Amit Maskara

Like many of you, I have had difficulty connecting to relianceindiacall.com for few weeks now. At first I thought it was something stupid and will fix itself. But after 4 weeks of trying, it was time to take action.

So I disconnected my cable connection from the router to see if the router was causing it, and there it was. I was able to connect to their web site if I wired my computer directly to the modem. But I need my router to be able to be wireless. I was thinking that there is some new application that their web server has added that needs some ports to be open to work., but could not get good answers from their tech support.

So after much research, I found out that if you use a free proxy web site to connect to their web site, you can get around the firewall. I used kproxy.com and it worked. All you do is type www.kproxy.com on your IE browser and on the URL box of kproxy site, type the URL www.relianceindiacall.com This should work. Just as a warning, the Krpoxy site opens a ton of popop adds, so make sure you have a tool bar that blocks them. I use google toolbar.

How safe are AOL users? this is a good question which is mostly ignored. I will try and throw some light on it and may be some people will come to light as to what this big company is doing..

Recently I was called for an onsite service call at a residence. The issue was that they had just purchased a wireless router [Linksys G series] and they were not able to make it work with their laptop. And another issue was that their desktop would not connect to AOL if they wired it to the router. So they wanted me to configure it right.

I have never been a fan of AOL, as they put craf on your PC. Being a tech I know that and there are tools that you can download for free to see how infected your computer software is.

Anyways, I go there and refresh the power on the cable modem and the router and it seems to work. So I wire it up to the PC to see if Internet works. Yes it did. So why did his AOL did not connect? well, after examining his computer I realized that he already had bunch of spyware, trojens and or worms on his computer. So I try to decrapify his PC by scanning it with Spybot Search and destroy and AdAware SE Personal ed. Most of the things are cleaned, but of course it took off some functionality of AOL. You will wonder why? Wait I know, coz some software that AOL installs on your PC need back door entry to be clear. I have known this for sometime now and for this very reason, I recommend to my customers not to use AOL in any form. But this giant company has acquired its market by mailing free CDs to people even in Mars.

So in order to fix the AOL software and AOL messenger, I had to reinstall the software from their web site and let it run. After it was all downloaded and installed, I try to start it up, but the same thing happened. The softweare would start, but during the connecting phase, it would simple disconnect. So I go into the router settings to see if there is some kind of built in firewall or port forwarding rule that I could use for AOL. But could not find any. Did AOL mention this during the installation phase - NO. So I think to myself that since they do not mention anything about port forwarding or relaxing firewall rules, it should work as it is. But no it did not. So finally I gave the PC a static IP and put that IP in the DMZ area of the router. [DMZ is an acronym for demilitarized zone. which means that the device under that IP is set with all ports open. which means no firewall and no immunity form hackers or broadcasted melicious softwares.] Guess what happens next - Yes, AOL works! But at the cost of exposing that PC to the demiliterized zone. I explained the customer of the risks, but he said he is trapped. All his business contacts have his AOL email ID and he has to have AOL for his business.

So much for giving your trust to a big company like America Online. What a bunch of liars and two faced people are running that company. They tell you that AOL gives you free spyware protection and protection from viruses. It actually has a software module to do that. But itn’t it an irony that the same software needs to be in a DMZ zone in order to function on a simple home networking router?? It needs you to open up back doors on your computer in oder or work? huh! I wonder how safe they really make your PC.

Last week I was working on a Gateway MX6445 series notebook with MS Media center loaded on it. I want to share my experience coz. it was really interesting.

Initial Problem - Wireless internet disconnects sporadically. I was called in for an on site job.

Initial troubleshooting - Checked the connection on the notebook end and on the router end to make sure they are connected and talking. Then un installed the broadcom interface and left the basic drivers. After rebooting the system, it seemed to connect, but only for few minutes. The wireless network kept disconnecting on its own even when the router was 5 steps away from it. The windows interface for wireless networks would say unable to find any wireless network in range and will have the disconnected Cross sign. While another Gateway laptop with same broadcom built in G adapter, was connecting without any hiccups and scanned more then 5 networks in range.
So next I try another wireless USB adapter by DLink. Same thing, no luck. So I decide to take the PC with me and do a system restore. I take it back and reinstall OS from their restore partition. No results, it still did the same thing in my house. [I had a Linksys router, so this ruled out any router problem as well.] So I decide to wipe out the restore partition and install OEM Win XP Pro. Did that but ran into a bigger driver issue.

There were bunch of drivers missing. So I say to myself, “no big deal”. I download the drivers from Gateway web site and install them one after the other. All goes fine except that the Sound drivers and SM Bus [Chipset] drivers does not install.

After spending 8 hrs and doing another windows reinstall, I somehow find out the make and model of the chipset and the sound card. It was a ATI chipset with SB400 AC97′ type sound chip on board. Gateway had posted an AMD driver setup file for this? Weird! So, anyways, after running the ATI chipset driver setup file, SM BUS was installed successfully, but sound wasn’t. I was hoping that it will coz the driver said it will install both the chipset and the SB400 sound chip.
At the end the driver that actually worked was what Gateway had provided - AC97′ Conexant sound drivers. Weird!!
What was I doing wrong all this time? - Well, I was using the setup file to install this sound driver, since windows built in driver wizard was not able to find a suitable driver in the directory where I had it all saved. So all this time I was thinking that it is not the right driver, since windows does not like it. Even the built in Setup file that came with the driver failed to install and gave an error saying “Failed”.
Sound Driver solution - But the way it worked was I had to do a forceful install. i.e. using Have Disk feature while installing the driver. So to make the sound drivers work, -

you will have to go to device manager, right click on the sound device [doesn't matter if it is not yellow with question mark],
• select update driver
• select Not at this time when asked to connect to the internet for drivers
• select Install from a list or specific location
• select Don’t Search, I will choose the driver to install
• select Have Disk and browse and point to the folder where the drivers are saved. [Make sure the drivers are unzipped]

This should fix your sound problem. It fixed mines, although I still had wireless dis connectivity problem which I could not fix. Or let’s say, I was so fed up with the piece of shit that I did not want to work on it anymore. Thank’s to Gateway for making such f***ing piece of shit notebooks with crappiest hardware in it. I am never going to recommend another Gateway to anyone.

This problem is not strange to anyone who has a PC. A PC is like a car.. although it not mechanical, but it still needs regular maintenance or else like a car, it will “run slow”.

Alright, to cut the story short, the main reason a PC gets slower is because of the memory issues in every software and OS [Operating System]. In layman’s term if you mix tar in gasoline n then not change your engine oil and filter, you sure got yourself some trouble.
Soon even before you can realize, you got worms, trojens and viruses infecting the software of your PC.
Ooh I forgot to mention the Hard Drive part. The way data is stored on a hard drive, it needs scanning and defragmenting once in a while. Just like the filing cabinet of your office. Once in a while you need to re arrange all the stuff in your filing cabinet, or it gets unmanageable.

THE SOLUTION:
The solution comes in two pack.
1. Run some good anti Spyware software and anti Virus software and get rid of those nasty stuff. For recommended cleaning software that really works, read on to the “Tools” tab of my web site.
2. First run scan disk, then Defragment your Hard Drive(s). I have instruction for that on the Tools tab as well.