Tech: Computer difficulty

Subject: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Dave Earl
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 05:53 AM

I have a second computer that I use for back-up storage only.

It was running on Win 98 but has now decided that it won't power up. I have checked plug,fuse and lead (OK) replaced PSU and on/off switch but still no apparent life.

BeforeI spend any more money on it (I was going to upgrade the motherboard and processor) can anyone suggest anything else I should be checking.

The beast refused to restart after I installed a the software fore a USB 2 card that I wanted to install - Is this perhaps part of the problem?

Dave Earl

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:09 AM

If you are simply not getting a power on light, and no sign of electrical activity, it seems unlikely to have anything to do with software.

Upgrading with a new MB and CPU would, IMO, solve your problem, as you should be able to use your current hard drive, and any PCI cards you have on the old one.

I hesitate to suggest it, but it's not unknown for people to overlook the obvious. Have you checked the fuse at the plug, and the power socket it's plugged into?

Also, does your PC have an on/off switch at the back?

Don T.

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Dave Earl
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:20 AM

Thanks Don,

I have checked the plug and fuse and know that they are OK. I plugged the whole kettle lead on something else (from the wall socket I was using) and it worked. There is no "sleep" switch at the back of that machine so all the obvious things have been checked out.

Unless someone comes up with another idea it looks like I'm off to the shop for a new MB and processor. This was planned anyway to speed up the beast and with more RAM I was hoping to get XP to run on it.

Dave

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Gervase
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:45 AM

Dave, it could be the power unit inside the box itself than converts your 240-volt AC mains current into the 12-volt DC supply that powers the computer - I've had them give up on me a couple of times now. It might not be frazzled - check the wiring and, if you've got a multimeter, see if any power's coming out of the unit. If it is frazzled, though, it shouldn't be too expensive to replace - particularly if you've got a local computer shop with loads of machines in bits in a back room - and certainly less costly than a motherboard and processor.

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Rasener
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:48 AM

Just be careful you are not spending more than a low end PC which can be purchased for very reasonable prices these days.

How often have I seen somebody start the upgrade process, only to find that by changing motherboard and ram etc, it then leads on to further components to be replaced, resulting in more costs than it is worth.

How old is the PC to begin with and what is its spec?

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Dave Earl
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:52 AM

Hi Gervase,

I have put a new PSU in and still no joy.

I have a multimeter (cheap Maplins thing) which I could test it with (do I put the leads to the red and black outlets?)

Dave

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Dave Earl
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 07:00 AM

Villan,

I am aware of what you warn about.

I bought it in 96. It has an Intel Celaron process, 256 ram, 6GB hard drive. I am about £30 into this problem at the moment and my local Maplins can sell me a motherboard with AMD Sempron processor and fan for £99.

If that doesn't do the business then it will be a load end spec replacement as you suggest.

Thanks for your advise.

Dave

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 08:07 AM

There are now cheapish little plug in PSU testers which test all the outputs of a PSU under a load - useful if you have several old PSUs that you want to use as 12V power supplies, but perhaps a little too much just for 1 PC. I have seen them for about AUD$20-25.

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Dave Earl
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 08:32 AM

Thanks FT,

Maybe I can find one of those in my local Pooter shop.

Dave

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 08:50 AM

I found a reference on my PC to a "Antec Power Supply Tester"

That's one type.

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Dave Earl
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 08:56 AM

BINGO

First hit with Google Search £9:95 + VAT.

Off to send 'em me card details for shipping today (they say)

Thanks for your help.

Dave

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Dave Earl
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:30 AM

Order placed and confirmed.

When the tester arrives I will be able to verify the power supplyem and know where I need to go next.

Thank you folks

Dave Earl

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 12:26 PM

How long will you let this nickel-and-dime you before you call it quits and get a new computer?

I'm fighting a computer battle for a woman who has recently moved here from New Orleans, fleeing Katrina. She can't afford a new computer, as inexpensive as they are, so I've been trying to figure out if her problem is a dead hard drive or just one that is so messed up that it has ground to a complete halt. The registry is fried, so I think it's a virus or worm of some sort. Fortunately, she doesn't have any data on the thing that needs to be preserved, it's a little 5-year-old Gateway for Internet and email and school homework for her daughter. I'm taking it to a friend on campus (one of the IT guys) to look at (he offered, understanding the story). If push comes to shove, I'll go buy her a new hard drive and install it at my cost. They're fairly inexpensive. Then I'll install an older copy of Win98 that I am no longer using here instead of reinstalling her old WinME. That program is a piece of junk.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Amos
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 12:32 PM

POwer supply failures are the most common cause of this sort of symptoms, in my experience. They wear out earlier than MBs, usually. But I have no idea what they cost there to replace -- there is not much to them.


A

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Dave Earl
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 12:40 PM

SRS,

Sorry to hear of your friends problems.I hope you get it sorted for her soon.

I am going as far as new MB and processor (assuming the power supply is working properly) If that doesnt work then I will be £150/£200 out of pocket and I will have to look for a replacement which may cost £400/£500.

I could pass it to a Techie at the Uni as my other half works in the computer department there. However, I think I am capable of getting the beast back to life.

Dave Earl

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Dave Earl
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 12:47 PM

Amos,

From what others have said I agree so when the Tester come through the post I'll be able to get closer to establishing where my problem lies.

Dave earl

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Grimmy
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 01:09 PM

I'm in IT Technical Support and, in my experience, 9 times out of 10 it's the on/off button. People tend to press it harder than necessary (especially when frustrated!) which can push the toggle switch inwards and the button can't reach it any more. Easy thing to check - make a note of where the on/off switch is located - remove the front cover of your PC, revealing the switch - press it (you may need a pencil or something similar).

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Rasener
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 01:19 PM

very good point there Grimmy

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 03:22 PM

I must admit, I don't think I'd be spending to fix that one.

I've bought a couple of computers lately from a company called Golden Electronics. Thier cheapest (here) is �165 and looks to me a pretty good spec for the money.

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Cluin
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 04:05 PM

Hard drive given up the ghost? Maybe seized up?

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:41 PM

If your Win98 machine is used only for backup, and you have another machine with a USB port, you can get an "external USB HD enclosure" in my area for about $40 US. (23 £?) They come in a couple of sizes so make sure you get the size (3.5"?) for your computers' drives.

Remove the hard drive from your Win98 computer and put it in the box. Hook up and copy what you want to save to the other computer's HD. Take the Win98 HD out of the box, and put a decently sized (120 GB or so, $160 US? = 93 £) backup HD in the box. Throw the 3 GB HD away, or use it as a paperweight. Leave the new backup HD connected to the other machine, and remember to back up to it occasionally.

(There's also the option of just leaving the 3 GB HD in the box connected to the other machine for backup, if it's big enough for what you need to isolate. You're only out the $40 = 23 £.)

Just a thought.

(Current UK £ to US $ from one conversion website : 100 £ : 171.771 $ - for my thinking convenience. Varies daily, I think.)

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:54 PM

John. forget exchange rates when dealing with electronics goods. We get ripped off in the UK. Not always but often $1=£1 tends to work out closer.

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 07:14 PM

That said, John I could get a 120GB IDE drive much cheaper than your estimate. £46 at the site I mentioned before. Could get a 160Gb sata for the same price too.

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 07:39 PM

Jon -

Comparing real prices is tough, and as I said the conversions were more to help my thinking that yours.

The notion of just saving the hard drive - or transferring its content to another usably sized drive - is a viable one, unless there's some real reason to bring life back into the old PC. That Breton Cap just really wants to is probably sufficient reason.

Backing up the data to a "Drive in a box" might still be worthwhile, even if he puts the old 3 GB drive back in the old PC to procede with the blessing and salvation of the old machine. He'd at least have an alternate way to stay backed up while he works on the old one.

