Macs with browser pop ups

/

I recently had an iMac running 10.10.3 with invasive pop ups every time you tried to click on a link or open a new tab in both Safari and Firefox.

I tried disabling Extensions first, and there were a few suspicious ones, This did not help, so I searched around and found the method below, which DID work! ———— You may have installed the "VSearch" trojan, perhaps under a different name. Remove it as follows. Malware is constantly changing to get around the defenses against it. The instructions in this comment are valid as of now, as far as I know. They won't necessarily be valid in the future. Anyone finding this comment a few days or more after it was posted should look for more recent discussions or start a new one. Back up all data before proceeding. Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it: /Library/LaunchAgents/com.vsearch.agent.plist Right-click or control-click the line and select Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal) from the contextual menu.* A folder should open with an item named "com.vsearch.agent.plist" selected. Drag the selected item to the Trash. You may be prompted for your administrator login password. Repeat with each of these lines: /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.vsearch.daemon.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.vsearch.helper.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/Jack.plist Restart the computer and empty the Trash. Then delete the following items in the same way: /Library/Application Support/VSearch /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/Jack /System/Library/Frameworks/VSearch.framework ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ConduitNPAPIPlugin.plugin

Some of these items may be absent, in which case you'll get a message that the file can't be found. Skip that item and go on to the next one. From the Safari menu bar, select Safari ▹ Preferences... ▹ Extensions Uninstall any extensions you don't know you need, including any that have the word "Spigot," "Trovi," or "Conduit" in the description. If in doubt, uninstall all extensions. Do the equivalent for the Firefox and Chrome browsers, if you use either of those. Reset the home page and default search engine in all the browsers, if it was changed. This trojan is distributed on illegal websites that traffic in pirated content. If you, or anyone else who uses the computer, visit such sites and follow prompts to install software, you can expect much worse to happen in the future. You may be wondering why you didn't get a warning from Gatekeeper about installing software from an unknown developer, as you should have. The reason is that this Internet criminal has a codesigning certificate issued by Apple, which causes Gatekeeper to give the installer a pass. Apple could revoke the certificate, but as of this writing, has not done so, even though it's aware of the problem. This failure of oversight has compromised both Gatekeeper and the Developer ID program. You can't rely on Gatekeeper alone to protect you from harmful software. *If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select Go ▹ Go to Folder... from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Standard Procedure for installing and testing EOP units

/

EOP units should not be installed behind surge protectors if at all possible. I believe the electronics in the surge protectors can interfere with the signals the EOP units use.

Install send and receive units in a proximity where we would expect them to work OK first - within the house or something like that. Connect your Netbook with a CABLE to the receiving unit - assuming here that the sending unit is connected to the modem/router. Test ping times from your Netbook to the router using ping -t . Leave it running for a few minutes to make sure the link is stable.

After testing to get this benchmark, move the remote unit to where it is needed and re-test with ping using the same cable connection. Look at the ping times - if they are reasonable and it stays stable then go ahead and set up the wireless on the remote unit and test it (assuming it is a wireless unit!). Ping times can vary but I believe they should be below 50ms and there should not be any packet drops.

We can also use the NetUptime Monitor program on your Netbooks as a persistent ping tester so please remember to set this running at any job where you are having connection stability issues. This will track and log failures over time better than a simple ping test.

Libre Office

/

I have been using Libre Office instead of Open Office for a few installations now and I want us to standardise on this as our recommended free alternative to MS Office.

Couple of advantages I am aware of:

1) reads old MS Works files (yes some customers do still have these!)

2) can save in MS Office XML formats (.docx, .xlsx etc).

https://www.libreoffice.org https://www.libreoffice.org/

Download Windows and Mac versions on to your portable media so you have them handy.

When you install it please make sure of a couple of things:

1) Set the default file saving formats to MS Office files - go into Preferences (Mac) I think its Options in Windows and set up the default File Formats for Text, Spreadsheet and Presentation as XML. Uncheck the Warn box!

2) make sure Libre Office is the default program for appropriate file types - Control Panel, Default Programs in Windows, use one of these methods for OS X if it has not already set the default (test it first!)

http://osxdaily.com/2013/08/08/change-default-application-open-files-mac-os-x/ http://osxdaily.com/2013/08/08/change-default-application-open-files-mac-os-x/

Cheers

Paradise SMTP server errors

/

I have come across this a couple of times recently. Paradise email user having problems sending mail - gets something like a 552 error from smtp.paradise.net.nz http://paradise.net.nz/. Username and password OK for receiving email and works on web mail.

