Ok, my third visit to the local vet… I’d better get the internet going today!

I try to ping… but nothing responds… hmmm, this is worse than last time.

I ping the printer (its a networked printer, so it has its own IP address)… and that doesn’t work. The other surgery PC on the network seems to have no trouble accessing the files stored on the main PC, and printing works fine… very curious.

I unplug the ethernet cable and: I can now ping internet addresses!!! I disable the wireless adapter, and the local ethernet works well, I can ping everything on the local hub network.

I vaguely remember having seen (a long time ago) some network settings, which allow different network adapters to be given different priorities, but I cannot find these settings anymore. But in my searching, I find something called: ‘bridge connections’. I’m not sure if this is the correct way to fix this problem, but hey, its worth a try.

It takes about 2 minutes to bridge the 2 network adapters, and after that, everything works as it should.

The vet will try to setup a different email address & asks about a web site. I offer to send him some details on how I can set one up for him, and I am finally on my way.

Its amazing how a simple “please connect broadband internet” request can turn into a 3 day saga.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 1:28 PM EDT

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I return to the vet, & after another check, I find I have no option but to setup wireless at his house & setup the office with a wireless card.

The house is easy (the PC runs win 2000, so I switch it from using usb to ethernet broadband access). I place the modem/wireless router on the windowsill, hoping that the signal will be strong enough to reach the office.

I install a d-link g510 pci card into the office pc, but installing the drivers causes some problems (the dlink wireless utility doesn't want to start). I get the latest driver & I also realise that I need to install the drivers before plugging in the card (whatever happened to plug and play?). So: uninstall the drivers, reopen the pc, remove the card, start the pc, install the latest drivers, shutdown, plugin the card, close the pc, start the pc, and hey, the dlink drivers start correctly (grumble grumble).

Now I go to setup the wireless security, and… hmmm, the windows xp wireless tabs & options look a bit different, somethings like wpa security don't exist!

Ok, I'll try the dlink utility instead… everything is setup correctly, but the link adaptor remains disconnected…

I eventually realise that the PC is running xp SP1. Do I want to do an SP2 upgrade on this computer? After some thought, I decide to go ahead… the risks are minimal, & it should be done sooner or later anyway.

The install takes about 40 or 50 minutes, and after the reboot… yippee, I can get a wireless connection. Signal strength is 40% - 50%, which is fine, since I am running a wireless system myself, which sits at 25% - 35%, but no noticeable dropouts.

I try a ping to an internet website: no response, I ping the wireless router: its fine.

I reboot: still no internet.

Its getting late again (and the vet is getting busy with customers, so I decide to hand back the PC & arrange for another visit).

At this stage, I feel I'm so close to getting the internet working… probably just a simple setting somewhere. Or it might just start working spontaneously a few minutes after I leave.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 8:00 PM EDT

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A vet asks me to help set up broadband in his office.

I get there and it starts looking complicated. The computer is plugged into an ethernet hub, as is another computer, and the printer (all with a huge mass of wires behind the front counter). He also has a d-link wireless router / modem / 4 port ethernet router, which he wants to use to connect to ADSL.

After some mucking around, I realise that he already has adsl at the main residence, and the surgery is running on the same phone line… a quick check, and, yep, you really cannot run 2 adsl modems on the same phone line.

Getting adsl to the office is more important. After some experimenting, I find that there is a problem with the office phone line… the modem drops out all the time; its really not useable. But it seems that the house broadband works quite reliably.

I also take a look at setting up a wireless laptop (a toshiba satellite psa10a-01m7lp) … its a pentium 4 'm' and it has a wireless switch on the front, so it should have wireless. Shouldn't it?

I go to the control panel network settings, and I only see the wired adapter… hmmm. Is it turned off in the bios? No. I leave it, and since its getting late, I arrange to return another day, and get everything going.

I do some research later on, and I find that the laptop only has a wireless antenna… the actual wireless board is an optional extra. How useless is that?

