jayroos.com

Daylight Savings Time Update for Windows 2000

Jay — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 23:27:17 +0000

The United States government has changed the start and end dates for Daylight Savings Time as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The theory is energy will be saved by starting earlier and ending later. Of course our computers don’t know that yet. Unless you fix it, your computer’s clock will be off by an hour when you wake up on March 11th.

If you have a computer running Windows XP or later you’ll be fine if you just go get the patch for your OS from Microsoft. If you have Windows 2000 you have to do it the hard way, unless you have Extended Hotfix Support. Windows 2000 is no longer supported by Microsoft, but they do provide a long knowledge base article to tell you how to do it yourself.

Fear no more. I needed to simplify the process so it can be repeated on hundreds of machines. I’ve wrapped it all up in one self-extracting zip file and I’m sharing it with you. DSTUpdate.exe was created with ZipGenius and if you want to check my work feel free to look inside and check it out.

Make the Windows 2000 Registry Repair Utility into a Bootable CD

Jay — Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:00:00 +0000

In September Microsoft released the Windows 2000 Registry Repair Utility at their downloads site. The utility fills a void in my software toolbox I’ve been trying to fill for some time. There are ways to boot into the recovery console and fix the registry but there’s never been an easy way and they often don’t work. This utility has already saved more than one computer I administer.

The instructions provided with the utility require creating six Windows XP Setup Floppy Disks and then running an installer that copies some files to the sixth disk. To run the program you need to boot from the floppy drive and successively insert each disk until you get to the last one. The program then asks which installation to fix and hopefully fixes it.

I wasn’t satisfied with loading six floppies to get the job done. My toolkit only includes one blank floppy. Everything else I need is kept on CDs. If I need a bootable floppy I have images on a CD that I can load to the floppy as needed. So I set out to figure out how to move the utility to CD.

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Dual Boot Windows 2000 and Ghost

Jay — Mon, 04 Nov 2002 12:00:00 +0000

For some time now, I’ve been using Norton Ghost to make perfect backups of my computers. The one thing about Ghost that gets old, is you have to boot up to DOS with a floppy disk or CD-ROM in order to make the backup. In addition to requiring a boot floppy, I keep my BIOS set to only boot to the hard drive so I don’t accidently boot up a floppy and risk infecting my computer with a virus.

I decided to figure out how to dual boot Windows 2000 and DOS so I can boot up to DOS on the hard drive and run Ghost without popping in floppy disks and changing BIOS settings to allow the computer to boot to the floppy.

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Recovering From a SYSTEMced Error

Jay — Wed, 16 Oct 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Note: This procedure has been superceeded by the availability of the Windows 2000 Registry Repair Utility. Please see my tip on how to make it into a bootable CD and try it before you try this tip.

The Windows 2000 SYSTEMced error occurs when the system can’t load the SYSTEM hive of the registry. The reasons include the SYSTEM hive being damaged, missing or too large to load.

The cause I’ve experienced most often has been the hive being too large to load. The SYSTEM hive has to share 16 MB of memory with several other processes when it is first read so if the hive is 16 MB and the other processes take up 3 MB it just can’t be read. Microsoft has instructions for recovering from a hive that gets too large in knowledge base article Q269075. However, I’ve never been able to recover a system using only the method they specify. Microsoft assumes that the SYSTEM hive is too large because there are a large number of shared resources and their fix is to eliminate the key of the hive with the shares in it.

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Cleaning up after Internet Explorer

Jay — Thu, 28 Mar 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Internet Explorer leaves pieces of information from browsing all over the place and doesn’t clean up after itself when you’re done browsing. Whether your concerned about privacy or just don’t like having all the garbage lying around, this one’s for you.

You use this script at your own risk. I am not a programmer. I just occasionally hack together code that gets the job done. If this script should happen to go wild and hose your computer you’ve been warned.

CleanExplore.vbs

This script replaces launching IE directly. Instead CleanExplore launches IE and watches it. When IE exits the script wakes up and deletes Typed URLs, Cookies, the Cache and History files. It will not remove any index.dat files or any subfolders that are not empty.

Installation:
Copy this file anywhere you like. If IE is not in the standard location change the strIEPath variable below. Replace your IE shortcuts with shortcuts to this script. Rename them to Internet Explorer for transparency and change the icon to the big blue E.

Securing Netbios on Windows 98

Jay — Mon, 12 Mar 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Microsoft is not known for it’s high security practices. As a result most people who run a Microsoft operating system have the security holes already built in. In this tip I’ll show how to add just a little more security to your Windows 98 setup.

If you are using file and printer sharing or any other service that depends on netbios you shouldn’t use this tip. If you are unsure you certainly shouldn’t bother. This procedure also requires registry editing and renaming of system files. Anytime you venture into the registry you risk rendering your system useless. Before following these instructions be sure you have all important files backed up.

