TeaTimer Fixer
2007-01-29 15:34 - Programming
Some of the core business at my new job has to do with some client-side (read: Windows) software. I of course do the web site that the software runs on, but I'm getting corollary exposure to some windows development, which I've never much had before.
To solve a small issue I was having, I ended up finding a reference to a piece of software called Resource Hacker. To make a long story short, windows software usually relies on "resources": the images and cursors in a program are one good example. Not only that, but the "maps" of where the buttons, text fields, and so on go are also a resource. And, with the program linked above, you can edit any resource in most any program on your system.
The wonderful Spybot - Search & Destroy software includes a little utility called Tea Timer. I don't quite know what the name means, but it does a lot of useful things like keep your startup software entries from being changed (without your knowledge and approval) along with some other important settings like that. Thing is, there's been a long-standing bug. There's a checkbox to "remember this decision" each time the Allow / Deny dialog comes up, but on most (not all! but most) systems, it appears on top of the allow and deny buttons. Which, of course, makes it hard to properly allow or deny the action.
With my new resource hacker knowledge, I managed to get in there and fix it. Perhaps this is a slightly fragile fix, but it works for me, and has on three different machines. Now that I had it fixed, I figured it would be great to share this fix with the world. The TeaTimer.exe file is about 1.34 MB, which is a little chunky. I could zip it to around half that, but darn it if only four bytes changed, I should be able to distribute the fix in a much lighter download.
It took a fair deal of googling, but I found the CodeFusion Wizard application. Exactly what I was looking for! It's a program designed explicitly to package up binary patches like this and distribute them. So, without further ado, here you go: TeaTimer Fixer. Download and run that, and it will patch up your copy of TeaTimer to move the checkbox down. (And the download is only 17.4 kB!)
(Note: It would probably be a good idea to make sure that TeaTimer is not running when patching the .exe file. You'll also have to manually find your copy of the .exe file. It's probably at C:\Program Files\Spybot - Search & Destroy\. No warranty express or implied, use at your own risk, yadda yadda.)
2007-01-29 15:42 - arantius
Of course, to write up this article, I googled the address to link Spybot. Once I was on the site I started clicking. I found there's already a FAQ about this and, though they don't link to it, a post in their forums showing how to perform these tasks, and someone named murdo has already uploaded a fix just like mine above. Back in November of 2005. Oh well, I had a good time digging around and learning things anyway!