Windows logs every single filename you visited (ShellBag) out of the box!

Posted on by
Reply

Basically Windows is making a diary of every single folder/filenames you’ve visited in chronological order. Just learned about something called ShellBag while using NTlite to slipstream Windows. WTF!

Parents can run a scan with ShellBag Analyzer in their family computer and see what their teenager has been up to!

Everybody should first disable this feature by running this registry settings (or manually creating the DWORD entry and set it to 1) which you can download and execute below:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell]
"BagMRU Size"=dword:00000001
Disable-ShellBagsDownload

Loading

Windows recovery mode repair option disappeared?

Posted on by
Reply

Sometimes Windows recovery mode do not have the ‘Startup Repair’ option like this below

I don’t know under what condition it won’t show up (sometimes I plug the system drive to be repaired in a computer, it shows up, at least for Windows 2008 R2), but you can selection Command Prompt (always available) and go to X:\sources\recovery and run startrep.exe to launch the repairing tool.

Loading

Are powered USB hub bus-powered?

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve bought many powered USB hubs, even the expensive industrial version like Startech, but they never work reliably when I connect multiple devices that draws quite a bit of power. The behavior is the same (erratic when too many power drawing devices are active within one hub) whether I supply the hub with external power or not.

I suspected the USB hubs wasn’t wired in a way that the USB hub controller understands that I want to have the hub self-powered (powered from an external source like a wall wart instead of drawing the 5V from the USB upstream cable). So I opened up my StarTech and it looked like this:

Love that it’s made in Taiwan and they cut no corners in power management.
10 ports means 3 x 4-port hub chained and they do not share power converters.

On the top left corner, there’s a jumper to set the USB hub to use self-powered instead of bus-powered (default out of the box). I switched the jumpers and the board no longer takes power from the upstream bus and the lights won’t light up until I have the local power connected, which confirms it’s working as a self-powered hub.

Loading

Patten: Leadership in Beijing they may be thuggish dictators he (Percy Cradock) would say, but they are men of their word, now we know that at least one of the things is correct

Posted on by
Reply

Chris Patten, “My main critic when I was the last colonial oppressor (the MPs chuckled) … Percy Cradock, who used to say, …, the leadership in Beijing they may be thuggish dictators he would say, but they are men of their word, now we know that at least one of the things is correct.

Loading

Capacitor Plague for unused New In Stock boards

Posted on by
Reply

The conventional wisdom is that the bad capacitors (the ones with stolen chemical formula) bulged because of the hours you put in it. Today I found that it’s not true. I had a batch of new old stock Trinity S2390 motherboard (used in Agilent logic analyzers) and I noticed all the 100uF 6.3V capacitors bulged and one burst:

Reminds me of Duralcell’s Alkaline batteries (never used) that leaked during storage (before the expiration date). Stop blaming the bad chemical formula on how users use them!

Loading