HP Pavilion Entertainment PC (Laptop) 9700 Series

Have been trying to get to the bottom of the BSOD on a HP DV 9705ea laptop.

1. The system has been restored from recovery cd's, but will not fully finish install without a Blue Screen (BSOD).
2. Have tried to do a basic install of vista home premium which works fine in Safe mode (most of the time) until it has do some work or gets warm. (will some time boot normally, unless it gets warm then BSOD).

Have read numerous feed back on the HP 9700 series having a heat problem caused by poor design, insufficient heat sink and a small fan.

I have seen a video of a chap in the states repairing a over heated Graphics chip. The Nvidia Graphics chip is soldered on the board so can't just be reseated.

Have you had a similar problem?



HP Forum comments

FAke AV on windows

Another PC infected with Fake AV!  The machine was running windows xp fully patched and with Mcafee security suite installed.

I have taken some screen shots.I manged to boot with only essential drivers and services (msconfig) I found a process called "av.exe" once this was stopped the Fake AV stopped appearing. I then removed entries from registry (Deleting keys etc from the registry can kill your system).

Reset ie8 to defaults and deleted all temp files etc.

Ran spybot search and destroy, which found a few trojans and registry keys which had been adjusted, I just accepted the fix for all items (some probably had been changed by Mcafee).

Not to sure what Mcafee does, but there are a few obvious flaws!!

The AV.EXE had placed itself in "C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\av.exe"

Screen Shots:-

Bleeping Computers have a good article on this problem

Key words on screen shots to bring on panic and a want to get the card out and pay for these software vendors to fix your none existant problem.
Attention danger
Detected 25 critical system objects
Alert system scans for spyware, adware,trojans.
XP Internet security
Activate your copy right now and get full real-time protection with internet security
xp internet security - unregistred version

Adding the tools to view your .tel in another webpage.

It the finally worked for me, the issues I had initially were down to file paths and that I did not have dns.php. Follow the install readme from telnic.

I installed as follows.

1.    I copied the .tel tools to my cgi-bin folder (as per the telnic instructions)

2.    I created a folder called “Net” in my cgi-bin which I copied the net_dns files and folders.

3.    I edit my .htaccess file to add: AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .html

I use shared hosting using Apache.

The software can be downloaded from the telnic.  Web site. http://www2.telnic.org/tools-website-integration.html

The basic requirements are  PHP 5, DNS resolver (I used the Pear Net_DNS-1.0.1. http://pear.php.net/package/Net_DNS/download)

There are many other tools available on the telnic tools page.

The .tel domain names certainly provide a good way of indexing business information, I am still learning.

bizuk.tel
caravan.tel




A lot of .tel domains have been bought but are still not active. Check the telnic.org website

Face Book

What is all fuss, me I can probably list all my friends on an A4 sheet, people I know would take a few more pages. 
So who would you give access to your sensitive information? 
Paul Ducklin of Sophos has some very useful advice and comments on Friends on his Sophos Blog "Be careful when getting into social networking. In particular:                       
Don't blindly accept friends. Treat a friend as the dictionary does, namely "someone whom you know, like and trust." A friend is not merely a button you click on. You don't need, and can't realistically claim to have, 932 true friends. Learn the privacy system of any social networking site you join. Use restrictive settings by default. You can open up to true friends later. Don't give away too much too soon.                       
Assume that everything you reveal on a social networking site will be visible on the internet for ever. Once it has been searched, and indexed, and cached, it may later turn up on-line no matter what steps you take to delete it. " (Paul Ducklin, Sophos)
http://www.sophos.com/blogs/duck/
I wonder if that is his real name! Sophos have some great Security Blogs, which have a serious message but sometimes in a humorous way.
Another Blogger from Sophos has some advice on the new Face book security settings
http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/12/10/facebook-privacy/

Make Live recordings on Your Laptop or PC

How can you use your laptop to record from your Mixing desk?

I have been using audacity it free to download software, and a 2 port USB sound adaptor which has 2 x XLR balanced inputs and 2 x phono out (£25 from CPC - Farnel). (there are numerous adaptors with a range of inputs, normally only stereo).

1. Connect up the usb adaptor (mine doesn't require additional  drivers, uses the standard window susb Drivers).

2. Start up Audacity

3. You may need to change the sound source with in audacity (File Preferences or edit - Options)

4. Click the record button and it should record.

There are many options and settings within the software which makes it very versatile.

Home PC security need not be Rocket Science

Home pc security need not be rocket science; I have stumbled across “Get Safe on Line” its founding partners are UK government, Banks, Microsoft, SOCA…


It gives simple advise.

http://www.getsafeonline.org/

Imaging disks with Microsoft Vista installed with Ghost 8.0

Vista and Ghost 8.0
I have had to image two failing disks with vista Home basic on. The process even using Ghost 8.0 was not as easy as XP!! I have imaged many disk over the years as an IT pro, this was the first time with Vista.

Connect up the new disk along side the disk to be imaged (using sata, IDE, usb caddies etc)

Boot the system using a Boot environment, Ghost or other.
I use BartPe boot disks with the Ghost 8.0 plugin, and Intel sata drivers added (see BartPe for information)

Open Ghost, and select the options box.
Set option within Ghost 8 gui –FRO, and then image all disk partitions.
(If you need more information on Ghost look on the web)
Wait a while the disk is imaged, swap old and new disks.
(Laptop PC now has the freshly imaged disk installed, old disk removed)

Boot from vista install DVD (set language) and then select repair option, if prompted to repair say no, we don’t want to repair at this stage.
You should see the Vista install you wish to sort listed, select with mouse (now highlighted)
Now select Next
Select Command Prompt from list of options.

Type bcdedit (press return)
This will show the contents of the BCD file (the new boot.ini)

Look at the device boot and osdevice

If the imaged disk is failing to boot the following can be run at the command prompt.

BCDEDIT /set {bootmgr} device boot

BCDEDIT /set {default} device boot

BCDEDIT /set {default} osdevice boot

This worked for me, there are other references to vista failing to boot on the web following disk imaging using Ghost 8.0

I also ran Bootrec from the command prompt
Bootrec /fixmbr

Bootrec /rebuildBCD 
(plenty of advise on line about bootrec)

Vista should now boot, as with all advise online search around and verify that other folks have done some thing similar. Data is important back it up prior to imaging etc.

Helpful Sources on Ghost 8.0 and Vista

http://www.bobnedved.com/post/2007/11/How-to-restore-Vista-Ghost-Image-(Ghost-80-or-82).aspx

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/windowsgeneraldevelopmentissues/thread/443251a3-46e6-4868-8f9d-5fdc5b838343/