The case of the missing CD Rom

A help desk call arose today, where the CD-Rom drive was detected in the BIOS, but not within Windows XP. Device manager showed error 39.

After attempting removing the device in device manager and re-installing did not work, it was time to dig out the registry hack.


In Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Expand SYSTEM, and then expand CurrentControlSet.
Expand Control, and then expand Class.
Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
In the details pane of Registry Editor, on the right side, click UpperFilters if it exists and delete.
In the details pane of Registry Editor, on the right side, click LowerFilters if it exists and delete.

Re-starting the computer then revealed the CD-Rom. Please note, ensure your registry is backed up prior to editing it.

Apparently this can be caused by removal of some CD burning software

Unravelling Paypal IPN

Back to work on the Findapro website. Just unravelling the Paypal payment notification system in order the backend can be as automated as possible.

Interesting ones from yesterday

The laptop turned out to have a large number of trojans on it, which were detected after booting from my ultimate boot disk. Whilst I had the machine booted, I backed up the users documents to a removable USB drive, then re-formatted the hard drive and re-installed XP just to be on the safe side.

No news on the email case.

A couple of interesting ones

The first is a laptop that the user reports has a virus, it keeps re-booting when CTRL-ALT-DEL is pressed to log in. The user states this happens in both safe mode and normal and thinks it is a virus. I'm not so sure - I'm going in tomorrow to carry out a data recovery and will post back the actual cause.

The second is a user complaining about not receiving emails. I have asked that he gets the senders to send me their bounce messages so I can investigate further. There is no filtering on the server other than to flag spam/viruses.

I'll keep you all posted.

HP Technical Support

Whilst on a client site on Monday, I plugged my new HP laptop in to carry out some checks and found that some of the smoke that makes it work escaped.

Not a major problem thinks I, I'll log it with their technical support when I get back to my office...

The error report was raised fairly easily, usual sort of stuff...purchase date, serial number etc. I then sat back to await their response.

Within an hour an email had arrived advising me to fill out a questionaire (serial number, date of purchase etc). All of these details were conveniently attached to the bottom of their email. This was filled out and sent back.

Approximately two hours later a subsequent email was received advising me that they needed to escalate my call and could I provide some details (serial number, date of purchase etc). Is this starting to get familiar?

I finally received a phone call from them advising that a courier would collect my laptop for repair today.

I'm not sure about you, but I would have expected a company like Hewlett Packard to have a more joined-up support system.

Free telephone support

Due to abuse of my free telephone support by one of my customers, I have had to take the regrettable decision to cease providing free telephone support with effect from the end of next month (February).

Customers who have a support contract will still enjoy the free telephone/remote support, but all others will have to pay my published fee for off-site support of £25.00 per hour.

Adsense

I have finally decided to dabble with Google Adsense to generate a modicum of residual income. If you see any adverts of interest, please click through to them!

Hastings IT Support directory

I've just created a directory for IT Support in Hastings. The first month is free, with subsequent months costing just £5.00