Monthly Archives: September 2007

2Clix vs Whirlpool

Computer Aid Posted on by

Seems like there is a lot of legal bluff flying around at the moment.

I just read a very interesting article in Whirlpool,  (ok, I’m a bit slow on this news as well) where a very shoddy-seeming company decided to sue the founder of whirlpool.

I must say, after reading the posts, I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with 2clix.

It seems to me that the owner(s) of 2clix treat it as a pure money-making exercise, with very little interest in actually providing a product that works as advertised.

Once they saw that their income was under threat, they retaliated legally. I suspect they know little about computers (and even less about the internet), otherwise they wouldn’t have risked legal action.

Regardless of the outcome of the court action, I’d say 2clix is ultimately doomed (and I’d say it was bound to happen sooner or later anyway). The amount of bad publicity from the legal action has virtually sealed their fate, and many would say they deserve this fate.

Interestingly, it appears that they are trying to “expand” (or should I say escape?) into the UK… well, you cannot hide on the internet…

Deep down, though, I feel angry. Angry that the owners of 2clix have probably made a bucketload of $ from a bad product, and are probably living the high life, while honest people like me, have to work hard for every dollar.

It seems like the liars and the cheats are rewarded, while the honest people of the world get trodden-on.

I can almost feel what it would be like to own 2clix: you keep putting off the negative feedback, you give the company a positive vibe, and you milk it for all its worth… but you know that it will eventually end. And when it does, you just get in your merc/bmw, and drive away, since the law cannot touch your (sizeable) personal assets.

Grrr.

Update: It appears that 2clix have dropped the court action… yet a google search finds a few articles where it appears that 2clix has “changed name” / “formed a partnership with a 3rd party” in order to provide an improved product… Am I the only one to be skeptical?

Its probably worth keeping an eye on: http://www.p1software.com.au (otherwise known as Platinum One)… the sales pitch sound the same.

Microsoft tries to kill Autopatcher

Computer Aid Posted on by

OK, I’m a few weeks late, but I’ve just realised that microsoft has effectively killed Autopatcher (autopatcher.com) in its current form.

I’ve found Autopatcher to be absolutely fantastic, when I need to reinstall XP (or do a fresh install), as it has saved me many gigabytes of downloads over the years.

Luckily, Antonis Kaladis is now looking at a way to resurrect autopatcher, so that microsoft cannot threaten autopatcher.

I just find it absurd that MS would move to prevent people from downloading Autopatcher, as it actually helps keep people “addicted” to windows… without it, Linux becomes an increasingly tempting alternative.

Even if a new autopatcher doesn’t materialise, the current Autopatcher has around 3 years worth of updates (and other useful extras), so I’ll be keeping and using my copy for a long time to come!

netgear wgr614 v7 and vista wireless strangeness

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer needed a wireless router in order to connect 2 new vista laptops (HP), plus 2 PCs (one wired, one wireless).

So I supply a netgear wgr614 v7 wireless router.

I connect it to the adsl modem, then connect a PC to the ethernet port on the router.

When I connect to the routers IP address (using IE), I get a “setup” screen. I click on a few “next” buttons until I get past the wizard, and I see the usual web interface.

I setup wpa-psk as usual, save and restart the router.

I then go to the vista laptops, and setup one with the wireless settings, restart it (and the router (just in case).

But Vista cannot see any wireless networks… Hmm, how odd. No amount of “scan for networks” will find the router.

The other (identical) laptop behaves the same way.

I check the network settings, make sure the laptops wireless switch is in the “on” position, but still no go.

I then decide to read the documentation that came with the router, and it says something about visiting the netgear website for vista wireless updates.

I usually ignore the documentation, as its usually little more than a request to register online (so we can capture your email address). Well, looks like I have to visit the website, download some kind of driver setup file (I keep asking myself why should I need this… it should work as is).

Anyway I copy the file to the vista laptop, discover that to run setup, the laptop needs to be wired to the router…

OK, I wire up the laptop to the router, then rerun the setup file, and it take a few minutes to install “something”.

