Hacks and Gadgets by HJL

I purchased a 3-user Norton Internet Security 2007 a few months ago and hadn’t gotten around to trying to installing it. Part of the reason for putting it off is because something often goes wrong and makes e-mail and internet applications unusable for a while.

This evening I’ve discovered that this version apparently doesn’t like PCAnywhere installed on the system. So it asks you to manually remove PCAnywhere 10.5 (another Symantec product). They helpfully guide you to a page on the Symantec website describing their remedy, which is to download and run another utility that removes all previous versions of assorted Symantec products such as AntiVirus, Internet Security, PCAnywhere etc.

Unfortunately, that utility also complains that it can’t uninstall PCAnywhere and wants you to do it from the Windows Add/Remove Software dialog.

Which doesn’t actually have a “remove” button to uninstall PCAnywhere.

Which requires digging up the original PCAnywhere CD-ROM, to run its setup utility, which also allows you to remove the program. I save the various host profiles first, then successfully complete the uninstallation process.

Unfortunately, both Norton Internet Security 2007 and the Norton Removal tool still think PCAnywhere is installed. And Norton Internet Security 2006 is semi-broken now, so e-mail isn’t working any more.

I run regedit, and search for keys related to PCAnywhere. I delete most of the ones I find, although for some reason there are a couple under \HKLM\Software\Symantec\ that can’t be deleted, even though I’m logged in as administrator.

At this point I’ve blown more than an hour debugging Symantec’s installer, and have nothing to show for it other than screwing up my e-mail config and removing PCAnywhere from my system. Now I rummage around some more to find the Norton Internet Security 2006 CD-ROM and attempt to re-install that to try to fix the existing application.

There’s no “Repair Installation” option on NIS 2006, but I try the “Modify Installation” option and e-mail seems to be working again.

I suspect the problem lies with the registry keys that can’t be deleted, but don’t have the time to research it at the moment. This is on a fully patched Windows XP SP2 system, it may be fussy about permissions for registry changes. I deleted several other keys without any complaints though, so it’s just a few that are sticking.

I feel like I should send.an invoice for technical consulting to Symantec after I get this sorted out. It’s a fairly miserable process, and I seem to go through some variant of this every year.

We recently added Comcast internet service at our home. We already have PacBell DSL service here, which we’ve had since 1999 or so when the service was originally launched in the Bay Area. I’ve migrated the non-work subnet onto the Comcast cable internet service, while my office network remains on the DSL service.

I ran the Broadband Reports network speed test a few times for a quick comparison of the delivered bandwidth:

The PacBell DSL service is rated at 1.5mbits down, 384kbits up, tested at 1317 down, 324 up:

The Comcast cable service is rated at 4mbits, 384kbits up, tested at 4620 down, 356 up:

DSL and cable modem access technology have different characteristics, in particular the DSL connection speed is determined by the modem, while the cable modem speed is partly determined by shared traffic on the subscriber’s branch of the cable network. Comcast’s 4mbps product will allow burst traffic at up 6mbps, so you can see higher than rated bandwidth if traffic is light. In contrast, DSL performance tends to be pretty stable.

My preference would have been to change the existing 1.5mbps/384kbps DSL connection to the 6mbps/768kbps service that’s available elsewhere from PacBell/SBC, but I apparently can’t get it in Palo Alto today. The Palo Alto fiber loop runs down Bryant a few hundred yards away, but there’s no convenient ISP for connecting there yet. I haven’t been too excited about getting the Comcast service, as the cable TV service here goes out fairly regularly, in contrast to my DSL line which basically stays up, other than power failures. The higher speed is nice for watching internet video, but I need my VPN and data services to be more stable than what Comcast is providing today. Still looking for a better alternative.

This evening I tried installing the latest version of Internet Explorer. I didn’t have any problems with the installation, but quickly discovered that upgrading from IE6 to IE7 apparently breaks HTML copy and paste from Outlook XP (2002) into Microsoft Word.

I typically use that feature to select text and graphics from HTML e-mail and paste it into Word documents for editing and formatting.

After installing IE7, text from the copied selection within Outlook can still be pasted into a Word document without any problems, but any images in the selection turn up as empty picture objects. So I end up with text, and blanks where the images should be.

This might be related to new browser security settings somewhere, but I don’t have time to sort it out at the moment and a quick online search doesn’t turn up any obvious fixes. However, uninstalling IE7 apparently does restore the old IE6 HTML handlers used by Outlook, which fixes this problem. I think Outlook just uses the latest version of the HTML layout control on the system.

I don’t have a pressing need to upgrade to IE7, as these days I mostly run Firefox, making extensive use of the tabbed browsing feature. However, some sites require Internet Explorer, and others don’t print well in Firefox, so I still regularly use both. I was looking forward to tabbed browsing in IE, though.

