Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware: Critical Error 101

Contributor Icon Contributed by davak Date Icon January 27, 2005  
Tag Icon Tagged: Windows spyware

As the use of Microsoft’s new beta antispyware increases, many users are reporting this error. Here are some hints for working around this error.


So you are receiving the classic 101 error too? It’s an odd error that is caused by several things… usually it because of a permission issue. An update or a reinstallation will usually work.

Here’s how to Update:

    1. Logged in with admin privileges, open your Control Panel
    2. Select Add/Remove Programs
    3. Select Microsoft AntiSpyware
    4. Click Change
    5. The Maintenance Wizard will open. Select Next
    6. Click Update Microsoft AntiSpyware
    7. Select Install and the product will install
    8. Click Finish

If that doesn’t work, you can uninstall it completely from the control panel and reinstall:

Previous recipe | Next recipe |
 

Viewing 4 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    I couldn't get it running following the recommended steps, uninstall/install/ or dcomcnfg, but managed with a slightly different approach.

    1. start-run-C:WINDOWSsystem32svchost -k DcomLaunch <enter>

    2. use task manager, end process gcasServ.exe. (gcasDTserv.exe not active)
    3. open dos/command prompt & navigate to c:program filesmicrosoft antispyware

    4. type gcasdtserv.exe <enter>
    5. type gcasServ.exe <enter>
    6. type GIANTAntiSpywareMain.exe <enter>

    I got mine working this way.
    • ^
    • v
    Additionally, perform a scan with Anti-spyware & remove any spywares detected (there were 2 on my PC). MS Anti-spyware loads fine on subsequent reboots.

    regds,
    wong
    • ^
    • v
    I tried out the routine you used and mine came up now. I just gotta wait and see if it finds anything and if it comes back up again. Thanks.
    • ^
    • v
    !! EXPLANATION !!

    I've only done preliminary research on this one, so I'm throwing this out to the community for further investigation. Hopefully my science won't get truncated for running overlength.

    The current machine that I'm investigating the error on seems to be having problems because of registry permissions that need to be fixed. This might be unrealistic to fix manually, because there are approx 83 registry keys that have permissions issues. The permissions on the registry keys seem to have become corrupt, and have to be recreated in order to allow Windows to access them as part of installing/running MS AntiSpyware. Since the manual fix is very slow, I'm tossing this out there in case someone else would like to try investigating it. I am limited in the number of computers I have to test this on. Anyway, the fix follows. Feel free to contact me at my Yahoo account, for which the address is the same as my username.

    !! MANUAL FIX !!

    The 83 classes run from
    HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTgcAntiSpywareLibrary.ActiveXObject
    to
    HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTgcTCPObjLib.TCPIPQuery


    1) Left click on entry. You'll receive an error which basically means that RegEdit couldn't load the contents of the key into the right-hand window pane because of permissions issues.
    2) Right click on entry, choose Permissions. Receive amusing error about not being able see the permissions, but that you can change them.
    3) Hit the Add button.
    4) Type in "Administrators"*** (without quotes). Then click the Check Names button, which should re-format that blank as %YourComputerName%Administrators. If it doesn't, you probably mispelled "administrators" or forgot to leave out the quotes. If it works, then click OK
    5) By default it's only given you "Special Permissions", which is stupid useless. Click the checkbox at the intersection of "Allow" and "Full Control". Click Apply and you'll receive an untrue error that says the permissions couldn't be changed.* Ignore it and just hit OK.
    6) Click the advanced button. In the new window, go to the Owner tab. Highlight Administrators in the lower window pane. Check off the "Replace owner on subcontainers"** and then click OK. You'll receive another untrue error*, but you can ignore it.
    7) You're back at the initial permissions window now. Slap that OK button and we've finished this round. You now should be able to see the objects inside of the key. Feel free to go back into permissions and verify your changes.
    8) Locate the next entry and loop back to step one. If at end of list, crack yourself a cold one and pray that this solved your problems.

    * I don't know why this procedure encounters so many failure errors that prove to be untrue. All I can assume is that Windows attempts to verify the changes before they're actually completed. It's understandable if you choose to believe Windows's errors before my word, but you can verify my findings. You can go through these steps for a registry key, then feel free to try repeating them. Everything should complete without error and all settings should evidence that the previous attempts had already succeeded.
    ** Offhand, I don't believe that any of the keys that we're running through will contain subcontainers, nor objects that are capable of separate permissions than their containing folder, but I do it because I'd rather be safe than sorry.
    *** Your results may vary, but for some reason the contents of my clipboard disappeared every time I moved to a new entry, so I had to type "administrators" from scratch every time. Fun, eh?

    !! THEORETICAL AUTOMATED FIX !!

    In theory, you should be able to just go on up to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT folder and force permissions and ownership down to each of the subcontainers. I haven't tried this yet, because I don't know whether it's safe to force this change. I don't know whether it's possible to force down just permissions as they pertain to the SYSTEM and Administrator classes without altering any specific specialized settings that the individual ones might have. I'm pretty sure that you can safely propagate down folder ownership, but I'm not sure whether or not this would work if you haven't sent down the permissions first.
 
close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus