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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2004-02-12

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

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1) Reader-Recommended BIOS Resources...

The recent item, "BIOS Update: Not As Scary As It Seems" ( http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-02-09.htm#1 ) brought lots of interesting email, including these:

Hi Fred, Just a quick note about a resource for BIOSes. This site is excellent http://www.badflash.com/. Thought you might want to pass it on to your readers. Regards, C Chadwick

Thanks! We'd actually covered BadFlash before--- it's a service specifically designed to help you recover from a bad or failed BIOS update process. Although it's rare--- and getting rarer--- for BIOS flashes to fail catastrophically on newer PCs, it still can happen, and it's nice to have a fall-back option.

The major BIOS vendors and resellers may help, too:

http://www.mrbios.com/
http://www.phoenix.com/en/home/
http://www.ami.com/

And if you want to get really serious about BIOS updates, especially if you need to replace many (eg if you're in an IT department in a business), or if you're doing something nonstandard, then something like this may help:

Hi Fred, I just wanted to comment on the question of updating your computer's bios information ... I have been looking into this issue lately because I wanted to use an AMD Athlon XP processor on my Abit KT7A motherboard. According to Abit, the earlier versions of this board (ver 1.0-1.2) do not support the XP processor, but I went ahead and did the upgrade anyway. It works fine in every way except that in the bios it says "Unknown CPU type". To make a long story short, I want to experiment with some hacked bios versions I've come across on various web sites, but not without some way of recovering from disaster. That brings me to the reason for this correspondence... The IOSS Bios Savior. http://www.ioss.com.tw/eg/ ... It sounds like the perfect thing for anyone who wants to update their bios, but wants some insurance to go along with it. Regards and thanks for a great newsletter. ---Dave Anderson

Thanks to all who wrote in!

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2) ... And Reader-Recommended Undelete Resources

Similarly, "Gone, But Not Deleted" ( http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-02-09.htm#2 ) also triggered great emails, some pointing out interesting products.

Here are two examples, one for a free tool I'd never heard of--- but that looks great for basic undeletion--- and one a high-end professional-quality data recovery program for recovering from worst-case kinds of data deletion errors :

I saw your article about recovering deleted files and thought you might be interested in checking out this freeware file: REST2514.exe Here is the site address and what it says about the program. I have used it many times to help friends recover from accidental errors. http://www.collina.us/files/REST2514.htm "Restore files which are deleted from the recycle bin by mistake. Conversely, delete files completely. [OS] Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP. Freeware. [Author] Brian Kato..."

Hi Fred! About recovering files, I found a simple easy to use program that is a miracle worker. Hands down the most incredible software I've seen. Its called Easy Recovery. ( http://www.ontrack.com ) I once fdisk-ed and reformatted a partition (ntfs)... and on that partition was many gigs of irreplaceable video of me in my early days racing stock cars. You can imagine my shock when I rebooted and found it all gone! I wanted to die I was so upset, the last pictures of my Dad were in there before he died so I was totally devastated. By accident I found a company that offered a program called Easy Recovery, I tried it and while slow--- it took 10 hours--- it recovered more than I ever imagined. Not only did I get all my video back in perfect shape but many many files from years previous that were from my win 95 days!!! Stuff that had been formatted and written over 10 times or more! Unbelievable! This software did 2 things to me: 1 made me be extremely grateful to the genius that made it, 2 scared the living you know what out of me in regards to what you said a while ago about safe HD disposal. ( http://www.informationweek.com/837/langa.htm ) Thanks Fred, Aloha Shawn

Major-league data recovery is indeed slow--- and expensive. The Ontrack solution is a do-it-yourself thing, and costs from $89 to $500. But that's still less than many send-it-out professional data recovery services; they might charge $500 just to assess a hard drive, with the actual recovery costs going much, much higher.

I won't beat the dead horse again, except to repeat that good backups are your best, simplest--- and in the long run, least expensive--- insurance against catastrophic data loss.

Thanks to all who wrote in!

