Aw dawg, this is just my whateva-whateva site.

So, you've been wondering what I've been doing for the past month and-a-half. Well, I've been redesigning Dial-a-fix. I have started it completely over, and began re-coding it from the ground up.

Here's some preview teaser shots of what it's going to be like, and what's complete so far. I have also listed percentages of completion for each section.

Overall new features

1. Resizable, maximizable dialog
2. Single-form design
3. Nicer graphics everywhere

Startup – 80% complete

Immediately upon startup of Dial-a-fix, it begins checking your system for common/immediate problems. The following checks are performed, in this order:

1. A log of your system info is created, initializing the log pane – 100% complete
2. Your %TEMP% environment variable is checked against several critical folders around your system, to ensure that you don't empty a valuable directory by mistake – 0% (not coded yet but won't take long)
3. Services important to Dial-a-fix, including their dependencies, are queried (to make sure they exist) and changed accordingly/automatically (i.e., if your BITS service is set to Disabled, DAF sets it to Automatic). If a critical service doesn't exist, Dial-a-fix disables the part of itself that deals with starting/stopping that service. – 80% complete
4. Important utilities are checked for existence (regedit.exe, net.exe, net1.exe, msiexec.exe, etc) – %0 (not coded yet)
5. The OLE32 registration section of your registry is checked for consistency (applicable platforms only). – %0 (not coded yet)
6. Then, your registry is scanned for restrictive policies. If there are any, then the status bar will list how many were found, and the Policies tab will begin blinking to remind you to click the Policies tab (a feature for non-technical users who have never used DAF). – 100% complete

Main tab – 20% complete

New features:

1. Actions area, with quick access to frequently used system utilities (Event Viewer, Regedit, Services, etc). Certain buttons (such as Services) will not show in Win98/Me, obviously.
2. "Invert states" button in Registration center
3. Nice section icons
4. Much smarter code

Tools tab – 0% (not coded yet)

No screenshot yet as it is blank. Besides the DLL registration function used throughout DAF, this tab will take the longest to complete.

• Scriptable! Use real Object Pascal language/syntax to create your own tools and load them into Dial-a-fix

Policies tab – 100% complete

(click it to see it unscaled)

1. Actions area, with new dialog expansion button (expand/contract dialog by 2x for easy policy viewing)
2. Nicer icons

Log pane – 80% complete

(click it to see it unscaled)

1. Pseudo HTML-enabled log pane allows for graphics, colored text, formatting
2. Saves plaintext to .txt file or copy plaintext to clipboard – 0% (not coded yet)
3. Quick macros for Tool writers to format their log pane messages in a standard way
4. "Undock" the log pane from its tab and move it around in its own window – 0% (not coded yet)

Help and About tabs – 0%

Nothing here yet either, but I hope to have a nice help system soon. It'll be the last part I do before I release it into the wild.

It will probably take about 2 more months for me to completely finish this. Obviously, a lot of the design in these screenshots is subject to change.

In Superfail, I described a problem afflicting Windows 2000 machines. I believe it has to do with one of the Windows Updates from June, but I can't be sure. It's still affecting people right now.

These are the steps I usually use to fix it:

(edit): 0) Make sure you're using the latest build of Dial-a-fix.
1) Reboot so you're starting with a clean slate.
2) Run all of DAF section #5 (Registration center).
3) Run DAF section #3 (WU/WUAU).
4) Start > Run > rundll32.exe setupapi.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %systemroot%\inf\au.inf
(Note: the above command is one huge line — it has been wrapped for easier reading)
5) Immediately merge this .reg file: win2ksvchost.reg
6) Reboot.
7) Try Windows Update again. If it fails, try clicking "Flush SoftwareDistribution" in Dial-a-fix (and answer No) and then try Windows Update again.

Some combinations of the above steps usually fix it. Each machine seems to freak out a bit differently, so your results may vary.

I'm working on something very huge. I will post about it next weekend…
;)