Tech: Taskmgr.exe or XP on Windows problem

Subject: RE: Tech: Taskmgr.exe or XP on Windows problem
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Jun 06 - 01:10 AM

Second try: (I bumped a key and my message vanished--I'd like to know what key that was, to avoid it!)

I will be getting her computer in a couple of weeks, once we know what all features will be best. It'll be another Dell (she is accustomed to them). She'll be the envy of her brother in having her own computer and possibly in her bedroom (though I have a nice living room table I may use because I need to be able to check it and she might just be like a lioness guarding her cubs if I let her put it in her room. . . )

I'll have it set up for several weeks to work out the bugs and to decide what sort of backup system to use.

I've been installing the new equipment this evening. I put in the new drive, partitioned the disk (I'm using one, the rest isn't formatted to use yet--that can come later). Operating system, productivity software, firewall, etc. It took a few tries to get the wireless network hooked up--they never seem to go easily, but I think it is okay now. Downloading 50 updates from Microsoft right now.

Evening one, and a lot is done, but there are many more things to do on this computer before I turn it back over to the kids. For a "later" project, I put the old hard drive into the second slot but I didn't attach it to the harness and power cord. I'll leave that for after I have the new drive working okay, then we'll go take a peek at the other one.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Taskmgr.exe or XP on Windows problem
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 Jun 06 - 01:29 AM

SRS -

To lighten your day when you take a break from working on your hard drives, you might take a look at Tech: How fast does a CD spin? where a (brief) description of the first ever hard drive is posted. A couple of posts that follow in that thread give some speculation about what happens next year - or at least soon?.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Taskmgr.exe or XP on Windows problem
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Jun 06 - 02:28 AM

I saw the thread, I haven't read it. I have the rudimentary computer up and running, complete with password protected accounts for all users. I haven't reattached the old drive yet. Maybe tomorrow, maybe I'll wait a couple of days.

Query: If there are programs and their assorted data files on that second (now non-booting disk) along with a registry that is no longer the registry of reference, will my son have to reinstall his game then associate his files with the ones on the old drive to get it to take up from where he left off?

SRS

BTW: Microsoft had 50 updates, some of them very large, that had to download into this computer. They were for XP and for Office. Took an hour or more just for the 70meg of updates before it started installing them.

Subject: RE: Tech: Taskmgr.exe or XP on Windows problem
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 Jun 06 - 04:19 AM

As recently as your machine was purchased, I'd guess that you probably got the SP1 and SP2 patches both included in your original installation, so you got the small update package. My original installation didn't have those two, but I did order the CDs for both so that I could reinstall and patch up to that point before I'd have to connect and start downloading. Both of them were installed from the CDs on my 3 WinXP machines, so I didn't have to download them.

Received as they were issued, my "Patch List" in the programs folder shows more than 125 or so installed. As later patches come out, earlier ones are rolled into the later ones, so the 50 odd ones you got with download should include everything in the 125 that I got incrementally.

Office patches that I noticed haven't been too frequent, with the biggest being the macro virus patch and a couple of buffer overrun fixes. There are a few optional Office patches that wouldn't be included in the automatic downloads that might be of interest, but it would depend largely on what browser features you use. Several of the optional office fixes were for things that are turned off by default and that most people are unlikely to discover could be turned on.

Aside from the Microsoft stuff, most OEM disks will load some stuff by other (non-Microsoft) makers. One of the really irritating bugs is with Macromedia Flash. The had a rather significant vulnerability in the versions recently provided by the OEM makers, and they've been less than open about pushing the patch. Your recent machine might have the latest version, but if not it's a rather large download. Adobe has purchased Macromedia fairly recently, so you get it from the Adobe site - if you want to use Flash. (I'd rather not use it, but it seems necessary for a lot of web sites.)

Both Real Player and QuickTime, if you use them, have had minor patches disquised as "new versions." Nothing that I've seen reported on them looked particularly threatening; but if you want to plug everything possible, you'll want to check for new versions or at least to see that anything installed from your Instl CD is the latest thing.

