PSP Hacking

My brother gave me a PSP 2000 with some damaged goods a while back. Namely, the bars that hold the UMD disc door in place and help it close were severely bent and had popped off. Sidebar - I guess letting a 4-year-old "play" the PSP isn't such a good idea :). Anyway, I was able to get it back together with some mad needle-nose plier skills, but it still was somewhat finnicky to get the disc door closed. So, I decided to devote my time to hacking the PSP so I wouldn't need to use the discs anymore.

In a nutshell, what I needed to do was hack my PSP, overriding the "stock" Sony firmware with custom firmware. What that firmware would do is unlock the full potential of the PSP unit, things like allowing me to play my UMD Iso's straight from the memory stick, the ability to install cool apps (more on that later), and so on. There are a lot of really easy to follow tutorials out there, so I won't bore you with lists of them. The important thing to note is that you can't hack your PSP 3000 just yet, only Fats (the 1000 series) and Slims (2000's). There are also a number of ways to tell which on you have.

I purchased a Pandora's battery (a tool necessary for the hack) and went to work. All in all, the process was fairly simple. Once I was done, I was then able to install the following:
- Emulators: NES, SNES, GBA, GBC, N64 emulators to play all the games I owned as a kid
- ISO compressor: to compress the backups I made of my PSP games, so more would fit on my 4GB memory stick
- Custom themes: to make your PSP look "cool"

All in all, it was worth it just to play my games from memory stick instead of UMD, but the emulator is just cherries on top. Since installing it, I've beat Metroid, Zelda, Startropics (ok, I got to the end guy, but haven't beat him yet), and am currently working on Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Ahh, the memories.

Fix BootMgr is Missing Error Message

BootMgr is Missing

So you've got a new Vista/Server 2008 (Server 2008 was the culprit in my case, but I've read of it happening on Vista as well...) install on your desktop, and you reinstall to finish some updates. As you're booting, you hear a beep, and see: "BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart." Crap. What now? The Windows repair disc doesn't fix it, and you're not sure what to do.

As best I can tell, Serv08 just got confused between my IDE and SATA drive, and even though it installed Server 2008 to my SATA drive, it dumped the boot files on the IDE drive. Why? I'm not sure.....but it did. Thus, the error.

Using the Repair Disc, I loaded into the Command Prompt, figuring that I'd need to copy files over. The problem is, what files should I move?

First, I needed to find out where everything was:

• c: to switch to the C drive.
• dir /a to view all the files. The "/a" switch is to show the hidden ones (the files you are looking for, listed below, are hidden).
• d: to switch to the D drive.
• dir /a to view all the files there.

What you're trying to find is your BOOT folder and the BOOTMGR, since this is what's missing. Then you also need to find the WINDOWS folder, since the BOOT and BOOTMGR need to be on that drive.

Once you know that, you need to copy them....

• c: to switch to the C drive, or wherever you determined the boot files to be.
• xcopy /h bootmgr d: to copy the BOOTMGR file to the D drive, or whichever drive you need to copy them too. The "/h" switch ensures that you'll include hidden files, which is important.
  
• robocopy c:\boot d:\boot /mir to copy the entire BOOT folder from the C drive to the D drive. The "/mir" grabs the entire directory and its' sub-folders and files, keeping the same file structure.
  

Sure enough, once I moved those files over, everything booted up fine. Thank heavens.

Remotely Logoff Terminal Users

One of the things I use this blog for is to augment my bad memory. Specifically, when I find a solution or fix a problem, I like to document it so I can easily find it later. Today I've got two. If nothing else, I'm sure I'll be using these again down the road.


Remotely Log Off Users

I frequently use Remote Desktop, especially when I'm at home and need to access my desktop at work. Nothing stinks more than logging in, only to see this:

This happens because Windows by default only allows two simultaneous terminal services connections to the same machine. Usually one is my console user, but at various times other people remote into my machine to grab things, and don’t explicitly log out of machines when they disconnect from remote desktop which causes their sessions to remain active.

First, how can we query to find out what users have a session on a remote machine? Windows provides the qwinsta.exe command which we can use to query for the sessions that are running The format is as follows (from a command screen, of course, so go to Start | Run | cmd - and you must be an administrator on the target machine - for instance I'm an admin on the 10.1.2.230 box):

qwinsta /server:

So, in my case it's qwinsta (or quser works as well) /server:10.1.2.230

It shows the user and the session ID, and quser shows the idle time as well (which is handy for determining who to boot).

Now that we know what users are on a machine, the next step is exercising those Administrator functions, and kicking them off. The command is logoff.exe.

logoff  /server:

So for mine, it was logoff 1 /server:10.1.2.230. That kicked Nate off my box, and allowed me to remote in.

