Fix “This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action” in Vista and 7

Few days ago there was a newly signed up user in forum requesting for help. Initially his computer had some error messages that pops up during Windows startup and he tried using some third party software to fix it. However it ended up making his computer unable to run any exe programs at all including the icons on desktop. He was very sure that he only changed the ProgramFilesDir value from C: to D: in registry. From what I know, this only changes the default location of Program Files where software are installed but no matter what, we all tried to help him undo the changes he made. I showed him how to run registry editor but he wasn’t able to as he kept on getting the error message “This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action".


After spending a few hours trying to help and without any success, then I started thinking maybe this problem is caused by another factor which I’ve encountered before in Windows XP. Somehow a virus managed to corrupt the .exe association in registry causing the user unable to run any programs. I used TeamViewer to remotely connect to his computer and tried running this command “assoc.exe=exefile” in command prompt which should fix the problem but don’t know why this command has been denied. I checked his user account and he is an administrator. I then tried to use DougKnox’s EXE registry fix but that failed too because I wasn’t able to import the .reg file since it requires regedit.exe. I also converted the .reg file into .exe file which can imported into registry without using regedit and that too didn’t work.

After 2 days, I am glad that I finally managed to fix the problem.

work is because the Windows Vista registry location for exe association is different from XP. Obviously using the XP fix cannot work on Vista
!

When you have a corrupted exe association, you definitely cannot use any registry editor to fix it because it is impossible to run it in the first place. So here are a few methods you can try:

1. Run command prompt and type assoc.exe=exefile (If you get access denied error, try step 2)

2. Download this .reg file and run it. Make sure you right click and select Save As. (If you cannot import the .reg file because Windows cannot find the registry editor, then try step 3)

3. Open command prompt and type the following command REG IMPORT vista-7-fixexe.reg. Make sure you’ve already CD to the directory where the .reg file is. (If you have problems getting this to work, try step 4)

4. Download the EXE compiled version of the registry file above and run it. Although it doesn’t make sense to run this exe file since most of the exe files are blocked, but this is the one that fixed the user’s computer. (If this couldn’t fix it, try step 5)

5. Microsoft Fix It has an automated way to fixing the exe association problem. Simply download this MicrosoftFixit50194.msi file and run it.

If done correctly, it should fix the problem instantly and no reboot is required. Now I will always remember that whatever works in XP doesn’t necessarily works on Vista and 7.

Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Update Hang and Timeout Problem

There has been quite a lot of complaints about Avira recent updating problem that hangs and counts time elapsed endlessly. Check Avira forums and you will see how many people are complaining over it. Honestly I do not use Avira even though I say that Avira is the best free antivirus because I have commercial license for Kaspersky and Norton. If compared between a paid and a free software, I prefer to use paid because I am eligible for prompt support. So I installed Avira on my test computer and researched for a few days on what’s happening to Avira’s update servers. I wasn‘t very sure at first but now I am confident to share with you on my findings and also the temporary fix until Avira fix the problem at their side.

One of the main difference between the personal and premium edition is the premium edition gets to update the latest virus definition using Avira’s Fast Premium update server. This is true because the Avira AntiVir personal edition gets the latest virus definition from personal.avira-updates.com and the premium gets it from premium.avira-updates.com. There are only 4 premium servers and as for the personal update servers, there are 24 of them. I am able to download the virus definition at full speed from any of the 4 premium servers but as for the 24 servers that are used for personal edition, I get timeout most of the time on 20 servers and only 4 ipv6 servers are working.

I get to compile a list of Avira update servers by multi pinging Avira’s personal update server personal.avira-update.com. Do take note that the IP address could change if Avira decides to do that.

Personal
80.190.143.227
80.190.143.228
80.190.143.229
80.190.143.230
80.190.143.231
80.190.143.232
80.190.143.233
80.190.143.234
80.190.143.235
80.190.143.236
80.190.143.237
80.190.143.239
62.146.66.178
62.146.66.179
62.146.66.181
62.146.66.182
62.146.66.183
62.146.66.184
62.146.66.189
62.146.66.190
2a01:138:a001:201::21 (works most of the time)
2a01:138:a001:201::22 (works most of the time)
2a01:138:a001:201::23 (works most of the time)
2a01:138:a001:201::24 (works most of the time)

Premium
62.146.87.171
62.146.87.172
80.190.154.74
80.190.154.73

As you can see from the multi ping test, Avira randomly assigns an update server for you to download the updated definition. From what I’ve noticed, most of the time Avira will try to assign one of the 4 of the ipv6 update servers to personal users. Only sometimes you will directly get the ipv4 update server. I believe the reason they are doing this is because all of the 20 ipv4 servers are overloaded. I’ve used DownTester to try to download a 5MB definition file from all 20 servers with a setting of 50 retries if failed and guess what, NONE of the servers allowed me to successfully complete downloading the 5MB file.


