Fencepost Software & Consulting

Removing IE9 from Windows 7 (and keeping it off)

Alan — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 01:07:36 +0000

Update: This article covers removal, see the IE9 Blocker Toolkit from Microsoft to keep it from installing. If you’re looking for registry options, the important values are DoNotAllowIE90 and DoNotOfferIE90 in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\9.0.

I’ve had to remove Internet Explorer 9 from a variety of new PCs lately because they’re connecting to online services (hospitals, medical labs, radiology services, etc.) that are not yet compatible with the new version, including issues in Compatibility mode. I’ve also needed to provide instructions (now reproduced here) for some physicians to do the same on home PCs so they can connect into those same systems.

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Post tags: Fixes, Microsoft, Office IT, Troubleshooting, Windows

Viewing DICOM (Medical) CDs on Windows 7

Alan — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:39:25 +0000

Of the large number of medical practices shifting to Electronic Medical Records/EMR most are also updating older PCs at the same time. Updating to Windows 7 (generally 64-bit) raises compatibility problems with older medical imaging CDs and with current CDs created with older versions of software. In my case, I have two customers who’ve recently replaced many of their PCs with systems running Windows 7 x64, particularly for the physicians. Both experienced problems viewing diagnostic images (DICOM) on discs using eFilm Lite, but the same issues may apply to other packages as well. When this happens, it’s necessary to either use a different software package or (possibly) jump through some hoops to use a different version of the bundled software.

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Post tags: Medical, Windows

Simple Rules for Avoiding Malware in Email

Alan — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 06:04:38 +0000

Here’s a bit of a writeup I did for some folks who were being hit with a bout of malware email messages (the actual attachments were being removed by our filters).

The message(s) you received were an attempt to infect your computer with malware, the mail server on receiving the message removed the dangerous attachment but in general if you receive an attachment that you’re not expecting, do not open it – malware writers are creative and may come up with something that the mail server won’t block, at least not while the attack is new. This is the first attempt I remember seeing that pretended to be travel arrangements, but it’s not a surprising development.

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Post tags: Email, Malware, Phishing, Scams, Security, Spam, Virus

USB Bluetooth on Kubuntu 11.04 (Natty)

Alan — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 04:44:19 +0000

I recently ended up with an ASUS Eee-PC tablet/netbook (T101MT) to play with. Reviews for the system were less than stellar, based in large part on it shipping with Windows 7 Starter edition (which is lacking in both features and good touchscreen/tablet support), so after a bit of partition rearrangement to free up space, I installed Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal on it – the same thing I’m using on my desktop.

The Ubuntu community has good support and documentation for both this machine and for running Ubuntu and Kubuntu on netbooks, so getting everything going was remarkably painless with two notable exceptions: getting a USB Bluetooth adapter working, and getting the screen to lock when I manually put the tablet to sleep (after a little fiddling with screen savers & settings, it locks fine if it goes to sleep due to idle timeout). I’ve seen some recommendations for the sleep locking issue and will pursue that later, but in this article I’ll do a bit of diagnosing and configuring to get Bluetooth working.

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Post tags: Bluetooth, Fixes, Linux, Troubleshooting

National MS Society Fundraising Walk

Alan — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:57:02 +0000

I and several neighbors will be participating participated in the National MS Society fundraising walk in Chicago’s northwest suburbs on May 2, 2010. If you’d like to sponsor our team (The College Hillers) please visit my Walk MS Personal Page.

We do have a commitment from a private party to match the contributions we receive and we haven’t hit the limit on that yet, so anything you donate will effectively be doubled.

The walk was a great success, and we (our local team and the event as a whole) did a great job!

ESVACommunity.com is the new home for ESVA (Email Security Virtual Appliance) (2011-August)

Alan — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:04:05 +0000

Update 2011-10-13:
ESVA is now at the ESVA Community – Email Security Virtual Appliance site. Registration for the previous site at global-domination.org expired and attempts to re-register it were unsuccessful, so that site is now serving ads. Please visit the ESVA Community Forums for information on how to upgrade your installation, etc.

