Monthly Archives: October 2008

Paid Content in Computer Aid

Computer Aid Posted on by

I just thought I’d let everyone know that some parts of this blog will become “paid content” sections.

To keep things fair (those who know me, will know that I’m a big fan of being fair, honest and open), it will only be selected posts… probably less than 10% of the overall blog.

The way I’d like it to work (this part is not finalised yet), is that paid posts will be split into 2 parts:

  • The first part will be free and contain background information
  • The second part will need to be paid for by paypal (I’m thinking around $4 – $8 per post), and it will contain the real interesting/vital information.

To be even more fair to my loyal readers, all new posts will be free, and a post might become a pay post only once it drops off the front page, and it shows a certain amount of long-term popularity.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and by looking at the stats on my website, I’ve noticed that certain posts are a lot more popular than others (even some posts from 2006 show up in my top 10 posts).

So I figured that if someone is looking for a solution to a specific problem, then paying $5 for the solution is a lot better than spending 10 or 20 times as much to have a professional tech fix the problem.

The stats also show that I get between 10,000 and 20,000 unique visitors per month, but only 1% will click on the google ads… each ad earns me an average of $0.23, with about an average of about 6 ad clicks per day, I’m getting about $40 per month.

I can easily see that most visitors to my site are looking for a specific solution… They read a relevant post, fix their problem, and then leave (rarely leaving any feedback, and rarely looking at other parts of the website).

I started thinking: If I could just earn $1 from each visitor, then my website would earn much more than Computer Aid!

So, I thought about how to increase my income from the Computer Aid website. Most solutions seemed to revolve around changing my website into a hard-sell site, with up-sells and continuity programs and all sorts of marketing stuff that I really didn’t like much…

So, I came up with a more subtle approach.

I’m not sure how well it will work, but its worth a try.

What are your thoughts? Do you think its a good/bad idea?

stopsign eAcceleration doesn’t work

Computer Aid Posted on by

I got a PC that was badly infected. It would hang as it started windows.

I removed infected files from the system in my usual way: connect the HDD to an clean PC, and scan from there.

Once I restarted the customer PC using the cleaned HDD, I found stopsign popped up, wanting to scan the PC.

Sorry Stop Sign, you had your chance, and failed. I also find out that the customer had actually paid for stopsign eAcceleration

And the PC also has vet, spybot, and a few other “leftover” security software.

So I remove all old and useless security software, and install antivir, and everything starts working much better.

Remember people: don’t buy security software online, unless you are really sure it works.

STOP 0X0000008E BSOD: not always a hardware problem

Computer Aid Posted on by

This PC would start, briefly display the windows startup splash screen, and then restart.

Once it restarted a few times, I pressed F8, and tried safe mode: but it also restarted.

Next step: F8 again, and try “disable automatic restart…”

I see a blue screen, and the main error is: STOP 0x0000008E

I lookup the 8E error, and it looks like a hardware error (most likely RAM).

I do a RAM test, and the RAM passes with no fault.

I try booting a Mepis Cd (and also UBCD4Win), and they boot just fine… and UBCD4Win can also display the contents of the main hard drive.

OK, a hardware fault is looking very unlikely at the moment.

So I take out the hard drive, plug it into my main system, and do a scan.

Antivir finds (and quarantines) about 16 infected files.

After that, defender finds and cleans an extra 2 spyware infections.

Put the HDD back in the original PC, and it now boots correctly (and I also notice its got IE6 and a counterfeit version of XP).

I upgrade IE6 to IE7, install antivir, and thats about all I can do with the system for the moment.

Customer says she will get me to install a legit XP sometime in the future.

ie 7 can act like a spambot!

Computer Aid Posted on by

I recently upgraded bad behaviour (from 2.0.23 to 2.0.24) on my blog, and found I couldn’t activate the new plugin (I got a http 403 error).

Reverting back to V 2.0.23, and everything was fine again.

At first, I thought it was a bug with bad behavior, but when I tried updating from firefox, bad behavior activated normally.

I went back to Maxthon (ie7), and found I was being blocked from my blog (error 403 again).

