/// <summary>
/// Converts an RSS feed to an HTML UL list with title and links to the article, blogpost etc.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="pRssFeedToLoad">The RSS feeds URI. (Either from disk, or url)</param>
/// <returns>A fully XHTML formatted unordered list with css class "RssFeed"</returns>
protected string ShowRSSFeed(string pRssFeedToLoad)
{
// setup initial stringbuilder, for creating an HTML UL list.
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.AppendLine("<ul class=\"RssFeed\">");

// create a new xml document used for parsing
XmlDocument rss = new XmlDocument();

// load the rss feed either from disk or url.
rss.Load(pRssFeedToLoad);

// select the items
XmlNodeList rssNodeList = rss.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("channel/item");

// traverse the items in the feed.
foreach (XmlNode rssItem in rssNodeList)
{
// get the needed data from the item.
string itemTitle = rssItem.SelectSingleNode("title").InnerText;
string itemLink = rssItem.SelectSingleNode("link").InnerText;

// create HTML LI element.
sb.AppendLine("<li>");
sb.AppendLine(string.Format("<a href=\"{0}\">{1}</a>", itemLink, itemTitle));
sb.AppendLine("</li>");
}

// close the HTML UL list.
sb.AppendLine("</ul>");

// return the HTML UL list.
return sb.ToString();
}

1. First up, you’ll need to fetch a copy of the ultimate I-got-all-the-tools-u-need linuxdistro called BackTrack. You can visit their download section by pressing this link and view a bunch of different versions and select the one that fits your taste or use this link to do a direct download of BackTrack4 Final.

2. Ok, here we are. We have downloaded a fresh cool copy of BT4, and are ready to reset some passwords! Hey wait a bit! Didnt we forget something? Oh yea.. First off you’ll need to burn the ISO to a DVD, since we have to boot from that DVD later on. For your ISO burning, you could use an application called ImgBurn <- clicky clicky.

3. Burn it, and stuff that DVD into the computer you wish to reset a password on.

4. Next up is that you need to ensure that the computer we want to boot, has booting from cd/dvdrom-drive enabled. Since there are five million different ways to check this on all brands, I’ll just leave you up to check it yourself. See if there is a message when you turn on your computer that says “One time boot order”, “Boot order” or something in that direction. (Dell users can probably just hit F12, and Lenovo users can hit Enter or ESC to interrupt normal boot order).

5. Things going great so far, but we haven’t touched the fun part yet. Once you booted from the DVD, you’ll get a menu where you have a bunch of different options for which settings you would like to run BT4 with. For simplicity just choose the BackTrack 4 with Frambuffer (1024×768) or choose some other option if you want that, you decide.

6. Let the magical linuxdistro boot up and wait for a line that has some green text saying root@bt4~:
We are now ready for the interesting part (and the part that we actually do something).

7. First off, we’ll need to mount our Windows drive so we can access it and locate our favourite file called SAM. Now, we need to find out which disk drive to use. Your disks would be called either hd or sd, depending on the type (IDE or SATA) and which driver that are in use. Dont pay too much attention to this right now, we want to find our correct disk and partition.

On the commandline type “ls -la /dev/sd*” if that dont return any results looking like /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 or similar, try to run this command instead “ls -la /dev/hd*” and follow the same procedure looking for /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2 or something similar. Both those two can have an other letter like /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdc2 and so on.

We have hopefully located our correct disk, if not repeat the procedure mentioned like 2 seconds ago. In this example I will use my computer as reference, and my disk is located at /dev/sda and my partition with M$ Windows is on the first partition /dev/sda1 .

8. Now I’m going to make a folder called /mnt/mydisk where I will mount my partition using this command : mkdir /mnt/mydisk
(the /mnt folder already exists in every linux distro, so you’ll just have to make the mydisk folder, if /mnt for some reasons dont exist, use this command first “mkdir /mnt”)

Then we’ll mount our partition to that newly created folder using this command: mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/mydisk

Now we got our partition mounted, and it’s ready for access. If for some reason it doesnt list Windows when you do a “ls -la /mnt/mydisk” then you probably have the wrong disk and/or partition. Follow the step where we mounted the partition, and try with another like /dev/sda2, or /dev/hdb3 (re-read section 7 again).

9. Okay, here we are, ready to finally reset our password. Run this command: chntpw -i /mnt/mydisk/Windows/system32/config/SAM (if it says that it cannot open the file, please check the foldernames as they are casesensitive.)

10. We now got a sweet little menu with a few options, you should select option number 1 “Edit user data and passwords”. Moving on.

11. Next up you will be prompted for which user you would like to change password on, you’ll get a list of all the users. Type in the username and hit Enter.

12. Now you got the “User edit menu” with 5 possible options. On option number 4, you can unlock the useraccount if it has been locked due to a number of failed login attempts. If it’s not locked it would say something similar to “seems unlocked already”. Then skip this step.

13. We have unlocked our account if it was needed, and are ready to reset the password. Retype your desired username and hit Enter, and then type 1 and hit Enter. Your password will now be reset to blank (no password needed at login).

