Google Chrome 16.0 and Twitter Direct Message Problem

First, I can't believe my version of Chrome is now on 16.0.912.75. It seems like only yesterday I had Chrome version 1 and it didn't change for a good while.

Unlike Internet Explorer which refuses to force automatic updates on their browser users which mean developers still have to cater for IE 6 and non standard compliant code due to IE 9 not being available on Win Vista or XP. I do appreciate that they automatically upgrade the browser when required.

However it does seem like FireFox (version 9.0.1 I am currently on now) and Chrome are in some kind of race to see who can get to version 100 first. I haven't exactly noticed many differences between all these nightly version changes so it must be bug fixing as if it isn't I have no idea what it is apart from security hole patches.

Anyway, I recently got a new laptop for work (a DELL, 64bit, quad core i5 Win7) which is good APART from the horrible, horrible flat mouse pad which seems to go into sticky scroll mode a lot. You know when suddenly the mouse cursor turns from a pointer into cross-hairs and as you move the cursor the whole page scrolls with it.

Tonight I noticed an issue with this and Twitter's new format for Direct Messages which open in a draggable DIV popup.

I went to write a Direct Message and the cursor went into sticky mode. I couldn't remove the mouse cursor from the pop div as wherever it went so did the popup box. Very annoying.

What was interesting was that as soon as this issue occurred my CPU and Memory for the Google Chrome.exe *32 process went shooting through the roof and my laptop turned into a helicopter. I honestly thought the machine was going to take off it was that loud from the hard-drive spinning away.

The only solution was to move the cursor off the webpage to the toolbar and kill the page totally and as I did the CPU and Memory dropped like a stone from a cliff.

This is obviously an issue with DELL's mousepad but it reminded me of an issue I had with my own HTML WYSIWYG editor which was a pop DIV you could drag about the screen.

The editor had a couple of listboxes on it for selecting fonts and sizes etc but because I had a a drag event attached to a mousedown and mousemove event it meant that you could never actually open the list and scroll it down to the bottom as if you did all that happened was the Editor moved around the screen.

It was a simple drag n drop solution which was fired by a mouse down event setting a flag so that when set any mouse move event moved the referenced DIV until a mouse up event set the flag off.

I got round the problem at first by just making the top and bottom sections of the DIV container for the editor draggable which did fix the issue but in the end I settled for what is getting more common as a solution for the old pop up window, the lightbox.

I don't know why Twitter need to make their new message pop div's draggable as they change the backgrounds opactity like a lightbox anyway so I don't see the point in the draggable effect at all.

I know it would certainly help with my DELL's sticky mousepad problem!

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Troubleshooting Issues with Remote Desktop / Terminal Services


This morning I tried remotely accessing my work PC which is always left on from my home laptop.
However after my first attempt I was met with the following error which appears om the login screen on the remote PC.

"the refereced account is currently locked out and cannot be logged on to"

I tried pinging the PC and could get a response fine but running the reboot command:


shutdown -m \\mypcname-r -f

I just got an "Access Denied" error.

I could login fine the night before and I hadn't installed anything new. I ran a virus scan which didn't pick anything up.

After connecting to the Virtual Private Network (VPN) I tried running the following command from the RUN prompt.


\\mypcname\c$

But it returned a popup screen with the following message.

"The system detected a possible attempt to compromise security. Please contact the server that authenticated you"

Obviously this was some kind of mistake and from searching the web it seems the problems comes about due to the machine I'm using to access the remote PC which was on a domain and was using different credentials than what I was trying to use to access the resource.

From Microsofts own Knowledge Base article 938457: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938457

Symptom: When you try to include security settings for a user from a different domain in a local domain folder, you receive the following error message:

The system detected a possible attempt to compromise security. Please ensure that you can contact the server that authenticated you.

Note: This problem may also occur when you try to browse the Active Directory directory service listings for the nonlocal domain.


Cause: This problem occurs because the network firewall filters Kerberos traffic.


