Kodak EasyShare C613 Lens Error

So my favorite niece got a Kodak EasyShare C613 for Christmas I believe about a year and a 1/2 ago. Well It had gotten stuck halfway out and when turned on would give a "Lens Error" and then some numbers not sure what they were since it's working now. The process to get it fixed was a piece of cake.

Just take out the 7 screws on the sides and bottom of the camera. I used a #0 Phillips to take them out. The front is not connected by any wires so you will take it off. First though take out the batteries, SD card and pop open the battery compartment.

Start pulling the front from the body of the camera on the bottom. The tops and halfway up the sides is a little more tight. I used a 1.4mm regular screw driver to slide into the gap and turned it to widen the gap. Doing this slowly all around got the front off.

Wipe off the sides of the telescopic lens. Pop the batteries back in and close the compartment. Turn it on. To do this you need to press the on/off button which may be hard to see. Pull the black plastic back some to see it. I used the phillips to turn it on.

For me it turned on and finished it's extension. Tested it by turning it off and on a couple of time. Good to go. It sounded a little mechanical so I blew it out which fixed it a little. But it worked and thats what mattered. Then time to put it back together. Pull out the batteries and leave the door open. Slide the front back on starting at the top and pressing it together. When done put the 7 screws back, followed by the SD card and batteries. You are good to go.

If the above didn't fix it for you yours may have been damaged further then hers. Hope this helps someone

CompTIA A+, Network +, Server + requires renewal

So I got a call from a vender for exam preparation material, and they shared with me something that will affect many people now. Previously if you held CompTIA A+, Network +, and/or Server + you were not required to renew them. Kind of nice since many other venders required you to do so. Due to them getting those Certifications blessed per se by the ISO. Then they have to provide a way to renew, meaning that we have to renew. They have set this at every 3 years. This is effective as of January 1, 2010. So I looked at their renewal page to see what you can do. You can take the latest version of the Cert, or a Bridge exam to it. You can start keeping track of CEUs, and after hitting a particular number of them then you are good for another 3 years.

Good thing though is that you only have to maintain the highest of the 3 that you have, the order being as I have them listed in the title. For example if you have the Network +, you don't have to maintain the A+ just maintain the Network +. By this same theory, even though they don't state it exactly, then you could just take and pass then next certification to complete the renewal requirements. Since when you pass say the Security + then your highest wouldn't need to be renewed for 3 years.

Have no gripes about this because I am kind of tired of running into techs that claim certain certs but have had them forever, and can't even swap out a light bulb. OK I am exaggerating but we all know them. Off to study for the next Exam....

Here is the link to CompTIAs Renewal Policy FAQ

Antivirus Live = Very Annoying

So I had one of my users call me over the weekend regarding the fact that they are getting a lot of virus warnings. The first thing I asked was if it said ESET on the box. Nope, yeah well the lots of boxes warning of viruses the first tip that it wasn't my solution. This particular users was a limited user so I knew that it had penetrated only so deep and that removal wouldn't be very hard. I told them to try a restart first. This because sometimes you just wander onto a website that pertends a program is running and actuality hasn't installed anything. Well that didn't fix the problem so I told him to leave it on my desk and I would fix first thing Monday.

After turning it on I notice a little blue shield with a diagnal shield. and Next thing after letting it it for a little bit the screen looks like the picture to the right. (Insert picture.) So first things first. I know at this point it is installed on the computer. Since this person is a limited user it limits where it can hide(unless it takes use of some exploit in the OS). Any time you try to run a program it will pop up real quick then close. So go ahead and restart and if necessary(I hope it is) log in. Really quickly goto the start menu and click on "Run..", type in "regedit"(without Quotes) and hit enter. At this point the program hasn't become suppoer annoying so it won't stop you from doing this. You could also boot into safe mode or under a different user. You are going to go to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Run . (if you are doing this under a different user than the one that has the problem than do a search for sysguard and it will find it for you.)
Look to the right and you will see an entry for a file that is located in  Documents and Settings\(the Username that is infected)\local settings\Application Data\(random string)\(randomstring)sysguard.exe
Delete this entry and restart. After restarting and logging in as the infected user you will no longer run into a problem. At this point you need to fix all the stuff it broke.

Open up Internet Explorer and goto Internet Options under Tools. Goto the Connections Tab and click on LAN settings. Uncheck the box beside "Use a procy server for your LAN." You should no be able to browse as needed. You may try getting spydoctor or other spyware tool and remove the rest of it that way, but I will continue the manual way for sake of helping those that prefer it.