OK, looks like an IE7 problem.

I tried from another PC, and I could access computer-aid.com.au/blog without a problem

OK, the problem is with IE7, but only on my main PC.

I tried running IE7 in safe mode, but the problem persisted.

I tried uninstalling ie7, then reinstalling it. But that didn’t fix things.

I used winmerge, so I could see what had changed between bad behavior 2.0.34 and 2.0.24.

The only obvious difference was a check for the string “User-agent: “.

I commented out that check within BB, and IE7 was working again… but this is just a work-around. I want to know the reason for this problem.

I found a nice site called: http://whatsmyuseragent.com/

And I find my user agent was: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; http://bsalsa.com) ; MAXTHON 2.0)

Ok, some duplication, and a suspicious entry for bsalsa.com

A quick web search gets me a solution, but not much more.

I start regedit, go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionInternet SettingsUser AgentPost Platform

and then delete the badly formed user agent value (there was only one value).

I restart maxthon (ie7), reinstall BB 2.0.24, and I can finally work on my blog again.

Please: I don’t want any comments about browser X is better than maxthon. I like maxthon. I’ve been using it for many many years, and I’m happy with it.

I also use ie7, firefox, opera, safari, chrome… but maxthon does just what I want.

Vista to Windows 7: sounds like Win98 to Win98SE

Computer Aid Posted on by

Isn’t it funny how history repeats itself.

There has been lots of talk recently about how some leaked screenshots of windows 7 look remarkably like Vista.

Many are saying windows 7 will provide performance, reliability, and stability that Vista lacks… but little else.

You might almost say Windows 7 will be what Vista should have been (or maybe windows 7 is more like Vista SP2).

It all sounds remarkably like move from Windows 98 to Windows 98SE.

I remember at that time, those that purchased Windows 98 felt cheated, as they needed to pay (again) to get what they wanted in the first place.

If history repeats, then we can look forward to Windows 8 (which might be like windows ME: yuck!)… and finally Windows 9 will be the equivalent of XP.

There is a little voice in my head that’s saying: “Microsoft are digging themselves into a hole”

stop 0X000000ED unmountable_boot_volume

Computer Aid Posted on by

PC wouldn’t start. It gave a blue screen of death (BSOD) with the following error:

STOP 0x000000ED unmountable_boot_volume

I thought: this is not looking good.

I booted from a bartPE CD, but using windows explorer, it would just wait for 2 minutes before timing out

Using a command prompt and entering: “dir C:” returned nothing (no error, but no contents either)… very unusual.

I was starting to think the hard drive was totally corrupt.

Next, I tried chkdsk C: /F

It found and fixed a few errors… and after that, C: was visible again… And the PC booted relatively normally.

After that, I had some time to tune the PC… and it needed it, as it was very slow to start. Besides the usual need for a defragment, deleting temp files, and rubbish startup programs, the customer also had multiple antivirus and spyware applications, as well as some minor infections.

Once I was finished, the PC was running at a speed I was happy with.

Computer won’t switch off (forced power off)

Computer Aid Posted on by

This seems to happen most often to laptop owners. Desktop owners usually resort to pulling out the power plug, but you can’t do that with a laptop due to the battery.

There can be many reasons that cause a PC not to shutdown normally, but many people don’t realise that there is a “secret” way to force a computer to power off.

A quick word of warning: powering off in this way can lead to data loss, or even a non-starting Windows, as vital data can be either not be saved, or even corrupted… The chances of this happening can be minimised if you make sure the HDD light is off before you try this:

Press (and hold) the power button for about 5 seconds. That usually forces the computer to power off.

Note: you should rarely need to power off in this manner. If you need to do this often (or all the time), then there is something wrong, and you need to fix the cause of the problem.

d-link failure season

Computer Aid Posted on by

I’m starting to notice that D-Link network equipment seems to have a limited lifespan.

I only started noticing this recently, when I was called upon to fix a few failed internet connections (Its starting to feel like its d-link failure season).

In every case, the internet dropout was caused by a D-Link modem (or wireless router, or wireless modem router) which had “lost” its settings.

In each case, I could re-enter the appropriate settings (usually email address and password… and sometimes some wireless settings).

Once the new settings were entered, the D-link device would keep the settings for a few days/weeks, and then fail again.

Installing something more robust (like a new netgear) was the best solution in all these cases.

I must say I rarely find a netgear device that has failed from “old age”.

Dell XPS 720 non-standard motherboard/power supply

Computer Aid Posted on by

Someone asked me to help fix their computer.

It was a Dell XPS 720 (ie a high-end gaming PC), and it would run for a few minutes, and then suddenly switch off.

It seems like a failing power supply, so I think it shouldn’t be difficult to fix…

Once I’m in front of the computer, I see the PC is really large… one of the largest PC cases I’ve ever seen… and its really heavy!

It takes me a while to figure out how to open the case.

Peering inside, I see a computer that looks quite different to any modern PC… hard drives, power supply, motherboard… all laid out in a non-standard way.

Despite the huge case and cables neatly arranged, I still need to take out the hard drives, in order to get a good look at the motherboard.

After figuring out how to remove the hard drives, I then see that the power supply is plugged into the motherboard in 2 different places, using non-standard power connectors.

This is something I’d expect to see in the late 1980’s !

Anyway, I realise there is no way I can replace the power supply at short notice, so I reassemble everything, and give the customer the verdict: Either he (or I) will need to contact Dell, and get the power supply for this model PC (and I suspect it won’t be cheap!).

Dell: why do you do this?

Asus F7sr downgrade vista to XP

Computer Aid Posted on by

I downgraded an Asus F7sr laptop from Vista home premium to XP home.

As mentioned in a prior post, I had some problems installing XP (until I upgraded the BIOS, so that I could run the hard drive in ATA mode).

Installing the device drivers was more difficult than I had hoped.

I use microsoft updates to install a few drivers (but not many).

Looking at the Asus website, I find NO XP drivers (I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, the F7sr never had XP as an OS option).

I use the universal drivers from driverpacks.net, and I manage to install about 4 drivers (that leaves 5 unknown drivers).

Next, I use the Vista drivers CD that came with the laptop.

Wow, some driver folders actually contain drivers for both Vista and XP (even though the CD has “Vista drivers only” printed on it!).

OK, that takes care of a few more drivers.

I’m eventually left with unknown drivers for sound and dialup modem.

I download the modem driver from a similar Asus laptop (which does have an XP option).

And I finally get the sound driver working by searching the Vista driver CD, and running the setup program (which warns me about vista drivers not working on XP… but they end up working anyway!)

setup did not find any disk drives installed in your computer

Computer Aid Posted on by

Strange things can happen when trying to downgrade from Vista to XP.

In this case, an Asus F7SR laptop needed to be downgraded.

I boot from the XP CD, and it soon tells me:

setup did not find any disk drives installed in your computer

After some searching, I figure its due to BIOS running the hard drive in AHCI mode.

The standard XP CD is not capable of detecting AHCI drives (at least not without making slipstream CDs, or other fancy footwork).

I look in the bios, but there is no way to switch back from AHCI to ATA mode (so that xp installation can detect the hdd).

I do some searching on the net and find the generally suggested solutions are

– switch from AHCI to ATA mode (I cannot)

– slipstream the XP (I don’t really want to do this unless I find myself doing a lot of Vista downgrades)

– Put the XP sata drivers onto a floppy (laptop has no floppy, so a usb floppy drive is an option), and use the SCSI option when the XP CD starts up.

It just happens that I have a USB floppy drive (this is the first time I’ve used it in 3 years!)

But finding the XP AHCI drivers proves difficult.

The Asus website only has vista drivers (and only eSATA drivers).

While at the ASUS website, I see that the latest bios is “203”… the laptop has “202”.

The 203 bios only has a short description: “support both xp and vista”

I download the bios, use the usb floppy to update the bios… its surprising how many BIOSes will still not upgrade via a USB drive!

After the BIOS upgrade, there is now a bios option to operade the hard drive in ATA mode 🙂

After that, the XP installation was typically easy.

Installing XP drivers was more difficult… and thats a story for some another time!