Category: Windows

Stuff about Microsoft Windows

Clever Bulk Rename Trick in Windows

Stumbled into a clever way to rename a bunch of files to have the same prefix and a sequential numbered suffix… from the Windows GUI no less.

Ever want to rename a bunch of files to the same prefix, but have an incremental count after them?

From Explorer, select all the files that you want to bulk rename, right click, and select Rename.

While all of the files will be selected, only one is editable. Give the file a name, let’s pretend for the sake of discussion you typed ABC.jpg.

All of the rest of the files will be renamed ABC (1).jpg through ABC (n).jpg, where ‘n’ is the number of files minus one, since the first one doesn’t get a number.

Knowing this, you can do some clever stuff. Create one bogus file renamed to ZZZZZZZZ.TXT at the end of your list; select all the files, and bulk rename them as shown above. Then delete the bogus file, it should be the only one without a number, and you’ve just made a sequence of files.

Is AVG killing windows Remote Desktop?

Today terminal services stopped working, and I could no longer remote in to my Windows box. At the moment, speculation suggests it appears to be a false-positive by AVG.

This morning Anti-Virus Guard,AVG (not the free version), decided that TRMSRV.DLL in the System32 directory was threat and copied it out of the directory.

The result was that Terminal Service no longer works. That means that software like Remote Desktop Connection 2 (RDC), can’t connect, although the machine responds to pings and Samba requests.

Placing a exception in AVG to not check that directory (sounds bad, eh?), and restoring the file from another machine seems to have temporarily address the problem.

I wonder if AVG knows about this.

We’re also seeing that Cygwin and the System Restore Point is also among the collateral damage.

UPDATE 11-Nov-2008: Looks like AVG is now flagging Windows as a virus.

Loathing Dell, Hating Symantec

A password to uninstall Symantec Antivirus…?

In trying to repair a Windows laptop which was acting really slow and appeared to be riddled with problems, I discovered it was running Norton / Symantec Anti-Virus.

Ugh.

It’s been shown with benchmarks that this software kills PC performance. And, in other tests, AVG, which costs less, catches more, without being a resource hog.

So, I go to uninstall Symantec, which can be a chore unto itself. But this time I was greeted with a new source of irritation.

I got a dialog box which said “Please enter the uninstall password”. Great. Just great.

So, given that this OEM laptop had paid support by Dell, I figured I’d ask.

The answer I got back was “I wasn’t aware there was a password to uninstall.”

While Dell was dodging the support question, I found this very helpful article:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/05/hack-to-removeuninstall-symantec-norton-antivirus-sav-client-without-password/

In it, it said change the value of this registry key, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\INTEL\LANDesk\VirusProtect6\CurrentVersion\Administrator Only\Security\, from 1 to 0 with RegEdit.

I tried it. It worked. No problems. Problem solved.

So, I tell the Dell Support person the point is moot, I got past it, and shared the link with him so that future customers with the same problem could have the problem solved. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Learn something, and share — that way others don’t waste time down the path you traveled?

Dell’s tone instantly changed, they didn’t seem happy I got past it. And, then he tells me that Dell support doesn’t give passwords, or tell how to override them, even for OEM installed stuff; they would not be sharing the information, no matter how useful.

So, did they know about the password and just feed me a line? I was certainly left with that impression.

Incidentally, I’ve been told by an IT person, the next time I encounter the password box, enter: symantec

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Sticky Fingers: Logitech Mouse

Ok, not making this up. It’s been so long since I used my home Windows system that the plastic on my mouse is decomposing. Literally. Not the rubber. The plastic housing. The hard plastic.

This will give you an idea of how long it’s been since I’ve used Windows at home.

I had to hook up an LCD monitor to the Windows box, boot the system, and install a pile of updates [1 WGA; 34 express; 2 custom]. However, something else gave me a true sense of the time that had passed: when I moved the mouse, I felt something oily and sticky on my thumb. The plastic mouse had degraded.

Upon closer inspection of my Logitech iFeel MouseMan (M/N: M-UN53b; P/N: 830445-0000), the thumb button had ooze dripping on it.

Where did it come from? The answer was obvious. There was a thumb print above the button, where the hand naturally rests.

