Category: Windows

Force MSN Messenger to Use a Proxy

For anybody wanting to know how to do this, it's possible to force Windows Live Messenger to obey your proxy settings.

In my case I wanted MSN 2011 to connect using a socks proxy (using SSH port forwarding to use an SSH tunnel as SOCKS 5 proxy).

To set the proxy settings, go to the "Connection" page in the preferences of MSN Messenger, click Advanced Settings and enter your proxy details.

The problem is, MSN will only use your proxy settings if it can't normally connect to MSN without them (i.e. if your default TCP internet connection will work, MSN will always use that instead of your proxy settings). This is how you can force MSN to use the proxy settings.

You have to block MSN from being able to connect to its authentication servers without the proxy. To do this, we have to tamper with the Hosts file.

The Hosts file on Windows is kept at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts (note that it doesn't have a file extension). Open this in a text editor like Notepad or the edit command in Command Prompt (I prefer the latter approach because you can open a Command Prompt window as Administrator and then editing the file is a snap without having to deal with permission issues when saving changes).

Add these lines to the Hosts file:

127.0.0.1       messenger.hotmail.com
127.0.0.1       msgr.hotmail.com
127.0.0.1       gateway.messenger.hotmail.com
127.0.0.1       login.gateway.hotmail.com

And then restart MSN and it should have difficulty connecting without the proxy settings (if using a SOCKS proxy, attempt to sign into MSN before you open the proxy to be sure that it fails to connect. Then start the proxy and see that it successfully signs in).

This works by routing all the MSN Messenger hostnames to the loopback address and blocks MSN from being able to authenticate. But with the SOCKS proxy, it can connect because it would do the DNS lookups from the SSH server instead of the local system.

Hope this helps someone!

Get FAT Drive Serial Numbers in Unix

There's not a lot of information about this on The Google, so hopefully this blog will help anyone who wants to know how to get the serial number of a FAT partition from within a Unix-like operating system (including Linux and Mac OS X).

First, this is what I mean about serial numbers. Suppose you're using a Windows system, have a floppy disk at drive A:/ and a regular USB flash drive at E:/, and you run these commands in the command prompt:

C:\>vol E:
Volume in drive E is CRUZER
Volume Serial Number is 955C-59BF

C:\>vol A:
Volume in drive A has no label.
Volume Serial Number is EC2B-36AF

These serial numbers are assigned when the drive is formatted; reformatting a floppy disk or flash drive will give it a different serial number.

According to The Wikipedia, the serial number (ID) is kept in two different places on the partition depending on the version of FAT being used.

In FAT12 and FAT16 (used with floppy disks), the ID begins at byte offset 0x27 (39 in decimal); in FAT32 (used with flash drives and external hard drives), the ID begins at 0x43 (67 in decimal).

So, with the handy dd utility that comes standard on pretty much any Unix-like system, you can extract this information and display it. Here are a couple of one-liners you can run in a Unix terminal. I'll explain how they work afterward.

# For FAT32 filesystems (modern flash drives)
dd if=/dev/sdb1 skip=67 bs=1 count=4 | hexdump -v -e '1/1 "%02X" " "' | xargs perl -e '@_=@ARGV; print "Serial Number: $_[3]$_[2]-$_[1]$_[0]\n"'

# For FAT12/16 filesystems (old floppy drives)
dd if=testfloppy.img skip=39 bs=1 count=4 | hexdump -v -e '1/1 "%02X" " "' | xargs perl -e '@_=@ARGV; print "Serial Number: $_[3]$_[2]-$_[1]$_[0]\n"'

I underlined the input file (if) and byte offset (skip) in both of these commands. In the first one, I ran the command on a real, physical, flash drive, that had a device node at /dev/sdb1 for its one and only partition. In the second one, I ran it on a floppy disk image file (who has a computer with a real floppy drive these days?)

If you're going to be using a physical device like in my first command, you need to run the command with root privileges (regular users can't read directly from the device node). My second example (using an image file) can be run as a regular user, however.

These commands printed in the terminal for me:

(for the flash drive)
4+0 records in
4+0 records out
4 bytes (4  copied, 3.3445e-05 s, 120 kB/s
Serial Number: 955C-59BF

(for the floppy image)
4+0 records in
4+0 records out
4 bytes (4  copied, 3.1551e-05 s, 127 kB/s
Serial Number: EC2B-36AF

And now, how the commands work. I'll use the flash drive command as the example. In this one-liner, three commands are being executed at once:

dd if=/dev/sdb1 skip=67 bs=1 count=4
hexdump -v -e '1/1 "%02X" " "'
xargs perl -e '@_=@ARGV; print "Serial Number: $_[3]$_[2]-$_[1]$_[0]\n"'

The dd command gets the operating system to read raw data from the flash drive at /dev/sdb1, skipping the first 67 bytes, reading only 1 byte at a time, and reading a total of 4 bytes. This gets the 4 byte serial number; now we need to display it in hexadecimal like Windows and DOS.

