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Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category

80048820 error in MSN on Vista

June 9th, 2009 No comments

Wow, this one really sucks, and I’ve spent ages trying to fix it – from changing MTU, re-registering DLL, reinstall MSN etc etc.

Anyway you will see some posts that hint that changing or correcting your PC’s time fixes the issues – well in my case I unchecked the “adjust for daylight savings” box in the time settings dialog and BAMM – now MSN is working ( though my PC time is off by an hour ) … way to go Microsoft …

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Categories: Windows Tags:

Black screen when playing all video in Windows

September 4th, 2008 No comments

So, the other night I decided to clean up my PC and install XP Service pack 3, update my ATI drivers etc etc.

After the reboot, went to play some of my videos, only to find the video display to be black. Audio was fine, everything looked dandy. VLC, Media Player, Nero all refused to show the video.

Doubling checking the codecs, everything looked fine.

The solution – in the back of my head I remembered settings in the Catalyst Control Center. Look under VIDEO and then BASIC color. For some reason, USE APPLICATION SETTINGS was unchecked, and the brightness turned down to zero. I still can’t set it back up higher, but checking the USE APPLICATION SETTING box fixes the issue.

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Categories: Windows Tags:

IP reported as 0.0.0.0 in Apache access log

October 30th, 2007 No comments

If you are running Apache on a Windows 2000 server, and notice your access logs are coming up with 0.0.0.0 IP addresses

0.0.0.0 - - [30/Oct/2007:19:29:11 -0400] "GET /ad_images/siam.gif HTTP/1.1" 304 -

or similar, in your WordPress install posts are coming from a 0.0.0.0 IP, check your httpd.conf, and add the following line:

Win32DisableAcceptEx

at the top of the file. Restart Apache and your should be ok!

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Categories: Windows Tags:

Reseting your disks from PIO to DMA

October 26th, 2007 No comments

If you are having issues with your PC, noticeable by your Media player crapping out whenever your Hard Disk or CD/DVD is accessed or by your mouse sticking, check this piece of VBscript that resets your devices from PIO ( software ) mode to DMA ( hardware ). Sometimes windows will switch over to software mode without even telling you ( thats nice ) and this will detect and reset those settings.

For the original script check it out here

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' Visual Basic Script program to reset the DMA status of all ATA drives

' Copyright © 2006 Hans-Georg Michna

' Version 2007-04-04

' Works in Windows XP, probably also in Windows 2000 and NT.
' Does no harm if Windows version is incompatible.

If MsgBox("This program will now reset the DMA"_
  & " status of all ATA drives with Windows drivers." _
  & vbNewline & "Windows will redetect the status after "_
  & "the next reboot, therefore this procedure" _
  & vbNewline & "should be harmless.", _
    vbOkCancel, "Program start message") _
  = vbOk Then
 
RegPath = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\"_
  & "Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\"
ValueName1Master = "MasterIdDataChecksum"
ValueName1Slave = "SlaveIdDataChecksum"
ValueName2Master = "UserMasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed"
ValueName2Slave = "UserSlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed"
ValueName3 = "ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess"
MessageText = "The following ATA channels have been reset:"
MessageTextLen0 = Len(MessageText)
ConsecutiveMisses = 0
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
 
For i = 0 to 999
  RegSubPath = Right("000" & i, 4) & "\"
 
  ' Master

  Err.Clear
  On Error Resume Next
  WshShell.RegRead RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName1Master
  errMaster = Err.Number
  On Error Goto 0
  If errMaster = 0 Then
    On Error Resume Next
    WshShell.RegDelete RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName1Master
    WshShell.RegDelete RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName2Master
    On Error Goto 0
    MessageText = MessageText & vbNewLine & "Master"
  End If
 
  ' Slave

  Err.Clear
  On Error Resume Next
  WshShell.RegRead RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName1Slave
  errSlave = Err.Number
  On Error Goto 0
  If errSlave = 0 Then
    On Error Resume Next
    WshShell.RegDelete RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName1Slave
    WshShell.RegDelete RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName2Slave
    On Error Goto 0
    If errMaster = 0 Then
      MessageText = MessageText & " and "
    Else
      MessageText = MessageText & vbNewLine
    End If
    MessageText = MessageText & "Slave"
  End If
 
  If errMaster = 0 Or errSlave = 0 Then
    On Error Resume Next
    WshShell.RegWrite RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName3, 1, "REG_DWORD"
    On Error Goto 0
    ChannelName = "unnamed channel " & Left(RegSubPath, 4)
    On Error Resume Next
    ChannelName = WshShell.RegRead(RegPath & RegSubPath & "DriverDesc")
    On Error Goto 0
    MessageText = MessageText & " of " & ChannelName & ";"
    ConsecutiveMisses = 0
  Else
    ConsecutiveMisses = ConsecutiveMisses + 1
    If ConsecutiveMisses >= 32 Then Exit For ' Don't search unnecessarily long.
  End If
Next ' i

If Len(MessageText) <= MessageTextLen0 Then
  MessageText = "No resettable ATA channels with "_
     & "Windows drivers found. Nothing changed."
Else
  MessageText = MessageText & vbNewline _
    & "Please reboot now to reset and redetect the DMA status."
End If
 
MsgBox MessageText, vbOkOnly, "Program finished normally"
 
End If ' MsgBox(...) = vbOk

' End of Visual Basic Script program
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Categories: Windows Tags:

Windows Process Monitor

October 16th, 2007 No comments

Haven’t seen much of this, but this can be really handy for detecting vermin and seeing what the hell is going on with your windows machine

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processmonitor.mspx

Wanna see why your harddrive is getting trashed? Need to see what Netbeans is upto? This shows all file and I/O access on your machine, think of it as Etheral for processes. Great tool, and free.

The only caveat, tends to reboot your machine if you have a lot of stuff going on.

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Categories: Windows Tags: