Windows Desktop

I recently brought 2 colocated servers online running Windows 2003 Server. Being paranoid regarding security, especially on a production Windows server, I had the network people filter all traffic to the box except SMTP, HTTP and PPTP. I figured any other access I needed could be done over a VPN tunnel. Well, what I forgot to do was to enable Remote Desktop before I brought the box down to the NOC. So, when I got back to the office to test it, I could VPN in with no problems, but could not get a Remote Desktop.

I fired up the MMC, and connected to the remote machine. Terminal Services were running. Still couldn't connect via RDP. Did some digging online and found a way to enable Remote Desktop from the registry.

Launched regedt32.exe (can't use regedit.exe for remote registries), connected to the remote registry, and set the appropriate key. Voila! I was in! Here is the key / value you need to set:

KEY: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer
DATA: fDenyTSConnections
VALUE: 0 = enable Remote Desktop / 1 = disabled

Posted under the influence of [[NiN :: the mark has been made]]

I have a client running a Windows 2000 Pro box with dial-up for Internet access. His computer has steadily been becoming more unusable with his dial-up connection. After an indeterminate amount of time, he would get a svchost.exe fault, and his Internet connection would stop responding. At this point he would have to reboot in order to restore use of the modem.

I had searched the web high and low, and worked through all sorts of troubleshooting guides on this problem to no avail. Finally, I came across this comprehensive site that details how to really fix the problem.

I'm sure if you're facing the same problem it will help you as well.

A client running Windows 2000 Professional (SP4) was experiencing something very odd trying to install his new Dell PocketPC. When he clicked the link to install ActiveSync 3.1, the hourglass would show up, the computer would work a little bit, but nothing would happen. No error messages, no setup screens, nothing.

If you look at Task Manager, you see a "SETUP.EXE" process running, but it never goes anywhere. Also, this happened with other apps: Procomm Plus for one. So it wasn't strictly an ActiveSync/PocketPC issue.

I found the solution digging around on ActiveSync installation problems. It turns out that the software for my client's HP All-In-One device interferes with many installation routines. The solution is to end all the processes beginning with 'hp'. Once those are terminated, both installations ran flawlessly, and of course after a reboot all the hp processes had returned and the printer still worked fine.

Posted under the influence of [[Mighty Mighty Bosstones :: Noise Brigade]]

I discovered this out of desperation today. I was trying to do an in-place Windows XP Pro upgrade, and I kept getting an error. All the work-arounds I found on the web required access to a command prompt. Well, during an XP upgrade, you can access a command prompt by hitting Shift-F10. This only works once setup has reached the GUI phase. I found it documented at Microsoft's Knowledge Base here.

Posted under the influence of [[VNV Nation :: Kingdom]]

I got a call on a Windows 98 laptop today that was having some printing difficulties. He could not print to his Laserjet 5L after months of it working just fine. When I checked it out, I noticed about 5 or 6 old printer drivers still installed, so I started by removing those. Oddly enough, after a reboot, all of them would reappear. This was vexing, so I searched out the entries in the registry and blew them away completely. They still came back after a reboot.

This was beginning to get weird. What's more, I could not add a new printer. I tried, and the wizard would walk all the way through the process, but after a reboot it would disappear. Also, trying to print a test page from ANY of the installed drivers immediately produced a "Test page could not be printed" error. It didn't even make it to the queue, it errored out instanteously.

I started doing some searches on technet, and there were a number of similar circumstances, but none applied completely. Then, I stumbled across this article on the Microsoft Learning site. Apparently a read-only WIN.INI file will prevent Windows 98 printers from being added, edited or removed. After resetting that file attribute, and rebooting, everything worked beautifully. Too bad it took me 90 minutes to figure it out.

Posted under the influence of [[Tori Amos :: Doughnut Song]]

Windows XP added a new feature that allowed filenames with numbers to be sorted in a more "logical" format. In previous versions of the OS, numbers were viewed strictly as characters, and sorted as any other characters would be.

