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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2005-03-03

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) De-Dust, We Must

Hi Fred: Regarding the 'Dirtiest PC...' item in the current LangaList ( http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60403472 ) - actually, you have found a worse example than the one used in your InformationWeek article (excellent by the way).  I'm referring to the 'Sweater of Death' ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-07-22.htm#10 ). You obviously couldn't have used it for the article, but as a bad example it's pretty good. Looking forward to your next issue. --Tom Mighill

Fred: I'm sure you've heard some amazing stories [about dirty PCs]...I'll ad mine to the mix. I wish I had taken pictures. I've found chips and salsa in a cpu box once, but that was minor compared to a recent service call. I was installing an update for some accounting software at a car repair shop. The CD drive wasn't reading the install disk very well, so I assumed that maybe a connector was loose. When I opened up the tower, there was 3/8" of dirt in the bottom of the tower. I am not making this up. I had to replace the CD Drive and a floppy drive before I could finish the job. Something that should have taken 45 minutes, took me nearly 4 hours. I had to change my clothes before I went back to the office. Hope you don't get sick of hearing this, but your newsletter is wonderful. I've learned a great deal from you and my fellow subscribers. Thanks. Regards, Karl Magnuson

Fred: Now you have thrown down a challenge, and I am sure you will get lots of emails about dirtier PC's. Here's my submission: http://www.kronhead.com/dirtydell.html ---Dan Kronstadt

Fred: I refurbish computers and give them to kids and families that can use them. Several weeks ago our Church was given a HP Pavilion XE746. Before I could work on it I had to clean it. This is the only machine where I had to wear rubber gloves to clean it. This machine had belonged to a heavy smoker. Second hand smoke had coated the inside a dull yellow. That along with dust bunnies and dirt made it a sickening mess. The USB ports were so encrusted I had to use a pick to clean them. The CDRW did not work and I suspect the laser is covered by nicotine. If second hand smoke can do this with a computer just imagine what it can do to children. ---Allen

All this, of course, is from the photo-essay "Getting The Grunge Out Of Your PC" posted now (free!) at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60403472 . It's actually turning into one of the most-viewed articles I've ever done for InformationWeek.Com.

Even if your PC isn't a basket case, it may well harbor far more dirt, dust, and grunge than you suspect. You see, a PC's constantly whirring fans draw in a huge volume of air over time. Even in a seemingly clean environment, the amount of dust and dirt that can build up inside a PC's case is nothing short of astonishing. This layer of dust literally acts like a sweater on your PC's delicate electronics, preventing them from getting rid of their heat, and heat is the enemy of all electronics. At best, excess heat will shorten the life of a PC; if allowed to worsen, it may cause erratic behavior, data errors, spontaneous reboots, and other intermittent problems; and in the worst cases, a PC can literally cook itself to death.

But it's easy to clean a PC--- even if it's a real mess inside! Come see the step-by-step photos of me cleaning the dirties PC I could find, and you'll also see how simple the job really is!

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60403472

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2) Weird "Restore" Error

Long-time readers of this newsletter know that I'm a backup fanatic, so you may find it amusing to learn that I couldn't restore a file I needed the other day. <g> At least, not at first.

I had the file--- actually a mailbox--- backed up numerous times; it's part of my automated nightly backup process, where XP's built-in NTbackup grabs all my most-critical files, and stuffs them into a beefy ".bkf" file. I then have WinZip set to run and automatically compress the .bkf file into a password-protected Zip file about half the size of the original (That makes the nightly backups small enough to fit easily on a single CD.) When I start my workday, I burn the zip file onto a CD for eventual safe, long-term offsite storage. I also retain the original zip files on my hard drive for about a month, or until the partition fills up. This way, I have ready access to about a month's worth of daily backups; as well as long-term access to the backups on CD, which I store in a rental locker for safekeeping. (I also periodically make full images of the hard drive to get the settings and data not caught in the nightly sweeps, but that's another story: http://langa.com/backups/backups.htm )

The above is the theory, anyway, and it's worked well for years. But when I recently needed a copy of an old file I'd previously deleted, I ran into a snag I'd never encountered before. I went through my normal file-restoration process: I un-Zipped the backup containing the file I needed, and launched NTbackup in "Restore" mode. But the file I was trying to Restore didn't appear in the Restore catalog list; I couldn't select it, or any files in the backup I was using, for Restoration. Hmmm.