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 8:19 PM EDT

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Customer needed some help with some monitor drivers… and the computer keeps resetting, & misc other problems…

Hmmm, its not often that someone want to install monitor drivers (I’ve tried it myself, to see how far I could push my Viewsonic PF790… (BTW: its an excellent Trinitron monitor!) but it never really works well)

So I pick up the computer (windows XP), and I note a few odd things:

• A 30 Gb drive with 2 partitions (one fat32 one NTFS)
• An 80 Gb drive with 5 partitions (mostly fat32)
• 2 CD / dvd drives
• Display is low resolution, only shows 16 colours, and cannot be moved to a higher res
• Very slow (for a P4 2.2Ghz, with over 500Mb ram)
• It freezes occasionally
• Motherboard has about 12 Capacitors that seem ready to fail (typical bulge… one is leaking slightly).

It seems that this system has been upgraded over the years (hence the many small partitions: a leftover from the days when win98 couldn’t go above 33Gb). 7 disk partitions & 2 CD drives can cause a lot of confusion (9 drive letters to remember!)

Anyway, it will be way too expensive to fix all the problems ‘individually’, so I give the customer a few options, but the only realistic one is to replace the Mobo, backup the drives, re-partition & re-install windows (with only NTFS).

Finding a suitable Mobo is not simple: I need to make sure it can take ddr400 Ram, it can take the agp video card (different agp cards can run at different voltages, so the mobo must accept the video card correctly), it has the correct CPU socket, it can fit into the case, and the customer wants 6 pci slots for future expansion.

I manage to find a suitable Mobo

I also do the backups, reinstall windows, update from SP1 to SP2, latest updates, some tuning and configuration, anti virus, etc.

It takes a while, but I eventually get everything going.

BTW: Don’t try to update the bios on an Asus P4B533-V socket 478 motherboard (using the windows utility)… it usually results in a bad flash, and a few anxious hours digging up old floppies, while praying that the bios is good enough to boot a floppy with the old bios on it…

I decide on making the 80Gb drive the primary, with an 8Gb windows partition, and a 72Gb ‘D:’ drive. I make the 30Gb drive the ‘E:’.

Since the whole family will be using this PC, I decide to allow for “expansion”. I’ve noticed that most people (particularly the ‘ipod generation’) will just store their data (music, assignments, etc) into my documents and/or the desktop.

Now, with WinXP, my documents & the desktop are actually folders under the ‘documents and settings’ folder, which is usually under C:

So as MP3 files get stored under my documents, the C: drive will quickly blow out.

With a bit of research, I found that it is possible to point the ’documents and settings’ folder (and also the program files folder) to the much larger D:

I also setup the 30Gb drive (E: ) to hold the windows page file and the ‘temp’ folders.

A quick disk defragment, and the system is very quick & ready to take whatever the kids can throw at it.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 10:06 PM EDT

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A few months ago, I got a typical spam message, but I just couldn't help replying… take a look:

From: JAMES KIRK <ijeobimma3@yahoo.com>

To: sales@computer-aid.com.au

Good day Sales.
                      Am JAMES Kirk,the  GM  of BUSYBEST STORES AUSTRALIA.

I got your company details from our local search  business journal and found that 
your company is in  the position to supply quality products and services .
kindly confirm if you can supply my new outlet in Nigeria with
your products,if you can supply them,email me back with your preffered
method of payment (VISA CARD OR MASTER CARD?) ,also your prefered
method of shippment(DHL,UPS,FEDEX OR TNT).I also need the price list of products
you have in stock.

Once the confirmation is made to me i will advice you on the type of
products am interested in.

Do email at ijeobimma5@yahoo.com.au  or fax me with your response as
soon as you receive my email.

Waiting for your prompt response to enable me place my order
immediately.

Regards.

James KIRK..
BUSY BEST STORE
AUSTRALIA
TEL/FAX:+61 7 3102 9366

Now, I don't know if this guy chose the name at random (It would have been perfect if he chose James T. Kirk !)

