A
Adam Albright
The often heard recurring theme spread by no nothing trolls and
fanboys is if Vista isn't working right, it must be something you did
rather than owning up to how badly Vista is designed once you start
poking around and SEE how badly implemented it is. Much of the
frustration with Vista comes from it's applets crashing or acting up
for no apparent reason. Since these applets are INTERNAL and built-in
as part of Vista's core the often heard excuse it's some third party
driver, a hardware problem or other software you installed is proven
to be bogus.
When something happens to either crash or slow down Vista it usually
gets documented in Vista's Error Logs. However like most everything
else Microsoft does, the logs are of little actual value other than
pointing to how poorly designed and broken Vista really is.
To illustrate how broken Vista is, here's my experience this morning.
As usual I started my day going to Google (my default home page) and
clicking on News to see what the headlines were. Microsoft's browser
hung. Waiting for it to respond, after 90 seconds I gave up and sure
enough was treated to the usual BS asking if you want to wait longer
or shut it down. I shut IE7 down. Next I went to Event Viewer.
7:29 AM Error Http Event
Unable to initialize the security package Kerberos for server side
authentication. The data field contains the error number.
Note this Vista error message points to a data field that actually has
NO error number. So the message Vista gives is totally useless. See
interesting details following later.
8:14 AM Application Hang
The program iexplore.exe version 7.0.6001.18000 stopped interacting
with Windows and was closed.
That's just Microsoft saying, hey we know our browser is a pile of dog
shit, why it stops working randomly for no reason we have no idea, but
it done something so bad, to prevent an even worse system crash we had
to shut the crap down.
To see if more information about the problem is available, check the
problem history in the Problem Reports and Solutions control panel.
Again, nothing useful reported there.
Am I the only one experiencing these problems? Well lets check.
If you Google Kerberos server side authentication you'll get over
400,000 hits. So no, I'm not alone. This is a COMMON Microsoft blunder
and centers around a boneheaded decision with SP1.
The general consensuses is this error occurs AFTER you install SP1 and
Windows thinks it is NOT joined to a domain. Does it mean anything is
actually wrong? No, the message is almost always bogus and can be
safely ignored. However depending on your hardware this stupid
Microsoft DLL can result in your install of Vista hanging during boot
or cause a very slow boot. Again because Windows always has been dumb
enough to never install drivers in the same order if or not you see
errors each time you boot often depends on what sequence drivers get
loaded!
Lets look deeper. If you go to Microsoft's Knowledge base you find a
interesting article on Kerberos server side authentication. If you
care to read it all, here it is:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q262177/
Now this was originally designed to TRACK errors. What is interesting
is Microsoft says: "Note Remove this registry value when it is no
longer needed so that performance is not degraded on the computer.
Also, you can remove this registry value to disable Kerberos event
logging on a specific computer."
What the fu*k?
This illustrate the stupidity of the Boys of Redmond. Somehow a tool
intended to trap errors got made part of SP1 so it gets loaded
automatically at start up, which may cause bogus events to be logged,
and in some cases cause your system to either hang or be extremely
slow to boot.
This again illustrates that Microsoft does NOT carefully check what
garbage it includes in any release. As in this case something
originally designed as a tool you may sometimes want to install
according to Microsoft's own Knowledgebase says you should REMOVE when
you no longer need it is now automatically part of Vista if you
installed SP1. Obviously fanboys rather pretend stupid errors by
Microsoft like this don't exist.
Back to why does IE7 keep crashing for no apparent reason. Good
question. Again, the fanboy crowd will usually point to some plug-in
being the fault. Well maybe, but not why you may think. Lets check. I
went to IE7, clicked on Tools, then manage add ons to get to a list
of plug-ins.
Like Adobe's Shockwave Flash Object and Sun Java. But wait... these
are known and approved ActiveX controls or browser extensions and they
work FINE with other browsers. What else is there?
Oh something weird looking: Why is there a hook to the Registry Key
named E2E2DD38 D088 4134 82 B7 F2bA38496583?
Beats me. So I fire up Registry editor and sure enough there is this
key. It points to xpnetdiag.exe. Says it is some XP network tool.
Well why would some old XP tool be on my Vista system?
Lets use Vista's advance search and see if we can find the files
pointed to. According to the Registry there are suppose to be two
files, both in C:\windows.
Not there. Well, how about Googling xpnetdiag.exe?
