This error can be easily fixed by unregistering and re-registering some of the dll files and important system files for Media Center. So if you ever encounter such an error message, you can perform the following steps:

Click on Start and type cmd in the search box and hit enter.

If you have Windows XP Media center, click on Start and Run, type cmd and click on OK.

It will open Command prompt. In command prompts we will need to execute following commands in the same order as I am writing below:

regsvr32.exe atl.dll

C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehSched /unregServer

C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehSched /service

C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehRecvr /unregServer

C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehRecvr /service

C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehRec.exe /unregServer

C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehRec.exe /regserver

C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehmsas.exe /unregServer

C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehmsas.exe /regserver

In command prompt, type one line at a time from the above and hit enter. If the command is executed you will receive a message whether it succeeded or failed.

Restart Media center once all the commands are executed and it will work fine.

One of my friend faced a similar issue by which he was exhausted with all steps to get rid off a couple of unknown dll files (which does not have any reference in google too). The malware name is still unknown (let’s call that as CRAP) but some of the symptoms he has noticed. Over to Sunieet’s experience with the malware.

 I always thought I am capable to delete any kind of virus/malware with much ease as that is the one thing I enjoy most. But this malware gave a me a tough competition and I was about to break my mettle. 

Till now I am not sure about the name of the malware as I have googled a no of time but did not find anything. After getting my laptop virus infected!! it generated urqQiJYP.dll & ssqQgFWM.dll files in C:\WINNT\System32 folder. I was able to delete ssqQgFWM.dll file by rebooting the laptop in Safe mode with Command Prompt but the main suspicious file “urqQiJYP.dll” was not deletable and was creating a couple of other dlls like acwzvo.dll, rqRBTKA.dll, jqtpskxy.dll, ssqQkJde.dll, qjemve.dll, nnnkLfef.dll in C:\WINNT\System32 folder.

This specific piece of malware has been written in such a way that not a single Antivirus application like Norton, AVG, McAfee, Trend Micro were able to detect it and fix it. It will automatically show a lot of pop ups related to porn sites as soon as the infected PC/laptop is connected to Internet. I had also tried to use Hijack This considered as the most popular application to play with Virus and Malware,  but in this case I was not able to open this application. Tried some other tools like Hijack Pro, Pview, Tlist, Kill.exe but no success. 

About the Dlls, most of the valid DLLs will have proper description and company name. But these DLLs do not have any description, company name but have some suspiciously strange names.  In order to make sure that this DLL is indeed a malware, we can double click the DLL name and check the strings within the DLLs. See if there are some suspicious strings within the DLL. Strings like worm, password, or name of some suspicious website are indicating that it is indeed a malware.

Finally guess what, yes I was able to delete the crap from my lappy. And here is how I won in the battle?

You need the following two tools:

> Sysinternals Process Explorer

> FreeCommander (A Replacement for File explorer)

Steps to remove the CRAP:

- Install & Run FreeCommander so that we can browse and delete files.

- Start Process Explorer and search for the dll file. You may find the dll files are running inside no of processes like Explorer.exe, Winlogon.exe. 
 

- Now we will kill Explorer.exe, winlogon.exe and smss.exe

- We are killing Explorer because most of the time explorer.exe is infected so as a precautionary measure we are killing it.

- Now its time to kill winlogon.exe, if the process is running with it. First we have to kill Smss.exe, because this process monitors winlogon.exe and will shutdown the machine if it finds that winlogon is not running.
After killing Smss.exe, you can safely kill winlogon.exe.

- After winlogon is gone and all the process ended, we can safely delete the malware.

- Press Alt+Tab key to open Free Commander and browse to that location and delete the dlls and whatever suspicious things you find.

This method can be used to delete any of the stubborn virus/malware or dll files which are not easily deletable.

This post is out of a personal experience from Sunieet who is a good friend and a brother. He used to write for the blog but due to some other commitments he is no longer able to write here.

Here is the tweak and explanation of the tweak to quickly shutdown your Windows Vista based PC.