14. Now we want to quit and save. Type ! and hit Enter. You will now be sent back to the main menu, type q and hit Enter again. When asked to save you choose yes (type y) and hit Enter.

15. Password are reset, and we’re ready to boot back into Windows and retrieve our long lost files! Type reboot and hit Enter. You will be prompted to remove the DVD.

That’s it! Once you boot into Windows, just type administrator as username (in my example) and nothing in the password field, and click OK. You will now be logged in :-)

That kicks ass! And yeah, you can use this method on any pc which you have physical access to and able to boot from a DVD :-)

Hopefully someone have had good use of the few articles I’ve posted here earlier, and I’m looking forward to posting some new cool stuff here with fixes for different problems and some tutorials maybe. If you have a problem that you can’t fix, give me a heads up and I’ll see if I can manage to fix it, and maybe post an article for reference to others who may have the same/similar problem (computerstuff please, if you have a personal problem, go see your doctor/psychiatrist). :-)

The problem seemed to be with the “Remember me” option. Other people that had the same problem just disabled the remember me option, and logged in as usual with their own password. The same solution worked for me. :-)

Just got to love the power of Google :-)

If you try to kill the wlcomm.exe process from within task manager, you will be logged off WLM. wlcomm.exe will start again when you log in the next time.

After a bit of searching around the net, I found a solution, it’s not perfect, but atleast it works. You will have two (2) options. The first is to downgrade to an older version of WLM/MSNmessenger, or the second, which is to install a different MSN client like pidgin or amsn. (There are other open source msn clients, just google it :-) )

Note: If you choose to downgrade to an older version of WLM / messenger, you will have to run the Microsoft Install Cleaner after the uninstall of WLM. Otherwise you will get an error while trying to install the older version, with the message that there is a newer version installed. Open the CleanUp Utility and highlight the Windows Live (WL) and Windows Live Messenger (WLM) files. Kudos to the user Bobbye from the techspot forum for this information, see techspot url under sources for more information.

If you have a solution for this error, without downgrading or installing another client, please post the solution in a comment, and I’ll update this article and include the solution.

Comments appreciated :-)

Sources:

• Information about the wlcomm.exe process (from whatsrunning.com)
• Information from a forum thread at techspot.com
• Windows Installer CleanUp Utility

Go get the invite you want! :D

Got a fresh and funky playlist? Share the URL in a comment :-

Networking:

• MidpSSH (SSH1/2 and telnet client)
• Mobile Web Server

Fitness:

• Step counter (Nokia E66 is not supported, yet..)
• Sports Tracker
• Wellness Diary (Data from Sports Tracker and Step Counter can be imported to this app)

Utilities:

• pyS60 [Post @ this blogg]

Media:

• Location Tagger
• Twibble (twitter app)

Useful applications will be added to the list. If you have an application that you would like to add to this list, post a comment.

The Python package for the S60 are called “PyS60″ and this can be downloaded from Sourceforge.net [Link]

Look at this page called Mobilenin for some pyS60 tutorials. [Link]
The pyS60 tutorials are written by Jurgen Scheible and are easy to follow to create some nice python application examples.

Jurgen Scheible had a presentation at my university about a year ago, where he talked about Python for the Series 60 phones. He also showed some examples and let the attendants write some simple test applications. It’s worth to take a look at, if you would like to write a program in a different language than C++ or Java :-)

Have fun!

“If it moves, compile it.” -GentooLinux

Youtube url

This guy is really good at playing keyboard :D

If this tutorial helped you in some way or another, be nice and give me some feedback :-)

Let’s just start from the top. The requirements for this tutorial is:

• A computer. (of course ;-) )
• Propellerheads Reason installed. (tested with v3.0, would probably work with newer/newest version.)
• Guitar Hero: World Tour drumkit. (Rock Band drumkit would probably work too)
• Xpadder. Download Xpadder.
• A virtual keyboard. Download Virtual MIDI keyboard. (You can use another virtual keyboard software if you like. This one doesn’t have a “always on top” function, which could be very neat to have.)
• A virtual MIDI port. Download Virtual MIDI router (If you’re running a 64 bit OS, you should consider using another Virtual MIDI driver.  LoopBe30 v1.5 is a possible alternative, I havent tried this since I run a 32bit OS. If you try this, please give me feedback so I can update this tutorial with it. ty :-) )

The first thing you would have to do, is connect the usb dongle for the drumkit to a free usbslot on your computer. Turn on the drumkit and let Windows autoinstall the drumkit.

When the drumkit is set up, continue to install the virtual MIDI port. For this installation, you’ll need to extract the downloaded file to a folder of your choice. Then head on to “Add Hardware” wizard in Control Panel.

Start the Wizard by double clicking it. In the first window, choose “Next” to proceed.

Choose “Yes, I have already connected the hardware” and click “Next”.

Browse down to the bottom and select “Add a new hardware device” and click “Next”.

Select the “Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)” option and click “Next”.

Browse the list and find “Sound, video and game controllers” option, select that and click “Next”.

Click the “Have disk…” button.

Click the “Browse” button.

Browse to the folder where you extracted the downloaded archive.

