I was “offered” to select an option to upgrade, and since I had to log in, I agreed.

Well it seems like there’s another problem, my Windows Installer is out-of-date.

I couldn’t care less anymore, and went ahead to download the standalone installer from Softpedia.

The next problem? I couldn’t sign in because of error 80040154. After some investigations, it turns out that I have to install the Windows Live Communications Platform, which is bundled with the Windows Live installer (the installer with Windows Live Mail, etc.).

I decided to instead just reinstall the older version back (8.1), update Windows Installer, then allow Messenger to update itself. I wouldn’t want the junk that comes with the Windows Live installer.

I downloaded Windows Live Messenger, and guess what? I have to uninstall the current version installed (14.0.8089.726).

I went to Add/Remove Programs, and I just couldn’t find the Windows Live Messenger entry. Great stuff from Microsoft, eh?

After some research, I found out that to uninstall, I have to do it through the Command Prompt (CMD) using the command “msiexec”.

I still had the standalone installer which I used to install Messenger 2009 (Build 14.0.8089.726).

Solution

1. Open up Command Prompt.

   Windows XP
   Start > Run > cmd

   Windows Vista
   Click Start, click in the Start Search box, and then type command prompt. Under Programs, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.

2. Place the MSI installer file of Windows Live Messenger in C:\. In this example, my MSI installer file is Messenger.msi.
3. Type cd C:\ in the Command Prompt.
4. Type msiexec /x <MSI filename>. In my example, it would be msiexec /x Messenger.msi.

This method is only for those who installed through the standalone MSI installer.

This method may work for those who installed through the Windows Live installer, but you must locate the appropriate MSI installer.

I had to get a technician to clean my system out and through him I got to know AVG, which I had been using for the last 4 years.

So on Saturday, for the first time in 4 years, my system was infected, this time by a trojan. AVG went down in a matter of seconds.

I had Avast! setup file with me all along (I had wanted to find time to try it). I thought I might as well install it since AVG has died on me. But however I tried running its setup file setupeng.exe its process would just end on its own. No dialog, no window, nothing, it just starts and ends. I figure that it was caused by the trojan.

I opened up Task Manager and found a few suspicious processes – these processes did not have a proper name – and ended them.

I restarted my PC and found something new.

The icon was so fake, only unsuspecting users would fail to see that.

I managed to trace it to the following process and delete the file in question, using Process Explorer.

It was also on the startup list.

After some wild goose chase, I finally pinpoint it to a process called ctv<number>.exe (ctv1113.exe, ctv1923.exe, etc.). I find that this process had been popping up ads and IEXPLORE.exe (Internet Explorer) was running in the background when I wasn’t using it.

I killed the CTV processes at first, but it was able to spawn itself.

Using Process Explorer, I nailed it to igfxtray.exe.

A search online tells me that this is from Intel, but since when had Intel switched to the virus market?

Nevertheless, I thought I would just delete it and reinstall my Intel drivers again (my system is using Intel Extreme Graphics 2).

So I went to its containing folder, and I was surprised to find 2 igfxtray.exe. One was named igfxtray.exe, the other igfxtray .exe (noticed the spacing on the second one?).

I figured out that the one without spacing was actually the trojan, while the one with spacing was renamed by the trojan.

I did a restart, only to find that I was back to square one again. Not only was igfxtray.exe, but also ituneshelper.exe, dvdcheck.exe, amongst others.

And the files created by the trojan would be either be 28kB or 25.5kB. I did a full system search, and managed to eradicate them all.

The logic is actually quite simple. Most of the files it affected were set to run during startup. Take ituneshelper.exe for example, which is set to run during startup.

By renaming ituneshelper.exe to ituneshelper .exe (the spacing again) and then spawning the trojan file as ituneshelper.exe, the system will run the trojan instead of the actual file, thus able to spawn itself with the user on a wild goose chase (this is provided the user has no clues about PCs).

And after eradicating them all by deleting the files and ending their processes, I find that Avast! setup now runs. Before no matter how I tried to run it, it would end by itself, or rather I should say, ended by the trojan.

—

I found that the trojan file is still present in my system, when I was cleaning my Temp folder. But of course, since I had eradicated the “roots” – the processes needed to start the trojan – my system was fine.

Avast! managed to detect the trojan when I opened my Temp folder. I don’t know about AVG because I had uninstalled it (to try out Avast!).

Avast! reports that it’s a dropper named Win32:Unruy-C.

I frequently come across people complaining that they got cheated of their capacity, be it the capacity of a MP3 player, USB drives, HDD capacity of their PC, etc.

There’s no cheating involved, in fact, it merely takes a smart brain to figure out, the same thing the marketing people used to advertise their products.

To simplify things, I’m going to use my Toshiba 2GB USB stick (aka thumb drive, pen drive) as an example.

Windows report my 2GB stick with a total capacity of 1.86GB.

Cheated?

Actually not, it’s the difference between giga and gibi, mega and mebi, kilo and kibi.

Wikipedia: SI prefixes

Wikipedia: Binary prefixes

Let’s break 2 gigabyte down.

