Aria in Aqua

Fixing mpsvc.exe and mpclient.exe

Crisu — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:31:15 +0000

I found a solution at http://forums.techguy.org/malware-removal-hijackthis-logs/901616-cant-kill-infected-process-just.html and wanted to thank the original poster, but I’m having problems with my registration on that forum.

Well anyway, I wanted to put another post on the Internet about the issue. My dad’s laptop — an old one still running Windows XP Service Pack 3, came upon a situation where five instances of MPClient.exe were running and taking up 100% of the processor.

Deleting one would make it reappear again.

Deleting the parent process, MPSvc.exe would only cause it to restart and generate FIVE MORE MPClient.exe

The files are hidden, located in C:\Program Files\Windows Defender

but that didn’t make a lot of sense at all; it’s likely a fake, a spoof. I read elsewhere that Windows Defender is for Vista and above, not XP. So I think it’s just pretending to be something important to cause you problems.

So as per the TechGuy posting, I went to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx and downloaded Process Explorer. This free, easy-to-use program provides a much better visualization of the processes on your computer than the standard Windows Task Manager (which I use Ctrl+Shift+Esc to pull up, not the common Ctrl+Alt+Del).

I discovered that the MPSvc.exe was a child process of Adobe Updater. That is even weirder to me; why would Adobe do that? ….Or perhaps that was just another part of the malware’s trickery, to hide within Adobe, which a majority of computer users have.

Well anyway, killing the Adobe Updater process tree stopped MPSvc from respawning. And that allowed me to force-delete “C:\Program Files\Windows Defender” and the hidden programs in it. I also went ahead into ‘regedit’ and deleted any mention of MPClient and MPSvc from my registry.

Restarted the computer, and I think everything is fine now. Another copy of MPSvc seems to still be lurking around, but it is not spawning processor-hogging MPClients, so I think it’s okay. Maybe there is a legitimate MPSvc, so I’ll leave it alone until it causes problems again.

But yes, I hope this can help a few more people who happen to be experiencing this.

Red Trillian

Crisu — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:15:07 +0000

I upgraded to Windows 7, and my Trillian is suddenly red. I mean the Preferences window, which has had a dark blue background as far as I can remember, is now dark red.

Not sure if that’s just because of my new OS … or if Trillian is trying to say something to me.

It’s fully-registered. Maybe I should ask tech support. o.o

Computer supply troubles?

Crisu — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:39:23 +0000

Hey computer friends,

My PC won’t turn on anymore. It was running okay, and then I told it to go into standby. Well, it didn’t go into standby — it just shut off.

This had happened once before, and I just needed to fully cycle through the power (unplug, replug) for it to work again. But now nothing works.

After a lot of trial and error, I see that the green LED on the back of the power supply only comes on when I have the supply disconnected from the motherboard. As soon as I connect the 24-pin connector from the PSU to the motherboard, this LED goes off.

Random Google searches talk about issues with standby power … or stored static charge. Pretty sure I’ve gotten rid of any excess static from all the fumbling around I’ve done, removing modems and video cards and detaching/reattaching RAM, etc. But it seems the motherboard won’t accept the PSU anymore?

International Saimoe League

Crisu — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:43:51 +0000

Lately I’ve been putting a lot of my time maintaining and improving the International Saimoe League, now in its second year. It’s fun for me because I get to do some programming, and it’s related to anime, which is another favorite hobby of mine. In addition to HTML and CSS, I have been learning PHP, Javascript, and small touches of PERL while helping to develop the site, so I think it’s great experience.

Teamwork, too, I suppose. You can never get enough of that kind of learning, even though college puts you through a lot of it.

So if you’re a fan like me, please support the site and participate in the tournament!

I beat Metal Gear Solid 4

Crisu — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:18:48 +0000

Game of the year!

Long ending is long!

LostWinds is pretty

Crisu — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:30:03 +0000

I bought LostWinds for WiiWare and love it. Spent 2 hours on it, and I think I’m 75% through the game. It’s pretty, though, and I just move a little fast. I did miss some of the collectible statues, though, but it’s a game where you semi-backtrack when you get new powerups to get to places you haven’t before. And locked doors that mysteriously open and close depending on plot progression. There are always new areas, though. It’s an entertaining game. Very pretty music and graphics keep the experience smooth and soothing.

Doodle 4 Google is cute

Crisu — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:25:09 +0000

http://www.google.com/doodle4google/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJZ2WA8EClo

If you have a Gmail (or just a Google) account, you can vote the winner out of the finalists of this contest. Basically, K-12 students competed in drawing a new Google logo with the theme “What if…?” as it relates to the status of the world, whether culturally, technologically, or anything else.

