Messages

1

General Computer Support / Re: Advertised shortcuts (Office 2007)

« on: June 03, 2013, 07:00:18 pm »

Yep, I'm aware of that tool and use it frequently.  Not sure how that info applies to the stated goal though.

Say it with me, "I don't know". 

2

General Computer Support / Re: Advertised shortcuts (Office 2007)

« on: June 02, 2013, 07:18:08 pm »

Yep, I'm aware they're not normal shortcuts, that's why I specified "Advertised" shortcuts. 

And as I mentioned in my post there is no issue with the normally created shortcuts.  However, there are drawbacks.  For instance the Advertised shortcuts keep a history of recently opened files associated with whichever program.  And without the registry modifications I mentioned above if you tried to open a doc/xls directly it would results in the same Windows Installer prompt as opening one of the Advertised shortcuts.

Most likely a repair or reinstall would fix the issue, but in the situations where that's not possible I'd like to have a fix rather than an workaround.  If you (or anyone else) can think of something else to try towards that end it would be appreciated.

3

General Computer Support / Advertised shortcuts (Office 2007)

« on: June 01, 2013, 10:49:08 am »

Issue: Clicking on any Office shortcut in the Start Menu will result in the Windows Installer coming up and attempting to repair/reinstall an Office component before erroring out with a bad path.

The latest instance of this that I've come across was Windows 7 SP1 with Office 2007.

- Launching any Office document/sheet will result in the same dialog Window coming up (same for Outlook).
- Repair from appwiz unsuccessful, flashes an error and then disappears (no eventvwr error)
- This customer did not have the installation media to attempt a repair with
- System restore was turned off so no restore points

No malicious software was found on the machine (TDSS, Roguekiller, Hitman, MBAR, aswMBR)

I've seen a similar issue to this relating to ddexec so I modified the HKCR\Word.Document8 and 12, Excel.Sheet8 and 12\shell\open by removing the ddexec key and modifying the default value to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE" /e "%1" (program depending) from /n. I can now open any document/sheet without issue. However, the Start Menu shortcuts will still result in the Windows Installer coming up.

Some files were missing from the Office entries in Windows\installer ({91120000-00CA-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}) so I copied those over from another machine with Office12 (2007) with no change.

I've used shellexview to disable any 3rd party Context Menu items and the same issue occurs.

Normally created Office-shortcuts work without a problem. I'd really like to determine what is causing the issue with the Advertised shortcuts and how to fix it rather than modifying the above registry entries as a workaround.

4

General Computer Support / Re: Windows Defender removed/disabled by malware

« on: May 20, 2013, 10:59:05 am »

Yes, I've seen this happen on 3 machines in the last couple days.

5

General Computer Support / Re: Windows Defender removed/disabled by malware

« on: May 18, 2013, 07:19:35 pm »

Hey Shane, I believe I've come across this just recently. 

In my instance in addition to the registry files being missing/corrupt, the Windows Defender folder only contained symlinks to System32\config.  I deleted the file symlinks without issue, however the "en-US" folder could not be removed without attempting to take the System32\config folder with it.  "rmdir" returned "This directory is not empty".

I ended up renaming "en-US" and copying the Windows Defender folder directly from another like machine (Vista x86).  Windows Defender was then able to start and do updates.

I am starting to see this more frequently so I believe there is a new variant of 0access (Sirefef) out there that is causing it.  One of the side effects (intentional or otherwise) appears to be the message "The file contained a virus and was deleted" from IE when downloading.