Kirb’s Musings

Kirby Witmer’s ponderings, ruminations, and meditations of… anything.

I was trying to install the Blackberry Desktop Manager on Windows Vista, but it kept aborting on the following error message.

error 1325 favorites is not a valid short file name

Frustrating. Turns out its a simple fix. Simply set your Favorites back to the default location. I had my favorites folder pointed to a network location and for what ever reason the installer didn’t like that. Apparently its a bug in the Blackberry installer program.

      Late last week I requested a static IP address from my web host, hostmonster. Supposedly this would be a simple change that would go off without a hitch. And it did for the most part, except for one problem. The A name record for blog.kirb.com was somehow erased, which simply resulted in this website being down. The solution of course is to update the A record. Simple, right? Take a peak at these conversations with Hostmonster Support.
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Have you been struggling with the nasty medichi.exe virus? I’ve been trying to remove it on a customer’s computer for days, and haven’t been getting anywhere. This virus goes the whole way by disabling access to your Control Panel, Task Manager, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Norton Internet Security. Apparently its a new virus that none of the virus companies have a fix for yet. The only one that detects it is Microsoft, but they can’t actually remove it successfully yet. At least they didn’t for me.

Basically this is what I did to fix the problem.

UPDATE: Symantec now calls it Trojan.Virantix.B and has a document outlining how to remove it. Please follow those steps instead.

1. Download Process Master and install it.
2. Run Process Master and kill the following processes if running, medichi.exe medichi2.exe and suspend.exe.
3. Show System and Hidden files in Windows Explorer, by going to Tools and then Folder Options and selecting the view tab. Select the “Show Hidden files and folders” and also uncheck “Hide Protected Operating System Files”. Click Yes, and then OK.
4. Delete the following files if existing.
  C:\Windows\Medichi.exe
  C:\Windows\Medichi2.exe
  C:\Windows\System32\suspend.exe

5: Search the registry for “Medichi” and delete every reference to it.
6. Restart Windows.

These steps were taken from here.
Note: The one step over there involves patching ProcessMaster to avoid paying for it. It doesn’t mention that anywhere, but thats what happens if you follow it. If you want to stay legal, please pay for ProcessMaster instead of simply patching it.

Via the Washington Post:

It used to be all but impossible to walk down a city street in the Washington area without hearing the “chirp.” The distinct beeping noise made by Sprint Nextel’s walkie-talkie-like service, called Direct Connect, was so commonplace that it almost seemed a part of the aural landscape. These days, the chirp stands out because it has become so infrequent. More people have been abandoning the service over the past year, following Nextel’s merger with Sprint. The company has lost more than 700,000 monthly subscribers this year, and the carrier warned last week that it expects to lose 370,000 more this fiscal quarter. The vast majority of departed subscribers are former Nextel customers.

“The chirp is not extinct,” he said. “It has, perhaps, become less deafening.”

The article goes on…. and echoes what I’ve written before. 

I’m so frustrated right now with this old, old problem of installing Windows XP on a RAID hard drive system. The only way to add the drivers is by using a floppy disk. That brings up several questions.

1. What is a floppy disk?
2. Where do I find one?
3. Where do I find a floppy drive? New computers don’t have them.

Ahh.. Here we go, I found a used floppy drive in one of my old computers, but now for a disk. Ahh.. found that too. First disk doesn’t work, second one doesn’t either. Is it the drive or the floppies? Try the third disk.. sweet, that one works. Start Win XP setup, hit F6, insert floppy disk. ERROR!!  grrrrr…. still no go. Ok, lets try with a new disk. Attempting to write files. Error :

Windows Error N. 5
Access is denied.

I agree with Iain Magee :

So - all told - a 5 minute job took probably the most of an hour. Why Microsoft? Why can’t we have setup read the file from a CD or USB key? This was a problem 5 years ago - and I just can’t believe that 5 years on it’s still a problem.