or so. Here is the scenerio I propose using freeware:

1) Boot the computer you want to hack using the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows.
2) Use The Sala Password Renew Program on UBCD4WIN to create a new administrator user.
3) Reboot the PC, and Login as the New Administrator user
4) Install Ophcrack. (I recommend burning the rainbow tables from your home installation to a DVD to make this quicker. You can install Ophcrack without downloading the tables, and just copy them into the C:\Program Files\ophcrack\win32\5000 directory after the installation)
5) Load the local SAM file, and launch!

Should only take a few minutes to get the local admin password!

NOTE: If you don't want to get caught, you might consider rebooting the computer once after getting the Administrator password, then log in as administrator and delete the user account and profile for the Administrator user you created using UBCD4WIN. After that is done, uninstall Ophcrack, and clear all of the event logs. Of course, this is just for educational purposes. Don't try this out on computers that you do not own! Good luck!

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Novell Client

Good lord! Why does it have to be so damn hard to find old stuff online? I am working on a school project where we have to build a legacy network using Novell Netware 5.0 server, a Windows NT 4.0 server, a Windows NT 4.0 workstation, a Windows 98 SE Workstation and a Linux workstation. I have been scouring the internet looking for the client install files for Windows NT and I finally tracked them down. To make life a little easier for those who follow me looking for the Novell Client for Windows NT (Also known as Novell's IntranetWare Client for Windows NT 4.0, Also Known as Novell's Client 32 for Windows NT), I have posted the install files here, just download it and run setupnw.exe.

For those looking for the Windows 9x (95/98) client, I posted it here. Just run setup.exe.

EDIT: I REALIZE THAT MEDIAFIRE HAS REMOVED THE CLIENTS FOR DOWNLOAD. I WILL TRY TO FIND THEM AGAIN, AND UPLOAD THEM TO A DIFFERENT HOSTING SITE. (SORRY TO THE GUYS CURRENTLY IN CAPSTONE)

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Transformers: Episode 2

In case you were wondering what happened after episode one...

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Transformers Rock!

I just went out and saw the new Transformers Movie yesterday, and all I can say is WOW! That was one of the most bad-a$$ical movies I have ever seen. In honor of such a job well done, and an incentive for you to go out and see it yourself, I found this little gem of a video on youtube. Transformers: Episode 1!

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Micro$oft Updates

How many of you out there are not fond of the Microsoft Update site? I am sure there are many of you. How many of you are fed up with the Genuine Advantage nonsense every time you want to make sure you are up to date? Not to mention if you have a "legally questionable" Windows or Office installation. Don't fret, there are other methods for getting your updates so you can stay patched up. I will talk about two of my favorites.

The first one I like is called Autopatcher. Every few months they create a core distribution, almost like a service pack, which contains all previous patches. Then every month they come out with a big update that you install to keep your system patched up. Autopatcher is really nice if you don't like to reboot. How many times have you built a new machine and installed Windows from scratch, then tried to patch it up? You have to reboot about 3 times before everything is patched up! With Autopatcher, everything patches at once, and you only have to reboot once! Autpatcher is also nice because it comes with some cool, optional, tweaks and other apps for a more enjoyable Windows experience. If you want to download the latest Autopatcher core and monthly updates directly from Autopatcher's website, they only offer it as a bit torrent. If you are not fond of bit torrent like me, you can slow download the installers from FTP here.

My other favorite is Windiz Updates. I mentioned them once in a previous post, but never really got into it. Windiz Updates is good if you want to completely remove Internet Explorer out of your browsing equation. If you go to Microsoft's update site, they require you to use Internet Explorer because they use active x controls which Firefox doesn't support. Windiz Updates allows you to use other browsers including Firefox, Netscape, Firebird, Opera, and K-Meleon. If you still need convincing, they offer these ten reasons why you should use them:

• No personally identifiable information is collected from your computer.
• No more unwanted spyware -- Microsoft Internet Explorer can finally be removed from your computer (if that were possible).
• It lists just the updates you need. If an update has been superceded by a newer one, it will not ask you to install the older one.
• Using enhanced data from MBSA, WindizUpdate will find more security patches needed for your O/S than the "other" website.
• If there is a security issue with a component that is not yet installed, it will not ask you to update it. For example, if you have not installed hyperterminal, it will not update it.
• It is not restricted to just Microsoft products. Software from other vendors can also be updated.
• Upgrading to the latest version of Internet Explorer is not considered a Critical Update!
• Works on Windows versions no longer supported by Microsoft -- Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 95
• Our plugin is not an ActiveX control.
• Integrated download manager with error detection -- you can cancel downloads at any time, and the next time you wish to install the cancelled update, it will continue from where it left off. Only corrupted sections of the file are re-downloaded.

