Satola » Technology

Disable Automatic Reboot after Windows Updates on Windows XP Home and Pro

Chris Satola — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:24:41 +0000

If you are reading this post, you are probably about as annoyed as I am about seeing the following:

Well, after a bit of googling I found the fix! Best part about it is that it’s quite simple to fix whether you have XP Pro or Home. Check it out at Code Retard. Hopefully this helps you as much as it did me.

Share This Post!

.SQL Files launch a new instance of SQL Server Management Studio instead of opening a new query window (Windows 7)

Chris Satola — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:14:27 +0000

I had an issue where doubleclicking on a .SQL file always launched a new instance of SSMS instead of just creating a new query window. Needless to say, it was a bit annoying. Usually, you would fix this by deleting and recreating the file association. Well, thanks to Microsoft’s wonderful engineers, Windows Vista and 7 users don’t have the ability to delete a file association.

After some experimentation and research, I found a simple fix. If you execute the following registry edit, you should be okay (it worked for me).

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.sql]
"PerceivedType"="text"
@="sqlwb.sql.9.0"

Share This Post!

Exmerge – Permissions Error

Chris Satola — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:26:32 +0000

When running the Microsoft Exmerge utility, you may receive the following error in your exmerge.log file:

Error opening message store (MSEMS). Verify that the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service is running and that you have the correct permissions to log on. (0x8004011d)

Even though you may be a Domain Admin or Enterprise Admin, you will still receive this. In fact, you are at a distinct disadvantage being in either of these groups. In order to run Exmerge, you must have “Send As” and “Receive As” rights on the Exchange Mailbox Store that holds the given users mailbox. Domain Admins and Enterprise Admins have implicit DENY policies in this.

Resolution:
1. Open “System Manager”.
2. Drill down to the applicable Mailbox Store.
3. Right click on the store and go to “Properties”.
4. On the “Security” tab, add your user and ensure “Receive As” and “Send As” are allowed.

This should resolve the issue. The other consequences of this is that any user you add here will be granted FULL control of all mailboxes within this store. Use with caution.

Share This Post!

sysprep fails on Windows 2008 Server Enterprise and Standard

Chris Satola — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:32:00 +0000

When running sysprep tool with the /generalize switch on Windows Server 2008 Standard, I received the following errors (viewable in C:\Windows\System32\sysprep\panther\setupact.log):

Error [0x0f0082] SYSPRP LaunchDll:Failure occurred while executing ‘C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer returned error code 2
Error [0x0f0070] SYSPRP RunExternalDlls:An error occurred while running registry sysprep DLLs, halting sysprep
execution. dwRet = 2
Error [0x0f00a8] SYSPRP WinMain:Hit failure while processing sysprep cleanup providers; hr = 0×80070002

The problem is that there is not a “RunOnce” key in the following registry location:

hklm\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\

To resolve, simply add this key to the CurrentVersion folder and run sysprep again. Worked for me.

Share This Post!

Android Phones coming soon to Verizon

Chris Satola — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 02:04:06 +0000

Well, Verizon and Google had a joint press conference announcing the soon coming release of two Android powered Smartphones on the Verizon network. While they didn’t give many specific details, they said the release would be “in the coming weeks”. While they didn’t specify what phones, Verizon CEO and Google CEO were holding what seems to be the HTC Hero and the Motorola “Sholes/Tao/Droid”.

Some details have surfaced. The Motorola phone will be named “Droid” and according to reports, the release date seems to be October 30th. If this pans out to be true, have no fear… there will be quite a bit of review posts coming as I will be buying one that day! I cannot wait! More to come…

Share This Post!

Microsoft breaks Firefox – go figure…

Chris Satola — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:52:43 +0000

We all know that Microsoft hates their competition and will do anything to eliminate it (but not before stealing it’s technology). While you may think it’s just another bug in Microsoft’s programming, some seem to think they are trying to sabotage Firefox and their growing market-share.

A while back, Microsoft silently installed an addon to the Firefox browser for .NET framework. It wasn’t something you could opt out of, it wasn’t something you were told about, and it is something that’s hard to remove. Now they’ve gone farther and caused enormous security flaws in FireFox with their latest spread of addons and have even admitted it, recommends uninstalling it.

Well, my first thought is yay Microsoft. Take a browser far more secure, far faster, and more feature rich than IE, and then try killing it. You guys rock! Sounds like a great plan for taking a browser that’s sure to overcome IE in market-share and expose it to the same flaws as IE, so IT Professionals will want to remove it from their networks. Here’s an idea – stay away from shit that isn’t yours. Let FireFox be and if they are better than you, deal with it. Here’s a thought — focus on putting out a good product that can beat FireFox fairly instead of focusing on bringing other browsers down to IE’s crappy level. What’s next? Sabotage Android so it sucks like Windows Mobile? Please… I beg of you… STAY AWAY FROM FIREFOX AND ANDROID!!!

