Monthly Archives: June 2007

corrosion on sodimm ram

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer called, saying her packard bell laptop wouldn’t start.

I now feel like crying every time I hear the words “Packard Bell”… Its one of the most difficult brands to work with, due to the strange problems, and the near-impossible-to-find drivers.

Then I got to the laptop, it started normally.

I tried restarting it a few times… no problem.

At this point, the customer is annoyed at the laptop… as it wouldn’t start for a whole day.

I decide to look at the components underneath… just in case it stops working as soon as I leave.

I check re-insert the RAM (2 X 512MB SODIMMs), reinsert the wireless card, re-insert the hard drive, check the CPU/GPU cooling fan and heatsink… but it all looks normal.

I flip the laptop back around and start it one last time.

It doesn’t startup.

The cpu fan would spin, the leds would light up, but screen didn’t do anything. The HDD led was off, and after a few seconds, the cpu fan would stop.

So I take the laptop back to the office for a more thorough test… But it just wouldn’t start.

I adjust some of the underside components again, and it starts working again.

OK, I’m starting to suspect the RAM, So I run a memory test, but it finds nothing wrong. While the test is running, I give the sodimm a slight push, and the laptop froze.

started again, ran mem test… it worked fine, until I gave the ram a gentle push, and the ram test froze.

I take out the RAM and have a very careful look at it.

The gold contacts seemed slightly “worn”, and the colour is dull. I wipe the contacts & re-insert the RAM… and then couldn’t get pc to fail.

This had the potential of many return visits, with no clear solution, and lots of wasted time and money.

Sometimes its worth being “clean and tidy”.

Moving address book from outlook to outlook express

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer wanted to move his email from his laptop to a new acer PC that he purchased recently.

After a few questions, I discovered that he didn’t care about his old emails, but he did want the address book moved over (he didn’t want to re-enter about 100 addresses).

This is where I have a few rants against microsoft (no I didn’t say this to the customer, but this is what goes through my mind)…

  • Why does outlook have an address book AND a contact list? Its the same thing, with exactly the same information… Why call it by 2 different names and confuse the hell out of technically unsophisticated people?
  • Why is it so difficult to transfer emails and address books from outlook to outlook express (and vice versa)? They should have been called two completely different names, as they operate completely differently.

Anyway to move an outlook address book to OE (in the microsoft convoluted way), you need to first run OE on the computer that has outlook (yes, I know its weird), select file -> import -> other address book… select microsoft exchange personal address book… then click import.

This will “magically” import the outlook address book into OE.

Now, from OE, you do: file -> export -> address book -> text file (comma separated values) … click export, then choose a destination (a usb drive is a good choice).

Take the USB drive to the new PC, run OE, select: file -> import -> other address book -> text file (comma separated values) -> import… then select the file you saved on the usb drive… next, then there you have it.

ie6 links don’t work and cpu at 100%

Computer Aid Posted on by

This is the second time I’ve seen this…

ie 6 starts normally, it loads the home page (or another web page, if starting from a saved ie6 favorites shortcut.

But if you try clicking on a link, or try entering a url in the address bar, then ie6 doesn’t take you anywhere, and will usually max out the cpu at 100%.

At this point, very little can be done, until you kill ie6 via task manager, and then the cpu usage returns to normal.

I thought this might somehow be related to a spyware / BHO infection… but a scan only reveals some “low” priority infection…

I try firefox, and it works perfectly

I also try upgrading from ie6 to ie7, and that also fixed the problem.

Its possible that an infection corrupted something internal to ie6; and an upgrade, reinstallation, or a different browser fixes the problem.

computer breaks when i move it

Computer Aid Posted on by

I was returning a customers second PC (after removing an infection, and upgrading RAM from 128mb to 380mb), when he asked me to upgrade the ram in his main PC.

I said I’m running late for my next appointment, so I’ll take a quick look, so I can order the correct part.

It needs some PC2700 RAM, so I then close up the PC, and head over to my next customer.

He calls back soon afterwards, saying his PC won’t start… and he needs it for tomorrow morning.

So I return later that night, and sure enough, the lights come on,but it won’t start.

All I did during my earlier visit was to slide the PC out of its alcove, open the side panel, shine a flashlight to look at the ram, close the side panel, and then put the PC back in its alcove.

I eventually track the problem to… drumroll… a faulty power supply.

When I take out the old PSU, I notice a rattling sound from within… A careful look shows that there is a loose screw inside… hmmm, that could be dangerous!

Being curious, I take the old PSU home, open it up, and I find a screw similar to the screws holding the PSU case together.

There are no empty holes where the screw might belong, so I don’t think it could have vibrated/worked its way loose. So its probably a manufacturing defect.

There is also a bulging cap, so the PSU probably needed replacing anyway.

But what really bugs me is when things seem to break when I “touch” them.

Luckily it hardly ever happens to me, but its irritating nonetheless.

shipped PC won’t start

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer arrived from the UK, but they found that their PC won’t start (and it was working perfectly before it was shipped).

They were waiting for the insurance company to do something about it, but after a few weeks, they got tired of waiting, and called me out.

The PC would seem to power up, lights would come on, but no beep, no bios, and no output to the monitor.

I start removing components (HDD, floppy, CDROMS, PCI cards), but the problem is still there.

OK, lets try reseating and swapping the RAM: no change.

Try a different AGP video card: no change

Hmmm, the only thing left is the CPU or the motherboard… This could end up being time-consuming…

The only thing left for me to try is to check the CPU.

I remove the fan/headsink… and of course, the CPU is “glued” to the heatsink, so it comes out as well. But the whole lot comes out very easily… usually it take some force to get the cpu out of its socket without undoing the ZIF lever.

I carefully “unglue” the cpu from the heatsink, check that the cpu pins are straight, and place the cpu back in its socket.

I apply a tiny amount of heat transfer paste, reattach the heatsink/fan, fire up the PC, and now it works!

I wonder if its possible for a CPU to pop out of its socket, while it has the pressure of the heatsink clamp on it…

The only other possibility, is that during a prior service, the cpu wasn’t inserted correctly.

Either way, its somewhat suspicious.

adobe acrobat reader 8.0 won’t print

Computer Aid Posted on by

I had a customer that couldn’t print pdf documents.

I’d tell it to print… make sure the output was to the the printer, and then I’d get a popup asking for the filename output.

I had a quick look at the printer properties, in case it was set to print to file instead of the usb port… but it all looked normal.

I tried printing from word, and that worked correctly.

Well, rather than try to figure out why acrobat isn’t printing, I just uninstall, and reinstall.

That fixed the problem very nicely.

sudden increase in bandwidth usage

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer suspected he had a spyware infection, since his daily internet usage increased from around 10Mb per day to 100Mb per day.

I take a look and see he is running norton internet security… which should protect against most nasties.

But I install and run AVG antispyware anyway… and it finds nothing…

He points out that the NIS log has many entries for 127.0.0.1

But when I look at the actual transfer sizes, there doesn’t seem to be much…

He is sure that on most weekends, he hardly uses the PC, yet the ISP records that he has downloaded and uploaded large amounts of data…

I disable some unnecessary startup programs, but cannot pinpoint any obvious culprit.

I then find he uses a VOIP phone via a VOIP modem/router…

Now that could cause “difficult to detect” bandwidth usage (both download and upload… thats what normal telephone conversations would be like).

He’s sure the NIS log indicates something on his PC is “abusing” 127.0.0.1, and somehow causing larger than expected downloads.

I take a look at the norton firewall, and setup “monitor” on icmp and loopback traffic.

This seems to trigger NIS into displaying a never ending series of message windows in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. And for some reason, I cannot make the popups stop.

In the end, I suggest a reinstall of NIS, and unplug the VOIP (he says he will revert to his original modem, so he can eliminate a modem fault).

If the bandwidth usage drops, then it must have been VOIP that caused it somehow.

crossover ethernet cable and bridged network

Computer Aid Posted on by

Had a new customer that needed to have their network fixed, and to have the capability to add a third pc.

It was setup by a relative who “works in IT”, but it stopped working soon after he first set it up, and subsequently, he couldn’t fix it. So the laptop is effectively disconnected from the main PC (and the internet).

Their broadband was via those crappy usb-only, power from usb, dlink modems (with the pretend dial up access to broadband)…

And the PC and laptop were connected via a red crossover cable, so the PC was setup in bridged mode… but then, the laptop also had the modem software installed, and it was also set to bridged mode… all a bit messy.

I said I could setup a proper modem, and a router, so that they could add multiple PCs.

I mentioned that the laptop might be wireless, and if they purchased a wireless router/modem, it would save some space in the crowded office.

Customer then asked if I could somehow make use of something they have in the back room (it was left over from when they purchased the business… a wireless router/modem (perfect!).

She didn’t think it was usable, since it was setup with the prior owners ADSL details.

I say: all I need is you adsl email and password, and I can set it up.

She can’t remember the password, so she calls the ISP, and gets it with no handholding from me (a rare occurrence for me!)

In the meantime, I setup the new modem and wireless security, enter the password, and the PC and laptop are on the internet… good.

The laptop doesn’t have wireless capability, so it will have to remain wired.

But there are also problems with printing from the laptop, and it cannot see the folder shares from the main PC (and vice versa)…

Here we go again…

I find norton is behaving strangely (she says she installed NIS, but the laptop only has NAV, so something went wrong.

I uninstall NAV, but it has little effect (Except I can now ping IP addresses)

I disable some suspicious startup programs, and I find I can now see the printer and shares on the main pc… looks like a minor spyware infection was blocking access. A quick scan removes the nasties.

The main PC still cannot see the laptop shares, but its probably just a windows network lag. I say I’ll fix it if it continues to be a problem after a few days.

The internet can be too easy to use…

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer (new to Brisbane), rang, wanting to be connected to the internet… a PC plus a laptop (via wireless 802.11).

Mandy took the call, and knew to ask if the Broadband internet had been connected by telstra, and to make sure that she had the modem, and all the relevant documentation (like email address and password).

So it looks like all systems go for a quick visit.

I get there, and the modem is still in the telstra box.

Customer also has a linksys wireless router, and 2 dial-up modems… but no power packs.

OK, I let her search for the power packs (she is not sure what they look like, so I show her one).

In the mean time, I setup the telstra speedtouch (luckily it has a power adapter, thanks to it all being sealed in the box).

I plugin all the cables, fire up the modem, but the DSL light just blinks every minute or two. Hmmm, no ADSL signal on the line.

I tell the customer what I see happening, and she repeats (for the Nth time), that it should be working, as a telstra technician was there that morning, but he wouldn’t setup the internet, saying “you need to get a third party to run the cables”. She also says she doesn’t know anything about computers… and she has been without the internet for over 3 weeks now, and she needs it to communicate with London, as she has dealings with art auctions.

OK, this has happened before: usually a mixup with Telstra or the customer, and the ADSL line is not ready when it was supposed to.

We call Telstra, and an interesting story emerges:

Telstra cannot find any request to have ADSL setup on the customers phone line. There are no other phone lines in the house.

The tech asks where the box with the modem came from. The customer eventually admits that they got the modem while they were living in Paddington, Sydney… but they never got around to installing the modem, and a few months later, they moved to Brisbane.

The tech asks for the Paddington phone number. Yep, they got broadband in Sydney, it got automatically activated after 21 days (even though the modem didn’t get connected… apparently, its standard policy).

Since ADSL connections will not magically follow you around the country, Telstra charge $55 to move the adsl line from place to place… and you must wait 3 working days.

Customer looks like she is close to tears… or a nervous breakdown…

I also ask the tech to arrange a temporary dialup connection, so at least she can do something.

While waiting for the tech, I find that she uses an business email address (eg something like jj@somedomain.com.au), but she has no idea how she got it, what the password is, and believes it must be a telstra thing.

Once the tech sets up the dialup, I ask him about the extra domain, so he says I’ll need to put you through to the business division.

While on hold, I hand the phone to the customer, go grab a dialup PCI modem from the car, install it, then fire up the PC.

At this point I need a password to get into windows XP. Customer has no idea what the password is… so after 20 minutes on hold, we give up on Telstra, she phones her hubby, and we try 3 different passwords, until we find the correct one.

I then setup dialup networking, dialup telstra, find that the PC has an antivirus package I’ve never heard of before. emails fires up and starts downloading the emails for the prior user of the PC (another user on the somedomain.com.au domain).

Oddly, the web also doesn’t want to work… But given that emails are the main focus, then I leave things as they are, as its now been nearly 3 hours, at the end of a very long day, and there is not much more I can realistically do, until hubby finds out the passwords for the relevant email addresses, and until Telstra connects the broadband.

All up, an apparently simple setup job became a marathon of obstacles, with few good results (I’d say getting the dialup half-working was all I really achieved).

She suggested I deal with her husband in the future, and I must say I agree… and given that he works during the day, I offered my services after hours, once broadband is connected, and I’ll finally be able to complete the task.

She agrees to call me in a weeks time, to arrange an appointment… but I don’t hear back. Things get busy, so I don’t get a chance to call back for a few weeks…

to be continued…

cannot connect to windows XP folder share

Computer Aid Posted on by

I had an ongoing problem with a customers network.

He had 2 PCs (XP home and XP pro), and in sharing folders, the pro pc could see the home shares, but the home PC could not see the XP shares… the pro pc would show up under “my network places”, but when trying to view the folders, I got the usual “you might not have permission to use this network resource”.

I tried all sorts of tricks to make it work. The workgroup was the same, I created an identical admin user on both PCs… It should have worked.

A few months later, this customer bought a third PC (vista home premium). I setup the network shares for this as well, and I get a similar issue: the vista and “XP home” shares are visible by all PCs, but the XP pro shares are only visible by the pro PC itself.

After a lot of digging around, I find some evidence that Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder (KB922120) could fix the problem. So I install it to the pro PC, but it has zero effect.

The error messages from vista a slightly more descriptive than those from XP… and I start to suspect a firewall problem.

I take a look at the XP firewall on the XP pro pc, but it all looks normal. Nothing unusual being blocked.

I disable the firewall, and suddenly the shares on the pro pc are visible by the other PCs…

OK, hit the advanced -> restore defaults, and the XP firewall is back to behaving normally.

Who would have thunk it?

xp end task: should not see me

Computer Aid Posted on by

The other day, while shutting down a pc after I installed some software, I was surprised to see the end task window.

Occasionally, everyone will get some windows tasks that are slow to shutdown (norton internet security comes to mind).

This time the name of the task was: Should Not See Me

Having never seen a task with such a strange name, I immediately started to think: infection

Well, after some digging around, it turns out to be nothing dangerous, but it is a very rare event, often triggered by a software installation.

Sure enough, another PC restart later, and there was no evidence of this task (and I did a full virus and antispyware, just to be sure)