Virus and Cable Modem

The "cable" light on the Scientific Atlanta modem was going off, and the modem was trying to reconnect, but could not. But the problem, as I said, seems to have been corrected when I wiped out and reinstalled Windows. I have in image made with Norton Ghost, which I used to restore Windows. When I did that, the problems seem to have dissapeared, so far. I will know later on, around 10PM local time,. when the problem with losing connectivity has been the worst. If nothing happens then, then I know that restoring Windows from the Ghost image will have solved the problem. By that time of the day, around 6PM, I was already having a lot of problems, and no problems so far tonight.

Well, something was causing the modem to lose connectivity, which has appeared to have stopped since I restored Windows on the image I have made with Norton Ghost.

Wiping out and resinstalling Windows get rid of any spyware, viruses, or trojans my virus software might miss.

I do have a firewall, but even with a firewall, things like spyware, adware, viruses, trojans, and the like can still sneak in, which is why creating an image with Norton Ghost, and using that once a month to restore Windows is actually a good practice.

Of course. But not your modem, your computer.

Why? My Windows2000 was installed almost five years ago.

Do you have a firewall on that computer? A box with no firewall on a broadband connection is a bullseye waiting for a missile - which will be coming along in just a few minutes, every time you reinstall Windows.

There should be NO REASON to do a monthly clean install of ANy version of Windows. If you have to do this something is wrong with either your hardware, or the way you use your computer. In any case, this should not affect your modem in any way. If it loses sync, either the line is bad, or the modem is defective. Have them checked.

It should NEVER be necessary. I have three computers, all running WinXP. All have firewall and antivirus protection, and all work from a router. I have had no virus, trojan, or maleware problems, and I haven't done a thing to windows except install patches and Service Packs.

...only if you don't practice safe hex. What browser do you use?

It's nice to have a backup, but reinstalling once a month? Posh. You have other issues if that is really necessary.

Virus on your pc will not cause the modem to lose sycn.

Are you saying you are losing the sync light on modem or losing sync with the modem.

When was this? It could be the cold weather causing the coax.connectors to shrink and giving you a better connection, or line amps doing better in the cold.

The only way something on the computer could cause the modem to appear to loose sync would be if it were resetting the modem. Whether sync was lost, or whether the modem was reset would be something that the logs would show.

Maybe cable provider fixed a line problem or maybe a tech put a filter on a neighbor's drop to keep a trashy tv from putting noise back on the cable feed while you were reloading.

Hmmm, why would any malware decide to get worse at 10pm.

Think about how a cable modem works. You have an ethernet connection to the cable modem. It takes your bits and transmits them to the cable headend. You cannot talk to the the cable modem's software controler except to fetch it's webpage if it has one, and it is programmed to allow you access to the web pages.

To change the software settings in the modem, commands have to be sent to the cable modem from the headend.

Your malware cannot tell the headend to reroute packets back to the modem.

Now they say unpatched win boxes last around 12 minutes. So, next time you believe malware is causing sync loss, you can try unplugging the ethernet cable.

Then again, maybe you have a weak cable trasmitter, and constant transmission from malware causes the transmitter to overheat and that causes the problem.

Dang, forgot all about the reset modem buttons on the cable modem web configuretion page. :(

I use Internet Explorer, which is the standard in browsers. 99.9 percent of the computers in the world run IE, and nearly every Web site is designed to best work with IE.

Norton Ghost restores Windows in only a few minutes.

Well, Norton Ghost makes it easy. I can restore from the image file anytime I want. Got the idea from when I went to college. They used a program they had to automatically wipe out and restore Windows every night when the labs closed. The final duty of the night for the last lab attendant of the day was to run that program on all the computers in the lab, which wiped out and restored Windows every night on every computer. The lab attendants had to do that every night before closing the lab for the night. The system was totally automated, all an attendant had to do was to start the program, and then Windows would be wiped out and restored, and then the system shut itself down for the night.

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 17:52:27 -0800, "Charles Newman"

Poor practice compared to finding out what malware is getting in, how it's getting in, and fixing that. All you are doing is learning nothing, and re-creating the same infectable state again and again.

Your installations prolly spend half theier lives spewing out malware via your nice fat cable connection. We do not thank you for that.

Proverbs Unscrolled #37 "Build it and they will come and break it"

Well, that was in the days of Win9x. The machines could not be locked down as easily as an XP machine could, so ghosting the machines every night was the only fesable way to do it. The tried locking down the machines, but computer geniuses from the computer science department could break the passwords quite easily, so they started ghosting the machines every night. There is no secure way to lock down a Win9x machine. The lab people learned that one the hard way.

I have three machines; two at home, one at work. All three have been running on their original installation since 1999. Only upgrades and patches have been installed in that time.

I don't doubt that sometimes, under certain conditions, that someone might get frustrated and frazzled enough to wipe and re-install but it should

*never* be necessary if you pay attention to what you install, what take off (and how), use decent protections against malware, and don't confuse hardware trouble with viruses and trojans.

Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine.

Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out

DHCP RENEW WARNING - Field invalid in response

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ these are two entries from my modem log page. Are they indicative of a problem? What do they signify? TIA.

dj

Try again. 88.9% and falling by the day, because people are realizing they DO have options, and they DON'T have to put up with a substandard web browser, which IE is. That people are putting up with its repeated security bugs just boggles the mind.

Again, not correct. The web wasn't designed to work on a single browser. HTML is the standard that web browsers are expected to follow. Sites that depend on a particular browser's quirks are poorly designed from the start.

I would hope that eventually the folks running the lab would learn a little about security, and lock the machines down so such a move wouldn't be necessary. Ghosting the machines each night would be like a car dealer replenishing his inventory each day instead of not leaving the keys in the ignition of all the cars on the lot.

I'll guarantee you one thing - I did not take M$IE into consideration at all when developing my site. I have M$IE available to use, but I only start it when I get to a site that functions only with MSIE (and I really need to see what's on the site cause I would normally blow it off if it won't render on Mozilla/Firefox). That and for XP updates and sometimes to browse M$ site (something I avoid if possible).

I pretty much loathe M$ in general and prefer open source software when possible - Mozilla, Apache, Vim, etc, etc.