The hexdump command takes the 4 binary bytes and displays them in hexadecimal. On my flash drive, it looks like this: BF 59 5C 95. Note that the hex codes are out of order; Windows shows them as 955C-59BF - basically, the reverse of what hexdump shows. Hexdump is showing the correct order; Windows and DOS reverse them when they show you the serial number.

So, we run it through xargs (which turns the four hex numbers into four separate parameters) and sends them to a quick Perl script, which prints out "Serial Number:" and puts the hex codes in the correct order, to give the same result as Windows and DOS.

One could use this information to make a vol command for Unix. If the command checks other places in the filesystem headers to determine the version of FAT, it could automatically use the correct byte offset and get the serial number from both floppy disks and flash drives.

A "Dumb End User" Experiment

Whilst using Windows operating systems and installing the software I tend to use, I've noticed that a good portion of Windows software comes bundled with crapware. During the installation of things such as AOL Instant Messenger, if you don't watch out, you'll also install the AIM Toolbar, set your Internet Explorer homepage to AIM's site, and set your default search engine to AIM's.

I, along with pretty much every other savvy computer user, never do the "Recommended" installation of software and always go with the "Custom Installation" route, so that I can opt out of installing unnecessary toolbars and other spyware/adware that comes with free Windows software. But does the Average Joe Windows user know that? Definitely not; the Average Joe just clicks through the install dialogs until the program he wants is installed, not knowing that he also just sold his soul to the devil by installing all manner of malicious spyware on his system.

So, I conducted an experiment.

I installed Windows XP on a virtual machine, and installed only a small selection of software that the average user would likely use, and went with all the "Recommended" installation options for every program installed. Altogether, I only installed 9 programs, and most of those were something everybody can say they've installed: instant messengers.

The Experiment

I used Sun VirtualBox as the virtual machine platform and installed Windows XP, Service Pack 2, on it. The specs of the virtual machine are as follows:

Memory: 256 MB
HDD Space: 10 GB

I installed a fresh copy of Windows XP, installed the VirtualBox guest additions, and used this as the baseline for a "vanilla" Windows XP installation -- a fresh, clean, pure instance of Windows with nothing really installed on it.

[click for larger screenshot]

In our fresh vanilla Windows XP install, we see the default desktop, the start menu, the Task Manager with few enough tasks in it that we don't even need a scrollbar, and a default Internet Explorer 6 window with MSN as its homepage.

Then, I started installing some software.

Installing Software

I started with AOL Instant Messenger 6.9.17.2. This installed AIM like I wanted, put an icon on my desktop, and also the AIM Toolbar for IE, and it also set my homepage and search engine to AIM.

Then I installed Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.2162 - this installed Yahoo Messenger, put an icon on my desktop, installed the Yahoo! Toolbar, and set my homepage and search engine to Yahoo.

Then, Windows Live Messenger 2009 (Build 14.0.8089.726) - this one didn't install a desktop icon, but it set my homepage in IE back to MSN.com and changed my search engine back to Bing.

These are the three most common instant messengers that most people use. So, I went and installed other essential software:

Sun Java Runtime Environment, JRE 6 version 15. Java also took the liberty of installing the Bing Toolbar in my Internet Explorer.

Then I downloaded WinZip 12.1 Free Edition. Windows XP comes with built-in support for zip files, but Average Joe is bound to come across archives of other types and will be told to get WinZip. WinZip installed for me the Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer.

Then, the Adobe Flash Player 10.0.32.18 - this is, so far, the only piece of software that installs what it says and nothing more. It's also the only thing I've installed in my experiment that installed only what I wanted it to.

Finally, I got a couple extra instant messengers installed: Skype 4.1 and ICQ 6.5 - Skype installed the Google Chrome web browser and ICQ installed the ICQ Toolbar and set my homepage and search engine to ICQ.

At this point, I have only installed 8 programs; 8 programs that Average Joe End User is likely to install. Using the default options on all the installers, my system is now fscked up already. But why stop there? Average Joe also needs an antivirus suite, with all this scare going around about viruses.

So, Average Joe installs AVG Free because Average Joe is a cheapass who can't afford Norton or McAfee. AVG may be well-intentioned, but that didn't stop it from installing the AVG Toolbar "Powered by Yahoo!" into my Internet Explorer as well as changing my search engine to AVG Search.

So, what's the damage? 9 programs, and this is what my system looks like:

[click for larger screenshot]

My Task Manager list has grown exponentially; I have to resize it vertically as tall as it will go, and even then there's still a scrollbar. And do you see the IE window in all that mess? It's completely being murdered under the weight of the 7 different toolbars taking up HALF of the vertical screen real estate.

