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

I've started Dial-a-fix over and here is what I have so far:

As you can see it's mostly empty (for now) but there are great plans.
Currently, the "Scan" button on the "Find issues" tab looks for over 40 separate problems relating to the registry, services/drivers, shell/Explorer.exe, and Internet Explorer. It also displays restrictive policies.

It's written in Delphi and coming along nicely. A few rules lists will be moved to outside of the program .exe for easier access (such as restrictive policies). It will support languages. It will support Vista, Server 2003, and XP Pro x64. It will still support Windows 98. You can even resize or maximize the window now.

I spent all weekend working on it, and I plan to spend all of next weekend working on it as well. I have a lot of work to do but I'll keep everyone posted.

With each subsequent release of Delphi, Borland has put roadblock after roadblock up for me. I love the language, but not necessarily the VCL, IDE, or the company.

The latest is that Delphi 2007 has been optimized to work in x64 and Vista… but you have to pay expensive upgrade fees to get these features that should have (in my opinion) been released as a patch for Delphi 2005. It's $899 for a new user license. The VCL is very unaware of Unicode, too, which in a modern development environment is ridiculous.

I was using Turbo Delphi 2005 (which is free, but limited in that you can't install optional components and there's no command line compiler). Was. There are too many limitations for me to be able to continue.

TNTUnicode was just sold to TMS Components, so a once-free component (which I was going to use to add Unicode support to Dial-a-fix) is now a for-pay component. I was going to figure out how to purchase Delphi 2007 but I'm just too depressed to do so. One of the main reasons that Dial-a-fix updates have been delayed is my frustration with limitations. The other reason is my life, which has recently resolved into normality again. I'll be able to start working on this stuff after the upcoming radio show on Monday.

Also, there's hundreds of bugs in Delphi's VCL that cause stupid things to happen (double buffering isn't even supported very well, for instance. Unicode support is non-existent, as I said above).

I think I'm going to switch to C++. This is going to be a daunting task (especially since I don't know C++, but then again, I didn't know Object Pascal either, and I made the transition pretty easily even though it had been 10 years since I worked with Pascal) but it needs to be done.

Microsoft's free version of Visual C++ isn't very limited at all. That's okay though, as I received a free copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard from Microsoft. Thanks Microsoft! I also got Office 2007 Professional for free. I've never seen an opportunity to receive a free copy of any versions of Delphi; if any have existed, I missed the opportunity. Still, Delphi, which is a great teaching language, isn't very accessible unless you're actually a student at a university (at which point you get a massive discount). I'm just a hobbyist trying to write freeware and there's no Turbo Delphi 2007 in sight. I don't know if they're going to release a Turbo edition of Delphi 2007, but it doesn't matter anymore – I don't want to upgrade. I've removed Delphi from my system and have installed Visual Studio 2005 Standard in preparation to start over again. Besides, even if there was a Delphi 2007, it wouldn't allow me to install things like TMSUnicode, etc. Installing third-party components to add support for something that should have been in Delphi since Windows NT 4 is always fun.

Besides all of this annoyance, I should be writing this in C++ anyway, as I'm starting to get deeper and deeper into Win32, having to translate C++ into Object Pascal every time I need to know how to do something lower level. MSDN was written with C++ in mind. I might as well use the language that Win32 was documented in and be done with it. No more translation required! No more trying to figure out what esoteric data type I'm supposed to use ("cardinal"? What the hell is that?)

This all means that Dial-a-fix will go even faster and will become more intimate with your system, letting you know about problems that no other software has ever tried to look for. The filter driver article I just wrote is only one example; The new (Codename) Dial-a-fix++ will scan all of your drivers for missing filters and even ask your permission to repair them for you.

Wish me luck.

—

PS: Carey Holzman of Computer America mentioned Dial-a-fix again! Check out the 1st hour of the May 2nd show.

We’ve waited a long time for this… At last Merijn Bellekom has finished a brand new version of his most famous program, HijackThis.

