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Today I was searching for a fast and easy way to burn an .ISO image from windows, nothing more natural, you’d say: grab NERO Bloating Rom and burn ‘ur iso, except that:

1. NERO is a complete commercial burning software suite, and (rightfully), you have to pay a license for it.
2. I just needed to burn a pretty standard ubuntu ISO image!

Well, the easier method I found was to download and install Mr. Alex Feinmann’s ISO Recorder, insert a blank CD and then right-click on my ISO; from the contextual menu I choose "Burn something" and some minutes later I was done!

Sorry I couldn’t donate, right now I couldn’t spare any bucks, but take this post as good reference and, hopefully, someone is gonna send some coins in my place!

A new MB doesn’t always mean headaches … OK, OK, I know, I know, let’s take this #### pill.

I got this new super/ultra/cool/powerful ________ Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3 MB.

It’s intel P35 based. I come from XP and I am an usual (not MMOG addicted), gamer.

So, all of my data stood inside a SATA WD Raptor X 150G, including my OS, XP. I needed to move this XP install from the good old glorious, powerful, full-featured, performing _______ ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe Rev 2 to this new Gigabyte.

I proceeded this way:

1. Connected a new IDE disk to the IDE controller.
2. Booted Ubuntu live and cloned the Raptor inside the new IDE HD (dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/hda bs=32256).
3. Booted the old MB with the new IDE HD and made sure it worked perfectly and flawlessly.
4. SYSPREP-PED it with sysprep.exe, found inside XP_CD\SUPPORT\TOOLS\Deploy.cab (I used these options, “MiniSetup” and “Pre-Activate”- get ready for product key).
5. Switched the IDE HD from the old to the NEW MB.
6. Booted it.
7. After some MS XP basic questions, I got my old desktop.
8. I then installed the new drivers.

All of this can seem daunting, a pain in the ass, but, seriously, it isn’t. For me, everything went just fine but my SATA HDDs: they disappered!…Next arcticle is gonna show you hou I managed to get my SATA HDDs working; I anticipate that I’ve the other SATA HDDs on “AHCI mode” from BIOS (for other reasons…soon I will tell why).

Generally, I am used to store my _important_ combo of user/password inside a key+strong password encryption DB file.
The Software I love (and hate) is KeepassX (grab your copy here http://www.keepassx.org/ – XP, Linux or Mac OS X).

Once in a while (especially after holidays…), I may forgive to keep my passwords DB updated, as a result, I may end up struggling to gain access at a damn login screen :-((
…and that’s what just happened recently!

So I was in the search of a free method to reset the MS Windows Local User Account’s Password. The case applied to an install of MS Windows 2003 Server, but it should apply as well as for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
After some Goggleing, I ended up to an interesting method that worked fine (and freely) for me: I downloaded a mini CD with a linux kernel from here: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ (thanks pnordahl!), mounted the iso inside the VM and booted it. Then I just followed the on screen info (it’s easy: menu driven), you are presented with a List of functions to choose from, simply by pressing corresponding letters/numbers.

Important Note: This method writes data inside windows registry by using ntfs-3G, a GNU/Linux RW NTFS compatibility layer, believed safe to use (no warranties BTW). Be sure to have Windows NTFS partition (were Windows resides) CLEANLY UMOUNTED, else the program won’t work. Some W2k3 (for security reasons I guess), need to be correctly shutdown from an user logged in; if you shut it down by cold reset or power OFF, you’ll end up with an unclean NTFS.
I’ve read somewere (and suggest hereby) first booting Windows in “Safe Mode” (by pressing F8 before the Boot Up process), then Reboot from there.
Next mount the iso and boot from it. Then you’re ready to reset the User Local Account’s Password !

You could now boot your windows & enjoy.