Category: Compgeeky

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When One Is a Windows User. . .

. . .no matter how experienced, educated and “crafty” *heh* sometimes the best answer is to throw one’s hands in the air and. . . go check OPE (Other People’s Experiences). Almost invariably, someone, even someone with all sorts of certs and official qualifications, has had the same intractable problem and has fumbled around and eventually churned up a workaround from the muck on the stable floor.

So it was with this problem/answer.

Short and sweet(er than not): error message stating some third-party security apps were blocked from running by group policy. Checked group policy editor and even did a “gpresult /h” (to have a nice html file report to read in a browser) and no, they were not. . . according to Windows. Still blocked, though.

Kludge-around: back up the Policy keys in the registry. Delete those keys. Force a GP update. Ta-da! All’s well. But. . . I really hate deleting keys, even when they’re backed up, so I’d not gone that far. I would have preferred fixing the problem the right way–in Group Policy Editor. Nope. *head-desk* “It’s Windows, dummy. Do it the roundabout, kludged-up way.”

*sigh*

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*gagamaggot*

Opera ASA, the Norwegian company that publishes various forms of Opera Browser for just about every platform out there, has apparently decided that its real growth market is among computer users with the intelligence of a rotten cabbage and attention spans that make mere nanoseconds seem like years.

Example: suppose one were to want to import one’s bookmarks from a previous version of the Opera browser to the current Chrome knockoff Opera browser. The Opera “help” (and I use the term derisively) file says,

“To import your bookmarks:

“From the main menu, select More tools > Bookmark Importer.
“Click the Select Bookmarks button.
“From the list, select which bookmarks you wish to convert to Speed Dial.”

Well, first off, that’s a flat out lie. “Bookmark Importer” has sporadically appeared and disappeared from the Chrome knockoff Opera since its inception. Not there in ver. 24.0.1543.0.

Secondly, “From the list, select which bookmarks you wish to convert to Speed Dial,” pretty explicitly says, “Choose a few bookmarks. We’ll let you sort of ‘import’ those few. You lose the rest AND your folder structure. Tough noogies. We only want users with the attention spans and intelligence necessary to make gnats seem like Steven Hawking in comparison.”

100s of bookmarks nestled in a folder structure that allows clear navigation and categorization with a bookmark management functionality that allows quick and easy searches to delve quickly into that complex tree structure and pluck just exactly the gem one wants? Gone, bubba.

So, then Opera ASA touts its “synchronize” function. . . which does no such thing at all. All it does is export bookmarks in an html file that COMPLETELY DESTROYS ALL ORGANIZATION INCLUDING ALPHABETIZING OF BOOKMARKS, making the thing almost completely worthless. . . especially since it also RANDOMLY LOSES BOOKMARKS.

Now, that’s just ONE of the many, many ways Opera ASA has screwed up a once exceptionally useful tool. *sigh*

I am trying Avant Browser and I find it to have a few useful, built in features even Opera 12.x doesn’t (the old Opera browser that’s still at least an order of magnitude better than the “new” Chrome knockoff Opera), but it, too, does not import Opera bookmarks (though it offers to and appears to attempt to do so), and in all other ways, excepting a few nice lil features, is about as capable as Opera 11.x.

*sigh*

It’s almost enough to make a guy give up on the web.

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When Windows Borks

I had occasion, recently, to do a *meh* “rescue” *meh* of a different flavor to the procedure(s) described in a previous post. A hard drive began causing Windows errors on a Win7 installation on my most-used Windows notebook and imaging the drive to a newer, larger drive seemed the perfect solution, once I determined there were no unrecoverable errors in the OS itself.

It was, except. . . As usual with Windows, the story didn’t end with complete success. When a Windows OS borks for any reason–even if it’s not actually the OS’s fault exactly, any fixes tend to complicate things.

And so it was. The Windows install booted just fine, and everything worked. Scans with a few low- and mid-level tools said all was well with the OS and the data.

Cool.

