What's On Your Thumbdrive?

Broue Master asks: "Nowadays, we need to support not only people at the office, but friends, family, friends of the family, family of the friends... you name it! They all run Windows to a degree and there are many tools to help you when assisting. Personally, I have a thumb-drive with removable memory cards. One of them has a small bootable Linux, the other one is filled with ready to use Windows utilities (CPU-Z, Ultra-Edit32), DOS utilities I've been collecting over the years, and Unix-style utilities (ps.exe, kill.exe, and others) ported to Windows, without the need for a layer like Cygwin. I also have a copy of the install files for AVG, Spybot, Sygate and the likes. But, even though I think I have many great tools, I'm sure I do not know about a lot of great others to help diagnose and solve problem. So I ask you, what's on your thumb-drive?"

Here are two excellent resources...

[jbarr (2233)]

For me, the key is to load "portable" versions of apps instead of "installable" versions. The point is not only to eliminate the need to install, but more importantly, not to leave traces of your apps behind. It's security and a courtesy. Two excellent sources are:

PortableApps.com [portableapps.com]
PortableFreeware.com [portablefreeware.com]

-Jim Barr
http://jimstips.com/ [jimstips.com]

Re:Here are two excellent resources...

[Mooga (789849)]

PortableApps.com has tons of great stuff. I use Portable Firefox all the time when I'm on the run and can't use my own laptop.

I've also been crazy enought to run Steam on one of my 1 gig thumb drives. Simply install Steam and the games of your choice localy (I did it with Half-Life and TFC). Then copy the whole Steam folder to your thumb drive. While updates take a long time, booting the game and downloading new maps isn't nearly as bad as you would think. Lag was minimal when I tested.

Re:Here are two excellent resources...

[MLease (652529)]

Ever considered switching to decaf?

-Mike

Everything

[oskard (715652)]

My girlfriend bought me a laptop hard drive in an enclosure. Its 100 GB with a 5400 RPM disc, and supports USB 2.0. I literally store everything on it, from schoolwork to movies to backups of video games. I take it everywhere with me just incase I find some software (say on my school's network) that I'd really like to take home. Or if I need to access my schedule or project documents, or maybe my voice communication client.

So, technically its not a thumbdrive, but it fits in my pocket.
EVERYTHING.

Re:Everything

[by Anonymous Coward]

You obviously missed the real "shiney". Grandfather starts by saying My girlfriend...

Re:Everything

[masterzora (871343)]

Good point. In that case, it should be modded +5, Funny.

mozilla?

[qortra (591818)]

You missed firefox/thunderbird. It's shocking how many people don't have them, and how much grief they put themselves through because they don't.

Book 'em.

[by Anonymous Coward]

"So I ask you, what's on your thumb-drive?"

Fingerprints.

--
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment...that says the same thing you're going to post, and you get a redundent. HA! HA!"

Don't People Bother to "Search" Before Posting?

[AnswerIs42 (622520)]

Could do a long post... but easier just to point to this /. post [slashdot.org] that was already up with MANY MANY good links.

Sneaker net

[PIPBoy3000 (619296)]

I use it to transport data from high-bandwidth to low-bandwidth areas, not much more. If my family has computer problems, they typically drop off the entire thing on my doorstep. Making housecalls is annoying because there's always that one little utility or piece of hardware I forgot to bring. My nerd cave is full of wonders, and is appropriately treated with awe.

Beats me.

[MarkusQ (450076)]

Beats me. You'll have to ask the guy who swiped it.

--MarkusQ

A few win32 apps on my drive

[(H)elix1 (231155)]

are Putty (ssh client and proxy pipe), PSCP (secure copy of files from *nix to/from win), PSFTP (secure ftp), tail, and scite (a nice text editor).

Re:A few win32 apps on my drive

[enrgeeman (867240)]

you may want to switch to portaputty, it keeps stuff out of the registry, and in a neat little folder, same directory as the exe

Sysinternals

[nmb3000 (741169)]

There are a myriad of great tools out there, but personally I have a copy of almost everything from Sysinternals [sysinternals.com] on my thumbdrive. Top of the list are Process Explorer [sysinternals.com] a (overclocked, suped-up, uber, and simply amazing) version of TaskManager. It shows everything you've ever wanted to know about a process but didn't know you could know. In addition, FileMon [sysinternals.com] and RegMon [sysinternals.com] are very helpful for troubleshooting permission problems, and the PSTools kit [sysinternals.com] (psexec, pskill, etc) are also great. They also have a free read-only version of NTFSDOS [sysinternals.com] (and even an NTFS filesystem driver for 95/98. The TCP/IP tools [sysinternals.com] are also very good to have on hand. Best part is of course that they are free, and many have source available.

