KB982861 could not be installed

Internet Explorer 9 Language Packs are provisioned by different x86 and x64 Windows Update files, named as IE9-Windows6.1-LanguagePack-xAA-LLL.msu, where AA = architecture (86 or 64) and LLL = language code (e.g. nld for Dutch).

When trying to install these language packs via wusa.exe, Windows Installer might throw the follow error:

Windows update "Update for Windows (KB982861)" could not be installed because of error 2147944003 "Fatal error during installation." (Command line: ""C:\Windows\system32\wusa.exe" "X:\IE9-Windows6.1-LanguagePack-x86-nld.msu" ")

Search no more. Although there doesn’t seem to be any resource (for now) that states so formally, you cannot deploy IE9 LPs unless the same Windows 7 Language Pack has been installed previously.

In other words, after installing the Windows 7 Dutch Language Pack, IE9-Windows6.1-LanguagePack-x86-nld.msu for Internet Explorer 9 installs succesfully too.

GoogleCL on Synology DiskStation

Some time ago I decided I would not upgrade my SOHO server (the dearly beloved Zeus, a Windows 2003 box acting as a file/print/mail/etc server) but to move these services to the cloud. Despite my mainly Microsoft oriented professional background, I choose Google Apps rather than Microsoft Office 365. I buried the server, reluctantly concluded not to use Active Directory any more (nor any other directory service)  in this heterogeneous environment of Windows, Linux and Mac clients (and plenty of other devices). As far as storage is concerned, I bought a Synology DiskStation DS212+ NAS to safeguard my personal and business files. In short: less is more.

I’m using Google Docs intensively now. Despite my beliefs and unconditional trust in the cloud (and Google in particular), the paranoid control freak in me wanted to have a local “backup” of what I’m storing in the cloud. So here’s a little post on how to copy files from Google Docs to the DS212+.

Prerequisites

Enable Secure Shell on the NAS first if you haven’t done so yet:

By doing so we’ll be able to connect by ssh from a Linux or OSX terminal session (or PuTTY if you’re running Windows). Connect to the NAS with root (which has the same password as admin).

In the next following three steps, we’ll 1) bootstrap the Synology NAS to install ipkg (the Itsy Package Management System), 2) install Python, the Google Data APIs Python Client Library (gdata-python-client) and the Command Line Tools (GoogleCL) and finally 3) Test GoogleCL.

Bootstrap

In order to install ipkg (via a bootstrap script), you need to figure out the CPU of your Synology NAS beforehand because these scripts are specific to the processor. In my case, the DS212+ CPU seems to be a Marvell Kirkwood mv6282.

On this page, you’ll find URLs to download each specific script (xsh) and straightforward instructions on how to install it, follow these carefully. In short: download the xsh file, execute it and reboot (there is a reboot command available in Synology’s BusyBox).

After rebooting, ipkg should be functional. First thing to do after rebooting is to update the package repository by executing ipkg update. There is no need to upgrade (as stated in this article) as we don’t have any packages installed yet.

Python

In order to install Python, we’ll check which packages are available first:

ipkg list python*

Install the Python 2.7 package (ipkg will automatically download and install dependencies):

ipkg install python27

Next, test if Python is working properly:

If Python was installed successfully, download, extract and install Google’s gdata-python-client first, then GoogleCL. Builds 2.0.15 and 16 of gdata-python-client seem to be broken (at least they didn’t work on my box – AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'DOCLIST_FEED_URI' error upon testing GoogleCL), so I advice to download build 2.0.14 available here:

wget http://gdata-python-client.googlecode.com/files/gdata-2.0.14.tar.gz

Decompress the tarball:

tar xvf gdata-2.0.14.tar.gz

And finally, install the goodies:

cd gdata-2.0.14/
python2.7 setup.py install --record=files.txt

Check files.txt if you need to troubleshoot and eventually delete the source files downloaded and extracted here if the installation succeeded.

Repeat the same procedure for GoogleCL, latest version, available here.

Test

Time to test GoogleCL! google should be installed in /opt/local/bin. Try to execute google and invoke help:

Done for now, in a next post we’ll create a (cron)job to backup files from Google Docs to the Synology DiskStation automatically on a daily or weekly basis.

RU #Pwned?

Hackers hack systems. Their mission: harvest accounts, credentials, e-mail addresses, passwords. It’s a very lucrative business. You don’t want your accounts to be compromised, do you?

PwnedList collects hacked accounts, automatically (from known hacker groups) and manually, i.e. the two-headed team regularly imports dumps of hacked accounts found on the world wide web into their daily updated database. They offer a tool to check whether your account or online identity has been stolen.