It would be nice to be able to say that on a campus connection she could rely on the campus network for firewall protection so AV alone would be enough, but few campus networks are really clean, and many of them have more script-kiddies and bot-weenies inside the network firewall than most of us are exposed to out in the wild wicked world. (I'm assuming she'll be on the school's net, and probably will use it for web and email?) Some schools make up nice little booklets on how to be compatible and safe, or may tell you on a web page; but the quality of advance info you get can be extremely variable. I've heard rumors of a couple of campus IT managers who claim that individual firewalls are "incompatible" with their networks. I don't think I really believe it, but it might not hurt to see if the school would like to offer an opinion about what should - or should not - be on a student's machine. (And leave a little space on the HD for things they might claim she has to add.)

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Taskmgr.exe or XP on Windows problem
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Jun 06 - 12:07 PM

On her computer I will install access to my Earthlink services for Firewall and Antivirus, assuming I can use one of my eight accounts to set her up even remotely. She won't be going through their network to get access, so I think it will work. She'll go through the campus infrastructure to reach the Earthlink stuff, but she doesn't use Earthlink as her homepage. I don't know if she'll use the campus one or not, but she needs to check in there regularly for various reasons. I have to see if I need the master account password to keep her connected or if her secondary password will keep her connected. She'll be exposed to the campus crud you mention.

I still have to put in things like Adobe Reader, I have a copy of the Dreamweaver Suite (prior to the Adobe purchase), etc. Lots of downloads for Dreamweaver. And several smallish pieces of equipment and drives. And a bonkers printer I have to troubleshoot.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Taskmgr.exe or XP on Windows problem
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 Jun 06 - 06:15 PM

SRS re: your query on games.

Many games have websites with FAQ that may offer help.

In the absence of info on the specific games, the safest method would be for him to reinstall the games. The reinstallation will likely make folders same-named as the folders on the old drive. He may be able to copy just the file(s) that kept his game status into the new folders created by the installation to recover where he was in the games. It's impossible to say what filenames for the game history might be, but he may be able to recoginize them if he looks "intelligently." Sometimes it's easy, and sometimes not.

A Win Explorer search in the game folder for files "modified after" a date just prior to the last time the game was played may(?) reveal what files get updated during play to help narrow the choices.

I can't guarantee this will work, but if it does it could be simpler than attempting to rebuild the game from the inside to point to different locations.

If it doesn't work as expected, he should of course uninstall the game (on the new drive) before reinstalling to clear anything messed up by the copying.

A few games I've heard of appear to have an "import identity" function so that a visiting player can bring his/her history to the game on another machine, but I have no idea how common this is. It's probably more common in multi-player games(?). It might be worth looking for, once the game is reinstalled and before trying to fix it, if it sounds like a possibility.

A last resort, if nothing else works, would be to copy the game folder to the new drive as a complete folder. It might run, but probably not. An "overlay reinstall" sometimes - with some programs - may see the folder(s) you copied as an "older version," and will copy the program files and registry entries, but may attempt to preserve "settings" from the older version (which may or may not include player histories.)

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Taskmgr.exe or XP on Windows problem
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage on that other computer
Date: 27 Jun 06 - 07:43 PM

John,

Thanks--I hadn't thought of that. As long as it parked all of it's files in one directory I could give that a try.

We're sorting out how the screen looks (there is a jerkiness to scrolling and moving windows that wasn't here before. One part of it was to change the appearance so it doesn't try to show the window contents when you're moving the window, but the scrolling is still jerky.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Taskmgr.exe or XP on Windows problem
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Jun 06 - 12:54 AM

SRS -

Your graphics card toolbox program (even if it's just a motherboard "integrated graphics" thing) may have an adjustment for "Hardware Acceleration." You may also find the same thing in Control Panel - Display, depending on what the PnP setup decided your graphics hardware is. Often at Display on the Settings tab, the Advanced button will offer to open the "real graphics card" setup; but this varies with the hardware you have. A few machines may not have an accessible adjustment for this, but it's fairly common on recent ones I've seen.

Most of the time the acceleration can be set to "maximum" but sometimes it does something similar to what you describe if set too high for the hardware.

Some flat panel monitors also get testy if you try to set at anything other than their preferred resolution. Newer ones are more flexible, but some older laptops, and I would presume some similar era desktop FP monitors, show you lots of different resolutions but then curse at you and change it back if you try to select one other than what they want. Sometimes they'll let you set an "off" resolution, but then they misbehave to make you sorry you did that, and you have to apologize to them to get them to work right again.

A worn/dirty scroll wheel on a mouse can do some similar things, but you'd likely make that connection pretty easily if you use it for scrolling.

John