Who's out there?

Would that be to give him a target for his anger ?

We do but some clients need win-dos for employment reasons - same with Office, never liked it myself, still dont, but we have to provide support for it. Lotus Smart Suite was always a better product but I am not sure that is still available following the recent changes at IBM. Whinge whinge

Regards

Mike

For backing up any windows system including XP, why not just download the 'iso' CD image of KNOPPIX LINUX from

Another problem that has not been mentioned which can lead to crashes and errors in ANY computer system is the build up of dust as the cooling fan draws in air. After a couple of years the layer of dust particularly along edge connects (eg for the memory) lead to stray capacitance which can alter the timing (the faster the bus speed the more critical timing becomes). This can result in the odd misreading of the occasional bit leading to errors that may go unnoticed eg if it just results in the slight change in the shade of a colour or one letter being changed to another in a word document. However if it is a memory address that is misread it could cause an error, computer 'lockup' or crash which is usually not repeatable.

Another cause of errors over a period of time is electrolytic corrosion on connectors again often associated with a thin layer of dust which attracts moisture.

The cure is a 'spring clean' of the inside of the computer. Use a soft brush to dislodge the dust and a vacuum cleaner held close to it to collect the dust. Obviously you should take care and you do it at your own risk. Remove each connector in turn and reseat to dislodge any corrosion (on older systems I clean and coat each connector with a very small amount of electrolube from eg Maplins).

Alan

Have you tried using Ghost with the System Recovery version of Windows which ships with almost every PC these days? I once used something similar and the end result was so poor I was forced to reformat almost immediately. Also it doesn't matter what kind of backup you use if your PC accidentally reformats the drive where it is stored.

(kim)

In message , kim writes

Fascinating. How can the computer [assuming we are talking about the PC version] possibly reformat the drive, either intentionally or by accident?

In the unlikely event however that this is indeed possible and we have PC's that can act in such an arbitrary fashion, who knows what can be achieved with training and discipline. I definitely want one :o)

Cheers.

Load system completely into memory (kernel, disk drivers etc.), avoid use of virtual memory (disk access), issue appropriate format command, watch data on disk disappear.

The thing that finally caused me to jump ship from MS Windows 95 was when I was one day just copying a file from a floppy disk back to the hard drive and the system decided to cold reboot the machine.

I got Linux installed PDQ after that.

-- Rod

No - he'd need MVS for that :-)

-- Rod - VM bigot

??????? Are you suggesting Linux would annoy him? Or that the fact it's free means he can throw it at the wall with impunity?

Ken.

recon you get what you pay for there then Cheers, Simon

Wow VM - you are strange !

"It can only be attributable to human error."

HAL - 2001

In message , MartinS writes

Someone had to :o)

Cheers.

In message , simon writes

and old!

"Repairing" Windows can do that. It's not supposed to do that. You know careful MS is to make their OS idiot proof and bug-free, right? So they tell you to back up everything before repairing the system. So that if repair doesn't work, you can reinstall the kablooey system from your backup. An example Very Clear thinking, eh?

BTW, the latest nasties are rootkits. Find out about them, and notch up your paranoia.

Oh well, Win95 would reboot if you just squinted at it. :-)

Common in the UNIX world for decades, now available on windows too :¬P

James Moody

In message , Wolf Kirchmeir writes

Ms and clear thinking don't seem to go together very well somehow.

Great fun [not].

Thought for today!! Now that there are so many cheap boxes knocking about I suppose that it's time to replace the old P2 server with something a little more modern.

Cheers.

Old ? BT was still running it at Bletchley in late eighties

Simon

Yeah - I'm one of the few who recognise a good OS when I see one.

Jane wrote:

Ahem - I'm only 46.

sim> Old ? BT was still running it at Bletchley in late eighties

There are tens of thousands of companies still running VM for their work and enjoying it. There are others who are happily replacing MS Windows & SUN server farms by doing server consolidation using Linux running under VM. Indeed, more companies are getting VM licenses every day in order to do this and reap the benefits.

There are all sorts of papers out there telling people of the benefits if anyone is bothered enough to go look for them.

-- Rod