Computers and Internet: February 2012

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Melbourne Brisbane Computer Repairs, Website design & SEO

infection says: Hard drive rotation speed decreased by 20%

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 10:59 PM PST

If it wasn’t so annoying, some of the “informational” messages that you get from an infection are almost comical.

I had one the other day that did its usual fake scan, and then gave some messages that were meant to frighten someone who didn’t know much about computers. Here is a sample:

Hard drive rotational speed exceeds limits and may cause a system failure
Ram memory speed decreased significantly and may cause a system failure
Hard drive rotation speed decreased by 20%

Now most computer people know that its virtually unheard of that a hard drive rotational speed will increase so much as to actually cause a problem.

Similarly, RAM speed is virtually unchangeable, and even if it did change, the system has check in place to add extra delays if its running slow.

And then the hard drive rotation speed decrease… it feels like they are contradicting the first statement.

But then, if you don’t know, then the infection just needs to display something that might sound vaguely plausible.

Non technical people (ie most computer users), could believe such statements.

Its like a motor mechanic saying that your engines conrod slide bearings are worn… to me, that could mean anything… but it sounds serious (and expensive).

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Nita's Random Thoughts

Movies at Home

Posted: 28 Feb 2012 10:20 PM PST

Content by Mac Kline

We watch a lot of TV and my family. The good thing is that we mostly watch movies and not a whole lot of shows which somehow feels less mindnumbing to me. A few months ago I signed us up for Dish because they have a lot of movie channels that we have really been taking advantage of it. My husband and I actually decided to institute a family movie night with Jeff been a really great way for us to connect with our kids doing something they really enjoy doing. I don’t allow video games in the house and there are a lot of times when I think it best for my husband and I to turn off the TV when we are alone but at the end of the day I’m just happy my family and I have something that we both like to do. It’s important to bond as a family no matter what you are bonding over and in our case that thing just happens to be great movies.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Melbourne Brisbane Computer Repairs, Website design & SEO

Com surrogate is not responding plus microsoft security client oobe stopped error: 0xC000000D

Posted: 26 Feb 2012 10:33 PM PST

I sold a computer about 9 months ago. It had an Intel motherboard, and worked well until the customer reported that the internet suddenly stopped working.

After some initial telephone diagnostics, I decided I needed to visit and see what was happening.

At this stage, I’m guessing that the ethernet drivers might need re installing

I first noticed that the network adapter was disabled by Window 7

So I enabled it, but then, whenever I tried to see some adapter information (eg IP address), the window would just show the “waiting” cursor. It was effectively locked up (yet the rest of windows was working fine).

I noticed that the antivirus detected and removed a virus on the same day this problem occurred… a coincidence?

Device manager said the device was operating normally.

After a few minutes, one of the frozen windows displayed the error:

Com surrogate is not responding

Hmmm, It was all a bit too strange, so I took the computer back to the office, and had a more careful look.

I did a RAM test (RAM is ok)

I tried safe mode (with networking), but still no network.

Eventually decided to plug in a USB WiFi adapter, to see if I could get to the internet a different way… and this worked.

The next step (now that I have internet access) is to do a full malwarebytes scan… but no malware was found.

Looking in the event log, I find:

session “microsoft security client oobe” stopped due to the following error: 0xC000000D

I also find a few errors about reading hosts file

So also create a blank hosts file, and that fixes the errors, but not the internet access

I remove and reinstall the ethernet drivers (broadcom gigabit netlink controller), but that doesn’t fix it.

I found a reference to removing the file:

C:/program data/microsoft/microsoft security essentials/support/MSSEOOBE.etl

But that didn’t help either

OK, how about uninstall Microsoft Security Essentials?

Still no go.

In the end, I decide it must be a fried ethernet adapter chip.

So I disable the onboard ethernet adapter, plug in a new PCI ethernet adapter, and that works perfectly.

Isn’t it strange how we can be fooled into believing that there’s no hardware problem, just because windows says so…

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Thursday, February 23, 2012

Nita's Random Thoughts

Unlimited Online Storage

Posted: 22 Feb 2012 11:11 PM PST

Individual computer users as well as businesses, accumulate data over time. It is vital that these data are stored properly since they are essential to the individual's life or the business' daily operations. A company who has lost all of its important data will encounter disruption in its day to day operations. It is also most likely that they will lose loyal clients if the clients see that the company is not capable of protecting their information. Some companies are able to recover from this setback but there are those who are forced to stop their operations because of this. Loss of data can be caused by a number of factors including human error, natural disaster and corruption of the computer system that is being used.

