Dec

23

Anti-virus/security software sucks

Filed Under Ranting, Security, Software, Stupid, Viruses | 30 Comments 
Posted by: DjLizard

To celebrate symantec-sucks.blogspot.com's existence I have decided to finally upload my avsucks folder.

(Note: This is an image-laden post that needs to be viewed separately. Clicky below to go to the article.)

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Dec

18

Top ten reasons why Dial-a-fix doesn't support Vista yet - and - Mac zealotry

Filed Under Apple, Dial-a-fix, Mac, Microsoft, Ranting, Stupid, Vista, Zealotry | 24 Comments 
Posted by: DjLizard

(Another double feature!)

Part I: Top ten reasons why Dial-a-fix doesn't support Vista yet

10. Vista sucks
9. Vista sucks
8. Vista sucks
7. Vista sucks
6. Vista sucks
5. I don't have very much personal time available to me these days.
4. I don't have any spare computers with which I could run Vista at the moment.
3. I use Borland Delphi which is fucking terrible, and I haven't been able to get back to my C studies for several months now. Object Pascal (as a language) is kick-ass (in my opinion), but Borland's IDE is complete garbage - especially its cost. Don't suggest .NET... that's not even funny.
2. Microsoft changed nearly everything Dial-a-fix is capable of fixing to the point that Dial-a-fix has to be rewritten from the ground up just for Vista. Nobody's really got lists of "common" fixes the way XP has. Dial-a-fix is just a collection of known fixes, anyway - 99% of what DAF does is not even my invention.
1. Microsoft should fix their shit so Dial-a-fix need not exist. Is it too much to ask for a brand new operating system version not to bring 7 years worth of bugs with it? Basically, #1 is that I can't currently be arsed to fix their brand new old bugs - that's their fucking job!

Everyone should petition Microsoft to get their shit together. How can this stuff happen so much to so many people that a program like Dial-a-fix needs to be made? If I can do it, why can't Microsoft?

I will probably make a Vista version, but don't ride my ass about when and where.

Vista is an abomination and it just goes to show you that even if you "listen" to your customers (by way of usability tests, etc) it doesn't guarantee you'll get the implementation right. Microsoft needs to go back to the basics and re-think the way people use computers. Most people are multitasking, non-deterministic users. Some are single-tasking deterministic users who have old habits that are hard to break. Tough for you folks - you'll need to renew your computing license. One of the problems I see in Vista is that it tried to simultaneously retain backward compatibility while moving forward. The result: a train wreck. You know who doesn't care AT ALL about your previous programs working? Apple. They couldn't give less of a flying double monkey fuck about your programs working in the next version. You know what else? This seems to be perfectly acceptable behavior in the Mac community. Why isn't anyone up in arms about how Apple constantly ditches everyone, each time a major OS release is made? At least Microsoft tries (even if they inevitably fail).

Part II: Mac zealotry

Don't even get me started about Mac zealotry (too late). Some (but not most) Mac users have serious mental issues and honestly believe that Apple computers are somehow special or better than PCs. I have news for you: they suck exactly as much as PCs - no more, no less. They fail too, and often in the same ways as PCs. Sure, there aren't any major viruses going around, but that's because people with virus programming skill are usually in it for the money, and are too skilled to waste their time on 1% of 1% of the computing population. (It might even be embarrassing to them to some degree.)

Apple almost had it right except that they've spent a lot of their time and money mocking Microsoft Windows and not a whole lot of time developing a better computing attitude and environment and moving forward with technology. So what if you're some hipster/yankee twentysomething who buys vendor-locked brand name computers at ridiculously inflated prices to use most of the same programs that are available for Windows? Sure, sometimes it's not the exact same program, but with so many choices available, there has to be something for Windows that does the same thing as what you're trying to accomplish on a Mac. There's a lot more freeware on the PC than there is on a Mac, too.

Most of the time they mock PCs for the wrong reasons. PCs don't get viruses, Windows does. PCs don't need major overhauls to upgrade operating system software - Windows does. A PC is just some hardware. Everything after that is up to the operating system, of which there are many available. It's just unfortunate for all of us that Microsoft won that war before the war really began.

You know the Mac guy on the PC versus Mac commercials? That guy is more smug than a motherfucker. Meanwhile, the PC guy is hilarious and has a nerdy charm to him. The Mac guy is a huge douche about everything, constantly mocking the poor PC's troubles, ignoring the fact that he has his own, as well as the fact that he lives in his mom's basement smoking pot all the time and needs to shave, get some respectable clothes, and get a fucking job.

