Avian Waves : Tech Blog

Mystery of the Service that Administrators Cannot Touch!

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:07:00 GMT

I ran into a very strange situation on an old Windows Server 2003 server at work today. The Windows Search service could not be started, stopped, or have its permissions modified by anybody -- not even an administrator!

I first noticed there was something wrong when I tried to apply a Security Configuration Wizard template. Among other things, the template disabled Windows Search, which wasn't being used. It kept failing with an "Access Denied" message. It was very misleading, because it kept pointing to access being denied to a configuration file. In hindsight, this must have been a bug in the way it reported errors, because access was actually being denied via the Security Configuration Manager (SCM), the "service" that runs all other services on Windows.

Before I got a chance to break out with all the fun diagnostic tools (such as SysInternals' ProcMon), I realized that the Windows Search service (WSearch) was still started in the Service.msc MMC. I tried to stop it and got "access denied" which I found to be quite odd.

I then opened up another MMC and added the Security Configuration and Anlaysis snap-in and also the Security Template snap-in. I quickly ran a quick audit and looked at the permissions on the Windows Search service. "Everyone" had "read" access, but only SYSTEM had "Full Control" access. Bummer.

At this point, applying a custom template would do nothing (I didn't have access), but I tried anyway. No luck. So what does one do in this case?

You need to log on as the SYSTEM account. This is actually pretty easy to do if you are an administrator. First, make sure you are either logged on at the console or using the console session in remote desktop. Now, open a command prompt and type "at 10:53 cmd /interactive" minus the quotes. Also, replace "10:53" with the time that is exactly one minute from now. What this does is it tells the old legacy "at" process scheduler to open an interactive command prompt one minute from now. Since there is no direct way to log on as SYSTEM, this is second best. Since everything run via "at" uses the SYSTEM account and since it's told to interact with the desktop (but only the console session), you get a command prompt running as SYSTEM. Fun!

Now, use the "SC" command to apply new permissions. This can be most easily done using the "sdshow" and "sdset" flags. Look up help on SC at Microsoft's website for more information. All permissions for "sdshow" and "sdset" use the SDDL formatted descriptor. If you don't like SDDL, the easiest way to fix this is to boot-strap permissions for your locked up service. Use "sdshow" on a service you know you can manipulate. I used w3svc. Then take the exact string shown and apply it to the locked service using "sdset." Now your regular admin account can use the afforementioned friendlier "Security Configuration and Analysis" and "Security Templates" MMC approach which has the nice GUI. Of course, if you are well-versed with SDDL, you can just modify the permissions directly from the command line.

I can't say why this happened, but it's an old server and has had a lot of roles, so I speculate that some third party application must have screwed up service permissions at some point.

Either way, mystery solved!

Help End the Sale of Live Animals From Chain Pet Stores

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:22:00 GMT

As most of you probably realize by now, I love birds -- especially parrots! One issue that always bothered me was how chain pet stores (in particular PetSmart and PetCo) emphasize responsible adoption of dogs and cats, while at the same time sell birds and small mammals from factory breeders (the bird and rodent equivelent of "puppymills"). I have yet to walk into a PetSmart or PetCo where the birds waiting for adoption look healthy and happy.

Well, love them or hate them, the always controversial PETA is on the case. No matter what your opinion of PETA is in general, this particular campaign of theirs is very important. It's quite simple. You sign a pledge that you will not shop at PetSmart (or PetCo or other chain store) until the sale of live animals has stopped and send a letter to PetSmart to let them know of your boycott. With enough people boycotting and enough negative exposure, they will stop this cruel practice on small animals, just as they already have on dogs and cats.

Live animal breeding should be left to the experts in the breed of animal, not chain stores where the animal is subject to an impulse-buy. Sign the petition and send your letter!

http://www.petsmartcruelty.com/

Save the Red Knot!

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:01:00 GMT

I got the following email from Defenders of Wildlife the other day. It's about saving a small bird called the Red Knot. They had me at "bird." :-)

Take action! The Red Knot needs your help! From the email...

The red knot is a tiny shorebird that's struggling to survive. Please help me save these amazing birds by taking action at http://action.defenders.org/saveredknots.

Mystery of the Missing msnmsn.inf on XP SP3

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:16:00 GMT

I'm not sure if this is related to the installation of Service Pack 3 on this XP box or not, but I recently ran into the following error after running "Add/Remove Windows Components" from within "Add/Remove Programs."

For those unable to see the above image, it says, "Setup was unable to open information file msnmsn.inf. Contact your system administrator. The specific error code is 0x2 at line 0."

Then you click okay and you get the following dialog.

"The application could not be initialized." Ahh, the death throws of the Windows setup application...

Well, from the error, it sure sounds like something is failing to parse an INF file. But why? This sounds like a job for ProcMon!

Sure enough, searching the ProcMon results for msnmsn.inf after running the setup again shows us the following...

File not found! Why on Earth would that suddenly go missing? No clue how this happened. But here's how you fix it. Copy the msnmsn.inf from C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386 into C:\Windows\System32\Setup.

But wait! There's more! After doing this, I got a different error. This time it said it couldn't find ocmsn.dll. It turns out that C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386 has a copy of ocmsn.dll as well, so I copied it to C:\Windows\System32\Setup.

Fixed!

RD Tabs 2.1 is Released!

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:54:00 GMT

It's finally here! RD Tabs 2.1! More info at this link...

http://www.avianwaves.com/Forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=102

America has finally come to her senses...Maybe

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:51:00 GMT

Happy isn't (or shouldn't be) driving around in a car as large as your house. But this article does make me happy.

Maybe the astronomical gas prices do have one good side effect. Now excuse me while I go take out a loan to pay for this week's commute to work.

Deep Thought

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:36:00 GMT

Why are there always screws left over when you put something back together?

Mystery of the Failing Office Outlook 2003 Updates

Fri, 30 May 2008 18:32:00 GMT

I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I would post another Russinovich-style "case of" post about a problem I ran into recently. I had a WSUS client machine that was failing to install two specific Office Outlook 2003 updates. This is a very specific solution to a very generic error, but I'm hoping it might help somebody out there.

The client computer is running Windows Vista Business (x86) and the Office version is 2003, SP3.

The generic error I was getting was 779. I clicked on the 'search for more information' link and all I got were the generic troubleshooting tips. A cursory search on the live search and the google revealed nothing other than "reinstall office" suggestions, which, in my opinion, is the lazy way out and should always be the absolute last resort.

I decided to do some digging. First, I fired up SysInternal's amazing Process Monitor (ProcMon) application. This is my favorite troubleshooting tool in my toolbelt. Next, I performed the update installation from Windows Update manually. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find the standalone installers -- which I prefer -- for these updates, but it didn't make much difference this time.)

I let the installation finish and fail. Same error code: 779.

