Recently, after resuming my Vista laptop from hibernation, I was greeted with a rather strange wait, followed by a blue screen of death. Analysis of the dump yielded the following:

THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER (ea)
The device driver is spinning in an infinite loop, most likely waiting for hardware to become idle. This usually indicates problem with the hardware itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly.
If the kernel debugger is connected and running when watchdog detects a timeout condition then DbgBreakPoint() will be called instead of KeBugCheckEx()and detailed message including bugcheck arguments will be printed to the
debugger. This way we can identify an offending thread, set breakpoints in it, and hit go to return to the spinning code to debug it further. Because KeBugCheckEx() is not called the .bugcheck directive will not return bugcheck
information in this case. The arguments are already printed out to the kernel debugger. You can also retrieve them from a global variable via
“dd watchdog!g_WdBugCheckData l5″ (use dq on NT64).
On MP machines (OS builds <= 3790) it is possible to hit a timeout when the spinning thread is interrupted by hardware interrupt and ISR or DPC routine is running at the time

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• TechBlog: Vista followup: Rethinking AVG
  Dwight plays around with cutting down his Vista startup times.
  (tags: Boot Performance )
• Simple guide to test Vista SP1 RC1 on a separate partition
  Long Zheng describes a nice way to test SP1 without affecting your current install.
  (tags: SP1 Partition )

Trojan.Win32.Obfuscated.gx (also know as Trojan.Win32 or Trojan.Win32.agent.akk) used to be a real virus, now fake anti-spyware software like IE Defender will display Trojan.Win32.Obfuscated.gx as their scan result to trick user to buy the fake anti-spyware program. The fake anti-spyware program usually get installed onto your PC without your permission, through Trojan, malware and virus (or you could get it by installing a fake video codec). fake anti-spyware will display the Trojan.Win32.Obfuscated.gx fake system alerts or fake security alerts to trick user to buy the Paid Version of the fake anti-spyware program.

The possible error messages are either “Your browser was hijacked by Trojan.Win32.Obfuscated.gx”, or “Your browser was hijacked by Trojan.Win32.Agent.akk”. As discussed previously, these messages are completely misleading. You can safely remove Trojan.Win32.Obfuscated.gx by following our manual removal instructions if you are familiar with regedit and dll files. Good luck!

Download SpyHunter* Spyware Detection Utility

Manual Trojan.Win32.Obfuscated.gx Removal Instructions:

Unregister Trojan.Win32.Obfuscated.gx DLL Files:
(Learn how to do this)
windivx.dll
ecxwp.dll
stream32a.dll
vipextqtr.dll

Find and Delete these Trojan.Win32.Obfuscated.gx Files:
(Learn how to do this)
windivx.dll
ecxwp.dll
stream32a.dll
vipextqtr.dll
gebca.dll
ddcdedd.dll
advpac.dll
tdlRMS.dll
lcxmehhg.dll
hdbxuqje.dll
mljge.dll
ddcbyvt.dll
advrepkon.dll
mlljh.dll
ibpmxtbv.dll
ljjhedc.dll
cabvie.dll
ddayv.dll

…

Trojan.Win32.agent.akk (also know as Trojan.Win32 or Trojan.Win32.Obfuscated.gx) used to be a real virus, now fake anti-spyware software like IE Defender will display Trojan.Win32.agent.akk as their scan result to trick user to buy the fake anti-spyware program. The fake anti-spyware program usually get installed onto your PC without your permission, through Trojan, malware and virus (or you could get it by installing a fake video codec). fake anti-spyware will display the Trojan.Win32.agent.akk fake system alerts or fake security alerts to trick user to buy the Paid Version of the fake anti-spyware program.