Except, next day: Windows popped up the “Windows Genuine Advantage” notice that my installation of Windows was bogus. It offered to resolve the problem online, which resulted in being notified that M$ would be MORE than happy to “fix” my problem. . . for $200 (by selling me a new license key).

*arrrgggh!*

Nope. Not going to happen. Ran other checks with built-in and add-on M$ tools (MGADiag, slmgr.vbs) and they returned reports saying various things, but nothing indicating the OS was not genuine. Windows property page noted no problem, and the watermark warning that a bogus Wininstall is supposed to place on the desktop didn’t appear. Nevertheless, I got the error message and Windows update reported the WU service was not running, even though services.msc did report it running. System file checker run in scan and repair mode reported corrupt files it could not repair. Ran it in Repair Mode/command prompt, pre-Windows. Again, no joy, but a more verbose response (added a coupla switches).

Dropped to an elevated command prompt and did numbers of things (stopping/starting services, checking key registry files, etc.). Nope. No useful info, so. . .For whatever reasons, I don’t see that kind of thing often, and it took me a while to recall “slui 4” to load the lil app to allow phoning for a code to eliminate the WGA notice. (The “slui 3” command would just allow re-entering one’s product key, and I already knew that would be a waste of time. Other parameters would do other also useless things.).

Finally, after a pleasant time visiting with a nice guy somewhere on the Indian subcontinent, I had my verification code and all is now well. I hope.

We’ll see, won’t we? 😉

Yep. Message gone. Windows Update works. Other errors reported by MGADIag, et al (“tampered file” this that or ‘t’other, etc.), all gone.

All this might seem like a real PITA to some folks, but it was a little fun for me, especially since it got me back fiddling around at the command prompt for a while, banging on “the little grey cells” to recall appropriate commands, parameters, switches, etc. . . . and then “solve” the problem with a phone call and entry of a 48 numeral key. Toughest part was dealing with Indian accent, telephone speaker and my tinnitus. *heh*

UPDATE 2: Woke this A.M. to a WGA notice, no access to Windows Update, etc.. ?!? Rebooted a couple of times and *poof* No more notice, Windows Update available, etc. Needed more reboots? Oh, so tired of this silliness and almost ready to scrub this notebook (my most casually-used computer) and just use a ‘nix OS on it. Almost. I’d lose my 5,557-to-0 score in Freecell, though, so. . . *heh*

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Make a New Plan, Stan

or, “Why I Don’t Bother With Whole-Disk Backups”

Well, not much. An occasional whole-disk image is a Good Thing, but I only want disk images of fresh installs that have been cleaned up and configured the way I want them. That way, if a hard drive borks on me, all I have to do is reimage the drive. Oh, my data, you may ask? *meh* I usually save new documents, downloads, etc., to three different locations off my computers—storage attached to another computer(s), an NAS and “cloud” storage. It’s extremely (extremely) rare that I cannot access my data. I sync up my “offsite” (off of my computers generating my data, and in the case of “cloud” storage, completely offsite) pretty often, so any I may have missed saving in all locations and any latest versions are all in place, juuuuuust in case.

Oh, and every now and then, I burn important data sets to DVD as well, just whenever I feel like it.

My applications? For anything not downloadable via Ninite (so, FRESH, up-to-date) I have reinstallation media and product keys for reinstallation.

This procedure, while perhaps a wee tad cumbersome, suits my personal computer use just fine. If a drive (or OS) borks on me, a little time reimaging a new drive is not a really big deal. Reinstalling applications take little time, and I have a fresh system, without the sometimes hinky cruft that tends to creep up on even the most paranoid OCPs among us. 🙂

The only really important thing is that my data is safe, or as safe as I can reasonably make it without taking extraordinary measures I’m just too lazy to take. *heh*

What’s your backup plan?

Yes, I do a fresh OS install every now and then, anyway. Sometimes because an OS has been updated too many times since the image I have for that computer, and it just saves time to use a OS installation disk that has the latest (or almost all the latest) updates slipstreamed, or in the case of ‘nix computers, new distros entirely. *shrugs* YMMV, of course, but for me, it saves time on any large (or large numbers of) updates.

