Nov
24
Dear Microsoft Product Support Services,
Filed Under Dial-a-fix, Microsoft | 9 Comments
(If you are not in contact with Microsoft PSS but I sent you here anyway, it just means that you need to get the newest version of Dial-a-fix, which is listed below after the explanation of the two errors you are receiving.)
I am very glad to see that you trust me (a barely-known third party) and my software enough to recommend it to your customers. That is the motivating factor behind my recent heavy re-development of Dial-a-fix. I have been studying the Platform SDK and as much Windows internals reference material as I can get my hands on in order to make Dial-a-fix a very trustworthy and reliable program. There is a new version currently in the works which is going to be far more intelligent and accurate than ever before.
If you are a customer/end-user and I have directed you to this article when you emailed me, please point your Microsoft PSS representative to this page so that they no longer continue to send out an outdated version of Dial-a-fix. The two "Unspecified" errors you received (in browseui.dll and shdocvw.dll) are not problems with your system, and you can continue to use Dial-a-fix as normal, simply ignoring those errors. Dial-a-fix makes no changes to your system when these two errors occur – it is safe to completely ignore them. Obviously, a better idea is to download the latest Dial-a-fix and continue your repair routines with it.
I'd like to make two requests to all PSS agents who use/recommend Dial-a-fix:
- I don't know where you are sending your customers to get Dial-a-fix, but it apparently isn't here, because an older version of Dial-a-fix is currently being recommended to your customers that contains a known issue with regards to Internet Explorer 7. Versions of Dial-a-fix prior to v0.60.0.23 do not understand that the two files browseui.dll and shdocvw.dll can no longer be registered as of Internet Explorer 7. The error that is displayed when this is attempted is: 0×80004005 (Unspecified error). Please send your customers to my website to download Dial-a-fix, as I am often unable to keep up with the various shareware/freeware sites that mirror my program. Please do not attach my program to reply emails to your customers, as this may not provide them with the latest version. The correct address to download the latest version is: http://wiki.DjLizard.net/Dial-a-fix. You can also find the Dial-a-fix tips article at my wiki, which contains descriptions of known issues and other miscellanea. I create maintenance releases of Dial-a-fix whenever a common issue like this happens, or when a major update (via WUAU or in this case, IE 7) makes uncommon changes to common behavior. I also make exclusions for certain versions of system files (see the MSHTML.DLL fiasco) occasionally.
- My second request is that you contact the Internet Explorer 7 team about these two files and ask if this is proper behavior. I assume that files that cannot be registered should return error 127 (The specified procedure could not be found) while trying to GetProcAddress the DllRegisterServer entry point rather than return an Unspecified error after actually trying to enter that procedure, but as I am a self-taught end-user myself, I don't have a whole lot of knowledge on the matter.
The latest version of Dial-a-fix ignores these two files when Internet Explorer 7 is present on the system (for the time being).
As I mentioned above, I am actively hard at work on a major Dial-a-fix update that I hope will be properly disseminated to Microsoft PSS customers when it is released. I am working on it with Microsoft PSS agents in mind: it is going to have a much easier user interface, and it is going to be much smarter with regards to services and DLL registrations than it ever has been.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Michael C.
Nov
12
Dial-a-fix v0.61? Coming soon!
Filed Under Dial-a-fix | 3 Comments
That's right, ever since Financial Redness day, I've been working my ass off on Dial-a-fix. It's going to be sweet. I was planning on releasing a version this weekend, but I didn't get the security descriptor manipulation function done in time. Ah well. It's coming!
Nov
12
First Vista repair
Filed Under Fixes, Vista | 3 Comments
I fixed my first Vista problem last week. My boss brought in his Vista RC1 machine and it was acting oddly. Explorer.exe would take 50% CPU usage (two core CPU) and the Start Menu's pin list wouldn't show up at all. Everything else was working properly (including the All Programs list, and other functions of the Start Menu).
I had to find out whether the pin list problem was the cause or the effect, so I began searching the internet for the location of the pin list. It's nearly impossible to find this information.
After a half hour of digging around with Sysinternals Filemon and Regmon, I wasn't getting anywhere. I used Sysinternals strings.exe on shell32.dll (which I had previously discovered is where the pin list calls & code are stored) and finally found out where the pin list is stored: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage
The value Favorites contains the pin list itself. I found that on this Vista machine, there was nothing wrong with the Favorites value. It was the ProgramsCache value that had become corrupted. After deleting the key and restarting Explorer, the pin list came back up and all of the CPU usage went away. Problem solved. (This all works the same in Windows XP.)
Nov
12
Financial redness averted :)
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment
Thanks very much to all who have donated! I have been able to buy gas, groceries, etc. A few friends have helped me out with the bigger problems and now I'm back on track again. Thanks again to all! If you wish to have your name and/or website listed on a tab of the Help dialog in the version-after-next of Dial-a-fix, drop me an email with what you want it to say.
Nov
4
Financial redness – I need your help!
Filed Under General | 5 Comments
If you were considering donating a few bucks for my work on Dial-a-fix but hadn't gotten around to it, now would be a great time to do so. I have come into some harsh financial issues and I need all of the help I can get. Even if you can spare just $5 USD, it will help out a great deal. I'm trying to figure out how I can get $400 USD before November 16th, but it isn't looking too bright. I think I'm going to sell some of my computer parts for spare change, but it isn't ever going to make it to $400.
Huge thanks to William Sanders for donating $25 USD before I even posted this! Your donation helps a great deal.
edit: If you'd like your name listed and/or website linked in a new tab of Dial-a-fix's about box (in the next version I release), let me know about it when you make a donation of $5 or more.
Edit 2: Thanks to George Hoffman for his generous donation of $20!
Nov
4
Windows Media Player phones home
Filed Under Security, Software | 2 Comments
Windows Media Player 10 and 11 both have developed a nasty tendency to behave like spyware: they report back to their master and do so to a multitude of sites. They automatically retrieve content even if you don't explicitly click Online Stores and/or Guide, simply launching WMP will result into WMP retrieving content.
What is this spyware-like activity?
The spyware-like activity is the automatic downloading of content when you launch Windows Media Player (aka WMP) with an active Internet connection. The content (images, cookies, javascript, etc.) will end up in Internet Explorer's Temporary Internet Files.
This can easily be confirmed by first emptying Internet Explorer's Temporary Internet Files and Cookies, and then launching WMP.
To counter these problems you could simply try to block the offending sites by putting them in your Windows HOST file, and into Internet Explorer's Security-> Restricted Sites, and Privacy areas. But alas, the HOSTS-file method won't necessarily work because Microsoft has decided to implement a strategy to bypass the HOSTS file in certain instances for some microsoft.com URL's.
And you can't simply turn the update function in Windows Media Player (aka WMP) off because you only have the choice between updating every day or week or month.
The result is that you cannot prevent your WMP from contacting Microsoft's sites.
How to prevent WMP from phoning home
To prevent WMP from automatically contacting sites which WMP automatically retrieves content from you'll only have a few options:
1. The best choice is to install a third-party two-way personal firewall such as Comodo, Kerio, ZoneAlarm, etc. In your personal firewall set it to Block/Disallow WMP access to your Internet connection by creating a permanent rule. Or at the very least and perhaps a better recommendation is to set your personal firewall to Ask every time WMP is launched so that permission must be first granted by you rather WMP is allowed to automatically retrieve online content or not.
2. Compile a list of the sites which are loaded by looking into Internet Explorer's Temporary Internet Files and Cookies.
3. Using the list you compiled in #2 block the cookies, scripts, etc., from offending sites in Internet Explorer.
Note: Don't block go.microsoft.com as doing so will break many links that Microsoft utilizes when visiting microsoft.com.
On the other hand: do you really care? It only checks for updates and bypassing the HOST-file is done for security reasons in order to prevent malware from wrecking Windows Update.
In the end it depends on your mindset: do you think that Microsoft spies on you or do you think Microsoft helps you to keep your system safe.
(post witten in cooperation with Andavari)