Absoblogginlutely! » XPSP2

Cleanup after Vista sp1 is installed.

Andy — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:26:13 +0000

vsp1cln is a useful utility that removes files no longer needed after Vista sp1 has been installed and you are sure that you will not need to remove sp1. A useful utility but I’m surprised it is needed – after all you just needed to delete the $ntuninstall*$ files in XP

Cleanup after Vista sp1 is installed. was originally posted at Absoblogginlutely!

Windows 958644 direct download locations.

Andy — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:12:06 +0000

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.

Windows 958644 direct download locations. was originally posted at Absoblogginlutely!

Linksys WRT54G upgrade and WPA2

Andy — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:02:33 +0000

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.

Linksys WRT54G upgrade and WPA2 was originally posted at Absoblogginlutely!

Group policy problems with printing.

Andy — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:11:18 +0000

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 http://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 http://absoblogginlutely.net/test/lock.htm – the only thing I’ve done is change the domain name for security reasons.

Group policy problems with printing. was originally posted at Absoblogginlutely!

mspatch fix.

Andy — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:58:44 +0000

kb article 909444 has how to fix the issues that may arise when you install Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-051: Vulnerabilities in MSDTC and COM+ Could Allow Remote Code Execution (902400). Although I’ve not had any of these issues – yet – this will be good reference for me.

mspatch fix. was originally posted at Absoblogginlutely!

Solving “Library not registered” errors with quickbooks.

Andy — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:16:43 +0000

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

As it turned out there were far too many problems with not enough access in the registry and also it seemed quicker to just set permissions on HKCR\typelib and HKCR\Interface directory to give the owner permissions. The problem was just how to do it? The regedit interface seemed to have issues in trying to edit permissions when it didn’t have permission to see the existing permissions. I knew that cacls would do the trick on files so a quick search later I came up with subinacls which seems to be cacls on steroids and works on registry entries too (amongst other things).
Downloading subinacls from microsoft was necessary as the version in the resource kit does not work properly (at all in my case) so a useful site to look at is Analog Duck’s documentation which tells you how to run the program.
After running a couple of display tests I ran the following (as administrator) :-
subinacl /subkeyreg hkey_classes_root\interface /grant=domain\user=f
subinacl /subkeyreg hkey_classes_root\typelib /grant=domain\user=f
Then I logged on as the user and quickbooks worked fine.
These instructions are overkill in that too many permissions are given to the user, but the user is unlikely to mess about in the registry and this solves a lot of other software issues too and I’ve already spent far too long trying to get this working.

Solving “Library not registered” errors with quickbooks. was originally posted at Absoblogginlutely!

“is not an existing data source name” errors with odbc

Andy — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 23:15:51 +0000

On some new machines that I’ve been building I’ve had major issues with SYSTEM dsn’s not working properly and getting the “DSNNAMEis not an existing data source name” when trying to configure a dsn…. Eventually I found an answer…..

The problem seems to be that when the dsn is configured as a user, the permissions on hklm\software\odbc\odbc.ini\DSNNAME is set so that only system and the user have access to that key. Anyone else does not have access. A short term solution is to add everyone with FullControl to these dsn’s within the registry and things work when logged on as a different user. I thought the whole point of system dsn’s was so that one user could create one and then everyone else on the system could use it.

“is not an existing data source name” errors with odbc was originally posted at Absoblogginlutely!

frx and XP SP2

Andy — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 03:50:28 +0000

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 0×80040200. 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!

frx and XP SP2 was originally posted at Absoblogginlutely!

solving ftp connection problems from a cmd prompt.

Andy — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 21:32:47 +0000

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.

solving ftp connection problems from a cmd prompt. was originally posted at Absoblogginlutely!