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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2002-06-20

A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa
That Helps You Get More From Your Hardware, 
Software, and Time Online

Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!

1) Software Quality = Oxymoron?

Lots of readers are exploring the excellent "software quality" info over at InformationWeek.Com:

• Rate Your Software Vendor (fast, free, fun survey)
• What's the Buggiest Software? (a statistical look at how common bugs are in 18 major software categories, including operating systems, desktop productivity software, email clients, anti-virus software, and so on.)
• Learning To Live With Bugs (includes an amazing pie chart near the end that shows one of the reasons why software quality is such a fuzzy issue)
• Software Quality Quiz and Resources (see how your answers stack up against those from some 800 business technology professionals)
• "The Case For Results-Based Software Management" (an interesting way to look at software management in terms of "software economics" rather than the more familiar "software construction"' or "software engineering")
• And  "In Search Of... Software Quality" (a meta-page that links you to a variety of resources--- organizations, software testing tools, academic resources, methodologies, and weblogs--- all relating to software quality.)

I've listed fuller descriptions and direct links to all the above items at http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020614S0002

After seeing the above, reader Russell Coover was prompted to write an interesting and provocative note in the discussion area:

You're using Adobe Photoshop on a Windows machine and your computer freezes. Who is at fault? Is it Adobe? Is it Windows? Is it some other Application running in the background? If you're unhappy with Adobe, then it's Adobe's fault. Don't like Microsoft. The bug is theirs. In fact it may be neither's problem. [Perhaps] you've installed a program to change your wallpaper every 15 minutes, and *it* is at fault. But few of us really know how to tell who is at fault! When my Windows XP machine has problems, it asks to report the problem to Redmond, but it doesn't report the problem to me. I suppose I could check the trouble logs, but that's too much trouble, and if I try, I find the log is in a code I don't understand. Oh I guess I could find something to help me understand the code, but that's too much work. It must be a Microsoft bug! Bill Gates and Company are ALWAYS at fault, or are they?...

Please click over and take a look! Then join the discussion: What do *you* rely on to gauge software quality? (Word of mouth? Benchmarks? Formal reviews by testing labs? Etc.) Do you do any formal personal testing or benchmarking yourself, or do you just "dive in" and see what a new piece of software has to offer? Do you think software quality has improved, declined, or stayed about the same over the last few years? Who produces the best software these days--- and who churns out the worst? Join in at http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020614S0002 !

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2) Other Hard Drive Repair Options (Part One)

The recent "Dead Drive Fix" item ( http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2002/2002-06-13.htm#2 ) prompted a flood of email--- I had no idea that drive problems were still such a hot button!

A lot of the information was really, really good, and I'll be presenting the best of it in upcoming issues. But this one (long-ish) note from reader Dalton Seymour covered so much ground in itself--- not only in suggesting fixes, but in illustrating a excellent analysis of drive problems--- I thought it was worth running in its entirety, spread across two newsletter items, as the lead-off "dead drive" followup:

Dear Fred, As a computer user and tech for over 20 years who has salvaged a lot of drives, thought I would put in my 2 cents for the sake of your distress call for help on a dead drive. I'll try and make this somewhat brief, but touch all the bases.

Your distressed subscriber failed to characterize the suspected drive problem. The most common problems originate from corruption of the master boot record, FAT, or directory. Those are soft problems which can usually be taken care of with a combination of tools like Fdisk /mbr to refresh the master boot record followed by a reboot and Norton disk doctor or Spinneret.

The most common hardware problems are a bad controller, a bad drive motor, or a bad head mechanism.

1. Can the BIOS see and identify the hard drive correctly? If it can't, then the hard drives onboard controller is bad.

2. Does the drive spin and maintain a constant velocity? If it does, that's good news. The motor is functioning.

3. If the drive surges and dies, the most likely cause is a bad controller (assuming the drive is cool). A gate allowing the current to drive the motor may not be staying open. The drive needs a new controller.

4. Do you hear a lot of head clatter when the machine is turned on and initialized (but before the system attempts to access the hard drive). Head clatter would indicate that the spindle bearings are sloppy or worn badly. Maybe even lose and flopping around inside.

5. There is always the possibility that the controller you are using in the machine has gone south.

(See part two, below, for solutions to the above problems.)

