CDaze Notes

I got two EVOs for just over a month now. All of sudden my battery was not holding a charge. At first I thought it was that Latitude app but even after killing that off my battery would drain in less than two hours. I tried killing just about everything running except the cell phone stand bye, need to make and take calls on the EVO too. Same thing, battery dead in less than two hours. You can see what is eating up the battery since the last time it was hooked to a power source from Settings -> About Phone -> Battery -> Battery Use. It will show what percentage of the battery is being used on. Pretty nice feature. Anyway none of that was helping me with my problem. So I took the battery out and found the problem. The last pin for the battery connection was kind of corroded, very odd since I haven’t taken off the cover since I got it. I cleaned that off with an eraser from a pencil and cleaned off the battery tabs also. Slapped it back together and instant improvement. Solved. So now I wonder if this is going to be an issue with EVO phones. I took out the battery on my other EVO and sure enough there is a small build up on the same pin that connects to the battery. Looking at it I would guess it is pin 4. Maybe later I will post a photo of it.

Got stuck trying to undo some contact changes on my EVO. I was tired of having all those ‘linked’ accounts because I used HTC sync for Outlook which do not sync with Google account. Android stores the contacts in separate storage locations. If you change the view to only show Phone contact storage and then delete all those contacts, it removes them from the Google storage also. Soon as I saw them disappear, I tried to make sure the sync did not happen with Google. While logged in to Google I made a change to the contacts and this must have caused a conflict. After the change my contacts would give an error on sync but would accept changes to contacts still on the phone, even accepted new contacts. Just the contacts on Google that were not originally on the phone storage would never sync.
To fix this you need to clear the storage manually on the phone. You do this through Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications -> All Apps -> Contacts Storage -> [Clear data] -> Done Return Home
Go back to People and watch them start showing up as the sync automatically starts. If the sync has not started you force a sync from the Settings -> Accounts & Sync -> Google Gmail or [Sync All].
There are apps that allow you to sync your Outlook Contacts with GMail. Still need to test those to give any thoughts but here is a free one I was going to try out. OggSync There should be some open source for doing this also. Google has one but they only offer it to the paid version of Gmail which is really meant for Exchange users. Hope someday they provide a free one that is only for Outlook using POP3 or IMAP.

After an Aug 2nd MS Update for Win 7 drivers of a MS Bluetooth dongle, the bluetooth icon disappeared and devices were not working properly. The devices were not being detected by ID, instead they were generic HIDs. The problem is from the IVT driver being installed for the Bluetooth driver instead of MS driver. You must roll this back or click update driver and browse for compatible device drivers. You do this through the Device Manager, select the Bluetooth device to get to the properties menu. There you can select the drivers tab and uninstall/change drivers. Select update drive and browse/choose from list. Select the correct one from the list, in my case it was a Microsoft Transceiver 2.0. After the driver was updated the bluetooth icon and options in the control panel came back. The devices however were not working 100% yet. I removed them from the list of connected devices and manually added them back. Once this was done, everything is back to normal.
Not the first time a MS update of drivers has broke my systems. Unless there is no support for your device directly from the manufacturer, I would refuse the MS update. Failed updates to name a few; realtek hd audio, nvidia video, nvidia gigabit network, via network, Chrome9, Brother PCL drivers and now MS Bluetooth 2.0.

Windows 7 Pro, MS Elite Explorer Bluetooth Desktop 2.0

Not much to go wrong during the install of RealVNC that would present this problem. This can happen even after VNC is working fine with windows authentication. One day it works but the next day you are prompted with an error message with no access check logs.   If you change the authentication option to RealVNC password it connects with no problems.  The problem is not with RealVNC, not exactly anyway. Your windows event logs are full and not being cleaned out. Chances are you have a app that is filling up your event log every few minutes.  If you can’t stop the errors from filling up your log, then increase the size and elect to have it over write when full.  Probably not a setting recommended by your system admin but chances are you never check your event logs anyway.  Clean out your event log and everything works again.
Event Logs can be accessed through the Control Panel.  Administrator Tools is the default location, look for Event Viewer.   Click here MS KB308427 for more details.