It’s really a bad decision to use the ipv6 servers because by default Windows XP
don’t have ipv6 installed and configured. Installing IPv6 in XP is easy but you still won’t be able to connect to the ipv6 servers as it doesn’t work right out of the box. Pardon me, I have no experience with configuring ipv6 nor could I get XP to connect the Avira ipv6 update servers. When Avira on XP tries to connect to the ipv6 servers, it hangs for a very long time until it times out and redirects you to one of the 20 ipv4 servers, and again, those are problematic slow servers. So, basically Avira users on Windows XP is pretty much screwed until Avira gets more servers or fix it. If you are using Windows Vista and 7, you shouldn’t have any problems because the operating system already supports ipv6.

If you are using Windows Vista
or Seven and wants to manually select which Avira update server to use, then you can use your Windows HOSTS file to map personal.avira-update.com and personal.avira-update.net to any of the IP address. Unfortunately we CANNOT redirect and use the premium servers because the definition files being used are slightly different. When Avira couldn’t find the files that they are looking for, it will automatically redirect you back to any of the free servers.

Here is how to modify your Windows HOSTS file so that the Avira AntiVir Personal Edition can download the updates from working servers.

1. Simultaneously press Win+R on your keyboard and you should see a Run box.



2. Type this in the box %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc and click OK.

3. Open the hosts file with a text editor such as Notepad.

4. Copy the 2 lines below and paste it to the last line at the hosts file. Save the file.

2a01:138:a001:201::21 personal.avira-update.com
2a01:138:a001:201::21 personal.avira-update.net

It should look like the screenshot
below.

One of the user from Avira forum suggested that Windows XP users can add this 2 lines to hosts file. I’ve tested it and ended up waiting for more than 20 minutes to download the updates but still stuck with the message “Files are being downloaded” with no progress at all.

::1 personal.avira-update.com
::1 personal.avira-update.net

5. Save the hosts file either by going to File > Save or just simultaneously press Ctrl+S. Now try to update Avira and it should work now.

Just for your knowledge, the HOSTS file can only map host names to IP addresses. If you haven’t noticed, all four ipv6 address are nearly the same except for the last character which is 21, 22, 23 and 24. You can try any of the four servers by changing the hosts file to find which Avira personal update server works best for you. Remember, the IPv6 servers can only work in Vista and 7. It doesn’t work on XP unless you’ve managed to install and configure IPv6 properly. I wonder if this is one of the Avira’s dirty tactic to make everyone pay and upgrade to Premium edition? They better fix it fast or else many people will start switching to Avast! or Microsoft Security Essentials.

Hacking Firefox to Always Auto Save Password Without Showing Notification Bar

As usual when I was screening through all the new posts in forum to see if there are any spam and also any computer topic that I can help, I saw an interest question asked by Rizzano. He wanted to know if there is anyway to make Firefox auto save password without clicking the Remember button. In Firefox, even if you have the option “Security Remember passwords for sites” checked in Tools > Options,the browser will still display a notification bar at the top that asks “Do you want Firefox to remember the password for “Username” on website.com?” with three buttons “Remember”, “Never for This Site” and “Not Now”.

The first thing that came to my mind was perhaps there is an addon that can do this but I couldn’t find any that can make Firefox auto save password without prompting. After spending nearly two hours researching on how Firefox saves the password, I managed to find a way on how to make Firefox save the login information to the Firefox Saved Passwords manager.

First, I searched some of the important keywords such as “Never for This Site” and “Not Now” on all the files and found that this function is controlled by a few javascript .js files. Then I was more confident in getting this to work since I didn’t have to go through the trouble of downloading the Firefox source code, modify and compile it.

When you submit a form with username and password, it will process the function:

1. _onFormSubmit() in nsLoginManager.js
2. promptToSavePassword in nsLoginManagerPrompter.js
3. _showSaveLoginNotification in nsLoginManagerPrompter.js
4. addLogin in nsLoginManager.js

1. Close Firefox
2. Edit nsLoginManagerPrompter.js with notepad which is normally located in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\components\
3. Replace the entire line 642 to 711 with the code below:

var pwmgr = this._pwmgr;
pwmgr.addLogin(aLogin);

Now whenever you login to any website, Firefox will auto save the site, username and password to the login manager WITHOUT showing the notification bar. You can access the saved password area by going to Tools > Options > Security and click the Saved Passwords button. There is one possible bug which is even when a user entered the wrong username or password, it will still be saved. I am calling this a hack instead of customization because it’s not an included feature in Firefox. I had to manually modify one of it’s original core files to make this work. Thinking about this logically, obviously Firefox did not include such feature nor there is an addon for this because they don’t want the world’s favorite browser to turn into a keylogger. Use it with care and think twice before implementing this illegally as it can get you into a lot of trouble!