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A good customer recommended me to her sister-in-law because her sister-in-law needed some help finding her way around Windows 7.  My customer said, “I live just around the corner.  When you’re through there, would you come over and take a look at my computer.  I’m having some issues.”

No problem.  I know better than to press people about their issues.

Chitka is Devil App from Hell

I got there Friday afternoon to find Internet Explorer with at least eleven toolbars and four (or maybe five) rogue search engines.  The home page was snap.do.  I see this a lot, and I have tools to get rid of all of it most of the time.  What surprised me was something I’d never seen before.  On every site I browsed to, there were popup ads.  Some were just annoying ads for bellyfat products.  Others were pretty racy.  Some popups insisted I had to download a flash player before I could view the content.  They really looked like they were being served up by the website, but they were not.  Some ads said “Chitka” and some said “iLivid” and some didn’t have any clues.

I started my cleaning routine.  Microsoft Security Essentials didn’t have anything in its history.  My customer said a quick scan with the free Malwarebytes didn’t detect anything.  I ran a full scan, and it didn’t detect anything then, either.

As I kept on uninstalling malware and cleaning temp files and the registry, I checked and kept getting popups.  I could not get rid of them.  I scrubbed Internet Explorer, I ran the Tweaking.com cleaning utility.  No change.  Tool after tool said everything was fine but the popus were still there.

Worse than just the browser

Eventually I realized it would be good to know if it was just Internet Explorer that was hooped or if this went deeper.  I have portable Firefox on a flash drive, and when I fired that up…I got the popups.

I had a real Scooby Doo moment.

Huh?

Got to be the hosts file.

Fixing or replacing the Hosts files on a 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium is not as straightforward as I would like it to be.  That’s why there are tools and scripts that are supposed to do that.  But none of them worked.  And the really confusing thing about this was that when I looked at the Hosts file, it looked right.

Normal Hosts file

At that point I drew a line under the billable hours, shut down the computer and told the customer I’d be back on Monday with a plan.

Over the weekend I prowled the usual fixit sites.  I found plenty of people who had problems with Chitka, and I found lots of people helping them.  What I did not find was anyone who had actually resolved the problem.  Just a dozen or so open threads.

“Interesting,” I thought.

I love it when a plan comes together

When I went back this morning, I had a plan.  It wasn’t a great plan, but it was, in fact, a plan.  And it was an OK plan because this is both a good customer and even if I really screwed up, a new computer wasn’t out of reach for her.

I did get the Hosts file problem fixed.  Here’s what I figured out to do, based on all the help threads I found.

First, I ran a program called DDS, which produced an inventory of some important settings, including the Hosts file.  That certainly confirmed the hijack.  And it was comforting in a way to know that I hadn’t completely misread the situation.

DDS logfile shows browser hijack

Microsoft Fixit for the Hosts file didn’t fix it.  Tweaking.com’s fix didn’t fix it.  Every time I looked at the Hosts file, it looked normal, but DDS kept telling me it was screwed up.  And the popups were relentless.

I know how to edit the Hosts file in 64-bit Windows Home Premium, but when I opened it, the file looked normal.  Where the heck is the hijacked file?  And why can’t I edit or replace it?

Well, the hell with it.  My weekend research project had turned up a tool called RogueKiller, and wow did it ever look scary.

RogueKiller fixed the Hosts file

I had taken the time to read a little bit of the tutorial, so I had a general idea that if it found a hijacked Hosts file it would fix it.  The other important thing to know is that not everything it finds is a bad thing, so you don’t generally just want to start clicking on things.  I’d downloaded the 64-bit version, so I copied it onto the customer’s desktop and ran it as administrator.

It found the bad Hosts, and when I clicked on Fix Host…it did.  I could see the Hosts file was back to normal.  I rebooted the computer, fired up Internet Explorer and … no popups.

The Aftermath

I then ran the Malwarebytes Antirootkit tool, which found vestiges of Trojan Sierdef.C and cleaned them.  I ran the scan a second time and finally got a clean bill of heath, no toolbars and no popups.

Next I updated Java, FlashPlayer, AdobeReader and all the usual suspects, installed Mike Lin’s Startup Monitor, and flushed the System Restore.

Finally, I uninstalled Microsoft Security Essentials and replaced it with the free version of Avast! antivirus.  It’s more verbose and it nags about keeping risky programs up to date.  And I replaced Malwarebytes with SuperAntiSpyware, which will lock the browser home page, even in the free version.

