PS Tools

PS Tools is a resource kit that is part of the Windows Sysinternals suite of tools provided by Microsoft. It’s free to download and easy to get started using this variety pack of goodies. Mainly geared for system administrators in the business sector, PS Tools provides a variety pack of commands that can be run to help a sys admin out in their day-to-day tasks. Some of the top tools that I’ve used are PsLoggedOn, PsShutdown, PsExec, and PsKill. I’ll highlight their uses and basic syntax below (ensure that you are in the parent directory of PS Tools before running the commands in the command prompt).

PsLoggedOn – if you’re trying to figure out who is logged onto a remote computer, this is the best tool to use that I’ve found (there are others out there like NetUsers or even Windows Server’s ‘Remote Desktop Services Manager’ or ‘query’ command). Common syntax is:
PsLoggedOn.exe \\SERVER-NAME

PsShutdown – does exactly what you would think it does….yes, it shuts down a remote computer. Interestingly enough, it can also reboot, log off, and lock a remote computer as well. For our purposes, the basic syntax to shutdown a remote system is:
PsShutdown.exe \\SERVER-NAME

PsExec – this is a great tool to execute or run remote processes on remote systems. This command is a little more tricky since you can pass specific options to run a process or executable, and these options might not exactly be options (more like requirements depending on the scenario). So if you have an executable file on your server where PS Tools runs and you want it to run on a remote server, the syntax would involve copying the executable onto the remote system and running it (-c is used to specify the copy portion and test-application.exe is the name of the executable that you want to run remotely):
PsExec.exe \\SERVER-NAME -c C:\test-application.exe

PsKill – another great tool that I’ve used frequently to kill processes remotely. If you’ve used Windows for a while and start to remember process names that could typically be running, then you don’t need to use PsInfo to gather the process information or IDs. In the case that you have a great memory, just run PsKill using the following syntax (notepad.exe is an easily remembered process, along with word.exe, excel.exe, outlook.exe, iexplore.exe, firefox.exe, explorer.exe, etc):
PsKill.exe \\SERVER-NAME notepad.exe

SATA drive testing

Requirements:

  • Laptop or desktop with Windows 7 (or higher)
  • Cygwin installed with smartmontools
  • SATA to USB docking station or cable adapter
  • 2.5” or 3.5” SATA hard drive to be tested

Steps:

  1. Power on the laptop and plugin the SATA to USB (dock or adapter)
  2. Plug the hard drive into the dock or adapter
  3. Wait a few moments and Windows should start installing the drivers for the SATA to USB device
  4. After drivers are all loaded, open Cygwin (Run as Administrator)
  5. Type ‘smartctl -a /dev/sdb -d sat’ and press Enter (Note: you might need to use a variation for the device itself (sdb, sdc, etc) or the type of device (ata, sat, usbjmicron, etc)
  6. After you are able to get the basic hard drive information from the command above, you will now need to run a short offline test, using the command from above with the addition of ‘-t short’ (Ex: smartctl -a /dev/sdb -d sat -t short)
  7. After the short offline test completes successfully, you can run an extended offline test with the command from above with the addition of ‘-t long’ (Ex: smartctl -a /dev/sdb -d sat -t long)

Types of Plastics (1-7)

Ever notice the variety of numbers inside the triangular recycling symbol? Essentially there are 7 different types of plastics that all range in varieties of production, composition, and safety levels. Most that have researched the mysterious numbers have discovered that numbers 2, 4, and 5 are the safest plastics to use for food storage and drinking from while number 1 is considered okay to use (while poor 3, 6, and 7 have been deemed harmful after long-term use).

Plastics can consist of soda bottles, water bottles, milk jugs, saran wrap, grocery bags, packaging containers, Styrofoam, and LEXAN (ranging from 1 to 7). Unfortunately, not all of these types of plastics are recyclable in numerous municipalities. This can be due to lack of processing and sorting equipment or people, or local sources that will be able to reuse the plastics in their products. In Boston alone, grocery bags, saran wrap, packing bubbles, and Styrofoam are some of the most prolific non-recyclable plastics for the area. There are some companies popping up that collect and reuse Styrofoam and packing peanuts to manufacture picture frames and tea or coffee cups. Although not always the best to constantly use during consumption of liquids, it’s better than the materials ending up in a landfill.