I started at the bottom of the ProcMon results and searched in the upward direction for "access denied" messages, since those are the most frequent causes of update errors, in my experience.

The first one I found was for the file C:\Windows\system32\mapisvc.inf when MSIExec.exe was attempting to create (write over) the file. This is a bit odd as usually the culprit is the registry. I also opened up the WindowsUpdate.log file in c:\windows to attempt to confirm that this was what was causing both updates to fail.

I, again, started at the bottom and scanned up to see what error the update engine was reporting. I saw the following which confirmed my suspicion.

2008-05-30	14:09:15:833	2376	12a8	Handler	  C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\ 79834ebef0aa43d1dd3408b229219bfb\img\OLKINTL.MSP

2008-05-30	14:09:15:833	2376	12a8	Handler	MSP final command line: DISABLESRCPROMPT=1 LOCALCACHESRCRES=0 NOLOCALCACHEROLLBACK=1 REBOOT=REALLYSUPPRESS MSIRESTARTMANAGERCONTROL=Disable

2008-05-30	14:09:45:816	2376	12a8	Handler	MSP Error List:

2008-05-30	14:09:45:816	2376	12a8	Handler	1: 1913 2: C:\Windows\system32\ 3: mapisvc.inf

2008-05-30	14:09:45:816	2376	12a8	Handler	  : MSI transaction completed. MSI: 0x80070643, Handler: 0x8024200b, Source: No, Reboot: 0

2008-05-30	14:09:45:816	2376	12a8	Handler	  : WARNING: First failure for update {6D6FD00B-5750-4C4B-B6B2-4D7D0C078F2E}, transaction error = 0x8024200b, MSI result = 0x80070643, MSI action = RemoveIniValues

2008-05-30	14:09:45:816	1056	11c0	AU	>>##  RESUMED  ## AU: Installing update [UpdateId = {3BE47429-68D2-41D9-947B-6EB2D71B73FD}]

2008-05-30	14:09:45:832	1056	11c0	AU	  # WARNING: Install failed, error = 0x80070643 / 0x00000779

2008-05-30	14:09:45:832	2376	12a8	Handler	  : WARNING: Operation failed at update 0, Exit code = 0x8024200B

As you can see in the highlighted line above, the update engine was reporting that it was, indeed, having problems with that file. I wonder why?

I looked at the properties of the file and it made sense immediately. No account had write access on the file. Administrators and SYSTEM (which is the account that the update service runs under) only had read access. This is strange because it is inheriting permissions from SYSTEM32, which by default grants Full Control to administrators and SYSTEM. Since the inherited permissions do not match the actual permissions on the folder, that can only mean one thing: the file's ACL was corrupted. This is easy to fix.

First, take ownership of the file. Apply the changes. Next, uncheck inherit permissions. Apply the changes again. Now, check inherit permissions. Apply the changes one more time. Hooray! The SYSTEM account once again has full control on the file.

I ran Windows Update again and it completed successfully.

Mystery solved!

RD Tabs Security Advisory - 2.0 and 2.1 Beta

Tue, 20 May 2008 21:34:00 GMT

There was a pretty serious cryptopgraphic bug in RD Tabs prior to 2.0.x version 2.0.14 and 2.1.x version 2.1.8 Beta. Please upgrade to 2.0.14 or 2.1.8 Beta today!

More info...

Security Advisory: http://www.avianwaves.com/Forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=93
RD Tabs 2.0.14: http://www.avianwaves.com/Forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=94
RD Tabs 2.1.8: http://www.avianwaves.com/Forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=95

Finally! A 64-bit virtual MIDI patchcable

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:49:00 GMT

Quietly, and without much fanfare, nerds.de released an updated version of LoopBe30, a virtual MIDI patchcable driver, which now supports 64-bit operating systems, such as Vista 64 and XP 64.

Users of 64-bit operating systems have been getting the middle finger from many audio companies (such as these guys, although recently they have taken a slightly softer approach). It is/was really short-sighted, because 64-bit operating systems are, in general, higher performance and can address more RAM, which are both monumentally important to audio production. It doesn't matter that audio width greater than 32-bits provides little more (no perceptible) clarity than 32-bit. That is not the issue. If the OS has less overhead and greater bandwidth, more registers, and more RAM, the entire system will be faster, releasing resource pressure for the audio application, leading to overall higher performance. These guys understood and were the first to fully embrace 64-bit computing. Good for them.

Whoa, I went on a rant there. Sorry. The point of this post is to introduce you to the first (that I know of) 64-bit version of a virtual midi patchcable. What the heck does that do? It allows you to pipe midi-enabled software and hardware through multiple chains of midi within your computer. A good example is to pipe your sequencer's output through the mighty, mighty Midi-Ox, which will send the signal out your interface's midi-out to your hardware device.

Now 64-bitters can join the party! It's a niche market, for sure, but it's important when you rely on it!

It's worth noting that developing a 64-bit driver is not trivial because Microsoft requires that all 64-bit drivers be signed, which takes time and money, working with MS's quality labs, to make sure it won't crash the operating system and follows "best practices" set up by MS (a good thing). Thankfully, nerds.de took the time to do it.

I'll give a review of LoopBe30 in a later post. This is just to announce it's release! The big question for me? Will it work with the old school 32-bit Midi-Ox (another powerful program that refuses to make the jump to 64-bit at this point).

Easy Way to Change Permissions on the Windows Server Scheduled Tasks Folder (C:\Windows\Tasks)

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:06:00 GMT

By default, ostensibly for security purposes, Microsoft makes it very difficult to modify folder permissions on C:\Windows\Tasks -- the "Scheduled Tasks" folder. You'll notice there is no security or sharing tab in the properties of this folder. The only way to modify it is to use CACLS.EXE, XCACLS.EXE, or XCACLS.VBS, or a similar program which manipulates the NTFS permission flags directly. This is not really the ideal way to do it. It's much easier to use Explorer's view, so you can be sure of the permissions you are assigning, without messing up other permissions.

I found a fairly reasonable work-around for this problem. It's a multi-step process, but it is worth the trouble. Although command line operations with CACLS is still required, you can use the Explorer interface to assign the new permissions before applying them to the Tasks folder.

Be VERY cautious when following these steps, or you may inadvertently open up serious security holes -- there IS a reason Microsoft locks this folder down tightly.

1. Open a command prompt.

2. Type

XCOPY C:\WINDOWS\TASKS c:\TASKPERM /s /e /k /o

This will copy the tasks folder, in its entirety, including permissions and attributes. This essentially gives you a "mirrored" version of the scheduled tasks at C:\TASKPERM. It is probably not necessary to copy the tasks within the "Tasks" folder (the /S flag does this), but I like to be complete. :-)

3. Go to Windows Explorer and modify the ACL of C:\TASKPERM to suit your needs. Remember that if the user/group you are assigning permissions to should not be able to modify ALL tasks, it is important to set the "Apply To" attribute to "This folder only."

