Error 1327, Invalid Drive J:

I've found this problem several times when trying to install newer software at work. In the past the school I work for had used redirected My Documents folders. Unfortunately some software tries to write to temporary user files within the My Documents or user profile under Windows 7. Removing the redirected My Documents didn't solve the problem as the registry had been altered with the redirection. This meant that the software kept failing to install with the error message "Error 1327, Invalid Drive J:".


After much searching online I found out how to fix this problem. You need to find this registry key: 



HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

And change all references to the mapped drive back to their original local folder location (usually c:\users\username\). Also check the key for Shell Folders as this stores some public document settings. Once you've done this, restart your computer and when you try to install the software again it should work properly.

Farewell Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, co founder of Apple Inc, sadly died yesterday after a year long battle with cancer. Tributes have gone up around the world for a man whose influence in the world of IT has made huge changes to the way we live our lives. He revolutionised the portable music industry, the smartphone industry and had a huge impact on the computer and laptop industry.

While I've never been a big fan of Apple (mainly due to their too often release cycle for new software/hardware), I respect the achievements of Steve Jobs and his contribution to modern life. It is with a great sadness that the world says a fond farewell to a man who has been hugely influential in many people's lives.

Rest in peace.

Windows 8

Just had a quick look at the Microsoft Build demo of Windows 8. If people thought the change from XP to Vista/7 was strange and difficult, they haven't seen anything yet! The new OS from Microsoft is most definitely aiming to compete on the same market as Google Android and Apple iOS.

Designed with touch screen technology in mind, Windows 8 looks to include several 'flickable' screens of apps instead of the traditional desktop that we've all come to know and love. Media Player and IE appear as apps on the home screen along with various other packages, such as a social networking app, a news app and various touch screen enabled games.

How this will work for currently popular software remains to be see, as initial footage of the home screen looks quite cluttered and disorganised. As far as I understand there is going to be a traditional desktop hidden away in the OS for all those traditional Windows users. I'm not sure how the smart phone approach to operating systems is going to pan out on desktops and laptops, especially older or non-touch screen systems. But maybe Microsoft will release multiple different versions of Windows 8 to cater for both, much in the way as they have released different versions of their previous offerings.

I didn't watch the whole video as it's some two hours long, but first looks are definitely teasing and this is one project I will be keeping my eyes on. If you are interesting in watching some, or all, of the video you can find it here:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/KEY-0001

Mounting a Samba share in Arch Linux

Today I had a need to copy some image files from a PC running Arch Linux so that I could edit them on my own PC. However the default DVD writing program in Arch Linux failed every time to record the DVD. I'm no expert in Linux but I think I'm able to have a good guess at getting things working, however I couldn't see anyway to access another computer on the network or get the DVD writer working.

Fortunately for me Google came to the rescue and directed me to the incredibly well written, and detailed, wiki for Arch Linux. Here I found a guide to creating a mount point and mapping that to a network share. Perfect!

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Samba#Manual_share_mounting

Uninstall Fail

I was uninstalling a program from a laptop at work today when I got the following dialog box. I had to post it because I think it's hilarious!

The Great Broadband Speed Ripoff

We've been with or telephone and broadband provider for three years now, and we've been happy customers 99% of the time. We've only ever had a couple of phone outages and those were fixed within a few hours of happening.

However, recently we noticed that our broadband seemed to be slower than usual and when I did a speed test it showed we were only connecting a 1.6 Meg instead of the 12 Meg that we had been getting for the passed couple of years. We're paying for an up to 20 Meg connection so I had figured all this time that getting 12 Meg was pretty reasonable, considering our distance from the local exchange and the quality of the line.

So you can imagine my shock when I discovered we were only getting a 1.6 Meg connection. I called up our provider and they were surprised at how slow our connection was. We tried all sorts of fixes and tests; switching the router for the original modem, changing the phone cable, using the BT test socket; but nothing seemed to make any difference. We got sent a new filter for free and it arrived speedily on a Saturday morning. It didn't make any difference, at quiet times we were still only getting a 2 Meg connection.