More of operator head space and timing error.  In all the changes to the BIOS trying to fix the ATI BSOD I cleared the CMOS and pulled all the power to the system.  The system clock reset back to 2006…  Windows update does not like your PC being too much out of sync.  Update the system clock to the current time and everything should be back to normal.
One odd thing was there was no updates detected.  This was a fresh install and I know there was a few updates available.  Waited a few minutes and went directly to the Windows update through IExplorer (Saftey drop menu) and the Windows update in the control panel popped back up with all the available updates.

Installing a fresh install of Windows 7 64 bit causes a BSOD blue screen of death.  This was pretty frustrating as I’ve always run in to a problem with ATI drivers.  In XP the solution for me was to run Omega ATI drivers instead.  After many changes in the BIOS (Abit AV8 board) nothing would work but changing the video driver to standard VGA in the OS (from safe mode). Tweaks tried: reserving IRQ, disabled extra devices, clock settings and bus speeds… Nothing worked.   One thing that changed while upgrading this time was I put in another 2GB of ram.  Removing the ram proved not to cause the BSOD but I want to run with 4GB of ram.  Found the solution but not sure on what causes the problem.  I noticed my board with dual sided chip drops the clock to 333 instead of 400 when using 4GB.  Could be something with this.  What fixed the problem was manually entering how much ram is available to the OS at boot time.  You can access this setting with the msconfig tool.  Boot up into safe mode or standard VGA video.  Run msconfig by typing in ‘msconfig’ from the Start Run or search prompt.  Prompts to run as Admin are ok but in safe mode it should not prompt you.   Click the Boot Tab. Now put a check mark in the Maximum memory setting and select how much memory your system uses.  It should default to how memory the system is detecting.   Mine is 4GB or 4096MB.  Apply the changes and the system will need to reboot.  If everything works, your screen should flicker instead of BSOD.  For some reason my desktop theme was blank (black), probably from the auto repair options trying to fix it.  You can change your desktop themes back to normal though if that happens…  BTW the latest Vista x64 Catalyst drivers from ATI (AMD) loaded up fine.  Good luck.

Adobe Illustrator CS3 patch fails to update to 13.0.2

I could never find a quick solution to this problem and most methods did not work. Adobe’s solution is to completely remove all of CS3 and reinstall. When that fails, run their cleaner utility and install it again… Why not just fix it??? Adobe’s patcher’s will fail if any one file being updated does not match the md5sum. This means if you had what you thought was a patched Adobe install and just one file does not match the md5 check, the whole update fails. This even includes the Illustrator CS3 Read Me.html file. Their updates also need to be updated in sequence, 13.0.1 must be installed before 13.0.2. The updater will not check against any older check sums as an alternative possibility. This was the whole reason CS updater was failing for me, some of my files were still the originals of 13.0.0. When I added options that were not installed from my initial install, the installer somehow reverted some of the patched files back to the older version from the DVD. If you attempt to re-install 13.0.1, it fails telling you it has been updated already. The whole check to tell if your system is patched is a simple xml text file. It does not verify if the files were actually patched. It just reads the xml file, finds a reference to 13.0.1 and stops. No update needed.

This is how you check if you are having the same problem. Locate the patcher log file and open it in notepad or any text reader. The easiest way to get there is to bring up your Run dialog from the Start Menu and paste this %APPDATA%\Adobe\PatcherLogs This takes you directly to the application folder in your user profile. Open up Adobe Illustrator CS3 13.0.2.log and scroll down to the current date in the log file. If you have a large log file you can simple delete the file and run the patcher again. It will create a new text file with current dates. Look for the failed entry in the log file. Mine fails on the first file as seen below. This means the md5sum of Links Panel.aip is wrong, its expecting to find the md5sum from version 13.0.1. Mine is from version 13.0.0.

