Posts by alc6379

Learn Perl from the folks who wrote it

:)

Wow.

How dumb is this? You'd think that in this day and age with all of these security fears we've got going around, Cisco of all places, which offers a FREAKING INTERNET SECURITY CERTIFICATION would have thought better than to hard-code a username/password pair into their firmware.

Ah well... at least they released a patch... :rolleyes:

What's the router's default gateway address? Are they using DHCP or static IP addresses? Can any of the hosts ping the router?

The router has an IP address, and you'll need to configure those hosts on the network to use the router's IP address as the default gateway. If the machines are configured to get an IP address automatically, then you should automatically get DNS and gateway server addresses.

What model motherboard is it? Is it an onboard or a PCI NIC? Have you tried another NIC in the system? Have you tried plugging the cable into another port on the hub?

There are still a number of things that could be going on here...

What is 1on1.exe? Have you tried a Google search for the program "1on1.exe" + spyware?

Whichever file your system uses, make sure that the numerical UIDs don't match any other users on the system. If they do, those two users will have access to the exact same sets of files.

Did you get a "Recovery CD" set, or did you actually get a set of discs that included the OS and the applications that came on the system?

If you got the Recovery CDs, you won't really be able to wipe the system and reinstall-- you'll only be able to wipe the system and restore the computer to factory state. If you got the other types of CDs, it could just be a matter of putting in the Windows XP disc, blowing away the system, and reinstalling applications.

Checking the Microsoft download page, it says it's only for Windows XP.

Sorry, but I don't know of any free equivalents of the software.

I found this link, and it looks like a multiplatform library.

That'd be kind of interesting to see. Would you have to compile such a parser? I could see where such an application would be advantageous, wouldn't it be faster than using Python or Perl?

...But then again, why would you want to do it with C++? Perl and Python are both exceptionally capable, and they already have pretty widespread usage.

Have you tried a Google search for that message?

Just type the exact error message in quotes there, and you may come up with a solution on your own.

Look under Disk Management.

Right click on My Computer, select Manage. You should see the H:/X: drive there? Right click on it, and select "Change drive letter and path..." Do you see 2 entries there? You should be able to remove the one you don't want.

put the Windows disk into your CD drive, then run in a Command Prompt:

sfc /scannow

If there are any missing files, that should restore them.

Have you tried reinstalling the MSN software? From the looks of things, that's a program included with MSN. Either repairing or reinstalling the MSM software may do the trick.

What file does it ask you to load? That may help us determine what needs to be done...

Try clearing the CMOS on your motherboard without the hard drive hooked up-- that may help. Also, does that H: drive show up if you unplug the drive?

Could it be because Comcast bought TechTV? :confused:
He was only one of two people I could tolerate on that channel...

Have you reinstalled your OS? There could be some corruption evident there. If you were to completely reformat your hard drive, reinstall a fresh copy of Windows, and you were still having the problem, test the card in another system. If it works in the other box, then it probably is the motherboard. Did you try clearing your CMOS and resetting BIOS defaults?

It's probably spyware. Have you run SpyBot or Ad Aware yet?

try doing a forum search for bridge.dll both on this forum and on Google. It's been discussed a lot around here. The common opinion is that bridge.dll is related to some kind of spyware. I'd recommend running CWShredder, and then back that up with a healthy dose of either SpyBot or AdAware.

What drivers have you tried? Are you installing from a CD/Floppy, or is the driver downloaded? Have you tried searching for the mwci.dll file? Where is it located currently?

I suggest installing the driver from different media or something. Even further, you might want to consider reinstalling Windows 98. That dll file may be a part of the OS.

Definitely, that setup is a good idea. If you do other things on those boxes, port forwarding is a good idea.

Do you currently have a broadband router? It will most likely do port forwarding. Otherwise, here are some HOWTOs to give you some ideas:

IP Masquerade on Linux
ipnat under FreeBSD
IPNAT under NetBSD

If you have a broadband router, it's pretty easy to do port forwarding. If you have an old box sitting around, throw a pair of NICs into it, and build a router yourself. Personally, I like using the BSDs. I'm a fan of Free and NetBSD, as their NAT setups are pretty straightforward to configure, especially given that their online docs are pretty easy to follow.

I wouldn't even bother with such a setup.

If you keep your box up-to-date with the latest versions of your MTA (mail transport agent) and apache, that will give you an edge. Also, you should read a tutorial on securing a webserver, like setting up permissions and configuring the server itself.

