David Moisan's Blog: Computers and Internet

Weird Display Artifacts With Vista Aero

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:15:40 GMT

Notice the ghosted text in the upper center. It was caused by Movie Maker crashing the night before. The artifact persisted until the system was rebooted.

Excellent Russinovich post : The Case of the Failed File Copy

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 02:20:37 GMT

Mark Russinovich, one of my very favorite Windows experts, posted another excellent blog entry, "The Case of the Failed File Copy". It's a great example of how Windows file system abstraction, normally a great thing, can kick you in the ass at the wrong moment.

We think of the old FAT12 and FAT16 filesystems as being outdated, but they are still very much in use in digital cameras, PDA's, and MP3 players. Virtually every SD or micro SD card you pick up has a FAT filesystem, as do the vast majority of USB sticks. (I'm certain that's all of them, since I have yet to see a USB device formatted as NTFS!)

There is no other "common" filesystem in the world but FAT. This has caused me grief in transferring video files between PC's and Macs since the only common format is FAT32 and it cannot create files larger than 2 gigs. (By the way, Microsoft may have thrown a very misleading error message in this situation, but Apple, sadly, is no better. All sorts of file copy errors and SMB protocol errors seem to result in an "error -35". Much fun to figure out.)

Microsoft's new filesystem, exFAT, to be in Vista SP1, promises to resolve these issues at least in part, but I'm not hopeful for it to be included in the next version of OS X after Leopard.

Microsoft should just make virtue out of necessity and relax the licensing for FAT or even open it up completely, since it is already so ubiquitous.

Google Book Search becomes accessible

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 03:36:17 GMT

Excellent news for people with visual impairments who read books online. Google Book Search has added accessibility features so these people can read more books!

I've been visually impaired myself for all my life. When I had retinal surgery a few years ago and was trying to save my sight, the only books I could read were either on my Palm Tungsten or through the excellent NewsAloud RSS newsreader. Things are much better these days but I've always set my machines to show much larger text than most people would use, and I use my PDA (now a Windows Mobile iPaq) very heavily for ebooks.

Official Google Blog: Ever more books to read

Information Technology and Coping with the Second Energy Crisis

Sat, 26 May 2007 15:19:58 GMT

[This post is part of the World Without Oil alternate-reality game but is completely factual. See my posts on A Salem Blog.]

Many are barely aware of it, but we're in what I call the Second Energy Crisis. Some of you are old enough to remember the first Energy Crisis in the seventies.

If you're in IT, whether small or large, the Second Energy Crisis will--no, already is--affecting you in big ways and small, not all of which are immediately obvious.

Consider the organization I work for, Salem Access Television. We are a small non-profit cable television access facility, operating since 1994. We broadcast on 3 channels and we serve government, citizens, students and businesses of Salem. We are a small company, with just 3 full time employees, but because of our purpose, we have a surprisingly dense IT shop.

We have 11 client machines (mixed between Windows and Mac) and 2 servers; we have a gigabit network and WiFi for use by vistors.

We worry about power all the time. We have two UPS's but no generator; when we were established (and before I was working in IT there), public access TV was considered more of a luxury. It's now a necessity. Our one radio station no longer exists for us, our daily newspaper is managed from Lawrence and owned in Alabama. We have just one weekly newspaper for Salem. And SATV.

As an example of our power challenges, I'll talk about our cablecast area. Cablecast has the same function as the master control area in a TV station: To organize, store and control everything that goes out over our three channels.

We have one UPS to power all of that. Note the old-style wooden racks. They look pretty but they are heat traps. (We have had machines fall over and die from the heat.) The TV monitors are regular TV sets and are among the few things left over from the original 1994 install. Three rack-mount PC's provide "bulletin board" announcements for each of the channels; the fourth is used as a management console and it also provides audio from TICNetwork, the local reading service for the visually impaired. There's also a network server in our back room that serves all the ciient machines with Windows services, Internet access, and most importantly, remote control, notification and monitoriing.

We're renovating this area, replacing the monitors with LCD's and replacing the heavy wood racks with something that runs cooler. (I have promised to be the first to break apart the old racks with a sledgehammer!) We feed programs into the system through DVDs and VHS tapes, but in the renovation we're getting a video server.

Again, we worry about power:

We have no generator. Once the UPS goes out, we're out! We are in a congested city that has had power problems before and will most certainly have in the future.

