Post AvEXV677aaJkWLMg2y by david@fedi.machaj.info
(DIR) More posts by david@fedi.machaj.info
(DIR) Post #AvDuaxWKYVhtOTxagC by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T13:57:20Z
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fucking OLEI've got a system that has a control panel that uses windows' OLE system, but I don't have the installer for it, I just have it installed on an NT4 VM. I need to move it elsewhere, anywhere, even another NT4 VM, but that means I've got to figure out how exactly this OLE stuff is set up so I can mimic those files/registry keys
(DIR) Post #AvDueRIeIF6ecbDiLI by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T13:58:05Z
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you might think this would be an easy thing to look up, if you were unaware of how microsoft has run their operating system and documentation for the last four decades
(DIR) Post #AvDukFhELcfuN5UQdc by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T13:59:05Z
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the installer and documentation for this program were thrown out back when clinton was still in the whitehouse
(DIR) Post #AvDuqPiryyxpCnC8EC by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T14:00:10Z
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the program only runs on NT4 and the assorted tools I'd use to try and debug what it's doing do not
(DIR) Post #AvDuuVlTSbyB6QMnYG by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T14:00:57Z
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maybe I'll just duplicate the VM and start randomly deleting files/registry keys until it breaks, then I'll know which parts need to be copied over
(DIR) Post #AvDv3npdelY9k8kG0m by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T14:02:43Z
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i searched the error message and get a hit on a 1997 (!) post on experts-exchange
(DIR) Post #AvDv8YyMKYoF6c5t3o by gsuberland@chaos.social
2025-06-17T14:03:27Z
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@foone oh wow
(DIR) Post #AvDvBFCGJSZ4dnsKmG by Sempf@infosec.exchange
2025-06-17T14:03:45Z
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@foone Aah, yes. One of the worst URLs ever devised.
(DIR) Post #AvDvKDfZMQNCVhraeO by lilstevie@infosec.exchange
2025-06-17T14:05:35Z
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@foone I think the only lucky thing is that it wasn’t you that was the original poster with no responses 😂 I’ve hit the same issue more than a decade apart only to find my own “please help me” a non-zero amount of times
(DIR) Post #AvDvO5u4B2ZbaAUYZE by hosford42@techhub.social
2025-06-17T14:06:16Z
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@foone Hooray for evolutionary algorithms!
(DIR) Post #AvDvWusCYX6DympI6S by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T14:07:58Z
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http://www.cgoakley.org/prog/oleaut.html this page from 1997 has some info on how it works
(DIR) Post #AvDvbwpqgkbPVq7oki by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T14:08:44Z
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@krishean no the problem is that the installer did that, but the installer is long gone. it's already registered, and I need to extract that registration to be able to copy it to another system
(DIR) Post #AvDvyqm3OFJ1NHGpyy by gsuberland@chaos.social
2025-06-17T14:12:55Z
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@foone woah, blast from the past, I remember reading that original article as a kid around the turn of the millennium! I was trying to figure out how to get some VB6 OCX stuff working in C++. never did get it working, and sadly lost all my code from back then to a disk failure. but wow, that page hits me with so much nostalgia.
(DIR) Post #AvDwIUcbShScSgDULw by f4grx@chaos.social
2025-06-17T14:15:55Z
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@foone oh my dog
(DIR) Post #AvDwuJDAKjTG4rLmls by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T14:23:21Z
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having to copy files off the NT4 VM using 4 virtual floppies because I've got no network and no compression utilities and the VM's file format isn't easily mountable by anything I have on hand
(DIR) Post #AvDx2Dbv2aQ91WhTNo by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T14:24:46Z
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@saphire yeah! OLE was a thing to let you embed objects from program X into program Y without program Y needing to know how program X is coded, using a standard RPC-ish mechanism
(DIR) Post #AvDxH1eTmjvcHIxTpA by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T14:26:27Z
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@riley I already got one of those
(DIR) Post #AvDxZ0SewzzFnX0HhY by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T14:30:37Z
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@riley godspeed *salutes*
(DIR) Post #AvDxdrHOW0pCll32Qq by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T14:31:37Z
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okay blindly importing the entire HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT over (along with a ton of DLLs) makes it work.time to rewind and figure out the minimal set I need to copy over to make this work
(DIR) Post #AvDzGJwAW00cbk1XeK by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-17T14:49:44Z
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gotta go manually change all these "ThreadingModel"="Apartment" lines cause I live in a house, not an apartment
(DIR) Post #AvDzRnI3imz0pWjYyu by permik@mastodon.online
2025-06-17T14:51:49Z
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@foone Now slap some binary search what deletes half of the systems DLL's and registry keys, then run the script concurrently on XYZ amount of virtual machines in parallel :)I have the weirdest hunch that this is a thing that people would like to have.
(DIR) Post #AvDzfXW1AWONxXok1g by jernej__s@infosec.exchange
2025-06-17T14:54:13Z
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@foone A lot of the time you just need to run regsvr32.exe correct.dll, and it'll create the appropriate Registry entries.
(DIR) Post #AvE8EzJCcoSFvZEleq by vt52@ioc.exchange
2025-06-17T16:30:14Z
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@foone do you have any debugger access?https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/combaseapi/nf-combaseapi-dllgetclassobjecthttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/com/registry-entries
(DIR) Post #AvEByxWxrqznb2HppY by geoffl@mastodon.me.uk
2025-06-17T17:12:12Z
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@foone This is how I roll.
(DIR) Post #AvEXV677aaJkWLMg2y by david@fedi.machaj.info
2025-06-17T21:13:11Z
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@foone 1. Open regedit2. Right click something (such as HKLM)3. Export, choose a file name4. Install program5. Export again6. Copy before/after exports to a modern computer and diff them.
(DIR) Post #AvEzSRb23iFozksWKO by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-18T02:26:37Z
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@david the installer was last seen in 1998.
(DIR) Post #AvF9hRHoUbqVv2g5IW by david@fedi.machaj.info
2025-06-18T04:21:21Z
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@foone Eww. Could maaaaybe try this approach to compare a clean install of NT4 to a device with this program installed. That would rule out anything from the OS itself. There would probably be a bunch of noise, though.
(DIR) Post #AvFBKV7WGul93e3LBw by foone@digipres.club
2025-06-18T04:39:41Z
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@david yeah. the one VM I have with it has dozens of programs installed and was running for 20 years straight. it has a very noisy registry