Vista is trouble, Adobe is da bomb; let’s just get that out of the way.

Some of you may remember when I was lamenting that my Palm had gone on the fritz months earlier and how I wanted to get something that would work the same way, but not only could I not find anything else that worked like a Palm (stupid smartphones), but there was a problem with Palm the company falling apart; I think they’ve finally found a buyer, though I have no idea what that means for the company overall.

Anyway, I ended up buying a Palm, the same as I have now, on eBay, had it break 10 days later, sent it back for repairs, got it back, and I feel like my world is fairly complete once again. That “fairly” is because I still had one overriding issue that was messing me up and driving me crazy; keep my first line in your mind because we’ll be back to that.

I’ve always had Adobe Reader for Palm, which is great because I get tons of PDF files and no time to read them, and it’s great being able to put them on the Palm for those times when I have long periods away from the computer, like on an airplane. Well, for whatever reason, it wouldn’t load onto the new Palm. It was freaking me out. For almost a month I kept trying to load it here and there, and it just wasn’t having it. It wouldn’t load when I first had the Palm either, but I thought after it broke that maybe there was a problem with the software.

As I said, I kept trying to get it to load, but it wasn’t having it. I would reset the Palm; nothing. I would load and unload this program called Hotsync, which is how you sync a Palm to a computer; nothing. I would download the program time after time, even though it was the same program, and I thought that one day it would just magically work; nothing. The program was on the computer just fine, with PDFs ready to load and others already on my Palm; what the hey?

Last Thursday, it finally hit me as to what the answer could possibly be, and this is where stupid Vista comes back into play, and actually Windows 7 follows this rule, but I don’t have that so I’m not going to call it stupid; yet anyway. One thing most of us who have ended up with this operating system learned is that Vista put files in a different place than where they resided on XP. I did a quick search for the file I was trying to load onto the program, knowing the extension was “.prc”, and I found it.

What I needed to know was what folder it was in, and I found it buried deep in a User file under my name, under Documents for some reason, then under Palm and finally in a folder called Installations. I looked at the properties for the folder, and I saw that it was set to “read only”.

I clicked that off, figuring that was the entire problem, and tried again; nope. But I knew I was on to something. I went into the properties again, this time to all the “users”. Under Security, they were me, Admin, and System; go figure, but that’s what was there. There were shaded out checkmarks for each name, which meant I couldn’t do anything with them, but thought the checkmarks meant that it was already set for me to use that folder. However, it wasn’t working. So I decided to click on Edit, which opened another menu, and then clicked on Add. The name “Everyone” came up, and I selected that. I gave that name approval to do everything in the folder, saved it, and closed every menu.

I went to sync the Palm, and everything worked perfectly. I’m a happy guy once more, with my PDF files and the like on my Palm, and I’m feeling pretty smart about it all. What made me think about it? I remembered my wife’s computer, which is on Windows 7, and when I was trying to load Mailwasher onto it. For some reason, it wouldn’t let me activate it, and I tried at least once a day for a week. That is, after the two week period that it lets one run the program before it decides it’s not going to play any longer until you update. I couldn’t get it to load, so I went online to see if anyone else had the problem previously, they had, and they talked about doing what I did as a potential fix, and afterwards it worked perfectly.

See, Vista and Windows 7 have put in a lot of protections up front to keep people who don’t know what they’re doing from messing things up. That’s why most people can’t see the extension on their files, which is moronic because that makes people click on some of the stupidest stuff, not knowing it’s not a program file, and that will mess up some computers here and there as well. The area I was in is one that’s not critical to the operation of a computer, and thus it makes no sense for it to have the same kind of security as every other folder. But I guess that would have been too complicated for Microsoft to do for us; sigh.

Anyway, if you find yourself trying to install something, or get something working that doesn’t seem to have any other fault, this is something you can think of trying out.

Acrobat Pro 9 Upsell from Acrobat 8 Standard – Windows Price – $149.95

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

Oddly enough, I guess I owe this post to much of the spam I’ve been receiving lately. Much of it asks, stupidly of course, how they can subscribe to my RSS feed for this blog, which is pretty much all over the place, especially if you use Firefox.

However, it got me thinking about RSS feeds in general, especially as they apply to business websites. I have enough websites, I figure, but in reality I have 3 business websites. And I don’t have RSS feeds on any of them.

I’ve started wondering if I should have feeds on them. After all, I don’t do a lot of updating to those sites. One of them I have my business blog attached, and it obviously has a RSS feed, so I’ve just assumed that site didn’t need one. For my other two sites, though, I do add something here and there, and those are mainly articles, and maybe I need a RSS feed for those. After all, who doesn’t want more RSS subscribers?

The question of course is why anyone would subscribe to the RSS feed for a business site. It’s not news, and since most of us assume that most sites are fairly static, what would compel us to subscribe? Or is this a case of “if you build it they will come”?

I’m not the only one who thinks about this sort of thing. A woman named Sarah wrote an article titled Why RSS Is So Important For Your Business That You’re Probably Already Using It (whew, long title!), and she talks about the importance of having RSS feeds if you’re constantly updating your information. That’s easy to agree with, but what about if you’re not constantly updating your content?

