BT 2-Wire Business Hub handing out wrong IP Address

One of our clients had a hard drive crash that prevented them booting into Windows.  As the machine was pretty old, and running XP, we agreed that it was a good time to upgrade to Windows 8 and snappy new hardware.

Everything went well, we managed to reinstall all of the software on the new machine, and transfer over all of the data.  We even managed to make a VHD image of the old broken hard drive, and copy that onto the new machine.

As the machine was the network server as well as one of the workstations, it seemed the best plan was to keep the machine name the same, so that the new machine could impersonate the old one.

The only problem was that the BT Hub was insisting on handing out the IP address of the old, dead machine (192.168.1.100) instead of the one assigned to the new machine via DHCP.  And there seemed to be no way to get the Hub to forget about the old machine.  Sometimes it returned 127.0.0.1 and others it returned 192.168.1.100, but never it seemed 192.168.1.64

This problem dragged on for a couple of weeks, until finally I noticed the problem.

The BT hub has case sensitive host names.  The old machine was STUDY, and the new machine was study.

When a lookup of a host name was requested, the old machine was first in the table, and a case insensitive comparision returned that, instead of the new lower case machine.  Why the Hub compares as case insensitive but inserts as case sensitive appears to be a bug in the firmware.

The FIX?

Simply rename the machine on the control panel to be the old upper case version.

More Backup Woes: Error 0x81000037

Today, I was called out to a client who reported that their backups were failing.  They just use the standard Windows 7 backup, but after getting about 30% of the way through, the backup failed with the above error.

It turns out the problem was caused by the anti-virus software detecting a virus (some Java exploit) during the backup, and causing it to fail.  The virus was being reported in Microsoft Security Essentials in a shadow copy on the disk.

So, my solution, was first, clean the account that was infected using Security Essentials.  That would probably be sufficient to let the backup complete, but I also took the following additional steps, just to be certain nothing was hanging around in a previous snapshot:

1. Uninstall Java.  You know you want to anyway.
2. Right click the C drive, and choose disk cleanup, go to the more options tab, and choose system restore and shadow copies.

After deleting, your disk should no longer contain any copies of the file security essentials is complaining about, and backups should be able to proceed as normal.

HP Machines and Windows 8

I’ve had a bad 24 hours.  I’ve been trying to get started developing for Windows Phone 8, and as a result of the new outlandish hardware requirements to do so have had to purchase a new PC.

So, I wandered down to Curry’s and picked up an  HPPavilion g6-2241sa 15.6 Laptop – Blue for £350.  I then had to get the windows pro pack to enable Hyper-V, (which I still haven’t, at the time of writing this, managed)

Alas, I’ve stumbled into the problem that Windows Update on HP machines doesn't actually work very well (if at all).  The big 190 MB update that needs to be done locks up after reboot at 13%

After nearly 12 hours talking to support, I came across this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2777330

What I did was:

go to the windows update site, and download the updates manually: KB2764870, KB2761094, and 2756872 as well as delmigprov.exe

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34908

I then ran delmigprov

did the clean boot thing

copied the files to the desktop

and then went to device manager, and uninstalled all devices that might cause a problem (2x network, card reader, 2xaudio, and web cam).

I also manually stopped the audio services in case it was the IDT audio.After running the first 2 kb updates, I needed to reboot.

Alas, that meant I had to remove all of the devices again, and stop the services after they were installed.

Now my machine has finally booted back into windows!

I am now going to create another system restore point

Since then, I’ve added another 5 windows updates, but this time without disabling the devices.

And now another restore point, and finally install of pro-pack.

All of this seems to have worked, and I’m finally up and running after only 19 hours of work.

If this has saved you time, please consider purchasing some of our software at http://www.wieser-software.com/

CryptAcquireContext fails again

Today I spent about two hours with a customer who was having problems installing some of our full version software.

When he ran the installation program, he was presented with a series of error messages, the first one being:

Error during CryptAcquireContext along with error code 0000054F or 1359

That error code translates to ERROR_INTERNAL_ERROR.

After some psychic debugging, I realized it probably had something to do with his user account and the way his machine had been configured by the manufacturer.

The default account settings some manufacturers use

I’m not exactly sure what was going on, but as I asked him what antivirus software he runs and the answer was none, it suddenly occurred to me that he probably only had only one user account on the machine, and that user account had no password.  Both of those guesses proved correct.

And sure enough, the problem was solved by doing the following:

• Create a new administrator account on the machine
• Create a password for the new administrator account
• Log into that new account
• Install the software