So I have some fun & play up the star trek theme a bit:

Hello James,

Do you have problems with Klingons on your starboard bow?

Computer Aid can supply you with spread frequency phasers, which can easily remove
those annoying encumbrances.

We also can supply any other type of computer products. I don't have a price list, so
please let me know what you are interested in.

I can only accept payment via Direct Bank deposit into the Computer Aid bank account,
I'm sure that you won't have a problem with that.

Of course, the humor is totally lost on this guy & he just focuses on the money:

Credit Card payment only.

Advice

Advice? what does he mean with "advice"? Well, I've run out of imaginative replys, I don't take CC (way too expensive for something I might use only once every month or two), so I reply with:

Hello James,

What about PayPal ?

I've not heard back since… I wonder why?

Posted by Computer Help as Humor at 10:13 PM EDT

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Found a virus infection that could not be cleared easily .

Customer is running Norton IS (suprise suprise), but the kids did a lot of instant messenger (also seems to happen a lot), so this is what I suspect happens:

• Children and teens are much more suceptible to social engineering attacks, compared to us cynical adults.
• As kids do the messaging, they occasionally stumble across an offer to download and install 'messenger plus'.
• They think: wow, the emoticons/smiley faces are much cooler than boring microsoft & yahoo messenger
• The desire to show their friend their new 'cool' messenger overrides any boring warning messages that a firewall / antivirus / anti-malware program might pop up.
• Malware is now installed & its downhill from there

In this particular case, Norton said everything is fine, but occasionally, a red box would pop up in the bottom left hand corner, saying something like: warning, your system is infected by a virus.

I think: ok, I'll install and scan with antivir (www.free-av.com) and ewido (www.ewido.net) but they also find nothing!

This is looking like a true virus infection (probably an infected dll)

I take the laptop back to the office & have a think of the best way to fix this.

I can think of 2 options:

1. I can create a boot CD with the latest anti-virus
2. I can plug the drive into my main system (as a drive D: ie: not the main drive), & then do a scan from my already up-to-date antivir

Since I'm short on time, I decide option 2. I find some nasties (mostly trojans) & clean them up. Most trojans are very recent (they were added to the antivir list just 6 weeks prior to my scan!).

After that, everything is just fine.

Now, I just need to find a simple way to implement solution 1. above, while making sure I always have the most recent virus definitions… Maybe a boot disk & a virus def. file on usb.

Unless someone has a suggestion, it looks like I'll be spending some time reseaching the latest antivirus applications.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 11:51 AM EDT

2 Comments »

I helped a customer setup his internet link about 6 months ago (when he got a new computer).

After 6 months, I went back for a computer checkup.

The computer was running slower & he couldn’t understand why. It also had some shutdown & startup problems.

I ask a few questions, & it turns out that he has norton IS running, no viruses or spyware, lots of memory, and the computer is used for little else beyond a lot of internet surfing.

So, I start looking at temporary folders. Windows XP has 3 temporary folder areas:

1. A main windows temp folder
2. A user specific temp folder
3. An Internet Explorer temporary area (also stores cookies & acts as a web page cache).

The first 2 are used by applications while running & during installation. The applications should remove their temp files when they close down, but it seems to happen rarely, so the temp folders just keep accumulating files. In one case, I ended up deleting 9900 files!!!

Although NTFS is a good file system, having more than a few hundred files in a folder can cause a noticeable slowdown whenever that folder needs to be accessed.

The IE temp folder/cache is worse, as it seems to be used for many different purposes, and there is a rarely publicised IE flaw that makes it worse: within internet options -> general tab, you can click the “delete files” button for temporary internet files… and although it should clear the cache folder, it leaves a lot of files behind.

And to top it all off, that slider you can use, to tell IE how much disk space to allocate to the cache: it doesn’t do anything! You can change it to allocate 1Mb of disk, & you can still end up with many hundreds of Mb used.

So, I manually clear the temp folders.

