Monthly Archives: December 2007

samsung sp1654n sp1203n hard drives don’t work upside down

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer had a motherboard failure, so I install a new motherboard/CPU/RAM

In the process, I take a backup of his 2 samsung drives (sp1654n (160GB), sp1203n (120GB)).

But the bios on my “backup” system has problems detecting the drives.

The first problem is me: I can’t read the jumper instructions properly. So instead of cable select, I have cable select and limit drive to 33GB… doh!

But after I fix that, the drives seem incredibly slow.

One of them is upside down (simply because the ATA connector happens to be upside down)… I try flipping it, so that the drive can then be run “rightside up”)… after that, it works well.

how unusual… the last time I say hard drives that had a preferred orientation was in the mid 1990s (I’m showing my age here 🙁 )

outlook express send/receive doesn’t complete (duplicate emails) due to CA internet security 2007

Computer Aid Posted on by

The customer from: http://computer-aid.com.au/blog/2007/11/17/800ccc0f-error-while-dowloading-emails-in-outlook-express/ calls me to setup her PC after moving house (and to say that the repeat email problem has re-appeared)

After setting up the PC, modem, skype phone, printer, etc., its obvious that outlook express is only downloading a handful of messages, and then stops.

But this time, there’s an extra (obvious) clue: the CA internet security email scanner pops up to say it detected something in one of the emails… as soon as I say “quarantine”, the email download dies.

Interesting. I check to see what has been downloaded (in OE), and delete the equivalent emails via webmail. Then OE downloads another handful, then dies again.

I repeat the above process until all emails make it through. I was (again) hoping that OE would get stuck on just one email… but no.

After some investigation, I figure that stopping CA from scanning emails is the best way to fix this… looking at the CA software, I eventually find I need to disable email scanning in about 5 different places, before I’m sure its not going to look at any emails.

While I’m mucking around with CA, I decide to find out why the microsoft updates don’t work (it stays at 0%), the webmail behaves strangely, and IE is still on version 6.

I then find that the CA firewall is blocking the MS updates and is causing my original problem of webmail working intermittently.

So: disable the CA firewall… enable the XP firewall, and everything seems to finally be working correctly.

Customer also agrees to move away from CA once the licence period is over.

dialup: Error 797: The connection failed (internal dialup modem disappears from XP)

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer calls saying that he installed a new printer, and now his dial-up modem has stopped working.

It sound unusual, as printers and modems shouldn’t interfere with each other.

When I get there, hitting the dialup shortcut give a error 797.

Since the modem doesn’t even show up in device manager and detect new hardware devices also doesn’t find anything, I decide to open up the PC and take a look.

The modem card seems to be plugged in correctly, but when I go to pull it out, it seems to slide out very easily… I plug it in again, and I notice it doesn’t fit well.

The metal backplate will only fit by pulling it slightly. When screwing in the backplate, the card is pulled slightly (in a lever fashion), such that the pci pins furthest away from the backplate are pulled out of the pci socket (but only slightly).

I’d say the card wasn’t fitting flat/squarely into the pci socket, so a bump to the case (by moving the PC to insert the printer USB cable) dislodged the modem card enough for it to lose contact.

To fix: a slight bend in the PCI backplate was all it took.

problem with outlook express sending a large/huge email

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer (for the second time in about 6 months) sent a huge email from outlook express (about 40 digital camera attachments). This causes OE to become unusable.

I figure the procedure for fixing the problem is a bit to complex to explain over the phone.

Once I’m there, I see I can start OE, but as soon as I do a send/receive, it effectively locks up.

The problem is bound to be the outbox.dbx file, so I find it at:

C:Documents and Settings{userid}Local SettingsApplication DataIdentities{LongNumber}MicrosoftOutlook Express

(substitute {userid} for your actual user id, and {LongNumber} with the name of the folder at that position (which has a lots of numbers)).

To be safe, I rename outbox.dbx to outbox.dbxx

That clears the problem

I also educate customer on how to check emails sizes, as sending images usually involves having some “technical” knowledge of image sizes, and how to reduce them by changing resolution and image quality.

nowadays, its easy to attach 10 or 20 photos from a digital camera, without realising that each photo can be 1 to 4 MB in size… leading to an email that is 10 to 80 Mb in size (which most ISPs cannot handle for various reasons).

