Report for Previous Meeting
September 2008
This month’s meeting was a lively affair beginning with the customary fundamental ‘stoppers’ – those little things that are not so obvious and completely stop your computing but take just a few short steps to solve. The first was the location of the place to edit the phone number in the long-ago set up Dial-Up Networking settings. We found the place for it – after setting up DUN for the first time on our meeting room computer, in XP, still, under the Network Connections, Properties of DUN via the Control Panel. Another obvious-when-you-know-where-to-look thing.
A member asked if it was time to add Service Pack 3 to Windows XP. A quick show of hands demonstrated that 80% of those present had installed SP3 and were happy with it. Yes, there have been some reports of it giving trouble, but, similarly, some people have won the lottery, too. Peter H demonstrated Winver (Start, Run, Winver for (XP/Vista)) that shows the current version level of your system.
Then followed a long discussion over an XP, SP2 machine that was rebooting after a normal shutdown, rather than powering itself off as would be expected. Speculation roamed from Windows’ device drivers to BIOS (press Del upon booting) settings. One idea was to unplug the network cable during shutdown so as to avoid an active network forcing restart. We searched for a similar setting within the BIOS for WON – Wake On LAN, but it was not obvious; BIOSes vary in their settings and placements. A prime candidate suggested was the power management settings in BIOS since the shutdown instruction relates closely to power matters. Also demonstrated was the Optimised Settings choice in the main BIOS page, and the Safe Settings option, too, so as to get the system back to a known initial state. If our suggestions failed the member determined to take the whole box to the next companion Hardware SIG.
The question was asked as to the advisability of formatting an external, USB, disk drive as FAT32 or NTFS. The member wanted to be able to transport the drive from machine to machine and to have it readable at each, without developing complications anywhere by its attachment. Poplar advice was for NTFS, a more robust file system, and its reasonable compatibility with XP and Vista hosts. Some caveats were offered in that Windows can grab external drives and be reluctant to release the drive letters it assigns to them causing system slowdown, albeit temporary. Warnings were given regarding security permissions where some files/folders could be inaccessible if a user present on the originating system wasn’t enrolled on a newly attached one. In some cases even an administrator can’t gain access – as it should be, under modern usage safety precautions.
As an aside it was mentioned that Western Digital external drive setups, and Seagate's, under some circumstances, have ‘intelligence’ built into them through their drivers, when loaded, that administer ‘rights-constrained’ music files and inhibit full control of them. A new level of corporate control by proxy.
Bob T gave us a rundown on AVG 8, especially where to find Free AVG. He pointed out the Link Scanner and Safe Search settings and the need to turn them off, with the proviso that that prevented the running of Update if the machine happened to be switched off at a time scheduled. Bob pointed out PUPS, potentially unwanted programs, and the capacity to specify known good but otherwise suspect files in AVG.
After the coffee and chat respite we had a demonstration from Peter H of the Winbubble utility that lets us tweak numerous handy settings within Vista. This appeared to be a truly impressive next-generation TweakUI. Emerging during the discussion were ideas such as Roaming settings being moved to Local during shutdown: a ‘virtualisation’ safety feature; XPmediacentre.com.au for tweaking for those watching TV via Media Center; and a utility to expand the number of folders whose settings Vista should remember.
Once again, a valuable evening.