I recently came across an issue whereby I have been executing PowerShell scripts to perform various functions on some digital signage and the PowerShell window was clearly visible. i.e. in these cases the last thing you want to see is a window open running a PowerShell script.

After much back and forth I realized that the recommended method (or so I was told) was to launch PowerShell minimized. For some reason I could not get this to work in every scenario, so the next best thing was to look for a running instance of PowerShell and minimize the window. Now to caveat my solution, I only tend to have one instance of PowerShell running at any one time, so here is what I came up with:

$sig = '[DllImport("user32.dll")] public static extern bool ShowWindowAsync(IntPtr hWnd, int nCmdShow);'

Add-Type -MemberDefinition $sig -name NativeMethods -namespace Win32

$PSId = @(Get-Process "powershell" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)[0].MainWindowHandle

If ($PSId -ne $NULL) { [Win32.NativeMethods]::ShowWindowAsync($PSId, 2)}

Note that the IF statement was to handle an exception when I was executing from the PowerShell editor i.e. if there is no instance of PowerShell running, the script would throw an error when trying to set the selected PowerShell instance to mimimized..

To use this, just copy the lines above early in your PowerShell script and while you will briefly see the PowerShell window open, it will minimize itself quickly.

Enjoy!

I though this would be pretty simple given that NCF communications are supported in Windows 8 as long as you have the appropriate NFC reader of course… well here goes and keep with me if you are interested in the application manifest script.

Firstly, I purchased the Sony RC S380 NFC USB reader / writer.

Next, I very carefully looked at the compatible NFC tag compatibility list (this is extremely important if you want to avoid disappointment):

・FeliCa Standard
・FeliCa Lite
・NFC Dynamic Tag (FeliCa Plug)
・Mobile FeliCa IC mobile phone
・Pico Pass
・MIFARE Classic
・MIFARE Ultralight / Ultralight C
・MIFARE DESFire / DESFire EV1
・MIFARE Plus
・Topaz/JEWEL
・ISO/IEC 14443 Type A / Type B
・ISO/IEC 14443-4 Type A / Type B (T=CL)
・NFC Forum Tag 1, 2, 3, 4A, 4B

The thing to keep in mind is that not all NFC tags are created (or indeed formatted) equal. I purchased MIFARE Classic NTAG203 tags (not the 1K version) and they worked perfectly.

Lastly, I downloaded the Windows 8 app called NFC Kits application. Note that at least one reviewer said that this application did not with the Sony RC S380 reader.. This not the case, but most likely that they didn’t have compatible tags.

When you create an Application Launch Tag, the main thing you will need to know is the App ID. This proved to be the most tricky part of the process and hence the post. The issue here is that the Application ID is constructed in the following way:

<package family name>!<app id>

Now, if you are anything like me, you start asking yourself where do I get that information from… and this is the fun part and not obvious, so I turned to my old favorite, PowerShell to help (I found very little online).

There are two main PowerShell cmdlets you need to know:

Get-AppxPackage

This gets a list of the app packages (.appx) that are installed in a user profile.

Get-AppxPackageManifest

This gets the manifest of an app package (.appx), which is an xml file that is stored in the app directory (AppxManifest.xml). It is important because this is where the <app id> is stored, oh and where you can also find the application’s real name (more on this is a moment).

In PowerShell (important… running as administrator), if you simply execute Get-AppxPackage, it will return a list of all of the applications installed in your user profile. If you want to output this to a text file (not required, but useful) you can use:

get-appxpackage >> c:\apps.txt

This will output a list of all of the installed Windows 8 (Modern) applications to the c:\apps.txt file. For example, the Bing News application will appear as:

Name              : Microsoft.BingNews
Publisher         : CN=Microsoft Corporation, O=Microsoft Corporation, L=Redmond, S=Washington, C=US
Architecture      : X64
ResourceId        :
Version           : 2.0.0.273
PackageFullName   : Microsoft.BingNews_2.0.0.273_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
InstallLocation   : C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.BingNews_2.0.0.273_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
IsFramework       : False
PackageFamilyName : Microsoft.BingNews_8wekyb3d8bbwe
PublisherId       : 8wekyb3d8bbwe

You will have already noticed that part of the information you need is contained within: PackageFamilyName : Microsoft.BingNews_8wekyb3d8bbwe

