Customer calls with a PC that is freezing (at random… every few minutes, with no apparent correlation to a possible cause, except she replaced a faulty monitor a few days prior to this problem starting).

I thing its possibly a heat issue, as I have seen a few PCs struggle with Brisbane’s summer heat & poor air circulation due to dust & poor case design.

I cannot make the PC freeze (windows 98 running an amd athlon 750Mhz in a HP case), so I open it up & clean out the dust (it’s not overly dustly), but I cannot cause a lockup… I try running an openGL screensaver, but still no lockup.

I suspect it should all be fine, but while on my way home, the customer calls & says it has locked up again… and given that she needs it for the weekend, I return with a few spare power supplies & an old spare PC.

Changing the power supply doesn’t help, so I start to suspect the motherboard (the PC is about 8 years old).

So I place the HDD into the spare PC that I took with me & fire up win98… after windows “discovers” all the new hardware, it’s back up & running… at this point (after over 2 hours of working on cramped PC cases, I suddenly remember one of the windows98 mistakes I made many many years ago: activating the DMA setting in the device manager properties for the disk drive often causes random lock-ups).

I check it out, and: yes, DMA is activated… I switch it off & ask the customer if anyone with technical knowledge has used the PC (answer is no)… Given that the PC is running, I decide not to waste too much more time tracking the exact cause of the problem.

Customer assures me she will call if the PC gives any more problems.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 3:04 PM EST

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A business customer rings with an odd outlook email problem: it keeps resending emails (multiple times)… which make the company look unprofessional to the recipient.

I do my usual badware & virus check, but find nothing (laptop already has the trend antivirus). So while the ewido scan is in progress, I do some ping tests & notice ping times around 1000 to 2000 ms (to google.com.au)… they should be around 200 to 300 ms.

I notice the telephone cable is plugged into one of those surge-protector boards. I bypass that, just to eliminate it from the equation… but nothing changes.

I then shutdown outlook, & everything is quick again…hmmm.

I look at the email sitting in the “outbox” folder, & it has an 8MB attachment… A touch large for an email attachment… it’s a tif image from a scanned image… and smaller emails go through without a hitch.

So I check out the ISP (telstra bigpond), to see what kinds of limits they have on their SMTP servers… there doesn’t seem to be any size limit, but after some more digging, I find some obscure references to a 20 minute smtp limit… ie if you can send an email within 20 minutes, fine (so the faster your internet connection, the larger the attachments you can send).

I suspect that if the email takes longer than 20 minutes, then the smtp server just truncates the email & sends it “as is”… At the other end of the connection, Outlook (or should it be called “Lookout!”?) gets an error message, so it shrugs it’s shoulders & tries again (thus multiple emails get sent).

Now I do some simple sums: assuming a slow adsl connection: 64kbitsps uplink, and a 9Mb email (90,000 kbits), then the email should take 90000/64 =1400 sec =23 minutes… but a faster adsl should not have a problem with this… and the customer is unsure of the adsl speed.

I also notice that trendAV also scans email (incoming & outgoing)… So scanning outgoing emails could slow things down a lot… I disable the outgoing AV scan… & I suggest that they try to keep attachments to below 2 or 3 Mb. Outgoing emails now work fine, as long as the email size is kept to something reasonable.

Everything else is fine… I find some spyware running on a second computer & install some anti-badware measures.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 3:00 AM EST

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A customer I dealt with a few months ago calls me out again, since his broadband is running very slow.

I checked for spyware last time, & found none, but since he often surfs to porn sites, its a safe bet that there is a spyware infection, or a hardware problem (since he had a problem with the ethernet link from his PC to the broadband modem).

Once I’m there, I see no evidence of an internet slowdown… I’m there for 90 minutes, & I notice a slowdown only in the last 10 minutes…

During my time there, I check for spyware (only a minor infection), and I disable some suspicious programs in the auto-startup places.

Once the slowdown started, ping times grew very long (1 or 2 seconds, or even lost pings). I started to suspect the usb cable, so I swapped it & everything seemed to return to normal.

A few days later, customers calls saying he is not happy, since I charged him $110 but the problem is still not fixed! He eventually fixed the problem himself by calling the ISP, who got him to download the AVG virus checker, & removed some viruses.

Ok, I should have made sure he had a virus checker… for some reason, I thought he already had one installed.

So I offer a full refund, but he graciously points out that I did do a lot of other work while I was there… so we agree to split the difference & I send him a cheque for $55

I don’t like dissatisfied customers & will do anything I can to make things “right”.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 2:57 PM EST

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Once the PC is back in its home, and everything plugged in, I fire it up. Since this is a new windows install, it naturally finds new hardware & prompts me to install the software for the new hardware.

oh, look, the mouse doesn’t work. Oh, the keyboard doesn’t work either… Ah, they are wireless, so it should just be a matter of pressing those little “resynchronise” buttons on the KB & mouse & on the radio receiver… hmmm, that doesn’t work. Try again… nope. We try a few different combinations, but nothing works.

So I go to the car & get a wired KB & mouse, plug them in, restart the PC, then finally say: yes, please install that software for the new hardware that you found.

So what does windows do? it installs the software drivers for the wireless keyboard & mouse!!! Argghhh!

Now thats an interesting “catch 22″ situation: wireless KB & mouse won’t work until the drivers have been installed, but cannot install the drivers unless we hit the OK button… but cannot hit the ok button unless the KB & mouse work… etc etc.

I tell you: wireless keyboards & mice are more trouble than they are worth.

Anyway, with that little hiccup out of the way, I finally reinstall the modem software (the bigpond software doesn’t work very well, but it eventually does something after a few reboots). sigh.