I get no indication of exactly what its installing… I kinda feels like its installing vista drivers on the laptop… and I wonder how thats going to help me on the wireless front.

In the end, I’m asked to restart vista, and the router.

After the restart, I still cannot connect to the router via wireless (the wireless LED is off…)

I connect to the router web interface again, and I find I need to go through the setup wizard again… maybe the firmware got updated… so I click on “next” buttons again, then go to setup the wireless settings again, but I find that they are just as I left them earlier.

I give the router one more restart and the wireless LED starts this time, I restart the vista laptop, and it can finally see the wireless network. yay!

I test the internet connection, and it works well.

I try the second laptop (thinking i’ll need to run the silly driver setup file again, but luckily it sees and connects to the wireless network without a problem.

Looks like some part of the router firmware must have been updated, so that it could work in a vista-compatible way.

I get the feeling that it will be a while before all wireless routers will work with vista “out of the box”… is Vista to blame? or is it the router manufacturers? who knows!

ibm netvista with loud fan noise and error 0135: fan failure

Computer Aid Posted on by

I was sub-contracted to investigate and resolve a few issues for a large company.

One problem was in a training room with 8 PCs: but one pc had a very loud fan… loud enough that it caused a disruption to classes held in the room.

Before going onsite, I figured maybe it was a dodgy fan, or maybe an overheating CPU.

Once onsite, I could see the PC (a fairly recent IBM netvista) started normally and quietly, but after 10 or 15 seconds, a fan went into high-speed mode.

A peek inside the case showed that the CPU fan was spinning as fast as it could. Unplugging the fan stopped the noise… reconnect the fan, and it went back to full speed again. I started the bios setup screen, and before getting to the bios, I was given an “error 0135: fan failure” message.

OK, I borrowed and plugged in, a fan from another identical PC, but it also went to full speed.

This looks like a motherboard failure. I see if I can work around it somehow:

– there is a bios setting that controls the fan speed, but changing it has no effect.

– The fan cable has 4 pins, so I try popping out the 2 non-power pins (ie not the red and black), but it doesn’t slow down the fan.

At this stage, I give up and allow the support company to investigate if this can be repaired under warranty (otherwise a new motherboard will be needed).

an error occurred while importing this file (bad jpg import into MSWord)

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer was frantically trying to import a graphic logo into word (and email), but whenever he printed the document, he got a black rectangle where the logo should have been.

He’s using office 2003.

I try printing the logo from the windows image viewer… and it prints correctly. I can also print other images from word correctly.

At first I think it might be an MSWord problem, but I cannot see an obvious cause.

I find out the logos have been newly created by a nearby graphic design company (ablazing grafix), and they can print the imported logos from Microsoft Word without any problem.

I take the CD with all the logos, and try it at the office (on my old office XP).

Well, when importing, I get “an error occurred while importing this file”… On another PC, the import seems to work, but the colours are lighter than when viewed from irfanview…

I decide to use irfanview to resave the images.

Since the CD has 3 logo sizes (small medium and large), and 3 different color types (colour, grayscale, and black/white), I take the large colour image, and resize it to the same resolution of the small image, and save it with a similar name as the existing small logo.

I can see some differences:

– the new logo is about half the size of the original.

– the new logo is much better quality (no jaggies due to proper anti-aliasing)

– the logo can be viewed and printed within word.

I looked at the hex codes within the original logo, and it seems that it was saved from an adobe product (maybe photoshop).

I guess that ablazing grafix didn’t use proper anti-aliasing, and only use a state of the art version of MSWord.

After I hand over the “corrected” logos, ablazing admits that they saved the logos as a CMYK jpegs (instead of RGB)… I didn’t think that the jpeg format allowed for CMYK and RGB, so I looked it up and sure enough, it looks like jpegs can be either format.

cmdline.dll keeps reappearing

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer keeps getting a warning about an infected file (cmdline.dll), which seems to have significantly slowed down her PC.

Once I take a look, it appears that she is running the an aol antivirus… it tries to remove the infected file, but the warning keeps coming back.