For Windows XP Users:

Note: Before editing the registry, please take a back up of it. It is quite simple and can be done by clicking file > Export in registry editor menu and putting the file name of the backup and clicking on save.

- Click on Start and Type regedit in the search box and hit Enter.
- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER >> Control Panel >> Desktop
- Look at the right pane to locate the key WaitToKillAppTimeout, double click on it and change the value to something between 4000 and 5000. (Lesser the value more quicker will be shutdown, the value is in milliseconds).
- Click on Ok and the settings will be saved.

The key WaitToKillAppTimeout determines how long the system waits for user processes to end after the user attempts to log off or to shut down. When the time specified in this entry expires, the End Task dialog box appears, stating that the process did not respond. So now we need to do some tweak so that end task dialog box will not appear. Right? The key responsible for this is AutoEndTasks.

In registry editor Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER >> Control Panel >> Desktop

Look for AutoEndTasks key in the right pane and double click on it. The default value will be 0, change it to 1. Click on OK. This will not display the end task dialog box.

For Vista Users:

The key WaitToKillAppTimeout is replaced by WaitToKillServiceTimeout in Vista and the location has also changed.

- In Vista navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
- In right pane, look for WaitToKillServiceTimeout and double click on it. Change the value to around 5000. Click on OK.

Test your shutdown speed now and let me know if it really become quicker.

Start the Phone and Modem Options Control Panel applet (go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, Phone and Modem Options).
Select the Modems tab.
Select the modem, and click Properties.
Select the Advanced tab.
Add one of the options from the table below to the initialization string, and click OK.
Close the Control Panel applet.  Here is the screen shot:

M0 Speaker always off
M1 Speaker on during connection
M2 Speaker always on (very noisy)
L0 Lowest volume
L1 Lowest volume (redundant)
L2 Medium volume
L3 Maximum volume

First let me tell you the causes this can happen. The most important reason is the restriction set by administrator, but when you yourself is the administrator this reason is not valid. A virus/spyware infection comes next and may be a corrupt registry entry which may be caused due to virus/spyware infection. I will provide various steps and it is good to try them one by one and check if you get access to Control Panel.

Registering Files:

- Click on Start and Run and type cmd and click on OK.

- In command prompt type the following as it is provided:

REGSVR32 appwiz.cpl
REGSVR32 inetcpl.cpl
REGSVR32 nusrmgr.cpl

If the registration is successful, you will get a message that “Dllregister server in appwiz.cpl succeeded”

Modify Registry:

Note: Take a back up of registry before doing this.

Click on Start and Run.

Type Regedit and click on OK. It will open registry editor.

Navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER /Software /Microsoft /Windows /CurrentVersion /Policies /Explorer

Search for the value ‘NoControlPanel’ from the right panel from the right and set the Value Data to 0(zero) by double clicking on the entry or we can delete that entry too.

Repeat the same steps for

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /Software /Microsoft /Windows /CurrentVersion /Policies /Explorer

Use a patch if you are Novice:

If you do not wish to mess up with the registry and you are not experimental, use Control Panel restriction patch from kelly’s Korner.

If none of the above works, I am sure you have screwed up the PC by watching all sorta porns and downloading all free stuffs from sites full of spywares. Come to our FORUM and post your concerns and we will take care of the issue.

First a brief introduction about DreamScene feature for those who are still ignorant about it. This is a special feature in Vista which is available only on Windows Vista Ultimate (Apart from that Bit Locker is another feature in Vista Ultimate). This is not a built in feature but available as a download only to Windows Vista Ultimate through Windows Update. With the help of this it is possible to give life to still boring wallpaper on the PC. Yes you can set moving wallpaper and that too set your favorite videos as wallpaper. So the video alongwith the sound will be running as the desktop background. Huh…such a cool feature. Not to forget this feature requires sophisticated hardware like WDDM capable Graphics and obviously much touted Aero feature being enabled (if you have Vista Ultimate then you definitely have both of them).

