Eddie On Everything » software

Fixing the Chrome Error: “Could not create directory for unzipping”

eddie — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 16:06:16 +0000

I went to install a new extension in Google Chrome / Chromium and I was getting the error message “Could not create directory for unzipping.”

This doesn’t seem to be a permissions issue, as I have full rights on the PC I’m working on.

I found this thread in which some others report the same error.

The funny thing is, it seems to go away & come back randomly, so some of the suggested permanent fixes either don’t work for everyone, or they stop working after a period of time. (Or, worse, they cause other problems.)

I did find a work around that allows you to install the extension without getting the “Could not create directory for unzipping” error.

Here is how to work around the “Could not create directory for unzipping” error:

Download the extension you want to install to your hard drive by right-clicking the install button and choosing “Save Link As”

Change the file extension from “.crx” to “.zip”.
Open the file in your favorite zip program. (I use WinRAR)
Extract the files to a folder on your hard drive
In Chrome, open the extension tab by typing “chrome://extensions/” into the location bar
Choose the “Developer Mode” link, and then hit the “Load Unpacked Extension” button

Browse to the directory containing the extracted extension files & hit “OK”.

That’s it! Chrome should now load the new extension without giving you the error message about creating a directory.

VanDyke Secure CRT – bind: Permission Denied Error when connecting to Ubuntu SSH Server

eddie — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:56:06 +0000

When using Windows, I use VanDyke SecureCRT to connect to my Linux machines, which include servers running Red Had Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, and the Debian-derived Ubuntu. Everything was working fine until today.

Though I was playing around with the SSH configuration files to get SFTP transferred files to set a specific file permissions mask (umask), I don’t think I changed anything that would have caused this error:

“Connection to session XXXX failed: The server has disconnected with an error. Server message reads: A protocol error occurred. bind: Permission denied.”

The problem occurred on the Debian/Ubuntu based machine. Interestingly, the error only occurred when using SecureCRT – sftp via Sftpdrive worked great, and connecting to the machine via other SSH clients worked fine as well.

After trying everything I could think of, including changing authentication methods, user names, etc, and after much searching, I finally found a solution over in the HP forums:

Got it working. Fix is:
in SecureCRT

Options -> Global Options -> SSH2 Options

Turn off Option: Enable OpenSSH agent forwarding

Easy enough fix, but it took me about an hour to find the solution. If yo urun into the same problem, hopefully you’ll find this post much quicker than I found the HP solution.

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How to Speed Up Your Computer Running Windows XP – Part 1

eddie — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:20:30 +0000

OK, so you’ve had Windows XP for a while now and have installed a bunch of third party apps, and Windows just keeps getting slower, and slower, and slower, and slooooower…

It might be Microsoft’s fault, since there are a bunch of things that XP should do differently. It might be a third party application provider’s fault for installing a bunch of junk into the startup folder that you didn’t ask for. It might be your fault for carelessly installing software that contains spyware or adware.

But we’re not here to point fingers. The purpose of this article is to help you get your computer back up to speed.

Before I begin, let me tell you how I personally keep my Windows machines running at top speed — I completely reformat the C: drive and reinstall everything, starting with Windows XP, every few months. Yes, this can be pretty time consuming, though I’ve worked out a few tricks that really speed things up. If you really want to get back to top performance, this is the best course of action. However, this solution isn’t for everyone – you should have some clue as to what you’re doing before taking this route.

If you want to speed up your current system without reformatting, give these steps a try:

Clean up your Desktop

For some reason, having large files on your Desktop slows Windows down. (Don’t ask me, I didn’t design it.) You should try your best to store your documents somewhere else, for instance, in your “My Documents” folder.

Having a lot of icons on the Desktop can slow windows down as well, which is why Windows ships with a “Desktop Cleanup Wizard.” You may have noticed that an annoying little bubble pops up from time-to-time saying “You have unused icons on your Desktop” This isn’t Microsoft trying to be helpful by unlcuttering your screen for you, this is them working around the “too many icons slows me down” design flaw.

If you’d like to use the Desktop Cleanup Wizard, access it by right-clicking anywhere on your Desktop then choosing “Properties.” The “Display Properties” window will appear. Choose the “Desktop” tab, then click the “Customize Desktop” button at the bottom of that screen. From that screen, choose the “Clean Desktop Now” button.

Of course, there is really no need to run the wizard – you can accomplish the same by simply deleting the icons that you don’t use manually.

Free Up Disk Space by Removing Temporary Files

Start Microsoft’s “Disk Cleanup” by going to
Start –>All Programs–> Accessories–> System Tools–> Disk Cleanup
-or–
Go to Start->Run and type “cleanmgr”

If prompted to choose a drive, select “C.”

Disk Cleanup now examines your drive for a bit, then shows you how much disk space you can reclaim by deleting unused files. When the box pops up, you will probably want to choose to get rid of

Downloaded Program Files
Temporary Internet Files
Microsoft Error Reporting Temporary Files
Recycle Bin
Any “Log” Files

Do NOT choose “Compress Old Files” — while this will free up some disk space, it will also make your computer much, much slower.

Anything else, it’s really your call. In my list, I see that “Office Setup Files” are taking up about 200M of disk space. While I could reclaim that space by deleting them, I choose to keep them in place since it makes some tasks in Microsoft Office a little bit easier. And since I’m not really hurting for disk space, they really don’t bother me.

Hit “OK” to let XP reclaim some disk space then move on to the next step.

Defragment your Hard Drive

Start-> All Programs-> Accessories-> System Tools-> Disk Defragmenter
–or–
Click Start->Run and type “dfrg.msc”

Choose the C: drive from the list and then click “Analyze.”

The tool will now analyze your hard drive and tell you whether the drive needs to be defragmented. If so, follow the instructions on-screen. (You may want to bookmark this page now — your computer may need to be rebooted by the defrag program. Hit “CTRL-D” to bookmark.)

Note: Depending on the size of your Hard Drive and level of fragmentation, this step might take a few hours to complete. You will still be able to perform other tasks while the program runs, though.

Check Your System for Malicious Adware

If you don’t already have Lavasoft’s Ad-aware installed on your computer, you need to download it and install it. What this program will do is search your system for malicious programs that may be running in the background and disable them.

The software is free and can be obtained from download.com or in the free Google Pack. To get Google Pack, which contains a bunch of other software as well, click the button below.

(Note: Google Pack is completely customizable. Just de-select any software that you don’t want.)

After installing Google Pack, run it by finding the appropriate file in the Start Menu. Be sure to choose to “Check for updated definitions” if prompted.

Once the definitions have been updated, choose “Start” to start the scan. Once the scan is complete, choose to have any detected adware files quarantined or removed.

Get rid of Spyware

Like adware, you may not even be aware that spyware is running in the background on your computer. The best spyware detection tool out there is called Spybot Search & Destroy and can be downloaded by clicking here.

Download and install the software, the run it by locating the appropriate menu under Start->All Programs. (Likely called “Spybot Search and Destroy”)

When you run the program, you will need to first choose “Search for Updates,” after which you may need to re-start the program. Then choose “Check for Problems” and let Spybot S+D quarantine any problems found.

Run a Virus Scan

This is going to vary depending on the virus software that you use, but you should start your virus scanner, update the definitions, and run a full system scan.

If you don’t have virus software, or if you are looking to make a change, note that Norton Antivirus is included in the free Google Pack. You can download the Google Pack by clicking the button above.

Do you have enough RAM?

RAM, or Random Access Memory, is what your computer uses when it “thinks.” The more complex tasks you perform, the more RAM you need. And if your computer doesn’t have enough, Windows can run like a dog as it tries to make up for the RAM deficiency by caching to disk. Most bargain-basement computer manufacturers keep their costs down by selling PCs with too little RAM – those of us “in the know” know that simply popping an extra RAM module in can speed up performance drastically.

To check the amount of RAM that your computer has, hit the Windows Key and the Pause/Break key at the same time. (Or right-click on “My Computer” then choose “Properties.”) The amount of RAM That you have will be listed on the bottom right side of the box that pops up. If you have under 512M, and if speed is an issue for you, you’re going to want to seriously consider upgrading to at least 512M of RAM or more. It shouldn’t cost you more than $50, and the performance increase will be considerable.

