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We moved, so I'm test posting.
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I fear pink.
I didn't realize I fear pink until this morning. As I was stepping into
the shower, I noticed I had a pink towel set aside for myself, and I shuddered.
I'm a pinkophobe. I had no idea.
I saw my male neighbor, wearing a pink shirt, out in his yard a couple
weeks ago. I noted, to myself, just how *wrong* that was. I didn't
say anything to anyone though. I knew my wife would regard such comments with
scowling.
Now, I'm admitting my fear. I not only don't like pink, I fear
it. I'm afraid to wear pink. I'm afraid to use pink.
Don't get me wrong, I toweled off with my pink towel. I'm not that far
gone, yet. I wouldn't, by choice, select pink for just about anything, though
-- clothing, paint, decorations, etc.
I'll buy my daughters pink items and gladly allow them to wear pink.
I'll not comment on my wife's use of pink. Maybe I'm not a true, blue,
pinkophobe. Is there a word for a half-phobe? A semi-phobe?
I don't run in fear from pink, and I don't cower away from pink.
I suppose I'm a pinkosemiphobe then.
I will use a pink highlighter. I just noticed I have on in my large
coffee cup on my desk. On second thought, I think I'll go trade it in for a
blue or yellow highlighter.
---Dan---
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As you can see, I have little control over the current font I'm using in my
BLOG.
I think we have a newer version of the BLOG editing tool out now. I'll
check it out.
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Remember way, way, way back when Microsoft shipped Windows 95 ®?
Anyway, we had the control panel option where you'd see a map for the
timezone and clickity-click on the map in a timezone area, and that would highlight
the map along a border-line and select your timezone for you.
Wasn't that cool? Heck yeah. I thought so. We changed it
though. We still had the map, but you couldn't clickity-click on the map and
get a highlighted area. Clicking did nothing for changing your timezone.
Wanna know why?
Well, there is a county, and I won't mention it's name, but said country is
in constant border disputes with another country. Microsoft drew the border-line
"incorrectly" according to said country.
They threatened to never, ever, ever allow us to sell that software in their
country if we didn't "fix" the border-line.
We learned not to highlight timezones and border-lines any more.
---Dan---
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I got a real comment (not from Ivanna).
I see above that you've fixed this already, but IIRC John
Robbins' book "Debugging Applications for Microsoft .NET and Microsoft Windows" details
how to debug a service on startup. IIRC, it involves setting the ImageFileOptions
key in the registry.
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Okay, so I finally figured out why the binary wasn't writing to the log file.
The code was commented out.
I can build it, so I modify the code. I always copy the file and
make a backup of the original. Then, I go to down on the old file.
Rebuild. Errors. Okay. Some more stuff needed to be actually
uncommented out. You can't have a:
dwMyDwordValue = 10;
and not have
DWORD dwMyDwordValue;
up above it. Yeah, that's real basic C programming, but heck, who'd
know if you didn't write it all yourself?
Well, I got the log and it showed me the problem. I didn't have to kernel
debug after all. I was able to provide a solution to the customer, so I 'm hoping
all is well now. Basically, with the other service (I think it's a third party
service) that was running, our workstation service wasn't loading fast enough for
webclient. If you make webclient dependent upon LanManWorkstation, it works.
Makes sense as to why you could boot with webclient turned off and actually
run it fine. The issue was related to timing.
That logging ability was nice. I'm checking with our dev folks to see
if we can send that logging binary to customers. Please don't email me and ask
me for it. If I need to, I'll know when to use it.
Would it have been easier to kernel debug to begin with? Probably, but
I wouldn't have learned how to log this stuff and that may pay off big time in the
future over and over again. I hope so.
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I'm still working on that webclient issue.
I think I'm going to have to setup a kernel-mode debug, which is pretty
easy to do except I need a second system to do the debugging from. I think
I'll just use my laptop rather than asking the lab to create one for me.
Well, looking at the web client code, I seem to see some logging functionality.
I love to jump on logging functionality -- even if it's a waste of my time.
Well, none of my logging experimentation has panned out. I have
no log file. I've broken into the process to see if the debug logging functionality
even exists in the binary I built. We'll see.
As I'm investigating further, I find I am stupid and don't know hex.
Now, I also find the log file won't be created if it's not there. I create it
but it still can't access it. I set permissions to Everyone Full Control, and
now it can access it but it doesn't write to it.
Well, I'm still trying to figure this out. At the minimum, I should
be able to get a debug monitor output, but I want more!
That's all for today.
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Well, if you read what I wrote yesterday, you read that I put a service all
by itself in a separate SVCHOST.EXE proces.
Windows XP SP1
Service of interest: WebClnt
Binary of interest: WEBCLNT.DLL
Problem: Hangs on startup.
If you run a CMD.EXE prompt (command prompt) and type: TASKLIST
/SVC you'll see an output like this:
F:\Documents and Settings\danvdw>tasklist /SVC
Image Name
PID Services
========================= ====== =============================================
System Idle Process
0 N/A
System
4 N/A
services.exe
416 Eventlog, PlugPlay
lsass.exe
428 Netlogon, PolicyAgent, ProtectedStorage, SamSs
svchost.exe
636 RpcSs
svchost.exe
660 AudioSrv, BITS, CryptSvc, Dhcp, dmserver, ERSvc,
EventSystem,
lanmanserver, lanmanworkstation, Messenger, Netman, Nla,
Schedule, seclogon, SENS, ShellHWDetection,
srservice, TermService, Themes, uploadmgr,
W32Time,
winmgmt, wuauserv, WZCSVC
svchost.exe
772 Dnscache
svchost.exe
796 LmHosts, RemoteRegistry, SSDPSRV,
WebClient
spoolsv.exe
876 Spooler
inetinfo.exe
1084 IISADMIN, SMTPSVC,
W3SVC
<Cut Short to Eliminate Boredom>
I'm interested in the one that has WebClient in it. I see it's Process
ID (PID) 796.
That's nice to know, but not really want I want. What I want to see
is WebClient all alone in an SVCHOST.EXE process. Exactly like DNSCACHE is doing.
Why can't my webclient do that too? I think it can!
If you read Raymond Chen's blog, you'll see he refers to Q314056 about SVCHOST.EXE.
Now, I mucked with the registry on this system. If you muck with your
registry, make sure you make backups of the stuff before you fool with it. I
will not be held responsible for anything you do to your registry even if it's something
I write about.
Are we clear on that?
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\svchost
Right there, under svchost, are keys and values. I'm interested in the
*value* that is Localservice and I see it's a REG_MULTI_SZ and is:
Alerter
WebClient
LmHosts
RemoteRegistry
upnphost
SSDPSRV
There's my WebClient. What if I just highlight it and take it out of
there with a DEL button press? That works.
Okay. But, I want it in it's own SVCHOST.EXE. Can I do that?
Well, I think I can if I hack some. So, let's hack:
I notice that the *keys* are similar to these values. Let's do a new
key and value. I'll call it WebClntSvc.
So, I add a Key and a Value called WebClntSvc. I could have called it
anything, like AnyNameAnything, but I called it WebClntSvc.
So, I make a REG_MULTI_SZ *value* entry called WebClntSvc and add: WebClient.
I also make a Value entry and call it WebClntSvc. What to add there?
Heck, I just copied what was in the Localservice key. That key had:
AuthenticationCapabilities, REG_DWORD, 0x2000 and CoInitializeSecurityParam,
REG_DWORD, 0x1
So, I added them both. Is that it?
No, because I see that HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services is of interest
to me, based on the KB article.
If I look at HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient, I see an ImagePath
value that's a REG_SZ. I think I want to edit that and change it from:
%SystemRoot%\System32\svchost.exe -k LocalService
to
%SystemRoot%\System32\svchost.exe -k WebClntSvc
We can confirm this works by checking the interface. That's right-click
on My Computer, Select Manage, then go into the Services, find WebClient and open
it up.
Make sure the "Path to Executable" was changed. Mine would
say:
F:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe -k WebClntSvc.
F: is my system drive here. Don't ask me why. You don't want to
know.
That would make sense, right? Does to me. Then, I reboot.
Now, I have a separate instance of SVCHOST.EXE running with WebClient in it.
I do.
Now, to debug it is simple. Right, I just attach my debugger to the
process that exists as SVCHOST.EXE with the one and only service in it that's WebClient.
However, I don't want to debug it as it is, I want to debug it as it starts.
Hmm... How do to that?
Well, it's tricky and I have one trick up my sleeve to use that is this:
Copy SVCHOST.EXE to SVCHOST1.EXE in the same place as SVCHOST.EXE and use SVCHOST1.EXE
in my ImageFileExecutionOptions registry setting and use SVCHOST1.EXE in the registry
location for the service for the executable.
Now, when I check the interface, my path says:
F:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost1.exe -k WebClntSvc.
There is a problem here. The default SVCHOST.EXE has a timeout for any
service. If it doesn't start in X seconds, you get a nifty dialog telling you
it didn't start, blah blah blah.
You don't get the dialog for the failure on startup, but it's not running
regarless.
I'm guessing there is a way around this, but I don't know what yet.....
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Last night, my wife called me into a room for a "private
conference." She doesn't like me sharing about our lives publically.
She's very private. At least, that's what she tells me. Yeah.
I'd agree. We've been married 20 years, so I probably know that. Anyway,
I know better than to expect her to change. I just didn't realize sharing info
about the family in a BLOG would bother her much.
I won't be sharing a whole lot more of family stuff. I guess I'll do
more work stuff.
Remember I mentioned Brittany is sewing? Well, last night, Bekah who
is 5 years old, came upstairs into the bonus room with this huge, gargantuan piece
of lime-green cloth and scissors. She starts cutting and humming a little tune
while she cuts.
Me and the boys, playing our video games, look down at her, sitting on the
flooor humming and cutting along, and freak. "Are you supposed to be cutting
that, Bekah?"
Yes.
You sure?
Yes.
Ben runs out of the room to check with the Overlord or the OIT to see if this
statement of cutting allowability is true.
Apparently, the voluminous lime-green cloth was deemed too ugly to use.
Hence, Bekah's humming and cutting. She had a terrific time.
What? I didn't say anything about my family, did I?
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Apparently, I'm encouraged to and supposed to talk about what I do at work
some in the blog. Well, we can't divulge sensitive information.
Okay. Work related, huh? Here's something.
I got a DVD ROM image from a large department store IT group a few weeks back.
It had <NAME OF DEPT STORE> CONFIDENTIAL written in hand all over the DVD ROM.
Like what, we have spies from other department stores to worry about?
Uh oh. Be on the look out for those department store IT spies. You know,
the guys seeking the CONFIDENTIAL information about the other department stores.
Maybe they're having a special sale! Whoo hoo!
Anyway, having the DVD image to restore on a lab computer is really one of
the best ways I have of solving problems. This customer has a Microsoft service
that's not starting when Windows XP starts up.
Using Publically Documented information, I moved the service from where it
was running under SVCHOST.EXE with a number of other services to where it runs under
its own SVCHOST.EXE. How? I can't remember as that was this morning and
now is this afternoon. But I did.
The problem still occurs, but now, when I break into that instance of SVCHOST.EXE
(as it's attempting to load that service that's not loading), I get two threads with
a simple stack each to look at. Makes it much, much easier for me to see what's
going on. Of course, I have no clue what's going on. I have to figure
this out.
Interestingly enough, if another, third-party service that's running is disabled,
this problem doesn't occur. Neither service is running in the same process.
What does that mean? Who knows. I would *love* to be able to blame the
problem on the other, third-party service, but I can't without first figuring out
what's going on.
I guess that's why I get all those dollars -- figure out the tough stuff.
I'm a hundredaire you know. I have like $100.00 or more in the bank now.
I wonder if I can tell people I have a hundred dollars in the bank in a blog?
I hope so.
Anyway, if I can recreate my steps to moving the service into it's own process,
I'll post them 'cause that might be interesting to you and I figured it out from a
single KB article that's public.
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Ben and I run out the door of the pizza place, go home, and we play our games.
Lots of fun. Finally, Barb and the kids return home from church. Barb's
grateful I took Ben to Blockbuster as that was on her to-do list. She goes to
be early.
This morning, I tell her about this BLOG thingy. Well, my near 17-year
old daughter listens in while she sews a quilt for her cousin, Lauren. "You're
not talking about me on the web, are you Dad?"
Of course not Brittany. I would never, ever talk about you on the web
without your prior permission. Yeah. Right. Mwa haa haa. Mwa
haa haa haa. Brittany is my oldest child. She's almost 17 years old.
She's really an incredible kid. You couldn't ask for a better teenager.
I mean it.
I do call Brittany the "Overlord In Training" or OIT on occassion. She
can't help what her mother models, right? I mean, if my wife is The Evil Overlord,
some of it is gonna rub off, right?
In case you didn't gather, my wife is The Evil Overlord. I also just
call her Evil or Overlord on occassion.
My other kids are Ben, who you've read about. Bobby who is older than
Ben and younger than Brittany, and Bekah who is our youngest. Bobby and Bekah
attend public schools in 9th grade and kindergarten, respectively. Ben and Brittany
are home schooled by Evil herself in 5th grade and 11th grade, respectively.
Brittany is gonna be 17 soon. I need to think about doing something
for her birthday. Hmm... at least a card. My biggest trick yet is sending
unsigned cards to my sisters by accident. Hey, at least I thought of the card.
I bought the card, addressed the envelope, put a stamp on the envelope and sent the
cards. I forgot to even sign them.
Anyway, Brittany was sewing this morning. I asked, "Is this Home Ec?"
Evil informed me this was an "Interior Design" class going on. Oh. Okay.
Interior Design. That's good.
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So, I get home and my son, Benjamin, is waiting for me. He was home
alone. The wife and other kids were at church. Ben is old enough to be
home alone for a bit.
"Dad. Can we go to Blockbuster?" He wants to turn in a video game
and rent another. We pay for that monthly game rental where you can rent
one video game for as long as you want for $20 a month.
Not a bad deal, IMHO, if you're playing games actively. We do in my
house.
I asked, "What do I have to do to have the minimum impact in my evening?
Blockbuster, EB Games, what?" Remember, from yesterday, we're returning
that one game. I knew he wanted to go to EB Games and return it.
Blockbuster was sufficient. Cool. I was hungry, having come in
from work, and I didn't see any food to eat in the house. There's
this really good pizza place by Blockbuster. My mouth started to waters as I
anticapated getting a couple slices of that yummy, greasy pizza. Mmmmm....
Hurry up and get in the car, kid! Off we go. We trade in the game
and visit the pizza place. We encounter a friend there. I order two pieces
and him one. We each get a drink. Ben's jumping up and down up and down.
Why do children wait until the very, very last moment to go to the toilet?
Ben runs off and uses the toilet. My conversation with my friend turns to children,
being out, and and our children having to emergency-use the toilet.
Such delightful conversations.
We eat with said friend. Ben tells me, "Dad, you know how it is?
You feel real hungry and then you eat one bite and you're not hungy any longer?"
"No. That's never happened to me." I grab his mangled, partially
eaten pizza and finish is off. I just scrape off the greasy cheese and
pepperoni toppings and eat them. I use my fingers. My wife's not there
to glower at me. Mmmm... Good.
I'm chattering away with my friend and his son, who is Bobby's age (and hence
4 years older than Ben). Ben says, "Dad. We're wasting time. We
could be home now with me playing this new game." What a delightfully polite
child I've raised.
Ben's right though. I'm wasting precious Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) time!
Well, better go. See ya later, friend!
<Gotta run. I'll write more later.>
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First off, I can't figure out how do fonts in the blog editor I have.
You see the system ones in my last posting because I did a cut and paste from a draft
email, but direct entry. I don't know.
I'll be how to make the fonts the way I want is documented, and I just have
to find it and read it. Hmm...we'll see if I can handle that or not.
So, what's new? I let Ben buy a new video game that is really, really
"bad". I won't mention the name, but I consider it ultra-violent and offensive.
I had no idea. Perhaps I should actually look at the games before I buy them.
IMHO, the rating system doesn't really tell you much.
Regardless, we're returning it tonight. We won't get full refund, but
we can sell it as "used" to EB. They'll give us a credit for another game.
Ohh. Yesterday, some guy here at work sold me two 256MB memory strips.
At first, I thought they were 512MB each, but they're not. The price was right.
After carefully ensuring they were the right kind of memory for my sons' Dells at
home (identical systems), I bought them.
Then, I installed the two 256MB chips in Bobby's system. I told Bobby,
"I'm upgrading your memory to a faster, more reliable memory." This statement
is true. The kind of memory I bought was top notch. The dude selling it
got a new motherboard for his home system and didn't need it any longer.
The part I didn't tell Bobby is that I took out his one 512MB strip and put
it in Ben's system. Now, Ben has 1GB RAM and Bobby still has the 512MB he had
before (albiet "more reliable and faster" mwa haa haa).
I told Ben my trickery. He was like, "But Dad! Bobby is your first
son! Why are you giving me the extra memory?"
Simple: I play Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) on my system and Ben's
system. I don't play on Bobby's system. I'm going to upgrade Ben's to
the more playable state. (FYI, you really need 1GB memory and a 128MB video card to
play SWG).
He was like, "Can we tell Bobby anyway?"
"No."
"Never?"
"No. Don't tell him."
"How about in a few days?"
"No."
"A few weeks?"
"No."
"How about in a few years?"
"Okay. In a few years."
Ben's really having a hard time with this deception. We both know if
Bobby found out Ben got the upgrade it'd be a lot of: "Why did Ben get it and
not me? Are you going to upgrade me soon? When? Why not? It's
not fair. How come Ben gets the upgrade? You know, I gave Ben $17.00 for
that video game. I did. I should get the upgrade too. Why not?"
So, we keep our collective traps shut, and I don't have to hear it from Bobby.
Oh yeah, Brittany wanted to know what memory her system. She has Ben's
old system. It's a PIII 650MHz with 256MB RAM. I told you, "You have 256MB and
Ben has 1GB."
"Huh?"
Well, she does Hotmail. What do you really need for Hotmail? Heh?
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Today is
May 5, 2003. It's Cinco deMayo or something like that. More importantly,
it's my Dad's birthday. Of course, he's dead now, but I think he'd have been
64 if he was still alive.
So, I'm
thinking about my Dad some today.
I never
think about Cinco deMayo. In my humble opinion (IMHO), Cinco deMayo is just
an excuse for Mexican restaurants to sell lots of food and alcohol. I don't
need any particular excuse to eat lots of food. Notice I avoided the whole alcohol
issue.
Well, April
came and went. Was it eventful? I can't remember. Now, I know
Benjamin Kris Van Der Werken turned 10 years old in April on the 11th. I recall
perhaps that we had a party and he got lots of gifts and cash.
In fact,
we (Evil -- for the newbs at reading my musings, I refer to my wife as The Evil Overlord
or Evil -- and I) gave Ben $100.00 to spend as he should so choose. Immediately,
Ben wanted me to take him to the local Electronics Boutique games store and get the
PS2 game, Dragon Ball Z Budakai. So, I did. He played it. I've played
it.
Note:
Ben's "twitch reflexes" are now more developed than mine. He's better than I
am at these games. Of course, Bobby is the best, but Bobby's had years to practice
on Ben. I didn't start playing "twitch reflex" games until after I was married,
so I don't have the innate early training necessary to really "compete."
This situation is "just that way."
I rather
suspect Bekah will out-reflex me by the time she's 10 years old also. Again,
"just that way."
Well, the
game I bought Ben only cost $54.00, so I pocketed the $46.00, hoping he'd forget about
it. He didn't. Barb paid him back and put that and some other cash he
had from his birthday into his bank account. Somehow, I still ended up with
that extra $46.00, I think. Good for me!
Ben can't
handle money well. He gambles with it. He bet the neighbor kid he could
beat the kid down the hill on a bike, even though the kid is two years older than
Ben and has been riding his bike for much longer than Ben has. So, Ben had to
pay this guy $2.00. Of course, I let him pay up. Then, we took all his
money away from Ben and put it in his bank account.
We defnitely
have our work cut out for us with Benjamin. There are other issues with Ben,
things I can't mention in a public forum, that indicate we really, really have our
work cut out for us with Ben. In fact, he's on restriction today. No t.v.
and no video games. We really have our work cut out for us.
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My friends on my email listing keep asking me, when are you going to do another musings?
I'm just lazy. I haven't written a musings in months and months.
So, I'm going to put my musings in my BLOG. Mwa haa.
Mwa haa haa.
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