Download SpyHunter* Spyware Detection Utility

Manual Trojan.Win32.agent.akk Removal Instructions:

Unregister Trojan.Win32.agent.akk DLL Files:
(Learn how to do this)
windivx.dll
stream32a.dll
vipextqtr.dll
ecxwp.dll

Find and Delete these Trojan.Win32.agent.akk Files:
(Learn how to do this)
windivx.dll
stream32a.dll
vipextqtr.dll
ecxwp.dll
awtqqpq.dll
tufxleqe.dll
sstts.dll
nsn2B.dll
argosqaf.dll
tuvurst.dll
pmnlk.dll
fcccdbc.dll
qbbrqqde.dll
Avipra.dll
jspubsbm.dll
bpingscm.dll
VSAdd-in.dll
blopenvtok.dll
werbetxdp.dll
werbetpql.dll
blopenvtlv.dll
wvuus.dll
xxyxxwv.dll
vtuuuuu.dll
ddabc.dll
ddccawv.dll
vipextqtr.dll
prosearchsite.dll

Remove Trojan.Win32.agent.akk Registry Values:
(Learn how to do this)
7a329404de21925daacbbbee093ff6dc
bb5be1c92c299a1c6bcfe67655b0a0c7
9a9f57899a28547b04fc2da3700c95cf
7d4b39e4cab018496e2fe9bf9c3234b2
93591057eb39ad5595a7c54dd5fd787c
e06e0cb0b3756a20f13ddb2d93169f22
03d7e175712a6eff950e451a18d9ee30
05c505be23642e3b1e47bb4ae46ceb37
92905c5ce0362c7bb9dfdb4cb43fc17f
9687aa2905b44b5408ad0a4f096c67be
5f38f4ae4b183ba77968253c0f3535ea
b63686b961dc9dfda5747a9be4c690f3
e8b5519049041fc5873011b0aead14a4
2126467f121c1ffe191bbe826b21b381
d156c98b1cb9a5cf6aff715560ecdef7
03386f07b805557af3fe10d2ae47e9da
ddc6494ca6f8a20b0a0437c943ef04bb
a7b78cdc5256e7bd5224357ff5e727a7
1992b9dd72fd15434a43763134d89c75
2482fb7608d53577a51772477bda458a
2482fb7608d53577a51772477bda458a
f51df1399d591f3b741518694f9f9345
39d36d9a908aa2073344c55fc40289fb
4aaa70b2d8990ff8c003d02c3450df58

Download SpyHunter* Spyware Detection

…

A couple of people, dozen at max, have expressed interest in testing out the soon-to-be-public Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate release. There are many ways of installing and testing operating systems and even more so service packs so it can be rather confusing and cumbersome experience for some people out there. Out of all the possibilities, I do myself and recommend everyone to always start fresh, but that doesn’t always mean from the command prompt.

Whilst release candidate will be a very good representation of the final product early next year, it still means you’ll have to forfeit this release sooner or later so it is not recommended you replace your existing Windows installation with it. Especially with all the problems people have been running into uninstalling their service pack betas which itself sounds like a really bad idea anyway, it’s ideal to set up a fresh install. And the most convenient fresh install is on a separate partition on existing disks.

Formerly the process of ’splitting’ a partition involved third-party software which is time-consuming and sometimes unreliable, however a less-known disk management function in Windows Vista will simplify all that.

Preparing your new partitions

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Once in a while, Windows gets into a terrible state and the Taskbar and its Start menu disappear. This is because the software that manages these, called the Windows Explorer shell, has crashed. To deal with this, without logging off and on the computer, you have to end any existing sessions of Explorer and run a new one.

To end existing Explorer sessions hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys and press the Delete key. On some versions of Windows this will open up the ‘Windows Security’ dialog box, if so then press the ‘Task Manager’ button; on other versions you will be taken straight to the ‘Task Manager’ program.

To stop the Explorer shell, go to the ‘Processes’ page and look for ‘explorer.exe’. You can sort the processes into alphabetical order by clicking on the Image Name heading. If you find an entry for ‘explorer.exe’, highlight it and click the End Process button and click Yes on the warning dialog. If you don’t find an entry for it you can go straight to the next step.

To restart the Explorer shell, click on the ‘File’ menu in Task Manager and select ‘New Task…