Come the Monday I got a call back from our provider. The technician I was dealing with had tried various tests and tried to fix our line at 4 Meg but it kept connecting at 3 Meg. He informed me that he'd done a postcode check on our broadband and we could only get a 4 Meg connection. I didn't believe him and argued that we'd been getting 12 Meg for some time now. He went away to register a line fault with BT.

At this point I was beginning to think that the problem was indeed beyond our provider. I know that they can impose their own limits on connection speeds, especially on heavy users (which we aren't), however the technician seemed to have been genuine and was unable to raise our speed. So I suspected that in an attempt to increase the number of users on our local exchange, BT had capped broadband speeds in the area. Of course I had no proof of this, other than the fact that I had previously been getting a 12 Meg connection and now I could only apparently ever get a 4 Meg connection.

Anyway, the technician lived up to his promise and got back to me later in the day to confirm a visit from a BT engineer had been scheduled.

A few days later the engineer from BT turned up at our home. I was out at work but my wife was in. He was a bit off with her about having been called out, but checked out our master socket and broadband equipment (once again, as if it was our problem and not theirs). Unable to find a fault in our home he advised my wife that he would check at the exchange and get back to her.

Many hours later the engineer finally called my wife and told her that he had to stop fixing our problem because he was later for another appointment! Erm, isn't it his job to solve our problem or escalate us to a senior member of staff before just walking away! Funnily enough though, when I came home I checked our internet connection and we were suddenly connecting at 7 Meg! Whilst it's not our original 12 Meg connection, getting 7 Meg off of a 4 Meg line is certainly a worthy achievement.

So, still no proof, but how convenient that a BT engineer can go to the local exchange and suddenly increase a line speed that without a doubt could never achieve a higher speed than 4 Meg. :)

Change the size of Windows taskbar items

At some point in the past, when Windows 7 was in beta testing, I downloaded and installed a Windows 7 style pack for XP as Windows 7 beta wouldn't detect my wireless card so I couldn't use it. Whilst the theme itself was brilliant and perfectly emulated Windows 7, the resources it used left my system running to slow to be usable. So I uninstalled it all.

However one thing has remained from this legacy; the task bar items that appear when you have active windows were much smaller than normal. For a long time I had no idea how to fix this and wasn't really that bothered by it. Just recently though I decided that my laptop needed a visual overhaul so did some research to work out how to fix the taskbar.

Many thanks to ghacks.net for the solution to my problem. It turns out that you just have to modify one registry key in order to change the size of taskbar items. Go to the reg key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics and change the value for MinWidth. The default is 154 pixels. A higher value will stretch the taskbar items whilst a lower value will shrink them.

Osama Bin Laden Hanged / Olympic Torch HOAX email

I regularly receive all the circulated email virus rumors, so I thought I'd shed some light on this particular one that I received today. The email warns of two viruses; one regarding the hanging of Osama Bin Laden and the other about a virus in an attachment called the Olympic Torch. The content of the email is as follows:

DO NOT WANT TO SCARE YOU BUT WHY TAKE A CHANCE!!!!!!!!!! TWO SUBJECT LINES of
which to be AWARE .


Just verified this with Snopes and it is REAL.  ALSO WENT TO TRUTH OR FICTION,
IT'S on their site also.


PLEASE INFORM EVERYONE you know !

1.)  Emails with pictures of Osama Bin-Laden hanged  are being sent and the
moment  that you open these emails your computer will crash and you will not be
able to fix it!

  If you get an e-mail along the lines of 'Osama Bin Laden Captured' or 'Osama
Hanged', don't open the Attachment!!!!


  This e-mail is being distributed through countries around the globe, but
mainly in the US and  Israel  .



Be considerate & send this warning to whomever  you know.


2.) You should be alert during the next few days:

  Do not open any message with an attached file called 'Invitation' regardless
of who sent  it.


    It is a  virus that opens an Olympic Torch which 'burns' the whole hard
disc C of your computer!!!!

    This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in
his/her contact list, that is why you should send this E-mail to all  your
contacts.

Have not yet bothered to check this out so just forwarding just in case!
F.