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3) Other Hard Drive Repair Options (Part Two)

(Continued from previous item:)

Solutions:

1. If the drive spins, try booting to the A> prompt, run Fdisk and check to see if Fdisk can see a partition on the hard drive. If Fdisk can see the partition, that means that it can access the drive and that the controller electronics are functioning correctly. If there is no head clatter, it may be just a matter of disk corruption which commonly occurs when a surge hits you machine and overwhelms the power supply voltage regulator. It commonly over whelms the system electronics allowing an EM pulse to wipe out the master boot record, file allocations table, and primary directory. Fdisk can fix the master boot record and Norton Disk Doctor can restore the FAT and Directory from the secondaries.

2. The drive spins but Fdisk can't see it. Try the drive in another system and repeat the test to confirm that Fdisk can't read through the drives onboard controller. If it sees it in another system, then your machines hard drive interface is bad. You can try an upgraded or replacement controller card like a Promise or CMD Technologies (there are others) in you machine after disabling the integrated controller in the BIOS, but if the integrated controller went south, it may just be symptomatic of further failures and you'd be wise to replace the motherboard. Trying the drive in another machine also eliminates the variable that your machines 12 volt power output being bad

3. If you get head clatter but a constant velocity on the drive motor (no surging), you might try sticking the hard drive in the freezer for about 12 hours. This is an old trick from back in the days of the MFM/ESDI driver era. This can cause the drive components to shrink enough to make the track marker align with the tracks. We don't see that kind of platter spindle wear much anymore, but back in the old days, the balancing and bearings weren't as good. Still, under the right circumstances, it might help. It would depend on how old the drive is and how many hours of wear have occurred. You have to be quick to get your info off the drive when it works. Back then, the drives were much smaller, so there wasn't so much to copy. So, go after the important data first.

4. The drive doesn't spin. Either the onboard controller is bad or the motor is bad (assuming you did try the drive in another machine). It's time to hit the net and local independent shops to see if you can locate another drive of the same make and model that's good. Since the drive is probably an older drive and no longer in distribution, your best bet is to find an identical used drive. If you know someone with the same make and model, you might be wise to try and persuade them to sell you their drive with an offer of providing them with a free upgraded drive. If you can locate an identical drive, start with the controller replacement ... this is the simplest and least invasive. If swapping the controller doesn't produce the desire result, you can tear into the drive and swap the motors. While you have both drive opened up to accomplish this, scrutinize the platters, heads and armatures. You might even hook the drive up and power it from a system with both drives attached. This way, you could see anything that deviates between the actions of both drives when they are initialized. Swapping patters is unlikely to produce any positive result. They are a balanced system like the tires on your car and I suspect that the balance will be different for each drive as will other variables.

5. There's always Ontrack Corp. who will attempt to recoup your info starting at $500 and going up from there. They don't fix and return the drive either.

If the info is all that important to you, I would seek some professional and experience technician in your locality who makes his living from servicing and building computer systems ... not just selling them. If you have had much experience salvaging information from bad hard drives, your likelihood of success is low. In the case of soft corruption, all utilities have their eccentricities. Often times, Norton Disk Doctor will go too far (if you let it). It's wise to just let those utilities small steps and then have a look at the drive and see if you can copy it off. Norton will go so far as to rename directories and files, and even delete them or break them up into fragments which are useless.

Good Luck, Dalton Seymour

*Outstanding,* Dalton. Many thanks!

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4) Automatically Create A "Restore Point" In XP

Reader Josh Neagle writes:

Being somewhat of a nut about backup's and being able to restore my computer from disaster, I did some searching on how to automatically create a system restore point without user input. I came across this, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q295299

This article explains how to create a system restore point by creating a VBS script file. (It has other interesting info too.) After trying the script it works perfectly! All you have to do then is setup when you want to create the point through Scheduled Tasks. I've set mine to run every morning before I get to work. Not only does this create restore points easily, but you can run the script by a simple double-click whenever you need to, and not have to wade through XP's menus to find System Restore! (Can't help it, I'm lazy!) --- Josh N

Thanks, Josh. I use System Restore, but only in limited ways, preferring not to have a gigantic SR folder on the hard drive. (System Restore will consume prodigious amounts of disk space, if you let it.) It's also a less-complete backup method than are standard backups.

But for those who use SR as a primary safety tool, this could be very handy. I suspect that the files--- or some close variant--- could also be used in WinME, as that also uses System Restore....

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5) AOL Passwords Endlessly Duplicated?

