The Fake Geek

Problem: You try to play a DVD movie or try to run some other disc and nothing happens. The drive spins and seems to work but Windows does nothing. You look into My Computer and the drive is missing there. You look into the device manager and see the device but it has a warning.

Fix: You need to delete the optical drive upper/lower filters entries in the HKLM registry tree.

THE METHOD:

1. Open RegEdit (Start>Run> Type “regedit”)
2. Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}”
3. Delete the “UpperFilters” value.
4. Delete the “LowerFilters” value.
5. Restart the computer.
6. You might need to uninstall then reinstall any burning software you may have (Nero, iTunes, etc…) do this now.

Note: Backup your registry and create a restore point before doing any of this.

How to explain this problem to the client: Sir, sometimes when you uninstall a burning application it forgets to change a few settings so that other programs will work fine. This is just a case where it forgot to remove its’ “upper/lower filters” settings. No worries though your computer is now safe and sound! Money please.

Good luck and tell me how it goes on the forums.

Problem:You suddenly and inexplicably cannot send or delete some mail from your outbox.

Fix: Apply a Microsoft update to Windows Mail to fix the problem

THE 32-BIT METHOD:

1. Ensure that you are running 32-bit Windows Vista.
2. Download the 32-bit version of the update (Clicky).
   
3. Apply the update.
4. Restart the computer.

THE 64-BIT METHOD:

1. Ensure that you are running 64-bit Windows Vista.
2. Download the 64-bit version of the update (Clicky).
3. Apply the update.
4. Restart the computer.

And you should be able to delete that pesky mail.

How to explain this problem to the client: Good customer, it would seem that Windows Mail lost a part of the mail and can’t delete it anymore, it’s a Windows Mail bug. We’ve installed an update that fixes the bug. Isn’t that great?

Good luck and tell me how it goes on the forums.

So a client brought in their computer to my repair shop and it was a Mac. Now we don’t get many of these in for repair so I screamed in surprise and after the customer left (I had to convince him that the scream was a nasty oversight on my part and would NOT happen again) I set to work using my diagnostic CDs. Then I ran into a problem.

Problem:The freakin’ disc won’t eject from a Mac!?

Fix:There are many different way to eject discs from a Mac including terminal commands. One of the following should work. I’m gonna start obvious and work my way into ridiculous.

THE FIRST METHOD:

If you have access to the Mac desktop then things should be easy. Simply click and drag the icon of your CD into the trash. Hopefully the thing pops out and your free to enjoy your life!

THE SECOND METHOD:

Turn off your mac, click on the mouse button (hold it, don’t let go!) and turn the Mac back on. The Mac tells itself ”Oh! The user is holding down the mouse button! Why that’s the command to tell me to eject any CDs I might have! I should do that!” And the disk should eject.

THE THIRD METHOD:

Turn off the computer. Turn it on and immediately press down on the following buttons: Command-Option-O-F. The command button has an apple or a weird squiggly thing on it, the option button says option, and then the two letters “O” and “F”. Keep these pressed until something called Open Firmware loads onto the screen. It will say “welcome”, type: “Eject CD” This should eject the disc.

If it works type “mac-boot” and your Mac will load your desktop normally.

THE FORTH METHOD (NOT FOR NOOBS):

(This has the potential to damage your CD Drive, so use it with caution.)

Sometimes the CD can be stuck on an “infinite loop.” This simply means that the disc is too busy spinning ’round and ’round to pay attention to your pleas telling it to come out. This is the method that finally allowed me to get my disc out of the Mac. What you need to do is find a business card (paper not plastic!), something cheap nothing special. Fold the business card in half and carefully and slowly push it into one of the ends of the drive. Keep in mind that your doing this while the computer is on.

You should feel the disc slowing down as the friction against the card reduces its speed. Once it is completely motionless one of two things will happen:

1) It will come out by itself. Congratulations your done!

2)You have to tell it to come out. This means that you have to use method #4 in combination with one of the other attempts above. And the disc will finally come out.

How to explain this problem to the client: Well valued shopper sometimes computers mess up and there really isn’t anything we can do about it. It looks that in this case the Mac simply “forgot” about the disc and you need to use special methods to coax the disc out. Good thing you have me as your tech, eh?

Good luck and tell me how it goes on the forums.

Good day to you all. I hope things are treating you okay today. ;)

Problem: Windows boots normally and you hit the logon page. You click on one of the accounts and it starts to log in, you see a flash of your desktop wallpaper and then you’re logged back out again. This happens for every account.

Fix: You need to tweak the registry using remote registry tools. I’ll briefly show you how.

THE FIRST METHOD:

The way to fix this problem is by modifying a registry key in the HKLM registry tree. The key points to a file located in WINDOWS_DIRECTORY\system32\ (WINDOWS_DIRECTORY is most likely “C:\windows\ but some users like to choose something else….) The file is called userinit.exe.

Unfortunately since you cannot log in you can’t get to the registry via the normal way. There are a variety of ways of loading something called a “Remote Registry” and the process that I like the best is by using a free tool called UBCD4Win. It’s basically a liveCD version of windows. Get a copy and boot into UBCD4Win and on the desktop you should see an icon called “Remote RegEdit.”

Open it and load the remote registry hives. You don’t need to in this example but you might as well “load all remaining users.” And there you have it, you should have your registry open in front of you and ready to be modified.

Okay let’s modify!

1. Navigate to the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon” registry key.
2. Find the “userinit” value. Delete it. (If you can’t find it, don’t worry we’ll be creating a new one.)
3. Right click and create a new string value. Call it “userinit” and put the following into it (without the quotes): “WINDOWS_DIRECTORY\system32\userinit.exe” (where WINDOWS_DIRECTORY is the path to your windows folder, usually it will be “C:\windows”.)
4. Reboot the computer and you should be able to log in!

THE SECOND METHOD (Try the first method first!!):

Sometimes the above method may not work because the windows files themselves have become damaged. In this case you must replace them with a new, working version. Thankfully this is easy.

Using UBCD4Win you can boot into the recovery console (make sure that your version of UBCD4Win was built with the XP version of Windows.) Follow the prompts (I assume I don’t have to hold your hand for this) and once you’re in the recovery console do the following:

Open the correct windows installation and enter your administrator password if you have one. You’ll see something like “C:\Windows\”, this means that it is pointing to your windows folder. That’s good and normal except the file that we want to change is in another folder so we must point to that folder.

1. Type the following: “CD SYSTEM32” and press enter. The prompt should now say something like “C:\windows\system32”.
2. Type the following: “COPY USERINIT.EXE WSAUPDATER.EXE” This will replace the file that is responsible for this mess.
3. Type “Exit”.

Now you should be able to log into windows. The last thing you need to do is change the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon” key as described in the first method.

And hopefully that will work!

How to explain this problem to the client: Well sir this is caused by a rogue piece of spyware that likes to maim your windows installation when you remove it. It’s like a kamikaze attack. Pretty snarly isn’t it?

Good luck and tell me how it goes on the forums.