This is only 9 programs being installed. For a quick list, here they are again:

1. AOL Instant Messenger
2. Yahoo! Messenger
3. Windows Live Messenger
4. Sun Java
5. WinZip
6. Skype
7. Adobe Flash
8. ICQ
9. AVG Free

And this is the damage. Let's have a better look at that Internet Explorer window:

[click for larger screenshot]

This, THIS is why Windows sucks. All Windows software installs all this crapware along with it, and all this crapware competes with each other (just look how many times my search engine had been changed).

This is the list of toolbars in IE, from top to bottom, which take up 50% of my 1024x768 vertical resolution:

1. (IE Menu Bar)
2. (IE Default Toolbar)
3. (IE Address Bar & Links)
4. AIM Toolbar
5. Yahoo Toolbar
6. Tabbed Browsing Toolbar
7. Google Toolbar
8. Bing Toolbar
9. ICQ Toolbar
10. AVG Toolbar

Perhaps more saddening is this: you may have noticed in the final screenshot that I'd installed LavaSoft AdAware - I was intending to scan my system with it and see how much spyware and adware it detected. Know what it found?

19 cookies in Internet Explorer. Cookies!!!

The only thing AdAware found were cookies left by ad banners. No adware? No spyware? Are you kidding me!?

So, how do the startup programs look? Well, I'll tell you that rebooting this virtual machine is miserable. With all these programs starting up when the desktop loads, nothing productive can be done for a full 10 minutes. Here's the breakdown:

Startup Items

There are three categories of startup items: current user items in the registry, system-wide items in the registry, and items in the user's Start Menu. At the beginning, the only startup item was VBoxTray, which is part of the VirtualBox Guest Additions, and it was in the system-wide registry list.

After this, the startup items were:

• Current User Registry Items
  • AOL Instant Messenger
  • Windows Live Messenger
  • Yahoo Messenger
  • ICQ
  • Skype
  • Google Toolbar Notifier
• System-wide Registry Items
  • AVG Tray
  • Microsoft Default Manager
  • Sun Java Update Scheduler
  • VBoxTray (VirtualBox Guest Additions)
• Start Menu Items
  • WinZip Tray

This is absolutely ridiculous.

It should be noted here that free, open source software, almost never comes with crap like this. If you stick to fine programs like Firefox and Pidgin you can install them without worrying about what other crap they'll bring along with them.

I hate Windows.

Console for Windows

Where has this been all my life?!

I've just discovered a program called Console. It's a command prompt replacement for Windows, and is much more like a Linux terminal emulator. Not quite gnome-terminal, but much better than cmd.exe:

Why it's so much better than command prompt:

• It allows you to customize the font and choose any monospace font you have available (I chose DejaVu Sans Mono). Also can select font size, bold, etc.
• It allows you to customize the color palette. Not just the default foreground/background (command prompt allows this), I mean all the other colors. For instance, bright blue and bright magenta look terrible on a black background, so I chose softer shades of these colors (see the screenshot).
• It supports tabs! Not that I use tabs, but it supports them!
• It has a menu bar, toolbar, and status bar by default. I don't like these so I disable them (I disable the menu bar in gnome-terminal too). You can right-click anywhere to get a menu.
• Better copy-and-paste support.
• You can change the transparency of the window, like with Linux terminal emulators. In this regard it behaves like a Linux terminal in a compositing window manager, in that the window is truly transparent and you can see stuff below it. I don't much care for this (I prefer the fake transparency like gnome-terminal uses without a compositing window manager, where it just copies your desktop wallpaper).
• Perhaps most importantly, the window can be resized to any size ya want. With the regular command prompt, the window can be no wider than 80 characters (you can adjust how many characters, but it's still limited to whatever you set and can't be made wider during run-time).

You can download Console from SourceForge.net.

I also recommend OpenSSH for Windows. It installs OpenSSH from the Cygwin project, without the entire Cygwin installation (which is enormous, and is overkill if all you want is SSH from it). With this you can open a command prompt or Console window and use SSH as though you were on a Linux system.

These two programs are all I need to feel more at home when I have to use a Windows system.

MS-DOS and Windows 3.1

For a limited time only, files for installing MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1!

Download the tar.gz here (~80 MB).

The tarball contains:

• MS-DOS 6.22 Installer Floppy Images
• Windows 3.1 Installer Floppy Images
• Drivers:
  • CD-ROM Driver (Floppy Image)
  • DOSIDLE to make DOS not consume 100% CPU(Floppy Image)
  • WQGHLT to make Windows not consume 100% CPU (Floppy Image)
  • SoundBlaster 16 Drivers (CD Image)
• A VirtualBox Disk Image (VDI file) which has all of the above installed on it.

Update:

If you want to download the components separately (DOS, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and the drivers) you can find individual links on my MS-DOS page.