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If you've purchased a PC from Dell lately you might have noticed that there is an option to get the recovery media, specifically Windows 8.1, on an 8GB USB flash drive. If you work in an IT department, these flash drives might start piling up and you might want to try and use them, at least some of them, for something else. Here's the rub... the freaking things are read only. I don't know about Dell's consumer level PC's but stuff like the Latitude laptops can be had with an optional 8GB bootable USB 3.0 flash drive with Windows 8.1 on it. Unfortunately, these flash drives are write protected. They can't be written to, formatted, or partitioned, but if you're willing to loose all the data currently on the drive, they can be made to work. Low level formatting the drive will wipe all the data and disable the write protection. A Dell USB flash drive without it's skin A close up of the USB controller chip - Phison PS2251-07 Nope. Cant writ

As a desktop administrator, I like to automate as many tasks as possible.  Recently, I needed to automate the installation of network printers in a Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 environment. After some digging through manuals, I found a solution for installing TCP/IP printers via a batch file. In this tutorial, I will outline the VBS script we will leverage for port creation, and I will also describe the use of rundll32 to install print drivers silently and to create printers. Modern Windows operating systems such as Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2008 have great built-in scripting tools and utilities. However, most users are not aware of these abilities.  The guide below includes an example.txt file that will have the generic script included. It also contains an explanation of each step and how to tailor the script to one’s own environment. The following items are used as examples: – A computer on the 192.168.1.x network – An HP Laserjet M603 with static ip