Actually, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? As a consultant, I often advise potential clients that they need to have constantly updated content in some fashion. Of course I usually recommend blogs first, and most blogging software comes with the ability to easily add RSS feeds so you’re covered there. But what about the website itself? Other than news sources and sales pages, are there any other reasons for a business to syndicate their site?

Something more to think about, I guess. Meanwhile, the palm trees are for my friend Sue.

Propac Images 4501 18 x 18 Palm Tree I II Price – $77.22

Have you ever taken a look at the Microsoft updates that come to your computer at least once a week? I always take a quick look, although I’m not sure why since, with Vista, it came with the Genuine Advantage thing, so maybe I shouldn’t care what’s being put onto my computer.

But I do look, and most of the time I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. For instance, last night, there were 5 updates awaiting me when I got home:

“Install this update to resolve issues caused by revised daylight saving time and time zone laws in several countries. This update enables your computer to automatically adjust the computer clock on the correct date in 2010.”

Okay, that one I easy understood, since last year they changed the dates for daylight savings time.

“Install this update to improve Internet Explorer 8′s JSON interoperability in conformance with the new ECMAScript, fifth edition standard.”

What the heck does that mean?

“Install this update to resolve issues with non-compatible applications for Windows Vista.”

I’m thinking it would have been nice if they’d told me which issues those were more specifically. Actually, to be fair, they did give a Knowledge Base article number, and if you follow that you see there’s over 200 programs it’s affecting, so maybe I should be glad they didn’t try telling me all of those.

“Both the Meiryo UI font and the Meiryo UI Bold font are included in this update. These new fonts let an application optimally display Kana characters in the Ribbon UI component and in other parts of the user interface, especially in areas where text area is limited.”

Part of me realizes I have a new font; not sure if I’m supposed to use it or not. The rest of it; no clue.

“Install this update to resolve issues caused by manifest expiration in AD RMS enabled applications. This update will fix any existing issues in addition to addressing any future application manifest expirations.”

Once again, huh? Even my spell check freaked out on that one.

Part of me gets it; these tekkie guys are trying to tell us something. They might have well written most of it in Sanskrit if you ask me. Maybe they should just say “download this update; you don’t want to know”, and being the sheep we are, we’ll just accept it and move on. It’s about as clear to us if they do that as what they’re telling us now.

I’m just feeling so stupid and inadequate now; I need cake.

Microsoft Zune 4GB MP3 Player, Red with FREE Microsoft Zune Car Pack & Microsoft Zune Premium Headphone (v2) Price – $98.99

While talking to one of my best friends Monday night, she mentioned that her computer had suddenly just crashed and wouldn’t work anymore. I had sent her a message earlier in the day through Facebook letting her know that I thought she might have a virus on her computer because I’d received two emails from her email address that had a link going back to Germany, and saying nothing else. I knew she didn’t send them, so I figured it had to be coming from her computer.

She told me that she had also been unable to get the computer to reboot, even to safe mode, and that she kept getting the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). I’m sure everyone who’s ever been on XP has had to deal with it at some point; I dealt with it often before getting this new computer. But not being able to boot into safe mode; that was something new. I told her to bring it over and that I’d see what I can do; I love challenges.

I got the computer this evening, hooked it up, and turned it on. She was correct, that bad boy just wasn’t going to boot up at all. I knew that to get into the computer I was going to have to pull out my old XP disc and boot it up with the CD. I pulled up an old bootleg CD and it booted just fine; I did have to go into the BIOS to tell it to look for the CD option first.

I decided to go into the Recovery Console option, which many folks will tell you not to do unless you know what you’re doing, and I figured I did, even though it’s been about 10 months since I’d been into a computer with XP on it. I tried to run “bootcfg” in some fashion, but nothing would work initially. I finally got it to give me a message saying I had to run “chkdsk” first, which I tried, but nothing would happen.

I decided to try it again to see if maybe it had corrected itself; nope. But I also knew that the bootleg wasn’t going to get it done. So I pulled out my genuine copy, put that CD in, and booted the computer up again. I went back into Recovery Console and tried to do chkdsk again. This time it did what it was supposed to do, finding some errors along the way and fixing them. I was going to try to run bootcfg /rebuild and create the boot.ini file again, but I decided to see if the computer would boot up since chkdsk worked.

This time it booted up perfectly, and all was right with the world; well, at least the bootup was. I hooked my cable to her computer and tried to open a browser; wasn’t happening. I knew that something was in her computer messing things up, and that I had to run some checks on it.

The first thing I did was go to my wife’s computer and download the latest version of Stinger.exe from McAfee. The new version checks for more than 1,300 viruses, as opposed to the 600 or so it used to check for. That bad boy took about 40 minutes, and when it was done it found nothing. I knew I couldn’t stop there. So I ran Combofix, which some of you might remember I had to run on a different friend’s computer’s in June. It did its thing, taking about 25 minutes again, but it found malware that it cleared out of the computer, though a couple of times some kind of thing popped up, trying to fight its way back into play. While it’s doing its thing, at some point it will reboot itself, and when the computer comes back up runs chkdsk again and does some other things before it’s finally completed its work.