  It is better to receive this message 25 times than  to receive the virus and
open it.


  If you receive an e-mail called 'invitation', even  though sent by a friend.
Do not open it!!!

  This is the worst virus announced by CNN, it has  been classified by
Microsoft as the most  destructive virus ever.

This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday,  and there is no repair yet for
this kind of virus..

This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where other vital
information is kept.



  SEND THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU  KNOW!!!! 


Both of these are complete hoaxes, although the first is based on some truth. Back in 2004 an email circulated with links to supposed photos of the hanging of Bin Laden. In fact these links just directed victims to a page where a trojan was downloaded onto their computer. The current hoax alert offers no such links and refers to an email that isn't circulating anymore. And besides, we all now know that Bin Laden was killed in a firefight. The first message also claims to have verified the validity of the virus alert with the website Snopes, but actually checking out Snopes.com reveals this all to be completely false (http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/osama.asp). 


The second virus alert claims to be in an attachment, and I hope that most people are aware of opening attachments in emails. This virus alert claims to have been discovered yesterday by McAfee and rated by Microsoft as the most destructive ever. However, a quick check on McAfee's theat activity list (http://home.mcafee.com/VirusInfo/ThreatActivity.aspx) does not confirm the existence of any such incredibly dangerous threats. In fact all of the most recently discovered threats by McAfee are classified as 'Low' threat.


Finally, Symantec have confirmed that this email is entirely a hoax (http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2007-053113-4142-99&tabid=2). Hoax Slayer have also verified that the email is a complete hoax. A full report from them can be seen at http://www.hoax-slayer.com/invitation-bin-laden-virus-warning.html. 

Computer Dustbunnies!

I came across this article recently on The Register which has highlighted one of the most overlooked elements of keeping a healthy PC - Cleaning the dust out of it! I've seen several examples of machines that could do with a thorough Spring clean, usually caused by dusty environments or pets, but as I progressed through the pages of this article even I withdrew in horror!

Be warned those of you with weak stomachs! The latter examples in this article are quite seriously disturbing!

Enjoy!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/26/ventblockers_2/

Swapping a hard drive from an Intel based PC to an AMD based PC

I knew it was going to be an issue when the idea first popped into my head, but I had someones computer with a dead Intel motherboard and the only spare I had was an AMD. I'd heard all about the risks and experiences of others when trying to swap a hard drive from an Intel board to an AMD board but I had no choice as I needed to get this computer up and running. I read a few articles online from people who had successfully made the change and there were a few things that needed doing in advance.

Removing Intel specific drivers and stopping certain services were the key to a successful transfer. However I discovered there was one more really important, above all else, thing that needed to be done to make the transition work: disabling the intelppm service. According to others online, if this service isn't disabled then it doesn't matter what else you try to do, you won't be able to boot an AMD based board.

There are two ways to disable this service. Firstly you can disable it through the registry. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Intelppm and set the 'Start' value to 4. Reboot the PC and this should do the trick. Or if you are unlucky, like I was, and can't find this registry key anywhere you can also do it from the Windows Recovery Console. Simply boot up your Windows XP cd, choose the recovery console option and then type the command disable intelppm. That's it! Simple! Reboot and you should be able to boot your previously Intel based hard drive in an AMD machine. 


Many thanks to all the forums I read but particularly from the guidance from Microsoft.

Windows Vista/7 Device Drivers

At work we've just purchased some brand new Stone netbooks with touch screen technology. They are pretty clever little things, based on the Fizzbook Spin, but for our needs have one flaw in that they come with Windows 7 Starter and we need them to work within a domain. Fortunately we have a volume license agreement so we could put Windows 7 Professional on them.

All went happy and well with the install, until I checked the drivers list in Device Manager. There were several devices that Windows 7 couldn't detect, including the graphics card, audio card, network card and a few unknown devices. I downloaded all of the drivers from Stone's website but I still have left 4 unknown devices, all windows ACPI devices. Despite all my efforts locating drivers or even working out what the devices were, I couldn't not find any suitable drivers.