I digress.

You basically bought a PC with different software on it. You have what kind of processor and motherboard (I'm sorry - "logic board")? Oh right, Intel. What kind of power supplies are used in Macs? ATX and BTX. What kind of hard drive? Seagate. Congratulations: you bought the most proprietary PC possible that still contains nothing but regular modular PC parts (excluding the motherboard's design and firmware). At least it can run Windows, I guess. I'm not sure if that's a pro or a con.



Dec

15

Entitled - Notepad

Filed Under Data recovery, Ranting, Stupid, djlizard | 11 Comments 
Posted by: DjLizard

Welcome to part 1 of 1 of Self-entitlement for dummies: hunting and escaping.

When I left you last I was blathering on about my history and crap. Now I'll tell you what happened that SNAPPED me right back into reality.

Tits McGee entered the shop at 4:00 and was all like "here's the laptop and keyboard for the keyboard replacement" and one of our receptionists was all like "oh hey Mike there's a keyboard replacement" and I was all like "not to mention the keyboard replacement"

But seriously...

(Remember, naughty language ahead. This time I fucking mean it.)
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Dec

12

The history of DjLizard - and - Your inflated sense of self-entitlement (0 of 1)

Filed Under Dial-a-fix, History, Ranting, djlizard | 7 Comments 
Posted by: DjLizard

(This is going to be the longest blog post I've ever written.)

Hello all. I've been away for quite a while. I have been put in the position where I work as hard during personal time as I do during actual work time. In fact, going to work is a bit of a relief to the life part. As such, I have not done any development at all on Dial-a-fix and I am very sorry. Vista support is long overdue (as you can see in the message you get when you try to run Dial-a-fix in Vista) but I have just not had the energy to complete this overwhelming task with my remaining personal time. Vista changes the way *everything* works to where Dial-a-fix is no longer able to perform the same tasks. For instance... I know someone who wanted to fix System Restore and was not able to make use of Dial-a-fix because the operating system is Vista. Unfortunately, in Vista, System Restore is no longer System Restore - it's more of a function of the Volume Shadow Copy service. So you see, I have no idea how that shit even works now. It's not the same at all. At least 50% of the DLL registrations don't even exist anymore. Most of the checkboxes would go away. Windows Update is now a program and a few services so I don't really know how that works.

I have not answered my email box for a couple of weeks, either, so I apologize if you wrote to me and I did not respond. You can try posting in the DjLizard.net subforum at Lunarsoft.net forums and hope that Tarun or others can assist you or wait it out for me to eventually get to you.

Below this line is where the long story begins...

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Oct

24

Dial-a-fix MSXML3 error

Filed Under Dial-a-fix, Fixes, XP | 2 Comments 
Posted by: DjLizard

Does anyone know why Dial-a-fix sometimes gets an "unspecified error" while trying to unregister MSXML3.DLL? It seems to be new because it's never done that in the past. Apparently you can immediately try it again and Dial-a-fix will then be able to unregister/re-register it. It's weird.

(Update: see the comments for a possible explanation. Short version: just run the same parts of Dial-a-fix again and you shouldn't get the error. If you still have trouble with Windows Updates, try clicking "Flush SoftwareDistribution".)

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Oct

20

Superfail, the third

Filed Under Dial-a-fix, Fixes, Microsoft, Windows 2000, Windows Update | 8 Comments 
Posted by: DjLizard

Superfail part 1
Superfail part 2

Thanks to astute reader Nate Coffey and Dial-a-fix, we've found another DLL registration bug.

The current version of wuaueng.dll provided to Windows 2000 service pack 4 clients has a bug in its DllInstallServer.

In the first picture is a "before" screenshot that shows that all of the SvcHost key values are here. This is a freshly installed Windows 2000 machine that only has Service Pack 4:

Everything's normal

In this second picture, I have visited Windows Update, gotten the latest Windows Update client, closed my browser, and then unregistered the DLL using regsvr32 /u:

Where'd it go?

In this third picture, I have re-registered the DLL using regsvr32 /i, but it caused an error (0×80070057) and only one key was put back. The netsvcs key is lost at this point. In order to fix this, merge this default SvcHost key .reg file.

DllInstallServer is broken.

The error code 0×80070057 is E_INVALIDARG, or invalid parameters/arguments.