For example, you would have a list like this:

1.txt
10.txt
2.txt
21.txt
210.txt
3.txt

But now, XP sorts like this:

1.txt
2.txt
3.txt
10.txt
21.txt
210.txt

I believe this is a very nice feature, usually. The problem I encountered today was doing some file management alongside a list of files stored in an Access database. MS Access continues to sort the filenames in its tables using the old method. Having two different methods was making my task harder than it should have been. I dug around in the File Options tab and didn't find any way to toggle this behavior on or off. My next step was to do a little digging on the web. I was comforted to see that quite a number of other people had faced this exact same dillema. Unfortunately, most of the workarounds required a registry hack that didn't take effect until after you logged out and back in. I wanted something I could toggle in real time.

Eventually, I discovered the most elegant solution of all. I wish I could take credit for crafting it, but I can't. A user named Mosaic1 on the winguides forums posted a small registry hack that met my needs exactly. I have posted the code below. Cut and paste this into a plain text file. Save that file with a .reg extension and execute it. After running the code, you will now have a check box in your Folder Options/View/Advanced tab called "Disable logical sorting". By default, it will be unchecked and XP will continue to sort using the new logical format. Placing a check in the box and clicking apply reverts XP to the old method without even needing to close the window. Truly an elegant solution. The code follows . . .

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\List Order]
"Type"="checkbox"
"Text"="Disable logical sorting"
"ValueName"="NoStrCmpLogical"
"CheckedValue"=dword:00000001
"UncheckedValue"=dword:00000000
"DefaultValue"=dword:00000000
"RegPath"="Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Policies\\Explorer"
"HKeyRoot"=dword:80000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]

"NoStrCmpLogical"=dword:00000000

Posted under the influence of [[Pitch Shifter :: (We're Behaving Like) Insects]]

Out of the blue, Outlook starts firing errors at application startup, promptly closing down the app and preventing you from using it at all. What happened??

Well, the version of Outlook at issue here is Outlook 2000 (with the full litany of service packs and hotfixes installed). To complicate matters, the error seems to have been triggered by a recent visit to Microsoft's Office Update site. The update applet identified some additional updates that were recommended, and the user installed them.

I wasn't physically present to witness any of this, but naturally it's my urgent task to resolve the problem. I started with my handy dandy search engine and quickly discovered a MS Knowledge Base article that seemed to roughly describe our symptoms. It linked the problem to a trial version of Office XP that lived alongside Office 2000 in problem systems.

The user never recalled installing Office XP, but lo and behold, there was an "Office 10" folder in "Program Files\Microsoft Office" along side "Office 9". (Office "10" = XP, Office "9" = 2000, fyi) I tried firing up Outlook XP and it didn't work either. In fact, it seemed to be more screwed up than Outlook 2000 was. After commenting about Office XP to the user, they recalled that the Office Update site was supplying updates for Office XP, not Office 2000. There's the problem. Somehow during that update process, Windows allowed Office XP to "take over" as the current Office installation, even though it was a partial, broken install.

The solution was simple. Completely uninstall Office XP. Then, run the Office 2000 CD setup and do a "Repair" installation, making sure to check the Complete Reinstall option, not the "repair missing files" option.

Posted under the influence of [[Joan of Arc :: On A Bedsheet in the Breeze on the Roof]]

This problem sprang up out of nowhere on my XP laptop. All of a sudden, double-clicking an Excel document would open Excel, but not the file. It did not matter if the file was local or remote, if I accessed it via Explorer or not, or if another program (mail client, for instance) tried to call the file open command. Either way, I would be greeted with an empty Excel workbook. If I then chose File, Open, and browsed to my document it would then open it. Very frustrating, but I lived with it . . . until today . . .

I tracked down the problem to the file type associations in Windows XP. The resolution was quite simple once I knew what to do.

1. First, open any folder in Windows XP.


2. Click on the Tools menu, and choose Folder Options.


3. From the dialog that pops up, click the File Types tab. You will now be presented with a list of all document types recognized by your computer.


4. Scroll down to XLS, select it, and click the Advanced button. Now you'll see several "Actions" registered for Excel worksheets.


