remotely debug user browser without installation on local PC - remote-debugging

Hello Stack Overflow Community,
This is my first post, so if I misstep, please help me correct.
I am a support manager and we are dealing with a browser issue that we cannot replicate. It appears to happen for our end user in no visible pattern. The same user will have success one day from the same network and PC and failure the next day or even next hour.
What we are looking for is a method to remotely debug an end user's PC without additional installation that will involve their IT. We have tried using Internet Explorer developer tools, but those are proving to create additional problems while running.
Thank you for your gift of shared knowledge.

Related

"File is not commonly downloaded" -- Can't find a way around the Window's Defender Smartscreen

We're a small 4-man team working on an indie games marketplace.
Like several previous posters before us, we are having trouble with the Windows Defender Smartscreen blocking our app. The most common message is "File is not commonly downloaded" but sometimes it also reads something like "Windows Protected your PC."
We've received a number of complaints from our users about the Smartscreen warning message, and it's badly hurting our efforts with user acquisition.
In accordance with previous threads we found on this topic, we have tried
Code Signing - we sign our code through DigitCert, and have done so for nearly 5 months; the message has not gone away. As we use AWS for our servers, we don't have any way to use an EV Code Signing hardware token.
Microsoft Code Review - We submitted our files to Microsoft for Malware analysis. The analysis came back clean, even with a note saying they could not reproduce the warning, and yet, both our own testing and our users confirms the Windows Defender message is still happening.
Becoming a Microsoft Partner - Unfortunately, even after getting approval and confirmation, absolutely nothing has changed.
Everything I can find online about getting our app whitelisted is about whitelisting specific programs from the user side -- not very useful for convincing people we're safe to download. There are two threads on Stack Overflow that link to a blog article which has since been removed. Microsoft, Amazon, and DigitCert support have all been less than helpful.
My questions are:
1. Is Amazon CloudHSM a substitute for EV Code Signing? As stated above, we can't use a hardware token, but I have to imagine that AWS has some kind of substitute. We've never re-issued the serial on our current code signing cert, but I can't imagine 5 months is a normal turn-around time.
2. Does hosting the download link on our own domain make a huge difference? Currently, the download link leads to an AWS bucket. One website said that could potentially slow things?
3. What else are we supposed to do? We're not a large team and we're kind of stretched thin as it is. If anybody has any suggestions we haven't tried yet, I'm all ears.

How do I get past ColdFusion server-specific error code 2?

I had installed ColdFusion 2018 recently and with the installation less than a month old (and my understanding of the technology even less), my Cold Fusion service has stopped working. I have tried a number of things and have referred to a number of articles and out of many such errors where the service is not being accessible, some of them were able to get it resolved. However, some other obscure reason that may be causing this error have been untouched and unknown.
Whenever, I try to restart the service, I get an error as shown below:
Windows could not start the ColdFusion 8 Application Server on Local Computer. For more information, review the System Event Log. If this is a non-Microsoft service, contact the service vendor, and refer to server-specific code error 2.”
Without much understanding, I started to google it out. Looking into every one of these posts, I tried
Configure JRE and try to relaunch the service by looking at "JAVA_HOME" variable and JVM.config
Run the batch files in every possible combination to find if anything clicks
Check if the present JAVA version works and is compatible with Coldfusion version installed
Fiddling with the "SessionStorage" var in neo-runtime.xml file as some suggested
and few other tricks coupled with a numerous service restart attempts and a few machine reboots as well.
A service that renders Cold Fusion pages should be shut down abruptly. To add to agony, the CF Admin also depends on the service and hence does not work.
Any pointers to any potential solutions?

Failed to sign into Microsoft account from Windows 10

I have problem signing into Microsoft account from my local account on my machine. This used to be my work laptop I have bought it after I left company. I could sign in on my domain user without any problems. Since I left domain I lost this account.
I am trying to "Sign in with Microsoft account instead" option in Accounts->Your info. After I enter my Microsoft account credentials and insert my local user password I get message "Oops something went wrong. Whatever happen it was probably our fault". Good one Microsoft.
Also similarly when I try to add account to Calendar app I end up with same problem, but here I got more information: "You will need the internet for this. It doesn't look like you're connected to the internet. Check your connection and try again. 0x800704cf". This led me to check Network troubleshooter and this error came up:
Your computer appears to be correctly configured, but the device or
resource (www.microsoft.com) is not responding
Contact your network administrator or Internet service provider (ISP)
Completed Windows can't communicate with the device or resource
(www.microsoft.com). The computer or service you are trying to reach
might be temporarily unavailable.
I have tried many ways how to fix this. (Flush DNS, reboot router etc..), but I am pretty sure that my problem is not with my internet connection. It works perfectly fine, also note that I was able to check this with 2 internet providers with same result. Also another thing is, that this works perfectly fine with other devices in our household.
For me it looks like system don't see microsoft.com. Only thing I am able to work with is One drive.
I am pretty sure I would be able to fix this by resetting Windows 10, but I don't want to loose my installed programs (and licenses).
Any advice will be appreciated. I really ran out of options.
After doing many many thing, only thing that helped was resetting PC. It always does help.