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3) "Cryptographic Service Error"

A "Cryptographic Service Error" is itself fairly cryptic. <g> But it actually can crop up in quite a few areas. Here's one example:

Fred, My subscription to the Plus version has proved invaluable many times over. Thank you. Last weekend a client said he couldn't logon to MSN Explorer from one of his 2 PC's running XP Home. I used Ad-aware and Spybot to clean up a generous amount of garbage, reinstalled MSN Explorer and fully expected to logon. Nope, but with IE6 I could browse the WEB. Little did I know that the logon problem was a symptom of a deeper issue. I couldn't install IEsp1 over IE6 and Windows update wouldn't work. Finally checked to see if XP sp1 was installed. It wasn't. When I tried to install XPsp1 I received the following message: "Service Pack 1 Setup Error: Setup could not verify the integrity of the file Update.inf. Make sure the Cryptographic service is running on this computer." The cryptographic service was running so off to Google.
I ended up at http://www.updatexp.com/cryptographic-service.html and was pleased to find a well written solution. May this tip shorten the odyssey that I experienced. Christopher Harris

Thanks, Christopher. The Cryptographic Service Error page is a marvel of completeness. In fact, the whole http://www.updatexp.com/ site is a gem, and well worth perusing. Nice find!

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4) Bulletproofing PC Setups

This reader has to deal with an extreme case, but his basic idea of making PCs totally klutz-, hacker-, accident- and kid-proof is sound, and can work on almost *any* system. <g>

Fred, I'm a middle school science teacher, and my school just purchased a portable wireless computer lab (16 laptops and a wireless hub on a rollaround cart that can be "checked out" to any teacher). Due to the fact that the laptops have Win98 (support to be phased out) installed on them coupled with the fact that middle school students will be using them, I've convinced my principal to let me "tweak" the setup for optimum long-term performance. What I've got in mind is this:

I plan to take one of the laptops, divide the HD into 3 partitions (system, [hidden] backup, and documents), get it completely current as far as security patches and updates go, install all needed programs on it, and point the "My Documents" folder to the "documents" partition. I will then create an image of this as-perfect-as-possible setup using BootItNG ( http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ ), burn this image to CD, and then paste that image onto each of the laptops (and also place a copy of the image on the "backup" partition for easier access later). This will not only ensure that each computer has an identical setup, but it will allow much simpler recovery for WHEN (not if) a students tinkers with system settings.

Two questions: Am I missing anything that you can think of? Do you foresee any problems with this plan? Thanks in advance, Robby Workman

If you have valid software licenses for all the PCs, and if the hardware is truly identical, this will work fine. This is, in fact, how many PC vendors set up PCs on an assembly line: One master image gets plopped onto many successive hard drives.

But it won't work if the systems are different because they'll need different drivers and hardware setups.

But even then, you can still partially automate this by copying the /Win98 folder tree from the setup CD to the hard drive of your master system, and doing your install from there, rather than from the CD. Then, any changes made to any subsequent installation of that image that normally would require inserting the CD will instead simply read the needed files off the hard drive, out of the /Win98 folders.

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5) Free Reg Cleaner

Hi Fred, I was furious! :-) Furious but not for long!
 
On the subject of registry cleaners in your http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-02-05.htm#3  issue, I too was a long time "JV16 Power Tools" user - and I followed its development from it's simple beginnings when it was called 'RegCleaner".

Then I woke up one day to discover that it had disabled itself with it's own time bomb - a pop-up announcing that I was using an "outdated" (ha ha ha!) version and I needed an upgrade - to the shareware. I was furious! Wrote the author - he moved! Wrote the company expressing my displeasure - they wrote back but avoided the issue, really...I don't even remember what they said.

Anyway - I found what I believe to be as good, even better - and *faster* - registry cleaner: Reg Seeker. It's free and safe: http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm It is a beta, but I've never had a problem and it works great. ---Bob in Canada

Thanks, Bob. Please note that any Reg cleaner can run amok and delete settings that should be left alone, so use them all with care and caution--- and with backups!

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6) Recommend This Newsletter And Win!

