Linksys router blinking power light of death

I’ve been having some odd problems with the router at home recently. I woke up yesterday morning and noticed that neither of my computers could get online. The thing that’s odd about this is that we also have a computer downstairs that has been able to get online while the others haven’t. There haven’t been any changes to the router that I’m aware of. I went through power cycling the router and modem, leaving it alone for a while, and going back through power cycling. But it didn’t work. So I finally decided to check the firmware version to see if there was an upgrade on the Linksys website.

I downloaded the newest firmware package, went into the router setup page and attempted to flash it. I got the “your settings have been successful” page then had to wait for the router to reboot. When it came back up one thing had changed, but not in a good way. I could not longer get to the router’s setup page. I went out to the garage and climbed a ladder up to where we have our modem and router, lugging my laptop up there with me so I could easily bounce between the modem and router. That is when I noticed the blinking power light of death. I had never seen this on a router before so I didn’t know what it meant. But after digging around online I discovered that it meant the firmware was corrupted, which would explain why I couldn’t get to the router’s setup page anymore. I have no idea what happened because I did get the page that said it was successful – a bad download maybe.

I’m sure I spent at least an hour on the ladder in the freezing cold garage figuring this out, but I did finally find a solution that worked for me here in this forum.

Problem: Blinking power light on Linksys router and unable to access setup page.

Solution: What you need to do is statically define your computer’s IP address in order to communicate with the router and flash it with the latest firmware. You will need a little file transfer program, which you can get from Linksys here and also the latest firmware package for your model of router. Plug straight into your modem to download those. I unplugged everything from the router so that the only thing plugged in was my laptop, that probably isn’t necessary though.

1. Go to your control panel and select network connections… or go to network and sharing center, then click on where it says change adapter settings in the left panel.
2. Under LAN or high-speed internet, you will see local area connection. right-click on it then select properties
3. Under local area connection properties, look for internet protocol TCP/IPv4, highlight it and click properties.
4. Once in the internet protocol TCP/IP properties, set it to use the following IP address and settings:
   • IP address: 192.168.1.5 (it must be same range of your default gateway: 192.168.x.x)
   • Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
   • Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1 (that is the default one. if not then enter the IP address of your router, to check it, open command prompt, then type in “ipconfig” [no quotes] the default gateway is equivalent to router’s IP address)
   • Also put in 192.168.1.1 as the DNS server.
5. Click ok and click the close button on the local area connection properties window.
6. Now unplug the router and let it sit for a few seconds, plug it back in. I had to do this before I was able to ping the router.
7. Open your start menu and go to run, then type cmd. For windows 7 or Vista, just type cmd in the search bar.
8. Once the black box pops up type in ping 192.168.1.1. We need to make sure your computer can communicate with the router before attempting to flash it again. If it returns 4 responses then you’re good to go, if not then check your settings again and power cycle the router one more time.
9. Now you need to open the program you downloaded earlier, tftp.exe.
10. In the server section you want to type the router’s IP address, which is the 192.168.1.1 and the password for it. The default password for Linksys is admin, but if that doesn’t work you can try the password you set for it if you changed it.
11. Now click the button next to file and find the firmware update you downloaded. Then click upgrade and it should flash the router. It was pretty quick for me.

I had to power cycle my modem and router one more time after this to get everything online again, luckily it saved me another 40 bucks by not having to buy a new router. I would guess that you could probably use tftp.exe with other router brands as well, you just need to download the correct firmware for whatever you have and know the default settings for it since those may be different.

Open .eml attachments in Outlook 2003/2007

I came across a problem today where some co-workers were forwarded a bunch of emails that were attached as files, instead of inline, but they couldn’t open them. They kept trying to open in Outlook Express, which we don’t use. I could have just let them open all the attachments in Outlook Express, it wouldn’t have been a huge deal. But if they wanted to respond back to them they would have to bounce back and forth between the two – slightly annoying. I googled and found this website where you can download the registry key that allows you to open the .eml files in Outlook 2003 or 2007. You just have to make sure you install the key for the correct version of Outlook and either the 32 or 64-bit version of windows (most of you are probably 32-bit).