Apparently the natural oil in my hand left a finger print on the mouse. Undisturbed for so long, the plastic broke down and started becoming liquid mush in that one spot.

I’ve never heard of a mouse breaking down like that, but I’m holding the evidence in the palm of my hand.

Now, the larger question: do I buy a new mouse? Nah, Windows isn’t worth the pocket change or that level of effort to me anymore.

Vista DeFrag Sucks

Vista’s Disk Defrag leave a lot to be desired. Here’s how to you can defrag your disk for sure.

Well before Vista was even real, I wrote about the problematic issues, bad practices for customers, and locked in formats that would make Apple Mac a highly attractive option. Pretty much most of the things people said couldn’t or wouldn’t happen have. It’s no wonder that the US Government would rather keep XP than move to Vista, that students on college campuses are reporting terrible problems interfacing with the IT departments and campus infrastructure, and that even Office formats are in dispute.

Even in our own offices, Vista has been one disaster after another, causing us all kinds of heart ache and productivity loss.

We thought the nightmare was over when we found a clever hack to make Vista think our networked HP LaserJet was a local printer (and we’d given up on being able to even use sound). However, we’ve been getting terrible disk performance on a laptop with Vista installed. Turns out the drive is badly fragmented.

Obviously, an XP user would simply run Disk Defrag and let that be that.

Not so with Vista. Sure, it has the program, but it provides no indicator of how much work needs to be done, and no visual interface at all about what’s being done. All you get is a stupid message that says the operation could take minutes to hours to complete.

So, we let Vista run overnight. And performance didn’t improve. At all.

You’ve got to see the conversation over on the Microsoft Developer Network about Vista’s defrager.

It seems that Microsoft expects you to leave your machine running all the time, and at some time like 2am on Wednesday, it will run the defrag automatically for you. Whether you want it to or not. And it will do the same crappy job.

If you’re running an enterprise service, you do not want to take an I/O channel hit “just because.” If you’re an IT administrator, you don’t want to screw with scheduling. If you’re a laptop user, you don’t want to leave your machine running.

Now I know I said I wasn’t going to give Microsoft support anymore. But I occasionally will share tips.

Grab the free version of Auslogic’s Disk Defrag. It will impress you. It’s clean, crisp, visual, astoundingly fast, and most importantly: it solved our fragmentation problems.

Dell Inspiron E1505 Mouse Pointer Problem

The cursor on a new Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 graphics card running XP Home looks like a vertical bar, not a pointer. Here’s the fix.

Today’s tip comes from John Cook, who reports that upon purchasing a new Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 graphics card running Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (build 2600) and using the “Synaptics PS/2 Port Pointing Device” as a mouse, the cursor appears as a vertical bar.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing on the Internet that tells how to correct the problem.

SOLUTION: The problem is with the hardware acceleration.

Right click the desktop, choose properties, go to the Settings tab, click Advanced, choose the Troubleshoot tab, and slide the slider one notch to the left. Click Ok, then OK.

Ubuntu and Parallels Rescue Broken XP

How I recovered a badly damaged XP box with severe Windows Update problems using Ubuntu and Parallels for OS X.

Normally, I don’t provide XP support, however, because I was the one who recommended the owner perform a Windows Update that precipitated the total incapacitation of the machine, I felt a slight guilty streak of obligation.

Because of the horrible reputation of Windows Genuine Advantage disabling legal installations, the owner of the box disabled all Windows Updates for fear his system would become disabled and he’d lose his data. As such, when I recommended keeping the system patched, there were well over 60+ patches to start with.

Frozen XP DesktopProblem was, one of those patches was for the NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4200 graphics card, and during the installation process, when the Microsoft Version was applied, the machine froze, requiring a manual reboot via the reset switch.

Naturally, after a forced shutdown one should invoke a check disk. However something insidious occurred. Explorer, and I don’t mean Internet Explorer, no I mean Explorer – the GUI shell, would lock up shortly after login. The start menu would go dead, icons didn’t function, start/run couldn’t invoke programs, applications invoked from the command line wouldn’t work, Internet Explorer wouldn’t even start, and Windows Update did nothing. Even Ctrl-Alt-Del wouldn’t work, as the Task Manager couldn’t start. Nor could the user logout or shutdown the machine. Things were bad. It was like the desktop was there, but the underlying services that made it function were dead.

