Tag Archives: internet connection

trend pc-cillin rivalling norton in quality…

Computer Aid Posted on by

Trend is starting to annoy me almost as much as norton.

I saw another customer, whose internet connection dropped out. I ask if he installed anything new, or changed any settings… nope.

I look at a few things, but I just cannot connect to the modem to see if its connecting to the net correctly.

Ping doesn’t work, and vista is falling back to the 169 ip address.

He is connecting using a usb cable… so I try ethernet, but I get the same problem.

He happens to have a work laptop (which he couldn’t connect to the internet, since he hadn’t installed the usb drivers… well, with ethernet, that is no longer an issue.

The XP laptop connects to the internet perfectly.

Back to the main vista PC, I decide to disable everything within Trend (firewall, spam filtering, the lot). But still no internet.

At this stage, my only options are: either uninstall trend (and maybe run a cleanup program), or reinstall vista.

I uninstall trend, and after a reboot, the PC can finally get to the internet. I reinstall Trend pc-cillin, and everything is working normally again.

We briefly discuss creating a business website, and I’m on my way again.

I’m starting to encounter so many trend problems, its starting to look like trend is trying to out bid norton in the bad-quality software stakes!

SMTP timeouts & email virus checks

Computer Aid Posted on by

A business customer rings with an odd outlook email problem: it keeps resending emails (multiple times)… which make the company look unprofessional to the recipient.

I do my usual badware & virus check, but find nothing (laptop already has the trend antivirus). So while the ewido scan is in progress, I do some ping tests & notice ping times around 1000 to 2000 ms (to google.com.au)… they should be around 200 to 300 ms.

I notice the telephone cable is plugged into one of those surge-protector boards. I bypass that, just to eliminate it from the equation… but nothing changes.

I then shutdown outlook, & everything is quick again…hmmm.

I look at the email sitting in the “outbox” folder, & it has an 8MB attachment… A touch large for an email attachment… it’s a tif image from a scanned image… and smaller emails go through without a hitch.

So I check out the ISP (telstra bigpond), to see what kinds of limits they have on their SMTP servers… there doesn’t seem to be any size limit, but after some more digging, I find some obscure references to a 20 minute smtp limit… ie if you can send an email within 20 minutes, fine (so the faster your internet connection, the larger the attachments you can send).

I suspect that if the email takes longer than 20 minutes, then the smtp server just truncates the email & sends it “as is”… At the other end of the connection, Outlook (or should it be called “Lookout!”?) gets an error message, so it shrugs it’s shoulders & tries again (thus multiple emails get sent).

Now I do some simple sums: assuming a slow adsl connection: 64kbitsps uplink, and a 9Mb email (90,000 kbits), then the email should take 90000/64 =1400 sec =23 minutes… but a faster adsl should not have a problem with this… and the customer is unsure of the adsl speed.

I also notice that trendAV also scans email (incoming & outgoing)… So scanning outgoing emails could slow things down a lot… I disable the outgoing AV scan… & I suggest that they try to keep attachments to below 2 or 3 Mb. Outgoing emails now work fine, as long as the email size is kept to something reasonable.

Everything else is fine… I find some spyware running on a second computer & install some anti-badware measures.

Noisy telephone line (and spyware)

Computer Aid Posted on by

Another customer with a difficult ADSL internet connection.

I do my usual spyware check & fix a few nasties (but I don’t need to work on the PC from the office).

The internet connection still doesn’t work, so we ring the isp & ask for a password reset.

We are back on the air, but the connection will still drop out every minute or two… client says she has noticed that the internet became unreliable 2 weeks ago, and she also noticed the telephone line was “noisier”.

So we call the ISP again & ask about the line noise, & they ask how long is the telephone line? (about 6 meters). We are told that it is probably long enough to cause some adsl length problems. I don’t believe it but I give it a try…

I connect a very short telephone cable from the wall outlet to the modem, & a 12 meter cat5 utp ethernet cable from the modem to the PC.

The noise is still there, the internet connection is still flakey.

Client comments that there is a new housing estate being built nearby & it is possible that telephone work on the estate has caused problems in the neighborhood. Customer is happy to ring the ISP herself & give them hell until they fix the problem, and I don’t want to increase my fee by just waiting on the phone, so we leave it at that & I’ll check back in a few weeks.

Bad sound card ? no, just lots of spyware

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer calls, saying that the sound on her PC doesn’t work & she would like to fix it, as her son would like to play some of the games he got for christmas.

She’s got broadband & runs winXP, so this sound like an easy fix sound card drivers, or maybe install new card, & possibly download drivers from the net.

So I take some extra sound cards with me, & when I get there, I see that XP is running very slow, & I’m told the the internet connection stopped working a few days ago. A quick ctrl-alt-del shows that spyware is running rampant, & using 3 different login accounts (each with access permissions, so that each account cannot “spy” on the other) makes eradicating the malware more time-consuming.

I decide to take the PC home & I’m given another PC with a broken power button, & am asked if I can fix it too.

The power button is easy, it lost a spring, but rather than dismantle the button, I open up the PC & swap the power & reset buttons, so the the reset button is now “broken”. This PC Also has Malware, so I clean it up.

The first PC is another story: The son tried to re-install windows XP, but actually installed it onto the recovery partition (with only 5Gb of space, it was running out of space very quickly.).

So I decide to go back to the original XP partition & make that the default boot OS. I then clean up all the spyware, copy some settings from the “new” xp install, install Ewido, ad aware, antivir (http://www.free-av.com/), startup monitor, & do some tuning. I also spend some time explaining that they need to be carefull about what they download & install.

New HP Laptop

Computer Aid Posted on by

Client needs help setting up a brand new computer & multifunction printer/scanner

She doesn’t know much about computers, so I startup the laptop & go through the windows “configuration” screens, nothing unusual.

She wants to setup the internet… but has no broadband modem… So I ask her to call the ISP.

In the meantime I check the wireless connection, & it looks like someone nearby has an unsecured wireless connection to the internet… So I tell her she can use it occasionally, but needs to get her own internet connection.

I enable norton, since it was already installed with windows.

I then install the HP printer software.

The HP software take 30 minutes to install… wow is it slow.

I also notice that the wireless network is still visible, but I can’t browse anymore.

By the time the printer is fully running, I have used up my allotted time, so I leave. But later, I start thinking: enabling norton might start blocking the wireless internet access… I’ll need to investigate this Norton software some more… Lots of people out there are using it (perhaps they shouldn’t), but I need to become familiar with how it works. Looks like I’ll be spending some time “playing” with this monster.