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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.)
4. 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.
5. 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.)

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This behavior is meant to prevent you from hosing things up by deleting files that shouldn’t be deleted. Unfortunately, while the safeguards work most of the time, there are sometimes glitches, particularly with network files and background applications. Sometimes, you are not able to delete a file, even though no other program is actually using it. In other cases, you don’t really care whether another program is using the file, you just want the file gone!

Of course, the first thing you should do is make sure you know what you’re doing. If you are sure that the file you want to nuke is not an important system file, or an important part of some software package, you have a couple of options.

One method of deleting locked files is to reboot your computer. When you restart your computer, you are killing all processes that might be using the file. This usually works. But not always. The downside of this method is that it can be annoying and time consuming to reboot your workstation.

Another method is to kill Windows XP’s “explorer.exe” process, delete the file, then restart explorer. To do this, hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE to bring up Task Manager, then highlight “explorer.exe” and choose “End Process.” However, this method is not recommended: when explorer starts back up, your computer may not be in the exact state in which you left it. (For instance, you may notice that some icons are missing from your system tray.)

Fortunately, there is another way.

Unlocker will remove a file’s access restrictions that prevent your from moving, deleting, or renaming a file. The way it works is this: You install the program, and it runs in your system tray. Whenever you encounter the dreaded File is in use by another person or program message, Unlocker Assistant will pop up and ask you if you want to break the hold that some other application has on your file. You simply highlight the file you want to delete, hit “unlock,” and voila, problem solved.

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One of these days, I am going to write a nifty screenshot utility that I’ve been planning for some time. Until then, just follow these steps.

1. Get whatever you want to take a screenshot of on the screen

Duh.

2. Hit the “Print Screen” Key

On a normal keyboard, the Print Screen key (sometimes abbreviated “prt scrn”) is located above the number pad.

Pressing the Print Screen key causes an image of whatever is on your screen to be copied to the clipboard.

3. Start your favorite image editor

If you have Photoshop, fire it up. If not, you can use the simple image editor that Windows XP ships with – MS Paint. MS Paint is located in your start menu, under “Accessories.” Alternatively, you can run MS Paint by going to Start->Run and typing “mspaint”. (no quotes)

Note – if you’re looking for a nice free image editor, you may want to check out The Gimp.

4. Paste the image from the clipboard onto your screen

Use the Edit->Paste functionality, or try the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-V (paste.) You should now be able to use the photo editing program to crop the image to your liking, add text, etc. When finished, simply save the image to your hard drive.

5. A note on image formats

If you are using MS Paint, the default image format will be BMP or “Bitmap.” BMP files tend to be very large and limited in their usefulness. If you are taking this screenshot to email to someone, you should probably choose to save the image as a jpeg (JPG) file.

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You can safely disable this largely useless feature (and thus speed up your computer in crash-situations) by taking the following steps.

How to disable dumprep.exe:

1. Right click on “My Computer,” choose “Properties” from that menu.
2. Click on “Advanced tab,”
3. Click the “Error Reporting” button.
4. Check the “Disable error reporting” box. You may choose to uncheck the the box below it, “But notify me when an error occurs,” if desired.

Voila, the annoying dumprep.exe tool is now disabled!

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This list of recently accessed files can be viewed by anyone using your computer, which can make for some uncomfortable circumstances when others sit down at your desktop.

Keep your files more private by turning that list off.

There are 2 ways to turn this list off. The first uses menu options, the second uses the registry editor.

Here is how you turn off the Recent Documents display in Windows:

Voila- the list is now gone!

You can accomplish the same by editing the registry using the Registry Editor.

Here is how you turn off the Recent Documents display in Windows, using the registry editor:

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