Her computer is running okay once more. I say that because they’re over capacity on the hard drive, and it’s going to run slow until her husband moves over most of his music and video files to the new external hard drive he purchased. But this is a good lesson for everyone else, I figure, which is why I’m sharing it with you. I hope it doesn’t happen to you, but if it does, hopefully it’ll give you an idea of what you can try.

Actively Cooled Hard Drive Enclosure Price – $72.99

Oh,… my,… goodness!

It’s been a tough road to hoe, but now, maybe, my bliss will be returning to my computer very soon.

Back in December, I bought this new computer, Vista and all, and very quickly realized that I couldn’t run Google Desktop on it. It wasn’t compatible with the 64-bit operating system, which was grossly irritating. Yeah, there was a way you could force it through, which I started, then halfway through I realized what I’d be doing to my computer and decided that wasn’t a smart move.

Then PC World magazine came up with a program that supposedly would work just as well as Google Desktop, only for 64-bit computers. It was called Copernic Desktop Search, and it was free. It was also a big program, at 29 MBs, but that’s not such a big deal. I loaded it, gave it time to scan my computer for stuff, then tried it out.

Miserable; it couldn’t find any of the stuff I specifically wanted. I even tried giving it easy ones to knock out of the park, specific file names I knew it should be able to find because, well, a couple of times I was looking right at the file. Nope, it couldn’t do it. Sucker found lots of other stuff, but never a specific file name I was looking for.

That, plus the window was divided in half, and the lower half acted like a search engine on the web. Now why would I want a desktop program looking for things on the web? Google Desktop never did that?

So, I deleted it from my computer on Wednesday, and figured I’d just take another quick look to see if Google Desktop might finally have a 64-bit version. After all, Windows 7 will be coming soon, and they announced that they’re not going backwards, so 64-bit is going to be the new standard, plain and simple.

And I found it! It’s called Google Desktop 5.9, and it’s now available for download. Man, you should have seen the smile that crossed my face!

Of course, I know how this will go. I’ve downloaded it, and now I’m going through the time process of allowing it to go through my computer and find stuff. It only runs when I’m not doing anything on the computer for awhile, which means it’ll mainly have to run overnight, or at least the 5 hours I’m usually sleeping; isn’t that a shame? I hope it works out just as I need it to, especially when it comes to email.

And, for all of you who were using the original version of Google Desktop and having problems with the indexing, you can be sure that if I encounter that problem with this version I’ll certainly let you know how to fix it. I don’t want to go through mess like this again.

Of course the rumors were always out there, at least for the last year, so when Google announced to day that they were coming out with their own operating system, some people were surprised, but many people who dabble online were wondering just what they thought they were doing.

This might end up being a good OS, but who’s going to know? Unlike Microsoft, it’s hard to imagine that Google will be able to convince a lot of computer makers to switch to their new OS just because they’re Google. Some might be inclined to try if it’s free, which it just might be, but it’s not going to gain a lot of attention initially, if at all.

Still, they had to do it, just as Microsoft feels they have to try to get into the search market stronger with their latest effort (how many is this now?), Bing (does anyone else ever want to break out into a song when they see that?). But one has to wonder what the ulterior motives of it all is.

Yeah, I’m sounding like a conspiracy guy, but let’s look at this for a minute. First they come out with Google Apps, which mimic all the Microsoft Office products only it’s a free online service. However, you store all your records on Google’s servers; do we really know that they don’t have the capability to scan all those records and do something with all that information?

Then they do an end-round on Firefox by developing their own browser, which they say will be faster than any other and work better with Google since they developed it. Mozilla supposedly really didn’t know until late that Google was working on the project, and when they found out, along with the rest of us, we all questioned what the relationship would be with the Mozilla Foundation, whom Google used to fund; they still might.

To date, Microsoft is still leading on office products (by the way, who else asks themselves why Microsoft has both Office and Works, yet they’re not compatible with each other?), and Mozilla is still holding a strong second. Truthfully, I think Chrome is still down around 5th, but don’t quote me on that one. I don’t know all that much about Google Apps to be able to talk about why Microsoft is still killing them when it’s free, but I do know about Firefox enough to talk about it.

Firefox is the bomb because of all the add-ons you can attach to it, which can do so many things. Neither IE nor Chrome nor Opera or anyone else can make that claim. Sure, even with the new Firefox 3.5, which I like, we all know that Firefox isn’t the fastest browser out there; Opera has always made that claim in the past (turns out that lately it might not be true). But it’s the most customizable, therefore the most fun and the most productive.

So, what about the Chrome OS? It’s best feature might be that there won’t be any viruses for it for a long time. The worst features is that, from what I’m hearing, it might not work with any of the Microsoft products on the market right now, and it’s unsure how they’ll work with other products. Sure, there’s Google Apps, but it’s not universally used, so at some point you need more in an OS than being able to tell people to load it, then go online to do everything. And, just to mention this, but right now it’s only for notebooks.

All that, and then there was this article from PC World titled 5 Ways Microsoft Will Bring the Hurt to Google Chrome OS that’s an interesting read. Microsoft isn’t just sitting around waiting for Google to catch up.

I’m certainly not the biggest Microsoft fan out there, especially when it comes to Vista, but one has to acknowledge that Microsoft is firmly entrenched in our computer lives, and we’d really be in a lot of mess if we had to deal with another operating system that has limits to what it can allow us to use and do.

