Raymond.CC Blog

3 days ago Christy posted a new thread at the forum sharing some interesting apps. Out of the 6 applications, I was more interested in taking a look at Dev Eject which is used to eject locked USB drives. One of the most common problem that we face with a USB flash drive connected to the computer is unable to safely remove it because the device is currently in use and asking you to close any programs or window that might be using the device and then try again. There are times when you can be very sure that there are no visible files that are running from the USB flash drive but you still cannot eject it. Little did you know that there might be some other process such as Explorer.exe that is locking up the drive. Dev Eject is a small and simple application which you can use to list the files that are open from the drive and which process has them open.

One may ask why do we even need a third party tool to uninstall software when software that we install normally comes with a built-in uninstaller anyway? The uninstaller that comes with the installer is able to remove the files that it installed to your computer but a more sophisticated software such as antivirus may create or download new files and registry entries to your computer. Those new files and registry entries created after installation are not logged during installation, hence it is not recognized and removed by the uninstaller. If you normally download stuff and play around with third party software, within a few months you will notice that your computer is filled with junk files that was left around even after uninstalling the software.

One way to keep your computer clean so that it last longer without having to reformat and reinstall Windows is to use a reliable uninstaller tool. The most downloaded uninstaller in CNET Download.com with over 4 million downloads to date is Revo Uninstaller. It is probably the most popular brand when it comes to an uninstaller software. I have never done a review on such software before because I never needed one as I always use imaging or snapshot to restore the changes but I was curious to see what is so good about Revo Uninstaller Pro that is making it so popular.

When you get online or in a network, network packets are being used to transfer data around. We don’t normally get to see them because they work secretly in background. In order to investigate the packets, we have to use packet sniffing tools and one of the most popular free software for that is WireShark. Seems like Nir Sofer, the author of Nirsoft.net has been playing around with network packets lately because most of his new release tools has got to do with packet sniffing. One of his latest new release is called HTTPNetworkSniffer which captures all HTTP requests/responses sent between the Web browser and the Web server and displays them in a simple table. Basically this is an alternative to URL Snooper.

Tools such as HTTPNetworkSniffer are very useful when you want to find out the direct link to download a software when it uses web installer. One example is when you want to download and install AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012, you will have to first download a 3.7MB web installer, and the web installer will then download the latest necessary files to install on your computer. The web installer doesn’t show you where it is downloading from and HTTPNetworkSniffer solves this problem.

While I was browsing the Internet for new software which I have not tested or unheard of, I found USB Manager which claims to on or off USB devices and locking them. As far as I know, since Windows XP this is made possible by changing some registry keys and was wondering if this uses a different technique. USB Manager is a free software that the installer is less than 1MB in size. Installation is a breeze but be careful what you are clicking because at the last part of the setup, it asks you to choose additional products (DealPly and ICompleteU) to install and even including IxQuick search engine and IxQuick homepage on your browser. Clicking the Cancel button will avoid installing the unnecessary software.

The USB Manager places itself on the notification area and it comes with a very simple graphical user interface. Right clicking the USB manager icon shows a context menu allowing you to disable USB storage devices, disable USB printers, enable USB scanners and disable USB audio devices. As for the Options, you are able to password protect the software to prevent unauthorized users from using USB Manager, switching to a different language, hotkeys, start with Windows and hiding in system.

On earlier Windows version such as 95 and 98, there are only a few areas where it controls a program to auto startup when Windows is booted up. There are so many now startup methods on Windows 7 and is better to rely on a tool such as Autoruns by Sysinternals. One of the auto startup method that is still being used until today is the Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run path in Windows registry located at both HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. I am very familiar with this auto startup registry path because I already memorized it more than 10 years ago when I’ve helped many friends clean viruses and trojans such as NetBus and Back Orifice from their computer. Basically any values added to that Run key will be started when Windows is booted up.

Now if you look at the next registry key after the Run key, you would find a RunOnce key. The Run and RunOnce does the same thing which is running the program when Windows is booted up but with one difference which is RunOnce only run the program once and it won’t run again at the next reboot. Usually the RunOnce key is being used to delete files that are being used by system services or locked by Explorer.

When a software is unable to run, the first logical attempt to fix the problem is by reinstalling the software. However there are times when a software is so badly corrupted that you cannot even uninstall or reinstall the software, leaving you with the only option to reformat your hard drive to reinstall a clean Windows. The Windows Installer Clean Up (MSICUU2.exe) tool developed by Microsoft is probably one of the most useful free tool to fix program reinstallation problems. However this tool can sometimes also damages other components installed on the computer rather than fixing it. In order not to take further risks, Microsoft has decided to pull the plug and retire this risky yet valuable tool on middle of 2010.

Even if you managed to download MSICUU2 from third party websites such as Softpedia, this tool doesn’t support Windows Vista and Windows 7. The good news is Microsoft has created another tool called “Program Install and Uninstall troubleshooter” which is a replacement for the retired Windows Installer Clean Up plus it supports both 32-bit and 64-bit of Windows including the latest Windows 7.

Emsisoft Anti-Malware may not be as popular as AVG, Avira or Avast but it is well known for its superb detection taking the lead in a couple of independent tests. The first thing I like about Emsisoft is that their company is not too big which made it possible for me to speak to Christian Mairoll, the CEO of Emsisoft a couple of times over Skype. Christian is definitely a very friendly and professional person. I got to know about the major update on Emsisoft Anti-Malware few weeks back and this version claims to have taken more than one year in development to completely rewrite for multi-core optimizations which makes it faster, safer and more resource-saving than ever.

I was excited to review the new Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0 and finally I had the time to do it today. The current (6.0.0.46) setup installer file size is at 106MB while when I benchmark the performance was an older build at 96.5MB. The design remains familiar while there are dozens of technical improvements.