If anyone knows how to fix the image copy-paste behavior, I’ll give IE7 another try. I’m done with it for now.

My wife has an original iPod Mini which has been slowly losing its ability to hold a charge. The correct solution to the situation is inevitably going to be replacing it with one of the updated iPod Nanos, but this involves selecting a color first, which is out of my hands.

In the meantime, I saw a battery replacement kit at Fry’s this afternoon and thought I would try rehabilitating the Mini, since it’s in good condition, other than having a battery life of about 30 minutes. I also remembered reading a few articles on the subject a while back.

I got a kit made by Premium Power, which supplies a lithium-ion battery, plus a small screwdriver kit and instructions. It was around $40 at Fry’s, but is available online for around $18. I believe Apple also provides a mail-in service for replacing the batteries, but I was taking the instant gratification approach here.

The front of the packaging says it includes “easy installation instructions”, while the back provides a caution - “installing this battery requires a moderate level of technical ability and proficiency in the use of hand tools as well as a general understanding of electronic components.” There’s also a warning that disassembling your iPod will void the warrantee, but in our case it expired a long time ago.

Once you get the iPod case open, it’s not bad. The primary challenge is getting the two end covers off. They are glued onto the ends, so prying them off pretty much requires inflicting minor chipping somewhere on the plastic. You can see the adhesive in the photo above.

The replacement battery was about a half millimeter larger than the original one, and fit more tightly in the limited space. It looked like it might not make it back into the metal housing, but actually did fit with some careful jiggling.

I wouldn’t recommend the DIY approach to battery replacement to anyone uncomfortable with following directions or handling small parts. The “easy installation instructions” are easy to read, but following them is probably beyond the average person’s comfort level.

This unit is likely to be retired to backup duty shortly, but if you’re like me, hate discarding perfectly good electronics, and aren’t scared off by the instructions, replacing the battery can give your iPod Mini an extended life.

I have an Ott-Lite desk lamp. It puts out a nice white light which is great for reading and task work, but it also emits a modest buzzing / humming sound. I think the sound is from a transformer or some other part of the power supply for the fluorescent tube. I can make it stop if I press firmly on the middle, but it resumes as soon as I let go.

The Ott-Lite is by far the loudest piece of equipment in my office, since I’ve gotten the computers running virtually silent now.

Anyone know how to make the buzzing stop? I’ve tried paper shims, putty, and general banging on the case with no success.

It’s too bad, since otherwise it’s a great lamp. If you have a higher tolerance for ambient noise, or work with headphones on, I’d recommend it without hesitation. I find I swap between the Ott-Lite and my halogen lamp because of the noise.

I’ve been getting comment and trackback spam lately which links to nonexistent domains named with apparently random alphanumeric strings. Here are a few examples:

• zbnmktun.com
• youxrkab.com
• nalvynnj.com
• mmpuyrmg.com
• f4hurycdhn.com
• 6gvboi8prk.com
• puhkruw526.com

I’m not sure what the objective is, since the domains don’t appear to be registered. Perhaps the idea is to run a spam campaign and see what sticks? Or trying to throw off text statistics used by anti-spam filters?

Jeremy Zawodny reports good results running Ubuntu Linux on his Thinkpad T43P.

I booted from the Ubuntu 6.06 “live” CD and ran the installer. I then rebooted the notebook and found that it detected my wireless interface just fine. The screen was properly detected at 1600×1200, the sound worked, and the TrackPad worked fine.

Then came the real test. I decided to exercise the power management features. Suspend to disk (hibernate) and suspend to RAM (suspend) worked. In both cases, it worked as well as in Windows (better in some ways) and nearly as good as a Powerbook.

I cannot overstate how important this is: Ubuntu is the first real “desktop” Linux I’ve ever seen. There’s a lot of polish to it, most of the “right” things have been hidden from non-Linux geeks, and it just works.

I’ve been reading positive reviews of Ubuntu on notebooks for a while, and actually have a partition on my Thinkpad reserved for running Linux from when I originally set up the system last year. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to chase down power management and driver problems, which has kept me away from doing anything with it. Sounds like the current Ubuntu works pretty well for notebooks, or at least Thinkpads.

Over the years, I’ve accumulated a number of disk drives that have either been swapped out of computers in active use, or that have been pulled from systems being completely decommissioned and stripped for parts. I normally either donate or resell used hardware as it turns up, since most of my equipment ends up in good condition. Disk drives are a particular problem though, and I only pass them along after they’ve been completely erased, to avoid accidentally leaking personal or business data.

In the past, the only way to wipe the drives once they’re removed was to open up a chassis, hook the drive up to the IDE or SCSI interface so you could run the disk erase utility of your choice. I also used to have a bulk degausser for erasing magnetic tape which is probably still in the garage somewhere, but I’m not sure it would work on today’s hard drives anyway.

