○ Programming a MXM graphics module bios (by performing a hard flash).

In a previous post we talked about how to revive a dead GPU card using the tweezer method. In this post you will se further info to complement that revival using eeprom programmable cards, credits will go to Michal.T and we will quote is own words, so let's get started:

Situations may vary when people are left with a not functional mxm graphics module/card. The most common situation should be considered like the consequence of notebook vendors commercial/marketing policies (those policies which are limiting their products by allowing only certain graphics modules/adapters to work); people then are trying to overcome such a situation by trying to flash many and untested bios images for their graphics modules hoping such a move will solve the software incompatibility issue.

I tried such a move and got an unusable mxm graphics card. My intention was to overcome the annoying "MXM bios structure error message" at boot time which was forcing the system to post such message for 30 seconds.

People at mvktech.net site have understood how to fix the performance table of such adapters that are going no longer than the throttle frequencies and voltages, but this is another story and it covers how to let adapters like the nvidia 9600m gt one to work correclty at full speed. If the software flashing procedure went wrong in most cases we have as result a "broken" piece of hardware, we know however that we only bricked the bios (the hardware is not responding).

At first we have to try the tweezering method which consist in shortcutting pins 1 and 4 of our adapter's bios eeprom just when powering on the system.If such a method is going to work we should have a black screen with a full prompt command responding system; this means we would be able to flash the card again. The tweezering method however is not guaranteed to work every time and with all the adapters and hardware around. A hard flash in some cases is the only solution to let revive the hardware.

Such a step is not simple and people with no soldering/desoldering experience should ask others to perform such a task.

We have at first to desolder the mxm graphics module eeprom: it is usually represented with a Macronix MX25L512 chip on the top-left adapters's corner. See Fig.1 and Fig.2

Fig. 1

Fig.2

Then we need a good eeprom programmer, there are many. I have built myself a Willem rel. 6.1 one some time ago. It was when I broken my old notebook bios by putting my hands were I should not :)

Once we have a programmer we need to understand if it is capable to hard flash the Macronix chip; I had to order from a chinese shop an adapter that was suitable for.

The adapter I took is a Xeltek SA 602A. See Fig.3, Fig.4, Fig.5 and Fig.6

 

Fig.3

 

Fig.4

 

Fig.5

Fig.6

As you should see I had to built a second adapter that was allowing the Willem eeprom programmer recognize the Macronix chip. (see the top-most bottom pins configuration)

I was not sure I could use the zif socket to perform the flash procedure so then I wrapped the Xeltek adapter on a 8 pin adapter to let match its pins configuration with the socket I had to use for. See Fig.7

Fig.7

The software version that is making the willem eeprom programmer recognizing the SPI chips is the 0.98D10 version. Once I put on the adapter with the eeprom mounted in place the flash procedure was very simple. see Fig.8, Fig.9, Fig.10 and Fig.11

Fig.8

Fig.9

Fig.10

Fig.11

The last step was to resolder again the eeprom chip back in place. At last a software flash should be required due to a bad checksum calculated during the hard flash procedure. "

Many thanks once again to Michal for providing this, if you like italian you can also check his blog where he tributes a great novel writer who left this planet a few years ago.

 
 
Taken from: http://bitboard.blogspot.com/

○ oPEn Shell Menu and Network drive with Access Denied

If you can't access a network drive trough My comnputer saying "Access Denied" and you see a "oPEn" entry when you right click this network drive,  you may be having difficulty accessing this network path when navigating to "My computer" in Explorer. This behaviour in my experience can be left overs from malware for instance. Specially if you log in with other domain account and there you can access it.

Now if you are familiar with regedit and windows registry you would think that you could just do a search in regedit and query for "oPEn", bad news is regedit.exe is not case sensitive (at least mine is not at this moment)  so i got a tool that allowed case sensitive searches trough the registry and it led me here:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2\##server##folder\shell\oPEn

Then, just deleted the ##server##folder and all other sub-keys entry and recreate the nework drive by the traditional means.

Hope this helps. Be carefull tough, only delete when you absolutely know what you are doing.

○ Restarting server shares service for network folders

Different network shares can exist in a server environment. If you happened to restart one of your main server that had shared network folders active and not anymore, you have to restart the corresponding services.

To check what resources are being shared on the server type at the command prompt:

"net share"

To see a list of your previously shared network folders on the server open regedit and go to:

SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares

These are the folders you need to reshare again right?

If so all you have to do is to restart these share services you need to restart the "Server" service along with this service dependencys.