The other part you need is the app id, for which you will need to use Get-AppxPackageManifest. In this instance, we want to query the manifest to find the application ID for Microsoft.BingNews_8wekyb3d8bbwe. This is achieved through the following commands:

$xml = Get-AppxPackage | Where-Object {$_.Name –like “*Microsoft.BingNews*” } | Get-AppxPackageManifest
$appID = $xml.Package.Applications.Application.Id
write-host "AppID: $appID"

The first line will query the package list for an application called *Microsoft.BingNews* and return the appropriate Manifest xml data. Note that I used wildcards here in case there are leading or following characters. I queried the $_.Name field, but could have easily used the $_.PackageFamilyName or other as required.

The second line simply parses the xml data and returns the Application ID. In this case returning:

AppID: AppexNews

One thing I did find really confusing is that the Name (in this case Microsoft.BingNews) does not necessarily align with the name of the application. Many of the 3rd party applications I came across simply used the appID of “App” which made me wonder if I could also retrieve the real name of the application. This data is also held in the xml and can be retrieved through the following:

$xml = Get-AppxPackage | Where-Object {$_.Name –like “*Microsoft.BingNews*” } | Get-AppxPackageManifest
$appID = $xml.Package.Applications.Application.Id
write-host "AppID: $appID"

$appName = $xml.Package.Properties.Displayname
write-host "AppName: $appName"

This returns:

AppID: AppexNews
AppName: ms-resource:News

This is not critical to this process, but was important when looking at some of the applications on my machine to understand exactly what they were…

Now we have enough information to construct our Application ID (<package family name>!<app id>), which in this case is:

PackageFamilyName : Microsoft.BingNews_8wekyb3d8bbwe!AppexNews

Putting this all together, I wanted to build a script to list all of the applications installed under my profile and build the relevant Application IDs to allow me to write NFC tags for some of them. Below is the raw script with no error handling (so beware – it is not pretty and is provided as-is with no warranty etc).

#function to return required package details
function PackageDetails
{
#define the parameter being passed to the function - in this case the PackageFullName (to avoid potential versioning issues)
Param($pname)
[hashtable]$appdetails = @{}

#retrieve xml data about the requested package
$xml = Get-AppxPackage | Where-Object {$_.PackageFullName -eq $pname } | Get-AppxPackageManifest

#retrieve appID and Displayname from XML
$appdetails.appID = $xml.Package.Applications.Application.Id
$appdetails.Appname = $xml.Package.Properties.Displayname

#return array of details
Return $appdetails
}   

#main code starts here

$index=1

#Retrieve entire list of applications
$applist=Get-AppxPackage
               
Write-Host "Ref`t Application name, NFC AppID"

#step through the list of installed applications and retrieve their details from the manifest xml
    foreach ($app in $applist)
    {
        $appdetails = PackageDetails $($app.PackageFullName)
        Write-Host " $index`t $($app.name), $($appdetails.Appname), NFCApp=$($app.PackageFamilyName)!$($Appdetails.appID)"
        $index++
    }

Enjoy and let me know if you can improve on this in any way

Ever wondered how you take a snapshot of the layout of the tiles on a Windows 8 Start Screen and then restoring them exactly as they were before.

No? Well nor had I until I got asked just that question recently…

It turns out that the answer is really simple. I started down the route of trying to decode the database files that contain the tile locations and states. You can find the files here:

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms.bak

Don’t do that… I wasted some time trying to reverse engineer these to no avail. Then I realized that you don’t have to know what is in them, you just need to have a good known state, back it up and restore it as required.

I know, you probably came to the same conclusion without even having to look at the files… So here are two batch files (yes, I said batch files – I was feeling really lazy that day) that you can use:

Startscreenbackup.bat

@Echo Off
Copy %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\GoldappsFolder.itemdata-ms
Copy %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms.bak %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\GoldappsFolder.itemdata-ms.bak

echo "Your current Start Menu configuration has been backup up"
Pause

StartScreenRestore.bat

@ Echo off
Del %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms
Del %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms.bak
Copy %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\GoldappsFolder.itemdata-ms %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms
Copy %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\GoldappsFolder.itemdata-ms.bak %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms.bak

tskill explorer

echo "Your current Start Menu configuration has been restored"
Pause

The first script simply takes a copy of the current database files after you have set up your Start Screen to it’s preferred layout to a Gold copy

The second script just restores your Gold copy.

Keep in mind that the StartScreenRestore batch file deletes your current config, so I recommend that you think long and hard about whether you need to backup your current config before restoring the old one in case there is a problem. You might be pleased to note that if there is a problem and you manage to delete your config altogether, rebooting (or indeed just using “tskill explorer” from the command prompt) will create the default set again.

Note: This will not uninstall your applications, nor does it require admin privileges, so you should only impact your own profile if something goes wrong.. Usual disclaimer about using the scripts at your own peril etc applies…

Enjoy!

I had a PC with two hard drives. Each drive had an operating system (Windows 8 and Server 2008 R2). The primary hard drive that held the boot sector failed over the weekend and left my system unbootable…

All I needed to so was rebuild the boot sector on the 2nd drive…

The solution turned out to be pretty simple (after a bit of research). A while ago, I posted an article on how to build a bootable USB flash drive. This included all of the tools I needed to perform the recovery, including the bcdboot tool:

C:\windows\system32>bcdboot /?

Bcdboot - Bcd boot file creation and repair tool.

The bcdboot.exe command-line tool is used to copy critical boot files to the system partition and to create a new system BCD store.

bcdboot <source> [/l <locale>] [/s <volume-letter> [/f <firmware>]] [/v] [/m [{OS Loader ID}]] [/addlast]

  source     Specifies the location of the windows system root.

  /l         Specifies an optional locale parameter to use when
           initializing the BCD store. The default is US English.

  /s         Specifies an optional volume letter parameter to designate
             the target system partition where boot environment files are
             copied.  The default is the system partition identified by
             the firmware.

  /v         Enables verbose mode.

  /m         If an OS loader GUID is provided, this option merges the
             given loader object with the system template to produce a
             bootable entry. Otherwise, only global objects are merged.

  /d         Specifies that the existing default windows boot entry
             should be preserved.

  /f         Used with the /s command, specifies the firmware type of the
             target system partition. Options for <firmware> are 'UEFI',
             'BIOS', or 'ALL'.

  /addlast   Specifies that the windows boot manager firmware entry
             should be added last. The default behavior is to add it
             first.

Examples: bcdboot c:\windows /l en-us
          bcdboot c:\windows /s h:
          bcdboot c:\windows /s h: /f UEFI
          bcdboot c:\windows /m {d58d10c6-df53-11dc-878f-00064f4f4e08}
          bcdboot c:\windows /d /addlast

The steps were very simple:

1: Boot from the USB flash drive I created previously (or similar) – in my case I had to use F12 during the POST process to select to boot from USB.

2: Select Next from the language selection menu

3: Select “Repair Your Computer”

4: Select “Troubleshoot” (to display Troubleshooting Options)

5: Select “Advanced Options”

6: Select “Command Prompt” (now, others had reported success with the Automatic Repair Option, but it didn’t work for me)

7: type "bcdboot c:\windows /s c:” (without the speech marks) and press ENTER

Note: This assumed that my boot drive was C: and the version of Windows was installed in the C:\Windows directory. You get the picture…

Okay, I told you this was straight forward, but it had me thinking for a few minutes… thanks to Scott Hanselman as it was his blog post that finally pointed me in the right direction after a few false starts.

Enjoy!

For those of you that joined us at RSA this year in San Francisco, you may have taking in the session presented by Jeff Jones and Tim Rains on 10 Years of Tech, Researchers and Threat Evolution. Jeff and Tim followed up with a series of blog posts delving in to more detail:

• Trustworthy Computing: Learning About Threats for Over 10 Years - Part 1
• Trustworthy Computing: Learning About Threats for Over 10 Years - Part 2
• Trustworthy Computing: Learning About Threats for Over 10 Years - Part 3
• Trustworthy Computing: Learning About Threats for Over 10 Years - Part 4
• Trustworthy Computing: Learning About Threats for Over 10 Years - Part 5
• Trustworthy Computing: Learning About Threats for Over 10 Years - Part 6

I would also recommend reading the Behind the Charts – Scrubbing the Vulnerability Data post to understand more about the data sources and methodology Jeff used in his analysis.

The great news is that Tim and Jeff have delivered a webcast of the session, which you can find here. The deck from the webcast can also be found here.

Note that you can also download the full report: Microsoft Security Intelligence Report Special Edition: 10-Year Review.

