Monthly Archives: December 2006

allofmp3, itunes, and emule

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer wants to download music and copy it to CD (for listening in the car and at work).

He doesn’t mind paying for the online music (but is not good at computers). So I do the right thing and look at some music sites. I’ve never looked at the music websites before, but it shouldn’t be too hard.

I’ve heard that allofmp3.com is reasonably priced, so I connect, register, then try to add money to the newly created account… but it seems that allofmp3 no longer supports visa and mastercard payments… OK, scrap allofmp3.

Lets take a look at itunes. After wandering around the website, I start to suspect that I need to download and install the itunes player to the pc… The website is not laided out very clearly, and the terminology used doesn’t make it any easier for an new visitor (even an “experienced one like me”).

Once the itunes player is installed and running, we try to download some music, and we are finally redirected to a setup your account web page.

Once that is done, we get sent to a topup your account page… After filling in the CC details, we can finally download a song.

I download a test song, then play it… so far so good.

Now to copy it to CD… Hmm how do I do that? I spend 10 minutes looking, but the closest I get is a backup to CD (but its not in music CD format, so its useless to my customer.

Ok, I can’t afford to waste any more time on this. Scrap itunes.

I’ve tried to do the right thing. But there are too many roadblocks.

Lets look at emule. I download and install and run emule in 5 minutes. During the download, I tell the customer that downloading songs that you don’t already have, is illegal. I will only show him how to use emule as long as he agrees to only download music he has already paid for either via itunes, or via a conventional CD. He agrees.

I spend another 2 minutes configuring emule, connecting to the P2P network, search for (and find) an MP3 song.

Another 10 minutes downloading the song.

Another 2 minutes burning the song to CD using nero (written in music CD format).

And hey presto, my customer now has a working music CD in less than 20 Minutes.

Now, if it were possible to pay to download and record music this easily, I would have done it.

I reckon itunes is heavily geared towards the ipod generation. This leaves many people in the 30+ age group, who are not interested / capable of using ipods, and who cannot use itunes to burn CDs.

Now, someone might pipe up and say “but hey, its easy to make a music CD from itunes”… But if I couldn’t figure out how to do it, then I’d say many people will be in the same boat as me.

So my message to the music / video industries is: if you don’t change (and change fast), you will become obsolete (and a laughing stock too!)… You are already 5 years behind the times… and your time is running out.

telstra and new Thompson Speedtouch 536

Computer Aid Posted on by

I’m setting up a new ADSL connection for a customer (very standard setup… laptop and a speedtouch 536 modem).

I’ve done lots of these, so I didn’t think I’d have any problems.

I do the standard Bigpond CD install, but part way through, it tells me it cannot communicate with the modem.

Now this is just not true! I can ping the modem, and I can ping the DNS servers beyond the modem.

Anyway, I figure I’ll do it my usual way: web interface to the modem.

I go to the “broadband connection” menu, and the DSL connection icon shows a green tick, but the internet icon shows a red cross. Ok, I click on the connect button. and it seems to connect correctly.

But still no internet access. The modem has all 4 lights on (power, dsl, ethernet, internet)

I do a connectivity test, and it fails on the last test (internet).

Since the modem probably doesn’t have the correct username / password, I search the menus for a screen that allows me to enter the correct logon info.

But I cannot find it anywhere…

I call telstra technical support, and the technician deduces that the line must be locked by another ISP. I doubt it, but its not worth arguing, so I let him pass me to the activations department… But they run their tests and can see no locks, and the line is setup for telstra. So I get passed back to technical support.

A different technician now tries to guide me through setting up the modem, but what he sees on his instructions is slightly different to what I see…

We eventually decide to try hitting the internet disconnect button, then the connect button. This time, I’m presented with an adsl username and password prompt (woo hoo!).

I enter the details, and I’m finally on the net.

Outlook express doesn’t want to connect to the email server, but a laptop and modem restart soon fixes that problem.