The current version of Dial-a-fix will accidentally trigger this because of the malformed DllInstallServer in wuaueng.dll. Once a new, fixed version of the Windows Update client is pushed out, Dial-a-fix will be able to help you again. I'll be filing this as a bug with Microsoft - I hope they fix it.

Edit: be sure to read Superfail part 2 for the solution for afflicted machines.

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Oct

17

Defeating a Trend Micro PC-Cillin uninstall password

Filed Under Security, Software, Stupid, Technical | 17 Comments 
Posted by: DjLizard

If you are asked for a password when removing Trend Micro PC-Cillin, open regedit, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Trend Micro\PC-Cillin and either rename or remove the System sub-key. Then try the uninstaller again. It's just that stupideasy!

This doesn't work if you are already in the uninstaller being asked for the password and then remove you the key, so remove the key before starting the uninstall process.

Midas reports:

You can also use pcctool.exe for 2007 and older or tissprt.exe (or similar name) for 2008.

which will remove Trend Micro PC-Cillin without a password. You can find it in the installation directory.

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Oct

13

So I downloaded a "registry cleaner"...

Filed Under General, Software, Technical | 9 Comments 
Posted by: DjLizard

This comment prompted me to download a program called Uniblue RegistryBooster. Kim Komando said it was good. Heh.

c|net has a quote blurb on the Uniblue website that says:

This easy-to-use tool lets you remove faulty Registry entries that slow down your computer.

Removing a kilobyte of cruft should net you what, a gain of 10 nanoseconds for every 15,000 value reads?*
*: Actual value may vary**
**: Variance not guaranteed

I also don't think removing registry keys is the start to solving your Windows problems, but I'm going to run it for science!

As soon as I launched it, it performed its whole system scan.

A total of 311 invalid Registry entries were found on your System. Click on "Repair Registry" to fix all entries.

On the Overview tab, it says my registry health is low. Uh oh, I should be seeing errors and crashing all of the time, then, right?

I don't know if it's a function of not being registered, but since the window cannot be resized (giant skinned window with Vista style minimize and close buttons) and there isn't a horizontal scrollbar in the results area, I can't read the full path to most of the keys so that I can verify the results. Well, you can read the log file though. It opens an HTML log from Uniblue's area of your user profile's Application Data folder in your default web browser and it contains all of the information you need, should you actually know what you're looking at.

It found quite a few missing ActiveX/COM+/DCOM/OLE objects, which is the largest group of "errors" any registry cleaner can find in your system. This is because ActiveX, COM, and OLE (which all store and retrieve information to/from HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT) are so frequently used and are so frequently damaged (in one way or another). This could happen if you move the file to another drive or folder or if a module crashed while trying to register or unregister itself. The majority of what Dial-a-fix does is register ActiveX/COM/OLE objects, such as the components that run Windows Update. (Dial-a-fix tells the modules to self-register, this way, Dial-a-fix does not have to know the exact registry keys and values needed to make a module work again.)

Almost all of the ActiveX/COM errors that registry cleaners find can be ignored. There are a few things registry cleaners can figure out that are harmful to the speed of your system, but they don't occur very frequently. If you had a file type registered to a program that exists on a mapped drive and that network share was down but still listed as a mapped drive, you might get slowdowns as Windows tries to figure out where the share is. Registry cleaners are also able to remove invalid OpenWith entries, which is a good thing to do just to tidy the list of broken icons and to save Windows from having to check for non-existent locations. A lot of keys chosen for removal just contain MRU (most recently used) paths to things I have accessed using whatever program the MRU list is for. Removing these keys isn't really going to "repair" your computer.

Still, for the average user, cleaning this cruft will probably not visibly impact performance to the point that such a program should scan your entire system every startup.

At least RegistryBooster isn't taking up a lot of memory.

Another problem with registry cleaners is that you're at the mercy of the database and program version you have. Compounding this is that each registry cleaner program is third-party, meaning they all can have potentially differing opinions on what constitutes an invalid entry. There is the potential to ruin your computer by removing things that need to stay — many a registry cleaner has had to come out with program fixes and registry patches for things erroneously removed. I would hate to be a tech support person for a registry cleaning program. I'm sure there a lot of irate people who:

  • Have had things removed from their system that shouldn't be, and are having new problems because of it
  • Have other problems such as hard drive and memory problems and will blame the company for problems with their computer because the last thing they remember using was the registry cleaner program
  • Have other problems as mentioned above and corruption occurs after a registry clean because of interference from the faulty hardware
  • Have problems that can't be solved by a registry clean (which is to say most problems) and are upset that this program has not improved the performance or stability of their machine

Here's an issue I've found already, and I'm not very far through my results log:
RegistryBooster wants to remove HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows Search\CrawlScopeManager\Windows\SystemIndex\DefaultRules\22 because it says "file:///c:\ " is a bad path. This isn't true - this is the format Windows Search uses for indexing rules. If I remove this stuff, I suspect Windows Search will forget how to search my system, and had I not read through the log, I would later wonder how it disappeared. I might not even connect its destruction with my use of a registry cleaner - another big problem. Obviously something has directed RegistryBooster to look here, yet it does not actually understand what it is seeing and recommending for removal.

