Nov

24

Dear Microsoft Product Support Services,

Filed Under Dial-a-fix, Microsoft 

(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emailed me, please point your Microsoft PSS representative to this page so that they no longer continue to send out an outdated version of Dial-a-fix.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.

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Comments

8 Responses to “Dear Microsoft Product Support Services,”

  1. # rridgely on November 24th, 2006 10:28 PM

    I posted this on your section of LS but now I cant check to see your response.
    Its easier in my opinion to get answers in a forum environment than through email since its easier to see all responses at once.

    I'm fixing a log that has issues connecting to windows update. The issue was probably caused by some
    spyware but that seems to be gone now.
    Anyway I had them run dial a fix and it returned this error:

    {snip giant fucking log - DjLizard}

    Here is the log its from:
    http://forum.ccleaner.com/index.php?showtopic=7605&pid=55441&st=0&#entry55441

    It seems to be system restore related. Should I get them to use dial a fix to reinstall system restore?
    Or would it be better to try something else?

    Thanks dj.

  2. # DjLizard on November 25th, 2006 11:18 AM

    Yeah. If the "Reinstall System Restore" Tool doesn't solve it, extract srclient.dll yourself from the Windows CD, or try sfc /purgecache and sfc /scannow (which are also Tools in Dial-a-fix).

  3. # rridgely on November 25th, 2006 4:41 PM

    Thanks DJ.

  4. # spud on January 3rd, 2007 1:11 AM

    I have IE7 installed and I am not having any problems registering shdocvw.dll or browseui.dll
    i cant use dllinstall though ( /i )
    versions are 6.0.2900.2987 and 6.0.2900.2995 respectively

  5. # spud on January 3rd, 2007 1:13 AM

    also, here is a good site with lots of good info
    http://www.jsifaq.com/SF/Search/SearchResults.aspx?qs=regsvr32

  6. # DjLizard on January 3rd, 2007 11:09 PM

    Re IE7: Yes, it's the /i part that is messed up in the new versions.

    Re jsifaq: I have all of those, and then some.

  7. # Whimsy (EPS-Perf/IE) on April 30th, 2007 8:44 PM

    Hey DJ,

    Here's a funny bit of irony: I ran across your post on SA and remembered using your program for my own repairs. Then I thought about using your application. I'm not sure if v-2 engineers have been recommending it but I was thinking of recommending it as the Performance team tends to deal with a lot of stuff that Dial-a-fix can cope with.

    Thanks for making such an awesome application!

  8. # DjLizard on April 30th, 2007 9:44 PM

    What does "v-2 engineers" and "Performance team" mean? Is that part of ... well, I won't mention the domain in your email field unless you want me to. Is that part of your company, or are you referring to Microsoft? Also, I kind of missed the ironic part :)

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