Now thats a nice idea for a new email client: have it automagically warn you if the email is bigger than, say, 2MB, and then offer to reduce the image size for you.

wireless (wifi 802.11) network interference

Computer Aid Posted on by

I must say that in 2.5 years, and countless wifi installations, I’ve never encountered a problem with interference on wireless LAN channels.

But in this case, it seems highly likely.

Customer had a wireless router, and the wireless part of the router stopped working. So I install a new belkin wireless router, and everything seemed to work well (with the one wireless desktop PC).

A few days later, he asked that I setup 2 laptops for the 802.11 wireless network. One laptop (IBM thinkpad) cannot be setup (it sees the wireless network, but the 802.11B card in the laptop doesn’t support the WPA protocol (only WEP, which I wouldn’t use nowadays).

The other laptop (Acer) has builtin 802.11G electronics, so it should be easy.

But it cannot see any wireless networks within range… despite the other thinkpad seeing the router via the 802.11B network…

I check the desktop PC that I setup a few days ago, and it seems to have suddenly lost its connection (despite it saying that it is connected, I cannot ping the router…)

I connect to the router via an ethernet cable, and everything looks fine…

I decide to change channels (from channel 13 to channel 3… you can see I’m a lazy typist  🙂 )

Customer also says that he has 3 different wireless/cordless phone systems in the house (attached to the landline). And he says the dropouts happen less frequently in the late evening.

So I’m starting to suspect a channel overlap problem. The channel change should fix things.

But I also show the customer how to change the router channel, so he can experiment if need be… If it becomes an ongoing issue, I might need to explain that the channels actually overlap, such that channel 1 can also see the signals from channels 2, 3, and 4.

Ideally (to minimise overlap with many routers close together), I’d say the channels to select are: 1, 5, 9, 13 (only if you select the Australian wireless range… other countries might only have channels 1-11, in which case, just use channels 1,5,9).

dell d400: sample – this program is not responding (bad intel proset software)

Computer Aid Posted on by

I just got a dell d400 (to replace an aging ibm 570)

At some point, after setting up the wireless (as usual, I disable the intel software, and use the XP wireless software), I notice I start getting a strange error when shutting down the laptop:

“sample” this program is not responding

I figure I’ll look at task manager (and look at the startup areas), to find out whats going on.

But I cannot find a program called sample (I didn’t do a file search on XP… I just went straight to google, and looked for the same error). 

After some reading, I decide the best solution is to totally uninstall the intel proset software.

After the removal, the problem vanished (but the wireless kept working, as removing the intel software didn’t remove the wireless drivers)

Competitor comparison

Computer Aid Posted on by

Its always nice to have a customer compare my services to a competitor.

It gives me a way of knowing where I am, and where I could be.

In this case, the customer moved from a home office, to an office in an industrial area about 20 minutes drive away.

He thought he was now outside my “area” so he called another company to help out with a minor problem (new printer didn’t have a ethernet port).

So he looks in the Brissy YP and picks someone (I’m not in the Brisbane-wide YP…. yet. I’m just in the local yellow pages), .

They charge $100 an hour (I charge $70). They sell him a print server, and they set it up in difficult-to-use manner (but it was probably quick and easy for the technician to setup).

After 2 hours, the tech leaves, with no instructions on how to use the printer.

After a few calls, the tech admits he might have made a mistake installing the device, but can fix things over the phone.

Needless to say, the customer is not impressed, and so he calls me, and gets me to come out and fix things.

He doesn’t mind that I actually took longer than 2 hours, because he knows that I explain what I’m about to do, and I take the time to understand what he wants, and give him what he needs (even if he doesn’t know it!). Ultimately, most people don’t want to jump through hoops, in order to use technology.

Unfortunately, many techs love the complexity of technology, and so cannot grasp that most people want to avoid that complexity… they just want the convenience.

belkin f1up0002 setup (LPR)

Computer Aid Posted on by

I recently had to setup one of these things for a customer.

Customer already had a wireless modem/router, so wireless on this device was a bit of overkill (but it was installed by another tech… not my choice).

The bizarre thing, is that the belkin printer manager software was installed on each PC, and to use the printer, you had to click on the printer manager icon (in order to open the printer manager software), select the printer, then hit the connect button. After the printing is complete, you had to hit the disconnect button, otherwise nobody else would be able to use the printer (or so I was told… I didn’t test this lack-of-functionality).

