Zugg Software :: View Entry

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 2:59 am

Warning: If semi-offensive language offends you, or you are a Microsoft fan-boy, then stop reading now.

OK, all I wanted to do tonight was play a relaxing game before I have eye surgery and then have to lay off the computer for a few days.

But I was getting an error from the Microsoft Update service. It was trying to install the monthly update for Windows Defender and was getting an error. Something about the "Windows Module Installer" had crashed. Clicking the recommended button to get more help just gave another crash and asked info to be sent to Microsoft. Microsoft: I hope you just love the dozens of crash dumps I have sent you tonight!!

So I look in my Event Viewer and there was an error accessing the WCP.DLL file. I have no idea what this file is, but it must be part of windows. I did a full ChkDsk of the computer and it didn't find any problems. So I went looking for this WCP.DLL file. It isn't in \Windows\System32.

I ran the Find File in Opus (which is thankfully much faster than the one in Windows) and finally found it in two locations:

v:\windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft-windows-servicingstack_31bf3856ad364e35_6.0.6000.16386_none_07289f4cca5f6990\wcp.dll
v:\windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft-windows-servicingstack_31bf3856ad364e35_6.0.6001.18000_none_095f6148c74a7a64\wcp.dll

So here is my first rant: WHO THE HELL NAMES THEIR FILE DIRECTORIES LIKE THIS??? Geez people, didn't you ever think of what might happen if someone needed to enter this into a stupid command prompt window??? Morons!

Since I suspect that a file might be corrupted, I am told that the correct way to fix corrupted system files is with the command:

sfc /scannow

I open an Admin command prompt and enter this command. The same annoying crash dialog from the Windows module installer pops up and then after a minute or so, the command prompt window displays the error:

"Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service."

Yeah, great, thanks. What the hell am I supposed to do about that? So I do a Google search for this and find this Microsoft knowledge base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929833

Basically, it gives the following procedure for replacing a system file that cannot be repaired normally:

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

I guess Vista's UAC is a bit like the oldskool 'nix operation, where you hafta "su -" to get elevated permissions in order to mess with the system files. In some ways it feels good, in other ways it's really frustrating.

I ended up turning of UAC because of incomatibilities with a programming tool I use. Basically turning off UAC puts Vista back to an "XP-like" mode, where you are the administrator account 24/7 and can do whatever you want to your PC with no annoying popups :)

Initially I was wondering if this was a smart move (it means that when surfing if a malicious page downloads a trojan, then it can infect my system instead of go "are you suuuuure you want to allow <blah> to modify your system files/registry?")... but then I asked myself when was the last time on XP I got a virus that Symantec couldn't deal with. To which the answer was "never". So yeah, byebye UAC, hello easy-to-use-OS.

Of course, disabling UAC means that when you do a test of CMUD under Vista you may get different behavior if you try and modify a c:\program files\ file or hkey_local_machine key... but then you can test all that permissions stuff on Chiara's PC if needed, and not suffer from lockey-downned-ness in your day-to-day operations.

PS... on the command prompt you can type like "cd m" <tab><tab><tab> and it will keep cycling thru the different options available.

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 7:20 am

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

Can't you take ownership of a file simply by using the Advanced button on the Security tab of the properties dialog? That's always worked for me on NTFS drives. Saves you from typing that stupidly long path, which I'm sure is that way to prevent people from finding it and messing with it.

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 10:51 am

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

Windows XP pretended to protect system files, which was worse, in my opinion, because it gives users the false impression that they're secure. Vista may be annoying, but it's been far better to me than XP in terms of security. Hopefully, SP1 will improve things like this.

Wanderer Joined: 09 Jun 2006 Posts: 62 Location: Florida

SP1 certainly seems to have improved it on my end. I'm not having any problems remotely similar to this, so I assume SP1 fixed it or it just wasn't a problem on my machine in the first place.

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 5:31 pm

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

Hey, I didn't say SP1 would improve it, though I think they have added things to make the UAC just a little more sane. It's not going to make your existing problems magically disappear, certainly.

I don't build my own PCs any more, mostly because of hardware/software compatibility issues. The PC assembly companies have a lot more time and manpower to test various configurations and ensure a good working set. If it doesn't work, they help you make it work. You, unfortunately, opted to build your own computer and that right there could be the source of many of your issues.

We can point the finger at Microsoft and tout other systems, but even Apple and *nix systems have their own issues. I've seen reports and even been surprised by them myself, but Windows is not the buggiest or even the least secure of the operating systems. In the end, many of the problems people experience (on any OS) are from third-party software, especially drivers. I know that's not what you're ranting about here, so it's just a side note, really.

