win32/Glenwiry.p fiasco

So I think the most recent update of Computer Associate's virus scan definitions is giving false positives on wextract.exe. If you have real-time scan activated you'll probably get C:/WINDOWS/system32/wextract.exe and C:/WINDOWS/system32/dllcache/wextract.exe quarantined by your anti-virus software. This might prompt Windows to put up a red flag and demand that you insert your operating system install disk. Not sure yet what the best fix is, so I am going to wait out til the next update from CA which should fix the problem. If that doesn't happen soon or my system has problems due to the quarantined/missing wextract.exe, I will probably restore the quarantined item using CA's tools that come with the anti-virus software.

This all did give me quite a scare though since I pride myself on keeping as secure a system as I can considering I am running Windows. Anyway, I hope this post helps somebody not feel as freaked out as I was initially. There isn't much info online as of now.

Oh, as a side note, I would be careful about going to sites you might find by searching for glenwiry. I think many of them are bogus. If you do go to one by mistake, don't try and click any videos posted there. And if you browser goes into a pop-up hell, you should ctrl-alt-del and kill the browser process. That should get you out of the pop-up carousel.

If I learn anything new tomorrow I'll try and update here, but as you can see by my post history, I am not the most prolific blogger.

Max memory in Toshiba Satellite 1955-S803

Just a quick note about the laptop I use at work--a Tosihba Satellite 1955-S803. It is a bit old (2004?) with a Pentium 4. Anyway, the documentation I found online said this thing has a maximum 1GB of memory. It comes standard with 2 256MB sticks. Things were sluggish and the only memory I had available was a 1GB stick, so I popped it in place of one of the 256s and thought to myself: "Self, you should just leave that other 256 in there and see what the heck happens." I listened to myself. I assumed that nothing too bad would happen. Worst case I figured that the motherboard hardware just wouldn't recognize anything over 1GB, but would make use of up to that amount. Too my delight, Linux booted up just fine and checking /proc/meminfo showed me the full 1.25 GB was recognized. Awesome. So the moral of this engrossing tale is that you can't always trust the info from the folks selling you the equipment. Sometimes you can trust your overall knowledge of computer architecture. Now, I wouldn't try and shove all kinds of stuff that doesn't belong, but this was benign enough to try. As a quick aside, I think the system will take up to the full 4GB if I had 2 2GB sticks available. If I ever try that, I'll be sure to post about it. I know you can't wait.

Disassembly of a Sharp TM150 cell phone

I have had a Sharp TM150 cell phone for a couple years now. It works well and I haven't had any complaints. But I recently thought, "hey, I don't have no games nowhere on here, nohow." Sometimes it's fun to think in multiple negatives, I highly recommend it.

The whole t-zones thing from T-mobile still somewhat confuses me. When I bought the phone I was under the impression that I could have games, but t-zones won't let me download any. Lame. So I searched for "Sharp TM150 games" and found some sites that would let you download things. The phone has java installed, so these games seem to be .jar archives. The weird, highly disappointing part is that there is no way that I can find to install a game. There is a removable memory card that is handy for moving pictures from the phone to my computer and vice-versa, so it seemed logical that a .jar could be moved likewise. Not gonna happen. Lame.

So the only way to get things installed seems to be to download them. To download them, you have to use some service not run by t-mobile, and it will cost you. But to have access to the Internet you'll need to pay t-mobile an extra monthly fee. Not sounding worth it for a Tetris knock-off I'll use only a couple times a month. Lame.

I would have hoped that the process for installing things on my phone would be more open... a bit naive maybe. So to get a little more to the root of the problem, I cracked the phone open. I wish I could have documented it better with some pictures, but my only camera is actually on my phone. Sorry. My main goal was to kill a half hour and find out what processor is actually in the phone. I achieved the first part, but the second part was a failure. The bottom half of the case (the half with the buttons, as opposed to the half with the screen) opened pretty easily. There are only four screws. You'll need to remove the battery and the little activation card thing that t-mobile supplies. And I think the memory card should be out also. Unfortunately, the processor is located underneath a bunch of casing for the memory card and the charger interface. Couldn't see the chip at all. Oh well.

If I find more info about the phone, I'll be sure to update it here.

Disassembly of an Inspiron 1000 (or how I battled an army of Dell screws and won)

So I've had this Inspiron 1000 for a couple years now and have tried a few times to crack open the case but was either too frustrated or too bored to finish the job. Tonight I found an important clue here. So the game was afoot!

Removing the keyboard securing strip required a little more force than I would have expected. But then again, I think I broke a plastic tab doing it, maybe there was a gentler way to do it. It doesn't seem any worse for the wear after re-assembly, thankfully. Here is a super low-res, blurry photo to illustrate the strip removal:


When you take it off, you'll need to kind of pop it off of the hinge behind the monitor first. Then laying the monitor completely open, you can jimmy the rest open.

Oh, remember to remove the battery before doing any of this stuff. Oh, and don't take my word as gospel on any of this stuff, I'm just a guy who felt like voiding his warranty and couldn't find any better instructions on the Internet (the Dell manuals are lacking). Don't do any of this stuff if you aren't comfortable with basic static safety or don't have the right screwdrivers or haven't taken apart a desktop before or whatever.

Anyway, to get the rest of the case off, you'll need to remove the hard drive and find some secret screws in there. And note there are a couple screws under that keyboard strip:



Heck, there are screws freaking everywhere. My strategy was to unscrew every screw possible until stuff fell apart. It's good practice to keep track of all of the screws somehow. I had a separate piles for monitor screws (there are four), all of the internal screws, the hard drive related screws and all of the underneath screws. Screws!

When I got inside, I was a little overzealous and tried to remove the heatsink on the bus controller and broke the screws (more screws!). So be careful with that:


I was very excited to see that at the end of the whole deal, I didn't have any extra parts and that Windows booted up still and the keyboard still worked. Phew. Now we'll wait and see if the heatsink thing bites me later (I kinda taped it in place).

This was just a Sunday night exercise for me (either that or watch "The Surreal Life"), but if I ever need to replace the keyboard or fan or whatever, I guess I'll know how now.