The title of this post has been changed from “ESVA Website (global-domination.org) Down, Probably Permanently, 2010-March, Back 2010-July” to help people find the new community development site. All active links to the old site have been disabled to avoid directing traffic to the domain squatter.

Update 2011-08-07:

At this point it appears that Andy MacLachlan, the creator of ESVA, has moved on in his life and no longer has time to be involved with development and maintenance of ESVA or the global-domination.org website. Several of the more active forum members have set up the ESVA Community site at http://www.esvacommunity.com/, including ESVA Forums. The future of the global-domination.org site is up in the air at this point but may clarify in the next couple of weeks (I’m attempting to register the domain to link to the ESVA Community site).

Update 2010-08-07: Several updates of note pulled from the comments.

The main site and Andy are back, see the last few comments for more info.
Downloads of 2.0.5.7 are available, see the 2010-04-08 update at the end of this post.
Updates beyond 2.0.5.7 are not currently available, but people are working on it.
Most discussion should probably be moving to the ESVA Interim Forums at http://rbe1.de/ESVA
There is a semi-commercial fork of the project at ESVA.Libra.IT, there has been some controversy over it but the developers of that project are also involved in the discussions and further project work at the forums. It also has its own forum.

Update 2010-04-12: The problem is being worked on; read for details.

Just a note because I’ve been seeing searches hit my site looking for information on this.

The Email Security Virtual Appliance (ESVA) website is down, I do not have any information on why but it doesn’t appear to be a domain registration or DNS issue – it’s something on the hosting side. I’ve been unsuccessful in contacting the creator/maintainer of ESVA, but I wasn’t corresponding with him before so I don’t have a known-good email address – just two old ones that may not still be in use. He does travel for business and has disappeared from the ‘net in the past while doing so, so everything may be restored at any time if he’s simply out of contact.

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List of USB Flash Drives with Hardware Write Protection Switch

Alan — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 05:14:48 +0000

Frequently when troubleshooting or cleaning PCs (ah, the joys of small business IT) it’s useful to have a bundle of tools that you can use. I generally use multiboot antivirus CDs created with Shardana Antivirus Rescue Disc Utility (SARDU) with additional utilities put in the Extras directory, but sometimes it’s hard to beat the convenience of a USB flash drive. Unfortunately very few flash drives still have the hardware write protect switch that was common years ago.

Here’s a listing of drives that still include that hardware write protection, along with some other options that might work though not as well. This listing is based on reports from several discussion boards in 2009-2010 as well as a list prepared and maintained by c’t Magazine (German) (or via Google Translate). Where available I provide links to the manufacturers and possibly to stores where the drives are available. Please comment with any corrections or additional drives to be added to the list.

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Post tags: Hardware, Malware, Reference, Security, USB

(Fix) Postfix: Recipient address rejected: Domain not found

Alan — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:42:54 +0000

We had a problem last weekend with Postfix not accepting email for a single domain when it was coming from outside our network, while messages from hosts on the local network were accepted and routed with no problems. Messages from outside the network were rejected with a 450 (temporary) code and the error message “Recipient address rejected: Domain not found”. The cause did end up being a DNS problem (apparently the most common kind of issue with Postfix), but not one that I would have expected (a missing host entry for the top-level domain, so example.com wouldn’t resolve even though mail.example.com did). Finding the source of the problem was complicated because of a set of several changes during a weekend maintenance window.

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© Alan Miller/Fencepost Software & Consulting, 2010. All Rights Reserved. | Permalink & Comments
Post tags: Email, Fixes, Linux, Troubleshooting

Configuring apcupsd on Linux for Multiple USB UPSes

Alan — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:18:04 +0000

I recently needed to add monitoring of a UPS powering network equipment to a Linux server already monitoring one USB-connected UPS. Since the second UPS also uses a USB connection for monitoring apcpusd (the standard UPS management package for Linux systems) was not seeing it. This is not a fault of the software – it’s designed to work pretty much seamlessly with detection of a single UPS and does so, but autodetectin multiple battery backups would still require some level of manual configuration – at the very least, which one(s) are powering the monitoring system in case it needs to shut down? The solution is to set up udev rules to let the system recognize each attached UPS as a distinct device using the serial number of the UPS, then follow the instructions for managing multiple UPSes in the manual.(...)
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Post tags: Battery Backup, Hardware, Linux, Office IT, Open Source, UPS

