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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2002-09-19

A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa
That Helps You Get More From Your Hardware, 
Software, and Time Online

Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!

1) Windows XP SP1 Feedback And Alternative Fix

I'm collecting reader feedback on XP's "Service Pack 1" and will have more info soon on how this update fares on real-world systems. (Plus! edition readers can already see some preliminary info in item #11 in the Sept 12th issue: http://www.langalist.com/plus/newsletters/2002/2002-09-12plus.asp )

But meanwhile, if you are running XP and have NOT yet upgraded, you need to know about this problem and solution, sent to me by Steve Gibson (yes, *that* Steve Gibson, from http://grc.com ):

Hey Fred, Just a heads-up on a rapidly forthcoming bit of freeware from me -- regarding the distressingly dangerous pre-SP1 Windows XP vulnerability.

Since THE REGISTER's Thomas Greene has now blabbed all of the exploit details across the Net <<sigh>> I was then able to take the next step ...

I wrote a super-small (30k), super-quick (instantaneous), super-simple (chimpanzee approved), totally safe automatic vulnerability fixing utility to deal totally with this Window XP mess: XPdite

This is not, of course, a replacement for installing XP's Service Pack 1, but for all of those people for whom SP1 is impractical, "XPdite" gives anyone a super-quick and easy means for patching the system immediately....

This little 30k app *contains* the Service Pack 1 replacement file with which it replaces the pre-SP1 file, renaming the original file ".bak". It does the right thing pre and post SP1 and also on non-XP systems so that ANYONE can run it at any time "just to be sure".

One of the COOLEST things for corporate deployment -- where they just CAN NOT move all of their machines to SP1 immediately -- is that it accepts the single command line option "runsilent" -- which can be executed from the corporate LOGON script. The "runsilent" option suppresses *all* UI, and causes the app to check the host and install the replacement file only on pre-SP1 XP systems which don't have it yet. Thus, a corporation can cause all of their systems to quickly patch themselves.

This makes it super-simple to fix the vulnerability on any scale. :)

Thank you Steve.

More detail: The "exploit" that Steve refers to is one in which a malicious hacker may contrive to delete files on an XP system (other versions of Windows aren't affected) by enticing you to click on a specially-formatted URL in a web page or in an email, or simply by opening an mail or visiting a web page that has the malicious URL embedded within.

As Steve says, Microsoft has fixed this problem--- the fix is included in SP1, along with tons of other stuff. But if you're waiting to see whether SP1 is worth installing as a whole, Steve's XPdite lets you address just this particular problem now, without having to install the full Service Pack.

As is usual with much of Steve's stuff, he's offering this file for free, as a service to the computing community.

Full info and the download is available at http://grc.com/xpdite/xpdite.htm .

If you want more info on the exploit itself, see some of the original work on its discovery at: http://www.security.nnov.ru/search/document.asp?docid=3370 or
http://24.78.2.184/helpcenter.htm ;
or see the derivative article in the Register at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/27074.html

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2) Deciphering "Exit Codes"

Exit codes--- sometimes called "result codes" or "errorlevel" codes--- are a kind of simplified numeric message generated by many programs when they complete a task: The codes are a way to report what happened when the program ran. The numeric message is delivered to the operating system or to any other program that's looking for it.

For example, the DOS command XCOPY can generate five different result- or exit codes:

0 = Specified files copied; normal exit
1 = No file found to copy
2 = User pressed Ctrl-C to stop command
4 = Not enough memory or disk space, syntax error, or initialization error
5 = Write-protected disk or other write error

The OS, or any other program that uses XCOPY, can interpret whatever exit code comes back when XCOPY finishes and either present that info to you or take some kind of additional, perhaps remedial, action.

The problem is, exit codes aren't standardized; each program can have its own exit codes. (By convention a code of zero does usually mean "all OK," but this isn't necessarily universal.)

So, you have to go hunting to dig up the codes for whatever program you're trying to monitor.

For example, the exit codes for common DOS commands are listed here:
http://home.online.no/~westerma/planet/dos/commands.html

You can find Information on Defrag's error codes here http://users.cybercity.dk/~bse26236/batutil/help/DEFRAG_N.HTM or here http://www.google.com/search?q=defrag+exit+code

Info on "Errorlevel" codes, used in batch files, is here:
http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/e/erroleve.htm

And so on. Google will turn up tons of info for you on well-known programs and their exit codes.