Resources:

Microsoft Security Intelligence Report Special Edition: 10-Year Review

RSA Conference Webcast: Code Red to Zbot: 10 Years of Tech, Researchers and Threat Evolution

RSA Conference Webcast: Code Red to Zbot: 10 Years of Tech, Researchers and Threat Evolution presentation deck

The team (Trustworthy Computing) that I sit in includes a range of different areas, from Security, Privacy and Reliability, to Online Safety, Accessibility and more. Today I attended a session by the Accessibility team that opened my eyes…

Accessibility for me became an area of interest when a number of years ago my Grandfather’s eyesight started failing. At the time technology was limited and access to that technology even more so ( I am among other things Zimbabwean, need I say more). As an engineer, he had been heavily reliant on technology and his ability to use it and when he could no longer do simple things like send an email because he couldn’t see the letters on the keyboard, he became increasingly frustrated.

Fast forward to just over 18 months ago when my father was going through the same thing. The amazing thing was that technology had moved on so much and all I really had to do was install Windows 7 and the vast majority of what we needed was right there, built in to the operating system…

Back to the Road to CSUN…

As it happens the Accessibility team recently went down to the CSUN conference in San Diego, California. They drove down from the Microsoft campus here in Redmond, Washington, making stops along the way. Their journey is both entertaining and informative. If you do nothing else today (or this week), I would encourage you to go to their blog and read about their journey. If you just want the quick fix, here are the link to their videos:

• Episode 1 – Teaser trailer
• Episode 2 – SeniorNet / Tacoma Lutheran
• Episode 3 – Boundless Technologies / ViewPlus Technology
• Episode 4 – Tri-County Independent Living
• Episode 5 – Guide Dogs for the Blind
• Episode 6 – Santa Clara County Office of Education / Yahoo
• Episode 7 – Blue Marble Games
• Episode 8 – Santa Monica Pier
• Episode 9 – TERI Inc.
• Episode 10 – Recap 

Enjoy!

Recently the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit announced that they are partnering with NetClean to make our Microsoft PhotoDNA image matching technology available to law enforcement at no cost to help enhance their child sex abuse investigations.

This means that PhotoDNA will be available to law enforcement at no charge via:

· NetClean Analyze. PhotoDNA is being made available through a new version of NetClean Analyze, a free technology already used by law enforcement in many countries worldwide. The new version will also include functionality to support connections between NetClean Analyze and the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS) where appropriate.

· The Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS). PhotoDNA is being integrated into CETS, a collaborative global law enforcement program supported by Microsoft technology for child pornography investigations. CETS helps law enforcement agencies follow hundreds of suspects at a time and eliminate duplication, making it more efficient for the agencies to follow up on leads, collect evidence and build cases against suspected child pornographers. CETS is currently used by agencies in Australia, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Blog: Microsoft PhotoDNA Technology to Help Law Enforcement Fight Child Pornography

Video: Microsoft Makes PhotoDNA Available to Law Enforcement

Video: How PhotoDNA Enhances NetClean Analyze

I have blogged about using Mouse Without Borders before, but today after installing the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on my system I wanted to see if I could get Magic Mouse running. While the computer I installed it on has a basic touch screen, I wanted to put a mouse and keyboard on the device, but not clutter up my desk even more than it is. So…

The first thing I discovered is that Mouse Without Borders requires the .Net Framework 2.0. For those who have not yet discovered it, the .Net framework 2.0 is not enabled by default in Windows 8 CP. There are a few solutions to resolve this..

1: Using an installer that tries to download the .NET framework will trigger Windows 8 CP to try to enable the component automatically. It will likely require a download from Windows Update. This did not work for me, despite being connected to a wired network, it came up with an error trying to download the necessary files.

2: If you go to Control Panel.. Programs.. Get Programs  and select “Turn Windows Features on or off”, you will see the “.NET Framework 3.5 (include .NET 2.0 and 3.0)” listed, but disabled. Simply select the feature and Windows 8 will try to install the necessary components. This did not work for me, despite being connected to a wired network, it came up with an error trying to download the necessary files.

So, given the error message, I wondered if there was a way to download the files from the Internet, I pulled out my trusty install Flash Drive from my earlier post. That happens to have the necessary files on the drive.

