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Old November 23rd 14, 08:30 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware
Paul
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Posts: 18,275
Default Microsoft Fixit can't contact server??

jbclem wrote:
I have a CD-ROM device that won't read or play disks, and I'm trying to run
Microsoft Fixit to get some diagnosing help. But when I try to run Fixit I
get the error message that it can't contact the server. Since my internet
is working fine, I'm not sure what the problem it, but it's persisted for
days.

I'm using WinXP, could this be the problem (no more support?). The firewall
is turned off, could there be a problem with Microsoft servers?

Any suggestions?



OK, I rewrote my answer a bit... And removed some but not
all of the techie stuff :-)

I reproduced your symptoms. In the sense that, I attempted
to download the current Fixit. It's a stub only, not the
Fixit. The stub, in turn, opens a connection to some Microsoft
server. It looks like TLS is being used perhaps. (As SSL is
rather broken now.)

Anyway, the freaking stub does a 40MB download (that's the part
that didn't arrive on your machine). It includes a copy of Powershell.

It means Microsoft re-wrote the Fixit to use Powershell.
At least, since the copy of that Fixit that I have archived.

For a person on dialup, they're cursing right about now. 40MB...

*******

So the race is on, to find an old copy of 50027.
OK, this link still works! Yippee.

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...Fixit50027.msi

When the program is downloaded, I double-click from my download
folder, agree to the license. Then I see...

"After you run this Microsoft Fixit, some programs
might not be able to use your CD or DVD
drive until you reinstall those programs."

Which of course is insanity, because the problem will come back
if you reinstall the trouble maker.

"Some examples of programs that might be affected by
this Microsoft Fixit

iTunes software by Apple [Likely the Gear Software burner]
Nero software by Nero Inc
Roxio Creator software by Sonic Solutions
Zune software by Microsoft [??? really?]"

Anyway, I wanted to go that far, to verify that is
the fixit for DVD drives. That's the Fixit that removed
an UpperFilter entry from a certain ClassID.

The old file is 652,288 bytes.
The sha1sum of the old (non-Powershell) MicrosoftFixit50027.msi is

98b9236f5416fdd692dd4b7e6a468225269e9335

Hope it fixes your drive for you. What the Fixit will be
doing, is deleting the contents of UpperFilter, for this
specific ClassID, so it no longer conflicts with other things.
By removing the driver entry that UpperFilter points to,
on the next reboot the optical drive might be working again.
That's a guess as to what will happen.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

UpperFilter

( as seen in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929461 )

Note that only that {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
one should be touched in any case. If you delete other
UpperFilter entries similar to that one, it can kill
your keyboard or mouse. So don't do that :-)

The main benefit of the Fixit, is the user not touching
the Registry directly. If you have any doubts about
what is going to happen, you could set a Restore Point,
which writes out a copy of the Registry and other things,
and allows you to go back in time, in case the computer
is (partially) "bricked". For example, you can revert
a System Restore point, from Safe Mode.

System Restore is in places like:

Programs : Accessories : System Tools : System Restore
Control Panels : System : System Restore tab (to verify, turned on)

HTH,
Paul
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