• Two-factor Authentication: After entering my user/pass to get onto logmein.com, a code gets sent to my BIS e-mail address, which can only be accessed from my BlackBerry. I have to enter the code correctly before being shown my list of computers.
• Personal Password: I’ve entered a personal password into the settings for each computer running LogMeIn that cannot be accessed by LogMeIn employees because it’s stored on the computer being accessed, not on their servers. When trying to connect to the computer, I’m required to enter a subset of the characters in the code. The interesting thing to note here is that you select the characters from drop down lists, so they cannot be recorded by a keylogger. Also, because you’re only entering a subset of the characters in the code, someone looking over your shoulder will not know the entire code.
• After that, I’m still required to enter the password of a user account on my computer (or a domain account if the computer is part of a domain).

So there’s four pieces of information that are required to access any of the machines in my account, including one physical piece (the BlackBerry with access to the BIS account). In addition to that I’ve also enabled the following settings:

• E-mail notifications for everything from changing settings on the account, failed logins, etc. I’m even notified via e-mail for successful logins, so if by some freak chance someone actually managed to login to my account, I’ll get notified immediately. All notifications list the public IP from which the access was made.
• Blank the computer screen while it’s in use, and give priority to the remote user over the console user. This prevents anyone who has physical access to the computer from viewing and hijacking your remote session.
• Lock the computer upon any remote session disconnection, including graceful logouts.

In addition to this, you can configure the following settings if you so desire:

• Limit connections to specified IP addresses. This will limit the locations from which someone can even attempt to access the machine from.
• Require console user consent when accessing. Useful in a work scenario where you might have someone in the office 24/7 and you want to require that they physically go to the console to allow your remote access request. You could then also have a written IT policy to require that the request is only accepted after verifying the requester’s identity over the phone with a security question.
• Record the screen during all sessions. This way if multiple users have remote access to the machine, you can audit their work.

Sounds pretty secure, no? Post your thoughts and opinions in the comments if you’re so inclined.

On a side note, one of the best features of LogMeIn is the Wake-on-LAN support. As long as you have one computer on a particular subnet turned on and running LogMeIn, you can power on any other computers on the same subnet that are running LogMeIn and have WOL enabled in the BIOS. This works great in a home or office scenario where workstations might be configured for standby on idle but some machines are left running 24/7. You can remotely wake any of the sleeping machines right from the LogMeIn website.

• rd /s D:\$RECYCLE.BIN

After confirming the action, the 50GB was returned to the free disk space and I was happy once again. Make sure to substitute the D: in the above command with whatever drive your Recycle Bin is taking up space on. Also note that this was done on Windows 7. I would assume the same command will work on Windows Vista but I have not confirmed it.

Now that the space has been cleared up, I’ve also reduced the amount of space the Recycle Bin can consume to 10GB. This is done by right-clicking the Recycle Bin on the Desktop, choosing Properties, and setting the size in MB.

When using Windows’ Remote Desktop Connection to access other Windows machines, I don’t like to have it running full screen, as I’m usually working with many other applications on my local computer at the same time. My primary monitor resolution is set to 1680×1050, but with the taskbar and the RDC window border and title bar, I can’t set the RDC resolution to 1280×1024 without having to scroll to see everything. The next step down in the RDC options is 1280×720, which is a bit too disproportionate for me.

Long story short, you can actually set the RDC window to whatever resolution you desire, using a couple of switches for mstsc.exe (the executable for the Remote Desktop Connection application).

Use the /w: switch to set the width, and the /h: switch to set the height. Simple enough, right? The example below would launch the RDC application with the resolution of your RDC window set to 1280×925. Note that the custom resolution won’t show up in the options for your session, but when you connect to your computer of choice, the window will be the size you specified.

• mstsc.exe /w:1280 /h:925

As it turns out, the amount of usable memory can be limited by the chipset, as well as the BIOS. In my case, the Intel 945 chipset only supports a 4GB address space. Since memory on other hardware devices (i.e. video cards) needs to be mapped somewhere in that address space, some of it is reserved, and cannot be used by the operating system.

Now, if your chipset supports more than 4GB of address space, the BIOS still needs to support memory remapping. The memory remapping feature allows for the other hardware devices to use memory addresses above the 4GB limit, thus allowing the operating system to use all 4GB of system memory. I’m assuming that if the chipset supports more than 4GB of address space, then the BIOS should support memory remapping, but you know what happens when you assume.

What’s interesting to note, and makes perfect sense once you think about it, is that if your amount of system memory is equal to the amount of address space supported by your chipset, then your operating system will never be able to use all of the system memory. Again, this is because of the reserved address space for other hardware in the system.

Microsoft’s knowledge base article #929605 has a good explanation of the requirements for making 4GB or more available to the operating system.

I managed to duplicate the issue on another laptop, also running Windows 7. What was also interesting is that both laptops were configured with BitLocker for full disk encryption.

After some searching, I came across a Microsoft hotfix that resolves that specific issue on Windows 7 computers running BitLocker. Microsoft doesn’t include a cause in the information for the hotfix, so I have no idea what the actual issue is, but at least there’s an easy fix for it.

The hotfix is provided in article ID 975496 and can be found at the link below:

• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975496

For those wishing to enable the Windows Installer service in Safe Mode, add the following registry keys and set their Default value to ‘Service’. The first key is for plain Safe Mode, the second key is for Safe Mode with Networking.

• HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\MSIServer
• HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\MSIServer

The screenshot below shows what this should look like in regedit.

• net start msiserver

You should now be able to run any installer or uninstaller that uses the Windows Installer service in Safe Mode.

Anyways, I used Acronis Disk Director to shrink my current Windows partition to make room for the new one.  Then I create the new partition and format it with NTFS using Disk Director.  Here’s where it gets messed up.  I installed the new copy of Vista, but didn’t format the partition using the Vista setup since it was already formatted using Disk Director.  Vista installed fine, but I found that I couldn’t install any software.  Any setup file, would complain about not having access to the temp folder.

After some searching, I found many people having the same problem.  I started the Vista setup from CD again, but this time formatted the partition right in the Vista setup and all is well.  So, pro tip for the day; if you’re using Disk Director to create a new partition for a Vista install, make sure you format the partition using the tool provided in Vista’s setup and not with Disk Director!

I haven’t played a Mortal Kombat game since the Sega Genesis days, but this game still has all of the familiar characters from the old game.  They have a lot of the same special moves and finishing moves too so anyone who’s feeling nostalgic of the old Mortal Kombat games can pick this one up and feel that familiarity.  All in all, if you like fighting games, this is a good one to try out.