None of these repairs are actually broken repairs but issues with functionality which was limiting the usage of that bit of IT. The first one on the repair list was the WordPress software which this blog is written in. Since I reinstalled in earlier this year with the current version they had this horrible thing called Gutenberg which was the system within which you wrote the blog, well I am sorry to say that if this was supposed to be an advance in technology then something was seriously lost along the lines. To be honest it was more like Fisher Price, My First Word processor. Apparently Gutenberg is a Block editor, other making an easy job difficult I am not sure why there was a change to a Block Editor, maybe the speel of how better Block editor are failed to reach this old fart, who taught himself the art of using Word Processing software who can now comfortable write a documents that looks half decent. I been asked to look at document that senior staff have written and been asked if I can “tidy” the formatting up because nothing lined up the way they wanted it, so I think I can say Gutenberg is a pile of poo. I has has been replaced with the old style editor which is way more like a Word Processor to use and a lot simpler, if I insert something, it inserted where I want it, not where Gutenberg wants to put it. I can use html code which will produce the desired html action rather thane just printing the HTML code in a highlighted box. I could go on but I already lost a couple of readers already so lets just say I am happy and move onto the next repairs.
Both of these repairs came to light at the same time, I have a Windows 10 PC which runs headless (no monitor, keyboard or mouse) and I would access the PC by using a program on my Linux laptop which allowed me to connect to my Win10 PC using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). When I did this I would in affect have a window with my Win10 desktop and could do anything in this window I could do on the Win10 PC if connected in a conventional sense with monitor and keyboard. But then one day it refused to connect, the Win10 PC was on and running but I was unable to connect, now this is the downside to my setup, if something bugs out on the PC I can not see it. Now this all is not lost as one possible issue could be the network has gone awol, so I checked the connection and everything indicated I had a live network connection. So I went of to check the router to see what IP address it is configured with etc. etc. Well this is where repair number 3 came to light, I could not login into the router, It did not matter what password I used I could not login. I cast my mind back and a little light twinkle, I had reset the password down when I had carried out a firmware upgrade several months ago………………………..and I had forgotten to write the new password down in my password program.
Now for both these issues there is a simple repair, in the case of my Win10 PC, just connect it to a monitor and keyboard and mouse but there a reason it runs headless, a lack of space makes it impossible to run the PC with the monitor, keyboard and mouse, due to a lack of space, (at the moment I have 2 x 24″ monitor, 3 Laptops, keyboard and mouse sat on my desk and the PC sat in a little space between the desk and the wall), which is why there is a monitor under my desk (connected to the PC) and a keyboard sat down at the side of the desk. The repair was simple, the Win10 PC had changed its IP address, why I don’t know (unless I can get into the router). I have given the Win10 PC a new IP address and I can now access from my Linux Laptop.
The router, well there are two options, the simple route and harder longer route, I have chosen the harder longer route for now. The simple route is to do a factory reset on the router, then I will be left with a router just like it was when I first took it out the box and I just need to reprogram it. But no, I have decided I am going to hack my own router, I am going to use a piece of software to crack the router password, Brute Force attack. This involves collecting some very large word list files of words and phrases then getting the software to try to login to the router using words\phrases in the files, and there are millions to try, the current wordlist file is 1.89gb (compressed). I have uncompressed this file and broken it down into 42 50mb files and slowly running through each one, I am currently on the fourth and this one has been running for 13hours. The question you may be asking is why? Well my Internet is running perfectly fine so at the moment time is on my side, if that changes it will only take about an hour to reset the router and reprogram it and have it back up. Going down the hacking route, I am learning new things, having the software and wordlists is one thing, putting them together in a cohesive manner so that they work and test each word\phrase on the router to login, is a new skill. At the moment, I doing this on my 16 year old laptop, now that my Win10 PC is now available I may change it over to see if a modern 4 core chip works any quicker. I f I crack the password I will let you know (not the password but the fact that I cracked it)