(cross-post added to Vista Perf & Maint)
"philtuber" <philtuber@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:53AA268C-0507-452C-8957-F2F41451A0DB@xxxxxx

> This problem may have followed installation of SP2 on my Vista 64 HP, not
> sure and haven't done a restore yet, hoping for a less drastic fix.
>

> If I click on the Windows Update tray icon, or the corresponding control
> panel menu item, I get a dialog box that says "explorer.exe" in the
> titlebar, and the message is "This file does not have a program associated
> with it for performing this action.."

>
> I ran Sysinternals procmon a few times to try and see what was being
> attempted,

Good idea. But before imagining what your symptom means
the tack that I would take is to try to expand the symptom description.
E.g. check to see if there are any other writes being done concurrently,
as these might involve some diagnostics that you may be overlooking.
Even without using ProcMon you might be able to detect such files
using a cmd window (probably running as an Administrator) with just

dir/a/s/tw | find "2009-07-06 12:2" | sort | more

E.g. assuming that that command was issued right after the error
message appeared, I would use a filter to make a sort manageable
You probably wouldn't need the more element of that pipeline,
even without the filter stage; it's mostly a JIC feature of it. ; )

> and the only file with no association in the registry I found in
> the listing was C:\Windows\AppPatch\AppPatch64\sysmain.sdb.
> But wuauclt.exe appears to open that successfully.

FWIW I see this in XP:

<cmd_output OS="XPsp3">
E:\>assoc .sdb
..sdb=appfixfile

E:\>ftype appfixfile
File type 'appfixfile' not found or no open command associated with it.
</cmd_output>

But I've seen other cases where an association is given and no
filetype open action appears to exist. (E.g. in TechNet resource files
of various kinds.) So, evidently files with specific extensions can be used
without us knowing how conventionally.

>
> Don't know what to do now.
>
> Thanks

I think you are more likely to find knowledgeable help for this
from another Vista user and since I'm not on my Vista partition right now
I'm cross-posting to a Vista newsgroup. ; )


Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
---

"Robert Aldwinckle" wrote:

> (cross-post added to Vista Perf & Maint)
> "philtuber" <philtuber@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:53AA268C-0507-452C-8957-F2F41451A0DB@xxxxxx

> > This problem may have followed installation of SP2 on my Vista 64 HP, not
> > sure and haven't done a restore yet, hoping for a less drastic fix.
> >

>

> > If I click on the Windows Update tray icon, or the corresponding control
> > panel menu item, I get a dialog box that says "explorer.exe" in the
> > titlebar, and the message is "This file does not have a program associated
> > with it for performing this action.."

>

> >
> > I ran Sysinternals procmon a few times to try and see what was being
> > attempted,

>
>
> Good idea. But before imagining what your symptom means
> the tack that I would take is to try to expand the symptom description.
> E.g. check to see if there are any other writes being done concurrently,
> as these might involve some diagnostics that you may be overlooking.
> Even without using ProcMon you might be able to detect such files
> using a cmd window (probably running as an Administrator) with just
>
> dir/a/s/tw | find "2009-07-06 12:2" | sort | more
>
> E.g. assuming that that command was issued right after the error
> message appeared, I would use a filter to make a sort manageable
> You probably wouldn't need the more element of that pipeline,
> even without the filter stage; it's mostly a JIC feature of it. ; )
>
>

> > and the only file with no association in the registry I found in
> > the listing was C:\Windows\AppPatch\AppPatch64\sysmain.sdb.
> > But wuauclt.exe appears to open that successfully.

>
>
> FWIW I see this in XP:
>
> <cmd_output OS="XPsp3">
> E:\>assoc .sdb
> ..sdb=appfixfile
>
> E:\>ftype appfixfile
> File type 'appfixfile' not found or no open command associated with it.
> </cmd_output>
>
> But I've seen other cases where an association is given and no
> filetype open action appears to exist. (E.g. in TechNet resource files
> of various kinds.) So, evidently files with specific extensions can be used
> without us knowing how conventionally.
>
>

> >
> > Don't know what to do now.
> >
> > Thanks

>
>
> I think you are more likely to find knowledgeable help for this
> from another Vista user and since I'm not on my Vista partition right now
> I'm cross-posting to a Vista newsgroup. ; )
>
>
> Good luck
>
> Robert Aldwinckle
> ---
>
>
>

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Robert,


Thanks for the suggestions. I ran that dump subseconds after clicking the
update icon at 6pm and got, time sorted in XL:

6:00PM 0 BUILTIN\Administrators dump.out
6:00PM 317 Stentor-PC\Stentor Local Disk (C).lnk
6:00PM 516 Stentor-PC\Stentor _sstore.dat
6:00PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010008.ci
6:00PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010008.dir
6:00PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010009.dir
6:00PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0001000C.ci
6:00PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0001000C.dir
6:00PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0001000D.dir
6:00PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0001000F.ci
6:00PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0001000F.dir
6:00PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010010.dir
6:00PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010011.ci
6:00PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010011.dir
6:00PM 8,192 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010009.ci
6:00PM 8,192 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010010.ci
6:00PM 8,192 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM edb.chk
6:00PM 10,002 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM authcab.cab
6:00PM 12,288 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0001000D.ci
6:00PM 19,218 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM SEARCHFILTERHOST.EXE-AA7A1FDD.pf
6:00PM 32,526 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM WMIPRVSE.EXE-43972D0F.pf
6:00PM 34,952 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM TRUSTEDINSTALLER.EXE-031B6478.pf
6:00PM 56,530 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM CMD.EXE-89305D47.pf
6:00PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010008.wid
6:00PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010009.wid
6:00PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0001000C.wid
6:00PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0001000D.wid
6:00PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0001000F.wid
6:00PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010010.wid
6:00PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010011.wid
6:00PM 262,144 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM COMPONENTS.LOG1
6:00PM 262,144 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM SYSTEM.LOG1
6:00PM 3,573,790 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM SystemIndex.169.gthr
6:00PM 18,612,224NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM SYSTEM
6:00PM 41,418,752NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM COMPONENTS
6:00PM <DIR> NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 9482F4B4-E343-43B6-B170-9A65BC822C77
6:00PM <DIR> NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM AuthCabs
6:00PM <DIR> NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM CiFiles
6:01PM 1,284 Stentor-PC\Stentor local_store.dat
6:01PM 2,750 Stentor-PC\Stentor Local State
6:01PM 2,904 Stentor-PC\Stentor 2009-07-06-2.ezlog
6:01PM 3,344 BUILTIN\Administrators 7B296FB0-376B-497e-B012-9C450E1B7327-2P-0.C7483456-A289-
6:01PM 3,344 BUILTIN\Administrators 7B296FB0-376B-497e-B012-9C450E1B7327-2P-1.C7483456-A289-
6:01PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010012.ci
6:01PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010015.dir
6:01PM 28,672 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010015.ci
6:01PM 30,110 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM SystemIndex.Ntfy776.gthr
6:01PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010012.wid
6:01PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010015.wid
6:01PM 262,144 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM ntuser.dat.LOG1
6:01PM 8,249,960 Stentor-PC\Stentor Safe Browsing Bloom-journal
6:01PM 8,650,752 Stentor-PC\Stentor NTUSER.DAT
6:01PM 46,721,487NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM CBS.log
6:01PM <DIR> Stentor-PC\Stentor User Data
6:01PM <DIR> NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 7971F918-A847-4430-9279-4A52D1EFE18D
6:01PM <DIR> NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM CiFiles
6:02PM 18,712 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM TASKENG.EXE-5BAF290C.pf
6:02PM <DIR> Stentor-PC\Stentor Default
6:02PM <DIR> Stentor-PC\Stentor Temp
6:03PM 42,391 Stentor-PC\Stentor shared.xml
6:03PM <DIR> Stentor-PC\Stentor Skype
6:04PM 262,144 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM SOFTWARE.LOG1
6:04PM 97,779,712NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM SOFTWARE
6:06PM 2,750 Stentor-PC\Stentor Local State
6:06PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010001.ci
6:06PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010001.dir
6:06PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010002.dir
6:06PM 32,768 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010002.ci
6:06PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010001.wid
6:06PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010002.wid
6:06PM 83,868 Stentor-PC\Stentor update[1]
6:06PM <DIR> Stentor-PC\Stentor User Data
6:06PM <DIR> NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM Logs
6:06PM <DIR> NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM Windows
6:07PM 317 Stentor-PC\Stentor Local Disk (C).lnk
6:07PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010003.ci
6:07PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010003.dir
6:07PM 4,096 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010004.dir
6:07PM 8,192 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010004.ci
6:07PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010003.wid
6:07PM 65,536 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 00010004.wid
6:07PM <DIR> Stentor-PC\Stentor Recent
6:07PM <DIR> NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM CiFiles

I checked the unique extensions from all this, and the only ones undefined
are, "ezlog" and "wid".

Also searched for the type "appfixfile" in the registry and found nothing.

Here's some stuff I gathered about sdb files

http://filext.com/file-extension/SDB
from a table on the above link >>> appfixfile
%SystemRoot%\system32\sdbinst.exe %1

So in some scenario sdbinst.exe takes the sdb/appfixfile file type as a
command arg according to that link. But in procmon all I saw opening the
sdb, not necessarily defined as you point out , was wuauclt.exe.


Application Compatibility Database
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...82(VS.85).aspx

Tool to view .sdb files JGurtz
See the sdb2xml tool by Heath Stewart to view and export from the included
system AppCompat DBs http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/pages/sdb2xml.aspx

I don't think I'm going to go through megabytes of an sdb XML dump just yet
though..

Thanks again.

"philtuber" <philtuber@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:98766FD2-31AB-480F-B5F7-D6E34B04C9C8@xxxxxx

> Thanks for the suggestions. I ran that dump subseconds after clicking the
> update icon at 6pm and got, time sorted in XL:

....

The only obvious clue you got from that list I think is:

> 6:01PM 46,721,487NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM CBS.log

though I would be curious to know what this was
and why did it show up so much after the problem symptom?

> 6:06PM 83,868 Stentor-PC\Stentor update[1]

In any case there is undoubtedly a clearer clue inside the CBS.log
and you should then be able to correlate its lines (i.e. the pattern
of its lengths as seen using Notepad with Word Wrap off and Status bar on)
in your ProcMon trace. E.g infer the WRITE of CBS.log records which
interest you based on their length, their approximate timestamps, etc.
Then you can see any preceding registry and file accesses as being
possibly related to the message you are being given.


Good luck

Robert
---