I recently switched to Comcast for internet service and had a few minor issues getting a DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit router to work. The Dlink router could not get an IP address from a Comcast cable modem. On the status page of the router the renew / release buttons were greyed and there was a message to check the logs. The logs had an error: “The addressing of the Internet side learnt thru DHCP conflicts with the addressing selected for the LAN side. Internet communications will be disabled until you have changed the LAN side addressing to resolve the problem.”
The issue was the Comcast modem was handing out an IP address in the same range that the router uses for the internal LAN ie my home wireless network. Comcast gives an address in the 192.168.0.x network which is the same IP address range the Dlink uses by default. To remedy connect a lan cable from a computer to one of the ports on the router but not the internet or WAN port. Login to the router by opening a web browser to 192.168.0.1 and go to the Network Settings page. Change the IP address to another subnet such as 192.168.10.1, reboot the router. Now shut down the router and the modem, connect the lan cable from the modem to the internet port of the router, start the modem and wait 30-60 seconds, then start the router, now connect a PC and you should be in business.
dmw Uncategorized broadband, comcast, dir-655, dlink dir-655, dlink wireless router
I ran into an issue today where the sound on a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop running Windows XP Professional kept randomly not working. Even restarting did not fix. I checked all the normal places to make sure it was setup properly. In windows everything was fine. I reinstalled the sound card driver and it started working but then later in the day stopped. Turns out Real Player had been opened, the volume set all the way down and then closed. Even though it was closed Real Player was still running in the background processes and hence was controlling the sound. Ending task on the process or raising the volume in the application fixed the issue. Hopefully this will help someone trying to solve an inexplicable issue with the sound on their laptop or desktop not working.
dmw Uncategorized no sound, sound not working, windows sounds
After deploying an image and trying to boot windows you receive an error “There has been a signature failure”
This message comes up as a result of the active partition being set to boot from the built-in recovery partition on the hard drive. Most Lenovo laptops come with a hidden recovery partition used for the rescue and recovery software. To fix the issue get a bootable floppy disk or usb drive with fdisk. Boot from the device and use Fdisk to set the proper mark the proper partition as active then run fdisk /mbr and restart. You could also use a Ghost 2003 cd and run gdisk which is their version of fdisk. Run gdisk 1 /act /pri:1 assuming you want partition 1 to be the active, bootable partition.
Boot to ghost 2003 cd\support gdisk, gdisk 1 /act /pri:1 to set the first partition as the active one or use fdisk and set partition 1 to active and run fdisk /mbr
dmw Uncategorized signature failure, symantec ghost
You may encounter an error “Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item” or “Your current security settings do not allow this action” when trying to copy a file locally or run an executable file from a network share when using a Windows 2003 Server virtual machine. At first I thought since I was running into this issue on a newly created virtual server guest on Vmware Esx it might be related to Vmware permissions. It turns out it was a very simple solution. All I needed to do was uninstall the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration component from Add/Remove Programs. Go to Add\Remove Programs, Add\Remove Windows Components, Uncheck Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration in the list, click next and then finish.
I only saw this error with virtual machines and not physical Windows 2003 servers. After uninstalling the component you may have to restart for the change to take effect or just restart the explorer process.
dmw Uncategorized esx, virtual machine, vmware, windows 2003
I recently ran into an issue with a laptop where I could not access it via remote desktop or ping even though I was on the same network as it. It drove me nuts before I figured it out. Here is what I did before I realized what was blocking access:
- Verified windows firewall was not blocking access.
- Verified I could rdp from the machine to the machine, open remote desktop on the machine with the issue simply connect to itself by name, ip or loopback.
- Verified tcp was working, ping loopback…reset the tcp/ip stack, ran winsock fix, lsp fix but found no issues.
- I uninstalled any unneeded programs and also my antivirus just to test. Still had the issue.
- I rolled back from XP SP3 but still had the issue.
And then it dawned on me to check the Cisco vpn client. The built-in firewall was running. To disable I opened the client, right clicked the gold lock icon in the lower right hand corner and deselected Stateful Firewall (Always On). It started working as sooon as I did that. I am not sure if that is a default setting or something I enabled inadvertently. Next time I will think to check for any vpn clients and related issues much earlier in the process. Vpns have been known to cause a variety of network issues since they work so closely with windows networking.
dmw Uncategorized ciso vpn firewall, rdp, rdp connection failure, remote desktop
The Conficker worm has been in the news a lot lately and for good reason. If you want to make sure a machine is not infected BitDefender has setup a great service that can detect and remove the worm. If you can’t get to the site from a computer and you suspect it may be infected go to a known clean machine and download the tool. Then transer the tool to the suspect machine and run. After it has been removed make sure you run Windows Updates to get Microsoft patch 958644 to close the vulnerability.
The BitDefender site is www.bdtools.net
dmw Uncategorized
I got an email from a person with a hotmail address the other day. At the bottom of the email was an advertisement for Windows Live Skydrive with 25GB of free online storage. That struck me as a very good deal as most free online backup and sharing services limit you to 2-5 GB. Everyone should back up their files regularly. Ask yourself what you are willing to lose if your computer is lost, stolen, or the hard drive just craps out. Do you have your pictures, financial files, resume stored on your computer? If so you should have that backed up. Having worked in desktop support and system administration roles I know failed hard drives are a daily occurence. The good news is there are great and free ways to backup your important files like Skydrive and others. Some are strictly for backup and others like Skydrive allow you to share files, link pictures and videos to blogs…Here is a list of solutions to check out with a great comparison chart.
http://lifehacker.com/5064688/online-storage-feature+by+feature-comparison-chart
dmw Uncategorized backups, free backup, online backup
I am testing Vmware Workstation 6.5 and in particular the Pocket Ace features. This feature allows an entire OS to be installed and run from a usb drive, external drive, and other drives. The idea is you setup the virtual machine in Vmwaare Workstation then deploy it to the desired drive. Give the drive to a user, they plug it in and run it. It installs the Vmware player if needed then is able to run the virtual machine you setup.
I ran into an issue when deploying to a 32 GB usb flash drive. It was taking forever. It wasn’t hung but it was taking more than 24 hours to deploy. Now the day before I had deployed to the same the drive without issues so I knew something had to have changed. The change was I had formatted the drive as FAT32 instead of NTFS. As soon as I used NTFS it took about an hour to deploy to the drive. Not sure why this and don’t have the time to figure it out.
Hopefully this helps someone down the line.
dmw Uncategorized