In the Second Energy Crisis, many small IT shops face the same dilemma. How to you keep the computers running? How can you be "green" and stay that way?

What if your computer breaks and you can't get a new one from Dell because there's no oil to ship your machine to you? Or run the factory? What if the IT cornucopia that is Taiwan and China runs dry? It might be the end of IT. (Oh well, it was a good 20-year run for me.)

In the meantime, I'm doing what I can. Configuring machines to sleep when they're not used. Putting monitors on standby. Getting cooler machines (thermally cooler, though with our Macs it's possible to be aesthetically cool as well!)

What will you do?

UPDATE: Stories like the WABC Fire keep me up at night. When we renovated our facility last year, we found some very scary original wiring. Brrrrr

I leave you with two posts from Coding Horror: When Hardware is Free, Power is Expensive and The cost of leaving your PC on.

Take care,

Dave

Technorati tags: worldwithoutoil, Salem, Massachusetts, IT, power, media

Vista Speech FUD not funny for people with disabilities

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 13:23:21 GMT

If you are a person with a disability that requires you to use your voice to control your computer, people are trying to scare you. So goes a thread in George Ou's blog the other day. Apparently, someone could play out "FORMAT C: Yes!" through the speakers of your speech-enabled PC and the microphone could pick it up and execute it!

This is not a new problem. Risks-Digest published a funny story about voice recognition working all too well during a presentation.

I'll get to my security opinions in a moment, but what I'm reacting to is the effect of scary reports--FUD, really--on the consituency this feature was designed for--people with disabilities.

I know several friends who are unable to control their computers through a keyboard and must use speech recognition software. They need the same level of control with their speech that the rest of us take for granted at the keyboard.

I once had to use text-to-speech software myself after retinal surgery left me blind for a short while. I'm still able to use a keyboard, but as a person with disabilities myself, I'm very sensitive to issues surrounding people with disabilities.

This FUD really hurts those of us who need to use adaptive technologies such as speech recognition. It's already hard for such people to find gainful employment ("it's too expensive to hire you") and it could be worse now ("Our IT staff has recommended against hiring you because your speech software violates our security policies.")

This problem--while it is an interesting theoretical problem that needs to be brought up amongst specialists--is not one that can be laid on Microsoft alone. Any speech recognition system that relies on audio transmission will potentially have this problem. (The Bell System resolved this a century ago by inventing the handset, and the hybrid transformer, making sure that your voice and your caller's voice never interfered with each other. But most people use mics and speakers and don't get the benefit.)

(Could frequent speech users use a phone headset for computer audio and avoid this problem? Yes, but it wouldn't make the press or the blogs. Can't have that.)

The Ubuntu project, for example, could have speech recognition code donated to them as Sun donated their screenreader to them, and the same thing would happen. Any system that needs to be controlled can and even will have potentially harmful commands available if it's to be useful to a broad number of people, and speech users need to have all the control they can get to be independent and self-sufficient.

It's still easier for the bad guys to send you phishing emails pretending to be from your bank, or to give you spyware pretending to be dancing pink elephants than it is to screw you over with a speech exploit.

Microsoft didn't invent this to profit from yet another security debacle. They did this so more of their customers could use their systems. I won't pretend they're altruistic but helping people with disabilities is good. Not FUD. Just something for security bloggers to keep in mind.

Take care,

Dave

Technorati tags: Microsoft, speech software, disability, FUD, Vista, usability, security, risks

Windows XP: When CD Burning is Broken--Diagnosis and Repair

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 03:21:09 GMT

Recently, my two machines (XP and 2003) had a very frustrating problem: The built-in CD burning folder didn't work. Actually, it almost worked!

Here are the symptoms:

1) Inserting a blank CD into the CDRW drive would sometimes bring up the blank CD window and sometimes not.

2) The "Send to CD Drive" context menu item was gone.

3) Dragging files to the CD drive would cause the CD drive window to close!

4) Start/Run/<drive letter of CD> would cause the well-known error "Cannot read drive D:\ Incorrect Function" that one usually gets when trying to read a blank disk in an ordinary non-recording drive.

5) In the CD Drive window, there are normally "CD Writing Tasks" such as "Write these Files to CD" and "Erase this CDRW". Clicking on either of these normally causes the actions to be performed. Neither of these functions worked and Windows would just ding at me.