How exactly does the WiX 'Service Install' work internally?

I have a problem with a web service that is installed and started with a .msi that is created with the WiX toolset.
The service can be installed and started on all the machines I tested so far (shown as running in the Services Manager) but on some machines it is not reachable (for example via a browser) and not shown in the list of listening ports on that machine (displayed with 'netstat -a').
I am trying to figure out what's going wrong but I am not really familiar with web service development and configuration. It's a third party service, thus I don't know how it works internally.
A good starting point for me would be to find out, what exactly happens when a service is installed and started during the execution of the .msi-file.
Maybe I could try to tackle the problem on a lower level then.
Below is my code in the ServiceInstall-Element:
<ServiceInstall
Id="ServiceID"
Type="ownProcess"
Vital="yes"
Name="ServiceName"
DisplayName="ServiceDisplayName"
Description="Lorem Ipsum"
Start="auto"
Account="LocalSystem"
ErrorControl="normal"
Interactive="no"
Arguments="action=run">
</ServiceInstall>
The argument is important - without it, the service won't start or run.
Maybe someone else encounterd the same or a similar problem and can help me out.
Thanks already in advance - each hint is appreciated.
EDIT I (15.04.18):
As it might be a problem with the specific service, I will add some further information here:
It's a third party software called CryptoLicensing:
http://www.ssware.com/cryptolicensing/cryptolicensing_net.htm
Part of this software is that specific program, that serves as a License Server and does the license registration, for example in a customer's network.
The service can be run as a Windows application or installed and run as a Windows service. In both cases it should be listening on a (pre-)specified port on the installed machine.
Whenever I start the .exe as an application, everything works as intended. The service is reachable (for example with the browser) and can be accessed from other machines in the network.
When the .exe is installed and started as a service, it does not work as intended on every machine. For example if I install and start the service on my laptop, it is shown as running in the Services Manager, but is not reachable on its assigned URL (not even on the localhost) nor is the specific port displayed in the active listening ports, for example with 'netstat -a'.
The service itself starts without any error messages and does not log any errors or exceptions as it seems to be running without any problems.
I contacted the vendor, but sometimes he doesn't reply quickly and he is not very specific in his replies.
Before asking the question I assumed that it was a problem with the Windows user rights and the WiX installer but during the discussion here I had the feeling that it might a problem with the service itself.
I hope this 'new' piece of information helps in isolating and location the problem.
Thanks to everyone who helped so far!
Hopefully not stating the obvious here, but WiX doesn't do much except populate the ServiceInstall table in the MSI file, so this is about why Windows Installer won't start the service. ServiceInstall table:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa371637(v=vs.85).aspx
Also, this isn't really about ServiceInstall - it's probably about the ServiceControl element in your WiX source, but it's not clear whether that's how you're starting it or if you're starting it manually later on. That does make a difference. What is the error message and where are you getting it, and is it a 1920 or 1921 error (in the context of ServiceControl).
The main reason a service will start on one system but not another is missing dependencies. If your service is C++ based (the post doesn't say) then there are probably dependencies on C runtimes, UCRT runtimes, MFC or ATL runtimes and so on.
First: are you sure this service is intended to run as LocalSystem? (MSDN, SO).
Second: did you check the event logs in detail for anything obvious? If the service is good you should find a hint at least. Something to start with. I find that I sometimes miss the actual logs in the event viewer because it is so "crowded". My take on it: empty the log and stop and restart the service.
Something locking / blocking: If the service installs and runs OK I would suspect other factors such as firewalls (hardware & software), security software in general (anti-virus, malware scanners), network configuration issues (proxies, WINS, DNS and all the complexities involved in networking). Is the service trying to reach an UNC path?
Diverse Machines: What are the target machines? Are they virtual, are they physical, are they test machines, are they operative SOE machines in corporate networks? Are they the same OS version and edition?
Further Ideas: It is not quite related, but maybe skim this list of suggestions for debugging from another answer (I am not sure why it was down-voted, I think it is an OK list to inspire debugging ideas): Windows Application Startup Error Exception code: 0xe0434352 (maybe just skim the bolded words for ideas - Recommended).
sc.exe: And finally, perhaps check the sc.exe tool (Service Control) and see if it can provide you with some useful information for debugging.
sc.exe in the context of killing hung services (sample use).
sc.exe from MSDN
Some further links:
Windows Services Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Content seems to be up to date - at face value at least. These guys claim to be experts on services. I have no idea who they are.
Essential Tools for Windows Services: SC.EXE
Run Service Control (sc.exe) command on secure port
After almost 20 months we finally (and accidentally) found a solution to the problem! For the few machines, on which the service did not run properly, setting the NoInteractiveServices value in the registry to 0 did the trick. A value of 1 (which is default) means that no service is allowed to run interactively, regardless of whether it has the SERVICE_INTERACTIVE_PROCESS property. More information on Interactive Services.
I am not completely satisfied with the solution, because on all the other machines NoInteractiveServices is set to 1 AND the service runs properly anyway. However, on the machines where the service did not run interactively this solution worked for us. Thus I will accept this as an answer.
If anyone has more information on this issue and can explain why this works, feel free to
add them - I would be very interested!

