Internet Explorer 8 won't submit forms???

I just had a great problem to try and solve. A user had contacted me complaining the when he tried to log in to any page the page would just reload. On GMail it loaded the "Loading" page but would not proceed - this is where I found my first clue to what was going on, I changed the basic HTML view and all was well in the google world.

Looking at the source code for the gmail page and the other login pages that had been showing this problem I noticed they were all using Javascript. I reset the advanced options to their defaults in the Internet Explorer options and tried again - no luck. This particular laptop was in Korean so trouble shooting was hard; I reset EVERYTHING to its default in the process of troubleshooting so this was a long shot.

After some googling I found the golden answer. Open a command prompt and "Run as Administrator" - as you always have to in Vista and Win 7. Then type this glourious command in regsvr32 jscript.dll. Reload Internet Explorer and amazingly everything is working again, exactly as it should.

This was an amazingly frustrating problem as most googling just gave me developers dealing with the problem and modifying their HTML to solve the problem - as much as I'd like to re-write the whole internet, I can't. Till this breakthrough the only other solution I'd found was to user Chrome - this is a fix for many things but it didn't work in this situation.

I hope this advice/rant is useful to someone out their in Internetland.

UBCD4Win and OSX Install on one USB Stick?

In theory, I figured this would be something easy to setup. I'd have all the tools I wanted for OSX setup and Windows repair all in one place. But I quickly found it got tricky. The problem is that USUSB that comes with UBCD4Win which you use to copy create a UBCD4Win partition on a USB stick, also formats the stick. Here's how I got around it.

The first thing you need to do is setup the UBCD4Win partition. The process can be found here: http://www.ubcd4win.com/howto.htm (Just select "No Media" then run UBUSB.exe). When running UBUSB one option it'll ask is about formatting the partition, one thing you can do it set the partition size. Set it to something that will leave you with at least 6GB on the USB stick for the OSX install - I made mine 1.2GB. Let it build the partition.

This is where I thought it'd be easy, just create an OSX partition and clone the OSX install disc there - unfortunately I couldn't format the remaining space ???

** This is the trick **
The trick was to boot with the gParted Live CD and create a hfs+ partition there. Once that partition is there OSX will let you "Erase" is to an OSX Extended partition. From there everything works as expected - fire up Carbon Copy Cloner and clone the disc.

Another point worth noting is that if you use the "Startup Disk" utility on the OSX partition to specify a startup volume the UBCD4Win partition is deactivated in the MBR - so just reboot instead. (I haven't tested this theory completely, but so far it seems to fit).

Working with AVCHD in Windows Movie Maker

I'd have to say that I was a little disappointed when I found that my new JVC GZ-HD310 recorded our precious memories in a format that is compatible with stuff all software. Its my own fault really, I got over excited and should've done more research. After a few days of playing around I've found a good (but less than ideal) work around.

Here's the short version:
1. Use Free HD Converter to convert the files to wmv
2. Add those wmv files into Windows Move Maker and edit and export like you would with a "normal" camcorder.

The reason I say this is less than ideal is because it involves converting the video files twice. Like any media, everytime you convert/re-encode you lose quality. for me, I'm not too concerned. The reason I got an HD camcorder was a way of future-proofing, I don't have an HD TV yet so don't really get the benefit yet.

Here's the longer version of the process I now use. I'm writing this based on my JVC GZ-HD310, but most of the process will apply to any HD camcorder that uses AVCHD.

1. Install Free HD Converter. Visit http://www.koyotesoft.com/indexEn.html and download Free HD Converter, version 1.2 at the moment. The installation is pretty straight forward - next, unselect all the toolbars, next, finished. If you can't handle this step on your own - this process is going to be too hard, you should consider returning your camcorder to the store.

2. Connect your camcorder to your PC. For my JVC this means connecting the camcorder using the USB cable, turning the camera on and selecting "Playback On PC". "Export to PC" will also work, I believe the only difference is what the JVC software does - I don't use the JVC software.

I also remove the battery from the camcorder and connect the external power. This is so I don't have to worry about the battery dying during the conversion - which will take a few hours. I also disconnect the battery to try to maximize its life and not waste recharge cycles when I'm going to be sitting next to a power outlet anyway.

3. Select the AVCHD (.MTS) files. When I connect my camcorder it installs as an external hard drive so I access the files by going to H:\AVCHD\BDMV\STREAM. It may not be H: for you, but the principle should be the same. On non-JVC camcorders this process may be different - I cannot help you here, the manual may.

Open the path to the MTS files in Windows Explorer. Select the files you want and drag them onto the In Free HD Converter window. You can also go to File->"Add MTS/M2TS File" the option is yours. The application can appear to hang during this process, be patient, it'll get there.

4. Select encoding options. Free HD Converter has a few presets built in. For me the WMV HD option is perfect, if you have specific requirement or want to preserve the 1080p/i quality you can tweak the options in the bottom right:

I also change the Output directory - this is just a personal preference with how I organise my computer. Do what you like here, just make sure you know where the files are going.

