OT: windoze woes and full rant mode is on

Why I hate being a systems programmer for my pc.

I apologize in advance for any bad formatting as I am typing this offline
into Notepad and
will cut and paste it later which usually screws up the formatting.

Didn't Robert Duvall say in the Apocolypse Now movie that he loved the smell
of sofware bloat
in the morning? If he didn't he should have.

If you don't like whining you may want to skip this, but if you are thinking
of switching to
Internet Explorer 7 you might want to read that part to save yourself some
grief.

In the last few weeks I have suffered a number of aggravations which I will
now present in
order of increasing agravation.

Lowest Amount of Aggravation: MSN Messenger

I hate the MSN Messenger icon in my system tray. Microsoft Defender removed
it but it came
back. I stopped Outlook from starting it. Defender still thought it was
gone so I used
msconfig to remove it from startup. It came back. I went to Outlook 2002 to
try and stop it
from starting it. The help said: Tools, Options, Preferences should get me
to the place to
turn it off. Except there is no Preferences tab. PC Magazine said to try:
Tools, Options,
General. Yes the option is there and checked. All I need to do is uncheck
it. Only it is
grayed out or yellowed out and I can't change it. PC Magazine said try:
Start, Run then

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove

but it said to be sure not to type any spaces as it could lead to
unpredictable results, only
the string does contain spaces. Confused? Well me too as I only have a
masters degree in
computer science from Johns Hopkins University and 35 years of experience
with computers. I
know I am not even the smartest guy on this newsgroup and by a lot of potent
brain power.

Anyway I found the above command string on the internet, tried it and it
worked after the
reboot. I love rebooting all the time. Norton Antivirus 2006 starts up like
a herd of turtles
in banana dust. So problem solved, only there was a windoze (I refuse to
capitalize that word)
update for windoze messenger. Now I thought MSN Messenger and windoze
messenger were differnt
programs just like Outlook and Outlook Express are different programs and
windoze exploer and
internet exploere are different..

I guess the Microsoft software naming guy is mentally challenged. But I
digress. After installing windoze messenger
guess what was back? Well I killed it again so cross your fingers.


The next level of aggravation: Internet Explorer 7

How do I hate thee, let me count the ways.

windoze update installed this 14+ MB monster. I played with it trying to get
the feel for the
user interface. I could not find any Help button. Try the upper right corner
or press F1 like
I did. To get the Menu bar that has File, Edit, .. visible, right click on
the command bar and
check Menu Bar. Help, Customize IE toolbars is your friend:

**********
"To show or hide toolbars

In Internet Explorer, right-click the Command bar to view the list of
toolbars.
Do one of the following:
To show a toolbar, click the name of the toolbar to select it (a check mark
will be displayed
beside it).
To hide a toolbar, click the name of the toolbar to clear the check mark."
**********

So now how do I read mail and read newsgroups?

**********
"To change buttons on the Command bar

In Internet Explorer, right-click the Command bar, point to Customize
Command Bar, and then

click Add or Remove Commands.
Make one or more of the following changes:
To add a button, click the button you want to add in the Available toolbar
buttons list, and

then click Add.
To remove a button, click the button you want to remove in the Current
toolbar buttons list,
then click Remove.
To change the order in which buttons are displayed, click a button in the
Current toolbar
buttons list, and then click either Move Up or Move Down.
To restore the Command bar buttons to their default settings, click Reset.
When you're done, click Close.
You should see your changes immediately. If you've added a lot of buttons,
you might need to
resize the Command bar to see them all."
**********

Well I could not see any new buttons. There is a lot of open, wasted space
available. There is
one whole line/bar with only one icon on it. There is empty space on the
Command bar but no
new icons displayed.

*********
"To resize the Command bar

In Internet Explorer, right-click the Command bar, and then click Lock the
Toolbars to clear
the check mark (if the check mark is already gone, skip this step).
Drag the Command bar separator bar left or right.
When you're done, right-click the Command bar, and then click Lock the
Toolbars."
*********

Well I just cannot see the Command bar separator which makes it hard to drag
it:-(

On the right side of the Command bar just to the right of Tools there are
two small greater
than signs: >>. Click them and a drop down list appers and then click Read
email and you can
get your email.

