FIX! Generic Host Process for win32 Services szModName: ntdll.dll

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I worked on a computer today that would pop the Generic Host Process for win32 Services error with the szModName: ntdll.dll.  I did trial and error in the MSCONFIG application and found that if I uncheck Terminal Services on the Services tab, the problem disappeared.  This user will never need to use any built-in remote support features, so I tally this one as fixed..Омоложение сада, омоложение растений в саду

STEPS:

Click Start, Run, type msconfig, click Services tab, uncheck Terminal Services, click OK, reboot and see what happens.

HP d530 Ultra Slim Definitive Guide to Repair

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At the school in which I manage the IT, we had 33 HP d530 ultra slim form factor desktop computers donated from a large corporation.  They have been so frustrating, with more than half with hardware problems right now.  I will use this post to list the problems, and solutions with this model.

Rule 1: If you have any problems with an HP d530U, always start by examining the motherboard capacitors.  The only one I’ve seen go bad is the one all alone near the RAM slots:

This one is very bad, or as I like to classify it, a Class 4.  Here is another Class 4:

Brian Morris Capacitor Classification System:
Normal: Capacitor has no signs of bulging on top — totally flat
Class 1: Capacitor bulging slightly, computer working fine
Class 2: Capacitor bulging noticeable, but not too much, computer working fine
Class 3: Capacitor bulging very noticeable, but no “goo” visible
Class 4: Capacitor “goo” visible

I always replace Class 3/4 immediately and plan on replacing Class 1/2 in the short- to mid-term.

Bad capacitor symptoms: computer won’t turn on, freezing, blue screens, turns off while in use

If you need to replace the board, look for the model number on the board and search for that model number on eBay.  I bought lots of 332935-001.  It can be tricky to avoid buying bad boards, but that’s how I did it.

Here is the HP Repair Manual with instructions on how to take apart the computer (start on page 149).  To swap the motherboard, remove the CPU fan, power supply, hard drive, bay drive, front bezel, CPU heat sink & CPU, RAM, front chassis panel, drive bay, PCI card, then unscrew the two screws on the CPU cradle.

If you determine that the capacitors look good, here are your next steps:

Symptom 1: Computer won’t turn on, hard drive light illuminates, but power doesn’t:

In my testing, I tried swapping RAM, processor, motherboard, but found that the solution is to replace the Power Supply. I have been buying power supplies on eBay with part number 308446-001.  NOTE 1/2011 – I’m finding these power supplies hard to come by and the last two I bought were bad upon receipt.  Be careful!

Symptom 2: 511-CPU FAN NOT DETECTED

There could be multiple reasons for this message (like not connecting the fan or connecting it properly, or a bad fan), but I swapped fans and motherboards.  Finally, I swapped the power supply and it was fixed.  The PSU must have not been sending power to the motherboard to run the fan.

Symptom 3: Power light blinks 4 times

I’ve found this to be the power supply each time, although it may not fix it 100% of the time.

Here is a page on HP’s website with a guide to the blinking lights:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00274415

I’ve found this to be very helpful in troubleshooting.

Long Term Problems – HEAT:

These computer sure get super hot.  I’ll tried installing a PCI fan, since it is right below the power supply, but it only dropped the case temperature near the power supply from 120F to 110F.  This may be one of the contributing factors of the part failures.

Here is the HP reference page with lots of info.

If you have questions, post them here.

FIX Grand Am squeak/rattle for $5

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Thanks to the great post by GREEDJ at the Grand Am Owners Club I found how to fix this problem and wanted to show some pictures to help others save lots of cash!

My 2002 Grand Am GT (with 104,000 miles) was starting having these really annoying high-pitched squeaks and rattles, especially on small bumps from the front passenger area.  With the radio on, you didn’t hear them, but with it off they were awful.  I had my mechanic look at the twice and he didn’t.  The strange thing about it is that you would hear it less when you put the window down and it sounded like it was in the dash area, rather than down in the wheel well area.

After searching online and finding the post above, I grabbed my Lithium Grease, which you should be able to buy at auto parts stores and maybe Home Depot/Lowe’s:

Then I opened the hood and took a look at the strut mounts at a sharp angle to see inside the rubber bushing:

You’ll see the little holes, as the arrows show.

