|
Please visit the LangaList Home Page Please note: Older issues may contain information that is now out of date How To
Subscribe and Unsubscribe is at the end of this
note. Mailing List Trouble? See
http://langa.com/help.htm Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win a prize!) An easier-to read formatted
HTML version of this newsletter is available The
LangaList 2005-03-14 Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!
--- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 1) Rust Never SleepsIs your PC in a non-air-conditioned space? Mine sure is. Here on the coast of New Hampshire, although it can get beastly hot (>100F/38C) and humid here in the summer, my office relies on simple fans and open windows for warm-weather ventilation. There are maybe 10-20 days each summer when things get really uncomfortable without air-conditioning, but most of the time I'm glad to use a simpler, less noisy, less energy-intensive way of keeping cool. Besides, it's beautiful here, and I like feeling connected to the environment by having the windows open. <g> But PCs in non-air-conditioned homes and businesses may need special care beyond the cleaning tips we've recently covered in "Getting The Grunge Out Of Your PC" ( http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60403472 ) and "Curing Laptop Overheating" ( http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60300177 ). You see, PCs in non-air-conditioned spaces may be subject not only to outside dust, dirt, and pollen, but also to very wide temperature swings, and to the corrosive action of high humidity. Here's a real-life example:
Howard's is an extreme example, of course. But even in less extreme instances, slowly
corroding contacts in a PC's plugs, sockets and switches can lead to
unreliable operation and early system failure. Click on over to Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList S.E. Free! ) --- "Hi, Fred: Just a line to
say a great news letter, the best investment --------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 2) XP SP2 Kills Recovery Console?
The Recovery Console is a very handy thing to have; it gives you the option of booting XP or Win2K in a minimal way, without the graphical interface, to perform low-level maintenance or emergency repairs. By way of very rough analogy, it's sort of like booting to DOS in Win98. You normally can install the Recovery Console from inside XP or Win2K (eg: http://langa.com/u/8b.htm ); it then shows up as a boot option when you start your PC. Or, you can access the Recovery Console by booting from a setup CD and selecting the "Repair" option, when it's offered. The Recovery Console uses copies of a few essential system files to boot; the idea is that even if the main files on the hard drive are munged, the Recovery Console will still be able to boot and run.But SP2 changes many system files: In effect, the Recovery Console files from the original version of XP, or on the original setup CD, will no longer match or mesh with the SP2 versions of those files. The answer is to make a new setup CD that incorporates the
SP2 patches, and install the recovery
console from that CD. Or, boot from that CD, and select the Repair option to
access the Recovery Console directly. How To Save an Hour (Or More) On XP Installs
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=47212312 Additional info: Recovery Console Won't Install After SP2? Preconfigured Search: Click to email this item to a
friend 3) LavaSoft Weirdness Again?
LavaSoft is a strange little company that seems to go through intermittent periods of severe growing pains. They have some wonderfully talented staffers there, and they do a true service to the computing community at large by offering the free version of Ad-Aware; but they also seem to have some very inexperienced folks on board who sometimes behave, well, more like college kids than computer professionals. When LavaSoft switched Ad-Aware from its original architecture to the newer version, they went through a long period of no updates; and at about the same time had terrible trouble keeping their main site online (this was eventually resolved with the creation of a separate "lavasoftusa" domain). During that period, I temporarily withdrew my recommendations for Ad-Aware because it was simply too unreliable to count on. The folks at LavaSoft responded by posting a long, juvenile anti-Langa rant on their site that (1) denied they'd had any trouble at all and (2) suggested that I was secretly being paid by their competitors to badmouth Ad-Aware! It was bizarre and almost funny... except they were dead serious. There are some strange minds at work in LavaSoft. But Ad-Aware's been operating fine for quite a while now, and I've been recommending it again. I haven't seen any special problems in getting updates, so, as far as I know, there are no systemic or site problems going on. To answer Michael's question, I suspect that his problem is local: He should probably just uninstall his current version, and grab a fresh copy from the Ad-Aware site, and install that: It probably will work fine. The whole WhenU saga is something else. The point of contention appears to be over just what, exactly, constitutes malware. LavaSoft apparently did cave in to pressure from WhenU, a company that seems unusually litigious: AdAware then gave WhenU special treatment, arranging not to flag WhenU as potential malware. Later, though, LavaSoft reversed itself and said it would again resume detecting WhenU as a potential threat. Because Ad-Aware detects virtually every persistent cookie in the universe as a "tracking cookie" (even when the cookies are utterly benign), it only makes sense that it should apply the same ultra-rigorous standard to things like WhenU or any other potential threat, whether it's an actual, live threat or not. Or, conversely, if some potential threats get a free pass and aren't flagged as malware, then Ad-aware ought to treat all other potential threats the same way, giving them a pass; and flagging as malware only known, certain, 100% no-questions-about-it malware. In order for users to be able to make sense of scan results, anti-malware should be consistent in how it detects and classifies things; it's a bad idea to be ultra-rigorous in some cases, and ultra-lax in others. LavaSoft will probably write another anti-Fred diatribe now, but be that as it may: I think Ad-Aware is still worth using, but also do not recommend that it be used alone. All anti-malware tools have blind spots, weaknesses, and other issues (like WhenU's perhaps getting special treatment). This only serves to drive home the point that no one anti-malware tool can do it all. You need multiple tools, working cooperatively, to be truly safe. As for the WhenU thing--- is it really malware or not?---