4. Back at the command prompt, type

CACLS C:\TASKPERM /S

Select the SDDL string (the stuff between the quotes) into the clipboard. Since the command prompt does not support line-wrapping text copy, you may have to post a larger string into notepad, and then trim out the stuff on either side of the quotes. You only want the bare SDDL string in the clipboard.

5. Type

CACLS C:\WINDOWS\TASKS /S:<SDDL>

...replacing/pasting the <SDDL> part with the SDDL string you put into the clipboard in step 4 -- do not include quotes.

6. Test!

7. Delete the C:\TASKPERM folder.

Not too bad, right? If you screw up your C:\WINDOWS\TASKS folder, the default ACL for Windows Server 2003 is D:P(A;OICIIO;FA;;;CO)(A;;0x1200ab;;;BO)(A;;0x1200ab;;;SO)(A;OICI;FA;;;BA)(A;OICI;FA;;;SY)

The CD is now for sale!

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 06:38:00 GMT

CD Baby has finished setting up my CD for sale. You can now buy it at the following link for the low, low price of $10.95: http://cdbaby.com/cd/avianwaves.

Unbelievably, I've already sold a copy, before any promotion. I think I like this CD Baby thing...

New Indonesian Bird Species

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:47:00 GMT

In case you haven't noticed, I have a thing for birds. I just read this article on Yahoo (happened upon it by accident, like most things on the internets) about how a new avian species was just discovered. It's wonderful to read about new species being discovered when so many other species are going extinct every day.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080314/sc_nm/bird_indonesia_dc

WM5 / WM6: Toolhelp.dll throwing error while attempting to generate snapshot

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:30:00 GMT

I am writing an application for Windows Mobile 5/6 that needs to enumerate all running processes on the system (in order to find the main window handle of another program). I found example code on MSDN here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa446560.aspx. Half the time it works and half the time it gives me the "Unable to create snapshot" exception.

Well, it turns out the problem has to do with flags being sent to the CreateToolhelp32Snapshot function in toolhelp.dll. I found a great blog post on how to fix it here: http://nativemobile.blogspot.com/2006/01/k-jam-and-toolhelp.html. The author did this to fix a bug for K-Jam (HTC Wizard) phones, but the problem happens at least also on my Sprint Mogul (HTC Mogul/Titan) phone and I suspect other WM5 or WM6 devices.

As a side note, for some reason the developer of the MSDN sample code stores the PID of the process in a property he calls "handle." Do not be confused as I was at first. This is NOT the window handle (hWnd). It is actually the PID of the process! And he stores it in an IntPtr to make it even more confusing (even though he always uses it as the casted "int" value). To get the window handle (if you need it), you have to use the managed .Net "Process" class like this:

Dim p As ToolHelp.Process = ToolHelp.Process.GetProcesses(0)
Dim hWnd as IntPtr = Process.GetProcessById(p.handle.toInt32).MainWindowHandle

SNOCAP Update

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:01:00 GMT

The SNOCAP store on the front page and the MySpace page is currently offline as new MP3s are validated by SNOCAP and come online. In support of the new album release, I've re-encoded ALL singles from the self-titled album using LAME. I used the original 96Khz/24bit masters as the input files and used LAME's "extreme" quality option, which uses variable bitrate compression for maximum quality. The files are a little bit bigger, but none exceed 16 MB (and that's two songs in one file: Out of Darkness + Toward the Light). Price is 99 cents per song (the usual cost).

Note for DJs: The SNOCAP singles are not cross-faded together (except for Out of Darkness + Toward the Light, which were recorded together and so are not easy to break apart), like on the retail CD. I have my artistic vision and all that for the album, but the SNOCAP singles can be arranged however you want. That makes these singles ideal for radio/club play.

Coming soon: Ring tones!

Copying Office 2007 'Quick Access Toolbar' Settings from Computer to Computer

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:14:00 GMT

So you painstakingly set up your Quick Access Toolbar preferences in every Office 2007 application to your liking. You have your favorite shortcuts for composing Outlook emails, setting up charts in Excel documents, and your obscure not-so-easy-to-get-to-in-the-Ribbon formatting control in Word. But now you have to set it all up again at home. There has to be an easier way!

Well, the officially supported way is to fire up Windows Easy Transfer or the User State Migration Tool, since Office 2007 defers settings transfers to those tools instead still offering the greatly missed "File and Settings Transfer Wizard" made famous in Office 2003. But both of those methods require (A) administrative access and (B) a lot of time. Maybe just setting it up again is easier...

Well it's not! The easiest way to transfer the Quick Access Toolbar from one computer to another is simply copying a few files in your Application Data folder. Here are the locations:

XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\*.qat

Vista:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\*.qat

Simply copy the QAT file associated with the application (or form) you want the customized quick access toolbar for from your source computer to your destination. Done!

Additionally, if you are interested in exporting other settings (kids: don't try this at home), HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0 contains a wealth of settings that are ripe for exporting and importing. However, DON'T WRITE OVER THE "Registration" KEY! If you do, you will invalidate your Office Activation and you might have trouble reactivating it.

The CDs are Finally Ready!

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 22:41:00 GMT

Well it took forever and a day, but the Avian Waves CDs are now in my hot little hands. Once I get some mailed off to CD Baby, they will be available for purchase! Now I just have to figure out how to market them so I can, you know, make a little money here and there...

Chief Justice Says Exxon More Important Than Coastlines

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:55:00 GMT

This is absolutely frightening.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/28/chief-justice-roberts-defends-exxon/

To my readers not in the USA, Chief Justice Roberts serves on the U.S. Supreme Court and was appointed by President Bush. For him to worry more about the bottom line of a multinational corporation MORE than a previously pristine environmental habitat shows EXACTLY what is wrong with American politics in the 21st century. This sums it up better than anything else I can possibly think of. And this tool gets to serve on the court until he (1) decides to retire or (2) dies. He's only 53, so he's a long way away from either.

Mystery of the Crashing WGA Installer - or - Why "WgaNotify setup canceled" is a stupid error message!

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:16:00 GMT

I was installing XP on a virtual machine recently and ran into a problem while installing the Windows Genuine Advantage update. Basically, it starts the update, then tells you WgaNotify setup canceled (sic). See below...

I then searched the google, but (surprisingly) found more help from the Live Search this time. From a site I found there, I got a link to the manual WGA installer.

When Microsoft Update doesn't work, sometimes the manual installer gives you more clues about why it is crashing. However, it just threw the same error with no additional clues (not even in the Event Viewer).

Well, nobody I could find on the google or the live search posted anything else helpful, so it was time to dig into this mystery on my own.