If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, maybe a friend would find it useful too! Just use the following link to recommend the LangaList---your friend may find a new source of useful information and you just may win one of three FREE ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTIONS to the LangaList Plus! edition given each month. (If your name is drawn and you're already a Plus! subscriber, your current subscription will be extended by a full year.)

Check out the details at http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm . Thanks for recommending the LangaList--- and good luck!

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7) New "Notify" Edition Rollout!

Several issues back, we quietly rolled out a new version of the Plus! newsletter: A "Notify" edition designed to save you email bandwidth and/or to avoid most problems with spam filters or blacklists.

Now, it's time for a full-scale rollout!

Like all the Plus! editions, the Notify edition arrives many hours before the Standard edition does--- being first in line for each issue's downloads and external links is one of the many benefits of being a Plus! subscriber. But because the Notify edition and subscriber list is small, it mails very fast, and has been arriving even earlier than the other Plus! editions, which have many more members. "Notify" is turning out to be the fastest way to get the LangaList!

To avoid triggering spam filters, the Notify edition contains just a URL that brings you to the full text on the private Plus! web site: The Notify email arrives in your mailbox, you click the URL, and you're there, reading the full Plus! text. No fuss, no hassle--- and no having to fish your issues out of a spam folder or having to argue with your ISP about blockages. <g>

To avoid blacklist problems, the Notify mailing list is actually on a different server with a different name and IP address than the other lists. So when some blacklist decides that the main LangaList edition is spam and blocks the sender, the Notify edition will still go through.

Finally, because the Notify email is so small, it downloads in a flash, too, and leaves your mailbox uncluttered.

So, there are lots of reasons to like the Notify edition, and I invite you all to try it out.

If you're NOT yet a Plus! subscriber, check out all the benefits, and select "Notify" when you're asked to choose an issue format: http://www.langa.com/plus.htm

If you ARE already a Plus! subscriber, please click to http://www.langalist.com/plus/change_format.asp . It only takes a minute to change your current format over to the Notify version; and if you don't like it, it only takes a minute to change back!

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8) Another Code-Load Success Story

Code-loader Wayne Hausknecht writes:

Hi Fred, Thanks for listing my site in the "Loaded the Code" section on 2004-01-26. I usually get 50-75 hits a day. Your newsletter bumped my hits up 2300% to an amazing 1150! And the "Langa Effect" lasted for a whole week. Another great reason to "Load the Code", besides letting everyone know what a terrific resource you are. Regards, Wayne Hausknecht
http://www.wghwoodworking.com

Do you have a home page or website? (It doesn't matter what size.) Please click over to http://www.langa.com/code.htm , and maybe you can join the thousands of LangaList readers who have "Loaded the Code!" (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

Fathers, Kids and Computers
http://www.ryanpardue.com/index.html

BopDoc
http://www.bopdoc.net/

Temporary tattoos
http://www.temptatts4u.com/

Fred's World (offers gator)
http://www.fredsworld.cjb.net/

"Refuge From Boredom & Mediocrity"
http://www3.sympatico.ca/wpetelka/

Conscious Vibes
http://cvibes.net/

Marco's Home
http://home.hccnet.nl/mj.devries/marco.html

Canadian actor Steve Bacic Fan Site
http://www.afan.dk/stevebacic/about.shtml

QuickBooksRUs
http://www.quickbooksrus.com

SmartProjects
http://www.smart-projects.net/

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9) PopUp Blocker + Password Manager + Form Filler...

Here's a multifunction product that this reader absolutely loves:

I've gone the route of a lot of your readers, first the free newsletter, then the Plus edition, and now trying to make a contribution...

One of the better tools your newsletter has put me on to over the years has been EMS Free Surfer Companion. ( http://www.kolumbus.fi/eero.muhonen/FS/ ) After playing with a bunch of pop-up stoppers (some incorporated into other, larger programs) I keep coming back to this one. The main reason? Not only does it do a great job of blocking most (but not all) pop-ups, but it has an elegant way of letting you know when it's working. You can choose to play a sound through your speakers, but the default is for it to use your PC speaker. This is important to me because my computer is in the family room, and I normally have my speakers turned off so I don't annoy everyone else. And I do want to know when a pop-up is blocked because it may be something I actually want to see. And that's where Free Surfer really makes my life easier, because it is very simple to check what was blocked, and choose to "surf" that pop-up if desired. The blocked pop-up may have been a sales receipt or something equally important!