you can decide for yourself: Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 4) XP Home's Hidden Backup Tool
First, for all XP Home users, the backup applet is hidden on the setup CD. It's in the \VALUEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP folder; click
on NTBACKUP.MSI . For info on using the tool once it's installed, check the Help file, or see "Windows XP Backup Made Easy"
If you have no setup CD, you can grab a copy of the NTbackup tool from Bob Cerelli's site at http://www.onecomputerguy.com/software/ntbackup.msi And for more into on
"Built-In And Alternative
Backup Tools For Win9x / ME / NT / 2k / XP" see Click to email this item to a
friend 5) Seemingly-Dead Links
This problem crops up from time to time; frequently enough I have a reply written in advance to send to readers who write to ask about it. But, every now and again, it's worth sharing more broadly: There are usually three main possibilities for this. But first, make sure the links themselves really are OK: Try copying and pasting any of the "broken" links into your browser. If they work there, then it's not a general connectivity problem, and we can look at the most common reasons for email URL failure. (a) Many people use HotMail (and Hotmail-related, like MSN) accounts;
those services have problems parsing some links.
For this problem, these links may help: Click to email this item to a
friend 6) Don't Make Me Beg! :-)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 away each month. (If your name is drawn and you're already a Plus! subscriber,
your current subscription will be extended by a full year.) Click to email this item to a
friend 7) New Windows, New ProcessorsTwo items of note:. First is one that should be of interest to anyone who has purchased a PC using one of the 64-bit AMD Athlon CPUs:
Most of us have 32-bit chips, and run a 32-bit version of Windows. The 64-bit Athlons were the first low-cost, mass-market 64-bit chips designed to run a mainstream OS like Windows--- but there wasn't much software that could use 64-bit chips to full advantage. In theory, a 64-bit version of Windows should be able to do just that. And speaking of chips:
And, of course, there's a whole new version of Windows--- the successor to XP--- in the works as well. It's in Alpha now (codenamed "Longhorn"), maybe soon to be beta, with a probable release next year. See http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/longhorn.asp and http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/longhorn_alpha.asp for more. Click to email this item to a
friend 8) More Reader Sites!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
) Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At http://technologybabble-on.blogspot.com/
The Collectin' Cat Golden Shears David Douglas Realty Gator Technologies Tom793 Three Rivers Community College Eric Meacock Web Pages Dave Perry Homepage (au) Mad Sally Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 9) Oddball Hardware Troubleshooting Tip
I once had a similar too-fast-to-see on-screen message, Stan. Mine appeared during startup of one of my test machines: At the literal last fraction of a second before Windows took over and erased the initial BIOS-controlled startup screen, some kind of text warning or error message was flashing across the bottom of the screen. It was impossible to decipher, and there was no way to slow or halt the screen to read it: It appeared after the boot process was past the "Hit [a key] to enter setup" and before F8 (to go to an alternate Windows startup) had any effect. The BIOS error log showed nothing wrong. Windows started and ran normally. It drove me nuts: MY PC was trying to tell me something, but I had no way to get at the information Then I had an idea: I aimed my digital camera at the PC's screen and captured several seconds of video of the critical moment during the boot process. Exactly one frame--- one frame!--- clearly showed the message, which turned out to be a warning about mixing different speeds of memory sticks: The BIOS was reporting that, because of the speed difference of the memory banks installed in the test machine, the PC was working in single-channel memory mode instead of dual channel. So, if you have or can borrow a digital video camera, you can then capture on-screen messages that otherwise flash by too fast to read. Weird? You bet. But hey, it works! <g> Click to email this item to a
friend 10) Just For Grins
Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 11) Plus! Edition Highlights:
The Plus! edition is only pennies per issue, and comes with a MONEY BACK GUARANTEE from Fred. How can you lose? Check out the details: http://langa.com/plus.htm Click to email this item to a
friend (Give a gift subscription to
the LangaList Plus edition! See you next issue, 2005-03-17! Best, 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://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. UNSUBSCRIBE (instant removal!):
http://langa.com/leave_langalist.htm This newsletter is SPAM PROOF and requires two levels of subscriber confirmation
before delivery begins: See
http://langa.com/info.htm |
|
|
Please visit the LangaList Home Page |