Acting on a gut feeling that it might be permissions related, despite being a fresh install of XP, I fired up SysInternal's ProcMon. I ran the setup again while capturing all activity. I then searched for Access Denied error messages and found this...

That looks promising! I fired up regedit and looked at that registry key. Sure enough, I had no permissions to write to that key...

I added "full control" for local administrators, re-ran the manual WGA installer and it worked! Mystery solved.

Mystery of the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME BSOD While Installing Windows Server 2003

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:24:00 GMT

We got a used (pre-owned?) server today at work so we could quickly deploy Team Foundation Server in our DMZ for collaboration with an outside firm. I was tasked with setting this beast up using a bunch of volume license stuff we bought and downloaded today (this has to be up by Monday, so I can't wait for disks to arrive in the mail). Well, I downloaded Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard from Microsoft's OpenValue website and burned it to CD-R with the "Microsoft Corporation.img" file in the boot options so it could boot normally. You know, the usual pain-in-the-butt for any non-OEM Server 2003 image you put together with fancy updates.

Well, right after the installation sequence would finish loading drivers but before it asks you to "press F8 if you sign your first born over to Microsoft" I kept getting a BSOD, and the error was UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. Now, on the google, there are many, many articles on this issue. But it all revolves around a particular update that may happen on XP after a service pack installation. Generally, the solution is to use the Recovery Console because something got messed up in the boot record.

This wasn't my problem. Afterall, this was an empty hard drive (I just freshly wiped it using Active@ KillDisk from my handy-dandy Windows PE "rescue disk").

The problem was I was barking up the wrong tree. The hard drive was fine. The unmountable boot volume was the CD itself. I found this out because when I popped in a TechNet Windows Server evaluation disk, it went right to the Windows installation screen, past the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME error.

Now, I'm not sure if the cause was a bad CD-R, bad burn, corrupt download, or if I just forgot to include a folder in the ISO, but whatever it was, it was the installation disk, not the hard drive.

I dug through an old dusty box in the back of the server room, past the cobwebs, and found a volume license Windows 2003 RTM CD from the year 2003 (not even SP1 yet) and was able to install the operating system on the server and upgrade to SP2 and R2 after the fact. Okay, it wasn't in a dusty box. It was actually well organized in a CD booklet of server disks. :-)

Hope this post helps somebody else barking up the wrong tree. Your drivers and hard disk might be fine. It might be your installation disk!

Mystery solved.

Excel 2007: "Windows Cannot Find <filename>" -- but you KNOW the file exists!

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:49:00 GMT

I just got a new computer at work. It runs Windows Vista (finally) and Office 2007. This is a completely fresh install from a corporate deployment image (no prepackaged adware). The deployment image did not have Office included since we run a mix of 2003 and 2007 here currently. So the Office installation is even more fresh.

Despite this, I ran into a really weird bug. Anytime I tried to open Excel files by using Explorer file association (ie, double clicking on the target file, instead of using File->Open menu within Excel), I would get the following error...

My first thought is permissions. I double checked. They were correct. Okay what's the problem? I opened the file from WITHIN Excel. It worked! Very strange.

I searched the google on the internets and found this post. Apparently, there's an advanced setting in Excel that can interfere with file association opening. Very odd. Click on the office "pearl" (the circle button in the upper-left corner of Excel), then click on "Excel Options." From there, click on "Advanced," scroll down to "General," and uncheck "Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)." (March 21, 2008 - Thanks to Shrivmather, in the comments below, for pointing out a mistake in the preceding paragraph. It has been corrected.)

I'm not sure I understand entirely why this setting prevents files from opening by association, throwing a "File Not Found" error. Maybe somebody can explain this to me? Well, the solution works, so mystery solved here...

Knight Rider 2008

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:05:00 GMT

I was a fan of the original 1980s series, Knight Rider. I tried very hard not to get my hopes up on the TV movie / backdoor pilot that aired last night, because I've been disappointed in the past. The 90s, afterall, brought us such wonders as Knight Rider 2000 (meh...), Knight Rider 2010 (huh?), and Team Knight Rider (AGH!). For Knight Rider fans, the 90s were teh suck. Like The Hoff singing level of suck. Yes, that bad. The 90s killed the Knight Rider, then buried it, then dug it up, then spat on it, then buried it again, then dynamited the bural ground, then spat on it again, then buried it one more time before dumping the contents of a porta-potty ontop of it.

But you know what? This new Knight Rider was actually pretty good! Sure, it did have its moments of being a big Ford commercial, but was the original Knight Rider any less of a commercial for Pontiac? It's all in good fun. It pays the bills too, afterall. And when Ford makes a Mustang that actually gets 167 mpg and drives itself, I'll be lining up to buy it!

Speaking of which, KITTstang was cool. I've read a lot of people bitching that KITT wasn't a classic or concept Camero or Firebird (or some other GM), but really, we've been down that road before. Remember that red thing in Knight Rider 2000? Okay, maybe it was a cool car in its day, but it doesn't have the "wolf in sheep's clothing" sorta thing going on. I don't know. It just wasn't as cool as the original Trans Am KITT. And before that red thing in the movie, he was some classic something. I don't really remember, I just remember he shot Scotty with some sort of stun gun. Anyway, the point is, GM doesn't have a Camaro/Firebird right now to sell, Ford wants to sell the Mustang, so get over it. KITT's a Mustang now.

Now, the series did have its flaws. (What fun would a blog post be without some know-it-all complaining about something?) I was not very excited about Michael Knight Junior (a.k.a. Mike Traceur) at first. His character grew on me by the end, though. They tried too hard to make him the dumb muscle / comic relief / smart hero all rolled into one waaaay too quick. It took MacGuyver-er-Jack O'Neil many seasons to get that going where it worked on Stargate SG-1, so they shouldn't have tried to force it so hard in this short movie. Bad writing. Very FORCED character development. By the end he was less "comic relief" and more just saracastic bantering with KITT, which fit better with the "Knight" loner / hero persona they should have been going for. Second half of the movie, his character worked. When Mike started kicking ass at the casino, it was the first time I could see him settling into the new Michael Knight persona. The writers blew the first hour of character development there. Also, if this becomes a series, his racing car sidekick mechanic buddy comic goofball needs to go. Quickly.

Second, was it just me or was Sarah Graiman a lesbian at the beginning of the movie and then pining for her true-lost-love Mike at the end? Or did losing Mike all those summers ago turn her off men? Actually, at the beginning, I was excited because I thought that meant they weren't going to do any tired predictable sexual tension between the two since she might not swing his way, but, alas no. Those two had to have a past and bring out the predictable cliches. Thanks, NBC. I guess Sarah is bisexual. I wonder how that will work out if this becomes a series? Seems kind of useless and tangential to what people want to see: Mike and KITT kicking ass. Make her go back to doing women exclusively and let Mike just be a loner on a mission with no ties. Please!