Install language of the product as set by patcher: en_US

Patching file: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS3\Plug-ins\Extensions\Links Panel.aip

Patcher successfully located the file to be patched at: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS3\Plug-ins\Extensions\Links Panel.aip

Checksum before of the file as specified in Manifest XML file: 8f43623eed759b34cc98cf632ec033c1

Checksum of the file as computed from the target location: F71DF13E1158F1A2EFF92CD89BA4A475

checksum failed.

Checksum before of the file as specified in Manifest XML file: 11579373299fb29fddf4dafff0d28384

Checksum of the file as computed from the target location: F71DF13E1158F1A2EFF92CD89BA4A475

checksum failed.

Patcher was unable to verify the checksum before and checksum after of the file to be patched. Patch will fail.

File operation failed.

If you are getting basically the same error message then these steps will probably help you. Now the steps I am going to do are assuming most my files are reporting version 13.0.0. If most of yours are reporting 13.0.1 you will need to modify these steps towards extracting the files from the 13.0.1 patch instead of the install disk. Warning this may take a few minutes but should be shorter than completely stripping every reference of CS3 on your system and possibly messing up your serial activation. These steps will not touch any registry settings, license files or change anything not related to Adobe. How are we going to do this? Simple we are going to give the patcher what it wants and make it run like it should without modifying the patcher.

Things we need to have… 7Zip, Notepad or any text reader, Adobe Install Disk and Adobe patches.

7Zip is a free archive program. It is able to open and extract many different archive formats. This is not the only program that can do this but is fairly simple for what we need to do, plus its free. http://www.7-zip.org/

Notepad should be part of your OS install but if you are looking for something that does a lot more then try NotePad++ http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net

You can visit the Adobe website and download the manual patches for Illustrator 13.0.1 and 13.0.2. http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/

Now it’s time to get started. First find this file and delete or move it. {C4519961-AC64-4565-B3AF-9050296B5D5A}.patch This is the xml file that tells the patcher checks for what version is installed. If the file does not exist, the 13.0.1 patch will now tell you an update exists would you like to install it. It’s located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Installers folder.

So now try installing 13.0.1 patch. You should now get the prompt about new updates and asking to install it. Try to install the update. If it completes without any error, then consider yourself lucky and finish up with installing the 13.0.2 patch. This means all your files were actually from the install disk and the xml file was just a leftover causing the problem. If you get a generic error message then we need to go back to patcher log file to find out what files are causing the error.

I am going to use my 13.0.1 patcher log file as an example.

Install language of the product as set by patcher: en_US

Patching file: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS3\Plug-ins\Photoshop Filters\Gaussian Blur.8bf

Patcher successfully located the file to be patched at: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS3\Plug-ins\Photoshop Filters\Gaussian Blur.8bf

Checksum before of the file as specified in Manifest XML file: 82b0067317d3e1893f2fa3af8c63a784

Checksum of the file as computed from the target location: C45387A2E4777A5C88C097DFAAA1D705

checksum failed.

The patcher is looking the file Gaussian Blur.8bf, the md5sum it is expecting is 82b0067317d3e1893f2fa3af8c63a784 but what is detected on my PC is C45387A2E4777A5C88C097DFAAA1D705. If the files don’t match the patch fails.

We need to replace the current file on the PC with the one the patcher is looking for. This file is on your install DVD. It is located in a cab file Adobe CS3\payloads\AdobeIllustrator13en_US\AdobeIllustrator13en_US1.cab Your location may differ. Find this cab file and open it up with 7Zip. When opened you will see a bunch of files with md5sum values at the end of the file name. We need to make this a little easier to find the file we want. Sort them by file size and compare it the file size of the file on the PC. They will not be exact but should be close enough to find the file we need. For me the file is name is _111_82b0067317d3e1893f2fa3af8c63a784. Extract your file to the PC somewhere. Rename it to the actual file name on the PC. Backup your file on the PC and replace it with the file we just extracted and renamed. Make sure if you are backing up the original file to move it to another folder. If it’s left in the folder with a different name like .bak, Adobe will still try to load the file as a plug in. It will cause an error when starting Illustrator. Now that the file is replaced, run the patcher again. It will probably fail a few more times. For me, it took 5 files to get the patch applied. Just go back to the log file, go straight to the bottom of the log and find which file failed this time and replace it. After the 13.0.1 patch is completely installed, try installing the 13.0.2 patch. It should now pass no problems. If it still fails you can try the same steps to troubleshoot.