Point your browser to https://pwnedlist.com and enter an e-mail address or account name. In seconds you’ll know if the account is listed as compromised.

Not appearing in the list is of course no guarantee that your account is safe but at least if it does, you’ve got a problem. Needless to say that you often need to change passwords and apply a decent level of complexity.

SQL Server 2008 R2 – The performance counter registry hive is corrupted.

Sequel number four (yes, 4!) of the SQL Server 2008 R2 installation woes saga.

Previous posts include:

1. Version string portion was too short or too long
2. Error code: 1605
3. Version’s parameters must be greater than or equal to zero

This post discusses the following error which appears in Summary_%computername%_%date%_%time%.txt, located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log:

The performance counter registry hive is corrupted. To continue, you must repair the performance counter registry hive. For more information, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300956.

Performance counters

In normal circumstances, the value of Last Counter (e.g. 13400), located in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib, should match the Counter counterpart, located just beneath the previous key, in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib09. The exact same value should be there in the end of the large string.

Investigation of the registry’s keys and values on the erroneous target machine reveals a mismatch between the above values. In other words, we are dealing with performance counter corruption, also confirmed by the fact that trying to add a new counter in perfmon.msc (by clicking the + button), results in a dialog window popping up showing no performance counters to choose from.

Remediation

In order to fix the performance counter corruption, the performance counters have to be rebuilt. Simply follow the procedure as outlined in KB300956 step by step. If several Windows XP SP3 clients demonstrate the exact same problem, a batch file can come in handy to fix the issue swiftly. Here’s a procedure to create such file.

1) Expand perfc009.da_ and perfh009.da_ in the i386 folder of Windows XP’s original sources, and put both files in a separate directory, e.g. PerfMonFix.

2) In the PerfMonFix directory, create a new file PerfMonFix.bat with the following contents:

xcopy %~dp0*.dat %systemroot%\system32 /y
cd /d %systemroot%\system32
for /f "tokens=1 delims=:" %%i in ('findstr drivername *.ini') do lodctr /r:%%i

On the target machine, execute PerfMonFix.bat and launch the SQL Server 2008 R2 installer after verification of the performance counters. The error should be gone.

SQL Server 2008 R2 – Version’s parameters must be greater than or equal to zero

A third (!) and hopefully final blog post on SQL Server 2008 R2 deployment woes. Previous posts include SQL Server 2008 R2 – Version string portion was too short or too long and SQL Server 2008 R2 – Error code: 1605.

This time the installation problem comes with the following beauty:

Exception type: System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException
Message: Version's parameters must be greater than or equal to zero.
Parameter name: build

In this particular case, it appears the SQL Server 2008 R2 installer detects some SQL Server 2000 residues on the client and fails to determine its version.

SQL Server 2000

A quick investigation of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server reveals that the 80\Tools key is still present on the machine, even though SQL Server 2000 has been uninstalled. Not surprisingly, the ClientSetup key, which denotes the version, is missing.

Two options:

1. Install SQL Server 2000 before 2008 R2 – which is not an elegant solution.
2. Give the SQL Server 2008 R2 installer a helping hand by recreating the missing key and value pairs

Solution

Dump the following info into a fix.reg file or recreate the following in the registry manually and the SQL Server 2008 R2 installer should continue successfully:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\ClientSetup\CurrentVersion]
"Language"=dword:00000409
"CurrentVersion"="8.00.194"
"CSDVersionNumber"=dword:00000300
"CSDVersion"="8.00.760"

SQL Server 2008 R2 – Error code: 1605

Yet another post on SQL Server 2008 R2 deployment woes.

An unattended installation of SQL Server 2008 R2 – developer/management tools on Windows XP SP3 clients in this particular case – might fail with the following error:

MsiGetProductInfo failed to retrieve ProductVersion for package with Product Code = '{0A869A65-8C94-4F7C-A5C7-972D3C8CED9E}'. Error code: 1605.

The error appears in Summary_%computername%_%date%_%time%_ComponentUpdate.txt and other log files as described here: View and Read SQL Server Setup Log Files.

Error 1605

This record of Windows Installer error codes on MSDN lists 1605 incorrectly as an indicator for not enough free space available on the target drive; DesktopEngineer.com however, states that 1605 designates a missing product, required to complete a custom action successfully:

1605 ERROR_UNKNOWN_PRODUCT This action is only valid for products that are currently installed.

Windows Installer GUIDs

In order to figure out what missing product might be the culprit, we’ll check a working installation for the GUID specified in the error message.

