I got a report about some problems on one of our Windows 2003 servers. It started last Friday and people got this error message when they tried to run some applications: The Application Failed to Initialize Properly (0xc0000022). This error only applied to regular users; administrators did not have problems with this error.

A quick Google search found this article. I thought that this would fix the problem, but it did not. I still got the same error message after I ran the commands to fix the DLL and OCX files in the Windows system32 directory.

I then used Process Monitor to monitor file access while I tried to run the problematic application. Process Monitor showed that there were access denial problems when the application tried to call some DLLs in the application directory. I checked the offending DLLs and found that they did not have read and execute permissions set for regular users. After I modified the permissions to give regular users read and execute permissions to those DLLs, the problem was fixed. Here is a screenshot of the permissions of the application’s DLLs directory. Make sure the users have the highlighted permissions.

I found this utility WhoCrashed a while ago to help analyze crash dump files on Windows. I thought the program was easy enough for the end user to use. There is one restriction for WhoCrashed, but it’s only free for home use. For professional use, you’ll have to buy the Pro version.

I just found another alternative, and it is also free for professional use. The program is called BlueScreenView from NirSoft. No installation is necessary; just unzip the file and run the program. By default, it scans C:\Windows\minidump directory and shows you the results.

If you use this on a different computer and there are no dump files in C:\Windows\minidump folder, just click on the Advanced Options icon in the upper left corner and specify the location of the dump files. Please give it a try and let us know what you think.

I helped a user fix his web server problem on a Snow Leopard server. Since I do not have much experience with OS X server administration, it took me a while to fix the problem. The user has a server which hosts a wiki site. The wiki site stopped working around the time the server got upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard. The error message was:

Access forbidden!

You don’t have permission to access the requested object. It is either read-protected or not readable by the server.

If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.

Error 403

I first thought it was related to the upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard. However, this was not the case and it was irrelevant. I then checked the error log file and tried to identify the source of the error. There were several entries of this error:

Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible: /Library/WebServer/Documents/wiki

The wiki directory is a symbolic link, so I checked the httpd.conf file and made sure the FollowSymLink option was turned on. That option was already turned on, so that was not the cause. My next step was to check the directory and make sure world (other) had read and execute permissions. I found the permissions were also set up correctly on that directory. At this point, the wiki site was still not working and I was clueless as what to try next. I finally found that, in order for the web server to serve a directory, not only does the directory need to read and execute permissions for world (other) but all the parent directories would also need the correct permissions set. For example, if the directory is at:

/Volumes/Web/level1/wiki

You will have to check the wiki directory and all the parent directories of wiki:

/Volumes
/Volumes/Web
/Volumes/Web/level1

and make sure they all have read and execute permissions for world. After I checked all the parent directories of wiki and made sure they had proper permissions, the wiki site was working again.

We have a special deals section where I created some customized pages to present deals available to our readers. I just noticed that there was a problem with one of the pages. The pagination does not work any more. Here is a screenshot of the pagination of my page.

When I created these pages, I used “page” as a variable in the query string. For example, to go to the sale page #2, I have this as the URL:

http://www.kombitz.com/sale/?page=2

This stopped working after I upgraded to WordPress 3.4. This puzzled me for a while, until I noticed whenever I click on the URL, the system changes the URL to

http://www.kombitz.com/sale/2/

This, of course, does not work with my script. The workaround is actually quite easy: just don’t use “page” as a variable in the query string. I changed the variable from page to page_number, and my scripts are working once again. The updated query string is like this one:

http://www.kombitz.com/sale/?page_number=2

One popular post on my site is about the Windows XP drivers for Dell Vostro 260. There is a new model: Vostro 470. I do not have this machine, but here are the drivers for Windows XP based upon the spec. Please let me know if they do not work for you.

Network
Realtek PCIe GBE Network Adapter

Audio
Realtek Audio ALC887

Chipset and Video
Intel Driver Update Utility

The link to the chipset and video drivers is a utility that you can run under your browser window. You need to have Java installed to use it.

I set up a dual boot MacMini to be used with a projector in our conference room. There was a compatibility problem with this combination. Users could not hold down the option key during system bootup and select which OS to boot to. They could only change the default OS after the computer booted up completely to the current OS. This brought up a new problem. In order to change the default OS, you need to run Boot Camp utility with elevated privilege. However, we do not give regular users admin privilege; therefore, they could not change the default OS for the dual boot MacMini.

I found an Apple article about restarting into Mac OS using command line. Fortunately, you do not need to run the commands with an elevated privilege. There is a typo in the original script. I have corrected it and added a dialog box to warn the users before the computer reboots. Here is a listing of the script:

@echo off
Echo MsgBox "Please save all files and click on OK to continue.", 48 > %temp%\warning.vbs
wscript %temp%\warning.vbs
"c:\Program Files\Boot Camp\bootcamp.exe" -StartupDisk "Mac OS"
Shutdown -r -t 10

You can put this script in the Public desktop so that everyone can access it. If you want to make it fancier, you can use a program called Bat to Exe Converter to turn your script to a program. Now every user can click on the Boot to Mac icon on the desktop to boot to Mac OS from Windows.