It should be an interesting battle over the next five years.

Sony VAIO TT Series Laptop Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo SU9300 1.2GHz Notebook

Last July, when I first started thinking about getting a new computer, I wrote about my Vista worries, based on everything I’d been hearing about it. Then came December, when I finally bought my new computer with Vista, since that’s all that was around (well, I could have paid extra for XP, but that didn’t seem so smart), and I hadn’t quite had enough time to truly evaluate it.

Now I’m about six months into it, and I think I can give an honest evaluation of it; Vista is the dog of all operating systems. To be fair, I never tried ME, which I heard was pretty bad, so I don’t know about it. But compared to all the other Microsoft operating systems, it’s the worst.

Since I’ve had this computer, it’s crashed twice. By crash, I mean the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). That’s actually not so bad when I consider what my other computer used to do. Still, this isn’t a dog of a computer; it’s got real power in it. This time, I know it’s not the computer itself, but the operating system.

The problem is the 64-bit thing. There aren’t all that many programs, at least older ones, that will work properly in the 64-bit setting. Many of my programs wouldn’t load into this OS. Some that did loaded into a different Program Files directory. Vista has two, those programs it likes, and those that it tolerates.

Some of those that it tolerates are their own products, though older versions. I have the Office 2003 suite, which I loaded. You’d think I wouldn’t have any problems with it, but it does, probably because they wanted everyone to go to Office 2007, which I saw and didn’t like.

Anyway, on my computer, there are certain programs where, if I let the computer go into its own energy saving mode, will freak behind the scenes and cause me minor grief when I come back and shake the mouse. One is Webshots; another is my email program, ECTOOL. A third is Top Style, the program I use to create my HTML pages. If those were open when I left, they’ll have corrupted when I come back. That’s not so bad, as I just have to shut them down, then reopen them again. Of course, if I hadn’t saved what I was doing in Top Style, I have to do it all again.

The real culprits, though, are Word and Excel, the two Office programs I use the most. They totally change how they look, and they freeze. Luckily, when I close them both back, they’ll have saved the files, since I made the settings save those files every 5 minutes. However, today, something new was added to the mix.

I had a business meeting that lasted about 3 hours today. I came back to the office, and once again the files had corrupted themselves. Word, my email chess program, Top Style and Webshots all had decided to pick on me. I went to shut down Word, as I had two different files open on it, when the computer decided to die on me. I got the BSOD, which is the second incidence ever that I mentioned earlier.

Then it started to reboot on me, which has never happened to me before, never on XP, and not the first time on this computer. I figured no big deal, except I’d had a Notepad file open that had some information I really wanted to keep. Then I realized I hadn’t heard a sound I’m used to hearing when the computer boots up, and looked on the screen to see something saying “ERROR LOAD OS”. What the hey? I tried hitting the button to shut the computer down, and instead it started to reboot again.

This happened a few times, and the start button never went off. I tried pulling the plug, waiting a bit, then put it back in. The first couple of times the light was immediately on, which was strange. The last time it was off when I plugged in, but it still wouldn’t boot up properly.

At that point, I knew it was time to try to boot into safe mode, so I did and it came up just as it was supposed to. I thought that was kind of odd, based on the error message I’d gotten, but I ran a quick diagnostic, and everything came up fine. I then rebooted in regular mode, but lo and behold I got the same error message again.

This time, I rebooted, but decided to go into the BIOS. I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for, but thought looking around wouldn’t hurt. Everything looked pretty normal until I got to the area where it talked about boot order. Oddly enough, I noticed things had changed. For whatever reason, Vista had changed the boot order so my computer was trying to load my USB external hard drives first. Now things made some sense. I don’t have any OS on either of the external drives, but once Vista recognizes it as a hard drive instead of a floppy or CD it thinks that’s the drive and that’s that. In safe mode, your USB connections don’t work the same way, as in your computer won’t boot safe mode from an external source like that, which is why that worked.

I changed the order to have my main hard drive first, saved it, booted up, and all is fine with the world once more. But I’m thinking that’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, the BIOS changing orders like that.

In any case, it’s made me disdain Vista even more than I already was. I hate that so many of my good programs won’t work. I hate that things such as Zone Alarm won’t work because they won’t create it in 64-bit. I hate that I can’t run my Dragon program, which had been relatively new, because they want me to buy the latest version at $150 to work with Vista; nope, not happening. I hate that Vista didn’t come with a fax program, so I’ve had to purchase one. Yeah, the professional version came with it, but it wasn’t offered when I bought this sucker; well, I didn’t want to pay an extra $200 for it.

There’s a rumor that Best Buy will be offering a special deal for the upgrade to Windows 7 the last week of June, even though it won’t be released for awhile. I’m hearing nothing but good things about it, however, if I go this route, I don’t want to buy an upgrade, but the entire program when it’s ready. So, for now, I’m stuck with what I have, but now have to be more cognizant of what I leave open when I leave the house, or go to bed.

And that just stinks.

A few days ago, a friend called me, distressed because she couldn’t get her computer to do anything. She kept saying something about a program telling her she had multiple viruses and malware, and to buy something. I told her to stop, don’t do anything, and I’d be right over.

