Have you ever encountered the “The RPC server is unavailable” error message when trying to start Disk Manager? Have you also noticed that Event Viewer and Disk Defragmenter don’t work either? In fact, if you look at the Services window, you’ll notice that many of Window’s necessary services are not running at all, including the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Service. Try to start this service and (after a while) you’ll see the “Could not start the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Service. Error 1058″ error message.

After some Googling, you will have discovered this is caused by the DCOM Server Process Launcher will also failing to start. Many other programs and services require this service because they are DCOM objects, or connect to DCOM objects. You will have also found many other people with the same problem and their solutions (e.g., reboot, Malware scan, sfc /scannow, rollback to restore point, reinstall Windows).

However, if you are like me, none of those solutions solved your Windows’ problem. Here’s what happened to me and how I solved it, and I hope it works for you. (If you are too impatient to read my prose, just skip ahead to the The Solution! section.

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This blog article is an announcement of the unveiling of the new Virtualization technology discussion forum here at TechExams.net. This new forum is for all discussions about virtualization products, information, training, and certification. Also welcome are questions about setting up a virtualization lab, configuring, using and troubleshooting virtualization software, and generally discovering what virtualization is.

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Microsoft has given its customers an early holiday present with the first release candidate (RC1) for Windows XP Service Pack 3. Windows XP SP3 RC1 is a pre-release intended for post-beta testing. It also puts to rest the speculation that Microsoft will or will not release a third service pack for Windows XP.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 is currently scheduled for full release during the first quarter of 2008, at which time its contents will be fully described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 936929: Release Notes for Windows XP Service Pack 3. Until then, the official description resides in the PDF file Overview of Windows XP Service Pack 3. An excellent alternate source of ongoing SP3 information is Paul Thurrott’s Windows XP Service Pack 3 FAQ.

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It’s getting close to the gift-giving season and you might be thinking about building (or rebuilding) a Windows computer as a present for someone, or possibly even as a gift to yourself. When I rebuild a computer, I like to install a standard set of utilities and tools that are very useful for keeping the computer working well and for fixing any problems that will inevitably occur.

Windows XP and Vista come with a variety of software tools for providing useful services, such as backing up and defragmenting the hard drive and scanning for malicious software. However, not all tools you may need are included with Windows, and certainly not the best tools for every job. And when you start adding up the costs of all the tools you might need, you’ve just added several hundred dollars to the cost of rebuilding that old computer! Doesn’t anybody make good Windows tools that are also free?

In this article, I look at ten categories of computer utilities used to fix, maintain, and provide useful services for Windows computers, and I make recommendations of free tools for you to try. All of the tools listed are freely distributed under a public license and are available from their owner’s Web site, or from the amazing selection of Freeware tools at MajorGeeks.com.

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Back in August 2007, Microsoft released a critical update for a Visual Basic 6 Runtime file. The file, OLEAUT32.DLL, contains a vulnerability that can be exploited and allowing an attacker to gain complete control of a computer if the logged-on user has Administrator privileges. The exploit may be performed by a COM component or an ActiveX control residing in a Windows application or a Web page.

The vulnerability itself is caused by the improper checking of input data, allowing specially crafted memory requests to be passed to the Windows OLE Automation service. The OLEAUT32.DLL library provides the API to COM and ActiveX components to access this service. The update released by Microsoft patches the vulnerability by adding validity checking to memory requests.

So what’s to worry? You faithfully run Microsoft Update on the second Tuesday of every month, right? Well, hang on to your mouse–not all critical updates released by Microsoft are distributed through Microsoft Updates. This Visual Basic critical vulnerability is one that you’ll need to patch yourself.

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