Resolution: To resolve this problem, configure the network firewall so that TCP port 88 and UDP port 88 are not blocked for either domain.

My Firewall was not blocking these ports but I had no idea what had happened the other end on the servers at work.

To get access back I tried terminal servicing into a different computer from my laptop which I knew I had access to. I could gain access to this PC.

Once I had remotely accessed another computer on the network I ran the following reboot command which when run from my own laptop gave me an "Access Denied" error.

I ran the reboot command

shutdown -m \\mypcname-r -f

I then tried pinging the PC from my laptop and couldn't access it so I knew it was rebooting.

After a while the PC came back online and I could re-gain access to it.

I checked the event logs on both machines and found the following items of interest.

On the Remote PC (I couldn't access)

The Terminal Server security layer detected an error in the protocol stream and has disconnected the client. Client IP: 10.0.9.121.

That IP relates to our server that manages domains om our network.


From looking at the event log on my own PC I could see the following errors at around the time I tried remotely accessing the work PC.

08:32.01
The server could not bind to the transport \Device\NetBT_Tcpip_{AE7A7B4B-3EED-4D2A-B123-1A4F4AB04698} because another computer on the network has the same name. The server could not start.

08:32.03
CoID={C5816EC8-C2E8-4710-A412-F7ECDBC25C42}: The user me successfully established a connection to OurCompanies VPN using the device VPN3-1.

08:32:08
The time provider NtpClient is currently receiving valid time data from domainserver.domain.company.co.uk (ntp.d|0.0.0.0:123->10.0.7.1:123).

08:32:12
The server could not bind to the transport \Device\NetBT_Tcpip_{AE7A7B4B-3EED-4D2A-B123-1A4F4AB04698} because another computer on the network has the same name. The server could not start.

08:33
The password stored in Credential Manager is invalid. This might be caused by the user changing the password from this computer or a different computer. To resolve this error, open Credential Manager in Control Panel, and reenter the password for the credential DOMAIN.COMPANY.CO.UK\me.

08:33.11
The server could not bind to the transport \Device\NetBT_Tcpip_{AE7A7B4B-3EED-4D2A-B123-1A4F4AB04698} because another computer on the network has the same name. The server could not start.


I have since managed to reboot my work PC and home laptop and connect successfully but I hadn't changed my password so I guess it was an issue at the company on their network that caused the problem and looks like an issue with the domain controller and Kerberos which is a network authentication tool designed to use strong authentication for client/server applications by using secret-key cryptography.

Here are some helpful articles related to the same subject if this method doesn't fix the problem for you.

http://www.bluemoonpcrepair.com/wp/?p=20

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938457

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Troubleshooting WAMP Server installation on Windows 7 computers

I like to code in both PHP and .NET or ASP so on my laptop or PC I need to be able to run
both PHP code and .NET code.

As both languages use different web servers to run their code this means on Windows PC's I have been installing WAMP Server to run and test any PHP code. However ever since moving to a new laptop (Windows 7 64 bit) I found that getting WAMP Server to work was a right pain in the arse.

I had managed it on my Work PC (also Windows 7 64 bit) without any problems at all so I don't know why on a fresh install I had issues. Anyhow this is how I troubleshooted WAMP Server installation on a Windows 7 laptop.

After installing wampserver turn it on and start all service then try and access it e.g http://localhost

You will probably be met with an IIS 7 home screen and not the WAMP Server home screen you might have expected.

This is because windows PC's come with their own IIS web server which sits on the same port 80 that WAMP Server does.

First off try turning off IIS by going into Administrator Tools, open IIS and disable it.

Or you could go into Administrator Tools, open Services and turn off World Wide Web Service.

Then restart all the WAMP Server services and try http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1 again

If it works then you will be met with the WAMP Server Home page but if like me on Windows 7 you might be met with a 404 page that just says

Not Found


HTTP Error 404. The requested resource is not found.