Share This Post!

Scheduled Tasks in Windows Server 2003 – Executing a Batch File – Error: Could not start

Chris Satola — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:48:55 +0000

When executing a batch file via scheduled task, cmd.exe is called by the user the task is running as. If you use the default user, or a user with administrative rights, it works perfectly. What happens when you want to lock down permissions and run the task as a non-administrative user? Chances are, you will see a permissions error that says “Could not start”. The problem is that the user does not have rights to run the command prompt (cmd.exe).

To resolve this, give the user account that the scheduled task is running under “Read” and “Execute” rights to cmd.exe (Default: C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe).

Share This Post!

Jared Newman, PC World – You got it wrong this time.

Chris Satola — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:17:41 +0000

Network Woes? Hate the iPhone, Not AT&T – PC World

Historically speaking, AT&T has always had horrible service reception, dropped calls and customer service. Not to mention frequent billing mistakes that take months to fix if they ever do get fixed. I personally had to call the FCC and PUCO to file federal disputes with AT&T before they would resolve my billing problems. Blame the iPhone? Come on – you have GOT to be kidding me. The only thing keeping AT&T in business these days is that they managed an exclusive deal with the iPhone and the world love Apple and their cool toy.

If Verizon could get their hands on a deal with Apple for the iPhone, I would bet anything their service would remain high, their coverage would remain top notch, their customer support people would still care about getting whatever issue you are calling about fixed and they would still have the least number of dropped calls in the nation.

AT&T disables services on their network because they love having control over people. They disable VoIP over their network because they want people using their limited minutes instead of their unlimited data for phone calls to increase the chance for overage charges and more profits for their CEO. Their rate plans are higher because there is nothing anyone can do about it. Devote followers of the iPhone will pay anything to have it. When there is no competition in an industry, you can charge whatever you want and nobody can say a word about it. This is why our government has laws restricting monopolies.

Jared Newman, PC World and my loyal blog readers, I leave you with this… Don’t blame the phone, blame the network. When Verizon gets the iPhone and everyone with AT&T switches, we will see the effects on the network. I got $20 saying Verizon does it right and backs their phones with the network to support it.

Share This Post!

Web Browser Market Share

Chris Satola — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:07:55 +0000

As a web developer, I like to know what browsers are likely to be hitting sites I design. There are many sources for this information on the net, but the numbers seem to vary greatly. Fortunately, I found a wikipedia page that has stats from several sources as well as the average among the listed services, helping to give a better view of what the approximate market share of the browsers is.

It’s no surprise that IE still owns a good percentage of the market, followed by FireFox. But what are the actual numbers? According to WikiPedia (see wiki here), they are:

Source	Month	Internet Explorer	Firefox	Safari	Chrome	Opera	Source
Net Applications	August 2009	66.97%	22.98%	4.07%	2.84%	2.04%	[1]
The Counter	July 2009	73.67%	18.06%	4.49%	0.00% (N/A)	0.86%	[2]
OneStat	March 2009	79.79%	15.59%	2.65%	0.86%	0.54%	[3]
Stat Counter	August 2009	58.69%	31.28%	3.25%	3.38%	2.67%	[4]
W3Counter	August 2009	52.36%	31.86%	4.35%	3.23%	1.19%	[5]
AT Internet	April 2009	63.60%	28.40%	3.40%	1.70%	2.20%	[6]
Median	August 2009	65.29%	25.69%	3.46%	2.84%	1.61%	—

My personal browser feelings are FireFox all the way. It seems most forgiving for developers, is faster than IE and has far less vulnerabilities. All that aside, the number one reason FireFox has kept my attention all these years are the addons. I could not live without having the tools that make my browsing experience that much better. The developer tools that help with CSS are priceless. IE Tab makes the use of IE when absolutly needed easier by allowing me to stay within FireFox and still render the site in IE.

Share This Post!

Video Game System Reliability Report is in!

Chris Satola — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:47:16 +0000

SquareTrade, a 3rd party video game warranty company, released a report giving their statistics of failed game systems (X360, PS3, WII). Not surprisingly, the X360 has the highest failure rate (typical of everything microsoft?) and the WII has the lowest (typical of Nintendo’s history).

In this report, the following is their summary:

X360 Failure Rate: 23.7%
PS3 Failure Rate: 11.7%
WII Failure Rate: 2.7%

Matt Peckham at PC World posted a good article on this seen here.

Personally, I have had good luck with my 360 at this point. No Red Rings yet – knock on proverbial wood.

Share This Post!