Third, nano robots? Why is that such a popular theme these days? They did that in the new Bionic Woman too. Old KITT was bullet proof without little robots! At first this whole nanotechnology stuff made me wince. Of course, it's probably more plausible than the advanced AI that KITT is, but the growing a double spoiler out of thin air just gave me flashbacks of Team Knight Rider's motorcycles. AGH! Stop! My brain! It hurts! Nano robots would have been fine if they weren't responsible for transforming KITT's body. I don't know why I think that. But I do. Gives me flashbacks of the Knight Rider rip-off series (from the same swamp of 90s suck), Viper (you know you watched it too -- pining for a black Trans Am to take out the Dodge Viper). Anyway, I'd rather see the spoiler/wing/air-intake/whatever-else come out of a compartment, mechanically, and the nano robots just responsible for like repairs and color changing and stuff. Suspension of Disbelief... Suspension of Disbelief...

But you know, despite all this complaining, I really enjoyed it. I really did! Overall, KITT was extremely cool. Sarah wasn't that annoying. Mike turned out to be a pretty cool "Michael Knight Junior" after the first half of the movie. And, yes, KITT kept taking him down a notch, in proper form. It was fun. It really kept you into it. It wasn't just nostalgia either, it was good on its own even if you never watched the old Knight Rider. And it treated the Knight Rider series the way it should have been treated back in the 90s. I hope this becomes a regular series. Afterall, we have only one more season of the new Battlestar Galactica coming up (one of the best shows on the teevee, ever). So if Glen A. Larson is going to keep one of his resurrected 80s ideas on the teevee, he needs to work quick! I doubt this will ever be as incredibly awesome as the new Battlestar, but it was a very good backdoor pilot movie (which is rare) and they could certainly do some really cool story arcs, given time.

Watch it! Rent it! Download it! Whatever! Let's get this thing turned into a series.

The Mystery of the Corrupted Vista Installer Service (MsiInstaller 1015 Warning)

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:25:00 GMT

I ran into a very strange problem last night. Somehow a portion of the Windows Installer service got corrupted on my Vista laptop in a way I couldn't find any information on while searching the Google.

Whenever I tried to run any MSI file, I would get an error about how the installer service could not be contacted. In the event log, I saw a warning, event ID 1015, which said Failed to connect to server. Error: 0x80070005 at the exact same time.

Although I couldn't find much information on my specific error, the Google did bestow me with the knowledge that "80070005" usually indicates "Access Denied."

So I fired up SysInternal's ProcMon, the de facto standard tool for debugging permissions problems.

The trace revealed the following entry (click to zoom)...

As you can see, access is indeed denied for "Network Service" on the installer service's entry in HKCR\AppID.

But why? I honestly have no idea why it changed. I suspect some misbaving application I installed, but I don't know for certain.

I fired up RegEdit on my corrupted machine and on an innocent uncorrupted machine and navigated to the key...

Upon investigating the uncorrupted Vista box, I noticed that this particular registry entry should not be inheriting from its parent as it was on my corrupted machine. Ah ha! So I took ownership of the key on my corrupted machine, cleared the ACL and added the following entries...

All entries (including Administrators and System) should be given "read" except TrustedInstaller, which is set to Full Control. If you are having trouble adding the TrustedInstaller user account, remember that it is a new built-in principle, not a normal user. First, you must set the "location" to your local machine (if you are on a domain, that is), then type in NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller. After you are finished with the changes, be sure to change the owner of the key BACK to TrustedInstaller (this is important).

That did it! MSIs were installing again!

Mystery solved.

Website Blog and Music Update

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:08:00 GMT

I decided having multiple blogs (Music and Tech) was pretty confusing, so I introduced topics (a.k.a. "tags") to my blog. The two previous blogs were unified and then the topics were applied (among others) so that they are actually still sorted basically the same. You can see in the upper left hand corner the various topics you can filter by, in case you aren't interested in all the wonderful things I have to say. Any old links to previous music/tech blog entries should still work. Please let me know if they don't!

CDs are finally in the process of getting pressed. Late 2007, I think I said, right? So late that it's 2008 now, apparently. ;-) All singles will be for sale shortly after I get the CDs in retail outlets (like CD Baby).

Next step... I need to start writing new tracks and get back to work on RD Tabs and XS BAP.

The Mystery of the Windows Mobile Pass-Through Internet DNS Failure (Vista/WMDC)

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 01:55:00 GMT

I ran into a strange problem tonight. I have a Cinulgar 8125 Windows Mobile (WM5) phone. When I connected it via USB to my laptop (running Vista Ultimate), I couldn't get DNS to work on the phone. I was able to connect to any site by IP address, but DNS resolution failed. Of course, Exchange sync would fail too since it's accessed by DNS as well.

I was able do PC sync, copy files, install programs, and, again, passthrough internet worked, just not DNS resolution.

I searched on the google and I tried every possible thing I could find as far as settings are concerned, but nothing worked. One thing I kept coming back to, but kept blowing off, was this KB I found at Microsoft's site, but that dealt mainly with ActiveSync and the symptoms said that passthrough internet completely failed (it did not mention that only DNS failure might also be caused by this).

Silly me, it turns out that WAS the cause! Just an undocumented symptom. Here's the KB.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936858/en-us

The only possible interfering LSP I can think that might be installed on my computer would probably come from Microsoft Forefront because I don't have anything like parental controls or third party firewalls installed.

So I have no idea what actual LSP is causing the problem, but strange DNS failures like this CAN be caused by one. So if you are suffering from the same problem, give this a try.

Mystery solved!

I hope MS can find a better solution to fix this problem in the future since disabling features (and possibly security if a particular LSP is enabled for security purposes) is never the ideal solution.

The Mystery of the Broken Large File Downloads on WM5

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 21:20:00 GMT

I have Cingular (now AT&T Wireless, again) as my cell phone provider. I get the unlimited internet because I'm a geek and must have email wherever I go, for some reason.

Today I was attempting to download a large file to my phone (approximately 25 MB) and I kept getting the very uninformative "The page cannot be displayed" error every time. Small files downloaded fine. Anything over a few MB would crap out (after hanging for a few minutes).

Was it Pocket IE? I mean I know it's not the best browser on the planet, but why would it restrict download size if your device has a couple gigs of storage available? So I tried other browsers, such as Opera Mini. Opera Mini defers to IE for downloads since it uses a proxy server to display content quickly. The last thing they want to do is proxy a large file download. I tried Minimo, but it wouldn't even install. And I heard they aren't developing it anymore (thanks, Mozilla). All the others cost money, which I don't want to spend to download only one single file.