Given the customer is an elderly lady, she asks that I increase the text size. So I change the appropriate settings in the display control panel, in IE, and in OE.

removing Zonealarm from badly installed CA internet security suite

Computer Aid Posted on by

An existing customer asked me to help setup his mums laptop. (dialup internet is not working properly), and to convince her to switch over to broadband. This doesn’t sound too difficult…

Once on site, the laptop seems to connect to the internet, and can browse correctly…

She says that her son and granddaughter tried to setup internet security and mucked it up… Now she cannot get any emails. Turns out the salesman said the laptop had no internet security (it actually had NIS), so he sold them another internet security solution.

Sure enough, there is the standard NIS installed, as well as something from Computer Associates called :Internet Security Suite (CAISS?)

Since NIS is due to expire in 45 days, I figure I’ll uninstall it an go with CAISS (which I gather has a 12 month licence).

After removing NIS, I see that CAISS wasn’t fully installed… only the firewall was installed (a rebadged, old,  Zonealarm).

I try to uninstall CAISS, but it goes through the motions, asks to restart the PC in order to complete the removal, and after the restart, the firewall is still there unchanged!

I remove the whole CAISS folder from program files.

I also try to remove ZA manually, by disabling the truevector service (which can only be done in safe mode!). but the emails still don’t work. I check the username, password, mail servers, etc etc, but everything is correct. Even the webmail access works correctly.

I eventually have to take it back to the office and puzzle over this laptop. I set it up to use my wireless LAN. I can ping and FTP, but I have no web access.

After some time, I see that the truevector service had been reenabled somehow!

I now see that Truevector actually runs from the c:windowssystem32zonealarm folder. OK, from safe mode: remove this folder, disable the service again, and reboot.

Thats better, I can get web access now. So I install antivir (I don’t have the serial for CAISS), AVG AS, winpatrol bhodemon and spywareblaster.

But while updating these over the internet, at some point, the updates suddenly stop.

I reboot and everything is working again. Do some more updates, and after a few minutes, suddenly, no more internet access (no ping, no nothing!).

This is one of those days 😐

A web search finally gives me the answer I need ( http://forum.theispguide.com/isp-ftopic1024.html ). Reading between the lines, I figured I needed to search the system32 folder for all files starting with “VS” which belonged to TrueVector (some are microsoft files, so I left those alone).

Another reboot, and I run for over an hour without any internet hiccup.

Everything is updated, and I’m happy until the internet drops out again!!!

What could it be this time?!

The wireless connection is fine, I can ping my router, but nothing beyond that.

I try another office PC, and I get the same problem.

I check my router and its working fine. I give the modem and router a power cycle, but still no internet.

I connect to my modem, but given that its in bridged mode, there is not much to check… the adsl light is on, so its got a connection to the exchange.

After 30 minutes, the internet is back… it must have been an ISP outage. Grrr!

I reckon I’ve had enough hassles for the day, so I turn out the lights and go to bed!

pioneer and liteon DVDRW lockups and sending pictures via email

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customers (hubby and wife) need some help with internet security, making music CDs, and misc other questions.

I start with setting up security (antivir, winpatrol, spywareblaster).

They then want to know how to send pictures via email (correctly). Ah, now here is where many non-tech people come unstuck. There are so many different photo manipulation programs out there (at least a different one for each camera manufacturer), so it can get confusing very quickly.

Since they sometimes send emails to friends that have dialup, I decide a little education on file sizes is in order (eg its OK to send a 200Kb picture via email, but not a 2Mb picture).

I then install and show them the basics of irfanview (IMO, the best, fastest, simplest, free photo viewer you can get… I’ve been using it for 8 years!). I just show how to check file size, how to resize the image and then save the “smaller” image for sending over email. I’d also like to show them the red eye reduction and cropping, but they are already overloaded.

At some point, the PC had developed a “jerky” mouse pointer (needing a restart).

I then move on to burning CDs and DVDs.

Now, the PC has 2 DVD writers (a pioneer and a liteon). I pick one at random, put a blank CD into it and a music CD into the other. I then show them how to use Nero to copy the music CD to the blank one.