(Fix) OpenOffice.org Hangs When I Start Typing

Alan — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 05:21:03 +0000

I ran into a minor difficulty recently on a Linux desktop PC (CentOS 5.4) updated to the recently released OpenOffice.org 3.2, specifically the Go-Oo.org variant that includes some options and tweaks left out of the primary branch. OpenOffice.org 3.2 would start without difficulties, but as soon as I started to type the application would completely freeze up or hang. I only checked this in Calc and Writer, but I suspect that it applies to all of the other components as well and from what I’ve read it’s not specific to CentOS (or other RedHat-derived distributions).

After a bit of searching, I ended up at this thread: OpenOffice-3.0.1 hangs if SCIM is active. Boiled down to something for those not interested in the technical details, OpenOffice.org 3.x has problems with some configurations of SCIM, the “Smart Common Input Method platform.”
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Post tags: Fixes, Linux, Troubleshooting

Email Marketing – Use A Service

Alan — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 04:52:12 +0000

I occasionally get requests from clients for assistance with sending out email marketing to their existing clients. My advice in these situations is always the same: Use A Service.

Every client that I’ve dealt with that’s interested in this kind of marketing starts out planning to do it using their regular email account, but there are good reasons not to do so. The reasons for using a service break down into three key areas: creation of your content, distribution of your content, and management of your address list. Keep reading for some notes on those.

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Post tags: Email, Free Services, Marketing, Office IT

Monochrome Laser Printer TCO/Cost – Preliminary Results

Alan — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:44:58 +0000

I’m regularly asked by customers “Which laser printer should we get?” or “What’s the cheapest good laser printer?” Here’s an initial stab at answering those questions. I’ve been pulling together some numbers on the costs to purchase & run assorted monochrome laser printers. While there’s still work to be done on tracking down some items like maintenance kit part numbers and prices, none of the outstanding information is likely to lower the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a printer.

The preliminary numbers have surprised me quite a bit.

Brother – a company I’ve always looked at as being a good choice for a home printer – is hands-down the winner on a pure cost standpoint over almost the entire range of print volumes.
Hewlett-Packard/HP, which I knew would command a price premium, is never even within 15% of the best TCO, with toner costs in its low- to mid-range LaserJet printers more than twice most other manufacturers.
Lexmark, another brand that I expected to be somewhat pricey, was within 15% of the best TCO only with one low-end printer under very light loads typical of household use.
Dell, while the numbers are incomplete, looks like a very solid value for higher-volume printing or over the long term (300,000+ pages)

Read More for print volume numbers and some specific printers.

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Post tags: Office IT, Printing

Calculating Printer Costs and TCO

Alan — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:08:30 +0000

I’m currently working up an article on the total cost of ownership (TCO) for printers and choosing printers for your office, but while I work on the details (including researching costs for a variety of printers) here’s some information on the calculations involved. This is important for small to midsize offices because the variation in cost between different printer manufacturers and between low-end, midrange and high-end printers can add up to thousands of dollars a year in consumables.

Currently I’m only focusing on monochrome/black & white laser printers. The same calculations can be applied to color and multifunction/all-in-one printers as far as printing is concerned, but they don’t take into account the potential added value of the additional features (and volume of color printing will vary by office). I’m also not factoring in the cost of paper, since it’s effectively a constant – it’s unlikely that paper cost will vary based on which printer is chosen.

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Post tags: Office IT, Printing

Slow Startup with Multiple ‘Starting’ Services After Malware

Alan — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:02:18 +0000

I had an interesting problem with a server (Windows 2003 Standard) at a small business (6 users total) the other day – a very long startup time. The server in question is a standalone domain controller/DC as well as a database/application server and file/print server. Terminal Services is installed & configured, but rarely used – mostly for access from outside the office. Database and domain services/authentication were available fairly quickly, as were console logins (via UltraVNC/uVNC) – probably 15-20 minutes to that stage, but more than an hour before terminal services/remote desktop was available.