Before you install the key, you have to make sure you have all the current windows updates associated with Outlook, it won’t work if you don’t. After you check for updates, all you have to do is download the zip file, open it, and double click on the version that matches what you have – the key will install itself. You don’t need to restart the computer and I don’t think you even need to restart Outlook, if it was open. The .eml attachment should now open in Outlook without any problems.

If the link for the .zip file on that website ever dies, I uploaded it here.

“The Facebook Team” has sent you a virus!

Yet another email is floating around out there trying to get you to download a file that’s really a virus. It’s sent from “The Facebook Team” and says something like “for security reasons your password had to be reset” and it tells you to download the .zip or .exe file that is attached (Facebook_Password_4cf91.zip or Facebook_Password_4cf91.exe).

If you look at the email closely enough, it probably isn’t even addressed to you. My Aunt got this email and the name they used referring to her, in the body of the email, was just a bunch of random letters. That, the random letters at the end of the file name and the fact that there is even an attachment at all should throw up red flags. But there will always be people who fall for this kind of thing or just don’t pay attention and download it anyway, which is why there are geeks like me around to fix things when this happens. Unless you reset your password yourself and triggered a confirmation email, you will not get these kind of emails, period.

My Aunt flipped out because she thought she may have saved the file on her computer so this prompted me to do a bit of research on what this virus is. I found the virus total report that shows which scanners are able to locate and eliminate the virus. Only 14 out of the 41 scanners are able to detect it – my Aunt happens to have Symantec, which if you notice is not one of those 14. I’m currently running F-Secure’s online scan and will run Microsoft’s Security Essentials since both of those are listed as being able to detect it.

Here’s the page on F-Secure’s website about the virus. There isn’t a whole lot of information on it. But it does list a registry key that is installed.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\”RunGrpConv” = “1″

If you’re comfortable working with computers you can check the registry yourself for that key. If not then I suggest running the F-Secure online scan on complete mode, if you have time to let it sit for awhile, and also running Microsoft Security Essentials. They are both user-friendly and free. Just be sure to remove security essentials once you’re done if you do have another anti-virus currently installed. Having more than one can really slow the computer down.

The good news is, from what I’ve read it looks like it’s just another virus that causes messages to pop up telling you that you need to pay to download a fake anti-virus in order to fix your computer.  So it doesn’t appear to be something that is terribly difficult to get rid of.

• F-Secure’s online scan
• Microsoft Security Essentials

Disable the restart now prompt

I’m sure you recognize the reminder we all love to hate.  I could easily disable automatic updates altogether so I don’t get the prompt at all, but knowing me, I’d forget to check for months at a time.  I went searching for a better solution mainly because I was playing a game online one day when the prompt came up in the middle of the game, which forced the game to minimize.  There’s nothing like being in the middle of an attack by a horde of zombies (Left 4 dead, ftw!) when the game suddenly minimizes to remind me to restart my computer!  Ahhh!

Permanently stop Windows Update from both restarting your computer automatically and reminding you to restart:

1. Go to start -> run (for Vista type this in the search bar), type gpedit.msc.
2. Navigate to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components – > Windows Update.
3. Double-click No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations and enable it.
4. Then to stop that irritating reminder from popping up every 10 minutes, double-click on Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations.  You would think that disabling this would disable the reminder, but it does the same leaving it not configured would do – allows the reminder to popup to interrupt you every 10 minutes.  I don’t quite understand that.  But anyway, after opening the box for this, click on enable and type a 1440 in the box.  This will set it to remind you once a day so you can restart it whenever you want.

I don’t have a Vista box here to test it on, but I’m fairly certain the directions are the same.  If not, leave a comment and I’ll update them.

Recover deleted email in Outlook

We had a co-worker come to us asking if it was possible to recover some email messages she had accidentally deleted using shift+delete, which skips the trash folder entirely. I’m not sure how one accidentally presses two keys that really aren’t next to each other and happens to delete important emails, but I have learned not to ask. I googled it and came up with a simple solution.

1. Exit Outlook.
2. Open the Windows registry editor.
3. Browse to My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options.
4. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. Type the name DumpsterAlwaysOn.
Note Do not type any spaces in the name.
6. Set the DWORD value to 1.
7. Restart Outlook.

The Tools menu now has the Recover Deleted Items command for every Outlook folder.

Source: Microsoft Office Online