Years ago, computer users rely on their hard drive or external storage devices such as USB devices to backup their data. But these methods are still unreliable since hard drives can still be damaged or corrupted by a virus. Nowadays, utilizing the services of online data backup providers has become more popular to those who are looking for ways on how they can store and save all their important data. There are providers who offer unlimited online storage for those who have a need for reliable data backup services.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Melbourne Brisbane Computer Repairs, Website design & SEO

wrong exe file association in windows 7

Posted: 22 Feb 2012 10:29 PM PST

I recently came across a case I haven’t seen before on a customer’s computer.

All of a sudden, for no apparent reason, whenever he tried to open any program, Windows Media Player kept opening. On rebooting the computer, Media Player kept opening about 6 times before you could turn WMP fully off. Folders opened OK, but that was about all. Even trying to open System Restore or Regedit just produced more copies of WMP.

I figured out that for some unknown reason, Media Player had taken over the file associations for .exe files. Booting into Safe Mode didn’t help.

Google searches revealed some rather complicated edits to Regedit to restore the proper associations, but of course I couldn’t get Regedit to open, even from a command line.

Nor could I copy the proposed registry edit into Notepad and save as a .reg file, because trying to open Notepad.exe of course only opened the blasted WMP once more. By that time, I’d concluded that the numerous instances of WMP opening at startup were the various security and other startup programs trying to open.

By then I was contemplating a Repair run of W7, which may or may not have fixed the problem, but I didn’t really want to go through the risks of that if I could possibly avoid it.

Finally, after more research I found a simple little.reg file that someone had written for XP and W7 to fix just this problem. I downloaded it on my own computer, put it on a thumb drive, plugged that into the bad computer, and by right-clicking it and selecting “merge”, voila, problem fixed.

Research indicated that the problem of another program taking over .exe files (usually either IE or WMP) is rare, though not unknown.

My initial thoughts were that it surely had to be a virus, but running the HD through my own computer scanning with Avira and Malwarebytes showed it was completely clean (and others had reported similar results.)

The computer was only 2 months old and although the owner is rather a novice, he insists he hadn’t done anything unusual or visited any strange websites, and had not downloaded anything immediately prior to this happening, not even any email attachments. This is also consistent with what others have reported.

I have no idea what could have caused this, as it’s not something you could change by accident, nor do I think it could be the result of some random registry corruption. And there is no PC tuneup or similar utility on that computer which might have made that change. And I couldn’t find any answer to this on Google, only various solutions. He’d never used Media Player or, to the best of his knowledge, ever opened it.

A strange one indeed. Some corruption of WMP or IE would be my best guess. But why just .exe files, as all other files (eg .jpg, .doc), weren’t affected? Even more surprising when you consider that W7 generally protects .exe files from this sort of activity.

Don Penlington

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Bloody Computer!

Sourceforge: The home of open source software

Posted: 22 Feb 2012 05:18 AM PST

Sourceforge is an excellent repository of free software for Windows, Linux, MacOS and even Android. All the software is open source, meaning that the source code is also made available for other programmers to edit. This provides for a collaborative approach to software development.

Sourceforge hosts a number of well-known application, including VLC media player, Audacity sound editor, and Pidgin IM. It also provides Games, Educational, and Science & Engineering software. So go and browse the directory of software to see whether there is anything that you may like.

Nita's Random Thoughts

Best Movies I’ve Seen

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 10:12 PM PST

Some of you may agree with me, some of you don’t, but below are the best movies I’ve seen in no particular order….

1. Armageddon
2. The Day After Tomorrow
3. Avatar
4. Die Hard
5. The Terminator
6. Toy Story
7. Beauty and The Beast
8. The Lion King
9. The Incredibles
10. The Dark Knight
11. The Thing
12. The Lord of The Rings trilogy
13. Cinderella Man
14. Star Wars
15. Saving Private Ryan