I then sprayed some grease on the bolt and in each of the 6 holes are 1-2 seconds, as instructed by GREEDJ:

That was it, the squeaks are gone!!!

This should work for the 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Pontiac Grand Am and I would imagine other GM cars.

Verizon FiOS modem replacement — way slow!!

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I’ve had some of my customers ask me about whether they should switch to Verizon FiOS from Comcast.  I posted a comparison earlier.

Today I got a phone call from a customer that their internet was down.  She told me the only light on the Verizon FiOS Actiontec modem (MI424WR) was the power light.  I had her pull the power and the plug it back in, but then no lights came on.

I went on-site and found the the power adapter/transformer for the modem had a green light and it was blinking.  I didn’t have my multimeter on me, but decided this was a bad sign.  I called the FiOS support line.  It was fully automated asking me what my problems were.  When asked whether the lights came back on for the modem, I replied, “no.”  It then told me it would have someone call me back and disconnected.  Disgusted, I went on the hunt for a power adapter to replace the original.  I went to Radio Shack first.  He looked at it and immediately said they didn’t have any as high as 5 Amps and that he had my customers come in looking for FiOS modem adapters and he knew they didn’t have any.

Undeterred, I went to Batteries Plus, a very cool battery store that is usually very helpful.  They didn’t have any power adapters, except for laptops and cell phones.  I then went to Home Depot, but I didn’t come close there either.  When I got back to the customer’s site, I plugged in the adapter again, and the light stayed solid this time.  I plugged it into the modem and most of the lights came on, but the power was amber, not green, and I couldn’t get any of the 4 LAN ports to light up, so I decided the modem was fried.

I called FiOS support, and this time the automated system said I had an open trouble ticket and that it would transfer to an agent.  It then disconnected me.  Nice.  I called again, went through all the prompts again and talked to a real person.  That person couldn’t figure out what kind of trouble ticket was setup, he hadn’t seen an automated ticket like it before.  He said he would ship out a replacement modem and we would have it by Saturday.  Wait — it’s Tuesday.  I insisted that I needed it faster — how about overnight shipping?  Nope.  How about going to a store?  He suggested calling a Verizon Wireless store.   I called the closest store and they didn’t stock modems at all, but suggested calling the Pittsburgh FiOS office.  I called there and they  didn’t have any either.  She comforted me by telling me that the Support folks would ship it to me within 2 or 3 days.  I told her that I could go pick up a Comcast modem immediately if I wanted and with FiOS I had to wait 2-3 days??

With Comcast, they will usually send a technician the next day to replace your modem.  Verizon will ship you a modem in 2-3 days and you have the privilege of doing it yourself!

UPDATE 11/10/08: Verizon did ship out an A/C adapter only.  When it arrived, it was an empty bubble mailer.  Nice.  I called about that, the tech told me that I don’t even need the modem/router, that I could just plug directly into the computer.  WHY DIDN’T THE OTHER PEOPLE TELL ME THAT!  My customer actually used a router behind the FiOS router, so I just ditched the Verizon router anyway.  All that pain for nothing.  The Verizon router did come a few days later and I shipped the old one back.

In one more interesting twist, a member of my family has the same router and they received an unsolicited AC adapter from Verizon for that router.  It included a letter:  (I will scan and attach)

Review of the Garmin nuvi 205W GPS

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After my ordeal with the TomTom XL 330, I wanted to find a good upgrade to my Garmin c320.  I wanted coordinates and Where Am I? features in particular.

I hope Garmin reads this, I could help them sell millions more.

PROS:

1. Best routes.  (See my cons)  This may be one of the main reasons Garmin dominates in the US — good routing.  Of course, I wish it had more a brain and could think about traffic lights and general traffic in certain areas at certain times (not actual traffic reporting), but I guess needing brains is good.

2. Where Am I?  (See my cons) This will list your nearest street address.  In this screen it also shows altitude and your coordinates.