Apache is designed to work on the Internet, and it's also designed to be pretty secure. There's no reason why you couldn't have a fileserver/webserver box on the internet, "exposed" so to speak, and not have any problems. I'd look into setting up firewall rules, permissions, and closing any unneeded open ports that are facing the Internet side of the server. That should help.

Have you run any virus or spyware checkers on this system? Being Windows 98, it is pretty prone to freezes because of spyware. What are the specs on the machine? Has any software/hardware been added to the system in the past month? Also, what exact messages are being given when it does give error messages?

There are any number of things that could have happened. If we get a little more information, someone may be able to help you out.

You can even do it from the Windows CD:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;318378

Hope that helps!

Have you tried running Stinger in Safe Mode? Have you checked Event Viewer for any messages?

It very well could be a virus, but it could also be a hardware issue. Try checking out those two suggestions, and see if they can't yield anymore results.

I wouldn't try to get around it.

Granted, there probably are ways to get around this software, but here's why I think you shouldn't bother with it: For one thing, you're on their network. It's their perogative to block or allow whatever sites they don't want users to have access to. Second, following on the first point, subverting measures in place to access a resource they've denied you access to is a violation of their policies, and could result of revocation of your network access priviledges.

I personally would just do a clean reinstall.

I actually had a bootlegged version XP a friend had given me. I thought, "what the hey-- I'll save some cash", and I installed it. It turned out that it was some kind of pre-release demo or something... You didn't activate it, you only entered in the 25 digit key. That started crashing, causing all sorts of problems. I'd be to worried about a botched install to even let that other stuff give it a chance to screw up my system.

Could you please post the exact error messages that you're having? That would help us determine what's going on.

Further, try doing a Google search using those exact error messages, in quotation marks. That may even yield you a faster result than posting here.

...and while you're at it, you may want to look into running a spyware scanner, like SpyBot. It may turn out those files are related to spyware running on your system...

***EDIT ada95 should not even be in this forum, I'll let the mods guess where it should be layed to rest.

Hrm... I'm thinking Computer Science would be a better forum for this?

Mind telling us a bit more about Ada? If it doesn't belong in the Scripting forum, I'm assuming it's compiled, right? What platforms does it run on? What programs are out there to interpret/compile it?

I personally am open to exploring anything new in terms of computers and languages... Until I get some more information about Ada, I'm tempted to keep the thread here.

If all you're talking about is TCP/IP connectivity, it shouldn't matter. The only time most sysadmins get antsy is if you start doing odd stuff on their network, like ARP poisoning and packet sniffing. If all you're doing is surfing the Web and the like, they'll probably never care what OS you're running.

They may have a policy about what OSes they allow on their network, but it's probably more of a technical support/ Help Desk issue. Don't expect to get much help from their IS/IT staff when running Linux. At the college I just finished from, the only thing the IT staff could do to "troubleshoot" our UNIX/Linux installs was to wipe it out and re-Ghost image it. Even then they had to come in and get one of the instructors to change the IP addresses on the "fixed" boxes!

Wow... here in Nashville, I pay $42 a month for my cable... That's 3Mbps down, 256k up. Am I on the lower price range of things?

Fix these:

R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Bar = http://searchcentral.cc/search.php?v=4&aff=4384
R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://searchcentral.cc/index.php?v=4&aff=4384

...They seem like they'll take care of the problem. Tried doing a Google search for "searchcentral"+"spyware" yet?

...What kind of motherboard is it?

Check out swaret.org....dependency check is now c/w.

I'll be sure to do that, once I get my system back up and running. But, I can tell you, it's not going to pull me away from my *BSDs. I'm just too happy with ports and pkg_add -r. Besides, I like ipfw or ipf more than iptables for my firewalling needs.

Boo Yaw! Slackware user since 1995. Often immitated, never duplicated. :cheesy:

Oh yeah...and for those interested...package managing got a lot simpler than it already is. Try http://swaret.org/

IMHO... Package management could have been simpler on Slackware. Even though the packages install nicely, there's absolutely no dependancy checking. That's one of the reason why I switched over to the *BSDs. If you like the BSD-style init scripts, why not go with where they originated from? It really helps that the BSD packages have some form of automated dependancy checking and retrieval.

Someone may have set the Admin password, so your best option may be to reinstall Windows. You can use an XP Home edition disc to reformat the system, don't try to do a repair on it, or use a recovery console-- it won't work without the admin password.

