Are Toshiba Notebooks 'Phoning Home'? 20
Tangential notes puzzledly: "At our company (software consulting) we equip our consultants with Toshiba notebooks. I received this message today from one of our consultants who was just upgraded to a new Satellite Pro 4300 ... 'My new Toshiba laptop appears to call home. While working on something else I opened port 1214 on my firewall and started monitoring it with a packet sniffer. To my amazement, I see my laptop communicating with a Toshiba server on that port. Are you guys aware of this?'... Has anybody else seen this behavior? Is this some new 'support' feature? Does anybody care?" Curious Toshiba notebooks owners, speak up!
Re:Gimme a break (Score:1)
Might be something else entirely (Score:2)
Not just toshiba: here's how to tell (Score:2)
I'd seen this kind of stuff before with netscape and that talkbalk client they used, but simply renaming the filename.exe to nofilename.exe usually did the trick. Works great with find fast, btw.
However, for a good time, look through the registry. Toshiba stuffs so many URLS into this system that I felt like my laptop was a giant banner ad.
The registry has a nice search function - and while I was surprised at the amount of stuff I found, it made me wonder how much more is hidden elsewhere in the system.
Simply use the registry search function to search for "www" or ".com" or "http:" or "https:" - you'll see things that'll make you tremble. Real Player is the worst, followed by Microsoft. ALL software today phones home, so remember to install adobe.com and microsoft.com in your hosts file and alias them to 127.0.0.1 as well.
I simply replaced most of the addresses I found with either 127.0.0.1/whatever. It certainly prevents my laptop from chattering away when I don't expect it. I don't look forward to XP.
Dunno if this has anything to do with it but... (Score:4)
Re:Wipe the hard drive... (Score:1)
Uh...not to mention they are refurbished as you state. OEM versions of Windows cost about 20$ each if not less.
Ahh! That's the laptop I'm running! (Score:1)
Re:Wipe the hard drive... (Score:1)
Linux runs awesome on my Tecra 8100. First thing I did when IT gave me the thing was to wipe the drive and load linux. takes about 5 hours of minimal redhat install and configure->make->make install for all the latest software. drivers aren't an issue, they are all in the kernel and XFree86 has the Savage/MX driver built in.
Re:Wipe the hard drive... (Score:1)
The only serious drawback is that some useful apps that come preinstalled are not generally downloadable, i.e. software DVD players.
Oh and btw, for many laptops these days, it's a smooth procedure to install a recent Linux distro, i.e. Red Hat 7.1 or SuSE 7.2, and of course you don't have to download umpteen drivers. Your machine's hardware just needs to be supported by the kernel, and you're in good shape. Funny how Linux actually wins in usability in certain cases, huh?
Re:Gimme a break (Score:1)
Is it "VirtualTech"? (Score:4)
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I haven't noticed anything... (Score:1)
It may be toshiba's tech support thingy, not sure what its called.
Wipe the hard drive... (Score:1)
Re:Not just toshiba: here's how to tell (Score:1)
Re:Not just toshiba: here's how to tell (Score:1)
Re:Gimme a break (Score:1)
*sigh*
Re:Wipe the hard drive... (Score:1)
I tend to do the wipe-first-then-install on desktops, but with laptops there is so much that could go wrong. I wiped my boss's Fujitsu laptop (which came with Win98) and we put Win2000 on it -- there is still an "unknown device" in the Control Panel, even after we downloaded all requisite drivers from Fujitsu. Everything seems to work fine, but as always, be careful and YMMV, especially with proprietary hardware such as Compaq Deskpros and laptops.
Re:Wipe the hard drive... (Score:1)
Yeah, I know. What I didn't say was that I loaded WinME and all the IBM patches on my wife's IBM 600; my IBM 600 has Red Hat 6.x (don't remember which; I don't much care because I'm going to upgrade to the 2.4 kernel once I pick a distro, and it's probably not going to be Red Hat 7.x). You're right, it was much easier to load Linux. Of course, I chose the IBM because of their Linux support :-)
BTW and OT, we bought them on eBay from a company that refurbishes them and sells them without an OS. Laptops without an OS are much cheaper than with an OS, since the OS in question is undoubtedly Windows.
Re:Wipe the hard drive... (Score:1)
Re:Wipe the hard drive... (Score:3)
Even the laptops? That's what this is, a laptop. Where do you get the hardware-specific drivers? I loaded WinME on a wiped-clean IBM 600 laptop and it loaded just fine, but it didn't really work right until I downloaded all the IBM patches and BIOS upgrades, essentially turning my over-the-counter copy of WinME into an IBM-Specific OEM copy of WinME. If Toshiba laptops run with over-the-counter Windows, that's a neat trick. Usually no two laptops from any given manufacturer share the same drivers, let alone use the generic drivers provided by Microsoft (if they share the same drivers they ususally have the same model number; IBM has dozens of "Model 600" laptops because each one requires a different driver mix).
Re:Wipe the hard drive... (Score:1)
ImageCast saves the day with setting up and maintaining labs, faculty boxes, and notebooks. You can send out patches or remotely install software, bleem boxes, etc. across your network. It's sweet and it's SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) in my shop. Installing and configuring stuff yourself is the only way to ensure that boxes are up to snuff when issued. Of course, nothing prevents the user from installing stuff later on.
But if you block all ports but 80 (web server) - OUTGOING and INCOMING - plus other stuff you need or want to run (ftp, databases, ICQ, SETI@home, etc.) at the router then you don't have to worry much about unauthorized apps talking dirty with Microsoft or Toshiba on your nickle.