Reader Jerrold Billmyer sent in an alarming email about AOL passwords:

Fred,  I have learned more about my OS from you than any book/magazine on the subject. THANK YOU! Now, here is something...

My job (a sensitive position) brings me in contact with among other things, AOL disks in volume. On handling these I noticed of the 30 to 50 I had to sort they all shared one of two identical passwords. HMM, now I know that everyone is exhorted to change their PW regularly and presumably the personal data associated with an activated account would protect...

I guess they've exhausted the PW supply, like the telephone company and phone numbers. Next they'll add an "area code" prefix?? --- Jerry

The worst part about this is that many AOL users are neophytes, and have no clue about password security. If they simply accept--- and leave--- the passwords that came with their sign-up CDs, they're leaving themselves wide open to account-abuse by any with access to another sign-up CD from the same batch.

So, let's see: AOL can mangle your network settings (see http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,33602,00.asp or
http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=aol+network+settings+insecure&sp-a=0008002a-sp00000000 ), install itself covertly in your "trusted" zone so that AOL stuff can bypass your Internet security settings (see http://www.google.com/search?q=aol+%22trusted+zone%22 ), inundates you with ads even though you're paying top-dollar for the service....

Man, I don't understand why so many people love AOL. I just don't get it.

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6) PR Budget = $0.00

Long-time readers know this newsletter is a one-person private project of mine: It's not part of some publishing empire's stable of publications. There's no budget, staff or facility to handle outreach and promotions. The newsletter depends on word of mouth to grow.

And that's where you come in: Each issue, I try to offer you useful, interesting and amusing factoids to help you with your hardware, software, and time online. Can you take just a minute to help me out in return?

If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, just use the following link to recommend the LangaList to a friend. Your friend just may find a new source of useful information; I just may gain a new subscriber; and you just may win $10,000 for your trouble (full details also available via this "Recommend It" link): http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#1  The "Recommend-It" service is an ad-based site (you’ll see banners and such). The advantages to you of using the Recommend-It service are that you can win $10,000 and that you can add a personal message to your LangaList recommendation.

But if you’d rather use the tried-and-true, ad-free recommendation form, you’ll find it at: http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#2  . That option gives you a shot at winning a no-strings $30 Gift Certificate for any item at Amazon.Com--- books, software, hardware, kitchenware, toys, and more.

Either way, thank you for helping to spread the word about the LangaList!

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7) Cosmology And More

A few issues back ( http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2002/2002-06-13.htm#5 ) I told you of a disappointing read--- Hawking's "The Universe In A Nutshell." It was a major letdown after his excellent "A Brief History of Time" ( http://www.langa.com/books.htm#Time )

Well--- as usual!--- many readers had additional information even on this rather offbeat subject. <g>

Fred, Didn't know you were into such things....  Speaking of time and all things cosmo-wise have you ever read "Wrinkles In Time" ( http://www.langa.com/books.htm#wrinkle )by George Smoot and Keay Davidson? Also a few really great Cosmology links are..... 
http://snap.lbl.gov/news/news.html
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni.html
http://www.superstringtheory.com/
http://space.gsfc.nasa.gov/astro/cobe/cobe_home.html
Of course the subject of time and cosmology goes on and on...... but seriously, if you really wanna do some heavy duty mind bending, it's a bit of a different subject ( biology/ physiology) try "The Body Electric" ( http://www.langa.com/books.htm#body ) by Robert O Becker and Gary Selden ---Best Regards, Jim

re  LangaList cf Steven Weinberg's "The First Three Minutes." (  http://www.langa.com/books.htm#3minutes ) It's literally that what was known then (I believe the book came out about 15 years ago) or extrapolated anyway, about the first 180 seconds after the Big Bang. And it's not namby-pamby like some of Prof. Hawking's text. ---Thomas Brown, the Baltimore Woodwright

Let me recommend another and new book, BAD ASTRONOMY ( http://www.langa.com/books.htm#astronomy ). In it the author criticizes persuasively the pseudo-sciences dominating so much of popular culture, i.e., creationism, horoscopes, hoaxed moon landing conspiracy, Hollywood sci-fi. But in his critiques he explains some of the same material as Hawkins and Greene with erudition, humor, and style. ---William P Honeywell