But one of the drives locks up (LED on, no flickering, and no response from Nero).

I reboot, and the PC get past the bios, then just shows a grey screen and hangs.

I open the PC, take a look inside (it looks OK, nothing where it shouldn’t be). However, the DVDRW drives have jumpers to force them to be master and slave, but the cable configuration is the opposite to the jumper settings (master cable plug inserted into the slave drive)… a possible problem, so I set them both to Cable Select (as I usually do). But the PC still locks up occasionally, or will be exceedingly slow.

The bios settings seem OK.

I even try unplugging each in turn (between reboots), but there is still something strange happening (lockups at boot, or while writing data to a blank CD).

I figure one of the drives could be faulty, so I take them back to the office for a test.

Both drives work well in another PC… (I only tried them one at a time).

Back at the customer, I carefully try each drive in turn (both have jumper on CS), and I see the pioneer drive insists on being the master drive (even when plugged into the slave cable plug!)

OK, I set the jumper to force it to be slave, plug it into the slave cable plug, and then the bios detects it correctly. I plugin the liteon (cable select, on the master plug)… now both drives are detected correctly.

I do a CD copy from liteon (master) to pioneer (slave) and it works.

I also burn some data to the liteon, but nero (and the drive) lock up.

So although the pioneer drive has trouble with cable select, the liteon doesn’t like writing to blank disks…

At this stage, I figure its better to leave a mostly working system, and I ask the owners to keep an eye on the drives, and let me know if things deteriorate.

zonealarm web access and lexmark printer problems.

Computer Aid Posted on by

A new customer rang, saying that he is unable to view certain websites, and he has problems getting his lexmark printer to function correctly (and also cannot download that latest driver to fix his problem… as advised by lexmark).

Once on site, I notice that I cannot connect to the lexmark website, yet other websites show up correctly… The error message indicated that the website has been blocked.

I decide that I need to make sure the internet is working correctly, before I try to install new drivers for the printer (which cannot be downloaded from lexmark yet!).

Customer runs zonealarm. I gave up on ZA many years ago… at the time, it had an obvious memory leak (which most users never noticed! ), such that I needed to restart my PC every 2 days… which is ok for win98, but not so good for xp.

Anyway, ZA has had a few additions since I last looked at it (antivirus, antispyware, antispam, etc etc)… But I still suspected it could accidentally block legit websites.

There appear to be no malware infections.

I disable ZA, but I still cannot see the lexmark website.

I try a few ping tests: my standard ping to bb.com fails (I later found out the bb.com no longer returns pings, so I’m now using ee.com). Ping google.com.au works, but ping lexmark.com fails… very strange.

I remember that ZA would keep on blocking ports and sites even after it was “disabled”… so I uninstalled it completely (customer didn’t have a problem with removing ZA), but I still got errors.

I boot up in safe mode (with networking), but still no go.

At first glance, there seems to be no leftover ZA processes.

I take a look at the modem/router setup, but it all looks very normal.

All I can think of, is that the router firewall might be misconfigured. After 2 hours, I decide that rather than muck around with the router, I’ll take the laptop to the office and check it out on my LAN.

At the office lexmark.com works nicely…very good.

I download the printer driver, have some dinner, then try a few sites like lexmark.com, lexmark.com.au, etc.

Suddenly I cannot get to any of the lexmark webpages anymore!

Whats going on?

I try lexmark.com from one of my PCs, and it works. Back to the laptop, and it also works now. Weird!

I try a few more times, and it all works well again. I leave it for a few minutes, and when I return, lexmark.com works for a few seconds, that I start getting timeout errors again (even on 2 of my own PCs).

I start wondering if its a lexmark.com DoS filter that has gone haywire… blocking my modem ip address incorrectly.

Next morning, I call lexmark, and they can confirm that the website has a few problems (which have been ongoing for just over 24 hours). Good. Looks like I’m not going crazy after all 🙂

I also wonder if the “website blocked” message was due to zonealarm (this error had been occurring for over 1 week), while the “website timeout” message I noticed (after removing ZA) was due to lexmarks issues.

