Make a bootable Universal Flash Drive

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This is a really old trick for Universal Flash Drives (UFDs) and I’ve been using it for years. I just thought I should document the steps so it’s available as quick reference for me :)

  1. Insert your UFD and make sure all your data is backed up because we’re going to format it.
  2. Run command prompt
  3. Open diskpart (will ask for elevation)
  4. Type “list disk”
  5. find what disk is your USB based on the size. Mine is number 3.
  6. type “select disk 3″ (where 3 is the number that the system associates with my flash drive)
  7. type “clean”
  8. type “create partition primary”
  9. type “select partition 1″
  10. type “active”
  11. type “format fs=ntfs”. Might take some time based on the size of your drive
  12. type “assign”. This gives your drive a letter on the system.
  13. type “exit”. Closes diskpart.
For step 11, you might get away with “format fs=ntfs quick” as well since full format takes forever. Now your UFD is ready for installing Windows, Linux or anything else you want. You can now even boot an operating system off it ;)
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HTC Incredible S – Fix for Bootloader saying “Security Warning”

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I had this infamous issue where I was stuck with my phone unable to boot for 2 days. I documented everything I learnt so others might find it helpful and as usual, it’s on XDA for all nicey goodness :)

You would want to read this post either because you have already seen this issue and want a fix or haven’t seen the issue yet and want to avoid it. This tutorial has information on how to fix the bootloader Security Warning issue and how to avoid it.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=16684717&postcount=38

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Fix for Chrome redirecting to URL when opening a new tab

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I was helping a friend fix his hacked site when I had to disable ESET to check where his injected code was (because the website ran an img iframe hack to download a trojan on the user’s machines). I found the issue and told him what to do but had my own machine infected in the mean while :(

Chrome kept redirecting me to his website when I opened a new tab (which thankfully Chrome kept warning me was a malicious page). If I kept a tab open with his site, it wouldn’t redirect me again. The problem was localized to Chrome only so it was a browser based problem.

Simple fix, clear cache and clear old plug-in data. Voila! ;)

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Rooting HTC Incredible S with Revolutionary

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AlphaRevX totally revolutionized the S-Off scene for HTCs everywhere a few months back. I wrote a bunch of posts on XDA-Dev which showed people how to use it. But AlphaRevX doesn’t work on all software versions. One such version was 2.30.x which I was stuck on. I can now confirm that Revolutionary (formed by team unrevoked and team AlphaRev) does work on this version too. Really simple to use.

  1. Go to revolutionary.io and download revolutionary for your OS (Windows/Linux)
  2. Enter the details they request for to get your beta key. It’s pretty straight forward. You should know your phone version. Your HBoot version is available by you switching off your phone > turning it on with vol down pressed. Your Serial number is on your phone box/behind the battery.
  3. Turn off fastboot for your phone
  4. Turn on developer mode for your phone
  5. Make sure you have HTC Sync drivers but no HTC Sync i.e. install HTC Sync and then uninstall the software leaving the drivers on your system
  6. Connect your phone to your PC and run revolutionary.exe on your phone
  7. Enter your beta key and enjoy ;)
The reason why AlphaRevX didn’t work for some versions was because HTC patched GingerBreak which is what AlphaRevX used to get temp root then run it’s magic before giving you S-Off.
Take that HTC!
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Android terminologies

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Confused AndroidFor a first time Android user looking to customize his phone, XDA-Dev can be filled with a lot of jargon. Hope this helps users understand at least a part of it.

Bootloader a.k.a HBoot: This is the piece of software that runs before anything else on the phone. It basically packages it all up, tells what to run in what order etc. Every computer device has a bootloader in some form or another, be it an Android Phone, iPhone, Windows PC, iMac etc.
The HBoot is accessible by switching your phone off, then holding down volume down as you turn it back on. The first line of the HBoot will tell you if you are S-OFF or S-ON.

Recovery: The recovery is the piece of software that allows us to write files to partitions while they aren’t being used. It is the portal to allow us to flash custom ROM’s and kernels. There are custom recoveries with more options than the stock such as ClockworkMod.

root aka su or superuser: This is a user that is present on all linux distros that allows higher permissions than standard users have access to. Certain apps need superuser permissions to function, such as Titanium Backup.

Rooting: Process of getting root access on your phone

S-On/S-Off: Short for security on/security off. If your phone is Security On, you can only flash (if you don’t know what that means, let’s say install) code that HTC has signed at “OS level” so to say.. There are folders which are protected.. these are folders that normally users wouldn’t touch say files for radio, the /system partition, your OS files, recovery etc. If you aren’t a user who “normally” uses his phone and you want to have custom ROMs or for that matter, root access.. you need S-Off.
This will allow you to run unsigned scripts and eventually will let you get root access.

Confused Droid

Why get S-Off?
So you can root and/or install custom radio and/or install custom roms

Why root?
So you can use apps such as screenshot and/or titanium backup which require special privileges. You can also do things such as install custom boot animations ;) (Point #7 on my post titled “Complete guide from S-On to S-Off to Root and customizations!” for HTC Incredible Son XDA-Developers Forum” which I have also talked about here)

Why install a custom ROM?
Because you want to. If stock ROM suffices, stick to it. Custom ROMs might give you better performance or access to features stock doesn’t.

Credits: First 3 terms are quotes from l0st.prophet from the “Rooting Incredible S – AlphaRevX in Public Beta” thread on XDA-Developers.

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Recursively delete files from a folder in Windows

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This is something one might need to do regularly. I need to because wget often creates multiple index.html@* files despite being set up not to (my GUI for wget might forget configs.. who knows?)

I’m left with a couple of hundred folders with 6 html files each which to me is quite irritating. So here’s a simple command to delete files in Windows recursively.

del /S index.html@*

Change the “index.html@*” part to anything else you might want. Obviously, wild cards are valid. Have fun and be careful! :)

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Creating your Spotify Account in a blocked country

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Spotify Logo

Spotify - DRM-based music streaming service

For those of you who don’t know what Spotify is, it’s a great music streaming site which allows free streaming to your PC and great streaming/offline music play on your mobile device.

So, have you been waiting years to create your Spotify account? Here’s a way to easily get a free spotify invite and register yourself:

  1. Click this link to get your invite. This facility is only available to Klout users so all you have to do is sign in with your Twitter/Facebook account and you’ll be good to go! (Alternately you can comment here with your proper e-mail address in the e-mail field or any other contact details and I’d be happy to invite you :)) I’m out of invites so Klout is the only way to get them :(
  2. Head on over to a proxy such as Hide My Ass and go to the registration page (https://www.spotify.com/us/invitation/). Attempting to register from a country which is banned will not work.
  3. Complete the registration and download the Spotify installer for your platform.
  4. Run the installer and start spotify.
  5. Login and enjoy music bliss! ;)
Hope this is helpful!
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Reloading Unix/Linux Profiles

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Here’s something small but interesting and useful I learnt today. Often times, I update my linux profile so that I can have aliases to work with on my server. Problem is that the profile is only loaded when you login so, in normal circumstances, you would have to relogin to have your profile loaded. Now that’s a pain!

An easier solution (which works at least on bash) is to do this:

source .bash_profile

It’s something so simple and yet so powerful! I’ve heard that for KSH, you would need to simply invoke the profile file name and it would be reloaded. Will need  test this out for confirmation though :)

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