Publisher could not be verified!

I hate that message!  I have a batch file set to run via a timer and every day it stops because it wants to verify the publisher.

Here is a way to disable the message:

1. Click Start–>Run and type gpedit.msc. Click OK

2. Go to User Configuration–>Administrative Templates–>Windows Components–>Attachment Manager

3. Add “*.exe” to the “Inclusion list for moderate risk file types” setting. You can also add other file types.

This should disable the “Publisher Could Not Be Verified” messages from appearing for that file type in the future.

Good luck!

(Note, this is the second method I’ve used for this and I’m waiting to see how well it works.  I used a different method yesterday via IE to trust the directory where the batch file is located and it made absolutely no difference at all)

 

How to make Excel open each file in a separate window

http://my.opera.com/Jarrah/blog/how-to-make-excel-open-each-file-in-a-separate-window

 

An awesome post.

Vista BSOD ATAPORT.SYS hang on CRCDISK.SYS

What a nice cryptic name for a blog post!  If you found this via a search, then I’m sorry for you.  This was a really, REALLY frustrating problem.

Symptoms Prior: Browser would randomly bring up an ad filled website which is obviously a virus of some kind.

I treated the system with scans by Spybot, Microsoft Security Essentials (which was installed) and AdAware.  They said everything was fine.  I felt better.  Maybe it was just some script in Firefox?   I did find that my firewall was disabled, which was odd.  I turned it back on and shortly after, I had:

New Symptoms: a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) relating to ATAPORT.SYS.  It cycled like this for a bit and I attempted to go into safe mode.  Safe mode hangs up everytime at CRCDISK.SYS.

After a few articles – everyone is convinced the hard drive is bad.  I took the drive out and put it on a USB/SATA adapter on another machine and ran chkdsk.  The hard drive appears fine – survived all five levels of CHKDSK.

I found this article: http://forums.techarena.in/operating-systems/1127074.htm

and followed it.  Removing the files isn’t easy since Vista protects them, so you have to use advanced security to “TAKE OWNERSHIP” of each file and then you give yourself permissions and then you can delete them.  Took a while, but I had high hopes.  (note if you are doing this from XP, you have to turn on ADVANCED Security.  I’d never heard of this option until running through this procedure). 

[How to disable simple security in XP:

1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
3. Click the Viewtab.
4. In the Advanced Settings section, click to clear the Use simple file sharing (Recommended)check box.
5. Click OK.
   ]

Plugged the drive back into the laptop – no difference.  Exact same lock up at CRCDISK and in non-safe mode, gets almost booted up and I get a BSOD with ATAPORT.

After more articles, I found that it isn’t CRCDISK.SYS causing the problem, it’s whatever driver is loaded AFTER CRCDISK.SYS.  I tried a boot logged bootup and found that TUNNEL.SYS comes after CRCDISK.SYS.  I actually don’t know if the log I found was the one I just created because it always locked up right there and the log I found was from a complete bootup.  In any case, I researched TUNNEL.SYS and found it it sometimes infected with a virus.  I used the USB adapter again to locate TUNNEL.SYS and replaced it with another one on the drive.  Yes, probably dangerous – but did it really matter at this point since I was facing a complete reinstall (and trying to avoid that).  I booted in SAFE mode and TA DA - no difference. 

I booted the Vista CD again and was able to get to the command prompt and ran the SFC /SCANNOW (I’ve never used this).  It took a while and said it repaired some files.  I checked the log and it turns out, it corrected TUNNEL.SYS.  Now, did it just put the same one back?  I don’t know, but I rebooted into safe mode and it made it.  Unbelievable.

I had downloaded another scanner that looks for TDSS called TDSSKILLER which I had also come across in the 50+ articles I read.  I followed the instructions and I had the TDSS virus.  UGH!  But it all made sense.  It cleared it and now the system booted up normally – not in safe mode.

I ran Spybot again and it found a few random files which it fixed. 

So TDSS is the culprit – it was not a bad drive (which I read so much about) and it wasn’t the SATA interface (which I read so much about).  Just another old virus. 

What I learned:

1. Download all the latest Virus scanners (including root kit scanners) before you need them – put them on a USB
2. Make sure you have some method of reading your drives on another machine.  I usually have no problem with IDE, but I had to buy this SATA cable which was only $29 at BestBuy (you can get them online cheaper).  (honestly – I’ve had machines that wouldn’t boot and running a CHKDSK on my drives on another machine works 90% of the time.)
3. Don’t stop reading after one article (including this one).  It’s certainly possible that your problem, while it looks JUST LIKE this one, might be different. 
4. Learn how to take ownership of files and change security. 
5. People who create viruses might be smart – but they actually suck.  The fact that SpyBot years ago used to search for about 45k issues and now it looks for 750k issues – I mean really – is this the future we were looking towards?

www.twit.tv/live

I finally did it.  I’ve had the computer hooked up to the TV for a long time, but yesterday while cleaning house, I brought up twit.tv and set it to live and watched it most of the day.  I never get tired of hearing Leo Laporte talk about the latest technology.  And what great technology there is!  Apple has some kind of new solid state drive available with 10 gigabit transfer rates and you can hook four of them together in a RAID 0+1 (or 1+0) or something like that.  I don’t have an Apple or $2,000 to go out and get the drives, but I admit, it sure sounds exciting.  Just amagine what will be available in 10 years?

Do you really need to text that much?

