Monthly Archives: January 2008

thinkpad T42 will not start

Computer Aid Posted on by

I took a look at a thinkpad T42 that refused to start.

Customer thinks there is something wrong with the power socket in the back of the laptop.

He said the power supply itself is ok, as he did the “tongue test” on the plug… Owww, 16 volts must hurt (I find testing a new 9 volt battery just bearable!).

Anyway, I measure the voltage, and its OK, but the socket at the back feels loose… This is a familiar sight, as sockets often get damaged when people lift up the front of the laptop while the plug is still in the back…

I hope this doesn’t become a solder and pray job… they are often not worth it (as the socket will usually break again in just a few weeks/months)

So I take the laptop back to the office, dismantle it (with the usual array 40 tiny screws, in about 8 different shapes and sizes), and test the power socket. Luckily the socket is not soldered onto the motherboard… it has wires that go to another plug… and that goes into a socket on the motherboard.

Now thats a brilliant idea. The mechanical wear and tear on the main socket is isolated from the motherboard… thus fewer motherboard problems.

Anyway, the socket is kept in place with a screw (which was slightly loose… so I tighten it). I cant see that a holding screw would cause a power problem, so I look around a bit more, but I find no scorch marks, no burnt electronics, nothing unusual.

I’m thinking: if the laptop doesn’t start after I re assemble it, then its an untraceable motherboard fault.

So, after some re assembly, the laptop starts! woohoo!

I try to do some tests, put my cd in the drive, but it doesn’t show up in windows explorer.

Hmmm, I pop the CD out, and… the laptop suddenly restarts… Now thats strange.

I think: I hope I put everything back correctly!

I pull out the CD/DVD drive (luckily it doesn’t need any laptop disassembly!), and inspect it (and the drive bay it came from), but I find nothing unusual.

I power up without the drive, and XP starts normally.

I shutdown, insert the CD drive, restart, and windows starts normally. Explorer shows a CD/DVD drive as usual.

I experiment with opening and closing the tray door, and find it randomly resets the laptop. Sometimes while opening the tray, sometimes while closing the tray. And sometimes the laptop refuses to start until the drive is removed.

The only thing that is consistent, is that the drive will not read a CD.

So I pull out the drive and give the customer his options:

either get a replacement drive (a gcc-4242n drive (fru 13n6769)) is not easy (nor cheap) to find.

Or buy an external usb CD/DVD drive.

difficulties with bigpond internet security: cryptextq.dll, browselect.exe infection (and a faulty CD drive)

Computer Aid Posted on by

Ah, another learning experience…

Customer can’t connect to the internet… it suddenly stopped 2 days ago (and the PC seems to be running slower since then).

I quickly pinpoint that the PC cannot get its dhcp information from the modem.

In fact, it behaves like the ethernet port has developed a fault (an ipconfig returns: an internal error occurred… Unable to query host name).

I can see the system is running bigpond internet security (BIS)… a quick look shows that it protects against viruses, spyware, spam, etc etc. It looks like a norton wannabe.

So, since an infection shouldn’t be a problem, I decide to boot from my bartPE CD… but it won’t boot.

I look at the bios, make sure the CD needs to boot before the HDD, but it still won’t boot (it boots from the HDD instead).

While in XP, it cannot read the contents of the CD…

Hmmm, do I have a faulty CD drive and a faulty ethernet port? … possible, but unlikely.

I try plugging in an ethernet card, but that also doesn’t work.

I decide to take the PC back to the office and carefully check it out.

I find the CD drive is faulty (a spare one works just fine).

I get annoyed with the slow PC, so I uninstall Bigpond internet security (BIS), and install antivir and windows defender… I’ll update them once I’m connected to the net.

I boot bartPE, and it has no problem connecting to the internet over the ethernet port.

I try running LSPfix and winsockfix, but I start getting weird errors when running ipconfig (An error occurred while renewing interface local area network: An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket).

I take a look at the xp services, and many are disabled (bits, firewall, Computer browser, Application layer gateway service, ipsec services, logical disk manager). Trying to start them gives a few errors:

  • 1068 (The dependency service or group failed to start)
  • error 10044: the support for the specified socket type does not exist in this address family
  • error 10047: An address is incompatible with the requested protocol was used
  • error code -2147014852

I try “netsh winsock reset catalog” but it replies with: Unable to reset the winsock catalog. The system cannot find the file specified.

I also try “netsh int ip reset reset.log

I try copying tcpip.sys and ndis.sys from another system: ahh, this works better: ipconfig shows ethernet has a 169 ip address range… not quite what I wanted, but better than before.

