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Pidgin 2.7.3 MSI – Did this help you (comment!)?

Pidgin Universal Chat Client MSI available for download here: Version 2.7.3

I see some people on the net looking for a Pidgin MSI (as have I but I was left wanting). Pidgin is a “Universal Chat Client” allowing a user to use one program to communicate with many types of chat gateways like MSN Messenger (Now called “Windows Live Messenger”, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, GChat, etc. What’s also nice about Pidgin is that your typical chat client like MSN Messenger will have advertisements embedded into them but Pidgin doesn’t have them!

Side note:

Another INTERESTING tid bit is that the word “Pidgin” doesn’t have anything to do with the bird and it’s NOT misspelled.

“Pidgin…is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common, in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different to the language of the country in which they reside (but there is no common language between the groups)” Source: Pidgin Wikipedia

Although the Pidgin website doesn’t mention why they called their application Pidgin (and not Pigeon like the bird / fowl) is probably because of that very meaning, it has to be right? It enables one program to communicate with all those networks! It’s an even more brilliant name once you know what Pidgin means isn’t it?

Back to business:

I used a program called WinINSTALL LE, although it’s not a single file MSI it does the trick! It’s likely not a single file MSI because I used the free LE version of their product, not the professional version.

* Warning * – although this MSI works for me, if it doesn’t work for you I might be able to help but I make no guarantees.

Now that my warning is out of the way, here’s what you’ve been googling for, get it here —>

2.7.3 MSI

Extract the files to a network share, make your Group Policy, point it at the MSI and happy chatting. Let me know if it works for you too! Friendly command line installation:

msiexec /i Pidgin-2.7.msi /qn

One last thing – to anyone asking, “Why would an organization push out a chat client to their end users, that’s crazy!!!” . Note that I agree in most organizations it’s crazy BUT for some organizations like Colleges, Universities, geographically dispersed organizations, virtual office organizations, etc who foster collaborative efforts within their corporate culture chat clients serve a purpose and is needed. Heck, I needed it and if you need it, it’s possible to kill several birds (sorry Pidgin) with one MSI.

!!!!!!!!!! Update !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!! Update !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!! Update !!!!!!!!!

If you’re using my MSI I’ve noticed an interesting issue. The prior installation gets left behind and the new installation does not get “uninstalled” by the new version. If you find yourself with multiple instances of my installer in your “Add / Remove Programs” you need to run these commands. Although the new versions don’t get affected by previous installations being there it’s nice to keep things tidy!

1 – Make a batch file with the below content and name it “pidginuninst.bat” (the 2.6.6 zip has a bat file ready to go and it also includes MSIzap for you, make sure to edit the bat file so it fits into your environment).

2- Download my MSIzap from Microsoft and drop the contents in your Pidgin folder on your network share!

3 – Edit the commands below for your environment!

4- I’d possibly make an Active Directory Group Policy or a for loop to push this out and in the future include the command from the batch file to zap the previous installation after the new installation gets done!
* For loop example that schedules a task at 3:45am to uninstall old Pidgin versions: “for /f %i in (c:\temp\pcs.txt) do at \\%i 03:45 “\\yourserver\yourshare\PidginDirectory\pidginuninst.bat”

5 – If you’re really slick you could use an email sending vbscript to notify you via email when each workstation is done or what might even be better, store your log in a central location for later review instead of storing them locally in a temp directory. You’d also want to echo the computer name for the log file name like this: >> “\\yourservershare\yourshare\%computername%.log” and you can use it again in the future.

* All this should give you a good idea of what to do, you can slice and dice this in many ways. If you have questions just ask!

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:: Pidgin uninstall cleanup from prior versions that didn’t get cleaned up
:: by installing a new version with a custom MSI!

cd \
c:

echo %time% Uninstalling Pidgin 2.6.3 >> c:\temp\Pidginuninst.log
:: Comment – this should point to Pidgin MSI version 2.6.3
\\yourserver\yourshare\PidginDirectory\msizap T! “\\yourservers\yourshare\PidginDirectory\Pidgin.msi” >> c:\temp\Pidginuninst.log

echo %time% Uninstalling Pidgin 2.6.4 >> c:\temp\Pidginuninst.log
:: Comment – this should point to Pidgin MSI version 2.6.4
\\yourserver\yourshare\PidginDirectory\msizap T! “\\yourservers\yourshare\PidginDirectory\Pidgin.msi” >> c:\temp\Pidginuninst.log

echo %time% Uninstall of previous Pidgin versions complete please check the logs >> c:\temp\Pidginuninst.log

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Adobe Reader Patching and Pitfalls – Did this help you (comment!)?

If you’re patching your Adobe Reader here’s a few things that might help you out!

First, I recently learned (thanks to errors I got while patching a package) that Adobe has two types of packages. They have a “Security Update” and a “Quarterly Update”. You can patch quarterly updates with security updates but you can’t patch security updates with quarterly updates.