I got there, and she said her son admitted to downloading some online golf program from a site he’d never been to before. She then said she’d been trying to download an antivirus program, but she’d lost her internet connection. I told her that if she didn’t already have an antivirus program on her computer that it was too late.

I put in my USB drive and was able to move the programs I was going to try to run onto her desktop. However, none of my programs would open. I tried opening some things on her computer. The browser would open, but it wouldn’t access the internet. The explore window opened, but none of the programs would open. I couldn’t get the task manager or control panel to open. And I couldn’t get to the C prompt either.

I tried rebooting first, but to no avail. I then remembered to boot up into safe mode. That was smart, but none of the programs I needed to access were there. See, when you boot into safe mode, you’re suddenly someone else, probably the administrator, and the administrator didn’t have access to the desktop of the original user. So, I had to reboot normally, then move everything to the C drive, and reboot again into safe mode.

Once it was back up, I went to the C drive and decided to start with Stinger. It’s the quick down and dirty virus checker from McAfee, free always. The problem, though, is that I had a version from last September; you always need to keep up to date if you’re going to use Stinger. It found nothing, which I figured might happen.

Next I decided to run the major program, Combofix. A few months ago, I worked on one of my computers, and I was able to get rid of every virus and spyware/adware piece of junk except one Trojan that just wouldn’t go away. Running Combofix killed it. Usually it likes to access the internet while it’s doing its thing, but in this case, you can’t access the internet while in safe mode. But I knew I had the latest version, as I’d downloaded it before I went to my friend’s house, so I wasn’t worried about it.

I ran the program, and it took about 25 minutes. It needed to; it’s hard to believe, but in one download her computer ended up with almost 200 viruses and registry entries. You never know what you’re going to get if you load something and haven’t verified where it came from. But at this point the computer was pretty clean.

While still in safe mode, I went into the control panel, then into add/remove programs. I knew which programs were associated with the virus; I can’t tell you why, but I just did. I deleted every program, and since it couldn’t access the internet or give me any other grief, especially after the cleaning Combofix gave it, they all went away submissively.

I booted the computer system back into real time, and it came up with no issues except not having any protection. I decided to start off with Zone Alarm, which added a firewall to her computer. You can’t use Zone Alarm with Vista unless your computer is 32-bit, which mine isn’t. But it’s a great program, and fairly easy to use for the uninitiated. It’s always best to start by adding the firewall program first to block anything sneaky that might still be on the computer.

Then I put on AVG’s free antivirus program, and, because I know she and her family don’t have a real clue as to how to protect themselves, I added the security toolbar, which I wouldn’t use myself. Then, for a final bit of protection, I added AdAware for spyware/malware checking, and decided to go ahead and run that. It found 114 instances total of spyware and malware; I started thinking that maybe some of this stuff was there before today’s incursion.

However, after just about 4 hours, her computer was clean, and now it was protected. But it could have taken a heck of a long time if I hadn’t remembered safe mode. So, now you won’t forget it either. But protect yourselves!

For those of us who use Firefox, there are a host of add-ons and other things that we can employ to change the look and use of the Firefox browser. One that I particularly love is called Stylish. Basically, this allows you to change the look of certain websites that you may visit on a consistent, or even inconsistent basis, including colors and styles of those pages.

The first thing you do is download the Stylish add-on from the link above. Then you go to the main page, Userstyles.org and search for sites whose style you might want to change. For instance, here are some of mine:

Main Google page:

Google images page:

Wikipedia page:

This is my Facebook page:

There are many other sites that you can alter, and there are even some add-ons that will change the look and color of your browser, which is really neat. Vista is hard to figure out in terms of changing colors and such in general, so I was glad to find a style and color that I liked to at least change how my browser looks. I’d show you that, but it would look goofy with all the things I have open right now. Oh yeah, you can also use Stylish to change the styles and uses for Thunderbird, if you use that for your email client.

Check it out, if you’re predisposed to do so, and if you’re using Firefox. And if you’re not using Firefox,… why not!

There are some things you allow others to buy you, then there are those things you just have to do for yourself. This is one of those things I had to do for myself; I finally bought a new computer.

For the back story, my previous computer has been nothing but problems from the day I bought it. That sucker just kept shutting down at the most inopportune times (as if there’s an opportune time for your computer to throw up the BSOD), and there was nothing I could do about it. I took it back to Comp USA, where I bought it, seven times. I’d had it put together there, and I’m not sure but that was probably the biggest mistake of my life. I easily spent over $3,500 on that bad boy, first picking out all the components, then in repair costs and replacement parts costs (even though I purchased a service agreement), and nothing.