I run “sfc /scannow”… and I can finally connect to the internet (yay!).

I update antivir and defender, and antivir immediately complains about: a5vdmow5yog.exe, cryptextq.dll, browselect.exe

So the system was infected! and Bigpond I.S. didn’t even hint at there being a problem… Once again: a free antivirus beats a payed-for one…

But as expected, antivir cannot delete the infected files… soon after that, the internet connection drops out again… but I’m not worried now.

I remove the hard drive, scan it from the office PC (and remove the nasties), plug the HDD back to its home PC, and the network is fine (after I reset winsock again using “netsh winsock reset catalog”).

I put my usual suite of internet protection software, and return the PC to the customer.

He is happy to have the PC back (I had the PC for about 1 week). I explain what I found, and he is understandably concerned about the infection.

He becomes even more concerned when I explain how spyware operates. He does internet banking, so, as usual, I urge him to change his password once I leave.

He does admit that his confidence in internet banking has been shaken. Partly because the idea of something monitoring your keystrokes is unsettling, and partly because he paid for protection which seemed to be ineffective.

And I’ve learned to not assume a security program will do what it should.

strange brisbane ants

Computer Aid Posted on by

Having lived in the outer Brisbane suburb of Deception Bay for nearly 3 years now, I find the behaviour of the local ants difficult to understand.

Besides the normal ant behaviour (they swarm after most discarded/dropped food), they do other peculiar things:

  • They often swarm into a glass that has a small amount of clean water in it. I can almost understand this: its been very dry, so water is just as important as food (to them).
  • We replaced a worn out toilet cistern. After that, they would swarm around the silicon sealant that was used on the toilet piping (maybe they were getting high on the vapours?)…. after a few months, they are now just swarming around the toilet bowl (I assume they want the clean water)
  • They seem to like biting small chunks out of clean paper facial tissues (This gets annoying/gross when I suddenly need a tissue for an imminent sneeze 🙁 )… I now have to look before I grab a tissue from the box, as it could have 20 – 50 moving black dots on it
  • We went on holiday for about 4 weeks, and during that time, they managed to bite a hole through an unopened (ie sealed) plastic bag of Castor sugar (and also an unopened (sealed) paper bag of white sugar).
  • They have set up a mini nest inside a cordless phone headset (the backlight to the lcd display shows funny moving ant shadows. I fixed that issue by removing the battery and placing the unit in the freezer for an hour (and then spent 10 minutes shaking out dead ants and eggs).
  • A few have explored a salt shaker (made of clear perspex), and have obviously died of thirst… leaving black specks in the salt.

These ants look normal (they are small and black… smaller that the ants roaming outside the house).

I can’t pinpoint the main nest, as they usually appear from cracks in the wall.

I have tried baiting them using a boron based poison, but that doesn’t seem to have much effect.

They can sometimes be useful (cleaning up some sticky messes), but they also do some weird stuff!

removing kukkakreck.com and other nasties

Computer Aid Posted on by

I found another difficult-to-remove nasty the other day.

Again, it has desktop icons like “online security guide” and “live safety center”. the icon have a “reassuring” shield shape, but looking at the properties shows that they point to http://kukkakreck.com

After trying numerous ways of removing this, I eventually had to fall back on my very reliable way of removing these things:

Remove the hard drive, plug it into my office PC (as a secondary drive), and then scan it with antivir (avira) and windows defender.

Once the HDD was back into the original PC, I did some minor cleanups, ran autopatcher, and then I allowed it back onto the internet.

I need a way to carry around a live cd (or a HDD) that can be updated daily, so that I don’t waste so much time taking computers back to base…

I think the best solution is to carry an updated laptop, and an external usb drive connector… I have one that I use for data recovery (I can use it to connect laptop, pata and sata drives) so it should be a great combination. My dell d400 laptop is lightweight, has usb 2.0 ports, and is kept updated with the latest anti-virus/spyware software.

I’ll try it out at the next infection I find!

5 Steps To Speed Up Your PC

Computer Aid Posted on by

Do you want to speed up your slow computer? Given here are 5 steps that will not only help your speed up your PC, but also enable you to fix several computer errors.

Remove Virus and Spyware

Virus and spyware programs are one of the most common causes of deteriorated PC performance. In fact, if your PC slows down suddenly, it is most probably infected by a virus or a spyware program. These programs add several infected files, processes, and registry entries in the system that not only deteriorate the performance, but also generate several errors on the system. To prevent these programs from infiltrating your system, you must keep your antivirus and antispyware tools updated with the latest definitions and run regular full system scans to detect and remove any malicious information that would have got on to the system.

