Best Buy $1000 Gift Card Text Scam

I was recently contacted by someone regarding a text they got from Best Buy. It said the following: "Your entry last month has WON! Goto http://www.bestbuy.com.wgmc.biz/?claimid=912" They were asking me if it was a legit offer. Well it wasn't much longer tell I received the text myself later. Here is a picture of it:

The Scam in text form

At first appearance it may look like a legit link. Sadly that is not the case. The first sign of this being bad is that at the tail end of the link you see: .wgmc.biz. Sadly someone has registered wgmc.biz and then created a subdomain to add the info in front to make it appear as if it was from bestbuy. You can look at the whois info by following this link:  http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/wgmc.biz

The above picture is a screenshot of the scam intro. Here you are supposed to put in the winning code. Another bad sign though is that you can actually type in whatever code and it always says that you have a winning code and then takes you to another link. This one is biggerbidder.net, so another sign to stop, even though it shows the BestBuy images below:

I put in a a fake GMail account and random zip code info. If you proceed past this then you get a pop up and some additional offers. It also forces you to sign up for two different offers. At this point I stopped. At this point it is obviously a scam. These guys should be dealt with since our phones shoud be a sanctuary from scam, but guess it was only a matter of time.

Bottom line this  is a SCAM

Note: It says the call is from: 1 (310) 849-7742. Hopefully someone stops them.

UPDATE 5/4/2012 - I noticed the scam they used in the text they sent me for the scam no longer works, either it got pulled down or the server did. Either way I am sure they have rebounded and using new domains and/or servers. So even though it may not match the URL everything else should still apply. Be Safe

Remote Assistance, VNC, and UAC Prompts

Intro
Many of us as tech professionals are quite busy and reducing time doing unnecessary tasks is necessary so we can still complete the ever growing tasks being asked of us. One of the ways to do this is remove travel whenever it is possible. When someone has a problem and you need to resolve it then often we run down to do it ourselves.

Luckily Microsoft has us covered by including remote assistance and for some the preference or need means VNC. Both of these programs allow us to complete tasks remotely without leaving our desk. Many of us also follow LUA, aka Least-Privileged  User Account, meaning most of our users run as limited users. Because of this when you connect to a computer using the two previous methods you would have to use various "Run As" methods to remotely change some settings or install software.

With Windows XP this wasn't a problem, as long as you knew the various ways run as methods to get into various control panels, software installs, and other tasks that you might be called upon to complete.

Problem
With the advance of Windows Vista and 7 came UAC and "secure desktop." These things were great but when you wanted to use Remote Assitance or VNC then anytime something deemed that administrative rights were required you would get a blank screen with a Pause symbol on Remote Assistance and with VNC I believe it turned everything a pink color and in both cases you lost control. The user than would be displayed a prompt to put in credentials.(In Group Policy it may not be set to display credentials so your behavior may be slightly different.

This effectively reduced the functionality these tools brought us quite heavily to the point that trips were sometimes made instead. The reason this was happening is that UAC was set to display only on "Secure Desktop." For a good article on this behavior you can read a Microsoft Article here.

Solution
Security settings can be changed on the computer to fix this issue. Remember though you are loosening some the settings so read up on the changes and determine if you are fine taking the associated risk. If you are using Group Policy this makes life a lot easier. If not you can change these locally on the computer by going into "Local Security Settings" and deploy this using various methods.

Under Group Policy\Domain then you will take the following path:
Computer Configuration>Policies>Windows Settings>Security Settings> Local Policies>Security Options

Under Local Security Policy:
Local Policies>Security Options

Remote Assistance
If you are using Remote assistance then you will need to change the following settings to Enabled:
User Account Control: Allow UIAccess applications to prompt for elevation without using the secure desktop

This will allow Remote Assistance to disable "secure desktop" for UAC so you can also see the prompts allowing for you to do what is needed. For information on this setting click here.

VNC (Other Viewers such as TeamViewer should fall under this settings)
Now if you installed VNC as a service than the later version may work by just changed the above settings. If they are installed as an application, or if just changing the above setting didn't work then you need to Disable the following setting:
User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation

This will disable "Secure Desktop" for all prompts. I recommend again reading the first link mentioned in this article so you can determine for yourself if you are OK with the potential security risks. For more information about this setting you can also read this article here.

