Andy’s Technotes and commentary

Scenario:
Vista Business on a brand new Dell desktop hosting a network share of a HP 8100 USB printer.
One of the  networked computers is Windows 98 and there is no 98 driver for HP 8100.
I tried the tried and true old trick of loading a Generic driver for the HP8100 and sharing it  so the  98 machine would have at least basic printing abilities until it gets replaced in a few days.
Bad idea.
I  ran a  test print from within the Windows Vista  printer wizard dialogue.  The printer printed correctly  but the  wizard app stopped responding. The error cascaded to an open instance of Open Office and to Windows Explorer.
I shut down through Task Manager and after an extrodinarily long shutdown process, restarted the machine.
After a long wait, Vista came up in a crippled state. I could not start Control Panel, could not start System Restore (well I couldn’t find it…Why did Microsoft move everything in Vista?) , could  not start Open Office. I started Task Manager but could not see anything amiss.
After another 5 minute shutdown sequence I booted to Safe Mode.
I opened the System Restore FAQ in Help which answered many questions but not  “Where I can I click to start System Restore?”. One of the FAQs near the bottom of the page offered a way to start from the command line.  I rolled back two days and my problem was fixed.
My advice :
DO NOT TURN OFF VISTA SYSTEM RESTORE !

Dell GX-270 motherboards frequently have bad capacitors that cause erratic system performance and system failure. Avoid.
The problem  undoubtedly exists  on Apple  HP and other computers based on the Intel D865GBF motherboard.

Seagate discwizard 10 (Acronis) appears to be incompatible with Dell Vostro 200 SATA drives. The program aborts after an error indicating it cannot detect any drives.
Thsis model uses the Foxconn G33M motherboard with Intel G33 chipset.

The new version of Magic Jellybean Keyfinder 2.0 beta (not 1.5) supposedly allows one to recover the Product Key from a hard drive that is no longer bootable.
The test was done when a 1.5ghz PIV 845 chipset motherboard died. The computer had been running a Nobilis XP Home.

The hard drive would not boot into windows on any of the three new motherboards tried. It would just BSOD briefly and reboot.

Initial tests were done using a Windows 2000 machine as a host. It didn’t work. The host machine OS version must match (at least to some degree) the OS on the drive from which you are attempt to retrieve the key else you get an error something like “Hive Load Failed”. When tested on another XP Home machine the MJBKF worked for installation however activation failed and Microsoft refused to activate the product installation.

Update Jan 19 2007: I found the original key for the install described above and it does not match the keys generated by MJBKF or Dagon. Maybe these guys are not “recovering” the keys but are generating new keys that will allow installation but not activation.

DagonDesign.com has a similar technique for “recovery” of the Product Key. The technique described there created a different Product Key which Microsoft also refused to activate.

Brand new from Wal Mart.
Slow celeron 1.6 and 1 gig ram with Vista Home Premium.
Lots of crapware HP/Yahoo search, Norton Security trialware.
Cannot access internet through dial up modem. Cannot remove Norton crapware. Norton will not uninstall because AV is running, but AV is turned off in Norton. You have to reboot after turning off.
Got rid of Norton. Modem connection now works.
Pretty  slow computer.

Tested out WinTV=HVR-1600 today.
Using Gigabyte GA-M61P-31 motherboard with built in 6150 graphics 256 motherboard video ram allocated to video, 1gig DDR2 RAM on motherboard, AMD XP+ 4600 cpu chip.
Quality of reception  varies greatly with aiming of my little  Radio Shack indoor  UHF  antenna that I got on closeout for $2.
I am getting 1041 WDAF, 1051 KCTV, 1061 KTAJD1, 1062 KTAJD2, 1063 KTAJD3, 1064 KTAJD4,  1291 KCWE , 1501 ION, 1502 qubo, 1503 IONLife, 1504 ION Worship, 1621 KSMO using the ATSC antenna in.

Reception on none of these is flawless but all are BETTER than the corresponding  analog channels with the same location, antenna and tuner.

Would like to add KCPT and KMBC and I am not sure why I cannot receive these.

The idea that over-the-air digital reception is all-or-nothing is misleading. It is true that in any one instant of time you either get reception or not. You will get a momentary freeze or audio loss if the signal is lost briefly.

“Print” the PDF file to the MDI (Microsoft Office Document Image Writeer) virtual printer that installed when you installed Microsoft Office.
The resulting file will be a .MDI or .TIF file. Open the file with the Microsoft Office Document Imaging application. Use “Tools”, “Annotations”, “Insert Text Box” and fill in the text boxes to complete the form.
To add a  signature just scan a copy of you signature and save it as a  .jpg or other format and insert it using “Tools” “Annotations”, “Insert Picture Box”

I tried to upgrade the RAM on an A105 series Toshiba laptop using a DDR2 667 memory module. These are incompatible and I had to use a 533 chip instead.

Window Update wants to downgrade your Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400 drivers to 4.5.2.3 dated 7/23/2003. Don’t do it. This bad driver causes the display to revert to 640×480 16 color mode.
You can use Driver Rollback if you have problems with the 4.5.2.3.

The default driver on the XP SP2  CD (5.6.7.3 04/07/2004) works. MS must think there is something wrong with it but they don’t want to share that information.

Why hasn’t Microsoft fixed this problem in the last three years?

Compaq AMD 3800 running Vista Home Premium lost connectivity. The box would not acquire a DHCP  address but would only default to a Windows 169 address. I suspected Norton Internet Security. Turning off NIS did not fix the problem. In fact I found it impossible to turn off the Anti-Scam portion of the software.

Uninstalling NIS fixed the problem.
I replaced the functionality with AVG free and Windows Defender.