I’ve had easier recoveries from the blue screen of death. If you can get past that, usually you got yourself a working system. In this case, the system would boot, and even allow a login, but once there, the interface wouldn’t function.

Of course you’d think booting and reverting to the last known good configuration would help. It didn’t. Safe mode was equally hosed. Anything past the login prompt rendered the machine in a frozen state, popping up a message about a Windows General Services failing, with an option to report the problem to Microsoft.

That’s the state of the machine as I received it prior to repair.

Here’s how I fixed it.

The detail message reported that the offending file as WUAUENG.DLL. A quick Google search showed this was the Windows Update module. It seems between going from Windows Update to Microsoft Update, the DLL got corrupted. As Windows booted after login, it accessed the DLL, and the system froze.

My goal was to replace at least this file from a working system. Problem was, I was in a catch-22. I couldn’t access the broken system, and if it was possible, the files would be in use by the operating system anyhow.

I downloaded Ubuntu and burned it to a CD using OS X. I then booted off the live CD on the broken machine, however while it could see the NTFS volume, it couldn’t write to it.

So, I enabled all the repositories by going to System / Software Sources, making sure Universe and Multi-verse were included. Then I opened up the terminal and entered sudo apt-get install ntfs-config, and installed the package that allowed writing to NTFS drives.

I added root to the fuse group, and then went to Applications / System Tools / NTFS Configuration Tool. It was quick to tell me I needed to run ntfs /dev/hda1, which fixed the volume and set it to check the disk on boot.

I shutdown Ubuntu, booted Windows, which caused a check disk, and when I finally got to the login prompt, shutdown again without ever logging in.

I booted back off the Ubuntu CD, did the same trick as before with the repositories and installation of the NTFS driver, and this time was able to mount the drive as writable.

I went to the WINDOWS\System32 directory, and found the following files, to which I renamed them, appending .old to their extension for the purposes of a backup: wuaueng.dll, wuaueng.dll.mui, and wuaueng1.dll.

Then I booted Parallels on OS X, brought up a copy of XP, went to its C:\WINDOWS\System32 directory, and copied those three files to a USB stick. I unmounted the USB stick and shutdown Parallels.

With Ubuntu still running on the broken machine, I plugged in the USB stick, which instantly appeared on the desktop, and copied over three files to the broken machine’s system32 directory.

I then shutdown Ubuntu, removed the USB stick and CD, and booted into Windows. The error message was gone, but it was obvious things were still fragile.

Back on OS X, I downloaded Windows XP Service Pack 2, burned it to CD, and stuck it in the broken machine, executing it. A bit later, it finished and I rebooted.

I was suddenly able to run Windows Update again, and that downloaded 40+ updates, effectively jump starting the process by grabbing only the critical updates. In a rise-lather-repeat cycle, I did this until all the critical updates were obtained. Then I did the same with the optional software.

Each time I came in from a mandatory reboot, I made a system restore checkpoint.

Just to confirm it was the NVIDIA driver, I downloaded just that option from Microsoft, and the machine locked up. Which, to get out of I had to hit the reset button, screwing up the disk again. No problem though, I booted, holding down F8, and booted to the last known good configuration. When it came up, I right clicked properties on the C: drive, and forced a check disk, rebooting. The machine came up fine.

Going over to NVIDIA’s site, it was a trivial matter to download the latest driver for the GeForce 4200 card, and unsurprisingly, it worked without incident.

Ubuntu saved the day for being able to repair and manipulate the NTFS volume, while Parallels made it possible to see what needed fixing, where it went, and a working copy without having to have a second dedicated Windows box.

A recovery solution wouldn’t have been possible with an disc of an OEM version of XP alone. Honestly, I don’t know why users put up with this, or how Microsoft can sleep at night.

The recover process, non-stop, took from 10am – 7pm straight. No breaks. No food. No stalling. That’s nine hours of my life I’m never getting back.

Apple’s Top Secret Feature?

Could Apple’s release of Safari for Windows actually be a hint to one of the Top Secret Features in the forthcoming OS X?

According to WebWare, Apple is releasing its browser, Safari, for the Windows platform.

The initial question from the community is: Why? (Though this may be the wrong question..!)

