Blog: Windows XP

There have been many reports (Google AMD XP "serice pack 3" or visit Microsofts support forum) of problems primarily with AMD based computers after installing XP SP3.  Tom's Hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-XP-SP3,5334.html was the first report of this we found, but Computerworld http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9084418 also posted an article the same day.

From time to time when I've been out of town working with offline files, I would get an "Incorrect Parameter" error when I tried to synchronize the files (usually when I had returned home and was plugged directly into our network).  This happened to me when out of town recently at the end of a day when I'd created quite a few files (a few hundred) in a customer's folder tree.

I thought it might be related to creating so many new files so I copied the bulk of the new files (fortunately, they were mostly located in a single four-deep folder set) to a temporary folder on my laptop then deleted them from the offline files.  Also, note if you've created folders while offline but have not synchronized them yet, you can still delete the folders while offline.  If they've been synchronized, you can't delete them unless you're online.  [more]

I then connected via Cisco VPN and tried to synchronize and it worked.

Finally, while online, I copied the new folder set to the customer's folders online (which copied them directly to the server) then synchronized to get them back into the offline set.

The alternative was to work on an offline copy then manually synchronize them once I was back in the network and to nuke my offline files to get synchronization to work again.  This is what Microsoft recommends and I've done it numerous time.

This was a preferable solution.

Windows has a tendency to cache negative DNS lookups so that even if you fix a DNS problem you still cannot look up a name. A negative DNS lookup occurs when trying to resolve the address for a name that has no corresponding DNS record.  There is a registry entry that specifies cache times for DNS.  One of them specifies how long to cache these negative entries.  I would suggest setting it to zero so it will always try to query a DNS server even though the name did not exist before.  Doing this might save you some confusion when troubleshooting DNS issues.  Read about it here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318803.

There is also a dnscmd Windows Support tool that is handy for updating DNS without having to run the GUI.  You can read about it here http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/5c497b2e-3387-4ecf-adf5-562045620a961033.mspx.

I was trying to copy a VMware folder to the server's VMware share and I went offline.  After I finally rebooted to get things straightened out, I couldn't determine why my synchronization was taking a long time - well over 30 minutes.  I finally paid enough attention to see that it was trying to sync an offline copy of the main VMware disk image (about 4GB in size).  The problem is offline files was trying to keep a temporary copy of the file synched up until I deleted the temporary offline files.  When I deleted temporary offline files, it told me it deleted one file of 167MB but it freed up about 4GB on my C drive.

I recently ran into an issue whre I connected to an XP machine with remote desktop and the background would not repaint when windows were closed or moved.  I found that the Windows Security Center and the system tray notification about the Antivirus not working were running (wscpui.cpl and wscntfy.exe) under another user's account.  When I stopped those processes, then the background would repaint again.  So, if you see this behavior, you might check for processes running under another user's session.

If you ever get this error : "Run-time error `339`; Component `MSCOMCT2.OCX or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid."
This error is indicating that your workstation installation is missing a file that should have been installed when the OS was installed.
 
To fix the problem, simply download MSCOMCT2.OCX or copy it from another machine.
 
You then need to put it into the correct directory on the problem machine. It should look something like this:
 
%WINDIR%\SYSTEM32\REGSVR32.EXE %WINDIR%\SYSTEM32\mscomct2.ocx
 
You then need to register the file by typing in the following command:
 
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\REGSVR32.EXE
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\MSCOMCT2.OCX (on Windows 2000)

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\REGSVR32.EXE C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\MSCOMCT2.OCX (on Windows XP)

Microsoft has just released a patch to correct a critical vulnerability in Windows systems. The vulnerability applies to current versions of Windows and the update should be applied as soon as possible. Of course, systems not protected by a corporate firewall and/or up-to-date antivirus software are at highest risk. Compromised websites can infect unpatched computers. At least one known worm has been detected which exploits this vulnerability.

This patch can be applied via normal Microsoft update procedures you may already have in place. [more]

For manual application or more information, please visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS07-017.mspx

This is one more example of why it is important to apply all critical updates to systems on a timely basis.

For help applying this critical security update to your Microsoft Windows based systems, please contact us.

A great utility for any engineers CD collection is the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, available at www.ubcd4win.com (at least the instructions and utility to build the CD). All you have to provide is a Windows XP CD, and the utility will build an ISO that you can burn to a CD. Once booted, you can view/edit files on a hard drive, edit the registry, RDP to another machine, scan for viruses, and many other tasks. While you might only use this CD once every couple of months, it can be a great time-saver when needed. 

One alternative use I have found is to use the CD from within Windows when needing a NIC driver, since it includes such a variety of these drivers for its own portability.

Microsoft provides a useful command-line tool called err.exe that can help you find the meanings of error codes. When you run err.exe and specify an error code, the program searches all the error-code definitions from the various header files that Windows uses to generate a list of possible error meanings. You can download err.exe at Microsoft Web site. (Although the Web page is called "Exchange Server Error Code Look-up," err.exe actually handles Windows OS error codes.) [more]

If you run err.exe and specify an error code--for example,

err 1645
the output looks like this:

C:\temp\Err>
# for decimal 1645 / hex 0x66d :
ERROR_INSTALL_REMOTE_PROHIBITED winerror.h
# The Windows Installer does not permit installation from a
# Remote Desktop Connection.
# for hex 0x1645 / decimal 5701 :
NELOG_NetlogonFailedToUpdateTrustList lmerrlog.h
SQL_5701_severity_10 sql_err
# Changed database context to '%.*ls'.
# 3 matches found for "1645"

Notice that err.exe searches for the value you entered in both its hexadecimal and decimal forms.