Remount Ejected or Safely Removed USB Device Without Unplug and Reinsert

f you’ve requested for the free license of USB Safely Remove, then probably you have tried the new feature which is the “Return Device Back!”. After you had stopped the device, but still did not unplug it, sometimes it is quite useful to return it back into the system. For example if you remembered that you forgot to write a file to the external drive. In order to do it, you have to physically reconnect the device, however sometimes it’s quite inconvenient to do if the device is connected to the rear panel of the computer.

USB Safely Remove claims to be the first Windows program that allows you to return stopped device back and I thought that there isn’t a way to do it without using a software. Thanks to Ed for his valuable tip, we can now remount the ejected USB device with a few simple mouse clicks without reinserting (unplug and insert) the USB device.

Here’s what you need to do to have the “return device back” feature without using USB Safely Remove software.

1. Right click My Computer and select Properties (or you can simultaneously press Win+Pause/Break key). In System Properties window, go to the Hardware tab and then click the Device Manager button. In Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can just click the Device Manager link located at the left hand sidebar when you are at the System Properties window.

2. Click View from the menu bar and select “Devices by Connection“.

3. Find the parent USB Root Hub of the USB device that has a yellow color exclamation mark. Right click on the USB Root Hub and select Disable. Again right click on the same USB Root Hub that you’ve just disabled and this time select Enable.

Voila! The drive letter has been returned back to My Computer and the autorun or autoplay window will appear if it is enabled. Since this can be done in Windows itself, Microsoft Windows development team should consider adding a feature to easily re-enable the drive after ejecting without unplugging and reinserting. This tip has been verified to work on Windows XP, Windows Vista and even the latest Windows 7. No doubt that unplug and reinsert it way faster than this method IF the USB port is easily accessible. If not, this method would save you from bending your back and trying to reach the back of the case.

Thanks Ed for sharing something that took him 2 years to discover!

Re-Enable Brings Back Run, Task Manager, Regedit, CMD, Folder Options and System Restore

One of our forum member tangomouse has created a nice and simple tool called Re-Enable to help us re-enable disabled Task Manager, Registry Editor, Command Prompt, Folder Options and even System Restore configuration that is normally caused by virus. Honestly the tool that I’ve been using to do this is Remove Restriction Tool v1.03 but now the latest version of RRT has grown so much that I’d say it’s a little too bloated. I just needed a simple tool that does the job and doesn’t have all those flashy interface that sometimes I can’t run on a virus infected computer. This project started off to help another forum member but somehow it ended up in Softpedia and now in this blog.

As you can see at the screenshot below, it’s a no brainer to use this tool. All you need to do is put a check on the checkbox that you want to enable and click the Enable button. The disable feature will be instantly enabled or if not, a reboot would do the trick. Please make sure that the computer is free from virus or else the changes made by this tool will not be effective and there is no end to enabling/disabling competition between you and the virus.

Re-enable is coded in .NET but doesn’t need .NET installed because .NET dependencies are included in the program making it fully portable. That is why a single file is in 36.7MB. However if you working on a computer that already have .NET framework installed, then you can just use the 64KB version instead.

This product was last tested in the Softpedia Labs on 1st of September 2009 by Cosmin Anton and they guarantee that Re-Enable Portable 1.0.0.0 is 100% Clean, which means it does not contain any form of malware, including but not limited to: spyware, viruses, trojans and backdoors. Re-Enable is only in version 1 and I am sure that it can be improved with a couple more features without making it too bloated.

[ Download Re-Enable With .NET | Without .NET ]

MetrO Worldwide Public Transport Systems for PDA or Phone

I will be going for my honeymoon next week and I’ve done a lot of research to prepare myself so that I won’t get really lost or waste a lot precious time when I am traveling in Europe with my wife. I will be bringing my Garmin Nuvi GPS along with me so that I know where is my current location. The Point of Interest feature in my GPS is also very helpful in finding nearby hotels, restaurants and etc. Another important gadget that will guide me along the way is my newly bought HTC Touch 3G PDA. At first I wanted to buy a simple and cheap Nokia phone but it lacks of third party software, so I went for a PDA instead. It’s running on Windows Mobile 6.1 and there are tons of software for it.

