Monthly Archives: April 2009

The smell you’ll never forget.

Computer Aid Posted on by

In my many years servicing electronics be it, TV, industrial electronics or computers, there’s something that ties it all together. That oddly enough is a smell. The smell you’ll never forget.

One day I came home from a hard days work to find my wife quite upset. Just an hour earlier she had found the house full of smoke. In a near panic she called the fire brigade who dutifully sent a crew around to investigate. They found no flames, just smoke. They looked in every room, in the roof space and under the floor but found nothing. They declared it safe and left.

As soon as I walked through the front door it hit me. The smell you’ll never forget. I went straight over to the TV sitting in the lounge room which was located not far from the front door. The odour, as I expected was much stronger there. Pulling the back off the TV revealed the source. No, not a dead cat or even a dead mouse, but a dead line output transformer. Not just dead, but burnt, melted, black and smelly.

The smell you’ll never forget is the smell of burnt electrical insulation. It’s quite acrid and imprints on your brain forever.

What does this have to do with computers? As a computer technician I encounter many ‘nogo’ faults. The computer simply won’t turn on. This is often a dead power supply. A good indication of a fried power supply is …. You guessed it… ‘The smell you’ll never forget’. Just sniff near the exhaust fan at the back. Not always, but generally that smell indicates cooked components.

A computer power supply normally comes out fairly easily so is an easy component to replace and get a client running again. Once it’s out flipping it upside down often reveals the presence of ‘bits’ floating around inside. That’s bits of destroyed electrical components. These days you just wouldn’t bother to repair a pc power supply. Well, I have been known to replace a fan in several but that’s a different story.

So, when you smell ‘that’ smell, expect problems.

The Computer Temple is broken

Computer Aid Posted on by

Its amusing how some customers can get computer terminology so wrong.

An elderly lady rang the other day. She said her computer would sometime just stop working.

I said it could be something like the power supply, or the memory (I avoid using terms like “RAM” and “motherboard”… it confuses many people).

She then said she had spoken to a friend. She said: “He told me that the computer temple was broken”.

I said: “I’m not sure what you mean by temple…”.

computer temple

Then she says: “Oh I can’t remember exactly what he called it… that black thing under the desk with buttons and lights on it, and a tray at the front”.

Me: “Ohhh, you mean the computer tower! Well, hopefully its something simpler and easier than that”

But at the end of the call, I couldn’t help smiling at how newcomers to computers can sometimes get the terminology so wrong, that its funny.

But then she might have had it right after all: I’m just about to kneel before my own “computer temple” and change the video card…

Setup Thunderbird email to use gmail imap

Computer Aid Posted on by

Having moved from the world of pop3 to imap (some of you will say: about time!), I’ve found that I tend to want to setup thunderbird (and gmail) in a way that suits the way I work.

This means setting up Thunderbird slightly differently from the way google recommends you do it.

The obvious first step is to install thunderbird and to make sure your gmail account is set to imap (settings -> pop/imap -> enable imap).

Follow googles configuration instructions for thunderbird imap (gmail thunderbird imap configuration). Its slightly outdated, but its good enough to get most parameters correct.. Just remember that where they say: “select server settings from the folder list below your new account” they ACTUALLY mean: right click on the new account name, select “properties”, then select  server settings. Also follow the recommended client settings.

At this point, I change a few settings.

  1. I create my own signature file (usually just a text file), and then I go tools -> account settings, tick “attach this signature”, and choose the signature file I just created.
  2. Account Settings -> Copies & folders: don’t tick “Other” for Drafts and templates
  3. Account Settings -> Composition & Addressing: Then, start my reply above the quote and place my signature below my reply (above the quote)
  4. Check your emails… making sure you can receive emails, then: Account Settings -> Offline & Disc Space: tick both “offline” options (and use select button to select all folders). This works to “backup” your emails, plus lets you read emails if you get disconnected from the internet.
  5. Account settings -> Junk Settings: I tick enable adaptive junk… but if you use this account on many PCs/iphones/etc, then enable this setting on only 1 PC (the most used one). Also: Move new junk to: [Gmail]->Spam
  6. Trash: Google strongly suggest you don’t do this (because if you have an email in a few folders, then deleting it from one folder will delete it from all folders… which is exactly what I want anyway): Tools -> options -> advanced -> general -> config editor -> in the filter box, type: mail.server.server, looks for the number after “server” which corresponds to the account you are setting up.. be careful here! (eg mail.server.server2) Right click on any name -> new -> string -> enter something like: “mail.server.server2.trash_folder_name” -> OK -> enter: [Gmail]/Trash -> OK (make sure the string you enter has the correct upper/lower cases!
  7. Now for the most annoying part of thunderbird: the columns on the main window. thunderbird-columnsClick on the small box in the top right hand corner of the window (the one with a tiny square and a tiny black triangle),  and tick: size, recipient. untick: starred, read.

