Frank's Blog

Windows Vista – Disinfection

frank — Thu, 06 May 2010 23:25:06 +0000

And I thought I could avoid Windows Vista by using mostly Mac OSX and – for special things – my old XP.
Far away from this!
Not having totally finished the Thinkpad T61 story a mostly unusable Vista was given to me by a friend asking for help.
So, without promising anything I took a look.
The Windows started normally but then it stuck, neither explorer opens, nor task manager. Just the installed Symantec Personal Security Scanner popped up and found 42 threats, here are some of them:

Malware alerts

Sorrily the application didn’t want to cleanup the system, it was just a kind of evaluation, for full power… please insert coin.
:-/
I tried to access the files as shown in the scan, but wasn’t able to even find the folders where they should be. Seems, they hide themselves very well. Anyway, I had a special, bootable cd for cleanups like this, it’s called desinfec´t (a project from the german computer magazine “c´t”), Therein are three virusscanner free to use: Bitdefender, Kaspersky AntiVirus and Avira Antivir.
Good moment to give it a try.

Although there is a grafical desktop there is just the need to doubleclick the programm icon which starts a menubased script in a terminal. I used the wizard to scan relevant files and found them:

~ition/7.5/Quarantine/0D840000/4FC621EC.VBN INFECTED Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.ahwn
~STA/Users/user/Pictures/Setup_364s1.exe INFECTED Trojan.Win32.FraudPack.atdy
/media/sda1-VISTA/Users/user/Pictures/Setup_364s1.exe INFECTED

Reviewing the scanner logs I found an error with the Avira Antivir, it was not running. Doing a quick search in the magazines forum of the desinfec´t I found a solution (copying the avguard to the upper folder).
Next step was running the scan with placing the malware in a quarantine directory. You may ask “why not deleting directly ?”. Simple answer: I like to collect them to analyze them later.
Okay, the cleaning up ran through and after a reboot the Windows came up with “new features”. There were ducuments on the desktop ! The explorer came up, so the task manager did !
Ah, and also the Windows update wanted to install 17 updates, and later the service pack 2 and some more things.
Not to mention the new Java version or the installed Symantec endpoint protection.
I installed clamwin as free virusscanner and after a reboot I let it scan the whole disc, also the Symantec tool.
Both didn’t find any threats.
Cool.

Of course, there is always the risk that important windows system files are infected and windows cannot boot after the cleanup. This didn’t give me headaches for two reasons.
First, I did a backup of the user data before cleaning up (carefully with it, there were infected files within).
Second, there was a recovery partition of 30 GB to restore to factory defaults which didn’t seem to be infected (I ran scan on it also).
So after some hours of work (and let the laptop work) the system seems to be clean.
Oh, did I mention that I also install firefox and recommended it to the owner ?
Let’s see, if/when she comes back with new (or old ?) problems.

Lenovo Thinkpad T61 with broken Windows Vista (3)

frank — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:12:46 +0000

Here we are, continuing repairing the Thinkpad T61. For last status see prior post.
First I assured that my try to install a Windows Vista from a usb stick failed because of Windows – and so it was!

I connected an usb cdrom drive to the Thinkpad and was easily able to install from cd, well from the cds, there are 4.
:-/
Unfortunately I didn’t know the former version of Windows, an so the key from the sticker at the bottom doesn’t fit.
Anyway, Vista lets you install and use for a while, enough time to see if it works and to download and install a bunch of additional software from Lenovo support website (around 700MB, although I’m not sure if this was really all).

Lenovo Addon Software

This all leads to the result, that the dvd drive was already broken and the only problem was the broken harddisc.
Now I “just” have to install a clean operating system with a valid license. Let’s see, if the owner has some documentation about what version was installed. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea to see the costs of a Windows 7 license.

But which one ? There are plenty. Doing some research the Home Premium version should do it. So I went to one of my favourite shop sites Alternate and found this price:

Windows pricing at Alternate Germany

Okay I thought, but one moment, I was looking in the german website! I know there are strange differences of pricing between Spain and (at least) Germany, so I checked the spanish Alternate Website and… whoops !

Windows pricing at Alternate Spain

It would be more economical order a copy in Germany. Before doing this I’ll have to check some other possibilities, but not now, tomorrow will be another day to go on.

