IT Professionals

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.

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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.

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?

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?

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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I appear to have been invited to join the ACM.

My question for existing members is simply this:

Is it worth the money?

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.

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/tutor…

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?

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?