It just dawned on me, that some systems are requiring an increasing amount of time to fix.

I think its something like the 80/20 rule: I spend 80% of my time fixing 20% of the systems.

Maybe I’m a perfectionist, but when I stumble across a system that, say, involves difficulty in installing a printer driver, but it also needs an upgrade to SP2, then a virus and a malware scan, before I do the printer driver install… all up, at least 2 hours, then I feel I must do it… and often not doing it will cost even more time. But I feel uncomfortable charging for 2 or 3 hours work, when I was asked to fix a ’simple’ problem.

Then there are the problems in getting around illegal copies of XP (which makes it difficult to install SP2… and many would say ‘rightly so’), but my main aim is to help… help my customers get the most out of their computers.

Many customers buy computers from ‘friends’ who have installed the illegal software… so they are not to blame for someone elses illegal actions, and they certainly don’t want to spend $200, just so they can upgrade a $200 computer to SP2.

And the number of badly configured computers seems to be increasing (its probably just my imagination).

Its going to get to the point where I will need to factor a higher quote for new customers, just because of the many unknowns in their systems (and asking if they have SP2, etc is mostly useless, as most don’t know if they have XP or 95).

I guess there is not much that can be done about the time it takes to do virus & spyware scans & SP2 upgrades.

Grumble, Grumble, Grumble.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 10:19 PM EDT

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This system was the most difficult so far (and it still has problems that I can’t resolve!)

Some of the malware found: doubiousHandle1, winantiviruspro2006, enconfidence, funweb, mywebsearch, hotbar, newsupdate, winantivirus2005pro, incredimail, and many others.

To remove it all, I first had to upgrade to SP2, and then install and run:

• Ewido
• Antivir
• AVG
• SpywareBlaster
• Spybot
• BHODemon
• Hijackthis

Most of the above found nasties that the others did not   

Since this was a dialup internet system, and since many problems resurfaced after my first visit, I took it to the office for a thorough clean (which I should have done at the start).

I also ran autopatcher to update it to the latest patches, before I connected it to my wireless network.

After I managed to cleanup everything I took the PC back, but then it had some modem problems… It wouldn’t connect… no dial tone… I was eventually told that the PC has a ’strange’ modem… the ‘line in’ and ‘phone out’ plugs are reversed! I plug the phone line into the phone socket, and it then works!

A few days later, I get called because the computer is spontaneously starting when it is shutdown… I figure its a bios setting that ‘wakes’ the computer whenever an incoming call comes in.

I get there and yep, it is the bios setting, however, during some testing, I notice that the customers phone will divert to voicemail without the phone ringing… but if I unplug the modem, then the phone rings normally… even if the computer is shutdown!

Now this is just not worth tracking down! I tell the customer to disconnect the phone line when the internet is not in use (until they get broadband… then the problem should go away).

The PC is also slow to shutdown… and after all the tuning and malware removal, all I can suggest is a windows reinstall (which the customer cannot afford at the moment).

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 10:02 PM EDT

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I’ve just fixed a badly infected computer system.

It was a celeron 466Mhz, with 256Mb ram & winXP (sp1).

Its not a blazingly fast system, but OK for what the owners need.

It had quite a lot of Malware on it, and my standard run of Antivir and Ewido (in safe mode) didn’t get rid of everything… OK, looks like I’ll need to do what everyone else says: run a few different anti-malware tools.

Some of the spyware found was: spywarequake, valueclick, vcodec, windows.security.internet.explorer

After the first round of removing malware, I upgraded to SP2.

I took this opportunity to closely evaluate spybot S&D and try a few combinations of tools.

I managed to clear everything by running Antivir, Ewido, and Spybot (with spybot and its teatimer monitor, I didn’t need to use winpatrol). All up, quite a lot of work!

I’ll need to try combining avg and spybot, as I don’t like the overlap of antivir & spybot (both will scan for malware), but the combination could cause conflicts.

I eventually had the system running with just antivir and spybot (with teatimer), and taught the customer to manually update Spybot and SpywareBlaster

These malware infections are starting to get more difficult to clear! Its becoming increasingly tempting (and cheaper) to just do a fresh reinstall of WinXP.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 5:56 PM EDT

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Windows 98 systems are becoming increasingly problematic for me.