Disclaimer: I'm not so much a fanboy of MS as I was five years ago, but I'm definitely not an Apple fan. I use Linux as my server platform, mostly for compatibility with the server apps I'm required to run.

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:58 pm

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 7:09 pm

But back to the problem that originally caused all of this mess...

I looked through some more log files and through some of my Acronis backup logs. I have found that something similar has happened THREE times over the past 2 months. The only reason I caught it this time was because the Windows Update stopped working. But it has effected other system files in the past too.

In the past 2 months, there have been 3 corrupted file issues. In EACH CASE, the file was in the V:\Windows\winsxs directory. My physical disk is a 250GB drive, partitioned into the C:\Apps, V:\Vista, and K:\CleanXP areas. The C:\Apps drive is the largest partition and has all user files and all of the applications left over from XP (there is an old Program Files directory from XP on that partition so that I can grab any files that I might still need). It has all of my development tools, all of my 3rd party components, source code, web files, etc. Lots and lots of files. The V:\Vista partition has the Windows directory, along with the Documents and Settings for Vista, and along with the new Program Files for applications that I have installed fresh on Vista. The K:\CleanXP is a small partition with a basic XP system on it that I can boot if I have problems with anything else.

So of all of the hundreds of thousands of files on this disk, all 3 corrupted files were in the V:\Windows\winsxs directory. That seems really suspicious to me. Running low-level disk scans and CHKDSK show no problems with the disk itself. And the location on the disk of these 3 files are completely different. For example, one was near the beginning of the disk, and one was near the end. In fact, one was a recent file only put into the \winsxs directory within the past couple of weeks by Windows Update itself.

When I use CHKDSK, I also tell it to scan the free space on the disk. I also have another disk tool that scans the free space for bad blocks. None of these have reported any problems with any area of the disk. So it's not like there was some bad block "lurking" on the disk waiting to cause trouble. I also monitored the SMART system for any low-level hardware errors. There haven't been any. Also, this is a new disk...this is not the disk that was failing back in February that caused me to get a new computer system.

So why are these files getting corrupted? If it wasn't for my weekly full Acronis backup, I probably would have never known about these other problems (until the recent problem with Windows Update failing). Is there some interaction going on between Acronis backup and Vista? Acronis backup is doing a low-level sector backup of the disk. Maybe when it locks a sector to back it up it causes some sort of interaction with Vista that causes the high-level data to be corrupted. These problems are not low-level hardware problems...they are higher level problems with the file structure.

I know for a fact that Vista is doing *something* to the disk that XP never used to do. My disk activity light seems to be always flashing in Vista, where is never had that much activity back in XP. I've turned off the Vista DEFRAG program, so that isn't running anymore. I've turned off the background scanning of my virus checker. But something else is performing disk activity. Maybe if this disk activity interfers with the Acronis backup then it could cause problems?

As an experiment, I'm going to exclude the V:\Windows directory from my daily/weekly backups and see if that makes any difference. I did a Google search on these file corruption errors and there seems to be cases where this happened in Beta versions of Vista, but I can't find anything more recent. In most cases, people blamed the hardware, but the issue was never resolved. But I'm starting to become convinced that there is something very fishy going on here with Vista and it's file system integrity.

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

I was curious about the winsxs directory, so I did a couple searches and found a couple interesting articles. It's apparently Microsoft's way of allowing side-by-side installations of DLLs used by any version of any application. The biggest issue most people seem to have is the typical "file accumulation" problems because things are not properly uninstalled. It's been noted that you can move the directory to another drive, but that's risky and breaks future updates, like SP1.

Seems like your backups are a helpful thing, but I definitely feel for you on the loss of time. It's never fun when you have to stop all productive activities just to deal with this crap. I just spent a couple weeks replacing a hard drive and power supply (the latter of which was only about two months old!) and re-installing Ubuntu just to get my Linux development server up and running again.

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 8:01 pm

Yep, DX10 is Vista-only. Of course, that's why no games are actively using it yet...because no game company can afford to stop supporting XP. For example, Lord of the Rings Online uses DX10 on Vista. But it also still uses DX9 on XP just fine. And the differences are pretty minor so far. In theory DX10 does lots of great stuff, but if nobody uses it, does any of it exist? (If a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it...).

Rorso: No offense taken. I just read your post the wrong way because I'm in a bad mood. But you are right...we are stuck with Windows more than people expect, which gives Microsoft a lot more power than I wish they had. One bad glitch in a Windows Update and Microsoft could destroy a large number of computers around the world in a single stoke. And I can lose sleep over that!