Can't reproduce situation with a tool (jmeter) that I can reproduce manually with two browser windows

I'm working on an online reservation system (the details aren't really relevant to my issue). It's mostly developped in C# with framework 4.0. I have a DB which contains, among other things, the products and the availability of these products. The DB is accessed by a web service, the latter being queried by a web application, which in turn sends the information to be displayed to the browser. Nothing too fancy in term of architecture, but I don't have much experience with that kind of system. This projet is quite old; it's been in development for a few years and I just hopped in six months ago, having no web programming experience before.
I'm currently experiencing concurrency problems. If I open two browsers window (any browser), enter the same query in both windows and post on both pages as fast as humanly possible, I get unhandled exception in my web service. One of the client gets the data, the other receives an error. EDIT : Also, I tested using two different computers simultaneously, and I still could get the unhandled exception.
I was able to trace the problem back to a cache system that was implemented almost a year ago. There's is no locking mecanism, and the cache uses a Dictionary (which is not thread-safe). A few Stack Overflow questions helped me in pinpointing the problem and how I should correct it (this one and that one for example).
That being said, I'm trying to reproduce the problem without having to manually click in two browser windows and hoping to get the right timing to access the same cache simultaneously. The reason I'm trying to do that is that I don't like implementing a solution that should work when I can't reliably prove it actually worked. Also, there's a lot of places where the cache has been (badly) implemented, and I'm not sure I can test all those places by "guessing" the right timing manually.
So, I downloaded Apache JMeter, and using Fiddler2 hooked up to my two browsers, I could find all the HTTP requests I needed to create a Test Plan that sends exactly the same requests.
But to my dismay, JMeter couldn't reproduce the problem, even if I set my Thread Group to create 40 concurrent users! Each one of them receives the data correctly, and none triggers the unhandled exception I am getting by doing it manually. I know it's not a cookie issue, nor a difference in user-agent, as I tested with multiple browsers and with disabled cookies. As the HTTP requests were created directly from Fiddler2, it shouldn't be an issue with hidden fields or URL rewriting, and there's no dynamic field names or content involved. I know Fiddler2 has a "replay" function, but even that couldn't reproduce the problem. This baffles me to no end.
So, my questions are : why can't I reproduce the problem with JMeter? Is there a better tool than JMeter (which is quite complete for a free software) to do that? What are the browsers doing that Jmeter doesn't do (apart from rendering the page, which is really not the issue here)?
Any thought would be much appreciated!
When you say 2 Windows are you sure they use 2 sessions, depending on the browser and the way you open the second window you won't get 2 sessions.
Are you sure you reproduced all the trafic between browser and server ?
If you have more than 1 request then you should Check if it's not 2 parallel Ajax requests from the browser , if so you must know That Without some custom scripting jmeter does not reproduce those 2 parallel request for same session(except for resources download), That might be your issue .
Regards
Philippe M.
http://www.ubik-ingenierie.com