Manage Startup Programs

Startup programs are those that are loaded when you boot your Windows system. Many of these programs are essential for the functioning of your Windows system. However, there are some that are added by various applications that you install later on the PC. Many of these startup programs are not required unless you are using the application and therefore, they unnecessarily eat up system resources. You can disable unwanted startup programs by using the System Configuration utility (msconfig). You can also check the Startup option in the Start menu, and delete any shortcuts to the programs you don’t want to load at start up.

Clean Windows Registry

A bloated and damaged Windows registry may also slow down your PC. Registry bloatoccurs due to the accumulation of a large amount of unwanted and invalid information in the registry. Many computer errors, such as driver errors, DLL errors, runtime errors, and ActiveX errors are also generated due to incorrect entries in the registry. To resolve these errors and repair the registry, you need to regularly scan the registry for this unwanted and incorrect information and repair it. You can do this easily with the help of a reliable registry cleaner program. Registry cleaners automate the process of repairing registry problems, making registry backups, and defragging the registry to consolidate its files and reduce the size of the registry. Cleaning and defragging the registry helps in speeding up registry access, which, in turn, speeds up your PC.

Uninstall Unwanted Programs

One of the popular methods to speed up your PC is to uninstall unwanted applications from it. This not only helps in freeing up space on the hard disk, but also helps in controlling the size of the registry. While uninstalling, you must ensure that you use legitimate methods to perform the uninstallation. Also, it is recommended that you follow up the uninstallation process with a registry cleanup to ensure that there are no orphan entries left behind in the registry by the uninstalled application.

Clean the Hard Disk

After you have removed virus and spyware programs, gotten rid of unwanted startup programs, cleaned the registry and uninstalled unwanted applications, it is time to use the Disk Cleanup tool to remove any other unwanted information on the hard disk. The Disk Cleanup tool is the one stop tool to empty the Recycle Bin, clear unwanted Internet Explorer files, and delete unwanted program setup files. You can also use this tool to uninstall unwanted applications and remove obsolete System Restore points.

Finally, use the Disk Defragmenter tool to consolidate the files on the hard disk to make them contiguous and thus enhance the performance of your PC.

dell inspiron 530s loud fan

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer asked me to install a new PC (Dell inspiron 530s), and to transfer files from her old PC.

It seems like a reasonable system (3GB ram, vista home premium, core 2 duo, etc)

Once I connect everything, I fire it up, and I notice the CPU (or PSU) fan are very noisy (running at full speed). I would expect the fan to go quiet after a few seconds.

Anyway, I decide to worry about it last, as I have a lot of configuration to do (remove norton, and some other junk, and then install/configure antivir, defender, spyware blaster, winpatrol, bhodemon, office, etc).

I also don’t have a crosover ethernet cable with me… So I’m reduced to copying about 15Gb of music files using my 1GB usb drive… painfully time consuming!

I then run out of time, so I ask Andrew to track down the solution to the noisy fan.

I suspect its a bios problem, or a faulty motherboard/fan

Andrew downloads and installs an updated bios ( http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19675114-Dell-530s-very-noisy )

And now, the PC is very quiet.

I wonder why Dell would ship PCs with a such an obvious software fault?

Many users would struggle to fix this type of problem.

slow norton parental control

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer calls about a few problems (no sound, Norton parental control slows down PC startup, and Norton parental control seems to block emails until PC is restarted).

The sound problem was easy: download the latest driver.

From past experience, I know that NPC is very slow to start. So I decided to do this last, as there isn’t much I can do, and some PC tuning might help.

I decided to test the “email blocking” but couldn’t reproduce the problem… except that email won’t work properly until NPC has finished starting… so an impatient user will not get emails as soon as they expect.

So, all that left is my usual tuning, and afterwards, the customer says she can see a difference in speed.

So I finish off with a disk defragment (I tell the customer to let it complete before using the computer).

After starting the defrag, I’m on my way again.

strange computer lockups and reboots (memory problem)

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer has a computer that will frequently restart for no reason.

At first thought, it sounds like a typical power supply problem.

But the problem happens after I install a new power supply.

OK, lets try pulling out the modem card, unplugging the HDD, and booting from the CD: problem happens less often… but it keeps happening…

So I unplug the CD drive (and reconnect the HDD), and after a few minutes, the PC freezes… hmmm, so far, its been sudden restarts, but no lockups.

I reboot again, and everything seems normal… but the problem seems be happening even less often now…

I try removing the RAM, and then installing it into a different socket: now the PC makes a loud beeeep.

Ah! this is familiar: faulty RAM, or faulty RAM socket, or just some “dust” preventing a good electrical contact.

I re-seat the RAM, and the PC starts.

Good, I insert my Mepis live CD, and run memtest.

In the past, memtest has found memory faults within 5 minutes (even though it doesn’t complete all its tests).

This time, memtest says everything is fine.

I’m starting to run out of options here.

I’m starting to think CPU or motherboard.

So I pull out the CPU, clean off the thick, hardened layer of thermal paste, and apply a new thin layer.

But that doesn’t help either 🙁

So I take the computer away for more thorough testing.

I give it to Andrew (and tell him I suspect a MOBO fault), and he swaps CPU and RAM, and eventually diagnoses a RAM fault (after a few hours of running memtest!).

Its the first time I’ve seen a RAM fault that has been particularly difficult to pinpoint.

norton firewall blocks microsoft updates

Computer Aid Posted on by

I was tuning a customers XP system (a 2 year old system with 512MB RAM).

It should be fast enough, but was using 380MB ram while idle, and I’m told it it can sometimes take 10 or 20 minutes to pop up an internet banking website.

So I do the usual: clean out temp folders (one has 3000+ files in it), clean out the IE cache (and I install cache sentry), remove rubbish startup applications, do a registry cleanup (using jv16 powertools), defragment, etc.

After about 1.5 hours, the system seems to be running even slower…

I left the itunes/ipod services running, as they get a lot of use, and norton is also running (which, as usual, slows down the PC startup by a few minutes).

I look at doing an MS windows update (to update the hardware drivers), but the update just sits at 0%.

Ah, I’ve seen this before. Its the norton firewall.

I disable the firewall, and the updates start.

Unfortunately, I inadvertently start the office update as well (which take 20 minutes to run 🙁 )

While waiting, I talk to the customer, and he decides to remove norton (as he has also heard bad things about it).

Once the updates complete, I remove norton (another wait for 15 minutes). I install antivir, winpatrol, spyware blaster, windows defender.

After all that, the system is only down to using 320MB… still more than I would like for this type of system (about 220MB – 270MB is about right).

But the system feels faster, and the customer is very happy with the huge (to them) gain in speed.

slow network card while doing backup

Computer Aid Posted on by

I replaced a faulty network card for a customer, and about 2 weeks later, I’m called back to investigate a strange network problem (with the same PC).

The PC could copy 600MB of data to another PC both quickly, and without a problem.

But try to run microsoft backup (and quickbooks backup) to backup a smaller amount of data to a network drive on another PC, and it would be very slow, and eventually give a memory cannot be written error (which usually indicates a severe hardware issue).

I do a RAM test, but its fine.

I do the backups to 2 different networked PCs (with the same results).

I look at the settings for microsoft backup, and try changing some settings (disable volume shadow copy), but the problem is still there.

Now why would some network traffic work, and not other network traffic?

Then I start thinking maybe the network card has an intermittent fault… seems highly unlikely, but possible.

Then I have an idea: maybe it needs an updated network card driver (I found a similar issue a few days prior).

I connect to MicroSloft.com, and do a windows update (I choose custom, not express), and I see that there are 4 updated hardware drivers available (one of which is the ethernet card). Once updated, All the backup problems are gone.

Its frustrating how outdated driver software can cause such problems (and other times it causes no problems at all)

Not a vista fault (for a change)… dlink wireless pci card needs new driver

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer had a print server (belkin), which I configured correctly (using the windows LPR functionality).

He has 3 PCs (an XP home system connected to the router via ethernet wire, an XP pro system using a dlink pci wireless card, and a vista PC using a dlink pci wireless card).

The XP PCs seemed to print well, but the vista pc would print intermittently. Usually, the printer light would flash when its about to print… but sometimes, the light would start to flash, but nothing would print. And he would also have the internet drop out (occasionally).

I looked high and low, but couldn’t find out why the printer was behaving this way.

Since I had only just setup the print server, I assumed there was something wrong with it (or with the way vista works).

I stop by a few days later, and he tells me he fixed the problem himself! It turns out the dlink wireless card needs to have updated vista drivers installed… He just ran the microsoft update manually (it was a suggestion from a friend of his), and installed all the device updates.

Then it dawned on me: microsoft/windows update doesn’t update device drivers automatically… its something you need to do by “hand”.

Now thats something to remember if I (or someone else) installs new hardware and assumes it will work.