6) If you opened "My Computer" and right-clicked on the CD drive to get the context menu, the "Write these Files to CD" and "Erase this CDRW" options would work!

Normal Microsoft guidance for resolving CD writer problems is to go to Device Manager, uninstall the CD drive and redetect hardware changes and then to pull up the drive property page in My Computer and make sure that the Recording tab is present and the Recording checkbox is enabled. If that doesn't work, check that the IMAPI CD-Burning COM service is not disabled.

I did this and no luck (or I wouldn't be writing this!)

Using the Autoruns utility from Sysinternals, I got a clue:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ShellServiceObjectDelayLoad            
+ CDBurn            File not found: CLSID\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}\InprocServer32

This registry key relates to shell extensions used by Explorer, of which CD burning capabilities are one of them.

I went to a working system and searched the CLSID (the incomprehensible string of numbers starting with "fbeb8a...") and found these registry keys related to the CD Burning service. You may want to copy and save this into a file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}]
@="ShellFolder for CD Burning"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}\InProcServer32]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
  00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,53,00,48,00,\
  45,00,4c,00,4c,00,33,00,32,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,00,00
"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}\MergedFolder]
"Attributes"="0x0"
"AttributeMask"="0xffffffff"
"Location"="@shell32.dll,-12589"
"ConflictOverlayIcon"=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,\
  6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,\
  00,5c,00,53,00,48,00,45,00,4c,00,4c,00,33,00,32,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,\
  2c,00,2d,00,32,00,33,00,32,00,00,00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Drive\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}]
@=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shellex\FolderExtensions\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}]
@=""
"DriveMask"=dword:00000020

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ActiveX Compatibility\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}]
"Compatibility Flags"=dword:00000400

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Drive\shellex\FolderExtensions\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}]
@=""
"DriveMask"=dword:00000020

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Drive\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}]
@=""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\DUIBags\ShellFolders\{FBEB8A05-BEEE-4442-804E-409D6C4515E9}]
"ExpandDetailsTasks"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}]
@="ShellFolder for CD Burning"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}\InProcServer32]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
  00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,53,00,48,00,\
  45,00,4c,00,4c,00,33,00,32,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,00,00
"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}\MergedFolder]
"Attributes"="0x0"
"AttributeMask"="0xffffffff"
"Location"="@shell32.dll,-12589"
"ConflictOverlayIcon"=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,\
  6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,\
  00,5c,00,53,00,48,00,45,00,4c,00,4c,00,33,00,32,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,\
  2c,00,2d,00,32,00,33,00,32,00,00,00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ShellServiceObjectDelayLoad]
"CDBurn"="{fbeb8a05-beee-4442-804e-409d6c4515e9}"

I put all that into a .REG file and merged it into the registry on my XP machine.

It worked!

I tried the CD writing functions and they worked as expected. I then did the same fix to my Windows Server 2003 machine and that worked fine.

If this didn't work, I would've done a repair install of Windows, which should fix the problem.

You can try this for yourself if you are having this problem. As usual, registry editing is dangerous, perform a backup, etc.

Take care,

Dave

Technorati tags: WIndows XP Server 2003 CD Burning troubleshooting "IMAPI CD-Burning Service"

Wither Vista?

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 22:27:48 GMT

Vista is out (for MSDN and Technet members, anyway), but for the first time since 1995, I'm not first in line.

In 1995, when I had only owned my first Windows machine for 3 months (RIP, WfW 3.11, I don't really miss it), I got a beta copy of Windows 95 a month before its famous launch.

I skipped 98, SE and ME (with good reason) but I snapped up XP as soon as I could get an RC copy. I rebuilt my machine with the new OS just as soon as it went gold.

Vista?

Not so much. I tried Beta 2 under Virtual PC. Um, ooookay. That version was only good for its DVD case! (I tried microwaving the DVDs only to find that pressed DVD's don't make impressive sparks, but only delaminate and melt quietly...)

RC1 was much better and RC2 better yet in a VM. But I still haven't run Vista outside of a VM. I'm aware that much of Vista isn't present under a VM (no 3D, no USB, etc.) and know I haven't used it to its fullest. I'd been hoping to run it full time when "one more program" is compatible, but with the news that PowerShell won't be gold for Vista until its official launch date of January 30th, 2007, I don't have a reason to switch yet.

As well, I'm not happy with the pricing for Vista Ultimate at $399. Unless I get an OEM deal or get the upgrade version for $259 (I have a legal full non-OEM copy of XP), I'm inclined to drag it out especially as I need Office (before the 2007 beta, the version I used was Office97 :o.)

I'm not nostalgic about XP; I see its flaws every day at home and work (no good native browser until IE7, 32-bit XP consumes resources too fast, removable USB drives a pain in the butt to actually disconnect from the system, and of course, security or lack thereof.)

(BTW, I need the features in Ultimate; I produce video for fun and my home machine is part of a domain on my home SBS box.)

But I wouldn't mind if there were a six-month decline in Vista Ultimate sales to make Microsoft reconsider, even if it's to drop the price only slightly to bring it in line with the other releases. Ideally I'd pay $100 for home or buslness and $200 for Ultimate. I'd get started about Office pricing but that's for another post.

Take care,

Dave

del.icio.us tags: Vista pricing ambivalence upgrade

My first Vista bluescreen!

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 03:12:05 GMT

When I was running Vista in Virtual Server through remote desktop, I watched Explorer crawl and die. Then Inoted a blue screen showing in the thumbnail.

By the time I got to the remote console to see what was happening, Vista had rebooted already, and the event viewer and dialog on login said, yes, it bluescreened!

From the dialog:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.5536.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 50
BCP1: 950A0000
BCP2: 00000000
BCP3: 00000000
BCP4: 00000000
OS Version: 6_0_5536
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\Mini083106-01.dmp

[...]

The entry in the event viewer had an interesting item. Note the fault bucket line:

Log Name: Application
Source: Windows Error Reporting
Date: 8/31/2006 1:20:39 PM
Event ID: 1001
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: yakko.dot.loc
Description:
Fault bucket 0x50_nt!MiMakeSystemAddressValidPfn+26, type 0
Event Name: BlueScreen
[...]

Running the debugger and doing "!analyze -v" didn't help; Vista symbols don't seem to be in the main symbol repository yet, though as you can see from the fault bucket info, Vista gets its symbols from somewhere.

It's a bit (read: a lot) technical but perhaps I can put that fault bucket info into a search engine without running the debug tools like I do now.

Anyway, the error (0x00000050 PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA) suggests corrupt hardware, according to Microsoft. I'm not sure how this applies since I'm running Vista in a VM, but I did scan the virtual drive from within Vista for errors.

In the meantime, wouldn't this dialog be better? I think so!

Take care,

Dave

Vista 5536 (Pre RC1) VM Quirks

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 22:22:57 GMT

I'm posting this from my copy of Vista build 5536 (pre-RC1) running inside Virtual Server. I ran into a problem getting Vista to install on Virtual PC. When I tried to mount the ISO image, VPC gave me: "This File does not appear to be a CD Image
CD Image files must be greater than 2MB and a multiple of 2K in size"

Starting the Vista install from the physical disk (attached to the VM) worked, but thie install barfed with Vista reporting that INSTALL.WIM--Vista's base installation image--was corrupted. I burned another DVD on a different machine with different burning software--same result. I checked the MD5 sum against the one listed on the pre-rc1 download page and it matched.

I then tried installing from a VM in Virtual Server on another machine I have and it worked; I then transferred my VHD image back to the workstation I use for testing and ran it under Virtual Server. Worked, after I reset the network configuration.

After installing the virtual machine add-on for Vista Beta 2, I have a reasonably responsive, though plain, client. (no Aero since I'm running from the Terminal Services client).

BTW, if you are running Windows in a VM to use as a desktop, I strongly recommend enabling remote access so you can access it from Remote Desktop. When you run Remote Desktop (Start/Run/mstsc.exe) open the Options dialog and under Sound, specify "Bring to this computer". That's the only way you can get sound when you run Vista as a VM.

More to follow.

Take care,

Dave

Fixing "(null) Library not registered" errors in Windows Script

Sat, 21 May 2005 17:04:40 GMT

I was debugging a WMI script on my XP machine and I couldn't get it to run. I kept getting the error message "(null) Library not registered".

I couldn't find a cause for this but I fixed it with the following from a command prompt:

regsvr32 wbemdisp.dll

Scripts work now. I mention this only because Google Groups was no help and I hit upon the fix almost by accident (I know about regsrv32 but *which* DLL...?)

The WMI Scripting Primer Part 1 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnclinic/html/scripting06112002.asp)
has a good description of where WMI fits in with the scripting engine.

Take care,

Dave