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Featured Application #2: Mouse Without Borders – share keyboard and mouse over network

In 2010, I wrote an article about Input Director, since then a new application has emerged for sharing mouse and keyboard over network for Windows: Mouse without Borders

It’s a simplified version of Input Director, with a handy feature – shared clipboard and the ability to copy and paste files between workstations.

A screenshot of the setup between my PC and laptop:

Mouse without Borders can be downloaded here and configured within a few seconds :)

7

Fix for Windows 7 & wmic: Invalid XSL format (or) file name

In Windows 7, there is a bug with wmic and the /format switch. When using the /format switch, you will get the error “Invalid XSL format (or) file name.”

1. Example:

C:\Tmp>wmic /output:C:\tmp\procinfo.html CPU get Description,
DeviceID, Manufacturer, MaxClockSpeed, Name, Status, SystemName /format:hform.xsl
Invalid XSL format (or) file name.

2. Cause:

Windows looks for the XSL stylesheets but cannot find them, which produces the error above.

3. Resolution:

Copy *.xsl from x:\Windows\system32\wbem\en-US\ to x:\Windows\system32 – this can be done quicky from command prompt:

copy /y %WINDIR%\system32\wbem\en-US\*.xsl %WINDIR%\system32\

If you run your original wmic command (example in Section 1), there will be no errors and wmic will export data in the format required.

01

Featured Application: Input Director – share keyboard and mouse over network

Input Director is a completely free Windows application that allows you to share a keyboard and mouse across multiple physical systems over a network connection.

This is extremely useful if you have a few separate PC’s and laptops in the same workspace, and don’t want the hassle of using multiple keyboards and mice, or a physical KVM switch to manage each system.

The configuration is extremely simple: install the application on each system that you would like keyboard and mouse shared over, set your main system as the Master, and then configure each secondary system as a Slave. As a plus, you can enable encryption between the Master and Slave systems for added privacy over the network.

This is my config at home, a PC with two monitors, as well as a laptop with another screen attached. Input Director virtually allows me to treat this setup as a single device with four screens attached:

Input Director also shares content on the clipboard between Master and Slave(s). Go ahead and download Input Director here: http://www.inputdirector.com/downloads.html

For cross-platform keyboard and mouse over network sharing, see the Synergy+ project. Synergy+ allows you to share keyboard and mouse over network across Windows, Mac and Linux clients. I will do a write-up on Synergy+ soon.

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Disk Drive Performance Benchmarking Tools – Linux & Windows

Windows Disk Benchmarking Tools

HD Tune Free will test your drive’s transfer rate. In this example, I have 4x ST3500418AS SATA2 drives with ICH10R RAID10:

Download HD Tune

Another free tool is HD Tach. This is supposed to only work with Windows XP/2000, but you can right-click the HD Tach app to run it in compatability mode (right-click HD Tach shortcut, click Properties and Compatability tab):

Download HD Tach

Linux Disk Benchmarking Tools

We can use hdparm to test drive read speeds. Use fdisk -l to determine which device you wish to test. In this example we use /dev/sda:

$ hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads:   14104 MB in  2.00 seconds = 7063.75 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:  1452 MB in  3.00 seconds = 483.65 MB/sec

And we can use dd to test drive write speeds. In this example we write a 512MB test file:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=test.file bs=1024k count=512
512+0 records in
512+0 records out
536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 10.4991 seconds, 51.1 MB/s

If your dd client does not output the time taken, run the this command instead (time command specified before the above command):

$ time dd if=/dev/zero of=test.file bs=1024k count=512
512+0 records in
512+0 records out

real    0m1.156s
user    0m0.002s
sys     0m1.010s

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Free, simple CD/DVD Burning Applications

Tired of looking for free and easy DVD/CD burning software? I'd recommend using one of the following. Both easy to use and straight to the point:

ImgBurn [Link to download page]

InfraRecorder [Link to download page]

I have used both without any issue for quite some time. They both do the same job, so it's up to you which you'd prefer to use :)