3. Easier broad map access.  On my c320, you had to dig in the menus to find a broad map view, so you could touch areas on the map and go to it.  On the 205w, you can just touch the map while driving and it will take you to the broad map.  You can then touch an area that you want to make a Via Point and change your route that way.

4. Speed Limit sign.  You can set it up to show the current speed limit on the screen.  It has been super accurate to the instant of a speed limit change in real driving.  If the sign is missing on the screen, you also then know that it doesn’t really know how to calculate arrival time from the road.  You may want to use that information to take or avoid that road on your next trip.

5. Very compact.  My c320 was much bigger, so this is super small.

CONS:

1. Touchscreen.  This may change as I use it, but the touchscreen is no where near as sensitive as my c320.  It requires some hard touching.  It also shows fingerprints much worse than my old GPS unit.

2. Ball mount.  This gives a better range of motion than the mount on my c320, but it feels like I need to push really hard on my GPS unit to get it to snap in.  This may change in age, too.

3. Keyboard speed.  When I’m typing in a city, street, etc., the keyboard is a full QWERY keyboard, which is an improvement over my c320, but there are two things I don’t like: 1) there is a delay from when you type to when it shows, so if you type fast, you can’t see what you’re typing, if you make a mistake, you don’t see if very fast; 2) the spacebar is tiny and way off to the right, while dumb menus are in the bottom middle — very annoying!!

4. Charging cord.  On my c320, the charging cord would plug into the mount and there wasn’t a charge jack in the GPS unit itself.  This was nice because you could leave the power cord in the mount all the time and take the GPS with you – you never had to plug in, just clip the GPS in and out.  Now, the power cord won’t stay put and it falls out the door, etc because it must be plugged into the back of the GPS.  I suppose with the mount the way it is, it’s not possible to have a jack in the mount and GPS, but I think they should work on that.

5. Current road.  The TomTom XL 330 did show what road you are currently on and what the next road to turn onto was.  Garmin only shows the next road name.

6. Routing pet peeve.  Sometimes I won’t want to take its routing because I know of a better way.  Let’s say I turn off of the normal route — it will recalculate and have a shorter time than before I turned.  What’s up with that?  Why didn’t it take me that way to begin with?

6. Routing choices.  I don’t like the fact that I can choose either Fastest Time or Shortest Route.  I would imagine that much of the time, the best route would be in between those to extremes.

7. Missing POIs.  There are just so many cases where I’ll be looking for something and it’s not in the Garmin — even for stores and restaurants open for years.  I know you’ll have this will all GPS units, but for the #1 seller in the US, can’t they figure out a way to get the users involved?  How about incentives for users to fix problems online and give them discounts on map updates?  If you have the best maps and POIs by far, why would anyone buy any other company?

8. Tinny speaker.  I’m not impressed with the speaker, it is much worse sounding than the deep c320, but you can hear it.  It’s just not pleasant.

9. Voice choices.  It would be nice to choose your voice, but I don’t see that option, unless you choose another language.

10. Nearest intersection.  This is within the “Where Am I” place in the menu.   It could be very useful in an emergency to have the nearest intersection in addition to the nearest address.  However, I’ve found that they should have labeled it, “random intersection within a few miles.”  It will generally show me a major intersection, and sometimes ignore dozens of closer small intersections that would be much more beneficial to the police, fire, ambulance, etc.

11.  Volume.  I hate how they have the volume setup.  On the c320 there was a  wheel on the side of the unit — that’s best.  On the TomTom, there was a place on the main driving screen that you touched and then moved the volume slider.  On this 205W, you must hit Menu, Volume, move it, then back, then View Map.  This is just awful.  I want a Mute button on the driving screen and a separate volume button there, too.  This is widescreen after all.  I hope this doesn’t cause accidents, because I think it will.

12. Need customization!  Let me choose 3 shortcut button for the driving map view.  That way I can put Where Am I, Volume, and POI on the main screen.  Please!!  I also want to change my route color to red instead of light purple.

13. POI choices.  This is something I’ve never found a GPS that does this how I want it.  If I’m looking for gas or food, it is usually on a long trip.  If I want to go to fast fast, let’s say (that wouldn’t happen!), I would choose Restaurant, Fast Food.  It will show me all the restaurants by how far they are from me now.  That’s not what I want, so I choose Near…My Current Route.  That’s closer to what I want, but it still shows how far it is from where I am now.  I want it to show me that, but also how far I’d have to deviate from my route.

Overall, this is an excellent unit and I would buy it again because I believe the Pros outweigh the Cons and no competitor and yet beat it.

Please leave me comments on how other competitors stack up on these weaknesses, as I’ve only used Garmin, TomTom, and Microsoft Streets & Trips via laptop.

Review of the awful TomTom XL 330 GPS

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I have a Garmin c320 GPS unit and wanted to upgrade to a model with more features – particularly coordinates and “Where Am I” features.  After reading the reviews, I really liked the features in the TomTom XL 330.  The only hesitation I had was with the speaker volume.  The Amazon reviews showed some buyers that had speaker problems with their units.  There were enough positive reviews to make me buy it.

PROS:

1. Lots of customization.  You can change color schemes, choose your voice, change viewing angles (Garmin c320 & 205W can’t do that).

2. “Where Am I?”  This is far superior than Garmin.  It shows in what City, Township, Municipality, etc. where you are and the nearest address.  This can be very valuable when calling for help.  Garmin only gives nearest address and nearest intersection (which I like to call “some random intersection within a few miles”)

3. Alternative routes.  If you don’t like the route you’re given, you can ask for a new one.  Read more in the Cons.

4. Tons of route control.  You can look through a list of every turn ahead of time and ask it to avoid a certain place.

5. Compact, attached mount.  I didn’t use it, but it was a cool idea.  The mount would detach from the unit or you could leave it on and fold it in.

6. Fixing map errors.  I never got to see this in action, but it sounded really cool.

7. Results as you type.  I loved this feature and will really miss it with my new Garmin 205W.  As you type a street name or city, it will show you the results as you narrow them down.  This can really save time and effort.

CONS:

1. Routing.  (Deal-breaker one)  The routing seemed to have a large bias toward driving on interstates.  It seemed to me that the reason was insufficient non-interstate speed limit information.  For example, I asked the Garmin and TomTom for a route from Irwin, PA to Oakland, MD.  The Garmin used state routes and backroads to get us there in 2 hours.  The TomTom insisted we take mostly interstate (and adding many, many miles) at an estimate of 2.5 hours.  The TomTom alternate route was even longer.  (Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Mapquest all were similar to Garmin’s route.)  When we took the Garmin route, the TomTom said it would take over 2.5 hours (adding existing travel time + time left), but as we drove, the time remaining kept decreasing super fast.  The Garmin’s arrival time was rock steady all the way.

2. Address entry without City.  (Deal-breaker two)  There are many occasions in which I have a street address, but don’t know the city.  You know — maybe someone lives in a Township with a city’s mailing address, or any area known as “North Hills” has many post office names, but you don’t know which one.  Garmins give you a “Search all cities” option.  TomTom has no option.  You must enter a city.  If you don’t know it, you won’t get there.

3. SPEAKER. (Deal-breaker three)  I had read two problems with the speaker; 1) too quiet, 2) garbled.  I figured that if I got a bad one, I’d exchange it and I’d get a good one.  How widespread could the problem be?  Well — the first unit was very quiet.  If you have the radio on, you can’t hear this thing.  I called TomTom and the nice rep seemed to be very familiar with the problem and suggested returning it to the store.  So fine, I shipped it back to Amazon.  The second unit was much louder.  Wait — you couldn’t understand it, it was all garbled.  Well, third time should work.  NOPE — just like the first, you couldn’t hear it.  See the end of this post — I will post WAV files of what I heard.

4. POI annoyances.  On my first unit, when searching for a POI, it would show the distance you were from the POI, but not which direction it was from you.  This made it unusable.  I won’t make a big deal of this, because my unit #2 did have a directional arrow for each POI.  This may have to do with software version on the unit.  Secondly, though, it only listed a few pages of POIs.  I would have liked to see more choices.

5. Graphics.  The graphics rendering was very jagged and old-looking.  Garmin is far ahead here.

After doing all this testing, my decision was easy.  Even if the speaker actually worked, the first two cons make it unusable for me.

