• - Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - August 2009 (KB890830)
• - Update for Windows Mail Junk E-mail Filter [August 2009] (KB905866)
• - Security Update for Windows Vista (KB973540)
• - Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Junk Email Filter (KB972691)
• - Security Update for Windows Vista (KB971557)
• - Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 (KB972594)
• - Security Update for Windows Vista (KB956744)
• - Security Update for Windows Vista (KB971657)
• - Security Update for Windows Vista (KB973507)

One of these updates broke my network connectivity. The NIC was still available but DHCP was broken, and assigning a static address would not help. The device itself was functioning normally and nothing in the event log gave any clues. Looking in the update history in the Windows Update application, all of these security updates have the same description:

A security issue has been identified that could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to compromise your system and gain control over it.

Microsoft, how about telling me what the hell is being patched, since I can't use the links to the technet articles as my network stack was broken. Not very helpful when I am trying to figure out which patch has wrecked the system.

Cold light of day edit: I realise this is a Microsoft problem, not neccessilary a Vista problem.

Luckily System Restore actually works, and returned me to where I started at 5:00 this afternoon, with everything working.

One final thing. Why is Vista such a resource pig? This computer is a dual core AMD64 2.30Ghz but it runs like its been eating pastry all day. As I am typing this, I have 4 apps open, my CPU is boiling over and my memory usage is over 1Gb. Why?! This PC is only used for web surfing, email and music.

Vista ... why oh why

OK - so ending the apps in my tray (Skype, Gladinet, MSN and Avast) have recovered a few hundred Mb, but I don't see why Vista is so bad at memory management compared to Windows XP, Windows 7 ... or for that matter any Linux distro ...

Well thats it, I can't be arsed troubleshooting it. I'm through with Vista. Time to backup, wipe and move on.

Options
1. Install some software that modifies the shutdown routine
I didn't really want to do this. I've only had this machine a few weeks and want to keep it free of software that could mess things up. I also don't want to pay for a solution, if possible.

2. Windows registry editing
Every local group policy has a corresponding registry entry, so I wondered if in the absence of the group policy editor, I would just be able to create the relevant registry keys and values to run a script at shutdown. Microsoft kindly provide a list of group policies and where they are configured in the registry, so I downloaded it to have a look. Sadly I couldn't find what I needed in here.

I also wondered if I would just be able to export the existing key from my XP machine into Vista, I tried this but that didn't work either - looks like this was because it references the name of a local group policy, which of course didn't exist on my new machine.

3. Windows task scheduler
The Vista task scheduler is actually very good. You can schedule tasks to run when specific events are written to the event log, such as Event 4634 in the security log (Log Off). I tested and found this would actually work if I used the log off feature, but when shutting down, the OS does not wait for scheduled tasks to finish so it only gets to run for a few seconds.

4. Use a VBScript to sync and shutdown
This is how I've implemented this solution - for now. I've created a VB Script which brings up an "Are you sure you want to shutdown" dialog, if you click yes, it syncs to my remote machine and then shuts down. Then I created a shortcut to the script and added it to the quick launch buttons, next to the start menu button. As a final touch I changed the icon to the same power icon that Vista uses for shutdown.

Shutdown button

The snag is of course you have to remember to click on this button to shutdown if you want your documents to sync, if you forget and use the usual shutdown option on the start menu, you get no backup for that session. This also means that it doesn't sync when you reboot, and you also don't get the option to install Windows updates before the computer shuts down.

Anyway here is the script:

Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
Set wshShell = WScript.CreateObject ("WSCript.shell")
strShutdown = "shutdown -s -t 0 -f"

Continue = MsgBox ("Are you sure you want to shutdown?",vbYesNo + VBCritical, "Shutdown computer")

If Continue = vbNo then

' Do nothing

Else

' This box will disappear after 5 seconds.
intReturn = objShell.Popup("The computer will now sync and shutdown.", 5, "Shutdown computer", VBInformation)

' Run synctoy - just change "MyDocs" to the name of your folder pair.
wshshell.run """c:Program FilesSyncToy 2.0 BetaSyncToyCmd.exe"" -RMyDocs", 6, True

' Shutdown the computer
objShell.Run strShutdown

End If

How do I use this code?
To use the code right-click on your desktop and select New --> Text Document. Copy and paste the code above into the new document. Click on File --> 'Save As...'. Change the filename to shutdown.vbs and the type to 'All files (*.*)'. Once saved you can drop this file on your system anywhere to keep your desktop tidy.

Save As ... All Files

Next you can create a shortcut to the file in your quick launch area or Start Menu and give the shortcut a nice name like 'Sync and Shutdown', and a nicer icon that the generic VBScript icon.

One slight annoyance is the SyncToy command prompt window opens minimised, but I can live with that for the moment. I tried a number of sync tools before settling with MS SyncToy. I did try using rsync which I thought may be a bit faster due to it's compatibility with Linux, but the scanning of the folders took forever.

Technorati Tags: Vista, File Sync, VBScript

The remote machine is a Linux computer on the network. If I click open the Vista menu, and then type \\servername\backups, it opens straight away and I can drop files in there and do whatever I like in the remote location.

But, when I use "Backup status and configuration" to set up a new backup job and set the remote location to "\\servername\backups", first it asks for a password (which I enter - this is the Unix password for user Ben), then I get this message:

Vista doesn't like Samba?

But that's not the end of it. If I then go back to my remote backup location, I can see a new file in there called SDT97DB.tmp and a folder with a randomly generated name - so, it clearly can access that location as it has created folders and files there!!

Not sure if this is a bug with Vista or a compatibility issue with Samba but it's damn annoying!

Technorati Tags: Vista, Backup, Buggy Windows