The Alpha 2 ISO image is available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid/alpha-2/ and here’s a quick screencast showing the installing.

The process has been shortened in video editing but only took around 20 minutes from boot-up to final reboot.

An infected PC we recently looked at had been running ZoneAlarm Internet Security – we don’t know the history of how it was infected, if ZoneAlarm was out of date or if the user had simply ignored warnings and ‘allowed’ the infection in but the PC constantly popped up fake virus warnings all directing the user to part with their credit card details to download the fake anti-virus software. Web browsing was randomly redirected to the same fake antivirus site and any attempt to download or install any genuine anti-virus or anti-malware software was intercepted and again redirected to the ‘purchase’ option.

The only solution was to boot the PC from a boot CD so the infection had no chance to load up and then we can scan the hard drive from a clean environment. In this particular case it took us a record 4 different programs to find and eventually remove the trojans and fraud malware.

The safest option probably would be to format and re-install the whole system but with a system with a lot of data, programs, user settings and configurations this was the best way of getting the PC useable quickly. The user can then back up their data, note down all their settings and then re-install should they want to.

Here’s a list of downloadable CD-ROM images available to help in the battle with malware. Most of them can be downloaded and burned directly to a CD-ROM, others need the particular program installing (on a clean PC!) then updating before it creates an ISO image to burn to CD:

Avast BART CD

Avira AntiVir Rescue System

Bit Defender Rescue CD

F-Secure Rescue CD

Kaspersky Rescue CD Download

Panda Security Rescue CD

Spybot Search and Destroy Boot CD

Trinity Rescue Kit

Ultimate Boot CD for Windows

After installing WAMP the PC was still running at normal speed with WAMP running but whenever we tried to access a simple website we had set up there was a 4 or 5 second lag before the page was displayed.

We were using a simple html file to test it with so that ruled out there being a problem with PHP or MySQL in WAMP so it was just Apache that were were finding slow to access – either locally or through the other Windows 7 PC.

I thought it may be Windows firewall and when I shut the firewall down then requests to Apache speeded up to normal speed. Obviously running with the firewall down isn’t ideal so I thought it might be related to a problem I had using localhost on Vista.

Eventually I found disabling IPv6 on the WAMP PC’s network adapter fixed the problems. We don’t need to run IPv6 and running both IPv4 and IPv6 along with Windows firewall and Apache must cause a bottleneck somewhere.

The flickering seemed to be worst when there was keyboard or mouse activity so we initially thought that maybe the wireless keyboard and mouse were causing interference with the new monitor. We switched to a wired keyboard and mouse but still had the same problem.

We then swapped monitors with another PC but the problem stayed with the Acer laptop so the screen itself was fine. The laptop’s internal screen was fine but the external monitor was still flickering. We then spent several hours download and installing all the latest drivers on the laptop. W even updated the BIOS but still the screen flickered.

Different screen resolutions and refresh rates made little difference. The flickering varied but was always there. Then we had a breakthrough! – we noticed that when we disconnected the laptop’s power supply the flickering stopped. Faulty power supply we decided, having another power supply nearby we switched power supplies but still the flickering was there. So we tried another laptop with the Acer Aspire 5535’s power supply (the other laptop was also an Acer and the output of the two power supplies matched exactly!!) and had no flickering at all so the problem wasn’t the power supply but the laptop itself.

So we have a laptop which runs perfectly on its own but when attached to an external monitor and only when running on mains power the external monitor flickers.

Then whilst talking to a friend with an electronics background he suggested that the cause could be a ground loop between the laptop and the monitor. So I opened up the monitor’s 3 pin plug and disconnected the earth wire (as the monitor costs less and is easier to replace than the laptop!) and voila! the flickering was cured.

So it seems that the cause may be a badly designed power circuit in the laptop. I don’t know if there’s any kind of filtered sockets or plugs that would prevent a ground loop occurring and the fix I’ve used should be used with caution (seek professional advice if you’re at all unsure!) but it works for us.

To remove this sync partnership you need to edit the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SyncMgr\Handlers

Find the branch that refers to Microsoft SQL Server and delete it. Sync Center should then not start up again at reboot (unless you have have other Sync Partnerships).

For some reason in Vista and Windows 7 localhost doesn’t work out of the box. To get it working you have to add this line to the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file:

127.0.0.1      locahost

Now the hosts file is a Windows system file so the only way Windows will allow you to edit the file is if you do it as Administrator. To do this click Start and type CMD in the search box, when Windows shows cmd.exe right-click it and click run as administrator then when the DOS box opens type:

edit c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Then add the 127.0.0.1 localhost line and save and close the file.  Then localhost should work as it did in XP.

Looking closer we found that everything in the ‘My Pictures’ folder had been moved to \users\<user>\pictures on the Vista PC during the copy. Reading up it became clear that with Vista Microsoft change the location of many of the application data and user data folders and to minimise application compatibility due to this Vista uses junction points which are hidden redirects to the new folders. That way applications can look for the old folder that XP would use and be transparently redirected to the new location.

One of these junction points for example points \documents and settings\<user>\application data to \users\<user>\appdata

So care has to be taken when copying files and folders as they don’t always end up where you’d expect them to be. Another problem is that some junction points are cyclic – we found this out by trying to copy the whole system drive of a Vista PC onto a backup disk using nothing but Robocopy. It got to the ‘Application Data’ junction point and just got into a loop copy it over and over again into itself resulting in the destination drive having and endless Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\…. path!

The problem can be avoided by using the /XJD switch when using Robocopy.

PHP Warning: mail(): SMTP server response: 501 5.5.4 Invalid Address

We were trying to add a ‘friendly’  name to the from header of the email in the format: 

$headers .= ‘From:  Name <address@domain.com>’. “\r\n”;

We found that PHP running on Windows doesn’t parse these headers correctly (see http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php ) so the fix was to change to:

$headers .= ‘From:  address@domain.com’. “\r\n”;

Which gets the mail to send but doesn’t allow us to use ‘friendly’ names.