Monthly Archives: April 2008

ntldr is missing (don’t use partition larger than 120Gb on older systems)

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer had another technician upgrade his HDD from 40Gb to 250Gb… the 40Gb drive was failing.

The tech booted the xp cd, created a 250gb partition, then installed windows.

At some point (after a few weeks), the PC began to refuse to start, giving the error: ntldr is missing. press ctrl alt del to restart.

The technician tried a repair install, but it wouldn’t complete (due to the ntldr error).

Its at this point that I get called to help.

The PC seems a bit old, but it is running a 1.3Ghz celeron, even though the mobo is an old spacewalker mv25v1.1

I’m tempted to say its a motherboard fault, but there is no other indication that the mobo is at fault.

I end up taking it to the office, and try the hdd in a few other Pentium 3 systems… but all give similar errors… except the bios in some would show the 250GB drive as a 137Gb drive…

Now that make me wonder if the drive is compatible with the older system…

I find that many older bioses have a 137Gb limit on the hard drive size… could it be that this is whats going on here?

Well, I decide to split the drive into partitions (122Gb for xp, and a 128GB one as an extra drive).

It worked well, but I guess only time will tell.

I’ve finally got digital TV

Computer Aid Posted on by

After months of mucking around with PC based TV tuners, we finally decided to upgrade our whole TV system (we had an 8 year old Sony TV (pre wega)), since with a VCR, Sony ps2, wii, dvd player, the cords and switching equipment was getting difficult to juggle.

So we spent some serious money and got a Sony KDL40D3100 (40″ LCD).

We also got a ds6200 PVR (personal video recorder). A cheap hard drive unit from dick smith, but with a dual tuner, so it can record 2 channels at once. This allowed us to finally throw out the VCR.

I did some research, and found out the difference between the different cables you can use to connect the TV to various equipment: component cables are best, followed by svideo, then composite.

Since the TV had 1 svideo input, 2 component inputs, 3 hdmi, and a few composite inputs, then I managed to connect up as follows:

  • PVR – connected using svideo (it didn’t have any component outputs).
  • DVD – component cable.
  • PS2 & Wii – composite (initially), and eventually a combined component cable.

So now, if I need to connect anything else, I’ll need to use composite, or HDMI (no more component inputs).

I’m not sure I like HDMI… some bandwidth is taken up to check for valid copyright checking… the “industry” keeps trying to enforce copyright protection… its not worked in the past, and its going to keep failing… no matter what they try. It just feels like hdmi is either going to fail as a universal standard, or someone will find a simple way to bypass the copyright protection.

An alternative to autopatcher (heise offline update)

Computer Aid Posted on by

Since Autopatcher got hit by microsoft in July, I’ve been finding it increasingly annoying to have to download an increasing batch of updates after running autopatcher.

It seems like autopatcher is about to get a new lease on life (there seems to be some new beta software available), But I think I’ll wait until the software moves out of beta testing for now…

But, while looking around, I found a German company that seem to offer a similar product: Offline update (by heise security).

I’ve been meaning to try it out for a few months now, but I finally unpacked and ran the software. I then selected “english XP updates”, and create a product iso image, and let it run for a while.

At some point, I noticed that the command prompt window was asking me “are you sure (Y/N)?

It looked like it was doing some cleaning up, so I just said “Y” a few times… so this is not as automated as I would have liked… it would have been nice to just run the offline update program, and come back later, to find an iso image ready to be burned to CD.

After a while, it generated an iso file, but it was 19MB… seems a tad small to me, but I’ll try it anyway.

But it only seems to install ie7… hmmm, something is wrong. I try again, but get the same results.

OK, I won’t waste any more time on this… so it looks like I’ll be taking a closer look at apup.exe (from autopatcher) sometime soon.

virusheat not detected by antivir and windows defender

Computer Aid Posted on by

I recently had a customer call me to say that she has something called virusheat on her computer. It says she has thousands of infected files, and by purchasing the virusheat remover, her system will be cleaned up.

The thing is: I installed antivir and windows defender (together with bhodemon, spyware blaster, and winpatrol), about 6 weeks before this re-infection.

She also said she scanned her whole PC with antivir and defender, and they detected nothing wrong.

I take the PC back to the office, and take a good look.

It turns out someone was using the PC to surf porn websites (a potential source of newly created malware).

Also, someone had removed bhodemon, and spyware blaster needed to be updated.

I also find that antivir and defender (as of 31/mar/2008 ) do not detect virusheat.

Using highjackthis, I was able to find the infected files, and rename them (just rename the c:program filesnetproject folder… from safe mode or by connecting the hard drive to another PC).

After that everything settled down. I just did some cleaning up using highjackthis, and it was gone.

I must say that in over 2 years of using antivir (and about 1 year of using defender), this is the first time i’ve seen them powerless to prevent an infection.

Of course this is to be expected, since most anti malware programs are reactive: ie only able to detect infections after the infection is released to the internet… so new malware is less likely to be blocked by traditional anti malware solutions.

Ultimately, there is only one (impractical) way to guarantee that you will not get infected: stay off the internet.

problems with tv excel pci tv tuner (prolink 2388x & cyberlink powercinema 5)

Computer Aid Posted on by

Yes, I’m an idiot.

After wasting money trying to make a usb DVB-T TV tuner work, I decide to try a PCI card TV tuner.

So I buy a $70 special from a local supplier (XITD … or as I like to call them: excited). It also has cyberlink powercinema 5 software bundled

At first, it seems to work well… it scans analogue and digital channels.

But I soon notice I cannot receive digital channel 9

Also: if I enable time shifting, then ony 1 analogue channel is viewable (all the others display static).

I know its not the TV signal, as the swann usb tuner displays all the digital channels correctly.

I’m fairly sure its not a software problem, as I also ran the arcsoft totalmedia (for the swann usb tuner)… and I get the same problem (no channel 9)

Mandy calls XITD, wanting to exchange it, as it looks like there might be a hardware fault, but they fob her off (they are really not interested in exchanging a faulty item).

OK, I contact cyberlink. I tell them the symptoms, and ask if I might have a faulty card… but they get me to try all sorts of software solutions (increase RAM to 1 GB, reinstall powercinema, uninstall all other video viewing software, then reinstalling powercinema, upgrading software drivers for sound and video (but they are already as up to date as I can find, but they reckon drivers from 2005 are too old…).

If you want a summary of the cyberlink suport, take a look at these links:

http://www.cyberlink.com/english/cs/support/qa.jsp?m=9216ae1226343cfd49e9e75b83b89e64&ID=CS000475831

http://www.cyberlink.com/english/cs/support/qa.jsp?m=9216ae1226343cfd49e9e75b83b89e64&ID=CS000475834

http://www.cyberlink.com/english/cs/support/qa.jsp?m=9216ae1226343cfd49e9e75b83b89e64&ID=CS000476703

http://www.cyberlink.com/english/cs/support/qa.jsp?m=9216ae1226343cfd49e9e75b83b89e64&ID=CS000490923

http://www.cyberlink.com/english/cs/support/qa.jsp?m=9216ae1226343cfd49e9e75b83b89e64&ID=CS000491390

After a few months, they refer the matter to their R&D dept… and so far, I have not heard anything more (over 1 month of silence now).

I also decide to try contacting prolink, and they send me some different software (tvExpert)… The software actually displays the signal strength as a number. It seems to go from 0 (no signal) to 100 (perfect signal). Most channels have a signal strength of 80, but channel 9 has a strength of 27 to 50.

So I’m told: sorry, you cannot view a channel unless the signal strength is at least 70… Well, obviously… thats why I’m asking for some help!

At this point I’m just going to give up.