The 3 GB drive will be pretty worthless in an upgrade to WinXP, since WinXP needs about 13 GB of drive freespace to install. Installed size is a bit less, but there's lots of unpacking and temp storage to be done to get it on a drive.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 12:02 AM

John,

I have one of those boxes, bought to represent the lost expansion space in the stolen computer last winter. I have 300gig hard drive in it for storing music. But I am thinking about taking that drive out for a moment, bringing the drive from the Gateway over and dropping it in, formatting it, and taking it back and installing the Win98 on it. Does that sound like a reasonable plan? Main thing is, I don't have any of the very basic software that might be needed for the newly sripped-down bare drive. I wonder if it would boot from the C: drive okay (Win98 disk) with nothing on it?

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 12:03 AM

(i.e. will the ROM take care of it?)

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 12:11 AM

Some MB BIOSes may not be able to see the whole 300Gb disk size.

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 03:26 AM

Stilly -

I've had a couple of "external USB hard drives," and in fact have recommended them here. I'm sad to report that I've found their reliability less than expected. I did resort to one of the external cases, with a new hard drive, for a recent HD upgrade on our Win2K machine.

The machine had all of the EIDE ports filled, so there wasn't a place to connect the new HD to transfer anything to it. I could reinstall the OS and programs, but I did want to save a bunch of data files she had on the old drive. The unsavory option was to disconnect one of the two DVD drives, reconfigure, install 2 HDs, reconfigure, and when done copying, pull the old HD, move the new HD to where the old one was, and reconnect and reconfigure the HD and DVD drive.

Instead, I put the new Seagate 160GB HD in the case, hooked up to the machine's USB port, and used the Seagate software that came with the HD to make the new HD a mirror copy of the old 30 GB C:\ drive in the machine.

Remove old 30 GB from the machine. Remove new 160 GB HD from the box and insert it in the machine. Boot was completely normal (if there is such a thing for Win2K) and the machine never "noticed" that the drives had been switched. The old 30 GB drive was in FAT32 format, but the new one defaulted to the much improved NTFS format. The machine didn't say anything about noticing the difference.

For the present, I've put the old 30 GB HD in the box, and left it connected, so that "she" can be assured I didn't lose anything; but I probably will get a bigger drive to go in the box.

Normal HDs are much more fragile than one might expect, so having one anywhere except in a "massive computer case" risks early mechanical failure. (Laptop drives are "hardened," which is why they're so #@!$! S..L..O..W..) The USB stuff in the case should be relatively immune to early failure. With the external case I'll at least save the $50 - $90 difference I see in my local market for the difference between an "external USB drive," and a replacement standard HD that I can drop into the external box.

If this is the sort of thing you're wanting to do - an exchange of drives - and if the Win98 machine is currently running and has a USB port, you should put your Gateway drive in the box, connect the box to the Win98 machine, and do everything from there. The case will likely be USB-2, and an old machine may be the slower USB-1, but it should connect okay - just a little slower.

The Seagate program I used of course came on a CD with a bunch of other utilities. If you don't have something suitable, you can probably(?) download an appropriate setup utility from any of the HD makers' sites, but preferably from the mfr of the HD you want to use.

You can do it all with just FDISK and FORMAT, but the manufacturer's utilities generally make it a lot easier, and if they recognize the OS that's running, they shouldn't let you do anything incompatible. Any of the setup utilities should give you the option of copying the entire Win98 setup to the new drive so that you don't need to reinstall anything.

(Just be sure to go throught the "Safely Remove Hardware" button before disconnecting any USB device from any machine.)

If the Win98 machine isn't running, or doesn't have a USB port, the procedure gets a bit more complex, but you can set up the drive, in the box, while it's connected to another machine.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 04:01 PM

I've wondered about the durablity of these boxes. This is a big enough drive that I want it to stick around for a lot of use. I don't have any expansion space in my CPU. I have one of the solid firewire/usb external drives (Western Digital) that I use for backup. Maybe I should use the 300 gig drive in the kids' Dell and buy myself a regular external drive instead of the box? Do you think they're more durable?

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 04:46 PM

SRS -

I'm not sure that putting a standard HD in one of the boxes makes it more or less durable than one of the "external USB hard drives," but if/when you have to replace a drive putting a new standard drive in the box saves, in my market, about 30% of what you'd pay for a new "external" drive. I could, perhaps open one of the 3 externals that died "out of warranty" on me, to see if they've added any shock absorbers etc that aren't in the "box," but my impression is that there's no real difference in what you end up with doing it either way.

