Here at USERBYTES we have grown tired of CD’s for a long time now. They often get scratched and I found that I have to keep up with way to many of them. All our readers here prefer the USB flashdrive method with lots of utilities on it.

Read about how to create your own here http://www.userbytes.com/roll-your-own-multiboot-usb-flash-drive/

For those that are familiar with this project and you now want to add AVG to your drive, its really simple.

First download the version for USB flash drives here. Download Rescue CD (for USB stick) it will be in .rar format so you will need winrar or 7zip to extract it.

WINRAR Download
7zip Download

Once it is downloaded, extract it and put the contents in a folder that you will create on the root of the USB flash drive called AVG

Now add this code to your menu.lst file on your multi-boot usb flash drive.

title AVG Anti-Virus
root (hd0,0)
kernel /AVG/vmlinuz persistent vga=0×317 ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw quiet
initrd=/AVG/initrd.lzm
boot

That’s all there is too it.

Over 70% more companies reported spam and malicious infections arrived via social networks in 2009 vs. 2008. By the end of last year, 72% of companies expressed concern that their employees’ use of popular social sites could result in a security breach. Of all the companies that reported, 60% of companies now consider Facebook to be the riskiest social network out there.

Those findings, released Monday, come from a survey of 500 companies worldwide conducted by security firm Sophos. They help quantify the rising tide of spam and malicious infections proliferating on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo and other such social networks.

As the planet’ s largest social network, Facebook might naturally be expected to emerge as the No. 1 target of cybercriminals, says Graham Cluley, a senior analyst at Sophos. But he says Facebook has exacerbated matters by asking its members to embrace a new, more granular privacy setting. Cluley demonstrates in this video how the new setting, in effect, authorizes Facebook to expose more of its member-generated content to everyone on the Internet.

Facebook’s new privacy setting gives the company leeway to submit more content to Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo Search so the search services can incorporate more Facebook content into real-time search results, much as they’ve begun doing with Twitter microblog postings, says Cluley. Don’t believe me? Google your name. When I Google my name the first thing that pops up is my twitter account.

However, the wider release of Facebook members’ data “inevitably means more information will be made available to cybercriminals who want to target you or you company for an attack,” says Cluley.

Facebook continues to defend its new privacy setting as flexible and easy to change. But privacy advocates continue to criticize the move. And last week the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada launched an investigation into a citizen’s complaint about the new settings.

Meanwhile, Sophos’ new survey includes extensive analysis about how Facebook, Twitter and other social networks have become like a candy store for data thieves. The fast-morphing Koobface social network worm is a case in point:

Most notably, the notorious Koobface worm family became more diverse and sophisticated in 2009. The sophistication of Koobface is such that it is capable of registering a Facebook account, activating the account by confirming an email sent to a Gmail address, befriending random strangers on the site, joining random Facebook groups, and posting messages on the walls of Facebook friends (often claiming to link to sexy videos laced with malware). Furthermore, it includes code to avoid drawing attention to itself by restricting how many new Facebook friends it makes each day.

Koobface’s attack vectors broadened, targeting a wide range of sites other than the one that gave it its name (i.e., Facebook). Social networking sites, including MySpace and Bebo, were added to the worm’s arsenal in 2008; Tagged and Friendster joined the roster in early 2009; and most recently the code was extended to include Twitter in a growing battery of attacks. It is likely we will see more malware following in the footsteps of Koobface, creating Web 2.0 botnets with the intention of stealing data, displaying fake anti-virus alerts and generating income for hacking gangs.

This is why you have to be aware of who you FRIEND on Facebook and other sites. If you are allowing random people you don’t know to befriend you on Facebook, that’s a problem!. Are you just after a high number of friends? Well, welcome to virus-ville. I don’t even friend some that I do know as friends.

Lets say you just recently added a person that you really have never met, but you add them anyway. Later they tag you in a photo. How is that even possible?!?!?!

When have you ever had to add an app to see a comment on a photo? Never and you never will either. This is complete nonsense, and Facebook should really monitor the publication of apps better.

I have come to realize that this application looks official until you add it to your account. Once you add it, it should become clear that is it a false application created to get information out of your account. It is simply a trick to get your data! If you do click it you will  take you to an application confirmation screen, and want you to click to add it, when doing so I am sure through some sorta of technical magic that it is doing something mischievous.