Clearly the region of the browser application space has been filled by Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and a handful of others.

Wouldn’t releasing Safari simply make the Windows environment more compelling to stay? This got me thinking…

What if multi-platform Safari wasn’t the point at all, but it was actually a proof of concept of something greater?

A while back, Apple made the stunning announcement that it had been secretly working on a way to take the same source code and produce a PowerPC version and a Intel (Mac) version, and have them look identical. Combined together, they make the Universal Binary, which is a program that can be run on either system architecture. This was no small feat of clever engineering.

What if the Top Secret feature is that they’ve added Windows as a target for the same source code? Already RealBASIC is doing it, but that’s BASIC, not the mixed language richness of XCode.

As a developer, if I can use Apple’s amazing environment to produce Windows code, I’m all for it.

As a business owner, if I can produce applications and have them work on Apple’s customers as well, I’m all for the additional marketspace.

And, …if I’m a home user… if I’m wanting to switch to Mac, but I’m tied to the Windows platform because of application lock-in, this is a breath of freedom if my applications and data work elsewhere.

Could it be that Apple has taken Safari and simply “recompiled” it? That this is merely the test run to give applications independence of Windows, allowing users to switch over to a kinder, friendlier environment?

I’d like to think so.

Mac to Windows: The Experience

I corrupted my Windows tech guru, turning him on to Apple. He explains from a Windows viewpoint what it’s like to deal with a bare-metal install on Apple compared to a pre-installed Windows system. In this review, we see a totally different perspective: rather than focusing on features, Marcus addresses the overall experience.

I have a good friend, Marcus. He’s a super-uber-master-wizard at Microsoft operating systems and has astounded me on numerous occasions with obscure tidbits of advice from secret registry edits to recovering from system crashes so bad that even Microsoft would recommend switching to Linux.

Why tell you about Marcus? Because I have corrupted him. Yes, it’s true — I showed him the Mac.

No, not the stupid little in-store demos where you can create a photobook with iLife; no, I gave him the real demo, the one reserved for hard core developers.

Marcus shortly thereafter obtained his own laptop, and quickly made the swap to OS X, abandoning in a fortnight over a decade’s worth of emotional ties to Microsoft.

Or so I thought. Marcus writes me, he’s got some new emotions pertaining to Microsoft.

What follows are Marcus’s own words, as only a Windows power-techie can explain. But this review of his isn’t about the features, it’s about the experience.

Marcus writes:

Macintosh. Every time I find another tool that Apple offers to make my life easier, I realize that the scale tips in there favor. I was able to rebuild that drive yesterday in under 2 hours using the transfer my data method from the OS CD. So as my positive experience increases with Apple, inversely that causes an increasing disappointment of Microsoft. I am still shocked that Apple will provide a utility that will allow you to replace your hard drive and automatically transfer not only your profile and files, but all of your applications and their licenses. I booted up and everything is working.

Marcus had an external Apple drive loaded with data and applications; he wanted to install a fresh new version of the OS on a different machine, but port over everything from the old disk – but not the older OS that was on it. Apple’s default OS installation does this automatically, cloning from another system.

Dell vs. McAfee. I bought a Dell Inspirion E1505 laptop for my nephew, Justin, to take to college with him. After putting in over ten years of technical support for various companies I’m now the technical support for the family when it comes to PC’s. I thought I would just open up the laptop and setup everything for Justin in advance. That way he could have one more kid moment when he opens the gift, it would be in a functional state and ready to work, i.e. play games.

I opened the box on a Tuesday night around 6pm. I got everything ready and turned on the laptop. Immediately things went wrong.

1) The network drivers were not loaded, so the system could not call Microsoft to register.

2) Once getting to the desktop, Internet Explorer crashed with a fatal error requiring a reboot.

3) McAfee was not installed correctly and reports too many errors to even cover. This required ALL of McAfee Security Center to be uninstalled.

4) Microsoft Update was not installed, rather they were using the old Windows Update. It crashed 3 times attempting to install this update. (Note: Microsoft Update patches all MS products, verses Windows Update, which only updates the OS.)

5) After Microsoft Update was installed, the real patches start to download. Two hours later on broadband, another GB of the hard drive gone, the system appears to be nearly functional.

