TB Brick's Useful Utilites

SkyPilot is Flying Again!!!

2010-03-19T13:57:00.002-04:00

Even though technically, Sky Pilot is a Firefox theme and not a utility, I'm going to post it anyway. My favourite them is alive and flying again. Click on the blog title for the home page.

Windows Installer CleanUp Utility

2010-03-17T13:59:00.001-04:00

M$'s utility to remove their programs that their regular Uninstall will not remove. Click on the post title to access the web page.

Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware Program

2009-02-11T14:49:00.006-05:00

Have had several users catch Antivirus 2K8-9 malware. The program is the bomb to get rid of it and other such nasty malware. Click on the post title to open the program download.

Bomgar Remote Support

2009-01-28T07:25:00.004-05:00

We use Dameware for most of our remote desktop support, which for the most part works just fine. However, our home-based transcriptionists or archivists use VPN to logon to the system and DW just isn't happy with it. So the network admin setup Bomgar and it is most sweet. Only thing I haven't figured out how to do yet, is to send a Control-Alt-Delete. Will put that in the Figured it Out blog when I do.

Notepad ++

2008-04-03T07:57:00.005-04:00

I know I'm years behind in finally ditching M$'s notepad, but better late than never. Notepad ++ is a very nice replacement. You can save in a boocoo of formats, open multiple docs via tabs, and even open the last ones you've accessed, if you like (which I do not.) Open source to boot.

Mark Lyon's GMail Loader

2007-10-14T19:21:00.000-04:00

Got a new boss who's does not like anything that isn't Microsoft. So, buh-bye to our internal GroupWise and our external email system and hello Google Apps. Transferring the information from the Thunderbird accounts became much simpler with GMail Loader. Easiest way to do this is in the Google Apps Inbox, label everything to "NewInbox" and archive it. Then in each of the Thunderbird folders, use GMail Loader to transfer the info the the GA Inbox. When it all arrives, label it with the TB folder name and archive it. Keep on repeating until all the TBird folders have been transferred. It worked very quickly with the exception of the HR Director, who had a BOOCOO of folders, due to the fact he'd been with us for quite a while. Could have been much worse had I not had the utility.

Spiceworks Network Manager

2007-10-14T19:12:00.000-04:00

Spiceworks Network Manager seems too good to be true, a free network management utility. But, it does seem to be what it says it is. Easy-peasy, not even queasy to install. And it does what it says it does, inventory, monitor and report. Will fool with the Help Desk function later. Did a bit of Googling on it to see if there were any gotchas, none thus far.

The PC Decrapifier

2007-06-21T13:35:00.000-04:00

So Mr. or Ms. Brown just delivered to your door a bunch of brand-spankin' new Dell computers. Boxes piled up all over the place. You unbox the first tower and spend boocoo amounts of time deleting all the garbage Dell thinks you and/or your users are just dying to have. Then you Ghost it and image the rest of them. But now, thanks to Jason York, there's a better way.

The PC Decrapifier does exactly what it's name says it does. You run the PC-Decrapifier-x.x.x.exe program and it scans your new PC. It gives you a list of the semi-useless junkware Dell has installed, all pre-checked. Scroll down the list and remove check marks from the stuff you want to keep, and then the junk goes to Bitland. Jason also has a blog here on the program. Just wish I'd known about it the last time I got a multi-machine order.

The price can't be beat, 20 US and it's a per technician license, not a per PC. Besides having a perfectly hysterical name, it's a sweet little utility that any network admin will want to have on their Utilities CD.

Thumbs Down: Agnitum's OutpostPro Firewall

2007-05-31T10:22:00.000-04:00

For grins and giggles, I tested Agnitum's OutpostPro firewall. Current firewall is just fine, except it would be nice to eyeball programs as they interact with the web.

OutpostPro has a lot of potential, except for the little things that make the difference with this network admin. Firstly, when you're viewing the logs, you can't right-click on an IP address to do a WHOIS search on it. I know, I know, it seems petty, but it sure is a time saver. Secondly, when adding rules on the fly, you can put in a range of ports, but not a range of IP addresses!?! Finally, when I tried running my HTML editor, Outpost blocked it automatically. It said my editor was trying to inject something into it. First time it happened, Outpost did give me the option to add my editor to the exclusions list, which I did, with no joy. When I went to the exclusions list, my editor wasn't listed. So I added my editor manually and still no joy. Looked all through the program settings/options/help and could never find out what why it wouldn't let it work. Nor could I find anything in the logs saying my editor had ever been ran, evaluated, banned, nada.

Too bad as it was nice to be able to manage a firewall via application or protocol. If it's still around in a year or so, I might give it a go again.

