Frequently you need to uninstall some software which is causing your system grief, but you can’t uninstall it in safe mode. Follow these instructions to enable the windows installer.
You simply need to create a registry entry the type of safe mode you want to use:
Safe Mode:
REG ADD “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\ MSIServer”/VE/T REG_SZ /F/D”Service”
Safe Mode with Network:
REG ADD “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\ MSIServer”/VE/T REG_SZ/F/D”Service”
Then start the Windows Installer service by typing “net start msiserver”.
This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.
There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.
Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it.
It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
Moral of the story: make sure you identify WHO is responsible for everything you request. Don’t send an email addressed to a group of people and expect that any one of those people will just assume responsibility. Just because it’s important to you, doesn’t mean it’s important to the people you sent your email to. Focus your attention on an individual, and confirm their acceptance of responsibility.
Exchange memory management follows the “Law of Two Year Olds”, which goes something like this:
If it’s in my hands, it’s mine.
If I like it, it’s mine.
If it looks like mine, it’s mine.
If I saw it first, it’s mine.
If I can take it away from you, it’s mine.
If I had it a while ago, it’s still mine.
If I’m doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
If you put something down within my reach, it’s mine.
If it’s mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
If it’s broken, I didn’t do it.
If you have one, where’s mine?
Pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?
Mon.itor.us is a free server and traffic monitoring service and part of Monitis family, which provides professional, premium all-in-one monitoring service, integrating application performance with backend infrastructure with cloud monitoring.
There are others out there (siteuptime, internetseer).
Anyone using any of these services? Comments?
Frequently you need to process files in a folder but don’t want to deal with 0-byte files… so how do delete these pesky files in your script? Easy – in one line:
for /f “tokens=* delims=” %%F in (‘dir /s/b/a-d d:\folder’) do (if 0 equ %%~zF del “%%F”)
You can use the same technique for files that are smaller than a certain size, or bigger than a certain size by replacing EQU with LSS or GTR.
I love MAME and have wanted to build my own MAME cabinet for a long time. The closest I’ve gotten is an X-Arcade joystick mounted to a bakers rack at a comfortable height. I ran across this the other day and thought it was a nice look – retro gaming in an ultramodern shell:
And how about this one for the inspiration from 1971:
Source: http://www.retrothing.com/2008/08/retro-space-21s.html
So I go to install a new USB GPS receiver and the install CD that comes with the device is calling for a driver – ser2pl.sys. Odd that it wouldn’t be on the driver CD – but ok, I’ll go find it and download it from the web.
After a quick Google search I go to a couple sites and end up at floridaprobe.com and voila – I have myself a copy of the driver. Now I can install the driver and see the device in Device Manager. But my navigation software still doesn’t see any data, and as an added bonus my machine has learned how to BSOD with a root cause of ser2pl.sys. Great.
Back to Google I go, following the rabbit hole to a bunch of message boards who all tell me to visit tech.prolific.com.tw to get version 2.0.2.8 of the same driver (the one from Florida Probe was version 1.3.0.1). That site is no longer good, and you get redirected to the “new” support site. Seems promising, but no joy – the file doesn’t actually appear to be downloadable from their site – at least not from the section marked Downloads for GPS – where you might expect to find it.
But, if you go to the section for USB, I/O Port Controllers, PL2303 you can download the file you need. Here’s the link directly to the file: http://www.prolific.com.tw/ support/ files/ /IO%20Cable /PL-2303HX /Drivers /Generic /PL2303_XP2KME98Driver_Setup.zip
The Download page has more versions (64 bit, Mac, etc.) but they don’t seem to support Vista.
You can also try downloading the ser2pl.sys directly from here.
If you have strange name resolution on your network, it could indicate a DNS poisoning, DNS hijacking, or it could just be that you need to clear your cache.
First, check your DNS forwarders to make sure they are set up appropriately. If you don’t trust your DNS provider, or have any reason to suspect they may be having an issue, you can temporarily change your forwarders to a public DNS server (recently I’ve been really digging OpenDNS (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 – but there are certainly others out there). Once you get things straightened out you can always switch back to whoever you had originally.
A good place to start, though, is to clear out all your caches. Here are some of the places you might need to check for (and clear) the bad entries:
– Your local cache (ipconfig /flushdns)
– Your AD Domain Controllers (Go to the DNS console, turn on advanced view, right click on the cache and choose “clear cache”)
– Your ISA server (you must use the command line tool dnstools /c – you need to download this from Microsoft – search for dns cache tool for isa or look at isatools.org)
– Other proxy-like appliances installed in your enviroment
As always, when trying to solve this type of problem, “be the packet”: follow the path from you to the Internet and leave no stone unturned along the way.
Many people still don’t understand ftp and how to use it. To make FTP usage easier for people you can embed the username and password in the URL (of course then it’s plain text, but if you’re sending it directly to someone they are going to know the password anyway).
This also comes in handy on those occasions when you need to use IE as your FTP client and it refuses to prompt your for a username and password.
Here’s the format: ftp://user:password@ftpserver.com
When you try to install a program that uses the Windows Installer in Microsoft Windows XP, the program does not install, and you may receive an error message that is similar to one of the following error messages :
* The Windows Installer service could not be accessed. Contact your support personnel to verify that the Windows Installer service is properly registered.
* The Windows Installer service failed to start. Contact your support personnel.
* Internal Error
To resolve this issue, use one or more of the following methods in the order that they are listed.
Method 1: Reregister the Windows Installer
1. Quit all Windows programs.
2. Click Start, click Run, type msiexec /unregister in the Open box
3. Click Start, click Run, type msiexec /regserver in the Open box
4. Restart your computer.
Method 2: Remove the Windows Installer files
1. Quit all Windows programs.
2. Execute msiexec /unregister in the Open box
3. In Windows Explorer, rename the following files in the %systemroot%\System32 folder: Msi.dll, Msihnd.dll, Msiexec.exe
4. Restart Windows XP.
Method 3: Restart Windows XP in Safe Mode
Restart Windows XP in Safe Mode, and then retry Method 1 and Method 2 in the order that they are listed.
For more information about how to restart Windows XP in Safe Mode, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 316434 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316434/) How to perform advanced clean-boot troubleshooting in Windows XP
