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Thu, Oct 03, 2024 10:32 pm
Starting the Windows Media Player (WMP) from a command prompt
If you wish to start the
Windows Media
Player (WMP) application from a
command-line
interface (CLI), such as a command prompt window, you can
do so by entering the command
"%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows Media
Player\wmplayer.exe"
at a command prompt window (be sure to enclose the
command within double quotes since there are spaces in the
directory path). You might wish to do so if you are logged into
one user account, but wish to open a movie or music file that is
not accesible from the currently logged in user account. If you
wished to run the program from an administrator account, you can
open a command prompt window as
an administrator or you can open a unprivileged command prompt window from
the currently logged in account and then use the
runas /user
command e.g.,
runas /user:username
"%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe"
where
username is the account name for the account from which you wish
to run the program. E.g.,
runas /user:jane "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows
Media Player\wmplayer.exe"
to run the Windows Media Player with Jane's
account privileges. If you need to run the command from a
Windows domain
account, you can use
runas /user:domainname\username
"%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe"
where
domainname is the name of the domain and
username is the
name of the domain user account. Once the Windows Media Player app
is open, you can then hit the
Ctrl-O
keys (the Ctrl
and the letter "O" key) simultaneously to open a window where you can then
browse for audiovisual files in directories to which the other user
account has access.
[/os/windows/software/audio-video/WMP]
permanent link
Tue, Sep 24, 2024 8:53 pm
Extracting files from a .jar file with the jar command
If you have a
JAR ("Java archive") file and wish to extract the files contained within
it from a
command-line interface (CLI) on a Microsoft Windows system,
you can do so by
opening a command
prompt window and using the
jar xf filename.jar
command,
where
filename.jar is the relevant .jar file, if you have
the
Java
Development Kit (JDK) installed on the system — the JDK software
can be downloaded for free from Oracle's
Java Downloads
page.
Minecraft uses
.jar files for mods and if you wish to view the models (.json files), textures
(.png files) within a JAR file used by Minecraft, you can use the
jar xf filename.jar
command to see those. If you
copy the .jar file to a directory where you wish to extract its contents
and then run the command from the directory in which the .jar file is located,
you should see a directory named assets
appear beneath which you
can find blockstates
, lang
, models
, and
textures
subdirectories.
The .json files files, such as those you may see in a models/block
subdirectory are
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
files, which you can view or edit in a text editor, such as the
Windows Notepad
application. The .png files, which you may see in a textures
subdirectory are Portable Network Graphics (PNG) files, which you can
view or edit in graphics applications such as
Microsoft Paint
on Microsoft Windows systems. You can also use a tool such as
Blockbench to work with the
JSON model files and PNG images.
[/os/windows/software/games/minecraft]
permanent link
Sat, May 25, 2024 10:05 pm
Using MakeMKV for ripping DVDs and for other A/V tasks
If you wish to "rip" a DVD, i.e., create a video file on a disk drive
from the DVD, one free program you can use on Microsoft Windows systems
or Mac OS X systems is
MakeMKV.
The software can also be used to extract a video file from an ISO image of a
DVD.
[ More Info ]
[/os/windows/software/audio-video]
permanent link
Fri, May 17, 2024 3:10 pm
View RDP Firewall Rule using PowerShell
If a Microsoft Windows system is running the
Microsoft Defender
Firewall,
firewall software that comes with Microsoft Windows systems, you can
check on whether connectivity is allowed on a particular
network
port from a
command-line
interface (CLI) using
PowerShell. You can determine whether the Windows Firewall is active on a
system from a command prompt
using the command netsh advfirewall show
currentprofile
. If the value of "State" is "ON", then the Windows
Firewall is active on the system.
C:\>netsh advfirewall show currentprofile
Domain Profile Settings:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
State ON
Firewall Policy BlockInbound,AllowOutbound
LocalFirewallRules N/A (GPO-store only)
LocalConSecRules N/A (GPO-store only)
InboundUserNotification Enable
RemoteManagement Disable
UnicastResponseToMulticast Enable
Logging:
LogAllowedConnections Disable
LogDroppedConnections Disable
FileName %systemroot%\system32\LogFiles\Firewall\pfirewall.log
MaxFileSize 4096
Ok.
