tcpdump OS X

tcpdump is built in to OS X (Mac) Linux users have been using it since the inception of *nix variants.

*Warning: this and other tools like it are very powerful, with knowledge comes power, use it wisely*
*Respect others privacy
*Think before you do something and understand the consequences

Click here to leave a comment .. even if it is just to say HI!!

From wikipedia:
tcpdump is a common packet analyzer that runs under the command line. It allows the user to intercept and display TCP/IP and other packets being transmitted or received over a network to which the computer is attached.

For my uses I am the admin of a very

small company that uses Windows 2003 and Citrix to serve up applications to dump terminals. We have been experiencing excessive band width usages and I am curious as to where, how, and why. This is probably not the best tool to use but it gives me an idea of what is going on.

On my PowerBook (separate from the network) I opened a terminal and typed:

tcpdump -ien1

And was presented with

tcpdump: (no devices found) /dev/bpf0: Permission denied

-ien1 is the airport card en1

/dev/bpf0 is where *nix (OS X in this case) stores information about the airport card en1.

well having been use to Linux commands as well figured I would su (super user basically running as root)

This did not help either, apparently OS X requires the use of

sudo -s

then enter the password of an administrator account

This will give you a bash prompt (for me it was) and now you can run your command at the prompt.

bash-3.2# tcpdump -ien1

Happy hunting for more information on the tcpdump command and its switches from a terminal prompt type:

man tcpdump

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HP Mini NetBook 1151NR Rock-in Little Machine Missing Bluetooth Drivers

HP Mini NetBook 1151NR Rock-in Little Machine Missing Bluetooth Drivers

BTW I have tried looked every where there are no downloads for the restore disks for the HP Mini 1000 or 1151nr netbooks .. in fact I placed an order with HP on the 20th of October 09 ... and am still currently waiting for the disk to arrive as of the 5th of November 09.*******
****** UPDATE Finally HP is shipping my restore disk out on December 1st 2009 WAHOOO I may get it before 2010 LOL.


HP has put out some Sleek Fancy looking consumer base laptops over the last couple of years IMO.

I love the design and the looks of the sleek black shinny cases and the glossy Hi-Def displays.. I'm a sucker for the technical geeky looking laptops.

If you are looking for 1024x768 on an HP Mini 1000 or 1100 (1154NR, 1151NR)

I have been looking for a NetBook for a few months and could not justify another toy with the wife, seeing as I recently acquired a MacBook Pro and have been really happy with that .. not only the performance of the laptop but as well as the price I paid for it (giggle giggle 250$) .. It pays to know how to work on laptops and keep an eye on CraigsList.

If you want to know how to change the Hard Drive Click this link

Or

If you want to Upgrade the memory ...

But back to my current issue I have acquired this cool looking little HP Mini (and I do mean little writing this post and the last 2 on it .. takes a bit to get use to the small keyboard). The person that had it before me though it would be a great idea to make the little machine into a Hackintosh. Which I would not disagree would be cool to have OS X on a tiny little laptop like this, but the OSX86 community is not quite up to all of the platforms that are out there and some drivers have not been compiled for these machines yet and the OS is not as stable as it should be.

So my task is to put WinXP back on it (did not have recovery Cd's they are on order from HP as we speak).. Which actually was no problem at all. Plugged in my full size CD ROM in to an IDE to USB converter plugged in to the NetBook and it was off installing XP in a flash.

After XP was installed all of the drivers off the web site were loaded and all updates off of Microsoft's Update were installed (mind you took 2 days even with broadband speeds) glanced at Computer Management and the Bluetooth 2.1 is sitting there with a yellow exclamation.

That bytes .. I know I did not miss anything off of HP's site got all of the downloads for this machine..

Well they left it out for some reason if you need to install it you will need to search for sp43730.exe or just click the file it will take you to hp to download it ... unless they change things again

Well that was easy ... NOT well even though the softpack should automatically install the driver it would not ... there was a pop up .. that says turn on the device .. well its already on and you can't turn it off if you tried.

so you will have to manually install the drivers from Computer Management right click the bluetooth properties.. reinstall diver ... don't search let me specify.

Browse to the folder c:\swsetup\SP43703\Win32\ and then install from there ... otherwise it will not search sub directory's ..

once installed your ready to rock and roll..