Learn more about it here (versions 8 & 9): —> Link
Learn more about it here (version 10): –> Link

Here’s a brief table Adobe gives for the process:
___________________________________________________________________________________

Acceptable: Acrobat 9.0.0 (Original Product) -> 9.1.0 (Quarterly) -> 9.1.1 (Security)

Acceptable: Acrobat 9.0.0 (Original Product) -> 9.1.0 (Quarterly) -> 9.1.2 (Quarterly)

Unacceptable: Acrobat 9.0.0 (Original Product) -> 9.1.0 (Quarterly) -> 9.1.1 (Security) -> 9.1.2 (Quarterly)
___________________________________________________________________________________

Second, if you’re going to distribute Adobe Reader on your network or website one of the easiest ways to get a clean copy without Adobe Air or Adobe.com packaged into it is to sign up for a license (it’s free). —> Link

Once you sign up and get approved they email you a license with helpful links to all kinds of stuff including your own link to a clean package.

If you have an old package from 9.0.0, 9.1.0, 9.1.3, etc like I did you probably have an MST file which will transform the package and properly tweak your settings for your environment. You can create your own custom package with the Adobe Reader Customization Wizard: —> Link

The third and last thing to note is the extraction process of the exe you get from adobe and some setting changes you’ll might have to make in your setup.ini file. This is what tripped me up. No matter how many times I told Adobe to use my transform (.mst) it wouldn’t take any of my settings. So check your settings.ini if you’re having problems, and if you follow the steps below you might not have to do that, I tested it out!

Referring to the Adobe Deployment Guide this is what we need to do from start to finish!

Download your exe from Adobe
Download the customization wizard and make your mst transform or use mine: Link
Extract your Adobe 9.2 files, puts them in the same folder: <path to>\AdbeRdr920_en_US.exe -nos_ne -nos_o”Reader9″
Copy the MST you made into the folder “Reader9”, that contains your Adobe Reader 9.2.0 source files.
Install Adobe 9.2.0: msiexec /i AcroRead.msi TRANSFORMS=AcroRead.mst
OR Install silently: msiexec /i AcroRead.msi TRANSFORMS=AcroRead.mst /quiet

DONE! If you happen to have problems of any kind don’t use my MST, try creating your own. Perhaps my settings aren’t meshing well in your environment. The MST I made does not enable JavaScript, disables other big things like Adobe.com and any license agreements (or should).

Also note that you can also push this out via an Active Directory Group Policy and that there are a lot of ways to slice how you do that.

In brief: Open “Active Directory Users and Computers” > Right click your desired OU (Usually has computer objects in it) > “Create and Link a GPO here” > Name your GPO > Right click your GPO > Edit > Computer Configuration > Software Settings > Right click “Software Installation” > New > package > Find your “AcroRead.msi” and hopefully you put it in a network share that’s reachable by your computers > Advanced > OK > Modification Tab > Add > Select your “AcroRead.mst” file > Open > OK

Lastly – my MST does not have any warranty (but it should work)

Lastly lastly – if you’re using an MSP to update instead of an MSI here’s the cod ;) : msiexec /update AdbeRdrUpd1013.msp /quiet

* You can get the patches from the links I put in way in the beginning for your version – the section with the word “Link” to the update paths.

For loops and executing remote commands on a list of PC’s – Did this help you (comment!)?

A colleague of mine uses this handy tool (and now I do too!). It’s called a “for loop“. From a Windows command line you can run an executable with options against a list of PC’s (or any list for that matter). The command will iterate through each item in your list.

Here’s the code and procedure:

PSTools lets you run remote commands on Windows PC’s download it and extract the files: Download

Make a list of PC’s in your domain, M$’s got a nice method for enumerating computers in a Windows domain: Link

To make it easy, put your text file with the list of domain computers in the same directory of your PSTools (I called mine “computers.txt”). Open a command prompt and migrate to the PSTools directory. If you type in “for /?” you get a HUGE list of methods for the “for” command line methodology.

You’ll see a line like this in the list which is what we’re using, I list the process running called “OUTLOOK”, this means those in the list are actively running OUTLOOK:

FOR /F [“options”] %variable IN (file-set) DO command [command-parameters]

Run this: for /f %i in (computers.txt) do pslist -e OUTLOOK %i

You’ll get something back that looks like this:
________________________________________________________

Process information for COMPUTER:

Name Pid Pri Thd Hnd Priv CPU Time Elapsed Time
OUTLOOK 2520 8 40 2540 218408 0:01:23.750 8:10:55.620
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Outlook takes a shade over 1 minute of my CPU time in the 9 hours my PC’s been up and running. If you’ve got a rougue process taking over a machine somewhere on your network pslist.exe is a great way to inspect that machine and evaluate what’s running or how many resources something is utilizing.

You can browse the PSTools apps to see what hidden treasure you can find or download other exe’s that run on Windows! Cygwin has a TON of exe’s that run on Windows, they can help you do all kinds of automated tasks on your machine or remote machines. I know I haven’t even cracked the surface!

WordPress Catagories not showing! – Did this help you (comment!)?