Lets go ahead and get rid of the remnant file. You can do it a coupel of ways. Goto Explorer and in the address bar goto this location "(rootdrive):\Documents and Settings\(the Username that is infected)\local settings\Application Data\." Or you can show hidden files and click through till you get to the same spot. One of the folders at that loication will just be a whole bunch of letters. For my user the folder was called uceejn. Look inside of it and you sill see the sysguard.exe or in my instance the dbdvsysguard.exe. Delete the folder it is in. Now it's gone.

We are going to have to fix some registry keys so go back to the Start Menu and click on "Run...", type "regedit" and hit Enter. Delete the following folder "AvScan" located here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AvScan (only the AvScan folder).

It will have also modified these settings and you may want to change them back but depending on your settings in Internet explorer then you might like your settings this way. You could reset Internet Explorer back to it's defaults too to reslove this.

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Download "RunInvalidSignatures" = "1"
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings "ProxyOverride" = ""
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings "ProxyServer" = "http=127.0.0.1:5555"
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Associations "LowRiskFileTypes" = ".exe"
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Attachments "SaveZoneInformation" = "1"

 You are now good to go. I would like to credit http://www.2-viruses.com/remove-antivirus-live this site since I got the last 5 regsitry keys it modifies from there.

Also I did run a scan with eset and it did find the file and delete it since when writing the instructions I left the file there to see if ESET Anvitirus could find it. Always make sure you are running the lastest version and defs of your Antivirus as well as patch your OS and applications.

Dell Server 1800 + Linux + Rebuilding drive + reboot = Failed Array?

So I came in to swap some backups up on Monday, even though I was supposed to be out on vacation. I heard a load alarm coming from the server room. after searching around for a while I found it was our Dell PowerEdge 1800 that had been sent to us a couple of years ago, with a vender app loaded on it before my time. Well after restarting it stopped. YAY Good. Well not quite. After rebooting the server then after getting to the point where it discovers the raid array. It alarmed again stating that the Array had a missing member or was rebuilding.


So I hit Ctrl+A to hop into the utility. After looking around I could see that one of the drives was not showing up. Which added up since while it was loading I could hear some Putting and Clicking sounds drives shouldn't make. Well I contact that vender and they sent out a replacement drive. After putting that in and getting back into the Utility I had it search for new Drives and it started the rebuild. Well since this was a critical server to have up, I went ahead and exited the application so that it could boot into the OS.

Now I knew that it wouldn't perform as fast but at least it would be up, and in the background would be rebuilding. Well as Linux started to boot up it said that the Journal as dirty (or something to that nature). Pretty much it sounded to me, a windows guy, as a check disk. So I stuck around to keep an eye on it. At 67.5% it locked gave me some errors about EXT3-FS yada yada(sorry didn’t have something to write the errors down on when they came up) and then rebooted. I knew that wasn't good.

Well after coming back up it told me that the Array had no failed. :( Nooooooo. It always happens on vacations or weekends. Well after trying various things with the Vender support they had me force online the raid. We reboot and the Linux boot loader comes up. YAY. Well then some more errors and a error along the line of "kernel failed to init." Not good. Well so now I wait for the install media for that vender application, so it can be re-setup and then at which point then we will restore as much data as possible.

Morale of the story, you may just want to stay in the utility and let it rebuild even though it may take awhile.

I use for the most part Microsoft products but dabble in opensource software when the need arrises. i.e. Setup a Clonzilla server for a large school district for imaging.

Dell 2135cn Communication Error 033-762

We purchased a Dell 2135cn for one of our departments and after setting up the unit was getting great feedback. Well after about a week I get a call stating they are not getting any incoming faxes. The previous fax machine worked fine. After talking with the people I realized it had never received any faxes. Hmmmm.

After speaking to Dell they had me check one or two things but after those checked out they sent us out a new one. They were very quick about this and the new unit even included new Toner. Got it set it up using the same seetings as the existing unit it's receiving faxes like a charm. I would love to know what on the other unit was the problem but will be fine with the new one just working. The Department that uses it loves it.

Overall it is a great MFP. My only complaint is that it does not have a Duplex Option.

Update - 7/21/2010 - If you have the "Junk fax" Option I would try disabling this. It may fix your problem.