Posted by Lim on Jul 29th, 08 | Filed under
Application,
Tips,
Tutorial |
1 Comment
USB devices such as flash drives may harm your computer. Some of the USB drives which infected by virus will automatic copy files to your computer when connected. So, i would like to teach users how to block certain USB devices to connect to your computer.
I had cover USBDeview before, which is a utility to view and manage all devices connected to your computer, no matter previously or currently. Now, i am going to use this utility to block known devices from connect to my computer.
Note: If you don’t know what is USBDevice, you may refer to my previous article.
Steps
- Open USBDeview, and you will get a list like below:
- Now, choose which device that you want to block from connect to your computer. For example, i want to block my Kingston USB flash drive.
- Right-click the device and choose “Disable selected devices”, or you can press F6 to start block the device from connect to your computer.
- After that, try to connect the USB flash drive to your computer, you will found that you will not get any menu popup, or any new removable device at “My Computer”. But, you still will heard device connected/disconnected sound when you plug/unplug it.
- You can always right-click the device and choose “Enable selected devices” or F7 to unblock the device.
download USBDeview | download from MediaFire
Posted by Lim on Jul 25th, 08 | Filed under
Application,
Portable Apps |
1 Comment
USBDeview is a free utility which can list out all USB devices that currently and previously connected to your computer.
By using this utility, you can get more information on USB devices that connected to your computer. For example, you can get information about the device name, description, device type, serial number, last plug/unplug date, and much more.
For devices that currently connect to your computer, the icon’s color will turn green. For example, device Port_#0003.Hub_#0001 is currenlt connect to my computer, which is my mouse.
This utility is able to remove unwanted devices driver from your computer. It is a good utility especially you want to uninstall unused devices from your computer or you want to do a clean installation for the driver.
download USBDeview | download from MediaFire
Posted by Lim on Jul 24th, 08 | Filed under
Application,
Cool Stuff,
Downloads,
Portable Apps |
4 Comments
app-stick.com is a website which collect a lot of useful portable applications. For example, you can get your portable Firefox, portable 7-zip, and portable Skype over there.
Nowadays, USB flash drive is a must have accessories for everybody. It is very common for everyone to have at least 2GB flash drive. So, why not install some portable applications to it?
Just go to app-stick.com, and you will get to know some free portable applications. In their main page, they listed out some of the popular applications such as Skype, Firefox, and Open Office. You can click and view portable applications of different category by clicking the link at your left hand side.
app-stick.com will not host any files. All the link will point you to the original website that host the application. Beside this, they provide a brief description for all applications, which is a good feature for those who don’t know about the applications.
I recommend users to download some System utilities to your flash drive. It may help you to solve some system problems. For example, you may download Avira Antivirus, “Autoruns” to detect any applications that run at startup.
Spent some times and you will find some useful applications there.
app-stick.com
Posted by Lim on Jul 21st, 08 | Filed under
Application,
Downloads,
Portable Apps |
11 Comments
USB Write Protector is a portable utilities which can write-protect your USB flash drive so that virus/spyware can’t copy itself to the drive.
The main cause of viruses are USB flash drive. These viruses tend to copy themselves to the flash drive whenever system detected new device plug in. I still remember there are some old USB drives that come with write protect feature. But unfortunately most of the new flash drive don’t come with such feature, maybe the manufacturers want to cut down the cost?
So, the only way to protect our USB flash drive is enable the write protect through our own PC. With USB Write Protector, you can turn on/off the write protect to a USB flash drive.
Open this application before you plug any flash drive into your computer. After you turn on the write protection, you will not be able to write any files to the flash drive, or delete any files from it. You must always unplug and plug your flash drive if you want to turn on/off the write protection.
Note: This utilities will not write any files to your flash drive, it just make sure your flash drive is write protected in this cumputer only. So, when you plug the flash drive into another PC, your flash drive may still infacted by viruses. So, the beast way to protect your flash drive is to install this application to all computers that you may use.
download USB Write Protector | download from MediaFire
USB Image Tool is a cool application for users to backup entire content of USB drive. It is built using .NET Framework 2.0.
It is necessary for us to backup our USB drive frequently, especially if you have a huge capacity’s USB drive, or you store important information on it. With USB Image Tool, you can easily backup or restore the entire USB drive.