Then I remembered that AT&T configures you to go through their own proxy server so they can feed you the completely useless MediaNET content by typing in normally non-existent top level domains (ends in .cingular, if i recall). So I went into the connection properties, advanced, then onto proxy settings for the MediaNET connection. I cleared "use a proxy for this connection" and voila! I could download large files now! And, strangely enough, the ping time seemed to be much better. I figured the proxy server would be higher performance (since Edge is technically only marginally better than 56k modems) because they might be caching requests and reducing image sizes and everything else proxies can do, but I guess not. I guess it was only for the completely useless Media.Net. Without the proxy, my speed definitely is better than it was before.

P.S. If you like Media.NET, I apologize. I find the service completely useless, as you can tell. :-)

Freeware Method of Recording Internet Radio Shows That Don't Podcast!

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:21:00 GMT

Cool article here on how to use a bunch of freeware to record internet radio for those wonderful shows you can't listen to live and don't offer a downloadable form. Think of it as a "DVR" for your internet radio!

http://www.minezone.org/blog/2006/08/17/record-streaming-radio-using-free-software/

Few notes:

- The tool "close" isn't really necessary because Windows' built-in taskkill.exe should signal a normal close unless you specify the /F flag which forcefullly terminates.

- If you have RD Tabs installed, you don't need "wait.exe" either. The "sleep.exe" included in the RD Tabs installation for scripting purposes does the same thing, only it sleeps for miliseconds, not seconds, so note that in your calculations in the script.

- Mplayer playlists can be in a wide variety of formats. If your favorite show isn't a "m3u" as in the example - no worries. Just make sure the output file is the right format for the playlist because mplayer isn't smart enough to do automatic extensions it seems. I'm recording an "ASX" (window media) stream for lunch-time enjoyment right now.

XP SP2 Setup BSoD (0x0000007B) on New SATA Systems

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:21:00 GMT

We still run Windows XP SP2 as our primary workstation OS at work. It's mainly a cost decision as Vista's feature set is absolutely drooled over by everybody here. Anyway, We just got a brand spanking new Optiplex with Vista pre-loaded. Using the retrograde licensing provisions, we buy Vista systems, but install XP, to save on the upgrade cost later.

While attempting to install XP SP2 on this system I kept getting a BSoD right at the point where it says "Setup is starting Windows." It would give the bad hard drive error (Stop code 0000007B). It turns out that this happens because the SATA mode is set to AHCI instead of standard SATA (or even IDE) mode. Fixing this on the Optiplex is easy. You go into F2 BIOS setup, go down to SATA options and change the mode from AHCI to SATA. That's it!

Of course you get better performance in AHCI. To change to AHCI after Windows is installed, you first need to preload all the AHCI drivers from Dell's website, THEN change the mode to AHCI. If you just change the mode ahead of time, you'll get that pesky BSoD again and risk corrupting the installation.

Now if you got a new Optiplex with an XP SP2 disk, it will probably have the correct AHCI driver included, but I didn't have one.

I'm sure this information is applicable to many other vendors, just replace the words "Dell" and "Optiplex" with your vendor's names. :-)

Dish Network's DVR External Hard Drive Feature ROCKS!

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:09:00 GMT

My Dish Network VIP622 was dying slowly (kept rebooting multiple times per day) and occassionally would squeel and buzz and make very loud annoying noises while crashing (poor thing). Luckily, Dish had finally started their external hard drive feature for the receiver where you can archive recordings to an external USB 2.0 hard drive. I was worried at first that the recordings were married to the receiver and I'd lose everything if I replaced my receiver. It just seems like the way DRM is going these days, that's the route they'd take. (Sort of like how Sirius' "DVR" Stiletto 100 player doesn't contain the ability to notify you of when artists are on (the Stiletto 10 can) because the benevolent music biz decided that would encourage piracy.)

Anyway, Dish Network pleasantly surprised me again. I plugged my replacement receiver in, plugged the hard drive in and it told me "This hard drive was used on another Dish DVR, would you like to convert its contents to work on this DVR?" I hit yes and now I lost absolutely NO archived shows!

Thanks, Dish!

Now the question is with the wording there, can you convert it back? How many times can you convert from one receiver to another? Can you only convert between receivers you own? I would guess the answers would be (in this order): yes, some limited amount, and yes. They can't give away the farm here. The movie and TV industries would blow a gasket whether or not "trading hard drives" ever could possibly become a piracy problem (that's even MORE complicated than trading VHS back in the day). I mean it's not like you want to just go give away your $100 hard drive to people. And the data on the drive is encrypted and who knows if even the mighty Norton Ghost (I refuse to call it Symantec Ghost) could image it successfully. And lastly, when you copy a show to your receiver, it's removed from the hard drive, necessitating recording it again for the original owner, which makes piracy even more difficult (but is also not very intrusive to the legitimate user -- good balance).

Anybody got any answers? I'm curious...

Why I Hate the GPL, Reason #28342

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:12:00 GMT

Here's a great example of why I hate the GPL:

[Ebay Item Listing Link]

If that link is broken, just search on Ebay for Microsoft Office and you are bound to run into dozens of items listed actually selling OpenOffice (free, OpenSource, basic "office" package). Now, mind you, I'm not against "selling free software" in all cases because, afterall, CDs cost money to burn, but selling a download link where the proceeds clearly are not going to the person paying bandwidth bills? The download link is FREELY ("as in beer" as the kids say) and EASILY found on the google!

These jerks on Ebay are CLEARLY exploiting those that are looking specifically for good deals on Microsoft Office (it shows up in a "Microsoft Office" search afterall because of a clever title) and see this item and think, "wow, great, where do I sign up?" What these poor consumers don't realize is that they are being swindled out of a few bucks.

This seller is NOT selling a CD burned with OpenOffice (for which $4-5 is fair). He/she is selling a download link -- the thing you find in two seconds on the google! The problem is the target consumers are not particularly savvy and don't KNOW they can find this application for free with a simple search.

Now this example of $4 is not the most egregious offense. I've actually seen completed items going for up to $80 on Ebay. Unfortunately, Ebay has purged the history that far back (this was a couple months ago when somebody emailed me the completed listing). It seems "competition" has forced the link prices to go down since other jackasses have now thought it's a good way to make an easy buck off some poor unsavvy chaps. Jerks. And, no, market pressure didn't resolve this. Four dollars is still too much to pay for something that is free. Especially when all you are selling is the knowledge of the link to download it! Remember that the authors and distributors of OpenOffice are not being compensated here.

And this crap is all perfectly legal under the terms of the GPL. So it's not Ebay's fault.

Good job, FSF. Software freedom is on the march.

I just submitted RD Tabs to TUCOWS - See you 4.5 years.

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:15:00 GMT

So I thought I'd try to get the word out about the wonderful and free RD Tabs by submitting it to a few more software download sites. I hit TUCOWS. (Remember when they were popular? You know, back in '98?) Anyway, I finished the submission and this is the message I got.

