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Here are a few of my favorite sites for drivers, help,
software, and More!
Some antivirus sites:
Root Kits Info and tools:
Kill Spam:
Free Open Source...SpamBayes.
(Has a plug-in for Outlook 2000 and 2002) and
Spamilator
SAProxy has a
nice commercial product as Does Sunbelt Software
with the IHateSpam product.
The best thing you can do to avoid spam is to only give
your email address out to reputable businesses, and never click on the link
to remove you from the email list. (All this does is tell them that they
have a valid email address and that you are reading their SPAM!)
Check out my page on how to
help prevent Spam
Internet Filtering:
Parents... make sure you are monitoring and filtering
the Internet at home!!
Recommended programs and sites:
Cyber Patrol
is a nice filtering package for home. You can see if a site would be
filtered here(Ver5) or
here(Ver6) I
also like Cybersitter. (Cybersitter
is a one-time cost with no yearly or hidden fees.. many programs of this
nature have a yearly fee associated with them.)
Kid Defender
has received some nice reviews.
Fortres also has
some nice monitoring tools for time limits, history, etc...
Enuff is a
program for limiting computer time for children. Check out
http://www.familysafemedia.com
for some other nice tools.
Microsoft help and information
sites:
NT information:
 | www.backoffice.com |
| Paperbits Windows NT resources |
| Windows NT Magazine |
| The LabMice site is an excellent NT/2000 resource site |
| Tech Republic offers many
resources including some excellent tech email lists |
| Windows Registry Guide (http://regedit.com).
This site provides a handy list of Registry FAQ for NT and Windows 9x.
Kelly's Korner
also has some nice Registry Tweaks and Info. |
| WinFiles.com
(http://winfiles.com). This site contains a variety of NT and Win9x tips and
provides a unique Windows desktop-like interface. WinFiles.com also offers
shareware, driver downloads, and product reviews. |
| 15 Seconds
(http://www.15seconds.com). The 15 Seconds Web site gives helpful
information about IIS, Active Server Pages (ASP), and Microsoft Site Server. |
| NThelp
(http://www.nthelp.com). This site provides numerous administrative
tips. |
| Swynk.com (http://www.swynk.com).
Swynk.com provides many NT-related resources, including technical articles,
columns, a weekly newsletter, job listings, and Web-based discussions
boards. The site focuses primarily on Microsoft SQL Server, Systems
Management Server (SMS), and Exchange Server. |
| JSI (http://www.jsiinc.com). Part of
the Windows 2000 Magazine resource network. |
| Windows 2000 Magazine
(http://www.win2000mag.com). The Windows 2000 Magazine site offers a
wealth of information. I |
| NTSecurity.net (http://www.ntsecurity.net).
Also part of the Windows 2000 Magazine resource network,
NTSecurity.net is the definitive site for NT security information. |
| Windows NT FAQ (http://www.ntfaq.com)—This
site provides a selection of Q&As that cover nearly every Win2K and NT
administrative topic, from Active Directory (AD) to Registry tips. |
| Microsoft TechNet (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/). The TechNet site contains all
the information available on the CD-ROMs, as well as the most recent
updates. And, you don't have to swap disks.
