Power up your USB with PortableApps

Having a hard time installing some softwares that you really want? well there is a solution to that problem and that is to use Portable applications. You can just put it on your USB Flash Drive and have it installed on other PC’s with a breeze. A portable application, or portable app for short, is a software program that does not require any kind of formal installation onto a computer’s permanent storage device to be executed, and can be stored on a removable storage device such as a CD-ROM, USB flash drive, flash card, or even a floppy disk, enabling it to be used on multiple computers. This does not mean that it can be taken and used on a different operating system, processing platform, or another computer with completely different hardware (i.e., those that are not compatible with the software as stated by its requirements), so it is not to be confused with the concept of software portability, which is the ability for software to be run or compiled with little modification on diverse computing platforms. Ideally it can be configured to read its configuration files from the same storage location as the software program files.

Most software are not designed to be portable but there are also some applications that you can use instead of using the old software that isn’t portable. Here would be a list of Portable applications that you may use.

List of portable softwares

http://portableapps.com/ - is a community site devoted to the development, promotion and use of portable applications.

 

There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don’t. ~Author Unknown

The other side of autorun.inf

Autorun.inf is the primary instruction file associated with the Autorun function. Autorun.inf itself is a simple text-based configuration file that tells the operating system which executable to start, which icon to use, and which additional menu commands to make available. In other words, autorun.inf tells Windows how to deal open the presentation and treat the contents of the CD.

The autorun.inf defines the following:

• The process or application that will automatically run when a disk is inserted
• Optionally, one can define the process or application that will run for specific Operating environments.
• The icon that will represent your application’s CD or DVD when the drive is viewed with My Computer or Explorer.
• Menu commands displayed when the user right-clicks the CD-ROM icon from My Computer or Explorer.

read more about autorun.inf here

Autorun is intended as a convenience feature: software distributed on a disc can automatically start an installer when the disc is inserted. However, autorun can pose a security threat, when the user does not expect or intend to run the software.
For instance, an attacker with brief and casual physical access to a computer can surreptitiously insert a disc and cause software to run. Alternately, malicious software can be distributed with a disc that the user doesn’t expect to contain software at all — such as an audio compact disc. Even music CD’s from well known name-brand labels have not always been safe. – wikipedia

It’s always been a hassle for us students who are using computers with a lot of malicious software. Some of these software are really getting into my nerve. (Ravmone.exe, Vundo, imgKulot, RECYCLER, more..) These malicious softwares use the power of autorun.inf to be able to gain access of the PC and propagate their selves by sticking their files to the system folders. But usually they reside on USB Flash Drives and infect other PC’s. And recently I’ve been experimenting some ways on getting rid of it. Here are some steps in deleting these malicious softwares.

Precautions:

• Do not enter directly to your USB Flash Drive. Use [right click] -> open or explore
• Make sure there are no running malicious software in the background
• Be sure to have a cmd.exe on your USB. You can copy the cmd.exe from you X:windows\system32\ folder and put it to your Flash drive

General Steps in removing these softwares:

• run cmd.exe
• type in dir /a
• if you can find the autorun.inf delete it by typing del autorun.inf /a /f
• But before you can do this you must first know what are the accompanying files of the malicious software that is in your USB
• Then delete the files that are not yours that you believe to be malicious using
  del <filename> /a /f
• But this files can’t be deleted if its running on your system. Be sure to kill the process before trying to delete it.
• If you can encounter some malicious programs who uses directory such as RECYCLER. First download the eraser portable from the net. [link to download]
• Use the Eraser Portable to delete the directory and its subdirectories. (proceed to help if you need some help in using the program)

If you need more help on removing these softwares please feel free to to contact me at boting_231@yahoo.com .

How would a car function if it were designed like a computer? Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to re-install the engine, and the airbag system would say, “Are you sure?” before going off. (Katie Hafner)

Learn on your own

When I became a CS student I was aware that learning in school isn’t learning at all. You’ll have to explore the world of CS on your own, thus “spoon-feeding” is not an option for any CS student. Some argue to why teachers are just introducing topics and not tackle them very eagerly or should I say teachers are not doing their work. But I told myself, they’re wrong because students should not be dependent on their teachers as well as to other students. We should learn on our own and let ourselves explore the world of computers. (Hilas man paminawon pero tsada nang kita makaexplore kaysa i-introduce ra sa ato. dba?) I am posting this article not because I want all of you to be angry at me but because I want to help my fellow classmates or students to better understand this unexplored cyber-reality. In so doing this I am sharing some links on free e-books that you can use in your study. By the way. ” e-book (for electronic book: also eBook, ebook) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printedbook. Such documents are either read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book devices or e-book readers”. – from wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book)

I just want to share this link I have found while I was searching the net for good e-book providers. Hope you’ll like it. [link to a list of free e-books]

“Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more user-friendly… Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, ‘user-friendly‘ on the cover.”