There are 8493 program adds currently in the queue.
Estimated time until your software is evaluated: 1701 days.
To expedite the process, please choose one of the following options:

Whoa, there, horsey! 1701 days? That's like over FOUR years! No wonder most of the software on there is so out of date... And I thought download.com's one month turn around time was bad (they JUST approved RD Tabs 2.0.8). Of course, as you can see up there, I can expedite the process by PAYING them. Like free software generates dispoable income. I mean I don't expect them to jump over hurdles here, but 4.5 YEARS? 90 days is more reasonable.

So I thought about it for a minute and realized they at 1701 days, they are only processing 4-5 programs PER DAY. Holy smokes! How many people work there? I mean I could do that in an hour on my own.

What a racket... I won't be complaining about download.com taking five weeks any more (and here I thought that was sluggish). Apparently that's incredibly good turn-around time for no payment... Even if they do add typos into the description that I didn't type in. (Haven't they heard of cut'n'paste?)

Forefront Client Security History Consuming HUGE Amounts of Disk Space

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:13:00 GMT

I ran into an issue the other day where we had two servers in an isolated domain that were steadily losing disk space to an unknown cause. It turns out the cause was Forefront Client Security. The reason? Forefront's history kept accumulating events at a rate of approximately 120 events every five minutes! The history folder grew to about 2.5 GB in just over three weeks and had tens to hundreds of thousands of files (not sure how many exactly as Explorer would crash before I could get a count). Why? Group Policy was set to "Process even if Group Policy object have not changed" and so the firewall rules set up policy were being reevaluated by FCS every five minutes! Not a bug, persay, but definitely something that should be addressed in future versions of FCS. Anyway, here's a link to the newsgroup article I posted on TechNet. No responses yet at the time of this blog post, but hopefully somebody at Microsoft will chime in on this issue. http://forums.microsoft.com/ForeFront/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2258749&SiteID=41&mode=1

The Mystery of the Empty Vista Domain Admin Logon (a.k.a., Black Screen of Purgatory)

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:40:00 GMT

The other day, I was setting up my very first corporate Vista machine. It was a new laptop with Vista Business pre-installed that was to become the first live Vista machine on our corporate network. An exciting day it was. ... Okay, actually it was a pretty frustrating day because this machine was NOT cooperating. I had deployed test machines in our sandbox OU and thought I had ironed out all the problems, but not so... This laptop had one glaring horrible problem: I could not log on as a domain admin!

Now that's a big problem...

I was perfectly able, mind you, to log on as my normal account and then elevate to a domain admin when needed, but the domain admin logon itself failed. All I would get is a lonely empty black screen. It's as if Windows Explorer forgot all about me. How depressing! I named this experience the "Black Screen of Purgatory."

So what was the problem?

I went back to my regular logon, fired up Event Viewer and scoured the logs. This is the event that I found every time I tried to logon interactively as a domain admin...

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Winlogon
Event ID:      4006
Level:         Warning
Description:
The Windows logon process has failed to spawn a user application. Application name: . Command line parameters: C:\Windows\system32\userinit.exe.

Interesting, eh? Winlogon was actually failing to spawn a process. I wonder why? It runs as SYSTEM, afterall, even in Vista. SYSTEM has full control over most everything.

I scoured the google and found only a few pages related to Vista and only one related to Vista and domain admins logging on. The culprit? UAC.

Oh that blessed security feature we all love to hate! (--or is it hate to love?) Apparently, UAC was trying to open an elevation prompt during logon. Well, no interactive session has yet been established (that's the job of Winlogon and userinit.exe afterall) so the UAC elevation prompt just gets lost in the ethos of the Black Screen of Purgatory.

Luckily, if you press Ctrl+Alt+Del, you still get the security menu. No, TaskMgr won't run. But you can log off without powering down your computer.

The article that discovered UAC was the culprit also noted that turning off UAC fixed this problem. Well, of course disabling a security feature and preventing it from doing it's job will make things work (just ask the developers at the company I work for), but that's the cheap way out. I want to figure out WHY this is happening and fix it.

So I started doing some tests. First, I tried a local administrator account. That works! Wow, domain admins don't, but local admins do. Interesting. So then I guessed that maybe a GPO was the problem, so I pulled the computer out of it's home OU and put it into a test OU which blocks all policies. I rebooted.

I was able to log on as a domain admin. Very interesting! It was a GPO. But which one?

After gradually adding and enabling all applicable policies, I found the culprit: Restricted Groups.

That's an unusual, culprit, isn't it?

In order to keep local groups clean, I use Restricted Groups to prevent unauthorized additions to the Users and Administrators groups on workstations. In XP, it was sufficient for Domain Admins to be members of only the Administrators local group to gain full access to the machine. This is not the case in Vista. For some reason, if Domain Admins are not ALSO in the Users local group, they cannot logon due to UAC trying to request an elevation prompt at pre-logon. Apparently, permissions are set okay from a traditional standpoint (disabling UAC "fixes" this issue), but UAC doesn't like tradition. The reason you don't commonly see this issue on Vista machines is because in Vista, the built-in principle INTERACTIVE is normally automatically a member of the Users local group, but I had overwritten the Users local group with my own members by policy. Why do I do this? Because I don't want, for example, role accounts getting interactive sessions on workstations. I'm just paranoid like that.

I also noticed that in Vista, Local Service and Network Service are automatically members of the Users local group, so I suggest also adding those to your Vista Restricted Groups policy to prevent future weirdness.

Mystery solved and case closed.

Albums are dead? Bah! Plus updates!

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:03:00 GMT

So with new technology regularly comes speculations of grand new utopic worlds and the death of old ways. iTunes has basically made the industry (or those at least who claim to be "in" the industry) to speculate on if selling albums is worth it anymore. Afterall, you can just jot on over to iTunes (or whatever), download only the songs you like from every artist you like and be done with it!

Of course there are people like that. But they could (and did) buy 45's, cassette singles, and CD singles back in the "old" days. Some people just like buying albums (like me) because they want the full experience. Yes, some bands just produce collections of songs with no real forethought on the "experience" an album will take you on, and that's fine. But longer multi-part experiences are an important part of music and have been for some time. I'm not sure that's going to change! Symphonies were written in movements. Each movement you could say was a "song" and the whole symphony was an "album." It was the same concept. Teevee analogy: singles are the "episodes" and albums are the "season" (or "series" if you are from across the pond).

So anyway, I'm tired of hearing that the album is dead. The CD may be on life support, but the album is not dead. It will just be bought as a chain of singles off the iTunes, to be listened to in a specific order. Is that such a stretch? You can even leave cross fading intact!

