Cognoscis

Kingston has launched a new pen drive “Kingston DataTraveler 300 USB Flash Drive”.  It is said to be the world’s first 256 GB pendrive. With the amount of data being carried around increasing and the size of the semiconductor devices shrinking, this is just part of the data revolution that began with a 256 MB pen drive. Since the amount of data that will be stored is high, it can be protected using the privacy zone that is password protected using the Password Traveler privacy software. Capacity without speed is useless if you ask me, but DataTraveler 300 provides a speed of 20 MB/sec for read and 10 MB/sec for write. This is pretty good speed and lets you play high quality movies directly from the pen drive (which ultimately most people will want ).

The specs as given by the manufacturer are thus. They can be found here also

Features/Specifications:

• Capacity¹ — 256GB
• Fast — data transfer rates of up to 20MB/sec. read and 10 MB/sec. write²
• Dimensions — 2.78″ x 0.88″ x 0.65″ (70.68mm x 22.37 mm x 16.45mm)
• Operating Temperature — 32° to 140° F (0° to 60° C)
• Storage Temperature — -4° to 185° F (-20° to 85° C)
• Simple — just plug into a USB port
• Practical — durable, capless design
• Guaranteed — five-year warranty
• Safeguarded — includes Password Traveler security software for Windows

The Password Traveler security software does not work on Mac and Linux as specified on the website. The product comes with a five years warranty. Now for the most important question, how much does it cost? Well,  to give you a range, it might cost you somewhere between Rs. 43,ooo ($900) to Rs. 52,000 ($1000) depending on the reseller. Kingston says that they are releasing it in Far East, Europe, Middle East & Africa only. Anyway, I think the prices will drop drastically when the competitors start to release their products of similar capacity. Hopefully next year we will see bigger and faster drives for far cheaper price

One day suddenly I faced a new problem, when ever I double clicked on any drive, it started opening in new a window. I tried to fix it with the usual methods.

Open the explorer and in that choose

Tools >> Folder Options. 

In the General tab, uder the browse folder option select “open each folder in same window”

Click Apply and then Ok

I tried the registry fixes too but that didnt work!

Then I digged deep and found that there is a “autorun.inf” file that was created in all the drives. You have to use “show hidden system files” option from folder options menu to be able to see it. Then, I tried to search the net and found a solution that I like to share here

• First, click on start >> run
• Type “cmd” (without quotes) and press enter
• Go to root, meannig, type “cd..” (without quotes) till you reach the command prompt “C:\>”
• There, type “attrib -h -r -s autorun.inf” (without quotes) and press enter
• Type “del autorun.inf” (without quotes) and press enter
• Type “md\autorun.inf ” (without quotes) and press enter
•  This must be repeated on all drives. To change the drive just say “d:” (without quotes) or “e:” (without quotes) and so on.

What the above does is that it deletes the autorun.inf file from all the drives and creates a directory by the same name. So, when the virus tries to copy itself into the drives again, it cannot do it as the directory already exists. Do the same to your pen drives to avoid being infected by the virus. After the spreading of virus is limited, you now need to reset the values of registry it has changed. To do that follow these steps

• Click on start >> run
• Type “regedit” (without quotes) and press enter
• In the registry editor, navigate as shown below. To navigate, just press on the “+” mark behind the name specified on the left side of the editor

  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies

•  In policies, click on explorer

• Now, on the right side, find the value NoDriveAutorun. If its not there, right click on the empty space below the present values, click on new >> DWORD
  
  
• Rename it as NoDriveAutorun and press enter
  
  
• Double click on the value and chage the value to “FF” or “255″ and press enter

Now, colse the registry and restart the system. This solved my problems. I then made those autorun.inf folders as hidden. Now, this works well but doesnt remove the virus entirely. Scanning the system with a godd antivirus will help. But, there are simply too many viruses that create autorun.inf after infecting. Also, not all viruses are detected and deleted. I use AVG and it failed to delete this particular virus. Even Avast failed. So far this is the best fix I have. If anyone else has other tweaks, please comment

A fe days back I faced a strange problem, suddenly my CD/DVD drive disappeared. Everytime I rebooted the system, the “new hardware found” dialogue box would appear and fail to find any drivers for my CD/DVD drive. I tried to uninstall it from device manager and reboot the system, but that didnt work. A yellow exclaimation mark appeared on the CD/DVD drive in the device manager. So, this is the solution that worked for me

1) Close all open programs to avoid any intervention

2) Click on Start, Run, and type “regedit” (without the quotes) and press Enter

3) Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE >> SYSTEM >> CurrentControlSet >> Control >> Class >> {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} – Usually this is the first one in the 4D series

4) This folder is the DVD/CD-ROM Drive Class Description in the registry. Look for any of the following names in the right hand column.

• UpperFilters
  

• LowerFilters
  

• UpperFilters.bak
  

• LowerFilters.bak
  

5) If  any of the above keys shown in step 4 are listed, right-click on them and choose Delete

6) After deleting the keys, close the Registry Editor

7) Reboot your computer

Open My Computer and check to see if your CD or DVD drives have returned. You may also want to open Device        Manager and verify that the yellow exclamation and error code on the CD or DVD drive is gone.

 

Hope this solves the probelm