This article is the counterpart of my previous article, in which I created a small Windows application for users to boot to Mac OS from Windows on a dual boot Mac. In this article, I am going to show you how to create a Mac application for users to boot to Windows from Mac OS.

The whole process is more complicated than the Windows counterpart because the commands need administrator privilege to run. I created a script called boot-to-windows.sh and placed it in /usr/sbin.

sudo /usr/sbin/bless --device /dev/disk0s4 --setBoot --legacy
sudo /sbin/reboot

Note that users needed to input a password when they executed this script until I modified the sudoers files. The next step is to modify /etc/sudoers and add the following two lines:

%everyone ALL=NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/bless
%everyone ALL=NOPASSWD:/sbin/reboot

With these two lines in place, users can just run the script without needing to enter their passwords.

In order for the users to run this script, they have to run Terminal application and enter the script name to run it. Most Mac users have not used the Terminal application, and it would take a lot of effort to educate them about how to run that script. Therefore, I created a helper application to run that script. Invoke  AppleScript Editor and enter the two lines as listed.

display dialog "Please save all files and click on OK to continue." with icon caution buttons {"OK"}
do shell script "/usr/sbin/boot-to-windows.sh"

Save it as an Application. In addition, you can find a Windows logo to  make your app more appealing.

Finally, copy the application to this folder:

/System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/Desktop

Note that this is for the systems using English as the main language. If yours is different, you have to put it in the right language folder. The purpose of this step is for any new user home directory created with this application on the desktop.

I recently took quite a lot of photos with wrong color temperature (white balance) settings. It is easy to correct the color temperature if the photos are in RAW format. However, all my photos were shot in JPEG format and they are not easy to change. Most image editing tools allow you to adjust the color level or saturation, but not color temperature. I found this GIMP script which does let you manipulate the color temperature directly.

The script is called colortemp and it works with GIMP 2.2, 2.4 and 2.6. Here is the site. To install it, just download the script file colortemp.scm and put it in the script directory of your GIMP installation. On Windows, this location is

32 bit:

C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\scripts

64 bit:

C:\Program Files (x86)\GIMP-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\scripts

Once you have it installed. Open up a photo that you want to modify. The information you need to enter is the color temperature of the original file and the target temperature you want to set. There are two ways to specify the original color temperature. If you know the original color temperature, you can use the slider to specify it. Otherwise, you can use the color picker to pick a white spot on your photo and the program would determine the color temperature for you automatically. For some reason, the first option did not work for me, while the second option worked pretty well.

Click on Filters -> Colors -> Convert Color Temperature to bring up the dialog box.

Click on the drop down box and select From foreground color. Click on the toolbox and select the color picker tool. Use the color picker tool to select a white or gray spot on your photo to set it as the foreground color. Now back to the dialog box and use the slider to specify the target temperature or enter it in the box. You can leave Intensity or Saturation unchanged. Click on OK and the script would change the color temperature for you. If you do not like the changes, simply press Ctrl + Z to undo it.

If you do not know what is the correct color temperature to use for the target temperature, you can read this article to get a better idea about the topic.

I use an Asus Transformer at work. It is one of the company’s higher end models. It has a Tegra 2 3D processor, which is great for gaming. However, I do not use it for gaming that much. I found that, because of the mini-HDMI output, it is easy to use it as a media player. The price is kind of steep if I use it solely for the media player function. I set out to find a low cost Android tablet for my personal use. My criteria are: Android 4.0, mini-HDMI output, USB port and 7 inch display.

Here is a short list I found. I like the NOVO7′s low price and large storage. However, the company has no US service center. It would be a hassle if you need to contact their support.

Which one you think is the best? I’ll update the list once I find more tablets meeting my criteria.

I previously configured Apache server on Linux to use a password to protect some pages. However, when I tried it on a Mac server, I had a lot of trouble when trying to get it to work. I double-checked the .htaccess file and made sure the syntax was right. I later discovered that the problem was not with the .htaccess file I had. The problem was that the password protection option is turned off by default on Mac. The Apache configuration file is in this directory: /etc/apache2 . I opened up an editor to edit the configuration file httpd.conf and change this line from

AllowOverride None

to

AllowOverride All

and restarted the Apache web server. It did not work. It took me a while to find the second configuration file that I needed to change. The second configuration files is this one: /etc/apache2/sites/0000_any_80_.conf. After I edited this file to change the AllowOverride option and restarted the web server, the password protection began  to work. By the way, if you are concerned about your web site’s security, you can change the settings to AllowOverride AuthConfig, which provides more restricted features and makes your site safer.