Then this summer, I took it to the computer repair guy up the street, and had a couple of encounters with him that ended up with my computer still not working, but now it was shutting down more often, and at more inopportune times. Frankly, with everything I did over a four year period, if I was dealing with real world issues I’d have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Well, there’s nothing that a good consulting assignment won’t take care of, and in this case, it’s taken care of my being able to buy a new computer; whew! So, what did I get? I got the Gateway FX Desktop with Intel® Core™ i7-920 Processor, 3 GB DDR3 RAM, 750 GB SATA hard drive, 2.66 GHz processor, 512K ATI RADEON HD 4850 video card, 10 USB ports, one Firewire, dual-layered DVD player/ recorder,… and a host of other stuff that I’m not quite sure what it does, but I’ll learn it. This thing is fast, and it’s stable; man, I’ve wanted that for a very long time. It’s also expandable for two more hard drives and up to 16 GB DDR3 RAM; like I need more storage and more speed and power. Well, in this case, one never knows with me, right? Still, I’m stuck with Vista, but I have to say that, thus far, it’s working well, though there are some minor irritations I’m having, such as it’s working hard to keep me out of files that I’ve always been able to get into and modify on my own. That, and this weird thing of having two Program Files folders, one for 32-bit stuff, the other for 64-bit stuff; weird.

Now, me being me, I had to talk myself out of getting the computer that was one step up, and I’m glad I did. It came with a 2.93 GHz i7-940 processor and 6 GB DDR RAM and 2 GB video memory along with the terabyte hard drive, but when it comes to RAM, it was only expandable to 12 GB RAM. Of course, it was also set up for wireless LAN, and that would have been nice, but since my hub is less than a foot away from the back of my computer, it’s no big deal.

I had to talk myself out of that for two reasons. One is because I also bought the 22″ HDMI Gateway widescreen monitor that’s taken my breath away thus far (once again, having to talk myself out of spending another $150 for 2 inches; that just didn’t seem to computer). Two is because, since I was throwing my money around, I also bought a 42″ Sharp HDTV for the bedroom to replace the best sounding TV I ever had because the remote control wouldn’t work anymore, and it wasn’t the control, it was the sensor in the TV. Have you tried to find an inexpensive TV repairman in today’s world?

Yeah, I was throwing my money around yesterday, treating myself to a late Christmas present. But don’t think I spent it all on me. I took care of my wife before Christmas, the TV is actually more for her than for me, since I spend almost all of my time at the computer, and I’m still going to be giving her more stuff over the next few days to help her take care of some things she’s wanted to do for a long while. I’m a good husband, but she’s a good wife, and knew I needed a new computer. I gave her my old monitor, and man, there’s no real comparison between a flat screen 19″ and one with a big tube in it, is there?

Of course, the next big electronics purchase for me will need to be a laptop at some point. My poor laptop is moving close to 5 years old now, and I noticed it was struggling last week as I was running it as the main computer. I hope it can last at least another couple of months, as I have some other things to take care of, and then we’ll see what I go with. Right now, I’m leaning towards the Asus Laptop with Intel® Centrino® 2 Processor Technology, red and black colored (I love colors), Intel® Centrino Core™2 Duo Mobile 2.66 GHz, 320 GB hard drive with 4GB DDR3 RAM, and a 17 inch screen. Right now I have a 15.4″ screen, but if you know me you know I never go lateral or smaller, hence the larger screen. Of course, something else might tickle my fancy, as I haven’t ruled out the Alienware n9750 17″ laptop or their new M17 17″, with the 500 GB hard drive, and I’m still kicking myself for not buying, when it was available, the Superman Area 51 laptop; that was really cool!

No matter. With the new speed and no more worries about shutting down, there will be more blogging articles on all my blogs, and everyone will want to buy new computers eventually. Happy holidays!

Do you Twitter? Are you one of those people who writes once every couple of weeks, or are you someone who posts 100 times a day? How irritating are you to follow on Twitter?

Interesting questions, to be sure, but it’s not my attempt to take a potshot at anyone. Instead, I’m introducing this neat little website I came across a couple of weeks ago called Follow Cost. If you’re on Twitter, what you do is plug your Twitter name into it, let it do some calculations, and it’ll give you a quick statistic showing you what the average number of updates people are making on Twitter, and the average number you’re making over your last 100 posts.

Now, here’s the thing. If your close to the average, you only get the statistic. For instance, right now the average is 13.32 milliscobles, and my average is 12.18. However, a couple of weeks when I ran the figure, my milliscobles was around 48, and I got this sound that sounded like an atomic bomb, and the page shook and flickered with colors as it there was an explosion. It would seem the holiday and the trip across the country has slowed me up a little bit.

Of course, if you read my post on what makes Twitter interesting, you remember being introduced to Twitter Grader, where you can see how prominent you are on Twitter based on people you follow and how many are following you. Unfortunately, I had to remove the little badge that would have shown everyone how prominent I am because of that problem with javascript a couple of weeks ago; sigh.

Anyway, if you’re on Twitter, why not check it out and have a little fun with it. I’m wondering if anything happens if one hardly ever uses it; someone try it and let me know.

JVC TH-G51 Home Theater System – Amplifier, 5.1 Speakers – 1 Disc(s) – Progressive Scan – 1000W RMS – Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby Pro Logic II Price – $355.99

Over the last bunch of days, sometimes my blog has been very slow to access. I wasn’t sure what it was, though, so I started doing some testing, and it seems that the lethargy has been tracked down to incompatibility of javascript created items that I’ve been adding to my blog.

Of course, we all have a lot of javascript things on our blogs if we’re monetizing them. Adsense is a javascript program. Widget Bucks is a javascript program. Chitika is a javascript program. I’ve had Adsense almost forever, and my blog never ran this slow. I’m not sure about either Widget Bucks or Chitika. I had two other minor things on my blog, both from Grader.com, and I took those off because each one was a javascript program.

