Open NAT PS3 MW3/Actiontec Q1000

REJOICE, THE HOUR IS AT HAND, the hour of having an open NAT that is!

After countless hours configuring my Q1000 modem/router, I have finally obtained an open NAT on my PS3. The process is quit simple, and I honestly just missed one little step, and that step would have saved me hours upon hours of trying to get an open NAT.

First off, I want everyone to know that I have all three consoles (I mean who doesn't, and if you don't why not?). I want to bring to light that, I had an open NAT on my Xbox, but always had a moderate NAT on the PS3. Well, I had black ops for both systems, but I only have MW3 for the PS3 so that is the system I wanted my open NAT on.

I will start off by saying it is very difficult to have an open NAT for two systems connected to the same router. Actually I want to go ahead and just say its not possible, and here is why. 98.9% of home users have cable/dsl and with that, only one public IP address. This isn't something to be worried about, that is just how it goes. Well with one public IP address, you can only have one system with an open NAT. You could call your ISP and get two IP addresses, but that costs some cash and if you're like me, you are not willing to dish out even one more cent to the man! So therefore, you are stuck with your single public IP address, and two systems (I do have all three, but I don't play multiplayer on the Wii, so that isn't an issue). Ok, enough of this rambling and background blah blah, on to the fun stuff!

*Disclaimer, only perform the below listed steps if you are the owner of the router, or get permission from the owner (this applies to all you youngsters still living with the parents). I am not responsible for any issues your router may have by performing the steps I will list below, nor will I buy you a new router if you break it (which is highly doubtful but hey, I work in the IT field, I have seen stranger stuff happen).*

I want to say that, what I will discuss will be with the assumption that you have some IT knowledge. I am not talking about building Virtual Servers from ground up or deploying a bran new Domain controller on a network with 300+ employees (which I can do, allllll yeahhhhh). But enough knowledge to know how to access your router.

Unless you changed something, then your router IP will probably be 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1. Type this address (or your address) into your web browser URL and hit enter. If neither of these address work, on your home computer go to Start>Run (XP) Search(Vista and up)>'type' cmd>'type' ipconfig in the cmd window. You're looking for Default Gateway, that address should get you into your router.

Be sure to enable a static IP address for the PS3, if you do not know out to do this, do a Google search and get it done before reading on.


This will bring you to the router configuration page/s. Look for UPnP configuration page, and ensure that this is enabled. Before reading the below steps, look for DMZ configuation page. Remember that static IP you just gave to your PS3, well enter here and enable DMZ mode. What this will do, is place the PS3 outside of the router and use the public IP address directly. Load up MW3 and look at your NAT, if this does not work, remove the PS3 from the DMZ (this is important) and disable the DMZ and read on.

If the DMZ option failed, what we are looking for is port forwarding now. Find and enter onto the port forwarding page. Here are the ports you will want to forward for MW3:

"...

• Set port forwarding on your router to the IP address of your PlayStation 3. This game uses ports 81, 3074, 3075, 3478, 3479
  (UDP) and ports 80, 443, 3074, 5223 (TCP).
• For voice / video chat and online game play, direct communication with other PS3™ systems is used for data transmission during voice / video chat and online gaming. The port number used for this is UDP: 3658

..."

Original source: http://activision.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/activision.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=77659&p_created=1320244623&p_sid=G49GniIk&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_srch=1&p_lva=77658&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MSwxJnBfcHJvZHM9MCZwX2NhdHM9JnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9YW5zd2Vycy5zZWFyY2hfbmwmcF9wYWdlPTEmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD03NzY1OQ!!&p_li=&p_topview=1

and here are the ports in general for the PS3 system:

TCP Ports: 80, 443, 465, 983, 5223, and 10070 - 10080 - UDP Ports: 3478, 3479, 3658, and 10070


Also remember that, when setting port forwarding, "for a single port Port Start, Port End, and Port Map are all the same number. For a range of ports, Port Start is the first port of the range. Port End is the last port of the range and Port Map is ALWAYS the same as Port Start (Source: Actiontec Tech support e-mail)."

So for example, if you have a range of ports, like 3074 and 3075, you would enter it like this

Port Start: 3074
Port End: 3075
Port Map: 3074

Single Port exmaple:

Port Start: 80
Port End: 80
Port Map: 80

Now that you have your port mappings, let me give you a little tip. You cannot have two ports open for two different systems. One will cancel the other out. If you have port 3074 mapped for your Xbox and PS3, which ever one is listed first, will take priority. This is what plagued my moderate NAT for the PS3, because my Xbox had 3074 mapped first. After removing the Xbox map, my PS3 had an open NAT and my Xbox has a moderate.