Coming in Part 2

This ends Part 1 of the “How to Speed up your PC” article. In Part 2 I will discuss more advanced techniques, such as disabling certain programs that run at Startup and deleting Tasks in the Task Scheduler. Until then, Good Luck and happy tweaking!

How to Speed up Adobe Acrobat Reader and PDF file opening

eddie — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 01:39:30 +0000

Dumb Little Man found this little tidbit at DWTips that I wanted to pass along. (and offer my own alternative solution as well.)

DW Writes:

Every time you run Adobe Acrobat up to 20 plugins are loaded unnecessarily – most users do not need even a fraction of them!

To disable unneeded plugins and make them optional instead, follow these instructions:

1. Install the latest version of Adobe Acrobat – you can get it here
2. Browse to the plugins folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Reader\plug_ins
3. Create a new folder named Optional
4. Move all files from the plug_ins folder to Optional, except EWH32.api, print*.api, and Search*.api

That’s it! Load any PDF in Adobe Acrobat to see the difference!

That is indeed a great tip – Adobe Acrobat has to be the slowest, most bloated piece of crap software in computing history. There is nothing worse that unknowingly clicking on a link to a PDF file only to have your browser lock up for 15 seconds while it loads up 50 Meg+ Adobe Acrobat.

Better Solution: Get rid of Adobe Acrobat Reader
I’ve been unable to personally try the above tip because my computers all have a strict “No-Adobe-Software” policy in place. Which brings me to my preferred, alternate solution – get rid of Adobe Acrobat. You don’t need it. There is a company out there called Foxit Software that makes a small, free, and fast PDF reader called (you guessed it) Foxit Reader.

The Foxit Reader is under one Megabyte in size (take that Adobe), and it allows you to easily type right into any document and to easily select and copy text. Adobe Acrobat Reader, on the other hand, is over 50 times as large, doesn’t do either of those tasks very well, and it constantly “phones home” to Adobe, which slows things down even more.

So unless your employer forces you to use Adobe, I recommend that you ditch it and go with Foxit. You won’t be sorry that you did.

If you’re interested in my other software recommendations, click here.

Hidden Skype Icons and Emoticons

eddie — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:37:16 +0000

In addition to those provided in the drop-down list, Skype has a number of hidden emoticons as well. Some of these are not available with all versions. To be sure that they all work, be sure that you and the person you are chatting with both have the latest version of Skype.

If you know of any not included in the list, please post them in the comments.

Skype Hidden Emoticons

to use, type	description	image
(mooning)	a man dropping his pants	p
(toivo)	a man and his dog	p
(finger)	flipping the bird	p
(kate)	putting on lipstick	p
(bandit)	a ninja looking emoticon	p
(headbang) (banghead)	smiley banging his head into a wall
(drunk)	a drunk smiley	p
(rock)	smiley making the rocker hand sign	p
(smoke) (smoking) (ci)	smoking smiley	p

This is a list of all of the Emoticons that Skype understands:
:) :- ) :=) :( :- ( :=( :D :- D :=D :d :-d :=d 8) 8- ) 8=) :O :-O :=O : o : -o : =o ;) ;- ) ;=) ;( ;-( ;=( (sweat) (:| :| :- | :=| :* :-* :=* :P :- P :=P :p :-p :=p (blush) :$ :-$ :=$ :”> |-) I-) I=) (snooze) (|-( |( |=( (inlove) ]:) >:) (grin) (talk) (yawn) |-() (puke) :& :-& (doh) :@ :-@ :=@ x( x-( X( X-( x=( X=( (wasntme) (party) :S :-S :s :-S (mm) 8-| B-| 8| B| 8=| B=| :x :- x :X :-X :# :-# :=x :=X :=# (makeup) (kate) (chuckle) (giggle) (clap) (think) :- ? : ? (y) (Y) (ok) (n) (N) (handshake) (skype) (ss) (h) (H) (l) (L) (u) (U) (e) (m) (F) (f) (rain) (st) (#) (sun) (o) (O) (music) (~) (film) (movie) (mp) (ph) (coffee) (pi) (pizza) (cash) (mo) (flex) (^) (cake) (beer) (d) (D) (dance) \o/ \:D/ \:d/ (ninja) (*) (#) (mooning) (finger) (bandit) (toivo)

If you know of others, post them in the comments.

