The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

InitialKeyboardIndicators registry setting to fix NumLock in a certain state.

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/09/30

There are odd things with the InitialKeyboardIndicators registry setting. Technet only documents bitflag value 2.

According to the docs it should be a bitflag, but sometimes you encounter InitialKeyboardIndicators value 2147483648 (0x80000000) especially as part of the .DEFAULT profile at HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard.

The problem I had was having these symptoms:

  1. while logging in locally, I manually turned of the NumLock (as I have a 46W6740 UltraNav keyboard without a numeric keypad)
  2. after logging in locally, it magically turned itself on even with InitialKeyboardIndicators=0 in my local profile at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard.
  3. after logging in locally and turning it off, future local logons would keep it off
  4. after logging in remotely, it would magically turn itself on while logged in
  5. after having logged in remotely, the local logon console would have it turned on again

After reading Num Lock problem: Strange number in InitialKeyboardIndicators in Registry, I set both values to 0.

Now that it is 0 in both at HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard, symptoms 4-5 still hold. Strange.

It is not the same problem as Num Lock state not retained after resume from Hybrid Shutdown in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

If it persist, I might just put a script in: [Partially Solved: re-wired keyboard lol] Registry key “InitialKeyboardIndicators” NEVER keeps NumLock ON + ScrollLock ON (6) at startup and reverts back to NumLock ON (2).

–jeroen

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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Event, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, KVM keyboard/video/mouse, Power User, ThinkPad, UltraNav keyboards, Windows | Leave a Comment »

The IoT strikes back: 650 Gigabit/second and 1 Terabit/second attacks by IoT devices within a week

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/09/30

Many people – me included – complain about the sadness of IoT device security.

It seems the hackers found out it’s time to take advantage of that as within a week both these attacks by IoT devices took place:

The first already suspected IoT devices, the latter confirmed it were ~ 150-thousand hijacked cameras and DVRs [WayBack] performing the attack.

Or in short:

The IoT strikes back

Few parties can cope with this kind of traffic (Akamai had to stop their pro bono servicing of Krebs on Security; it took a few days and a lot of effort for Google’s Project Shield to take over).

So I’ve a few questions for anyone running IoT devices:

  1. How secure are your IoT devices?
  2. Have you confined them to a network that’s easily filtered/shut-down in case of emergency?

Edit 20161004:

–jeroen

Source: Da ist einiges neu an dem Fall: 1) Ein bisher unbekanntes Botnetz. a) Das neue…

Posted in IoT Internet of Things, Network-and-equipment, Power User | 1 Comment »

Some cURL links with tips I used doing some Fritz!Box scripting research

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/09/29

I needed to script a few things on my Fritz!Box. Here are the cURL links that I used to research some Fritz!Box scripting.

My first try was wget, but that didn’t do everything I need, so cURL came to the rescue.

In the end, I didn’t need cookies (a post request with an MD5 based handshake sufficed to get a session SID which is not stored in a Cookie), but that surely will come in useful another time.

Curl man page entries:

The script is and docs are here: jpluimers/bash-fritzclient.

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, bash, cURL, Development, Fritz!, Fritz!Box, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, wget | Leave a Comment »

atom-keyboard-macros: tried, doesn’t work reliably – anyone who knows a better one?

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/09/28

One of the things I missed in the Atom editor is a keyboard macro recording/playback.

I tried atom-keyboard-macros but it doesn’t work reliably.

Not sure where it fails as the failure patterns are inconclusive.

Anyone having a better experience?

–jeroen

Posted in atom editor, Development, Hardware, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, KVM keyboard/video/mouse, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Text Editors | Leave a Comment »

Jark/FTDISample: Note: As of version 10556.0 the ftdi driver does no longer seem to work. A sample application showcasing the FTDI D2XX driver use in Windows Universal projects (UWP). This sample is tested on the Raspberry PI 2 with Windows IOT installed and a FTDI FT232R usb-to-serial adapter.

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/09/22

Source: Jark/FTDISample: Note: As of version 10556.0 the ftdi driver does no longer seem to work. A sample application showcasing the FTDI D2XX driver use in Windows Universal projects (UWP). This sample is tested on the Raspberry PI 2 with Windows IOT installed and a FTDI FT232R usb-to-serial adapter.