C:\>
You can check on whether the firewall is permitting connectivity on a
particular network port, e.g., TCP port 3389 for the
Remote Desktop
Protocol (RDP), from a PowerShell prompt, which you can obtain by
typing powershell
in the Windows "Search" field at the bottom
of the screen and then clicking on Windows PowerShell when you see
it returned by the search function. At the PowerShell prompt, you can issue
the command Get-NetFirewallPortFilter | Where-Object { $_.LocalPort -eq
3389 } | Get-NetFirewallRule
. If you wished to check on whether
firewall connectivity is permitted for some other protocol, substitute
the port used by that protocol, e.g., port 22 for
Secure Shell (SSH)
connections.
[ More
Info ]
[/os/windows/software/security/firewall]
permanent link
Mon, May 06, 2024 10:31 pm
Stopping automatic updates to Microsoft Paint and other Microsoft Store apps
When I sat down at a system running the Microsoft Windows 11 operating
system on Saturday, I saw a message stating that
Microsoft Paint
had updated itself automatically. I had at least a dozen Paint windows open
where I had posted screenshots over the past week for things I wanted to
check later. I had not saved those Paint windows; I had anticipated going
through them on Saturday, extracting information I wanted to keep from some
images and then closing the windows and saving others. But I found
the update had just closed them all without any prompt asking whether
I wanted to save them and without saving the images. So I lost all the
information from them irretrievably. Certainly, I should have saved
the images in those Paint windows or used some other graphics application that
automatically saves the contents of windows for that application or at least
won't automatically update itself without saving any unsaved work, but I'm still
irritated at the mindset of Microsoft developers regarding not caring
about the impact to users if users have unsaved content in Microsoft
applications, in addition to being irked with myself for not saving
the information. I do use Paint a lot for simple graphics tasks, such as
cropping and resizing screenshots, and I don't want it updating itself
without warning when that may lead to a loss of information I haven't yet
saved. You can determine when a Microsoft Store app was last updated and turn
off automatic updates for apps obtained from the Microsoft Store, though
you have to turn off the auto update feature for all apps, since there is
not a way to do it only for a particular app, such as Paint.
[ More Info ]
[/os/windows/software/graphics/mspaint]
permanent link
Mon, Mar 18, 2024 8:47 pm
Removing admin rights from programs running in a Sandboxie sandbox
Sandboxie is a free and
open-source program that runs on systems using the Microsoft Windows operating system that
allows you to run other programs in a secure
sandbox.
If you wish to run programs in Sandboxie without the programs having
administrative rights, even if you are running Sandboxie from an account
that is in the system's administrator group, you can do so by editing the
Sandboxie configuration file, Sandboxie.ini. The file will usually be in the
C:\Windows
folder on most systems running a Microsoft Windows
operating system. Sandboxie will first look for its configuration file
in C:\Windows
, but if it doesn't find the file there, it will then
look in the Sandboxie installation folder, which will usually be
C:\Program Files\Sandboxie
or
C:\Program Files\Sandboxie-Plus
. When it finds an instance of
the file, it will not check other locations. There is a DropAdminRights
setting that can be used in the file. If you set the value to
y
for a sandbox, then any programs running in the sandbox
will have administrative rights stripped from them, i.e,. the security
credentials used to start the sandbox won't include membership in the
Administrators and Power Users groups. If you are running Sandboxie
from an account that is not an administrator account, then the setting
won't have any effect.
[ More
Info ]
[/os/windows/software/security/sandboxie]
permanent link
Sun, Aug 13, 2023 6:42 pm
CDisplay Installation File
While installing software that my wife uses on a new PC, I discovered
that the developer of
CDisplay, David Ayton, died in 2003 and the program is no longer
maintained. The application allows one to display
comic book
archive files, which are files with an extension of .cbr, cbz, .cbt,
or .cba — those files are renamed
RAR,
ZIP,
TAR, or
ACE
files. Since the website where I obtained the software almost two decades
ago, www.cdisplay.me, no longer exists, I've placed a Zip file
containing the installation program on this website at
CDisplay 1.8.1 so
that others who might need a copy of the software can access it.
