Tag Archives: Technology

Reset TCP/IP and Winsock in Windows – Fix your Broken Internet and Local Network Connections

The following are two of the most handy commands I have come across for repairing PC’s:

These are accessed by going to start, run typing in “cmd” and typing the following in the command prompt:

Reset TCP/IP

netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt

Reset Winsock:

netsh winsock reset

Back in the day, I used to reset Winsock by a longer and more risky process which involved deleting the Winsock and Winsock2 registry folders and reinstalling TCP/IP by hand from a windows INF File; the above command is much much easier.

Once you reboot your computer your network settings should have been reset and you should be able to connect to the internet and see other local computers on the network, barring your network is set up right.

I always use these commands especially after removing a virus. Virus tend to corrupt whatever they were infecting and often will destroy your networking settings in favor of their own. Most anti virus / malware removal tools will remove the virus but not reset your settings to what they used to be as any record of that is usually long gone.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Getting Wireless LAN Working in Linux using ifcfg and wpa_supplicant over WPA2_Personal with AES

This took me almost a full day to figure out so I figure I write down what I did for reference and for others benefit, seeing as I optimized my titles, tags and content. Makes it easier to find this site when using the searches I did to get to the information. I had to piece this together from multiple posts and instructions as each one didn’t work exactly right.

So, I recently got AT&T uVerse, and after configuring it accidentally with a WEP Open Shared Key, realized that not only is it not secure, but some devices have major problems connecting to it. Sometimes I would have a visitor with a laptop come over and the wi-fi just wouldn’t work.

I know Windows 7 has some issues connecting to an older less secure network, in fact, I have found myself having to manually configure networks sometimes in order to get it working if a network is using WEP, the automatic detection just fails. On my network however, even windows XP was failing, so it was time to change. I decided to go with WPA2_Personal using AES Encryption.

Everything was fine, all myd evices connected happily, even the linux box…taht is until I decided ot try to configure it using ifcfg and not Fedora’s built in whatever it is…

I knew how to bind eth0 style devices to my network, but I had never had to do it wirelessly, needless to say the need arose only because my wife decided that it was not acceptable to have a long wire running from the bedroom to the living room to use the extra PC as a server…hence the wireless solution! (At least now I don’t trip over the cord at night!)

I wont bother to bore with the details of the errors I was getting, so, after much frustration, here is how I figured out how to do it:

WordPress Server Migration Gone Bad

Looks like my ever advancing PHP experience and knowledge is coming in handy. I was able to help a major entertainment news website: http://www.bloginity.com, get back on its feet.

They use Godaddy, *shudder* and moved from a dedicated virtual, to a dedicated server. Sure, its cheap, but you get what you pay for. The migration did not go smooth ,Godaddy screwed them over. They had tons of problems. Godaddy should stick to domain names, of which they are, imho, the best to use.

SMX East, I’m Attending, Are You?

I missed the SMX East conference last year, so I am excited to go this year.  I am going on my own budget so money will be tight, I can only afford the Free pass to the expo itself. It gives limited Access, but at least I’ll be able to show my face among the various SEO Vendors.

I’d also like to be able to attend the SEOMoz conference, but there is no free pass and the minimum ticket cost is $649. At the moment it’s just not feasible. Not to mention it’s in Seattle, so the flight ticket cost is even more than to NYC.  It also will most likely be sold out. I asked SEOmoz if they could hook me up, sadly no. Oh Well. On to SMX East!

The reasons I am going to SMX East are:

Attend more than 30 presentations in the SMX Theater

I really would like to see the latest cutting edge info on search. I’ve heard a bit about these presentations and they always have something to take away. I also wouldnt mind twittercasting events at SMX. I remember following SMX when it was going on last year. It was fun enough just to hear what was going on. I plan to sit back and soak up the knowledge here.

Meet the market-defining vendors

I’d really like to get to know the competi…err, the big players out there. I am hoping to find many people I can actually physically talk with that know more about search than I do. In Miami, I hear a lot, some people talk about SEO and search as if they know what it really is, what it really means. They think its easy, cheap…something you throw a couple bucks at and it takes off on its own…I beg to differ, especially for competitive markets.

I have yet to meet anyone who is as involved online as I am, except maybe my evolving Social Media prodigy Alyssa Jones aka FlirtyKumquat. She is doing great with social media, though still not as technically minded as I…she’s getting there. I am hoping to meet many new people in the field that I can learn from and establish long lasting relationships.

Attend a conference session with your Session Sampler

I am really looking forward to testing out one of these sessions, it may inspire me to save up enough money to register for multiple pay for sessions next year.

Attend the keynotes

Keynotes are always important. This is the bulk of the reason to go to SMX, to hear first hand whats happening in SEM, and then chat about it afterwards with experts and professionals in the field.

Network with speakers, conference attendees and vendors

Social networking is at its best when its face to face. I can’t imagine how many Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare accounts I am going to connect with just by meeting different people face to face.  I’ll be checking in at every booth, making sure my name is up there.

See you at SMX! I Hope to learn a lot of new names and faces!!!

MSConfig: Remove Disabled / Unchecked Program Items Manually

It took a while to find this one. After accidentally installing a virus and cleaning it manually, I wanted to clean up the registry entries in MSConfig to not show the now defunct startup .dll’s and .exe’s

The way to do this is quite simple actually. There are 3 locations in your registry where the information is held.

The first two are:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

When you click on the folders you will find the names of the programs. Delete them and they are gone from MSConfig (Note: This does not actually delete the file). Make sure you browse too and delete the offending files before deleting them from the registry. Check both the Local Machine and Current User because they can have separate or duplicate entries. You also want to make sure one program doesnt reinstall another after rebooting thinking you had fixed the issue!

The third location is:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MSConfig

Here you will find two folders: /startupfolder/ and /startupreg/

/Startupfolder/ will have full path folders of items that startup with the “/”‘s trimmed as “^”. You can find information on the programs by clicking the folder and viewing the contents. Delete the folder if you want it out of the MSConfig list.

/Startupreg/ has more descriptive startup items. You can clearly see the names you would normally see in MSConfig.

Once you delete the files from these locations, give your computer a restart and you should no longer have them showing / loading.

These 3 Registry keys/folders are very handy for manually removing viruses, especially those “ANti Virus” Viruses. The ones that make it seem as if they are an anti virus.

You MUST make sure to remove every file associated with them…they will try to hide. Be vigilant and careful. Once manually removed it is recommended ot always followup with antimalware/spyware software such as Spybot Search and Destroy, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and a general Anti-Virus.

Repost from Esotech.org….who will get indexed first? Joomla! or WordPress…we’ll see!!