I’ve never seen the aol antivirus before, so I take a quick look, and it looks like its just a re-badged kaspersky antivir… but its no longer supported.

OK, I uninstall the existing antivirus, and install (and update) antivir & windows defender.

But the real-time protection of antivir doesn’t pickup anything.

I scan using defender but that also detects nothing.

I use defender in safe mode, but it still detects nothing

In safe mode, I delete cmdline.dll, but after a restart, it reappears again… even after disabling all the obscure startup programs.

So I use bhodemon to disable anything suspicious, but at the end, I seem to have stopped it from from actually running, but it still keeps reappearing in the users temp folder

By this stage, I was running out of time (and customer is happy with the speed increase). I don’t feel comfortable leaving the PC like this, but I decide to take a closer look when I return. I reckon its effectively disabled, except for the part that re-created the cmdline.dll file.

I later heard about a program called “starter”

With it, I can see everything that wants to start automatically… it also picks up on hidden registry entries. What makes a big difference is that I can view all running processes and find out which process is locking cmdline.dll.

I’ll be using it the next time I discover difficult to stop processes.

smitfraud variant (mxduo.dll, safewebnavigate.com) and how to remove

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer called, saying her daughters laptop is almost unusable, due to some infection.

When I get there, the daughter tells me that she noticed the laptop was running slow, and was generating many popup messages about a virus infection… So she bought and installed norton internet security.

Norton says everything is fine, and it couldn’t see a problem. I installed avg antispyware and windows defender, and they also said nothing was wrong with the system (I did a scan in safe mode, and everything was fully updated)

After some digging around, I eventually disabled some suspicious-looking startup programs, but after a reboot, the popups still poped-up (particularly browser hijacks to www.safewebnavigate.com)!

It was getting close to 2 hours, so I asked if I could complete the removal back at the office… By that stage, I had figured out that the problem seemed to revolve around a file called mxduo.dll

Further analysis showed that this was yet another smitfraud variant. I also found excellent advice on how to deal with it on:

http://forums.techguy.org/malware-removal-hijackthis-logs/616547-winavxx-exe-tried-delete-safemode.html

And it seems this variant was first seen on 25 aug 2007 (I saw it on 8 sep 2007… just 2 weeks later!). The chances of norton detecting it are virtually nil.

It seems that the area I had overlooked in doing a manual cleanup, was the O21 section of hijackthis.

O21 is otherwise known as SSODL (ShellServiceObjectDelayLoad), an undocumented autorun method,  found in the windows registry at: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionShellServiceObjectDelayLoad

After removing the relevant startup methods, and removing the infected files (in safe mode), the PC became a lot more responsive.

res://ieframe.dll/preview.dlg error while printing from outlook express

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer had problems printing from outlook express. Every time, she would get a res://ieframe.dll/preview.dlg error.

Printing from ie and MSword worked fine.

OK, a quick look at the web found a (badly typed) solution. A quick typo fix, and:

Regsvr32.exe %Windir%System32Ole32.dll

That fixed the res://ieframe.dll/preview.dlg problem.

I also help her with her monitor speaker (a new lcd monitor, but only the right speaker would work). solved that by adjusting the left-right balance.

I fixed a few other minor problems (I love customers that write a list of problems to be fixed!)

Towards the end, she (and hubby) became more talkative, and told me about their previous techs.

She liked to call them “laurel and hardy”… one would always sit and “direct” the other one on what to do/try. They always took many hours to fix things, and would then charge a huge fee.

Looks like I’ve pick up another regular customer!

Computer Aid expands the list of serviced suburbs (South of Brisbane)

Computer Aid Posted on by

A warm welcome to Todd Sullivan (based in Sunnybank Hills). He has just joined Computer Aid, and due to his location, he is able to cover a large area of Southern Brisbane.

Todd has many years experience in IT support, and website development and maintenance, and is a welcome addition to the team.