[/os/windows/software/comics]
permanent link
Mon, Nov 15, 2021 10:23 pm
Converting a transparent PNG file to GIF in Corel PSP X4
I wanted to convert a transparent
PNG
file to a transparent
GIF
file for placement on web pages in an area on the pages that had a black
background. I could have modified the code for the pages to use the PNG
file that had been provided to me, but I thought I could easily convert
the PNG image I had been provided, which was an image of stylized white
text on a black background, to a GIF image and just replace the old
GIF image on the site with the one I had recently been given. Since I use
Corel PaintShop Pro X4 for image editing, I thought I could just use its
"save as" feature to resave the file in the GIF format. But when
I saved the transparent PNG file as a GIF file expecting transparency to be
maintained by clicking on
File, selecting
Save As and then
choosing GIF as the new format for the file, I found that transparency was not
maintained in the GIF file. I was able to produce the GIF file I needed by
the following steps, however.
[
More Info ]
[/os/windows/software/graphics/corel/psp]
permanent link
Sun, Oct 31, 2021 9:53 pm
Trimming an MP4 Video on a Microsoft Windows 10 system
On a Microsoft Windows 10 system, if you wish
to save just a portion of a video that is in
MP4 format,
you can do so if you are viewing the video in the
Movies &
TV application, which is the default program for playing videos,
by clicking on the pencil icon near the bottom, right side of the
window. If you double-click on the file for the video, it will likely
open in the
Movies & TV app, but if that is not the
default program for playing videos, you should be able to open it
in the program by right-clicking on the file and choosing
Open
with then selecting
Movies & TV. Once you click on
the pencil item in the application, you can then choose
Trim
which appears beneath
Edit in Photos. You should then see white
circles at the beginning and end of a white line at the bottom of the
video that represents the length of the video. You can drag those white
circles to the points in the video that you wish to be the starting and
stopping points for the video. E.g., if I had a video that was several
hours long, but I only wanted the first hour of the video, I could
drag the white circle at the bottom, ride side of the window to the
left until I saw 1:00, which represents 1 hour and 0 minutes. Once you
have just the portion of the video timeline you want isolated with the
white circles, click on
Save as, which appears near the top,
right side of the window next to an icon that depicts a pencil over a
3
1/2" floppy disk. You can then chose a file name you want for the
new copy as the program doesn't change your original file, but makes a
copy with just the portion of the original file you opted to save. By
default, the program will append "_trim" to the original file name.
If it is a large video, you may need to wait a few minutes for the new
file to be created from the larger original file.
[/os/windows/software/audio-video]
permanent link
Wed, Apr 22, 2020 4:44 pm
Disabling the execution of JavaScript in Foxit Reader
If you are concerned about malicious
JavaScript
being hidden inside a PDF file, you can upload the file to Google's
VirusTotal site which will scan
the file with many antimalware programs. The scan results will show if
any of the dozens of antivirus programs the site uses in its scans have
detected malware in the file. However, for additional security, you may
want to know if the file contains code that will automatically be executed
when you open the file in a PDF viewer or if it contains embedded JavaScript.
The VirusTotal site will provide that information. For PDF files, you will
see "pdf" displayed in a gray oval underneath the file that was scanned. If
there is code within the PDF file that will automatically be executed when
you open the file, next to that oval will be another one with "autoaction"
in it. Embedded JavaScript is denoted by an oval with "js-embedded" within
it. Just because you see "autoaction" or "js-embedded" doesn't mean the
JavaScript is malicious, but if you want to ensure any malicious JavaScript
isn't executed, if you are using the
Foxit Reader
program to view PDF files, you can disable its execution of JavaScript.
To disable the execution of JavaScript in Foxit Reader Version 5.3.1.0606,
take the following steps:
- From the menu at the top of the Foxit Reader window,
click on Tools and select Preferences.
-
Click on JavaScript on the left side of the Preferences
window that will open and then uncheck the check box for "Enable JavaScript
Actions."
Also click on Trust Manager from the Prferences menu
and make sure that the "Enable Safe Reading Mode" check box is checked.
In the description of that setting, you will see "Foxit recommends that you
check this option for controlling unauthorized actions and data transmissions;
including URL connections, launching external files and running JavaScript
functions to efficiently avoid attacks from malicious documents."
[/os/windows/software/pdf/Foxit]
permanent link
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