Eddie On Everything » windows errors

Windows Desktop Icons Keep Flashing On & Off? In my case, VNC was the cause.

eddie — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:20:13 +0000

The icons on my Windows XP machine have been flashing on & off intermittently for quite a while. The problem would come & go, and it wasn’t my primary computer, so I never bothered looking into it, though I did have a few suspicions as to the culprit.

I had a little extra time today, and the desktop icons were flashing so much it looked like a little icon disco over there, so I decided to look into the problem a little bit further.

I suspected that the problem was related to VNC, (UltraVNC in my case), and as an experiment, I shut down the VNC daemon. Sure enough, the icons stopped flashing.

I figured that the icons were flashing each time a remote machine tried to make a VNC connection to my computer, so I did a second test. The second part of my test was to restart the VNC server & choose the option to to “Display Query Window.” What this will do is pop up a little notification each time the machine receives an incoming connection request.

After enabling that option, it didn’t take long until I got the following pop-up:

So, who is this remote machine? A “hacker,” of course. Actually, more like a script kiddie. In case you’re unaware, people use scripts to scan your computer hundreds of thousands of times per day, looking for vulnerabilities. Since I have my VNC running on the default port (5900), it is a prime target for these unsophisticated rubes.

Not that I’m too concerned about it – I have a strong password and am not worried about an intrusion. More than anything, I just want the flashing to stop.

Here are few ways you can fix or minimize the problem

Only run VNC when you have to. This isn’t a great solution for me, as I like to have it running 24/7. But if you use VNC infrequently, it may work for you.
Change the default port to something other than 5900. Many of these scripts are configured to only check the default ports. It won’t stop the more sophisticated port scanning apps, but it’ll stop most. Of course, you’ll have to configure your VNC connection software to use this alternate port.
Configure your router to only accept connections from certain remote IP’s, if you know the remote machines you will be connecting from. (Or only from your local LAN, if you only use VNC on your local network.)
Turn off VNC port forwarding on your router, and configure your router so you can connect remotely & turn it back on when you need it. This eliminates the flashing problem & keeps VNC running, but adds another level of security headache by making your router configuration accessible to the public. If you have a good username & password, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Change the “Display Query Window” settings to timeout after a longer period, and then accept the connection by default. These kiddie scripts work on brute force, and many time out after 10 or 20 seconds. Configuring the server to wait 60 seconds before replying will cause many of them to go away uninterested after the first timeout. When you connect remotely, you’ll have to wait 60 seconds for the connection, obviously. And you may have to deal with a pop up notification about an incoming connection every once in a while, but it’s better than the constant flashing.

Right now, I’m experimenting with option #5, with good results so far. I’ve had a few pop ups, but after that first initial inquiry, the remote machine just goes away. (Instead of trying its list of 100 common passwords, causing 100 flashes.)

Number 4 is a good option (for me) too, but if #5 works, I’ll stick with that because it’s only less step to perform when connecting remotely. (Just have to wait that extra 60 seconds.)

How to Fix the clock’s “An Error Occurred While Windows was synchronizing with” Error

eddie — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:14:05 +0000

Ah, daylight savings time.

The time of year that reminds us all that our computer’s automatic clock setting mechanism may not work as expected.

I’ve been getting the error message “”An Error Occurred While Windows was synchronizing with time.windows.com” error message when trying to manually sync my clock to the Windows time server.

A screenshot of the error:

If you’re getting this error, here’s an easy way to fix it: change the value in the “server” field.

How to fix the time clock’s “An Error Occurred While Windows was synchronizing with…” error.

Open “Date an Time Properties” by double-clicking the clock (in the system tray area) and choosing the “Internet time” tab. (Alternatively, you can get to the same screen by going to Control Panel->Date and Time.)
Change the value in the “Server” field to another valid time server. First try “time.nist.gov”. If that doesn’t work, try one of the following:
ts1.aco.net
nist1-la.WiTime.net
ntp.alaska.edu
utcnist2.colorado.edu
tick.ucla.edu
ben.cs.wisc.edu
time.xmission.com
If none of the servers listed above works, you may have a network problem. Either check your firewall, or keep trying servers from this list.

Hopefully one of the servers in this list will work for you!

XP Setup Disk: INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing – Status 32768

eddie — Sat, 27 May 2006 18:09:02 +0000

I’m a RedHat Linux guy, but I wanted to try out the Ubuntu Linux distribution to see if it’s an acceptable solution for Linux newbies (who would likely install a dual-boot XP system) or for cash-strapped non-profit groups (who would likely use it as their primary system).

I had no problems setting up the dual-boot XP/Ubuntu system using the provided Ubuntu installer – it’s a very easy step-by-step process that even installs a boot manager so users can easily run a dual boot system. When I went to get rid of the Ubuntu installation, however, I ran into a bit of a problem.

First a note about boot managers

There is no way to “uninstall” a boot manager – a boot manager is nothing more than a set of instructions written to a special place on a hard disk called the “Master Boot Record,” or “MBR” for short. The way to “get rid” of one boot manager is it overwrite it with another boot manager.

Restoring the Windows XP Master Boot Record (MBR)
It used to be that you could repair a damaged MBR from from MS-DOS using the command “fdisk /mbr“. Not so with Windows XP – apparently the Microsoft powers-that-be thought it prudent to remove any and every useful Windows utility in the XP release. In that vein, they got rid of fdisk. Boo!

Instead, the only way to restore the MBR is to use the Windows XP setup disk to boot to the Windows recovery console, which is sometimes easier said than done.

Error: INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing – Status 32768
I attempted to boot from my XP setup disks, only to receive the following error:

INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing – Status 32768

Oh great – a task that would have taken me about 3 seconds in Windows 98 is about to drag into an hour long ordeal in the “improved” Windows XP. Here are some options for working around this error:

Got another XP setup disk? Try booting with that, even if it’s a different version. My installation is a XP Pro with SP2, and for some reason, the XP Pro with SP2 boot up disk gave me this error. I popped in an XP Home setup disk and had no problems. From what I was able to gather from the newsgroups, the problem likely wasn’t with my installation media – instead, it’s a “feature” included with SP2. Way to go Microsoft!
If #1 isn’t an option for you, try Creating new XP setup disks using this utility at Microsoft’s website Wow, this might be the first time I’ve ever found one of Microsoft’s support pages to be useful.

Once you’ve booted the XP Setup disk
Choose “R” to enter the recovery console, then execute the command “fixmbr“, which should get rid of the Ubuntu boot manager. Your machine should now boot right into Windows XP.

Depending on how you first installed Ubuntu, you may now have to perform some partition maintenance to reclaim the disk space previously used by Ubuntu. That, however, is an article for another day.

Cheers!

Eddie On Everything » windows errors

Windows Desktop Icons Keep Flashing On & Off? In my case, VNC was the cause.

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