It can be a little harder to track down exit codes for some proprietary software: There, your best bet is probably the software vendor's support pages. Search there for "exit code," "result code" and perhaps "errorlevel" and see what turns up. For example, going to the Symantec search page ( http://www.symantec.com/search/ ) and entering

"result code" navw32
or
"exit code" navw32

turns up a ton of info on the exit/result codes for Norton AntiVirus for Windows ("navw32").

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3) Meet Faisal, Newest Member Of The LangaList Family

We've added another child--- the seventh--- to the group sponsored on an ongoing basis by LangaList Plus! subscribers. Here's a note I just got from an aid agency working in Indonesia:

Faisal Eko Budiayanto was born to a desperately poor family in Central Java province. He lives with his parents only in a very simple house, earthen floor without private bathroom and electricity in it. His father only earns a living by farm laborer with small income that in insufficient to meet their family's basic needs, and there is no way for the mother to help with the finances. The Family's annual income is US$ 154. It is painfully obvious that the child needs help to get proper nourishment clothing and better attention. We are happy to welcome him to our big family. Faisal Eko Budiayanto is a cute little boy. His health is average and he makes progress day by day. Your kind sponsorship will mean much for his happy growth.

Click to see Faisal: http://www.freetune.com/images/faisal.jpg
(If above link is slow, click here: http://www.langa.com/images/faisal.jpg )

Here's what's this is all about: Those of us with computers and Internet access are vastly better off than most of the world's population. Because of this, I decided that a portion of the LangaList Plus! subscription fees would be donated to registered/legitimate charities helping the underprivileged around the world. The contribution does not increase the cost of a Plus! subscription in any way; the donation is taken "off the top" of any profits. (This is described in the pages at http://www.langa.com/plus.htm  )

Faisal is the seventh child sponsored on an ongoing basis--- week in, week out--- by the collective generosity of LangaList subscribers. LangaList Plus! subscribers also have collectively contributed to emergency earthquake relief efforts in India and to funds to help the victims of last year's Sept 11th attacks in the US. (To see all the donations so far, click to http://www.langa.com/plus2.htm#kids )

As the year goes on, and as more readers sign up for Plus! subscriptions, I hope we'll be able to sponsor more children and assist other charities around the world.

Graham Greene once said, "There is always a moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in...." If you're already a LangaList Plus subscriber, thank you! You can feel good about giving back a little to those less fortunate, and opening "a door to the future" for a child in otherwise-desperate circumstances.

If you're not yet a Plus! subscriber check it out: With a Plus! subscription, you can not only help yourself make the most of your hardware, software and time online--- but you also can help those less fortunate (like Faisal) make the most of their very lives. Thanks for your help!

http://www.langa.com/plus.htm

If you have a website, your web host probably provides you with access to your site's log files, which contain information such as what pages people are visiting (or not visiting!), how many "page views" and "hits" your site has generated, and much more. Many web hosts offer free, simple logfile analysis as part of the base cost: You go to a special URL (perhaps the web site's "control panel") and the web host's own software will present usage data for your site in an easy-to-digest form.

That's usually fine for low-volume web sites, but doesn't cut it for larger sites: The built-in tools offered by most web hosts lack flexibility, and may not let you drill down enough into the raw data to really get a feel for what's going on in your site.

But full-scale logfile analysis tools are not simple things. A log file can be massive: Even a modestly active web site can generate a log file with literally hundreds of thousands---or even millions--- of entries comprising hundreds of megabytes of raw data every week! Plus, each type of web server (Apache, IIS, etc) generates files in slightly different formats, and with different kinds of data collected. Tools that can handle one server's log files may choke on another--- a problem if you manage more than one kind of site.

There are free analysis tools (see http://www.google.com/search?q=free+log+analyzer ), but most of the ones I've looked at have some problem or limitation that made them not work for me. And some of the heavy-duty commercial, tools cost a small fortune.

Consider this note from John Woram (Windows Registry expert, book author, and  former WinMag columnist):

Fred:  I've been using WebTrends Log Analyzer, version 5, but it's getting a tad long-of-tooth and I'm looking for a replacement. I believe their upgrade charges are just slightly to the left of armed robbery...Are you using anything comparable to analyze your traffic? ---John

I told John that I use OpenWebScope ( http://www.openwebscope.com/ ) a $99 tool that's very flexible and that can automatically handle log files from a variety of server types. It generates reports as easy-to-read local web pages with clear charts and graphs; instead of saving the giant log files (even zipped, they're enormous), I just save the report web pages as compact, all-in-one MHT files for a permanent record of past site activity.