I'll note that one "external USB" died while still in warranty, and Western Digital shipped a replacement promptly and with no argument. The replacement has been in service longer than any of those that died, which supports my "perhaps it's" thought that poor performance for hard drives purchased at retail outlets comes largely from mishandling by the "stock apes" at the retail outlets.

Any movement of a hard drive while the disk is spinning is extremely hazardous, and an external of any kind is much more likely to get bumped or scooted around than one that's inside your machine. Even when the drive is not running, any "shock" input, such as dropping the drive a few inches onto a hard surface is a hazard to a standard hard drive.

Any external box must rely on it's own convection cooling, and doesn't benefit from the cooling air circulation inside a machine, so casually allowing a few papers to drop on top of an external can cause significant heat buildup, which can eventually damage the drive.

In other words, if you place them in a good location, and are careful, the externals or drive-in-a-box should be reliable enough. If you mishandle them even a little bit, they probably will be less reliable than an internal drive that's safely tucked out of harms way.

If you really need a portable external, you probably should get one of the "portable external USB hard drives" that's "ruggedized" for use in a typical laptop handling environment. Unfortunately a "portable external" runs nearly twice the price of an "external" in my area's retail shops.

You probably could get one of the 2.5" drive external USB cases, and put a laptop hard drive in it, to get a similarly "handling tolerant" external, but the head park-and-latch systems in typical laptop hard drives makes them about a tenth as fast as a standard desktop hard drive. Even 30 GB laptop hard drives are painfully slow when you're used to your desktop, and any thing too much larger would turn pain into agony (for me, at least). Large laptop drives are also much more expensive than desktop drives - and really large ones are almost nonexistent.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 05:19 PM

Never knew what it was with Laptop drives. That said, having clattered my laptop to the ground a couple of times (both times not being thoughtful about the mains lead when plugged in and tripping over it when getting up in a hurry), I'm quite glad they are reasonably robust.

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 05:41 PM

Jon -

The specs for laptop drives look almost identical to specs for desktop drives, but real performance is much slower on the laptops. Real information is hard to come by, but it appears that the desktops allow the heads to "float" over the disks until the next seek command comes up, so they're ready to move. The heads only go to a "park" position when the disks stop, and of course with the heads out in the middle of a spinning disk, any physical motion of the drive is dangerous.

It looks like most laptop drives move the heads back to a park position on completion of each read/write command, so every new request must start from the "parking place."

Desktop heads park fairly securely when the disks are not turning, but laptop drive heads park very firmly any time there's nothing going on in the I/O department.

The "why" of it all is pretty much speculation, but the observed performance is that laptop drives are incredibly slow by desktop standards, even though the quoted "seek times" and "random access times" etc are almost identical.

(And I don't like laptop keyboards much either.)

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 07:16 PM

And I don't like laptop keyboards much either.

Nor me, but must say somethings good about them... I do like thier portability. Also, I've been using mine quite a bit lately for another reason . With the folkinfo rewrite, I've had a fair bit of need to refer to the php and mySQL help/manual files. It's been really handy just having it on the desk as my "reference books".

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 11:17 PM

Jon -

Agreed that they can be quite handy. I have two. One is so obsolete that Win95 is the only thing it will run, and I've kept it around mostly as a "tech reference" for old systems. My later one is WinXP, but has too small a drive, at 20 GB, to put much reference stuff on.

Recent use has been mostly when we're out of house, mostly in the camper, and I take a standard keyboard and optical USB mouse to avoid using "laptopish" features. I'm trying to figure out a place to put a real monitor - but it's a small camper.

When you need portability, they're essential, as a substitute for a real computer. Anyone who say's they're a replacement for even a fairly mediocre desktop setup is, IMO, not much of a user.

Nothing wrong with being happy to have one, but we real addicts need stronger medicine.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 12:05 AM

CHECK your power supply.

