Items filtered by date: December 2015

1. Turn OFF the "Automatically restart" checkbox. When the system BSODs you will then be able to SEE the crashdump on screen. This is important as you can typically SEE the offending driver that is causing the fault. More importantly is that it allows you to see the TYPE of fault. If you don't do this, the system will automatically restart and you will miss this vital information. NOTE: If this is a headless server hosted somewhere, you may not wish to do this... your system will not reboot until told to.. which means it will hang forever.

2. Turn OFF the "Overwrite an existing file" checkbox. Otherwise, if you have multiple faults you will never know about them since you would overwrite the previous crash dump. In some cases where "Paged Pool" is corrupted due to an offending driver, you may trigger a secondary fault that is harder to track down if you try to rectify it before it can be pushed to OCA. If you overwrite the file, you will be out of luck in comparing the dumps.

3. In a pinch a minidump is fine. 9 times out of 10 having the complete dump of memory is useless unless the debug team require to debug virtual memory issues (like BAD_PAGED_POOL_HEADER faults). A little known fact is that the data Microsoft fires off to OCA is actually a bastardization of the minidump, which is then sent to code on the OCA server which goes through a filtering algorithm to determine the true cause of the failure, and is then placed into the buckets for each vendor. If they need more information (like the full dump) you get routed to a special web page, and are then asked to upload it.

If you want to get geeky and LOOK at the fault (in case you skipped point one and the system rebooted), it is possible. To do this you will need to download Microsoft's kernel debugger called WinDbg. Then take the following steps:

1. Start WinDbg

2. Create a directory in the root of C: and call it "symbols" (mkdir c:\symbols)

3. Click on File, Symbol File Path. Here you will enter the symbols path, which is needed to effectively read debug information. Since Microsoft makes its public symbol server available to us, lets use it. The path will be:

 SRV*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols 

4. Once you apply the symbol path, select the "Reload" checkbox and then hit Ok.

5. Now go File, Open Crash Dump and load the file you wish to view. The minidump will typically be located in %systemroot%\minidump (in my case C:\windows\minidump).

6. When you hit Ok, the debugger will contact the symbol server, sync the data and load the debug screen with the data that it can read.

7. Now at the cmd prompt type !analyze -v

You now have a full debug of what has faulted, with all the information you need. At this point you can check information on the stack, look at the last instructions before fault and do all the magic a kernel guy does. Chances are, most of the information will be foreign to you. Don't fret. That's what people like me are for. Just look for something that says:

 Probably caused by : foodriver.sys  ( foodriver+4f20 )

Chances are, THAT is your offending driver (and the offset is the location, so if you let the vendor know they will know right down to the line number).

What do you do now? Well remove it. If the driver loads on demand, not a problem, you can simply remove the offending software. But what if the driver loads at boot time? You will never be able to do that, since the system will constantly crash on startup!

That is why the "Recovery Console" exists. Stick in your W2K3 or XP CD and boot from it. When asked, hit "R" for Recovery Console. When prompted type in your Adminstrator's password. Once logged into the console type net stop . This will set the driver to NOT load on boot. You should then be able to boot up, and remove the offending driver.

To Fix this issue you need to Take ownership of the file(s).

You can do it the hard way, Or the easy way.

The Hard Way

To take full ownership:
1. Right click file, select properties.
2. Hit security tab, select advanced
3. Click owner tab, the hit edit (accept the UAC pop-up box)
4. Select your username, click OK, accept the pop up box, then OK out of all dialogue boxes

To take full control
1. Right click file, select properties.
2. Hit security tab, then click on your username.
3. Hit edit, then click on your username on the pop up screen
4. Check the box marked "full control" under the allow heading
5. OK out of all dialogue boxes

Now you have ownership and full control of that file.

The Easy way

Download this file and install the TakeOwn+.reg file. After you have done that all you need to do is Right click + Shift on the file that you want to take ownership of and select Take ownership.

Services are added from the Command Prompt. You need to know the actual service name as opposed to what Microsoft calls the Display Name. For example, if you wanted to create or delete the Help and Support service, the name used at the Command Prompt would be "helpsvc" rather than the Display Name of "Help and Support". The actual service name can be obtained by typing services.msc in Run on the Start Menu and then double clicking the Display Name of the service. Once you know the name;

To Create A Service

• Start | Run and type cmd in the Open: line. Click OK.
• Type: sc create
• Reboot the system

To Delete A Service

• Start | Run and type cmd in the Open: line. Click OK.
• Type: sc delete
• Reboot the system

If you prefer to work in the registry rather than through the command prompt to delete services;

• Click Start | Run and type regedit in the Open: line. Click OK.
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
• Scroll down the left pane, locate the service name, right click it and select Delete.
• Reboot the system

When a router connects to the internet it aquires an IP address, it then shares this ip's ports with any computers plugged into it. Each ip has about 65,000 ports.

Now Imagine a router is like a Telephone PBX system, 1 telephone number , lots of extentions and the secretary connects you to the right department. Now imagine the IP address is the telephone number, the extentions are 'ports' and the secretary is the router.

Streams/calls come from the internet to your IP address/telephone number but each piece of information/call has its own port/extention it needs to go to. Your computer needs to recieve this information, so the secretary/router needs to know where to forward the information/packets to.

Setting up these rules to control the flow of data is called 'Port Forwarding', you forward the external data to your 'Internal IP' address.

By default no forwarding is setup so the data is lost and you will get very slow speeds and bad video

There are 3 ways of port forwarding:

1. UPNP - Once this is setup on the router and your PC all ports are forwarded automatically, not all software supports this.

2. DMZ - This is a setting on the router where it will forward all external data to one internal IP address, This is very easy to setup. run 'CMD' from the run menu, type 'ipconfig /all', make a note of your internal IP address and enter it in to the UPNP settings page in the router, If you are using DHCP you will need to change the DMZ setting every time you restart your PC. If using a static this should only be required once.

3. Manual Port Forwarding - This is the hardest of the 3 but can be useful if you are having trouble with connections, There will be a page for port forwarding in your router, sometimes it is called something different. The idea here is you forward just the ports you need to your local IP address. Do not use this method if you are using DHCP, the default setting for networks.

Use this website for more informatino and guides on 'Port Forwarding'