I was near to giving up when an idea popped into my head; what if I took the files from C:\Windows\System32\Drivers and tried to install those? Unfortunately I discovered that the files in this directory are .sys files that cannot be installed. However, this turned up a useful fact: It's the .inf files that are used to install the drivers and Windows Vista and Windows 7 keep a store of all driver files before they are installed!

The location for this files is C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore and you can use these files to install drivers for all devices installed in the system. Luckily for me we ordered several of these Stone netbooks so I just booted one of them up, located the driver store and copied all the relevant drivers across. Turns out that the ones I was missing were OEM installed drivers for the touch screen and anti-shock technology.

My thanks go to Vijay at msigeek.com for his incredibly helpful article.

Restore missing CD Drivers in Windows XP

I was working on a computer for someone and the motherboard died on me. So I had to replace it with a spare that I had from another PC. Unfortunately the original motherboard was an Intel board and the replacement I had was an AMD, so I had to do a repair install of Windows XP.

When I rebooted the PC everything came back successfully except for the CD-ROM drivers. I kept getting the error ""Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)" in Device Manager. I tried reinstalling the CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives but that just came to the same result. I figured the original Windows drivers were corrupt so I copied them back from the Windows installation CD, but that didn't solve the problem.

Eventually I came across a forum on kioskea.net that discussed missing or corrupt Windows CD Drivers, so I had a browse and I have to thank the member named "Matt" for his solution that solved the problem. The steps you need to take to restore Windows CD drivers are:

• Go to the start menu, run, and type regedit
• Look for the registry key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
• Delete the entries for "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" if they exist
• Reboot your PC

This should restore Windows CD drivers. Thanks Matt!

Moodle live over a network

As part of a project for work I'm investigating Moodle and it's use within a school as a learning platform. It's been a massive learning curve for me as I have no knowledge at all of using Moodle and there have been several problems I've experienced that have been worthy of blogging, but this one was both complicated and mind-numbingly simple at the same time!

I had Moodle set up with some basic pages, had logins based on Microsoft Active Directory, and was ready to let my colleagues have a go on my test site. However whenever I tried to load the site on another PC I kept getting an error:

“Incorrect access detected, this server may be accessed only through “http://localhost/moodle” address, sorry.
Please notify server administrator..”


I wasn't sure if this was a Moodle error or an Apache error. I figured that it must be a setting in one of the config files but do you think I could find it or any information online as to where to find it. After much searching I found a website called Utterly IT566 whose author had encountered the same error when using Moodle. The solution was so obvious I couldn't believe that I hadn't worked it out for myself: 


In the Moodle main config file there is a line that goes something like this:


$CFG->wwwroot = ‘http://localhost/moodle’;


It turns out that when you setup Moodle it automatically defines the localhost as your webserver. All you have to do is change the URL to that of your server name or website name, and then it works perfectly. Simple when you know how really! 


If you want to read the full article then go here.

Make VirtualBox use DHCP

Have you ever setup a virtual machine using the free software VirtualBox? I gave it a try for the first time just recently and I have to admit that it's a fantastic piece of software considering it's given away free of charge. Previously all of my experience of virtual machines was using VMware Player. However I'm more than happy to change, especially because it seems that the latest offering from VM suffers some problems on Windows 7.

However I had one issue that I couldn't work out with VirtualBox. When I logged into the virtual machine I was getting a strange IP address 10.0.2.2. I tried manually setting the IP but then my network connection stopped working. I took to hunting online with Google for an answer and eventually found what I was looking for.

Many thanks go to R3dux and his blog for the answer to this one. Whilst his advice was based on using VirtualBox on Linux, the same theory applied exactly to Windows. So here's the solution:

Go into the Network settings on the virtual console window and change the network adaptor from NAT to Bridged Adaptor. This then forces the virtual machine to share the network card settings from your host PC and therefore contact DHCP for an IP address.

If you want to read the whole article and see the screenshots, check out R3dux's blog.

Linux Server

I've got an old PC that I wanted to use as a home server, mainly to backup the documents on mine and my wife's laptops and PCs. I downloaded a copy of a low spec, low power linux OS called WattOS and thought that I could build a basic file server off of that.