And that’s not the only bit of news about HijackThis. It seems that Merijn has managed to sell the program to Trend Micro. Merijn's own explanation is here.

HijackThis 2.0.0 beta is downloadable here.

Changes:
- AnalyzeThis added for log file statistics
- Recognizes Windows Vista and IE7
- Fixed a few bugs in the O23 method
- Fixed a bug in the O22 method (SharedTaskScheduler)
- Did a few tweaks on the log format
- Fixed and improved ADS Spy
- Improved Itty Bitty Procman (processes are frozen before they are killed)
- Added listing of O4 autoruns from other users
- Added listing of the Policies Run items in O4 method, used by SmitFraud trojan
- Added /silentautolog parameter for system admins
- Added /deleteonreboot [file] parameter for system admins
- Added O24 – ActiveX Desktop Components enumeration
- Added Enhanced Security Confirguration (ESC) Zones to O15 Trusted Sites check

Every step forward seems like a step backward. I used to have a 1.0 design (which I posted about before) that was really neat, but I had to keep working on the current beta line to keep it maintained (and now it's fallen into disrepair). Then I became very busy at work and didn't even have time to answer any of my emails (about 500) for about a month. I apologize if I haven't answered your email. I will get to it, actually, starting Saturday morning. I'll answer all my emails and then begin working on Dial-a-fix again, because it needs overhauling (again – did I say "again" yet?). Every time I plop down a foundation (like that 1.0 teaser post), it comes up short and I have to start over again.

Again. Again. There, I've used it so much it's no longer a word.

Good thing Tarun is over there at the Lunarsoft.net forums helping out with Dial-a-fix support, or else everyone would be in the dark.

Oh yeah and Ninja Rope, I am still going to use ntdel as planned and The Notifier will live once again. Too bad it dies with Vista; Vista doesn't have Winlogon\Notify keys. Edit: Actually, Vista does. They're just in a different place and have a different syntax. Take a look at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SYSTEM
CurrentControlSet
Control
Winlogon
Notifications
Components

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.)

I had to fix a theme double buffering bug that would cause DAF to be mostly black when using themes.
So if you downloaded yesterday's .23, you'll want to download .24 to replace it.

* Slowed tooltip wait speed to 250ms (from 0ms) – tooltips are no longer annoying!
* Re-added "Hide disabled policies" checkmark that mysteriously disappeared from previous build
* Sped up policy scanning
* Reduced startup lag slightly
* Double buffered all forms and most controls (less flicker when moving/resizing certain dialogs), except the About box's rich text areas (Delphi 7's standard TRichEdit can't double buffer)
* The complete version number is now listed in the titlebar/caption, as well as the log
* The Dial-a-fix download is now a single .zip archive which includes secedit
* Until further notice from Microsoft, Dial-a-fix 0.60.0.23 now ignores browseui and shdocvw when Internet Explorer 7 is present (because attempting to register them produces "Unspecified error" – it is unknown at this time whether this is a Microsoft bug or if Microsoft intended this behavior for the new versions of these files)

http://wiki.DjLizard.net/Dial-a-fix_beta

Get support at Lunarsoft.net.

http://www.windows-noob.com/review/ie7/

Vista build 5728 publicly released

Since 0.57.7 is incapable of reporting Win32 errors, has no logging facility, and has various bugs (Win2k 'version.dll' access violation, etc), it has been deprecated in favor of the latest v0.60 beta until Dial-a-fix v1.0 is finalized (which will take me forever to finish). Please visit the Dial-a-fix v0.60 Wiki article and download Dial-a-fix there.

I have redirected the download locations for all forms of v0.57.7 to this post.

I have also updated Dial-a-fix v0.60 to v0.60.0.16 to bring it up to speed a little bit (and remove the Repair permissions bug where it has the potential to remove limited user accounts from the Windows XP welcome screen — they still existed as users, however).

Do not use Dial-a-fix v0.57.7.

Thank you.