5. Convert. When you're happy with the options you've selected click convert and go get yourself a coffee, you'll be waiting a while. My first test had just over an hour of recording and the conversion took just over 4 hours. This will depend on your PC specs and the footage you have but you'll definitely have time for a coffee or two.

When the conversion is done you'll have a folder of WMV files (depending on the options you selected of course):

You can now fire up Windows Movie Maker and work with the files you've created. there are plenty of guide out there on this process so I'll leave you to use those from this point. Microsoft has actually put together some good resources here for begineers: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/getstarted/default.mspx

Obviously, if you don't want to use Windows Movie Maker these files you've made will work with most (if not all) other movie editing programs. Lets be honest, Windows Movie Maker is a long way from being the best but it does have free working for it.

qtpfsgui Auto Align Runtime Errors

In my searching for a solution to the following problem I saw a lot of people out there suffering the same pains, but no one seemed to have a solution. So I wanted to post my fix, there's a bit of work to be done to get a more secure fix but for me this works.

If you're using the auto align option in qtpfsgui with hugin's align_image_stack and after clicking Next and waiting a few minutes you get an error:
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library
Runtime Error!

Program C:\Program Files\qtpfsgui-windows-EXE-v1.9.2\qtpfsgui.exe

This application has requested the Runtime to terminate in an unusual way. Please contact the applications' support team for more information.
I've found the problem. I took someone's advice and tried to use align_image_stack from the command line (its an executable included in the qtpfsgui installation). I noticed an error which seemed to relate to a problem creating output files. The output files, by default, are put in the folder the executable is running in, so C:\Program Files\qtpsfgui. Vista - with all its security - prevents user's from creating or modifying files in this folder, that's where our problem lies.

The quick solution is to edit the permissions on the folder C:\Program Files\qtpsfgui so "Users" have permission to "Modify" files. That's the quick easy solution, but means a compromise in security. If you've got time I'm guessing there's an argumant for align_image_stack.exe to specify the temp folder location, find that and update qtpfsgui's options to use a temp folder and you'll have a better fix.

Mine is sorted the unsecure way, and I'm ok with that.

P.S. If you're curious, my first HDR image is here: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/v7V3Bwh2becCb6FfqIAlbA?feat=directlink

Lost Command Line Completion

I'm not sure how it happened but I just went to the command prompt and my TAB key didn't work as expected. Instead of completing the cd Prog I had just typed it inserted a tab character.

I located the fix for this here: http://www.petri.co.il/automatic_completion_with_a_command_prompt.htm

Basically the solution it to set the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar to 0x9. For some reason mine had been set to 0x1a. Change it back to 0x9 and reload the command prompt and everything is working as expected again.

Ricoh 5in1 Card Reader Corruption

For a while now I've been having a small problem with my HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop. Whenever I inserted an SD card in the onboard reader I got an error "Error 0x80070570: The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable". I decided today to research it further.

I thought I'd start with HP's support and see what they had to say... the answer, nothing I hadn't already tried. I installed the latest card reader drivers from hp.com and restarted, no joy. I blasted the reader with air to remove any dust, no joy.

When looking at one forum about a similiar issue on a Dell laptop someone meantioned that a BIOS update broke theirs and rolling it back fixed it. So I installed the latest BIOS update from hp. Version F.32 was released 2009-03-25 and can be found here: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=ob-69499-1&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&os=2093&product=3722021

I've just installed and restarted and my SD and SDHC cards are now reading correctly again.

Malware Problems

For the past three days I've been scratching my head at some Malware somewhere on my PC. I'm still not entirely sure where it came from but the only thing that made me suspicious was that any Google result would jump me to seemingly random pages. The link would appear OK and so the correct address. I'd click it and search-tracker.net would start loading... then a few seconds later any number of page redirects would happen then I'd end up anywhere. sometimes it was the page I wanted, most times it wasn't. The most amusing one was my search for some info on some iPhone 3.0 changes and I ended up at a blackberry page.

After scanning my entire computer numerous times with Trend Internet Security Pro and AdAware nothing major came back and the problem remained.

Today, I finally cracked it. A forum post discribing something similar had the answer - ComboFix. You can find the program here: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/. This program took half the time any other scan took and actually got rid of the problem. I think it was one of these three files at fault:

• c:\windows\system32\drivers\MSIVXrepajqitioipqfxtpymewvvqbstksydj.sys
• c:\windows\system32\MSIVXiilttodnmsscucfonbrspgbebixdynsm.dll
• c:\windows\system32\MSIVXrwdiswrsfvujlfcxtpdpopbbqxsfxvpx.dll

These files are now gone so I can't say for sure what it was.

One note of warning!!! Bleeping Computer recommends not using ComboFix unless one of their experts recommends it for your situation. Also not that ComboFix resets a lot of your customizations. I was getting really annoyed so I ignored both these warnings but you may not be so lucky.

One more note of warning. I'm not sure of the payload of this so to be safe I suggest changing all your passwords after you've removed the malware.