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.
Wednesday 25 May 2011
Tuesday 24 May 2011
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/
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/
Friday 20 May 2011
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.
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.
Thursday 19 May 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday 18 May 2011
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:
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!
Sunday 15 May 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday 10 May 2011
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.
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.
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