The DIY guide to PC troubleshooting and repair

The DIY guide to PC troubleshooting and repair

By Scott Dunn The next time your computer acts up, drop the mouse, put down the phone, and use this troubleshooting checklist to find and fix the problem. Whether it’s a slowdown, some strange behavior, or a total crash, a few basic troubleshooting tricks and tools may be all you need to get your PC back to peak performance.

Do this before you call the repair shop

If it hasn’t happened recently, it will soon: something goes wrong with your computer. If you ring up the repair shop or call tech support, the person you talk to probably has less PC experience than you do.

Save your time, trouble, and money by using these dozen tips and tools to ferret out system failures, application crashes, and bizarre Windows behaviors on your own.

Check the obvious. Whether your computer won’t start, your browser won’t browse, or your word processor won’t process, take a deep breath and check the usual suspects — power outages, unplugged or loose cords and cables, or an always-on monitor that somehow got turned off. If everything’s properly powered, reboot your PC or restart your modem. This simple step resolves a great number of random glitches.

Ask yourself what has changed about your system. If you recently installed new hardware or software, shut it down. Make sure a program isn’t running in the background by checking for its icon in the system tray. If it’s there, right-click the icon and choose Exit or Close.

Look for a listing for the program under the Processes tab in Task Manager; press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to open the utility. Or you could simply uninstall the application. If you just updated one of your device drivers, revert to the old one by using Windows’ device driver rollback feature. The steps can be found in Microsoft Knowledge Base 283657.

Divide and conquer, part one. To determine whether an auto-start application is the culprit, open the System Configuration utility (a.k.a. “Msconfig”) to turn off all startup programs. Press the Windows key and R, type msconfig, and press Enter. Under the General tab, click Selective Startup and uncheck Load Startup Items. Then restart your PC.

If the problem goes away, return to Msconfig, click Normal Startup under the General tab, choose the Startup tab, and enable your autostart programs one at a time until the problem recurs, at which time you’ve found the source of the trouble.

Vista has its own tool for managing startup programs — Software Explorer, which is part of Windows Defender. Software Explorer is clumsy and not nearly as easy to use as Microsoft’s free AutoRuns utility, which works in XP, too.

Strategies and techniques for troubling times

Give System Restore a chance. If your problem appeared recently and the cause is not apparent, System Restore may be able to bring your PC back to a functional state. Choose Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore. Select Restore my computer to an earlier time, click Next, and follow the prompts. For more info on System Restore, see Woody Leonhard’s tips in the paid version of the Feb. 16, 2006, issue.

Try a different profile. Log out of your current account and log into a different one. If you don’t have any other accounts, create one. An alternative account can come in handy if your current account becomes corrupted. To create one, open Windows’ User Accounts Control Panel applet, click Create a new account, and follow the steps. (In Vista, you have to click either Add or remove user accounts or Manage another account before you click Create a new account.)

If the problem doesn’t occur in the other account, something is wrong with your profile in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER section of the Registry. You can always use the second profile as your new main account, although you’ll have to reinstall some software and redo your custom settings. Still, this is better than having to reinstall Windows.

Choose the Last Known Good. If you’re unable to log into Windows at all, press F8 after booting your computer but before Windows starts. On the Windows Advanced Options Menu screen, use the arrow keys to select Last Known Good Configuration and press Enter.

This option reverses the last configuration change made to your computer. If this setting allows Windows to load, your problem may be solved. Last Known Good Configuration can’t correct every problem, but like many of these strategies, it’s worth a try.

Crack open Safe Mode. Should Last Known Good Configuration fail to put you back in the Windows driver’s seat, press F8 on startup again to return to the Windows Advanced Options Menu, but this time select Safe Mode (or Safe Mode with Networking if you need to access the Internet or a network resource).

Unlike Last Known Good Configuration, Safe Mode doesn’t fix anything; it simply attempts to start Windows by using a very basic set of drivers. If you can successfully start Windows in Safe Mode, there’s a good chance your problem is due to a device driver. You can also use Safe Mode to correct the problem — once you figure out what it is (see the next tip for more).