Windows Installer GUIDs have a different formatting than how they appear in the MSI tables. In this specific case, the product code {0A869A65-8C94-4F7C-A5C7-972D3C8CED9E} needs to be transformed into its equivalent which is stored in the registry.

Some swapping and reversing needs to be done:

1. Reverse the first 8 digits
2. Reverse the next 4 digits
3. Reverse the next 4 digits
4. Reverse the next 2 digits (8 times)
5. Drop all hyphens

Applying the above transformation to {0A869A65-8C94-4F7C-A5C7-972D3C8CED9E} results in 56A968A049C8C7F45A7C79D2C3C8DEE9. Search for the value in the registry and soon MSXML appears to be the wrongdoer.

MSXML6

Now back to the client where the installation fails. Repeat the same search and you’ll probably notice that XML 6.0 Parser actually is present on the erroneous machine too, confirmed by the XML Parser entry found in appwiz.cpl.

Reinstallation of MSXML6 is the first next thing that comes to an IT guy’s mind. Unfortunately, the uninstall might fail with an exotic error. If this is the case, as a last resort other than swiping the client completely, the Windows Installer Clean Up Utility (a Microsoft tool which has been retired – in other words use at own risk) can forcefully remove installed products.

However, even after deleting MSXML6 entirely using msicuu.exe and reinstalling Microsoft XML Parser available here, the setup of SQL Server 2008 R2 still fails with the same error.

Solution

Trial and error to the rescue. So by means of elimination, the following simple solution appears to be fairly effective.

Delete the registry key’s parent containing 56A968A049C8C7F45A7C79D2C3C8DEE9 in HKLM\Software\Classes\Installer\UpgradeCodes. In this particular case, deleting the 7AB711B11CB5E91428E0D7F4F314C2B7 key first, results in a successful installation of SQL Server 2008 R2 afterwards:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\UpgradeCodes\7AB711B11CB5E91428E0D7F4F314C2B7]
"56A968A049C8C7F45A7C79D2C3C8DEE9"=""

Microsoft often moves in mysterious ways.

BMI on #RunKeeper

Another suggestion for the clever girls and boys at RunKeeper: why not introduce a Body Mass Index measurement?

Next to the weight and body fat (BF) measurements – which are indeed ideal quantities to report on – a private BMI ticker would be significantly interesting. This private ticker could be colored from green (value from 20 to 25) to red (less than 20 or higher than 30) and shades in between.

Throw in enhanced reporting on both weight, BF and BMI, just like the FitnessReports on Body Fat Percentage already available today. The icing on the cake.

I ♥ #RunKeeper

Since more than five months now, I’m a very loyal, energized user of RunKeeper. Both the site and the app have compelling, best-designed UIs, functionally and graphically, a pleasure to work with. I’ve tried many other apps out there, including Endomondo and MapMyRUN, but I keep coming back to RunKeeper.

In some strange kind of way RunKeeper acts as a personal motivator and gets me going. Submitting an activity after the hard work of completing a workout seems somehow compulsively rewarding.

App

The free RunKeeper Pro app (available for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7) lists activities and allows to edit or create them manually. In practice, I use the app merely as a GPS activity tracking tool. It’s my regular partner for running and cycling activities. Unlike the Garmins and Polars out there, the process of tracking activities with RunKeeper is ultimately simple: push the Start button when beginning an activity and push the End button when completing. All data is automatically uploaded over 3G or WiFi (whatever is available) to the site. There is no need in synchronizing through a PC, messing with cables etc. Convenience for the win.

Whilst sporting, you can listen to music playlists, predefined or randomly generated. You can walk, run or cycle routes, which can be found on the website or which you can create and publicize yourself.

The app comes with audio cues, configurable via de settings tab. During a workout, RunKeeper keeps you informed of key statistics such as time, distance, average pace and speed. These audio cues can be played on demand (by shaking your phone) or periodically, i.e. at a timed interval (e.g. every 15 minutes) or distance (e.g. every 5 kilometers) – or a combination of both.

And yes, battery consumption on my iPhone 4 is very acceptable if the RunKeeper app runs in the background.

Site

The website is the main place where you’ll find stuff like recorded activities, reports, routes and races. It groups all of your sporting activities by month. You can easily track and set your goals. Reports are rather limited unless you upgrade to RunKeeper Elite, after which you’ll be granted discounts on FitnessClasses (coached workout courses) too.

You can edit and share existing activities and enter activities manually. I always enter my swimming activities manually on the site.