Right now I am copying archived backup files from my Vista disk to Chiara's big backup drive so that I have space locally for the new weekly and monthly backups. I am copying two files: One is 12GB and one is 14GB. Currently Vista is using 10% of my network bandwidth, and 10% of CPU. Chiara's computer (where the files are being written) is using about 15% CPU. Both computers have a gigabit network card and are connected via a gigabit switch. The file copies are going very very slow. Yes I know, SP1 is supposed to "fix" this (although as far as I can tell, I've already installed the patches for the file copy and network issues that SP1 installs, but I'll have to wait and see).

So, as I sit here and stare at the progress bar, I wonder more and more about what I have gained or lost by using Vista? Is there anything that I use in Vista that I wouldn't have in XP? Is there anything I would miss? I'm using Directory Opus instead of File Explorer, and Opus works fine on XP. I can get some of the prettier icons and screen stuff using various 3rd party software from Stardock (windowblinds, etc). Most of my time is spent in Delphi, Firefox, Outlook...all of which work just fine in XP. All of the Ruby/Rails stuff that I plan to use later this month works fine on XP. Nothing actually *requires* Vista.

So, what would I miss if I wasn't using Vista? Have I forgotten about some "cool new feature" that I am taking for granted now?

Now that CMUD is working fine in Vista, would it actually suffer if I wasn't using Vista myself? Or would I get more time to spend on CMUD because I wasn't dealing with Vista issues every week?

After all, I have a *lot* of recent experience reinstalling all of my software apps. I think we have determined that it takes me about 2 days to get everything reinstalled and working properly? So would I be happier on a clean XP system? Or would it just be postponing the inevitable and have me forced back to using Vista within the year again? Would it stop me from whining as much? (well, maybe not ;) Anyway, something I'll be thinking about over the next couple of days as I sit on the couch with my eyes closed with nothing else to do except think.

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 8:17 pm

Still staring at the file transfer progress. I started running the Vista "Reliability and Performance Monitor" to look at network, cpu, and disk utilization (this is one system tool that I probably *would* miss in XP). If you click on the Disk area, it shows you all of the files being accessed on your system.

Watching this disk activity for a while is very interesting. There are all sorts of things running on the system that use the disk. Certainly the two file transfers are always at the top. But the "System" process is constantly accessing all sorts of files. Part of this is PreFetch, and I understand what that does (caches stuff in memory). But it is accessing files that I haven't even used in a while.

Also, even few minutes it runs something called "msfeedssync.exe". From a Google search, this is supposed to be part of IE7. But I never use IE7...I only use Firefox. The only time IE7 was run by me was back when Vista was first installed (before I installed Firefox). I've never set up any RSS feeds in IE7. So what is Vista doing running this every few minutes?? Also, if I look at the Task Manager and tell it to show all processes regardless of user, the "msfeedssync.exe" process never shows up in the list. So Vista is somehow hiding this process from the task manager. Just to be sure, I ran my antivirus on the msfeedssync.exe file, and it didn't report any problems, so I don't think it has been hijacked or anything. I think it's just one of those many things that Vista is doing in the background that it doesn't want you to know about.

It also looks like something related to the Volume Shadowing might be causing some of the disk activity, but it's hard to tell. But there is a *lot* of various random file activity. And it's either the "System" process, or various "svchost.exe" processes.

OK, the file copies are finally done. That was over 30 minutes. That's *way* too slow. But now maybe I can get on with my work for today.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Not sure if this works with Directory Opus, but another standard feature of Vista's File Explorer is you can right-click on a file while holding shift down, and it gives you additional options in the right click menu. One of these options is "Copy as Path"... so if I shift-right-click "wcp.dll" and choose "Copy as Path" I get the following on the clipboard: "C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft-windows-servicingstack_31bf3856ad364e35_6.0.6000.16386_none_07289f4cca5f6990\wcp.dll" ... which I can then right-click-paste in a "cmd" prompt.

On another note, even though I disabled it (because I use O&O), I caught vista defrag running just before... and svchost.exe was going thru my EQ2 files.

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 1:29 am

Yep! The Shift-rightclick works! I see the Copy as Path... Yeah, that was non-obscure. Don't know why it's not just in the normal right-click menu. Never knew they were adding "hidden" options while holding down keys on the keyboard. Geez.

Interesting about Vista Defrag. I wonder if there is a better way to *really* disable it. I certainly don't want it running at all.

