Microsoft Ramps Up "Fix it" Support Tool 144
CWmike writes "Microsoft has ramped up its new Windows support assistant 'Fix it for me' nearly three months after it quietly released the automatic repair and configuration tool. The upgrade adds a 'Fix it' button to some of the support documents that Microsoft posts to its Knowledge Base. The blog introducing the changes lists some of the Knowledge Base documents that boast the 'Fix it' button, including one that prevents users from connecting a USB storage device — useful in protecting against one of the infection vectors of the 'Downadup' worm. Have ideas for the tool? In a forum on the 'WinVistaClub' Web site, someone who said he was part of the 'Fix it' team at Microsoft encouraged users to send feedback on the feature to the group at fixit4me@microsoft.com."
Re:Seems exploitable (Score:5, Informative)
If the virus can modify the fixit binary then it already has admin access. Why would the author go through another hoop? Just attack the system.
The attack Im thinking of is spoofing the fixit4me button on a random webpage and hoping the user downloads your malware, but that's a trojan/social attack that works for just about anything (click here to install flash, etc).
Some kind of intelligent tool should be doable. Most PC problems are pretty basic and automating the fix straight from the KB makes sense for non-techies. I imagine a common scenario for this will be used by people who know a little tech, but are afraid of modifying the registry or installing a patch as opposed to the clueless grandma. This person would probably see the problem in the event viewer, click on the "what does this mean" button and be sent to the KB with the fixit tool sitting there.
>Education is the key to solving the most common issues.
Thats true of most problems, but a lot of people will never learn and simply will require hand-holding forever. Automated tools can do a lot of this hand-holding for them. Automated tools can also help those who understand the issue but may not be technical enough to perform their own fix.
Meta-fix It (Score:1, Informative)
Not my experience (Score:3, Informative)
Way back in the day, when Pournelle was still posting on BIX and writing in Byte, he recommended Norton Windoctor. For a while, (before, like all Norton products, it was ruined by bloat), it automagically fixed Win95/98 and even some XP installations quite well.
Worth trying if you're trying to fix one of those old installations and don't really want to re-install.
Re:But.. (Score:5, Informative)
Surely this [wikipedia.org] would have been better to explain the joke?
I'll also give them (Score:5, Informative)
That their tools can detect some things you might not think to look for. I've used the "Check for solutions online," thing before. Usually it doesn't get anything, meaning no answer found. Sometimes, it gets generic info that I already knew. Like it'll say "Your graphics driver caused the crash," which is evident from the STOP 0xA in nv4_disp.dll. No real fix, but that could be useful to someone less knowledgeable. I happen to know the files for the graphics driver, and what a STOP 0xA error is, most users probably don't.
However occasionally, it has been real useful. For example I was trying to install a Sound Blaster X-Fi. I'd launch it's installation CD, and it would crash. Had no idea what was going on. I decided "Ok smart guy, go ahead and check." It responded that Quicktime was the problem. Fine, I'll play ball, I uninstall Quicktime. Sure as shit, installer runs fine. Not something I ever would have though to check.
So while I certainly won't be running an automated fix script, I do applaud them in trying to increase their ability to check system errors. While I know everyone on Slashdot likes to give MS shit about being the source of all problems, that's really not the case. 3rd party software causes plenty of trouble.
Re:thanks (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not my experience (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, windows 98 had some half way decent fix tools inside it is you got into a jam. I'm surprised that there wasn't something more appropriate availible for the NT line.
Take regedit for instance, from a command line you could use the /opt switch to remove whitespace and more or less compact the registry resulting in a faster operating system. You could use the /fix switch that repaired file errors and did something with invalid keys that could cause all sorts of issues. You could even use the /restore switch to go to a recent version of the registry. You could also save an active state registry when everything was working fine, store it off the computer, then reload it when necessary. Of course the ERD programs sort of did this automatically but in WinNT systems, you have to do a repair install in order to restore something from it.
Fdisk also had the ability to back up the boot sector and store it on another drive. The chkdsk and fixboot utilities seem to have these functions but fail to restore more then the first partition leaving you sort of stuck doing data recovery instead of just having the second partitions.
There are quite a but more useful tools that came with windows 98. Most of the Fix it tools either automated their uses for most of us who didn't want to learn ever function of every file on the computer. Some of them actually replaced the tools with their own that could be run from recovery disks too. I imagine win doctor was similar to that. Something I generally liked was Fix It Utilities from ontrack/ it seems they are avanquest now (or maybe my memory is losing it). I haven't used them since version 5 or something, they are up to 9 now if that gives you an idea of how long ago we are talking.