Microsoft Musings

Recently I received the following comment on my post (which has over 200 comments already) about an Internet Explorer problem. I had to chuckle when I read it and thought it was worth sharing.

This worked! Thanks. That was a really annoying problem.

My other computer which also runs XP doesn’t have the problem, but after I installed the fix on this one I discovered that it already has that entry.

But why does it have to be this way? Imagine what life would be like if all our electronic products required this degree of fiddling and bug fixes. Why, we would turn on a lamp, only to get an incomprehensible error message. We’d copy it down, Google it, and come to a site like this and find some incomprehensible gobbledy-gook to try as a solution. Some of us couldn’t make heads or tails of it, while others would manage to install it. Voila! the light goes on. But then the refrigerator issues some kind of warning and goes off. And the toaster hasn’t worked for a week. And the car stopped in the middle of the road yesterday, and some motorist said the thingami package needed to be reinstalled and the registers cleaned out of electronic gunk. “You need to update your anti-roadblock software,” the motorist said as the car finally started again. “Or this’ll keep on happening. Don’t get Norton, though.”

I keep getting the following annoying error message when trying to print from Adobe Reader 9.

Before you can perform print-related tasks such as page setup or printing a document, you need to install a printer.

Adobe has a knowledgebase article on the exact problem and describes the solution to it. It does fix the issue, however in a couple of days the error message simply reappears. I’ve included the temporary fix below, but I would like know the REAL fix to this frustrating issue. If you know of a method to fix it for good, please let me know.

1. Select Start > Control Panel > Printers and Faxes (Windows XP) or Start > Control Panel > Printers (Windows Vista).
2. Look for a default printer, which is designated by a green check mark.
   * If there is a default printer, right-click on a different printer and select Set As Default Printer.
   * If there is no default printer, right-click on your printer and select Set As Default Printer.

You can also refer to the following screen shots for more help.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Does the above screenshot look familiar? The problem is quite frustrating, as multiple taskeng.exe processes will start and then never end. This results in a huge number of taskeng.exe processes running simultaneously as the about screenshot shows which over time drastically reduces system performance. You may also get the following error message when you start Task Scheduler.

The task image is corrupt or has been tampered with. User_Feed_Synchronization

Fortunately there is a simple solution for Windows Vista thanks to NickDownUnder:

1. Go to the start menu.
2. Type task scheduler and press enter.
3. Press continue on the UAC popup.
4. In the left pane of task scheduler, underneath Task Scheduler Local, right-click on Task Scheduler Library.
5. In the View submenu, make sure the Show Hidden Tasks option is checked.
6. Widen the Name column in the center pane. The hidden task that is likely at fault has a name that starts with User_Feed_Synchronization, followed by a dash and a bunch of digits inside a curly brace.
7. Select that task in the middle pane by clicking on its name.
8. To verify that this scheduled task is creating all those taskeng.exe processes, select the History tab in the middle pane near the middle of the screen. If you expand out the Level and Date and Time Columns, you should see a bunch of errors and date and times that are 5 minutes apart. If that’s the case, then this task is the problem.
9. On the rightmost pane, select Disable.
10. There may be more than one scheduled task like this, so you’d need to disable any or all that were causing problems.
11. Restart your computer.

I’ve been getting this call several times a day where the caller ID reveals the name as “Telemarketing” and the phone number as “866-831-4847″. And they expect me to answer?

Can someone explain to me why you can’t do SSL on a subdomain with Hostmonster? Is it a limitation of cpanel or what?

I just realized today that my MySQL slave box was like way out of sync. Yikes. The error message was ‘Duplicate Entry’. Which is like weird, because this is simply a replicated slave box, why would there be a duplicate entry anyway? After much searching I discovered this fix that worked like a charm. Just add the following line to the [mysqld] section of the slave’s my.cnf file.

slave-skip-errors = 1062

It worked, BUT is this a good idea? anyone have a better idea?

I did not have a very good start to my day yesterday. It involved my laptop and a glass of fruit punch. And now for some reason, my laptop keys are sticking.

I was trying to install the Blackberry Desktop Manager on Windows Vista, but it kept aborting on the following error message.

error 1325 favorites is not a valid short file name

Frustrating. Turns out its a simple fix. Simply set your Favorites back to the default location. I had my favorites folder pointed to a network location and for what ever reason the installer didn’t like that. Apparently its a bug in the Blackberry installer program.

      Late last week I requested a static IP address from my web host, hostmonster. Supposedly this would be a simple change that would go off without a hitch. And it did for the most part, except for one problem. The A name record for blog.kirb.us was somehow erased, which simply resulted in this website being down. The solution of course is to update the A record. Simple, right? Take a peak at these conversations with Hostmonster Support.
Read more…

Have you been struggling with the nasty medichi.exe virus? I’ve been trying to remove it on a customer’s computer for days, and haven’t been getting anywhere. This virus goes the whole way by disabling access to your Control Panel, Task Manager, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Norton Internet Security. Apparently its a new virus that none of the virus companies have a fix for yet. The only one that detects it is Microsoft, but they can’t actually remove it successfully yet. At least they didn’t for me.

Basically this is what I did to fix the problem.

UPDATE: Symantec now calls it Trojan.Virantix.B and has a document outlining how to remove it. Please follow those steps instead.

1. Download Process Master and install it.
2. Run Process Master and kill the following processes if running, medichi.exe medichi2.exe and suspend.exe.
3. Show System and Hidden files in Windows Explorer, by going to Tools and then Folder Options and selecting the view tab. Select the “Show Hidden files and folders” and also uncheck “Hide Protected Operating System Files”. Click Yes, and then OK.
4. Delete the following files if existing.
  C:\Windows\Medichi.exe
  C:\Windows\Medichi2.exe
  C:\Windows\System32\suspend.exe

5: Search the registry for “Medichi” and delete every reference to it.
6. Restart Windows.

These steps were taken from here.
Note: The one step over there involves patching ProcessMaster to avoid paying for it. It doesn’t mention that anywhere, but thats what happens if you follow it. If you want to stay legal, please pay for ProcessMaster instead of simply patching it.