So WAMP is still not running even though the other web server running on that port is off. So something else is blocking or listening that port.

You can try to find out what this is by doing the following:

Running Command Prompt (under administrator rights)

Typing in: netstat -b -o

You need the -o so that you can see the Process ID column as long as you remembered to run under admin privileges and you need the -b to see which program is running or creating the connection consuming the listening port in this case port 80 on 127.0.0.1 (localhost).

You will get something back like this

C:\windows\system32>netstat -b -o

Active Connections

  Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address        State           PID
  TCP    127.0.0.1:80           my_pc_name:49719       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:80           my_pc_name:49721       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:80           my_pc_name:49723       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:80           my_pc_name:49725       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:80           my_pc_name:49727       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:80           my_pc_name:49729       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:80           my_pc_name:49731       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:80           my_pc_name:49733       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1110         my_pc_name:49718       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1110         my_pc_name:49720       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1110         my_pc_name:49722       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1110         my_pc_name:49724       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1110         my_pc_name:49726       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1110         my_pc_name:49728       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1110         my_pc_name:49730       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1110         my_pc_name:49732       TIME_WAIT       0
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         my_pc_name:49155       ESTABLISHED     1368
 [mDNSResponder.exe]
  TCP    127.0.0.1:27015        my_pc_name:49441       ESTABLISHED     1128
 [AppleMobileDeviceService.exe]
  TCP    127.0.0.1:49155        my_pc_name:5354        ESTABLISHED     1128
 [AppleMobileDeviceService.exe]
  TCP    127.0.0.1:49441        my_pc_name:27015       ESTABLISHED     4768
 [iTunesHelper.exe]
  TCP    192.168.1.7:49619      ww-in-f125:5222        ESTABLISHED     4884
 [googletalk.exe]

Not very helpful as all the Proccess ID's for port 80 on 127.0.0.1 are set to 0.

If it's not set to 0 you can find out what process is listening on it by going to your Task Manager, ticking the "Show processes from all users" box and then searching for the PID (process ID).

If the PID column is not shown then go to View > Select Columns and tick the PID (Process Identifier)
option.

So because we are no nearer to working out what is using this port we are stuck as the other web server is disabled and not listening on port 80 but it seems nothing else is. A virus scan with a good tool helps here just in case something is running that shouldn't be.

As I haven't been able to find out what is using the port I have to now resort to a hack to get WAMP Server running.

This hack is actually useful if you want to be able to run WAMP and IIS on the same machine at the same time.

If you have done a default install then go to the httpd.conf ini file which should be at:

c:\wamp\bin\apache\Apache2.2.21\conf\httpd.conf

Then find the Listen option which will be under some comments near the top starting with

# Listen: Allows you to bind Apache to specific IP addresses

and change it to a port you want to use instead of 80 and one you know you are not using. I chose port 8888 a common HTTP alternative port.

So add this line in under the comments.

Listen 8888

This should get your WAMP Server default page up after a WAMP restart by accessing:

http://localhost:8888

However you should also change another directive in the file which identifies the servers name.

It starts with these comments

# ServerName gives the name and port that the server uses to identify itself.

So replace

ServerName localhost

with

ServerName localhost:8888

or if you chose a different port then use that instead of 8888.

You will now find that you can access WAMP Server from your PC okay and if you still want IIS to run alongside then it's a good idea to change the PORT of WAMP Server anyway to prevent having to keep turning IIS off (or permanently disabling it).

A bit of a pain to get going but it works for my 64 bit Windows 7 PC and I know someone else who had the same problem with their new PC. On my older XP laptops and PC's I had no problems at all getting WAMP working and it's only since moving to Windows 7 I have had this issue.

If anyone know what causes this issue then please let me know but please don't reply SKYPE or some other application could be the problem as we ruled that out with the netstat -p -o command prompt scan earlier.

Anyway this hack gets WAMP Server running and it is good to know how to debug the problem.

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