Simply open the application and plugin your USB drive. The application will automatic search for available drive. After that, press Backup to save the content into an image file, or press Restore to restore the image to yourUSB drive.
This is a handy application, as it may take longer time if we do our backup manually. Furthermore, this application will just create a single file, which is easier to manage.
Summary of features:
- Create image files of USB drives
- Restore images of USB drives
- Compressed image file format (take longer time).
- Show USB device information
- Manage favorite USB images
To use this application, you need to install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.
Source: Life Rocks 2.0
download USB Image Tool | download from MediaFire
Posted by Lim on Mar 25th, 08 | Filed under
Tips,
Tutorial |
4 Comments
If you use a lot of USB device, i believe you will use “Safely Remove Hardware” very frequently. But if you have a lot of tray icons, you probably need to take some time to find the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon. So, why not create a desktop shortcut to remove USB devices?
Step 1
Right click on your desktop and choose New -> Shortcut.
Step 2
Type “RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll” for the location. After that, change the name of the shortcut. I had rename it to “remove USB“.
Step 3
You had created your shortcut. Now you can double click it and remove and USB device as normal. This method works on Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista.
Note: If you face any problems when removing your USB devices, you can try unlocker.
Posted by Lim on Jan 26th, 08 | Filed under
Application |
2 Comments
USB Disk Ejector can easily and safely remove any disk drive that plug into your USB. It is a portable application and once launch, it will detect all USB disk connect to your computer and you can remove them by double click it.
If you have a lot of portable USB device such as USB flash drive, iPod, external hardisk, you probably will need to remember the drive letter when you plug all these devices in your computer and want to remove one of them.
Let say i had my iPod and my USB disk connect to my PC and i want to remove them from my system. I need to click the Safely Remove Hardware tray icon and then choose the correct drive. Sometimes, our system doesn’t really specify which one is which, so you need to go My Computer to look at the drive letter and then click the Safely Remove Hardware icon again to remove it.
By using USB Disk Ejector, you can easily remove these devices, because it will list out the device with its name. So, you can easily recognize which one is which.
Sometimes, when you trying to remove your USB disk, error message popup showing that the device is in use, even you close all applications that related to the device. USB Disk Ejector can solve this situation by safely remove your USB disk.
This application is useful if you deal with multiple USB disk and you don’t want the “safe to remove hardware” message popup. This applicaion also support command line options. You can read more information from the website.
download
download from MediaFire
Posted by Lim on Dec 9th, 07 | Filed under
Application,
Tutorial |
17 Comments
Do you know that we can use our USB flash drive as computer lock? You need a USB flash drive and a freeware called Log Monitor. This article will discuss the steps to configure them.
Log Monitor is a freeware that has many usages. I try to go to the author page but i can’t understand the language, but i think most probably the author is a Russian. After playing with this application, i found that it can actually lock our computer and prevent others to login. The theory behind this is very simple. It keep monitoring your USB flash drive, once the file being monitored changed, or you remove the USB flash drive, this application will immediately lock your computer. If you remove your USB flash drive and the login to your computer, this application will immediately lock your computer again. Unless you hold the USB flash drive, else you can’t access that computer.
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Posted by Lim on Oct 29th, 07 | Filed under
Application |
No Comments
PortableApps.com just released Forefox 2.0.0.8 Portable Edition this week.
Portable Firefox let you to bring your Firefox profile, settings, extensions, and bookmarks anywhere. You can install it in your USB or portable hardisk. Firefox Portable Edition is packaged in PortableApps.com, so it is very easy to integrated in PortableApps.com Suite.
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Posted by Lim on Oct 24th, 07 | Filed under
Accessories |
1 Comment
SanDisk introduce a ‘portable’ USB Video Player which support a variety of video formats, such as Divx, Xvid and MPEG-4.
Buy.com recently introducing the SanDisk Sansa TakeTV Video Player, which can easily bring your videos to the TV!
The Video Player can connect to any standard TV which have AV inputs. Simply drag the movie file from your computer onto the USB Video Player and the connect the USB Video Player to the TV using the cradle provided. Now, you can enjoy your favourite movie on your TV !
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