Overall, the best method is to limit your use of plastics overall. Instead of buying bottled water, just buy a decent filter for your sink or a water pitcher, and then use your own reusable water bottles. Although it’s very tough to avoid purchasing something without plastics, eventually we can hope that manufacturers make better decisions for the consumer in the near future.

Quickly save a list of all songs in iTunes

The following was done in iTunes 12.3 on a Windows 7 system. Just follow the quick and easy steps to create a document of your list of songs within iTunes:

  1. Open iTunes
  2. Click ‘File’ and then ‘Print’
  3. You’ll be provided with 3 radio buttons. Select the ‘Song listing’ radio button and keep the Theme dropdown set to ‘Songs’. This will create a list of songs that includes the artist, album, and length of each song.
  4. Click ‘OK’ and then you will have a few options. One that I like to use in Windows is to print to the ‘Microsoft XPS Document Writer’ in the dropdown list (if available). This will create a .xps file of all songs wherever you decide to save the file. Some other options are to use a “print to PDF” printer like CutePDF Writer or doPDF.
  5. Click ‘OK’ at the Print window and then select an area to save your .xps (or .pdf) file to. After clicking ‘Save’, iTunes will create the file where you saved it to.

Now you can take the file that was created in the steps above, and easily save it to an external USB flash drive or to some type of offsite cloud storage provider.

How to wipe your smartphone – Part 3 (Windows)

Similar to Android devices, I’m not the most well-tuned Windows smartphone user. Of course, I’ve went and scoured the web and looked through a variety of resources to come up with the straight and simple method of doing a factory reset for your Windows smartphone (of course, very similar to the iOS and Android devices, ensure that you back up your data first):

  1. Unlock your phone and using one finger, press and hold the screen and slide to the left
  2. Now you are at the ‘Apps’ list screen. Just scroll down to find ‘Settings’ and tap it with your finger
  3. Tap the ‘about’ button
  4. Tap the ‘reset your phone’ button
  5. Tap ‘yes’ to any warnings about your data being deleted (make sure you’ve backed it up first!)
  6. Let the phone run through the reset process and after a bit of time, your Windows phone should be loaded to the factory default.

How to wipe your smartphone – Part 2 (Android)

So I will confess that I’m not a very experienced Android device user (although not knowing about something has never stopped me from learning to “figure it out”). First things first, make sure that you backup your data from the phone before trading in or selling it. A majority of phones can be backed up with third party (or vendor) software and a USB cable to your home computer. We’ll write some more on Android backup specifics in a later blog post. This post is geared towards the wiping of your Android device:

  1. Navigate to ‘Settings’ on your phone or device
  2. Tap ‘Security’
  3. Tap ‘Encrypt device’ which will take up to an hour (NOTE: you might realize that this is not specifically wiping your Android device at this time. This is a precautionary step that will help to ensure that your data is not easily restored when you go to perform the wipe of the device)
  4. After the phone is encrypted, tap ‘Settings’
  5. Tap ‘Backup & reset’
  6. Tap ‘Factory data reset’
  7. ….then finally, tap ‘Reset phone’. This will reset your phone to factory defaults and wipe the encrypted data in the process.

That’s it! You’ve now successfully wiped your Android smartphone or device!

How to wipe your smartphone – Part 1 (iPhone)

Before returning your smartphone to your wireless carrier or selling it online, you’ll want to ensure that it’s wiped and somebody can’t easily recover your private data. This blog series will cover iPhones, Android devices, and Microsoft Windows smartphones. Some important points to bring up that will account for all 3 types of devices are the following:

  • ensure you deactivate the phone with your wireless carrier (this might be obvious, but hey, we can’t have you missing a step and you end up getting charged with usage fees for an old phone)
  • remove your SIM card, unless the carrier requires it upon trade-in/returns….any private buyer will not need your SIM card
  • remove any SD cards and erase or destroy them, unless your private buyer requested the SD card to be included. Most phones have built-in features to clear your SD cards along with the factory reset

For all iPhone users, your two best friends when wiping the phone are the iTunes software and your USB cable. Those are literally the only requirements to wipe your iPhone….

