Chairman’s Notes

Christmas is here again. We normally have a few mince pies etc. at the meeting. A bit short on interesting information for this week’s Newsletter.

Backup

We always go on about backing up your data. Anything can happen, hard drive failure, virus, theft, flood (if your PC is on the ground floor), storm (if it is on the top floor), or fire. The PCPro recommended backup software is Acronis True Image 9.

I have tried it and it works. It will back up to USB drives, network drives and multiple CD/DVD disks as well as a file on your hard drive, a 2^nd hard drive or a hidden partition on a hard drive. It costs as little as £15 if you buy from the right place. You boot the PC from the CD (or you can install it on the hard drive) and run the back up using the wizard. To restore you will need to boot from the CD because you will only be doing this if your hard drive has failed or is missing. The software run from the CD will locate all possible sources available where your back up could be. I tried it by doing a back up image copy of a small hard drive on a networked PC and then removing the hard drive and replacing it with another drive. There was a hitch in that the PC failed to recognise the correct size of the drive but at trip to the bios sorted this. Booting the PC from the True Image disk it list all the drives on the network having asked for the domain administrator password. Having run the restore, the CD was removed and the PC rebooted perfectly off the new hard drive. It is also possible to back up individual files, folders, partitions and multi-partition drives.

Boot errors

With Windows XP when a problem occurs with drivers etc. causing the PC to fail to boot an immediate solution is ’last known good’, this will get your PC running and give you an opportunity to fix the problem. If this fails then you can use System Restore to try to go back to a point before the error causing the problem occurred, if you actually caused the problem then you will no exactly when this was. The third option is running a repair installation from the installation CD. You will need to acquire a Windows XP installation CD with Service Pack 2 if you have upgraded to SP2, the original CD will remove SP2. Booting from the installation CD will give you two choices ‘Setup windows XP now’ or ‘Repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console’. If you choose the first you will now have two options and you should choose to repair the selected Windows installation. Note that with problems like this you will appreciate the data backups you have made in the past. If you have not, then use any remaining operability you have to backup your critical data, photos documents etc. Programs can always be reloaded even if there is a little agro tweaking them to your preferred settings, the data created with them will take a lot more work or be impossible to redo.

USB Dismounts

You should be aware that often USB devices often do not release drive letters when removed. One of the causes appears to have been PCTools Spyware Doctor but this problem has been solved by a recent update. A suspect cause can often be confirmed by disabling the product (not even uninstalling it) to see if the problem goes away.

Network cable testing

Please be aware that a network cable tester may not tell the full truth. DC continuity by tester may be fine, you even may be able to unplug the cable and get a network unplugged fault, and plug it in and get network restored. Despite this it might not be possible for data to pass. Try replacing the cable and all could be fine.

Windows 98

Microsoft is no longer supporting Windows 98. There will be no more patches for security breaches. Potentially you are now more at risk from hackers and viruses etc. although antivirus protection is still available inherent faults will not be corrected.

Sharing printers on a Mac

It is often not possible to share a printer connected to a Mac with Windows PCs or even sometimes other Mac PCs. A piece of downloadable software called Bonjour for Windows 1.0.3 from Apple will sort out sharing with Windows PC. In Mac OS X you have to make sure that Windows Sharing is checked under “SHARING” and that sharing printers is allowed. The software during installation will configure the Windows firewall but if a 3^rd party firewall needs configuring manually you will need to open UDP Port 5353 The wizard that is installed should recognise shared printers on the Mac although it may install generic printer drivers that will need to be changed for specific ones.

Spyware

These days spyware masquerades as anti-spyware. You are innocently browsing when a box pops up “**** has detected an infection on your PC” followed by “to solve the problem download free ****”. Don’t panic and never just hit the download key. Often these products bear a superficial resemblance to the genuine thing but closer examination of names or website will reveal the scam. If you are uncertain do a web search, usually someone will have found and reported these programs as suspicious. You can always do a search for the reported fault and again find a report of the scam or a genuine solution for a real error. Zlob the most common Trojan infection pretends to be a Media Player Codec that you need to play a free video stream that is probably full of pirate material. Before downloading anything free check it by an internet search, prevention is better than cure.

SpyDoctor

For those of you who have gone for prevention by buying PCTools Spyware Doctor by download may be disconcerted to find they have increased the price they are charging you in an acknowledgement email. This is actually a scam that has arrived by coincidence shortly after you signed up. You will notice it refers to SpyDoctor and is not from the correct web address. Delete it, the invoice attached carries a malicious payload.

Triple play

Warmer Bros have applied for a patent for a disk that will have CD/DVD on one side and both Blu-ray and HD-DVD on the other. This can work because Blu-ray and HD-DVD store their data at different distances from the surface. This disk can work in machines that each support only one of the formats.

Batch files

It is perfectly possible to create batch files in Excel. It can be quite handy to use the column system available here to paste in commands in the first column, computer names in the second etc. especially when you are writing large complicated files. You have all the search facilities and copy features of Excel to use on the way. You then save the whole thing as Formatted text (space delimited) (*.prn) remembering to change the extension to .bat.

Notepad replacement

Need a replacement for Notepad, why not try PSPad at www.pspad.com it is free. Not only will it edit simple text files but it will work with html and will edit hex code.