Btw, I have decided to just continue to live with this misery for a while. I just don't want to spend the time *again* to reinstall all of my apps, and I figure that I'd just end up being forced to Vista again some time in the future. So I might as well put up with the pain and just hope it gets better eventually.

Still makes me sick to my stomach that they have so much power in the world and are making so much money on poor quality products. Maybe there is some hope. I consider .NET and Vista to be products of Steve Balmer's tenure at Microsoft, whom I never agreed with. But I have a lot of respect for Ray Ozzie back from his days in charge of Lotus Notes when I was doing work with that at the lab, so maybe he can eventually turn things around for the better. But it won't be easy and it won't happen overnight.

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

I despised Lotus Notes when they made us use it at work! Razz

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:07 am

It was actually a very cool system once you got into customizing it. I wrote all sorts of applications with it. v4.0 was a vast improvement over previous versions. But it really came down to how well the system was customized for your workplace. I had it doing some amazing stuff, and I still miss it. If you just used it for basic email, then the company was missing the whole point. I didn't use it after v4.0 when I left the lab, so I have no idea if it got better or worse.

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

Well, I've had the exact same issue Zugg. With no backup software like that at all (I do manual backups every month).

And yes, I too pine for the days when Linux finally breaks the Micro$uck monopoly. Its STARTING to happen, but I don't see it happening completely till the big gaming companies start making their games for both OS'es. But HP for one has embraced Linux, and you can get servers and some workstations with Linux preinstalled. Also some big non-gaming software companies are embracing Linux too. I've been part of the Beta testing for Nero-Linux. We just need to kick the big gaming companies into it, because everything else already has decent support on Linux, support that would explode if Linux became the mainstream. For instance, OpenOffice is just as good as M$ Office for 90% of users. Sure, it lacks things like Visio and PowerPoint, but as I said, that would easily explode in advancement with general acceptance of Linux as the mainstream.

I mean, think about it. If the gaming companies all started developing for Linux (which would be smart since it's memory handling routines are 500% more efficient than Winblows [Yes thats exaggerating]), then the major hardware would ALL fall in line quickly. If the gamers are using Linux, but you only support Windows versions of your video drivers... your company would go to hell as everyone started buying from another Video Card manufacturer who has chosen to support Linux. And on, and on, and on.

This then brings up the downside. Right now most virii will not affect Linux at all. But if Linux became mainstream, you know the maleware would all follow suit as well. But oh well, some people are just Grade A assholes :)

On that note, I've been behind a couple, and participated in several surveys and petitions that get sent off to these major corporations. Including one back in 1999 to HP. I've always wondered if that had any part in their starting to work with Linux. But then I remembered that they've been experimenting for a long time... *beats himself with HP-UX*. OOPS. But hey, its still a start ;)

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 2:04 pm

The trouble is that there're massive barriers to changing the OS you develop for. Zugg is a perfect example of this, and I don't think I need expand on that further. With those barriers in place, the benefits of changing OS need to be enormous to warrant the cost of changing. And fact of the matter is that they aren't and they probably never will be. Linux would have to become more like Windows, or the price of retraining programmers and rewriting code would have to fall, or something else fundamental that would push people away from Windows. And all of those things are extremely unlikely, and even then it wouldn't be a sure thing.

So no, it's not going to happen. That "something else fundamental", though, could easily be Microsoft producing ...bad... software for the next ten years. Perhaps then people would start migrating. But Microsoft, knowing that it needs to stop that, would probably pull its finger out before then.

In short: no.

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 3:03 pm

You're missing the point. The problem is the "mixed results" part. Clients don't want mixed results, they want good results, and using an emulator (or whatever Wine actually is) will always be inferior to using the real thing, for what I hope are obvious reasons. Why bother using Linux and Wine, which is unreliable, when you can use Windows which is (relatively speaking) not?

If I were going to use Linux, I'd want all the programs I use (read: games I play) to work on it. Not for some of them to work, some of them to work-ish, and some of them to fail completely. It's not a case at all of choosing based on what you want to use daily - it's simply choosing what does what you want it to do, and Linux doesn't because companies don't write their software for it. That's the whole crux of this discussion: you suggested Linux, and Zugg can't use it because the things he uses Windows for don't work under Linux. Linux supporting some of the things you want to do isn't enough, because Windows will have to pick up the slack. And if you're already using Windows for some stuff, why not use it for all stuff? Ralgith already talked about that in some detail.

Until Linux starts doing everything people want it to do and does it better than its rivals, people won't use it. It's that simple.