How in the TECH

Lift those PDF print restrictions

Adam Myers — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:54:19 +0000

PDF, or portable document format, is ubiquitous on the Internet – every platform has an appropriate PDF viewer. The file format is an excellent way to ensure your colleague views the document in the style and fonts you designed it with – something a .doc file doesn’t cope well with, and that’s assuming they have the capability to open DOC files!

Generally speaking, once a document has been PDF’d it is uneditable – therefor it’s often used as a deliverance of a final “product”. This quasi type of security is understood and accepted but PDF has the capability to leverage further restrictions. PDFs can be created to disallow printing or copy/pasting of content and that’s where the delightfulness of PDF ends. While mother nature may be happy about not wasting paper, printing of documents to read away from the computer is commonplace. If you haven’t been affected by this limitation you probably just haven’t been using a computer long enough – your time will come! However, since you are reading this it’s safe to assume you’ve been bitten by the restrictions.

PDF Password Remover is a free, for personal use, Windows application that can aid in helping you reclaim your full use of a protected PDF file. Once installed, it only takes a few clicks to remove copy, edit, or print restrictions the original author may have placed. Point it to your PDF file, or files for batch processing, define where to save the newly created PDF, and click Start – it only takes a few seconds to strip out any restriction. Now that’s more like it!

Protect your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint history

Adam Myers — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:20:01 +0000

Microsoft Office has a feature that maintains a list of recently viewed documents within the applications of the suite. From a usability perspective this is quite handy as the odds of you needing access to a recent document is quite high – and they are just a few clicks away now. However from a security and privacy perspective, this situation is a nightmare. It’s not unfathomable to find many reasons where this information should remain hidden, if not completely wiped altogether. Unfortunately, Microsoft does not provide the means to accomplish this easily.

eSecure provides an Office add-in, appropriately titled eSecure Office ad-in, that aids in maintaining some privacy when you are working on those highly classified documents. The add-in, once installed, adds an additional option to the Office application ribbon that allows for easy deletion of your viewable document history. With one click your history and cookies are wiped – all from within the Office application itself.

eSecure Office ad-in is available for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint and is a separate install for each. Of note, the add-in is compatible with Office 2007 and 2010 only.

Eradicate non present storage device information

Adam Myers — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:36:50 +0000

Windows keeps track of every device that is connected to the system, even when the device hasn’t been seen in months. Every USB thumbdrive is uniquely identified and recorded in the bowels of Windows – the Windows registry. To the user, this is what allows Windows to always assign the same drive letter to an external storage system, for example. Typically, this indefinite tracking of devices rarely presents a problem but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason to keep it clean. It may come in handy if your trying to cover your tracks after corporate espionage.

As iterated above, all this information is stored in the Windows Registry, specifically in the keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceClasses
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2\CPC\Volume

While you can get your fingers dirty and clean up everything manually, there is a free utility named Drive Cleanup that will nuke all non present Storage Volumes, Disk, CDROM, Floppy USB drives. Drive Cleanup is tiny at just 20KB and is executed from an admin-rights Command Prompt.

Drive Cleanup can be controlled by a number of command line parameters that determine which types of devices you wish to purge. If launched directly without any flags, it does it’s job fully so be warned of that. Adding the -t option will describe exactly what Drive Cleanup will perform without actually doing it.

Now don’t you have some cleanup to do?

Running software with parameters easily

Adam Myers — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:52:10 +0000

The necessity to launch an application by any manner other than a simple double click on it’s icon, or traversal of the Start Menu has diminished rapidly. So much in fact, you might not even be aware of why you would in any other way. The reason why this may be of interest to you is that many applications can accept command line parameters that alter or unlock features. The parameters are prefixed with command line because if you want to pass them to the application – you must do it either from the Command Prompt or typing the full application executable path in the Run dialog of Windows. As computers continue to become more accessible and easier to use, you can see why this behavior has subsided.

Where may you still utilize this method? A few examples that just so happen to relate to web browsing. In Firefox, it is possible to launch the browser using an alternative user profile defined by a passed command line parameter. The safe mode Firefox link in your Start Menu is also just a customized launch link with a command line parameter. If you use Google Chrome, specifically the dev channel releases, a lot of beta-like functionality is only unlockable by launching Chrome with particular parameters. While you could create and modify the application shortcuts themselves, it becomes bothersome and tedious. Your only other option is using either method above; unless you download and install RunWithParameters.

RunWithParameters is a compact Windows utility that provides an interface to pass any parameter you wish to an application before it’s launched. RunWithParameters integrates into Windows Explorer so it’s functionality is typically just a right-click away. While light on features, it does remember the last parameter for each application and it even knows of a few itself for some of the most popular applications.

Prevent UAC from dimming the screen

Adam Myers — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:40:03 +0000

User Access Control, or UAC, is a security feature introduced by Microsoft in Windows Vista and exists today in Windows 7. By now you’ve probably heard all about it, but if you haven’t, you can think of it as your watchful mother looking over your every move – only this time on the computer. Simply, any time you perform an action that could potential harm your computer, i.e. installing a new application, or any administrative-like function, Windows prompts you with a Do you want to …. dialog. Just like mother who is always looking out in your best interest, Microsoft is doing the same. Usually it’s brushed off as being overbearing and protective, but yet it can be a true lifesaver, or computer-saver, once or twice in your lifetime.

The problem for the user who wants to keep the helpful UAC advice, and I strongly suggest you do, that, just like mother, it can be highly annoying when your barraged with prompts when you already know what you are doing. You see, UAC isn’t a normal dialog window you can ignore, rather it dims the entire desktop and forces you to deal with the window immediately. On one hand it can be looked as part of the entire security premise – but advanced computer users typically don’t need this extra layer. If you find this equally frustrating I urge you not to disable UAC completely but rather dial back the level of notification, which is easily accomplish under the UAC Settings.

Under Windows 7 Start Search find the User Account Control Settings by typing uac.

By default, the slider is set to the 2/3 mark point.

To disable the dim, adjust the slider down one notch to 1/3. You should see the window now read Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer (do not dim desktop).

Click OK and acknowledge your last dimmed UAC dialog.

Protect your files by blocking basic file operations

Adam Myers — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:50:34 +0000

I’m rather protective of my computing environment and the files it contains. It’s not that I don’t trust family and friends using my computers, it’s just accidents can happen. Obviously, something drastic like your little brother blasting out your folder of music on accident is tragic and the basis for all your concerns. It actually doesn’t have to be so severe though – if a folder is organized in a particular manner, perhaps your photos folder, a few errant mouse clicks can scatter the contents all throughout the system. Why set yourself up for that potential? Thankfully there is a solution – and it’s not as blunt as not allowing others on your computer!

Prevent is a light-weight, free Windows utility that can prevent basic file operations from occurring. When running, specifically, Prevent blocks delete, cut, copy, paste, copy to, move to, send to, and renaming. Prevent can further protect itself by disabling the Task Manager’s End Process button – which is generally enough to keep most of the savvy users at bay. Disabling of a running Prevent process is controlled by a user-defined hotkey.

While Prevent isn’t as secure as just locking your computer or otherwise disallowing shared user, it’s more than sufficient to allow safe access for friends and family.

Resize partitions for free in Windows 7

Adam Myers — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:48:52 +0000

For years there did not exist a free utility that allowed for disk partitions to be resized, either larger or smaller. Probably the software that most have heard of for this problem was Partition Magic, now owned by Symantec. The software was painless in it’s methods but of course, it was not free. Eventually, as Linux continued it’s growth in the desktop arena tools based on gparted garnered attention. Gparted is a Linux utility that manipulated partitions, generally for the purpose of splitting a single partition with Windows installed into two partitions for a dual-boot Linux and Windows hybrid. Gparted was free, but it wasn’t the most user friendly – often intimidating new users.

Finally, Microsoft introduced partition resizing natively in Windows, starting with the Vista release but most recently included with Windows 7. Logically, all things disk related can be accessed through Disk Management utility. Using Disk Management it is trivial to resize a partition.

From the Start Menu search for disk manage and launch the returned result – Create and format hard disk partitions.

Now inside Disk Management you will see all the attached drives on your computer; the hard drives are broken down by partition in a clean graphical presentation.

To shrink a partition, right-click on the one in question and choose Shrink.

In the box next to Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB provide the desired amount. This is a bit counter-intuitive, if you want to eventually create a new partition of 50GB, you would put 50000 as number here. It is not the size you want to shrink to!

Finally, click Shrink to begin the process.

Alternatively, if you wished to extend a partition to encompass an un-utilized portion of the disk, you would select Extend Volume instead of Shrink in Step 3.