From personal experience (within last 3 weeks) had a "unit." It appeared that a "chip" was "bad." Replaced "chip" (550 dollars US) and when the "unit" came up in temperature - the new "chip" was fried like an egg in butter.

Hired an X-SPURT.....Ran diagnostics - 240 steps - Outside machine would shut-down on step 111....nightmare for diagnostic technician.

Bottom line - when the power-supply came up to "higher temperature" operating conditions, it would spike a nearly 50% surge in output....before "discovery" of the situation three different types of chips got cooked.

Lesson learned....always check the power supply FIRST...under the full range of operating conditions.

Stay with 64RAM and DOS 3.4

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

BTW Power supply had a "lifetime warrenty" unfortunately, it did not cover damages to "chips" and other components, total cost nearly 3K.

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: treewind
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 04:40 AM

Gargoyle's story is also the reason why you should spend money on a good power supply. It's easy to buy cheap Chinese ones for $10 but there's a reason why they're cheap.

Anahata

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 05:26 AM

The original problem description of "won't power up" is a bit vague, and could mean total no power or just that the machine won't finish the boot. Later posts seem to indicate that nothing at all happens.

In any machine more than a few years old - suspected in one running Win98 - there tends to be some general "embrittlement" of the boards and they can become rather fragile. I have one Win98 machine that's completely dead because I carefully unplugged the monitor in order to move the machine. When I carefully reconnected the monitor I heard a faint "pop" and the machine is as dead as the one described.

Any flexure of a well aged and seasoned circuit board can cause "disconnects" in the wiring plated on the board. I haven't bothered to pull the motherboard to see if there's a visible crack, simply because I've found such damage very difficult to find and almost impossible to repair satisfactorily - and because we don't really need a "guest machine" at present.

1. It is possible that just inserting the USB-2 card that was mentioned could have flexed an old board enough to separate a plated-on lead somewhere.

I have another Win98 machine (originally identical to the one above) that quit because one of the memory chips apparently gave out. This one would boot up to the RAM check, but then simply looked like it had turned itself back off. RAM chips are one of the things most sensitive to static induced failure, and it can be difficult to track down a failure.

2. Any time the case has been opened and the machine fails to perform normally, RAM failure has to be considered. A static zap on a lead that connects to the memory can do it, so you don't have to mess with the RAM chips directly.

3. Installing the USB-2 driver may have caused a conflict in IRQ, DMA, or memory assignment, but in this case the machine should at least appear to try to start up, since the driver(s) shouldn't load until after system checks are done. A DOS boot from floppy, or a Safe Mode boot from a recovery floppy should be possible if the floppy doesn't load the new driver.

As a side note, a quick look at what it's likely to cost to replace the mother board and upgrade to something usable with WinXP, which was indicated as a "future hope," versus just getting what I'd consider a minimal replacement machine that would come with WinXP indicates that you can beat the price of a new WinXP marginally if everything works for you. It would be easy to exceed the cost of a new one if you have to do many startovers and/or buy much in the way of tools or test stuff.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 05:09 PM

My previous machine a P133 fried the extended memory interface chip or similar - would boot WIN98SE as far as trying to use the extended memory then go bizarre, and insist on wanting to reinstall Windows.

The cheap 'PSU tester' referred to above will only really check to see if all the supply rails are working or if one of them has died - a go-no go test. It won't tell you if you have very much over or under volts, or any spikes on the system as mentioned above.

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Dave Earl
Date: 21 Nov 05 - 02:06 AM

Further work over the weekend leads me to feel that there is a problem between the on/off switch and the Front Panel connections on the motherboard.

I am convinced that the PSU is OK and have put a new on/off switch in. I did at one point get some life out of the machine but when I put all the drives and expansion cards back in the machine failed to do anything at all.

I hope that my anti-static precautions were sufficient because if not I may have made more trouble for myself.

Dave Earl

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 21 Nov 05 - 05:04 AM

Dave - is your PSU up to the job. I rebuilt my machine a year or two ago (new MB, new processor, extra drive) and while my old power supply had no problems it wasn't enough for my new setup - the machine would even run for a short while then fail; when I upgraded the PSU it was fine.

