Resolving a Persistent spoolsv.exe Error/Crash

Today I was troubleshooting a couple of network printers. One of them, I believed, had an incompatibility with "Standard TCP/IP" printing, via RAW communications. I tired other printer port options, including the HP TCP/IP port. I found out later on that the printer itself (a multifunction copier actually) did not have printing capability enabled. In the process of installing a printer driver later in the day, I ran into this error:

The instruction at "0x00000000" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "written".

The error wouldn't go away. Reboots did nothing. Clearing out all registry references of the printers and drivers that I had been troubleshooting did nothing. Deleting my printer drivers folder only made things worse (as you'll read later) Even a reverting to an earlier System Restore point failed. Finally, after finding tidbits of information online here and there, nothing with a complete solution, I tried removing this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monitors\HP Standard TCP IP port

I then restarted "Print Spooler" in the Services control panel (services.msc), and my Printer control panel finally displayed properly, without crash. Unfortunately for me, I then had to delete all my printers, as I had deleted all of my printer drivers and none of the installed printers were functional.

So if you run into this error, try deleting the key above before attempting anything else.

Obama Yuks It Up Over the Collapsing Economy

Now, I'm no fan of the American auto industry either, but for much different reasons than Obama. Obama sees the auto industry as a whole as evil greedy capitalist pollution profiteers, and clearly takes joy in overseeing their demise. He sees the collapse of the American auto industry as a success of his ideals.

I, on the other hand, dislike what the American automobile makers have allowed to have happen to their once prosperous industry. One has to ask the question: Why are the foreign owned, yet locally manufactured, automobiles doing just fine in today's economy, yet the American manufacturers are struggling? The answer: Unions. The successful auto makers never bowed to union pressure. Foreign companies realized the hazard of giving up control of their own companies to socialist union thugs, pushing unsustainable pension plans and benefits. If the American auto industry had the spine to kick them out years ago, they'd be much better off now.

MuchTall.com: In With WordPress, Out With PHPNuke

I'm finally taking the plunge into WordPress. I've moved all of the accounts (minus passwords), categories, stories, and comments over from the old PHPNuke site. I have yet to pretty up the theme, but I just couldn't wait any longer. PHPNuke was just too difficult to maintain, and worse, was prone to spamming from bot-created accounts.

More changes to come.

Recovering a PPPoE password from an Actiontec M1000

If you ever get into a situation where you can't find the password used on your Qwest DSL account, and you have an Actiontec M1000 router (or similar), give this procedure a shot:

- You can find your account username on the Quick Setup page, listed as "PPP Username"
- Set your router admin password if you have not already done so. Take note of the username and password you set. It's important.
- Go to Start --> Run and enter "telnet 192.168.0.1"
- Login with your admin account and password, i.e., admin/admin
- Run this command "cat /var/tmp/pppoe_password". The output is your account password.
- Confirm your account credentials by logging in at at http://www.qwest.net

Good luck!

Update 5/29/2013: You may also want to check out my updated post: Recovering the PPP Username and Password from a Centurylink Actiontec C1000A

Cisco: Error opening tftp://url (Undefined error)

Though I still know my way around, it's been a while since I messed with a Cisco router to any great degree. But today at work I had to configure a Cisco 1750 to reply to one of our offices. I like backing up configs before I blow away a router, just so that I have a copy of what was on there. I knew that I could TFTP it to my PC, assuming I set up a TFTP server. So I went and installed Tftpd32 to my PC, set up a secondary IP on the Cisco router on my local network, and fired up the following command on the Cisco console:

  copy startup-config tftp://172.16.1.142/config.txt

I then saw on Tftpd32 that the router connected, and created the file "cisco.txt", however the transfer failed and the resulting file was 0 bytes. This is the error I got on the console:

  %Error opening tftp://172.16.1.142/config.txt (Undefined error)

Clearly, the Cisco was connecting, it just wasn't sending the content of the file. After running a standard FTP test, I noticed that the Cisco showed up to the server as the PRIMARY interface IP, not the secondary one. Once I re-assigned the primary IP address to the local IP range, the transfer succeeded.

So, long story short: If you see this error, check that the primary IP on the interface facing your network is in the same subnet as you (or the next hop), otherwise the Cisco might show up as coming from an unreachable IP.