My final question is — TomTom, don’t manufacturers test products before they get shipped to poor American consumers??

Garmin c320 without music while driving

TomTom XL 330 #1 (the quiet one) without music while driving

TomTom XL 330 #2 (the garbled one) without music while driving

TomTom XL 330 #1 with music while driving

TomTom XL 330 #2 with music while driving

Grand Am turn signals not working SOLUTION

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I have a 2002 Pontiac Grand Am.  In September 2007, the turn signals/flashers would intermittently stop working.  We figured out that if you hit the hazards button, the turn signals would work again.  In June 2008, the “hazards button” method would not always work, thus creating a “hazardous” situation for the driver and other cars.  My mechanic and I were having difficulty figuring out where the flasher relay was, so I went online to try to get some advice.  I turns out that many, many Grand Am owners from 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 had this exact problem.  GM even offered to fix the problem for free for SOME owners:

2000-2001 Grand Am, Oldsmobile Alero, Chevrolet Malibu

1999-2000 Grand Am, Oldsmobile Alero, Chevrolet Malibu

The problem is that many owners have found that in those years, their car “isn’t in the VIN range,” even though it has the same problem.

BOTTOM LINE: GM knows about this dangerous situation and is not doing anything about it.  They know that those models have a problem and talk to any dealer — they fix it all the time.  GM is culpable for all accidents that occur because of this problem.  They decided they would fix as little cars as possible.

If you have this problem, call these numbers and report it (have your VIN ready)!

CHEVROLET AT 1-800-630-2438, PONTIAC AT 1-800-620-7668, OR OLDSMOBILE AT 1-800-630-6537 to see if your car will be fixed for free — if not, complain to them.

NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION’S AUTO SAFETY HOTLINE AT 1-888-DASH-2-DOT (1-888-327-4236).

(Thanks Grand Am Owners Forum)

As a benefit to all owners of these cars, I have posted below instructions on how to fix this problem, since I couldn’t find any help anywhere.  I’m sure there are easier ways to do things; I had to figure it out.  Please comment below with tips and I’ll modify my instructions if appropriate.

These instructions are for turn signals not working intermittently.  There is another common problems where turn signals don’t turn off right away — that’s a different problem, but may be worth trying this because it is cheap!

TOOLS: flat head screwdriver, 7 MM socket

1. Visit your local GM dealer (doesn’t have to be Pontiac) and ask for a Hazard Switch for your car (this is the button you press to turn on your hazards).  They will probably know all about your problem.  Don’t be afraid to ask for the part at cost since this should have been a recall.  I got mine for $19:

2. I started with popping out the ignition ring. (Tip from George T in the comments: Don’t use a screw driver to remove the ring around the ignition switch, just pull the bezel with even force and it will remove it without damage.)

Sorry, my picture is bad, but I think you need to gently get pressure with a flat screwdriver to pry it out.  If you don’t do this first, you’ll see what happens — it gets broken:

3.  Next you need to pry off the bezel over the whole center console area.  I put my screwdriver to the right of the radio.  Once I could fit my fingers under the right side of the cover, I firmed pulled and the cover comes off:

4. Once I pulled the cover off, I put in the key, turned the ignition to on, put the car in Neutral and was able to pull out the console cover better:

5. Obviously, behind where the hazard button is located, is what we need to remove.  Start by unclipping the wire.  You need to push in the clip on the left and right side — enough to push the whole part back through the front, but we’ll do that after we remove in inner cover.

6. To take the whole cover off, remove the wires from the ETS button and cigarette lighter.

7. Now get yourself a 7 MM socket to remove the inner cover.  There are three screws holding it in (only 2 shown):

8. Your next job is to push in the two nubs holding the flasher in place, while pushing the whole part back through the front:

9. I had a difficult time doing this.  Many of you will think it’s easy, but I just could not get it to come out.  The black plastic is fragile — avoid breaking it.  The green plastic is fine to break, so maybe a tool to push both sides in at the same time would be best.  (Tip from Jim K in the comments: In order to squeeze the side tabs of the hazard switch to slide it out of the bracket, I taped a ¼” nut on each jaw of my channel locks, and squeezed directly behind the tabs because I couldn’t get a good grip on the tabs themself. Please read on as to why I didn’t want to break it out.) Here’s what things looks like when I finally got it:

10. You should be able to handle the rest yourself, just go backwards of the above steps.

Now a much happier car!