Clearing the IE temp folders cannot be done using windows explorer, So I use cachesentry to do the job. The first time it runs, it take 5 minutes to clear the cache!

The shutdown problem seems to be related to a program he installed, which monitors emails for spyware… Given that Norton IS also does the same thing, there is a likely conflict between the two programs.

The startup problem is not easy to fix. At powerup, The computer seems to freeze before the bios can do anything: you just get a blank screen. But after hitting the reset button, everything starts just fine. I put it down to a hardware or bios problem. Since tracking down the problem can take a while, & since it is just an “inconvenience” problem, the customer is happy to just leave it for now.

After that, its time for me to leave, so I ask the customer to run a defrag, and after that, the PC should be as quick as when he first bought it.

I’ll return in a few weeks, as he also needs cd/dvd writing software (don’t know why he didn’t get it when he first got the computer!)

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 10:22 PM EDT

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It always amazes me, that there are so many different ways for a power supply to fail (or in this case, partly fail).

This is a computer I've worked on previously, and at the time, the power supply would behave strangely when it was initially plugged into the wall. Ie, once plugged in, it would take about 15 - 25 seconds before the PC could be started. It seemed like a slow-charging capacitor, but since the PSU didn't cause any other problems, and since it worked well otherwise, I just ignored it.

Since then (about 3 months ago), the PC has started to randomly power off and reset.

So I replace the 500Watt PSU with a 450Watt I carry around as a spare.

Now the PC can start as soon as power is applied to the PSU, & the random resets have gone.

A complete sudden failure is much easier to diagnose than a random, "works 99%" failure.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 1:50 PM EDT

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A customer calls, saying her son had done somethign to her laptop, and she cannot use her word document.

 I ask a few questions, & all I can gather is that access to the file is locked.

I guess that the file has been pasword protected… Looks like I'll need a few days & a cracking program… But she says that ALL her files are locked…

This is very unusual, so I decide to pay her a flying visit, if it is a password problem, at least I can get a copy of the files in question.

Oddly, the word documents can be viewed, but not altered. I quickly find that Office keeps popping up with a request to be "activated". Also, it turns out Office was installed about 3 months ago.

This looks like an "I didn't know I had to activate Office in order to use it" problem… easily fixed: connect to the internet & 5 seconds to "activate" (and her son is off the hook).

Since this laptop never connects to the internet, I'm asked to remove Norton IS (which I do happily).

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 4:41 PM EDT

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Its not often that I say nice things about M1cr050ft, but I must say that the NTFS filesystem & the filesystem checking program are really top notch.

I have now recovered data from 2 different systems, (both seemed unrecoverable, at first glance).

The latest one was a laptop drive (the laptop wouldn't boot at all, no safe mode, nothing)

After connecting it to my main system (and waiting 15 minutes for bartpe to boot… not a promising start), I managed to run chkdsk.

While chkdsk was running, the drive gave many strange clicking noises, & the chkdsk process to about 3 hours in total…

I was starting to think that the drive was probably beyond recovery.

But in the end, chkdsk completed. It said it found some unreadable sectors, & tried to recover data from them, as well as correcting other ntfs problems.

I restarted into windows again (so I could copy files to my own HDD), & windows took an extra 10 minutes to start… hmmm this drive is not happy.

But once windows had started, bingo, the drive was visible & I recovered almost the entire HDD contents (minus some still corrupted… or maybe newly corrupted, files).

I managed to burn the files to dvd (and en extra copy of the critical ones to a CD), and the customer is happy.

He hasn't fully paid me yet, so I'd better chase him up…

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 7:39 PM EDT

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I’ve just found another step in the evolution of spyware.

This time, I try to do a spyware scan using ewido, whilst in safe mode, but I find that F8 will not work while the PC is starting… it meant I could only run ewido in normal windows mode… not quite as effective as in safe mode.

A few days later, I found that I could have tried msconfig… the boot.ini tab has a checkbox in it, which will enable safemode (/safeboot).

Something to remember for next time this happens.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 3:14 PM EDT

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