The solution I have found in both cases so far is to replace smtp.paradise.net.nz http://smtp.paradise.net.nz/ with smtp.clear.net.nz http://smtp.clear.net.nz/ and emails then send OK. vodafone would probably work too. I think this is just more evidence that Vodafone is trying to kill off the paradise domain….

Bill

NOW NZ ISP

/

NOW NZ is a company headquartered in Napier who are selling hard into the fibre market. They are offering well priced packages to get customers on to fibre services including VOIP phone. I am not going to make any judgements yet about the quality of their services, suffice it to say that so far I have NOT been recommending them myself.

They currently use a Netcomm router on the fibre connections I have worked on and they replace any existing router. I found out today that they do not, by default, allow customer access to this router. You have to get to it on a special port (192.168.20.1:8080) and the admin/admin credentials printed on the bottom of the unit do not work unless you talk to their tech support and get them to enable it. They will then tell you that the customer is then responsible for it. All this because I wanted to change the SSID and password to match the customers other router to save changing a whole lot of other devices!

This customer had not been set up with an email account by default, when they asked they were setup with an address@nowmail.co.nz . Pop3.nowmail.co.nz http://pop3.nowmail.co.nz/ and smtp worked with default settings and no security. When asked if they provided IMAP services they said no!

This customer also had phone service (VOIP) with them and said they had some issues in the first week. They had the 30MB fibre connection but I could not get a reading above 22MB from speediest. I also observed the same at another customer using this ISP and he also had a lot of phone issues.

Please post any further feedback or experiences with this ISP in the comments here.

Cannot run Office applications after 365 install

/

I came across this issue today after installing Office 365 (Office 2013) on two different laptops. Neither would run ANY office applications after a new install of Office 365! They just bombed out, tried a Repair of Office and that did not help.

I had uninstalled older versions of Office on both machines which had issues, so i thought this might be a clue but could not find anything to do with that.

Some searching turned up a possible conflict with the Abbyy FineReader which is an OCR Package often installed (I think with Epson printers).

I removed this package from both machines and Office applications ran fine, did not even need a reboot.

New one on me - but well worth knowing about as we do more of these installations!

Bill

Photos with Windows Live Mail

/

Using Windows Live Mail (which I tend to promote as the standard Windows tool if Outlook is not available) clients can have issues trying to send photos as attachments.

Turns out this is because MS changed the way this works when they introduced SkyDrive (now Onedrive or whatever). They changed the default behaviour when you right click on a photo and select Send to -> Mail recipient to use “Photo Mail” which works in conjunction with Sky/OneDrive to send a reduced version of the picture as an attachment while uploading the full size version to Sky/OneDrive so the recipient can download the larger image if desired. This is why that extra bloody window pops up asking you to log in the Live Mail or whatever - its trying to get you to sign in to Sky/OneDrive if you are not already! If you skip that then the message just gets stuck in the Outbox and jams up WL Mail until manually deleted.

This is all great 1) if you understand it - which the average user does not and 2) if you have and use a Sky/OneDrive account - which the average user does not!

So how do you make it behave “normally” and just attach the damn photo to an email and send it? Read this:

SkyDrive bypass for pictures in email Go to picture source (My Pictures) select pictures (Ctrl-Click for multiples) Click on email (on top of screen) select size (if other than full size desired) Click attach, it should then open in Windows Live Email. It will be in the Sky Drive format Click on one of the pictures Click the format button on top Click the paperclip That cuts out SkyDrive and makes the photos regular attachments. Add email address, type message and send

This (relatively) simple process just allows the user to change the “attachment format” from trying to use Sky/OneDrive to a normal attachment.

Yes, its a pain to have to do this but I have been looking for an answer to this for a while, and here it is!

Cheers

P.S. in case you wonder why on earth people are trying to do this, the answer is “because they can”. They want to look at the picture in Windows Explorer or Photo Gallery or whatever and then send it from there. They don’t understand that life would be a lot simpler if you compose an email and THEN select the attachments. To be fair, this method allows file resizing which is a handy feature...

P.P.S interestingly enough, there does not appear to be a problem if you use Outlook (2013 in my case) as your default email client - it just gets sent as an attachment without any fuss.