I know this will only affect (effect??? hmmmm... ) those few of us that will have to reinstall with out recovery disks .. but hey if it helps here's your sign.

Have a Great Day.

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What is shell32.dll and how do I find out What the icon number is??

What is shell32.dll and how do I find out What the icon number is??

Def of a dll from wikipedia
Dynamic-link library (also written without the hyphen), or DLL, is Microsoft's implementation of the shared library concept in the Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems. These libraries usually have the file extension DLL, OCX (for libraries containing ActiveX controls), or DRV (for legacy system drivers). The file formats for DLLs are the same as for Windows EXE files — that is, Portable Executable (PE) for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, and New Executable (NE) for 16-bit Windows. As with EXEs, DLLs can contain code, data, and resources, in any combination.

Ok that made allot of sense.. (actually I does to me) but for lots could just be a bunch of gobledy goock ..

The shell32.dll file contains among other things the icons that you see when you open my computer and the you see the hard drive and a little hard drive instead of just a listing for c:\

So how do we use this? Cause if you right click the c:\ properties .. there is no where you can change the icon or see a list of them that you can change to right??

Here is what you will have to do


Go to My Computer right click on the C drive and Create ShortCut.

It should pop a message
Windows cannot create a shortcut here.
Do you want the shortcut to be place on the desktop instead?

click yes

close My Computer

find the new short cut and right click properties

find the button for change icon and you will be presented with the icons that you can chose from.

the numbering of the icons start from the top left as 0 (zero) and go from top to bottom. Then starting on the next column top to bottom again.





So in the image above the current icon chosen is shell32.dll,8

Hope this explains at least something?? lol have a great day.

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How To Change C:\ Hard Drive Icon in My Computer

This is a quick how to:

How To Change C:\ Hard Drive Icon in My Computer Windows XP

I have searched high and low for this .. but have had little success until recenly. My c drive icon has been corrupt for a while now and folks on the net have suggested creating an autorun.inf file and placing it at the root of the drive. This will create the same effect that I was looking for but IMO this is just a stop gap measure. I finaly stumbled upon a post on

astahost.com from a member by the name of soleimanian and followed some of his suggestions. I am running a modified version of XP so your milage may very.

Start menue >
Run
type regedit

Sort down through the registry till you find

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer

if there is not a Key under Explorer Named DriveIcons create one

under DriveIcons create (if its not there already) a new key with driver letter C for example with in the drive letter create a new key and name it DefaultIcon

give the default value the icon you want to use like

%SystemRoot%\System32\shell32.dll,8

This was the icon I wanted to use in my shell32.dll file.

Now you ask how do I know which icon I want to use??? That will be in the next post

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A Look Back "I hate iTunes / iPod!"

iPod Touch, 2nd Gen, Mac Genius, Broken Touch, Sleep / Wake button

Its always good to go back and read (at least for me it is) what has been written in the past. In this post I hate iTunes / iPod!" I had more of a problem with music transfer from an older iPod to a new iPod where the music was lost on the computer it was syncing with.

Now my problem is different.

My experiences in the past with Apple consisted of High school clunky looking dingy white Macintosh Plus that I don't recall ever being turned on.






Image Courtesy of Wikipedia

The School administration staff was ecstatic with the introduction of the new computer. But that quickly wore off.

So about 8 months ago .. maybe more was some time after Christmas last year my interests peaked on this whole Apple experience. After playing with the iPods my girls received as gifts over the holidays I started to warm up to the design of Apple products. (OMG.. this coming from a PC guy)And it started with the Cross over to the dark side Mac OS X and just rolled on from there .. but that is another post entirely.

As a gift I was blessed with a second generation iPod Touch 8GB. This is a really cool little toy. (yes toy, boy's and their toys lol) I really love the wi-fi capabilities, bluetooth, and Videos.. It has replaced some of my time that was usually spent on a laptop cruzin the web and watching videos. All in a very neat compact user friendly design. Even with the failings of iTunes and one way transfers. (hmmm.. may have to look in to the jailbreak stuff folks are talking about)
I was a happy camper for a very long time till OH NO!!!!! for some reason the button at the top they call it the Sleep / Wake button stopped functioning. At first I had to press harder and harder to get it to work. And one day it just would not work at all anymore..

