Beginnercode.com

I ran into this little problem last month while running windows update on several workstations. You know that little yellow shield down by your clock in the taskbar ? For some reason, a few workstations seemed to have locked up. When I peeked into the task manager->Processes, one of the “svchost.exe” processes were consuming 100% CPU. Coincidently, these workstations also had a fresh install of Office 2003 professional.

After MANY hours of monkeying around, I found a ‘remedy’ for this. I use that term loosely because it did work, though I don’t know if there’s a better or more proper fix. This should be performed if you have errands to run or are going to bed…. A watched pot never boils.

This can get you by and operational if you don’t have time to perform the updates:

1. Go to start->run.
2. Type in services.msc and hit return.
3. When the services window pops up highlight the Automatic Updates service.
4. Double click it.
5. Change the startup type to manual, and click the stop button.

Performing the updates:

1. Go to Microsoft Update.
2. Run it.
3. At this point the yellow update icon will show up in your taskbar again and doing any task will seem painfully slow.
4. Go get coffee, or watch a movie.
5. Come back and click to install any updates recommended.
6. Here is where you go to bed, or go shopping.
7. After a few hours the updates will complete and you will be good to go.

*If you disabled the updates as above you’ll want to return them to their original state. If you don’t you will not receive automatic updates in the future.
You can do this by opening the services window, changing the startup type back to Automatic, and clicking the start button.

svchost.exe, cpu, Windows Update

Back in November I spent a little time watching videos to get a free copy of Windows Vista. (Thanks to Things That Make you Go Hmm! ) I did watch all the required video, but maybe MS is only giving out one or the other? I’m sure there were limited copies.

I had since forgot I did so. Last Thursday when I arrived home from work a discreet brown envelope arrived from Microsoft with my name on it! Heres the goods!

I’m always leary of upgrading anything, especially an OS. I hardly have enough time to upgrade, let alone troubleshoot or “un-upgrade”. But I was curious and also a bit excited. So, I decided to upgrade my laptop. Shortly after throwing in the disk I was presented with the agreement screen, along with the new looking backdrop.

Next I was presented with an option to use the upgrade advisor (optional) to see if my system had what it took. Of course it required the .NET framework to be installed in order to use it. This I really disliked. It forced me to the web to install it. This makes me wonder if I wasn’t yet connected, if it would offer to install it from the disk? After some blinking and flashing the advisor gave me the go-ahead.

Shortly after accepting this and proceeding with the upgrade Vista ran a compatability check on my hardware to see if there would be any confilcts. Most of my hardware seemed to check out. The items that didn’t were dell specific. At this point I wondered if Dell is aware of this. I also wondered “Why isnt the OS just backward compatable?”.

I had a loading screen for about an hour and a half with a note on the bottom stating “It can take a few hours to upgrade your computer”. Good thing I had other things to do!

If finally loaded. I knew right off the bat my Dell programs weren’t working right because the volume keys worked, but the visual display of it on my screen did not. It was getting late and didn’t have too much time to look it over really. I looked quickly at the nifty 3D screen chooser, and the new look of the explorer. It also came with a few gadgets running by default. It seemed to have more of a Mac look and feel. Especially explorer. It also seemed to have a larger memory footprint.

I did have a moment while trying out an MMORPG where the system suddenly shut off. When I turned it back on, there was some text on the screen complaining of temperatures, and something possibly blocking the fan. Never have seen this before. I’m guessing it has a lot to do with the dell BIOS, or software talking with Vista properly…

Vista, Windows

I wanted to add the ability to send messages to users on my domain for a few reasons. One of the main reasons is to let them know when the server might be going down etc.

The built in tool that does this is called NET SEND. To use it open a command prompt and type in: net send %computername% %message%. There are many things you can do with this but I’m not going to get into that just yet.

I was successful at it by manually turning on the Messenger service on my workstation. Again command prompt: services.msc. Locate the messenger service and enable it. But I have about 30 users and didn’t want to go to each workstation. So I was on the hunt how to do this using Group Policy from the server. After many blunderings I think I found it, because it does work…

First you want to create a Group policy object and link it to an OU that you will be using the policy for. Give it a friendly name like NET SEND or something. Then here’s the edits to make it go…

***CAUTION***I am a novice at these things so please be careful!

Computer configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Windows Messenger set the 2 items to ‘disabled’

Computer Configuration->Windows Settings->Security Settings->System Services->Messenger to Automatic.

Then force the group policy to update: (gpupdate /force).

Odly enough someone in IRC tipped me off that sometimes the workstations need to be restarted twice. I’m not sure why that is but it did work.

Now I’m not sure what adverse or unsafe situation this may present. I always make notes of what changes I’ve made, and when. If anyone reading this has any insight to any negative impact this may have by enabling this service please speak up! (I do know messenger in itself could be troublesome if not protected well).

Exchange, net send, windows services