travis' brain dump

http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/06/ics-based-cyanogenmod-9-its-on-track-but-not-for-everybody/

*cradles my MSM7230 phone*

I love CM. That is all.

Well, if it was only that easy eh?

So, poor Andy brings me his laptop with this error. Seems he’d contracted a virus earlier in the day and in the process of cleaning the virus out, rebooted his machine and up pops the error ” STOP: C0000135 The program can’t start because %hs is missing. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.” Whoops!?

So we buggered around with the system quite a bit last night and tried to figure out the root cause of the issue. He had mentioned attempting to install AVG so we had started there with the though that it might be the cause, but he couldn’t be sure since he didn’t actually get the install to launch since his system was acting like a complete maniac anyway. Well, further investigations uncovered that AVG had, in fact, not made it to the hard drive. So what now?

Fortunately, the error is pretty straightforward if you read it. It basically states that the system is having a problem launching off some type of program at boot-up. Due to the nasty blue-screen nature of this thing, it’s safe to assume it wasn’t something that lived in the regular ole startup/runOnce/run section of the registry and it behaved a lot like an error I’d seen before due to a csrsss.exe/winlogin issue. Not a full-blown blue screen with a nice kernel dump, but pretty annoying none-the-less. So, with csrss on my mind and a couple of pointers over googling some ideas, the solution came out of the following:

The virus which he had contracted, modified the registry settings under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems

The value ‘Windows’ was changed from:

%SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,20480,768 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ServerDll=sxssrv,4 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16

to this:

%SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,20480,768 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=consrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ServerDll=sxssrv,4 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16

The called ‘consrv’ is part of the virus that was implanted into his machine and when he cleaned it up, the dll went missing, thus causing the system to EXPLODE on bootup. Upon loading up the ole trusty Hiren’s BootCD in MiniXP mode and launching a registry editor from it, I was able to modify the two keys from their viral consrv entries back to winsrv.

With all that cleaned up, I was able to run another viral scan against the system, remove any other traces of such things that I could detect and the system now boots correctly. Unfortunately, there aren’t many things that can change in these fields that won’t spin off other types of error messages so if this particular error rears it’s head and you’re not running AVG and this fix doesn’t resolve it… it’s probably reload time. Also, if you happen to jack-up the entries in the registry, you may encounter a STOP: C000021a error on bootup. That usually happens when you’ve mistyped something in the registry entry while resolving this issue.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/31/justice-seeks-to-block-att-merger-with-t-mobile/?iid=A_F_News

For the record, I believe AT&T needs to go pound sand. The thought of them taking any part in T-Mobile disgusts me. I went to T-Mobile because of extremely poor service from other carriers and their value to cost ratio. AT&T would completely undermine the values of T-Mobile should they acquire the carrier. Not to mention we’d watch our rate plans and phone costs go through the roof. I hope they get burned for this and it costs them that 3 billion in reversal fees. It would serve them right for trying to covertly corner the market by strategically positioning themselves to own almost half of it.

All I can do is shake my head… really? I’m soooooo glad I don’t use PSN. What a bummer for those “70 million subscribers”….

(CNN) — A hacker has obtained the personal information of PlayStation Network account holders and subscribers of the Qriocity streaming service, Sony said in a message to customers Tuesday.

Sony’s investigations over the past week determined that an “unauthorized person” had obtained users’ names, home addresses, e-mail addresses, birth dates and passwords, according to a statement being sent to all account holders.

The attack also has crippled Sony’s PlayStation Network, which has some 70 million subscribers and has been down since April 20. The network lets customers download video games from the Web and play against each other online.

“While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility,” said Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment, which manage the two services, in a joint statement.

The hacker could have taken credit card numbers, card expiration dates, billing addresses, answers to security questions and purchase history, but not credit-card security codes, they said.

Sony is encouraging customers “to protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss” by reviewing credit-card statements. The company also suggested that some customers may want to place a “fraud alert” with credit bureaus.

Sony did not say how many accounts had been compromised. A spokeswoman declined to comment Tuesday.

Some subscribers reacted angrily to the news.

“You waited a WEEK to tell us our (personal) information was compromised?” one PlayStation user wrote on a Sony blog. “That should have been said last Thursday” — the day when Sony first acknowledged the issue.

The intrusions occurred between April 17 and 19, according to the statement. On April 20, Sony switched off the PlayStation and Qriocity online services, which have remained in the dark.

Users and paid subscribers were also mostly in the dark until Tuesday about the reason for the lengthy outage or about when services would be reinstated.

Sony initially said its PS network would be be back online within one to two days.

On Tuesday, PlayStation spokesman Patrick Seybold wrote in a statement that it could take another week before they “expect to restore some services.”