If you know of other alternatives to update your Microsoft system, let us know about it in the comments!

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R.I.P. Kelsey Briggs

Someone posted this video on myspace, and it made me cry like a baby. How anyone could do something to an innocent child like this I will never know. I have a two year old daughter and she tries my patience all the time, but I could never hurt her. This video is the story of Kelsey Briggs, and she had a purpose. After watching this video if you can make it through it, please visit the website her Grandma put up for her: KelseysPurpose.org

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Year of the Snake

I know, I haven't posted any cool flash games in a while. I found this one called Year of The Snake. It is a pretty cool arcade style fighting game. The controls are easy. Use the arrow keys to move. The S key to jump and the A key to attack. Have fun!

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Where to get the good buys

People I run into often ask me if I can get them a good deal on a new computer, or new equipment. The truth is....no, sadly I can't. I can, however, lead you in the right direction. I get almost all of my stuff online. It really is the best place to find computers and computer equipment, and is 9 times out of ten cheaper to buy online than to run down to CompUSA, or Best Buy for your computer needs. In this article, I will name off three of my favorite online vendors in no particular order.

By the way, these guys aren't endorsing me or this post. I just genuinely like doing business with these guys.



First off on my list I will recommend NewEgg.com. I have purchased tons of stuff through NewEgg including the processor, motherboard and power supply for my desktop PC. I got great deals for all of them. They also provide customer reviews so you have a good idea of the product you are about to purchase. They also have a good return policy (except they charge a 15% restocking fee on most items).




Next on my list is Tiger Direct. These guys have a great selection and their prices are really good. I have bought a few things from them and highly recommend them.



Last on my list are the Geeks over at geeks.com. Bar-none, these guys have the best deals I have ever seen. Sometimes you may come across some bad eggs in their items because they are so cheap, but most of the time you just get great deals on good stuff. These guys are just north of me up in Oceanside California if you ever want to go to their show room (which I have a few times). I just bought a refurbished 1.8GHz Pentium IV PC with 512MB of ram to use as an extra computer at home for only $120. That includes shipping and handling. You can't beat that anyplace! That computer is trucking along too with no problems!

If you have your favorite online places to shop for tech deals, hit me up in the comments. I would love to hear about it!

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HACKER: The Music Video

This is by Clock DVA:

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Futuristic Subnetting Training Video

I found this funny futuristic subnetting training video on Youtube. Enjoy!




If you're looking for a good, free subnet calculator, I recommend IP Subnet Calculator 3.2.1 by WildPackets.

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FREE Alternative to WinZip (and WinRAR)

If you work at a help desk, you inevitably get calls from users saying, "I need WinZIP! Can you install it for me?" Before I begin jumping through hoops to get the right approvals to order them a license, I ask them a few things:

1) Do you need the ability to create self extracting archives?
2) Do you need the ability to open multiple archive formats like RAR for example?

If they answer no to either of the above questions, I show them how Windows XP has a built in "ZIP" utility. (If you don't know, you can right click on a zip file and select "Extract all" to bring up the Compressed (zipped) Folders Extraction Wizard.) I also show them that they can create zip files by right clicking on files or folders they want to zip up and select Send to...> Compressed file (zip) folder). Easy, and more importantly no extra money needs to be spent.

What if they answered Yes to the above questions? Then I tell them about 7zip. 7Zip, is a free open source archive file manager. I used to use WinRAR, but technically you are supposed to purchase a license for that as well. Well no more! 7zip has all of the same functionality as WinZIP and WinRAR combined! It supports all compression formats including zip, rar, iso, tar and so forth! It even has the ability to create self extracting sfx archives as well!

Seriously, the next time you feel you need WinZIP, do a quick wallet check. Would you rather spend the money on an unnecessary license, or maybe take your lady out on a hot date? I'm going with the hot date.

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Cracking Local Windows Passwords - Free Cell Phone Internet Hack

This video is brought to you by the guys at THE FIXED:




In this video, these guys mention using CIA Commander, which retails for about $249. You can use free utilities to do the same thing (Create a new local administrator account) on the Ultimate Boot CD For Windows.