If you have any questions, please leave me a comment below and I will answer to the best of my ability, and if time permits I might even be able to offer assistance to you. Enjoy your open NAT on the PS3 system for MW3!!!!

VMware error: Call "datacenter.queryconnectioninfo" for object on vCenter Server failed.

I have been having a memory error with a blade server at work, and Dell sent me a memory module to replace. I put the Host in maintenance mode and then shut it down (which is the proper way to do this).

I pulled the blade out, replaced the memory and powered back up the server. Everything came up great, except for the fact that the server would not re-connect to the Cluster. I removed the server from the Cluster in efforts to re-add it back with no success, so I checked the KB site and here is what I found on VMware's KB site:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1027672

After reading that spill, I attempted to log onto the host through VSphere Client with success. To my amazement, the host was still in maintenance mode (which it should have been) and I took it out of maintenance mode and was able to add it back to the Vcenter cluster.

Hope this helps someone out. Thanks for reading! 

Spooler Subsystem App closed by Data Execution Prevention

Of course I come in on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and it suppose to be an easy laid back day, and I get notified that one of our print servers went down. This print sever houses one side of the state, and 40+ printers. The error is the same as the title bar states. I am unable to start the print spooler and I came across this information from forums.techareana. Big thanks to forum member Alan Morris for posting the following:

"Launch task manager. On the Processes tab, change the view to include a
column for PID

open a command window
type net start spooler

You have one minute to complete the next couple tasks

find spoolsv.exe in task manager, note the PID

in the command window type
ntsd -p [PID for spoolsv.exe] -g -G


press enter and a bunch of module load info will scroll paste.


when the process terminates you will see a prompt
ntdll!DbgBreakPoint:
7c822583 cc int 3
0:001>


type k"

and

"The problem is the fact that you had installed a previous version of
hptcpmon and the new version of hptcpmon terminates when it reads the old
registry data from the previous version.

You can fix this by deleting the old hptcpmon registry data, before
installing the new driver with the updated version of hptcpmon.dll

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monitors\HP
Standard TCP/IP Port

HP has data some place on their support site for this issue."


After I renamed the hptcpmon.dll and deleted that registry key, this solved my problem , and all 40 of my printers showed back up after a reboot. Awesome stuff!

Automatic Updates/Group Policy

Automatic Updates keep turning off no matter what I was doing! Ok, I have finally found what I was looking for. Through many hours of searching google, even a call into Microsoft and still I had no results to show.

I have setup a WSUS in my environment and wanted Automatic updates to be applied once a week at the time I specified. Well, I have came across the answer randomly (I was changing the desktop wallpaper in GPO and came across it).

Go into GPO, highlight the default GPO (or the one applied in your environment) and click edit. Under Computer Configuration-Windows Settings>Security Settings>System Services. Locate and find Automatic updates (pre-08) or Windows Update (08-present) and select automatic. Done!

I cannot believe it was right there, and I have missed it this whole time. I hope this helps someone else in the future!


To add onto this issue, if you turn on automatic updates here, it may not work with some systems. The best way is to leave this option 'not configured' and configure your automatic updates in Computer Configuration>Admin Templates>Windows Components>Windows Update. In here you can specify to turn on automatic updates and point it to a WSUS server.

Xbox 360 Elite restarts after HDMI input is changed/HDMI and Optical out

Last night, I was attempting to get black ops on my Xbox 360 and Ps3 to both have a NAT type set to Open. As it stands at the time of this typing, 360 is Open, PS3 is Moderate. (This is a whole separate issue)

I had both turned on of course, as I was going back and forth between the inputs. Well, I noticed that when I changed the input after being on the 360, and back to the PS3 (or any input for that matter) it would restart my 360. Luckily I figured this one out quickly.

I wanted to utilize my HDMI connection for the best possible picture, but I still wanted to use my Optical output on the standard AV/Component cable. Well if you try to connect both at the same time to the 360, you will learn real quick that it's not going to happen. To fix this little 'space' issue, I removed the plastic case on the AV/Component cable and what do you know, you can now plug both in at the same time!

Well, with both plugged in at the same time, your Xbox sees both types of connectors. So, if you are on the HDMI connection and switch inputs, your Xbox will reset. This is due to the Xbox trying to determine what connector your system is using, in my case its both, so if i change the input on either one its on, it will reset itself to determine which input it is requesting.

Keep this in mind if you are trying to do the same thing as I was (trying to use a cheap solution to using HDMI and optical out without having to buy another expensive cable). So, in closing keep your remotes in a safe place while gaming, if you change that input on accident, your console will reset.