Real world Windows experiences

How to install or update the Adobe Flash Player plugin without installing the Adobe Download Manager (DLM)

2010-09-09T13:09:00.000-07:00

When trying to install or patch/update the constantly insecure Adobe Flash Player using the download page (http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer), they are trying to lure their users into installing not only McAfeee Security Scan Plus, but also their own sneaky Adobe Download Manager (DLM).

Everybody understands that the DLM is simply a way to get unsuspecting users to install yet more Adobe crap, to give them more control over our computers.

Lately, they have even removed the direct link to the installer for users that didn't want to use the DLM.

Luckily, there is still a way to install Flash Player manually. Just check
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/191/tn_19166.html#main_ManualInstaller and choose your version below "2. Select the manual installer..."

Good luck!

Microsoft abusing it's update service once again

2009-01-10T08:48:00.000-08:00

Internet Explorer 8 is coming around the corner.

Currently in beta, the next version of web browser was put on all public computers in the recent TechEd ITpros Europe 2008, where delegates were swearing over the unusability of the web browser: The browser crashed everytime you made "paste" in the address bar (no joke, I tried this multiple times on multiple computers), and I myself couldn't perform an important money transfer in my online bank due to bugs in the web browser).

Now once again, Microsoft will push the new version of IE out to unknowing customers as a "critical update". This I think is a real abuse of the update service, since most customers consider critical updates to actually be critical. Now they are getting in the way of Microsoft's marketing machine, which once again will cause compatibility problems for thousands of their customers, just to push out their inferior web browser instead of letting customers choose themselves. Oh, did I mention it will be pushed out to servers too? Really smart, MS.

Yes, I know there is an "opt-out tool" available, but come on: The people who know how to use it are barely the people who need it.

To conclude this blog post, I have a message to Microsoft: Stop abusing your update service, and let customers choose themselves!

Changing Network Provider order in Windows

2006-11-01T00:10:00.000-08:00

Problem: I needed to put the "Microsoft Windows Network" network provider on top of the other (Novell Netware) providers. This is to get rid of the 15 second delay the Novell client does when trying to access a Windows file server.

This is pretty easy to do manually (Network Connections->Advanced->Advanced Settings->Provider Order), but a little more difficult to do manually. The registry key "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider\Order\ProviderOrder" lists the providers as a comma separated string, for example "NetwareWorkstation,RDPNP,LanmanWorkstation,WebClient"

Unfortunately, the installed providers aren't really predictable. For example, if the computer has PointSec drive encryption installed, a provider named "PssoCM32" is listed somewhere in the end of the string.

Solution: Read the string from the registry, split it up, create a new string beginning with "LanmanWorkstation" (which of course is the "Microsoft Windows Network" provider), attach the rest of the providers to the new string, in the same order they were originally listed.

VBScript Code (successfully made unreadable by blogger.com, but is copy-pasteable to Notepad):

'
' ChangeProviderOrder.vbs, by Anders Olsson, Kentor Teknik AB, 2006-10-31
'
' Reads the "Network provider order" from the registry and reorders it putting
' the "Microsoft Windows Networking" provider on top.
'
' Example: Before - "NCredMgr,NetwareWorkstation,RDPNP,LanmanWorkstation,WebClient"
' would become "LanmanWorkstation,NCredMgr,NetwareWorkstation,RDPNP,WebClient" after
' running this script.
'

Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

' Read the reg value of the providers
strKey = WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider\Order\ProviderOrder")

' Split the strings up using comma (ASCII #44) as the delimiter
arrProvs = Split(strKey, chr(44), -1, 1)

' If LanmanWorkstation is already first, we don't have to do anything
If arrProvs(0) = "LanmanWorkstation" Then
Wscript.Quit(0)
end if

' "LanmanWorkstation" should always start the string
strNewProvs = "LanmanWorkstation"

' Loop through the old provider strings, and add them to the new string. Don't
' write LanmanWorkstation, since it's already written at the start of the string.
For Each strProv In arrProvs
Select Case strProv
Case "LanmanWorkstation"
Case Else strNewProvs = strNewProvs & "," & strProv
End Select
Next

' Write the new string back to the registry
WshShell.RegWrite "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider\Order\ProviderOrder", strNewProvs, "REG_SZ"

Solving error 0x80070003 in Windows Update / Automatic Updates

2005-11-10T14:43:00.000-08:00

I posted a solution to error 0x80070003 on this forum:

Solving error 0x80070003 in WU/AU

Ok, it's in swedish, so here's a translation of the solution steps:

1. Stop the service Automatic Updates
2. Erase everything in the folder C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download
3. Start the service Automatic Updates
4. Run "wuwuclt /detectnow"
5. Wait for all the updates do download again (important, because otherwise you'll get the same error again)
6. Start the installation of the updates as usual

My very own PasteOff script

2005-11-05T18:34:00.001-08:00

PasteOff is a really neat little utility which allows you to quickly save screen shots and stuff to files. Please see the authors page for more info about it.

My personal contribution to PasteOff is a script which automatically opens a Windows Explorer window containing the recently created file.

Just create a cmd file containing the following line:

explorer.exe %1\..

Save in any folder, and tell PasteOff to "Run this program against the saved image". Voila! It opens a window after saving an image using PasteOff.

Firefox "bug" is a real showstopper

2005-02-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

I've become really annoyed over a certain "bug" in Firefox (FF) which makes FF save it's web cache files in the wrong directory ("%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox" instead of "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox")

This little misconfiguration makes FF nearly unusable in corporate environments which make use of redirected or roaming profiles, because the cache files are saved onto a server across the network, instead of being saved on the conputer's local hard drive, which is much faster.

Reading the last comments made on the bugzilla page for this bug, some people suggest the developers of Firefox are deliberately delaying the fixing of this bug to prevent FF from succeeding in large Windows environments. Personally, I don't think that's the case, but I really can't understand why this bug hasn't been fixed in the three years it has been open.

If you want this bug to be fixed, please register a Bugzilla account (here) and vote for the bug to be fixed (here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=74085). You can also subscribe to change notifications of the bug to keep track of what's happening.

Let's do this good, and get rid of IE once and for all! :)

My very first blog post

2005-01-09T03:51:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. This is merely a test post to try out the features of blogger.com. I'll be back with more real life Windows experiences later, unless I decide to change the name of this blog to something better. Perhaps the blog should reflect more about my life in general or something? Naah, I don't think anyone would want to waste their time reading it. :)

Anyhow, this is my first experience installing Suse Linux (since I happened to have some screenshots of that lying around):

This is just what a user wants to see at the first startup :)

Firefox fonts looking nice