If you’re developing a website, and you’ve just installed an SSL certificate, there is a good change you may get a message like the above (in Chrome) when you’re trying to view some of your website’s pages using the secure https protocol:

“This page has insecure content.”

As you can imagine, this can be very disconcerting to your visitors, especially if you’re running an e-commerce site or collecting any kind of private information.  What this message means is that you have code somewhere on your page that is requesting an asset (image, script, etc) using the non-secure “http” protocol. So to fix it, all you really need to do, is change those urls to use https instead of http.

Here are some places to check that people oftentimes miss:

• header (doctypes, html xmlns, etc)
• javascripts
• images
• stylesheets
• favicons    <– this one people always miss!
• plugins (such as ShareThis, Facebook widget, Twitter widget, etc)

A Note on Internal Assets

<img src="http://www.mysite.com/images/myimage.jpg" />

<img src="/images/myimage.jpg" />

WordPress Paths

If you try to install an existing java web-based application connecting to an ODBC on Windows7 64 bit environment, you’re going to run into problems.  Most likely you’ll get an error like this one in your tomcat logs when you try to connect to your local datasource:

..."[Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Invalid string or buffer length"...

In my case, this error was when I tried to connect to a MS Access database with Tomcat running as a Win7 service.  So here’s what you need to do:

1. Setup a 32bit ODBC driver in Win7 using this:  c:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe   (it looks just like the 64bit ODBC manager located in window/system, but it will setup the DSN as a 32 bit, not a 64 bit.)
2. Install the JRE required by your application.  In my case it was 1.6, so I stuck it under c:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.6.0
3. When you compile your code, make sure you’re using the right JRE.  In my case, I’m using Eclipse / Ant to build/compile my app, so in Eclipse I went to Window -> Preferences -> Java -> Installed JRE’s, and pointed to my new jre1.6.  Then I right-clicked the root folder of my project, and went to Properties -> Java Build Path -> Libraries -> remove the current jre, then “Add Library” to add the new one
4. And here’s the big trick:  instead of running Tomcat as a windows service, start is manually by creating a batch file somewhere (ie: in your tomcat directory, I called mine tomcat.bat), and put in the following contents, changing paths where necessary, obviously:

SET JAVA_HOME=c:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.6.0 SET CATALINA_HOME=c:\Tomcat start “Tomcat 5.5.31″ “%JAVA_HOME%\bin\java” -classpath “%JAVA_HOME%\lib\tools.jar;%CATALINA_HOME%\bin\bootstrap.jar” -Dcatalina.home=”%CATALINA_HOME%” -Dcatalina.base=”%CATALINA_HOME%” -Djava.endorsed.dirs=”%CATALINA_HOME%\common\endorsed” -Djava.io.tmpdir=”%CATALINA_HOME%\temp” org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start

Now run the batch file to startup Tomcat, and leave the window open to view error logs.  It’s not as nice as running it as a service, but it works.  If someone knows how to run Tomcat as a 32bit service on Win7 64bit, let me know!

Now you’ll have Tomcat, Java, and your app all pointing to the same 32bit JRE using the Win7 32 bit ODBC drivers, and it should all work perfectly, like it was on your old Vista or XP machine.

Did this help you?  Let me know!  Still have questions?  Ask in the comments below and I’ll do my best to help you out.

As a result of my computer recently being infected with the “AV Security Suite” virus, after I cleaned the virus, I could not browse anywhere on the internet.  Chrome will give you an “error 102 connection refused” message, Internet Explorer & Firefox will probably give you something similar like “The webpage cannot be displayed.”  This was because the virus had changed my Internet settings in Windows to use a proxy server.

You can easily fix this by going to Windows control panel -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN settings -> then UNCHECK “Use Proxy Server”.

Click to enlarge!

Hope that helped!

I’m a software developer, very computer savvy, and never do anything foolish online to expose my computer to possible risks.  I don’t run any anti-virus software, because I don’t want anything slowing down my computer while I work, and I’m pretty confident that I can get rid of anything that comes along.  And my track record shows that I’ve never got any viruses before today.  But this morning I got hit with a pretty awful one that I think most people would have quite a time removing – so I thought I would write about it here, if you need help.

The “AV Security Suite” trojan-horse virus will basically lock up your computer, not allow you to open any applications, and keep popping up windows saying that your computer is infected with a virus, and that you need to run a security scan to clean it.  Then they offer you to run the scan, or purchase their “anti-virus” software.  The screen that pops up will look like this:

You will not be able to open task manager to stop the process from running, as it blocks any application from running (including task manager).  The only programs it allows to run is Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe) and Firefox (firefox.exe).  So in order to remove the virus, here’s what needs to be done:

1. The process associated with AV Security Suite must be stopped.
2. Files & registry entries associated with the virus must be removed.

Here’s how I did it:

• reboot the computer in safe mode (press F8 a few times before Windows loads)
• as soon as you’re in Windows, press Ctrl+Alt+Del to open Task Manager.  Click the “Processes” tab, find “eaeujrwtssd.exe”, click it, then click “End Process”.
• download & install MalwareBytes Anti-Malware program.  Here’s the link:  http://www.malwarebytes.org/ (click the free version download).  Once it’s installed, run the Quick scan.  It should find the infected registry values & files.  Tell the program to delete (quarantine) the files after the scan, then reboot your computer.

That should take care of it!

If the above process doesn’t work, I found a much more detailed description on how to get rid of it at this link:  http://www.virusremovalguru.com/?p=6257

Did you get this virus?  Did you get rid of it successfully?  Let me know by commenting below!