Western Digital HDD Premature Failure

Recently while browsing some forums I found some information that Western Digital Green Drives have a feature that parks the heads after 8 seconds of inactivity. Depending your use on your drive you can see the amount of time this is done each day can be significant. This can cause your HDD to die much sooner than anticipated.

The method used to alleviate this is to use WDIDLE3 provided from western digital to increase this idle time to something more realistic or disable it completely. I have disabled mine on a 1TB WD Green HDD successfully without any problems or loss of data(I was scared I would lose my data but it was fine). I am not responsible if you mess up your drive, just thought Id share what I learned. Google the wdidle3.exe and you will see people´s recommendations on what to do.

2 things you'll need to know you need to run this utility in DOS bootable disk and the drive must be connected via SATA or PATA. It will not work while connected via USB. There are some bootable CD ISO´s with this software on it already, google is your friend.

Frigidaire Is Not Good

Well like I said when I made this blog, I will also be talking about general things besides tech ocasionally. I want to let you know to be weary about Frigidaire we all thought they were great products and they were but since Electrolux bought them over the quality is horribly.

I personal and some people have experienced problems with dishwashers, fridges, stoves and microwaves, All kinds of problems such as display panel led's breaking for no reason(you never need to touch this part so i dont understand how this happens.) Dishwasher spray arms fall off and when put back it just falls off again. Well im not gonna tell you all the problems I and other people have encountered you can google that, But just consider yourself warned, I wont be buying any frigidaire products again(matter of fact anything under the Electrolux brand).

Browser Redirect Virus

So I had this virus that was redirecting my browsers, AVG, Spybot and MalwareBytes did not detect anything. After running Hijackthis, I noticed some scheduled tasks. When I checked my Task scheduler I notice 23 Scheduled tasks, that ran mshta.exe and some URL. I deleted all of these scheduled tasks,searched my C drive for mshta.exe and deleted all instances of it(may need to use Unlocker to do this).

Once I rebooted I ran AVG, Spybot and MalwareBytes again, AVG found 4 things and could not remove them:

"C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe (1652):\memory_001a0000";"Trojan horse Agent_r.XJ";"Object is inaccessible."
"C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe (1652)";"Trojan horse Agent_r.XJ";""
"C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe (636):\memory_001a0000";"Trojan horse Agent_r.XJ";"Object is inaccessible."
"C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe (636)";"Trojan horse Agent_r.XJ";""

After some google'ing I found someone recommending TDSSKiller from Kaspersky. So I ran this program and it found 2 threats and removed them with a reboot, healed my system completely, AVG scan confirmed this.


Download Link: http://support.kaspersky.com/downloads/utils/tdsskiller.zip

Stream IP Camera VLC

Here's how to stream the live video from your Foscam or Foscam Clone Wireless IP Security Camera.






Create a text file and enter the following line replacing the username/pass/ip/port with yours.

http://username:password@IPAddress:port#/videostream.cgi

Save the text file as Security.asf (asf is the extension of the file so your media player will recognize it and open it) now double-click the security.asf file or drag and drop it into VLC and it should start streaming intermediately.

The above process worked fine with the administrator account. But for streaming only, its a good idea to create a Visitor account with restricted access, but the line above doesn't seem to work with Operator or Visitor accounts, so instead use the line below in the security.asf file instead of the one above.

http://IPAddress:port#/videostream.cgi?user=username&pwd=password

You can even use this file from a hotel or anywhere, any place in the world if you forward the port your camera is on on your router. So you can stream your camera from anywhere without having to log into the web interface, that is why I recommend creating a Visitor account for this purpose.

CURL Reboot Linksys Router

                                                                        
Here is a CURL command to reboot Linksys routers. This save's time by not having to login to the web interface and navigating the right pages. This can also be used to automate router reboot.

curl http://username:password@192.168.1.1/apply.cgi -d "submit_button=Reboot&change_action=&action=Reboot&wait_time=19&rebootmode=1"

Please note: All my curl commands might not work directly if you copy paste because when you copy it will take the line breaks and give you a error, so paste this code into notepad or something and remove wordwrap, make sure the command is all on one line then copy paste it.

Look at my other scripts to know how to use CURL in windows.

Asus RT-N16 Partial Review

RT-N16 by Asus is a beast of a WiFi Router.

This router has some amazing specs. And its performance is pretty good.

Specs:
RAM: 128MB
Flash: 32MB
2 USB 2.0 Ports
Wireless B/G/N
Broadcom Chipset @480Mhz
4 Gigabit Ethernet Ports 10/100/1000
3 External Antennae's(Great, better than Linksys with no antennae's)
Supported by DD-WRT

Supports 300,000 connections. It acts and a File and Print server with the USB ports. It also acts as a media Server. Can download files directly to USB drives so you don't need your computer on all the time anymore.The web interface of this device is one of the best, no The Best I've ever seen, Its good enough for techy people to use, yet, simple and intuitive enough for novice users to use.

At 100$ your getting top of the line hardware for a Wireless Router. And with DD-WRT the possibilities and features that can be used, make it worth just having this router around. You can install OpenVPN if you put DD-WRT on it, and have a free VPN server to connect home when away.


I have not seen such high specs on a consumer router before, so It's worth having even for future use. I say that because If you look at most manufactures (especially Linksys) The Ram, Flash, and CPU specs drop as they progress. It seems that we are moving backwards when it comes to home WiFi router's instead of forwards. I would of expected that by now our home Wireless Routers would be as good as our computers. I wanna see 1GB of ram, 3Ghz CPU, and 16 GB of flash in a router.

Reboot WebSTAR DPC2100R2

Now here is another command to reboot WebSTAR DPC2100R2 Cable modem, Feel free to try it with other versions of cable modems that are similar.

curl http://192.168.100.1/goform/reset -d RestoreFactoryYes=1

The last CURL command to reboot the cable modem is different to this one because this CURL command will be the result of if you actually logged into the modem with username and password and clicked on the reset button in the web interface.

The Last CURL command was to set the down frequency to the starting frequency causing the modem to reinitialise.


Here is the last curl command and how to use curl in windows.