XPSP2

Windows 958644 direct download locations.

I have spent all day patching servers, workstations and trying to find a direct download for the 958644 patch that got released last night. I was amazed when Microsoft even called us to join in a webconference for Microsoft partners about this patch – that is something new.
I was not so pleased when I called PSS to ask for a direct download to the patch as kb958644 does not have direct links, windows update services was timing out and the catalog website is badly broken. PSS informed me that as it was not a hotfix they could not provide me with the file and there was an 8-12 hour delay on callback from the server team. So instead I’ve been configuring wsus for servers (that were not already configured), approving patches and downloading by visiting windows updates – a VERY time consuming.
Anyway, without wasting more time – here are the download locations – I’d grab them before the server falls over too.

Thanks to Larry and Derek for the help in finding these.

Linksys WRT54G upgrade and WPA2

I upgraded my wrt54g to the latest dd-wrt firmware over the weekend from v23 to v24sp1. The annoying thing is that they highly recommend the unit is set to factory defaults which means re-entering the config in by hand after the upgrade. This is not a quick and easy task, especially whn you have to get the config off the there doesn’t seem to be a “print config” page. However, by using the screengrab firefox extension it didn’t take long to open up each dialog page, right click and choose screengrab, save, complete page.  Saving all the screenshots into a unique folder means I have a nice copy of the config that I was then able to refer to when rebuilding the unit.

The new firmware also supports wpa2 so I enabled that on the router and then found that my xpsp2 box couldn’t see the router. I was pretty sure I had all the updates for xp on the laptop but I guess not.  A quick download of the hotfix 893357, one reboot later and I was connected with wpa2.  I’m sure we’re going to see more of this sort of thing on client laptops so this will also be a good placeholder for work.

I haven’t got the openvpn configuration sorted out, I think I have to set this up from scratch as I forgot to save one of the keys – but openvpn seems to be more integrated in this version – at least there are dialog boxes for openvpn – there didn’t use to be.

Group policy problems with printing.

I’m having a problem where ctrl-p doesn’t work in a kiosk mode machine with group policy restrictions and wonder if anyone has a clue? I’ve posted this to google groups.

I have a group policy enabled for a particular user for a locked down, kiosk user interface in a public area. Currently in *some* web pages the ctrl-P shortcut key will work, but on other web pages nothing happens when ctrl-p is pressed. Other shortcut keys such as ctrl-h, ctrl-r, ctrl-w activate properly (in the case of ctrl-w this option complains that the user does not have access to close the window).
We are running internet explorer as the shell in kiosk mode, but removing the kiosk mode doesn’t make any difference. Likewise, we have disabled the toolbar, but adding the toolbar back and enabling the print button also does not make any difference – the print dialog box never appears on certain web sites.

www.msn.com, http://travel.msn.com/default.aspx both work but http://travel.msn.com/New_York_City_New_York_State_list_entitylist_attractions_23164_2.aspx or http://www.helsby.net or https://absoblogginlutely.net doesn’t. There are a lot more sites that do/don’t work but these are just a couple of examples.

Anyone come across this problem before?
I’ve uploaded the resultant set of policies wizard output to https://absoblogginlutely.net/test/lock.htm – the only thing I’ve done is change the domain name for security reasons.

Solving “Library not registered” errors with quickbooks.

I’m getting the message “library not registered” when attempting to open a navigator in quickbooks with errors on the various qpg files that it tries to open. On speaking to their tech support who had me remove the software, install it, install in safe mode, remove, reinstall in normal mode, then download the updates again (thankfully I had saved the 80mb patch file to disk so I didn’t have to download it again) he then recommended that I repair Internet Explorer as this was the problem. Unfortunately you can’t repair IE in xpsp2 (see KB318378 so I reinstalled xpsp2 again.
At this point, he admitted, several times, that NOONE in support can tell me what ocx’s or dll’s are required by the various pages used in the Navigator pages. I asked who could tell me which files are needed, but he kept telling me to repair internet explorer instead.
I’ve heard Intuit’s support is notoriously bad and I now believe it. I would have expected him to check my internet explorer security settings, popupblocker settings and it was only after about 40 minutes on the phone that he checked what version of quickbooks I was using (pressing F2 gives that information)
He was not interested in the fact that there was an incompatibility issue with Quickbooks Premier 2002 and Windows NT and that I am getting the same type of message. Unfortunately in this case, the pc that has a working copy of quickbooks and the faulty pc have the same version of comcat.dll
From the sounds of it, there is a permission problem in the registry under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\ but whereabouts I am not sure. It’s time to use regmon from sysinternals again to monitor for access denied messages when launching quickbook navigators.
Solution in the extended entry

frx and XP SP2

It turns out that if Windows XPSP2 is not compatible with cstext32.ocx and cscmd32.ocx (bundled with Great Plains software and others) and that you will often get a message saying that cstext32.ocx and cscmd32.ocx could not be registered quoting an error number 0x80040200. The official solution is to obtain a patch from the vendor and some vendors, such as hy-tek are more forthcoming than others.
I doubt it will be long before I start to get hits from Google on this as there are not a lot of solution pages out ther but a lot of problem pages!

solving ftp connection problems from a cmd prompt.

I’m not sure why, but a couple of times this week I’ve been unable to ftp files to any of my remote hosts from a command prompt (or within leechftp – my client of choice). When it failed, I would just get a connection refused error message before the username/password handshake takes place. As I’m running service pack2 and have the windows firewall enabled, I looked in the c:\windows\pfirewall.log file (something that I learnt about whilst doing the MCSDT exam – I didn’t know it did a log or that is where it put it!) and I was getting some dropped packets but no reason why. After a bit of digging on google I came across the How Windows Firewall Works document and it mentions that the Application Layer Gateway Service is required if you enable Windows Firewall on a computer that is an FTP client that does not use PASV ftp. The ALG service was running on the computer but a quick restart of the service and I could start ftp’ing again. I don’t see any obvious errors in the event logs as to why this service was not working properly but restarting the service is a lot more convenient than having to reboot the entire machine.