Check the web, setup email, and I’m finally finished.

phew!

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 2:21 PM EST

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While re-installing Windows XP MCE, I notice that HP have crammed a lot of hardware into a very small case (all the motherboard slots seem to be occupied).
To top it off, the location of the HDD is in a top-front corner of the case, with very little ventilation… I’m not surprised that the 160GB disk failed after just over 1 year. Very poor effort, HP.

Anyway, while installing XP MCE, it won’t accept the XP code on the side of the case… Grrr… oh well, a little “creativity” will fix that.

Once the install is complete, I do a full windows update, then I copy the customer’s data and applications (Program files) back into place, but I suspect many apps will not work unless they get re-installed.

Anyway, all I need to do now is take the PC back, setup the internet & email, and leave the customer to the tedious task of re-installing apps.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 2:11 PM EST

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Customer rang saying she is having trouble starting her PC. Something about being unable to find windll.dll, so the PC won’t even start windows.

I think: an in-place windows reinstall should do the trick.

I find out that she has also contacted HP (who say it’s not their problem… it’s microsoft & their windows product) and contacted microsoft (who predictably say it’s a HP issue), and the seller (a large department store - Myer), who have no inhouse technical support for products that they sell, so they cannot help (except to pass on my details).

Anyway, when I get there, all my tools show that the main C: partition is either not there, or unformatted… Ok, this is going to be a lot more complicated. She agrees to my taking the PC away to work on & I’ll keep her informed of my progress.

After some investigation, I decide that a chkdsk is the best way to go (if slightly risky… if the disk is about to fail, a chkdsk might make things worse… but I’ve heard some very good reports about the NTFS XP chkdsk.

The chkdsk repaired a lot of errors, but at the end, said that the errors were only minor (or words to that effect).

The PC now boots & complains about another corrupt dll file (still no windows), but booting from bartPE, I can now explore the C: partition.

I take a spare HDD & connect it to the PC, so that I can backup all the user data & eventually generate some backup DVDs.

All goes well, & after trying a second chkdsk, & noticing the drive has a few more errors that need correcting… it seems very warm to touch (warmer than most hard drives)… So it’s days are numbered.

Customer agrees that a new HDD is best. I try to image the old HDD to the new HDD, but the imaging software just cannot handle the old disk…

Now, the PC did not ship with any windows CDs, And this is not a windows XP home or pro pc … It’s a third variation called “windows XP media center edition”… Since the PC has a legit licence, I see no problem with downloading a WinXP MCE iso image, so that I can install it onto the PC. The pc has a valid license number on the side… We just don’t want to spend $66 on the official media (and wait 2-5 days for it to be delivered).

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 2:08 PM EST

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Customer rang, saying that their keyboard types strange characters, and the mouse is very erratic.

So I took a spare keyboard & mouse with me, and had a bit of a looksee. It turns out that they have a cordless mouse & keyboard, & using the computer is very difficult… So I plug in a wired keyboard & mouse & things are a bit better, but not much.

So I boot into win XP safe mode, & do a spyware scan. Clear out all found spyware & install standard anti virus & badware software (antivir, spyware blaster, winpatrol) & everything works just fine.

I also removed a warez downloader program… Looks like they have a son who does a lot of music downloading… except he seems to use a spyware infested program to do so.

I ask the mum if the son is likely to use the computer much, & she says that he has his own laptop, & he does everything from that (it’s connected to the internet via a wireless router).

2 days later, the dad calls me & says the antivirus is constantly “complaining” about some warez program & thinks it is spyware… I think: aha! the son probably has an unusable laptop due to spyware, so he uses mum & dad’s PC… Anyway I tell him it’s a very bad idea to run this warez program & he should uninstall it & not let it get reinstalled.

Case closed, but I wouldn’t be surprised to get a call asking to fix up the son’s laptop.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 1:14 PM EST

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This laptop (toshiba satellite 1800, ps181a-00wfx, 800Mhz, P3), runs windoze me… Customer would like it cleaned up & possibly upgraded to windows XP.

I take a look & given that it only has 64Mb of ram, I recommend upgrading memory by at least 128Mb, preferably 256Mb. The cost of also upgrading to XP & my fee will be fairly high, so I give the customer a few choices (and prices). He chooses to keep windows me, but to upgrade to 256Mb + 64Mb

So I order the memory & while waiting for it to arrive, I look at fixing windows me.

The first problem to fix is to remove a mild spyware infection.

The second task is to fix the sound (it should work, but it doesn’t… windows doesn’t report anything wrong, but there is no sound from the speakers). I was also told that the DVD drive doesn’t play DVD movies anymore, so it might be related.

To see if I can hear any sound from the speaker, I try to boot a few variations of knoppix, I even try “Damn small linux” and bart pe. But they all fail at some point in the boot process… looks like 64Mb is just too small for most OS’s.

At this point, all I can do an “in place” reinstall of windows me, and then the sound works just fine.

I then run windows update until the PC is fully patched, then I update antivir and spyware blaster, & scan the PC for any more nasties (none are found).

I also do a defrag & clear out tmp & cache folders (anything to speed things up a bit)

The DVD player is a lot more problematic. The PC already has powerdvd, & about 4 other DVD players installed, & none of them work. Most actually cause the PC to freeze, requiring a reboot… Quite time consuming.

In the end, I uninstall all the non-working DVD players, and I try installing JetAudio and media player classic. Both work flawlessly. I suspect the problem might have been a corrupt system file, so installing some different players (and removing the old ones) fixed things.

When the memory arrived, I installed it & it certainly made a big difference to the speed.

Another happy customer.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 4:51 PM EST

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