I recently realized that you can use the DIY external hard drive enclosures to temporarily connect old IDE drives to a live computer over USB or Firewire, greatly simplifying the mechanics. No more opening up a live system or setting up a dedicated system for the sole purpose of wiping out old hard drives. At the moment, you can get a generic USB hard drive enclosure from Amazon for about $20.00.

Once the drive is connected, you can use any disk erase utility to wipe out the previous contents of the disk. At the moment, I like Eraser, which is free, and makes GPL’ed source code available. The important point is to not only format your old drive, but to overwrite the previous contents of the disk. Formatting the disk will only clear the file directory entries, and leaves the underlying data intact until overwritten with something else.

As an aside, there is also a handy (but dangerous) open source utility called Darik’s Boot and Nuke aka DBAN. DBAN is included with the Eraser download, so you don’t need to get it separately. It which creates a bootable disk that will search for all connected hard drives and erase them. It should be obvious, but if you download this, be sure to CLEARLY LABEL YOUR DISK and don’t leave it in a bootable disk drive by accident.

In the past few days I have erased several 3.5 inch IDE drives using the external drive enclosure with Eraser, but I also have several 2.5 inch notebook drives which will require a different connector before I can wipe those as well.

The past few days I’ve been setting up a clean install of Windows XP on a generic PC. Aside from figuring out the mysterious installation failure which turned out to be due to smudges on the retail media, it’s been taking a while to get a basic load of software together.

This system is eventually getting shipped to my Dad, who only has dialup access. It’s also hard to do remote access over dialup and its impractical to download hundreds of megabytes of installation packages, so I’m trying to get everything installed before shipping, as proactive “family tech support”. He doesn’t spend a lot of time online, and mostly just checks e-mail and uses Microsoft Word from time to time.

Here’s the software set I’m installing:

• Windows XP
• All current patches from Windows Update
• All current driver patches for the system hardware
• Microsoft Office
• All current patches from Office Update
• Adobe Acrobat Reader
• Flash and Shockwave players
• Apple Quicktime
• Firefox
• AVG Antivirus

The hardware is a generic “Great Quality” computer from Fry’s Electronics. It originally came with ThizLinux installed, which allows them to sell the hardware without charging for Windows. I originally got the system to run some lightweight networking code on CentOS, so that worked out well for me. Presumably, many people end up running bootleg copies of Windows on the generic hardware, as it actually comes with a CD of Windows drivers for the video, audio, LAN, and modem hardware.

It’s been interesting installing from retail media. I haven’t done this in a long time, as I usually (re)install from recovery media generated from a preloaded system (e.g. my Thinkpad) or from bulk licensed media such as MSDN or a site/volume license. The retail CD has a shiny hologram on it and comes in a glossy cardboard foldout, presumably to make you feel like you’re getting you’re money’s worth. Too bad the CD itself was barely readable, due to scuff marks from the packaging.

There are an amazing number of Windows patches on first install. The first pass turned up 48 patches. There were more which turned up after the first set was complete, but I didn’t keep track. The Microsoft Office updates also turned up a few large packages. The system wouldn’t reboot cleanly after installing some of the Office updates the first time, which required reverting to the pre-install restore point and trying again. I have mixed feelings about it successfully installing after a few more tries. All things being equal, you’d think that the subsequent installation attempts should also fail, or the first one should have succeeded.

Flash, Shockwave, Acrobat, and Quicktime are all commonly used on many consumer-oriented sites, and are many megabytes of download, so those went on as well. I also installed AVG Antivirus, which is free for personal use, and can be updated periodically, like other antivirus services. I usually run Norton on my personal systems, but those require a paid annual subscription, which doesn’t seem worth it for a light-duty system on a dialup line.

I’ve been testing the system through intermittent startup / shutdown cycles and miscellaneous web browsing for a few days and it seems to be stable. I can’t imagine a typical retail customer managing the initial patch and installation process successfully, though, which helps explain why there is so much botnet traffic (presumably originating from unpatched desktop systems) in my server logs. I probably should have looked for a bootlegged but already patched WinXP installer on BitTorrent instead of building the system from scratch. Microsoft should provide this themselves if they don’t already, since the activation key is unique and is printed on a label pasted to the retail packaging. The physical CD is almost unreadable and is months out of date, so a downloadable ISO would have been better anyway.

I’m done with this project for now, but let me know if you have a better solution for bringing up a fully patched, basic WinXP system for home use.

I got a trial copy of Windows Vista Beta 2 in the conference bag from Gnomedex last week. I’m tempted to try it out, but am reluctant to be the first to try installing this version on a T42P, as the Thinkpad is my primary system lately and I don’t have a lot of spare time to rebuild it if the installation goes sideways. Quick search this afternoon turns up people working with earlier versions.

Update 07-08-2006 10:45PDT: Some useful notes on running the Vista beta in this thread at Thinkpads.com.