2GB = 2,000,000,000 bytes (1 giga = 1,000,000,000)

We all know giga is a SI prefix.

How about let’s put 2,000,000,000 bytes in binary prefix.

2,000,000,000 bytes

÷ 1024 = 1,953,125 kibibytes (KiB)

÷ 1024 = 1,907.349 mebibytes (MiB) (rounded off)

÷ 1024 = 1.8626 gibibytes (GiB) (rounded off)

1.8626 GiB ~ 1.86 GiB

See the link now?

In SI prefixes, 1000 is used as a base (you divide 2000MB by 1000 to get 2GB) whereas in binary prefix, 1024 is used as a base (you divide 2048MiB by 1024 to get 2GiB).

Windows report filesizes in binary prefixes and not in SI prefixes, although they use the SI prefixes k, M, G, which should be replaced by the binary prefixes, Ki, Mi and Gi respectively.

Ricoh SD Bus Host Adapter driver is installed by default.

So yesterday I had my camera with me and I thought I would try using the laptop to read my Kingston 8GB SDHC card.

I plugged it into the SD card reader. Windows XP identified the device as “SD/MMC” and I see it under “Devices with Removable Storage” in My Computer. However, when I tried to access it, it asked me to “insert a disk”.

I encountered a similar situation before where I tried to access a microSD card plugged into an adapter (converting it to SD form). I thought my 8GB SDHC card was not plugged in properly.

But however I tried, the same thing happens. Windows even identify the file system as RAW.

Then suddenly I remembered about SD and SDHC. I knew their differences all along and I had totally forgotten about it. I thought it could be a driver issue, since the laptop was quite old.

I did Google searches, but it had to take me quite a few results to get to what I want: an updated driver with support for SDHC. One result suggested to switch the driver to a Microsoft one, which didn’t have any effect (at least from what I see). Another even recommended to get a new card reader to read SDHC, and I know there’s no need for that because all it takes is a driver update.

FIX

I was right. Google led me to this result after a while, which then led me to this blog post. I downloaded the updated Ricoh driver, the version without the executable (I’m used to updating drivers manually). It’s for Dell, and the laptop I was using was a Compaq, but I thought there won’t be any problems since both of them use Ricoh.

I was right. I updated the driver, and did a restart.

Windows XP identified the card.

I hooked it up to a Windows XP PC.

All went fine until when I had to remove it. Most XP users will have to remove it software-sided through Windows’ Safely Remove Hardware.

Many times I would encounter the following error:

“The device ‘Generic volume’ cannot be stopped because a program is still accessing it”

I got so fed up with it that I decided to search for a fix.

I found one very simple fix. Simply open another drive.

For example, my USB drive was on G:\, and C:\ is where my Windows XP is based. I simply open C:\ and I am able to remove it.

“C:\Windows\System32\taskmgr.exe

The specified path does not exist. Check path and then try again.”

That was when I tried to open Task Manager through the taskbar.

When I first got that error, I thought it was because I was using a cloned Vista installation (from another partition).

However I thought it could be other reasons, and I did a search on Google.

I eventually found out that it was due to installing Process Explorer, clicking “Replace Task Manager”, then deleting Process Explorer.

I tried reproducing the error on XP. I did not get any error message, but Task Manager did not open either.

The solution? Launch Process Explorer (doesn’t matter where the files are placed) and click “Restore Task Manager”.

It’s a wireless router, so I was able to establish a wireless connection from my PC.

I flashed the Tomato firmware for its QoS feature and I tried to connect to the router wirelessly.

However, to my surprise, when I opened the wireless network list, it shows my router with “Not Connected” in bold.

I asked myself, “If it isn’t connected then it wouldn’t indicate anything, right?”

I was right. I was able to access the Google webpage, among others.

I thought it was the router settings, so I did a reset and it went away. I thought it was my router and brushed the problem aside.

However, I encounter the same error again. This time, I connected to another router. I was baffled. I tried rebooting the router, but it’s still the same.

I decided to investigate.

After some Google searches, I found a solution. Simply remove the network in question from the preferred wireless network list, and do a reboot.

Everything went back to normal again.

I have to thank this website for giving me this simple yet effective solution.

Since July last year I have switched to using SingNet ADSL2+ broadband as I was facing a lot of latency problems on StarHub. SingNet issues me an ADSL2+ modem router, the 2WIRE 2701HGV-E branded as SingTel mio Box.

The Linksys WRT54G thus became a spare, but it certainly didn’t go to waste as I found the 2WIRE modem’s wireless strength to be insatisfactory.

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post.

I came across DD-WRT a few months ago when I was playing around with my wireless setup. It’s a 3rd-party firmware available for use with certain routers. The Linksys WRT54G is one of those supported.

Being a rather safe person I was very hesistant to try out the DD-WRT firmware although I know it provides more features than the original Linksys firmware, as the version of my current Linksys firmware loaded on my WRT54G, v4.20.7, is no longer available for download on the Linksys website.

After around a few failed attempts in Google searches, I finally found the v4.20.7 firmware, thanks to VS-BG.com.

I managed to get both the ZIP and EXE versions.

