10 June 2022

Two Thumb Drives That Should Always Be Nearby

When something goes wrong with your computer, you might wish you had quick access to some utility applications. But because something has gone wrong with your computer, you might not be able to get to them. That's just one reason for having a thumb drive with a selection of portable applications.

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This is different from the recovery bootable USB drive that I've described previously, but it's worth taking a quick look at that process again. Most backup applications offer to create a recovery disc or thumb drive for you. The illustrations are from AOMEI Backuppper Professional; your backup application may be different, but the underlying concepts are the same.

A bootable thumb drive is the best choice, but most applications also allow the user to create an ISO file that would need to be burned to a DVD or to burn a CD or DVD directly. If your preference is a thumb drive, plug it in and make sure that it contains no files that you want to keep; then start the backup program and find the option for creating recovery media — probably in a Tools menu.

You may have the option of creating a Linux recovery device or a Windows PE device. Most users should choose the Windows PE device and select an option to download the PE environment from the internet unless a copy already exists on the computer.

A few minutes after you start the process, your bootable USB drive will be ready. If your backup application doesn't offer the ability to create a recovery disk, see this Disk Partition tutorial or refer to one of these instructional articles.

The recovery USB drive need not be large because the files consume less than 700MB of space. Resist the temptation to use this thumb drive as the target for installing the portable utility apps because the bootable USB drive must be formatted as a FAT32 (File Allocation Table 32) device. Because of the limitations of FAT32, you'll want a disk formatted as exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) or NTFS (NT [New Technology] File System] for portable apps.

Before I describe the second disk, let's think about how the emergency boot disk will be used. To use a recovery disc or thumb drive, you'll need to modify the computer's boot order so that the optical drive or thumb drive is queried first, before the hard drive. That requires modifying the computer's CMOS settings. There are two options here: You can modify the settings now so that the computer always looks at the alternate devices first or wait until there's a problem and change the settings then. Changing the settings now will make the boot process take longer because the boot loader will need to look at any attached USB devices to see if a bootable device is attached. That will slow the startup process. Even if you don't make the changes now, it's a good idea to investigate how to get to the CMOS settings before you need to get to the CMOS settings.

The recovery USB drive or disc is something you'll rarely need. With luck, you'll never need it. Think of it as an insurance policy. The portable applications drive is one that might use frequently.

A thumb drive with a lot of portable apps will be useful in cases like these:

• You need a utility application to diagnose a problem with the computer.
• A friend is having trouble with a computer and you're helping.
• The computer you're using has only Microsoft Edge, but you prefer Firefox.
• You're at a remote computer and want to access your email account without leaving information on the computer.
• There are applications you use so infrequently that you don't want to install them.
• Your employer doesn't allow you to install applications on your work computer.

Those are a few of the use cases that come to mind and the solution is PortableApps. This is a free application and service that offers more than 400 portable applications. An application is considered to be portable when it can be run as-is without being installed. The applications range from accessibility and development tools to games and security functions. There are music and video players, office applications, photo viewers and editors, graphics applications, and design programs. If you install every single one, you'll need a thumb drive with more than 46GB of storage; but, as we saw last week, even large thumb drives are inexpensive. And you don't need to install everything. There's an entire section of games. If you don't care about games, you won't want these.

Before going further, I have to say that — although the applications are free — you may see suggestions to upgrade to paid versions of some applications. Many of the applications and suites offered by PortableApps are free: OpenOffice and LibreOffice, for example. Others are free versions of commercial software that will suggest purchasing a paid version that has more features. Spybot Search and Destroy is fully functional, but it will recommend that you pay for a version that includes real-time antivirus protection. But everything offered is legitimate and without cost.

Installing PortableApps

Preparing PortableApps is easy.

1. After downloading the installer application, run it. You'll want to specify that you're creating a new installation. Later, you may want to update an existing installation.
2. There are several options for where PortableApps will be installed. These include using a portable device, but you can also install on a local hard drive for the current user or all users or install it to a mobile location such as Google Drive.
3. If you choose a portable device, the installer will suggest the USB drive it believes you'll want to use. Look carefully. If you prefer to install elsewhere, use the custom location option.
4. The installation will complete quickly. No portable applications are installed. This is just the framework that holds whatever number of applications you want to install. I use the term "install" here to indicate the inclusion of portable applications on the thumb drive. Normal applications are installed on a disk drive inside the computer, may write entries to the Registry, and store their data on the computer's hard drive. Portable apps are not installed on the computer's hard drive, write nothing to the Registry, and store their data on the thumb drive.
5. When the process is complete, run PortableApps.
6. Choose the applications you want to install and click Next.
7. PortableApps can automatically add many of the applications you select, but some require input from the user — either permission to set up the application or the location where it should be saved. If your list of preferred apps includes some of these, the installer will display a notification so that you can watch for alerts from these applications and approve them. I selected nearly 90 applications to include and about one third of them required my approval during the process.

Using The Applications

To use an application on the thumb drive, plug the thumb drive in, view it in a file explorer, and double-click start.exe. The PortableApps icon will appear on the Taskbar and a menu with the applications you've selected will be shown in the lower right corner.

To place the applications you'll use most often at the top of the menu, scroll through the applications, right-click an application name, and select Favorite from the context menu. To use one of the applications, click its name in the menu and it will open.

Consider this use case: Perhaps you're at a friend's house when you receive an urgent email on your phone. The message needs an immediate reply, but the reply will be complex, far more than a simple one-sentence response. You wish you'd brought your computer, but it's at home.

So you ask permission to use your friend's computer, insert your PortableApps thumb drive, launch Thunderbird, collect your messages, compose a two-page response and send it. This scenario does require a bit of preparation: After creating the PortableApps thumb drive, you would open Thunderbird and set up your email account using the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). Using IMAP will leave all of your messages on the server even if you prefer to use the older Post Office Protocol (POP3) on your primary computer.

When you close Thunderbird and remove the PortableApps thumb drive, you will have left no traces behind on the computer.

The thumb drive can also contain a variety of security applications and diagnostic utilities.

PortableApps users can create an account, but they don't have to. They can donate, but they don't have to. New functions are added to the PortableApps application from time to time, new applications are added, and your installed applications are checked and updated whenever you open PortableApps. Get started by downloading PortableApps from the website.

Short Circuits

Expanding Your PortableApps Thumb Drive

After creating a PortableApps drive, you may think of some additional utilities that you'd like to have constant access to. Presuming the thumb drive has sufficient free space, just copy those applications to the thumb drive.

Instead of placing the extra apps in the root directory, I think it's a good idea to create a directory called UTILITIES and placing the extra files there. Here are some that are helpful to have.

• The God Mode directory, which provides access to more than 200 Windows settings. I described how to create the directory in April.
• Open Hardware Monitor tracks information about the computer's temperature, RAM, disc drives, and CPU status and optionally can create a log file. This is a handy utility if you suspect an overheating problem.
• Your computer is a chatterbox. Internal applications talk with each other or with remote servers. Hundreds of ports are open and may be sending or receiving data, or just waiting for something to happen. CurrPorts will show you which ports are in use and what IP addresses they're associated with. CurrPorts is one of many handy applications from Nir Sofer. Look through the list of applications in the Freeware for Windows section of the site.
• Windows 11 Fixer is a utility I described a couple of weeks ago. It changes how the context menu works and offers a variety of other primarily cosmetic modifications.
• When you need to connect to somebody else's computer or allow someone to connect to your computer, AeroAdmin is an excellent choice. I described AeroAdmin in a May 2021 program.
• The Sysinternals Suite from Microsoft includes 68 useful utilities. Although most are intended to be used by system administrators, several can be used by anyone who needs information about the system. Autoruns shows which programs are configured to startup automatically when the system boots and examines all the Registry and file locations where applications can configure auto-start settings. Process Monitor shows all running processes, the process name, process ID number, operation, and more. This utility can also be used to kill a specific process.
• Agent Ransack is the application you need when you're looking for a file that's hiding. There's now a portable version at the bottom of the downloads page. Download the file, run it, and specify that Agent Ransack should be installed in the UTILITIES directory of the thumb drive.

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You may want a few other applications on the thumb drive too, ones that have to be installed. These are useful when you need to help a friend or family member diagnose and fix a problem with their computer.

• The free version of Aomei's Partition Manager and Backupper applications are good to have on hand and offer all the basic functions needed for partition management and disk backup.
• Belarc Advisor is a free utility from Belarc. It must be installed and the free application is limited to personal use. Belarc offers computer and workstation management applications for enterprise IT departments, but the free advisor builds a detailed profile of installed software and hardware, network inventory, any missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, and security benchmarks, then displays the results in a web browser.
• Core Temp is a handy application that reports temperature information about the computer it's installed on. It duplicates some of the features of Open Hardware Monitor.
• PatchMyPC is a useful program that checks for new versions of installed programs and updates them and can also be used to install dozens of applications.

Those are just some of the extras to consider adding to your thumb drive. There are probably other small applications that you use at least occasionally. If there's one you feel would be helpful when something has gone wrong, it belongs on that thumb drive.

Belarc Advisor Put Your Computer Under A Microscope

Continuing the theme of utility programs, let's take a closer look at the Belarc advisor. It's designed for IT professionals in enterprise settings, but it's a gem for use at home, too.

Because the Advisor is intended for use in a corporate environment along with Belarc's enterprise computer management tools, not all of the information will be useful. Users will need to be cautious not to make unnecessary modifications, and I'll get to that in a moment. First, though, consider the massive amount of information that it reveals.

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After the user starts the Advisor and grants administrator privileges, the analysis begins. A minute or two later, the summary page will appear on the default web browser. Information about your computer is stored on a local file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Belarc\BelarcAdvisor\System\tmp\. None of this information is sent to Belarc. The file will be the name of the computer with an HTML extension. Two other HTML files will be present, and these will be displayed when the user selects an option from the main report.

The report includes a security benchmark score, information about virus protection, and an indication of whether security updates are current at the top. Then there's detailed information about the operating system, computer make and model, processor data, and a list of physical and logical disk drives, including total capacity and remaining free space. User accounts and printers are listed. Memory modules are identified and their locations are shown. Multimedia devices are listed, as are Bluetooth, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi connections. All USB devices that have been connected to the computer in the past 30 days are listed, as are network devices. Software names and versions are shown near the bottom of the list. At the end of the page, all Windows hotfixes are shown. Many of the items in the various parts include links to additional details or explanatory notes.

The security benchmark report gave my computer a rating of 3.97 of a possible 10 points. That seems disturbingly low, but that's because the application is designed for enterprise use. Three of the failures are shown in the operating system settings section of the report:

• Fail: Local volumes must be formatted using NTFS. All of the drives connected to the computer are indeed NTFS volumes, but Google Drive creates a faux drive an it's detected as a FAT32 volume. This is not a security concern for a home-based computer.
• Fail: Accounts must be configured to require password expiration. In a corporate environment, it's a good idea to force users to change their account passwords regularly. This is less important in a home environment, and I consider this not to be a security issue.
• Fail: The Windows PowerShell 2.0 feature must be disabled on the system. PowerShell 2.0 is the old version of PowerShell, which is now at version 7. Although the danger is less in a home environment, PowerShell 2.0 should still be disabled. TenForums explains how to disable the old version.

The security benchmark summary included 10 major sections with a total of 209 individual tests. Most home computer users will see several flags, but remember that these tests are intended for corporate environments. Take care not to make a change unless you know exactly why you're making the change. Each flagged item has a link to a detailed explanation that can help users determine whether a change is needed.

Twenty Years Ago

Remnants Of The Internet Implosion Remained

The economy was in bad shape 20 years ago, and that was being felt in the electronics sector because of a reduced demand for computers and other devices.

Intel sales down

When the biggest computer chip maker in the world says sales will be down from what was expected, the result in the stock market is a drop in share prices. That's exactly the position Intel is in.

The company lowered its forecast this week for second-quarter revenue and earnings, blaming the problem on lower sales in Europe and weak demand for its new Pentium 4 chips. Intel told analysts that because its first-quarter earnings were better than expected, its projections for the first half of the year are still on target. While Intel is having trouble selling Pentium 4 chips, the company hasn't been able to turn out its lower-cost Celeron chips fast enough to meet demand.

Also this week, a semiconductor industry trade group scaled back its outlook for world chip sales in 2002.