- ...For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
- Hoist with his own petar...
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1) "NTLDR is missing"
Thanks, Bill! Normally, an "NTLDR is missing" message is a showstopper. Like "Missing HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," and "Windows could not start..." messages, you're dead in the water. We covered ways to get past "Missing HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," and "Windows could not start..." messages in the article here: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=185301251 . And normally, a missing NTLDR isn't too hard
to work around. (See But a munged boot order is a nonobvious thing--- it's the kind of problem that could leave you really scratching your head and/or cost you hours of unnecessary troubleshooting and rebuilding. I'm going to remember to check boot order when or if I ever have a "missing NTLDR" message again! (BTW: You check the boot order in the BIOS: Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) --- --------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 2) Defrag Just Won't Finish
Nothing jumped out as an obvious problem in your log file, Bernie, so my first thoughts are that there's either a disk problem; or that some open/in-use file is in the way; or that perhaps a security tool is preventing Defrag from moving a system file, thinking it's malware at work. I suggest you run Chkdsk in "thorough" mode: Open "My Computer," right click on your C: drive, and select Properties/Tools. Click "error checking" and tick both check boxes in the next dialog. Click to start the error check, and most likely you'll get a notice that the "disk check could not be performed," and offering to run Chkdsk at reboot. Choose Yes, and then manually reboot your PC to let Chkdsk get started. It's best to do this at night, when you're done with the PC: Although the standard Chkdsk ("automatically fix file system errors") is pretty fast, the deeper fix ("scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors") can take quite a while. So, let the PC churn as long as it needs to, overnight. The next day, your PC's hard drive should be thoroughly checked and OK. Reboot again, and start hitting the F8 key as the boot begins. (You may need to tap on it quite a few times to catch the moment when the awakening Windows looks for that keystroke.) The F8 key interrupts the normal boot and presents you with a menu of boot options, including Safe Mode. Select that. Windows, in Safe Mode, runs in a minimalist configuration: You do have a graphical interface and can run some software, but many of the OS's higher functions are unavailable, creating a simpler environment for maintenance and repair. If your antivirus or other security tools are running in Safe Mode, temporarily disable them or turn them off. Now run Defrag from the command line: Click Start/Run, and in the Run box, type defrag c: This activates the bare-bones defrag, sans graphical interface--- again, making the operating environment as simple as possible. Odds are, Defrag will now work to completion. You then can reactivate your security tools, reboot, and use the PC normally! More: Click to email this item to a
friend 3) Drowning In Dead Drivers
Tens of millions of people are in the same boat as you, Ed, and (alas) the boat's a bit leaky. <g> In Win95, driver development was in its "wild west" phase: There was no single way of handling drivers, so different companies did it different ways. Drivers could (and did) end up just about anywhere on the hard drive; some would replace or overwrite parts of the OS itself; some used the Registry, others used their own or Windows' own INI files to record startup and configuration data. It was a mess. In fact, this was one of the top two or three areas why Win95 could be so unstable. It got a little better in Win98; the OS was somewhat better able to protect itself against "improvements" when third-party driver software tried to alter essential files; and the Registry grew in importance as the use of separate INI files began to atrophy. WinME took a half step further, allowing old style Win98 drivers, but also allowing something closer to newly standardized, XP-style drivers, with still-better protection of the OS files; and so on. Trouble is, old machines that lived through the 95/98/ME evolution may have all three kinds of drivers on them. There's no single, simple way to identify and clean them all out. But you can try this: First--- you know it's coming, right?--- make a full backup or image. Next, gather current drivers for all the hardware that's now in your PC. You can grab these drivers from the vendor web sites, for example, and store them on a CD or in a single, obvious place on your hard drive (such as a folder called C:\NEWDRIVERS or some such.) Then, in Control Panel, uninstall any software that controls hardware--- printers, modems, video cards, etc. You may have to do these separately, with reboots in between; and you may even have to temporarily physically disconnect or remove some hardware to prevent Windows from rediscovering it before you're ready. Next explore the hard drive for any similar additional uninstall software that might not be listed in Control Panel. For example, some older hardware has its uninstall software in its own folder, or in a subfolder of the \Program Files folder; or elsewhere. While you're spelunking the drive, look for folders with names of hardware you no longer have installed or use--- stuff left over from old printers, for example, or old monitors that have gone to the Great Dust Bin In The Sky. Those folders can be deleted, wholesale. Next, go into Hardware Manager and Uninstall *all* hardware, including the stuff that Windows will complain about uninstalling. You want to clean out everything, which is the only way to be sure you're getting the obsolete/defunct/incorrect hardware entries. Turn off the PC. Reconnect/reinstall any needed hardware you removed earlier. Start the PC and let Windows rediscover the hardware that's physically present; you'll no doubt have to feed in driver disks when asked to do so; or, you'll have to point the driver install software to the correct files in your C:\NEWDRIVERS folder, or whatever you called it. When everything's running again, clean up the hard drive (eg http://langa.com/cleanup_bat.htm ), run a high-quality Registry cleanup tool ( http://tinyurl.com/od73v ), and defrag. That *should* do it, or at least get you close. But it's a hassle, and may not get everything. The way to be sure to get everything is to backup the current stuff, reformat the drive, and reinstall your most-current OS, from scratch. That's also not pretty and is a hassle, but it guarantees the final result: You'll have a clean install with only the files and drivers you actually need. Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 4) More MothballsThe item "Mothballing A PC" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-06-01.htm#3 ), which covered how to store a PC for long periods of disuse, brought this additional suggestion from a reader:
Thanks, Bill. I think this is one of those things where the older the PC, the more important it is: Once a hard drive has a lot of in-use hours on it, wear and tear can really start to take its toll. Taking the time for a cool down (is 5 minutes really enough? I would think a couple hours would be better...) could be a useful extra step to take when storing such older PCs. Click to email this item to a
friend 5) Firewall Incorrectly Blocks Local Traffic
A PC sharing an internet connection usually does not process the bits flowing to and from other PCs on the LAN; the bits simply pass through to their destination. A firewall that's on the PC that's doing the sharing mainly protects that one PC. The other PCs (or servers) do need their own protection. There are types of hardware and software that claim to protect everything on a LAN, all at once, but I think it's asking for trouble to put all your security eggs in one basket. In fact, this was what we discussed in "Asking For Trouble" http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-05-29.htm#1 . To configure the separate firewalls for unhindered access, set up a local workgroup using unroutable addresses such as 127.x.x.x or 10.x.x.x or 172.16.x.x-172.31.x.x or 192.168.x.x , and tell the firewall that any such local address is "trusted" and OK to connect with. Data sent from local address to local address won't "leak" out to the internet at large, because internet routers ignore data packets with those addresses. With your firewall trusting the local addresses, accidental blockages should be reduced; but the firewall will still correctly treat data from all other addresses as suspect, and deserving of full scrutiny and filtering. More: Click to email this item to a
friend 6) Three More Winners!"Burtel," "kozy" and "hal6" each won a FREE
full one-year subscription to the LangaList Plus! edition by using the
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friend 7) Too Many "KB" Files Cluttering Disk
The short answer is yes, you can delete them, and the *.log files in the same folder. But the longer answer is better, and you'll find it here: Delete Leftover Update/Patch Files? Click to email this item to a
friend 8) Yet *Another* Code Load Success StoryAfter their site was listed in the last "Load The Code" section, this reader wrote:
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 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://langa.com/link.txt ) Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At Security Info/Blog Courier Services to the UK. Chesapeake Antique Fire Apparatus
Association Letters from Royston Vasey Kansas Real Estate 8th Armored Division SouthCoastISP On-Ramp Sportive & Virtual World "Get fat" Dragon Dice Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) --- --------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 9) Hoist By Their Own Petard
Thanks, Fred. It's always darkly amusing when a company is harmed by the same policies and tools they force on their customers. Serves BellSouth right for using such a lame filtering tool. BTW#1: In case you've ever wondered, the phrase "hoist by his own petard," comes from Hamlet:
A "petar," or what was later called a petard, was originally a small bomb in a bell-shaped housing. The open end of the bomb was placed against a wooden castle gate; when detonated, the explosion was forced mostly in one direction, through the gate, destroying it. Think of it as an early shaped charge. A [military] engineer would be "hoist by his own petar[d]" when the bomb went off prematurely, blowing the engineer into the air--- and probably, into the afterlife. In Hamlet, Shakespeare used the phrase metaphorically, meaning to have one's plans turned against oneself, and that's pretty much what it's meant ever since. BTW#2: As mentioned, a petard is a device that forcefully expels destructive gasses in one direction. Believe it or not, the word traces back to the Latin "pedere," meaning "to break wind." Those medieval military engineers had an earthy sense of humor, I guess. <g> BTW#3: There's an equivalent concept to "hoist by his own petar[d]" in software engineering. I first heard it at Microsoft in the 1990s when the Windows development team was forced by Microsoft management to use the beta versions of Windows to finish development of those selfsame beta versions. The idea was an excellent one; the software engineers would experience *exactly* what their customers would be experiencing in using the software. For sure, that helped many bugs get fixed fast. <g> But the curious turn of phrase that Microsoft used for this practice was "making the programmers eat their own dog food." Hmmm. Enough. I'll stop now. <g> If you want more: Click to email this item to a
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They might run hot, Joe. But only once. <g> Click to email this item to a
friend (Give a gift subscription to
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