NiXC's I.T. Take-Away

Adobe have changed things, again, and now you can't get the flash players for IE and FireFox (et al.) as easily as you used to if you don't want to use the terrible DLM system they impose on you - which doesn't work with proxies (fantastic job guys).
And what's the point of a download manager for something that's less than 2MB in size? Idiots.

When you go to get the flash player you'll find the link that used to be at the bottom of the install page which gave you the direct link to the .exe for installing has now vanished. You must go to the troubleshooting page instead, and it's near the bottom of that.

Here's the troubleshooting page: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/191/tn_19166.html

But you don't need that necessarily as the following links are likely not to change since they are generic.
Latest Flash player for IE: download
Latest Flash player for FireFox, Chrome, Opera, etc.: download
Latest AIR player: download

Hope that helps someone :)

Here are the links if you want to keep them somewhere:

http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_ax.exe
http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player.exe
http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/win/download/latest/AdobeAIRInstaller.exe

Slightly off the usual topic of my blog - but I am obsessed with the band "Hybrid" (thanks to my friend Dave who originally introduced their music to me) and I have just discovered that they are releasing a new album on 29th March 2010 called "Disappear Here".

The album is available to pre-order on Amazon and there's a really good teaser for it on their site (www.hybridsoundsystem.com).

First impressions... AMAZING! Hints of their original and best quality work with lots of drum and base and their usual thick globules of classical. Fantastic. I can't wait for the release date!

When you install an app on a Nokia phone these days it won't install unless it's been signed with a trusted certificate. Problem is you have to pay to get a certificate you can use to allow anyone to install software. That's why you get a lot of free software for Nokias at the moment that you just can't install because they haven't been signed.

So how do we install the software?! The only easy solution is to get a certificate that only works on your phone, and is locked to your phone's IMEI number. The easiest way to do this is to use a free site in China that will give you the bits you need.

1. Go to http://cer.opda.cn/en
2. Click register at the top right
3. Fill in the details and register
4. Once you've registered click the "My Certificate" link at the top and log in
5. Now click the orange "Apply cer" button near the top right
6. Fill in the details, the only bit that matters in this page is your IMEA number (get it using *#06# on your mobile), the rest of the fields are to help you identify your certificate
7. After clicking the button you'll go to the My Certificate page where you certificates get listed. It'll show your newly applied for certificate and that it's in the 'apply' stage
8. Now go down the shops or play your favourite computer game and wait a few hours. It took about 3 hours for my first one to get approved. Perhaps they're running the system on a 486 or maybe it's a manual approval thing, either way it takes a while. I've heard it 'can' take 24 hours sometimes. So keep coming back every few hours. The site will time our after a little while so you'll need to log in again.
9. When your certificate is approved you will be able to click the "Signing" link on the certificate line that's been approved. You can then upload your .sis file that you want signed and then download a signed version.

Easy! Pity the Symbian Foundation or Nokia couldn't make it that easy.

Microsoft recently created up to date Forefront Client Security installation packages. According to KB976669 these are only available within WSUS. So at least existing installs can get the latest version of the client via WSUS. But what about newly installed clients? Why should we have to install an out of date 2007 version and then do an update just to get the latest client. I want the latest version installed right at the beginning dammit!!!

Well there's a way of finding the install files if you're prepared to crawl the WSUS SQL database.

Here are the direct links to the install files with their associated language and architecture.

fcsclientpackage language 2052 x64
fcsclientpackage language 1028 x64
fcsclientpackage language 1033 x64 English
fcsclientpackage language 1040 x64 Italian
fcsclientpackage language 3082 x64
fcsclientpackage language 1041 x64 Japanese
fcsclientpackage language 1031 x64 German
fcsclientpackage language 1042 x64
fcsclientpackage language 1036 x64 French
fcsclientpackage language 1033 x86 English
fcsclientpackage language 2052 x86
fcsclientpackage language 1028 x86
fcsclientpackage language 1041 x86 Japanese
fcsclientpackage language 1040 x86 Italian
fcsclientpackage language 3082 x86
fcsclientpackage language 1031 x86 German
fcsclientpackage language 1042 x86
fcsclientpackage language 1036 x86 French

Basically download the one/s you want and extract to a folder by using /extract
You will then have a folder with the files you should use to overwrite your FCS deployment share.

Of course it's possible these links might change, in which case you will have to crawl WSUS yourself. The secret is to query the dbo.tbFile table for a value like %fcsclientpackage% in the FileName column. Reasonably easy when you know what to look for :)

Thought I'd try out the new Adobe Flash ActiveX control for IE, and naturally I wasn't expecting a smooth installation process - this is Adobe after all - and low and behold the plug-in would not install on Windows 7 x64.

In a normal administrative user account (hint hint), and running 'as admin' the setup process will get to 100% and then gets killed by Windows with the familiar "program unresponsive" dialog. Even setting compatibility settings on the installer or running it from an administrative command line interface will produce the same results. Plus I did the install on 2 completely different machines with different anti-virus, same thing.

The answer? Enable your proper "Administrator" account, login as that and then do the install. It works perfectly. That sort of points the finger at Adobe not know how to handle UAC again. Yes it's only a beta, but that's still quite lame.
I don't doubt running the installer as the system user would probably work too :)

Recently I setup one of my work laptops to allow me to login using my fingerprint without the need for any client software other than a driver. A handy new feature built-in to Windows 7, and it works fabulously well. One finger on each hand for different things, one for admin, one for my normal user. Love it!

However I have been finding occasionally that when I switch the laptop on (usually after being in hibernation or standby) that I can't login with a fingerprint and have to resort to legacy means (typing!).

I think that this is because the "Windows Biometric Service" service has stopped. There are events notifying that it's happened but no explanation why. I made sure the service was set to automatic (it was) and I've added recovery options to the service telling it to restart if it stops. Seems that hasn't fixed it because the problem cropped up immediately afterwards when I tested it. I'm not quite sure what else to do yet...

Just thought I'd blog this in case someone else runs into it.