We really shouldn't be recommending the downloading of password cracking tools, either. I'm not saying anyone on this board would be dishonest, but we don't know if anyone could use that information to actually crack the password on a box. We have to keep our noses clean, you know... :)

If you formatted your recovery partition, you may be out of luck. Your only option may be to go and buy a retail copy of Windows and reinstall using it. AFIAK the Compaq recovery disc recovers from that partition you formatted, so you don't really don't have anything to recover from...

Don't shoot the messenger... Sorry! :(

Could you give us some of the specs of your system? Have you tried doing things manually?

Check out the help and support center from within Windows. There should be some good resources to show you how to configure network shares.

That's cool, but why, if I could ask?

I've seen PS2/PSX style gamepads for under $15 at discount stores...

Spybot: Search & Destroy

I've had better results with this than with Ad Aware. But, of course, YMMV.

Try using it in DOS. If it doesn't work there, your drive's dead.

www.python.org

...That's all you need to know. It's object-oriented, it's extensible, it has a really clean syntax, and it's a really fun language to program in. It can pretty much do everything Perl does, and it has some neat features. It's interpreted/compiled like Java (ala bytecode), and it has C integration. Because of the way it's compiled at runtime, you can make binary executables and distribute them, so people who don't have a Python installation to run a program written in it.

If you check out the website, you'll see even more. It's a great language for prototyping small programs, or just quickly developing a program.

Thanks to Dani for adding Python to the scripting languages category!

...I haven't heard many people mention Python around here... Am I the only Python fan here? I know its usage isn't as widespread as Perl, but it is, IMHO, as powerful and useful as Perl, for general scripting, web scripting, and for administration.

I'm not up on the intracacies (sp?) of Python, but I'd like to hear some opinions from those of you who have used it, work with it, or heard some guy talking about it once. So far, I've found it to be a really fun, flexible scripting language, and I've been able to do some pretty nifty little tasks with Python that would have taken a little more time to do in say, a shell script.

Opinions, anyone?

You might not be able to find just the bulb... Have you tried getting a Service Manual from IBM? Many manufacturers offer those, along with spare parts lists. You should poke around on the IBM website for a teardown manual and a parts list for that notebook.

ummm... are we sure this is an interview? This sounds more like a homework assignment to me... Who's doing the interviewing?

I prefer Slackware and FreeBSD. I still have (somewhere in this mess) the original Slackware 2 floppies, and I've been a Beastie since about 4.3. Why everone is so caught-up in Fedora is beyond me. (How many questions regarding Slack have you seen here? Compare that number to those using Fedora, and maybe that says something about Fedora?)

There are some things I can say in reply to these points:

• Slackware people tend to know Linux better than most users.
• BSD people tend to know Linux better than most Linux users.
• Newer users tend to gravitate towards more "user-friendly" distros like Fedora/Red Hat

In other words, you wouldn't normally be using Slackware or a BSD if you didn't know what you were doing. Most new people start off with a GUI-touchy-feely distro like Red Hat when starting off, so they will have more questions to begin with. I personally started off with Mandrake 7.1! I don't think there's anything wrong with Fedora, necessarily-- it's just that the people who have more questions are using Fedora as opposed to say, Slackware or Debian.

I'll come out and be honest, too, though-- I'm a HUGE slackware fan, but I don't run it currently. Right now, I've got Debian boxes, FreeBSD boxes, and NetBSD boxes.

If you got in a fight with Guido van Rossum (the creator of Python), do you think you'd win?

I'm sure some Perl Mongers and Pythonistas would want to see that...

That could be a virus. Checking here, it appears many viruses use the name svchost.exe to hide the fact that a virus has been installed.

I'd recommend you update your virus definitions and scan your system.

<edit>
just checked something. The Netsky virus actually uses svchost.exe as a name. Again... you definitely want to update and run your virus scanner. :-|

Tried Stinger?

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

It's not a replacement for a good virus removal program, but it can take care of specific viruses mentioned on their site. Just follow the instructions, and it may be able to handle your issue.

Excellent! I wasn't sure whether the default binutils slackware provided were statically or dynamic. That's what made me think of checking out ldconfig. Here's something to think about: if you have the time, statically compile binutils. Place it in /usr/local instead of the main root, and then modify your PATH variable to look in /usr/local/sbin (or bin) before looking in /sbin or /bin. I'd be curious as to whether it mattered that it was statically or dynamically linked.