Oh, application-specific configuration data? That’s almost entirely a concern only for my email client and browsers, but I have no problem spending maybe five minutes reconfiguring an email client, and my browsers are all automagically synced whenever I use them, across computers and across platforms, so no worries there, either. All I have to do is reinstall the browser (easy-peasy) and sign in for syncing and bob’s your uncle.

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They Know Me Too Well

Son&Heir and Son-in-Law: Xmas presents coming online today. Yeh, it’s not them; it’s me. (It’s taken me that long to get with the program *heh*)

Well, Lovely Daughter’s husband did give me something I used almost immediately–a Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill (manual grinder), but then the setup was. . . add coffee beans and grind away. *heh*

Son&Heir ? A nice WD external hard drive. Never have enough storage. Never. 😉

Son-in-Law ? A Symbology DS212J NAS enclosure. Has an ARM processor, 512MB RAM, 2 slots for SATA drives and 2 USB 2.0 ports. Guess where the WD external drive is going, hmm?

So, finally got around to putting a 2TB WD Red in the Symbology device. While it’s taken some time to install the Symbology OS and apps, format and verify the drive, set up some of the users and begin moving files onto the device, it does look like sharing (mostly media) files will be a bit easier, now. We’ll see. At any rate, both those guys knew how to give me a good time.

Thanks, guys!

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A Little Bit of Snark to Make the Season Bright. . .

I’ll not link the article this came from, because I don’t want to give traffic to an idiot.

“. . .works best with a fast Internet connection: I’d recommend Wireless-N or Gigabit Ethernet. When I tested this feature on my office PCs (connected to a 10/100 Ethernet network), there were a lot of timeouts, and some video clips played, but with scrambled video on my widescreen display.”

*sigh* That’s where I stopped reading the article and closed the tab. The moron who wrote the article confused LAN speeds with WAN speeds. A LAN with nominal 100mbit speeds and managed routing is easily more than twice as fast as any WAN/Internet connection available to all but the extreme upscale connection available anywhere. Sure, there actually are a very, very few places where folks who can pay the tab can get a gigabit Internet connection, but availability of those connections are very, very few. Average broadband download speeds for the US are somewhere in the 20mbs range, which is about 1/5 of the nominal 100mbs LAN speed the guy moans about in his stupid comment.

Nope. Connection “speeds” have little to do with streaming video issues anywhere past about 5mbs download connection speeds. Many other factors–some of them between the user and the keyboard–are more important. And LAN speeds are NOT Internet connection speeds.

I filed this article under “Too Dumb to Read” and moved on.

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Like Walking Into an Ebola Ward and Asking for a Transfusion. . .

It seems as though many people nowadays who jump on the Internet do so with the computer equivalent of logging onto a virtual ebola ward and just begging–nay! demanding!–the electronic version of a transfusion of ebola. They’re running onto the “information superhighway” without looking out for trouble, and so they are just asking for it.

No, seriously!

Consider: one’s data, identity, finances–all are just ripe for the picking by nefarious means if one just blithely wanders about the Interwebs, naively, thoughtlessly downloading and installing crap, visiting questionable sites or just blindly clicking links or executing attachments in emails. Heck, the crap one might thoughtlessly install (toolbars, webapps, browser extensions BHOs, whatever) might not itself be malicious, but many purveyors of such DGARA about your security or privacy and leave wide open holes for malware–or they have a crappy, wide open site that’s just begging for malware injections to mug their site visitors.

And many people just blindly, naively, thoughtlessly wander into these highly infectious plague wards and then wonder how they “got infected”.

They infected themselves by means of their own stupidity.

People who would NEVER think of just wandering out into a busy highway, who would stop, look BOTH WAYS and listen before crossing a residential street just wander into traffic on the Internet, cruise around looking for virtual streetwalkers to get computer “STDs” from and go hunting up electronic ebola wards to get a transfusion for their computer(s).