Google Notebook

2007-05-11T09:39:00.000-04:00

Google continues to become more and more useful. Other than the Ask section, I never use Yahoo! any more. Just tried the Notebook function and FF add-on. Rather than copying a chunk of data to a local file and then possibly forget to take it to home/work with me, I can drop it in a GN and have it handy where ever. Later, if I want to put it in my Clie or format it to a specific file, I've got it. Very sweet Google.

PDF Creator

2007-03-01T09:47:00.000-05:00

I maintain my organization's Intranet and wanted to convert the Office docs to PDF to keep the users from making nefarious changes. PDF Creator works like a printer driver. Instead of sending the content to a printer, it sends it to a PDF document. Nice formatting and file information. SourceForge.net does it again.

Windows Installer Cleanup Utility

2007-03-01T09:04:00.000-05:00

A user complained that he kept getting a PictureIt! 1607 error when opening a PageMaker file. It wanted to install something from the PictureIt! 2002 CD which I of course, do not have. As always, I thank God for Google!!! Mary Sauer of the Web Design Forum had the solution with the Windows Installer Cleanup utility. Was able to delete the offending entry toot sweet. Am willing to bet that when the program was loaded, someone picked the default rather than custom installation, which meant only part of the program was installed on the hard drive.

Ghost XP Boot Disk to Box Net

2007-02-26T09:56:00.000-05:00

Added my Ghost XP boot disk files to Box.net here. Use at your own risk and use password brick.

Savefile to Box.net

2007-01-24T16:51:00.000-05:00

Savefile was ok, but if you didn't have any activity on it for a month, everything would be deleted. So, I broke down and went with Box.net. If you go with them, based on this blog post, let them know tbbrick was the referrer please.

Have my Adblock and fixed Firefox extensions here. As before, the password is brick.

Protopage Desktop

2006-04-20T09:59:00.000-04:00

Protopage.com is an online desktop service hosted in the UK. You create an free account/password, setup the desktop as you like with with links, notes, and/or news sites, then set it as your home page. Have been using it for about four months?!? Very handy in that I now have the same desktop at home as with work. It's a little thing, but it sure is nice.

Updated Adblock Plus Text File

2006-03-15T13:00:00.000-05:00

Edited 20 Apr 06: Posted updated file.

Posted latest update of Adblock Plus ad text file in Savefile.com folder. As usual, type in brick to access the folder.

If you have Firefox and don't have Adblock Plus, you don't know what you're missing, or in this case, not missing. AB+ is a sweet FireFox extension that blocks images from web sites, using the usual wildcards. Who is the worst culprits, site adverts of course. It's amazing just how much faster web pages appear when the browser doesn't have to load a buncha ad-crap along with the good stuff. You choose which sites are blocked and the list is exportable to text file. Makes it so very nice when I install AB+ on a user's 'puter.

More Fixed FF 1.5.0.1 Extensions

2006-03-15T12:48:00.000-05:00

Edited 20 Apr 06:
Savefile.com has removed them.

Added two more extensions, Tabrowser Preferences 1.2.8.8 and Zoomy 2.0 to my Savefiles project folder Firefox Extensions Fixed. As before, these the fix lets you use them in FF 1.5.0.1 while you wait on the author to come up with a real solution. As usual, type in brick to access the folder.

Savefile.com Free File Hosting

2006-02-28T16:19:00.000-05:00

Per my previous posting, I fixed some FireFox extensions for 1.5+., but I can't always access them from work depending on where I'm at or who I'm logged in as. Came across a very sweet service, the free filehoster Savefile.com. You create an account, then a project folder, then you upload the file(s). If you like, you can add a password, per project. Easy-peasy, not even queasy.

The three FireFox extensions I fixed are External Applications 1.7.1, MapIt 1.7.2, and Ook. I've also uploaded my current Adblock Plus "bad ad" text file. If you want to give them a go, you do so at your own risk. My software-blogsite disclaimer is in force for these as well. As of this posting, the password brick will get you in all my projects/files. The Savefile projects are FireFox Extensions Fixed and Adblock Plus Text File. Compute in Peace!!!

Technorati

2006-02-23T17:11:00.000-05:00

Granted, Technorati technically is not a utility you can download and use. Buuuuuuut, I'm going to toss it into the UU blog mix anyway. I stumbled across Technorati and on a lark, linked this to it blog a month or so ago. Lo and behold, I find an article in an Oct 05 Discover magazine talking about Web 2.0. (I'm usually at three issues behind 'cause I not only read it from cover to cover, but have to re-read several really interesting articles.)

I'm usually not an early-adopter, too much Scots blood to waste good moola on stuff that will be cheaper-better-faster when the next new thing/upgrade comes online. Yet, it didn't cost me but a few minutes to create a profile and add a link to my blog. I figure, if it helps make the Web a better cyberplace, why not be a good Netizen?

