Today I fixed a new problem with my test installation of Windows 7 (first public beta): Avast! Free – my “default” antivirus, was causing random system crashes. After some tries, I understood that blue screen of death was occurring during internal network activity. To be more precise, the problem is located in the use of shared folders (aka “samba shares”, for Linux users) and it involves the tdx.sys file, that seems to be often a protagonist of BSODs. read full post »
I’m currently testing the first public beta of Windows 7 on a desktop and a notebook, so I installed Live Messenger through the official Live installer provided from Microsoft as optional pack of the operating system. While there wasn’t problems on the notebook (connected to the LAN via Wi-fi), the desktop gived me 81000306 error trying to connect to Messenger service. After a lot of tests, including activation of uPNP on the router and forwarding the typical Messenger ports to the desktop’s IP, I finally discovered that the problem was in a feature of Windows 7 (also included in Windows Vista), the auto tuning of TCP stack. To disable this feature (that seems to be also the cause of network slowness on some LAN), you’ve to execute a simple command as Administrator:
click on the Windows logo in the bottom-left corner of the screen (the old “start” menu);
type CMD.EXE and wait a second: the cmd.exe program will appair in a list;
right-click it and choose “Run as Administrator”, then confirm the action in the request that will appair;
you’ll see a black window; type the following command: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
now just close the window and try to connect with Windows Live Messenger (it shouldn’t be necessary to restart the computer).
Note 1: I suspect that this problem is linked to my hardware (a Netgear DG834G router and a Atheros PCIE Gigabit LAN, on a ASUS M2A-MX motherboard).
Note 2: If you want to restore the auto tuning feature, you’ve to repeat the above process with the following command: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
Today I discovered that French autoroutes have added this strange notice to every toll gate: “5€ and 15€ are not accepted”.
I thought that 5€ and 15€ were only banknote. It seems I’m a inattentive european
WARNING: After some tests, it seems that Windows Live Messenger contact list have problems after change of email login. So do this at your risk.
This problem always plagued Windows Live (aka MSN) users: you signed up for a Microsoft Passport account since 2002 with a custom e-mail as login, then you changed the e-mail address but you can’t change your Live Messenger login (this was my case).
About a year ago I tried to directly ask Microsoft, but they answered me that this wasn’t possible; they suggested me to sign up for a new Live account.
Now I discovered that it’s possible to do it easily. read full post »
Post updated at 13:50 (GMT+1) on June, 17th 2009 – Now Windows 7 RC1 is public and available to everyone.
As anticipated by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES (Las Vegas), Windows 7 first public beta is now available for free download.
Windows Vista users are free to get and install it on their computers as update.
The download isBeta licenses are limited “only” to the first 2,5 million of users.
This version will expire on August, 1st 2009.
The Aspire One is a netbook from Acer, very similar to the Asus Eee PC. It’s sold at about EUR 200 in Italy, and it offers an 8.9″ display (1024×600), a 1.6Ghz Intel Atom CPU, a 8Gb SSD drive, with integrated Wifi, Mic and webcam.
It’s a nice product, but the Linux operating system with it is shipped is not so good (it’s a personalized and branded version of Linpus – a Taiwanese distribution for low-resources PCs).
I tried a couple of alternative OS (for example Ubuntu Netbook Remix), but none of them fully fit on it: too weight, drivers problems, etc. read full post »
Notice: This little tutorial assumes that you have some basic Linux knowledge, and that you know what SSH is.
Christmas is coming, and I’ll be out of office for a while.
I was a little worried because I could need some data from my main desktop PC… I’ll copy the most important documents on the laptop, but if I’ll forget something? I don’t want to leave my desktop turned on, nor to be obliged to pass the evening of 24th of December in my car to come back to the office.
So it’s time to activate Wake On LAN
Wake On LAN (aka WOL) is a feature of many PCs. It leaves the network port in standby mode, without turning off it completely. It requires very little power, and it allows you to activate a PC from your LAN. read full post »
Today I upgraded the RAM of a Mac Mini Intel (1Gb to 2,5Gb). As usual, I googled for a while to find a good tutorial to correctly dismantle it. Even if I’m not a video-tutorial lover, the best one I discovered was on YouTube. I like it also because it’s speech-less (only subtitles), so it’s easy to understand the steps also for not native english-speaking users like me
One upon a time… only militar people – and then univerities – had access to the Internet (aka ARPANET), and nobody thought that one day anyone will connect to each other with one, unique, world-wide network, without fines. So e-mail protocol was understandably invented without any protection to prevent sending unwanted informations. read full post »
Disclaimer: This post doesn’t want to be an invite to hack websites. The admin pages linked by search engines in the “search suggestions” in the article are so easy to find that it’s, I think, exagerated to define this an “hack practice” (infact, many of them were already hacked and spammed by automatic bots ). On the contrary, it wants to be an advice to webmasters and sysadmins to double-check their installations and security measures.
Search engines scan the Web. The entire web, and they often discover something that nobody should see.
This is one of this cases: a webmaster forgets to password-protect the folder where a critical admin tool like phpMyAdmin is, a search engine reaches the folder and it puts in its search index the link.
At this point it’s easy for everyone to discover these security breaches: with a very simple search on a search engine like Yahoo! you’ll get 196 results (November, 7th 2008), they bring to the administrative home page of phpMyAdmin from several domains, with root privileges. read full post »
Today I fixed a new problem with my test installation of Windows 7 (first public beta): Avast! Free – my “default” antivirus, was causing random system crashes. After some tries, I understood that blue screen of death was occurring during internal network activity. To be more precise, the problem is located in the use of shared folders (aka “samba shares”, for Linux users) and it involves the tdx.sys file, that seems to be often a protagonist of BSODs. read full post »
Post updated at 13:50 (GMT+1) on June, 17th 2009 – Now Windows 7 RC1 is public and available to everyone.
The 
Short answer:
). On the contrary, it wants to be an advice to webmasters and sysadmins to double-check their installations and security measures.
At this point it’s easy for everyone to discover these security breaches: with