I know that most Europeans travel around Europe using trains and subways. I don’t want to go there then only learn about it so I looked for a software that can maybe help me find my way in public transport systems in Europe and I found MetrO.

Métro is your free guide on PDA (Palm, PocketPC, iPhone, BlackBerry, Smartphone, Symbian) to public transport systems worldwide with over 400 cities covered now. Other than that, updating the software and city files is easy when you install another software called MétrUp. It is a tool that connects to the free update service and downloads the latest versions of your Métro program & city files. You select which cities you want to update (select only one if your connection to the internet is slow) and the programs check if a new version is available. When it finds one, it downloads the file to your device and automatically update the city. If you already have the latest release, no transfer occurs.

Installing MetrO on your Windows Mobile PDA is very easy. Just download the correct package and run setup.exe which will bring up ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center to install MetrO. Wait, it’s not finished yet because you have manually copy the cities .PDB file to your mobile. You can either transfer all cities which is located in ALL folder or select a few from the list. As for me, I only select the cities that I’ll be in so that I won’t waste the memory space on my PDA and also it loads faster when searching for cities file.

ust put in where you are and where you want to go and the software takes you there. There are a lot of small buttons with no description on it. So make sure you get familiar with the software MetrO before you use it. The best place to learn about how to use MetrO is at the official user guide webpage.

[ Download MetrO ]

2 Free Tools to Recover Firefox Saved Usernames and Passwords

Firefox can securely save passwords you enter in web forms to make it easier to log on to websites. By default the option “Remember passwords for sites” option is enabled but you will still be asked whether to save passwords for a site when you first visit it. Clicking the Remember button will save the login information, Not Now button to ignore it or Never for This Site, that site will be added to an exceptions list and will never prompt you to save the username and password for that site. This feature is available at every web browser and is offered as a convenience but also increases the risk of your login information being exposed.

I normally save most of the usernames and passwords on my laptop because I am the only user and that computer is not shared with anyone else. If the laptop is not stolen or Windows is not hacked, then my usernames and passwords are pretty safe. One big reason I never let anyone touch my laptop is because someone could just run either of the 2 free portable tools to grab all my website passwords. Of course, we can also put these 2 tools to good use such as recovering
the sign-on details when Firefox fails to open.

1. FirePasswordViewer

- FirePasswordViewer is the GUI version of popular FirePassword tool designed to decrypt sign-on secrets stored by Firefox. FirePasswordViewer tool can decrypt and display these secrets on the same lines as the Firefox built-in password manager. The main advantage of FirePasswordViewer is that it does not require Firefox to be running. Also FirePasswordViewer can be used to display sign-on secrets from different profile (other than current profile) as well as from the different operating system (such as Linux, Mac etc) altogether. This greatly helps forensic investigators who can copy the relevant files from the target system to test machine and view the credentials offline without affecting the target environment. The displayed sign-on information can then be saved to a file in standard HTML format which can be used as valuable and quick offline reference.

[ Download FirePasswordViewer ]

2. PasswordFox

PasswordFox is a small password recovery tool that allows you to view the user names and passwords stored by Mozilla Firefox Web browser. By default, PasswordFox displays the passwords stored in your current profile, but you can easily select to watch the passwords of any other Firefox profile. For each password entry, the following information is displayed: Record Index, Web Site, User Name, Password, User Name Field, Password Field, and the Signons filename.

[ Download PasswordFox ]

To protect yourself against these 2 tools, simple enabling and setting a Master password would stop this 2 tools from harvesting your login information. You can do that in Tools > Options > Security tab > check “Use a Master password” and enter the password twice.

Note: Here’s a weird case of false positives. According to VirusTotal, 27 out of 41 antivirus detects PasswordFox as hacktool/trojan but NONE detects FirePasswordViewer as a threat. Now both tool does the same thing, do you think that PasswordFox is infected or a false detection? To me, PasswordFox is a tool that’s more likely to be used by hackers because it can be ran with a command line using a backdoor trojan while the user is using the computer and he won’t know a thing about it. As for FirePasswordViewer, the hacker would have to run the program, click the Show button and then Export the results. You should read about what Nir Sofer has to say about the false detection on his programs.

