andshrew andshrew

Procedure completed using Windows 11 24H2

When recently cloning an NTFS formatted drive the program (Acronis) reported a number of unreadable sector errors.

I wanted to know which files were occupying these sectors, and in searching found many suggestions to use an old Microsoft utility called nfi.exe (NTFS File Sector Information Utility).

This was a program distributed as part of the OEM Support Tools. This is a Windows NT 4 / Windows 2000 era package which of course is no longer available directly from Microsoft's web site.

Web Archive to the rescue:
Download

Backup android app, data included, no root needed, with adb

Note: This gist may be outdated, thanks to all contributors in comments.

adb is the Android CLI tool with which you can interact with your android device, from your PC

You must enable developer mode (tap 7 times on the build version in parameters) and install adb on your PC.

Don't hesitate to read comments, there is useful tips, thanks guys for this !

conceptId	name	publisherId	publisherName	source
10008740	Asphalt Legends Unite	EP2006	Gameloft Inc.	Product
10012106	Carmen Sandiego	EP2006	Gameloft Inc.	Product
10011382	Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo	EP2006	PM Studios, Inc.	Concept
10009610	Planet Coaster 2	EP2377	Frontier Developments PLC	Product
10010198	Arma Reforger	EP2601	Bohemia Interactive a.s.	Product
10012771	Rogue Flight	EP3446	PERPETUAL	Product
10010263	Warhammer 40,000: Darktide	EP4122	Fatshark AB	Product
10007652	Empire of the Ants	EP4295	Microids	Product
10010911	Karma: The Dark World	EP4382	Wired Productions	Product

Retrieving VMware Workstation VM encryption passwords saved in the the Windows Credential Manager

When creating an encrypted VM, VMware Workstation gives you the option to remember the password. It does this by storing the password in the Windows Credential Manager.

VMware does not provide a way to retrieve this stored password, but it can be accessed via the Win32 CredReadW API function.

There are a number of PowerShell projects including PowerShell Credential Manager which provide access to this API, but in testing I found they were unable to correctly display the VMware password.

This PowerShell example has been tested using Windows PowerShell (v5.1) and PowerShell (v7) using VMwa

Cloning (and expanding) a 60GB PS3 HDD to a 320GB HDD

These are the steps that were taken to clone a 60GB PlayStation 3 (PS3) HDD to a 320GB HDD, and then expand the USERDATA partition to the full size of the new disk using a NetBSD VM.

Clone the Drive

The original 60GB HDD was cloned to an image using ddrescue.

Original disk: /dev/loop0 (mounted 60GB HDD image file) New Disk: /dev/sdd (320GB HDD)

These are the steps I took on Linux Mint using the PS3 HDD decryption helper

Reference discussion: HDD mounting and decryption on Linux

Install qemu for PowerPC64 and download FreeBSD Image

qemu-system-ppc64 is used to emulate a PowerPC CPU
Install via:
sudo apt install qemu-system-ppc
FreeBSD has some instructions for using qemu with PowerPC64 here.
They have pre-built disk files which you can download here.

	[15:41:03.958] find_and_parse_output_edid connector:19 count_props 3
	[15:41:03.958] find_and_parse_output_edid idx 0 prop EDID 1 1 value 0 0 cnt 0
	[15:41:03.958] find_and_parse_output_edid idx 1 prop DPMS 2 2 value 3 0 cnt 0
	[15:41:03.959] find_and_parse_output_edid idx 2 prop CRTC_ID 15 15 value 0 0 cnt -858993460
	[15:41:03.959] find_and_parse_output_edid can not find edid blob for connecotr 19
	[15:41:03.959] Output: 1,create_output_for_connector
	[15:41:03.959] Output HDMI-A-1, (connector 19, crtc 30)
	mode [email protected], current, built-in