That was a brief introduction about DreamScene. So now I will provide a couple of workaround to bring that feature in Windows XP albeit it is not exactly porting DreamScene to XP, you will have almost similar effect. We do not need to spend a buck to have this feature running in Windows XP nor do we need any sophisticated hardware or Aero feature. We can use VLC player, BS Player or GT Ripple program to achieve this feat.

Using VLC player:

Download and install VLC player, one merit of this player is that it can play virtually any format without the need of a codec. It can also be installed without administrative right, just change the default path (C:\Programfiles) to something like C:\XXX\VLC where XXX is any folder in C drive. Now do the following steps to run the video in a loop without any interference:

- Open VLC player, click on Settings >>Preferences and expand Interface and Main Interface and click on xWidgets. Click on Advanced setting from the bottom right of the window and uncheck Taskbar. This will remove the VLC player from appearing in the taskbar.

- Click on Video from the left pane and make sure disable screen saver is selected. Expand video option and Output modules option, seelct Direct X and from the right pane check enable wallpaper mode.

- Select Play list from left pane and check repeat current item option from right pane.

- Click on Save.

Open the video in the VLC player. Right click on it while it is playing and select Wallpaper. Voila you have your video set as desktop wallpaper.

Using BS Player:

I will not recommend this method, cause the free version of BS Player is supported by adware as written on the home page. But it does not require any configuration. Just download and install the player, open the video in the player and right click on the video and select desktop mode or just press D key from the keyboard while the video is running.

Using GT Ripple:

This will not let us play video rather it will bring animation effect to the still wallpaper. Say you are using the Azul wallpaper with water and coconut tree and a sail boat to create the perfect scenery. But the water is standstill and give very boring effect. Here we can make the water moving using the GT Ripple program. I suggest to use this utlity to have professional quality animated wallpaper with ripple effect and Azul is the best wallpaper to experiemt with. Download and install the GT Ripple program. When started it will sit on the system tray and do it’s work. Click on the mirrror button from the toolbar to remove the mirroring. Play with available options like Frequency, height, Amplitude, perspective and speed to make the best suited rippling wallpaper.

Need further help on this trick, visit our forum and discuss it.

When I opened Task manager, I was confirmed his laptop is infected with a bunch of virus. Ended some of the suspicious process and laptop started running some how faster. Then I updated the virus definition and ran a scan, found few malwares/trojans and deleted successfully, but I was not satisfied with that. I wanted to go in-depth. Then I started searching the virus manually but would not be able to see the hidden files/folder in Windows Explorer, even if I changed the setting in the folder options. It will not show the hidden files. After working a couple of hours on his laptop, I found some steps to resolve the problem. Here are the steps it may be helpful.

1. Click Start > Run > Regedit
2. Registry Windows will open.

3. Navigate to the registry folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\

Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL

1. You will find a key called CheckedValue. Double Click CheckedValue key and modify it to 1. This is to show all the hidden files. Now you should be able to view all the hidden files, and also to alter its status from folder options.

NOTE: Please back up your registry before editing anything in it.

So how about a trick that will make you install anything on your Windows XP PC without stopping you due to failed validation. This is a nice idea to bring smile to your face. I am going to provide a simple registry tweak that will do the job. After you implement this tweak your computer will never fail validation during installation. So you can enjoy all the benefits of genuine Microsoft users. Here are the steps:

1. Download this registry file called (Right click on WGA.reg and select save as/save link as) WGA.reg and save it on your desktop.

2. Double click on the file to add the registry entries into your computer’s registry.

3. Go to download Center and try downloading any WGA enabled download or if you have already downloaded from a third party site, and stuck during installation, perform the installation now. You should be able to install the program.

4. Next time when you try to install another program that requires WGA validation, you should be able to install that. If not please doubnle click on the downloaded registry file to add it again to the registry and you are ready to install the program.

Isn’t it simple enough to combat the WGA terror. If you need additional assistance on this use the comment section to discuss.