Recently in Computers Category

I've had a week of computer problems that I tried to ignore during the week but the drain on performance was obvious.

Early in the week I had the dreaded BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) that went away after a reboot. The first signs of a problem.

Last Sunday night when my backup started it returned an error saying it couldn't read the data folder... another sign of trouble looming. I discovered there was a bad sector on the partition I used to store all my personal data. That particular 320 GB disk was split up into 4 partitions: a Vista install, my Documents, my websites and technical stuff, and all the TV shows I'd downloaded.

I've got 2 × 1 TB external drives that I back up to, so I copied over all the TV shows, and already had backups of the other 3 partitions. I deleted the faulty partition and re-routed some of the links, copying all my data back to the original My Documents location and pointing the links to the new location. That helped with the speed of the computer and things looked like they were back to normal.

I could boot into Vista, but because it too was looking for the corrupted data drive, it hung and did nothing, and was totally useless.

Yesterday I removed the drive from the computer, then I couldn't boot into XP because of the boot loader that Vista uses. I put the drive back in the computer but it didn't fix the problem. I used a couple of utilities off the Hiren's Boot Disk and managed after 4 frustrating hours to finally boot into XP. From there I was able to delete the boot manager files (renamed them actually because they're impossible to delete) and now the computer boots up normally again.

Previously I had 3 hard drives in the computer. The added the 3rd hard drive and it hung on boot again and wouldn't do anything, so at the moment I have just the one hard drive in the box, and the 2 external drives. The 2nd hard drive has a backup of my xp install, and all the software I've downloaded for the last couple of years, something I don't want to lost, but something I can't access at the moment.

I haven't given up, there has to be a way to get everything working again, though the 320 gb disk is probably as Bob says. I can live without it.

The humble computer mouse that we all take for granted (and have plenty of problems with) has turned 40. It's hard to imagine it's been around that long. The original mouse had two wheels set at right angles to each other and the computer plotted the distance each wheel moved. Then in 1972 Xerox came up with a ball mouse, which remained popular for decades. Logitech sold it's first mouse for $199. In 1984 it designed it's first cordless mouse, but it never took off. For further reading, PCWorld has an extensive timeline with some interesting facts.

I remember back a few years cleaning the ball and the cogs on the old roller-ball mouse and have had fewer problems since the introduction of the optical mouse.

And speaking of the computer mouse, I've spent the last few days being extremely frustrated with mine. When I click on an email it opens rather than just being selected, and when I delete an email, it will delete the next one too. I've tried slowing down the click rate, but that hasn't helped. If I try to minimise a window, the window will open in full screen, if I click again, it will minimise. It's driving me crazy.

Yesterday I received an email from a friend asking if I could play an mp3 that his computer had disabled. It was Rex Hunt going off at a cricket match and it played perfectly. I zipped it up and returned it by email to my friend.

Later, when I was in Firefox, I noticed that YouTube videos were taking an extraordinarily long time to load, as did web pages. I fired up System Explorer, a brilliant program for information about Tasks, Processes, Startups, IE Addons, Uninstallers, Windows, Services, Drivers, Connections and Opened Files, to check what I had running that shouldn't have been. System Explorer lets you check running files online at Virus Total to analyse them, and I found a file called svghost.exe that got the thumbs down from 11 of the 33 virus checkers they use.

Removing it was quite easy, just stop the process and delete the file. While searching for the file I came across a couple of other suspicious looking file called msupdte.exe and 17PHolmes1749.exe. I searched online for references to them and discovered they were associated with a rootkit virus, and the site recommended downloading a little program called SDFix to check system files in safe mode, which I did, and after a couple of hours of running various virus and trojan checkers I got a clean computer again.

Videos still wouldn't work though and I read that using MS Update would solve the problem, and after updating it did. Everything is now back to normal.

I'm running Spyware Doctor with built-in anti-virus on it's own now after AVG8 warned me about installing it with another anti-virus program installed. I should have ignored the warning and ran them both, because looks like the "Doc" missed this one.

I have a music collection on my computer that is in excess of 30 GB and tonight I discovered a way to access it from anywhere. Orb streams songs straight from your PC to nearly any Internet-connected device -- including some mobile phones. This free service turns your PC into a media server, streaming not only songs, but also video, photos, and even TV, to just about any Web-connected device. That means you can tap your music library from your work PC, your Palm Centro, your Nintendo Wii, or your iPhone -- to name just a few of the supported gadgets. Orb is also compatible with all major gaming consoles -- the Wii, PS3 and Xbox -- so you can now enjoy your media on your TV screen as well!

The Orb software client requires Windows XP or later and a broadband Internet connection. (If you want to add TV to the streaming mix, you'll need a TV tuner as well -- check Orb's FAQ page for a list of supported models.)

Once Orb is installed, configure the software to monitor the system folders containing your music (and, if desired, photos and videos). The software will also help you sign up for an Orb account, which requires nothing more than a user name, a password, and an e-mail address.

With the Orb client up and running, you're ready to stream. The hitch, of course, is that you'll need to leave your computer on at all times. To listen to your tunes, fire up the Web browser on the device you're using and then head over to mycast.orb.com.

When you install the software and create your account, your content is indexed on your personal Orb page. It is then accessible anywhere that has an Internet connection; you simply log in and access your files. After downloading the software, it took about half and hour for my whole collection to be available online. Orb even lets you invite friends to share your collection and you can blog on the site. A very cool tool indeed!