|
A few download sites for shareware, freeware and demos:
A few places for tech support:
Security Sites:
|
Microsoft Security Bulletin Search site
allows you to find the current security issues with your Microsoft products. |
| How safe is your computer on the Internet? Check out the Shields-up
site to find out. Steve also has a Firewall Leak test tool on his
shields-up site! You may also want to visit
Security Metrics and
Data Scope. For a listing of port numbers check out the
IANA site. A nice
info on firewalls and ports can also be
found here. |
| A nice security web site with good info:
http://www.windowsecurity.com/
Behind the sceens... GFI is affiliated with this site...so their products get
good reviews.) |
|
HackerWhacker
offers a higher level of security by scanning your PC's entire range of more
than 130,000 possible port addresses. It
also examines Windows' NetBIOS networking configuration. HackerWhacker
provides a complementary trial scan, but additional scans cost $10
apiece. |
| Symantec has a free security check site at www.symantec.com/securitycheck. |
| Microsoft has released a Personal
Security Advisor scanner for Win 2000 and NT 4 machines. (Sept. 2001) |
|
Network Word has a nice article on SOHO routers (Summer 2002) |
| Foundstone has some excellent
security tools. |
| The SANS site has excellent general info
on security. They also maintain the
top
20 Vulnerabilities of networks list in cooperation with
the FBI. |
| Security Focus
has a nice Info site with some good list serves. |
| NTbugtrac (Russ
Cooper's site) is a site that has a great list serve to follow the NT bugs. |
| Eric Cole's Security haven siteHacker
is excellent. He also has a nice book-- Hackers Beware |
| BlackIce defender can help
protect your computer from unwanted visitors |
| Want to trace who an IP is? Check out Tracer.bat |
|
This site has a
nice map to locate where an IP address is located. |
| Network Solutions
also offers a "whois" web site to find out information about
a domain. Want to find out if a domain is open to register?? Check
out this site which allows searches with wild cards! |
| Stat offers it's Stat Scanner
discovery tool for free. |
| NT Magazine has posted an excellent Security
Book/resource on the web |
| Lockdown
your IIS server |
| Articles on Security: At
Tech Rupublic |
| The nessus security scanner is great
for checking your network for vulnerabilities. (Open Source-- highly
recommended and good reviews.) |
| Microsoft's
Network Security Hotfix Checker (HFNetChk) version 3.2 is a command-line
tool that enables an administrator to check the patch status of Windows NT
4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP machines. The
pro version can be found here. |
|
A
nice Free scanner is located here to check your computer against needed
patches and security risks. |
| Excellent
site on Microsoft's ISA server. |
| ISASERVER.ORG
has the answer to all of your ISA server questions and setup. (Check out the
Learning Zone!) A few more nice ISA sites:
ISAtools.org and
Toolzz ISA tools and this
FTP site |
|
Microsoft
Personal Security Advisor (MPSA) is a Web application that uses an ActiveX
plugin to perform security checks on Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0
systems. (MPSA is available at the URL below.) MPSA checks include the
following: account password strength, password length, automatic logon,
anonymous access, auditing, service packs, shares, file systems, services,
Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), Microsoft Outlook zones, and Microsoft
Office macro settings. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/mpsa/start.asp
MPSA provides a solution and detailed implementation instructions for any
problems the tool finds. Although Microsoft designed MPSA for Win2K and NT
machines, the application also works with Windows XP.
|
|
TRACK
IP ADDRESSES
Jufsoft
released WhereIsIP 2.0, software that lets you find geographic locations of
IP addresses, Web sites, I Seek You (ICQ) contacts, email messages senders,
and connections. You provide an IP address, domain name, or email address
and the software shows you a detailed geographic location for the target,
including country, state, and city. WhereIsIP 2.0 runs on Windows 2000,
Windows Me, and Windows 9x systems and costs $19.50 for a single-user
license. Contact Jufsoft at sale@jufsoft.com.
http://www.jufsoft.com |
|
Security
Administrator has an excellent site with great info..
NGSSoftware now offers a free packet-capture and analysis
tool called NGSSniff. The tool runs on Windows XP
and Win2K using the raw socket capabilities of the
OS or the Microsoft Network Monitor drivers.
NGSSniff can also import captured packets from files saved using
Network Monitor so you don't need to install additional drivers. The
GUI-based tool offers packet sorting and ASCII text viewing of packet
data and can view packets in realtime without having to first stop a
capture operation. NGSSniff is available as a free download from the
NGSSoftware Web site. http://www.nextgenss.com/products/ngssniff.html |
|
Have you ever lost or forgotten a user password? Several
tools are available that can help you in those
situations, including Peter Nordahl's Offline NT
Password & Registry Editor tool (see the first URL
below). Nordahl's tool is available in the form of a floppy boot disk
image, which contains a single-floppy version of the Linux OS along
with software that resets any valid user's password. The tool works
on systems that have Syskey enabled--a nice
touch--and you can also use the tool to disable
Syskey. If you prefer to use a CD-ROM-based boot
image, DMZ Services offers one that contains a mini-Linux boot image
and Nordahl's password recovery software (second URL below). DMZ
Services offers a shell script that can create the bootable
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)-based image and
offers an ISO-based file (.iso) that you can burn directly onto a CD-RW
using standard CD-RW burning software.