I tried manually steering NTbackup to the .bkf file location; no dice. I tried bypassing the Restore Wizard; no dice. I tried everything I could think of, including re-unzipping the .bkf file, just in case it was a decompression error. I even tried a completely different zip/bkf file that also contained the needed file. No dice. No matter what I did, NTbackup wouldn't show or open any of my more-recent bkf files.

It wasn't exactly panic time--- yet--- as I was reasonably sure the data was safe, locked away in the bkf file. But something was seriously wrong with NTbackup.

Then, when I looked through NTbackup's "catalog" (that's what it calls them) of known and recognized backups, I found gaps of whole weeks, and in two cases, months where the records of backups were missing. I had the actual backup files--- the backups themselves were fine--- but something was preventing NTbackup from recognizing and accessing them.

The clock was ticking; I was on a deadline and *needed* the info in that file, but I couldn't get at it: It sat there, just out of reach, locked inside a .bkf file I couldn't open. I walked away from the PC. I watched the snow fall outside my office window. I practiced some deep breathing exercises. Find a happy place, find a happy place....

My subconscious finally earned its keep and delivered the mini-"aha" moment I was waiting for: I realized that if the backup catalogs were the problem, then deleting the catalog files might force NTbackup to deal with the file it actually had, rather than what the catalog said was--- and wasn't--- there.

I went looking for the catalog files, first trying the Registry; nope, nothing useful there. But a simple file search worked fine. I found and deleted all the catalog files from

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\
Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\catalogs51

(note: the line above is wrapped; it's really all one long line).

For good measure I also deleted the log files I found in

C:\Documents and Settings\Fred\Local Settings\Application Data\
Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data

(the above line is wrapped, too).

I then fired up NTbackup, and it worked exactly as it should. In a minute, I had the file back and was rolling again.

I still don't know what caused the catalog files to get munged, or why NTbackup wouldn't accept a manual override, but the fix was easy, once I found the simple solution.

If you run into the same problem you can find the catalog and logs in similar locations on your system, although the exact pathing and filenames may differ slightly, depending on your username and how your system's set up.

And then you, too, can find that happy place where backups and restores work the way they're supposed to. <g>

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3) Feedback On "Tools To Keep Hard Drives Healthy"

Last issue's two part item on "Tools To Keep Hard Drives Healthy" http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-02-28.htm#2 brought some interesting mail, including these:

Fred: Great newsletter with valuable stuff as always - thanks. I recently found a downside to GoBack (although in fairness it may not be entirely GoBack, it was just its logo onscreen whenever the system died.) While installing Norton Ghost as part of a new backup regime, we had a power cut - just as Ghost and GoBack were in conversation and, apparently, rewriting the partition table.  Result?  No machine.  Thereafter it'd boot to the GoBack screen and then hang for a bit before demanding a reboot. No response seemed to get me past that. Using the original windows disks I managed to get some access to the disk, but all windows installations seemed to be inaccessible. After much gnashing of teeth and external support, we managed to get a functioning system that at least allowed me to get some access - but not to any data that was visible on the disk.  The upshot was restoring a month-old backup and resolving i) to get a more rigorous backup regime in place, ii) to get a decent UPS and iii) to remove all Symantec software from the system. End result - a faster functioning system and a rather more focused mind on the drawbacks of some of these programmes. Thanks again. Best, Tony Quinlan

Thanks, Tony. GoBack can be a useful tool, in its place, but it can cause trouble, as you discovered; and worse, many users regard it as a replacement for backups, which it most emphatically is not. If you use GoBack as your primary backup tool, sooner or later, you'll regret it. See "What About 'GoBack' and 'Restore' Tools?"  http://langa.com/newsletters/2001/2001-12-03.htm#1