It’s a cute humanitarian effort by Google … and also the most amazing business strategy ever. Look at all those kids holding up ad banners for Google. I mean, they totally just locked in millions of future users. Sucks to be you, Yahoo!.

Kanon dub names

Crisu — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:07:40 +0000

ma-COAT-oh sa-WATER-i?

Are you serious, ADV? :(

Bill Nye!

Crisu — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:11:08 +0000

I got to see Bill Nye tonight. He’s still as awesome as I remember him from my childhood.

And I got to shake his hand, too. Rockin’

SCIENCE IS COOL

A Friday day

Crisu — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:05:17 +0000

My professor talked about how her flight was delayed because of some instrument problems on the plane. Everyone was seated, and the plane left the gate twice .. but came back both times after some short taxi-ing, because an instrument was reading 200 knots of wind speed when they were still on the ground. Everyone had to switch planes eventually, and what surprised my professor the most was that people were pissed about it. Here’s the airplane pilot, responsible for all the lives on the plane, noticing a safety issue that could endanger everyone, so he makes the right decision about it. But everyone’s all “It doesn’t matter! Just fly already!”She wanted to go thank him, but I’m not sure if she could.

In other news, rock candy is still popular with college students.

I heard that some friends were going to see Cloverfield at midnight. With all the hype about it and the big group that was going, I asked to go, too, lest I miss out on all the discussion in the days to come. Plus I need to teach myself to stay up late again; I’ve been feeling still gradually better as each day passes.Well I spent the evening photographing the Shana that my friend let me borrow until it was time to hit the theatres. The weather had turned to a mild sleet, but it wasn’t really snow-likely. Anyway the movie was an interesting experience. I grew tired, so the shaky camera gave me a headache sometimes, but it wasn’t bad. The ending was perhaps expected, but you don’t really believe it at first. In the end, the movie was probably just all hype. It was very unique though and worth a watch, just so you get the experience of how different it is. Although I never did watch Blair Witch, although this film is very likely way better than that one was.

One in our group said, “Whoa, I forgot I was watching a movie,” and I think that was what/all the director wanted out of this film.

Got back. My hallmate was still awake, so I got his new Canon Rebel Xti camera for a quick Shana picture or two. But the ISO setting was wrong. Eh, it was very late, and I was ready for bed. More photos with both my camera (Canon PowerShot S2 IS, a great camera but clearly inferior to the more expensive SLRs) and his camera tomorrow. Oh, but I did set up my second lamp, and it does make pictures look a lot brighter. It’s just that Shana’s hair is a bit translucent, so there’s going to be some glare.

How I send packages

Crisu — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:25:23 +0000

Well, I don’t do it for everyone .. just some close friends. And only when it’s the first package I’ve sent them in a long time.

The organization I work for has hordes of leftover t-shirts from past events that it holds .. on a fairly regular basis. And I mean a lot of shirts .. all with 2006 or 2007 written on them… or program titles that are useless today.

So if I have a package to send and I’m already over the weight limit to the point where I have to use a flat rate box from USPS?

I use these t-shirts as packing material. Styrofoam peanuts? Messy. Bubble wrap? Fleeting. T-shirts to wear? Awesome.

Crazy awesome.

Because if you’re just wearing them to sleep or around the house, who cares what it says? And in a weird way, I’m semi-advertising my organization in other parts of the country. Maybe. Can’t hurt. Hey, at least the shirt is being worn instead of sitting in a closet forever. Maybe my friends will never enter a science competition, but at least they’ll have a shirt from one.

School again!

Crisu — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:37:40 +0000

So school has started again, and I’m here in lab blogging between classes. I’ll probably use this time for blogging a lot if I’m bored .. or maybe if I want a late breakfast .. or if I have homework to finish. We’ll see.

And it’s actually cold today; it was so warm and humid yesterday, but the cold front finally passed over our area (after dumping some serious rain, too).

The irony of my blogging

Crisu — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 11:47:39 +0000

I write for a blog entitled Borderline Hikikomori. This was a semi-random choice; I could have applied at other places (who are still requesting writers I think), but I wanted to start at a small and laid-back place, so I can get used to the whole idea of blogging. And to give me something to do over winter break.

So I’ve been at home all three weeks of this break, basically confining myself indoors and playing games and watching anime and blogging.

Just as a hikikomori would do. But I’m a borderline one since I’m not afraid to go out — in fact I welcome it, as long as someone invites me to go out. It’s just that I hardly know anybody here anymore, since I graduated from high school here four years ago. I could still visit some teachers, but I don’t have a lot to say each year as I did before.

