The Digital Surgery (computer questions/problems here)

[Big Boy]

That's the version, and it works OK elsewhere.

[PET]

Flash works very well with Google Chrome and perhaps if you use Chrome, just for the game, it will be OK ?

[Big Boy]

Flash works very well with Google Chrome and perhaps if you use Chrome, just for the game, it will be OK ?

Thanks PET - yes I'd worked that out. I don't like Chrome at all, but it was the only solution I could find.

[Pagey]

Having problems again trying to use a VGA cable to use my TV as a monitor to watch the footy from Expat TV/365. I cannot use HDMI as I screwed up the connection on my laptop.

I was getting the 'No Signal' error message on my TV which in the past has been due to screen resolution so I made some adjustments and now when I connect the VGA cable my screen goes blank so I cannot right click on the desktop to pull up the graphics menu.

If I unplug the cable and go to display settings and click on the screen 2 icon and check the box 'Extend the desktop onto this monitor' and click apply, OK, when I re open it the box is unchecked again.

Any ideas ??

[Frank Hovis]

A strange thing happened on the way to the forum.

I started getting popups from Chrome asking me to update Flash and the screen that appeared was a poor lookalike to Adobe's own pages but the obvious give away was that the buttons linked to a setup.exe but located at facebook.com or google.com (like google.com/setup.exe), including the one that says 'Remind me later'. I also noticed a distinct slow down in pages loading in Chrome especially, Firefox didn't seem so troubled.

I run ESET 6, Windows Defender, Windows Firewall, Spybot S&D and MalwareBytes, on Win7, and none of them said there was anything wrong.

As I checked more closely I could see the 'delay' in loading pages was related to google and facebook. If I type google.com in the address bar it was taking forever, if I typed google.ch it was instant.

A bit more probing and I found that pinging google.com was returning a 50.97.99.3 address when normally google.com is on a 1.179.x.x address hosted at TOT. If you go to the 50 address it shows the same 'Your Flash Player may be out of date' but now the buttons domains are the 50 address and I imagine much more dangerous if you click them.

I did an nslookup google.com and found that my DNS server was set to 78.82.207.26, not the 8.8.8.8 google DNS it should be.

I reset my router to the 8.8.x.x DNS settings, did an ipconfig /flushdns and the problem disappeared.

I came back home tonight and although I'm not getting the popup anymore, my primary DNS has been reset to the 78 address.
Something is changing my routers DNS addresses.
The only way to do that would be to log onto the router and change it.
Yes, I am guilty of leaving my TOT supplied router with the default admin password and no it wasn't anyone else in the house that did it.

On the assumption that somehow someone (and I suspect it must be related to TOT) can remotely log on to my router, I have changed the password for the admin account and so far all is well.

Has anyone else experienced this, particularly if your are on TOT ?
Is it possible for some TOT users to do a ping google.com and report the IP address returned?

ping google.com currently returns 1.179.248.152 and that IP address belongs to TOT.
nslookup google.com offers a range of addresses between 1.179.248.148 and x.x.x.187.

[Dannie Boy]

It's probably nothing to do with this, but.........
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26417441

[buksida]

Pagey, these ones are difficult to diagnose without looking at the machine, its a long shot but try reinstalling the latest version of the display drivers.

[Frank Hovis]

It's probably nothing to do with this, but.........
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26417441

That would seem to be exactly what it was doing.
No problems since I changed the router password (so far).

[Pagey]

Thanks Buksi.

[Frank Hovis]

Does anyone have a TOT supplied Billion wireless adsl modem/router?
I think it's a model 5200.

I am still having problem with the DNS settings changing themselves even though I've changed the password on the router.

After my previous 'fix' I put my router back to 'Auto DNS Discovery' but today google.com started failing and when I checked my router it had been set back to 'User Discovered DNS' and the primary DNS was set to 68.168.98.196, a machine in Overland Park, Kansas. Secondary DNS was still 8.8.4.4 (google's own).

I've checked everything I can but in the Access Tab of the routers management pages there is an ACL entry. ACL is deactivated but there is an entry in the ACL list.

It shows what looks like a standard entry to allow any machine on the LAN to access the router.

Can someone else confirm this is the same as their router?

[Chromeman]

Not helping your question, but

It shows what looks like a standard entry to allow any machine on the LAN to access the router.

It shows that any machine with an IP address from 0.0.0.0 to 0.0.0.0 on your LAN is approved. That address is non-routable. It is used by computers that has not received any IP address yet; they send out the message, Hey, I am nobody (0.0.0.0) and need an address to any DHCP servers listening, in this case your router in order to get an address.

So don't worry about that listing, it does not allow anyone from outside your internal LAN to get access.

[Frank Hovis]

Thanks, that's what I thought, it lets any machine with access to the LAN (correct LAN password) join in and get an IPAddress from the router.

The settings ACL suggest to me that the router is NOT accessible from the WAN, is that correct ?

[hhinner]

Frank, your snapshot shows the ACL is deactivated as you say, so in fact it's not doing anything in this state. If activated it will only allow access from the LAN.

[Frank Hovis]

So do you mean it could be allowing a WAN located user to access the router because the ACL is disabled ?

[Chromeman]

No, it has nothing to do with who can access the router. Any outside user can access it, or at least reach the login page if they know your external IP address. And that is OK! You should be able to contact your router from outside to change settings if needed, or to get access to a computer on your LAN if you allow that. Also when you access a web server from inside your LAN like this site, the web server has to be able to send the pages and pictures to you. And all that info pass through the router.

Access management here means who can access the WAN from LAN or other way. The settings for login into the router it self is probably under "Interface Setup" or "Advanced Setup".

You say you have changed the password on the router, but still someone external is changing the settings.

What that means is that maybe that particular series of routers have a fabric set "user name/password" that comes in addition to the one used by you. Things like this was used as an easy way for telecoms to get access to equipment on their networks who behaves badly without having to spend time trying to get help from the users. The "user name/password" was then the same on all the ones produced, it is easy for someone on the outside to see that this is very bad security if the password ended up in the wild! But of course that would never happen... Or would it?

I am not saying that this is the case with your router, but it is a possible answer to why someone unknown can change the settings even after you have changed the password.