I’m not sure how many of you noticed, but the “My Book Marks” RSS Widget is gone. For some reason, it broke this morning, thanks to Pearl for pointing it out, so I removed it.

About 3 minutes ago, I added it again, and it was working great, until I started to write this post. As soon as I started typing, it was broken.

I removed the widget again, I’m not sure if this is a problem with Del.icio.us, which is where it pulls from, or if it is a problem with WordPress. I’ll try and figure it out, but I have more pressing matters to attend to.

In the meantime, you can still snoop through my bookmarks.

If you are curious, the error was:

Warning: Attempt to assign property of non-object in /home/%UserName%/public_html/blog/wp-includes/rss.php on line 428

Posted in del.icio.us, Bugs, Web Tools No Comments »

There are two errors associated with this:

“The necessary services are disabled or unavailable. Error 0×80246007″

“The necessary services are disabled or unavailable. Error 0×80246008″

I saw this error when one of my computers was trying to install updates from Windows Server Update Services, but you may also see it when you are trying to connect to the Windows Update site, or when you are trying to install updates downloaded from the Windows Update site.

In my case it was an issue with the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) needing to be re-registered. These steps are all outlined in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 883822.

To re-register the service, perform the following steps:

1. Click on Start then Run
2. Type “cmd” and click on “OK” or press enter.
3. In the Command Prompt Window, type in “regsvr32 qmgr.dll” then press enter. A window should pop up stating that “DllRegisterServer in qmgr.dll succeeded” Click “OK”.
4. In the Command Prompt Window, type in “regsvr32 qmgrprxy.dll ” then press enter. A window should pop up stating that “DllRegisterServer in qmgrprxy.dll succeeded” Click “OK”.
5. Close the command Prompt Window.

Now you should be able to install updates, but if you’ve been having this problem for awhile, you may need to install a whole slew of updates to get caught up.

The knowledge base article says that Microsoft Update and Microsoft Windows Update are the affected products. I saw the issue on Windows XP Pro, SP2.

References

MS KB 883822 - You receive a “The necessary services are disabled or unavailable” error message when you connect to the Microsoft Windows Update Web site or to the Microsoft Update Web site. - Microsoft

Posted in Windows Update, Windows, Bugs No Comments »

I ran into an issue where Windows Defender couldn’t download updates, when I would try, I would receive the error:

"The Program can’t download definition updates. Error Found 0×80240022"

This was occurring on a spyware ridden machine, and I was worried that it may be a piece of malware that was preventing the download. Maybe if I downloaded and installed the definitions manually, I would be able to run the scan.

After installing the definitions manually, Windows Defender was able to update itself. I’m not sure why, but that was the fix for this particular issue.

If you ever have a need to download Windows Defender definitions manually, the following link always points to the current definitions for the 32 bit versions of Windows:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=70631

If you are running an x64 version of Windows, this is the link:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=70632

Finally, if you are running an Itanium version of Windows, this is the link:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=70633

I found out about these links in Windows KB article 923159.

Reference:

How to manually download the latest definition updates for Windows Defender - Microsoft

If you like this type of Tech post, you should check out Two Guys Tech. A friend and I are working on it, and we even have a terrific podcast.

We’re always glad to answer questions, help people out, and help relate what we’ve learned. Get a new perspective on the tech topics and news that you’re interested in, come visit Two Guys Tech.com.

Posted in Windows Defender, Microsoft, Bugs 10 Comments »

I sat there in shock, a line of drool running from my mouth, and onto the keyboard. My eyes rolled into the back of my head, and I could hear the masses of the internet calling out my name in tribute. “Mike Scott, Mike Scott”, they chanted.

After weeks of hard work, it had finally paid off.

Well, maybe a week of hard work, but I did have that vacation right after I started the blog.

OK, so the posts so far haven’t been long and thoughtful, nor full of inflection and insight.

Enough of that, I did do some work on the blog. I mean, come on! Do you think these posts write themselves. Do you think I have a million monkeys typing in a room for eternity? Hell no!

I had a dozen monkeys with typewriters in a room for 4 hours (that’s all I could afford). Anyway that didn’t work out because the OCR software was horrible.

I must be doing something right, after all, I’m number-mother-grabbin-1! John Chow and Engadget can eat my shorts! Boing Boing, Gizmodo and TechCrunch will be forced to envy me as I sit high on my throne.

Anyway, I ran out to the mailbox to see if it was full of AdSense checks, and after I stopped crying when I saw that it wasn’t, I was hit with a realization. I don’t even have a banner up on the site yet.

I started to get suspicious.

Then I looked a little closer, and I realized that my Authority was 3. Hmm…

For some reason there was something wrong with Technorati’s site at about 2PM MST Saturday, and they were showing every blog, or at least all of the ones I found, as being #1, with the “top 100″ logo next to the rank.

I didn’t fake these pictures, they really are screen shots. I thought some of my favorite blogs might appreciate hanging onto them. I put mine in a Solid Gold picture frame, and placed it on my “I love me” wall.

Here is Incoherent Mumbling (Art’s Blog). For some reason it never generated the preview of your site.

Ghosts in the Machine’s Screen shot

Necessary Skills‘ Screen Shot

and even my old, abandoned, lonely, “red headed step child” of a blog, The Bit Bucket.

I apologize for the strange picture formatting. I tried to fix it, I even messed around with the HTML and the images, but WordPress just doesn’t seem to like it. I gave up after I finally had it this way.

Posted in Bugs, Odd, Blogging 2 Comments »