Anyway, I return the laptop, and start looking at the printer.

I uninstall the original driver, install the new driver (takes over 10 minutes to install!)

I then get the customer to show me his printing problem.

It’s a simple document with a solid border… nothing too fancy, but looking at the print preview, 1 of the 4 borders edges are missing.

I suspect maybe the printer cannot print right up to the edge of the paper (inkjets often have these limitations)… but on second thought, a print preview never shows a chopped border unless it is fully outside the edges of the paper.

I experiment with some of Words border options and eventually manage to make the border “reappear” by changing some margin settings and adjusting the page margins.

It wasn’t a printer problem after all, but the customer is very happy now.

The problem was fixed, albeit in a long, convoluted way.

error -536870397 while installing 7021 sound (alc655) on a sis741 MB

Computer Aid Posted on by

Needed to do a windows XP reinstall (customer had a dead HDD), but when it came time to install various drivers, there were (as often happens) 3 devices that XP couldn’t install.

A quick visit to microsoft.com and I got 2 drivers installed automatically via microsoft updates. I search around for the audio driver and I eventually find what i’m after (from the SiS website).

The sound is builtin on the SiS741 motherboard (AMD). Its called either alc655, or 7021.

Anyway I download, install, but during the install, I get the message: “error -536870397” in a small window, together with a small icon (a red circle with a white X). I click OK, and the install stops, and the device is not updated in device manager 🙁

Ok, I look around for other drivers. I find 2 more, but both give the same error.

At some point, I stumble across http://forums.pcworld.co.nz/archive/index.php/t-51738.html

I look through the instructions, And I like what FrankS says on 30/11/2004, and also xxxFarrellxxx on 10/08/2005

But since I don’t see the need to burn a CD, I do it slightly differently:

Firstly, I found I didn’t need to do a registry clean.

Then, instead of inserting a CD, I just have the drivers sitting in a folder on the HDD… and I run the setup program from there.

I eventually get to the point where I cannot find an item (as mentioned in the forum instructions). I reboot at that point, then complete the instructions, and the sound driver is finally installed correctly!

outlook error 0X800ccc0e while sending emails

Computer Aid Posted on by

I setup a website for a customer a short while ago.

As part of the handover, I setup (and test) his outlook express, so that it can receive emails from his new email addresses (from his new domain).

Two weeks later, he calls and says he can no longer send and receive emails using his new email address.

I try some over the phone troubleshooting, but I have no success. I figure its either a changed setting in OE, or a changed setting on the email section of the website control panel (cpanel). I setup my mail client to read and send his emails, and it works perfectly.

At this stage, its now looking like a problem with his PC, so I make an appointment to visit, and sort out the emails.

When I get there, I find I can receive emails, but sending emails give an 0x00ccc0e error. I do some research and re-enter all the mail server info, but no go. I eventually have to say “I need to check a few things and get back to you”… This is very baffling. I also setup logmein, so that when I have a solution, I can fix it from the office.

Back at the office, after a lot of reading forums and “refining” my google searches, I eventually realise whats going on: Optus (customers ISP) is blocking the outgoing port 25, to anything other than their own mail server.

The confusing part is they allowed it for a while, before blocking it.

There are two solution:

  1. Ask Optus to unblock port 25 (which isn’t a big deal and apparently they usually do it without too much hassle)
  2. Setup OE to use the optus outgoing server, and setup OE so that emails appear to come from the new email/domain, and the return/reply address also use the new email/domain.

I decide option 2 is the quickest and easiest. After explaining to my customer, he agrees.

So I login remotely, setup OE, test, and everything works well.

Something I need to remember in the future!

strange DVD playback problems

Computer Aid Posted on by

A previous customer, with a slow celeron 1GHz PC, rang asking about getting a newer computer. Given what he uses the computer for (dialup internet, watching DVDs, and some simple games), I tell him that he doesn’t really need a new computer, a windows reinstall is all that is needed.

He says ok, and I book a time to do the reinstall.

A short time later, he calls, saying a friend of his will sell a HP (P4, 2.2Ghz, 512MB ram, 80Gb Hdd), for $150. I say sure, thats a great price, I’ll install XP onto the new PC instead.

I swap DVD writer and CDROM drives between computers.

During the install, it turns out that XP doesn’t have the correct drivers for video, sound, and the ethernet port. Downloading the correct drivers could take a very long time over dialup, so I take the PC to the office.

The video and sound drivers are easy to find and install (via Miscosoft update), but the ethernet port takes a bit of time… I eventually find a website that has the correct driver, and I install it.

Everything seems to work well, but I remember his previous PC had some problems with DVD playback (probably due to some windows corruption, or CODEC problems… the playback was very slow, with many skipped frames… displaying about 1 frame every second or two).

So I try playing a dvd, and I get an error using windows media player (I think it was error C00D116A). The error indicated that the DVD is set for the wrong dvd region, or that the appropriate DVD decoder isn’t installed.

Since I installed Nero, then I should have the correct decoding software. And I doubt my customer would know how to change the dvd region.

I search the internet, but I find no solution. I’m sure this has to work.

I try windows media player, jetaudio, the nero dvd player, but they all refuse to work.

Someone in a forum mentioned using Media Player Classic. Given I’ve tried everything I can think of, I install it… and it works!

I can’t understand why only MPC works, where 3 other mainstream player refuse to work, but hey, it works, and I don’t have the time to wonder why.

When I deliver the PC to the customer, I explain the peculiarity with playing DVDs, setup his internet connection, and I’m on my way.

Watch out for shady computer repairers

Computer Aid Posted on by

While paying for some shopping, the lady behind the counter asked for my business card.

About 12 months later (!) she calls, saying that she has a problem, and would like to know how much I charge, if I have a callout fee, how long I think it will take, and how much it will cost. I think: she seems very concerned about the costs…

When I got there, I started looking at the computer. After 1 minute, she says something like: “oh, I forgot to check when you arrived, as I can’t afford to pay if you go over an hour”.

I just say “don’t worry about it. I’m not strict with my times”. if I go over by 10 minutes, I won’t charge any extra.

During my time there, she admits to why she was edgy about the time and costs:

Apparently, the last time she had a computer problem a very large technician had a look, decided that she needed a new motherboard, installed a “top quality” motherboard, and then charged her $450.00 (I believe he charged $40 per hour plus a callout fee, where I charge a flat $65 per hour)

She didn’t have that amount of money at the time, so he became threatening, and demanded payment. So she gave him all she had, and he returned a few days later to collect the balance.

She also said the PC made a rattling noise after he worked on it, but she wasn’t going to ask him to fix it (she didn’t know how he would react, and didn’t know how much he would charge!).

Since I had reason to take a look inside the case, I could see that the motherboard was only attached via 2 screws (hence the rattling noise), and there was no backing plate for the various plugs at the back of the computer. Given the shoddy installation, I also wonder if there was anything wrong with the original motherboard in the first place.

I inserted 2 new screws, but couldn’t do much about the backing plate (I can’t carry every backing plate ever made), but I told her what I found and what I had done.

She was very happy with what I had done. It took me slightly more than 1 hour, but only charged her for 1 hour.

Although my “competitor” made a lot more money than I did (in the short term), I now have a loyal customer who is very likely to call me again for any of her future computer requirements.

I find that my good customer service often leads to repeat business. In fact, I’m guessing that repeat business now represents at least 20% of my sales.

So be careful out there, there are some unscrupulous people, who will seem inexpensive, but who will charge (and can look like) like a herd of elephants!

data recovery using: r-studio, getdataback, nucleus kernel, stellar phoenix

Computer Aid Posted on by

Got a computer that wouldn’t start. Owner says she got a power surge.

The owner desperately wants to recover some accounting data (and if possible email address book and some excel and word documents from my documents). Her 2 sons also ask about their mp3’s.

I say I’ll do my best.

At the office, I see windows xp won’t boot… not even safe mode. I boot bartPE, but viewing the HDD proves near impossible.

I run a chkdsk (hdd is NTFS, and just 20 GB in size), and it finds many bad sectors… it cleans thing up, but then crashes part-way through the process. I try it again, and it gets most of the way through, but seems to freeze just after verifying USN… after 30 minutes, I pull the plug.

I then try my usual trick of plugging the drive into an existing XP system (making sure its set as a slave drive), and boot up… but I get to just after the windows start screen (the one with the moving horizontal bar)… Ie the part where the screen goes black for 1 or 2 seconds… I wait for the logon screen, but the screen just stays blank. The corrupt drive makes seeking noises for a minute or two, then goes quiet.

I try the same thing with a different PC, but get the same result. It looks like a faulty drive attached to an XP system can actually stop XP from booting (even if it boots from a non-faulty drive!)

Using BartPE seems to be the best way to get at the drive.

I figure: its time I got some serious data recovery software. So I try out the 4 that seems to get the best reviews.

Of course, not being able to start XP is my first obstacle. But I install them and take a look anyway.

At first, I like r-studio and getdataback, as they have the option to make an image of the drive/partition, and then work from the image file (thus saving wear and tear on a failing drive).

Nucleus and stellar work directly on the drive, and I suspect are useful when you just want to restore a few files.

I jump back into BartPE, and try running these programs from “bart”.

  • Getdataback complains about a missing DLL file… so I give up and try the next one.
  • R-studio started creating an image file, but takes 10 second each time it hits a bad sector… so after 1 hour, and less than 1% of the drive imaged (and the drive gets hot and less reliable after 40 minutes), I decide to try the next one.
  • Nucleus Kernel Fat and Ntfs : Insists on doing a very long scan of the drive… after 10 minutes and 1% of the drive scanned, I stop and try the next one.
  • Stellar Phoenix Recovery Suite has a reasonably fast scan (it scanned the 20GB drive in just 15 minutes). After that I saved the scan info the disk on my own drive, then selected the files to restore (total of about 600Mb), and I managed to copy them to my drive in about 45 minutes… Not very fast, but good enough.

After all this, I decided I need to find something that can image a drive quickly, and that will run with bartPE. I’ll give ghost 8.2 a try, but not sure if it will work with ntfs (nor how fast it is when dealing with bad sectors).

But the important thing is I restored the important data (minus the mp3s… that could have taken many hours of heat-generating, drive-destroying work).

All up, quite time-consuming (and expensive), but the customer is very happy to get her data back.

I get the data back to her (she is very grateful) and give her various options on where to go from here.

She initially wants to buy a new box, but given that upgrading the existing system to a new HDD, some more ram, and a DVDRW, all costs about half of a new system (and I assure her that it will be fast enough for her needs), then she goes for the “upgrade”.

So I install the new parts, install windows xp, install antivir, winpatrol, spywareblaster, nero, run autoPatcher, do some additional tuning, and the “old” system is ready to go (and quite quick too).

windows screen resolution too high

Computer Aid Posted on by

This is another one of those “its easy when you know how” problems.

Customer has windows xp. It boots up, displays the windows xp logo, then the monitor displays a message, something like: “freq out of range, H: 78Khz, V: 65Hz”. The PC continues to start, the HDD light keeps flashing away as the PC completes the boot procedure, probably tries to display the logon screen, except the monitor isn’t capable of displaying anything.

Of course I immediately recognise it as the screen display resolution being way to high for the monitor to handle (probably 1600 X 1200 or something like that).

I figure a boot into safe mode and a change of settings should fix it… but no… the problem reappears in normal boot mode.

Customer has no internet access, so I take the computer back to the office, find out that I need to boot into “enable VGA mode” after the F8 key (not safe mode), then change the resolution at that point. After that, everything is fine.

While I was at it, i converted the HDD from fat32 to NTFS… fat32 causes far more file corruptions than NTFS, so the conversion is always worth it from a reliability point of view.

I take the PC back, check that everything works correctly. I also start a disk defragment before I leave.