6) At this point it’s getting close to 9pm on Tuesday. All of the Microsoft OS and applications are patched, registered and working properly.

7) I reinstalled McAfee. The installation appeared to go smoothly. The application no longer reports any errors and results in a HUGE green checkmark saying that my system is protected.

8) Next, I initiated the Update feature of McAfee and this is when it all goes wrong. A window pops up asking me to register my software now or later. Since I had purchased a 3 year contract with them, I would really like to do this to get full support from them. I select to register now and I got an hour glass suggesting something was going on, the screen flashed and nothing happened. I saw a little red circle moving next to the clock in the tool bar reporting that 16% of the updates were complete; however, the software was not registered. After the download is complete, it requested a reboot.

9) After the reboot, I did a right click on the M icon now next to the clock. This is McAfee Security Center’s ideal of easy access to their software. I was presented with several choices, but thought I would start with Product Setup. I selected that field, got an hour glass, a screen flash and nothing again. I decided to just select open Security Center this time. The application still reports everything is working properly within it’s horrible “Crayola” interface. I again attempted to verify if the updates were complete, so I selected Update. Again the register now button appeared and failed. After trying this several times, by 10pm I was completely done with this thing for the night.

Thursday (yes, I have a life and was busy on Wednesday):

1) I turned on the laptop and found that McAfee was still in the same state as I had left it.

2) I called India…rather, I called Dell’s technical support. They reported that this appears to just be a software problem and that I should call McAfee.

3) I called McAfee. Press # for Home Products. Press 1 to make a purchase, Press 2 for something, Press 3 for technical support. Technical support will cost you 2.90 a min, but feel free to use the free technical support on the web via right clicking the M on the toolbar and selecting Customer Support. (Note: You mean the M icon that’s broken and will not do anything for me. WOW, what a terrible idea!)

I decided to Press 1 to make a purchase. I told them I wanted to verify that I was a customer with them since I was paying for a 3 year subscription that I could not register. I gave them the Dell service tag number and I was not in the system. Then they asked for an email address or my customer number. I had to then explain again that their on-line registration was broken and that they would not have yet received any such information from me. They then asked for a phone number to look me up that way. Again reminding them that I had not given them anything yet to create an account. So, they manually created an account for my nephew. I thanked them for putting me in the system, but had to explain again that in now 6 days the application reports that if unregistered it will cease to function. They of course argued that I’m in the system and a paying customer. While on the phone, the application gave me yet another reminder to register.

Annoyed with McAfee’s mentally challenged support staff, I called Dell back.

I explained the situation of paying for software that is going to disable because it could not be registered. They worked with me for 45 min trying to find a solution. Then without pressing the issue any further, Dell informed me that I can simply request a replacement laptop within the first 21 days or my money back if I’m not satisfied.

Bottom line, Dell was so professional. Dell offered all the information I needed to just wash my hands of this whole matter. McAfee on the other hand really doesn’t seem to want to help anyone. Considering the choice between McAfee and Norton, I’m not really impressed with either, but at least Norton knows how to register their software.

To sum up, with OS X, Marcus was able to do something in approximately two hours that’s completely impossible to do with Windows: install an OS from scratch and move everything from an older system to it seamlessly.

On the Windows side of the house, even when it came pre-installed by an experienced vendor, it took him, a super Windows guru with a decade of experience multiple days and phone calls just to get Windows to a point where it could be given away as a gift.

Marcus, next time perhaps Justin would like a Mac? You did.

Deleting the Postgres service in XP

Installed Postgres 8.2, but the obsolete service for Postgres 8.1 hung around. Here’s how to manually get rid of it.

Ever since I installed Postgres 8.2, I’ve been still getting Postgres 8.1 listed in my pgAdmin tool — postgres runs as a service, and I was surprised that even after uninstalling, manually deleting dependent files and directories, and cleaning out the registry manually and with automated tools that the old service still persisted to run.

Here’s how to remove the service.

Right click the service and go to properties. Look at the Path to executable and find the service name:
“C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.1\bin\pg_ctl.exe” runservice -N “pgsql-8.1” -D “C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.1\data\”

Now Start / Run… cmd and enter this at the command prompt:
sc delete pgsql-8.1

You’ll get a “[SC] DeleteService SUCCESS” message as confirmation it’s gone.