Enable boot logging. Check Windows’ boot logs for information if you suspect the problem is related to a particular device or driver. To enable boot logging, press F8 on startup to open the Windows Advanced Options Menu. Arrow down to Enable Boot Logging and press Enter to start Windows with this feature turned on.

To open the log file, press Win+R, type c:windowsntbklog.txt, and press Enter. The boot log adds new information to the bottom of the file, so scroll down to get the latest scoop. Look for lines that indicate one or more drivers didn’t load properly.

Boot logging occurs automatically when you use Safe Mode to log into windows, but the resulting log isn’t very useful — it shows all the drivers Safe Mode doesn’t use, but it doesn’t tell you which ones may be causing the problems.

Divide and conquer, part two. If you suspect a driver or other system file is the culprit but haven’t yet found the guilty party, isolate the problem by using Msconfig to create custom configurations. But first, a warning: Using Msconfig to temporarily disable Windows services will delete restore points created by System Restore. Try this technique only if System Restore didn’t fix the problem and you’re sure you won’t need any of your existing restore points.

Press Win+R, type msconfig, and press Enter. On the General tab, select Diagnostic startup and click OK. Follow the prompts to restart your system. If the problem is resolved, you can add other system files back in by using the Selective Startup option on the General tab to isolate whether the problem is in System.ini, wini.ini, services, and so on. Once you’ve narrowed your search down to a specific area, get more granular by using the check boxes under the other Msconfig tabs to turn on specific items (such as individual services).

Get more info from Windows. Some crashes cause your system to reboot automatically. This Windows feature keeps you from seeing helpful information about what might be causing the problem. To prevent automatic restarts after crashes, reboot and press F8 before Windows loads to view the Windows Advanced Options Menu. Use the arrow keys to select Disable automatic restart on system failure.

To turn the feature back on in XP, or to turn it off without restarting your computer, right-click My Computer and choose Properties, Advanced. Under Startup and Recovery, click Settings. Use the checkbox under Automatic Restart to turn the feature on or off.

In Vista, press Start, type SystemPropertiesAdvanced, and press Enter. Click Continue when prompted by User Account Control. Click the Advanced tab and under Startup and Recovery click Settings. Use the checkbox under Automatic Restart to turn the feature on or off.

The next time you have an unscheduled reboot, some text should appear on your screen with information about the error and possibly the name of the file that caused the problem. If necessary, you can do a Web search on that file name to get more information.

For example, Windows might list a component of your system’s video drivers as the cause. If so, it may be time to check for a driver update on the Web site of your video card’s manufacturer.

Run system file checker. If you believe a Windows file has been overwritten by another program, run the System File Checker to examine your files and replace any problem ones with Microsoft originals. Open a Command Prompt window with Administrator privileges, type sfc /scannow, and press Enter. You may be prompted to insert your Windows install CD to allow System File Checker to retrieve the original file.

Microsoft has published two articles on using this tool, one that refers to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, and another describing how to use it in Vista.

Try a troubleshooter. The adage says: When all else fails, read the directions. Windows Help may miss the mark much of the time, but some of its troubleshooting guides are actually helpful in certain cases. Open the guides by choosing Start, Help and Support. Search for troubleshoot, troubleshooting, and troubleshooter. Do a separate search for each term because you’ll get slightly different results each time.

Be persistent, but have an exit strategy

An old friend and talented troubleshooter used to tell me, “When all else fails, poke at it.” Sheer determination has helped me solve many computer problems. Try one possible solution after another, but remember to make sure you can undo every “fix” you try so you don’t inadvertently make things worse.

For example, when editing the Registry, be sure to use the File, Export command to create a backup of the Registry branch you’re about to tweak. Any keys (or branches) you add to the Registry subsequently will not be included in the backup, of course.

Scott Dunn is associate editor of the Windows Secrets Newsletter. He has been a contributing editor of PC World since 1992 and currently writes for the Here’s How section of that magazine.

Outlook corrupts HTML to text for some readers

By Dennis O’Reilly If you’re unable to view the newsletter in HTML format, a fix is in the works. We’ve received reports from a handful of readers that Microsoft Outlook has spontaneously converted our HTML content into an unreadable form of plain text, and we’re on the trail of a solution.

Get the full-color view of our newsletter

We love hearing from readers, even when what they have to say is not particularly complimentary.

That was the case last week as we heard from several people who suddenly were unable to view the Windows Secrets newsletter in HTML format. For some reason, Microsoft Outlook displayed the file as plain text.

While you can view the newsletter properly formatted at WindowsSecrets.com, that’s a far cry from being able to read it in your e-mail program as intended. Jim Ollerhead’s e-mail was representative of the half-dozen or so comments we received from readers experiencing this problem.

• “The last few editions of the newsletter have been plain text and very difficult to read. I have looked on the Web site but cannot find an option to rectify this. My Outlook setup resolves HTML from other senders with no problem, so I don’t think it’s the config of my Outlook settings.

  “Do you have any suggestions?”

While the problem has affected only a small number of subscribers, it is a matter we take very seriously. Our crack IT team — comprising Tony Johnston and Damian Wadley — is working on a solution.

There are two things you can do to help ensure that the HTML version of our newsletter isn’t garbled by Outlook. First, add our From address to your e-mail program’s Address Book. Second, enter our From address into any “safe senders” list your e-mail program uses. Our address is shown in the image below:

To add our address to your list of approved senders in Outlook, click Tools, Options, Junk E-mail Options, Safe Senders, Add. In the Add dialog box, enter our address and click OK three times.

Please let us know if you’re experiencing problems with viewing the newsletter correctly or with the tools on our site for subscribing or renewing an existing subscription to the paid version of the newsletter.

Our antivirus choice doesn’t please everyone

In last week’s Best Software column, Scott Spanbauer recommended Avira’s free AntiVir Personal antivirus software over Grisoft’s AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition and Alwil’s Avast! Antivirus Home Edition, which is also available gratis.

Unfortunately, Scott’s choice didn’t please reader Phil Daniels.

• “I recently switched to Avira free. I find it quite obtrusive: a splash window when it starts, progress windows when it’s downloading or scanning that can’t be minimized, a large invitation to upgrade when it finishes a download or scan.

  “I assume the payware version is quieter.”

Our software reviews consider the pushiness of freeware in determining the program’s overall rating. The organizations that offer free software walk a thin line between encouraging people to upgrade to the paid versions of their programs and being so intrusive that people choose a less-annoying alternative.

A request to tone down the wacky videos

Also meeting with some displeasure was our June 26 choice for Wacky Web Week, a video parody that Marv Plementosh found too graphic.

• “In the most recent newsletter you sent out, I found a link to a video that in my opinion was completely tasteless and not appropriate. You guys can do way better if you want to include some joke or funny video.

  “At the very least, you could have prefaced it with a warning. I just can’t really explain to you how much I am disappointed in Windows Secrets. We all make mistakes. I am not unsubscribing, at least not yet. Please think about your whole readership.”

The video — “Max Beer,” a spoof of beer commercials — admittedly dealt with a popular subject in a racy way, but showed nothing that’s even R-rated. We’ll try to indicate more clearly in the future when a particular wacky item might offend some readers, however.

If there’s anything else about Windows Secrets that you believe needs to be improved, please let us know about it. We’re striving to provide Windows users with the best information for keeping their PCs running smoothly. If there’s an area you’d like us to cover or a product you think we should review, please drop us a line via our contact page.

The Known Issues column brings you readers’ comments on our recent articles. Dennis O’Reilly is technical editor of WindowsSecrets.com.

A suit you can recycle for spare change

Most people return their used cans to the recycle center for pocket change. This guy uses them to enhance his wardrobe. Don’t think about sneaking up on anyone wearing this pair of aluminum coveralls. Nor would you want to be behind Can Man at the airport security checkpoint. Let’s hope he has a plastic-bottle suit to change into when the weather forecast calls for thunderstorms. Play the video

From paper to searchable PDF on the cheap

By Becky Waring You don’t have to shell out $500 for software that converts scanned paper documents into searchable PDF or Office files. One of the three programs I tested is the clear winner in turning all your scanned images into fully indexed documents.

Ditch the software bundled with your scanner

I’m addicted to the quick and streamlined (and free) Copernic Desktop Search utility. The program finds past articles to help me research new ones, it locates that six-year-old e-mail from my sister, and it looks up forgotten serial numbers. Basically, Copernic unlocks all the data floating around on my hard drive.

But I have a ton of data sitting untouched and forgotten simply because it resides only on paper: my print magazine articles, financial statements, letters from friends and family, etc.

I’ve been looking for good, low-cost software that can turn my scanned paper into searchable PDF or Word documents. I’m not willing to drop a cool $400 on ABBYY FineReader Professional or $500 for Nuance’s OmniPage Professional, the two leading optical-character recognition (OCR) programs for translating scans into text. Nor can I afford $300 for Adobe Acrobat Standard.

My five-year-old scanner — which was top-of-the-line when I bought it and is still very good — came with third-party OCR software, but the program doesn’t work with Vista and lacks upgrade privileges. I can scan documents, but if I want to translate those scans into searchable text, I’m on my own.

Even newer scanners, particularly cheap multifunction models, may lack OCR software. Or worse, you might be stuck with a poor-quality recognition engine. OCR is all about accuracy. If you have to open every page to correct a lot of scan errors manually, it will cost you a great deal of time and aggravation. You’re better off spending a little money on a program that does the job right the first time.

The best all-round scan-conversion tool

For all-round accuracy, formatting prowess, and depth of features, Nuance PDF Converter Pro ($99.99) is the clear winner.

Nuance is also the developer of OmniPage, so PDF Converter Pro’s OCR chops are to be expected. What did surprise me were the extremely powerful additional features packed into this relatively low-cost tool, such as PDF editing and creation (including fillable forms support). It also offers 128-bit encryption and password protection of converted files.

The program even lets you create a searchable PDF archive of Outlook e-mails in one step. PDF Converter Pro is not only the best conversion tool, it’s the best value to boot.

Nuance also sells PDF Create, a $50 program that can do OCR on scanned PDFs, but the program can save the results only as PDFs, not as Office files (.doc, .xls, etc.). Also, PDF Create lacks PDF Converter Pro’s powerful editing features, so it’s useful only for packaging existing documents as PDFs. Unless you have very basic scanning needs, PDF Converter Pro is well worth the extra expense.

PDF Converter Pro has a free 30-day trial version. The software comes as both a standalone program and as plug-ins for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Internet Explorer, so you can open and convert a document on the fly right within Word, for example.

If you right-click a file in Windows Explorer, you can convert it by choosing the option the program adds to the context menu. There’s no need to open the program first. I like to be very selective about my toolbar add-ins, so I used PDF Converter Pro’s Custom install option to choose exactly which Office and Windows integration features I wanted.

After I ran my test scan file through the converter, I output the results as a Word document (Office 97, 2000, 2003, and 2007 are all supported). The test scan consisted of three pages, all pretty severe tests of OCR capability:

• A complex page from a Consumer Reports review, complete with headlines, photos, captions, white-on-black text, and both two- and three-column material on the same page;

• A bank statement with varying format tables and some areas of shaded background;

• A business letter with graphic logo and signature plus some bold, italic, and underlined text.

PDF Converter Pro delivered the best overall results in converting my test scan to Word. The text was nearly error-free, and the program did an amazing job of reproducing the document’s format, including columns, justification, font selection, and bold and italic text.

The program handled white-on-black text without a hitch and kept graphics in the right places. The conversion was speedy, taking less than a minute. As with all the programs I tried, conversions are so fast you’ll spend more of your time doing the actual scanning.

The one place PDF Converter Pro fell short was the bank-statement scan, where it had problems reproducing the text in shaded areas. Probably a more OCR-friendly scan would solve the problem.

Bonus tip: For best results with text recognition, scans should be done in black and white (or grayscale, if you want to keep graphics) at 300 or 400 dpi. Higher-resolution scans just slow things down and require more storage space. Also, keep scans straight so the document is not skewed on the page, and adjust contrast and brightness so that the background is bright white (eliminating the lines in ruled paper, for example).

Figure 1. PDF Converter Pro did an amazing job of converting this scan of a Consumer Reports page (top) to Microsoft Word (bottom).

Since all three of the programs I tested have the ability to convert standard nonscanned PDFs — such as those you might download from the Internet or receive from a colleague via e-mail — to Word, Excel, or PowerPoint formats, I also tested conversion of a three-page tutorial PDF from FileMaker.

PDF Converter Pro did a beautiful job here — as you would expect, given the “perfect” source material. The flaw was a scattering of extra spaces in the middle of words here and there. Interestingly, the second-place performer, ABBYY PDF Transformer, put extra spaces in exactly the same spots, despite being based on the FineReader OCR engine, OmniPage’s direct competition.

You can find and correct these errors easily using Word’s spell-check tool, but they should have been avoided entirely — as the third-place converter was able to do.

The quickest and easiest tool is also one of the best

While PDF Converter Pro was the overall winner, ABBYY PDF Transformer Pro ($99.99) was a close second on accuracy. Also, ABBYY’s program has the best user interface by far: All options are clearly laid out in one window, and two big buttons are helpfully labeled 1 and 2 for opening your scan file and then transforming it. Tips for better conversion results are prominent as well.

Installation of PDF Transformer’s 15-day/50-page free trial went smoothly. Again I used the Custom option to select exactly which Office integration add-ons I wanted to install. Embedded conversion buttons are available for Word, Excel, and Outlook.

You can also use PDF Transformer to create searchable PDFs from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio documents, including password-protected and permission-controlled PDFs. However, the program has fewer “extra” features, such as PDF editing, than PDF Converter Pro.

ABBYY also makes a $50 program called ScanTo Office that converts scans to PDFs, but this program can’t convert PDFs to Word format and doesn’t create searchable PDFs from nonscanned PDFs. Again, unless you have very basic scanning needs, the extra money is worth spending for the Pro version.

PDF Transformer did a good job with my test file, handling the bank statement better than PDF Converter Pro did, but the program tripped on some of the images and captions on the Consumer Reports page. Another flaw was that some phrases that should have been entirely in bold were formatted with just a few characters in bold here and there.

The business letter converted nearly perfectly, however, and the conversion from regular PDF had only the same problem with scattered extra spaces as PDF Converter Pro experienced.

One other peeve was that PDF Transformer does not ask you to rename your files when you convert them, as the other two programs do. But overall, I really like this program’s ease of use and might have chosen it over PDF Converter Pro if not for the extra features PDF Converter Pro offers for the same price.

The least-capable converter is the accuracy champ

If not for one redeeming quality, I would have passed completely on Investintech’s Able2Extract Pro ($129.95). The program lacks Office integration, fails badly in formatting and graphic retention, and has virtually no extra features. It’s also more expensive than the other two converters I looked at. However, Able2Extract delivered the most accurate text conversion of the three.

In my test documents, the financial statement was reproduced almost perfectly, with layout in place. The Consumer Reports page and business letter had a single small error on each page (in areas the other two programs did much worse on).

All these errors can be corrected in just a few minutes. However, bold and italic formatting was lost in the conversion, graphics did not come through at all, and all the text was in a single font. Basically, if you need only accurate text rather than fully formatted pages, Able2Extract Pro wins.

Similarly, in the FileMaker PDF conversion test, Able2Extract was the only one of the three programs that did not insert random spaces into the middle of words (proving that it’s possible to avoid this problem). Annoyingly, the program makes you click through two dialog boxes for each conversion.

Since Able2Extract is based on Nuance OCR technology, it’s hard to understand why the results were so dramatically different from Nuance’s own PDF Converter Pro, but they were.

Able2Extract has a seven-day free trial that converts a maximum of three pages at a time, so you can try it out and see whether the accuracy overcomes its other limitations. There’s also a $69.95 Able2Doc version that converts only to Word/XPS and can’t output to Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF formats.

Becky Waring has worked as a writer and editor for PC World, NewMedia Magazine, CNET, The San Francisco Chronicle, Technology Review, Upside Magazine, and many other news sources. She alternates the Best Software column with Windows Secrets contributing editor Scott Spanbauer.

Seven uncommon keyboard shortcuts you'll love

By Woody Leonhard I have used Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+X, and other standard shortcut-key combinations for so long they now live in my subconscious. Recently, I discovered a handful of obscure-yet-useful keyboard shortcuts that I now use on a daily basis, and while you may already know about one or two of ’em, I bet a few of my favorites will come as a surprise to you.

See your System Properties dialog in a flash

Vista’s System Properties dialog box is a font of information. The applet shows which version of Windows you’re using (including the Service Pack number), the system’s Windows Experience Index, the computer and domain name, your Product ID, and your Windows activation status. In XP, System Properties shows only the Windows version, the name of the registered user, and hardware information.

You can open System Properties by right-clicking Computer (or My Computer) and choosing Properties. But you’ll get there faster by holding down the Windows key and pressing Pause. This shortcut comes in very handy whenever you go to a computer store and want to compare the Windows Experience indices of various PCs. The sales clerks will hate you.

Open Quick Launch shortcuts in an instant

No doubt you set Windows to show the Quick Launch toolbar. If you don’t see this toolbar next to your Start button, open it by right-clicking an empty spot on the Windows taskbar and choosing Toolbars, Quick Launch.

The one-click icons in the Quick Launch toolbar make it fast and easy to launch the programs, folders, and files you use most often. You can even create a new document by clicking a shortcut for a custom template. My Jan. 25, 2007, column provides more details on your Quick Launch options.

You can “click” any of the first 10 icons in the Quick Launch toolbar by pressing the Windows key and a number: Win+1 launches the first icon, Win+2 launches the second, all the way to Win+0, which launches the 10th.

The fastest route to the Task Manager

Want to run Task Manager in Windows XP? Use the old Vulcan three-finger salute, silly: Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Live long and prosper.

Unfortunately, in Vista, pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete brings up a menu of options that are much more readily invoked elsewhere. (What? A three-finger salute to change a password, fer heaven’s sake? Gimme a break!) Also, you may spend a long time waiting for that list to appear.

Fortunately, you can bypass the folderol by using Task Manager’s new secret handshake — Ctrl+Shift+Esc. If you can’t remember this key combination, you may be able to remember that you can also open Task Manager by right-clicking a blank spot on the Windows taskbar and choosing Task Manager. Either approach bypasses the interminable wait.

The no-click way to restart Vista

If you’ve ever had your mouse pointer disappear (and who hasn’t?), there’s a keyboard shortcut that’s worth its weight in gold.

To restart Vista without a mouse, press the Windows key, tap the right-arrow key three times, and then press R. (It helps if you simultaneously click your heels and whisper “There’s no place like home,” but I digress.) Alternatively, you can type U after arrowing over to this menu to shut down completely, or L to merely log off.

Alert the Media Center from your keyboard

This shortcut really took me by surprise. I’ve never seen it documented before. To start Vista’s Media Center applet, press Win+Alt+Enter. It’s a very slick way to start a movie without having to dive for your mouse.

Check your system status via Vista’s Sidebar

As I start each work day, my screen fills up before my coffee goes cold. It doesn’t take long for the Vista Sidebar to be covered over with this, that, and the other application window.

Once in a while, I want to view some information on the Vista Sidebar, most frequently when it looks like my machine has gone out to lunch and I want to see whether the CPU is redlining. Instead of minimizing screens one at a time (or Alt-Tabbing through them), I just press Win+Spacebar. This shortcut also opens the Sidebar if it isn’t already active.

Move up one folder level in Vista’s Explorer

This rates as my favorite little-known keyboard shortcut. I use it at least a dozen times a day.

The folks who designed Vista’s version of Windows Explorer didn’t include an “up one folder” button. You can navigate forward and backward, go into the address bar and type whatever you like, and search till the cows come home. There’s no easy, obvious way to move up one folder level — unless you know this trick, that is: Press Alt and the up arrow. Works like a champ.

If you’re getting the keyboard-shortcut jitters, it might interest you to know that many Vista programs show you the currently active shortcut accelerator keys when you press the Alt key. If you want Vista to always show available accelerator keys, click Start, Control Panel, Ease of Access, Ease of Access Center. Scroll down and click Make the Keyboard Easier to Use.

Scroll down again and check the box marked Underline Keyboard Shortcuts and Access Keys. After you click Save, Vista will show accelerator keys in many applications, including Internet Explorer 7 — but not in Windows Explorer (which appears to lack accelerator keys).

To have XP menus show accelerator keys, right-click an empty spot on the desktop, choose Properties, click the Appearance tab, and under Effects, uncheck Hide Underlined Letters for Keyboard Navigation until I Press the Alt Key. Click OK twice.

You’ll find hundreds of other keyboard shortcuts — some more useful than others — documented in Microsoft’s Giant Keyboard Shortcut List, better known as Knowledge Base 126449.

Keyboard shortcuts may not change your life, but they’re guaranteed to shorten your workday.

Woody Leonhard‘s latest books — Windows Vista All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies and Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies — explore what you need to know about Vista in a way that won’t put you to sleep. He and Ed Bott also wrote the encyclopedic Special Edition Using Office 2007.

Free tool identifies unsecure ActiveX controls

By Ryan Russell If you use Internet Explorer 7, some of your ActiveX controls may make your system susceptible to a drive-by browser attack. Now you can find and disable these unsecured controls by running a free program, though you may not want to disable all of them.

The care and feeding of ActiveX killbits

When Microsoft wants to disable an ActiveX control that makes Internet Explorer vulnerable to attack, the company releases a killbit as part of a security bulletin. This TechNet article describes how killbits work by editing the Registry.

As far as I know, the standard security tools don’t check specifically for vulnerable ActiveX controls. Nor do they let you manage the killbits for them. Errata Security’s free AxBan does just that.

Errata Security is a small company founded by a couple of friends of mine, Robert Graham and David Maynor. (I have no financial interest in the company.) In addition to whatever consulting services and commercial products the company offers, it has been putting out some nice free security tools. The utilities may lack polish, but they are highly useful.

To try AxBan, simply download it to any directory and run it. There’s no installer. Click OK at the warning, and then click the ActiveX tab. Any lines in red are installed ActiveX controls that have (or at one time had) some security problem. You don’t necessarily want to killbit everything, however.

Knowing what to killbit and what not to killbit

On my Windows XP system, AxBan identified my Flash and QuickTime plug-ins as being installed and not killbitted. This is accurate. In my case, I don’t wish to killbit those players because I use them. I did make sure they’re patched, though.

I have suggested to the developers that they add the ability to check for vulnerable versions of software. If the company makes significant improvements in the product, I’ll update. Errata has already indicated it is going to add a low/medium/high risk rating for ActiveX controls.

You will want to killbit any program listed in red that you don’t use. The AxBan portion of the Errata blog explains why some controls were added. It’s not quite a fire-and-forget tool yet, so some investigation on your part is required.

Figure 1. Not all the ActiveX controls AxBan flags are in need of a killbit, so deactivate with discretion.

Fortunately, if you turn on the killbit for some program you need, it’s easy to re-enable it. Just select it and press the Unkillbit Selected button. This is a new feature in the current version 1.5 of AxBan.

Find a list of your ActiveX controls

Since AxBan’s ActiveX list of known bad controls is incomplete, you may wonder what other ActiveX controls are installed on your system. In Internet Explorer 7, select Tools, Manage Add-ons, Enable or Disable Add-ons. Click Add-ons that have been used by Internet Explorer in the drop-down menu at the top of the dialog box to see a comprehensive list of your PC’s ActiveX controls, browser extensions, and browser helper objects.

There are a bunch. Any time you visit a site and click to allow an ActiveX install, there it sits. If your computer came preloaded with Windows, your vendor may have installed some of these items for you. The HP update control in the AxBan list is an example.

Even Microsoft has gotten into the game. You may have noticed Microsoft distributing killbits for third-party controls via security bulletins and other Windows updates. This is at the request of the parties who created the controls, not something that Microsoft just did. Susan Bradley described some of these updates in her Apr. 10, 2007, Patch Watch column.

The Perimeter Scan column gives you the facts you need to test your systems to prevent weaknesses. Ryan Russell is quality assurance manager at BigFix Inc., a configuration management company. He moderated the vuln-dev mailing list for three years under the alias “Blue Boar.” He was the lead author of Hack-Proofing Your Network, 2nd Ed., and the technical editor of the Stealing the Network book series.