The problem I'm talking about today is trying to upgrade your Windows 7 installation to SP1 by applying Microsoft's update KB976932, called "Windows 7 Service Pack 1 for x64-based Systems" and getting nothing but a failure every time. The same problem may affect 32-bit systems as well, and I'm not sure what the update number for that would be, but the solution should work for either one.

The update starts just fine, chugs along for 10 minutes or so, then reboots the system and starts performing more operations, when suddenly one of them fails about 10% down the road, reboots, and reverts the whole process. You end up with this message (code 80070490) and a failure for which there are a lot of useless "solutions" on the web that just don't work.

Except for one. I can't take credit for it – all I did was spend a month weeding through the crap, retrying, and getting nowhere, until a genius by the name Ben-IS came up with exactly the right diagnosis and provided exactly the right solution. This solution, in my own interpretation, is below.

Step 1

We are going to use a utility called SFC (System File Checker or Windows Resource Checker), which is part of the Windows installation. It will help diagnose the problem.

Open up a command prompt (cmd) as administrator and run

sfc /scannow

This will run for a while and produce a file called CBS.log which you can find in %WINDIR%\Logs\CBS (usually C:\Windows\Logs\CBS). See this KB929833 for more info on SFC and CBS (Component Based Servicing).

sfc /scannow

Beginning system scan.  This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

Even though there are no integrity violations, we should have enough info in the log to diagnose the problem.

Step 2

Unfortunately, Windows overwrote my CBS.log, so I'll go by the one Ben-IS provided.

Open up CBS.log and look for something like Failed uninstalling driver updates or 0×80070490 – ERROR_NOT_FOUND.

If you have this line, which you should if you're reading this post, you should also see lines similar to these a few lines above:

2011-04-14 12:02:33, Info CBS Doqe: q-uninstall: Inf: usbvideo.inf, Ranking: 2, Device-Install: 0, Key: 598, Identity: usbvideo.inf, Culture=neutral, Type=driverUpdate, Version=6.1.7600.16543, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35, ProcessorArchitecture=amd64, versionScope=NonSxS

2011-04-14 12:02:33, Info CBS Doqe: q-uninstall: Inf: sffdisk.inf, Ranking: 2, Device-Install: 0, Key: 599, Identity: sffdisk.inf, Culture=neutral, Type=driverUpdate, Version=6.1.7600.16438, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35, ProcessorArchitecture=amd64, versionScope=NonSxS

2011-04-14 12:02:33, Info CBS Doqe: q-uninstall: Inf: sdbus.inf, Ranking: 2, Device-Install: 0, Key: 600, Identity: sdbus.inf, Culture=neutral, Type=driverUpdate, Version=6.1.7600.16438, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35, ProcessorArchitecture=amd64, versionScope=NonSxS

One of these .inf files is the culprit, and we're going to find out which one in the next step.

Step 3

Now open up a different log file located at %WINDIR%\inf\setupapi.dev.log (normally c:\Windows\inf\setupapi.dev.log).

Look for a line that contains Failed to find driver update or FAILURE(0×00000490).

Note the exact path to the .inf file that failed. In my case, it was:

sto: Failed to find driver update 'C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_usbvideo.inf_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16543_none_8a1a2513d42628c3\usbvideo.inf' in Driver Store. Error = 0×00000490

Step 4

This is the key to the whole operation. Open up the command prompt again (cmd) as administrator and run

pnputil -a INSERT_FILE_NAME_FROM_STEP_3

For example, I ran

pnputil -a C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_usbvideo.inf_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16543_none_8a1a2513d42628c3\usbvideo.inf

You should see the following dialog:

Choose Install this driver software anyway.

The end result should be something like this:

pnputil -a C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_usbvideo.inf_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16543_none_8a1a2513d42628c3\usbvideo.inf
Microsoft PnP Utility

Processing inf :            usbvideo.inf
Driver package added successfully.
Published name :            oem69.inf

Total attempted:              1
Number successfully imported: 1

Repeat this step for any failures found in step 3.

Step 5

Apply the SP1 Windows Update again – it should now install successfully.

And voila – enjoy your SP1!

Microsoft has failed to fix this incredibly cryptic problem, leaving it up to the users to figure out why their SP1 updates are not installing. Thanks to people like Ben-IS, solutions no longer involve head-banging, postal rage, and f7u12.

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Introduction

If your WordPress comment counts got messed up, whether because of a plugin (I'm talking about you, DISQUS) or you messed with your database manually and did something wrong (yup, that's what I just did), fear not – I have a solution for you.

But first, a little background.

Comment Counts In WordPress

Here's how comment counts work in WP:

• Posts live in a table called wp_posts and each has an ID.
• Comments reside in a table called wp_comments, each referring to an ID in wp_posts.
• However, to make queries faster, the comment count is also cached in the wp_posts table, rather than getting calculated on every page load.
  If this count ever gets out of sync with the actual number of comments for some reason, WordPress, while still displaying all comments properly, will simply show the wrong count.

How To Find Out Which Posts Are Out Of Sync

Fire up a MySQL shell or your favorite MySQL software (mine is Navicat) and run this query.

It assumes your database is called wordpress and the prefix is wp_, so adjust those accordingly.

