Computing desk
< March 11	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	March 13 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 12

Computer unable to renew IP Address

I have until recently been successfully using a Dynalink RTA1025W wireless router for an ADSL2+ connection. It was used wirelessly for my laptop, running Ubuntu 7 and through ethernet cables to an XBox 360 and a pc and laptop running xp. I recently had the router replaced under warranty due to an unrelated hardware problem and the replacement unit will only interface with the wireless laptop and the xbox. When attempting connection with the windows computers, it says they're unable to renew their ip addresses. I have looked for this problem extensively on the Web but have never found an example of where the problem was a new router of the same model. Does anyone know of any settings for the pc or router that I should try in order to solve the problem? Help would be greatly appreciated and I'd be happy to give further details Mix Lord (talk) 07:20, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The first thing to check is whether the DHCP server on the router is turned on. If it is, we'll see what else we can think of... --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:21, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

DHCP is on, thanks for your help

203.219.227.72 (talk) 09:28, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is really guesswork, but maybe the windows PCs are remembering addresses that the router has allocated to your other devices. Bring up a command prompt and type

ipconfig /release

followed by

ipconfig /renew

If that fails type

ipconfig /all

and paste the results here so we can take a look. -- Q Chris (talk) 09:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ipconfig/renew takes ages then says "An error occurred while renewing interface Local Area Connection : unable to contact your DHCP server. Request has timed out.

ipconfig/all gives the following info Primary DNS Suffix................... Node Type............................Unknown Ip Routing Enabled...................No WINS Proxy Enabled...................No

Connection-Specific DNS Suffix....... Description..........................SiS 900-based PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter Physical Address.....................00-14-2A-78-3F-83 Dhcp Enabled.........................Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled............Yes IP Address...........................0.0.0.0 Subnet Mask..........................0.0.0.0 Default Gateway...................... Dhcp Server..........................255.255.255.255

Apologies if I have uploaded any sensitive information there which may make my computer vulnerable.

Definitely check the physical stuff: Is the link light on on both the back of your network card and for the appropriate port on the router? If not, try a different router port, network cable, and lastly, it doesn't hurt to re-seat the network card (unless it is onboard network, as most everything seems to be these days...). Also, if your router isn't of the "built-in ADSL modem" type, try bypassing it by plugging your PC straight into the modem. Usually, trying to find a new driver for your ethernet card/system board (whichever you have) is useful, but I think Windows 7 does a pretty dang good job of finding the best driver. It also doesn't hurt to call your provider, and provide them with your MAC address (the one labeled "Physical Adress" on your readout above). I wouldn't be surprised if frontline techs can't see this type of information (and they'll walk you through all of the "unplug and replug all of your cables, power cycle the modem etc.), but a real "tech support" type person can see if any requests are coming from that MAC address and/or if there is a restriction on it for any reason. Finally, when it all comes down to it, there's always the possibility that your network card/system board have gone bad. I mention this last because it's usually the hardest to test for a desktop. You'll have to take your computer somewhere with another, otherwise working internet connection and try it out. Sorry if any of this was too obvious.NByz (talk) 05:40, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was just taking a shower and thinking to myself: My feeling would be that if, when you did the release/renew, it took more than say... 5 seconds to return the error, I would lean towards calling your provider first, and the less time it took, the more suspicious I would be of your local hardware (especially your network card/system board).NByz (talk) 05:59, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And of course, doublecheck your network settings in the control panel. Under TCP/IP properties, make sure everything looks normal in there. Everything should normally say "Obtain automatically."NByz (talk) 06:01, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All routers I have come across use NAT by default, so the router allocating an IP address to connecting devices is not dependent on the router receiving an upstream IP address from the ISP. Even when unplugged from the phone/broadband you should be able to connect, receive an IP address, and view the router admin screens. I think I would do three things, firstly check out the router status from your laptop - looking at connected devices, etc. See if there is a limit on the range of addresses the router is set to allocate. Secondly I would check the LAN configuration on your windows box, make sure it isn't configured to ask for a fixed address. If neither of these work try borrowing another router or taking your PC to another network to see if it will connect to that. BTW, you have not given anything away about your network settings because you weren't even connected! -- Q Chris (talk) 09:38, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

best free fire-and-forget antivirus for Win 7 Home?