Setting up WattOS was easy enough to do. Once installed, the desktop is easy to use and the apps installed are basic and low power, just as stated. Unfortunately I'm not a Linux guru and am still getting to grips with terminal commands. Most of the guides I could find to setting up Samba seemed too complicated to follow and I quickly lost interest. Lucky for me someone has come up with a web-based configuration app for Samba, called SWAT (Samba Web Administration Tool). It's a great idea and greatly simplifies the process of setting up Samba without the need to go near the terminal.

But the problem I found again was a lack of documentation explaining how to setup shares using SWAT. I tried the guide on the SWAT website but the shares were not appearing on my Windows XP laptop. I could see the server but as soon as I tried to connect I kept getting permission errors. I tried all sorts of solutions in forums that Google found for me, but in the end I've had to call it a day. As a Microsoft trained IT Technician I think I'm going to have to give in and get a copy of Windows Server to do what I want to do.

While I still believe firmly that Linux is the best way forward, and capable of everything Windows can do and more, a serious lack of documentation is holding it back.

Revo Uninstaller

I've used this software several times now and it has once again proved its usefulness today. My sister's laptop had a piece of software installed that appeared to have been deleted though not completely uninstalled. The uninstaller for the software was unable to run correctly due to the deleted files and she wasn't sure what to do. I suggested Revo Uninstaller and it completely removed all traces of the software from her registry, start menu, installed programs list and c: drive.

Another successful user story for Revo Uninstaller! If you ever need to make sure that you completely remove any software I recommend using this program. It appears to work far better than any other I've tried AND there's a completely free edition available to download (with slightly less features than its paid for brother).

You can download Revo Uninstaller here.

Reso - Resolution Changer

I recently discovered this excellent free little app that can automatically change screen resolutions for you. It can even create shortcuts for any program so that you can launch an application at a set resolution. Whilst I'm sure this is of limited appeal to most people, on this particular occasion I found this program to be a life saver.

My problem was that I was installing a piece of educational software in a school, that was written some years back when 800 x 600 resolution was the norm. I was trying to install it on Acer One netbooks for the pupils in the school to use but it just wouldn't run because the netbooks were 1024 widescreen resolution that was non-standard.

After much searching and nearly giving up I came across this gem of a program and it has solved the problem entirely. I was previously using Display Changer but for some reason this wouldn't work under Windows 7. I'm so glad I discovered Reso as it works perfectly!

If this is something that might be of use to you, you can download it here.

Burning Fail, ErrCode: 0xeb020b88

If you ever see the error "Burning Fail, ErrCode: 0xeb020b88" then I've found the solution today; Turn down the write speed of the CD-R / DVD-R drive to a lower setting and this seems to do the trick. 

Dell Inspiron Duo

HP came out with it first; a touch screen laptop with a rotating screen. Suddenly your laptop becomes an iPad. The idea floated around a few of the main manufacturers and then Dell came up with a brilliant idea; what it we made a touch screen netbook but instead of having a hinge that rotates the whole top of the netbook, we add a rotating mechanism to 'flip' the screen only! Umm... really?

Check the link yourself. Does it look like it's going to break within minutes of use? Doesn't it just feel like they've tried to go one better than everyone else. There's being innovative and then there's this.

My personal opinion is that it just doesn't look usable. What happens when the rotating brackets holding the screen get loose and it begins to wobble when you have it upright? How long and how much would it take to snap the brackets? And at the end of the day they've gone and done it with a netbook. Whilst I have nothing against netbooks, they're hardly swamping the home user (or business) market.

Maybe I'm wrong about them. I haven't used one, this is the first I've heard of it. So I'm just going on looks and the little information on Dell's website. Only time will tell I guess.

Problems with using old equipment

I came across an old Via ITX computer and thought it would make an ideal low power, low noise server for my home. It would only be used for file storage and backups of our computers so I didn't need anything fancy. The only change I wanted to make to it was to up the RAM as it had a poor 128MB.

I rooted around in my garage and turned up a couple of sticks of possible memory. The first one I tried didn't cause any BIOS errors but the computer wouldn't boot. So I figured I'd try the other stick just in case the first was bad memory. I put the other stick of RAM in and as soon as I turned on the power I knew I'd done a bad thing.

A small plume of smoke drifted up from the RAM socket. I quickly turned off the PC and hoped that I hadn't caused any permanent damage. Switching back to the original 128MB RAM I turned on the PC and.... a single long beep repeated over and over; memory error.

So now I've got a lovely ITX Via doorstop. Oh the delights of recycling old equipment!

The Dangers of DeepFreeze

DeepFreeze is an excellent program for protecting your computer against malicious damage and accidental damage. However when it goes wrong, it can go wrong quite spectacularly as I discovered today!

I was busy updating Flash and Java on several computers ready to be frozen so that the kids in school couldn't mess them up. All was going well until I started to install DeepFreeze. The first few went smoothly and everything was working well, too well. So Sod's Law decided to step in and mix things up a bit.

I started getting error messages when trying to install the software. Something about an error 2000000 and DeepFreeze can't install. So I attempted again to install it, but this time I was only given the option to uninstall. Figuring that the best thing to do would be to uninstall completely, reboot and then try to install again, I gave it a shot. The uninstall process seemed to work okay and the PC went for a restart. However it wouldn't restart. All I got was a black screen.

So first thing to try in the event of Windows not loading; F8 on boot and use the last settings that worked. Except they didn't. Okay, so trying safe mode. All looked good for a while and then everything froze again. Fearing the worst I found a Windows XP install disc and set the PC about a scndsk to check for any damaged files.

While that was happening I decided to chance it being a one off and try installing DeepFreeze on another machine. Three in a row presented me with the error message installing. I got a colleague to check the first. He tried running the installer again and this time it offered to install, and completed properly. Rebooted and all worked fine. So try the second PC; this time I've only got the option to uninstall. Remembering how the last uninstall ended I decided to cancel and reboot. No such luck, on rebooting I got another black screen.

If things weren't already confusing enough I then tried the same troubleshooting steps as the first time it happened. And this time using the last known working settings worked. Except every time I rebooted I got a black screen and had to use the last known working settings to load Windows. Frustrated I attempted to unfreeze the computer to remove DeepFreeze. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts I finally managed to unfreeze the computer and remove DeepFreeze.

On the next reboot the computer started first time without any problems. Was I then crazy to want to try and install DeepFreeze again? Probably, because when I did it errored again. This time however before clicking any other button I called upon the System Restore feature of Windows. Did a System Restore, rebooted and Windows worked fine once again. I must have been mad because for one more time I was determined to get DeepFreeze working. And someone must have liked me because it worked!

The third computer I tried DeepFreeze on gave the same error and this time I quickly hit System Restore straightaway. After Windows had restored all my settings I once again tried DeepFreeze and was successful.

Why would a program that is designed to help protect Windows cause so much devastation if it screwed up? And why did I have three different problems caused by the same error? Lessons I've learned from this experience:

1. If you're installing DeepFreeze from a network location, only do one PC at a time. For some strange reason this causes the error I have described.

2. Always, ALWAYS, do a System Restore before attempting to install DeepFreeze (or any similar software).

3. Don't go straight down the reformat/reinstall approach because there might just be a slim chance of recovering your system.

I hope my experience can help someone else out down the line!

Remove Client Services for Netware/Novell

It's a bit of an old one this one, but I recently came across a computer that when removed from the domain began popping up a box at logon asking which server I wanted to connect to. On further investigation this was due to Novell client services being installed. After a quick Google on the issue a simple solution was found:

Go into the properties of your network card and select the 'Client for Netware' service. Click on the remove button and let the computer restart. When Windows starts again you'll have the normal Windows login options and no extra messages.

In the event that the Client for Netware doesn't appear in the list of services I found an alternative approach on a techspot.com forum; Click Start, Run and type services.msc into the run box. In the services list locate the Netware Client Service and double click on it. Stop it and disable it. Reboot your PC and then the Client for Netware service should appear in your network cards' properties box.