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Getting Pandora’s Jar to work with the Lastest Pandora Update – 6/10/06

eddie — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 19:03:23 +0000

The Pandora music service updated their code last night. If you’re a Pandora’s Jar user, you may have noticed that the Pandora player is no longer appearing on your Pandora’s Jar page.

Not to worry – here’s how you fix it.

Locate your Pandora’s Jar directory. If you followed my instructions when you set it up, that directory is c:\pandora . Open the Directory.
There’s a file in there called “pandoraGrabber.html”. Open it in a text editor.
Search for the string “https://www.pandora.com:443/radio/tuner_6_9_0_4.swf”. Change it to “https://www.pandora.com:443/radio/tuner_7_0_0_0.swf”. It appears twice, so you should make two replacements.

That’s it – restart Pandora’s Jar and you should be up and running.

If you’d prefer to make the edits, you can download a copy of the updated pandoraGrabbler.html here. Right click, choose “Save as,” and copy the file into your Pandora directory. NOTE that you’ll have to remove the “.txt” from the file extension!

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How to Securely and Completely Erase Your Computer’s Hard Drive

eddie — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 18:33:04 +0000

Getting rid of that old computer? You might want to consider either hanging on to the hard drive or making sure that it’s been completely erased before you do so – your personal data may be at stake.

If you’re like most computer users, you probably have a few files on your computer that you don’t want strangers getting ahold of. Perhaps you have a spreadsheet containing your budget and salary information. Or maybe you have a Word document that contains your credit card number or your Social Security number. Worse, you might have a copy of your Quicken or Microsoft Money, or maybe even a copy of last year’s tax return.

In fact, if you use online banking or shop online, it’s possible that even your Internet Browser’s cache folder contains information that can be used to steal your identity.

It may sound frightening, but the fact is that simply deleting these files will NOT prevent others from later accessing them. There are a number of data recovery tools available that can be used to retrieve this lost information, even after it’s been overwritten by other files.

For this reason, I’ve always destroyed hard drives by drilling holes in them then soaking them in water for a while before setting them out on the curb. But what if you want to donate your old computer to charity, or sell it on eBay?

Before doing so, you’re going to want to download a copy of Darik’s Boot and Nuke boot disk. (It’s completely free.) This disk is used by making either a bootable floppy or CD, and then booting the computer with the disk in the drive. The program will use sophisticated multiple-write algorithms to ensure that your data cannot be recovered by even the most advanced recovery techniques.

This program is used by both the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration, so you know it’s secure.

Always ask a repair center to return your drive to you, even if they say it’s going to be destroyed

Don’t trust that computer repair centers will actually destroy your hard drive – these places are notorious for reselling the damaged goods to wholesalers, who then refurbish them and re-sell them on the open market.

Case in Point: A June 2006 story on MSNBC tells the tale of how exactly that happened to one extremely dissatisfed Best Buy customer:

One year ago, Hank Gerbus had his hard drive replaced at a Best Buy store in Cincinnati. Six months ago, he received one of the most disturbing phone calls of his life.

“Mr. Gerbus,” Gerbus recalls a stranger named Ed telling him. “I just bought your hard drive in Chicago.”

Gerbus, a 77-year-old retiree, was alarmed. He knew the old hard drive was loaded with his personal information — his Social Security number, account numbers and details of his retirement investments. But that’s not all. The computer also included data on his wife, Roma, and their children and grandchildren, including some of their Social Security numbers.

In June 2005, when Gerbus took his computer to Best Buy for repairs after a hard drive crash, he knew the drive was a potential hot potato. So when a clerk there told him it had to be replaced, he asked for the damaged hardware back.

No dice. The replacement was done for free, under warranty, and Gerbus was told the old drive had to be sent to a repair center in Chicago to fulfill warranty terms.

“I asked in the store on two or three occasions. … I was very concerned,” he said. “But they said ‘we can’t give you the old one because it’s under warranty.’”

Gerbus said he was assured that, after verifying the warranty, workers in Chicago would drill holes through the drive and make it unusable.

Gerbus’ hard drive did make it to Chicago. But instead of being destroyed, it landed in Ed’s hands. In January, Ed tracked down the Gerbus family at the couple’s winter home in Florida, and placed that disturbing call.

“The only way he would have had my Florida number was if he had my hard drive,” Henry Gerbus said.

Ed told Mr. Gerbus he’d purchased the drive at a flea market for $25, Hank Gerbus recalls.

It is a HUGE mistake to trust someone else to destroy your sensitive information. As you can see from Mr. Gerbus’ story, despite Best Buy’s assurances, the drive was never destroyed. Don’t become a victim of identity theft.

Download a copy of Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN) Here.

How to Fix Pandora’s Jar error: “unable to rip MP3 null”

eddie — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:42:50 +0000

If you’re looking for information on how to use Pandora’s Jar, check here for my article called How to save music from Pandora using Pandora’s Jar

Lemme guess – Pandora’s Jar was working just fine for you, but then all of a sudden it stopped working?

The reason is that the Pandora Music Service changed the way that Pandora saves temporary music files to your computer.

Fortunately, there is a fix available.

User “Cooper” at Hak.5 posts this update in the Hak5.org forum:

Seems Pandora once again updated their program to store the downloaded MP3 file using a different name format.
To fix this, please replace the pandora.jar file from your current installation with this one:
http://comicnut.speedxs.nl/pandora.jar

So there you have it – the fix is at http://comicnut.speedxs.nl/pandora.jar I installed the updated version of the java .jar file and was back to saving mp3’s with no problem whatsoever.

I imagine that the music service will keep making changes. As they do, check back here or the Hak5 forum for updates.

Happy Sampling!

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How to save music from Pandora using Pandora’s Jar

eddie — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 23:41:12 +0000

The Pandora Music Service is pretty cool – you tell Pandora which artists and songs you like, and Pandora then plays music that it thinks you will like, based on your stated preferences. It’s a fun way to discover new music, though there are a couple of limitations.

The biggest limitation is that you are not permitted to “skip” more than a few songs per hour. After a few skips, the next time you attempt to pass by a bad song a notice pops up explaining that one of the terms of their music licensing agreement is that they can’t let you skip too many songs. Unfortunately, this makes Pandora pretty limited in terms of the music that are able to discover – I don’t know about you, but when searching for new music, I can tell whether I’ll like a song in 30 seconds or less.

Also, when searching for new music, I don’t always want to sit through listening to a song that I’m already familiar with. For example, I set up a music discovery station based on the artist “Johnny Cash.” No less than three out of the first 10 songs that Pandora played for me were by Hank Williams – as if I don’t already know every song Hank ever sang by heart! When I went to skip over the third Hank song, I was told “Sorry, you’re gonna have to sit through it!”

Another limitation of Pandora is that you have to be sitting at your computer in order to use the service. I don’t know about you, but when I’m sitting at my computer, I normally have other things going on (eg “work”), and I don’t always have the attention span to discover new music. I would instead prefer to discover new music while working out, listening to my mp3 player. (Not an iPod, btw.)

Since Pandora does not allow the user to save music to their hard disk, these two limitations are significant.

Enter Pandora’s Box – this piece of open-source software automatically saves Pandora’s music as an mp3 file, complete with song title and artist ID3 tags. You can then transfer the mp3 files to your portable mp3 player, allowing you to discover new music while working out, on a car trip, wherever. After listening to each song, it’s then up to you to respect intellectual property laws by deleting the mp3 files from your portable device.

