Viruses tore through my home network over the holidays and left me frustrated to no end.  The following is the process I used to remove the viruses and get the computers working again.

Background:

I have Windows XP Professional sp3 on two of the computers and Vista on another.  They were all infected.  The solution below is for the Windows XP Professional sp3 computers.

Solution:

• I installed Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) (http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/).  This found a lot of viruses, trojans and such and removed everyone that it found.  But I was still getting pop-up ads for virus removal tools. My system was in too bad shape for MSE to correct it.
• Next, I installed Malwarebytes (http://www.malwarebytes.org/) and ran it.  It found a few more corrupt files and found a lot garbage in the registry.  To clean up the mess left behind by the virus, it removed a lot of files and settings from the registry.  One of which, was a modified windows update setting.  So windows update no longer worked, and MSE wouldn't update it's virus database either.

I searched around for solutions for this and found a lot of dead-end forums saying pretty much to reregister dlls.  So I created a batch file containing the following:

REGSVR32 WUPS2.DLL /S
REGSVR32 WUPS.DLL /S
REGSVR32 WUAUENG.DLL /S
REGSVR32 WUAPI.DLL /S
REGSVR32 MUCLTUI.DLL /S
REGSVR32 WUCLTUI.DLL /S
REGSVR32 WUWEB.DLL /S
REGSVR32 MUWEB.DLL /S
REGSVR32 QMGR.DLL /S
REGSVR32 QMGRPRXY.DLL /S

And executed it.  All of the lines worked except for the bold one above.  And the windows update still didn't work.  I still got the error 0x8024D007 when I tried to reinstall Windows Update or download an update and the error I got when trying to correct the registry was:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuaueng.dll". Error 0x80070005: Access is denied

• So after following a few more forums I stumbled across an application called Dial-a-fix (http://wiki.lunarsoft.net/wiki/Dial-a-fix) and I downloaded version Dial-a-fix-v0.60.0.24.

I ran it with a check in the box for "Fix Windows Update" and it went to work.  However, at some point in the middle of the job it started getting errors, basically saying access is denied to wuaueng.dll and to run Repair Permissions.  So I did.

• In the Dial-a-fix application, I selected the "Tools" button (little hammer icon) on the bottom.  I then scrolled down to "Repair Permissions" and ran that.  It took about 5 to 10 minutes to run.
• After it completed, I ran Dial-a-fix again with a check in the box for Wu/Wuau / Fix Windows Update.
• After that I was able to go to microsoft's update site, reinstall windows update, and get the latest updates for the OS as well as the latest virus definitions for MSE.

This was not a fun process, but I hope this helps people dealing with the same issues.  

Just to note: I plan to reload my computers anyway because there is no telling what else doesn't work properly, but at least I'm able to back up the machines before reloading them. 

Title: Subiaco Abbey & Academy
Date: December 25, 2009
Medium: Acrylic
Size: 16" x 20"

Notes: My wife's family has a white elephant (or dirty Santa) gift exchange every year.  This year I decided to paint a picture of the Subiaco Academy, since that is where over half of her family is from.  I didn't get to spend as much time as I would have liked on it, but it turned out okay. 

This problem would have been a really good homework assignment for beginning programming.  It requires a little explination, though I will try to brief:

I received an Excel spreadsheet containing various forms of revenue for a company.  I was also given a summary report from a different system which was supposed to represent the same data.  However, the categorizations of the data on the report were different from those on the spreadsheets and the totals weren't adding up.  So I had to take the totals from the report and figure out which cells on the revenue spreadsheet were used to make that total.

To do this, I had to come up with every combination of the cells, get a sum of each combination, and see which ones matched the value I was looking for.

The VBA code below will allow you to select a column of cells on a spreadsheet, right click to activate the program, enter a value to be searched for, and it will return all combinations of the cells that can be summed to make that value.

What was most difficult about this, was coming up with an algorithm for giving me all possible combinations of the cells.  Plus, I wanted to search for the smallest number of returning cells first before searching for combinations containing all cells.  The GetComb function in the code at the bottom of this article works in the following manor:

Given the Cells: A, B, C, D, E, I started with looking for the all single items (in the first column) which required just 1 pointer value. I moved that pointer from left to right (follow it going down the column).  Next, I found all combinations of 2 items (in the second column) which required 2 pointers.  I moved the last pointer (labeled 2) step-by-step to the right.  When the last pointer was all the way to the right, I stepped back to the first pointer and stepped it one to the right, and moved the last pointer to the next consecutive place (row:5 column:2).  I then moved the last pointer again, step-by-step to the right.

This is the algorithm, repeated until all combinations are found.

Here is the VBA code I wrote to do this, Enjoy!

More...

I had a situation at work where a coworker needed to export a spreadsheet to a fixed width pnr file.  The resulting file was truncated at 240 characters, which I believe is part of the pnr standard (I haven't actually looked that up or anything).  So I wrote a script to export a spreadsheet to a fixed width .pnr file regardless of the number of columns.

To make it easier to code, I prompt for the number of columns and rows and it uses a common dialog control to get the destination file path.  If you don't have the common dialog control you'll get an ActiveX error.  The whole section prompting for file location can be replaced with an InputBox function, but that is neither here nor there.

Also, for your Excelling pleasure, I added a PadRight function since I couldn't seem to find one in Excel 2003. 

Just add the following script to your worksheet (Alt+F11 and double-click Sheet1 usually, paste and click the "play" button)

Enjoy: More...

I have a spreadsheet that I planned to populate as the data became available.  As I enter the data, I'd like to keep running totals based on the current state, which requires knowing the last entered value in the column.  To do this, I defined my range, and used the INDEX function and the COUNTIF function to return the last, non-blank and non-zero item in the list. 

Here is my formula:

INDEX(B4:B30,COUNTIF(B4:B30, ">0"))

This will return the last cell in column B from row 4 to 30 that is not blank and greater than zero.

Every now and then, when I am working remotely via Remote Desktop, the keyboard starts acting weird.  When I press L, it logs me out of the computer, and when I press E, it brings up "My Computer".  Basically, it acts as if the Windows Key is stuck.

Well, after searching around a bit, I found that this is a known bug in XP, and it is caused by using Windows + L to lock my workstation while using remote desktop.

The fix: Strike the Windows key a couple of times,  if you have somehow encountered this error on a machine that doesn't have a Windows key, [pressing] Ctrl [6 to 12 times] should work as well.

For the full solution, read: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverTS/thread/cbaae74e-8311-4a46-a842-31dcdd6878dc