The ZIP file contains the firmware in .BIN format which you can use in the WRT54G control panel.

The EXE is Linksys’ firmware upgrade utility. I do not know how it works as I have never and won’t try it.

The v4.20.7 firmware for Linksys WRT54G v4, both the ZIP and EXE versions, are available for download below.

This firmware may or will not work with versions of WRT54G other than v4.

Linksys WRT54G v4 v4.20.7 firmware

ZIP version (with .BIN file which can be used in the control panel) – http://www.mediafire.com/?gjznkk4j0r2

EXE version (with Linksys firmware upgrade utility) – http://www.mediafire.com/?yzgnj22dzoe

Do note that I do not claim any responsibility for the flashing of this firmware. Proceed at your own risk.

Until I get the time to replace it I have the main switched on for the time being.

Of course, there are times when I have to turn off the main to do maintenance works (I won’t want to get a power shock).

So every time when I start my PC up after turning off the main POST will prompt me that BIOS settings are wrong, which really refers to the wrong time and date set.

I would just leave it as it is, because I know there’s such thing called time synchronisation which will do the job of setting an exact time for me.

I will boot into Windows XP, set the correct date and hour and then synchronise. The correct date and hour have to be set or otherwise it would return an error, although the minute doesn’t matter.

So when I tried to do the same thing again just now, I encountered the following error just now.

“An error occurred getting the status of the last synchronization. The RPC server is unavailable.”

I know it isn’t some web server and instead a services process instead, so I immediately went to Start > Run > services.msc.

I found out that RPC stands for Remote Procedure Call and it is up and running, so I decided to do a Google search.

A simple search led me to the solution of starting the Windows Time service, which I am puzzled why it isn’t started. After I started it, I tried synchronisation again, and it worked.

Basically I am able to watch most of the shows aired on MediaCorp free-to-air channels, which includes Channel 5, Channel 8, Channel U and even okto.

I enjoy most of the Channel 8 shows and since I can’t find time to sit in front of my TV set watching the show with all the commercial breaks I decided to subscribe to this service. After an episode of a show has been broadcasted it will be uploaded onto this service, which I can then download. From what I see it’s just them recording down the show like how you do with a DVR or a TV tuner, cut out the commercials and then upload it.

What’s more they offer sneak previews, which means I am able to watch episodes that aren’t broadcasted yet.

The sneak previews are directly uploaded “unprocessed”. All the subtitles that you see during broadcast won’t appear, as the subtitles are added in realtime during broadcast.

Anyway, enough of introduction.

Such an excellent service, of course, would have to come with limitations. They won’t want people to start releasing pirated discs of their shows.

So what do they use? Microsoft (in)famous Digital Rights Management (abbv. DRM).

This DRM, if it’s obedient, doesn’t give you any problem, but when it throws tantrum it can be hard to control it.

I just re-installed Windows XP not long ago, and previously I had no problems with the DRM, all I had to do was to upgrade something associated with it and it will work. I remembered I had a headache with it the last time too but eventually it worked out.

Well it seems like the headache’s back and I just can’t get it to work the other time.

As my Windows XP was newly installed some of the things would be missing. The other time I tried to stream a show, the first after my XP installation.

It prompted me to upgrade a security component, which is the DRM, and I promptly accepted.

So far so good, but it just doesn’t want to work. I can’t really remember what I did the last time, but eventually my Windows Media Player 10 broke and I can’t even start it.

I abandoned it for days before deciding to try and fix it. I decided to play around by going to the Program Files folder, and I saw a setup file. I managed to complete the installation (or I should say, re-installation), but I was too lazy to do a restart. I hibernated the PC after use.

I stuck with InterVideo WinDVD for weeks for watching my videos.

It was weeks after the re-installation of WMP that something made me to do a restart the PC. After a restart I’m glad to find that WMP is working again, and I decided to try and stream the shows.

When I got to the acquiring license page, it would just stay there with an “Error on page” (I’m on Internet Explorer 6, by the way). I figured out that it’s the DRM that’s doing it.

I thought my DRM wasn’t upgraded (remember the prompt to upgrade the DRM component) so I went here to do an upgrade. To my surprise the Upgrade button was greyed out.

I tried resetting my DRM multiple times, by going to C:\Documents and Settings\All User and renaming the DRM folder to DRM_001.

I went back to that page thinking I could upgrade. No it’s still greyed out, and in the meantime another DRM folder popped out by itself with files inside totalling 1.85KB.

So I just keep trying other fixes and I kept on renaming.

There was this fix which told me to delete all the files inside the DRM folder. I tried, no luck.

When my renaming got to DRM_005 I decided to rename the DRM_001 back to DRM and use it. I then deleted the DRM_002 and so on which was a result of my renaming, since they were all useless anyway.

I also deleted all the files in the DRM folder, and then installed this update.

It prompted me to restart my PC, and I decided to do so since nothing was working out.

After a restart, I tried the upgrade page again, and surprisingly, the Upgrade button became available.

I did the upgrade by following the instructions on that page, and everything worked out.

I don’t know if this is a result of that Microsoft update which I installed, but it could be due to my restart as well.