  1. Download and install iTunes from the Apple iTunes site
  2. Plug in your USB cord to your computer, and the other end to your iPhone
  3. iTunes should automatically open (if it does not, open iTunes)
  4. You’ll want to backup the phone to save any of your data before wiping it – simply click the small iPhone icon in the upper-left area, make sure ‘Summary’ is selected in the left column, and then scroll down in the main window until you see the ‘Backups’ section….select whether you want to save to iCloud or your computer, and then click ‘Back Up Now’)
  5. After your iPhone is backed up, scroll up in the main iTunes’ iPhone Summary window, and click ‘Restore iPhone…’
  6. Click ‘Restore’ once again to verify that you want to wipe your phone and reset it to factory defaults
  7. Wait for the process to complete and you can verify that it was wiped when the ‘Hello…..slide to setup’ screen comes up on your iPhone!

There are a few other ways to wipe your iPhone, including doing it directly from the device or even if your device is lost, you can use the ‘Find My iPhone’ feature to remotely wipe the device. Hope somebody finds this helpful when trading in or selling their iPhone!

Formatting a computer before disposal

Before you get rid of an old computer, it is highly recommended that you format it. There are a bunch of different methods to quickly format your PC or Mac, and some are easier than others. The fastest and easiest way to ensure that your computer’s hard drive is formatted is by booting from a bootable CD/DVD/USB and running through some instructions to format the drive. My method below…

Requirements:

  • computer with a hard drive and a USB port
  • Internet access to download the bootable USB utility (Rufus) and hard drive eraser .iso file (DBAN)
  • 4GB USB stick to load the  DBAN .iso file onto (4GB is cheap enough and large enough to fit most .iso files you’ll find on the web, in case you choose a different software to format your hard drive)

Instructions:

  1. Make sure to backup all of your data using an external drive or cloud storage provider.
  2. Navigate to the Rufus utility site and download the latest version of the utility. At the time of this writing, the latest version is 2.6.
  3. Navigate to the DBAN download site and click the download link to get the latest version (Previous versions are located at the bottom of that page).
  4. Plug in your 4GB USB to your computer and let it install any necessary drivers.
  5. Open the Rufus utility, ensure the USB drive is listed under ‘Device’ and then check the box for ‘Create a bootable disk using’. NOTE: if the check box is grayed out, you might need to change the ‘File system’ type to something else.
  6. Click the dropdown next to the ‘Create a bootable disk using’ check box, and select ‘ISO image’. Then next to that, select the CD tray icon to locate your DBAN .iso file.
  7. Click ‘Start’ in the Rufus utility and you should have a bootable USB created shortly.
  8. Reboot your computer and at the BIOS screen, you will need to press a key to select what you want to boot from (most systems I’ve dealt with use F8 or F12 for this, but it depends on the BIOS manufacturer).
  9. Select your newly-created USB from the list and boot into the DBAN tool.
  10. Once DBAN loads, just simply type “autonuke” and press the Enter key on your keyboard. This will run a 3-pass DoD level wipe of the drive.
  11. After the wipe, DBAN will display that it has a log file to write and to press Enter to save the log file. This can be ignored and you can just reboot your computer.
  12. After rebooting, you should get the ‘No Operating System Loaded’ message, indicating that your drive was definitely wiped by DBAN.

Winter cleaning for 2016

Now that we’re getting into 2016, it might be time to clean out some of those old systems that you don’t know what to do with. We’re here to help with the pickup!

If you have more than 5 desktops, laptops, or monitors (or any combination of the three), just hop over to the ‘Contact Us’ page and request a free pickup. Don’t have enough items in your house or apartment? Just coordinate with a neighbor or family & friends to get some other equipment, and we’ll be glad to take it off your hands. Your equipment will help us to provide computers to schools and communities that cannot afford them. If we deem the equipment too old or broken, we’ll responsibly recycle it.

So clean out those Christmas trees and all other holiday decorations, along with your computer equipment with the new year!