Solved. Hope this helps

 If you need additional help read this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/125996

○ Renaming User accounts in AD and changing Documents and Settings Folder

Yes, this is from microsoft, it is just so I won't forget i know i can easily find this on my corner :D

Reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/236621/en-us

Identify the user's profile path. There are two methods to identify the profile path. Either by user path settings or user SID. The user SID method is preferred.

User SID method

Use the GETSID tool from the Windows Server Resource Kit to obtain the SID. Use syntax similar to the following example:

GETSID \\SERVER1 UserName \\SERVER1 UserName

Once you obtain the SID, use Regedit.exe or Regedt32.exe to select the user's SID under the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

 
 
Some Other SID Tools i Like:
 
user2sid
sidtouser
 
:)

○ Opening Google.com in new tab "about:tabs" automatically in IE8

I have been *not* using this feature for a long time. Everytime i pressed the "new tab" button i would always write www.google.com as a starting point. Not anymore, now it's automatic, you just have to:

1. Open Tools -> Internet Options:

2. Push Tab Settings and define new tab settings:

Done. (Not much of a challenge tough :P)

○ Windows DLL files Checker

To perform a windows DLL files test for integrity to see if they are intact and in their original versions there is a good native tool called SFC that only system administrators can perform:

This will check to see wether your currently being used DLL files are trust worthy and/or match those on the DLL Cache folder. I have a progress percentage indicator as you can see in this screenshot but some operating systems like XP/W2k/2003 end the verification and do not report anything back when it finishes. So, it's good to see that Microsoft gave this another step up.

Thanks for reading

○ Removing HD1.exe Virus

Hello, i decided to write something about this because i found the information available at this time.

This virus from what i have been seing recently spreads mostly from USB pens, on operative systems that have the Autorun Feature turned on for USB Removable devices.

It starts by:

1- writing a file named autorun.inf on your USB pendrive with the following content:

[autorun]
OPeN=rEcYClEr\sEtUp32.exe
IcON=%wIndIr%\sYstEm32\ShElL32.DlL,7
ACtION=Open USB
sHeLl\OpEN=oPEn
sHeLl\OpEN\cOMMaND=ReCyClER\sEtUp.exe
sHeLl\OpEN\deFaULt=1

It then writes the following registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Taskman"="C:\RECYCLER\S-{Numbers}\hd1.exe"

or

"Taskman"="E:\\hd1.exe"

depending from where did you run the virus file setup32.exe


{Numbers} represent the security ID's present on your machine. You may have more than one if more than one user has logged in at least once, so you may have more than one hd1.exe file.


To manually remove the virus:

1. You have to delete that "taskman" entry on the registry.
2. Manualy delete hd1.exe files from c:\RECYCLER folder.
2a. You can use at the command prompt from within RECYCLER folder: "dir /s /a hd1.exe" to see how many hd1.exe you have
2b. You can use attrib command to remove -S -H -R from hd1.exe/Desktop.ini files before deleting.
2c. You may have to terminate explore.exe process under task manager to successfully delete this file. If you still can't even after using attrib you have to use Windows Recovery Console, or any other bootable disk with full ntfs support tools, for instance, Hiren's Boot Tools.


I do not think there are any dll files altered with this virus after my tests. But checking windows dll files for integrity to see if they are in they are intact and in their original versions is a good idea afterwords.

Direct Link to this article

Thanks for reading

○ IVT_Virtual_0000 Driver

If you have this device hanging on your device manager waiting for a driver, probably you instaled IVT BlueSoleil on your computer without installing the native Bluetooth drivers from the manufacturer first. Or, the IVT version you have is not compatible with your windows version.

I came across this issue and what i did to solve it was to:

1. Download the latest trial version, right now it's IVT_BlueSoleil_6.4.275.0 which is Windows7 compatible.

2. Extract contents of the ZIP File to a folder

3. Extract all the CAB files BlueSo~1.cab, BlueSo~2.cab, etc, using a capable application like winrar.

After you have extracted the CAB Files you should see some .inf files, one of them is for the Bluetooth PAN Network Adapter .

4. Device Manager -> Unkown Device IVT_Virtual_0000 -> Update Driver -> Point to folder where you extracted the CAB Files.

And you are done:

edit:
This was not tested on Windows 7 64bit Platforms

○ Unknown device ACPI\ITE8707\4&2D46162D&0 on ASUS C90s

Another struggle for a unknown device. Funny thing is when i had XP i did not detect it, neither with vista, but windows 7 did.