Taking the above step might also require a reboot. After the appropriate setting is changed though you should now be able to use your favorite tool to complete and RunAs remotely.

Java 1719 Uninstall Error

The Problem
So I had a computer I was cleaning up for use by another and was uninstalling unneeded software. There was an older version of Java, Version 6 Update 7, that wouldn't uninstall. It would error out with the following error. I looked around and everyone recommended various fixes by starting up and stopping services, or checking the registry.

The Solution
After looking at a couple than I tried my own fix. I went to filehippo, one of my favorite places for downloading files for multiple reasons, and downloaded the same version 6u7. I ran it and it asked me "This software has already been installed on your computer. Would you like to reinstall it?"

Go ahead and click "Yes." Eventually it will come up with the normal Welcome setup box that we are all used to. Walk through the setup like normal. When it is done hit "Finish."

Now, try uninstalling it again. It should let you uninstall it now.

Windows Update Failing with Error 80243004

The Problem

I have 8 computers that due to the software they have on them I must some and update them manually once a month. Upon doing this I had three that failed with the error to the right. The Screen sat with the status "Preparing to Install" for quite a long time then all of them failed with the error 80243004.

I had one of the computers "Try again" with no avail it just failed again. After doing that I ran around the Internet searching for a solution. I found the following thread on Technet and in it my solution here.

The Solution

The solution is strange. It has to do with the notification area of the taskbar. See by default the notification area in Windows 7 and Server 2008 hide most of the notification icons in an area found by clicking on the skyward pointing white arrow shown to the right. Well if you look at this area after this error you will see the notification area is huge with tons of blank spaces. If you are seeing this then the solution to your update problem follows below.

Right-click on some blank space on the taskbar and select "Properties" about half-way down the screen you will see a button that says "Customize...", click it. On the next screen you will see the option displayed in the picture below: "Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar", place a check by it and click "OK" to close out that window and do it again for the notification properties window as well.

 It will then display all of the notifications now in the taskbar as you see in the picture below. Go ahead and have Windows Update "Try Again" now. It should complete successfully. After that you can revert your notification area back by going back and unchecking the setting you see in the picture above.

Conclusion

You should now be good to go. After checking the Windows Update Log located at C:\Windows\WindowsUpdate.lob I found the following error lines:

Can not perform non-interactive scan if AU is interactive-only
AU setting pending client directive to 'Install Complete Ux'
WARNING: Pending directive, 'Install Complete Ux', is not applicable
Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0

Now I was installing these updates under a standard user account and I know from UAC group policy a standard user is also referred to as "interactive-only" in some policies. I don't know if it was trying to display something to me and choked, hopefully Microsoft finds out. Either way thanks to all in that thread who discovered this wierd fix.

UPDATE:

I found that changing this setting while Windows Update is displaying "Preparing to Install" seems to actually kick start it so if the above solution doesn't work for you try checking or unchecking that setting and mousing over the notification area while windows update is displaying "Preparing to Install." 

Primary account cannot be removed from Outlook

The Problem

I was remotely setting up a new user. Instead of resetting up everything under a new user we just re-use the existing user setting up new email and changing relative information like the username. After I had setup the new users email account for exchange, I tried to remove the old account and got the following error:"The primary account cannot be removed unless it is the only account in the profile. You must remove all other Exchange accounts before removing the primary account." So I couldn't remove his unless I deleted the account. That wasn't really a path I cared to take.

The Solution
Open up the Control Panel and click on "Profiles." Then click on "Add..." It will ask you for the information for the new exchange email account go ahead and put this info and step through the wizard.

Remove the old profile which has the old email account by clicking on it and then on the button labeled "Remove." Click on "OK" when done to close out the mail dialog box and then open outlook

You now only have one email account in the account settings.

Bottom Line
Outlook 2010 doesn't like removing the first Exchange account setup under a profile. At this point I have seen no way to get around this. The best solution  when removing the account and/or adding another exchange account is to remove the old Outlook Profile and create a new one.