OK, did, well look at this:
http://www.prevx.com/filenames/130520580235140017-0/XPNETDIAG.EXE.html
Some virus or Trojan.
Hey, wait a minute. This is tied into IE7 Browser's plug-ins. So
anytime I fire up my IE 7 browser Vista is going to try to load these
files. Never mind they show as unsigned in the plug-in listing, never
mind that UAC is on, never mind that Defender is enabled. You
remember, the things that Microsoft says PROTECTS you from this exact
kind of threat. Well I guess not.
Plot thickens. I have two anti-virus, Malware applications installed
from day one. If I ever had this critter, THEY, not Vista either
isolated them or deleted them, the actual files anyway. Remember, like
I said, the files aren't on my system.
However...
Lets expose another fanboy fairytale. Registry Cleaners. The bozo
squad will constantly say Registry Cleaners, bad, bad, don't use.
Well if I had used one this threat likely would have been identified,
flagged and doing what I did above I would have deleted the Registry
Key.
Instead, leaving this Registry Key we can now take a guess what's
happening. Lets go back to the Error Log. Vista said oops,
"The program iexplore.exe version 7.0.6001.18000 stopped interacting
with Windows and was closed."
Well sure, Lets review. The plug-in, points to some Registry Key
that's been identified as pointing to something malicious. However,
the files no longer exist, yet Vista went looking for them to let them
do whatever they do. Apparently Vista waited, nothing happened and now
says hell, IE7 isn't responding to my request to load a plug-in, so I
need to shut it down because while the files are gone, Vista no doubt
went looking to fire them up and not finding them said oops, can't do
that, need to shut IE7 down.
Looking further in the Registry is shows these files respond only if
certain conditions are met with some CCS styles encountered on SOME
web sites. Otherwise nothing happens. So pretty good guess why
sometimes the browser hangs and needs to shut down, other times not.
It depends on what sites you went to.
This tortured journey only follows two error reports. Both clearly
show Vista either does nothing, totally blowing all the security BS
fanboys crow about or it installs something not needed. In both cases
it either slows Vista down, causes it to stop a hung applet or totally
defeats the so-called "security" Microsoft claims is now build into
Vista.
Still think Vista isn't badly broken? Maybe then you don't think too
well.
Now lets see how many monkeys will need to screech it isn't so.
fanboys is if Vista isn't working right, it must be something you did
rather than owning up to how badly Vista is designed once you start
poking around and SEE how badly implemented it is. Much of the
frustration with Vista comes from it's applets crashing or acting up
for no apparent reason. Since these applets are INTERNAL and built-in
as part of Vista's core the often heard excuse it's some third party
driver, a hardware problem or other software you installed is proven
to be bogus.
When something happens to either crash or slow down Vista it usually
gets documented in Vista's Error Logs. However like most everything
else Microsoft does, the logs are of little actual value other than
pointing to how poorly designed and broken Vista really is.
To illustrate how broken Vista is, here's my experience this morning.
As usual I started my day going to Google (my default home page) and
clicking on News to see what the headlines were. Microsoft's browser
hung. Waiting for it to respond, after 90 seconds I gave up and sure
enough was treated to the usual BS asking if you want to wait longer
or shut it down. I shut IE7 down. Next I went to Event Viewer.
7:29 AM Error Http Event
Unable to initialize the security package Kerberos for server side
authentication. The data field contains the error number.
Note this Vista error message points to a data field that actually has
NO error number. So the message Vista gives is totally useless. See
interesting details following later.
8:14 AM Application Hang
The program iexplore.exe version 7.0.6001.18000 stopped interacting
with Windows and was closed.
That's just Microsoft saying, hey we know our browser is a pile of dog
shit, why it stops working randomly for no reason we have no idea, but
it done something so bad, to prevent an even worse system crash we had
to shut the crap down.
To see if more information about the problem is available, check the
problem history in the Problem Reports and Solutions control panel.
Again, nothing useful reported there.
Am I the only one experiencing these problems? Well lets check.
If you Google Kerberos server side authentication you'll get over
400,000 hits. So no, I'm not alone. This is a COMMON Microsoft blunder
and centers around a boneheaded decision with SP1.
The general consensuses is this error occurs AFTER you install SP1 and
Windows thinks it is NOT joined to a domain. Does it mean anything is
actually wrong? No, the message is almost always bogus and can be
safely ignored. However depending on your hardware this stupid
Microsoft DLL can result in your install of Vista hanging during boot
or cause a very slow boot. Again because Windows always has been dumb
enough to never install drivers in the same order if or not you see
errors each time you boot often depends on what sequence drivers get
loaded!