Fred, I have installed Systemworks Premiere version, complete with Ghost v9.0, and took a single backup of my 7Gb boot partition. I was then (eventually)  advised by Symantec, as responses to queries as to the changes, and impact on my system of that installation, that: They had intentionally removed the facility to create booting recovery disks from Ghost v9. Ghost 9 will not write the recovery image to CD-R, you should write the recovery set to hard drive, or RW media, then copy that to the +R or -R media. If I didn't want the associated processes to read 600,000,000 bytes at startup, and randomly during the day, so aggressively that comms and CD/DVD writes were timed out - I would have to uninstall Ghost v9.0 - and could re-install it whenever I wanted to take a backup, uninstalling it after each backup. I was also advised that Systemworks is not supported on any dual/multi boot/OS system (Installing the 'Recovery Console' makes your system multi-boot) Also - it doesn't matter if the additional OS instance is solely a backup copy - the existence on your system makes your system an unsupported multi-OS. ---James Button

Thanks for the feedback, James. Your experience mirrors mine: The Symantec suites have evolved towards a mass-market "set and forget" functionality. That's great for many millions of users, but if your system isn't typical, or if you want to do things a little differently from what the software engineers planned for, you can end up fighting the software more than using it.

If the Symantec suites work for you, great! There's nothing *wrong* with them, per se. But as your experience and knowledge levels increase, you may find them holding you back more than assisting you forward. That's when it's time to move onto the other maintenance and recovery tools we've recommended in this newsletter.

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4) Correction on "Tools To Keep Hard Drives Healthy"

I'm actually glad to report this error on my part; not because I'm happy to be wrong, but because it's good news for users of the Symantec/Norton Suites:

In Tools To Keep Hard Drives Healthy http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-02-28.htm#2 I incorrectly said that the newer versions don't have a low-level disk/sector editor.

Before writing that, I'd checked in the printed manual; no disk editor was mentioned there. And I'd searched the install disk, which does have other low-level utilities in the open. Because the DiskEdit tool should not be run from inside Windows, I incorrectly assumed it would be a plain EXE file on the CD. (It makes no sense to have it be part of a Windows-only install, because a disk/sector editor should be run from a floppy or CD--- you shouldn't try to sector- or data-edit a disk that's active and in-use, as it would be if you ran an editor from inside Windows).

But then I got this:

Hi Fred, As a charter Plus! subscriber (and long time reader from the old WinMag days), I continue to reap the benefit of your, and your readers, wisdom.  Time to repay a little. The Norton Low Level Disk Editor is indeed still included in SystemWorks.  Navigate to the SystemWorks folder, then to the Norton Utilities sub-folder and you will find "Diskedit.exe".  My copy of NSW 2005 shows the date on this program as 8/10/01.  It should be noted that this excellent program is not for the novice user - one small mistake will totally bomb a system.  Then again, if one is using your "bulletproofing" techniques, have at it. Cheers, and thanks for a great newsletter! ---Dave Thomas

To try to see the file for myself, I tried installing SystemWorks 2005 on one of my test systems here, but gave up after a fruitless hour or so. I may have run afoul of the "unsupported on multiboot systems" snag (see previous item), or something else; I don't know. But because I didn't actually need SystemWorks installed, it wasn't worth tearing things apart to find out what the install problem was. Instead, I perused the help files (which are accessible on the CD without having to install everything) and did find DiskEdit referenced there; I'll take this as indirect confirmation of Dave's report.

So, my apologies for the error, and thanks to Dave for setting things straight: If you have SystemWorks and can get it installed, you apparently *do* have a low-level sector editor after all, and that's a good thing.

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5) A "Linux Inside Windows" Variant

In response to "Cygwin and 'Linux Inside Windows' Options" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-02-28.htm#4 ), this reader offered an alternative:

A version I haven't seen mentioned is coLinux - http://www.colinux.org - which lets me run Linux and Windows XP together, at the same time, on the same notebook.  It uses a different approach. ---Bruce

Thanks, Bruce. The site says:

Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine. For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software such as VMware, in a way which is much more optimal than using any general purpose PC virtualization software....

It's still in beta, but it looks interesting, and is worth a test drive on a fully backed-up system (which is the only safe way to test beta software).

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6) Three More Winners!