Whats annoying about the columns in the main window? With gmail imap, the columns apply to all folders… so the sent mail folder will normally show the sender… which is useless! I need to see the recipient! So I need to show both sender and recipient columns… what a waste of space.

Norton backup problems

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer had been using Norton Backup to backup her laptop to an external USB hard drive.

In theory, a very sensible idea, except for the norton part…

She needed to send the laptop for a warranty repair, and the shop had “forgotten” to remove the hard drive…

In the meantime, she had gotten a replacement laptop, and needed to recover her accounting data from the external hard drive…

It turns out that she assumed that Norton would backup everything… but wasn’t familiar using Norton to restore the data.

This is where I have a few issues with “commercial” backup programs (this is not just limited to norton).

The first issue is that backup programs will generate a backup file with all the backup data within the file. This forces you to use the original program to restore the data. I can understand the historical origins of this form of backup.

This is OK for a large company, but is utter crap for non-technical users. Take a look at syncback to see an example of great backup software. You can take a syncback backup to virtually any PC, and copy back any files you want, without needing to use any special software (just your standard windows explorer).

The second issue with Norton backup, is the default settings. By default, it appears that only “important” files are backed up… ie most of my documents, plus a few other selective windows files. Since MYOB stores its data (and its own backup data) in non-standard places on the drive, then Norton did not backup any MYOB data… Given the size of external drives nowadays, Norton probably should default to backing up everything, and prompt the user, if there isn’t enough space.

Needless to say, There was no data for me to restore (except for a few photos).

Now the customer hopes that the repair shop doesn’t wipe her hard drive… But from past experience, repair shops are notoriously careless with customer data… usually because the work is sub-contracted to the lowest bidder…

Oh well, fingers crossed.

Vista 64 hangs when going to sleep

Computer Aid Posted on by

While testing a PC with Vista 64, I noticed that it would “sleep”, but then not come back to “life”.

I’d end up having to press the power button twice, and then Vista would complain that it wasn’t restored correctly from sleep.

I had adjusted some bios settings (a DP45SG motherboard), so I looked at those first, and narrowed it down to either: “EIST”, “S3 sleep state”, “VT”, or “UEFI”.

A bit of research later, and I now understand what those abbreviations mean.

It turned out that the problem was due to UEFI being enabled.

UEFI (Unified Extended Firmware Interface) is supposed to be a good thing, as it allows for (amongst other things) booting from hard drives bigger that 2Tb… not needed right now, but drives bigger than 2Tb are just around the corner.

But it seems that proper motherboard support for UFEI is still not quite right.

So, I disable UEFI, and Vista started “sleeping like a baby” 🙂

And if you want to know about EIST: its really just speedstep… the motherboard dynamically lowers the FSB multiplier… so that CPU, RAM, etc runs slower, use less power, and generate less heat… but it switches to full speed when needed.

Vista 64 RAM usage

Computer Aid Posted on by

I tried out Vista 64 for the first time recently. I setup a new PC for a customer wanting to run Adobe illustrator & photoshop CS4.

So without going over-the-top, I got aPC with an intel DP45SG motherboard, a 3Ghz Core 2 duo, 8GB DDR3 RAM, and an ATI 4670.

The installation went smoothly, as did installing AntiVIR, Adobe reader, Java

Java was interesting, as the website suggested I install both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions, because I was using a 32-bit browser on a 64-bit OS…

Huh?

Sure enough, task manager shows all 32-bit processes with a “*32” at the end of the name… including ie7

I have a bit of a hunt around, and I see both ie7-32 and ie7-64 are installed… although ie7-32 is the default (apparently because many websites are not activex-64-aware… yet).

Other than that, the biggest surprise, is the RAM usage. Once started (with no other apps running, except for antivirus), task manager shows Vista-64 using anywhere between 1GB and 1.5GB… whereas I usually see vista 32 using 600 – 800Mb .

I’d heard that many 64-bit OSes can use up to twice the ram of the equivalent 32-bit OS, but I was still surprised.

Even so, that still leaves “only” 6.5Gb RAM for applications, which should make adobes CS4 apps really fly.

Hardware drivers are still the biggest issue with Vista 64. Luckily I didn’t need to install too many external devices… So my biggest problem was with a USB wireless adapter. Out of 4 cheap ebay adapters, only 1 actually had correct drivers (both on the CD and automatically downloaded from the net).

