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Quite an odd thing happened today… I encountered the same very specific error twice on two completely unrelated computers (two different clients). In _both_ cases, clamwin had unnecessarily quarantined the following file:

On both machines, this occurred during a scheduled scan. The symptoms of this problem are that windows will allow the user to login, but it immediately logs out after a second or two. Here’s how I fixed it in both cases:

1. Boot into the recovery console using a Windows XP install disk
2. Select the windows installation experiencing the problem and type the Administrator password when asked
3. Run the following command (assuming that your CD-ROM is D:\ and your hard drive is C:\):
   expand D:\I386\USERINIT.EX_ C:\WINDOWS\system32
4. Remove the CD from the drive then type ‘exit’ and hit ‘enter’ to reboot.

Once the computer boots properly (and allows you to stay logged in), use Malwarebytes, Spybot, HijackThis, etc. to scan your computer for viruses and/or spyware.

Update, 5 August 2009:

Just an additional note; you’ll want to be sure that the version of the file you copy from the installation disk is compatible with the service pack installed (it’s likely not). Symptoms of this incompatibility include things like explorer freezing when you try to shutdown or restart the computer. Uninstalling then Reinstalling the service pack should fix this issue. Alternatively, (and if ClamWin was the culprit) you could restore the old userinit.exe file from ClamWin’s quarantine directory… be sure to scan the file before doing this or else you could end up restoring an infected copy. So far, on every computer I’ve had to fix because of this (five and counting), ClamWin had falsely identified the userinit.exe file as a virus.

Error:

When clicking on the ‘File’ menu in Microsoft Document Imaging.

This problem has been around since at least office 2003. Lately I’ve been encountering it in recently updated versions of 2007, and by far the most straightforward way to fix it seems to be the following:

1. Run regedit (‘Start’ -> ‘Run’, type ‘regedit’ and click ‘Ok’)
2. Browse to the following registry key**:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSPaper 12.0\Recent File List
3. Delete every value in the key (to clarify, delete all the values that appear in the right window).

From what I understand (from having to fix it in previous versions), there is a character limit on the file path of items that appear in the “Recently Opened/Used Files” portion of the ‘File’ menu. If a file whose path exceeds this limit (in previous versions it was 55 characters) appears in this menu, MODI will crash with the above error.

**Replace ‘MSPaper 12.0′ with whatever version you’re using; for example, office 2003 will be ‘MSPaper 11.0′

Click “This Old House” under the Art/Design category in the Project Index to see some pictures!

The following vbs code will disable Advanced Text Services:

Option Explicit
Dim objShell
Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
objShell.RegWrite _
"HKCU\Software\Microsoft\CTF\Disable Thread Input Manager", "1", "REG_DWORD"
objShell.RegWrite _
"HKCU\Software\Microsoft\CTF\Langbar\ExtraIconsOnMinimized", "0", "REG_DWORD"
objShell.RegWrite _
"HKCU\Software\Microsoft\CTF\Langbar\ShowStatus", "2", "REG_DWORD"
objShell.RegWrite _
"HKCU\Software\Microsoft\CTF\MSUTB\ShowDeskBand", "1", "REG_DWORD"

If you would like to uninstall this service completely (and prevent ctfmon.exe from running) then see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282599

I still have a few users who use Outlook 2002. For the most part, they don’t have any reason to upgrade as it still meets their needs and I can’t justify telling them to spend ~$300 per user just to do what they’re already doing (sending/receiving e-mail… If I had my way, they’d all be using Thunderbird.) Today however, I encountered the following bug:

(1) User composes an e-mail (using word as their mail editor). The user also attaches either a word, excel, or powerpoint attachment to the message (tested with all three file types).

(2) User saves the message to drafts.

(3) A little while later, the user decides to finish writing this e-mail. They casually double click the attachment (in this case, a word document) link below the subject line and get the following message:

No big deal right? We’ve all seen this before. But there’s a problem! When they try to click on the ‘Open it’ option, Outlook is unresponsive. The only thing they can do at this point is kill OUTLOOK.EXE via the task manager. What makes this even weirder is that if the user re-opens Outlook, navigates to the ‘Drafts’ folder, opens the message and instead right-clicks the attachment, then selects ‘Open’ from the context menu, the problem does not manifest itself when the user tries to click the ‘Open it’ option on the subsequent warning message.

In this case, the user is accessing Outlook via a Terminal Services session, so upon being notified by the user that “my Outlook is frozen”, I login and take over their session. I do not notice a problem; I was able to click on the ‘Open it’ option just fine and Outlook was responsive. The user was happy that I fixed their problem and all was well… until it happened again. And again. So now I’m in WTF mode. I was able to recreate the error—it occurs whenever you (1) are composing a message with an attachment, and then double click on the attachment or (2) do the same thing from a message saved in ‘Drafts’. Right-clicking and selecting ‘Open’ _always_ works however. After googling for a few minutes, I came to the conclusion that this had something to do with “Advanced Text Services” so I disabled it, closed Outlook, logged out, logged in, opened Outlook, tried to recreate the error again and everything worked just fine!

To disable Advanced Text Services (in Windows XP/2003 … probably others):

1. Click Start, then Control Panel.
2. If Control Panel is in Category view, click the Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options link, and then click the Regional and Language Options icon.
   If Control Panel is in Classic view, double-click the Regional and Language Options control panel.
3. Click the Languages tab. Click Details.
4. Click the Advanced tab. Check Turn off advanced text services.
5. Click OK. Click OK.
6. Close the control panel

Or, if you’d like to disable this feature automatically (via domain login script), click here.