If your turn signal still isn’t working properly, the other big problem I read about is the multi-function switch in the steering column (attached to the turn signal stalk).  That’s much more expensive and I haven’t done it…yet!  The primary symptom of the other problem is that the flasher noise continues even after the turn signal turns off.  This website has some instructions and pictures.

Jim Kjendalen emailed me with these helpful thoughts on why this is happening:

I looked at the data sheet for the IC in the flasher. It looks like the only way for the “flasher” to activate & click, is to see a low impedance or ground on pin 8 of the IC. Crud on the steering column [multi-function switch] as described earlier, can definitely cause this.

I would “hazard” a guess, 🙂 that what’s burning up the flasher module is the extra blinking that is occurring. Each time you hear a click, the relay contacts are opening & closing. Mechanical relays like these have a fixed life span of so many open/close cycles after which they just wear out. Driving around with the relay clicking for hours/hours is shortening the life dramatically.

In short, I don’t think the crud itself is destroying the IC, but the excess clicking is likely wearing out the mechanical relay in the module prematurely. If you fix the steering column crud as soon as you start to hear the unwanted clicking, you probably won’t need to replace the relay.

link to the 8 pin IC http://www.atmel.com/Images/doc4726.pdf

 

[UPDATE 7/10] My car has been getting worse and worse with the turn signal clicking continuing, even with not having the turn signal on.  It is usually in the morning, and it goes away after a few minutes.  However, today it kept doing it for about 45 minutes straight!  I’m wondering whether this multi-function switch problem is actually the reason why the flasher goes bad…

[UPDATE 9/11] My turn signal is making a clicking noise again at random times… I’m going to have to mess with that multi-function switch soon it seems. With 22,000+ visits to this post since June 2008, this is no small problem..

[UPDATE 4/12] Bye bye, Grand Am. Who knows, maybe the next owner will end up reading this very page!

 

Autoplay disabled on new Dell Optiplex and Latitude

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I’ve noticed that Windows XP autoplay for installation CDs has been disabled on new Dell Optiplex 745 and Latitude D630 and D830 for the last few months.  I have not read about this anywhere else and have not been able to figure out how to fix it.

Comments are welcome!

“Preparing to Install” Fix — Windows Update in Vista

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I’ve been working most of the day on a laptop that I just cannot get the Windows Updates to install.  A while ago, it received the dreaded “Configuring updates: Stage 3 of 3 – 0% complete.  Do not turn off your computer” with a continuous reboot after an automatic update.  See here for more info.  I did the workaround for that (no thanks for Microsoft).

Now, it had error 8000FFFF.  Thanks to nskillen here, I fixed that, but Windows Update would just have “Preparing to Install..” but would never work.

So, my answer was to install this update from Microsoft.  This 937287 update, I believe, is a fixed version of the update that failed in the beginning.  In fact, here is a paragraph from the end of the instructions on how to fix your computer during the Stage 3 of 3 – 0% problem:

To avoid this problem, obtain and install update 937287 from the Microsoft Download Center separately from all other updates on Windows Update site. Install the update that applies to your version of Windows Vista to enable future updates to be installed successfully.

Worst malware infection I’ve seen in years

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I’m now working on the worse infection I’ve seen in years.  I’m early in the process, but here are some symptoms:

Once I cleaned the malware up in Safe Mode using AVG Free 8 (which was not easy at all), when I rebooted in to Windows XP, I could no longer run any EXE files.  When I tried to open the Control Panel, it said “C:\windows\explorer.exe Application Not Found.”

I couldn’t find anything on Google that helped me with that message.  I did find this, which fixed that symptom:

http://dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm

I downloaded the EXE file association fix, unzipped it to a floppy disk and was able to run the REG file on the broken computer, and now I can run executable files again.

Back to work on it!