To be continued…

Lenovo Thinkpad T61 with broken Windows Vista (2)

frank — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 23:46:07 +0000

Okay, as mentioned in this post I’m suspecting a broken harddisc or even more. Curious as I am I got a new harddisc (2.5 inch, SATA, 250GB, 56.- Euros) and replaced the old (broken?) one.
I also organized a Windows Vista install cd (the sticker on the bottom with the number was kindda readable). Prepared to install a fresh system I started from the cd drive – well, I tried to. The device just didn’t find anything to boot from. Hm, broken cd, I thought. To be sure I created a new virtual machine with Parallels and tried to install from the Vista cd – without any problem. Something wrong with SATA bus ?

Going on, I put the cd content on a usb memory stick to boot from it. This was done rather simple with this command on a Windows machine:

xcopy D:\*.* E: /s/e/f

Where “D” is the cd drive, “E” the mounted usb memory stick.
Selecting the stick as boot device (pressing “F12″ on the Thinkpad welcome screen gives a boot menu to choose from available devices) a Windows Vista installer came up, finally. I started the installation and ran into the next problem. The installer didn’t want to install on the harddisc because of:

Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation

Googling around led me to Microsoft Support which wasn’t that useful. Within the installation system I was perfectly able to get access to the disc via command prompt (pressing SHIFT+F10 opens a “DOS box”) and do tasks with diskpart.
So, what do I do normally when I expect hardware errors ? I use a Linux distribution to see if the error persists. I connected my pimped Billix usb stick and started a network installation of Ubuntu Desktop 9.04 – without any problem!
And btw: It worked like a charm.

I placed the Vista install cd in the cd tray but Ubuntu neither mounted it automatically nor manually:

Unable to mount location, No media in the drive

Surely there is just a little trick I don’t know to install Vista without problems but as I’m used to use Macs and PCs with Linux I have to do it the hard way :-/ .
I restarted with the basics, pressing the “ThinkVantage” button on startup I went into the BIOS and set the SATA mode to “compatibility”. But installation failed again. I started the HDD diagnostic program of the BIOS which passed without errors.
Could the installation problem be caused by the usb stick ?
Is the dvd drive defect ?

That I’ll try to make clear next time

To be continued…

Lenovo Thinkpad T61 with broken Windows Vista

frank — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:13:15 +0000

These days a friend came to me asking for help with her laptop which didn’t want to start.
It was a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 bought in the States 14 months ago (more or less) and it showed up with this message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

A quick search in the internet recommended to use the Windows Console Tool that comes with the installation cd. Guess what, there was no cd.
So I started with my normal actions when “there is something wrong”. I plugged in my Billix USB-Stick and booted the Damn Small Linux (DSL)
I tried to mount the harddisc, but it failed. Maybe DSL is not able to get it, I thought and tried a Knoppix 6.0.1 cd. Strangely I wasn’t able to boot from the cd or from any other cd. Whoops, something wrong with the SATA controller or missing drivers in my boot images ?
The Thinkpad has a hidden partition with some diagnostic tools, I tried to boot it up but it got stuck and was unusable.

Thanks to the architecture of the Thinkpad it was quite easy to unmount the harddisc and connected it via an external harddisc cage and USB to my iMac with OSX 10.6.2. I wanted to save at least the user data before going deeper.
While copying the data errors showed up and the procces failed:

ata attribute of mft_no 0×7d58 contains invalid data (wrong signature, wrong version, or wrong size), ignoring and using defaults.
NTFS-fs warning (device /dev/disk1s1, pid 827): ntfs_inode_afpinfo_cache(): AFP_AfpInfo data attribute of mft_no 0×7d67 contains invalid data (wrong signature, wrong version, or wrong size), ignoring and using defaults.
…
FireWire (OHCI) Lucent ID 5901 built-in: 62 bus resets in last 3 minutes.
NTFS-fs error (device /dev/disk1s1, pid 163): ntfs_vnop_blockmap(): Called for inode 0×67ae, byte offset 0×1aa80. This is not a multiple of the physical block size 512 thus the mapping cannot be performed. Returning error: EINVAL.
NTFS-fs error (device /dev/disk1s1, pid 163): ntfs_read(): Failed for file inode 0×67ae, start offset 0×0, start count 0×42400, now offset 0×42400, now count 0×0, ioflags 0×800 (cluster_read_ext(), error 22).