Then, I set up a backup.

Three and a half billable hours.  Expensive enough to make the customer think twice before clicking indiscriminately, but still not as expensive as a new computer.

Now I just have to fix the thing that makes Outlook 2007 ask if she really wants it to make changes to her computer every time she opens Outlook 2007.  I hope there’s a tool for that.

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Photo: CC-licensed image by zetson, via Flickr

One night as I was doing the wash I flipped the light switch for the light in the laundry room.  Big flash of light, then darkness.

The light fixture in the laundry room is a globe that I have to stand on a ladder to remove before I can change the light bulb.

Three things about me:  I have a healthy respect for electricity, I live in a house built in the 1980’s, and I don’t have a fear of heights, but I do have a fear of falling.

I waited until the next day when it was light, climbed up on a step ladder and changed the light bulb. Brand new pack.  I climbed down, turned off the light and went off to do something somewhere else.  That night, I turned on the light.  Big flash of light, then darkness.

Damn.

Changed the bulb again.  Flicked the switch.  Light came on.  Turned the light off,  turned the light on again.  Big flash of light, then darkness.

OK, OK.  I know the one about doing the same thing and expecting a different result.  I figured out that I needed to replace the fixture or do something with the wiring.  I just didn’t really relish the thought of standing on an aluminum ladder and monkeying around with electricity, so the next few loads of wash were done either in the daytime or by the light from the hallway.

One night after curling my skip mentioned that he’d rewired something in his house.  I told him my little story and he volunteered to come over the next day and fix this problem.   We’d both had many beers, and I wasn’t going to hold him to that, but sure as shooting the next day he showed up with a screw driver and a multimeter.

He climbed right up that aluminum ladder and started taking readings.  He said, “This doesn’t make sense.  Everything is working perfectly.”

I gave him another bulb from the package.  He screwed it in.  I turned on the light.  It lit.  I turned it off, then on again.  Big flash of light, then darkness.

“Do you have any other light bulbs,” he asked, “that you know WORK?”

I took one out of a lamp in the spare bedroom.  It worked in the laundry room.  I put a fresh bulb from that pack in the lamp in the spare bedroom and it would not light.  Nothing wrong with the fixture or the wiring in the laundry room.  The whole pack of bulbs was bad.  I don’t think that had ever happened to me before.

Now this guy just saved me a whole lot of time and money.  Replacing that fixture wouldn’t have made any difference.  It would just have been expensive and a hassle, and it wouldn’t have solved the problem.

Here’s the thing.   Troubleshooting is troubleshooting.  This is what I do for other people’s computers, but I was completely flummoxed when it came to troubleshooting my own light bulb problem.

I’ve had this running through my head ever since.

I’m beginning to see the light

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It’s that time of year again.  That time of year when we wrestle technology to the ground and live stream our Christmas tree.  This year is our 16th year.  We were doing this back in the last century, when it was called “webcasting.”

Here is our tree.  As Eric puts it, “as always, the best one ever.”

You’ll mostly see the tree.  Sometimes you’ll see Eric.  Once in awhile you’ll see me.  Sandy Dog puts in the occasional appearance, too.

There’s chat there.  We don’t monitor it all the time, but if you leave a comment, we’ll see it eventually.

Merry Christmas to all, and best wishes for a happy and prosperous 2013.

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4th key from the right, top row

The last couple of week have been hectic, and the last few days have been long ones.  The economy must be improving.  People are buying computers, tablets, and routers.  And it looks like this is a great time for people to catch up on the maintenance they’ve deferred for eight or nine months.  The good news is I’ve been up early and up late with lots of work to do.

So last night when I checked my calendar I was glad to see there was nothing scheduled for early this morning.  That would give me a chance to finish the next column, do the laundry and some grocery shopping and maybe sleep until 8:15 or so when Sandy Dog would have to go out.

At 8:45 I was still in my jammies checking email and working my way through the first cup of coffee when the phone rang.  An elderly gentleman was calling for help with his computer.  I’d set up his laptop for him last February.  His story:

“My wife was on the computer and everything was fine, and then all of a sudden she said Google was broken.  So I tried a few things and now I have a thing that says all my wireless devices are disabled and I need to enable them.  What do I do? “

I checked my notes to see what computer I had set up for him, and started searching Google for a setup guide or a manual.  I figured if I could tell him how to switch on the wireless we’d be home free.

“Also,” he said, “this thing seems to be frozen.”

Talking him through holding down the power button for 10 or 12 seconds to restart and then through pressing Enter to Start Windows normally bought me the time I needed to find the PDF manual online.  Once Windows started up again, I told him to look at the top row of keys on the keyboard, and count to the 4^th one from the left.

“Is there a light on by that key?”  The manual says if the light is white, the wireless is on.  If amber, the wireless is off.  It shouldn’t be a problem to get him to hit a key combination and turn on the wifi, right?

“Yes, I can see a light there.”

“What color is it?”

“Cate, I have no idea.  I’m color-blind, and my wife is in the shower.”

Just fucking shoot me.

In the end I just had him open a browser and see if it worked.  We got lucky; apparently rebooting connected his wireless again.  We left it that if he had any more trouble he’d schedule a service call.  But what a crazy first call of the day.

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Full disclosure:  I am a Charter Member of AOL.  I loved it.  I still have friends I met, some In Real Life and some online, through AOL.

But that was back in 1980-something.

Today, after I fixed a printing problem for a new customer she asked me to go through a pile of papers, manuals, disks, cables, and who knows what all else to see what she could toss and what she should keep.

And I found this, unopened at the time:

“I’ll just take that away,”I said.

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My customers struggle with passwords.  So do I, a little, but I use KeePass to help me.  I am always pleasantly surprised when I go to a new customer and ask, “Do you know the password to your router?” and they immediately produce the CD sleeve with all the information on it.  I always document the router and wifi passwords when I set up or change or fix anything to do with the router or the wifi.

That just leaves the passwords for everything else that they have to organize.

I came across a product called the Internet Password Organizer.  It’s set up like an address book, so you can keep track of your passwords for your important websites in alphabetical order.  And there are pages for router and ISP information.  Not a bad idea for people who feel better about writing things down than about saving things to a file on a flash drive.  And it beats the heck out of Post-It Notes on the monitor.

Wondering how much it costs, I found this interesting page on Amazon.

Used passwords?

Crazy, huh? Used costs more than New.  Maybe the used ones are full of passwords.

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Service In Steel

I’ve blogged about Public Art in Kelowna and included some photos of the art.  But there are some interesting looking things in town that have nothing to do with art, and today I encountered something in the north end of town that made me reach for my camera.

At the very end of Ethel Street is a … scrap yard, I guess is what it is.  But  this place is filled with huge steel beams, rebar, pipes, machinery, and things I can’t even identify, all heaped in a lot behind a secured fence.  According to the signs, there’s video surveillance.

I found this place on a hot, sunny, Sunday afternoon.  There was no one around except I guess the video camera(s).

I got as close as I could and poked my camera through the fence to get some of the shots.  It was all angles and shadows and shades.  I hope you like the pictures.

You can see it for yourself if you head all the way to the end of Ethel Street.  The steel is on your right.  You can’t miss it.

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Looking up at the original falcon

Stop #32 on the Public Art in Kelowna brochure is Renaissance of a Tree, a wood sculpture carved by a man with a chainsaw.

Pete Ryan carved the falcon from a cottonwood tree that fell in a storm which did considerable damage to City Park in 1997.  The sculpture is meant as a tribute to the tree and to the return of the peregrine falcons, who had recently been sighted in the valley after an absence of 40 years.

In the intervening years, this sculpture has had several Grand Adventures.  The original base, roughly 4 feet in diameter, rotted.  In 2008, Ryan carved a new base and added a young falcon and a nest to the sculpture.

The piece stood at the edge of a building in City Park which served for awhile as washrooms and concession stands and then as offices for some City employees.  The building burned and was eventually demolished in 2011.  Renaissance of a Tree was behind a security fence for awhile and now stands out in the open, where the concession building used to be.

Now, in July 2012, City Council has an agenda item to move Renaissance of a Tree and Zephyr to what will be a new plaza area in City Park.  For some reason, this angers Castanet readers.

Kelowna has over 60 Public Art installations.  I hope to blog about all of them.  Last July the Kelowna Art Gallery’s exhibition “Please Touch the Art: Art in the Public Space”  made me want to visit and blog about all the public art in Kelowna.  In August and September I rode my scooter around town taking photos and blogging about some of the pieces, and I saved some of them to post over the winter.  It’s scooter weather again, finally, and I’m picking up where I left off.

To see all the Public Art posts so far, click on the Public Art link on the right side of this page, or on this link.   Better still, pick up the brochure, or download the PDF, and build your own tour!