Windows 7 network failure after long uptime

Problems seen after leaving a Windows 7 computer on overnight:

• The Ethernet connection was in the "disabled" state and claimed the cable had been disconnected (it hadn't).
• ipconfig /all hung permanently and did not respond to Ctrl-C.
• The network control panel took five minutes to open.
• Anything that needed administrator access would not work. Task Manager would not show processes from all users, the Services control panel would not open, and I could not enable or disable the network interfaces. Windows would usually show a window asking for confirmation to perform an administrative task; it did not appear.
• After a reboot, the user could not log on. The computer had to be powered off and restarted. This may be PEBKAC, but has enough changed in the boot process that rebooting no longer necessarily means rebooting and a cached bad OS state could have been reloaded?

My initial thought was that a conflict between the wired and wireless network adapters might have occurred when the DHCP lease ran out, since the computer uses Ethernet but has wireless capability, so I disabled the wireless interface. The User Account Control failure suggests the problems are deeper.

From the Event Log: Around midnight, there are two DNS lookup failures for msftncsi and Symantec Live Update. After that, a large number of services fail to respond to svchost, starting with upnphost. It's possible that the failure to ping msftncsi led Windows to believe the network was down, but that does not explain why plug-and-play and a number of other services failed or why Windows thought the cable was physically disconnected. There was no sign of any earlier problem that would have led to the DNS failure.

The computer is less than a week old, so cruft should not be an issue.

What might have broken? I am not familiar with Windows 7's internals.

---

Another user with a potentially related problem:

Start an Internet radio stream on iTunes. Go away and have lunch or do some chores. You can listen while you work. Come back in thirty minutes and move the mouse. Frequently, the stream will stop and you will get the DNS server timeout error.

I have not tried that.

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Dependable DSL Modem?
Hello, I'm my mother's tech support and while I know a lot about Windows and a decent amount about corporate networking, my knowledge for home dsl modems is limited.

Her AT&T DSL modem is overheating and shutting down. Apparently they sold it to her and it's now out of warranty.

Their choices are 2Wire, Motorola and Westell modems. I believe she has Motorola now. From the reviews I've read, the first two brands have overheating problems. There's not much available about the Westell F90 other than there are quite a few available used. That's not a good omen to me.

From information gathered by googling "dependable dsl modems", I'm tempted to pick up an ActionTec GT724R at Fry's.

My mom is fighting terminal cancer and doesn't like to bother me so she'll go days without a connection before she asks for help. I don't like for her to be cut off from her email and online medical care.

Dependability is a huge issue for us. Any advice?

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Networking advances of the aughts?

What's new in networking over the past ten years? My reason for asking is that I'm re-taking a Cisco networking course to keep my skills up to date, but I have no expectation that the teacher and course material are up to date. I'll start with a few things that were not in the Cisco material when I last took the course.

• Netflow packet dumping.
• VPNs are far more popular than they used to be. Hardly anyone had them before; now it's expected that anyone knows how to set them up.
• Routers have gained enough features that traditional routers are called Layer 3 Switches, which raises the question of what new features are expected to be in a proper "router".
• Gigabit Ethernet and the move from Cat5 to Cat5e and Cat6 were a significant change. There is also Cat6A for 10,000baseT.
• BGP is the routing protocol used on the Internet. This is not new, but it was not covered in the Cisco material.
• Lots of places are punching big holes in their security with wireless routers and exploitable wireless devices (like printers) in the trusted section of the network. MAC whitelists and encryption are musts for access points, but some of the standard encryption methods such as WPA and WEP have been compromised.

What else is new? Also, what are some good news websites for reading about networking advances?

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Continuous VS Standby UPS
I just got off the phone with APC asking which units they sold offered 'continuous' rather than 'standy' power.

Continuous - always powered from batteries, which are charged when power is available.  This handles not only power spikes or flat out outages (like standby models), but low power conditions as well as 0 cutover time (as there isn't a cutover).

He informed me all the Smart-UPS and the RS models in the Back-UPS line all offer continuous.

I'm posting this info for a few reasons:

1) So you don't have to call APC :)
2) What other series from other manufacturers offer continuous ups?
3) Debate the whole necessity of continuous vs standy

More info about my setup/goals if you're curious:

My whole plan is get my home machines (2), 1TB San (750 due to raid5 - old, eh?), Router/WIFI AP and cable modem hooked up to either 1 or 2 of these + an LCD at each desk.  I'm divided whether I should get a higher rated unit for all, or 2 and split the load.

