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June - 2007 |
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You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder
what else you could do while you're down there. - George Burns
Our EmailLast month messages to us may have bounced back with a "550 unknown user" error. The problem occurred because of a change in service and servers, but should now be resolved. Sorry for any inconvenience that may have caused. You can use either bcs or steve @bergesch.com.
bcs@lakedalelink is no longer valid. Digital Gateway --topIf you have the Lakedale digital gateway (TV/DSL) service and are running a wireless router, we would like to know if you are experiencing gateway reset issues! If you are and have a Netgear router, Netgear has suggested changing the MTU setting of the router. Although we do not believe that will matter, try it anyway... Log on to the router by opening the Internet Explorer and in the address bar, type 192.168.1.1 then press Enter (or click Go). That should prompt you to log on. The default logon is username: admin and password: password. If you can get logged on, go to the "WAN" setup option (lower left) and in there, reduce the MTU to 1300. Apply the changes and once applied, be sure to "logoff" via the lower left Logoff button. Let us know... Check That Credit Card --topRecently we received one of those pass-it-along email messages, but unlike most, this one actually had some good information. There was a story about a cashier who used his cell-phone to take a picture of a customer's credit card. Something we would never have thought about... Another story where the waitress gave the customer a similar looking but expired credit card and so on... Whether the examples given were true or fabrications, they had valid points. Whenever your credit card is out, be aware who is around, what the salesperson is doing with it, and be sure you get your card back. Thanks Bob! Along those same lines...Identity Theft is surprisingly accomplished by means you may not think about. By most accounts, "dumpster diving" and "Postal mail theft" are the primary methods. Followed by computer viruses, corporate hacking and impersonation. More here. Be sure to destroy and not just dispose of garbage that may contain personal information... HP Pavilion Restore --topRecently we did a full system restore on a HP Pavilion. This was the built-in restore, i.e., no CDs, product keys, etc., needed*. Because of the issues with the computer, we needed to do a "destructive" restore by selecting the Advanced option. The Advanced option formats the drive, wiping everything out, and then reinstalls as if it came from the factory. After restoring and upon boot we received a long-winded message indicating there was a problem, "Code Purple." The message went on to indicate it would be necessary to bring the computer to an "Authorized HP dealer." Doing some research, we found this was a somewhat common occurrence. However, there seems to be no basis for this message as the format was successful, the restore work completed and the computer hardware was all original and working normally. So why would it have to be returned to a dealer? We found no answer... Perhaps this was a way for HP to guarantee their dealers more work. Whatever the reason, the work-around was easy... Remove the hard drive and piggyback it to another computer. Locate (on the HP's drive) a batch file named cfgchk.bat. Edit that batch file and remove this line: python c:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\run.py Save the batch file, reassemble the computer and the boot process completes as normal...
HP UpgradeVery esoteric, but another interesting HP/Microsoft issue occurred while upgrading a new HP A1640N from Windows Media Center to Windows XP Pro. The Microsoft issue occurred when we tried to upgrade the OS from within Windows Media by inserting the upgrade CD and following the prompts. When we got to the point at which the upgrade asked for the Product Key, typing the correct key resulted in a "bad Product Key" error message. We tried various things to resolve this, but could not continue. We contacted Microsoft Support and even their higher level support people had no clue why this would happen. Their only offer was to send out a new disk, but we have seen this problem before and it was not the disk... Next step was to boot to the upgrade CD and install from there. This is the HP issue; just before the Windows installation began the system crashed to a 0x0000007B error and told us to run CHKDSK which we did to no avail. Searching the Internet, Microsoft, HP support sites we found various articles pointing to all kinds of things, none of which were the case with this upgrade. The computer is basically brand new, no disk errors found, no extra peripherals installed, etc... After more experimenting we finally stumbled across a setting in the BIOS that was basically wrong from the factory. That BIOS setting told the computer hardware to recognize the (single) hard drive as RAID, which it was NOT a part of. Changing that setting to (the correct) IDE allowed us to perform the upgrade. (Windows) System Restore --topDifferent than the above full system restore, there have been various system restore and "go back" utilities available for years. These are designed to restore the system to a previous point in time when it operated correctly, but they are not perfect and the results are usually not what you expect... If a driver or system file has become corrupt, restore may be able to fix the problem. If, however, your computer has been attacked by a virus, the system restore will not remove the virus* and chances are good, it will not fix (or undo) whatever the virus did. System Restore can also cause problems. For example: If you install an application and then restore to a point before that installation, the application may not run correctly. Also, antivirus and other updates may also become corrupt if you restore to a point in time before those updates. Using System Restore under Windows XP
and earlier versions would not affect data, so for example if a word
processing file has become corrupt, the System Restore will not help. Here are Microsoft articles on Windows XP System Restore: Turning it on/off and what is not restored. Windows Vista however, can restore specific files including data files. More on that here.