5. Usually, Open is the default (indicated by being in bold). Select "Open" and click the Edit button.


6. The main piece of data in here is the field labeled "Application used to perform action". This should point to your Excel executable, followed by some command-line arguments. Here's how it appears on my PC: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\EXCEL.EXE" /e "%1"


7. It is very important to make sure that the %1 is surrounded by quotes. %1 is the variable representing the full path and file name of the document you are opening. If it contains any spaces, and this is not surrounded by quotes you will get a flurry of weird errors.


8. "Use DDE" is normally checked. Now, make sure that "DDE Message" is empty. Click OK.


9. Click OK back at the Edit File Type dialog. Click Close on the Folder Options dialog.

That should fix the problem. In my case, there was a malformed DDE Message in these properties. I have no idea how it got there, or what it should have been, but it works fine with it empty.

Another possibility is that Excel itself has some incorrect settings. That wasn't the case with my computer, but I came across this Microsoft knowledge base article that details the similar problem, though different solution.

Posted under the influence of [[Full Frequency :: Machine]]

I've had this problem on a handful of PCs, so it must happen to other people too. Basically, a Windows PC with an HP printer installed displays the printer properties, and possibly other dialogs, in a non-English language. This isn't a problem if the user is fluent in French, German, Russian, Japanese, or whatever the random language selection is. However, odds are they'll be more comfortable with their PC running in a total English environment.

There are two basic ways to solve this problem. Ideally, you have your original printer CD handy to perform some of these tasks. In lieu of the CD, another PC with the same printer driver, and the same Windows OS, will suffice.

1. Remove the printer driver. Run a util on the CD called a "scrubber". Reinstall the driver.

2. Manually replace a language specific DLL file on your PC.

Both options are written up exceptionally well on HP's tech support site. While our scenario involved a large-format cp1700 network-attached printer installed on Win XP Pro, this tech document covers a wide array of printers and OS combinations. You may reference the document by clicking here. Your clients will thank you that they can put away the foreign language audio cassettes.

Posted under the influence of [[Insted :: Blind]]

Today I was desperately trying to find a way to download the entire IE6 installation package. I wanted to burn it to a CD to install on an older Win98 machine with no network card, and therefore no broadband. My first visit was to Microsoft's IE site. There was a fairly obvious "Download Now" link. Seemed easy enough. It wasn't.

This link only provided the small 479KB file that starts the installation on the client. The rest of IE's files are then downloaded from the target machine. This method of installation completely defeated what I was trying to do. I dug around on Google for a bit, and it seemed that there should be an option within the installation package to simply download the files, and not install them. I tried it. I lauched the install, and found no such option. After further digging, it appears that this "Advanced" mode is not an option on Windows 2000 or XP. I knew I should have kept a Win98 machine around.

Well, back to Google. Found an immensely helpful article on, of all places, Microsoft's knowledge base. This article gave the steps to do exactly what I wanted. Basically, there's a command switch you can pass to that small initial install file that will let you download the complete installation. In addition, it lets you build installation files for Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000/XP or (shudder) Windows Millenium. (I find it interesting that they listed WinME last in their own list, heh) I ran the installation batch for all 4 target OSes, burned my CD and went away a happy man.

In preparation for this entry, I did a bit more digging and found an even easier solution. The NY School of Medicine has hosted a zip file containing the full IE6 installation package. I'm not entirely sure this is legal, or will even last long once people find out about it, but it is an option for now.

Posted under the influence of [[Savoy :: Bottomless Pit]]

Here's the scenario . . . A client's PC is infested with every piece of spyware known to man, and running slow enough to allow ample time for meditation in between tasks. You run one of the popular spyware removal tools (such as Spybot or AdAware). Hundreds, if not thousands, of infections are detected. You remove them all, like any sane person. After rebooting the machine, DNS fails completely. No names resolve in the browser or the command line.

Read on to find the probable solution . . .

_{^{Posted under the influence of [[X Marks the Pedwalk :: Sweep Hand (Timeless)]]}}