My main issue is power 'lows' - I've toasted 2 high end PSUs (along with mobo and vid card once), and the one I have now is working, but I suspect is not consistantly passing enough power to a hard drive that now refuses to stay on while under heavy use.  I don't know if either are now 'damaged', but I'm fairly certain the source problem is power.  I have a standby unit connected to my wife's computer currently, and occasionally it'll start beeping - leading me to believe stable power is an actual problem.

I plan on stopping by Home Depot on my way home for a Kill-A-Watt device so I'll know exactly what power rating I need.

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HelpSmith 3.3 is Available for Download
Divcom Software is pleased to announce the release of HelpSmith 3.3. HelpSmith is a powerful help authoring tool for quick creation of professional help systems (HTML Help, Web Help), Printed Manuals, and PDF documents. The new version includes improved Unicode support, the ability to use Flash and QuickTime animations, better compatibility of Web Help with Google Chrome, and other new features.

HelpSmith constantly receives positive feedback from its users due to its simplicity in use combined with a professional feature set, and comparatively low price. We hope you will also find it useful.

HelpSmith Main Window:



HTML Help and Web Help Systems created with HelpSmith:




HelpSmith is available as a FREE evaluation copy. The product includes sample help projects which you can use for testing purposes. In addition, we have technical articles on integrating a help system with different development environments and languages (C#, VB.NET, Delphi, etc.).

You can learn more and download HelpSmith 3.3 using the links below:

Home Page: http://www.helpsmith.com
Screenshots: http://www.helpsmith.com/screenshots.php
Download: http://www.helpsmith.com/download.php
What's New in HelpSmith 3.3: http://blog.helpsmith.com

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ACM Professional Membership - Worth it?
I appear to have been invited to join the ACM.

My question for existing members is simply this:

Is it worth the money?

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Router Question
I have to re-configure a D-Link WBR 2310 Router. I have never configured a router before but think for the most part I have enough info on how to do it.

The only part that I have no idea how to do is set a visitor log on with password for the public to be able to get onto the internet with their laptops.

Thank you in advance for your help.

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How web form do you preffer for creating form contact us? There are lot of variants nowdays such as form to email, e.t.c. As for me I prefered php form, and you?

http://phpforms.net/tutorial/tutorial.html

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Tutorial's discussion
Hello!
I would like to speak with about online tutorials. How tutorials do you like?
There are different tutorials nowdays for example: w3schools; tizag.com.
As for me I like to use these php tutorials. And you?

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Hi, everyone here!
Hi, everyone here!
I am beginner in this community. I would like to ask you. How web forms do you use. I heared about using form generator. But may form creator be better? How do you think?

Current Mood: accomplished

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Looking for a job. java team lead / system architect
Hi!

At the moment I am looking for a job of java team lead / system architect.
CV
http://www.chantingwolf.narod.ru/cv8en.doc
LinkedIN profile
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mykbova

-Mykola

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I can't figure out a PC problem
I am trying to help someone with their computer. Her "@" won't work. She said a hyphen appears when she presses "@". When she presses the shift key it does capitol letters. The number 2 also works. No other keys have the wrong character or are malfunctioning.

I had her hold down both shift keys for a few seconds and nothing. Then I had her apply sticky keys and the check box is checked. When she hits the shift key the check stays on. As soon as she hits the "@" the sticky key check box un-checks itself.

Another thing is the person can't tell me if this was a problem before because they just got the internet a couple of days ago and never used the "@" character.

We did try a new keyboard and it had the same problem.

I did do a Google search and the only thing I found on the problem are the things I have already tried.

I have never heard of such a thing happening before. I don't have any ideal how to fix it.

Any advice on how to fix this problem would be great!

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Remote Desktop Options w/ least end user interaction necessary
So I have been researching Remote Desktop options for awhile and have not found the perfect fit for my needs that does not cost an arm and a leg.  Was wondering if anyone had any suggestions that I may have missed.

Specifically, this is the functionality that I am looking for:

• The ability for me to remote desktop into an end user's desktop with minimal interaction on their end.  Meaning that they do not need to load or configure anything on their end.  Ideally, I could send them a link to a site and when they click on it the magic happens. 
• File transfer is a desire, but not a requirement.

LogMeIn Rescue offers everything I want and more, but they also want $1200/year for this ability.  Yes, I have utilized their free trial on several occasions and it has worked great, I just cannot justify the price. 

UltraVNC offers their Single Click option, which would allow me to send them a link to an executable file that they can download and run and would put us in business, however I have had a devil of a time getting it to work stable.