As it always should be said, ensure you have a back-up of any data on the partition in question. While I’ve never had an issue myself, there is always the risk of disaster!

Supercharge your mousewheel scrolling in Firefox 3.6

Adam Myers — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:32:36 +0000

It’s hard to remember the days when your browser lacked tab support. Firefox, while not the first, implemented tabs and brought the feature to the fore-front – now every browser supports that functionality. Tabbed browsing has become pivotal to the surfing experience. Of equal importance, the popularity of the mousewheel and it’s use in window scrolling is just as significant. Microsoft, again, while not the first, introduced the Intellimouse in the mid 90’s and was many’s first experience with the wheel. Here is a rhetorical challenge that I bet you cannot accomplish – use your browser for an hour without utilizing tabs or the mousewheel. It’s a losing proposition, I’m quite sure.

Having become accustomed to a few flicks of the mouse wheel sending pages of a document whizzing by I was interested to learn that Firefox 3.6 supports the same behavior. By default, and all releases previously, a single scroll jumps the web page up/down a bit; it can be a smooth transition but at the end, it’s still a one to one movement. That is, move the wheel once; the page move once, move the wheel 5 times quickly, the page moves quickly 5 times – but still just 5 equal jumps. There is no sense of acceleration like other applications have.

Buried in about:config lies a mouse wheel tweak that maps acceleration to the number of times you’ve flicked the mouse wheel.

In the address bar type about:config

Filter for mousewheel.acceleration

You’ll see two preferences returned: mousewheel.acceleration.start is the number of times you need to flick the mouse wheel before acceleration kicks in. mousewheel.acceleration.factor is the determinant to how much acceleration is applied
Change either preference by double clicking on them, it may take a few go arounds before you find a pairing you are comfortable with though.

Share your problems with Windows 7 Problem Steps Recorder

Adam Myers — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 02:00:46 +0000

Anyone who has been tasked to provide remote technical support, whether professionally or otherwise, has likely lived through the following scenario. You receive a panicked phone call from a user in peril explaining that such and such is doing this and that; everything from cause and effects, symptoms, and error messages are paraphrased. It’s frustrating for both parties that are involved, you haven’t been giving a clear description of what is going on, and unfortunately the user isn’t sure exactly sure how to describe what happened accurately. Where does this leave you both? Other than buying a Mac, there is another option that is perhaps a bit more sane!

A new feature in Windows 7 is the Problem Steps Recorder, a type of stop-motion video capture utility that is a welcomed improvement for supporting remote users. The final recordings are encapsulated in .mht files – archived web pages format – which you can then be transferred to you for final analysis and problem fixing. It’s such a simple and logical idea; it’s fantastic that it is now included with Windows. Here’s how it works:

Launch Problem Steps Recorder by searching for it from Windows 7’s Start Search box.

To begin a new recording click Start Record. Every action you perform will now be captured visual, along with a detailed description of what you are doing. Additionally, you are able to add your own captions to the photos easily. The captions are important because anything the remote user types is not captured – it must be conveyed through the caption system!

When you’ve stopped the recording you are prompted to save the entire sequence in a zip file.

The contents of the zip file is the .mht described above, which is viewable in Internet Explorer, that describes the entire sequence of events.

Problem Steps Recorder is another utility that you must keep in mind when doing any type of technical support for someone that isn’t just down the hall.

Launch a private browsing window along side your typical Firefox window

Adam Myers — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:58:20 +0000

All the major browsers now ship with a private browsing mode that, for brevity’s sake, does not store any information as it relates to the session on the hard drive after the browser has been closed. Not wanting to leave any web browsing tracks is valuable for many reasons, and they aren’t all naughty or nefarious. Nevertheless, Firefox’s implementation always struck me as being rather inconvenient. By that, I mean when you initiate a private session your existing browsing session is terminated and a private session is launched in it’s place.

While I’m sure there are technical reasons, if not usability reasons, behind this direction, it still handicaps a great feature. After all, Google Chrome behaves appropriately with it’s incognito private mode. Having recently upgraded all my installs to Firefox 3.6 I was pleasantly surprised to see this quirk address – ironically not by the folks at Mozilla however! Private Browsing Window is an extension available only to the latest 3.6 release that facilitates the ability to maintain a private browsing window along side your traditional window.

With the add-on installed, Private Browsing Window replaces the original menu option under Tools with that of it’s own. That’s rather convenient in my opinion and leaves little reason as to why you wouldn’t want this extension.