Windows Update problem after Windows XP SP3

A lot of people are apparently having a problem with failed Windows Update patch installations on machines with Windows XP Service Pack 3. The problem occurs regardless of whether Automatic Updates are configured or if instead the user manually visits the Windows Update site. The updates can be downloaded, but almost immediately after the installation is attempted, the following error message appears (in the case of using Automatic Updates):

Some updates could not be installed

The following updates were not installed:

<list of updates appears here>

(This problem does not appear to be dependent on any particular update.)

There is a Microsoft support article that describes steps that resolves this problem, although note that the description contained in the support article does not appear to directly describe the SP3 condition which apparently causes this particular problem. The specific cause has to do with a orphaned DLL that exists on the machine, but does not have a correctly correlated registry entry.

The Microsoft support article is here.

FYI, I used Method #1 of the two described in the article. Worked great for me!

Slower computers staggered by AVG 8.0 after system boot

I recently upgraded an older computer (733 MHz Pentium III; yes, very old!) from free AVG 7.5 to AVG 8.0. I then noticed some problems with the computer responding extremely slowly. Opening the Process Manager revealed that the problem was the process avgrsx.exe. It was taking up about 85% to 90% of the processor.

It turns out that when the system is booted, AVG 8.0 automatically performs a system scan. On slower computers like the one I’m describing, this process can really swamp the processor; in my case, for the first five or six minutes after bootup. After the scan is complete, the processor overhead for avgrsx.exe drops to zero except when opening an application, etc.

I’ve seem some reports that indicate that disabling the Link Scanner feature resolves this problem. I have not found this to be the case; perhaps people trying this “fix” happened to try it right around the time that the machine completes its initial scan, and thus saw the processor utilization fall about the same time.

LG EnV won’t recognize .mp3 files

My wife really likes her LG EnV phone. One of the features she uses heavily is the .mp3 playback, along with a pair of stereo Bluetooth headphones. But at first, I was going crazy because I couldn’t get songs to be reliably recognized when they were added to the my_music folder on the microSD card. I thought perhaps there wasn’t a proper “refresh” or “rebuild” of the music database when starting the phone up with the new files on it. After a lot of wasted time, I finally discovered that the problem was with the .mp3 filenames (or more accurately, with the EnV’s music player’s handling of .mp3 filenames). If the filenames contain more than about 30 characters, the phone simply will not recognize the files.

Note this is the filenames (as in MyArtist-MySong.mp3) that you see as you are copying files to the microSD card, NOT the ID3 tags that are read by most music players. There also seemed to be a potential problem with some odd characters. So bottom line: make sure the files you put on the microSD card have filenames with 30 characters or less, and only contains basic characters such as alphanumerics, underscore, hyphen, etc.

Erratic PPTP VPN behavior with iTunes and Bonjour

After a lot of head-scratching, I discovered that recent problems I was having with VPN connectivity was related to installing iTunes.

(Quick list of specifics of my case: Windows XP client, Windows built-in PPT VPN client, connecting to Net Integrations Technologies servers; all servers with identical VPN termination configurations)

I found that all of a sudden, while I could still successfully establish a VPN connection to all of the networks I had always worked with, for some of them, none of the resources could be accessed. So, even though I had the tunnel established, I could not even ping, by name or IP address, any device within that network. For other networks, things worked perfectly, as they always had done.

By trial and error, I eventually discovered that a recent update to iTunes, somewhere around version 7.6 (which apparently includes Bonjour) was the problem. Bonjour is a “zero configuration” network discovery technology that supports the ability to easily recognize other network devices and applications on a local network. It turns out that Bonjour makes changes to your local route table that certain VPN clients do not like. Apple somewhat cryptically notes: Some VPN Clients interfere with Bonjour although it doesn’t point out the more irritating inverse behavior.

Because Bonjour is a separate service, it may be possible to stop the Bonjour service when VPN connectivity is desired; it may also be possible to simply uninstall Bonjour, and leave iTunes functioning without Bonjour. I have not yet tested these possibilities, so YMMV.

Wiping data from a Blackberry 7100t

I needed to find a quick reference on how to reset my T-Mobile Blackberry 7100t before turning it in for an upgrade rebate. Although I found quite a few references for resetting many other Blackberry devices to clear personal data, I never did find specific instructions for this process for my model.

Finally, after poking around, I found it under:

Settings/Security

Edit the password field as if to change the password, and one of the available options will be “Wipe Handheld”. Select this, and you will be prompted to enter “blackberry’ to confirm. Wait a minute or two, and everything will be cleared and reset.

Feeling included by exclusion.

The “need to belong” is well understood by most people, at least instinctively if not objectively. But if membership in some sort of group or “tribe” defines belonging and self-identification, aren’t we really defining ourselves by exclusion; i.e. who doesn’t belong to our chosen group or identity?

Take any identifiable grouping of people; how about geeks (techies, nerds, … etc.)? We tend to compare ourselves favorably (putting myself in this group, here!) against the “technically unenlightened” all the time. Not that we do it obviously or publicly all the time; it’s more the smug inner sense of superiority over the unenlightened Luddites that provides the emotional payoff.

I would propose that this “exclusionary superiority” concept is a primary factor of our need to belong, and that there is evidence of it in most social structures. You can see it in the white collar worker who looks down on the “people who have to work with their hands”, while it’s also evident in the factory worker who mocks the engineers who “have no idea how this machine really works.” It’s patently obvious in gated communities and country clubs, but just as present in teenage cliques, music fans (“the band you like is a bunch of posers”) and activists (“obviously you’re not really as committed to <insert cause here> as we are.”)

The point is that regardless of how much we may not want to admit it, a sense of belonging is heavily derived from a feeling of superiority and exclusion.