1. Go to www.gpg4usb.org and click on download. See figure below:

2. Once the next screen loads, under the Download section click the zip file to download it.

3. Go to the location where the file was downloaded and extract all the contents of the zip file. In this example I saved the zip file to my desktop and I will be using the native Windows functions to extract the contents. Right the zip file and click on "Extract All..."

4. Change the location to extract if desired. In this example I will leave it as it is. I like checking the option "Show extracted files when complete", then click on "Extract"

5. Copy the gpg4usb folder to a USB drive to any location, I would strongly recommend to download the PortableApps Platform and install that into the USB drive. This will create a folder structure on the USB drive with locations for documents, photos, videos and for portable application. It will also install an application launcher.

6. open the gpg4usb folder and double click on "start_windows.exe"

7. If prompted by the Security Warning, uncheck "Always ask before opening this file" then click "Run", otherwise this message will be prompted every time the program is opened.

8. Choose the language for the application or leave it on default, then click on "Next"

9. Click on "create a new keypair" 

10. Click on "Create New Key"

11. Fill out the information in the "Generate Key" window, The Name, Email, and Comment will be visible to other people when the public key is shared. So keep that in mind when filling out the information. Since I did not wanted to display my information I filled it out with test information.  Selecting the KeySize is important, the higher the number the better and most secure it will be but the longer it will take to create the key. In this case I chose the maximum. Enter the password, the password will be used to decrypt messages so make sure not to forget it or all the encrypted documents that were encrypted with that public key will be LOST. Once everything is filled out click on "OK"

12. The following pop out screen will come out and depending on the KeySize, it will take a few minutes to create it.

13. Once its done click on "OK"

14. Uncheck "Open offline help", then click on "Finish"

15. The following window will open

That will be all for the installation of gpg4usb. In a following post, I will be explaining how to use gpg4usb to encrypt text and documents and I will also show how to decrypt documents.

Getting the computer manufacturer, model, serial number and BIOS version is fairly simple with PowerShell. I created a function called Get-ComputerInfo that can get all this information from a set of computer names. The code uses WMI and the class Win32_BIOS.  The only parameter that must be passed to the Get-ComputerInfo function is the -ComputerName. Multiple computers names can be specified by separating each computer name by a comma "," or by creating a file with computer names one in each line and using Get-ComputerInfo( Get-Content "Filename.txt" )

The code is "As Is" I am not responsible for any bugs or problems it may create. I have been using it and I have not encounter any issues with it but it is the responsibility of the tech using the script to understand it and to be able to troubleshoot if any problems were to arise. Feel free to share and modify the code and make sure to provide a reference to my blog post.

Create a script or module and add the following lines of code to it:

Sysinternals applications do not need to be installed, they can be copied to a USB drive and they will work well. The only inconvenience is that when running them from the command prompt or from PowerShell, that the current open directory will need to be the one containing the Sysinternal tools or the whole path to the Sysinternal tool will need to by typed. For example assume that Sysinternals tools are in C:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite, and that we want to run PSInfo on the current computer. To do this we would need to type:

'C:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite\PSInfo.exe'

As can be observed typing the whole path is time consuming if constantly using tools from Sysinternals. A work around to not type the complete path is to add the SysinternalsSuite folder to the Windows Environmental variable called "Path".

This can be easily done through the Windows GUI, but if needed to do it on multiple computers a script will make it much more easier to do. The script I created to set up the "Path" variable is an extension of the script used to download Sysinternals, therefore the two functions will need to be in the same script or module.

The code is "As Is" I am not responsible for any bugs or problems it may create. I have been using it and I have not encounter any issues with it but it is the responsibility of the tech using the script to understand it and to be able to troubleshoot if any problems were to arise. Feel free to share and modify the code and make sure to provide a reference to my blog post.

Create a PowerShell script or module and copy the following code:

Sysinternals is a great suite of small portable applications that every tech should have in their arsenal of tools. It is easy to download them all in a zip folder from  https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062.aspx. Also each of the applications can be downloaded one at a time from https://live.sysinternals.com/. 

One of the advantages of downloading the whole zip file is that all applications are downloaded, but then the applications would need to be extracted. If only one or a few tools are needed it is convenient to only download the ones needed. Although these are good options, it would be good to automate the downloading process of downloading the tools. There might be many different ways of automating the download but the way I decided to do it is by creating a PowerShell Module that would be loaded every time I open PowerShell and inside the PowerShell module I would add all my functions related to the Sysinternals tools. 

The code is "As Is" I am not responsible for any bugs or problems it may create. I have been using it and I have not encounter any issues with it but it is the responsibility of the tech using the script to understand it and to be able to troubleshoot if any problems were to arise. Feel free to share and modify the code and make sure to provide a reference to my blog post.

Create a PowerShell script or module and copy the code below: