Alexander’s Blog

Have you run into a situation where you try to logon to a SharePoint site in Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox and get no error, yet the page still shows the Sign In link, instead of Welcome SHAREPOINT\username? And you can’t edit the pages because the browser doesn’t think you are logged on. Here’s what I did to fix the problem.

I started Internet Explorer and went to Tools, Internet Options, Advanced tab. I unchecked the box “Enable Integrated Windows Authentication.” That allowed me to properly get authenticated and I was able to edit my SharePoint site both in Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox (you may have to refresh the screen).

Assuming you are interested in installing, or have already installed, Windows XP SP3, here’s some interesting browser comparison reported by BetaNews today.

“In a set of comprehensive Windows Web browser performance tests conducted by Betanews on August 7 — our first test of browsers running on the final Windows 7 RTM Build 7600 distributed by Microsoft yesterday — the five major families of browsers tended to run 13% faster on Windows XP Service Pack 3 than on Windows 7, and 29% faster than on Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

That reflects a decline in the speed gap between XP and Win7 of about 1%, from tests conducted comparing XP-based browsers to those running on Windows 7 Release Candidate Build 7100. Some browsers are faster in Windows 7 RTM, although Mozilla Firefox 3.5.2 ran just a tick slower.”

You can read the entire article here.

Well, since I am not interested in Chrome, I think I’ll stick to Mozilla Firefox. By the way, I am not pleased with IE 8 at all and I am lukewarm about IE 7. Firefox, although not perfect, is much more reliable, well-organized, safer, offers gazillions of nice add-ons, and have far better support than the rest.

There’s is a known problem experienced by many Vista users where the Help and Support stops working. When you try to start Help and Support you get the following error.

Internet Explorer cannot download / from help.

Internet Explorer was not able to open this Internet site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later.

The error message is completely useless and gives you no indication as to what the problem might be. Instead it tells you to try later, hoping something will magically fix your problem. This may be very confusing for users who are not even connected to the Internet and are being informed that Internet Explorer was unable to open the Internet site, as if they were trying to browse the Internet.

You can reboot and reinstall Office and try just about everything else……chances are that nothing will help. The problem has to do with the registry setting for .xml file types. This often happens when there’s something wrong with the Content Type and luckily there are a couple of things you can try to fix the problem.

Solution 1

Try to register msxml3.dll by using the regsvr32 command by typing the following at the Start, Run:

regsvr32 msxml3.dll

Note: You will need administrative privileges to run the above command.

If this method doesn’t work and you have Dreamweaver installed then try this second solution. Most users with Dreamweaver have reported this problem. I also run Dreamweaver on my computer and was able to fix my Vista Ultimate by using this second method.

Solution 2

Copy the following text into Notepad and save the file as a text file with .reg extension (e.g. fixhelp.reg). Make sure that the file has .reg, and not .txt, extension.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml]
@=”xmlfile”
“Content Type”=”text/xml”
“PerceivedType”=”text”

Right-click the fixhelp.reg file (or whatever you named it) in Windows Explorer and select Merge.

You should now be able to open Help and Support normally.

You may have heard about Google’s new browser called Chrome. I thought about installing it so I can evaluate it. But then I thought about all the privacy violations that Google has been criticized by security experts over the years and decided to do a little research first. I have to admit, I am pretty hesitant when it comes to installing anything made by Google, whether it’s their toolbar, Web browser or anything else. I stumbled upon this article on TG Daily: Chrome is a security nightmare, indexes your bank accounts. In Google’s defense, I should point out that at the time the article was written, Chrome was still in beta. However, the article raises some interesting points and it’s the fact that Google is once again in the middle of a privacy controversy that caught my attention. Here are a few quotes from the article.

After playing around with Google’s brand new Chrome browser, we’ve discovered that its history search box will fetch all types of data - even text from HTTPS-protected financial sites like Washington Mutual and Capital One.  With a few utterly simple keywords like balance, account and Sept., everything from balance information, account numbers and even how much you spent at Costco can be pulled up.