We just bought my computer illiterate mother-in-law an HP desktop with (legit) Windows 7 Home. What's the best free antivirus that I can install and set to regularly run/update itself on a regular schedule? In addition to the usual Admin / User account split, I want to make this desktop as bullet-proof as possible (for free) so that I don't have to be constantly going over there to do recoveries and such. I think most people with tech un-savvy parents can relate. I was thinking Spybot S&D would be a good start due to its realtime registry protection. Anything else? 61.189.63.188 (talk) 10:49, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've used AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition for quite a while, and it fits this purpose nicely. I set it up for my in-laws a few years ago and they have been happy with it, and more importantly I do not get calls about viruses. It's quite unobtrusive; the only issue I've found is that when a new version is released, it suggests you go ahead and buy the paid product (much like their website does) with small links to upgrade to the newer free version. This is fairly harmless. In my case, I told my in-laws that if it ever asked them to upgrade to a paid version, to look for the free version or to give me a call. (They actually ended up buying it anyways, but not because they forgot; my mother-in-law saw the notice, actually researched the difference between the paid and free versions, learned what the new features meant on her own and decided whether or not they justified the purchase. I was quite proud of her for this.) Coreycubed (talk) 15:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say Avast!. You have to get a code via email to use it, and then in 6 months or something it makes you get another one... I'm sure some people could accidentally convince themselves they need to buy the non-free version at that point. <shrug> If you want super free, you should check out ClamWin. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

61, you are an excellent human being for doing the admin/non-admin split. 74.212.140.226 (talk) 17:32, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I use Avira, and they have a free version. Nod32 gets consistently high ratings. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:17, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials (download link). Unlike AVG, it doesn't nag you to buy a paid version. You'll hardly notice it at all, actually. I also like NOD32, but it costs money. Indeterminate (talk) 10:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Truecrypt error?

I get this message in my Ubuntu terminal when I use Truecrypt:

(truecrypt:8647): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+2.0-2.12.9/gtk/gtkwidget.c:8547:
widget class   `GtkPizza' has no property named `row-ending-details'

What does it mean?Quest09 (talk) 11:39, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's a bug in the software library that displays your buttons and things on the screen (called wxWidgets). It was fixed a couple of years ago so you may be able to get an updated version of the wxWidgets package that will fix it. I'm not sure of the effect of the bug, but it's discussed a bit here and here. Apparently changing themes might help. --Sean 13:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Simple Python program

I have a very basic knowledge of Python and I am working in a simple program, mostly to myself and to learn the language.

I just want it to open a text, display it and if you double click a word, it should show the definition (from a dictionary) of the word in a separate window.

I know how to do things like opening, the dictionary with the definition and simple stuff. But how do you associate a double click on a word to an action?

Furthermore, can you have a Python window with drag-and-drop properties? Like you drag a file into it and the program opens it? --ProteanEd (talk) 17:30, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All of these things are possible, but doing stuff with windows and clicking and drag-and-drop is probably not a very good learning exercise. I've been programming in Python for a while, and the thought of building a GUI program in it (or in any other language) is kind of terrifying. Things like Project Euler or 99 Prolog Problems (you don't need to know Prolog to solve them, though it might be hard to understand some of the examples) are more suited to training at programming. GUI programming (especially GUI programming that needs to interact with the outside environment, like drag-and-drop) tends to involve an awful lot of wading through manuals and tedious tweaking. I'd much rather try to find the best solution to "P09: Pack consecutive duplicates of list elements into sublists" than to figure out how to recognize a double-click event, and I'd learn more from the former, too. Or you could try to make your program a command-line program that gives the definition of a word that the user types in.

Even if you one day want to write GUI programs (a noble goal), I'd recommend getting the fundamentals down first. The reason that Python, and Scheme and other such languages are good for learning is that they don't give you a lot of extraneous trouble most of the time. In my (limited) experience, GUI programming is a lot of extraneous trouble.

That said, if your heart is set on this particular task, there's a list of GUI toolkits on the Python wiki. Good luck! Paul Stansifer 20:03, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The simplest gui package for python is probably tkinter, which comes with it. Its main drawback is that the widgets are rather ugly and have their own style. It doesn't come with any docs, but the "Tkinter reference: a GUI for Python" document linked from tkinter is pretty good. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 08:50, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Countering virus infection without antivirus program

Resolved

1. Does My Computer essentially mean your whole computer where ALL files are located? Which means, if I wanna do an extensive search through the whole computer (in my case, for virus), selecting "My Computer" as the location would mean my whole computer?

2. Another computer is infected by virus (NewFolder.exe), on 12 March 11:20PM GMT+8. I have already rebooted it to Safe Mode. If I am to conduct search with the following criteria:

location: My Computer
to include searching "hidden files and folders", "system folders" as well as "tape backup")
Date created: from 12 March to 13 March (it's already 13 in my place)
type of file: Application
file size: at least 20,000KB (the virus size is 24,713KB or something around that number)

Is it safe to assume that the result will show ALL the virus files in my computer? Due to some reasons I don't have an updated antivirus program, and since the computer has plenty of important stuffs that aren't mine, I can't afford to reformat it.

Quick reply will be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance. — Yurei-egg tart 19:56, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, this is pointless. Viruses very often aren't individual files, but are instead changes done to several pre-existing files. You can't make assumptions about the sizes of files, because many viruses are polymorphic (they change with every infection, to evade detection). You can't assume they're applications, because many aren't. You can't trust the creation date, because that is trivial for a virus to forge. Viruses can lurk in places that a simple search like this can't find (the boot block, for example). Worse, some advanced viruses install a rootkit, which thwarts all but the most sophisticated attempts to detect them. You need an up to date anti-virus obtained from a trustworthy source; there is no substitute. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:08, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are plenty of free anti-virus programs (e.g. Antivir, Avast!, AVG). Clarityfiend (talk) 20:18, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I heard that there are many unreliable free antivirus programs, but I guess I'll try AVG out of desperation... But is it possible to download, install then execute it while being in Safe Mode? — Yurei-egg tart 20:27, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Edit Looks like AVG has issues with other antivirus programs on the same computer? The infected computer has expired Norton antivirus program, am I supposed to uninstall it just in case (is it possible in Safe Mode?), in order to install AVG without problem? — Yurei-egg tart 20:50, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You should never use more than one anti-virus software on a computer (and you should always have an updated anti-virus software). So uninstall the expired Norton, and then install AVG. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:56, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

More questions raining down... I don't see any Uninstall file for Norton. I've googled around and it says I should use Add/Remove program. There's the Norton Removal Tool, but I can't find the product key anywhere and updating it is impossible, what can I do if Add/Remove program doesn't completely work? And again, are all these possible via Safe mode? Thank you guys for the quick replies, really needed it (still needing it ._.). — Yurei-egg tart 21:14, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They tell you to save your key so you can reinstall Norton again; if it's expired then there's nothing to worry about. If that doesn't totally remove it (after at least two reboots after running the uninstaller) then Revo Uninstaller is pretty thorough. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:21, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh God, I can't Add/Remove programs without going back to Normal mode. It's nearly impossible to operate with the virus lagging it. plus the fear of it corrupting any essential windows component. wwwhat am i supposed to do if AVG fails to help me? Reformat? Oh that's the worst thing I can do. Please enlighten me with ANY, ANY tip that may help in my situation. Oh my kudos to Wikipedian for swift replies... Uhh what will happen when the virus finishes duplicating folder-named .exe files? Time to corrupt the system files? As much as I don't want that to happen, I'd like to hear if theres such a possibiltiy — Yurei-egg tart 21:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Edit: the uninstallation of Norton is still ongoing but Windows is warning me about low disk space, thanks to the virus duplication. ~~What will happen when the disk space is completely full? Anything I can do to slow it down or whatever?~~ Okay it has already reached its limit, now the uninstallation process hasn't been moving. Any method to improve the fast or something? — Yurei-egg tart 22:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I start by pulling the drive and connecting it to a clan PC using a USB adapter. Scan it with Avira (AVG rates about the same), Superantispyware, Spybot – Search & Destroy and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. If I get a hit for Vundo / Virtumonde, then there are other tools. Pop it back in the system and it is usually workable to where you can install all those apps and scan again. You may need fixes for bits that can get disabled: MSInstaller, regedit, winsock and the like. If in doubt, call a prof ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:15, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I guess Gadget850 means a "clean" PC and an USB disk enclosure. That's good advice - there comes the time when things are so broken that you can't really get it to run well enough to fix itself. Before you run those programs (I agree that they're all good) you should backup the data from the victim to the clean "medic" PC; with a system this badly mangled (and frankly I find uninstalling Norton often adds to the mangling) you can't discount the possibility that the files, or even the filesystem, are in jeopardy. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:12, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea what "USB adapter" or "USB disk enclosure" is so I don't know if there's one in my house. Will be it possible if I download, install and run Malwarebytes free version on the infected computer in Safe Mode with Networking, at the same time having expired Norton around? I have no knowledge of removing any component from the CPU so if my proposed method will work as fine, I'd love to do that instead.
Assuming I'll go with Gadget850's method, I'm kinda confused: cleaning up C drive essentially means cleaning up the whole infected computer? Well, there's only C drive in the computer; D is CD ROM one and E is.. unused. — Yurei-egg tart 09:52, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

CHEERS EVERYBODY, thank you for all the concern, my brother came to the rescue and got it done in 20minutes, no reformat required. He reckoned it was a weak virus. I got scolded, but not as bad as expected :'))) There's still rootkit left in the computer, but it should be okay from now on. Thanks again for all the help! — Yurei-egg tart 12:19, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

what is the name of the task manager executable on windows 7? (I'd like to start it with a shortcut)

Resolved

What is the name of the task manager executable on Windows 7? (like taskman.exe, taskmanager.exe, or something like it). I'd like to be able to start the task manager via a shortcut. Thanks.82.113.121.104 (talk) 23:24, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

taskmgr.exe (which I discovered using taskmanager) -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:31, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

thanks! that was it. I've added a resolved template... 82.113.121.104 (talk) 23:36, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why can't you simply use Ctrl+Shift+Esc? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:49, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not answering the question, but Process Explorer is much better —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 20:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]