WARNING BEFORE YOU DO THIS:
If you log someone off, whatever they had open or whatever they were doing is lost. Be prepared for angry people, unless you're really sure they're idle or done...

Windows 7 Release Candidate pt 2

Upon further use.......I still like Windows 7. The RC seems to be a little "heavier" than the beta, so it's not quite as "snappy" as I initially experienced with the beta, and this is on a faster machine then the beta was on, but I'm still a happy customer.

I haven't had any driver issues, and haven't had any other issues to speak of really, other than the typical change management issues one experiences when using a new OS. You know, the typical "Crap I know where that link was located on [insert other OS/software here]....now where is it?!" moment that one has when using an updated piece of software.

Anyway, I've had a few people ask how to get their hands on a copy, so without further hesitation, here's the information on downloads and other stuff:

Get the RC here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Main points of info
1) How long is the key good for?
June 1, 2010

2) What happens then?
You will need to upgrade to a newer version of Windows 7 before then (generally the releases go Release Candidate (one or more) -> Final version).

3) Can I upgrade from the beta release to the RC, or from RC to Final?
Yes, with the workaround discussed here, but let's be honest, I wouldn't recommend it. By 2010, you'll be needing a fresh reinstall anyway.

4) Where can I get an antivirus program that works on Windows 7?
Check out this page

5) Will my Vista drivers work on Windows 7?
Yes.

Windows 7 RC

I did it. I put Windows 7's RC on my main computer (my Dell Vostro laptop). I'm not sure why I did. I had to reformat anyway, to get a lot of the extra crap I'd had to install for the last 2 semesters of school, but I took a gamble.

And I'm loving it.

Sure, W7 isn't complete yet, and I'm sure I'll encounter bugs, but I haven't yet. For those that don't know, the RC (Release Candidate) is a version of a program that is nearly ready for release but may still have a few bugs; essentially the status between beta version and release version.

I blogged about the beta, and was happy with it, but it wasn't my main machine. This is. And now I'm using it every day, I'm finding some things that are frustrating, but nothing huge. And there are some really useful features, such as built-in ISO burning. Yeah I know, who burns an ISO nowadays? I've had to a few times, and it's nice. I just wish it had built-in ISO mounting as well (which it doesn't) and that Daemon would release a W7-supported version. But I digress.

For those that are on the fence, I say try it. I've enjoyed it.

Cool Free Software Part 3

Ever wanted to be in control of what album art is applied to your music? Don't trust what iTunes decides to place as the art? Don't use iTunes?

Wait no more!

I use Winamp at work for my media, mostly because I don't want to install iTunes, and since my work machine is ALWAYS on, I can install Winamp Remote and stream that music from anywhere, anytime. Problem with that is that I'm missing a lot of album art and Winamp just doesn't have the ability to find album art (that I could find...).

Enter Media Art Aggregator. It's a cool little program. From the description on the site: "A digital media art aggregator. Finds cover art for music, tv shows, movies or any other type of media. Searches different sources including Google Images, Yahoo Images, Live Images, Deviant Art, Amazon.com and Walmart. Additional sources can be customized by defining the url to get the source from and a regular expression to determine the image url or by defining new classes that inherit from a base class."

So, it finds album art for you. Cool thing is that you get to choose your album art. So, it brings up choices.


You can see for this Our Lady Peace album, I have 2 choices, which look pretty similar but have different sizes (one is 500x500 and the other is only 446x500). Of course, I pick the 500x500 one. You can also see the options for image database to search.


Here you can see more options. The current album art was only 200x200, whereas MAA allowed me to see a bunch of better looking covers.

Pros: It's easy. You can set it to search on double click, where it will just simply copy the highlighted text on the left and search by it. That works for people like me, who try to label their folders as Artist - Album Name, but wouldn't work as well for people who don't label their folders that way.

It works for various media types, not just CD's. That's nice.

It's free. You can't beat that.

Cons: It has a hard time finding some lesser-known bands. It also is subject (in some cases) to user-inputted pictures, which really sucks. For instance, the album art for my Classic Queen album looks like junk, and I couldn't find a better one (you can see the black on the bottom and right).

There are also some covers that show people actually holding the album and taking a picture. Of course, since you have so many search engines the chances of that are less, but still...

It also hasn't been updated in some time (since 2008), and that may not change, but that isn't going to be an issue unless the sites change their formatting and it breaks the search.

Overall it's a nice, lightweight alternative to iTunes, and one that gives you a large amount of control.

The Office Quote of the Day

This is actually the quote from the weekend, but I've been busy at work.

"There are thirteen people working in this office. So thirteen times a year, Michael gets a cake, and balloons, and some sort of joke gift, and makes a toast. And there are two types of toasts: one is a joke about how old you are... and the other is something inappropriate, or horrible. Or both."

-Jim