Hope that helps out…  — This is still in rough draft.  Will update it with some screen shots and clear up the wording.  Just wanted to get the idea out there for those looking for help on this problem.

Foxit Reader is a small free alternative program to open PDF files. It is much faster in starting and opening the PDF compared to the primary PDF reader from Adobe, Adobe Reader. One problem that I noticed with Foxit reader, it does not auto update the add-ons nor is there an update check for them. Recently while scrolling through a PDF, Foxit would crash repeatedly at the same page number. Adobe Reader would open the same page with no crash. First I just ignored the issue thinking it was a incompatible problem from not using Adobe reader or a corrupt PDF. It started becoming more frequent with other PDF files but still worked with most PDFs. I noticed the next readable page used a screen shot image embedded in the page before the crash. Way back when I first started using Foxit, certain PDF pages with images would not show up and required the free JPEG add-on. You must visit the Foxit web page and download it from their list of add-ons. The add-ons are updated from time to time to support the latest version of the Foxit Reader but they are not automatically updated after installing the latest version. To update the add-on, you must do this manually. So if you find your version of Foxit Reader crashing repeatedly check to see if any of their add-ons have been updated. In my case, the problem was the the JPEG2000/JBIG Decoder fxdecod1.dll. The crash occurred every time the PDF used embedded images but did not occur until one of those pages was reached.

The error was reported as:

FOXITR~1 caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)
in module ntdll.dll at 001b:7c9109f9.

Solution: Close Foxit reader and update the add-on.

Get Foxit Reader

When a php page is working on the root of the domain but not in any sub directories, the permissions are wrong. Any directories that need to run php need to be set to 755.

While trying to install Mambo CMS the installation page would never come up errors with 404. The CPanel Apache Error log shows – SoftException in Application.cpp:238 “..file.php” is writeable by group. The log file points to a problem with the file but it is actually the directory. The php file should be 644. Installing Mambo from the tar/zip file the default folder permissions needs to be set. This is similar to an inherit permissions. In Linux this is set with the cmd ‘umask’. To have all new directories created with the 755 permission set as default, ‘umask 0022′. Now when a new directory is created from mkdir or new extracting an archive, all directories will have 755 permissions.

If you have Outlook Express (OE) running and find you can not delete your emails anymore chances are your mail box dbx file is corrupt or just too big.   Outlook does not by default enable empty deleted email or sent email folders.  These files can become huge over time and tend to become corrupt.  A temp work around is to try the Shift and DEL at the same time while the message is selected (not open).   This bypasses the use of the deleted mail folder.   These folders that everyone refers to are actualy hidden files on your hard drive.  Rather than doing all the steps to make explorer see where the files are here is an alternate method.
1st  Make a backup of the email you wish to keep.   Create a new folder in the root folder of OE,  just above the Inbox.  Move or Copy (prefer copy) all the email to your new folder.
2nd  Open up Explorer and make a new folder in your choice of location.  IE C:\mymailbox
3rd  From the Options menu in OE, locate the Maintenance Tab.  Select change mail folder, browse to where you created the folder and click OK.  You will get a prompt saying to need restart OE.  Restart OE.
4th  After the files move over, close OE.  Now go to the new folder you created in Explorer and look for the files with the same name as your folders from OE.  Inbox.dbx  Send.dbx etc.  Make sure the new folder name you created has a file with that name.  Remove all the other files except the one you created.  There should be nothing there you need and the files will be recreated on the start up of OE.  If you are nervous about it, move the files to a different folder instead of deleting them.
5th  Start OE.  OE should be running normal now and all the emails you could not delete should be gone.   Move your emails back to the Inbox folder if you like. 
Just to note when I had this problem the mail files were huge, 2GB and 800MB.  Remember to empty out the old mail once in a while.