Alexander’s Blog

AVG AntiVirus is a free and popular antivirus application that people have been using on their desktop computers for years to protect their desktop operating system, such as Windows XP or Windows 7. Did you know that AVG also has an Anti-Theft Service for Android devices? Here’s how it works.

1. Download and install the AVG AntiVirus software from the Play Store on your Android device.
2. Once you have configured the software for protection, performance and privacy, click on the Anti-Theft icon to activate the service.
3. You will receive an e-mail from AVG that your service is activated, along with the instructions on how to use this service.
4. Go to any computer and visit AVG’s Anti-Theft Web page at http://www.avgmobilation.com/anti-theft.
5. Login with your Google account. Select the appropriate option, such as Shout, Locate, Lock, Unlock, Wipe, or Scan.
6. You can use the Shout option to make the device sound an alarm. Essentially, this will play a ringtone on the device. This can come handy if you can’t find your smart phone in your house and there is no other phone in the house to dial your number.
7. When you use the Locate option, it can take several minutes to locate the phone and will give you its proximity in a Google map.
8. The Lock option can be used to lock the device remotely so others can’t use it. This will require someone to enter the password that you will enter. This password is a temporary password and has nothing to do with any other password on your device or Gmail account.
9. You can use the Unlock option to send the unlock command to the device but it can’t actually unlock your device remotely. You must enter the password you provided when you used the Lock option to unlock the device
10. Using the Wipe option will wipe your Android device remotely. Needless to say, I didn’t try this feature and will have to trust AVG that it works.
11. If you select the Scan option from a desktop computer, within seconds your Android device will start scanning your computer for security threats. This is the same action that you can take from the AVG mobile application on your Android device.

Does the Service Work?

So what about security and does this Anti-Theft service really work? In my tests, I found that the application works for the most part and can be useful to lock a stolen device remotely (and potentially wipe out the device, which I didn’t try). The features work, except that the first time I used the Locate feature, it didn’t even come close to the actual location of the device. While my smart phone was in my had, it showed that my device was located in a different zip code about 10 miles away from me. After a while it did show the exact location, so decide for yourself if this is good, bad, or ugly.

Another weak point that I discovered is that the application itself doesn’t use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to encrypt the pages on the Web site. This surprised me. A company that makes AntiVirus software should be securing pages where customers are entering passwords and working on Anti-Theft software. In other words, you are using AVG’s unsecure page to secure your Android device. Really? This makes no sense.

Not only the Web site is unsecure, the password that you provide to lock the device can only be 4-6 characters. In other words, the password you provide is going to be very weak. While this may be good enough to keep an average “Joe” out, it won’t be good enough to keep a serious hacker out.

Hopefully, over time AVG will improve this application. It’s a good start but in my opinion the application appears to be more for fun and games than to offer a serious anti-theft service……mainly due to the quality of service and the fact that AVG doesn’t offer encryption to use a security software on their Web site. As I mentioned already, it does seem to get the job done for the most part so I am not ruling it out as a totally useless application. I believe it needs work to offer better reliability for locating the device and also needs some security improvements. After all it is a security application.

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Copyright ©2013 Zubair Alexander. All rights reserved.

When working with Windows computers, especially Windows servers, I often run into situations where the hard drive is running out of disk space. In fact, I have often seen drives literally have no available space on a SharePoint or SQL server. There are too many reasons why a drive can run out of space, or continue to run out of space even if you keep freeing more disk space. In this article I won’t be going into the details of the reasons why drives run out of space but I can tell you that trace logs, SharePoint_Config_log.ldf file on SharePoint 2010, and cache files in %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache folder on the server and PST files, temporary files, and thumbnails, eating up the disk on the workstation are a few common reasons. I have also blogged about other reasons in the past. The purpose of this article is to show you how to find out the size of some of the largest files on your computer so you can take action and delete them if they are not needed.

Not all large files are needed. If they are not needed then there is no sense in keeping them on your computer. Obviously, you can delete a lot of small junk files but The question is how to find out which are the largest files. A simple way to find out the size of the largest files is to write a PowerShell script. You can then pipe the results of the script to a file and look at them one by one. Here’s a sample script that will display in GB the 5 largest files on your server or workstation. You can change the number 5 at the end of the script to display more or fewer large files.

@echo off
Powershell -noexit “Get-PSdrive  | where { $_.Used -gt 0 } | foreach { Get-ChildItem $_.Root -recurse -force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select Name,DirectoryName, @{Label=’Size’;Expression={($_.Length/1GB).ToString(‘F04′)}} | Sort Size -descending | select -first 5}”

1. Paste the above script in Notepad.
2. Save the file as a batch file (File, Save As, change “Save as type” to All files, click Save). Give it a name like Top5largestFiles.bat. Make sure you use the .bat extension, otherwise it will not execute as batch file.
3. Start the Command Prompt as an Administrator.
4. Go to the folder where you saved the batch file.
5. Type the name of the batch file (e.g. Top5largestFiles). It’s optional to type the .bat at the end of a batch file because the system automatically knows that it’s an executable file.
6. Wait a while because the batch file needs to go through every file on your computer. The results will be displayed in GB.
7. You can also pipe the results into a text file if for some reason you want to save the results as a reference for future use. For example, type
   5ToplargestFiles > largefiles.txt
   This will send the results into a text file called largestfiles.txt.
8. Once you know which files are the largest files you can go through them and see if some of them can be deleted. Obviously, you have to have certain level of knowledge to understand which files are safe to delete.

As an example, on a SQL Server 2008 R2 if you run out of disk space, you can delete the file that ends with _blobs.bin (e.g. a368b368b28d9265_blobs.bin) in the %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache folder. According to Microsoft, this file is used by Windows Update mechanism and it is safe to delete this file. However, do not delete or mess with any other files in the WinSxS foder. Even if you delete all the files in the ManifestCache folder, they may appear later after a Windows Update or a reboot but will likely be not as large. Just keep an eye on these files and deleted them when necessary. Here a post from Joseph Conway on TechNet that describes in detail what the WinSxS folder is all about. Unfortunately, there is no known solution to this problem of Windows servers and workstations running out of disk space. Until Microsoft comes up with a solution, here’s a workaround.

Here’s how you can delete files in the Windows\WinSxS\ManifestCache folder.

1. Run the above batch file to find out the top 5 largest files.
2. If the files in the ManifestCache folder are among the largest files then use the following commands.
3. Run Command Prompt as an Administrator.
4. Run the command “net stop trustedinstaller” without the quotes to stop the Windows Modules Installer service. If your OS is running this service then make sure you wait for it to stop, if it’s not running and you get the message “The Windows Modules Installer service is not started” then go to the next step.
5. Type EXIT to get out of the PowerShell command and run the command “takeown /f %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\*” without the quotes at the Command Prompt to take the ownership of the folder. This step is necessary because you must take ownership of the folder before giving the Administrators proper permission.
6. If you get an error it’s likely because you ignored the first part of the previous step and ran the command inside PowerShell (if your prompt starts with PS then you are in the PowerShell command). If you run the command in PowerShell you will get the message “ERROR: The system cannot find the path specified.”
7. Run the command “Icacls %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\* /grant Administrators:f” without the quotes to grant Administrators Full Access permissions to the folder.
8. The last step is to delete the files in the ManifestCache folder. Run the command “del /q %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\*” without the quotes.
9. Restart the Windows Modules Installer service by typing “net start trustedinstaller” without the quotes.

Scheduling Cleanup of ManifestCache folder

The ManifestCache folder will continue to grow in the future but you can create a batch file to cleanup the content occasionally. I would recommend that you clean up the folder only if you need disk space because the cache files will improve performance. This solution is for people who are in desperate need of additional disk space. Here’ a batch file that I use on my SharePoint 2010 server and my SQL Server 2008 R2 server. I saved the content of this batch file in Notepad and named the file CleanManifestFolder.bat. I run this file at the elevated Command Prompt.

@echo off
cls
net stop trustedinstaller
takeown /f %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\*
Icacls %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\* /grant Administrators:f
del /q %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\*
net start trustedinstaller

You can also schedule to run this file with Task Scheduler if necessary.

Disk Cleanup Tool

At this point you may want to go through additional files and delete them if they are safer to delete. On some operating systems, such as Windows 7, you also have the option Disk Cleanup on the drive properties. However, this tool is designed to delete only certain types of files that are safe to delete, such as downloaded program files, temporary Internet files, setup log files, temporary files, thumbnails, etc. It won’t find other files that can be very large and often useless. I still encourage you to go through these and delete them. Especially, the temporary files and thumbnails. I noticed that on my PC, the thumbnails were 79MB but the temporary files were a whopping 13.7GB. Your mileage may vary but the results may surprise you.

In case you didn’t know, according to Microsoft, SharePoint Designer has nothing to do with designing SharePoint? Then why is it called SharePoint Designer? Good question. The simple answer is: for the same reason that you have to click Start to shutdown Microsoft Windows. Just kidding! I really don’t have a clue why Microsoft would name a product then tell us that the name is meaningless and we should ignore it. You would think a name like SharePoint Editor would have made more sense.

One thing is for sure, SharePoint Designer will no longer be called SharePoint Designer in future because the name makes no sense at all. That’s just my prediction. According to Microsoft:

“SharePoint Designer 2010 is designed for users to work on — not to design and publish — SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 web sites.”

Some people may consider SharePoint Designer 2010 to be a crippled version of FrontPage, even though when it comes to coding SharePoint Designer is a much better product. Others may consider SharePoint Designer 2010 a crippled version of SharePoint Designer 2007, which is perhaps a better way to describe it. Microsoft has removed a lot of features in SharePoint Designer 2010. Here is a partial list of what’s missing or changed.

• You cannot import a Web site from another server or file location in SharePoint Designer 2010.
• You cannot create, edit, or publish a disk-based Web site, or work with remote Web sites in SharePoint Designer 2010. Elements in the SharePoint Designer user interface that supported working with disk-based Web sites, such as the Use Microsoft ASP.NET Development Server preview option, have been removed.
• You cannot perform server administration tasks such as backup and restore, content migration, or other management tasks that affect and entire Web site in SharePoint Designer 2010. These operations should be performed in Central Administration.
• SharePoint Designer 2010 is designed for working with SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010. It cannot be used with earlier versions of SharePoint.
• In Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and previous versions of Microsoft FrontPage, you could use the Microsoft Script Editor (MSE) to add text, edit HTML tags, and edit any Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) code in a data access page. MSE also provided IntelliSense features for script creation and editing. You could also use the Script Editor to view your page as it would appear in a Web browser. Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 does not include Microsoft Script Editor.
• The Contributor Settings feature has been removed from Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.
• The Single Sign-On (SSO) method of authentication has been removed from SharePoint 2010 and replaced by the Secure Store Service.
• Powerful cascading style sheets (CSS) layout features have replaced layout tables feature in Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010. The tools related to creating and modifying layout tables have been removed from the SharePoint 2010 Designer user interface.
• If you open a Web page that contains an existing layout table in SharePoint Designer 2010, the layout table functions correctly. However, you cannot use SharePoint Designer 2010 to insert a new layout table.
• Themes created in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are not compatible with SharePoint Foundation 2010. If you are upgrading from Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to SharePoint Foundation 2010, you can use Visual Upgrade to continue to use sites in the old user interface.
• The Hyperlinks view is removed from SharePoint Designer 2010. You can use the error-checking features in SharePoint Designer 2010 to check for broken links, unused pages, cascading style sheets usage, and master page usage. The Recalculate Hyperlinks command has also been removed.
• Because of the changes to data management, the following database features from Microsoft FrontPage and Office SharePoint Designer 2007 are not supported in SharePoint Designer 2010:
  - Database Interface Wizard
  - Database tab of the Site Settings dialog box
  - Database Results Wizard
• Because SharePoint Designer 2010 is designed for working with SharePoint sites, and these servers already have the necessary underlying code installed, an FTP client is not required and is removed.
• Customizing pages (also known as “unghosting”) now requires higher permissions than in the previous release: By default, only Site Collection Administrators can customize pages, master pages, and page layouts, or use the All Files view.
• The functionality in Dynamic Web templates has been replaced in SharePoint Designer 2010 with master pages.

It’s always a challenge to find the right anti-malware tool that you can proudly recommend. Besides anti-virus software, over the years I have used tons of anti-spyware tools. There were times when I used 4 different tools because no single tool was good enough to protect my PC from every spyware. At one point Windows Defender proved to be a very reliable tool but it only protected my PC from viruses, not spyware.

Microsoft then came out with Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), which is a free tool. It includes protection from viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. You can download MSE at no cost here.

Mandatory Joining of SpyNet Removed (Great! Right? Not really)

When Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) came out, a lot of experts were really impressed by the product. MSE protects your PC from antivirus as well as anti-spyware. However, the thing I didn’t like about MSE was that Microsoft decided to make it mandatory for people to send their personal information to them if they chose to install MSE. Microsoft legal department must have taken the day off when Microsoft released MSE, or else they would have something to say. Believe it or not, Microsoft forced everyone to join SpyNet and gave us only the following two choices.

Choice #1: You must agree to have information automatically collected and sent to Microsoft, including your personal information.
Choice #2: You must agree to have information automatically collected and sent to Microsoft, including your personal information.

That’s right. Those were the only two choices. You could either send “some” information to Microsoft or you could send “a lot” of information to Microsoft. The two choices included:

Basic Membership: You agree to send some information to Microsoft.
Advanced Membership: You agree to send a lot of information to Microsoft.

In either case Microsoft warned us that we might be risking our privacy because our personal information might be unintentionally sent to Microsoft, as I pointed out in this article. I also said at that time that “I believe if enough people complain then Microsoft will add the third option of opting out of Microsoft SpyNet.”

During that time I refused to recommend MSE to my clients and removed MSE from my PCs. Then finally someone at Microsoft realized that “force feeding” of personal information to Microsoft may not be a good idea. Or perhaps enough people complained that Microsoft decided to change their policy.

Below you will find the old and the new screenshots showing the option for joining SpyNet.

Old Screen:

New Screen

The Penalty for Not Joining SpyNet

If you think you are forgiven by Microsoft for not joining SpyNet, think again. Now if you decide to opt out Microsoft will penalize you by not alerting you if unclassified software is detected running on your computer. While giving us the option to opt-out is great but penalizing us for not joining SpyNet is not. I will say the same thing I said back in 2010 that if enough people complain then Microsoft might change its mind and remove the penalty imposed on the consumers. But for now, if you like the software, you have to agree to suffer the consequences. I guess there is no such thing as a free lunch.

A Good Overall Anti-Malware Solution

When Microsoft removed the forced joining of SpyNet, I started to recommend MSE to everyone and have installed it on all my clients. I know, I agree to the penalty because I didn’t join the SpyNet but I love this product. I prefer MSE over the competitors, such as AVG, Avira, and Avast. The MSE reviews have always been great. Check out Fred Langa’s recent review of MSE. He did a great job of running various tests on antivirus software packages and came up with the conclusion that MSE was once again one of the best overall anti-malware tool out there (see screenshot below). Okay, I won’t speak for him but that’s my own conclusion. I encourage you to read his complete Windows Secrets article here and decide what you think.

MSE is supported on Windows 7, Windows Vista (SP1 or SP2), and Windows XP (SP3).

Microsoft Security Essential free download link

Free Antivirus Tool Recommendation

Currently I prefer the following free antivirus tools. Keep in mind that MSE is more than an antivirus, it protects you from viruses, spyware and other malware, while ClamWin is strictly an antivirus solution.

1. Windows client operating systems (Windows 7/Vista/XP): Microsoft Security Essentials
2. Windows Server (2008/2003): ClamWin
   (ClamWin is also supported on Windows 7/Vista/XP/Me/2000/98)

A few years ago I wrote this article Deleting Old User Profiles in Windows 2000/XP/2003 about a User Profile Deletion utility called DelProf.exe. This tool is part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit. Because it was written for older operating systems it won’t work on Windows Vista or later operating systems.

Lucky for us, Microsoft MVP Helge Klein has written a successor utility called DelProf2 that works with newer operating systems, such as Windows 7. DelProf2 works with Windows XP/2003/Vista/Windows 7/Windows 2008/Windows 2008R2.

DelProf2 will even handle profiles that use long paths (i.e. MAX_PATH values of longer than 260). This tool is great if you want to get rid of old profiles that are taking disk space. It will delete all profiles except the current profile. It will leave the necessary system profiles (e.g. Default profile) alone. Default profile is used by the operating system to create a profile for a new user by making a copy of the Default profile. You also have the option to delete locally cached copies of roaming profiles or delete older profiles that have not been used for a certain period of time, such as older than 90 days.

Here is the syntax used by DelProf2.

Usage: delprof2 [/u] [/q] [/i] [/p] [/r] [/c:[\\]<computername>] [/d:<days>]

       /u   Unattended (no confirmation)
       /q   Quiet (no output and no confirmation)
       /i   Ignore errors, continue deleting
       /p   Prompt for confirmation before deleting each profile
       /r   Delete local caches of roaming profiles only, not local profiles
       /c   Delete on remote computer instead of local machine
       /d   Delete only profiles not used in x days
       /l   List only, do not delete (what-if mode)

Helge has some nice examples on his site. You can use DelProf2 to delete inactive profiles remotely (including Windows 7 computers) using their IP addresses.

DelProf2 is a free utility that can be downloaded from Helge’s Web site here. While you are at it, you might want to check out some additional tools that he has written.