PM Computers

Memory Upgrades

Today on The PM computers show we upgraded someones Dell from 256MB of PC3200 to 2GB of PC2700. I know it is a speed downgrade, but what she uses the computer for, AOL and email, it won’t make a difference. 2GB of PC2700 is much faster than 256MB of PC3200, from a usability perspective.

The chip she had purchased for the upgrade, a 1GB no name PC3200 DIMM, was bad. I turned on the computer with the new chip in it, The machine beeped loudly several times on POST. Luckily I had ordered 2GB of Kingston PC2700 earlier that week, before she had called. I love having the right parts at the right time.

I also took the time to configure her Verizon FIOS Actiontech wireless router from the default settings to something more secure. I set up a new username and password and configured WPA2 security for the wireless. I also upgraded her anti virus software, as her Mcafee subscription had expired.

If that 1GB chip she had purchased via mail order had not been bad I would never have been called, she actually did a very good job of installing the memory, even though she professed to know nothing about computers.

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Coupons!

Most recently on the PM Computers show, we have spending our time doing routine computer cleanings
clients in Massachusetts. The most recent of which involved cleaning starware toolbar. The kicker was I had to go back a few days later because she couldn’t print out her coupons. I had disabled the coupon printer as being a suspicious Active X control. In the end I made sure everything was working amicably, she had her internet, and was able to print her coupons. I also adjusted a setting in her Google toolbar so her default Gmail would come up when she wanted to mail someone at Craigslist. I also helped her reset her online poker password.

Another recent issue was a friend who had installed a new graphics card. Over a period of about a month the plastic film on the top of the card melted and found it’s way into the fan on the GPU. This caused the card to overheat, and subsequently overheated his whole system. When he came to me he reported he had memory errors during POST.
I spent some time with him checking his RAM. he was running a AMD K8 64 2.6GHZ with 3GB of corsair DDR-400 with heat spreaders on them. Two of the sticks had recently been bought at Newegg. I checked his system using memtest86+ 1.70. The errors came up fast and furious. The unfortunate part is we did not have any known good RAM to try in his system. Luckily this was his spare system. He only brought his broken system. When we finished he took the system with him and decided to return the new RAM to Newegg. I did not look at the system too deeply, I just checked to make sure everything was in tight, because some of the chips felt loose, and then ran memtest. I didn’t check to see which graphics card he had. I expect however he may have a CPU problem and advised him to contact AMD.

Posted in Hardware, Misc, Security, Software | 1 Comment »

Verizon DNS

Turns out Verizons DNS servers suck whether it is Fios or DSL. We have been having a flaky problem with one of the apps at a clients office, it turns out the application phones home. The problem is it wasn’t able to complete the call, but most other net requests worked. The whole proble was we were using the Qwest DNS servers listed on Verizons support page. once I switched over to 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2, everything worked perfectly.

What is amazing is these problems have been documented back to 2006

and are still not fixed.

Posted in Networking, Tips | No Comments »

SSH Security and Attacks

Something that has been in the tech news recently is a rise in SSH attacks:

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11518

One reason for the increase in these attacks could be related to the recent Debian security issues:

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/13/1533212

I remember several years ago I had a similar problem - I was seeing a lot of connections to port 22 on my office Internet connection. The one thing that made the biggest difference was changing the TCP port I used to connect. 

I wanted to put up a list of basic tips people can implement, which will make a huge difference regarding these kids of attacks. In the process of double checking my information I found an article that had everything I wanted written up in a very concise manner. Instead of reimplementing thw heel I’m going to link to the article and give a brief summary.

Advanced SSH Tips and Tricks

The most important  points in this article are:

CHANGE THE PORT - attackers always check for port 22 and port 23 (SSH and Telnet) if the port isn’t open most attackers are going to go on their way to the next open host.

Implement TCP wrappers - editing your hosts.allow and hosts.deny files is very simple and only takes a minute. it also adds another layer of protection

Firewall rules - make sure your firewall is setup only to allow in the IP addresses you connect from.

The last tip is for advanced home users - when selecting a router for your home based DSL or broadband connections make sure you purchase one that can send all of it’s log messages to another system via syslog. Then install <a href=”http://www.cygwin.com/”>Cygwin</a> and have all of your routers information logged and saved. I’ll have more on the specifics of this in a future post.

Posted in Security, Software, linux | No Comments »

Status report

Not much to report. I’m designing a website for a local contractor. 

The worst thing that has happened lately is having to scratch my head over why Microsoft never embraced PGP and added support to it for Outlook Express. I absolutely adore Thunderbird and Enigmail.

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Windows XP SP3

The verdict is in. Unless you have a brand new fresh clean install of Windows XP, proceed with caution. Even then you might want to stick to SP2. If for some twisted, sadistic reason you need to install SP3, I beg you to read the following web page first:

Installing Windows XP Service Pack 3 - Things you need to be aware of.