I'm using Vista all the time now, and have most of the hardware updated with new drivers. Alas, I lost my surround sound, and although I've installed new drivers from the manufacturer, only 4 of the 6 speakers are working. This seems like a downgrade from XP, because they all worked beautifully on that version. But it's better than the single speaker that was working on the initial Vista install. Perhaps in time the driver will catch up with XP and it will sound the same. Still no printer or scanner, but for the moment I can live with that.

The best way to enjoy Vista would be to buy it with a new system, that way everything would work and you wouldn't go through the frustration of looking for updated drivers. I came across one site that suggested it had updated drivers for lots of the hardware, but I had to pay to download them, and decided against that. Forums have been the best resource for problem solving, and in the case of the sound driver, there was links to an update (unfortunately not compatible with mine).

I haven't noticed any performance improvement at all. The cosmetics are nicer in Vista, and plenty of help is available online for tweaking and customisation. Once you know where to look for the settings, it's not so different to XP.

Installing Windows Vista is not for the feint-hearted. This morning I decided to upgrade, after yet another backup (just in case), and after getting the list of programs that would no longer be compatible with Vista, I went ahead with the install. All seemed to go well until Windows wanted to reboot, then I got the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death" with a Stop: 0x0000007B error. Something to do with being unable to recognise the boot device. Perhaps this is another issue with using a SATA disk, I'm not really sure. Even tried booting into Safe Mode caused the BSOD error, so I had to restore the C drive (thank God for the backup!!!!).

Upgrading wouldn't work when I booted into the Vista disk. So I decided on a clean install on another partition (the second partition on the SATA drive, a logical drive). That didn't work either, with Windows telling me that it was incompatible with the install. Maybe I'm just not meant to install Vista. I'm trying something else now though. Moving everything off the first partition on an IDE drive to the second partition on the SATA disk, then I'll try a dual boot. Windows sees this IDE drive as the first in the list, so when it's empty I hope this approach works. Partition Magic comes with a handy utility for mapping drives, and it looks to references to a drive letter and can change it to a new drive letter. Since all my music is on the drive that I'm moving I'm hoping it will update all the links it finds. Probably another lengthy process. Nothing is ever quick when you're playing around with large disks.

I've downloaded update drivers for everything I need to work:

• Netgear 108Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter
• Lexmark 510 Series Printer
• nVidia Display drivers

It'll mean reinstalling all the programs I'm using but that's probably not a bad thing. I think I'll be able to see what's on the old C drive from inside Vista, (thinking ahead here - I haven't even got it installed yet). One piece of hardware probably won't work anymore: a Plustek USB Scanner that is fairly old, even XP sees it as outdated but it can be installed on Carly's computer so we still have the use of it. No biggie.

I've been preparing for this all day, and once again, am getting increasingly frustrated when things aren't going as planned. Nothing new about that though.

I've had some fun and games today, and it's taken me all day to resolve more computer problems. I'm definitely not meant to have a hassle-free user experience if my track record for problems is anything to go by. Last night I finally got a copy of Windows Vista. Now isn't that an experience in itself? This image sums it up beautifully.

Before I put my foot in it big time, I decided to do a backup of the C drive just in case the install/upgrade didn't go smoothly. I've used Norton Ghost plenty of times in the past and the backups have got me out of trouble more times than I can remember. I had no idea that this time would be any different. So I set the task for Ghost to back up C, and the computer shut down and rebooted into the Ghost screen, but all I got was a static hourglass and a progress bar going nowhere. So I did a three-finger salute, the computer restarted the Ghost job and the same thing happened. When I chose to skip the Ghost job and to boot in to Windows nothing happened either. I couldn't get out of the Ghost loop that I was in, couldn't get into Windows and was getting more steamed up by the minute. Talk about a disastrous situation.

I think the problem was the SATA drive I was backing up, which also hosts my operating system. I put Hiren's Boot CD in the computer, which has numerous tools for troubleshooting and after trying several partition and recovery tools I was none the wiser. I ran Partition Magic and deleted the "virtual" partition that Ghost had created and made active, but then I couldn't set my OS drive back to C. It's been a nightmare.

I read a post from Jaybee with the exact problem, after I set up the modem on the laptop and decided to look online for some inspiration, because by that time I'd run out of ideas. If only I'd done that to start with, instead of deleting things. Anyway, I tried a couple of the Symantec recommendations that didn't work either.

In the end I resurrected the "old" PC, which I had only retired yesterday after getting a new power supply back from the "new" computer manufacturer, and since it had a working copy of Windows, I swapped a couple of the drives and managed to boot into Windows. I reinstalled the new OS drivers, and suddenly my original C drive was back. Thank the Gods, I nearly fell to my knees crying, I was so relieved.

I did manage in the end to back up my C drive using Ghost, but this time from a floppy disk. Ghost does work with SATA drives and the problems only occur when you reboot from Windows. That's when it messes with the boot files on the hard drive and can cause the OS hard drive to be unbootable.

And so to the question... to upgrade to Vista or not? I have a backup now in case it all goes to hell, and I'm over my rage (yes, I had steam coming out my ears and got more frustrated as the day wore on), so I may take the plunge, but not today. As I said, I only got the new computer up and running again yesterday so I think I'll enjoy it working properly for for few more days before I make any more major changes. Perhaps I'll even consider setting up a new partition for Vista, that way I don't stuff up this install and can test the compatibility of programs as I install them.