Bart's PE Builder Bootdisk CD

2006-02-13T15:33:00.000-05:00

I used Bart's PE Builder for the first time today, and it surely made this netadmin's life boocoo easier. Had a XP PC do a BSOD, so I set up the external hard drive to Ghost the image back on. No joy as the HDD had bad sectors. Had bookmarked BPE a while back for "its and grins." Fifteen minutes later I'm running format and chkdisk, happy as the proverbial clam. Once the two were finished, Ghost worked fine and dandy.

Only problem I had was during the build, the verify reported the NTOSKRNL.EXE wasn't found. Evidently when BPEB copied it from the i386 CAB to te c:\pebuilder3110, it was renamed to NTKRNLMP.EXE. Twas no biggie, I just copied the NTKRNLMP.EXE to a second file and renamed it to NTOSKRNL.EXE. Probabably some fix on the forum site, but as I got it to work, I didn't worry with it.

Has a bunch of plugins you can add to the basic disk. If you so desire, you can write your own plugins as well. Seven stars out of seven for this gem.

Potential Firefox Extension Fix

2006-01-26T15:42:00.001-05:00

Have been using Firefox 1.5 since it came out. Has been working just fine. If you're still stuck with Idiot's Excrement ...err... Internet Explorer, you don't know what you've been missing. Go here to get it. MapIt was the last extension that wouldn't work in 1.5. MapIt's one of those extensions that even my 'puter-challenged social services users find handy. Many thanks to TrackZilla for fix which worked like the proverbial charm. I'm willing to bet the drill would be applicable to other stuck extensions. Here's a snip from the site on the drill:

[SNIP]

How to get Map IT! to work with FF1.5

by TrackZilla, Wednesday, November 30 2005

Here we go: 1) change the xpi extension to zip; 2) open the install.rdf file inside said zip file; 3) change maxVersion from 1.0+ to 1.5; 4) save changes to install.rdf; 5) copy new install.rdf back into zip file; 5) change zip extension back to xpi; 6) install and mapit!
[ENDSNIP]

FavIcon from Pics

2006-01-12T20:30:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder how other web sites display the miniature icon in the URL line, like Blogger's orange and white B? FavIcon from Pics allows you to upload the picture/graphic you want to be the icon, converts it to a 16x16 format. Then it shows you what it will look like. You like it, you can download it in a zip file. You don't, upload a different pic and see how it goes. It will even give you an animated icon, but I thought that was too cheesy.

It also gives you the link to get the .ico to work. I would have published it here, but Blogger wouldn't let me post HTML. I put the line in the Style Configuration section of each page, below the link to my .css stylesheet. If you're going to validate it W3C XHTML Trans., don't forget to put the /> to close the link.

Moved: CSS and Frames

2005-12-28T22:43:00.000-05:00

The content in this blog entry has been moved to my TYJ, Figured It Out! blog.

Moved: Ghost 2K3 with Windows 98

2005-12-08T09:38:00.000-05:00

The content in this blog entry has been moved to my TYJ, Figured It Out! blog.

Moved: GroupWise 5.5 Restoring Deleted User

2005-11-30T12:36:00.000-05:00

The content in this blog entry has been moved to my TYJ, Figured It Out! blog.

Blog Disclaimer

2005-11-30T10:32:00.000-05:00

Hate to do this, but I suspect a site disclaimer would be a good thing. So here goes:

This blog contains some of the experiences that TB Brick has encountered while testing and/or using the software and/or web sites listed below. The content and/or links are not unnecessarily endorsements of any products or services in such sites. All credits with respect to the delivered information go to the information delivering web sites. Opinions identified as originating with TB Brick are solely my own. tbbrick-uu.blogspot.com merely links the world wide web users to the potentially appropriate database for their specific interest.

tbbrick-uu.blogspot.com assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in the content of this blog and/or the software or documentation available from the software or web sites listed on this blog. In no event shall tbbrick-uu.blogspot.com be liable to you and/or any third parties for any special, punitive, incidental, indirect or consequential damages of any kind, or any damages whatsoever, including, without limitation, those resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether or not tbbrick-uu.blogspot.com has been advised of the possibility of such damages, and on any theory of liability, arising out of or in connection with the use of the software and/or documentation on the sites listed on this blog.

The use of the software downloaded through and advice taken from this blog and/or the sites listed on this blog is done at your own discretion and risk and with agreement that you will be solely responsible for any damage to your and/or any third parties' computer system or loss of data that results from such activities. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained by you from tbbrick-uu.blogspot.com and/or from the web sites below shall create any warranty for the information, software and sites published in this blog.