Review on FortiClient Endpoint Security Suite Standard Edition, the FREE Antivirus by Fortinet

I’ve only heard of Fortinet from VirusTotal as it is one of the antivirus engines that participate in VirusTotal. Fortinet has recently provided a free version of their antivirus program called FortiClient Endpoint Security Suite which is not much of a difference compared to the premium paid version. The only features that is not found in the Standard edition is an antispam protection, central management and logging. For a home user, these features are mostly not needed and the already available features (Antivirus/Antispyware engine, SSL and IPSec VPN clients, Personal Firewall protection, Intrusion Prevention, Web Filtering, Endpoint Application Detection, Endpoint Monitoring and Control, WAN Optimization, Anti-Rootkit Protection, Pre- and Post-Execution Behavioral Analysis, Real-Time Poisoned Webpage Protection, FortiGuard update services) makes it a very complete internet security suite.

I can’t wait to test the free antivirus from Fortinet because it can be installed on Windows server and is offered free of charge to anyone – consumers, small businesses, large enterprises – who seeks comprehensive protection for their laptops and personal computers. If you didn’t know, the free version of Avira, Avast, AVG and Rising is only meant for home usage. If you install them on corporate or educational environment, that is considered piracy and can be fine.
Here’s what I have to say about the free antivirus by Fortinet.

The setup file is only 10MB in size which I’d considered it to be very small if compared to other antivirus. However the first update takes a very long time to finish, perhaps it is downloading the latest antivirus engine and definition. I also like the interface because it is very neat, simple, easy to understand and use. Every main feature is being categorized at the left hand sidebar and there is very little configuration.

You don’t really need a powerful computer to run FortiClient. The system requirements are:

Pentium processor or equivalent

100 MB hard disk space

Compatible Operating System & Minimum RAM

- Windows 2000: 128 MB

- Windows XP 32-bit and 64-bit: 256 MB

- Windows Server 2003 32-bit and 64-bit: 384 MB

- Windows Vista: 512 MB

- Windows 7: 512 MB

After installing FortiClient on a clean Windows XP Professional SP3 with all latest hotfixes, I am seeing a total of 8 processes with 58MB memory being taken up. Running a full system scan with normal scan priority only takes up 30% CPU usage in average. FortiClient took 9 minutes and 38 seconds to complete scanning 21817 items which is also pretty fast. When I ran a full system scan again the next day, it took only 5 minutes and 2 seconds to scan 21815 files. Very likely FortiClient maintains a database of “safe files not to scan” to cut down the scanning time.

I’ve planted 21 virus that are currently circulating around the Internet on the test computer and sadly FortiClient only catches 10 out of 21. I noticed that most of the virus that are not detected by FortiClient are from Asian countries such as Brontok and Almanahe.

I’ve also tested FortiClient against my private trojan since it came with a firewall and intrusion detection. First of all, the virus signature cannot detect the trojan. When it comes to heuristic analysis, FortiClient also fails to detect any injection. Then I connected my test computer from my laptop using the backdoor trojan, there was no warning on the intrusion detection. I am not surprised why Fortinet scored so badly in Matousec proactive security challenge.

I also noticed another annoying issue with Fortinet which is I cannot access a shared folder on a local network. When another computer tries to access my shared folder, they get login prompt asking for password when simple file sharing is turned on. I’ve even configured the firewall to “Pass All” which means disabling the firewall, setting the network as Trusted zone and set the security level to Low but still cannot access shared folders. Finally I disabled webfilter and now I can access any shared folders on the network.

I like the fact that the free FortiClient allows anyone to use for free on any environment and also can be installed on nearly every version of Windows including both 32-bit and 64-bit but they should really work hard on improving the virus detection and firewall protection.

[ Download FREE FortiClient Endpoint Security Suite ]