DO NOT FALL FOR THIS

At the bottom of any Facebook page you should see an Applications button. Click it then click on Edit Applications.

Click the “x” next to the application named “Photo Comments” and then as well to any other application that you might have no use for that are just taking up space or you are not using anymore.

Tell all your  friends about this or forward them this website. If you are on twitter, retweet this. If you are on Facebook, share it.

First I think it would help if you read these articles first.

How to Install and Configure uTorrent
http://www.userbytes.com/how-to-install-and-configure-utorrent/

How to Install and Configure Peer Guardian
http://www.userbytes.com/how-to-install-and-configure-peer-guardian/

How to Spot the Best Torrents for Fast Downloads
http://www.userbytes.com/how-to-spot-the-best-torrents-for-fast-downloads/

Ok so like I was saying,  simply put, I have a computer tucked away in our tv armoire that is connected to our 42 inch HDTV, and it monitors RSS feeds for television shows that I tell it to look for, and it downloads them when they are available. When the download is complete, the computer sends an email notification that it is indeed finished and ready for viewing.

My Setup

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
2.8 GHZ Intel Pentium D CPU x2
1.5 GiG Ram
500 Gig Harddrive
2 Video Capture Cards – Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 with remote

I know its old but it has worked best for me for a long time now, since October 2006 I believe.  Media Center is Microsoft’s Digital Video Recorder, or DVR as most call it. You can pause and record live tv, schedule shows and movies to record for later viewing too.

My Media Center computer has two video capture cards with two cable connections connected to it with about 500 gigs of hard drive space. This allows us to record two shows at the same time, or view one while recording another. I know what you are thinking right about now. Why do I download shows when I can easily just record them? Well our cable connection is not in HD, and the recordings are great, but just not super crisp. There are several shows that we do not have programming for, like True Blood on HBO for instance. With my RSS downloading through utorrent,  I can monitor for that show and have it download for me. All the shows that are downloaded are also commercial free. However, you can easily skip commercials with regular Media Centers recordings too.

I have also had issues with my cable providers channel listings. I think its been a year now and they still do not have C-Span and FOX correct in the guide, so if I tell it to record American Idol, it will most likely record something on C-Span. This is one more reason we have to download certain shows.

Things you will need:

• A Computer
• Media Center XP, or VISTA Media Center or Windows 7
• Cable Connection (if you want to record tv)
• Network Connection (for downloading torrents)
• DivX (to play compressed video most of which will be AVI)
• Utorrent (for downloading torrents)
• Ugrowl ( plugin that talks to utorrent)
• Growl for Windows (notifications via email)
• Peer Guardian (to protect your privacy)
• Video Capture Card(s) I used the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 PCI TV Tuner with Remote Control

Ok, I am going to pretend you already have a Media Center computer setup and you have purchased your video capture card or cards and inserted them into your computer and configured them as per instructions that came with them. I am also going to pretend that you used the s-video out on the capture card and plugged it into the tv. On mine its on the back and in my menu on the remote its like AUX 3.

See I can easily flip from cable tv to the PVR. I could have two shows recording, something downloading, and I can switch back to the “real live” tv and watch something else. I know, sounds complicated but its not. Just re-read the previous few lines a few times.

Also I am going to keep pretending and think that your computer is connected to some sort of internet connection (network connection) so that you can download shows via rss and torrents from the internet.

Lets begin.

Its a good idea to go ahead and get organized before you get started.

I created some directories for my Movies, Torrents and TV Shows, so that later when I set up my RSS feeds I can easily point them to the correct folder.

In the TV shows directory I created several folders for shows that I know I will be setting up to download.

1. Install Divx. Download it from their website and just install it. Its really easy.

2. Install Utorrent, its simple just start the install and click next next next. Click here if you need help

After you install Utorrent, visit this link to understand how to setup and RSS feed with in it. http://ezrss.it/faq/

Then look at my setup. The feed I use is http://ezrss.it/feed/ OR http://rss.bt-chat.com/?group=3

Utorrent also has a web interface that you should also set up.
This is how ugrowl will communicate with utorrent to know when the download is indeed complete and finished.
You can not watch a video until its completely downloaded. Below is a picture of the web interface opened up in Opera my web browser.
This way I can easily inject the url to a torrent and let my Media Center PC download it. This prevents me from having to download it on my computer and moving it to the Media Center pc via USB Flash Drive or through the network. If you will notice, the url is a local computer name followed by a port number that I have blacked out.

