Other Software and Research

Index

Other projects and articles

  • Linksys WRT54G(s) v5-v6 R&D
    We analyzed and documented the proprietary firmware image format, documented the checksum algorithm, and wrote open source utilities to extract and build compatible firmware images for the Linksys WRT54G or WRT54GS v5-v6. This allowed flashing of third-party linux firmwares for the first time. It made a big splash in the news and our R&D work is comprehensive. This got our name ‘out there’ in the embedded systems world.
  • Overclocked WRT54G(S)v5+ CFEs
    Modified CFEs (boot loaders) for the WRT54G(s)v5+ that allow for extended overclocking through binary patches to the clock frequency table.
  • Firmware Modification Kit
    Our F/OSS ‘FMK’ allows people to extract some types of embedded firmware images, make changes, then rebuild them.
  • Trendnet TEW-632BRP R&D
    We discovered the serial port location on the PCB, documented the firmware file format, and wrote utilities to work with that firmware format.
  • ASUS WL-530g R&D We discovered the serial port location on the PCB, documented the firmware file format, and wrote utilities to work with that firmware file format.
  • X-Wrt
    X-Wrt, a web interface for OpenWrt, was founded to be a community project and has grown despite my absence, thanks to the hard work of ThePeople (a single person) and other volunteers. After making substantial contributions (many hundreds of hours of work time) and getting the project ‘off its feet’, I turned it over to the community for further development.
  • JCALG1
    This is slow to compress, but fast to decompress LZSS derivative achieves excellent compression ratios. It is written in native x86 (32-bit) code. It is no longer mainted, but perfectly fucntional. It is in use by companies large and small, for jobs large and small.

License rights

Each project is licensed separately and may have unique terms. If you have licensing questions, please contact us.

Windows Utilities

CorePrio

Thread scheduling optimization tool for the AMD 2990wx and 2970wx.

Product page
Github


 

Recent Files Exclusions

Add exclusions to Windows Explorer Recent Files.
Product page


 

groupextend

Allow processor group unaware applications to use the entire CPU.
Product page
Github


ParkControl

ParkControl is a simple freeware utility that lets the user easily view and tweak the hidden CPU Core Parking settings in Windows. It also allows for easy management of CPU frequency scaling. Settings are applied individually to each Power Profile on the system. So, a user can, for instance, disable core parking and frequency scaling on their ‘High Performance’ power plan.

ParkControl is distributed as a ‘live EXE’. No install required. No bundles. No crud. Simple and pure freeware.

License type: FREEWARE


RegMerge

RegMerge allows you to compare your current registry hive(s) with that of an exported REG file. This will allow you to compare and contrast parts of your registry (or the whole thing) with another system, AND also allow for safely importing REG ‘repair sets’ to fix various PC problems.

  • Compare
    By comparing your registry to that of another system, or an earlier state you can determine likely causes of problems.
  • Import safely and selectively
    Instead of wondering what a REG file has done, or if it is even different than your current registry, you can now see what it will change and selectively apply it

Latest version: Invite Only Alpha Testing
License type: Freeware 100%

 


(also entitled MoveAndLink) – Move a folder to another drive and replace it with a junction point (hard link), making it so no path changes are required. This utilizes NTFS Junction points so works on W2K-Windows 7. Do NOT use without seeing warnings and cautions. See SHJunction (SHJunc) for a similar utility I wrote years ago. Windows Vista+ will now display these junction points (hard links) with a shortcut overlay.

Examples:

  • I bought a new hard drive and want to move some of my program files to it without having to change a thing, or reinstall the software
  • I have an SSD and want to minimize writes to it. Therefore, I need to Move and Link high traffic folders to another drive – a conventional one
  • I am out of space on my primary hard drive partition and want to move folders from it without having to change the path I reference them by

Latest version: v0.12 alpha
License type: Freeware


RegBench

Have you ever want to know if cleaning or defragmenting your registry really makes a difference in its performance? RegBench is a small utility that benchmarks your system registry. It outputs to XML and uses a display template to allow for viewing of the results within your web browser. It is a console mode utility, but a GUI front-end will be added if this product turns out to be popular.

Latest version: v0.17 alpha
License type: Free for home and academic use


CPUEater

This application will simply initiate a load upon all system CPU(s). This was created for testing Process Lasso’s ProBalance technology. However, it can be used to test *anything* for the effect on overall system responsiveness.

Latest version: Same as Process Lasso
License type: Free for trial, academic, or home use. Commercial use requires licensing.


BurstBench

BurstBench is a bursting load CPU benchmark tool. It is most useful to compare differences in power plan settings.


ThreadRacer

This is a benchmarking or stress-testing application that will allow you to place a load on specific logical cores.

ThreadRacer is now included with Process Lasso, accessible via the ‘Options / Tools’ menu.


MakeService

No longer available.


WfpDeprotect, WfpReplace, and WfpAdmin

These tools are for PC technicians and developers who need a way to replace WFP protected files. WfpAdmin can replace files by closing the filesystem change notification handles that are watching the system directories. WfpDeprotect and WfpReplace use other mechanisms. It is likely that none of these mechanisms work on modern Windows.

Latest version: v0.1 beta
License type: Free

  • WfpDeprotect (no longer available)
  • WfpReplace (no longer available)
  • WfpAdmin (no longer available)

MoveLater

This is a small console mode utility that will allow for deletion or replacement of files at system boot. It works with ALL Windows variants (even 9x).

Latest version: v1.02 alpha (May, 2000)
License type: Freeware and open source, not GPL. Commercial use requires license.


SHJunction

SHJunction (SHJunc) is a free utility to manage NTFS reparse points, allowing for creation of junctions (virtual folders). This tool is currently in alpha stage of development.
License: Free


JCALG1

High performance compression library. Intended for extremely good compression ratio and very rapid decompression with low memory overhead. Used by PECompact (as pec2codec_jcalg1.dll, not default). Written in x86 32-bit assembly language, the full source code is included. The compression ratio is generally better than Zip’s Deflate and other common compression algorithms. Included is a DLL and libraries for easy use in your own projects. For more information and compression results of the Canterbury corpus, click here. JCALG1 is utilized in many applications, including AMD for BIOS compression and VMWare for application virtualization compression. Though a bit dated now, this compression algorithm has certain advantages still today on certain data sets and environments. The one advantage it doesn’t have is compression speed. Decompression speed is quite fast though, and compression ratio is competitive.. especially considering the fact that it uses no statistical algorithms. A more modern algorithm in this class is LZMA, though its decompression speed is a bit slower than that of JCALG1’s. License: unclassified


DriverSpyNT

DriverSpyNT is a one of a kind utility to intercept and monitor NT device driver I/O request packets (IRP). It can hook any virtually any device on the system and show you what processes are interacting with it, and dump the contents of the I/O request packets for analysis. It supports all Windows NT kernels, tested through Windows XP (it should work fine in Vista too). This utility has not been updated in some time, due to a lack of necessity for updates. It ‘just works’. License type: Shareware


Tweak CPU Scheduler

(For Windows NT kernels: 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 7, etc..)This utility allows you to tweak the NT scheduler. Now part of Process Lasso’s advanced tool.


Vista Multimedia Scheduler Configuration Tool

The Vista Multimedia Scheduler Configuration Tool (vistammsc) is a small utility to help you configure the multimedia class scheduling service in Windows Vista and above.

Now a part of Process Lasso Pro.


PWShow

PWShow (PasswordShow) displays the characters being asterisks in password fields of many applications. Most modern web browsers allow the same type thing. It does not compromise security, it lets the user recover their own password in the same was a browser’s ‘show password’ link does.
License: FREE


Developer Utilities and Source Code

PECompact

PECompact is one of the original Windows 32-bit Executable packers (compressor).


PESuite

This consists of PETrim, PESubsys, PEChksum, PEHideText, PEInsert, PESetVer, PEClassify, and potentially other small freeware utilities. Most owrk on both 32-bit PEs and PE+ (64-bit). These are for a limited developer audience.


PEBundle

PEBundle can bundle multiple files into a single executable, without needing to extract them to disk at runtime. It can also remotely download bundled DLLs on-demand, and register COM controls. The last version released is v3.20.


PE Compressor/Bundler Benchmarker

This utility, which includes C++ source, times the decompression or reconstruction time of executable compressors, bundlers, or other portable executable tools which attach themselves to a host executable. It works by timing the interval between the process creation and the instruction pointer reaching the host executable’s original entry point. We use this to keep our software optimal. You can use it to test to see the effects on executable load speed for any executable ‘wrapper’. License: Free for non-commercial use.


LZSS Implementation

This is a very simple implementation of the LZSS compression algorithm written in C++. This is was written decades ago and it isn’t intended for real-world use, but is a good example and may be useful for someone. View lzss.cpp License: Free, Open/Source [commercial use has restrictions]


AsmVars

This nifty utility scans assembly language projects for unreferenced variables, a feature missing from most assemblers. This project is no longer maintained. It generally works well on most assembly language source code.


BIT I/O Classes

These two C++ classes, bitin and bitout, facilitate bit input and output. They are great for compression or encryption algorithms, or any other code that requires input and output on a bit scale. They are free for use, MIT license.


Boyer-Moore Search

This high-performance string search algorithm includes assembly language source and an easy to use DLL. It includes a binary search function in addition to case sensitive and insensitive string searches. This implementation is not ideal for multiple searches for the same substring since the table is rebuilt on each search. This implementation was done many years ago. There are better implementations out there and the algorithm itself is so simple as to require only a few minutes to code from scratch.


Embedded Systems Work

Firmware Modification Kit

A kit that allows for extraction and rebuilding of firmware images for many popular embedded devices. This kit was specifically created to deal with DD-WRT firmware images for the WRT54G, WRT54GL, and WRT54GS. License: Free, Open/Source – GPL


WRT54Gv5 R&D

This is a research project. License type: Free, Open/Source


WRT_Vx_Imgtool

Utility to deconstruct, build, fix, and analyze VxWorks firmware images for the Linksys WRT54G v5, WRT54G v6, WRT54GS v5, and similar models. This includes (reverse engineered) detailed data structure definitions and the requried checksum algorithm. License: Free, Open/Source – GPL


unTRX

Utility to deconstruct TRX images into their component parts. License: Free, Open/Source – GPL


Trendnet TEW-632BRP Firmware

This is a research project. License type: Free, Open/Source


WL530-G R&D

This is a research project. License type: Free, Open/Source


IPK Packages

Informational. The structure (format) of an IPK and a script to create one. These are used by firmwares based on OpenWrt, or even distant cousins like DD-WRT. License type: Free, Open/Source