With the same computer from my last post, I tried to get the latest video drivers, so I could get a reasonable resolution & a decent number of colours…

Well, it looks like built-in video on this motherboard doesn't have any drivers for windows 98 (remember, I just transplanted the HDD from the old system into this new system). No drivers on the net, & the drivers CD only has xp and win2000 drivers.

I figure: hey, I'll just put a cheap agp video card in there… but there is no agp (nor pci-e) slot… only the old pci slots.

Looks like I'll have to dig for some PCI video cards. I find 3 cards (all 1Mb cards), but 1 freezes the computer every few minutes, and the other starts generating corrupt video after a while. The third one goes well (it froze the computer ony once), but the best I can get is 800X600 at 16-bit colour depth (or 640X480 at 24-bit, or 1024X768 at 8-bit).

Well, next time, I'll need to be careful about offering cheap "upgrades" as I might need to include win XP in the equation.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 12:21 AM EDT

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An elderly customer asked me to look into a problem with his computer (it wouldn’t start).

The power light came on, but nothing on the screen.

It took me a while to figure out how to open up the PC (had to pop off the front panel, in order to get to the screws…). While dismantling the pc, I hear clunking sound from inside the computer… I don’t like the sound of this!

Once open, I see that the CPU fan and heatsink had fallen off. Since its probably a P2 of P3 CPU, I’m pretty sure the CPU is fried.

I reconnect the heatsink and fan, but it doesn’t help. Customer is happy for me to get him a new ‘box’.

After getting the new PC and his old PC, I transplant the original HDD and floppy, restart & reconfigure all the new devices (he was running windows 98se, so it copes better that XP, when you transplant the HDD into a new box.

I connect up the internet & try doing a windows update, but microsoft returns the error 0×80072F89. I try it a different way, and i get: 0×800C0005. Now I’ve seen this problem before, but cannot remember what I did to fix it… I search the internet, and I eventually find mention that the problem is related to IE5…

It finally dawns on me: microsoft no longer allows you to run updates for win98 running ie5. I need to download and install ie6, before I can even start doing any other updates.

Having stumbled on this once before, I don’t think I’ll forget it in a hurry.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 11:56 PM EDT

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An elderly couple asked if I could recover some games that they lost from their computer… They asked if I could handle a “really old” computer.

I said sure!

When I got there, I find they were running windows for workgroups 3.11. Now that brings back memories from the early 1990’s

I suppose they could have been running MSDOS!

Well, it turns out they had misplaced one of the shortcut icons, and deleted a few others. Easily fixed.

Anyway, it was good fun to refresh my old skills. Its amazing… many tasks that we can do in an instant using win xp or win9x, were much more cumbersome back in the wfw3.11 days.

As an example:

I also have a cd with some simple windows games, so I thought I’d use the time I had left to install a few extra games…

I copy the games from the CD to a games folder I created on the c: drive. Partway through the copy, c: fills up.

Ok, I try deleting all the new files I created… but they are all read-only, and windows prompts me for every single file… and still doesn’t delete them… So I try to do a bulk change of properties (to remove the read-only flag)… but I cannot do it if I select a folder… so I have to work on each folder contents, individually… time consuming, but I finally manage to free up some space, and to install some new games for them.

I also tell them about windows ‘95′ and how wonderfully easy it is, to use

They are now considering getting a ‘used’ computer from me. Since the have no interest in the internet (and it would confuse the **** out of them), I’d say a cheap ($250 (or even a cheaper $150) P3 system with win98 will be more than enough for them.

 

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 9:38 AM EDT

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This customer has many kids, & is decking out most of them with PC & wireless internet connections.

Currently, the house has 4 PCs, 3 have wireless. I had helped her get a 3rd one onto the internet (a belkin usb wireless thing), but at the time, I struggled with the wep encryption… but eventually got it all going.

I go back, because the belkin has stopped working. Try as I may, I couldn’t get it to work (it eventually transpires that the son & his friends were playing games & knocked it around a bit… so it might have gotten damaged).