Microsoft needs to put this URL and a warning in large letters on the first screen of the installer. There are a lot of people out there who simply click and forget when presented with an update. Most people have more important things to do,  they just click yes and let the windows installer do it’s own thing. it is often easy to forget that you might be running anti-spy ware programs which can question the changes made to your computer and cause the installer to fail.

In addition to reading this page you should also make a complete backup of your system to somewhere safe. Most people should stick with SP2 or call a professional computer technician and have them install it.

I’ve also dug up a few other web pages regarding Windows XP SP3 to save people from having to search:

An overview of all the changes made with SP3

The ISO Image for XP SP3 so you can burn your own copy

The Network Installation Package - the whole thing in one nice executable

Error messages and troubleshooting for XP SP3

I had fun with SP3 yesterday. I took all of the precautions listed above and still managed to get an “Access Denied” message. The installer was able to roll back the changes and no real harm was done to my registry. I have spoken with other people who have managed to install it successfully. One person reported that it slowed his laptop down to unusable speeds, another person reported that it “creamed” his system. I did not get any specifics on that incident.

Posted in Antivirus, Software, Tips, Windows | 2 Comments »

Always keep a spare

If you plan to leave the country and need to take a computer with you, buy a brand new one, and keep the files you need to work with, on a jump drive/key drive/thumb drive. Thumb Drives can be kept away from the computer and may not be searched if they are kept with your tooth paste or clothes.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080423-laptop-searches-at-the-border-no-reason-no-problem.html

Another good tip is to run Linux and configure it to boot to a shell before flying home. Chances are most customs agents are only familiar with Microsoft operating systems. If all the see upon booting up is a text based login prompt they are likely to let you go.

Also be sure to check the licensing terms of any programs you need to use. Most software packages allow for three installations by a home user. This will save some money when setting up a business only travel laptop.

Posted in Hardware, Security, Software, Tips, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Mail migration

Not much going on this week. I spent part of Friday afternoon helping an office worker in Norwood migrate their old PC running Windows 2000 to a new dell 530 running XP. One of the things they were truly happy about was that XP had spider solitaire. Switching the mail from Outlook Express to Outlook 2003 was simple.

Posted in Misc, Software, Windows | No Comments »

Laptop update - all the stuff you don’t see

I always use more than one virus scanner. I know it takes more time, but if you look at the results below it will be come clear. Originally I tried just to clean the laptop with spybot to get an idea of just how infected it was. When I came across the licensing issue, and the problems with Symantec Live update, I knew it  was time to wipe and start over. I booted with a copy of Trinity Rescue Kit, and used NTFS-3G along with rsync to backup everything on the laptop to a server I have just for backups. I then reformatted the laptop and used clamav on the archive. Below is the output from the clamscan. This is all the junk spybot *didn’t* find.

/data/user/WINDOWS/MEMORY.DMP: Adware.NewDotNet.B FOUND
/data/user/WINDOWS/Giggles-Shapes_SS.scr: Trojan.Downloader.Banload-4568 FOUND
/data/user/WINDOWS/NDNuninstall6_22.exe: Adware.NewDotNet.B-3 FOUND
/data/user/Documents and Settings/Owner/Local Settings/Temp/SAVE-Cm-Sm-Tb.exe: Adware.WhenU-3 FOUND
/data/user/Documents and Settings/Owner/Local Settings/Application Data/IM/Identities/{461B3DBF-2BF9-4A69-B5AE-ABFCAAEA10BD}/Message Store/Inbox.imm: Phishing.Heuristics.Email.SpoofedDomain FOUND
/data/user/Program Files/SuperStar/Beginning Math/start.exe: PUA.Elirt FOUND
/data/user/Program Files/Giggles Computer Funtime For Baby/Giggles-Shapes/Giggles Baby - Shapes.exe: Trojan.Downloader.Banload-4568 FOUND
/data/user/Program Files/Giggles Computer Funtime For Baby/Giggles-Shapes/Check Out Giggles Gear.exe: Trojan.Downloader.Banload-4568 FOUND
/data/user/Program Files/MSN Messenger/riched20.dll: Adware.Searchbar-19 FOUND
/data/user/Program Files/MP3 Player Utilities 3.68/DelDrv.exe: Trojan.Delall FOUND
/data/user/Program Files/Common Files/Symantec Shared/SymcData/idsdefs/20070426.001/sigs.dat: Exploit.JS.CVE-2005-1790.A FOUND

———– SCAN SUMMARY ———–
Known viruses: 274284
Engine version: 0.92.1
Scanned directories: 5364
Scanned files: 66988
Infected files: 12
Data scanned: 25033.76 MB
Time: 5946.744 sec (99 m 6 s)
(END)

Posted in Antivirus, Security, Software, linux | No Comments »

New Favorite Tool

Trinity Rescue Kit is my new favorite tool. It is doing wonders for that laptop I mentioned before. I just thought I’d link to them and give a shout out.

Posted in Antivirus, Hardware, Software, Tips, Uncategorized, linux | No Comments »