Hi Fred: After reading the "Disappointing Read" section in your last issue I thought you might want to recommend an interesting read on the subject of Quantum Computers, written for the layman. If you like reading non-technical physics books then you'll enjoy this.... it gives you a fantastic insight on things to come in the world of technology, Physics and information processing. Until I read this book I had no idea that Oxford University had performed calculations [using] chloroform [molecules!]. The title of this book is "The Quest for the Quantum Computer" ( http://www.langa.com/books.htm#quantum ) by Julian Brown. David Deutsch at Oxford University is leading the way in theory and invention of the Quantum Computer, and is mentioned throughout this book. This is where its all happening: http://www.qubit.org/  Hope you enjoy the read--- Dean Smart

Fred, If some of your readers are not very familiar with Hawking they may benefit from looking at this "portrait" of the man and his work (at http://www.1-900-870-6235.com/HawkingMap.htm ). He and his staff are looking at replacing their old sitemap ( http://www.hawking.org.uk/info/map.html ) with this one I developed. It's a fun and friendly way to explore (intimidating?) subjects like Hawking and physics. Feel free to share it with your community. Always happy to help, Ron Wild

Thanks to all who wrote in! Lots to read this summer! <g>

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8) They Just Keep Coming And Coming and Coming...

Over two thousand of your fellow readers have "Loaded the code." Please click over to http://www.langa.com/code.htm  , and maybe you can join them! (If you've already "Loaded The Code" and are wondering if your site will appear here or on the Langa.Com web site, please see http://www.langa.com/link.txt  )

Speaking of which: Here's another eclectic sample of reader sites--- some professional, some very personal:

View A Randomly-Chosen Reader Site
http://www.langa.com/randomlink.htm

Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At
http://www.langa.com/readersites.htm

Unusual "personal presence" page
http://home.att.net/~robertmswain/CamelXII/Presence.htm

Link Haven
http://www.thelinkhaven.com/

The WikkerAwards
http://www.wikkerland.com/WikkerAwards.htm

Small Business Help
http://www.longshome.com/index.html

E&S Cleaning (Newton, Ma)
http://home.attbi.com/~aceman1/

International Shelling Tours
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geduffy/shell/index.html

EWT Services
http://www.ewtservices.com/

Martha's Web
http://www.keyboardpower.com/

SeekNLink
http://seeknlink.com/

Starlight Computing (NZ)
http://www.starlight.net.nz/

First Main Consulting Services
http://www.firstmain.net/

Stephen Jolly’s web site (UK)
http://www.sfjnet.co.uk/

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9) Several New Security Problems/Patches...

...Too many, in fact, to list in full detail. (Sigh.) Please click over to Microsoft to see if these affect you, and to grab the appropriate patches, if needed:

Unchecked Buffer in Remote Access Service Phonebook Could Lead to Code Execution (In NT, Win2K and XP): http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-029.asp

Replacement Patch for MSN Chat (original patch last month contained an additional problem...): http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-022.asp

This one brought a smile:

Unchecked Buffer in Gopher Protocol Handler Can Run Code of Attacker's Choice: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-027.asp

"Gopher" is an ancient but once-popular directory/file/resource browsing protocol; it predates the popularization of the Web, and was invented at the University of Minnesota, whose school mascot is--- believe it or not--- a gopher. Alas, the implementation of the Gopher protocol in Internet Explorer has a security problem...

More Microsoft security problems/patches: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/

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10) Just For Grins

Speaking of ancient (see item above) reader Jerry Barnes sent along this clip that supposedly dates to 1988--- and is one of the first-ever virus hoax emails <g>:

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----

11) Plus! Edition Highlights:

• Anti-Spam-Tool Reviews, How-Tos, More
• Linux Counterpoint
• Three Easy XP Customizations

Today's LangaList Plus! Edition contains all ten items above, plus about 30% more content including: professional reviews of several anti-spam tools, plus lots of how-to info on reducing the onslaught of spam, including a list of all known spammers and spam-friendly ISPs, a registry of known Spammers, an anti-spam block list, and more; a detailed letter with excellent "getting started" advice for Windows users interested in Linux; and three simple customizations you can use to make XP work the way you want it to.

The Plus! Edition costs just $1 a month! info: http://www.langa.com/plus.htm 

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See you next issue!

Best,

Fred

Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win $10,000!I)

An easier-to read formatted HTML version is available in the "Current Issue" section of http://www.langa.com.  (The HTML version of each issue normally is available by 9AM EST [UT-5] of the issue date.) All past LangaList issues are also available at the Langa.Com site.

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