Bandwidth Monitoring Applications

The applications below offer details concerning the amount of bandwidth used with a Windows computer.

http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/

http://www.floriangilles.com/software/netspeedmonitor

List of free DNS services

The following sites offer information concerning free DNS services.

http://www.comodo.com/secure-dns/

http://www.opennicproject.org/index.php/start-here/51-migrate-to-opennic/75-public-dns

http://www.dnsadvantage.com/dnsadv/index.html

http://www.opendns.com/

http://www.scrubit.com/

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/

Change the listening port for RDP

The default listening port for RDP is normally 3389.  To change this value, run Regedit and go to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp

Find the "PortNumber" subkey and notice the value of 00000D3D, hex for (3389). Modify the port number in Hex and save the new value.

Malware Example Sites

The sites below contain links to malware-related domains or network addresses.

http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/

http://www.malwaredomains.com/

http://malwaredatabase.net/blog/

http://www.dslreports.com/phishtrack

http://rogueantispyware.blogspot.com/

http://contagiodump.blogspot.com/

Display short URL addresses

The sites below take a short URL from services such as bit.ly and tinyurl and displays the destination.

http://longurl.org/

http://unshorten.com/

Classic Shell Utility

The Classic Shell utility offers older style menu options and Start Menu looks to Windows versions such as Windows 7.

http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

Microsoft Security Essentials command-line options

The Microsoft Security Essentials product has a few command-line executables available.  The main executable to know is mpcmdrun.exe, which has several different options available. 

One option is to run a manual scan:

Another would be to perform a signature update:

The msseces.exe will launch the main GUI window:

The update.exe will check for new product versions:

Fix when jump list items get stuck in Windows 7

Sometimes jump list items will get “stuck” within Windows 7.

To remove these entries, open a Explorer window and enter the following path:

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

The list displayed will be odd file names.  You can open the files within Notepad to hopefully determine the entry to delete.

FixWin Utility

This utility offers a GUI for several Registry hacks.

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/repair-fix-windows-7-vista-problems-with-fixwin-utility

Core Configurator

Core Configurator is a piece of software designed to offer some GUI configuration options for a Windows Server Core installation.

http://coreconfig.codeplex.com/