So now how do you get to read your newsgroups? Apparently there is no Read
newsgroups button.
Searching the internet with terms like email or news, or newsgroups is like
looking for a
single tree in a world wide forest. Eventually I found a newsgroup on the
microsoft web site
with the answer although it took me a while to figure out the details. This
user interface is
a new low even by micro*** standards.

Here is how you can read your newsgroups. Click Read mail as above. In
Outlook click View,
Goto, News and you will get the newsreader you set in IE Explorer Tools,
Internet options,
Programs tab.

That is as far as I got so far. One last thing. Since installing IE Explorer
7 when windows
are maximized the leftmost letter is cut in half by the left edge of the
window. Not just in
IE Explore but in ALL windows.

Stepping Up to the next level of aggravation: Backing Up my hard drive

I was backing up to DVD but it took a long time, it took 4 DVDs and I notice
that some files
were not backed up because they were in use. Due to another aggravation
which I am saving for
last my backup procedure became an area of intense focus. My last backup was
made in June.

First I bought a Maxtor One Touch external hard drive. It generally works
well but it does not
support backing up the windows folder or its subdirectories. To me this is a
serious
deficiency, because if I had to reinstall windoze xp pro and then download
all of the windoze
updates again over a slow dialup connection, it could take two and a half
days of almost
continuous download. Unfortunatly this estimate is base upon actual
experience:-----(((((((!!!

So I bought Symantec Norton Save and Restore(NS&R). This is getting way too
long so I will
omit the gory details. It did not work. Some access to folder problems and
three error
messages. Several hours learning more about xp security but not enough yet
to fix the problem.
Contacted support. They said I need to log on as Administrator. Told them I
already was. They
said I need to log on as Administrator. Apparently Symatec support consists
of a computer or
human bot that finds error message codes in you email and sends you a canned
email. I replyed
in ALL CAPS that I was the @#^^*(**^$#$**( ing Administrator. They gave me a
lengthy process
of looking at two tabs in msconfig and diabling all services except MS
services and Symantic
services including only programs and services on two lengthy lists. If I had
followed these
instruction to a T I am pretty sure I would have lost the driver to my
display and I could not
help but notice that NS&R was not on their list, only Norton Ghost. I got
another access error
when I clicked ok. On restart I saw that two of the services I had disabled
were still there,
so probably something to do with them caused the error. I ran NS&R and got
the same three
error messages as before and an additional one. Sent lengthy email to
support detailing
everthing I did including list of services enabled and list of services
disabled. They replied
that I need to log on as Administrator.

Sigggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I replied with a strong message that contained no error message codes. They
finally read more
of my previous lengthy email and said it was a windoze problem, they do not
diagnose those and
I need to contact Micro***.

My reply: "Well I guess that lets you off the hook, huh?
Your company has my money and your software does not work. You win and I
lose. Of course that
only works as a short term strategy. Not that you or your company care but
I will NEVER do
any more business with Symantec."

Catch-22. There is a refund page and a refund procees. It requires the
original receipt. I do
not have it, because I send it in, to get the offered rebate which required
the original
receipt. No joy there or here or wherever.

Higest Level of frustration: Trashing my hard disk

I get a newsletter from Internet Tourbus. They had a procedure for cleaning
up your hard disk.
It seemed straightforward and appeared safe. At one point it involved
running chkdisk. Even
though my computer is two years old it has a large hard drive 233GB. I do
not know if that
matters or not. I do know that after I ran chkdisk my drive was trashed. It
had a read error
in a critical place and windoze would not boot and using F8 did not work so
no safe mode and
no nothing but a read error for me. Driver and recovery CD worked as boot
source but none of
the recovery tools could do anything. Contacted Gateway non-support and was
given a fdisk
command that did not work because he told me to use a forward slash in the
path so I knew I
knew more than him. Reinstalled XP, downloaded windoze updates, reinstalled
applications (not
all yet) and restored what was available from backup DVD. Repair saga
continues.

Believe it or not I left out a lot of glitches that occurred during these
events.

Sorry. I guess this is mostly me for me although I hope the Internet
Explorer 7 part helps
some people. I just need to vent.

Leaving now to get car window replced as some vandal broke it out. I think
thw word "window"
may be cursed and UNIX/Linux is looking better and better all this time. I
wonder if my hard
disk is even large enough to hold Windoze vista.







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