Anyone have any options that are low to no-cost that they can recommend?

Thank you in advance!

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Ping Issue
I'm having issues with my network, the environment consists of windows, solaris, linux and mac. The issue seems to be, any machine that is connected to the wireless network is unable to access any other machine on the wireless network.

Wireless machines can communicate with wired machines.
Wired machines can communicate with wired and wireless machines
Wireless machines can not communicate with wireless machines.

I have a Cisco Aironet 130AG Series Access Point handling the wireless traffic and a cisco 2960 48 port switch handling the wired network.

What could cause this lack of communication?

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Consumer-grade dual-home connection
I may have posted about this before, I'm not sure, so please accept my advance apologies...

At home, I currently run two DSL lines. Right now, we just have two separate LANs, one connected to each line, with my wife's devices attached to one, and my devices attached to the other. For a while now, I've been thinking about setting up a load-balancing routing solution to give both of us access to both lines.

I have the opportunity to acquire a refurbed Cisco Catalyst 2960 at a ridiculously low price. I also have access to a (nominally) spare quad-core 64-bit PC with 8GB of RAM. I say "nominally" because I'm thinking about setting it up as a media center / gaming rig connected to the TV in the den. That's largely beside the point, but it bears pointing out that keeping the PC available for my other needs would be a good thing.

So.

Is it going to be a more-effective solution to drop a few bucks on the 2960 and go through the hassle of learning how to set it up (and then setting it up), or would I be better off putting a secured Linux distro (e.g. gentoo-hardened, or something) on the semi-spare PC and running the load-balancing via iproute2 and friends?

Either way, I'm looking at a learning curve, and a good amount of time fannying around getting the damn thing working -- there's a good chance I'd spend almost as much cash on the PC-based solution getting good-quality network cards, and maybe fast HDD tech (though it seems like RAM and cores would be more important than disk IO).

What are your opinions?

Current Mood: contemplative

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OpenSolaris vs. Solaris
I have some software that does some translation from UTF-8. In Solaris the product has always run fine, but in OpenSolaris I see an error:

ld.so.1: someprogram: fata: relocation error: file someprogram: symbol_iconv_open: referenced symbol not found

Now, from what I have found out is that Solaris used a system call called: _iconv_open
and most Linux use a similar system call in libc called: iconv_open

But apparently there is a slight difference between Solaris and OpenSolaris, which causes this issue.

Does any have ANY knowledge of this? Somewhere I can look to confirm this hypothesis?

Thanks

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Link Checking
In my spare time I run two websites and they use joomla as I have a number of users who add content on a regular basis.

So I am looking for a link checking program that identifies 404 links. I use Linux mainly, but would be open to something on Windows. Ideally I would like this to be able to run daily, and send an email, but what ever.

Also, please, don't recommend a Joomla plugin. I have far too many plugins installed already.

Thanks in advance.

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Hosted Forum
Can anyone recommend a fairly professional forum hosting service? I am looking for one for a client of mine. In the past I have ran a forum (phpbb) for their site and it becomes an administrative nightmare (updating software, making sure antispam software is updated, spammers, hacks, backups...) after a few months. Honestly, I want to be able to do as little as possible and just pay someone to handle the software side. I can get administrators to weed out spam and moderate.

Thanks

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Need help with Perl's DBD::File module
Has anyone here written a Perl module that subclasses DBD::File?

Does it still work with DBI v1.609? If so, what (if anything) did you have to do to make it work? If not, would you like to join me as I investigate what would need to be done to make it work?

Specifically, I'm trying and failing to install DBD::RAM, and kinda flailing around in a sea of badly-formatted code trying to figure out why it wont install for me.

As far as I can tell, DBD::File::db->STORE() is where it's failing (the DBD::RAM test script is trying to set a driver option, and crashing hard), but I can't yet pin down where the problem really is -- do I need to fix (and submit a patch for) DBD::RAM or DBD::File?

Current Mood: aggravated

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Strange Network Issue
Im not quite sure how to describe this issue. So I'll give it my best shot. We are having an issue on our where certain people are able to access our trouble ticketing system and others arent. To elaborate on that lets say the url to access it is tickets.companyxyz.com, there are certain people on the network who can at times access it and at other times can not, while others can access it just fine all the time. I am unsure what is causing this. I feel that it may be a DNS issue. Most of the systems that are doing this are windows XP pro, the service packs range between 2 and 3, mac OSX Leopard and Snow Leopard. So far the only ones not affected are the linux systems.

Any light that can be shed or any questions to help clarify my issue would be appreciated.

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