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd
http://www.dmzs.com/tools/files |
|
A few more tools include
TraceRoute, a freeware sniffer called
TCPDump, and
Foundstone
offers some excellent free utilities. |
|
New Router Security Analysis Tool: Free
--
April 2002 SANS just reported on a new version of the Router Analysis
Tool, running on both UNIX and Windows. It was released yesterday by the
Center for Internet Security. CERT/CC issued a report late last fall saying
routers are a new favorite target of attackers. If you use Cisco routers, it
makes sense to test their security settings using this free program. Go to the
site below and click on the Cisco IOS Router Security Benchmark Tool:
|
Check out the
top 50 security tools at
Insecure.org
UPnP is installed by default on WInXP-- Learn why you
should disable this service and the MSN explorer program from all WInXP
systems.
Pluto
is a vulnerability assessment program
EventWatchNT is a freeware tool for monitoring your NT/2000 event logs.
(Will even email you.)
Sygate Firewall
is not our corporate firewall, but it is a nice free one
for the traveling and home users.
Wavelock is a free wireless lockdown tool that prevents users from running
wireless cards.
The NtDump project is proud to
announce the release of NtDump Version 1.0. NtDump allows system
administrators to audit their security by viewing information normally hidden
from view by Microsoft Windows.
This is a
great place for keeping abreast of SQL
security issues.
Nice Article on using Nmap to check your network
HFNETCHKLT GOES FURTHER IN DISCOVERING MISSING PATCHES
The HFNetChk tool included in Microsoft's Baseline Security Analyzer has
been updated. See how to take advantage of its new functionality, and
learn how to go one step further with Shavlik's HFNetChkLT.
Nice TechRepublic Article.
Eraser
and
Sure Delete are a couple of free programs for totally erasing information
off of computer. (Fdisk and formatting still leave traces!)
Akonix Rogue Aware
is a free monitoring tool that detects and reports on IM and P2P File Sharing
use within corporate networks. Rogue Aware quickly exposes hidden instant
messaging and P2P traffic and allows IT administrators to view usage
statistics. Rogue Aware is critical risk management tool in assessing network
vulnerabilities during security audits. Supported IM networks include AOL,
MSN, and YAHOO. Supported P2P clients include KaZaA, KaZaA Lite, Grokster,
Bearshare, Limewire, Morpheus, Shareaza, Phex, Swapper, and Xolox.
The protocol
analysis institute has a nice web page with some excellent resources.
Neoteris has a nice
VPN appliance that is easy to use and highly secure. Check out their IVE
product line.
Spyware and Adware:
|
Spyblocker is a program that
renders Spyware mute and Ad-Ware
is a program that identifies Spyware on your computer and allows you to
remove it.
|
|
SpyBot is a nice freeware
program for detecting Spyware on your computer.
|
|
The Spyware Info site
even has an online spyware scanner.
|
|
HyJackThis is a nice
freeware program for looking at what is starting up without your knowledge.
www.sysinternals.com has a nice free
program called autoruns that assist with this same task.
|
|
Have spyware or stealthware on your system? Try
Lavasoft's Ad-aware program.
Spychecker.com also keeps a database
of stealthware and spyware programs.
|
| The best way to block ad sites is to send the ad request
from your Web browser to the host machine's loop-back address. To do this,
add a 127.0.0.1 bad_ad_site.com entry in the host
file of every machine on your network. Then, when a Web page contains a
reference to an ad located on the bad_ad_site.com
server, your browser will first consult the hosts file
locate the IP address before sending a DNS request for the ad site
content. The request for content will appear blank in the browser, so no
cookies or spyware will be loaded or accessed.
Rather than spending months developing your own
list of ad servers to enter into your hosts file,
you can use Gorilla Design Studio's
list, which contains over 17,000 entries. |
| Pest Patrol is a
nice program that will also help find some Trojans that virus scanners
might miss.
|
Internet Speed testing and Improvements:
DSL Reports site also has an
excellent tweak site
Cable DSL Modem Tuning site
Navas Group offers technical info on
Modems and high-speed access
A few sites for DNS and tracer and other info:
Hardware Site
Atek offers a variety
of products. (Check out the Tote-Remote for PowerPoint presentations.)
