ICSharpCode’s SharpZipLib’s Help File

In yesterday’s post, I described a cool Zip file Library from ICSharpCode and showed how you could use it within PowerShell. I noted it had a help file which would be of value when using this library. I spent some this morning playing with the Zip lib and wanted to see more details (i.e. from the help file).

However, when I started playing with the help file, I just got lots of blank pages and no content – like this:

It It took me a few minutes to work out that it was Windows “helping” me by not showing any content since the file had been obtained from the Internet! The file was downloaded by Firefox and FireFox (like IE) adds a NTFS stream to the file to indicate it had been downloaded from the Internet. Since the file had been downloaded, IE rendered nothing on security grounds. Thanks but…

Sysinternals to the rescue. I just used the Streams.exe utility to remove the added stream:

Once the additional data stream was removed, the help file worked great:

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,SharpZipLib,Streams,NTFS,Sysinternals Tools

Windows-based Format Utility for HP USB Stick

Some years ago, HP created a neat utility to format USB sticks – including formatting them using NTFS (something that XP/Server 2003 does not do). I first wrote  about this utility in May 2005, and again in late 2006. Originally released by HP for their USB  memory sticks, the utility appears to have been removed from the HP site. The name of the utility is: HPUSBFW.EXE, and a quick Google search yields several places you can download it from. I got the utility some years back from the HP site and it’s still working fine (just formatted a 2gb memory stick this morning to NTFS). No idea what the legalities of obtaining this HP utility form other non-HP sites, so tread carefully.

Technorati tags: HP, USB, utililty, USB stick format, NTFS