The customers printer installed flawlessly from the internet… I was pleasantly surprised.

So how is it? Its quick. I’m not equipped to do extensive benchmarks, but I didn’t notice any of the typical Vista delays when doing things like opening the control panel. The Vista “experience index” was 5.7 (based on the lowest score from the CPU).

So I can see that 64-bit is the way of the future… but only once 64-bit hardware drivers become commonplace.

outlook express links not opening browser

Computer Aid Posted on by

With Outlook Express, whenever you clicked on an email or web link, nothing would happen… sometimes the mouse pointer would briefly show the busy logo, but otherwise nothing.

I look on the net, and find all sort of suggestions.

The obvious ones involve correcting default file associations (but the email file association hadn’t been changed, and re-entering it made no difference.

Another suggestion was to re-register some critical dlls ie:

regsvr32 urlmon.dll
regsvr32 Shdocvw.dll
regsvr32 Msjava.dll
regsvr32 Actxprxy.dll
regsvr32 Oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 Browseui.dll
regsvr32 Mshtml.dll
regsvr32 Shell32.dll

But some of the commands give weird errors like:

  • mshtml.dll was loaded, but the dll register server entry point was not found… The file cannot be registered
  • shdocvw.dll failed. Return code was: 0x8002801c

I decided to install firefox, and see if I could use it as a workaround.

But after installing firefox, I just could not start it (I’d just get a busy hourglass for a few seconds, then nothing.

I finally found a solution that worked:

start control panel -> internet options ->advanced -> reset

Isn’t it amazing how 1 simple button, buried deep in a menu option, can fix a strange problem.

trend 2007 100% CPU due to pcscnsrv.exe

Computer Aid Posted on by

This PC is a dual core running slow.

A quick look at task manager shows its due to pcscnsrv.exe using 100% cpu of 1 core.

A quick search finds: http://antivirus.about.com/b/2006/12/02/pcscnsrvexe-performance-problems.htm

So I disable Suspicious Software Alarm System , but the PC is still slow.

About once every few minutes, the CPU would hit 100% for up to 30 sec… and PC would be sluggish.

I started disk defragment and the report shows that it found some log files under c:documents and settingsall usersappdatatrendpccillinlog were quite large (2MB), and consisted of about 150,000 fragments (wow!).

So I didn’t bother defragmenting (it would take too long)… I just renamed the files, & they got re-created. Then, after a reboot, I delete the renamed files

At this point, I do a defragment, and everything was much better… but it still felt slightly sluggish. I can’t be sure that its due to Trend, or if there is another problem.

But the customer is very happy, as the PC is much faster than before my visit.

I suggest that the customer re-installs trend (if they find the PC isn’t running fast enough).

I’m also told that the they also had 2 other occasions where trend went haywire, and they had to spend a few hours on the phone to trend support before the problem got sorted out.

chrome busy arc… clockwise or anticlockwise

Computer Aid Posted on by

I’ve been using chrome / chromium a bit lately, and at one point I noticed the rotating “busy” arc change direction.

I never noticed it before, so I decided to investigate.

Turns out the arc goes anti-clockwise while searching for the website… and once found and the website is being downloaded, the arc spins clockwise.

I like it when browsers (and other software) do things efficiently… In this case, the space used to display the websites favicon, is also used to display 2 different busy signals.

Its similar to maxthon (google: take note): the refresh and stop buttons are merged, as you don’t need both at the same time. While a page is loading, you see the stop button. Once the page has loaded, then the button changes into the refresh button.

Maybe one day, someone will design an OS that will just as efficient.

don’t get infected with P2P

Computer Aid Posted on by

Many people use P2P networks nowadays.

As time goes on, it seems that P2P networks are increasingly being used to spread the latest malware.

I admit I recently got infected, despite having some good protection in place.

So, after thinking about it, I’ve decided to add a new technique to minimise the risk even further.

Any P2P downloads will now go through a self imposed quarantine.

eg: if I download something today, then I won’t open the file for a week or two.

Its not easy, as most of us have the “want it now” mentality,  but given the increasing risk of infection, then this will help me.

Why?

It can take days, if not weeks before new malware gets incorporated into anti-virus/anti-spyware databases, so a weeks delay means my security software has a good chance of detecting a “previously undetectable” virus.

Of course this is not the best answer, since if everyone did this, then we would be no better off, given that AV companies rely (in part) on user feedback.

At the moment, its just shifting the risk of infection on to people that are impatient 🙂