You receive the “Error deleting file Cannot delete INFO2…” error message when you click the Empty Recycle Bin link in the Recycle Bin.

That’s my problem of the day, Luckily this guy has a solution LeeTutor’s Fixing Windows and it’s also coverd in this Microsoft KB article Cannot Delete Any Files in Windows

The solution does work - I guess it’s just the random system corruption of the day.

On one of my WordPress blogs, I’m beginning to see referrer tracks from poker and casino sites. At first I ignored it, but it’s becoming more persistent. Tracking down some of the URL’s indicate ther have managed to make comment spam in various blogs pointing back to their sites. So far they have not managed to make any comments, although, for the blog in question, there really is nothing in place to stop them.

Soon as I have time, I need a good solution to this. I think it needs something more than a comment control plugin.

The Google AdSense Terms of Service warn against clicking on ads on your own site. Google AdSense Program Policies

Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited, to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs.

However, sometimes I can’t stop myself, I forget I’m on my own site, and just want to click them so much. (Too bad the other viewers of my sites are not so excited, otherwise I’d have retired) It’s even worse if I’m looking at one of my sites on my kids computer, someday I’ll forget to close the browser window, and a kid will illegaly click me out of AdSense, no more commissions, no more money.

So I’m pleased that someone came up with a great solution - it’s for FireFox only, but why would you use any other browser?

Prevent accidental clicks on your own AdSense ads

This is an addon to Greasemonkey, so if you need that, install it first.

Once installed, it will require you to entire your AdSense ID, so it will only blog your own ads.Remember to install it on all the computer at work or home (and laptops also) that anyone can use to access your sites. Google is pretty smart and it will track you down - and saying my friedn at work clicked my ads by mistake won’t get you back in the loop.

Ever since the otmaker problems of last month, it seems a good idea to do more comprehensive checking. I’ve had good advice to run the Ewido trojan scanner. However, someone forgot to tell me it won’t run in WIndows 98, so I have to reboot into Windows XP.

It finds a massive number of traffic cookies, it used to be I would just ignore these as harmless, but now I’m on a kill for everything stealing system resources. So that’s 207 traffic cookies removed. In total it removed over 700 cookies and useless junk.

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.

Running this can find some very strange things. I found file extensions (which should be typically .com .exe .html) as complete sentences of meaningfull text. Either this was random registry corruption, or software installations gone bad.

Ended up removing 238 meg of assorted junk.

With no warning signs of any failure, the system will no longer boot into Windows XP correctly. No icons, no desktop and no taskbars appear. This makes it very hard to use.

Tried a few suggestions to fix this.for example run sfc /scannow to repair from the CD - no luck. Tried to go back to a restore point, but they all fail. It’s possible to actually run programs in a roundabout manner and they all execute correctly, so it seems that just the GUI interface is destroyed. After a day of trying patches and fixes, it’s not getting anywhere so a WIndows reinstall is in order.

Luckily I’m aware of the Slipstream installation - Slipstreaming Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) This allows me to take my existing install, which is probably mostly intact, together with all the patches I’ve downloaded over the last year or so since I frst installed, and create a new installation CD. Without this, I would have to reinstall from the original CD, and then apply all the patches, a process that might take a day or so.

Note this procedure also requires isobuster - which can be found at the Smart Projects Web site

The step should be followed carefully, since it’s by no means the normal procedure for creating a CD, it uses a lot of options you probably never saw before, and are unlikely to see again.

The end result is however a new install CD, which does work, and makes this whole exercise a lot less painfull than it could have been.

The weird otmaker is now installed again. It’s back in windows\system and also system startup. I’ve run Ad-Aware and Norton AntiVirus and nothing was found. This system normally runs in Windows 98SE, but booted into Windows XP and run the Microsoft Beta Adware, and again nothing found. It seems it might be connected to cfgwiz32.exe.

Manually removed cfgwiz32.exe and otmaker.

The computer (Win98SE) is misbehaving, a couple of applications are not running correctly. After some checking and detective work, there seems to be an unknown application Otmaker running, ctrl+alt+del, stops it but then a new application thnal5c starts up. Checking in the temp directory, there are indications this application was installed yesterday by some unknown process. There are also related files installed in Windows/Systm. Removed the files and the system is behaving ok again.

Searched the internet for Otmaker - but other than a post in a forum dated this week, there are no traces of it.