"Charles Landow" "momcann" and "kruschev" each won a FREE full one-year subscription to the LangaList Plus! edition by using the "Recommend To A Friend" form at http://langa.com/recommend.htm .

You see, each month I choose three winners of a new FREE ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION to the LangaList Plus! edition. (Existing Plus! subscribers get their current subscription extended by a full year.) To have a shot at winning, 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! (Full details also available via this link): http://langa.com/recommend.htm

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7) Transfer Email Settings?

I have joined as a Plus member sometime last year; and I enjoy reading every issue. There is a utility that I am looking for the would be helpful to me, and that is, a program that would allow me to transport email settings, addresses, and email messages from outlook and outlook-express from one computer to another? Naturally, a freeware if possible. Thanks, Tony Dewar

There are many tools that can help you, Tony. For example, if you're moving to XP, the built-in "Files and Settings Transfer Wizard" can help. see these:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=293118
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/mgrtfset.mspx

But you didn't mention which OS you're running, so an XP fix might not be what you want. In any case, you can find a boatload of solutions here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=transfer+outlook+express+settings
http://www.google.com/search?q=transfer+outlook+settings

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8) They Loaded The Code

Do you have a home page or website? (It doesn't matter what size.) Please click over to http://langa.com/code.htm , and maybe you can join the hundreds and hundreds 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://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://langa.com/randomlink.htm

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

mad sally
http://www.madsally.co.uk/madsally/index.php

long beach city appraisal
http://www.cityappraisal.net/content.aspx?FileName=CustomPage29.x

thailand, oz,usa
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/townsville/

di da do (argentina)
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/townsville/

poetry site (not for the easily offended)
http://omeagher.zoonic.com/

an homage to Venice, California
http://www.virtualvenice.info/boardwalk/links.htm

low cost telecom
http://www.lowcosttelecommunications.biz/

mfreitas.com
http://www.mfreitas.com/

California-Nevada Chapter of the American Correctional Health Association
http://www.statepen.org/

"keeping in touch" (tx)
http://www.geocities.com/newzltr/

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9) "Inverse Network Technology" / "Visual Networks"

Fred, I remember somewhere in one of your newsletters (I am a Plus member) about modem dialing out problems or programs hidden in the system that will do this without authorization.  A friend has a system with Win98 SE and has been woken up in the wee hours by his computer dialing out.  He hesitates to turn off the computer but has begun to unplug the telephone line while away or at night.  I believe we have tracked the problem to a program called "Canon Creative 3" and the message on the screen shows "Inverse Network Technology" when the dialing is taking place.  I cannot seem to find a way to remove this dial-up program without deleting the whole program.  Any and all assistance will be greatly appreciated. ---William Gibson

"Inverse Network Technology" is one of those things that *could* (potentially) be nasty, but most often isn't intentionally so. It's from a company that changed its name to Visual Networks; their stuff is explained here: http://www.visualnetworks.com/ The software is used--- with benign intent, as far as I can tell--- by ISPs, software makers, and others.

The Canon-specific install is discussed here: http://tinyurl.com/44u58 If you uninstall the Canon "AccessWizard" via the Add/Remove software applet in Control Panel, the Inverse/Visual activity should stop.

See also "Long-Distance Fixes" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-01-20.htm#2 ) for ways to block a specific piece of software; and on keeping a PC generally spyware-free.

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10) Just For Grins

Fred: And I always thought Microsoft was a humourless organization.  As they say in Men in Black: "We do not have a sense of humour that we know of."

See http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/tools/twkmatic.mspx.  In particular, read the rant about whether to tweak or not to tweak the registry.  I was impressed by the whole page until the final paragraph, which shows that in the end, they really don't have a sense of humour.  I kept waiting to find the "So there." at the end, but alas. ---Lyle McElhaney

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11) Plus! Edition Highlights:

• Severe "Stop Error"
     (tracking down a fatal "blue screen of death" problem)
• "QuickView" For XP?
     (where is it?)
• Nice Troubleshooting!
     (a reader nicely resolves a cpu-hog problem)

You can't lose! The Plus! edition is only pennies per issue, and comes with a MONEY BACK GUARANTEE from Fred. Check out the details: http://langa.com/plus.htm

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