Walker News » Windows Vista

How To Turn Off Or Disable The Citrix Beep Sound?

Walker — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:05:28 +0000

I am mad and frustrated by the annoying high pitch beeping tone when using application via Citrix XenApp (an application delivering system).

The Citrix beeping whenever I hit unnecessary keystrokes in the Vi editor or Linux command prompt through Putty remote access program!

While listening to Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.5 (I find classical best when I am seriously working on something), that flipping beep tone just too bad and makes everyone seated near to me feels uneasy :-(

Because I was rushing on a remote Linux machine, via Putty program delivered by Citrix XenApp Web Plugin, so I just turn off the Dell Latitude speaker that no doubt effectively solved it in no time.

Obviously, that fix is not good at all and too “costly”, as turning off speaker means no more Beethoven’s classical music playing too :-(.

So, I need a proper trick and thus briefly looking around Windows settings in the hope of fixing it myself. But, none of these works:

1) Turn off the “Windows Sounds” found in Vista SP2 Volume Mixer dialog box.

2) Set the Windows sound theme to “No Sounds” scheme

3) Edit the Launc.ica and set the “ClientAudio=Off”.

I am pissed off and went to ask Google for help. Luckily, locating the solution is quick. Indeed, the Googling is much speedy than trying various Windows settings myself.

Credit goes to Leroy Spencer:

As you can see, the trick is fairly simple and easy to remember. For Windows Vista (or perhaps Windows 7), you need to run an elevated mode of Command Prompt window and execute this command to temporarily turn off or disable Windows beep service (looks like a kernel mode driver):

sc stop beep

If you desperately want to turn it off in a persistent mode, run this command after stopping it:

sc config beep start= disabled

Thus, to re-enable beep service to its original start up mode (in this case, SYSTEM_START), execute

sc config beep start= system

Please take note that you need a space between the equal sign and the option value (valid START option values are boot, system, auto, demand, disabled, delayed-auto).

Thanks Ross Williamson for highlighting this. For more information, type sc config.

To query the Beep driver configuration-related information, execute:

sc qc beep

To query the beep driver running status in Vista SP2, execute

sc query beep

I prefer to keep it running so I won’t miss something else in future. Having said that, I need to execute sc stop beep each time running Citrix XenApp Web Plugin.

Will TRK Failed If User Cannot Change Password Option Is Set?

Walker — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 15:51:06 +0000

Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) is a pocketsize, tiny Live CD Linux distribution packed with many useful utilities by Tom Kerremans (a.k.a. Harakiri). Few of these cool Linux utilities are such as winpass shell scripts, chntpw, and Captive NTFS driver wrapper.

For those Windows owners who forget the account password and find no Windows password reset disk to unlock, TRK winpass is certainly a good password reset toolkit.

Hiding all the tedious steps which otherwise require one to type relatively “complicated” and lengthy Linux command line syntax, TRK winpass provides a simple menu interface that everyone can easily follow to reset the forgotten Windows account password.

Best of all, it works on Windows Vista SP1, even that is the hidden Administrator account which is disabled at out of the box can be enabled or reset to an empty password as you like.

As soon as the real Vista Administrator account is unlocked, it’s not problem anymore to reset other Windows accounts.

The chntpw utility (the actual program called by TRK winpass to deal with Windows accounts) is able to unlock a account that’s locked after number of invalid login attempts.

However, what if the User cannot change password option is turned on, can you use TRK to reset that particular Windows account?

The answer is absolutely YES, as shown in the follow screencast taking on Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 running in Virtual PC (visit WalkerNewsdotnet Channel for High Quality video):

With this in mind, I’ve decided to enable the real Vista Administrator account and give it a strong password, on top of the BIOS password protection.

I’ll login all Windows accounts to ensure none of these accounts has been reset to blank or new password, as a measure to prevent internal bad guys from using the TRK or sort of to gain access to my Vista machine and install keylogger / Trojan into it.

Of course, they could simply unplug the hard disk for the same purpose easily. To make it harder, use disk encryption software. Even the Vista Ultimate Bitlocker Drive Encryption could be too hard to break for most ordinary geeks and keep them away (for a while).

Should You Enable The Windows Vista Hidden Administrator Account?

Walker — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:36:13 +0000

Windows Vista regards the user-defined accounts in Administrators group as second-class administrators, which do not inherit complete privileges of the built-in Administrator account.

Thus, when User Account Control (UAC) is turned on, a user-defined account of Administrators group has to acknowledge Consent UI while the built-in Administrator account is not restricted to UAC.

Indeed, this built-in Windows Vista Administrator account is as privileged as the Administrator account in Windows XP, Windows 2000/2003.

By default installation, Windows Vista disables and hides the real, built-in Administrator account. This super user account is not even shown in User Accounts applet of Control Panel.