If you do any Windows troubleshooting, this website is a must-have. No joke.

My malware cleaning stuff...

[zerocool^ (112121)]

Trend Microsystems "Sysclean" package. It's just an exe file with the scanning engine, and you download the latest virus def patternfile, and it scans your computer. Very nice; TM I think is the best commercial AV product available.
Sysclean executable:
http://www.trendmicro.com/download/dcs.asp [trendmicro.com] (under "Not a Trend Micro Customer")
Pattern files:
http://www.trendmicro.com/download/pattern.asp [trendmicro.com]

I also carry, in the "Antivirus" folder:
Various utilities I've collected for removing Symantec AV
AVG Free installer (I tried to talk people into TrendMicro, because I honestly think it's better, but if they flat out refused, I'd install AVG for them - less virusy computers on teh intarwebs is a good thing)
vcleaner - avg's somewhat less capable version of TM's sysclean package.

Also:
A series of handy apps, including:
7zip - v313 (the older one seems to have less bloat)
adobe acrobat
Divx codec
VLC Media Player
Firefox
Winamp 2.92
IttyBittyProcessManager
Angry IP scanner
Killbox
MSRDPCLI.exe (MS Remote Desktop Client - for 2000/98 machines)
vbrun60 files

and a folder called "Computer Cleanup", containing:
ad aware personal (plus the latest defs.ref file, available form lavasoftusa.com)
CWShredder (remove cool web search spyware)
Hijack this
ewido setup
LSP Fix (for sneaky spywares that replace something with dns)
WinsockXPFix
BugOff
RegVac
Spybot S&D (plus latest update packs)

Yep.

No Hassle Rewards.

[fahrbot-bot (874524)]

What's On Your Thumbdrive?

My Capital One card.

Quick list

[Denyer (717613)]

Some of this is a bit redundant, but it is all only 19Mb using UPX.

1by1 (play MP3s), AriskKey (recover passwords), AutoRuns (enumerate startup tasks), BurnCDCC (burn ISO images), CD (basic CD player), CDex (rip CDs + convert MP3/WAV), Copier (quick scan + print), CWShredder (clean spyware), DComBob (tame DCOM), Discover (force windows onscreen), DupeLocater (find and clean), FileRecovery PC Inspector (undelete), Folder2ISO (make ISO images), FoxitReader (read PDFs), GUIPDFTK (split/join PDFs), HijackThis (find spyware), HJSplit (split/join files), Identify_Boards (identify hardware), IPAgent (show IP), KatMouse installer (due to MS drivers), LCISOCreator (make ISO image from CD), Leaktest (test firewall), Microsoft keygen (people lose things), MultiRes (change res + force refresh), Multi Timer (stopwatch), NoteTab Light (text editor), NTest (test monitor setup), OnTop (pin windows to foreground), Process Explorer (task manager), ProduKey (recover passwords), Registry Commander (virus cleanup), ResHacker (examine executables), Rootkit Revealer (just in case), ShootTheMessenger (turn service off), Shred by AnalogX (simple filer shredder), TedNPad (unicode text editor), TFT (dead pixel locator), UNPnP (tame SSDP), UPX (compress executables), UnitConverter (what it says), utorrent (basic torrent app), VCdControlTool (mount ISO images), Windows 98 generic USB flash driver, WinImp (archive to ZIP, de-archives more), WinIPs (set hardware IPs), Wizmo (create force kill shortcuts), WNTIPCFG (show IP config), WS_FTP95 (basic FTP client), XnView (image browser and effects), XPDite (minor XP-SP1 fix), YACalc (evaluate expressions), XVI32 (hex editor)

What's in my thumbdrive???

[Nick Driver (238034)]

... a bunch of cheesy video commercials of some viking dudes complaining about loss of their former jobs, but now glad that they won a battle-of-the-bands.

The information needed to rebuild my life

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

An Electronic Survival Kit [honeypot.net]. If there's one thing Katrina taught me, it's that losing your entire life would completely suck. Why not take a few minutes now so that you can get back to normal ASAP?

Re:The information needed to rebuild my life

[4D6963 (933028)]

If there's one thing Katrina taught me, it's that losing your entire life would completely suck. Why not take a few minutes now so that you can get back to normal ASAP?

If all you need to rebuild your life can hold on a thumbdrive, I wonder what kind of life you live ;-)

Anyways, why carry it with you? Zip your stuff, encrypt it if you want, and put it on a couple of servers that are in two different cities. If you're gonna get in a Katrina-type situation, rather have your data in some server in Germany than in your pocket.

Arsenal of Tools

[sixtyfivebit (884544)]

Funny, I also carry a thumb-drive with a removable memory card slot. It's this generic one floating around online: http://www.supermediastore.com/supermedia-handy-4i n1--usb-20-flash-memory-card-reader-yellow.html [supermediastore.com]

I think they're a great idea, because I can move with the SD card market as flash memory becomes denser and denser. Speed hasn't been a problem, either. The thumbdrives support USB 2.0 and my SD card seems to be capable of a very decent data transfer rate.

I have a collection of Windows tools on the drive. Not Linux tools, because I can usually accomplish whatever it is I'm doing in the Linux environments I encounter day to day.

Network Tools:
* Raw TCP/IP transfer -> netcat ( http://www.vulnwatch.org/netcat/ [vulnwatch.org] )
* SSH/Telnet -> putty ( http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ [greenend.org.uk] )
* Port Scanner -> SuperScan4 ( http://www.foundstone.com/resources/proddesc/super scan.htm [foundstone.com] )
* Classic Port Scanner -> nmap ( http://insecure.org/nmap/download.html [insecure.org] )
* Packet Capture and Analysis -> WireShark setup ( http://www.wireshark.org/download.html [wireshark.org] )

Editors:
* General -> vim 7.0 ( http://www.vim.org/download.php [vim.org] )
* Hex Editor -> xvi32 ( http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xvi 32/xvi32.htm#download [handshake.de] )

Development:
* Tiny C Compiler ( http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/tcc/ [bellard.free.fr] )
* nasm ( http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=6208 [sourceforge.net] )

Misc:
* Lightweight Windows md5sum -> md5summer ( http://www.md5summer.org/download.html [md5summer.org] )
* Process Explorer ( http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplo rer.html [sysinternals.com] )
* MP3 Encoding -> RazorLame with lame ( http://www.dors.de/razorlame/download.php [www.dors.de] )
* Terminal Emulator -> TeraTerm Pro ( http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002416/teraterm.h tml [vector.co.jp] )

The folder is 26.7MB.

Insert subject here

[Klaidas (981300)]

So I ask you, what's on your thumb-drive?

Nothing. No, really. I use it to transfer files, not as the "Ultimate thing for fixing anything" :)

Personal Wiki

[Lord Prox (521892)]

How about this... TiddlyWiki [tiddlywiki.com] a personal wiki for notes. views in a web browser, pure javascript love, as handy as a PDA, and only 300kb of HTML.



Place a curse on Spammers [i-curse.com]

Oh, you mean Knoppix? :-) (or BBC)

[billstewart (78916)]

Knoppix on a CDROM is a really convenient solution to a lot of Windows problems.
Boot it up, check the hardware, check the partitions, replace broken files,
and of course copy the important data off to a USB shoebox drive
(or to a CD/DVD if there's a second drive in the machine)
before doing any more serious maintenance. I've had to do that routine a few times.

The old "Linux Bootable Business Card" was a much smaller distro
that fit onto one of those 50MB truncated-small-CD formats,
and had a bunch of repair tools.

And of course thumbdrives can do the same thing,
but you need to be Really Really careful about viruses,
not only because we're reinventing the floppy disk virus vector,
but because one of the times you really need this sort of tool
is when a machine might be infected - CDROMs are really safe.

Re:Porn..

[talkingpaperclip (952112)]

Obviously it was a joke... a thumbdrive has nowhere near the storage capacity necessary for the average /.er's porn collection.