Files not found after Windows 2003 server patch updates

I patched a Windows 2003 server this morning and on reboot I got these errors as I logged on.

The messages consisted of 4 sequential file not found reports all in this format.

"Windows cannot find 'C:WindowsSystem32urlm'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button, and then click Search."
"Windows cannot find 'C:WindowsSystem32urlm'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button, and then click Search."

View full size error message

The files reported, in order, were:
C:WindowsSystem32winnin
C:WindowsSystem32urlm
C:WindowsSystem32brow
C:WindowsSystem32webc

I then found that IE8 was still outstanding as an update and installed that and rebooted and these messages did not appear.

I am thinking that Windows 2003 type servers might all require IE8 to support the current round of patches.

It’s a bit odd and I have not seen a repeat on any other server in the same situation but I figured it was worth noting.

Turn off UAC on windows server 2008

The UAC appears to give me grief constantly, it seems like every error I get with installing software stems from permissions issue.

So I went to turn off the UAC today on a server just to confirm if it made a difference.
To turn it off:

  • go to Administrative Tools -> System Configuration -> Tools tab
  • scroll down to Disable UAC and click to select
  • then click Launch and note that it will require a reboot of the server

Apparently it does not turn it off fully, as I still needed to use Run as Administrator despite my logged in account being specifically added to the local computer administrators. Seems odd and it did not fix the specific error I was looking at, so I turned it back on.

sharepoint webpart install timer service not started

While installing a webpart for Sharepoint today I had the installer routine advise that the timer service was not started. Which the services list told me was incorrect.

After a bit of messing around the solution was to use the Run as Administrator option for the installer.

But, the program list did not offer the right-click option, so I used a command prompt with Run as Administrator and ran the installer from the prompt.

The reference that helped was at codeplex.

Nagios error: /etc/init.d/nagios: line 60: /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_nagios: No such file or directory

This error occurred for me because the nagios/cgi.cfg contained the incorrect settings.

This is on a Debian Lenny platform and I was not the original installer.  I initially thought it was the nrpe settings and spent sometime working out why the correct settings in the nrpe.cfg were not working. 

Apparently the cgi.cfg takes precedence over the nrpe.cfg, at least in my setup it did!