The symptoms are usually that you are unable to open your company file in Quick Books and resolution attempts like repairing the installation fail, and you get prompts for a mysterious html file.

From most indications, this usually happens if you do a system restore, or move your operating system files to a new hard drive or new computer. It leads one to believe that there is some kind of hash or signature on the specific file causing the frustration and that file is the aptly named “Entitlement” file which manages the phone-home registration process of Quick Books. The file in question is the “Entitlement DataStore.ecml” file.

To fix error 3371, rename the offending file and you should be able to start living again. Obviously, you will have to re-register with Intuit.

If you are still using Windows XP, you need to do this:

For those who like to type:

• Click Start and choose Run.
• Type the following command into the Open field:
  C:Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Intuit\Entitlement Client\v2 (Note: you may have multiple “v” folders, so look for the current or latest one)
• Click OK
• Delete (or preferably, rename) the “Entitlement DataStore.ecml” file.

For the clickers, you can just “Explore” your way to the “C:Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Intuit\Entitlement Client\ v*” folder and rename or delete the stupid file.

For the Windows 7 users, go here: C:\ProgramData\Intuit\Entitlement Client\v* (where ‘*’ is a number). Rename the errant file. Quick Books will create a new one when you start the application.

[Note that the "ProgramData" folder may be hidden in which case you can unhide it like this:

• Open "Computer", Click on "Organize | Folder and search options | View,  and select "Show hidden files, folders..."]

Start Quick Books and you should be good to go. Remember, you most likely, will get a reminder to register Quick Books within 30 days.

Disclaimer: Backup your stuff before you start messing with files. If you hose your application, do not come crying to me. If you are not sure, consult a professional. ‘Nuff said.

The website has encountered a problem and cannot display the page you are trying to view. The options provided below might help you solve the problem

Then there is an error code 0×80070424. It could also show up as error 80070424.

This could be a symptom of one or more of the following problems:

• The Automatic Updates feature is turned off in Security Center and you cannot turn this feature on.
• The Automatic Updates service is missing from the Services snap-in.
• The registry is missing one or both of the following registry subkeys:
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\wuauserv
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_WUAUSERV

What this simply means is that Windows thinks the update service does not exist on your computer either because it was accidentally de-registered or was not installed properly. So you get error 0×80070424.

The fastest way to fix Windows Update Error 0×80070424 is to re-register the Windows Update and Automatic Update services by running the following commands either using command prompt or the “Run” option.

Option 1:

• Go to Start>Run
• Type regsvr32 wuaueng.dll
• Click on OK wait a few seconds, then click on OK in the RegSvr32 dialog box.
• Click on Start>Run key in regedit then click on OK
  Navigate to:
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\wuauserv
  Look for a DeleteFlag value and, if it exists, right-click on it and select
  Delete.

Option 2:

Open the command prompt, or the “Run” box and type, or cut and paste the following:

%systemroot%\system32\regsvr32.exe %systemroot%\system32\wuaneng.dll

This will register the Windows Update service and a dialog box should display to say the commands were executed successfully. You can then retry the Windows Update service again.

It may also help to make sure that required Windows Update services like the Background Intelligent Transfer Service, Windows Update and Workstation services are running. If they are not, start those services.

To check and start required Windows Update services:

• Click on Start, select “Run” and type in “Services.msc“. You may be prompted for an administrator password or confirmation.
• In the Services dialog box, click Background Intelligent Transfer Service
• Note the status of the selection. If it shows Stopped, right-click the service and click “Start”.

Do the same for Windows Update and the Workstation services.

In some weird instances, when you look in the “Services” section under Administrative tools, the Windows Update service may not appear at all. If that is the case, see this article about installing the Windows Update agent.

Additionally, Microsoft has also made version 7.4.7600.226 of the Windows Update Agent available and you can get the files here.

You must know which kind of processor platform (x86-based, x64-based, or Itanium-based) that you have. Most users have x86-based processors [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949104]

To learn which version of Windows that you are running, or to learn whether it is a 32-bit version or 64-bit version, open System Information (Msinfo32.exe). Then, review the value that is listed for System Type. To do this, follow these steps:

Step 1:
Click Start, and then click Run, or click Start Search.
Type msinfo32.exe, and then press ENTER.
In System Information, review the value for System Type.
For 32-bit editions of Windows, the System Type value is x86-based PC.
For 64-bit editions of Windows, the System Type value is x64-based PC.

Step 2:
Download Windows Update Agent for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2000 Service Pack 4

To automatically obtain the latest Windows Update Agent,  we recommend that you visit the Windows Update Web site. When you visit this Web site, the latest version of the Windows Update Agent will automatically be installed. For Windows 7 and Vista, Windows Update is integrated with the Operating System and can be accessed through the Control Panel.

While the media has been abuzz about the exploits of Anonymous and LulzSec, the bigger question we should be asking is, are any of their exploits new or did they just give us a wake up call that there is no security, at least in the way we normally define it. What they have demonstrated is that security is a term we use to make ourselves feel good.

A quick look at their “victims” shows that most of the organizations they targeted have tons of money to throw at security, and some are known vendors of security “solutions”. Whether it is RSA, CitiGroup, Bank of America, the CIA, the U.S. Senate, Fox News, Barracuda, Northrup Gruman, Lockheed Martin, Comodo, Yahoo! and countless others too “insignificant” to get on the front page like Distribute IT, the recent attacks clearly show that any one can be had.

It could have been worse and these attacks could have gone on quietly, as I am sure they have been for quite  a while. I strongly believe that what the LulzSEC and Anonymous groups exposed were events that happened regularly but were covered up by the affected organizations.

The effect of such cover-ups were a false sense of security on the part of the general populace and the tendency by most organizations to believe that just installing a security appliance was enough. It also gave vendors of security products license to continue milking millions of dollars from the government, consumers and businesses until the holes in their products were exposed.

Rather than demonize these groups, organizations and businesses should be thankful that someone has provided a yardstick by which you can hold your security vendors accountable. There is now a talking point of “how can you guarantee that what happened to Citi won’t happen to us and if it happens, can you fix it without billing us additional millions”.

Indeed, as the group wrote:

“Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind – we hope – inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love. If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere.”

Their activities in the past few weeks, if anything has put a little pressure on IT professionals saddled with the task of protecting a network to get off the World of Warcraft and actually do some continuous monitoring and vulnerability scanning; it gives security professionals food for thought when they go on an risk assessment assignment because they will actually be forced to do a thorough assessment instead of check-boxing their way through. CFOs should be thankful because now they have a reason to demand that the money budgeted for security is actually being spent on security and not on some cool gadget that is completely useless in protecting the organization from security breaches.

Finally, while there are ethical gaps in the way these groups did their “ethical hacking”, I hope it gives us reason to think twice before we put confidential information in insecure locations. But from the mostly negative and arguably silly comments you read on websites that report on the activities of these groups, a lot of people still do not seem to get it. There is a lot of focus on the what instead of the why and how. If the systems that were compromised were secure in the first place, could they have gained access? What does a hack teach the organization that was hacked? If these guys could get into our corporate systems and tell us, who else got in and did not tell us?

In today’s business world, where organizations face ever-escalating customer demands and expectations and little room for downtime, logic dictates that businesses today are seriously revamping their business continuity and risk management plans, or developing one if they did not have any.

This is even more pertinent given what we have witnessed in recent months in the areas of data breaches, hack attempts and the underground “war” being waged in cyberspace that has put most of the world’s powerful organizations on the defensive.
Business continuity management is usually regarded as “the capability to assist in preventing, preparing for, responding to, managing and recovering from the impacts of a disruptive event”. (Business Continuity Management, Australian National Audit Office, 2009)

We have always been told that to remain competitive we must build a resilient IT infrastructure, or risk our competition having us for lunch. Apparently, the folks at Distribute IT were not listening.

As few may be aware, Distribute IT, one of Australia’s web hosting providers got hacked on June 14, 2011 and practically went out of business overnight. In what could only be described as weird, absurd or the greatest display of corporate irresponsibility, the company did not have sufficient redundant backups to save its or most of its customers’ data. The company did not take offline backups and was forced to shamefully admit that:

Our Data Recovery teams have been working around the clock in an attempt to recover data from the affected servers shared Servers [sic]. At this time, we regret to inform that the data, sites and emails that were hosted on Drought, Hurricane, Blizzard and Cyclone can be considered by all the experts to be unrecoverable… our greatest fears have been confirmed that not only was the production data erased during the attack, but also key backups, snapshots and other information that would allow us to reconstruct these Servers from the remaining data.

Aptly named servers apparently, because nothing good usually comes out of an encounter with drought, blizzard, hurricane or cyclone unless you heed safety warnings and take appropriate measures! As the company explained to its customers, the hack and its aftermath left them with “…little choice but to assist you in any way possible to transfer your hosting and email needs to other hosting providers.”

Business continuity management is supposed to be an essential part of an organization’s overall approach to effective risk management. It is or was the overall responsibility of DIT’s executive to raise awareness and implement some form of resilience into the infrastructure and sadly, it failed woefully in that regard.

It is amazing that despite what we have experienced this year in terms of hacks, breaches and what not by the likes of Google, RSA, Comodo, Barracuda, and City Group to name a few, Distribute IT did not think it was pertinent to take precautions and bolster the security of its servers. The company has since been acquired by NetRegistry, but questions remain.

Distribute IT was ICANN accredited, but it appears that there is no form of auditing performed by the organization to determine whether registries are doing enough to secure their systems and preserve customer data.

Second, is the check-box “methodologies” of risk management experts creating a false sense of security and the ability to recover in the minds of clients?

How do information security “experts” do a better job of encouraging better risk and security decisions? Or avoid making the assumption that an organization will always recover if its risk controls fail?

Distribute IT is a small business compared to other providers in the industry, but it is not too farfetched to think that we couldn’t see similar sorts of existential threats to larger, IT-dependent businesses that might not be as risk savvy as a financial entity, for example – heck even those are feeling the pain – just ask CitiGroup or Bank of America, or Commerica Bank.

This unfortunate incident is yet another example of what happens when businesses ignore the risks that they shouldn’t. This situation will continue as long as executives think that security is all about installing firewalls and running the latest antivirus software.

As is always the case, it is only after a tragedy happens that people spring to action, despite several warnings that could have prevented the problem in the first place. Of course, there is always the reminder by company executives that they have tape and/or offline backups, but how many have taken the time to do a proper risk assessment?

Are we truly in an era when people can claim that “[t]here is no security, there will be no security. The horse has bolted, and it’s not going to be the infrastructure that’s going to change, it’s going to be us”?

Are these recent spate of breaches and hacks that have been exposed just old occurrences coming to light? US Department of Homeland Security advisor Jeff Moss Tweeted recently, “When I heard RSA had a shiny new half million dollar HSM to store seed files I wondered where had they been stored before”.

This error comes up when you try to print a form in QuickBooks, or try to access the File | Printer Setup menu. In some cases, installed printers will not show up in the Printer Setup drop-down box even though there are printers installed on the computer.

The culprit is usually a corrupt QBPrint file and the fix is very easy, in this case at least.

According to Intuit:

The Qbprint.qbp file contains a data line for each form in QuickBooks. It has a line for invoices and it has a line for journal entries. When you print a form, QuickBooks pulls the form information and uses it to print the form. If you change the selections on the Printer Setup window or the Print One Form window, QuickBooks writes the new information into the Qbprint.qbp file.

The easiest way to fix the “No printer installed” error is to rename the QBPrint.qbp file which is usually a hidden file located within the ProgramData folder in Windows 7 and Vista, or in the All Users\Application Data\Intuit\QuickBooks folder in Windows XP

To locate the QBPrint.qbp file:

Windows 7:

1. Right click the Start Menu and select “Open Windows Explorer”.
2. Click on Computer on the left hand side.
3. Choose Local Disk C:/.
4. Click on Organize right below the back and forward arrows.
5. Click on Folder and Search Options.
6. Click on the View Tab.
7. In the View Tab select the option “Show Hidden Files,Folders, or Drives.”
8. Navigate to C:\ProgramData\Intuit\QuickBooks – note that if you have multiple versions of QuickBooks installed, you need the one for the current version in use.
9. Right-click the QBPrint.qbp file and choose Rename – note that if the application is open, you may need to close it before you can rename the file.

Rename the file to QBPrint.old.

Windows Vista:

1. Click the Start button and choose Search.
2. Click the Advanced Search down arrow.
3. Click the Location drop-down arrow and select Local Disk (C:).
4. Select Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files. (QBPrint.qbp is a hidden file.)
5. In the Name window enter QBPrint.qbp and click Search.

Or you can browse to the file C:\ProgramData\Intuit\QuickBooks XXXX.

Windows XP:

1. Click the Start button and choose Search > For Files or Folders.
2. Select All files and folders.
3. In All or part of the file name enter QBPrint.qbp.
4. Click the Look in drop-down arrow and select Local Hard Drives (C:).
5. Click the More advanced options arrow and select Search hidden files and folders. (QBPrint.qbp is a hidden file.)
6. Click Search.

Or you can browse to the file C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Intuit\QuickBooks

In the Search Results window, right-click the QBPrint.qbp file for your version of QuickBooks and choose Rename.

• Enter QBPrint.old and press Enter.

After Renaming the QBPrint.qbp file:

• Open QuickBooks.
• Choose File > Printer Setup and make sure your printers are showing up in the drop-down
• Click any one of the transactions in the Form Name drop-down and click OK. This will create a new QBPrint.qbp file. (This usually needs to be done just once)

Open and print the transaction that was having problems.