Okay so enough babbling. Back to Avian Waves. CD coming soon (I'm serious this time). I finally found a reasonable manufacturing price (via Discmakers) and will be distributing via CD Baby. Let's hope I can make it onto the iTunes and others from that. Cross fades will remain in those versions, so if you buy them there you can run them back to back and get the "album experience" minus the artwork. The SNOCAP order form on my web page is for the "singles" versions where songs will not crossfade.

Of course if you buy the CD, I make more money (support your local starving artist) and you get something tangible to hold onto. It's also better quality.

Now if you are a TRUE audiophile, like me, you will really be excited to hear that all my music will eventually be available via DVD-Audio someday. Not sure when exactly. Not sure anybody cares! But basically the benefit of DVD-A is that it will store the ORIGINAL MASTERS in its full brilliant 96Khz 24-bit clarity. That means no resampling, no dithering, and no loss of quality from the master recordings! I work exclusively in the 24-bit 96Khz domain when recording, processing, and mastering (never leaving that domain for any reason), so listening to those high quality masters is absolutely the best quality recording available for my music. Hit me on the contact page if you are interested in a DVD-A format. It will only play on DVD players, of course (includes your computer). However, unlike CDs, you can losslessly rip the audio and store it and then play it through your media player whenever you want. However, copyright laws prohibit you distributing it (please, I really am a starving artist - feed me).

Yes, if a new high def audio format standard replaces the rarely seen DVD-A. I will embrace it and long as it is not prohibitively expensive.

DVD-A orders will be custom short runs (I anticipate very little demand lol), but for those of us that appreciate the sonic clarity that only high quality analog tape and 96Khz 24-bit (and above) digital audio can bring, it will be a welcome treat.

Forums have been upgraded!

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:16:00 GMT

I have upgraded the forums from YAF 1.9.0 to YAF 1.9.1. They do great work for free forums! If you run an ASP.Net website, I highly recommend it.

Here's the website.

Let me know if you run into any problems!

NEEDED: Windows XP/Vista x64 Beta Testers for RD Tabs x64

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 20:03:00 GMT

I don't even personally have a 64-bit capable computer yet (well, the CPU is capable, but not the OS). This makes building and testing the 64-bit version of RD Tabs difficult. Can somebody help me out here by being a tester? If so, see the forum post below...

http://www.avianwaves.com/Forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&m=106

Avian Waves Forums are now integrated into the main website

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 21:18:00 GMT

Anybody who has been using the Avian Waves Forums has noticed that it was not integrated into the main website. This is due to the code being from another author, who makes the amazing open source YetAnotherForum.Net. it's C#, so I can't integrate it directly into the main Avian Waves website since I write primarily in VB.Net. However, I found a clever way to integrate it by exporting the main website's current "skin" (even if I change it) and retrieving this through the skinnable features of YAF. The advantage is now it looks like the rest of the website, but can be easily upgraded since it is still technically a separate web application. Fun stuff! Enjoy!

The new URL is www.avianwaves.com/Forums but the old URL forums.avianwaves.com will still work.

RD Tabs 2.0 is out of Beta and Released to the Web!

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 19:03:00 GMT

RD Tabs 2.0 is OUT of beta! Horray! It's taken long enough, hasn't it? Thanks to all the beta testers! Here is the link to the forums for more information...

http://forums.avianwaves.com/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=33

Weird WSUS 3.0 Installation Problem

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 03:28:00 GMT

I ran into a really strange problem tonight on a server (domain controller) where I was attempting to upgrade WSUS 2.0 running with a SQL Express backend to WSUS 3.0.

The setup program said "success" but after seeing nothing new in the Start menu, I checked the wsussetup.log and I saw that it failed. I tried uninstalling WSUS 2.0 from Add/Remove Programs, but that faild too (invalid parameter). I then tried re-installing over, no go. So I manually deleted every folder and uninstalled SQL completely, then tried again. No good! I was stuck inbetween a broken WSUS 2.0 and broken WSUS 3.0 and it wouldn't uninstall or install over, even though everything was manually deleted. In the wsussetup.log it kept saying...

2007-08-19 22:41:24 Success   MWUSSetup          Validating pre-requisites...
2007-08-19 22:41:24 Error     MWUSSetup          Failed to determine if an higher version of WSUS is installed. Assuming it is not... (Error 0x80070002: The system cannot find the file specified.)
2007-08-19 22:41:24 Error     MWUSSetup          IsWSUSInstalledOnPort80: cannot found WSUS installed on any website (Error 0x8000FFFF: Catastrophic failure)
2007-08-19 22:41:44 Error     MWUSSetup          CSqlConnection::Open: Failed to open SQL connection to instance MACAW (Error 0x80004005: Unspecified error)
2007-08-19 22:41:44 Error     MWUSSetup          CUpgradeDriver::PerformPreSetupActions: Failed to open connection to SQL instance %computername% (Error 0x80004005: Unspecified error)
2007-08-19 22:41:44 Error     MWUSSetup          CSetupDriver::LaunchSetup: Failed to perform pre-setup actions (Error 0x80004005: Unspecified error)
2007-08-19 22:41:44 Error     MWUSSetup          CProgressManager::EnableCancel: GetDlgItem returning error (Error 0x80070578: Invalid window handle.)
2007-08-19 22:41:54 Error     MWUSSetup          DoInstall: Wsus setup failed (Error 0x80004005: Unspecified error)

So what can I do? I ran good ol' regmon from SysInternals (I still haven't gotten used to procmon) and looked through all the entries from the installer MSI trying to find out how this thing is detecting if WSUS is installed... And I found it. Even if it doesn't show up in Add/Remove Programs, there are still entries in the installer areas of the registry that trigger an upgrade option, even if it shouldn't. If it finds the GUID {6CD64D0A0598A1549809358CE67166E6} in any installer location of the registry (such as HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products OR user-specific portions of the registry), it will assume WSUS 2.0 is installed, even if it isn't. The solution? Delete all occurances of that GUID in the installer areas of the registry. Then it will magically install WSUS 3.0 from scratch.

"Out of Darkness" is Track of the Day at Garageband.com for the SECOND time!

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 14:26:00 GMT

I was surprised to wake up this morning and find an email from Garageband.com (which I haven't logged onto in years) has chosen "Out of Darkness" to be the Track of the Day for the second time! This time it will be featured on Saturday, August 18, 2007. The first time it was featured was February 25, 2001 (yes, it's an old song, and still not published)!

You may notice that the "band name" is TCX. That's what I went by back in the day and they don't seem to be too eager to update the band name to "Avian Waves." Rest assured, TCX is Avian Waves (only a more lame band name, that's all). I'm not hijacking somebody else's glory. :-)

Labels? Where are you? It's a 6 year old track that still hasn't aged a day! People love it! Sign me! (Yes, I'm begging -- but I'm a starving artist! We tend to beg...)

Garageband Track of the Day