A Tech Blog for Geeks by Tom Schaefer

Looking for a way to get access to more content through Windows 7 Media Center? Maybe you’d like a good way to jump back and forth between Boxee and Media Center with just a click of the remote? Today we show you how to get access to Boxee through Media Center with Boxee Integration 1.0.

Installing Boxee

Download and install the current version of Boxee. (See download link below) The install is very straightforward, just take the defaults. You’ll also need to register for a Boxee account, if you don’t already have one.

If you have Windows Firewall enabled and this is the first time you’re running Boxee, allow it to access your network.

Boxee Integration 1.0

Close out of Windows Media Center, then download and install the Boxee Integration application. It’s also a simple install. Just take the defaults and click “Finish.”

Restart Windows Media Center and you’ll see a Boxee tile on your main interface.

Click on the Boxee tile to launch it. You will be prompted to enter your username and password. Select the “Remember password” option if you don’t want to have to enter your login credentials each time.

You’ll be prompted to set screen calibration. You can do so now, or click “Skip.”

Boxee will open up in full screen. From here you can enjoy all your favorite Boxee content.

When you exit Boxee, Windows Media Center will restart in Full Screen mode. It is not completely seamless. You will see the desktop and a command box flash for a few seconds before Media Center opens.

Conclusion

This a great way to get access to some popular apps that aren’t currently available in Media Center like Pandora, LastFM, and MLB.TV. Unfortunately, Boxee Integration does not work on extenders.

Links

Download the latest version of Boxee

Download Boxee Integration 1.0

When using your new Windows 7 machine there might be times when something goes wrong with a driver or an app and Windows becomes unstable. Today we’ll show a complete System Restore process on a Windows 7 computer where the Office 2010 Uninstall went awry.

We recently had one of our computers in the lab take a turn for the worse after trying to do a complete uninstall of Office 2010 beta. It didn’t go the way we had hoped and experienced a hard time getting 2010 or 2007 reinstalled. It also caused some other apps that are associated with Office to error out and act unstable. Rather than spend hours researching Knowledgebase articles and tinkering with the Registry, we turned to restoring the system back to an earlier state with System Restore. In this article we thought we’d remind you about the importance of System Restore, and walk you through the restore process in Windows 7.

Recover from a Restore Point

First type system restore into the search box in the Start menu and hit Enter.

That opens the System Restore wizard and from here you can choose the recommended restore point,which is the most recent one…Or you can choose a different restore point, which for our situation we need to do. Select the radio button next to Choose a different restore point then click Next.

Now you get a list of different restore points and the description of what was taking place when it was created. We tried several attempts to install / uninstall Office 2010 Beta on this machine so there are several of those points listed as you can see. We need something later, so in this instance we want to click on the box next to Show more restore points.

Now scroll through and determine which restore point you want. For example, we know our system started being unstable at the time of trying to get rid of Office 2010…so we’ll pick a restore point that is a couple days before that when everything was working successfully.

When you pick a restore point, another thing you should do is click the button to Scan for affected programs.

The scan will kick off and determine what will be affected by the restore point you choose.

Then it brings up the results. It shows which programs and drivers that will be deleted…And what programs will be restored (though they may not work correctly and need to be reinstalled). This is goo information to know when selecting a point to recover. If some important drivers or programs would be deleted, you might want to try another restore point. Although, you may not always that luxury and will have to go with the one that works.

Confirm the restore pint and click Finish.

Click Yes to the message saying that it can’t be undone until it has completed, or cannot be undone if running it from Safe Mode.

The System Restore process begins…

You’ll see a series of messages display while the process completes and different things are being restored. The amount of time it takes to complete will vary between computers.

After returning from the restart, you’ll have a message advising it was completed successfully and the time and date it was restored to.

Now, your system should be functioning exactly how it was during the time it was restored to. You’ll still have all of your documents, but might be missing a couple of programs that you’ll just need to reinstall again.

Conclusion

Although often overlooked, it’s very important to create and maintain System Restore Points for the overall health of your system. It can make life much easier if something bad happens and you need a quick way to get your machine working again. A lot of times some programs and some Windows Updates will create a Restore Point for you automatically but not always.

I love writing applications and script. I wrote an IP-Blocklist package for the pfsense router. There is no PeerGuardian2 available for freeBSD so I made one.

This package is really sweet because you can upload list URLs and add manual IPs to block. The IPFW adds a drop entry for each IP. A perl script converts the addresses from the URL list to a ipfw friendly command.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

if($#ARGV != 1) {
    print("Usage: $0 <input file> <output file>\n");
    exit(1);
}

my ($line,$title,$iprange,$cidr);
my $i = 30000;

open(INFILE,’<’,$ARGV[0]) or die("Could not open input file $ARGV[0]");
open(OUTFILE,’>>’,$ARGV[1]) or die("Could not open output file $ARGV[1]");

foreach $line (<INFILE>) {
    chomp($line);
    $line =~ s/:((\d{1,3}[-\.]*){8})//;
    $iprange = $1;
    print OUTFILE "#$line\n";
    foreach $cidr (split(/\n/,range($iprange))) {
        print OUTFILE "ipfw -q add 1000 drop ip from any to $cidr\n";     
        #$i++;
        print OUTFILE "ipfw -q add 1001 drop ip from $cidr to any\n";     
        #$i++;
    }
}

close(INFILE);
close(OUTFILE);

sub ntoa {
    return join ".",unpack("CCCC",pack("N",shift));
}
sub aton {
    return unpack ‘N’, pack ‘C4′, split/\./, shift;
}
sub deaggregate {
    my $thirtytwobits = 4294967295;
    my $start = shift;
    my $end = shift;
    my $base = $start;
    my ($step,$output);
    while ($base <= $end) {
        $step = 0;
        while (($base | (1 << $step)) != $base) {
            if (($base | (((~0) & $thirtytwobits) >> (31-$step))) > $end) {
                last;
            }
            $step++;
        }
        if($step == 0) {
            $output .= ntoa($base);
        }else{
            $output .= ntoa($base)."/" .(32-$step);
        }
        $output .= "\n";
        $base += 1 << $step;
    }
    return $output;
}
sub range {
    my ($address,$address2) = split /-/, shift;
    $address = aton($address);
    $address2 = aton($address2);
    return deaggregate($address,$address2);
}

Using this I can process the over 225 thousand line lists in a matter of minutes. The really long lists take more than an hour but it pays off. Now you can block spam, hackers, and bogon addresses.

There are some limits though.

Lists can have any extension BUT if the list is compressed only .gz is supported.
Long lists take a very LONG time to process. A level1 list (225,000 lines) will take over 1h or more
The Firewall entries are lost on several occasions (when config.inc is processed) such as Rebooting, restarting the WebGUI, restarting SSH, etc…

IP-Blocklist

pfsense.org