So a borderline hikikomori I have been, and I write for a place with that name. Funny.

Time closing in

Crisu — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:34:46 +0000

Two more days left at home before going back to college. I want to go right now, but the residence halls aren’t open yet.

I’ll be upset, too, at the short amount of free time I’ll have once I’m up there. I’ll have to shift back quickly to being busy. Sure I have time here, but I’m at home — the feeling is different; the work ethic isn’t there.

Hopefully I can still blog at a decent pace.

Happy New Year 2008!

Crisu — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:28:36 +0000

Happy New Year everyone. It’s time for another presidential election and summer Olympic games. Hopefully schoolwork won’t be too difficult, so I can continue anime blogging and managing my clubs.

http://moe.imouto.org/post?tags=parent%3A11519 – New Years’ mikos from Lucky Star.

New hard drive

Crisu — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 12:36:12 +0000

Should say that I got my new laptop hard drive in from Newegg. It’s bigger and faster than the old one — not by too much, since this is always going to be an older machine. I’ll buy a brand new everything soon enough. But this laptop just needs to become operational again, and it is.

I’ll still investigate ways to recover my old data throughout next semester. But now it’s time to rebuild settings, recreate record files, and reinstall programs.

Blogging strategy

Crisu — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 12:20:58 +0000

Anime blogging is a lot more fun if you do it -while- you’re watching the episode. Seems to save time, and everything is absolutely fresh on your mind … because you’re streaming the information live. It makes summaries easier to write, and they can be nice and long, too. I wonder if that’s how other bloggers do it. And then I make notes in the Impressions section to expand upon once the ep is over.

Often, I’ll replay the ep from the beginning as I write the Impressions, so I can review whatever I missed. I’m proud of my typing skills and can generally do it without looking or thinking as I do the summary, but I’ll pause the video sometimes. Plus, even though I may be putting 20% attention on typing, I don’t have 100% on the anime episode, so a second rewatch helps me catch context clues.

Having a lot of anime to watch, plus Persona 3 being a delightful distraction, leaves me needing efficient anime blogging strategies. :X

Wasting away

Crisu — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 23:18:03 +0000

Heh, I’m so irresponsibly spending my holiday break. Sleeping at odd hours of the early morning, hardly leaving the house. I would nearly appear to be a hikikomori you didn’t know me previously. But there’s lots of anime to watch and blog about as many fall series are ending. And Persona 3 is a lot of fun.

I bought a new hard drive for my laptop from Newegg; it should arrive shortly after Christmas, so that’s good. Hopefully everything will work, too and I didn’t mess anything up by opening up my entire laptop the other night when I was investigating other issues with it. I tried putting the Windows CD in it and booting the laptop without a hard drive, but it just doesn’t make it. I figure it would at least have a BIOS in which I could navigate, but maybe not.

Lost a hard drive

Crisu — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 09:06:57 +0000

Platina
( July 30, 2003 – December 19, 2007 )

Well not precisely. It’s more like:

Platina’s Hard Drive
( July 30, 2003 – December 19, 2007 )

Greatest loss is all of my schoolwork since I bought the thing. I never did make an external backup of it. I’ve only backed up chat logs on my external hard drive .. and only up to the middle of this year (but that’s a whole lot better than losing everything). Anime is okay, since I have it on hard drive save for a bunch of recent episodes. Games I don’t care much about — software I kinda do. It really goes down to the school files, though I could try to recover various things from Gmail — the ones I emailed in to professors at least.I’m not all that upset about it .. but it probably hasn’t hit me yet. Or I’m really just that detached. Well, this is probably the “best” time for my hard drive to fail, since there’s no school and no immediate responsibility. But bleh. I still have my second laptop, but I need to get it up to speed. Or just get a new laptop for Christmas…

It happened out of nowhere; I’m just on my laptop, and I hadn’t recently struck it or dropped it or anything. It was sitting peacefully like always, and I suddenly hear this clicking noise. And I finally realized it was coming from inside the computer, and then the hard drive. And then I was having trouble closing windows. And that’s when I figured it was all over. It hasn’t restarted since. I opened up the whole thing to see if there was anything else, but I believe it’s just the hard drive. I think the disc arm / disc reader broke or fell off .. or something. I’m trying to figure out how it could happen as a result of four years of wear and tear.

How much are laptop hard drives? The computer itself is just fine…

Testing feeds

Crisu — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:51:06 +0000

Testing feed import to my blog on MAL.

http://myanimelist.net/blog/Crisu

I wonder if it’s automatic, or if I have to reimport regularly. If the first, then I may have accidentally done it twice, which kinda wrecks things. How would I undo that if that were the case?