This was covered more in the article How to Install and Configure uTorrent

I use http://ezrss.it/feed/ for my tv show RSS feeds. Sometimes the site is down, due to maintenance. When this happens, its worth noting that your expected downloads will not process until their site is back online.

In MY filter settings I am using this ” *txt*|*wmv*|*AC3*|*HR*|*264*|*720*|PROPER ” without the quotes to eliminate duplicate downloads and to not download what I cant use.
I just want HDTV AVI videos.

3. Install Ugrowl to work along with Utorrent. Visit their link if you get stuck, but its a basic install as well. Just next next next and see picture below for my settings for that.

The username and password here are the same as you set up for the web interface of utorrent. This has to be done in order for notifications to work

4. Install GROWL for windows. Again its just a simple install, visit their website for details.
This is the program we will be using to notify us when the tv shows we download are finished and are able to be viewed, so lets get started with the configurations.
You are going to want it to  automatically start with windows  see picture below.

Next, click on the applications tab within this program and all you need to do is click on Ugrowl, now in the middle click on Finished, then to the far right set it to TRUE.

Now move on over to the network, click the green plus sign, choose “click here to forward notifications to an email account“.
This is the last option in the list.

Click the edit link and set it to your server settings. Mine happens to be gmail.

The gmail settings are smtp.gmail.com for server and the port is SSL 587
Just put in your username and password.

5. Install Peer Guardian.  See my post on How to Install and Configure Peer Guardian for help

That’s about it. If all is installed and the feeds are pulling down, then they should download when they are available, and notify you when they are complete and ready to watch.

If you have any questions feel free to comment below.

I was shopping in Target this week and noticed that they had one that looked very interesting. It was from a new brand I have never heard of called Speck.

I had been seeing a lot of Speck cases and what not for the iPhone all the day long as I shopped today. This however looked like something I had been searching for, for quite some time.

This kit provides you with a base that can be mounted on the dash or suctioned to the windshield, a belt clip, a snap on case for the iPhone, ipod touch, or ipod nano, audio aux cable, and also an additional swivel attachment so that you can get every possible angle you need out of this thing.

As soon as I got to the car I took it out of the package and pretend to mount it on the dash to see how well this was going to workout. I could see right away that I didn’t want to give up my Incipio Case for the one they provide. The one that they provide is almost perfect for this.  See on the pack of it there is a square piece of plastic and it happens to fit in the other square on the mount.

This was not a deal breaker for me. I like to modify things, and I had been looking way to long for a decent mount.

All I had to do was take the piece that came with the kit for the ipod nano, widdle it down a bit with a grinder, super glue it to my Incipio Case and I was done.

I tried to find a good link to provide you with so you get pick up one for yourself but I had no luck. I guess the easiest thing to do is visit Target and see if they have one there.

Here is the exact same thing but its by a different company.

http://www.iq-ss.com/index.aspx?menuid=12&type=introduct&lanmuid=66&language=en

I included some photos from my setup.

This file you are about to create should be used at your own risk. I just have to say that for legal mumbo jumbo, but hey trust me it will work.

This file will kill all currently running apps on a system that you have started with the exception of a few locked Windows processes and some antivirus products making for a fast shutdown or reboot.

Here is the recipe for what I call a “just do it!” script. What its doing is basically killing off all apps that are started in your username and at the end its rebooting the computer.

@echo off
title Kill all running apps
cd c:\windows\System32
for /f “skip=3 tokens=1″ %%i in (‘TASKLIST /FI “USERNAME eq %userdomain%\%username%” /FI “STATUS eq running”‘) do (
if not “%%i”==”svchost.exe” (
if not “%%i”==”explorer.exe” (
if not “%%i”==”cmd.exe” (
if not “%%i”==”tasklist.exe” (
echo.
taskkill /f /im “%%i”
echo.
)
)
)
)
)
shutdown -r -f -t 00

Remember to copy and paste this into notepad and save it as a bat file like we showed you in the earlier post

If you don’t want the computer to reboot and you simply want it to shutdown, and I mean shutdown fast, then just remove the -r like this shutdown -f -t 00

Normally I leave my computers running 24/7. I know that’s not very green of me but that’s what I do. On the occasional reboot I have several of the same apps that I constantly use and I hate to click each one and wait for it to load so I created a batch file that will launch the ones I use the most with one single click.