Social

RunKeeper has a social aspect: street teams connect RunKeeper users with whom you can complete workouts or comment on completed sporting activities. You can opt to share your activities including a map with street team members only rather than publicly for privacy reasons.

Upon completing and submitting activities, RunKeeper allows you to push updates to Twitter and Facebook.

Foursquare

Connect your RunKeeper account with Foursquare and you can earn up to 4 compelling, RunKeeper-exclusive badges by achieving different milestones.

1. Warm Up - Rewarded when completing your first 3 activities
2. 5K – Upon completing a 5km GPS tracked running activity
3. 26.2 – Acquired when completing a marathon
4. Over Achiever – When having completed 5 different activity types

Feature Requests

RunKeeper brings improvements and new features quite regularly; nevertheless here’s my personal feature whishlist for the iPhone app:

• Suggest calories burned when entering an activity manually (calculated by taking the type of activity, duration and weight into consideration)
• Optionally push a tweet when starting an activity; not only when completing an activity
• I would like to use RunKeeper to keep track of all my sporting activities. So add more (team) sports, even “distantless activities” such as tennis, badminton, soccer, basketball, etc.
• Turn-by-turn navigation instructions on routes would be a killer feature and make you think twice before buying a Garmin EDGE.

And last but not least… It would be very cool if Garmin Connect and Polar Personal Trainer could talk directly to RunKeeper or vice versa. If you’re sporting with an advanced Garmin, Polar or other device and still want to keep track of a wider range of activities centralized in RunKeeper, it is quite cumbersome having to…:

1. Upload activity data to Garmin or Polar
2. Download GPX/CTX file to computer
3. Create a new activity in RunKeeper manually
4. Upload GPX/CTX or other file back to RunKeeper

So if all parties could provide a nice API, it would make sports tracking life much easier.

Automatically Refreshing a Background Image

Example

Take a look at http://www.ktown.be as an example. This simple web page has a background image (taken from a webcam located in the city of Kortrijk), stretched to fill the entire page. The background is automatically refreshed every 15 seconds – smoothly, without flickering.

Stretching

Stretching the image to cover the entire background is achieved through simple HTML and CSS. The background image imgBackground is contained in a div divBackground, resized to fit the entire page.

body {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
height: 100%;
width: 100%;
}

#divBackground {
background-image: url(http://193.190.76.133:8080/record/current.jpg)
position: absolute;
}

img#imgBackground {
position: fixed;
top: 0;
left: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}

The only drawback in the width: 100% and height: 100% combination, is that the aspect ratio of the original image is not maintained, which is no big deal in this case.

Refreshing

Automatically reloading the image is plain simple too, however keep in mind that:

1. We don’t want flickering to occur, neither do we want to notice the reloading process (block by block)
2. In most cases, the browser will reuse the image stored in its cache, in other words we have to use a trick to prevent this behaviour

In order to refresh the background without having the browser reloading the image from its cache, concatenate the request uri with the output of a call to Date.getTime(), which returns the number of milliseconds passed since January 1, 1970. Alternatively, a random number could be used. By doing so, the browser is fooled into thinking that it is a different image being requested that the one stored in cache.

<head>
...
<script type="text/javascript">
function reloadBackground() {
url = "http://193.190.76.133:8080/record/current.jpg?" + new Date().getTime();
img = document.getElementById("imgBackground")
img.src = url;
}
</head>

Next, the above function is to be executed by a timer, initiated in the body onLoad event with a call to Window.setInterval(). Pass the name of the JavaScript function reloadBackground() as the first and the number of milliseconds as the second argument – e.g. 15000 for 15 seconds.

onLoad="setInterval('reloadBackground()',15000)">

That’s it. Using a combination of some simple HTML, CSS and JavaScript basics, the background image is automagically and smoothly refreshed.

No Compatible Drives in CDBurnerXP

I’ve been using CDBurnerXP since day one. It’s a no-nonsense CD/DVD/ISO burning tool for Windows and it’s freeware. It supports Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs.

On my HP 620 laptop with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, version 4.3.8.2568 of CDBurnerXP doesn’t recognize the internal burner, an HP DVDRAM GT30L according to devmgmt.msc, although it is listed as compatible here. The target device for the burning process drop-down list doesn’t contain the burner but reads No compatible drives instead.

Even though I’m quite sure that the problem did not exist with previous versions of CDBurnerXP, the issue is driver related – as is often the case.

In my case, the solution was to download and install Intel’s Matrix Storage Manager driver (which is available on HP’s support site). Reboot and the DVDRAM GT30L burner appears in CDBurnerXP.