Monthly Archives: February 2009

Government and corporate: rules and legislation… has it gone too far?

Computer Aid Posted on by

I have a friend that regularly sends me “funny” emails (we all have one, don’t we?).

At the bottom of his email, he has the following sig:

UNIX was not designed to stop its users from doing stupid things,
as that would also stop them from doing clever things.

I think its very clever (and true).

Then I started to think: A similar phrase can be applied to many areas.

eg:

Google won’t stop its employees from doing stupid things,
as that would also stop them from doing clever things.

Of course, some might say the opposite might be true for Microsoft… 🙂

Or with Governments (you might disagree with me on this one):

Australia won’t protect its citizens from doing stupid things (with silly laws),
as that would also stop them from doing clever things.

And I’m sure you will find many countries that push their citizens to mediocrity either via legislation (most of Europe springs to mind), or via the military, or via religious propaganda… or even all of the above.

I wonder if there is a lesson here, that we can all learn from?

Here are some examples of what I mean:

– Pencil cases banned from a primary school in Manchester, in case they hide sharp objects

– Sunscreen banned from a primary shcool in Manchester, due to allergy fears

– Dudley council banns foam floats from pools, in case they hit swimmers

DisablePagingExecutive and LargeSystemCache = XP corruption

Computer Aid Posted on by

I recently added a few XP tuning techniques to my “bag of tricks”.

In particular:

  • HKLMsystemCurrentControlSetControlSessionManagerMemoryManagementDisablePagingExecutive = 1
  • HKLMsystemCurrentControlSetControlSessionManagerMemoryManagementLargeSystemCache = 1
  • from the command prompt: fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1

I did this to about 5 different PCs, with no bad side effects, and a noticeable improvement in speed.

But then I setup 2 customer computers, everything seemed fine (at first) but then the PCs would gradually start to “deteriorate” and show some very unusual symptoms (each PC showed a subset of the following errors):

  • Outlook express is very slow and sometimes will not print
  • XP takes a long time to start up (>10 minutes) and sometimes doesn’t shutdown properly.
  • MS updates give error 0x80070008 or 0x80244022
  • After a normal shutdown, XP will do a chkdsk at the next startup
  • XP says that no firewall is turned on (but when I run the XP firewall app, I can see its turned on and running normally.
  • Installing webcams and scanners either won’t work, or will stop working after a few reboots.
  • Logitech quickcam ptz install: cannot install hardware (code 39). The driver may be corrupted or missing)
  • BSOD in file USBCAMD.sys (0x0000007E)
  • BSOD while viewing webcam (0x0000008E)
  • Error installing AVG (error E0018E06)
  • Stack overflow in IE7
  • Avira AntiVir will not update
  • corrupt windows user profiles

I did countless rebuilds and ghost images to track down an intermittent problem with 2 brand new systems.

I was suspecting all sorts of hardware faults.

I eventually found the source to be either one or both of: DisablePagingExecutive and LargeSystemCache.

Apparently, these “tweaks” can conflict with some device drivers in very unpredictable ways 🙁

What made it more difficult, is that one system didn’t show any problems until I started installing webcams and video capture devices… so I naturally assumed faults with the hardware.

I finally figured it out when I did yet another fresh install of XP, then installed the webcams, etc immediately afterwards… then I made ghost images at every step afterwards, until I found the cause.

at least I can say that the command:

fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1

causes me no problems, but doesn’t make for a noticeable increase in speed. It can only cause problems in certain backup programs that rely on a files access date.

Do you have a favorite tweak for improving the performance of your PC?

MS antispyware 2009 removal

Computer Aid Posted on by

Recently, I’ve been finding that SuperAntiSpyware has been doing a great job at removing some very difficult infections. Particularly when I run Superantispyware from ubcd4win and downloading the latest updates before doing a scan.

But as of end of Jan 2009, SuperAntiSpyware hasn’t been able to completely remove MS AntiSpyware 2009.

At least SAS gets the PC into a usable state, but MSAntiSpyware 2009 is still there, as each scan detects the same registry entry.

What makes it difficult, is that MSAntiSpyware 2009 also disables regedit, and also disables the tools -> folder options, within windows explorer.

What this means is: you cannot manually scan the registry to remove traces of MSAntiSpyware2009, and you cannot look into the user temp folder, in order to remove infected files.

So, to get regedit working again, I downloaded and ran the Enable Regedit VBScript by Doug Knox.

At this point, make sure you have already run SuperAntiSpyware, and allowed it to fix as much as it can.

You also MUST be an Administrator user.

I then enabled tools -> folder options,  by using regedit to go to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorer

and change:

NoFolderOptions = 0 (ie zero)

I then start windows explorer, select tools -> folder options -> view:

  • tick: display the contents of system folders
  • tick: show hidden files and folders
  • untick: hide extensions for known file types
  • untick: hide protected operating system files

NB: remember to reverse these settings when you are finished.

Use Windows Explorer to go to:

c:Documents and Settings[your user name]local settingstemp

remove all files in this folder

You probably won’t be able to remove files like perflib_XXX.dat : just skip the files and delete the others.

Now run regedit, and click on “my computer” at the top, then do edit -> find

Do a search for msantispyware, CrucialSoft, antispyware2009, antispyware 2009

Remove any entries you find.

NOTE: some entries will be protected and cannot be removed… to remove them:

  • right-click on the folder -> permissions
  • check that either your user, administrators, or “everyone” has “full control” of the folder.
  • If no users exist, then click add -> enter an “object name” eg your user name, or administrators
  • click “check name”, then OK if it finds the correct user.
  • repeat the permission changes on all sub-folders, until you can delete the original entry.

Scan again with superantispyware, and restart the PC when asked.

After the restart, scan again with Superantispyware, and you should now have a clean PC.