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Coke Machine Jackpot Hack

PLEASE DON'T TRY THIS OUT! THIS IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. BAUER-POWER ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MISUSE OF THIS INFORMATION....OH YEAH, AND WE DIDN'T EVEN MAKE THIS VIDEO SO LIGHTEN UP ALREADY!

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SUCCESS! Ghosting Ubuntu with LILO Works!

If you have been reading my past few posts, you know I have been experimenting with "Ghosting" Ubuntu 7.04. The problem I was having was that GRUB breaks after the restore, and you have to go through a process to fix GRUB.

Well, my theory about changing from Grub to LILO was correct! I replaced GRUB with LILO and created a new image of my Ubuntu laptop. I wiped the drive down and this time when I restored it, everything was right as rain!

So for those of you looking for a good way to GHOST Ubuntu, remember to change your boot loader from Grub to LILO first!

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Changing from GRUB to LILO: Ubuntu 7.04

Like some things I write about, I couldn't find a definitive solution for changing from GRUB to LILO in the latest release of Ubuntu (Feisty at the time of this writing). Well, I don't just take things lying down. I found a solution and I will share it with you:

1) Install LILO using apt-get (sudo apt-get install lilo). Follow the prompts until it is finished installing.

2) Edit /etc/fstab (sudo gedit /etc/fstab). Find the line either containing your /boot partition, or your / partition (Whichever one Grub is set to boot off of). Mine is sda1. Comment out the UUID line of the boot partition ONLY. Change it to the 'Old school' format of /dev/sda1, then paste the last parts of the commented section after the 'old school' formatting. It should now look something like this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
#UUID=fded2ced-53ea-4dfa-bdb3-e4fd0b7a4fd3
# /dev/sda2
UUID=948b4626-2f62-40c0-bc92-6ee8b69af42e /media/hda2 reiserfs defaults 0 2
# /dev/sda3
UUID=e0430d86-1ae0-4563-9b12-f8b6988e9df2 /media/hda3 reiserfs defaults 0 2
# /dev/sda5
UUID=8af9d362-4535-49e4-a188-32bd74860d87 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

3) Once that is edited, and saved, reboot your computer and boot up using the Ubuntu Live CD.

4) Once booted up to the live CD, open a terminal. First we need to make sure that /boot or / (Whichever you have set up) is flagged as the active boot partition. To do this, in the terminal type sudo parted and hit enter. This will open the parted shell. In the shell, type print to display your current partitions and their settings. Find the number of the partition you want LILO to boot from (Mine was 1). Type set 1 boot on then enter. Then type quit to exit the parted shell.

(parted) > set 1 boot on

(parted) > quit

5) Now we chroot into the ubuntu install, and configure LILO. Type the following, line by line:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkdir /mnt/ubuntu

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/ubuntu/

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount -t proc none /mnt/ubuntu/proc

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount -o bind /dev/ /mnt/ubuntu/dev

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo chroot /mnt/ubuntu /bin/bash

6) Now we can run liloconfig (sudo liloconfig). When prompted, answer yes to everything (i.e. install boot block to /dev/sda1, and MBR to /dev/sda etc).

7) Now we run lilo -b /dev/sda1 to make our changes stick.

8) Now we unmount everything, and reboot:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo umount /mnt/ubuntu/proc

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo umount /mnt/ubuntu/dev

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo umount /mnt/ubuntu

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo reboot

9) When you boot back up, you should have a nice new LILO boot splash staring you in the face!

I found that trying to do this on my running Ubuntu workstation would cause a corruption in the MBR, it was only when I decided to try configuring LILO using the live CD so the boot partition wasn't active that I had success moving to LILO.

If you know an easier method for doing this, please hit me up in the comments!

NOTE: A big shout out to bigpond.net.au where I found a lot of my information for the correct commands to use.

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Restoring GRUB after Ghosting: Ubuntu 7.04

So, as you all know, I recently mentioned my love for a new disk imaging system I found called PING. I used it to create a disk image (Ghost image) of my Ubuntu laptop. Everything was great! PXE was working like a charm, Backup took a little longer than I wanted, but not bad. Then I took a deep breath, wiped my hard drive using DBAN and decided that it was time for a full test of the restore process.

Once again, everything was smooth. PXE still worked great, and I began restoring the imaged that I just created. The restore process was a 100 times faster than the backup process. So far, I am really loving PING.

After the restore process I received a bit of a shock. When the laptop tried booting up it got hung on GRUB. In fact, there whole screen was covered by hundreds of the word GRUB. Somehow, the GRUB boot loader got corrupted during the restore. After doing some research online, I found that this, unfortunately is pretty common. It isn't necessarily a flaw with PING, so please don't let this blog post discourage you from using PING. It appears to be a flaw of GRUB itself. From all of the forums I visited, this also happens with the commercial Symantec Ghost program as well.

So what am I supposed to do then? Re-install Ubuntu from scratch? Of course not. With the small exception of a corrupted GRUB, the rest of the image was fine. Here is what I did to restore GRUB:

1) Booted my laptop using the Ubuntu 7.04 install live CD
2) Opened a terminal window and switched user to root (sudo su)
3) I typed grub then enter which opens the GRUB shell.
4) Next I typed find /boot/grub/stage1 then enter to find out which partition grub saw was the boot partition (for me it was hd0,1).
5) I typed root (hd0,1) then enter
6) Then I typed setup (hd0) then enter. GRUB did its thing and re-installed itself properly.
7) I typed quit at the prompt to get out of the GRUB shell, then I rebooted my laptop. Everything booted up fine after that!

Does anyone know how Linux "Ghosting" does with LILO as the boot loader? If it does better, I might have to remove GRUB and switch to LILO. Let me know in the comments.

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FREE Linux Based Disk Imaging (Ghosting) at its Finest!

I am in love! That is right, I am not ashamed of it. I am in love with PING (PartImage is Not Ghost). I have been searching for quite a while on a free alternative to Ghost Cast for my personal home network. Well I found it. I was using DriveImage XML, but PING can do the same job, better and also support Linux!

Not only that, but it is very versatile in that there are many ways you can use it. You can use their boot CD (Download the ISO here), and create/restore images from a network file share, or directly to a disk. They also give you a tutorial on setting up a PXE boot server (On you home Windows XP machine if you want!) and create/store images to the same file share but without the need for boot disks.

You can find the full tutorial on using PING here!

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Holy SNAP! FREE work-grade snapshot software

Hey Kiddies,

It's time for some more time-saving, hassle killing, good, clean, free, fun. I work in a corporate environment, and lots of times, there are people who suffer from serious RTFM errors. Those people are prime candidates for the "Spell it out for me" award. This nifty little proggy, called MWSnap (named after it's creator Mirek Wojtowicz) is a super time-saver at work. Not just for the RTFM sufferers, but also for quick presentations, emails, graphic design, and general all purpose visual explanations of every kind. MWsnap stays permanently affixed to my start menu, and hotkeyed to my keyboard, which is actually one of the many features of MWsnap. I'll list the features below, but I want to add that I've tried a lot of snapper progs, this one is by far the most feature rich, easy to dive into, and lightweight of them all, and of course, as we all love it here on AskTheAdmin - it's completely and totally free. Our hats off to Mirek Wojtowicz for building a really great app which im very thankful for. Though money is tight, and Mirek does accept donations via Paypal, I figured I would go 1 BETTER and actually give him props, and a permanent place in the aTa archives as deserved. We love freeware, espescially when it's really, truly, should-cost-something useful.

From Mirek's Website, the features at-a-glance:

• "5 snapping modes
• Support for BMP, JPG, TIFF, PNG and GIF formats, with selected color depth
  and quality settings
• System-wide hotkeys
• Clipboard copy/paste
• Printing
• Auto-saving, auto-printing
• Auto-start with Windows
• Minimizing to system tray
• An auto-extending list of fixed sizes, perfect for snapping images for icons
  and glyphs
• A zoom tool for magnifying selected parts of the screen
• A ruler tool for measuring screen objects lengths
• A color picker showing screen colors with separated RGB parts
• Fast picture viewer
• Adding frames and mouse pointer images
• Multilevel configurable undo and redo
• Multilingual versions
• Configurable user interface
• And more...

So that basically sums it up...All in all this little app makes short work of tedious stuff, and actually lets you continue to think in pictures, rather than thinking about Photoshop's start-up time. :) No offense to Photoshop, I continue to use it constantly, but definitely lots of overhead.

Peace
Commodore64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on)

Originally Posted on Ask The Admin By Commodore

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