Mwave offers a variety of products.
Krista Micro has reasonable prices. (Must be
a reseller.)
Promise Technology makes reasonable priced
RAID cards for ATA drives
HWinfo is a nice simple program for
determining hardware info.
Tom's Hardware --nice general info
site.
Miscellaneous sites:
Networking Information:
Networking Tools:
Adkins-Resource the makers of
Hyena, provide a free
exporter tool which will export data about users, groups, disk space, etc...
The data can be exported to a spreadsheet or database.
Ntop is a nice freeware
network monitoring tool.
A
nice online subnet calculator and tool
Qcheck is an excellent free utility for
checking network throughput and troubleshooting problems.
WinInstall LE 2003 is a nice free program for making
Window Installer files. Pickup a copy
here.
Need to change admin passwords on all of your local
machines... This is the
free tool to do it. (And it is free!)
Languard
network scanner is excellent for finding out what is on your network.
A listing of some nice
network tools can be found here.
Mamba is a free-
real-time network monitoring tool.
Sysinternals software offers some
great NT utilities, including a free
SID changer program, a page file defragmenter and more! Also checkout Rasco's
site to analyze disk fragmentation over the web! They also have a tool for
testing disk download speed from the web.
Neotrace is a nice tool for doing a
trace route. This web site also
does a trace route with map!
Inuse.exe
Microsoft has released InUse to enable the replacement of a file that is
currently in use by the operating system. Normally a Service Pack or an
application's set-up program does this, but there may be times when you need to
replace a single file on the fly.
This command-line program supports batch files by including a /y parameter that
allows the replacement confirmation to be switched off.
InUse.exe is available from Microsoft.
Printmig.exe
Imagine you have a mass of printer ports set up on a Windows NT-based print
server. Now imagine that it crashes irrevocably and must be rebuilt without a
restore being possible, or you have to duplicate the ports on another server.
VNC makes remote
control a breeze... and it is free! TridiaVNC
also has a free remote control product. You may want to
consider tight VNC over the original VNC....
and yes it is free also! Site with info on the SOCKs protocol
Emergency Undelete and Disk KeeperLite
are free tools offered by Executive Software.
RegClean
and Tweak
UI (For Win 95 and NT) and Tweak
UI for WIn 98 are a few useful tools from Microsoft.
QUEST SOFTWARE - FREE REAL-TIME WINDOWS DIAGNOSTICS
Don't let performance problems hamper the health of your Windows OS.
Spotlight(tm) on Windows is a real-time diagnostic tool that pinpoints
bottlenecks and provides powerful drill-downs to eliminate them fast.
Download the freeware today:
http://www.quest.com/landing/windows_pros3.asp
This is a nice site with
info on the Fdisk utility
Aida32 is a Freeware
network tool that has some nice features.
A really nice freeware network probe/analyzer
can be found here.
EMCO software has some nice freeware utilities
including remote shutdown and License Managers
Raritan makes a nice remote access KVM
type of product called the IP-Reach. Check it out.
Ecora offers a
free network tool called NetExplorer
Sniff'em make a reasonable priced packet
sniffer with a robust feature set.
Peer Monitor is a nice
freeware ping monitoring tool for network connectivity. It will even email you
when there are problems.
Overseer
Network monitor is a very reasonable simple network monitor tool.
http://www.paessler.com/ has some nice network and Traffic monitor packages.
health
monitor is a nice freeware package for network admins.
WMI code creator from Microsoft, offers WMI scripting solutions.
Windows 2000 sites:
Visit Microsoft's Windows
2000 Learning center for Online Courses
The Windows 2000 experience
site has a wealth of information
Windows 2000
deployment and planning kit can be found here.
A great site for hardware and software
compatibility of products for Windows 2000.
This site contains a nice section on
Tweaking Win 2000.
Various articles from Win 2000 magazine: Win
2000 NAT, Win
2000 Disk tools, Win
2000 AD, and Software
installation in Win 2000.
The searchwin2000 site offers a
variety of information and resources.
