I recall a day, not too long ago, that there used to be a fair number of “rescue” tools out and about on the market.

My preferred go to tool of the day was FProt.

These days I didn’t know of one until AVG (yes, them of the free Anti Virus) released their latest product – the AVG Rescue CD.

But what does a ‘rescue CD’ do? In simple terms it is a stand alone, self-booting CD (or USB stick) that contains Anti Virus, Anti Malware and more besides. AVG have gone a step further though and added a few extra tools into it to make a truly versatile product.

In their words:

The AVG Rescue CD is essentially a portable version of AVG Anti-Virus supplied through Linux distribution. It can be used in the form of a bootable CD or bootable USB flash drive to recover your computer when the system cannot be loaded normally, such as after an extensive or deep-rooted virus infection. In short, the AVG Rescue CD enables you to fully remove infections from an otherwise inoperable PC and render the system bootable again.

Apart from the usual AVG functions (malware detection and removal, updates from internet or external device, etc.), the AVG Rescue CD also contains the following set of administration tools:

• Midnight Commander – a two-panel file manager
• Windows Registry Editor– simple registry editor for more experienced users
• TestDisk – powerful hard drive recovery tool
• Ping – to test the availability of network resources (servers, domains, IP addresses)
• Common Linux programs and services– vi text editor, OpenSSH daemon, ntfsprogs etc

I’ll certainly be adding it to my repertoire of tools to take when I visit friends and relations that have infected machines.

What tools do you use?

If you work with networks in any serious way then you will almost certainly have come across WireShark by now  (or Ethereal as it was formerly known).

Anyway, Laura Chappell who writes a well known blog “Inside Laura’s Lab” has now come out with a book to help us network techy types make the most of WireShark.

In her words:

Laura Chappell’s Wireshark Network Analysis book is filled with tips, tricks and techniques for new and experienced analysts, this will be a must-have book.

Get your book from the usual places or direct from WireSharkU or ChappellU and use this code: 998nws35 to get a 35% discount. The discount is valid until March 29th 2010 and only works on the two listed sites.

One of the most annoying aspects of Windows 7 (I find) is that lots of software doesn’t autostart or autorun properly. Let me explain with an example … do you use Piriform’s excellent ccleaner?

Do you use it the same way as I do – by right-clicking on my recycle bin?

If so, are you fed up with Windows 7 asking you for permission to run it?

This is the UAC in action.

Then the answer is that you need to run the item as an administrator and Windows 7 gives us have five options to do that – though not all would necessarily work for all situations and some will still ask you to confirm you are the admin or want to run as admin. (more…)

Security of your PC is down to more than just having an Anti-Virus and/or firewall to protect it.

It’s more than ensuring you follow security best practices – see here or here.

It’s more than not clicking random links sent to you by your mates.

It’s more than running WindowsUpdate on a regular basis – for the record I don’t have it set to auto update.

It also includes ensuring your application software is up to date.

But how do you do that? (more…)

I’m being a bit naughty in my continuing use of the spying word as it is one I disagree with, but it is good for the top line interest.

Anyway, in part 1 I put forth my case for ‘spying’ and in part 2 I expounded the benefits that employers, support staff and employees for that matter will gain. In this edition I want to suggest some ways you could actually go about monitoring and my prime criteria is that it has to be cheap or preferably free. (more…)

John over at Church IT has put up a short post about “Monitoring Your Church Staff’s Internet Usage“.

Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that I’m a wee bit passionate about protecting your own equipment and in helping guide your children down the path of healthy surfing and computer use. So you won’t be surprised to know that I’ve added a comment or two.

Today, the following comment was added:

I just don’t know about actively monitoring staff or employee computers. It seems like spying. I’ve always found that having everyone sign a computer and internet agreement policy and then locking down everything that wasn’t email or internet browsing through the router was plenty. There’s no reason to spend any amount of money or time installing monitoring software. It makes people feel like you don’t trust them and they don’t really work anyway. If you just have to see what your staff has been doing on the web most routers keep a log of every site visited and with what computer and at what time.

Well I was going to type up my reply on John’s blog but it started getting a little long, so instead I’m answering it here. (more…)

I’ve long been an advocate of people not needing ‘formal qualifications’ to get into the computer industry. And by formal I mean university degrees or 48 GCSE’s (or whatever your age 16 school exams are called).

However, that’s a subject matter for another time and another post. What one can’t avoid, so it seems, is the need to have a technical certification. Companies seem to turn a blind eye to experience and especially recruiting agencies. I know for a fact that certain agencies in the UK use an automated scanner looking for keywords for certain roles – so your CV arrives and is never seen by a human until after it’s been vetted by a machine. This is life now and so if you’re wanting to get into the network field, then as  bare minimum you’d need to start with a Cisco Certified Network Associate (or CCNA) certification.

This one exam (or two depending on route taken) certification is seen as the ultimate (more…)

… create a PDF.

I forget at times just how easy it is to do things and it’s usually when my wife asks “how do you…” that I realise I’ve been glib or dismissive in trying to pass on knowledge.

So today I bring you 4 ways to create a PDF.

1. Buy an application. Honest, this is probably the expected way and there are many, many options here. From the original Adobe PDF (not the reader) to CutePDF to Foxit … well, google’s your friend.
2. My preferred method is to use Adobe’s InDesign and it’s built-in export to PDF
3. For a free method create it in wordpad (it’s a free cutdown version of word included with every Windows PC) and print to it using a PDF printer driver such as the one from PrimoPDF. Once installed you treat it like any printer except it outputs to a physical file on your computer.
4. Finally, another way is to use an online convertor such as the one at FreePDFConvert.

There are pro’s and cons to each of the above methods with the first two having the major con of cost, whereas the later two have issues of security or restriction in what you can convert or create in the first place.

Why you’d want to create a PDF is an entire new set of reasons that I’ll leave to your imaginations.