The suburbs Covered by Todd are:

Acacia Ridge, Algester, Annerley, Archerfield, Balmoral, Beenleigh, Belmont, Berrinba, Bethania, Birkdale, Browns Plains, Bulimba, Buranda, Burbank, Calamvale, Camp Hill, Cannon Hill, Capalaba, Capalaba West, Carina, Carindale, Carina Heights, Chandler, Chelmer, Coopers Plains, Coorparoo, Corinda, Daisy Hill, Darra, Drewvale, Durack, Dutton Park, Eagleby, East Brisbane, Eight Mile Plains, Ekibin, Fairfield, Fruitgrove, Graceville, GreenSlopes, Gumdale, Hawthorne, Hemmant, Highgate Hill, Hill End, Holland Park, Holland Park West, Inala, Kangaroo point, Karawatha, Kingston, Kuraby, Logan Central, Loganholme, Loganlea, Lota, Lytton, Macgregor, Mackenzie, Manly, Manly West, Mansfield, Marsden, Mansfield, Meadowbrook, Moorooka, Morningside, Mount Gravatt East, Mount Gravatt, Murarrie, Nathan, Nathan Heights, Norman Park, Oxley, Parkinson, Richlands, Robertson, Rochedale, Rocklea, Runcorn, Salisbury, Seven Hills, Seventeen Mile Rocks, Shailer Park, Sherwood, Slacks Creek, South Brisbane, Springwood, Stretton, Stones Corner, Sunnybank, Sunnybank Hills, Tanah Merah, Tarragindi, Tennyson, Thorneside, Tingalpa, Underwood, Upper Mount Gravatt, Wakerley, West End, Willawong, Wishart, Woodridge, Woolloongabba, Wynnum, Wynnum West, Yeerongpilly, Yeronga

0X6afaf101 norton problems plus freezing on activation

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer couldn’t use IE. It would lock up, and a window (title was: ccapp.exe – application error) would say:

The instruction at “0x6afaf101” referenced memory at “0x00000008”. The memory could not be “read”

A ping test works fine. This is looking like a Norton Internet Security 2006 problem. 

I disable virtually all startup programs, plus a select group of useless services (but not norton IS), and I’m able to get to the web. A search for “6afaf101” finds very little (except solutions involving reinstalling windows).

I try to selectively enable some applications, but I quickly realise its going to take a long time (and many many reboots) to track down the problem (maybe!).

I then decide I’ll reinstall NIS. The uninstall works well (but takes a long time). The installation seems to work well… but after a reboot, Norton starts taking me through the activation… and as soon as it tries to connect to the internet, the window shows an hourglass, and no longer responds (and cannot be killed by task manager).

I try disabling ALL startup programs (except norton), but no go.

At this stage, its getting close to 2 hours onsite, so the customer agrees to toss norton IS and go with my security toolset.

I could have uninstalled norton, run the norton cleanup tool, then reinstall… but if that didn’t work, I’d probably be looking at another hour down the drain (that wouldn’t be fair on the customer).

I uninstall norton (another long process), install and update antivir, spyware blaster, winpatrol, bhodemon, windows defender.

In short order, the PC is secure, and able to access the web as well!.

laptop wireless failure

Computer Aid Posted on by

A regular customer rings to say his wireless has stopped working again…

In the past, its usually due to his son altering the wireless security settings.

Once there, I see he has 2 wireless laptops and a wireless PC. Of which none are able to connect to the wireless router.

I have a quick look at one PC, and it just doesn’t see any wireless.

I fix that by power cycling the wireless router.

Next, I take a look at an ibm laptop (it has both internal wireless (802.11B) and an external USB wireless (802.11G))… and I quickly see that the ibm wireless software is over-riding the functioning of the usb 802.11G dongle. Easily fixed by pressing Fn-F5 to disable the internal wireless.

The third laptop is tricky… everything looks like it should work… but it detects no wireless networks… sometimes it detects a “HP share” network. I had setup wireless on this PC over a year ago, so I know it should work. I try everything I can think of, but eventually decide that the wireless circuit must have developed a fault.

Customer is happy to use an ethernet cable, as the laptop spends most of its life about 2 meters from the router.