Not that talking about javascript slowing down blogs is new. A blog post that probably didn’t get the attention it deserved comes from Alex Iskold’s Techonology blog, where he wrote a post titled How Javascript Is Slowing Down The Web. In it, he talks about the problems that can occur when multiple “single” lines of javascript code come together from varying sources. He talks about how javascript performs things sequentially and not concurrently, and that anytime a piece of JavaScript is being loaded or evaluated, everything else has to wait.

Now, supposedly there’s things that can be done for different browsers, but none of those things are absolutes. That, plus it’s very technical stuff; most of us regular folks won’t understand it, let alone what to do with it. However, something I’m speculating is that when there’s two javascript programs next to each other, that’s when things have an opportunity to fail, even if the same company created both programs. When I first removed the Widget Bucks affiliate banner that was sitting next to their skyboard banner, this blog was running much faster. Since then, though, it seems to go up and down. Frankly, I’m not really sure what to do next, other than removing all javascript programs, and that’s not about to happen. It’s possible that it’s related to either the LinkXL or Kontera ads that have recently started running on this blog also; I’m just not really sure.

Luckily, the slowdown time is infrequent, so I hope it doesn’t overly disturb anyone. However, if it starts bothering me often enough, I’m going to start moving things around some more, trying to make sure there’s some kind of distance between all the javascript that’s going on. At least the Daily Puppy widget isn’t javascript; aren’t they cute? Anyway, Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome talks about how javascript works in web browsers, so I’m sharing that here; enjoy!

Camelot Handcrafted Oxo-Teak Chessmen Set Price – $465.00

After literally 12 hours of effort, I finally got my computer back up and running. Truthfully, I’m not sure what did it, but I’m going to detail what went on, which may give information to others who might go through this problem.

What started it all was my trying to get my scanner to work. It just wasn’t having it, and it wouldn’t run with either of the utilities are are supposed to scan items, those being Microsoft Photo Editor, my editor of choice, or its own toolbar; I have a Canon scanner. So, I did what I thought was the logical step; I uninstalled the drivers for the scanner so I could load them again after the reboot.

Okay, the reboot never stopped rebooting. At first I actually just let it go, thinking it would right itself, but that wasn’t going to happen. I then booted up in safe mode to see if I could determine what was going on; nope. I tried loading the Canon program back there, then rebooted the computer again; same issue.

I started trying to think of anything else I’d done since the last reboot. I’ve still been having major problems with the computer shutting down, and I thought I’d traced it to a HID compliance issue (human interface device, used to describe wireless hardware such as keyboards and mice) by adding some files to my computer that I’d gotten from others. That problem didn’t resolve itself, but I’d rebooted after that and the computer came back just fine.

Actually, saying my computer was coming back just fine is a misnomer. For the past week or so, any time I tried to reboot, the computer would hang and just not get it done. But if I rebooted a second time, or if I shut down the computer completely then started it back up, everything was fine. So, there were problems on the horizon.

Anyway, I kept going through the stages of booting and rebooting the regular way and through safe mode, even signing on as administrator, and nothing was working. Then I decided to try to run the Win XP repair option. When I’d accidentally erased my files before, I was actually trying to run a repair instead, but hit the wrong key and ended up doing a full reinstall. With the repair option, and I’m not talking about the Repair Recovery Console, you can have Windows repair itself, almost like a full install because it takes about as much time, but it doesn’t touch those all important Documents and Settings files, which contains all your data files, including your email files. I first had to go into the BIOS and change the boot option so it would look for the CD first, and away I went.

For the uninformed, after Windows loads all its files, it gives you some options. One allows you to hit R to go to recovery; don’t do that if you’re not close to being an expert. More on that one later. Instead, hit ENTER, which looks like you’re going to install, but you’re not at this point. What happens is you’ll come to the next screen where it will give you the option of either repairing or doing a clean install. This is where you hit the “R“. From this point on, you just let Windows do its thing, answering questions as needed, but here’s a very important point: Do NOT do any of this if you don’t have an installation key number! Oh, one more thing. After the install, when the computer reboots for the second time, you’ll want to go back into BIOS and change the boot order back to hard drive, and of course take out the XP CD.

Going on with the story, during the first repair process, suddenly it stopped and was looking for a particular video file. I don’t know why it wasn’t already on my computer, but it wasn’t. I had to go through the process of locating the driver on my laptop, then copying it over to a blank CD (I used a rewritable disk) and putting it into my computer. Of course, things never go easy for me, so it couldn’t find the file. I ended up having to reboot the computer, and when it came back it started the repair process again, but when it came to the file this time and I put the CD in, it found the file. Of course a few minutes later it needed another file, and I had to go back to the laptop and repeat that process, and of course I then had to reboot the computer and start the repair process again. Once it finally had both files, I was good to go.

Or so I thought. Once the repair process was completed, I started the computer again, and it kept rebooting itself; arrgh! I ended up running the full repair process again, just to make sure that it was done properly, especially with what I had to go through with those two files, and this time it ran perfectly.