Anyway, I’m about to leave (and not charge since i didn’t fix anything), but it turns out she also wants the 4th PC connected.

The main PC uses a netgear wg111 v2 (and I also use one of these things… they are difficult to get going, since the driver you download from netgear often ends up being the non-v2 driver (and some of the older v2 drivers also had problems).

Her son installed the driver for the older netgear wireless, and when he plugs in the older wg111v2, he gets “internet”… but there is no wireless connection if he plugs in the newer wg111v2 (there are no makings on either unit to make you think they are any different from each other).

I figure that the drivers between the two netgear CDs should be the same… and the units should be interchangeable… so whats going on?

I install the ‘newer’ netgear driver onto the 3rd PC (the one with the faulty belkin wireless usb), and it works!

I go back to the 4th PC, uninstall the ‘older’ netgear drivers, install the latest drivers from the ‘newer’ CD, and then the newer wireless usb works!

At this stage, I can guess at a few scenarios:

1. The drivers (and hence the actual usb wireless devices), are different and unique, and cannot be interchanged (despite the devices appearing identical in most respects).
2. A slightly different driver CD (and device) shipped in the few months between purchasing the 2 devices… such that the older driver cannot handle the newer device (despite the devices appearing identical in most respects).
3. The drivers are uniquely tied to the serial / MAC address of the device they came with, so that they cannot be used interchangeable (I think this is very unlikely).

Anyway, this take much longer than I expect, but she would like me to come back and “sort out” the main PC, as it is horrendously slow, and need some tuning (and maybe some malware removal).

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 1:01 AM EDT

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A past customer (an avid simulator game player) wants to get a car racing game running. It ran once, but since trying to re-install it, it keeps giving an error message at startup.

He tells me he'll probably need me to re-install windows. I say I'll take a look (and re-install windows as a last resort).

Turns out that the uninstall software doesn't fully remove the game (it still has files left in the install folder, and it has entries left in the registry). This is quite common across many software makers (including microsoft).

Some careful removal of the offending objects, then once the game is installed, it works well.

He asks me to try the same trick with another game he has trouble with (colin mcrae rally 2005). But I cannot get this game to work (it gives an odd error message at startup). It might have something to do with his dual-monitor setup. So I give up on this one, but I'll do some research & see if there is a solution.

At this stage, If I find myself back there at a future date, I'll uninstall the game & then run 'jv16 powertools'

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 9:50 AM EDT

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A past customer calls and says that he thinks the video card is about to breakdown.

I arrive (at the time, only his wife is there, & she cannot help much). I run lots of tests, to see If there is a hardware problem. I check voltages, I run stress tests on the CPU, memory, video cards (2D & 3D tests), and nothing unusual is found. Eventually, I notice a big slowdown in response, if I run 3D graphics tests & also a 3D screensaver. But I can’t tell if it’s just the vid card being overworked.

The hubby comes home & say it only seems to happen during DVD & AVI playbacks. Sure enough, its so slow, that the mouse cursor only updates every 10 seconds!

Having seen this before, I know its probably a problem with a video codec, or a system DLL. But it could also be a registry issue. Since I cannot be sure an in-place reinstall of XP will fix the problem, I recommend a full windows reinstall.

In over 14 months of operation, this is probably the second time I’ve recommended a full reinstall in order to fix a problem… but given the severe slowdown & it’s next to impossible to track down the source of the problem, there is no other choice.

They agree to backup everything & I return in 1 week & do the reinstall.

Then I hit another snag: XP couldn’t find drivers for many motherboard devices. Including the ethernet adapter (but the usb drivers are fine). Ok, I look around the computer room, looking for a CD with the motherboard drivers (they must have it, as I sold them a new hard drive 6 months ago, so they must have used the driver disk at that stage).

I can only find a video driver CD (I install it, since I’ll have to do it eventually).

They have a cable modem with a USB port, so even the ISP installation CD would work, (anything to get me onto the internet & download the latest mobo drivers). Given that the CDs cannot be found, I take the PC to the office, download the latest mobo drivers, burn them to CD, install them to the PC, and I can finally get it working on my internet connection.