Back to the internet once again research is my friend...

I have found a conciderable amount of posts regarding this issue but no fixes other than trying to reset it back to factory default with iTunes.. With nothing to lose (this time anyways) I had every thing backed up and all of my apps are in iTunes.

Hit the reset ... Well that didn't work.

I am a little aprehesive about going to or speaking with any representative of any computer or electronics repair outlets much less going straight to an Apple Store.

Due to a few reasons (and please don't take it that I am being Mightyer Than Thou this is not the way I want it to apper) But 9 times out of 10 I know more about their product than the kid behind the counter does and I try to be calm when they ask if I have "rebooted, reinstalled, or if I know where the (spelled out) O N / O F F switch is ... or there is a PEBCAK (Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard)".

Unfortunate for me I am Tech Support not just for my family but for more than I can count.

So off to the Apple Store I go with my 5 year old in tote. Nervious as hell cause its my Touch and I have no paper work proving I own it .. it was a gift and all I have left of the packaging is bits of broken plastic ground in the carpent some where in the house..

** side note **(might just be me but can't ever seem to get every little bit of glass or broken items out of carpet even months later a shard of glass will come up and bite me in the foot)

This place is packed .. there are people every where .. slowly I start backing out .. not to disturb the sleeping animal.. Bam "Hi can I help you with something" A very nice gentelman askes me. Not at all like the pimple faced kid at the local BuyMore (lol.. did not want to put out really who they are and I do like Chuck)

UUUmmm yeah I produce my Touch and proceed to show him that it won't work. "Oh you need to see a Genius do you have an appointment?"

**rant**
(at this point all of the bells, wistles and sirens go off in my mind.... WHAT you have got to be kidding me!! I have to have an APPOINTMENT to see one of your SO CALLED GENIUS people ... just to tell me I'm SCREWED. Of all of the AUDACITY, IDIOCY...........)

Well I really don't have much time to..... "Wow, you are very luck I am showing an open appointment in 5 min can you wait that long?" he interupts very happily. Well yes I can wait that long.. He lead me over to a terminal and proceded to log my appointment had me put in my email and confirm the appointment.

Not 5 min later I was talking to a Genius gingerly handing over my Touch explaining what was going on.. He looked it over .. pressed it a couple of times .. asked me if had it backed up? yes its backed up do what you need to I backed it up before trying a restore again last night. He was going to do the very same thing and then grabed a flash light .. (quick look up the tail pipe??) No not really but they do have to check for water damage .. in the head phone jack it will turn pink if there is the slightest amount of water that has entered the Touch. No issues there .. now he starts clicking away on the keyboard .. turns around grabs another Touch more clicking and hands it to me .. "your warantee will continue with this one and you can extend it with apple care before it expires. Is there anything else I can help you with?"
What?? .. your just giving me a new one no questions asked... Now this is service..

I talk with him a bit about Snow Leopard .. and in a daze walk out of the store with the 5 year old in towe..

I'm impressed .. astounded ... Falbergated .. Never has it been that easy to get Warantee work or replacement ... Kudos.. APPLE you just got your self a very happy long term customer.

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RansomeWare

As Defined in Wikipedia

Ransomware, or extortive malware that holds users' data to ransom.

By the way so far .. have not had any of these issues with OS X.. Not to say Apple is better But... OS X is a variant of *nix operating systems. So loop holes are not as accesable and wide spread as MicroSoft Operating systems.

Basically is software or code that is designed to require you to purchase their software to get your computer back.. This could disable items via your registry including but not limited to Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware, Anti-Spyware, Task Mananger, Regedit, and even msconfig. In effect entirely disabling your system from usage until you pay for their product. (even though it was their application that caused the problem in the first place) Nice huh? Actually it's a brilliant way to make $$ till they get caught.. (at least I hope they get caught).

As posted earlier today I had a run in with How to Fix Windows Police Pro

This is a nasty little program that reminds me of the commercials from Apple as follows.. Which by the way make me laugh my A$$ off.

Thank you APPLE for the Video's






And here is the rest of it.

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I am not Immune

How to remove Windows Police Pro, how to remove Spyware, How to remove Malware, How to remove Ransomeware, How to remove Virus

How to remove Windows Police Pro
or
How to clean up Windows Police Pro SpyWare, anti-spyware, ransomeware, virus, malware.


As the title implies, I am not immune to any of these issues be it SpyWare, anti-spyware, ransomeware, virus, or malware threats.

** Scroll to the bottom for the Video I mention later in the post **

I am the system administrator (among other titles) for a small company that requires computers for their daily business, as well I have been in the computer industry since before the dreaded year 2000 issues. I have also been using and configuring computers from the TRS-80 days (some of you may remember they were called Radio Shack Trash 80’s) and the 8088 days.

With all of this in mind I still have

problems.


I keep being reminded of the Apple computer ad’s: “I want a PC with out all of the issues of spyware and virus’s” and PC walks away.


Unfortunately every time I see the ad’s they make me laugh and cry at the same time.


I have been using Mac’s for the last 8 months starting out with the old iBook’s quickly moving up to finally what I have now currently which is a MacBook Pro.


The biggest reason I have found a final use for the MacBook Pro is due to the capabilities of running OS X (a Unix variant Very Stable) and Windows XP Pro side by side with BootCamp and Paralles.


This has given me the best of both world’s.


Back to the issue at hand just like any normal day I walk in to work plop my work laptop (a Windows based computer… still can’t get away form multiple computer systems ;) ) on its docking station and proceed to wake it up from hibernation.


And up pops “Your Computer is infected!!!!” in all the Anti-Virus mannerisms of McAffe or Norton’s Symantec Endpoint Protection.


Kudos to the folks that have written this very malicious software (not in a good way!) they have put a considerable amount of time and effort in to the coding and appearance of the ransomeware to make a person think that it is truly a good antivirus software.


But don’t be fooled this is a very bad piece of software.


I am not sure exactly where or when I have picked this up, as I surf the internet all of the time, from Craigslist (picking up parts or pieces and cheap computers) to looking for code for web design.


This crafty software not only embeds itself in to the operating system but also disables various items that would allow even the savviest of users the capability stopping the application and its processes.


Once it popped up my first jerk reaction is to three finger salute (ctrl-alt-delete) to bring up the task manager (taskmgr.exe) and kill the Processes that were associated with this nasty little program.


But there has been a registry change that has disabled Task Manager as well as MalwareBytes and McAffe from ever running again.


This is all to force you in to purchasing the software that caused the problem in the first place.


The first course of action is to enable Task Manager this will be a task in it self due to the fact that regedit.exe has also been disabled.


But here is the registry key that has been modified:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System] Data Type DWORD “DisableTaskMgr”=1


The DWORD =1 disables the Task Manager if you can change it to 0 (zero) then you will be able to use the Task Manager.


There are 2 ways to get around this issue.


Copy the following in to note pad and save as fixPolice.reg


REGEDIT4


[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]


“DisableTaskMgr”=-


then right click the file and select Merge.


This will replace the entries in your registry to allow the use of task manager.


Or your second option is to go to right click save as to your desktop fixtm.reg


Thank you bleepingcomputer.com.


And do the same right click Merge.


Then either crtl – alt – delete or open the run and type “taskmgr” with out the quotes.


Once in Task Manager you will need to find under the


Processes tab:


Find: Windows Police Pro.exe highlight it and End Process this will kill the process


And Svchast.exe or svchasts.exe and end that process as well


***BE CARFULL***


There are svchost.exe processes that are real system processes that are required to run the operating system don’t end these make sure it matches the above svchasts.exe or svchast.exe


Now that you can use your system again I use MalwareBytes it can be downloaded from cnet’s www.download.com here is the direct link MalwareBytes and save to you desktop.


Once that is done double click the mbam-setup.exe (MalwareBytes) and install the software let it do its updates and run..


This will take awhile to run and will ask you to reboot to finish cleaning up your system.


On the first reboot it is recommended to run it again (I know this is tedious and time consuming but it is for your benefit) and if it asks let your system reboot once again.


This should effectively clean up your computer and you should be back on your way happily surfing again.




Thank you APPLE for the Video's





Actualy this one is more fitting and funny as hell

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