Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

If you own Dell stock and are less than pleased with the performance, I’m afraid that it’s partly my fault.

You see, it’s almost daily that someone asks me whether the remedy to their slow pc is to buy a new one.

“How old is it?”, I ask. If the answer is 4 years or less, then I can presume that:

• They probably have a Pentium 4
• They probably don’t have Windows ME
• They probably can add RAM real cheap (Rambus excepted)

Case in point over the weekend.  Pentium 4 1.7, 512MB RAM, decent 7200rpm hard drive. Windows 2000 Pro was installed, along with all kinds of picture and photo printer garbage. Ran like a hog with no legs.

I backed up all of the data, twice, and did a clean install of Windows XP Pro. Be innovative and you can pick up a copy of XP cheap, if not free. Possibly even legally

Ok, just kidding. I don’t recommend pirating software, but between extra open license copies, cheap OEM licenses, legitimate educational copies - you get the idea.

At 512 RAM, this machine didn’t even need any money spent on it.

After the clean install of Windows XP Pro and just the needed software, no extra garbage, and this PC came to life.

Unless you are running the latest and greatest high intensity software, chances are that a clean install (after 2 backups!) will give you back that new PC performance you haven’t had in years.

A friend called the other day with a Windows XP computer that all of a sudden wouldn’t load Windows. Apparently it was reporting that a couple of key files were missing.

He booted from the CD into the recovery console (must not have had it loaded, I always load on any installs I do). But he could not get the files to copy.

I suggested trying a different CD drive, as often that seems to fix the problem (what do you expect for under $40 these days?). That fixed that problem.

Next issue: why did this happen in the first place? Well, when he told me that he could boot with a Windows 98 floppy and read the files I knew his drive was formatted as FAT32 and not NTFS. NTFS is a more secure file system, but it also has error checking built in that makes it less likely to fail in the first place.

To convert your drive to NTFS:

• Backup your PC
• Verify your backup - This conversion is NOT prone to problems; but what if the power goes out, or someone kicks the plug accidentally?
• At a command prompt, type (without the quotes) “convert [drive letter]: /fs:ntfs” which will likely be “convert c: /fs:ntfs”

Now, in all fairness, this could lead to a small performance penalty. This is due to cluster sizes with NTFS, potential fragmentation and some overhead for the file system; but, trust me, it’s well worth it.

Note: This applies to servers that are domain controllers, but if you get this error on a workstation, try the fix anyway.

I have written about the value of a system state backup, but what do you do when it fails with some arcane error message?

From what I found, this error comes from a bug in Server 2003 SP1. If you are trying JUST a system state backup, try including 1 small file from each drive on the system. Usually occurs if you have taken the prudent step of placing the NTFS log files on a different drive than the database.

Yahoo! tech had an article today about speeding Windows XP shutdown. See http://tech.yahoo.com/gd/how-do-i-speed-xp-s-shutdown-/200654.

In that article, the author suggested that XP can run reliably for days or even weeks without being rebooted, so why not hibernate instead - it doesn’t take as long.

Why indeed? Well, for starters because my experience is that Windows XP is more likely to have trouble entering or exiting hibernation mode than it is shutting down.

And, since my generic advice to ALL Windows users is to reboot once per day, whether by powering on in the morning and off at night; or, reboot when leaving for lunch; then why would I recommend hibernating instead?

The author also postulates that sometimes shutdown problems can be caused by a buggy device driver. He recommends getting updated drivers. Fine advice, except, the chances that the new driver is less buggy than the old driver is FAR less than 100%. Although don’t take this as a recommendation not to update - just that if it works, don’t fix it.

In fact, for one reason or another, some clients have found that unless they do reboot at lunch time, the afternoon can get quite frustrating. Chances are that is the fault of some application they use and not Windows itself, but nonetheless they use that application because they need it. We cannot force software vendors to fix their problematic software even though it is in their own self interest to do so.

So my recommendation stands. If XP won’t shut down properly, troubleshoot. Don’t choose hibernation instead. If it won’t shut down then chances are you have other problems, some of which may be alleviated by a daily reboot.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/935448/

Use the above link if you get:

Illegal System DLL Relocation

The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory

Apparently, a recent Windows XP security update was buggy (no, really?). So QuickBooks and a host of other programs are crashing now. Are we having fun yet?

Even though I have done a lot of programming in my day, I just can’t comprehend how there can be so many bugs still left in a 6 year old operating system like Windows XP that will allow a hacker to take complete control of your PC.

Shucks, when the owner of the PC tries to take complete control, Windows usually crashes!

Maybe you’ll like this video “honoring” Bill Gates accomplishments:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/5NoGbLI3ePA]

I received a call late yesterday from a client who had been aggressively burning files to CD and deleting. This system was running Windows 2000 Pro and equipped with only 128MB RAM.

Things started acting a bit weird, but she kept going until she received a registry error message. This got her attention, but she wasn’t quite done yet. After receiving a “windows is low on resources” error, she decided to reboot. Good idea, a tad late perhaps.

When the computer started to boot up, she was treated to the infamous “Blue Screen Of Death” or BSOD, with inaccessible boot device.

Since Dell and all other OEM’s don’t see fit to install the command console for you, we needed to boot her PC from the original CD, wait for all of the setup drivers to load, then select Repair via Console.

Fortunately, running ChkDsk fixed the problem.

Now, to help for next time:

I installed the command console: D:\i386\winnt32 /cmdcons

then

I ran Backup, selected just the system state, and saved to an external USB hard drive. This has the added side effect of updating C:\Winnt\Repair with current copies of the registry hives, which a Windows Repair can use the next time, if needed.

Mission accomplished. And I didn’t even have to break a sweat!

For more info on Computer Backup, head over to the computer backup section of my website.