To see all of this in action, just open up Chrome and log in to your favorite financial website.  Like most important sites, it should be protected with HTTPS/SSL encryption and that should be evident in the address bar of the browser.  Do the stuff you would normally do like look at your balances and gawk at your latest transactions and then open up a new tab in Chrome by clicking the “+” symbol.  In the right-hand history search box, enter a few keywords and see what they get you.  Surprised?  I bet you are.  No luck?  Then try something simple like oh Visa, Mastercard, balance and account.  Also try out the names and abbreviations of months like September, Sept and Sep.

And on Guardian’s Web site I read the following:

The history search feature means you can find all your financial, medical and other secrets from the browser without going anywhere near the secure site. Or someone else can. If you have a PC where someone else can access it — for example, in almost any office — then it’s a recipe for disaster.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a different concern. It says, according to CNet’s headline, We’re concerned about Google’s Omnibox. There’s a privacy issue because anything you type in gets sent back to the Google mothership, and it’s storing some of it. The ways to avoid that include (1) turn off auto-suggest; or (2) use a default search engine that isn’t Google; or (3) use porn mode. Any one will do.

Sorry, I forgot to include the (mercifully short) story of the day: you can crash Chrome by typing :% in the address bar. I expect someone will figure out how to crash it remotely, if they haven’t already done so….

According to Google their browser is supposed to “make the web faster, safer, and easier”. Safer? Really? Funny I just switched my default search engine from Google to Live Search as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post Goodbye Google, Hello Live Search!. And no I didn’t do it because of privacy concerns, I did it because I liked Live Search better.

A lot of people use Secunia’s online software inspector to inspect operating system and software for insecure versions and missing security updates. Although you may not see older versions of Adobe Flash Player in Add/Remove Programs, Secunia’s inspector detects the older version and informs you of the risk. You can get rid of the older versions by following the technique described below.

Find out where the Flash Player ActiveX control is installed. Thanks to Secunia’s scan, it tells you exactly where the file is installed, as shown in the graphic below.

The file is called flash.ocx if you are using Flash Player version 6 or later. For version 5 or earlier it is called swflash.ocx.  Here are the default locations for the file.

C:\Windows\System\Macromed\Flash for Windows 95, 98 and WinME
C:\WinNT\System32\Macromed\Flash for Windows NT and 2000
C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash for Windows XP and Vista

Sometimes you may see the file name to be something like flash9b.ocx, so you might want to look for all files that end with extension .ocx. For example, you may find a file located at C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\Macromed\Flash\Flash9b.ocx.

Keep in mind that there are still some other locations that these players are installed. For example, Dreamweaver installs it in the location where your Dreamweaver is installed, such as : Dreamweaver\Configuration\Plugins\NPSWF32.dll.

A lot of vendors want to install software on your computer either without your knowledge, or they bundle other “junk” software with useful products and it gets installed often without user’s knowledge. Both Apple and Adobe are notorious for their “junk” software installation. For example, you may also find a version installed with Adobe AIR in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe AIR\Versions\1.0\NPSWF32.dll. Why? Because Adobe bundles Adobe AIR with Acrobat Reader. Luckily, Secunia’s report will give you all the details you need. Here’s the step-by-step procedure to get rid of the old versions of Flash Player ActiveX controls.

Step 1

Locate the Flash Player version that you want to remove. Once you’ve located the file, use regsvr32 to unregister the ActiveX control. For example, to remove Flash9b.ocx, go to Start, Run and type regsvr32 “C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\Macromed\Flash\Flash9b.ocx” /u. You should see the following message.

If there are other versions you need to do the same for all other versions. Remember to use quotes if there’s a space in the file path. For example, to unregister the DLL installed by Adobe AIR type regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe AIR\Versions\1.0\NPSWF32.dll” /u because there are spaces in the path.

Step 2

After the ActiveX has been successfully unregistered, locate the file .ocx and delete it.

Step 3

Locate the .inf file associated with the Macromedia Flash Player ActiveX control (swflash.inf) and delete it. In the Adobe AIR example I gave in step 1, I would delete the entire folder 1.0 under Versions.

Step 4

Restart the computer.

Once you’ve removed old versions successfully, you should run Secunia’s inspector again to verify the removal.