EventId.net is a
nice site for looking for Microsoft Event ID's
Tackle Common Tasks With These How-to Resources from Microsoft
Exchange Server:
Add school
forms in exchange server!
A few Tech Tools:
| Boot disks
You can't get too far without a boot disk. I suggest you carry three:
Windows 98, Windows 95, and DOS 6.22. It's also advisable to make sure you
have the appropriate utilities with you as well—FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM,
SYS.COM, and such. These three disks will keep you running in sync with most
of the Windows systems you'll be troubleshooting. If you can't create your
own boot disks, download them from Bootdisk.com.
Once there, you can also find NT4 and Win2K boot disks, along with earlier
versions of DOS. |
| Bootable CDs.... Visit this
site to make bootable CD's |
| Directory Freedom
The latest version of this program, if you want to call it latest, is
version 4.61, written way back in 1993. And believe it or not, it is still
as powerful as ever. In my opinion, it's the best DOS file utility ever
created. To get the program running, you simply type DF at the prompt
and press [Enter]. Once this is done, you can navigate every drive on the
system. You can also copy and move files, rename files and directories,
change attributes, explore file archive contents, examine ASCII strings
within binary files, edit text files, and more. The best part is that you
can do all of this from an interface that resembles a DOS "dir"
command. For what it does, this is an incredible utility, and I can't
recommend it enough. Stop whatever you're doing and get it now. You can find
it at PC World.com and other fine
download sites.
Here is a recent quote from a veteran user:
My personal assessment is this: Directory Freedom is a truly superb little
utility. It runs wonderfully in DOS and in any operating system (e.g.,
Windows 3.1 or Windows 95) which includes DOS. Alas, Windows XP has a DOS
look-alike (Command Prompt) whose underlying code is *not* true DOS. As a
result, when run under Windows XP, Directory Freedom no longer works with
the mouse as explained in my original message; in that enviroment, it is a
keyboard utility only. Even with this limitation, though, Directory Freedom
is still quite useful, albeit not as much as before. Hence I would not
eliminate mention of it altogether, but would suggest adding a caveat along
the lines just described. |
| PKZIP for DOS
Yup, we were zipping files way before Windows! PKZIP was the original and is
still the best zipping tool for DOS. You'll need this package when you are
required to extract .zip files on your machine and are unable to boot into
Windows. PKZIP for DOS has been updated over the years. The latest version,
2.50, has Win9x long file name support among its improvements. You can
download it from PKWARE. |
| F-Prot for DOS
You shouldn't even think about troubleshooting a system without first
scanning a machine for viruses. F-Prot has several advantages over larger
Windows virus programs. Such favorites as McAfee and Norton have become too
Windows-dependent and are much too large for floppies. F-Prot is a DOS-based
program and runs off two disks. One disk contains the engine and the other
has the virus definition files. F-Prot is also disposable. You can throw
away the floppies once they've disinfected a system. Best of all, F-Prot is
free. You'll find it, along with the current definition files, at Simtel.Net. |
| Partition Magic
Did you know that Partition Magic comes with a DOS-based utility? The file
is PQMAGICT.EXE, a menu-driven, text-only version of this powerful program
that fits on a single floppy and runs via the prompt. Why would you need PM
on a floppy? Try this example: An employee has their C drive and can't
boot to DOS. You load the machine using a boot disk, run PQMAGICT.EXE, and
create a new partition. From this point, you can copy the "bad"
partition to the newly created partition, reformat the C drive, reinstall
the OS, and restore the data files from the new partition. Once all files
have been restored, you can safely delete the new partition. It's a real
lifesaver. PQMAGICT.EXE is part of the Partition Magic package available
from PowerQuest. |
| Easily convert PDF files to Word with
Scansoft PDF Converter. (It gets great
reviews.) |
|
ProduKey by Nirsoft ...ir
Sofer has done it again! This time a freeware tool aptly named ProduKey.
When you fire it up, it shows you the names of all the products it can find
keys for, including the product ID#, the actual product key and more
goodies. If you double-click on one of the highlighted entries, ProduKey
shows detailed data and you can stick that on the clipboard. |
Programming Sites:
Free Programming Courses Online are offered at CodeWarriorU!
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