This is so counter-intuitive, that I had a look through the manual, and sure enough, there was a setup that was easier for the customer (but a bit more complicated for me).

It was just a case of setting up an “LPR” printer.

And it worked well (except for a stubborn Vista PC… it kept saying: “unable to install printer, operation could not be completed”, and then the vista print spooler would crash… it eventually got fixed… details in future post).

I also connect to the print server, and disable the wireless… why have 2 wireless devices, when they are just a few centimeters apart?

While I’m there, I also make sure all the DHCP and reserved IP addresses are correct.

XP won’t start (corrupt partition)

Computer Aid Posted on by

I’ve now seen this problem twice in 1 month (once on a laptop, and once on a desktop):

XP won’t start (windows splash screen with rolling bar at the bottom, then it just restarts (with no blue screen).

I run bartPE and mepis, but they say the HDD partition is either “raw” or “unknown”.

In both cases, I’ve had no other option but to do a fresh installation of XP.

The only thing common between these PCs, is that they both were badly infected at some point in the past.

Its quite mysterious, and I’d like to know what happened (particularly if it starts happening more often).

I don’t understand MYOB (and the strict registration procedures)

Computer Aid Posted on by

Having used MYOB for over 2 years, I find that its one of the few applications I deal with, that I struggle to understand (on a few levels).

I started off buying MYOB Business Basics. I’m a small business, and I got it for a good price, and some of the cheaper/free alternatives seemed very difficult to use.

I found the MYOB user interface could be better.

For some reason, it reminds me of windows for workgroups 3.11 (the predecessor to windows 95).

It just feels like an antiquated user interface.

But I don’t mind, I’ve used WFW in the past, so its not a showstopper… It just take a while to get my mind around things.

Of course, part of the problem is that I don’t have any accounting training, so I get by as best as I can.

After about 18 months, I decide to expand by taking on a contractor (or two).

By this stage, I’ve handed MYOB over to my lovely wife, Mandy.

She takes a look around, and decides that the best way to handle contractors (from an accounting point of view), is to get a more advanced package.

We download a few trials. In one case, we convert the MYOBBB data file to a MYOB Accounting V16 data file.

We eventually decide that MYOB Accounting V16 is best, as we already understand how to use it (so to speak).

Now this is where it gets confusing. We go and buy MYOBAV16 from officeworks, convert the data file over, go to register our company file, and we are told something like: “sorry you cannot register the file”).

After that follows many calls to MYOB, where we get all sorts of confusing statements like:

  • You should have “upgraded” MYOBBB
  • it will cost you $XX to upgrade your company file.
  • We’ll give you the code for the initial registration of the company file, but you will need to apply to have it upgraded to MYOBAV16.
  • its registered now, so you won’t have any future problems.

Mandy is worried that in 3 months time, it will ask for company validation, and we won’t be able to validate it (despite assurances that it will).

Sure enough, after 3 months we cannot validate the company file… the 1 month “free” support from MYOB is well and truly over… so it becomes even more difficult to get help.

With a lot of persistence, we eventually find a friendly support person, who explains that if we de-register the new MYOBAV16 serial, and request that the original MYOBBB serial number gets transferred over to the new package, then we can validate the company.

But the whole process is made more complicated by the fact that we also had some “test” companies.

It all got sorted in the end, but I’m left confused by all this validation and registration stuff.

Other posts at http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/635506.html seem a lot more critical of the software and the company.

Personally, I’ll seriously look at changing (if there is much choice in the marketplace)… if/when I decide to “upgrade”.

bigpond 2wire adsl modem direct setup

Computer Aid Posted on by

I went to connect a new customer to broadband.

He got a bigpond 2wire adsl modem, so I set out to do the usual: ignore the bigpond CD, and connect to the modem directly (and usually save a lot of time clicking through menus).

Once into the modem setup menu, I enter the correct email/username, password, and then save, and try to connect… but it doesn’t connect.

I call bigpond tech support, and I’m told to hold down the reset button for 1 minute (I would have thought 10 seconds is the standard “reset to factory defaults” time… oh well, do as I’m told.

I then have to change the atm encapsulation setting to “routed LLC”

After that (and re-entering the username/password), the internet is up and running.

Its not often that the default modem settings need to be changed in order to get an internet connection…

I hate having to use the installation CD, but if ISPs decide to ship modems that won’t work with the factory default settings, then future internet setups are going to start taking a little longer.