Monthly Archives: July 2008

The best freeware applications

Computer Aid Posted on by

For a long time now, I find that when I’m looking for an application to do a particular task, I always take a look at various freeware offerings.

I’ve noticed that for many people, this is becoming increasingly difficult… not because there isn’t enough freeware, but because there is too much.

Realistically, few people want to install and test 20 different ftp programs, just to find the one that suits them best.

I used to do that, but now, I’ve found that I can usually get what I want by going to: Pricelessware

The website is the outlet for volunteers who participate in the usenet forum: alt.comp.freeware

These guys (and girls) do a fantastic job, and have saved me countless hours of testing. Well done!

The website has many different categories, such as: word processing, graphics, web design, web browsers, databases, etc

asus f2hf laptop with selective wireless connectivity problem

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer would like to connect her asus f2hf laptop to a friends wireless network.

Her friend is a past customer: I installed a wireless D-link router, and networked a few PCs (some wireless) for her.

Well, I try, but the laptop won’t connect.

I’m told that the laptop had been upgraded from vista to XP, by another tech, and that the wireless network worked just fine with two other wireless routers.

After a while, I decide to take it back to the office at take a good look. I uninstall Norton (given all my past grief with that software). Scan for nasties (none found), and it easily connects to my 3 year old tp-link wireless router. I also do some tuning and upgrade RAM from 512Mb to 2GB.

I give it back, and ask that she tries it at her friends again.

Nope, It still wont work on the dlink wireless network… Sometimes XP shows that there are no wireless networks in range… other times, it shows the correct wireless network SSID with an excellent signal strength of 5/5. But it just tries to connect, and then quietly stops trying.

I try plugging in a USB wireless adapter, install the drivers, and the laptop can now connect to the wireless network.

I’m tempted to upgrade the firmware on the dlink wireless router, but I don’t want to risk wrecking a router thats otherwise working flawlessly.

But customer is happy to use her friends usb adapter, as she only needs it occasionally.

What still puzzles me is: is it a fault with the dlink router, or a fault with the laptop builtin-wireless?

I’m leaning towards a faulty laptop wireless… or even a fault with the XP drivers (given that the laptop was a originally a vista machine).

billion 7300G wireless wpa fault

Computer Aid Posted on by

After upgrading my internet connection to ADSL2+ (TPG), I decided to upgrade my network to an all-in-one wireless modem router.

After some research, I decide that the billion 7300G seems like the best all-rounder.

The initial setup went without any problems.

I even setup some QOS settings (to limit all the P2P thats happening in my household).

The next day, I try out the wireless with my laptop.

Hmmm, it doesn’t want to work.

The XP wireless connection keeps starting and stopping… it looks like it continuously connects, then disconnects.

I try no WPA security, and the laptop connects first time (and stays connected).

A quick browse of some forums reveals the answer: the 7300G cannot handle a WPA password that has a comma (,) in it.

I experiment with a few different ascii characters, and as far as I can find, the problem is only with the comma… I tried:

!@#$%^&*()-_=+[]{}|;’:”,./<>?

So I just recreate a new 63-character password, but without a comma.

Note: I noticed this fault while the 7300G had the latest firmware available to me: 1.36-698-80.3_sso_billion

setup an asus eee laptop with wpa wireless security

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer needed to get his wife’s eee laptop on the internet.

So I install a wireless router (and setup wireless security).

All pretty standard stuff so far.

But I knew that the Eee would be interesting.

Research seems to show that the Eee could have some problems with wpa, but I thought I’d give it a try anyway.

Some guides on the net seem to guide you through using the network icon to setup a wireless connection (and you get advised to stay away from the “Wireless Networks” icon.

First, I made sure the wireless is on (blue light on the bottom right hand side… activated by pressing Fn + F2.

Well, after stuffing around for about 20 minutes (and getting nowhere), I eventually decided to try the wireless networks icon.

Well, it worked really easily.

First, I got a view of available wireless networks (Don’t disable SSID broadcast of your wireless access point!):

eee wireless Select the wireless network, and hit the connect button.

You then get another window, where you select the wireless encryption type, enter the password/key.

And thats all it takes!

At some point, I made sure the new wireless connection was set to run at startup, so that it would always run when the pc was switched on.

no internet (wrong password!)

Computer Aid Posted on by

At first, this sounds like a simple internet dropout.