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SELECT wpp.id, wpp.post_title, wpp.comment_count, wpc.cnt
FROM wordpress.wp_posts wpp
LEFT JOIN
(SELECT comment_post_id AS c_post_id, count(*) AS cnt FROM wordpress.wp_comments
 WHERE comment_approved = 1 GROUP BY comment_post_id) wpc
ON wpp.id=wpc.c_post_id
WHERE wpp.post_type IN ('post', 'page')
      AND (wpp.comment_count!=wpc.cnt OR (wpp.comment_count != 0 AND wpc.cnt IS NULL));

The result of this query is a list of posts whose comment_counts differ from the actual number of comments associated with each of them.

The left count is the cached number, while the right one is the right one.

How To Fix The Counts Automatically

The following query will recalculate and fix the comment counts for all posts that are out of sync (ones we just queried for above):

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UPDATE wordpress.wp_posts wpp
LEFT JOIN
(SELECT comment_post_id AS c_post_id, count(*) AS cnt FROM wordpress.wp_comments
 WHERE comment_approved = 1 GROUP BY comment_post_id) wpc
ON wpp.id=wpc.c_post_id
SET wpp.comment_count=wpc.cnt
WHERE wpp.post_type IN ('post', 'page')
      AND (wpp.comment_count!=wpc.cnt OR (wpp.comment_count != 0 AND wpc.cnt IS NULL));

I tested this approach on a few test cases but if you experience any problems, please do alert me in the comments and desribe your problem.

Happy WP hacking!

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The Update

To update your Hero, go to Settings->About phone->System updates->Firmware update.

The update took about 10 minutes to install, weighed 3.7MB or so, and rebooted the phone twice – once to install and once to reboot after the installation, so make sure you don't need to make any important phone calls during that time.

After the update, I immediately noticed the broken application icons (issue #4 on my bug list) fixed. The phone seems is definitely quite a bit snappier, which I hope points in the direction of some fixes in the battery and lag department (issues #1 and #2).

Since there don't seem to be any official details out from HTC or Sprint at the moment (I found out about the update by doing a random Google search and arriving at a random Facebook post), I cannot see the final bug fix and feature list, but here's what I managed to gather so far from my own observations and online [1] [2]:

What's New

Fixes

• broken app icons are fixed. This issue was also known as the boot caching issue
• broken app names are somewhat fixed. Some of mine weren't but I reinstalled them and so far they display correctly
• the major battery draining 100% awake SMS and letting the phone go to sleep after boot bugs are fixed. I've gone ahead and uninstalled HandcentSMS to see if my visual voicemail notifications will come back (they seemed to have gone away after I switched to Handcent)
• not receiving SMS when low on space is fixed
• memory leak related to bluetooth is fixed
• dialer app using too much CPU bug is fixed
• daylight savings time calendar issue is fixed
• the stereo headphone issue is fixed

Improvements

• the phone is a lot snappier – the lag is pretty much gone in a lot of cases but it's still there in others, especially in the Phone app and the browser. For example, I killed the browser and started it again – it took 20 seconds before google.com was loaded, 10 of which I spent staring at an almost completely white screen
  I have a feeling it is due to fixing something with the cleaning up of the old uninstalled apps. My theory is that the Hero didn't uninstall the apps properly, perhaps leaving their cache behind, thus slowing down more and more as I tried out more and more apps
• Update: I just charged the battery and I think the battery charged a lot faster than before, which is a really good sign
• loading of app lists seems to be a lot faster. By that I mean any time the phone shows a list of installed applications, it seems to show up a lot faster than before (Add shortcut, Manage, etc)
• camera quality is improved

New Features

• app search – if you push the search button from anywhere inside the Market app, it now pops up the app search dialog rather than the regular google search
• there are 2 new icons during a phone call: mute and speaker. I took a photo of this, which you can see below
• the green Android dude looks more 3D-ish now – a minor but nice UI change

Problems

• a lot of users are reporting that some of their apps, including paid ones, have gone missing
• the haptic feedback (vibrate on press) in the Phone app is now permanently on, even though I turned it off in the keyboard settings. I am fairly sure it's either a bug or a new "feature" that we didn't want, as it doesn't respect phone-wide settings

Miscellaneous Notes

• the update did not fix the all-day event 1 day too early notification problem
• I did not find an update for the voicemail app that some people mentioned (mine is at v5.0.0.32)
• the "linked program is no longer installed on your phone" problem that I'm having with my Twidroid shortcut every time I update it is still there (it goes away after phone reboot)

Overall, I'm very happy that Sprint and HTC are coming through. I was really afraid they would wait for the next big thing (Android "Eclair" 2.0) instead of releasing the necessary bug fixes but, thankfully, that didn't happen.

What else did you notice with the new upgrade that I missed? Is anything broken?

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SimplifyMedia is an extremely useful program, which allows super easy song and playlist sharing via streaming between multiple computers. It also works as a Winamp plugin, so the shared songs simply show up inside Winamp's own media library – each computer sharing music appears under the special "Shared" tab. And the beauty is – there is no need to muck around with network settings, open ports, or even touch your router.

Here's a screenshot of how it's supposed to work:

The Problem

Since I recently installed Windows 7 64bit on my laptop, I wanted to set up SimplifyMedia on it and listen to some tracks in my favorite music player Winamp. However, after I downloaded and installed it and restarted Winamp, the Shared tab did not show up. The SimplifyMedia installer did tell me that a 64 bit version of Windows isn't explicitly supported but mentioned it should still work fine.

The Solution

After reinstalling, analyzing, and comparing with my other computers, I found that the SimplifyMedia installer didn't copy the needed Winamp plugin files, namely ml_simplify.dll and ml_simplifyexp.dll. After I copied them over into the Winamp/Plugins directory and restarted Winamp, the Shared tab showed up like a charm.

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