When I chose to "repair" the registry entries, it told me I should make a backup, which is a good idea. The bad thing is that it is only going to delete all of the registry entries, not really "repair" them. What if the file can be found elsewhere on the drive? Should it scan my filesystem and put together the puzzle and point the key at the new location? It's probably difficult to decide when such a scan should be the answer, so instead of opts to delete every error that has been found rather than trying to fix it. Because of the endless possibilities, scanning for files and pointing erroneous keys to the findings is probably just as bad an idea as mass deletion.

I'm barely through the first few lines of the log and I have all of this to say - this should give you a clear indication of my opinion of registry cleaners. I'm giving this one a chance, but it seems like it's just like all the rest and has all of the same pitfalls as anything else.

I can give RegistryBooster one thing: it did find quite a lot of missing TypeLib entries that really are missing, although like I've said before, it's not really going to speed up my computer all that much. This is only a few kilobytes of text in my 35 megabyte registry.

I don't like that there isn't a "jump to value" context menu entry on each item in the results pane - it makes fact-checking take quite a bit longer.

I've also noticed that registry cleaners tend to find Explorer's "auto" file extension creation entries, and RegistryBooster is no exception. There's no point in removing auto entries as they will just come right back as soon as Explorer sees the file extension again.

It feels like it's very limited since I'm only testing the trial version, but I don't think I really need to see any more.

In the end, I can't really recommend this sort of program to anyone (no offense to Uniblue) and I did not end up removing any of the things it said I should. I can't really give it a 1-to-5 stars type rating, so I'll give it a rating of N/A.

There is one decent registry cleaner that I've found that generally does the same thing (finds COM junk and missing font entries, etc) and isn't too aggressive with its scans: CCleaner's Issues scanner. CCleaner's Issues scanner reminds me of one final point: registry cleaners don't take into account the things that they orphan from their first scan. After you remove 300 things from your registry, chances are that there is another 200 things that have become orphaned from the first sweep. If I ever wrote a registry cleaner (which I will not) I would have it check for "dependencies" and list them as sub-items of the main items, so that it basically says "if you choose to remove X, I'm removing Y also because it's orphaned by the removal of X".

*Anti-climactic cliffhanger ending*.

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Oct

10

Introducing: Dr JD Azil

Filed Under General | Leave a Comment 
Posted by: DjLizard

He's not really a doctor (unless you count that PhD from clown college) but he'll be posting here from time to time. Enjoy.

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Oct

10

Retarded viruses

Filed Under Fixes, Viruses | 8 Comments 
Posted by: DjLizard

Twice in 24 hours I've come across "WinBudget" which is some garbage BHO (filename matrix.dll) that gets installed somehow. A few of our customers who don't even venture that deep into the internet (and I know for a fact they don't surf porn sites or download pirated software) got infected by it somehow. I'm guessing it might have been an Outlook/Outlook Express/Internet Explorer zero-day exploit or something.

That was ridiculously easy to remove using RogueRemover and Spybot, but neither were able to find the odd infection left behind:

If you search your drives for folders called 'bak' you may find backup copies of executables from several popular software packages such as Adobe (several products), Nero, Apple (iTunes and Quicktime), Incredimail, Realplayer, Java, and even Norton Antivirus. If you move the contents of each bak folder to its parent directory and overwrite, the infection is gone. Thanks, stupid virus, for making backup copies before infecting files.

The best way to find these folders is like this:
Start > Run > cmd.exe (to get a command prompt)
dir /a /b /s bak

You'll get a list of affected applications. Go into each 'bak' folder and move whatever is in there one level up.

cd bak
move *.* ..

(yes you want to overwrite)

Thanks, WinBudget, or whatever the fuck you are.

Edit: I also found out that WinBudget sticks one or more entries in Internet Explorer's trusted zone list. One is called whataboutadog (dot com) and one is whataboutarabit (sic) (dot com).

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