Digging around on the console attempting to track down the source of the problems, I found multiple services listed as “Starting” – all of them malware-based, with the actual infection cleaned out. My suspicion is that these non-startable services were causing the startup of other services to be delayed, though in this case I’m not really planning on setting up a test system to verify that.

In the rest of this post I’ll give a bit more detail on the scenario, what I found, what was needed to clean it out, and a few more notes on what I suspect was happening.

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Post tags: Fixes, Malware, Office IT, Repair, Troubleshooting, Virus, Windows

Information Design and Graphics

Alan — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:47:09 +0000

While unrelated to most of the content of this site, I’d like to call your attention to David McCandless’ blog Information Is Beautiful (about graphics and data visualization) and in particular to a very nice piece on What Makes Good Information Design? – in particular the key dimensions of Interestingness, Integrity, Function and Form. Obvious in some ways, but still worth considering. Read the comments as well – there’s some worthwhile discussion in there.

He also has a few items related to medical statistics, one of which I’ve passed along to customers: How Safe is the HPV vaccine? (admittedly a controversial subject, as reflected in the comments).

(Fix) “Another Installation is Already In Progress’ installing Office 2007 over Office 2000′

Alan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:43:34 +0000

Ran into an interesting problem this evening – I was helping someone who was having problems with installing Office 2007 on an XP system with Office 2000 (I believe Professional) installed. The problem was that when the actual installation process started, it would hang up because another installation was running.

The standard fix for that is restarting the system to let the in-progress installation do the processing that it needs a system restart for, but in this case that wasn’t the issue.

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Avoid VBScript for Web Apps

Alan — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:40:32 +0000

Earlier this week I spent some time troubleshooting a browser-based application that a client is using. The problem cropped up on a PC with a clean install of Windows XP SP3 after assorted system corruption that wasn’t worth the time to repair.

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(Fix) When DNS and ping Fail but nslookup Works (Windows)

Alan — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:59:07 +0000

Spent some time recently with a Windows XP laptop that would see networks fine (although IP address acquisition via DHCP seemed slower than I’d expect), but which was unable to resolve names with DNS. This was affecting IE, Firefox, ping, basically anything that used the built-in Winsock calls such as gethostbyname(). NSLookup, on the other hand, worked just fine.

The first thing to do when facing any computer problem is to figure out where the problem lies, so it was time for a bit of sleuthing.

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Choosing Printers for the Office

Alan — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:17:05 +0000

For many small businesses, when it’s time to add or replace a printer in your office it’s easy to just go to an office supply store and buy whatever’s on sale. It’s also almost always a mistake.

It’s worth doing at least a little research when you’re purchasing technology items, particularly for items that you expect to last or that use consumables – specifically printers and fax machines. Because of the use of paper, toner or ink and possibly maintenance supplies, the up-front purchase price of a printer or fax machine is only a very small part of the total cost you’ll pay over several years of ownership. There may also be a surprisingly significant difference in setup costs between different pieces of equipment if you’re paying a third party to set up equipment and get it working for you.

This article leads off a series of occasional articles on purchasing printers for your office with a quick overview of some of the issues that I’ll examine in more detail in future articles.

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(Fix) r3953724.cn Malware/Adware Redirections

Alan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:34:02 +0000

Quick Fix: have a program named procmon.exe running (copy of notepad.exe) to disable malware temporarily. This should let you run searches & download fixes. This is only temporary while you clean the system. Read this post for more details and please let me know in comments if this does or does not work for you.

Update/Fix:

The system did indeed have a corrupted atapi.sys file as noted in the comments, though I did not end up using ComboFix to clean it – I was able to replace the file with the identically-sized but binary-different one from the most recent service pack (C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386\atapi.sys) and have not seen the same problem recurring.

In addition, if you need to prevent it from redirecting while you download fixes, you may be able to simply copy notepad.exe (or another common executable) to the name procmon.exe and run that. Last night while I still had the infection active it did not seem to redirect while procmon was running under that name, possibly as a measure to avoid detection.

At this point (several days after initial infection, more than a week after initial reports in the wild) I suspect that many of the tools linked below are updated with definitions that cover this malware so you can probably get by with simply running updated versions of those.

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