You may get an warning that the software hasn’t passed Windows Logo testing. Click “Continue anyway”.

Select the “Sonic Foundry Virtual MIDI router (x86)” and click “Next”.

Click “Next”.

Another warning about software that hasn’t passed Windows Logo testing. Click “Continue anyway” and let the installation begin.

Choose how many virtual midi ports you’d like. Ranging from 1 (minimum) and 4 (maximum) and click “Ok”.

Click “Finish” to close the window. If asked to reboot, do so.

Well well, all good so far. Now well install a virtual MIDI keyboard that let’s you map keyboard buttons to specific tangents. For this purpose, I used an application called Virtual MIDI Keyboard. First out, browse to the folder you downloaded the file to. Start the installation wizard, and just click through it.

If everything is going according to the plan, we’re now ready to set up the drums with xpadder. Fire up Xpadder by double clicking the Xpadder.exe file in the folder where you extracted the files. Once Xpadder are running, click the “Game controller” button on the left side and choose “New”. This will create a new empty controller layout with a new preferences window where you are presented with a couple of options. Click the “Button” tab, and power on the drumkit. Hit the different drums to add them to the layout. Use the mousepointer to arrange the buttons as you like. I placed mine like this:

Yellow      Orange

Red    Blue     Green

Pedal

Click the “Finish” tab, and click the “Close” button in the bottom left corner. You are now all set. The drumkit buttons are now represented in the Xpadder window. Click each button to select which keyboard key to map the drum to.
Example layout: A = Pedal, S = Red, D = Blue, F =  Green, G = Yellow, H = Orange.

By doing these steps, we have mapped each drum to a specific key on the keyboard.

Let’s fire up the Virtual MIDI keyboard and assign the drumkeys to the tangents we wish to use. As for the ReDrum drum computer in Reason, which can hold one sound for each slot where as there are 10 slots in total. The first tangent on the left are mapped to the first redrum slot and so on to the 10th slot and tangent. This is equal to a real MIDI keyboard connected to the computer. The first 10 tangents from the left are possible to use with ReDrum, whereas you can use all the tangents with different devices, as with the NN-19 digital sampler. But since the GH drumkit just have 6 “buttons”, we will just use the 6 first tangents from the left on the Virtual MIDI keyboard.

The main interface in Virtual MIDI keyboard is, yes you guessed right, a keyboard. Go to “Edit” on the filemenu, and choose “Connection”. On “Output MIDI connection” select “1: Sonic Foundry MIDI router”. Now our virtual keyboard will output all midi to Sonic Foundry Router slot 1.

Now we’ll map the appropriate keys on the keyboard to their on specific tangent on the virtual keyboard. Go to “Edit” on the filemenu, select “Keyboard map >” and then “Edit..”. As you can see in the new window, it has a table with 2 columns. The left column represents the tangents, from left to right (0 to 59), and the right column represents the key associated with the tangent. We’ll start with 0 in the left column, which we will map to the letter “A”, as we mapped the pedal on the drumkit to and so on.
Example:
0 – A (Pedal)
1 – S (Red drum)
2 – D (Blue drum)
3 – F (Green drum)
4 – G (Yellow drum)
5 – H (Orange drum)

You can of course map your keys as you like. As I mentioned earlier, the ReDrum drum computer has a total of ten slots which you can use. The tangent on the left (zero) will be a bass drum, and so on. Map your keys so they match the appropriate slot in the drum computer. You’ll figure it out :-)

Now we’re ready to make some noise! Fire up Reason with a new empty track. The first thing we have to do before we can make some noise is to tell Reason to listen to the right MIDI port. Click the “Edit” item on the filemenu, and select “Preferences” on the bottom. In the preferences window, select “Control surfaces and Keyboards” on the top. Then you click the “Add” button down to the left. On “Manufacturer” select “<Other>”. The model you should select is “Basic MIDI keyboard”. You can name this keyboard whatever you want, for example “My virtual keyboard”. The most important thing here, is to get the MIDI input port right. Select “1: Sonic Foundry MIDI Router”. Because this is the one we selected to use in the Virtual MIDI keyboard software. They have to match, otherwise it won’t work. Click “OK” to save the new keyboard and click the red “X” in the top right corner of the preferences window to close it.

Now we’re ready to make some noise! Add a new ReDrum device by clicking “Create” on the filemenu and then selecting ReDrum drum computer from the list. Load up a set of songs to the drum computer and try tapping the drums a bit. Cool eh?

I guess you won’t read this since you are making so much noise right now, but I’ll write it anyway. There are some technical problems with this solution. The drums seem to be a bit delayed. I’ve searched the web for this, and found out that you can adjust this by using a usb-midi cable and a specific application provided by redoctane. Read this thread for more information. Also there are some problems with the Virtual MIDI keyboard, which is that it has no option for keeping it on top or to prevent it from losing focus. When it lose focus it won’t recieve the signals from Xpadder.

I lay it out, for you to play it out. ;D

Give some feedback if you want to. All feedback are appreciated, doesn’t matter if it’s comments, criticism, tips or just plain chatting :-)