However, it’s possible to manage (to enable or activate) this hidden Administrator account by using “legacy” Windows User Accounts dialog box. To bring up the old Windows User Accounts dialog box, type this command in Start Search text-box (press Vista Orb) or Windows Command Prompt:

control userpasswords2

Question: Why should I enable the built-in Windows Vista Administrator account?

Here are the points that prompt me to enable this hidden, real Windows Vista Administrator account:

The disabled, hidden Vista Administrator account is set with blank password – when this super user account is enabled for the first time, anyone can press ENTER key (no password) to log in this privileged Vista account!
How difficult to enable the Windows Vista account even without knowing the account password? By using Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK), one can easily activates the disabled Vista SP1 Administrator account.

Imagine if you leave a Vista-enabled Desktop or laptop at office. Then someone comes at night / weekend to reboot or boot up your machine with TRK CD, enable the real Vista super user account, log in and install a Trojan or backdoor program, disable the real Administrator account again.

Of course, the BIOS setup is configured to prompt password before booting OS or entering BIOS maintenance mode eliminates the risk of hacking with TRK CD. (The good of TRK CD turns to be bad when it’s used for a wrong purpose.)

To make it safer (not harder), I decide to enable the super user account and set a strong password for it. From time to time, I will login to this super account to confirm the “strong” password has not been reset or changed. Otherwise, some bad people might have tried to mess with the Vista machine :-(

(Is the “User cannot change password” properties safe from TRK attack? Let me test and back to you later.)

How To Create Muggin For MSN Or Windows Live Messenger Display Picture?

Walker — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 15:46:22 +0000

I stumbled upon Muggin in Microsoft i’m initiative site. As the first line read, “Represent yourself with a Muggin”, I thought it’s another name of avatar (such as Gravatar) that Microsoft “invents” it for Windows Live Messenger.

However, the Muggin is not as simple as avatar. And Muggin is a Kiwee product, not Microsoft. The notable feature of a Muggin is that it animates according to some of the common emoticons used in your IM messages.

As part of i’m initiative, Kiwee partner with Windows Live Messenger to allow MSN user choose the male or female avatar and then customize the look and feel – hair-style, t-shirt with logo of social cause organization, pants, shoe, cap / hat, watch, cell phone, belt, eyeglass, and colour.

If you would like to change the MSN display picture, you likely find this animated avatar is cool and fun to serve as an alternative. After all, it’s free of cost is and somewhat recommended by Microsoft.

How to create Muggin for MSN display picture?

Follow this link to create a Muggin for your Windows Live Messenger or MSN display picture.

I’m not sure (unless I’ve tried) that a non-IE web browser is able to create and “install” the Muggin. As with my test, it was IE7 running in Protected Mode.

Once the Muggin customization (optional) completes, make sure you log in to Windows Live Messenger before click the Download button.

Finally, the new animated display picture can only be seen by your MSN contacts if your MSN status is NOT set to “appear online”.

Using TRK To Enable Vista SP1 Administrator Account And Reset Windows Password

Walker — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 09:18:40 +0000

If you lose or forget the Windows password, can you regain Windows account login? The answer is certainly yes (and there is not only one route to the Rome).

Take Windows Vista for example, the OS built in with a function calls “Create Password Reset Disk”. However, the question is how many of you bother to create one of this disk? Another problem of Windows Password Reset Disk is being unique to an account (good from security point of view).

That’s to say, even if you create a Windows Password Reset Disk for account A of Windows machine A, you cannot use it to reset account B of Windows machine A. In addition, what if the password reset disk corrupted?

If you wake up in such a bad day that you forget the password and there is NO Windows password reset disk, Trinity Rescue Kit may be able to get you back to luck.

Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) is a Live CD running Linux kernel; with an ISO image size at about 130MB; bootable from USB drive, CD/DVD, or over network from PXE.

The TRK owner, Tom Kerremans (a.k.a. Harakiri), creates a shell script calls winpass to automatically search and mount NTFS file system followed by calling chntpw to edit SAM file in %windir%\system32\config.

The magic is the chntpw (Offline NT Password & Registry Editor) that enable or unlock a Windows account (be it the real Vista SP1 Administrator account) and reset the Windows password to blank or new password.

How to use Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) to unlock Vista SP1 hidden Administrator account and reset the forgotten password to blank?

Linux OS is case-sensitive, i.e. Linux doesn’t agree “walker” and “Walker” are the same string. TRK is based on Linux kernel. Thus, please be reminded it’s also case-sensitive!

1) Download TRK from the genuine TrinityHome.org. In my “video-shot”, the latest Trinity Rescue Kit 3.3 build 321 is used (file name: trinity-rescue-kit.3.3-build-321.iso, MD5 checksum: 128abbe0a4b4d863d08bd10263f90755).

2) Burn the ISO image file to CD/DVD-ROM and boots it up (the easier way to boot up TRK). While the TRK boot menu appears, you have about 10 seconds to choose one of the boot options or just let it boots up with default option (recommended).

3) After the Linux boot processes complete, you should see the Linux command prompt appears. You’re ready to execute winpass shell script to start searching local hard disk for Windows NTFS file systems with Windows installation folder (%windir%). Unless it’s dual-boot machine, there is only 1 search result – enter 1 and press ENTER or just press ENTER to accept the default answer:

^{Type winpass to start searching Windows NTFS file system with Windows installation directory.}

When executing winpass without option switch, the default action of chntpw is to deal with Administrator account. To deal with particular Windows account, e.g. Walker, type

winpass -u Walker

Next, multiple lines of text scroll up. Take note of a section call SAM Policy Limits:

^{Vet through the winpass digest of SAM file and check is the Vista SP1 hidden Administrator account is currently locked or disabled.}

If the Vista SP1 hidden Administrator account is locked/disabled (i.e. the dis/lock keyword appears in “Locked?” column), choose option 4 to “unlock and enable user account”:

^{Use TRK winpass shell script to unlock or enabled the ultimate Vista SP1 Administrator account.}

When the “Unlocked!” keyword is seen, it indicates the Administrator account is successfully unlocked/enabled. Finally, execute winpass again and choose option 1 to reset the Administrator password to blank (doesn’t matter it’s actually blank or you’ve forgotten it).

That’s all to get the job done. Good luck!

How To Extend Windows Vista System Partition?

Walker — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:41:10 +0000

Windows Vista Disk Management tool allows user to extend or shrink the disk partitions online, without relying on 3rd party partition utilities (e.g. Partition Magic).

That’s to say, if you’re running out of free disk space on one partition, there is no need of running fdisk to recreate partition and then reinstall Windows (like my time with Windows 95/98).

However, the step to extend or resize partition with Windows Vista Disk Management tool might not be that straightforward in some cases.

For example, the Extend Volume option might be greyed out if you want to extend C: drive (which is the Windows Vista system partition):

^{How to extend Windows Vista system partition with the built-in Disk Management tool?}

You can’t extend Windows Vista system partition, because the built-in Disk Management tool is only able to extend the volume with focus into next contiguous unallocated space! In the screenshot (above), there is no “contiguous unallocated space” immediately after C: partition.

How to extend Windows Vista system partition with the bundled Disk Management tool?

There must be unallocated disk space after the partition that you want to extend. Unallocated disk space means a raw partition which is not formatted with a valid file system (e.g. NTFS, FAT32, EXT3,etc).

Thus, in this following screenshot, Windows Vista Disk Management is certainly able to extend or resize C: partition (i.e. system partition) by using the contiguous unallocated disk space:

^{How to trick Windows Vista Disk Management tool to extend C: partition?}

If you have two partitions, one being the system partition (e.g. C: drive) and the other being the data partition (e.g. D: drive), there are two ways of creating a contiguous raw partition to extend C: drive:

The easier way: Copy all data/files in D: drive to an USB hard disk (e.g. Western Digital My Book), right-click D: drive and click Delete Volume… to erase the D: drive file system.
Troublesome way: Shrink the D: drive partition to create new partition (e.g. E: drive), move D: drive data/files to E: drive, and apply Delete Volume… in D: drive.

The second way might not viable if there is not enough free disk space to backup the data/files in D: drive.

Windows Live Messenger Does Not Display Music Playing In Windows Media Player

Walker — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:37:07 +0000

Problem: Windows Live Messenger is not showing or displaying title of song played in Windows Media Player, i.e. none of the MSN contacts can see what song you’re listening to.

Reason: In order to display song or music title as “Personal Message” in Windows Live Messenger, both Windows Media Player and Windows Live Messenger must be configured for this feature.

Needless to say, the song or music must be playback in Windows Media Player (version 9 and above only).

(Note, it’s possible to display information of music playback in non-WMP player. But for this post, it’s about WMP and WLM :-).

Lastly, please be reminded that this feature is only available on Windows 2000 and above.

I think the second and third reason is straightforward. So, is time to look at how to configure Windows Live Messenger and Windows Media Player to display the song title you’re listening to for the online MSN contacts:

Configure Windows Live Messenger to display music title as personal message

Go to Windows Live Messenger, click the down-arrow icon of Personal Message box and click Show What I’m Listening To.

Alternatively, go to Tools menu, click Options and then the Personal option on left pane, make sure the Show song information from Windows Media Player as a personal message check-box is checked.

Configure Windows Media Player (version 11 on Windows Vista SP1) to show song title in Windows Live Messenger

In Windows Media Player, press ALT+T to bring up Tools menu, go to Plug-ins sub-menu and make sure the Windows Live Messenger Music Plugin is checked.

Note:

The song title display in Windows Live Messenger, change accordingly as Windows Media Player playing the playlist from track to track.

Once the music / song stop playing (press STOP not PAUSE, or simply close Windows Media Player), the last personal message before you playing the music/song is displayed in Windows Live Messenger (it’s empty if nothing was set there).

For Windows 7, Windows Live Messenger will not show music playing by Windows Media Player 12 unless the songs are added to Windows 7 Music Library.