3: To enable .NET Framework 3.5 using a Flash drive (or DVD):
Start a Command Prompt as an administrator (click the Start button and type CMD, right-click on cmd.exe and select “Run as administrator" and accept the UAC prompt, assuming you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7)
Run the following command in Bold followed by ENTER:

Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /All /Source:e:\sources\sxs /LimitAccess (note: the e: drive is the letter associated with the install DVD or Flash drive that contains the installation files)

If you need to, you can copy the source files (e:\sources\sxs\*.*) to the local hard drive and alter the /Source: parameter as appropriate.

Mouse Without Borders installed and worked wonderfully after that. Just remember to use the same version of the Mouse Without Borders software on all machines…

Enjoy!

a, First of all, you will need to download the ISO image of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

b, You will need to extract the files from the ISO image, so my preferred tool is SlySoft’s Virtual CloneDrive. This is free and easy to use. What it allows you to do is mount the ISO file as a drive. This will be needed later.

c, Now to format your USB flash drive. Keep in mind that this will erase all of the files on your USB flash drive, so you might want to double check it for important data before proceeding. Your flash drive should be at least 8Gb (especially if you are installing the 64bit version of Windows 8)

Plug in your USB Flash drive if you have not already done so.
Start a Command Prompt as an administrator (click the Start button and type CMD, right-click on cmd.exe and select “Run as administrator" and accept the UAC prompt, assuming you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7)

Type diskpart and then press ENTER
For each line, type the parts on BOLD and press ENTER after each entry, the notes are for reference only

DISKPART> list disk (note: this will list the disks on your system. Typically look for the one that matches the capacity of your USB flash drive)
DISKPART> select disk x (note: x is the number for your USB flash drive you obtained from the list command above)
DISKPART> clean (note: this will erase your USB flash drive)
DISKPART> create partition primary (note: this will create a new primary partition on the USB Flash drive)
DISKPART> select partition 1 (note: this will select the partition you just created)
DISKPART> active (note: this will set the new partition as active, which identifies it as a valid system partition)
DISKPART> format FS=NTFS QUICK (note: this will perform a quick format on the USB Flash drive)
DISKPART> assign (note: this will assign a drive letter to the partition)
DISKPART> exit

d, Now we need to put the boot files from the ISO image you downloaded earlier on to the USB Flash drive. You will need to mount the ISO image using SlySoft’s Virtual CloneDrive. To do this, right-click on the ISO image you downloaded (i.e. Windows8-ConsumerPreview-64bit-English.iso) and select “Mount”. If you do not see the “Mount” option, it may mean that the Virtual Clone Drive (or similar) tool is not installed. Once you have selcted “Mount”, a drive letter will be assigned to the ISO image. Make a note as to what drive letter has been assigned to the ISO, in my case drive “F:”.

Next, you will need to start a Command Prompt as an administrator (click the Start button and type CMD, right-click on cmd.exe and select “Run as administrator" and accept the UAC prompt, assuming you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7).

Navigate to your ISO drive, in my case “F:” and type the following:

cd \boot (thanks Ron T for pointing this out)

bootsect /nt60 y: (note: where y: is the drive letter assigned to your USB Flash drive – this will copy across the boot files)

e, Lastly we will need to copy the installation files across from the ISO image to the USB Flash drive. To do this, type the following:

XCOPY X:\*.* Y:\ /E /J /H (note: where x: is the drive letter assigned to your ISO image and y: is the drive letter assigned to your USB Flash Drive)

You should note have a Windows 8 Bootable USB flash drive.

Enjoy!

The Microsoft “Trust in Computing” research was conducted in nine countries around the world; the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Russia, India and China. Questions were asked on the Internet, devices, security, privacy, reliability, Cybersecurity representing use, experiences and perceptions.

For more details, see the blog post and keep following as we release more data in the coming months.

As a small taster here are some interesting findings.

Security, Privacy and Reliability of online services?

• 86.6 percent of respondents were concerned about the Security of online services they use
• 86.7 percent of respondents were concerned about the Privacy of the online services they use
• 80.5 percent of respondents were concerned about the Availability of online services they use

Where your data is stored and who has access to it?

• 59.1 percent of respondents are very concerned with where their data is located in the world.
• 51.1 percent of respondents are concerned about their spouse or partner knowing their location information.
• 71.5 percent of respondents are concerned about their Government having access to their location information

There are more findings in the Trust in Computing Research here.