Windows – No Disk

The other day a client calls up and says she keeps getting a “Windows – No Disk” window, that will not go away no matter how many times she closes it.  I then asked when did this problem appear, in which she replied “after I pulled out the USB Flash Drive”.  So at this point I was thinking that some files she was working on, wanted to save themselves to the usb flash drive and could not since the drive was not present, thus causing the annoying “No Disk” error.  I then instructed her to save her work elsewhere on the hard drive and restart her workstation.  Windows - No Disk ErrorUnfortunately however, after she restarted her workstation and logged in the error continued to pop up!

Since the restart didn’t solve the issue, I knew it was time pull out my best tool in the shed “Google Search”.  After a couple google searches and a couple forums, I found out that the reason for this error is due to a usb driver that became corrupted during installation. The solution is to uninstall the usb drivers and reinstall them.

Once I had uninstalled all the usb drivers in Computer Management and restarted the workstation, the “Windows – No Disk” error appeared no more.  Mere mortals can only guess why the usb driver became corrupted in Windows, but thanks to google and a post on technet this XP annoyance was solved!

References:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/itprovistahardware/thread/d5f38918-d11b-45c4-861d-b53aa3dbdaed

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Win32.Brontok Removed!!

win32.brontok

Fake Security Center Warning

Just today I ran into a nasty peice of malware called Win32.brontok.  It basically does the following:

1.  Hijacks your web browswer to a site that says you need to purchase this software to clean your pc

2.  Pops up a fake security center warning asking you to enable protection

3.  Upon enableing protection it opens you to a web page promoting a fake anti-virus product.

4.  Infects memory modules, and dll files (in this case it seemed to be .dll’s in the Google folder)

Some of the side affects of the malware were constant explorer.exe crashes and memory errors for the exporer process.  It was really annoying to have exporer crash more than 3 times in a minute, since it made it hard to work in the file system for very long.

How to Remove

To remove win32.brontok, first download Maleware-antibytes from this link:

1.  Download Maleware-Antibytes

2.  Install Maleware-Antibytes and Run a “Full Scan”

3.  Remove all infected objects it finds.

4.  Reboot

5.  Done!

And thats what removed it for me.  If you still are having trouble removing it, you might want to try smitfraudfix to remove browser hijackers.  ccleaner would be nice to try out as well, since it does an excellent job cleaning out temporary files and cleaning up the registry.

You can download ccleaner from this link:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/download/79cdedf2243b113d4f269134bfa9a19f/

You can download smitfraudfix from this link:

http://siri.urz.free.fr/Fix/SmitfraudFix.exe

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Schedule Disk Defragmenter to run automatically in Windows XP/2003

schedule-defragmenterYou can schedule the disk deframenter utility to automatically defragrment your hard drives, by creating a scheduled task.

  1. Open Control Panel, double-click Scheduled Tasks
  2. Double-click Add Scheduled Task
  3. On the Scheduled Task Wizard dialog, click Next.
  4. Click Browse and navigate to windows’system32 folder. Select defrag.exe and click Open.
  5. In the Scheduled Task Wizard dialog, type a name for the scheduled task (for example type Disk Defrag).
  6. Under Perform this task, select how often you wish Disk Defragmenter to run. Click Next.
  7. Set the time at which you wish the Disk Defragmenter scheduled task to run. This should be a time when your computer is turned on but not under heavy use (i.e. at night time).
  8. Enter a user name under which the Disk Defragmenter scheduled task will run. This user must be an administrator on the local machine (see note above). Enter the password for that user and confirm it. Click Next.
  9. Check Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish, and click Finish.
  10. In the Run text box, you can see the full path and command for defrag.exe.

Add the drive letter for the drive you wish to defragment to the command in the Run text box. If you want to defragment drive C:, your Run command should look like this:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\defrag.exe

Click OK

  1. In the Set Account Information dialog, enter and confirm the password for the user listed in Run as and click OK.
  2. Task Scheduler will automatically run Disk Defragmenter with the settings you selected at the time you selected.

Only one instance of Disk Defragmenter can be running at any given time. If you have multiple partitions you’ll need to add a separate scheduled task for each one, and make sure you give each task a different starting time, allowing for the previous one to finish.

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Windows XP Mode for Windows 7

Virtual Windows XP

Virtual Windows XP

Microsoft has implemented a Virtual Windows XP Mode in its newest upcoming operating system Windows 7.  Virtual XP mode in Winodws 7 will allow you to run legacy programs that worked in Windows XP or eariler version of windows via virtualization.  Now before you get any misconceptions in you head, this is not like a virtual machine that runs on its own screen or in a tiny window on the side of your monitor.  It is a virtualized platform that allows you to install Windows XP programs and add it to the host (Windows 7), and add the installed programs to the start menu.  You are not required to run the VM to use the programs installed in it.  It will run these legacy applications alongside Windows 7 applications!! In my opinion this was a great move for Microsoft, because this way they can claim 100% compatibility with Windows XP and ditch the “compatibility mode” that never worked half the time anyway!

Virtual Windows XP will be made available, for free, to users of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions via a download from the Microsoft web site.

References:
http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/04/24/secret-no-more-revealing-virtual-windows-xp-for-windows-7.aspx
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/xp_mode_pre_shots.asp

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