RSS-Spider

Was having problems installing a very critical piece of software on my new laptop this past weekend. Every time that the installer would get to “Publishing Product Information” the install would fail and start a rollback. Googled the problem a couple times but couldn’t find anything usable. Couple items said to run CMD as the admin then launch the MSI file using “msiexec.exe /i program.msi” and this should fix any problems that might exist with permissions. Well no this didn’t work. Looking at the directions for msiexec.exe I created a log file by rerunning msiexec.exe with the following command..

msiexec.exe /i program.msi /lv* installlog.log

looking in this file once the installer AGAIN FAILED… I found

MSI (c) (24:5C) [17:14:38:971]: Machine policy value ‘DisableRollback’ is 0

DisableRollBack set to 0 (zero)? Ok… so lets set it to one so it won’t roll back and see what happens.

Googled again for how to do this and found this page http://krzanowski.com/zune.html where someone was complaining that they couldn’t install their Zune software… Interesting… I’m sure they’re on a windows box using the MSI installer for a Zune… so three Microsoft products and this guy was having trouble installing… ha…

The key bits on this page are below… but first let me stress that this worked for me… it might not work for you. When ever you edit your registry all sorts of bad things can go wrong including a totally loss of your computer. I do not recommend you try this unless you’re totally sure you know what you’re doing. I will not be held responsible for anyone screwing up their computer. This information is for informational & educational use only. Blah blah blah… Anyhow..

- close all windows.

- click start – run – regedit (for safety if you want , right click on Computer and choose export. save it as a backup)

- expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\ (In my case there was no Installer Directory listed under here) I’ve got a brand new laptop and this was my case too.

-With “Windows” highlighted on left, right-click on Windows and click on New and then Key.

-Type Installer

-Then click on Installer and on the right you should see a key “Default – REG_SZ – (value not set)”.

-Right-click on an empty area below this and choose New and then DWORD.

-Type DisableRollback (one word and it is case-sensitive)

-After that, right-click on DisableRollback and choose Modify.

-Change the numeric value data from 0 to a 1 and to the right, Hexadecimal should have a dot next to it.

- Close regedit

- rerun the install program…

This time my application installed WITHOUT A PROBLEM.

Never did figure out why it didn’t install originally or what the problem was. Such is Vista…

Well over the weekend while backing up the database our hard drive running the database & sphinx search up and died on us. We have a new one on order but it won’t be here for a few days (ok.. we bought it on Ebay). Anyhow… we’ll be back soon
-D

Actually they all taste like burning…

Checking email for this site today I ran across this email from Google Search Quality. At first I thought it was a spam seeing as it was filled with crap about viagra & calliass but was shocked to find that this crap WAS on this blog. Well it seems an older version of Wordpress that I was running has a venerability allowing someone to update your theme files and post all sorts of CRAP into it with links leading back to thier spammy sites. Some one did this since I am a lazy sysadmin and didn’t update wordpress. Broke rule number 2 on the Google webmaster security check list…

Shame on me…

Dear site owner or webmaster of rss-spider.com/blog,

While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines, which can be found here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. This appears to be because your site has been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Many times, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index.
(Read on …)

This step by step comes from Design World Online and is reprinted with permission. The orginal document is located at http://www.designworldonline.com/ftp/dmm_pdf/DesignWorld_HowToRSS.pdf
FEED / BLOG CREATION

STEP 1. Find Service or Application
Design World recommends TypePad (www.typepad.com). It is very easy to set up a free 30-day trial and get started with your communication. If getting your IT department involved is required, you can even point these services to your own domain for seamless integration. If you have a Web site, blog, audio/video content or even photos, you can offer a feed of your content as an option. If you are using a popular blogging platform or publishing tool like TypePad, Wordpress or Blogger, you likely publish a feed automatically. There are also tools on the market that can help transform traditional web content into the right format for distribution. Simply creating an XML version of your content allows Aggregators the ability to read, but this entails some knowledge of XML syntax. Another method is PC-based software that allows blogging with associated feeds to be automatically published to a specific website location.

STEP 2. Enter Data
The more frequent the better! Your readers and search engines like constantly updated content.

STEP 3. (Optional) Enhance your Feed
There are services like FeedBurner (www.feedburner.com) that allow you to track statistics on your feed that include subscribers, hits and other good stuff.

STEP 4. Required! Tell us about your Feed*
Once your up and running, go to http://www.rss-spider.com/fsb.php and submit your feed address so we can subscribe to your feed and keep apprised of your news automatically. You post and we redistribute immediately. You gain the exposure of the RSS-Spider with no hassle.

* Edited out Design World’s email address since 99.999% of user submitted feeds have no relation to design engineering.