I take the PC back, but for some reason, the ethernet connector won’t get an IP address from the modem… I know it was working at my office, so I try some ipconfig commands, but no luck. I power-cycle the modem, and bingo! we now have an internet connection.

Another long, drawn-out problem, is finally resolved!

If anyone has a simple way to ‘refesh’ all the video-related files (codecs, dlls etc), I’d be very interested to hear about it!

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 8:54 PM EDT

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A new customer calls, saying he has a few annoying problems:

1. The PC is running slow (this is very familiar to me by now)
2. Web browsing (over dialup) is very slow.
3. PC spontaneously wants to dial the internet (he now disconnects the phone line to prevent dialups)
4. Constant windows popups
5. He has new stereo speakers, but only 1 speaker works.
6. He would like to "upgrade" windows… not sure what he means, but I'll find out when I get there.

Turns out he has a malware infection. He tried running zone alarm to control the dial outs. But without any anti-virus & anti-spyware measures, his PC doesn't stand a chance.

And he tells me not to worry about his speakers… they are faulty and he will get a new set.

He also runs XP service pack 0   

So after a quick scan (and I manually disable anything nasty from auto-starting), I install SP2.

However, AntiVir still keeps picking up a vundo infection within ddccc.dll (and cannot remove it). Ok, I'll start in safe mode. But Antivir & ewido still cannot remove this beast.

Given the time this is taking, I eventually take the computer back to the office & scan the internet.

Fixing this particular infection would have been so much easier to fix over a broadband connection.

Anyway, I eventually find an great way of removing it (using vundofix.exe) from: http://www.atribune.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t1444.html . Note: do NOT try the fixvundo.exe from symantec, it doesn't seem to work.

I still have a problem with auto-dialers, but a quick run with hijackthis, and another scan with antivir & ewido, and everything is rock-solid.

I update xp with the latest patches, and then hand back the PC.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 12:36 AM EDT

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This is a slight rehash of one of my previous articles ( http://computer-aid.com.au/blog/2006/04/28/connecting-a-dsl-modem-to-a-4-port-router/ ).

A customer had an optus cable internet modem (connected to his pc via usb). He had purchased a wireless router (d-link) and asked me to set it up (as well as a wireless pcmcia card for his laptop & a second computer).

At first glance, I think: hey, easy… its not a telstra cable internet, and I once had optus cable internet & a router connected at home, so maybe 1 hours work).

Well, I'm now so used to adsl, that I forget to do some reasonable checks:

1. When I change anything, refresh the network settings (or even restart all the network devices)… Not doing this can cause confusion & excursions down 'one-way streets' (ie: what the h*ll is going on here?).
2. If something doesn't make sense, keep investigating, until you understand it.

When the PC is connected directly to the modem, the ipconfig /all command shows the optus gateway & dns servers. I setup the modem & router to use the same IP subnet (192.168.100.xxx). Figuring out the modem IP address was tricky… as it doesn't show up in ipconfig! I had to go to the motorola website to find out!

I disconnect the usb between the modem & the PC, then connect the modem to the router WAN port via ethernet, then PC to router (ethernet)… but it doesn't work well (here is where I should have restarted the modem/router/PC)…

I figure the modem isn't made to work on the wan port, So I'll use the "messy workaround" (ie avoid using the WAN port). It works, but ipconfig still shows the optus gateway & dns servers. This is where alarm bells should have rung, and I should have followed point 2 above.

I now setup the laptop wireless card. It connects to the router, but no internet connection. I also try the second PC, & it also cannot connect to the internet.

I'm really puzzled… 3 PCs connected to the router, but only 1 can see the internet… why???

Eventually, I try 3 wan port configurations (dhcp enabled on only the modem, and dhcp only enabled on the router, and dhcp enabled on both). After doing a correct restart every time, I find that the ipconfig settings look normal (ie gateway & dns settings correspond to the the router address) when only the router is setup for dhcp.

I then restart the laptop: hey, it works! The other PC also works now.

Although the cable modem is slightly different from an adsl modem, the overall setup is still very similar.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 10:54 AM EDT

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