Good to go again, right; nope! Still was stuck in some kind of loop. Also, it kept flashing a blue screen message, but it was so fast that I couldn’t read it. So I had to boot up in safe mode and go into the My Computer settings to turn that off. I then rebooted the computer, and finally, even though it didn’t boot up, it stopped on the error message so I at least had a chance to see what was going on. I saw the error message and headed to the internet on my laptop. It indicated that there was a possibility that I might have a virus. Oh yeah; you can always type in your error messages, but someone else might not have typed in exactly what your problem is. However, the first two lines of the code will usually get you somewhere close to what your issue might be. I went to McAfee’s site for its Stinger program, which will scan your computer for the latest viruses without your having to load an entire program.

Before I went through this entire process, though, I suddenly thought about opening a restore point and going back to a date when the computer was running fine. Of course, turns out I didn’t have one. Figures, because a few days ago I was thinking I should go in and create a restore point; always follow your first thought.

I booted the computer again in safe mode, then this time I ran the Stinger program. It didn’t find anything, so it wasn’t a virus. I also decided to run two other programs. I ran Error Doctor again, which I’d already run twice, then decided to run this program recommended by PC Magazine called Driver Sweeper, a free utility that cleans out bad drivers, mainly video and audio, but still, it was another check. Then, while I was at it, I decided to run Spybot, a program that looks for spyware and malware, and it found nothing. I also was going to try to run my free AVG program, but it wouldn’t work; odd. And, one final thing, I also installed Service Pack 3, which I’d already had downloaded; you never know when you’ll need those service packs.

At this point, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I decided to hedge my bet. I backed up all my data files from Documents and Settings, which includes all the My Documents files. I was prepared to run the full install if my computer didn’t boot up properly.

I hit reboot, then waited. And this time, the computer booted up all the way. When I heard that wonderful applause (instead of the normal Windows opening, I replaced the sound with applause; who wouldn’t enjoy being applauded more often?), I was ecstatic. I checked the time, and it was 3:35; I’d spent 12 hours and 21 minutes trying to get this to occur. I decided to just turn off the monitor at that point and get back to everything else later in the morning.

Once I came back, I turned on the monitor to see it ready for me to do something. I had to reload many Windows updates, including reinstalling Internet Explorer 7, but I didn’t care. What I cared about was whether the computer would reboot once all that stuff was installed. It did, and that part of the computer is working well once again; whew!

The one bad thing? The scanner still won’t scan. Hey, I’ll take what I can get!

Most people who use Firefox or Thunderbird know that they got those items from Mozilla. However, I’m betting most of you don’t know that there’s a Mozilla.com and a Mozilla.org, and that, though each of the sites has some kind of relationship with the other, they’re totally different sites.

Mozilla.com is where we all get Firefox and Thunderbird. They also have a store where you can purchase t-shirts and other clothing, and other items with the Mozilla “Firefox” logo on it.

Mozilla.org is where one can pick up news about what’s going on with Mozilla, including updates to Firefox and Mozilla, but it’s also where other software that Mozilla offers resides. For instance, there are two other browsers that they provide, one called Seamonkey and the other called Camino. Seamonkey is an all-in one application where one can do browsing, email, chatting and HTML coding; it reminds me of what the earliest versions of Netscape used to do. Camino is a browser meant for Mac users who want to experience what everyone else experiences with Firefox.

Two things I was interested in learning more about, one of which I have downloaded and now use, were Sunbird and Lightning. Sunbird is a calendar application that works like Outlook, only more colorful. Lightning is actually more of a add-on that you can load into Thunderbird and it adds the calendar application right into that program. That turned out to be the one I wanted, so I downloaded it and installed it into my Thunderbird program, and was happy to discover that it also has a tasks list with it.

There are more things you can see on the second site, such as other projects the Mozilla Corporation is working on, and if you’re interested you can take a look. Happy viewing.

Palm(r) Treo(tm) 680

For about two weeks now I’ve been trying to figure out why Google Desktop wouldn’t index any of my email in Mozilla Thunderbird. I searched all over the place, and just couldn’t figure it out. I’ve finally figured it out, with some serious searching online and some testing on my own, and I’m going to tell you how I did it.

The first thing you do is close Thunderbird. The second thing you do is open up your Explorer window. Then go into your Program Files, Google, and then whatever is next; on my computer it’s Google Desktop Search, but on some computer it’s Google Desktop Directory. Once there, highlight whatever files you have that say “GoogleDesktopMozilla“; you probably won’t need them all, but copy them just in case. Then go to the Program Files for Mozilla Thunderbird, and paste whatever you can into the Components folder; if a file is already there, you don’t have to copy over it.

Then you go into your Thunderbird profile, which you access by C:DocumentsandSettings(username)/ApplicationData/Thunderbird/Profiles(unique profile). Once there, delete a file called “compreg.dat“.

That’s it. Open up Thunderbird, and Google Desktop should start indexing your email files in the background. You can check it by opening it up to see if it says it’s indexing. If not, just start the indexing process. Of course, if you’re starting from the beginning, indexing could take a long time, which means while you’re doing things your computer might slow down. But I love Google Desktop, and if you do also, give this fix a shot.

And there you go. By the way, if it’s not indexing your Firefox files, you can do the same process, only go into Program Files and then Firefox.

Satellite A305-S6857 Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 2.0GHz Notebook

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell