the Zen of Communication.

There are the usual ways to view history through the app, but I had to try and pull the history off an old partition because I needed a link I found right before a drive crashed.

For IE:

More details are found at this site – http://www.milincorporated.com/a-temporary-internet-files.html#ch2 .  The file locations are:

Win2000/WinXP:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\

Vista/Win7:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Low\

You’ll have to enable viewing hidden and system files.  That page has a quick rundown about how to do so as well.

There’s a program called IE History Viewer available at this page:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/iehv.html

You point it at your profile directory and it lists everything.  It can then spit it out as a CSV file or HTML report.  Very nicely done, and very helpful.

For Firefox:

(More info was found here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox#Finding_the_profile_folder)  The profile directories are:

Win95/Win98/WinME:

C:\Windows\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile folder>

or

C:\Windows\Profiles\<Username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile folder>

Win2000/WinXP:

C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile folder>
Once you find your profile, there are two versions of the history file – the Firefox V2 and earlier (history.dat), and V3 and greater (places.sqlite).

For Firefox 2 and earlier, it’s stored in history.dat .  This file is in the “Mork” format which is apparently very rare and a pain in the arse to read.  A program was written called Dork that’s a Mork viewer.  It was available at ” http://www.sunturbine.com/dork/ “, but that page has since been lost.  A copy was retained on the WebArchive, however, at ” http://web.archive.org/web/20070125084419/http://www.sunturbine.com/dork/ “  The zip file was also available for download from there.  In case it’s no longer available I’ve attached the zip file here (dork_history_reader).  He released it as free and open source so I don’t believe i’m violating any copyrights by republishing.

Disclaimer: Not my app, I didn’t write it, and I can’t help fix it if it’s broken.  I’m just making it available again on the interwebs.

Run Dork and drag-and-drop history.dat onto it.  It should decipher your history file.

For V3, the places.sqlite file is in a format called SQLite (clever file name, eh?).  There’s an app called SQLite Browser available on SourceForge.  http://sqlitebrowser.sourceforge.net/   Grab the latest version.  When I wrote this it was 2.0b1 .  Run the program, then open the places.sqlite  file from the profile directory.  You’ll get a list of tables, and one of them will be Places.  That has your history in it.

Now the interesting part about all this is apparently it can be done remotely on another profile directory on your system, or over a network share (\\workstation\c$\users\…), as long as you have permissions to view the file.

So, vLite out of the box (or extracted download, as it were) requires three files to run – wimgapi.dll, wimfltr.inf, and wimfltr.sys (wimfltr.inf is a driver file that requires .sys).

The interesting thing about Win7 and vLite is that Win7 already has wimgapi.dll in c:\windows\system32 (or syswow64, I presume).

“Neat!” thinks I, and copies that to the c:\windows\program files\vlite directory, and pulls wimfltr.inf and wimfltr.sys from another server I have with the WAIK on it. I run Vlite. It runs slow, but runs. I configure my install source, it runs slow, but runs. I get to modifying my install source (removing components), it runs VERY slow, then crashes. Consistently. Changing options, running as admin, running in a compatibility layer, all return crashes after it runs.

Turns out vLite does NOT like the wimgapi.dll that comes with Win7. So, moral of the story folks – use all the same versions from the same source.  In my case, I pulled them from c:\program files\windows aik\Tools\x86.  In your case, unless you’ve downloaded the 2gb WAIK iso, you’ll need to find them from Google or Bing.  Distribution is apparently some form of international terrorism.

From the WAIK I’d installed, these were files modified 11/1/2006 and 11/2/2006 . As soon as I replaced wimgapi.dll in the C:\Program Files\vLite\ directory with the older version  (replacing the one from 7/9/2009, with the one from 11/1/2006) vLite screamed to life and ran as expected and followed all the way through without a single crash.

This was, needless to say, a relief.  Happy trails.

If you’ve been following along, you may have noticed a distinct lack of progress with the MRTG/IIS thread, and the server mod.  That’s because shortly after I finished up the first round, the RAID array on my server took a dive.  Everything’s intact, but the server is limping right now, and I need to migrate to different hardware.  It, of course, is high priority just like everything else in life, and I need more than an hour or two to do it… easy, right?

So, once that’s been done, I can get back to rolling like we do.  Till then, keep tuned in. 

I just performed a long overdue upgrade of WP to the latest rev.  I’ve put it off until now because I’ve spent so long customizing the pages, adding plugin sources to pages, changing layouts, etc, I was rather nervous about an updated install hosing something up that would take days to find and fix a comma out of place (been there, esp. with the PHP mods).  But, I have to admit it was much simpler than I’d anticipated. 

The instructions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress make things very simple, and point out “don’t do this”.  I followed the guide for both my sites (Zen & Wings), and it worked quite instantly.  I backed up everything first though (including MySQL databases, as the new rev will make some changes) just as a precaution.  The new rev will also run automatic updates, saving me the trouble. 

So there’s a new login page, and a bunch of updated behind the scenes stuff.  If there are any issues, please let me know. 

And while I’m at it, is this site helpful?  Aside from more regular posts, I’m curious if there is anything you’d like to see added, more of, etc. 

 

 

Update: Turns out SemiSecure Login doesn’t like WP 2.7.1 .  After logging out, I was locked out again.  If you run into this, just rename the plugin directory to disable it, and then deactivate it.  I’ve replaced it with SemiSecure Login Reimagined which uses RSA keys over OpenSSL, which is much better anyway.

People talk about getting into the stock market… consumer electronics man, that’s where the money is.  What a ‘Super Deal’. 

Glen’s the man, going to work
Got his tie, got ambition Continue Reading »