Yeah, I couldn’t get this working either. I’m not sure where ReadTimeout is actually used by the SerialDevice class internally. But I did end up getting something working by copying the timeout to a

Source: c# – Unable to use SerialDevice.ReadTimeout in Windows 10 IoT – Stack Overflow

Source: Raspberry Pi • View topic – Windows 10 IoT Core Simple Serial Example not working

Posted in Development, IoT Internet of Things, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Word for Windows Keyboard Shortcut for Find Next – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/09/05

Unlike most applications where F3 is search next, Office has their own thought about keyboard shortcuts.

So in Word for Windows, you can use these:

  • Find next:
    • “RepeatFind”: Shift+F4 or Ctrl+Alt+Y.
    • “Browse next item”:  Control+PageDown.
  • Find previous:
    • “Browse previous item”: Control+PageUp.

–jeroen

via:

Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Office, Power User, Word | Leave a Comment »

Delphi: Alt+Down Arrow is the keyboard shortcut for ellipsis buttons

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/09/01

Thanks Primož Gabrijelčič for reminding me on Stack Overflow that Alt + Down opens the dialogs behind ellipsis buttons in the Delphi IDE.

It’s the CUA and Windows short-cut to open drop-down lists (comboboxes) and for opening drop-down list for a property in the object inspector, but I never realised also would work for these ellipsis buttons.

This was my original stack-overflow question: Is there a keyboard shortcut for the ellipsis buttons of the Project Options in the Delphi IDE?

The Project Options in the Delphi IDE has a few option (like the Search Path) each with an ellipsis button (the one on the right having only three dots ... in the image below) to pop-up a dialog.

What keyboard shortcut activates that button?

Project Options with ellipsis button

–jeroen

Via: Object Inspector Keyboard Shortcuts – RAD Studio

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 10.1 Berlin (BigBen), Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

4K/5K monitors: when your RDP session has small black bands limiting the height/width to 2048/4096 pixels

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/08/29

Sometimes RDP limits you to 2048 pixels vertical (or 4096 pixels horizontal)

Sometimes RDP limits you to 2048 pixels vertical (or 4096 pixels horizontal)

Just found out why on some Windows versions, the RDP sessions form my 4K monitor has some small black bands on top/bottom: older versions of Windows limit their RDP server to 4096 x 2048.

A 4K monitor will not hit the width limit (as 4K cheats: it is usually “just” 3840 pixels wide), but it does hit the height limitation (2160 is slightly more than 2048: you miss 112 pixels that show as two small black bands).

A 5K monitor is worse: it will hit both limits (5K does not cheat: at 5120 × 2880 it is exactly 5*1024 pixels wide) so you miss 124 pixels horizontally and a whopping 832 pixels vertically.

Don’t buy a 5K monitor yet if you do a lot of RDP work to older Windows versions.

The link below has a table listing various Windows versions, but it omits end-of-life versions so I’ve done some testing: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 share the same limitations as Windows Server 2008 most likely because their latest service packs share the same RDP 6.1 version.

I updated this in the table:

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Posted in 4K Monitor, 5K monitor, Displays, Hardware, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Olive – Juniper Clue

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/08/19

The original http://juniper.cluepon.net/index.php/Olive is gone, but the WayBack machine sitll has it: Olive – Juniper Clue

It describes how to install JUNOS on x86/x64 (or emulated) hardware.

–jeroen

via: Can I learn Juniper? : networking

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Posted in Internet, Juniper, Olive - JUNOS, Power User, routers | Leave a Comment »

Remote VPN to Fritz!Box from Mac OS X: don’t forget to set your Group Name to be the same as the User Name

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/08/01

With en empty Group Name you get this:

No Group Name means no connection

No Group Name means no connection

The bad thing is: the Fritz!Box will not tell you this in any of the logs.

So don’t forget to set the Group Name to be the same as the Account Name in the ….:

Always enter the Group Name in the Authentication Settings

Always enter the Group Name in the Authentication Settings

Then you can successfully connect:

VPN connection succeeded!

VPN connection succeeded!

–jeroen

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Posted in Fritz!, Fritz!Box, Internet, Power User | Leave a Comment »