Finally discovered that this unknown device corresponds to ITECIR Infrared Receiver

You have to download ite_ir_5.03_vista32-64 driver for it to install, here are 2 screenshots:

And voila

Thanks for reading, i hope this helps.

○ How to view Windows Registry in DOS Mode

This makes a usefull feature when all you have is a command line and want to sneak in the windows registry. You will have to have a PATH variable defined to the reg.exe file or direct access however otherwise it won't run.

The usage is:

REG Operation /?

Examples:

REG QUERY /?

REG ADD /?

REG DELETE /?

REG COPY /?

REG SAVE /?

REG RESTORE /?

REG LOAD /?

REG UNLOAD /?

REG COMPARE /?

REG EXPORT /?

REG IMPORT /?

REG FLAGS /?

You can even add or delete keys, of course, you will have to have the proper access control entry rights on any given hive. For more on ACE's

Be cautious about messing around in the registry. Even performin a query, if the key values are to extensive the output can be something like:

This reminds me of beeping outputs in the old days when using Type command on some file. Ouch

○ Intel 845GE Graphics Driver for Windows Vista/7

Ufff, i was installing a version of Windows Seven on my brother's computer, but Windows 7 did not detected /installed the proper drivers so i had to search for an alternative. The Standard VGA Graphics Adapter it gave me, could not go over 1024x1280 resolutions. I needed higher resolutions as i have a capable monitor of 1920x1200. Drivers were definitely not helping me.

After hours spent, i finally found this which almost did the trick (and you will see why it is almost). Don't know if it is true, but it seems the native graphics driver ( or Standard VGA Graphics Adapter ) from Windows is very close to
Intel(R) Graphics Controller 6.14.10.3722 . This is a driver for W2k but it works on Windows Seven. Going trough the setup.exe (double clicking the executable application) obviously is not the way to go. What you need to do is to go to Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager and Update drivers for your current listed Display Adapter selecting the .inf file.

So:

1- Download Intel(R) Graphics Controller 6.14.10.3722 for 845GE

2- Install from the ".inf", trough the device manager.

3- Restart, check configurations

You may get errors (like i did) but simply restarting a trying again should do the trick. (It did for me anyway)

In the end you will be able to see at the device manager:




Now as for the "almost" . The maximum setting it gives me is 1920x1200 x 16 bits when i was looking for 1920x1200 x 32 bits...

But as im not much of a player it's fine by him.

○ Garmin 1390 GPS Diagnose Diagnostics "hack" trick

Well, this is not actually a hack, it is just a trick. Here's the main screen:

If you tap the upper right Battery Icon for 5 seconds this interesting menu will pop up:

Here you have a secret diagnostics page. You can test ROM, RAM, monitor temperature levels, USB cable detections, battery level, etc...Press next and you have further options:

I Pressed Start Test, but it's a background test, does not show you anything else other than the results show at this page. Here you have an interesting "More" button that shows you info on your current Garmin Software Inventory. It's interesting to see how some were removed:

You can even test for dead sub-pixels. I found out i had a dead sub-pixel on the lower right corner. But completely unnoticeable otherwise.

Here you can test the current voice you have set on your GPS among other things:

Finally this one is interesting, you can check information regarding the sattellites you have gathered. 3 GPS are the minimum to gather your location, but in my case, more than 3 GPS work working, giving me more accuracy:

Of course, there were numbers were it's now painted in green. :)

○ Can't remove network printer connection? Forcing removal / uninstall

If you are having problems removing a printer from the Printers folder, this may be the answer for you:

When you add a network printer connection to your computer, the printer's shared name is placed on your printers folder as well.

When you try to remove this connection later on, the computer will communicate with the server to check if that printer still exists ( don't ask why) but, even if both printer connections are pointing to the same TCP/IP address, if the printers name do not match for confirmation, it won't delete, telling you something like "No longer connected to server"

To successfully remove this printer given that there is a mismatch with the printers connection name you have to first rename the connection, follow these steps to do it:

1. Start

2. Run

3. regedit.exe

4. Go to hive HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Printers\Connections

Unless you can't have access to regedit, you do not need special permissions to edit the lines as you are editing your own user hive ( HKEY_CURRENT_USER) . I advise you however not to mess with anything else if you don't know for sure that it is safe.

5. Rename the printer's name to match the one on the server

6. You should now be able to delete the printer connection.

I hope this helps someone as i struggled a couple of hours to find a solution but not even google helped me right away, so here's my contribution.