We got our first email address at our company around 1987.  This was back when you were the “Tech” guy if you knew how to type and put a disk in a drive.    After we had it all set up, the General Manager came into his admin assistant office and said “It’s all set up?  Good!  Now, make sure to check it at 10, 2, and 4 – Dr. Pepper“.   So at various times during the day – about every two hours, she would click on “Get Mail” and whatever package at the time would dial up the modem, log in to some email system and download – nothing.  Lots of nothing back then.  Once in a while, you’d get a memo or something from the corporate office, but that was about it.

Now I average about 300+ emails per day, mostly ads and system status reports.  I’m not even counting SPAM in that figure.  I’ve had to devise rules to handle it all so that I don’t have to see it – it just gets filtered into various folders for reference later.

People receive so much email, in fact, that they’ve moved on to other platforms like text messaging.  And the medium doesn’t require “checking for messages” anymore, it’s just a noise and then you have to check your phone to see what’s going on.   There’s nothing wrong with that – I like being in touch and being able to keep up with friends/family, but I’ve seen some teenagers and they always have their phone in their hand and they text every few minutes (sometimes less than a few minutes).  When did this become necessary?  I had friends in school and we’d call each other up occasionally, or hang out – but I never had a need to be in touch with them in an umbilical cord fashion 24 hours a day.

I wonder what the future holds?  Is there room for formulating thoughts anymore, or will all that be lost in the din of never-ending conversation?

What do you think?

Excel – Saving CSV with Quotes

Whenever I export a file with Excel to CSV, it does not add quotes. Wouldn’t you know it that I’m using an application that requires quotes on input files for CSV. I found the following routine for doing this. You open up the VB editor in Excel, start a new class and add this to it. Then select the TAB you want to export and click RUN. It does the job quite well.

Sub CSVFile()

Dim SrcRg As Range
Dim CurrRow As Range
Dim CurrCell As Range
Dim CurrTextStr As String
Dim ListSep As String
Dim FName As Variant
FName = Application.GetSaveAsFilename(“”, “CSV File (*.csv), *.csv”)

If FName False Then
ListSep = Application.International(xlListSeparator)
If Selection.Cells.Count > 1 Then
Set SrcRg = Selection
Else
Set SrcRg = ActiveSheet.UsedRange
End If
Open FName For Output As #1
For Each CurrRow In SrcRg.Rows
CurrTextStr = “”
For Each CurrCell In CurrRow.Cells
CurrTextStr = CurrTextStr & “”"” & CurrCell.Value & “”"” & ListSep
Next
While Right(CurrTextStr, 1) = ListSep
CurrTextStr = Left(CurrTextStr, Len(CurrTextStr) – 1)
Wend
Print #1, CurrTextStr
Next
Close #1
End If
End Sub

DropBox – Why it’s cool.

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t jump on all of the latest technology.  If I hear about a new site, I may run out and grab a free account just so I can claim my name for the future, but I don’t always start using the product.  A good example are a few of the Blackberry apps for keeping track of to-do lists, yeah, sorry – I still like a notepad for that.

However, I just started using a product called Dropbox which I love.  You can get a free account that allows you up to 2 gigs of space.  Dropbox installs on your computer and makes a set of folders under your My Documents area.  Anything you put into that set of folders gets copied to your internet Dropbox account.  This means you can access it anywhere, but that’s not all!  If you install it on another computer it syncs the files to the directories on that computer as well.

Basically, you drop a file into it at one computer and by the time you get to your other computer, the file is there waiting for you.  I’ve been using it to get all of my photos and downloads in one place.  Afterall, there isn’t a real point in downloading the same utility on every computer when you can download it just once and have it waiting for you on all of your systems.

Give it a try – it’s free!  They also offer 50 and 100 gig paid plans as well.

My Favorite Windows XP Batch File of All Time

My Favorite batch file for Windows XP ever only contains one line:

net stop wuauserv

When do you use it?  You use it when you are in the middle of trying to meet a deadline and every 5 minutes, the Microsoft Updater jumps up and says “You need to reboot your machine to complete your updates.”

These three words can take away as much stress as your manager calling to say that the meeting has been canceled and you should go home early to enjoy the rest of your day.

Now, I’m not suggesting you completely ignore updates, just ignore them when they are bugging the heck out of you.

 

Friday Summary

Hey!

Did you do anything amazing this week?

> Cleaned up my office.

Did you learn anything new?

>If you want to develop iPhone apps, you should use a Mac.

Did you try anything new?

>A new (to me) Wii game – Pinball Hall of Fame – The Gottlieb Collection – it’s awesome!

Anything you didn’t complete that you wanted to?

>I didn’t fill that hole up in the yard like I wanted to.

Why?

>Because it was too cold.

Okay, carry on.

Move your Firefox cache to a ramdisk and speed up your day

Lifehacker posted a quick article today about moving your Firefox cache to a ramdisk to speed up your browsing.  I read it a few times and then took the plunge.

I’m impressed.  I had to download a free RAMdisk program for XP.  I chose RAMdisk by DataRam.  Setup was easy but my machine locked up right after the install.  After a reboot, though, all was well.  Once installed, I configured it for a modest 50 megs of space (if you have the ram, you can do more).

Next I had to figure out how to get Firefox to use it.  I found this article which covered how to configure Firefox and I was off and running.

Facebook runs a lot faster.  I used to use ram disks all the time in the early days of DOS, but I don’t use them all that much anymore.  It’s a shame, really, because they really do make a massive improvement in cache type operations.

Try this change out, and I think you’ll be pleased with the results.