You can download a free trial version of the software, via the link above.

The "won't-fully-function-unless-you-pay" approach isn't unusual for trialware; lots of trialware either only works for a very short time, or works forever but has important functions disabled until you ante up. While I understand the frustration this can cause, I also understand that the software vendors need an income in order to stay in business and provide good service.

This is part of the problem that LavaSoft ( http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ ) has experienced: Their free, fully-functional and non-time-limited anti-spyware tool Ad-Aware is great, but it costs Lavasoft so much to produce and host it that their site has gone dark repeatedly as they've moved the domain from host to host, and set up mirror sites to try to share the burden. I applaud their generosity, but I also wonder if they'll be able to keep it up.

But that leaves unanswered your second question as to whether or not Aluria's reports were accurate or not. The easiest way to figure that out is to use a second malware-detection tool. Ad-Aware, mentioned above, can detect and remove many kinds of malware, although it's aimed more at the "spyware" subclass of malware. Still, it's certainly worth a try.

PestPatrol is another excellent tool ( http://www.pestpatrol.com ) although it also uses the "detect but not remove" model, until you pay the modest fee. But it's honest in what it reports. If it does find anything, and you can't afford the fee to get the full version, you probably can manually remove the malware it finds via a file/registry search to track down and delete all the malware components, and references to the components. It's laborious (paying the fee lets you avoid the labor) but it can be done.

If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, just use the following link to recommend the LangaList to a friend. Your friend just may find a new source of useful information; I just may gain a new subscriber; and you just may win $10,000 for your trouble (full details also available via this link):
http://www.recommend-it.com/l.z.e?s=143182

Or, win a no-strings $30 Gift Certificate for any item at Amazon.Com--- books, software, hardware, kitchenware, toys... and more. To have a shot at winning, just use the following link to recommend the LangaList to a friend. Your friend just may find a new source of useful information; I just may gain a new subscriber; and you just may win a $30 Gift Certificate! (Full details also available via this link):
http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm

Either way, thank you, and good luck!

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Dear Fred,  I've had the oddest problem just start about two weeks ago. I'm hoping you've perhaps heard of this or something similar and can help me, please?

From a website, I attempted to download a zipped file, in fact I tried multiple times both by clicking "open" and then "save". Every time whichever way I tried it, I got an error message "compressed (zipped) file is invalid or corrupted". I wrote an email to their webmaster who said it worked fine when he downloaded it, to try it again. I did, and I got the same error message. So, I wrote him back, and he didn't know what was wrong but said he would be glad to temporarily put it on another server to see if I could get it from there. I tried once from the alternate server, and it worked perfectly.

Today, I tried to download a zipped program from another website, and I got the same error message. I wrote their customer support folks who told me to try it again as it downloaded fine for them. I tried it again, and got the same error message again. I wrote back to them and told them it still wouldn't work and asked them if there was a mirror I could try downloading it from. I've yet to hear back from them.

Have you ever heard of this kind of problem downloading zipped files? It just started happening to me, and I'm very concerned. Do you think this is just a coincidence or is there something wrong with my computer? I am a computer novice, and I've only had this brand new computer for ten months. I've learned a lot from your newsletter, but not enough to have any idea what's going on with this problem. Regards, Josephine Shryock

There are several possibilities. With dial-up connections, it's not uncommon for a bit to be "dropped" (lost in transmission) from time to time, especially if your phone line isn't great. Zip files have very few extraneous bits, so loss of even one can render the entire Zip file invalid and unable to be decompressed.

That could explain why an initial download might fail, but wouldn't explain subsequent download failures. Caching could be the culprit there: For example, if your original download got munged, and your successive downloads all referenced a bad cached copy instead of the actual, original file, they'd all fail. The cache could be on your end--- either the cache built into your browser, or in add-on software (many "download accelerators" employ some form of caching to create the illusion of greater throughput). But some ISPs also use caches for greater speed. If your ISP's cached copy of the file was bad, your subsequent download attempts may have repeatedly accessed that bad cached copy instead of the actual original file, resulting in what seemed to be a series of bad downloads.