It's not clear if you fitted the new USB2 card before you failed, but the fact that you saw signs of life before adding your devices back might indicate a PSU problem. If you can borrow a higher rated PSU to test with that might be a good idea. There's also a calculator here PSU Calculator which might give you a rough idea of what you need.

Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 21 Nov 05 - 05:12 AM

I should add that when it was failing at one point I too thought there was a problem with the on/off switch. IIRC I upgraded the PSU from 300W to 400W and everthing was fine.

Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Dave Earl
Date: 21 Nov 05 - 05:17 AM

Thanks Mick

The new PSU is 300W which is twice the capacity of the original so I think it should be enough.

I wil disconnect everything and see if I can get it to light up and then put the bits back in one at a time and see if there is a point at which it fall over.

Dave

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 01:49 AM

Just to finish it all off.

It was the on/off switch/lead to the motherboard.

I am now up and running with this second computer except that the processor fan is very noisy, I think this will be easy to rectify.

Oh and my little network is also functioning properly.

Thanks for your help.

Dave Earl
(Does Mudcat Central want to close this Thread?)

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: fiddler
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 02:46 AM

Dave,

Bin it - it is good beer money after bad IT hardware - BIN it and get a new one.

I would not touch Celeron anyway

Bin it

Not worth the effort

If you were payig 4 timne ur in to a loss. and even when you do get it sorted remember Les Barker when ur Re installing windows!

Andy

Subject: RE: Tech: Computer difficulty
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Dec 05 - 12:46 PM

I don't feel like starting a new thread for this, and don't find one exactly suited, so I'll go with a general header and perhaps a few will benefit from this news item:

Google Desktop flaw/IE browser problem.


A security researcher in Israel has found a way to steal information from unwitting users of Google's desktop search tool by exploiting an unpatched flaw in Microsoft's ubiquitous Internet Explorer.

There is a bug in the way the Web browser processes CSS rules, Matan Gillon wrote in a description of his hack posted on Wednesday. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a method for setting common styles across multiple Web pages. The Web design technique is widely used on many sites across the Internet.

The proof-of-concept method is an example of how security flaws in software can offer all kinds of access to programs on vulnerable PCs, including to Google Desktop.

"This design flaw in IE allows an attacker to retrieve private user data or execute operations on the user's behalf on remote domains," Gillon wrote in his description of the attack method. He crafted a Web page that--when viewed in IE on a computer with Google Desktop installed--uses the search tool and returns results for the query "password."

To exploit the flaw, an attacker has to lure a victim to a malicious Web page. "Thousands of Web sites can be exploited, and there isn't a simple solution against this attack, at least until IE is fixed," Gillon wrote.

Microsoft is investigating the issue, which it described in a statement as a problem affecting the cross-domain protections in Internet Explorer. "This issue could potentially allow an attacker to access content in a separate Web site, if that Web site is in a specific configuration," Microsoft said in the statement.

Microsoft is not currently aware of malicious code that takes advantage of the flaw, but is monitoring the situation, the company said. A security update or an advisory on the problem may be coming, it said.

Google is also investigating Gillon's findings. "We just learned of this issue and are looking into it," Sonya Boralv, a spokeswoman for the search giant, wrote in an e-mailed statement.

While Gillon in his example uses the IE flaw as a means to get to Google Desktop, this flaw and other software bugs could be used to covertly access virtually any application on a compromised computer.

"It is like any other flaw within IE, but he got creative and used it to launch Google Desktop to retrieve data," security researcher Tom Ferris said. "You can bet we will see this one being used to steal users' Quicken data, database files, etc."

Steve Manzuik, a security product manager at eEye Digital Security, agreed. "This definitely looks like a flaw in IE and not a Google bug. He is using Google Desktop as to retrieve data, but it is IE that makes it possible," he said.

While IE is vulnerable, Gillon found that Firefox and Opera are not. For protection, Internet users could use one of those browsers or disable JavaScript in IE, Gillon suggested.

It has been a busy week on the Microsoft security front. Four examples of attack code were released for flaws in the Windows operating system, and a Trojan horse is finding its way onto PCs through another yet-unpatched flaw in IE.