Andy’s Technotes and commentary

This was caused here by a failed or partial uninstall of ZoneAlarm. Deleting the contents of the ZoneLabs folder under System32 and the contents of \Windows\InternetLogs fixed this problem.

Analog Devices ADI 198x Integrated Audio driver A022 will not load on Dell Dimension 3000 and fails with “device object not present”

Use driver A021 instead.

More precisely:
IE7 install breaks Windows and Microsoft Update after install of SP3 on a clean OS install of XP SP2

Fix is here:

http://download.windowsupdate.com/WindowsUpdate/redist/standalone/
7.0.6000.381/WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe

From CMD prompt:
net stop wuauserv
“%userprofile%\Desktop\WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe” /wuforce (don’t forget the quotation marks)
net start wuauserv

 http://msmvps.com/blogs/markd/archive/2008/05/09
/windows-xp-sp3-breaks-windows-update.aspx

I tried this and it works.

For search engines:
Windows Update does not work after installing XP SP3
SP3 damages Microsoft Update.

I ran yet another malware detector on the drive mentioned below.
Microsofts Live scanner:
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-au/default.htm?mkt=en-au

detected 8 more VUNDO infected files.

The Live Scanner is a nice tool.

By far the number one consumer/home user problem I see is fake antispyware/antivirus software that holds a system hostage.
At the core of this problem is the VUNDO trojan. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vundo_trojan
In my tests this  Medusa’s head  malware infestation is best remedied by zero filling the hard drive and installing from a trusted source.
In past tests the popular countermeasures Ad-Aware and Spybot were useless as was Norton’s Vundo removal tool.
Today we tested  Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.  After five passes the product declared the drive clean and indeed the symptoms were gone. I removed the drive and mounted it in a test machine and ran Avira Antivir against it and found three more instances of Vundo.
To me this confirms that you cannot be  confident that malware has been removed even if your tester shows a drive clean and confirms that the best approach is wipe and reload.

Scenario:
Vista Business on a brand new Dell desktop hosting a network share of a HP 8100 USB printer.
One of the  networked computers is Windows 98 and there is no 98 driver for HP 8100.
I tried the tried and true old trick of loading a Generic driver for the HP8100 and sharing it  so the  98 machine would have at least basic printing abilities until it gets replaced in a few days.
Bad idea.
I  ran a  test print from within the Windows Vista  printer wizard dialogue.  The printer printed correctly  but the  wizard app stopped responding. The error cascaded to an open instance of Open Office and to Windows Explorer.
I shut down through Task Manager and after an extrodinarily long shutdown process, restarted the machine.
After a long wait, Vista came up in a crippled state. I could not start Control Panel, could not start System Restore (well I couldn’t find it…Why did Microsoft move everything in Vista?) , could  not start Open Office. I started Task Manager but could not see anything amiss.
After another 5 minute shutdown sequence I booted to Safe Mode.
I opened the System Restore FAQ in Help which answered many questions but not  “Where I can I click to start System Restore?”. One of the FAQs near the bottom of the page offered a way to start from the command line.  I rolled back two days and my problem was fixed.
My advice :
DO NOT TURN OFF VISTA SYSTEM RESTORE !

Dell GX-270 motherboards frequently have bad capacitors that cause erratic system performance and system failure. Avoid.
The problem  undoubtedly exists  on Apple  HP and other computers based on the Intel D865GBF motherboard.

Seagate discwizard 10 (Acronis) appears to be incompatible with Dell Vostro 200 SATA drives. The program aborts after an error indicating it cannot detect any drives.
Thsis model uses the Foxconn G33M motherboard with Intel G33 chipset.

The new version of Magic Jellybean Keyfinder 2.0 beta (not 1.5) supposedly allows one to recover the Product Key from a hard drive that is no longer bootable.
The test was done when a 1.5ghz PIV 845 chipset motherboard died. The computer had been running a Nobilis XP Home.

The hard drive would not boot into windows on any of the three new motherboards tried. It would just BSOD briefly and reboot.

Initial tests were done using a Windows 2000 machine as a host. It didn’t work. The host machine OS version must match (at least to some degree) the OS on the drive from which you are attempt to retrieve the key else you get an error something like “Hive Load Failed”. When tested on another XP Home machine the MJBKF worked for installation however activation failed and Microsoft refused to activate the product installation.

Update Jan 19 2007: I found the original key for the install described above and it does not match the keys generated by MJBKF or Dagon. Maybe these guys are not “recovering” the keys but are generating new keys that will allow installation but not activation.

DagonDesign.com has a similar technique for “recovery” of the Product Key. The technique described there created a different Product Key which Microsoft also refused to activate.

Brand new from Wal Mart.
Slow celeron 1.6 and 1 gig ram with Vista Home Premium.
Lots of crapware HP/Yahoo search, Norton Security trialware.
Cannot access internet through dial up modem. Cannot remove Norton crapware. Norton will not uninstall because AV is running, but AV is turned off in Norton. You have to reboot after turning off.
Got rid of Norton. Modem connection now works.
Pretty  slow computer.