Here is a brief tutorial on how to set up Pandora’s Jar:

First things first – Your computer should be running Windows XP and have the Java Virtual Machine installed. (Yes, I know, Java sucks. I didn’t write the software.)
Download the latest version of Pandora’s Jar. You can find the latest version listed here, in this forum at hak5.org. When I wrote this article, the latest version was version 4. (A direct link to version 7.3.1, the latest version as of 20 Sept 2006, is available here. However, this may not be the latest version – be sure to check the forum if you have troubles.) Make sure you will be able to find the file after your browser is done downloading it. If you aren’t sure that you will, be sure to choose “Desktop” when your browser asks you where you’d like to save the file.
Create a directory called c:\pandora and extract all files to it.
If you don’t know how to do either of these things, here’s what you do:
- Go to Start->Run
- Type “c:” (no quotes) and hit “enter”
- Right-click on the window that pops open and choose “New Folder”
- Name this folder “pandora” (no quotes)
- Double click this folder to enter it
- Find the file you previously downloaded and double click it. If you can’t find it, look on your desktop. It should be called something like “pandoras-jar-beta.4.zip”
- Drag all of the files in the window that pops up to the folder that you just created
Go to Start->Run and type “cmd”
Type “cd c:\pandora”
Type “java -jar pandora.jar 5432″. What you’re doing here is starting a server that you will connect to with your browser. “5432″ is the port number that you are starting the server on. If you have a service conflict, you can choose another port by simply specifying another number. If you do this, be sure to use this number, not 5432, in the next step!
Open your browser and go to “http://localhost:5432″. Pandora’s Jar will then start up, and it will start saving songs to the c:\Pandora\mp3 directory.

That’s it! If the above scares you, don’t be too worried – it sounds a lot more complicated than it really is.

A few tips:

Don’t skip to the next song when one is being saved. It will cause the whole setup to crash, and you’ll have to repeat steps 6 & 7
Respect intellectual property rights. It is illegal to keep a copy of music that you don’t own a license to. (This usually means that you own the physical CD or have purchased the songs via iTunes or similar music store.)
It might be illegal to use Pandora’s Jar to save music for a one-time listen. However, if you listen only once, you are arguably using Pandora’s box as a time-shifting device and your use is thus “fair use” covered by the Sony Betamax case.
Nothing here should be construed as legal advice. I don’t know if this is legal or not.
I didn’t write the software.

Good luck, and happy discovering!

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How to delete a search engine in Firefox

eddie — Tue, 30 May 2006 08:27:08 +0000

Ahh, Firefox – so customizeable.

Unfortunately, it still has a way to go in terms of intuitiveness of design.

Case and point: it’s a breeze to add search engines to Firefox with a single mouse click using the Mozilla addons page. Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to delete old or unwanted engines from the list. Not only can you not right-click on an engine to get the option to remove it, but an option to edit the list of engines doesn’t appear anywhere in the entire interface!

Here’s how you remove those unwanted engines from your list:

Browse to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins
Delete the 2 filenames that correspond to the engine that you want to remove. There will be both a .src file and image file. (either a .png or .gif)

If you can’t find any applicable looking filenames, the engine may be installed in your profile area. If so, do this:

Browse to C:\Documents and Settings\edward\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[PROFILE ID]\searchplugins (where [PROFILE ID] is a random string of characters used as your profile identifier)
Delete the 2 filenames that correspond to the engine that you want to remove. There will be both a .src file and image file. (either a .png or .gif)

After you remove the files, restart Firefox and voila, the engines are now gone.

Update: The SearchPluginHacks extension will allow you to delete engines by right-clicking them. The extension is only 4k, so it shouldn’t delay your load time too much. Depending on your XP skill level, this may be an easier option for you, while a more experienced user may find the occasional manual delete process more convenient.

Eddie On Everything » software

Fixing the Chrome Error: “Could not create directory for unzipping”

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VanDyke Secure CRT – bind: Permission Denied Error when connecting to Ubuntu SSH Server

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How to Speed Up Your Computer Running Windows XP – Part 1

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How to Speed up Adobe Acrobat Reader and PDF file opening

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Hidden Skype Icons and Emoticons

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Getting Pandora’s Jar to work with the Lastest Pandora Update – 6/10/06

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How to Securely and Completely Erase Your Computer’s Hard Drive

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How to Fix Pandora’s Jar error: “unable to rip MP3 null”

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How to save music from Pandora using Pandora’s Jar

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How to delete a search engine in Firefox

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