As far as I know Novell Netware isn't used much anymore. It may still have specific uses for in-house software but it's useful to know about these things in case you ever happen upon a computer that has at one point in time used it.

Never Forget Your Proxy Settings

This is one of those 'Doh!' moments in life.

I was setting up an intranet for a school and was having some difficulties getting Internet Explorer to navigate to intranet.school.lan address. I'd set up the DNS forwarding for the correct IP. I'd got the correct configuration of IIS, the right homepage, the right permissions, everything. If I did a ping on the host address it worked fine in the command line but put the same address into the browser and nothing.

I visited so many forums and tech blogs for advice. Tried so many suggestions on tweaking IIS and doing reverse lookups in DNS. Nothing seemed to help me get any closer to solving the problem.

So eventually I had to admit defeat and asked one of my colleagues for help. They cast an eye over everything I'd done and came back to me with a solution: Put an exception into the proxy list to allow Internet Explorer to open the page!! I'd done all the complicated stuff perfectly but I'd overlooked the obvious! How silly I felt!

Heed this warning: Always check your proxies! :)

W32/Ramnit.N

Wow! What's the chances of coming across two variations of the same virus within a space of two weeks? But there you go, I managed to do it! The Ramnit virus strikes again, this time in the N variety (although AntiVir classed it as Ramnit.c). It's the same self replicating virus as the B variant I failed to remove before and it's caused just as much chaos. There is hope for anyone who encounter this virus; I managed to safely remove it from the laptop that was infected.

A combination of Malwarebytes Antimalware and Microsoft Security Essentials finished this one off. I knew that Malwarebytes would be effective when I tried to visit the official website and was redirected to another site. Thank goodness for software download sites like Cnet and FileHippo!

Firstly Malwarebytes detected and removed a few hidden trojans and a single instance of the Ramnit virus. After a reboot MS Security Essentials then began alerting to the mass infection and so I ran a full system scan. It took ages but found several infected files and successfully repaired them. One final reboot and then full scans with both Malwarebytes and MSE turned up no more infections.

I'm not sure what the difference between Ramnit.b and Ramnit.n is but I'm glad I managed to get rid of it this time without having to do another reformat/reinstall of Windows.

Win32/Ramnit.B

In all my years I have never come across a virus as devastating as Win32/Ramnit.B. The virus targets EXE, HTM(L) and COM files infecting everything on your computer, including your System Restore and antivirus software! The unlucky recipient of this gift was my wife. Where she encountered it I'll never know but as soon as it took hold of her laptop it spread to over 3500 files in an evening! Microsoft Security Essentials did well to detect the virus but as quickly as if disinfected files more were corrupted. Eventually it reached a point where system files and drivers were infected and MSE froze because the infected files were in use by Windows.

I tried various other antivirus and antispyware products with the same outcome. Trawling Google lead me to a few suggestions that were also ineffective at stopping the virus. Most forums just suggested reinstalling Windows. 

I'm saddened to say that I've had to eventually give up the fight. I've scanned all of my wife's documents for signs of infection (which I'm glad to find none) and have backed up all of her documents in preparation for a wipe and fresh install. In a way this might be a good thing as she was complaining recently that Windows was starting and shutting down very slowly. However I'm really disappointed that I've been beating by a really nasty virus. I've one more thing to try that I've been advised is incredibly powerful and also incredibly dangerous for system stability. Now I've backed up my wife's documents I'll give it a go but I don't hold out any hope.

Restore a missing or corrupted HAL.dll

I recently came across a laptop which wouldn't boot into Windows. It continually complained about a missing or corrupt HAL.dll file. I've come across similar problems with corrupt or missing Windows system files so figured there would be a similar solution. A quick Google search found me exactly what I needed to know:


1. Boot a Windows XP installation CD and enter the Recovery Console.
2. Type expand d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32 (where d: is your CD drive and C: is your Windows installation - change as appropriate)
3. If you're asked to overwrite press 'Y'
4. Type 'Exit' to reboot


And that's all there is to fixing this issue. Hopefully that should solve the problem.