I see the modem has a DSL light, so it looks like the internet should work… but it doesn’t.

I ask (as I usually do): has anything been changed recently? The answer is no.

Once connected to the modem, I can see that its “disconnected”. I hit the connect button, and it seems to work… but still no internet (no web pages, and no ping).

I try ping from the modems tools section, but I get no reply.

I try a factory reset, but that mostly doesn’t work… I managed to get 1 webpage working, and then nothing.

At this stage, I’m starting to suspect a faulty modem. I bring in my spare modem, to see if that will work.

I also ask the customer to ring bigpond, as we might need to reset her password.

She says only her hubby is authorised to discuss account details with bigpond.

Ok, looks like she will need to ask him to call bigpond, and add her as an authorised representative, so that she can get bigpond to talk to me, and I’ll see if a password reset is worth trying… phew!

After phoning her hubby, she tells me she knows what the problem is: A few days ago, hubby rang Bigpond, and increased their download limit (kids downloading lots of music, etc). For some reason, the password got changed… but he forgot to tell anyone.

Once I use the correct password, everything worked perfectly.

Its amazing how just 1 wrong piece of information, can lead to 90 minutes of running around, getting nowhere.

Vista exFAT (where has FAT32 gone?)

Computer Aid Posted on by

In a prior post, I stumbled across vistas options for formatting drives (it appears that the only choices are ntfs and exFAT).

Now thats going to cause problems with a lot of devices than need FAT32 (usb thumbdrives and mp3 players spring to mind).

So what is exFAT?

its really “FAT64”, but its totally incompatible with FAT32 and FAT16… so XP cannot handle exFAT drives.

Looks like Vista has painted itself into a corner on this (once again!)

While investigating this, I also noticed that XP artificially limits the size of (formatting) FAT32 drives to 32Gb… while FAT32 can actually handle drives up to 2Tb in size.

But I found a useful guide at: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm which allows a disk up to 2Tb to be formatted as FAT32 (the format program even works with vista!).

dlink di-624s usb file sharing

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer has a dlink di-624S wireless router.

It seems like a nice unit (except for scant documentation). I particularly like the 2 USB ports.

I had previously set it up (wireless network and network printing).

This time, he needs to connect an external 3.5″ 200Gb USB drive, and make it available on his network.

The drive was meant to go into one of his PCs, but the PC motherboard had some serious issues with running SATA and IDE drives at the same time (despite gamedude saying otherwise).

Before I got there, he had been using the HDD plugged into the usb port on one of his PCs.

So I connect to the 624S, and there is just 1 page, with a handful of options for configuring a usb drive.

OK, this should be easy. I change one option, so that there is no “security” on sharing the drive… There’s no point in worrying about security, as he is behind a firewall, and its just him and his wife.

But the drive doesn’t show up under my network places…

A quick web search shows that the 624s doesn’t seem to support ntfs (just FAT32)… now thats annoying.

I test it by using my 2Gb usb pen-drive… and network sharing works great.

Since the drive is ntfs, and contains data that needs to be saved, I connect it to the PCs usb port, so I can backup the data, before I format it to FAT32.

But windows (vista) says something about a drive error… oh no, I have a bad feeling about this.

vista makes the “usb detected” sound, but “disk management” doesn’t show anything. How am I going to format it to FAT32, if I cant see the raw drive?

I plug it into a nearby XP system, but get the same results…

At this point, the customer suggests switching the drive off, then on.

I figure its worth a try… if the file system is stuffed, then it won’t make any difference anyway.

And it works!

So I transfer the 70 Gb of data to the PCs internal drive… but vista decides it will take 40 minutes to copy the data.

OK, I’ll have to show the customer how to reformat the drive, as I don’t want to hang around for over half an hour.

As I go through the motions of formatting the drive, I see Vista only seems to allow the drive to be formatted using one of 2 filesystems: ntfs, and exfat.

Ok, I go to the XP box, and show the customer how to format the drive using FAT32.

I’ll need to find out what this exfat thing is.

Its a shame vista doesn’t allow formatting fat32 drives (how difficult can it be?).

vista update error 80070103

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer has a high spec gaming PC with vista… He’s had a lot of problems with it, since buying it from gamedude (he lives in Petrie… a long drive from Springwood).

Anyway, he calls me to help fix a few things (and re-configure all the networking again).

One problem is a vista update constantly says there is an update waiting to be installed, but when you try to do the update, you get an error 80070103. After the next reboot, the whole process repeats.

A quick search shows that its due to vista trying to update a driver, but vistas driver is actually older than the driver currently installed.

The solution: tell vista update to “hide” the problem update.

As a side story: it seems this PC has revisited gamedude about 3 times.

The last time, gamedude returned it with a broken raid 0+1 drive set… it just had 2 drives in a striped set, and another 2 drives as 2 “broken” mirrors…

So instead of having a 250Gb raid0+1 drive, vista had a 250GB raid 0 drive (with the OS on it), and 2 separate 250GB drives…

Customer can’t be bothered taking it back “again”, so will just put up with it… at least its more stable than past times, where he had to contend with RAM faults, and another time where the PC would randomly reset.

It situations like this, where I can easily interchange the words: leading-edge and bleeding-edge … this system must have cost him much more than just the sticker-price!

userinit.exe and wininet.dll application error. The application failed to initialize properly 0Xc0000005

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer brings me a PC that generates a few errors, and won’t display the start bar.

I can get around that by ctrl-alt-del, and then running explorer from task manager, but it quickly starts looking like another spyware infection (PC only has AVG free protection).

So I take out the HDD (and note that the case and power supply are very rusty, while the CPU fan has “solid” dust that needs to be scraped off).

I scan the HDD, and get avira and defender to remove whatever they can find (winfixer, SAP (service advertising protocol), whenusave).

But after putting the HDD back into the PC, I still get a startup error: userinit.exe application error. The application failed to initialize properly (error 0xc0000005). And the task bar still won’t show, and virtually no control panel apps will start, as well as no CMD prompt.

At least I can run regedit and a few other apps.

I try safe mode, but I get the same errors and problems.

Using hijackthis, I notice an O20 entry: __c0040e71.dat

It doesn’t look right. And when I use HJT to remove it, it reappears after the next reboot.

OK then, remove the O20 using HJT, then restart into bartPE.

Then use bartPE to rename the file.

After that, the PC finally starts correctly.

I’m starting to get annoyed at all this new malware that isn’t detectable by any antivirus/antispyware software.

I don’t really want to go down the path of using more than 2 scanners on each infected PC.

I guess its always possible to find a new infection that the security companies don’t know about (yet).

stay away from AVG

Computer Aid Posted on by

Stay away from AVG if you can.

I’ve just found out that AVG antivirus has a new “feature” that is causing problems all over the net.

You can read more about the specifics at:

The Register

SlashDot

I probably wouldn’t mention it if it was an accident, and AVG are busy trying to fix it… but when AVGs Roger Thompson says: And if that causes problems for webmasters, so be it. “I don’t want to sound flip about this, but if you want to make omelets, you have to break some eggs.”

Well I think that attitude is wrong.

Although Avira Antivir is my most recommended antivirus, AVG was my second choice, simply because it didn’t have the “please register” popup that avira has… and it has a good antispyware program (although it pains me to say that windows defender is pretty darn good as well)

Now what? I don’t know. I’ll evaluate avast and see how it goes.

Unfortunately, most users will be unaware that their AVG is causing problems.

If you are currently using AVG, you can try to disable link scanning (but not everyone would know how to do it)… or you can uninstall it, and install avira antivir. I cant say if avast is good, as I haven’t evaluated it yet.

problem with the pc emulator on a macintosh laptop

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer has some problems with the PC emulator on his mac.

Firstly, it looks like another technician had created about 10 different virtual PCs… mostly windows 2000.

Customer doesn’t have any windows XP CDs, so XP emulation is not an option.

I just cleanup all the extra PCs, and then take a look at his main problem:

He has some work-related CDs, but they don’t seem to work.

After some “getting used to” the macintosh interface (I find its similar to the Amiga…), I find that once the PC emulation is running, it seems to be setup to automatically “take over” the mac CD drive… So inserting the work CD, actually starts the autorun script on the CD.

The program starts, makes a few noises, then complains that it cannot run while CD emulation software is active.

OK, this looks like some overly restrictive software (thats paranoid about being copied), or a fault with the PC emulation (unlikely).

I cannot do much more, as my time is nearly up.

So the only solutions are:

– try the CDs in a real PC.

– Complain to the software maker… maybe they will fix the problem.