Computer Freezing a computer fault ?

I was called out a week or so ago to a customer who had previously taken her computer to a so called expert who advised her that the reason behind her computer problems [computer would lock up after a minute or so after booting or under stress conditions] was due to heat and that she had fan problems and suggested her computer needed replacing or along those lines

within a few minutes of investigation i noticed that infact the computer was operating fine, no evidence of fan failure or noisy bearings, HD seemed to be fine with no corruption neither was the computer freezing, XP reported no software problems nor hardware problems, my suspicions then moved from software to a possible hardware fault, as the computer was only a few years old the bios offered the facility to show realtime voltage and temps, once again the temps were fine and that associated with a 478 celeron, voltages seemed a bit low but hardly under the ATX thresholds, now to eliminate any further problems i tested the ram within a dos environment and it came back clear so i then went to stress test hardware components within xp and bingo, as soon as cpu usage hit 100% the computer locked up, i tried again and it locked up immediately

To finish this article a new PSU and an hour later the computer was operating stable, she was charged 50% less than her previous quote, it always helps to get a second opinion and unfortunately the likes of PC world give PC repair a very expensive name

Virgin Netgear WGR614 MOD

It has been a few weeks since I have updated this section so my apologies

Recently I have been asked how to remove the firmware from a virgin branded WGR614 Netgear wireless router, the problem is not so much the crappy branded firmware but the removal option to allow telnet and subsequent generic firmware flash

now I do not advise anyone to do this as your breaking the T&C from Virgin as they still own the equipment, whether modem, cable box or router. Trust me they hire subcontractors to go around customer's houses to collect the equipment several months after leaving virgin media on the likelihood that you will;

a) sell it on ebay

b} chuck it in the bin

they will invoice you if you cannot give it back !

anyway enough of my baffle

1. firstly you need

http://rapidshare.com/files/71670434/telnetEnable.zip

2. Login to Windows using an account which has administrative privileges (needed for sending custom crafted network packets which this tool does).
3. You will see a Microsoft Word document, which contains screenshots and instructions in korean language, a firmware update (you don't need this) and the telnetEnable.exe tool
4. Get the MAC address of your Netgear router. You can look it up on the web interface of your router (Maintenance -> Router status -> LAN port -> MAC Address).
5. Copy or type the MAC address to a text editor such as Notepad, Wordpad or write it down.
Remove any minus signs ( - ) or colons ( : ), replace all characters by their upper case representation (a -> A, d-> D etc.)
6. Copy the result of your editing to the clipboard and return to the command line window.
7. Type (without quotes) "telnetenable.exe", the IP address of your router (e.g. "192.168.1.1"), add another space (" "), paste the contents of the clipboard, and append " Gearguy Geardog". These are the default username and password for telnet console access (they differ from those of the web interface), you need to modify them appropriately if you changed them previously. The result should look similar to this: telnetenable.exe 192.168.1.1 000FB5A2BE26 Gearguy Geardog
8. Now press Enter to run the tool. It should return to the shell pretty quickly with no error. If it takes a long time and returns a 'send failed' error message, just try again.
9. You should now be able to login to the router via telnet from any computer in your local subnet (including the one you just used to activate the listening mode). To do so, type the following (no quotes): "telnet", append the IP of your router and press enter (e.g. telnet 192.168.1.1)
10. You should not be prompted a a login and password, but if you do the login is Gearguy and the password is Geardog - Correct character case is important here.
11. After successful authentication you will be presented a prompt such as: U12H09400 >
12. Then type “burnboardid U12H094T00_NETGEAR”
13. Then type “reboot”
14. After that, you can log back into the router via its web interface and flash it with the generic netgear firmware.
15. After flashing reset the router by holding in the reset button on the back of the router until the “Ѵ-“sign on the front starts blinking.

be aware you need to use Internet explorer to GUI into the router not firefox as the router will refuse the flash

funnily enough I had this problem when flashing some hax0rware firmware via firefox

good luck !

Conexant ADSL Router Vulnerability

I remember back about 4 years ago when BT Wholesale ISP's were supplying contracted customers with Conexant routers with the CX82310 chip, now with any customer they are advised to change the default passwords to deny external access via telnet, what the customer nor the ISP's knew was that you could telnet on a high port number such as 2** and gain access without even offering a password, this only came to light several months or even a year after distribution and no doubt even now some customers are unaware of this, this security exploit basically gave anyone complete access to the router

quite serious stuff if the Router was part of a business network

in other words my advice is always spend time learning about your new router or modem as it could cost you your data

OSCommerce integration problem

I been helping out a small businesses who has experienced problems concerning ebay / paypal integration into their existing sites using oscommerce

the problem revolved around his site that use frames and pay pal's insistence relating to security issues, more so compatibility

This is how it would look if making it appear within the same window:

the first problem was getting paypal to work in frames thus opening in a new window, below shows what to do

in catalog/checkout_confirmation.php, around line 123, find this code: echo tep_draw_form('checkout_confirmation', $form_action_url, 'post');

replace with the following: echo tep_draw_form('checkout_confirmation', $form_action_url, 'post', 'target="_parent"');

editing the above code should solve the problem of a website using frames

thanks to neil from http://www.neildavison.co.uk for allowing me to publicise this problem