Just don’t be one of those guys, mmmK? 🙂

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It’ds Definitely the Little Things. . .

So, lil discarded netbook with a couple of borked motherboard connections (keyboard, mushpad–result of spilled liquid, IIRC) being used as a “nettop” with external monitor and wireless kbd/mouse combo. Works pretty well, except. . . *sigh* DEAD SLOW.

Hmmm. . . what could be causing this? Win7 Pro (an upgrade from the Win7 Basic that came on the lil thing) w/2GB RAM should at least run OK–not blazingly fast, but OK. Ah! A service to cut background noise from microphone use is eating processor cycles like crazy! Disabled that (since I don’t use the built-in mic) and. . . runs OK, MUCH better than before.

It’s the little things, definitely the little things.

Oh, using the lil netbook/nettop temporarily while waiting for a part for the computer usually attached to this monitor. All the data files I need are on an external drive, and all the apps I need (standard app installs here at twc) are on the lil device, so, I can limp along with “OK” instead of “nice and fast” for a while.

Oh, rabbit trail: EVERYONE should use Ninite Install and PC Decrapifier when setting up a Windows box of any kind, IMO. PC Decrapifier is great for removing unwanted, pre-installed crap from an off-the-shelf computer, and Ninite Installer is a great way to quickly and easily install one’s own custom suite of apps.

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Yet Another Quick Tip for Windows Users

[And a bonus tip at the end.]

Every now and then, a scan with the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer is just a Good Thing to do.

My most recent scan with the tool on the lil lappy I’m using to post this turned up two “problems”–one of which wasn’t, for me. Apparently, an update of M$Office 2010 had failed and for some reason Windows Update had borked on its responsibility to clue me in on the fact. Bad Windows Update, bad! *heh* Fixed that, even though I rarely use M$Office 2010 (I prefer LibreOffice–horse races and all that). The other problem? My login password for Windows hasn’t been changed in a while. Notaproblem for me. My Login password for this user account is one of the very, very few passwords I’ve deliberately elected to NOT change regularly, for reasons of my own.

All-in-all, an encouraging scan. But do keep in mind: the tool is a BASELINE scanner. Generally, the things it scans for should form a foundation of your security steps.

See more here on basic computer security: Gizmo’s Freeware Security Wizard Walk through the Wizard to get more recommendations for your own Windows computer use.

Continue reading “Yet Another Quick Tip for Windows Users”

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Opera Software Tells Its Longtime Users to Pi$$ Up a Rope

[One wag who viewed this–but who did not comment here; what’s up with that?!?–commented that at least Opera isn’t telling longtime, faithful users to pi$$ into the wind. . . Yeh, funny. Almost]

Opera 15 is out–a three-step jump from 12.16–and it sucks dead bunnies through a straw and explosively sharts them out.

Dafq?

80% of the cool features that differentiated Opera from run-of-the-mill browsers like, well, ALL the other browsers, are *pft!* gone! In place of the almost infinitely customizable, tweakable, full-featured browser that was the joy of its faithful users, it’s now a dumbed-down version of. . . Google Chrome! Yep. Despite two (or maybe three) new “features” which are better suited to a Fischer-Price “My First Computer” user, the new Opera 15 is actually less functional than Chrome, of all things! Chrome! The previous fav of users who belong in Assisted Computing Facilities (“Here, dearie, let me make that mouse click FOR you. . . “) Heck, it’s an even worse browser now than Internet Exploder! Worse than Internet Exploder 10 on Win8!!!

!@#$%^&*

A list of features and capabilities present in Opera 12.1 and absent in Opera 15 is just too long and depressing to catalog. It’s as though Opera Software ASA has decided that its only hope for expansion–nay! for survival!–is to cater to a market segment with an average IQ of 80 and the attention span of an ADHD toddler on crack cocaine.

Other than that, it’s juuuust fine. . . *gagamaggot*