Use DiskPart to remove GPT partitions

Posted on by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

The standard Windows XP GUI tools will not allow you to modify a disk which uses the GUID parition table (GPT) instead of the standard MBR. This is a particular problem if you have used an external disk in a Mac; for example, I used an external HDD as the TimeMachine backup device on a friend’s MacBook. Now that she has her own external HDD, I wanted my disk back, but Windows appears not to recognise the disk.

To the rescue comes DiskPart (courtesy of pitumbo).

DISKPART> select disk N
DISKPART> clean

DiskPart itself has a range of useful options for managing and inspecting disks, partitions and volumes. For example:

Blogger to remove Publish via FTP

Posted on by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

As I suspected some time ago, but at a much later time than I thought, Google is finally going to switch off the “Publish via FTP” option from Blogger (http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/2010/01/deprecating-ftp.html, http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/), causing much ranting on Twitter


The FTP feature was great, in that you got all the benefits of the Blogger editor interface, but all the files were published as flat files to a custom web server. Better still, you could cajole Blogger into saving the files as PHP, thereby providing a cunning integration with flat-HTML websites, without the use of a database or blogging software installed on the server.

Apparently, this caused Blogger a great deal of headache, particularly in resolving support incidents: only .5% of active blogs used FTP for publishing (although I bet all those were “real” blogs, rather than spam or SEO-drivers).

I think this means we’ll need to install the blogging software on our servers, software such as WordPress (http://wordpress.org/). We need a mechanism which allows PHP scripts, so that the content can be embedded within the website itself, not hosted at some crummy http://blog.domain.com/ separate domain. This rules out the Google Custom Domain option.

Less than two months’ notice is not great, but hopefully we should be able to improve on Blogger anyhow.

Verified by Visa Confirmed Dangerous

Posted on by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

New research from the University of Cambridge supports the view that Verified by Visa is deeply flawed and unsafe. I first came across this mess of an implementation a while back, and the situation has only become worse since then:

the scheme has become a target for phishing, partly because inconsistent authentication methods can leave customers confused.

It’s time to insist that Visa, MasterCard and other payment gateway providers take some responsibilty for this, and stop pushing risk onto the customer.

WMIC – command-line control of WMI functions

Posted on by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

Before Windows PowerShell and all the flexibility (and complexity) that brings, there was WMIC, the command-line client for WMI.

WMIC works out of the box with Windows XP and later (including Server 2003 and Vista), and allows access to operations provided via WMI: “a powerful, user-friendly interface to the WMI namespace”. Upon first use, the WMIC environment is installed:

C:\> WMIC

Please wait while WMIC is being installed...

Several tasks which normally feel very GUI-oriented, such as checking the battery status, are made very “command-line” with WMIC:

C:\> WMIC Path Win32_Battery Get BatteryStatus /Format:List

BatteryStatus=1

In this case, the batter is discharging. You can see the beginnings of PowerShell in the syntax and detailed status/operations available. Another useful command is useraccount, to return details of the user accounts on the system:

C:\> WMIC useraccount list brief
AccountType  Caption                  Domain     FullName       Name   SID
512          SKELTON-M\Administrator  SKELTON-M  Administrator         S-1-5-21-68**03330-*********-839**2115-500
512          SKELTON-M\Guest          SKELTON-M  Guest                 S-1-5-21-68**03330-*********-839**2115-501
...

Or how about terminating a specific process (notepad.exe) from the command-line? Here we go:

C:\> WMIC process where name='notepad.exe' call terminate

Executing (\\SKELTON-M\ROOT\CIMV2:Win32_Process.Handle="4652")->terminate()
Method execution successful.
Out Parameters:
instance of __PARAMETERS
{
        ReturnValue = 0;
};

It’s helpful to install the WMI Administative Tools, so you can explore the WMI namespace and investgate the operations available to you via WMIC. For example, to determine the name of the time zone currently used by the system, use the TimeZone path:

C:\> WMIC Path Win32_TimeZone Get StandardName /Format:List

StandardName=GMT Standard Time

The time zone for my computer currently is “GMT Standard Time”.

For simple operations which do not merit PowerShell scripts or installation, WMIC is a good choice.

Improving broadband speed with BT

Posted on by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

If you are not one of the lucky ones to have received a recent cost-free upgrade from BT to 20MBit/s ADSL, and your broadband speed is less than good, here are some steps to diagnose the problems.

First we’ll check the actual line speed.

Go to http://bthomehub/ or maybe http://bthomehub.home/ – note: no “www” or “com” in there. If you get a status page then you are looking at the modem/router (BT Home Hub). It should give some stats like these:

My broadband connection
Your broadband line is connected.
Broadband connection details:
Downstream 15,323 Kbps
Upstream 888 Kbps
Connection time 3 days, 22:58:21
Data transmitted 166.57 MB
Data received 3.21 GB

It’s the Upstream an Downstream values which you need to record somewhere. The values should be at least 2,000 Kbps Downstream (“2 Meg”) and at least 200Kbps Downstream for a basic broadband service (these speeds will soon be mandatory).

If your speeds are less than or close to these values, you can try some of these steps:

1. Get a BT Broadband Accelerator – basically a better microfilter.

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/ consumerProducts/displayTopic.do? topicId=25075&s_cid=btb_FURL_accelerator

Go here, and select “Yes” in response to “Do you have more than one working phone socket in your home?” Then choose the socket which matches your “master socket” – hopefully it’s like #4. Sockets #1-#3 do not work with the Accelerator. Then you pay the P&P and BT deliver it – no other charges.

Installation should be simple. Do this first (or else establish that your socket is incompatible), and then (if the speed does not increase) try option 2 below.

2. Run the BT speed test wizard: http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/php/enduser/cci/bt_adp.php? p_sid=&cat_lvl1=346&cat_lvl2=401&cat_lvl3=407&cat_lvl4=753 &p_cv=4.753&p_cats=346,401,407,753&p_faqid=12666 or here: https://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/ php/enduser/doc_serve.php?&5=7. This asks you some questions about your connection.

This page also contains some good advice, which you can check, particularly around faulty wiring:
http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/ php/enduser/cci/bt_adp.php? p_sid=bgLqHKKj&p_faqid=9611&cat_lvl1=346 &cat_lvl2=401&cat_lvl3=407& p_cv=3.407&p_cats=346,401,407

e.g.

Check for faulty home internal phone wiring

Poorly-installed home phone wiring or poor quality phone extension leads (often with a flat rather then round cable profile) are the most common causes of slow broadband speeds. This is because they are more prone to electrical interference, which causes BT Broadband to reduce data speeds to compensate. You can test for this as follows:

  1. If you have a phone master socket like the one in the photo here (that is, square with a horizontal groove halfway down it, and removable upper and lower cover), we recommend you remove the lower cover as shown, taking care not to dislodge any wiring. Do not remove the upper cover. This will reveal a test socket on the right-hand side. This connects directly to the exchange, bypassing your home phone wiring and extensions.Phone master socket
  2. Plug your router or modem directly into this test socket via a microfilter.
  3. Recheck your connection speed as per Step 2 above, ensuring you refresh your browser page first. If your connection speed has increased significantly, this indicates a likely fault or interference source within your home wiring. If it remains unchanged, this indicates either no fault, or the fault or interference is more likely to be in BT’s wiring or in your local exchange.

Re-run the line speed checks (at http://bthomehub/) and check the new Upstream and Downstream speeds. Are they significantly different?

3. Finally, if the above do not fix the issue, BT have a “Broadband Accellerator” service where an engineer comes to the house:

http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/ php/enduser/cci/bt_catpage.php? cat_lvl1=346&cat_lvl2=1282& cat_lvl3%20=1859&p_cv=3.1859&p_cats=346,1282,1859

“The work we do on your home wiring should increase your connection speed by at least 1Mbps” – if your current connection is only 2Mbps, this would represent a 50% speed increase.

“If your Internet connection speed (independent of the broadband network speed) has not increased by at least 0.5Mbps, you are entitled to claim your money back.”

It’s not clear how much this service costs, but I think it’s about £80.

Your final option is… move to the city!