Lets look deeper. If you go to Microsoft's Knowledge base you find a
interesting article on Kerberos server side authentication. If you
care to read it all, here it is:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q262177/
Now this was originally designed to TRACK errors. What is interesting
is Microsoft says: "Note Remove this registry value when it is no
longer needed so that performance is not degraded on the computer.
Also, you can remove this registry value to disable Kerberos event
logging on a specific computer."
What the fu*k?
This illustrate the stupidity of the Boys of Redmond. Somehow a tool
intended to trap errors got made part of SP1 so it gets loaded
automatically at start up, which may cause bogus events to be logged,
and in some cases cause your system to either hang or be extremely
slow to boot.
This again illustrates that Microsoft does NOT carefully check what
garbage it includes in any release. As in this case something
originally designed as a tool you may sometimes want to install
according to Microsoft's own Knowledgebase says you should REMOVE when
you no longer need it is now automatically part of Vista if you
installed SP1. Obviously fanboys rather pretend stupid errors by
Microsoft like this don't exist.
Back to why does IE7 keep crashing for no apparent reason. Good
question. Again, the fanboy crowd will usually point to some plug-in
being the fault. Well maybe, but not why you may think. Lets check. I
went to IE7, clicked on Tools, then manage add ons to get to a list
of plug-ins.
Like Adobe's Shockwave Flash Object and Sun Java. But wait... these
are known and approved ActiveX controls or browser extensions and they
work FINE with other browsers. What else is there?
Oh something weird looking: Why is there a hook to the Registry Key
named E2E2DD38 D088 4134 82 B7 F2bA38496583?
Beats me. So I fire up Registry editor and sure enough there is this
key. It points to xpnetdiag.exe. Says it is some XP network tool.
Well why would some old XP tool be on my Vista system?
Lets use Vista's advance search and see if we can find the files
pointed to. According to the Registry there are suppose to be two
files, both in C:\windows.
Not there. Well, how about Googling xpnetdiag.exe?
OK, did, well look at this:
http://www.prevx.com/filenames/130520580235140017-0/XPNETDIAG.EXE.html
Some virus or Trojan.
Hey, wait a minute. This is tied into IE7 Browser's plug-ins. So
anytime I fire up my IE 7 browser Vista is going to try to load these
files. Never mind they show as unsigned in the plug-in listing, never
mind that UAC is on, never mind that Defender is enabled. You
remember, the things that Microsoft says PROTECTS you from this exact
kind of threat. Well I guess not.
Plot thickens. I have two anti-virus, Malware applications installed
from day one. If I ever had this critter, THEY, not Vista either
isolated them or deleted them, the actual files anyway. Remember, like
I said, the files aren't on my system.
However...
Lets expose another fanboy fairytale. Registry Cleaners. The bozo
squad will constantly say Registry Cleaners, bad, bad, don't use.
Well if I had used one this threat likely would have been identified,
flagged and doing what I did above I would have deleted the Registry
Key.
Instead, leaving this Registry Key we can now take a guess what's
happening. Lets go back to the Error Log. Vista said oops,
"The program iexplore.exe version 7.0.6001.18000 stopped interacting
with Windows and was closed."
Well sure, Lets review. The plug-in, points to some Registry Key
that's been identified as pointing to something malicious. However,
the files no longer exist, yet Vista went looking for them to let them
do whatever they do. Apparently Vista waited, nothing happened and now
says hell, IE7 isn't responding to my request to load a plug-in, so I
need to shut it down because while the files are gone, Vista no doubt
went looking to fire them up and not finding them said oops, can't do
that, need to shut IE7 down.
Looking further in the Registry is shows these files respond only if
certain conditions are met with some CCS styles encountered on SOME
web sites. Otherwise nothing happens. So pretty good guess why
sometimes the browser hangs and needs to shut down, other times not.
It depends on what sites you went to.
This tortured journey only follows two error reports. Both clearly
show Vista either does nothing, totally blowing all the security BS
fanboys crow about or it installs something not needed. In both cases
it either slows Vista down, causes it to stop a hung applet or totally
defeats the so-called "security" Microsoft claims is now build into
Vista.
Still think Vista isn't badly broken? Maybe then you don't think too
well.
Now lets see how many monkeys will need to screech it isn't so.