Experimenting with Data? --topFrom the archives... Before working with a file that you don't want to lose:
Note: Accounting packages and applications that save data in multiple files must be backed up through that application's built-in backup utility. Sites of Interest? --topWe have a variety of site links collected over the years, and here are a few that may be of interest to you...
Windows Home Server --topFinally Microsoft is coming out with a low end server package, which will be available sometime in the second half of '07. Until this, a true server package costs thousands of dollars plus individual licenses for each machine that connects. While this new Home Server is nowhere near as powerful as the true server package, it does offer a lot of features otherwise unavailable to small business and home users.
The article and Microsoft's Home Server information pages. Yet Another Battery Recall --topAcer is now reporting problems with... Sony batteries. If you have an Acer laptop visit this Acer site and check for your model. If that link does not work, start at this original article. Wireless Networks --topWireless networking is a local service and is simply not available everywhere. And while many coffee shops, airports, motels, etc., offer wireless, you cannot just pull out your laptop in the local park and connect to the Internet. There are a few municipalities offering citywide wireless, but not many. Citywide wireless is very expensive to initiate and maintain, but is not a good use of taxpayer money. However, setting up a local wireless network (house or office) is fairly inexpensive. While it is possible to set up a wireless network (local area network or LAN) without Internet access, most routers expect to see the Internet, which requires a connection from the router's Wide Area Network (WAN) to an ISP-connected modem or gateway. Setup of the router itself is generally easy, but many require an initial cable connection to the computer, i.e., they will not (initially) set up "wirelessly." Follow the instructions for your router... Articles on setting up and security:
With the release of Vista, we have seen a problem where the wireless connection is not maintained and/or Vista "loses" the encryption code to connect. So far we have not found any article that explains the problem or the permanent fix. Outlook Express Mailboxes --topJust a reminder... Do not let your Outlook Express (and to a lesser extent, Outlook) mailboxes folders get too full! For example: An inbox that is too full will stop new incoming messages and will error while sending/receiving. You may be able to get a "feel" for when your boxes are getting too full by the amount of time it takes OE to list the messages, e.g., you click the inbox or sent folder and OE takes a long time to show existing messages. But if you receive an insufficient memory message trying to access one of the folders, it may be too late! In this case, immediately close everything you have open, reboot the computer, open OE and try to access the folder again. If you get into the folder, delete those old messages! If you still cannot access the folder you may have no other option but to delete the entire folder and have OE rebuild a new, empty one. To avoid these problems, delete old messages you no longer need or at lease create another folder, e.g., "saved" and move those messages there. Do not just let the inbox continue to grow... Microsoft articles:
Google --topGoogle is a household name due in large part to their incredible search engine, but also because of their many Internet based applications. We have discussed these various applications in previous newsletters, but what is new at Google that piqued our interest? They now offer website visitation tracking tools and although these have been around for a long time, Google is offering a very comprehensive tracking system for free. If you have a website, this system may be of interest! It is easy to sign up and easy to initiate. More information. Outlook Express Dead? --topApparently Microsoft will be replacing Outlook Express with "Windows Live Mail" for XP and Vista users. It will begin appearing as a Windows Update in the near future, perhaps as an "optional" update and not a security update. Live Mail is available now as a beta download if you want to try it out. It is a 13.5 Mb download so dialup users can expect to be downloading for about an hour or so. However... We downloaded the beta version to test it, but could not run it because we do not have an MSN or Hotmail account. The article is implies it will "replace" Outlook Express, so we can only assume the full release will support non-Microsoft email accounts as well as Microsoft accounts. And by the way, the beta version did not replace Outlook Express, so at this time we are unsure what the full release version will do... The original article. Water on Mars? --topWe will leave you with this from Al Lowe Did you hear about the accountant with insomnia? He tried counting sheep, but he made a mistake and then stayed up all night trying to find it! |
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