Apparently; in WordPress there’s a bug that hasn’t been addressed. Until it’s fixed I’ve hacked my site to ignore it by commenting out several lines of code that display the “catagories” section. The problem that others are also having is this…as you make categories so you can properly sort your posts they don’t show up! For the search engines: WordPress categorizes not showing. Back to my post, all I saw was, “Home” and “Uncatagorized”. This was personally irritating and if I want to waste more time maybe I’ll look into it, but I’m not an “expert” which is why I said “I’ve hacked my site”. I know enough to be dangerous, LOOKOUT! I don’t think it’s a MySQL problem, hard disk problem, etc as some have posted if you search for it online although they said it fixed it for them. It might be a permissions problem but I think that’s unlikely. Permissions on my WordPress folder tree don’t seem to be it in my mind (but I won’t rule it out either). If you’re an eager beaver and feel like doing the same thing I did this is what I did. Oh, this is the site I was looking at when I got the brilliant idea to just change how the template works —> Here.

I commented out code to ignore the categories and only post my “pages” as my links, it’ll work for now since the home page shows everything in the “uncategorized” group anyway. Now – there is one quirk here but it’s less irritating than the former quirk. The quirk being, the “Home” link doesn’t get you back to the root page if you click your other page links but for me it’s something I can live with, if they want to go back to the root page they can click the top most URL.

In your theme folder (I’m using “pixel”): /wp-content/themes/pixel

Edit this file and code, it might not look “exactly” like mine but it’ll be close!: header.php

Original Code that listed the pages in the upper right hand of the page:

div id=”topright“>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_pages(‘depth=1&title_li=0&sort_column=menu_order’); ?>
<li><a href=”#searchform”>search</a></li>
<li><a href=”#main”>skip to content ↓</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div></div>
</div> <!– Closes header –>

Comment out the PHP with // and leave the rest unless you don’t want it:

<?php // wp_list_pages(‘depth=1&title_li=0&sort_column=menu_order’); ?>

I then edited the code below to list the pages instead of the categories:

Original Code, not this is NOT the same code we just edited, this code is what should be next in line in your header.php:

<div id=”catnav”>
<div id=”toprss”><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>”><img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_directory’); ?>/images/rss-trans.png” alt=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?>” width=”65″ height=”24″ /></a></div> <!– Closes toprss –>
<ul id=”nav”>
<li><a href=”<?php echo get_option(‘home’); ?>”>Home</a></li>
<?php wp_list_categories(‘sort_column=name&title_li=&depth=2’); ?>
</ul>
</div> <!– Closes catnav –>

Edit this line and change to list pages, the part in ITALICS is from the original code listing it “topright”:

<?php wp_list_pages(‘depth=1&title_li=0&sort_column=menu_order’); ?>

Results: Took catagories not showing away all together and replaced them with normal page links but on the homepage the uncatagorized posts still show as default which is still sort of a problem but much better than the original problem. If you rename your originals and keep them you can easily flip back once the real solution is found! Keep digging and let me know if you find it, I’ll do the same if I find it.

Blackle.com!

Anyone know why I have a mainly black website or why I really do use Blackle when I can to search instead of Google? (Edit: I no longer have a mostly black website due to readability, white text on black background was HARSH on the eyes I’ve found). It actually takes less power on your computer monitor / screen to render black than it does other colors, long live dark websites not because I’m a fan of a Gothic culture but because it’s the green thing to do! Lastly – even though your family will shun you for doing this; set your computer desktop wallpaper to pure black. If they ask tell them you’d rather see them in person than look at their picture.

Know more about how Blackle saves energy and you can save energy too —> Here!

Resetting and reauthorization of a WSUS client – Did this help you (comment!)?

I thought that in honor of M$ “Patch Tuesday” I’d throw out a bat file I use to reset troublesome XP clients that won’t talk or that stop talking to WSUS servers. Feel free to use it. The actual code is this below or you can download <— there.

I actually forget where I got all the code for this file, it’s a patchwork of a few different tech sites I found online of course. Perhaps this code will help someone out.

Code:
____________________________________________________________
:: Re-registering update dll’s

regsvr32.exe %systemroot%\system32\wuweb.dll /s
regsvr32.exe %systemroot%\system32\wups2.dll /s
regsvr32.exe %systemroot%\system32\wups.dll /s
regsvr32.exe %systemroot%\system32\wucltui.dll /s
regsvr32.exe %systemroot%\system32\wuaueng1.dll /s
regsvr32.exe %systemroot%\system32\wuaueng.dll /s
regsvr32.exe %systemroot%\system32\wuapi.dll /s

:: Rename the Software Distribution folder on local workstation for WSUS

cd \

ren %WINDIR%\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution_old

:: Start automatic updates, re-registering dlls’s kills that service

net start “Automatic Updates”

:: Re-authorize with WSUS and detect updates

wuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow
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I like to space my code out a lot and comment it so I can not only read it but so that others can also make sense of it.

Something’s broken with WP!

Categories are NOT WORKING, come on! I even forced an upgrade which I must say went as smooth as butter, great job WP people.

* The “real” fix is to make your categories, make your post, then put your post into that category! If your category doesn’t have a post in it WordPress is smart enough not to even show it…brilliant huh? It’s that simple! WOW I have egg on my face :-)