Yanzzee

The goal of this project was to install network wiring throughout a house that only had the cable line in from the ISP. The house is a split level with four levels. The bottom basement is unfinished, but also has the cable line and modem installed on an unfinished wall. The primary need for this project was to wire up the bedroom used as an office, so wireless wouldn’t be the only option.

As an initial solution, I bridged an old Linksys router to our main wireless access point. This provided wired connections in the office without having to run wires the entire way. However, the Linksys router was slower than the bandwidth from the ISP, and was likely slowing down the wireless for all other connected devices. The router was also unreliable and required rebooting every few days. This was not the ideal situation to work on computers that might have other networking problems. Also, I felt that if I was not getting the full bandwidth from the ISP, I was cheating myself.

One so…

For conduit, white smoke, babylon, anything opencandy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCandy), and other browser hijackers I usually do the following.
1. uninstall these and anything unrecognizable from add/remove 2. in EACH browser   a. remove any add-ins/extensions   b. change the default web page/home page   c. remove any search engines that you don't recognize, set default to google 3. delete anything from c:\program files, c:\users\appdata that appears to be from the malware 4. run a full scan of Malwarebytes, and possibly other scans 5. probably also a good idea to clear your cache and cookies
I also heard that some trovi malware is also changing browser shortcuts on the desktop, and has a scheduled task to change these shortcuts. I haven't seen this personally, but it's worth checking. Apparently ADWcleaner is good at removing this.
My rule of thumb is that if it takes longer than 30 minutes to an hour to fix I'm going to re-install the OS. However this isn't always …

Dropbox was slowing down my startup after logging in, so I wanted to delay startup by a minute or so to allow my computer to be usable earlier. The normal settings only allow it to either start up immediately, or entirely manually. Below are instructions on how I got it to start after 2 minutes. I did this in Windows 7, but it should work similarly in Windows 8, 8.1, and probably Windows 10. This also works with other programs, so you could stagger startup items instead of having them all hammer the system at once.

1. Disable the normal dropbox startup.   a. Click on the dropbox icon, click the gear icon, and click Preferences...
  b. Uncheck "Start Dropbox on system startup". Click OK


2. Open the task scheduler.   a. From the Start menu, click All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Task Scheduler.
  This can also be found in the control panel under System & Security, Administrative Tools, or by searching in Start.

3. Create a new scheduled task.   a. Click Create Bas…

I needed to update from Respondus LockDown Browser Lab version 1.0.5.14 to version 1.0.7.02. This is how I've done it as an SCCM application. This could probably be modified to be used in some other deployment solution, but I've tested it with SCCM 2012 R2 and Windows 7 clients running 32 and 64 bit versions.

Install Shield files and installer folder First, you'll need to create setup.iss files. Instructions can be found here: http://www.respondus.com/update/2009-11-d.shtml

Here's their instructions for convenience:

First, be sure that Respondus LockDown Browser isn’t already installed on the computer. If it is, then un-install it before continuing. Download the full installer (LockDownSFX.exe) from the Respondus website. BE SURE to obtain the .exe via the admin login for your institution since the installer differs for each institution.Run the installer and select the "Click Here" link that appears next to the text, "Problems with the installation program?…

Click the link to download an unbeatable Tic-Tac-Toe game. It's possible to get a CAT game or lose, but the computer will never lose! You can also play two player if you want to have the possibility of winning.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2509724/TTT.exe









I created the program in high school after completing all of the assignments for the class. It was created with Visual Basic 6 with about 1200 lines of code. The program is fully functional, but certainly not polished. It was created pretty simply, e.g. the computer is not performing strategy, just making the pre-programmed best move, as Tic-Tac-Toe is a pretty simple game if you think about it. I also created a minesweeper game similar to the windows one, but I had a few bugs that I could never iron out. Sadly, I think I left that one on the classroom computer and don't have a copy. Shortly after this class I took a C++ class that helped me decide I no longer wanted to be a programmer! Feel free to distribute the program, but ple…