The other pop-up blockers I have tried don't always make it easy to allow the pop-up through on a one-time basis. Many require that I back-track and move forward again while holding down the CTRL key, not a good idea if doing so could result in a double billing.

The main reason I'm writing you about Free Surfer now, when you have covered this program before, is because of the additions to the latest "pay" version of this program. For a very reasonable $20, EMS Free Surfer Companion not only does its pop-up blocking thing, as well as incorporating a clean-up plug-in (clears History, temp files and the like), but it now includes a very nice password safe/field filler, something that has gotten a lot of coverage the last few issues. It allows you to surf to a page, fill out the login fields, and then capture and store that information. You can then fill out the fields on subsequent visits with a right click, or select a site from the programs list and "Surf and Fill" in one step.

It even allows you to store multiple log ins for the same site (like Yahoo mail) and select the right one when you fill the fields in. The next revision will allow you to specify a master password to lock all your passwords up. And the program is designed to make it very easy to transport all your login data between multiple computers.  Well worth another look! Keep up the great work. I look forward to each new issue of your excellent newsletter. --- Dennis J. Alcover

Thanks, Dennis!

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10) Just For Grins

This has been around, in various forms, forever... but here's a recent one, sent in by Martin Hayhurst:

A lesson in Posting:
 
How many group posters does it take to change a light bulb?
 
1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed

14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently

7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs

27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs

53 to flame the spell checkers

41 to correct spelling/grammar flames

6 to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb" ...

another 6 to condemn those 6 as anal-retentive

2 industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term is "lamp"

15 know-it-alls who claim *they* were in the industry, and that "light bulb" is perfectly correct

156 to email the participant's ISPs complaining that they are in violation of their "acceptable use policy"

109 to post that this group is not about light bulbs and to please take this discussion to a lightbulb group

203 to demand that cross posting to hardware forum, off-topic forum, and lightbulb group about changing light bulbs be stopped

111 to defend the posting to this group saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts *are* relevant to this group

306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty

27 to post URL's where one can see examples of different light bulbs

14 to post that the URL's were posted incorrectly and then post the corrected URL's

3 to post about links they found from the URL's that are relevant to this group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group

33 to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all headers and signatures, and add "Me too"

12 to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy

19 to quote the "Me too's" to say "Me three"

4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ

44 to ask what is a "FAQ"

4 to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?"

143 to say "do a Google search on light bulbs before posting questions about light bulbs"

1 forum lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now and start it all over again....

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11) Plus! Edition Highlights:

• Add "XP Pro-only" Features to XP Home!
     (way cool! and FREE!)

• De-ME Your XP PC
     (undoing a WinME/XP dual boot)

• "Administrators Only" error, alternate fix
     (odd fix, from a Microsoft support tech)

Plus! edition subscribers not only get much more content in every issue (like the above), but also have access to a private web site with over 100,000 words of special content and features not found in *any* issue of the newsletter; along with dozens of private downloads and much more- -- all for just $1 per month!

Plus! Edition info: http://www.langa.com/plus.htm 

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(Give a gift subscription to the LangaList Plus edition!
Click <a href= " http://www.langa.com/plus_gift.htm ">here</a>)

See you next issue!

Best,

Fred
( Editor@Langa.Com )

Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win a prize!)

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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Disclaimer: http://www.langa.com/legal.htm In brief: All information herein is offered as-is and without warranty of any kind. Neither Langa Consulting LLC, nor its employees nor contributors are responsible for any loss, injury, or damage, direct or consequential, resulting from your choosing to use any information presented here.

This newsletter is a service of Langa Consulting LLC and is Copyright © 2004 Fred Langa / Langa Consulting LLC. All worldwide rights reserved. LangaList: ISSN 1533-1156

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