My next try was with a Linux virtual machine but it showed also filesystem errors and recommended chkdsk and use of windows. Okay, wasn’t there a Windows 7 installation in a Parallels virtual machine somewhere ?
Yes, there was. I started it and connected two harddiscs, the problematic one and another for having space to transfer the user data to. Well, it worked good enough to grab all data (allthough not good enough to copy the users homefolders entirely).

Afterwards I let Windows 7 fix the harddisc (on connect via USB, Windows 7 noticed the bad disc and asked if it should fix or just mount). Then I mounted the fixed harddisc in the laptop and started it.
The corrupt file error of \WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM showed up again.

I tried to start the build in diagnostics tools, and this time it started up normally.
I started the hard disc check which failed on the 3 SMART test: Short Self Test, Extended Self Test and Conveyance Self Test.
The Surface Scan Test got stuck at 35%, I cancelled it.

So, definitely something more broken than just a filesystem or a windows system file.
I gave it a last try with a BartPE system booting from USB, but it got stuck on accessing the harddisc.

Hopefully there is warranty on the device, the documents are still there and the case will be accepted by Lenovo.
Let’s see….

Using GPS – In Egypt

frank — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:45:52 +0000

I went to Egypt for roundabout one week, of course, not just to try out my Garmin Dakota 20 but it was a good possibility to see how it works and helps.
First step, prepare the device with map(s) and waypoints about Egypt.
There are no commercial maps about Egypt so I went to GPS MapSearch, found some maps, downloaded them and load them on the Dakota directly via drag’n drop in the Finder (did I mentioned already that I use Mac ?). The Garmin software don’t accept these free maps, so I had to go this way.
Next step, place some points of interests (POI). I went to GPS Waypoints chose the country and downloaded the file (*.gpx, xml format). I started the Garmin POI Loader but it expects some other format and didn’t let me choose the downloaded file. I switched to the Basecamp and there I was able to import the file and upload the data to the device.
So, what’s the POI Loader for ?

I dunno right know, need some time to investigate the Gamin apps.

Anyway, I had some rudimentary maps and some waypoints on the Dakota. With this I went to Egypt. Whenever I was outside I switched it on to let it track my ways.
First I let it run without organizing much, therefore the track contained up to 3 days. Not the best, I thought and change the usage to save every day seperately to not get confused by all the waypoints/tracks.
It was quite helpful for various situations:

Check if the taxi driver takes a reasonable route.

When docking with the ship in Luxor, the Dakota told me we were 10 km before Luxor. First I though about a malfunction/error but it was right. The taxi brought us to Luxor and also back later. If we hadn’t booked the same taxi to go back, how could we have explained were to go ? There was no address of these piers outside the city.

In Cairo we were “exploring” downtown by going through the streets which seemed interesting. After some time we wanted to take the same way to a famous bazar as the day before. With the Garmin it was easy to view the track from the day before and find it.

Overall it worked very well and helped a lot during vacations although I didn’t use routable maps or know all tricks/functions of the device right now.

After coming back I loaded the tracking data from the device to the Basecamp. As there isn’t any official Garmin map about Egypt the tracks aren’t good to view in there. But there is Google Earth and the Basecamp has a function “View in Google Earth” which I used to have it more visual. Another way is to open the track data directly in Google Earth.
All tracks in Egypt:

GPS Tracks Overview

A detailled view, visiting the island Philae:

Philae Track

Also I tried to unite the GPS coordinates and the photos. I used the application GPSPhotoLinker. Alhough the software has a function to load tracks directly from a gps device it failed with an error of GPSBabel.
Never mind, it’s also possible to get the data manually via filesystem and choose them via “Load Tracks”.
After that I loaded the photo folder and did the tagging by hitting “Batch save to photos” from the “Auto” tab. The result was that ca. 50 photos from 830 have no coordinates, reasonable as I’m not having tracks from every single minute e. g. inside the ship.
Now I imported the tagged photos to iPhoto. I checked the locations of some, but didn’t see always the expected places. Maybe it’s because of I don’t know how every area in Egypt is called, maybe there are errors in my tagging process.
Another thing to investigate another day, for the moment I’m satisfied with the overall result of my new toy.