To completely disable netbios in Windows 98, first open the Network Control Panel and make sure that File and Printer Sharing is uninstalled. Next go to C:\Windows\System and rename vnetbios.vxd to vnetbios_vxd. Now open regedit and navigate to the Key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\VNETBIOS. Right click on the VNETBIOS key and choose delete. With you must restart to apply the changes. Once you restart if you open a DOS prompt and type netstat -a you shouldn’t see any netbios ports listening (ports 137-139).

Modified 2001-03-12

Securing Netbios on Windows 2000

Jay — Thu, 08 Mar 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Microsoft is not known for it’s quality security practices. As a result most people who run a Microsoft operating system have the security holes already built in. In this tip I’ll show how to add just a little more security to your Windows 2000 setup.

If you are using file and printer sharing or any other service that depends on netbios you shouldn’t use this tip. If you are unsure you certainly shouldn’t bother.

Open the Network Control Panel. Then right click on your Local Area Connection and choose properties. The first step in securing netbios is to uninstall File and Printer Sharing if it is listed. This goes for any operating system and any protocol. If you don’t need a protocol then it’s just another security hole. The next thing to do is disable netbios over TCP. Click on Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and choose properties. Next choose Advanced… and click the WINS tab. On this page uncheck Enable LMHOSTS lookup and choose Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP. Click OK and if it asks you “This connection has an empty primary WINS address. Do you want to continue?” click yes. Click OK and OK and then close the control panel. You should reboot. Now any scanner looking for netbios information will turn up empty. One less hole.

Modified 2001-03-08

Creating a Bootable CD-ROM

Jay — Thu, 07 Dec 2000 12:00:00 +0000

The directions for making a bootable were never obvious to me so I never did it. One day I decided I wanted a bootable CD and made several coasters in the process of trying to get it right. Hopefully my directions will help you save a couple bucks on blanks.

The directions that follow were written with Adaptec Easy CD Creator in mind. There are many CD burning packages available and there will be variations in procedure.

When you create a bootable CD, a boot image is created on the CD that the computer uses to boot up. The boot image is created from a floppy and behaves like a floppy. The image is opened in to memory just like a ram drive and uses the drive letter A:. There are a couple things to keep in mind when you are creating a bootable CD. The first thing is the format used on bootable CDs is ISO 9660, which means filenames can only be 8 characters long with a 3-character extension. If any file names are longer than that they will be truncated so they look like filena~1.txt. The second thing to remember is the CD-ROM drive still needs to have drivers loaded in order to use it. Without the CD-ROM drivers, the computer will only read the image information from the CD. The best way to make a bootable CD is to act like you’re still using a floppy disk and CD. Set up a floppy to work with the CD as if it was a non-bootable CD. That means the floppy should be bootable and include the CD-ROM drivers, config.sys and autoexec.bat as well as any other files and drivers necessary to start the computer. Once you get everything set up all you have to do is burn the CD. If you use Easy CD creator it will ask you to insert a bootable floppy. Just add files to the CD and you’re all set. The last thing to keep in mind is the computer must support booting from CD-ROM and the CD-ROM must be set to boot before hard drive otherwise it’ll just ignore the CD and boot to the hard drive instead.

Modified 2000-12-07

Flushing the Windows 2000 DNS Cache

Jay — Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:00:00 +0000

In Windows 2000 there is a service that keeps DNS information cached on your computer. This is good because the computer doesn’t always have to query the DNS server to locate web sites you’ve already visited. The problem is if you don’t restart your computer often enough and one of the DNS entries changes it doesn’t always get reflected in the DNS cache. A recent example is when a friend of mine changed his hosting service. Other computers showed the web site with no problem but my computer continued to show the old site. I fixed it by restarting but depending on what else is running on the computer it’s not always possible or desirable to restart to update or flush the DNS cache.

There’s no real danger with this tip. The worst thing that could happen is your DNS server may go down immediately after you flush the cache and you won’t be able to access any web sites until it comes back up. Not likely.

This is a simple procedure. Just open a DOS Window and type ipconfig /flushdns at the command prompt. All done.

Modified 2000-12-07

Cleaning up your Windows Registry

Jay — Sun, 15 Oct 2000 12:00:00 +0000

Background

The Windows registry is the place for the operating system to keep information it needs to function. It also where programs store their data. Basically the intent is to do away with some of the .ini files that were abundant with older versions of Windows.

Warning

Any time you make changes to the registry you’re risking rendering your system useless. That would be very rare but the chance still exists.

Solution

Before you make any changes to your registry you should always back up the registry. To do this click Start -> Run and type scanregw.exe in the text box. One way to clean up and repair the Windows registry is to run RegClean.exe, a handy utility available from Microsoft for free. You can find somtimes on the install CD or you can download it directly from Microsoft. Just run the program and it’ll pretty much do the rest. The only thing you’ll have to do is tell it to fix it. Another way to clean and repair the registry is with scanreg.exe, included with a standard Windows installation. You need to reboot to DOS and all you have to do is type scanreg /fix at the command prompt. This might take some time depending on your registry’s size and your computers speed. Using either or both of these steps will usually decrease your registry size. How much will depend on how much garbage there is to clean out of your registry.

Modified 2000-12-07