Moving the file to a new location would have bypassed the cache; perhaps that's why your download from an alternate location worked.

If the problem recurs, try clearing your browser's cache: In Internet Explorer, click Tools/Internet Options, and on the General tab, click on Delete Files in the “Temporary Internet Files” section. In Netscape, click Edit/Preferences/Advanced/Cache, then click both “Clear Cache” buttons. Other browsers have similar settings. When you're done, close and restart the browser and see if that helps.

Or, if you want to manually flush your browser cache of virtually all files, use the free tools at http://www.langa.com/cleanup_bat.htm .

Likewise, if you're using any kind of extra cache in a download accelerator, explore that software's settings for ways to clear out old files.

There's nothing much you can do about a cache on your ISP's end. But if there are repeated problems, it might be worth checking out a different ISP.

Do you have a home page or website? (It doesn't matter what size.) Please click over to http://www.langa.com/code.htm , and maybe you can join the hundreds and hundreds of LangaList readers who have "Loaded the Code!" (If you've already "Loaded The Code" and are wondering if your site will appear here or on the Langa.Com web site, please see http://www.langa.com/link.txt )

Speaking of which: Here's another eclectic sample of reader sites--- some professional, some very personal:

View A Randomly-Chosen Reader Site From Among All Listed
http://www.langa.com/randomlink.htm

Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At
http://www.langa.com/readersites.htm

Free Meta-Search Engine
http://www.nscavenger.com/

Virtual Vacations
http://www.keepontrippin.com/

Scuba Site
http://www.mjbdiver.com

Non-Profit/Small Biz Marketing
http://ideamerchant.com/index.shtml

Dean E. Ewing, DVM (note: site automatically offers Gator)
http://www.deanewing.cjb.net/

Canning Supplies
http://www.galaxymall.com/foods/canning_labels/

Flat File Society Homepage/Diary
http://www.geocities.com/flatfilsoc/index.html

OKWoodWorks
http://www.okwoodworks.com/

"NeatStuff"
http://www.maraband.com/neatstuff/

Charger's Technical Support Website
http://www.x-plane.org/users/chargertech/

Fred, http://www.voycabulary.com/

VoyCabulary(tm) makes the words on any web page into links so you can look them up with just a click! --- Roger Griffin

Thanks, Roger. The page-processing is a little rough--- it changes the way most pages look--- but it does make any page's content fully one-click-searchable so you can look up or translate any unfamiliar words with ease. Interesting concept!

This won't seem particularly amusing at first, but keep reading:

Fred, I requested some help from my broadband provider the other day and got the following [sig, or signature file] attached at the end of the message

"The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers."

Yikes! Any comments? --- Pete Cedor

Actually, it's a fairly standard sig in common use, especially on corporate email systems. Strangely, I get that sig (or ones very much like it) on emails where people are asking me some tech question or other, hoping for an answer in this newsletter. But one could read the sig as prohibiting me from discussing their question in the newsletter. So, I don't.

But here's the funny part. This is the home-made sig Pete appended to his note:

The information in this transmission is intended to be totally worthless and devoid of any benefit to anyone with the exception of, possibly, the intended recipient. If you received this communication in error or if you accidentally read it when it wasn't addressed to you, then please immediately delete all of your saved game files and email addresses and then energetically beat yourself about the head and shoulders with a recent technology publication of your choice. All other more intelligent actions taken in response to this information are prohibited, so there.

• Preinstall SP1 On Your XP Setup CD
• Real-Life Linux Suggestions Continue
• New, Improved Version Of Archives En Route

Today's LangaList Plus! Edition contains all ten items above, plus about 30% more content including: info on a way to combine the your original XP setup CD with the patches in SP1 to create a new setup CD with already SP1 built in, for all-in-one installs of a fully pre-patched OS; more (excellent) hands-on information about various versions of Linux; and info on a coming update to the LangaList help file & archives that will be made available to all Plus! subscribers. As before, this one will place all past issues in convenient Helpfile format for super-fast local searching, but in a new format that makes the downloads smaller and faster!

The Plus! Edition is still just pennies per issue. Info: http://www.langa.com/plus.htm 

See you next issue!

Best,

Fred
( Editor@Langa.Com )

Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win $10,000!I)