An existing customer asked me to help setup his mums laptop. (dialup internet is not working properly), and to convince her to switch over to broadband. This doesn’t sound too difficult…

Once on site, the laptop seems to connect to the internet, and can browse correctly…

She says that her son and granddaughter tried to setup internet security and mucked it up… Now she cannot get any emails. Turns out the salesman said the laptop had no internet security (it actually had NIS), so he sold them another internet security solution.

Sure enough, there is the standard NIS installed, as well as something from Computer Associates called :Internet Security Suite (CAISS?)

Since NIS is due to expire in 45 days, I figure I’ll uninstall it an go with CAISS (which I gather has a 12 month licence).

After removing NIS, I see that CAISS wasn’t fully installed… only the firewall was installed (a rebadged, old,  Zonealarm).

I try to uninstall CAISS, but it goes through the motions, asks to restart the PC in order to complete the removal, and after the restart, the firewall is still there unchanged!

I remove the whole CAISS folder from program files.

I also try to remove ZA manually, by disabling the truevector service (which can only be done in safe mode!). but the emails still don’t work. I check the username, password, mail servers, etc etc, but everything is correct. Even the webmail access works correctly.

I eventually have to take it back to the office and puzzle over this laptop. I set it up to use my wireless LAN. I can ping and FTP, but I have no web access.

After some time, I see that the truevector service had been reenabled somehow!

I now see that Truevector actually runs from the c:windowssystem32zonealarm folder. OK, from safe mode: remove this folder, disable the service again, and reboot.

Thats better, I can get web access now. So I install antivir (I don’t have the serial for CAISS), AVG AS, winpatrol bhodemon and spywareblaster.

But while updating these over the internet, at some point, the updates suddenly stop.

I reboot and everything is working again. Do some more updates, and after a few minutes, suddenly, no more internet access (no ping, no nothing!).

This is one of those days 😐

A web search finally gives me the answer I need ( http://forum.theispguide.com/isp-ftopic1024.html ). Reading between the lines, I figured I needed to search the system32 folder for all files starting with “VS” which belonged to TrueVector (some are microsoft files, so I left those alone).

Another reboot, and I run for over an hour without any internet hiccup.

Everything is updated, and I’m happy until the internet drops out again!!!

What could it be this time?!

The wireless connection is fine, I can ping my router, but nothing beyond that.

I try another office PC, and I get the same problem.

I check my router and its working fine. I give the modem and router a power cycle, but still no internet.

I connect to my modem, but given that its in bridged mode, there is not much to check… the adsl light is on, so its got a connection to the exchange.

After 30 minutes, the internet is back… it must have been an ISP outage. Grrr!

I reckon I’ve had enough hassles for the day, so I turn out the lights and go to bed!