Here is how its done.

Lets say you want to launch Firefox, Microsoft Outlook, Opera, and Pidgin. These will need to be installed on your computer of course.

First open notepad and copy and paste the following into it and save it as something like “startall.bat”

@echo off
cd \
c:
start /d “C:\Program Files\Pidgin\” pidgin.exe
echo Launched Pidgin!
start /d “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\” firefox.exe
echo Launched Firefox!
start /d “C:\Program Files\Opera\” opera.exe
echo Launched Opera!
start /d “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\” outlook.exe
echo Launched Outlook!
exit

Remember that when in notepad go to File then Save As and notice the Save As Type in the dialogue box? Change that to All Files or it will default to a standard text document and this will not work.

That’s it! Save your batch file to your desktop labeled to something like I said earlier like StartAll.bat and there you go, double click it and all your apps that you coded into the file will launch.

Let me teach you how to find your own apps to add to this code above.

Through lots of trial and error I finally figured out the magic behind all this and its simply start /d and you have to have the correct quotations in place.

On your computer double click My Computer or click Start and click on My Computer and then Click your C drive and navigate to Program Files. Here lets look for programs that we want to launch when we want to.

For fun I have navigated to C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer and within that directory I see iexplore.exe which is indeed the Internet Explorer Application.

Now if I want to add that to my StartAll.bat file I would simply need to modify the code a bit to look like this:

start /d “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\“ iexplore.exe

Just to be clear on the syntax for this I am going to retype this below and for spaces I will use [spacebar]

start[spacebar]/d[spacebar]“C:\Program[spacebar]Files\Internet[spacebar]Explorer\”[spacebar]iexplorer.exe

I hope this makes sense and helps you out.

If you have any tips or improvements to this please list them in the comments section below.

Lately, I’ve been dealing with the Windows XP Automatic Updates restart nag screen for quite some time now. I am normally pretty busy and have tons of apps open along with several browsers with several tabs. Even though it doesn’t take long for my computer to reboot, I would rather do it at the end of the day.
To keep from hulking out like The Incredible Hulk and thrashing my laptop, (just kidding I would never do that) after clicking the Restart Later button for the tenth time, I decided to stop being lazy and figure out how to shut it off.

It turns out to be pretty easy.
You can either use the command line to shut off the Automatic Updates service or manually shut it off in the Services panel.

To shut it off manually:
1. Go to Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools and double-click on Services.
2. Right-click on Automatic Updates and select Stop.

An even faster way to do this is to select Start>Run> type “services.msc” and press ok or tap enter on the keyboard. This will bring you to the services control panel applet.

To use the command line:
1. Go to Start->Run. Type in “cmd” without quotes to open up the command line.
2. Now, type in “net stop wuauserv” without quotes and hit Enter.

You could go even a step further and make a batch file on your desktop to click on in case your forget these steps.

Just copy and paste the following into notepad.

cd \
net stop wuauserv

Save it with a file name of stopwau.bat

You must choose All Files from the save as type box to actually save it as a batch file.

Or you could just download mine.

How To Create Your Own Multiboot USB flash drive

For the longest time when I do computer repair house calls, I often depended on a satchel full of CD’s with my favorite tools on them.
Some of them being ERD Commander, Ultimate Windows Boot CD, Knoppix Live, Ubuntu Live, NTpassword, and so on. I hated to have all these cd’s with me at all times.
I often thought about how to accomplish this, but always got sidetracked.

Recently I made up my mind and said the ultimate goal was to have a bootable USB flash drive with a nice menu. I fiddle with this for at least two months with little to no headway, but alas I figured out how to do it and I would like to share it with all of you techies out there willing to read my blog.

I am going to teach you what I have learned throughout this process, and I’m sure you will feel technically empowered when this is all done.

Today you are going to build a USB Multiboot toolset complete with customized boot menu ready to launch many of your favorite tools.

Are you Ready? Good, lets get started!

Creation

First we are going to need a few tools to get started.
- USB flash drive
- grubinstgui
- grub4dos
- memdisk
- 7zip

Any USB flash drive should work. I first used a Kingston DataTraveler 4 GB. Then I later used a PNY 8 gig Flash Drive. Currently I am using this bad boy right here the Kingston DataTraveler 150 – 32 GB USB
Prepare the USB drive by formatting the drive fat32.  You can do this in Windows Disk Manager

To get to Windows Disk Manager in windows right click on My Computer and choose Manage from the context menu.
Next look for disk management. In here you should see your USB flash drive.  Select it and right click on it and choose format.

Next what you will need to do is run grubinst_gui.
Select the disk option and pick your USB drive. Be SURE to select the correct drive number.
If you’re not sure which drive is your USB drive check with Windows Disk Manager.
You should see your main hard drive as 0 and maybe your USB drive as 1, look carefully as this next step could erase your hard drive and I am not responsible for your laziness.
Read … Read… and Re-Read….
Once you are assured the correct drive is selected, go ahead and click Install.
No options need to be checked, the defaults are fine.

You will then need to copy the grldr file from the grub4dos package to the root of your USB drive. Also while you are at it copy memdisk to the root of the USB drive.
Finally finish off the install by creating a blank text file in the root of your USB drive called “menu.lst”.

Ok this USB flash drive is now bootable, so let’s move on to adding all our favorite tools and toss those cd’s.

For most of the distributions I added, I started off with an ISO version of it. I then extracted the ISOs using 7zip either to my desktop or directly to the root of the thumb drive (or you could just copy the files from a burnt version of the distro, just as long as you get the files to the root of your thumb drive).

Most Linux distros come with 2 folders: a boot folder and another folder that actually holds the meat and potatoes of the distro.

Since it would be impossible to have 6 or 7 different boot folders that don’t overlap on the same thumb drive (without multiple partitions…a route I tried to take for way too long before I realized the magic of grub) I simply renamed the boot folder to something like “bootbt3″ (backtrack3) or “bootknop” (knoppix) depending on the distro, and just left the other folder as is.

I did this at first and had lots of issues with some distros, then I read a little more about grub and realized I could boot the iso, so I will save you tons of time for some of the problem distros and show you how to boot the ISO.

Here is my menu.lst feel free to copy and tweak it. Download it here

splashimage /bgimage/yourimage.xpm.gz
color blue/black yellow/blue
timeout 120

title Hiren’s Boot CD ver 10
kernel /memdisk
initrd /HBCD/boot.gz

title Ultimate Boot CD For Windows
map (hd0,0)/UBCD.iso (hd32)
map –hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot

title BackTrack 4 Linux Penetration and Security
root (hd0,0)
kernel /bootbt4/vmlinuz persistent vga=0×317 ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw quiet
initrd=/bootbt4/initrd.gz
boot

title Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop
find –set-root /ubuntu904.iso
map /ubuntu904.iso (0xff)
map –hook
root (0xff)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu904.iso quiet splash locale=en.UTF-8 –
initrd /casper/initrd.gz
boot

title Puppy Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /puppy/vmlinuz root=/dev/rd/0 pmedia=usbflash
initrd /puppy/initrd.gz

title Gparted 0.4.5-2 Partition Editor
root (hd0,0)
kernel /gparted/vmlinuz1 live-media-path=/gparted bootfrom=/dev/sd boot=live union=aufs noswap noprompt vga=789 ip=frommedia
initrd /gparted/initrd1.img

title Ophcrack (Password Revealer, Resetter, Cracker)
kernel /bootoph/bzImage rw root=/dev/null vga=normal lang=C kmap=us screen=1024x768x16 autologin
initrd /bootoph/rootfs.gz

#this is for a space
title
kernal
initrd

title Restart The Computer
reboot

If you will notice in the menu.lst above, I didn’t use an ISO for every single one.
Not all distros boot well from ISO on a USB flash drive, so I had to extract some of them.

For Hiren’s boot CD I extracted the ISO with 7zip and copied the contents to the root of the USB flash drive as HBCD.
For the Ultimate Boot Cd for Windows you can see I booted the ISO. I just copied it to the root of the USB flash drive.
For Backtrack 4 beta I extracted it using 7zip and copied the bt4 folder to the root and also renamed the boot folder to bootbt4
For Ubuntu 9.4 you will see that I used the ISO
For Puppy Linux I extracted the ISO (this one was just for fun, its FAST!)
For Gparted I extracted the ISO to Gparted folder on the root of the USB flash drive.
For Ophcrack I extracted the contents to the folder called bootoph and I also put the tables folder on the root of the USB flash drive.

Here is what the Root of my USB Flash Drive looks like
>USBSTICK
|->bkgrimage
|->USBlogo.xpm.gz
|->bootbt4
|->bootoph
|->BT4
|->dban
|->gparted
|->HBCD
|->memtest
|->STORAGE
|->ntpasswd
|->puppy
|->tables
grldr
memdisk
menu.lst
UBCD.iso
ubuntu904.iso
ghost11.iso
ERD60_x86_WinVista_SP2.iso
ERD60_x64_WinVista_SP2.iso

Add what ever you wish to add to this USB flash drive. You can refer to my example and some of the grub manual for details on how to boot different distros.

Customizing

When it comes to customizing the USB menu with a splash image, its simply a matter of creating a 640×480 – 14 color splash screen image.

This is easy to accomplish with the Gimp. Gimp is like Microsoft Paint on Steroids for Linux users. Once you have the files on your USB flash drive you can boot into Ubuntu and use gimp from there. Just acquire yourself some sort of image and place it on the root of your USB flash drive. It needs to be a 640×480 image. You can crunch the colors in gimp by selecting Image, Mode, Indexed and entering 14 as the maximum colors.
Click Convert. Save this file as a XPM, then gzip it.  To gzip it in Ubuntu right click the image and create archive. Choose .gz from the drop down beside the name of the file.  Copy the gz to the root of your USB flash drive and prepend “splashimage /image.xpm.gz” to your menu.lst file. I inserted another USB Flash Drive in and copied it to that one whilst in Ubuntu.

If you dont want to mess with all that Download mine here

Further information on customizing the grub menu.lst file for your specific distros can be found in the grub manual.

Ok now that our files are in place, wouldn’t it be nice if you could mess with it for testing without having to reboot all the stinking time?

Well…there is an app for that….its VMWARE player and its free.
This way you can test your USB flash drive in a virtual environment without having to reboot your computer. That way you can continue to read my blog.

USB-TestVM -> http://userbytes.com/extra/USB-TestVM.zip
VMware Player direct download -> http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmplayer/VMware-Player-2.5.3-185404.exe

Tools I use:
- Backtrack 4 Beta (the backtrack login is root/toor
- Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
- Ophcrack
- Ubuntu 9.04
- NTpasswd
- MemTest86
- Hirens Boot CD
- Gparted Partion Manager
- ERD Commander Now a Microsoft Product

Some of these tools are downright dangerous in the wrong hands. It would be terrible if say you were an IT Specialist at ohh I dunno… a  “college” and you forgot it in one of the computers one day, and a student got their hands on it and used it for malicious mischief. YIKES !!!

Well I have an idea for that as well.

A password can be added by obtaining a UNIX md5. This can be done from Grub by:

1. Booting up the drive and pressing “c” at the grub prompt (you can do this in the VMWARE player)
2. Typing in “md5crypt” then entering in your desired password
3. Copying the resultant md5 hash on paper, etc. ( write it down. If you cant read it because of your splash screen, comment out your splash screen entry with a #  and try again)
4. Adding the line password –md5 *your md5 here* either after the preliminary lines (i.e. – after timeout, splash image, etc.) (This will require a password to make any changes to the menu.lst from the grub prompt) AND/OR after the title of a distro (This will require a password to boot the distro) Sometimes I have had to place it right before the word boot.

UPDATE -11-20-2009
I took the liberty of creating you one in case you didnt want to do all that. You will need to copy and paste the following in your menu.lst

$1$DnF0$t0Mb7RQFOfYgaTV13mY7t0

That is the md5 encryption for the password userbytes.com …..once again in case you missed it, the password is userbytes.com
You will want to place it at the end of your item to be booted so that it prompts you before the item is booted.
Like this:

title DBAN (Darriks Boot and Nuke, Disk wiper)
kernel /dban/memdisk
initrd /dban/dban.ima
password –md5 $1$DnF0$t0Mb7RQFOfYgaTV13mY7t0

And if you have one with “boot” in it, put it before the “boot” like this:

title Ultimate Boot CD For Windows
map (hd0,0)/UBCD.iso (hd32)
map –hook
chainloader (hd32)
password –md5 $1$DnF0$t0Mb7RQFOfYgaTV13mY7t0
boot

This way if someone discovers your USB swiss army knife, this will slow them down a great deal.

There are many benefits to having one of these. Not only can you rescue computers, but you could also us it as a means to get on the internet while you are on vacation. Just insert the usb flash drive in one of those computers that you use in the hotel business office, and reboot into Ubuntu or Puppy Linux. This way you can securely check your banking and leave no tracks.

I know there are several games, football and basketball, that many of us would like to watch on ESPN360 but are unable to, because we cannot get our respective Internet Service Providers to pay ESPN extra for it.

Well follow this tutorial and you will be able to do it!

First things first, if you have never used ESPN360, download the plug-in here (It will save you trouble later) It seems to work best with Internet Explorer.

Right click on the following link, save to your desktop, and double click on the exe file to install the plugin:
http://www.userbytes.com/extra/MoveMediaPlayerWin_071701000008.exe

Now I want you to go to http://ipchicken.com/ and write down the ip address that it gives you. This is your current IP address and later you will see how we will use a proxy to get a differant IP addess, we will use ipchicken again to show you that you indeed have a NEW ipaddress and this will fool ESPN360 into thinking we are on another network thus allowing us to watch the game online.

1.) Go to this address. http://fall.cs.princeton.edu/codeen/
It is a list of free proxy servers that are on the .EDU domain.
Note that the status messages are generally worthless.
I just sort the list by clicking on Total under the Users header on the far right hand side of the list and just go down the list until you find one that works.
Try to pick one that doesn’t have a country code like .br or .de at the end, etc. because it will be slower.
I used:
Name: planetlab03.cs.washington.edu
IP Address: 128.208.4.199

2.) Open Internet Explorer and go to Tools-> Internet Options->Connections Tab- >LAN Settings and check the box “Use a Proxy Server for your LAN”.

3.) Enter the IP address from the list and a port. The ports are always going to be 3128, 3127, or 3124 (unless it says otherwise on the list). I used 3128. In my case I used the following IP Address 128.208.4.199
Click OK, and then click OK again to get back to Internet Explorer.
Close Internet Explorer.
Relaunch Internet Explorer.

4.) Test the proxy server by going to http://ipchicken.com/ You should now see a completely different IP Address than before. This means things are working!!!

Sometimes you will see a CoDeeN splash page, but it will redirect you shortly. You will see under Advanced, a line that says Name Address.
If you are on the proxy server it should be a different ISP than your usual ISP. If a particular server doesn’t work, pick another one from the list in step #1.

5.) Go to ESPN360.com, click on the link that says “Watch Now”.
A new window will open up.

6.) Once Player loads go back to the other window of Internet Explorer.
Go to Tools-> Internet Options->Connections Tab->LAN Settings and UNCHECK the box “Use a Proxy Server for your LAN”.
Click OK, then Click OK again to get back to Internet Explorer.
Note: You can’t turn this off until after you Launch Video Player because it won’t work otherwise.

7.) Switch back to the ESPN 360 window and it should play using YOUR internet connection and not the one through the proxy.
You are no longer using a proxy server, so the video will stream full speed.
Its worth mentioning that Full Speed on ESPN360 can still be a bit choppy at times, but at least you get to watch the game.

8.) Don’t close the ESPN360 window or you will have to turn on the proxy again to get back in.
I usually click it full screen and when commercials come on it will bounce from full to not quite full screen but once the commercial is over it will go back full screen.
Also worth mentioning is the commercials will sometimes appear to be hung, but they are not. Don’t panic. When the time allotted for the commercial is up, the game will resume just fine.
Note: I have noticed that at times it won’t take the same proxy twice in a row, if that is the case you will need to find another one from the list in step 1.

9.) Enjoy The Game!

Here I am watching Southeast LA VS Ole Miss earlier this season on my living room media center pc.