Anyone Seen This XP Quirk?

I haven't seen that, but once in a while Explorer.exe ( the gui shell) will crash and exit leaving me with a black screen. I have to run task manager and start explorer.exe and then it works as normal.

Cheers

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crash and exit leaving me with a black screen. I

Don't you just _love_ Wimpows "updates" ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: "skypeanalog"  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

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crash and exit leaving me with a black screen. I

Even more amusing are dopey users that think they are all intelligent.

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crash and exit leaving me with a black screen. I

You mean you really tossed the guys in Redmond the keys to your PCs?

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

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crash and exit leaving me with a black screen. I

No. I meant going from 2K to XP.

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: "skypeanalog"  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

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crash and exit leaving me with a black screen. I

Ah, ok. IMHO NT4 was the best Windows so far. Not nearly as robust as DOS, of course.

I'd never let auto-updates happen. I don't want to come to the office on a fine Monday morning and then some stuff won't work anymore.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

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crash and exit leaving me with a black screen. I

I just backed out of the windows security update from 4 days ago due to frequent system crashes. All fine now. I a have SP2b OS installed.

--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT
"The RFI-EMI-GUY"©

"Treason doth never prosper: what\'s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

"Follow The Money"  ;-P

[snip]

Did you bite on the latest one? SP3, I think. The conspiracy theory folks think that its Microsoft's attempt to make everyone switch to Vista.

--
Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Windows tip #248: add BUGS=OFF to your registry.

My says (cryptically):

Version 5.1 (Build 2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254 : Service Pack 2)

What-zat-mean ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: "skypeanalog" | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

| 1962 | America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

You're probably just using the wrong secret herbs and spices. Try some oregano, or maybe some ground nutmeg. That should do it.

(Seriously, sounds like a software switch in the registry is flaky. Possibly, the result of a less than successful virus attack?, or one that was written poorly. I would run some scans, and look in the usual places for recent "new" files that you don't recognize...) -mpm

The issue of temporary profile/rights and security settings misalignment has come up a couple of times in the microsoft.public.win2000.general newsgroup, but I've not seen it mentioned in microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics.

I had a w2k issue in a relatively new and upgraded system (6mos in the brewing) where folders with recently relocated contents could not be moved or deleted until after reboot. It was not resolved before the system died in a system repair/restore attempt.

Posting your question there might be a good idea, before things get too out of hand..

RL

I love it when folks use words like "flaky" when referring to binary systems, and the controls for them.

ary

Honestly, do you have a better word??

I can no longer count the number of times the Windows Operating System has done something in the background (usually without my knowledge or permission), which later caused something to either stop working, or to work in some unintended and unwanted way.

I'll be happy to send you some *.vbs scripts if you truly want to understand what I mean when I say the word "flaky". :)

Sometimes buggy Explorer plugin software can be the reason for crashes, like pack programs, which adds entries to the context menus and allows to open zip files like folders. Not that I know a buggy zip program, but I've deactivated the slow Microsoft one (regsvr32 /u %windir%\\system32\\zipfldr.dll), which needed ages when browsing in an archive folder. A good idea anyway, looks like the Microsoft zip manager is buggy:

--
Frank Buss, fb@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de

The amount of rubble lurking in the registry from long defunct programs and installers that do not tidy up after themselves is legendary. Flaky pretty much describes the Windows registry as a whole (or maybe as a hole).

Hacking the registry with a flint axe is often the only way to get things working again if plug and pray has totally screwed things up. Memory card readers and some brands of cheap digicams seem particularly prone to generating phanton non-functioning drives on some peoples PCs.

Regards, Martin Brown

** Posted from **

Not on Vista.

That OLD schema where a drive letter was assigned to every port on a card reader, even if empty is not used any longer.

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

Archimedes' Lever wrote:

mpm's question is still unanswered; you appear to object to the word "flaky" to describe a system that may or may not function correctly with no way for a human to predict whether it will work correctly the next time. Do you have a better word??

IMO, the word "flaky" properly applies not only to systems that are nondeterminate (results depend upon chance) but also to systems that are chaotic (determinate but totally unpredictable because tiny changes in original conditions cause extreme changes in the final result.)

As for Vista, yes, it has fixed some problems, but according to Bill Gates, (

),

"The reason we [Microsoft] come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely not. It's the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard. When we do a new version we put in lots of new things that people are asking for. And so, in no sense, is stability a reason to move to a new version. It's never a reason. ... I'm saying: We don't do a new version to fix bugs. We don't. Not enough people would buy it."

In case you think that Microsoft has changed the way it does business since that was written, I refer you to this 2007 email (

) from Steven Sinofsky, head of Windows development, to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO saying that Vista "quality was uneven" and "I know they [Vista users] are struggling."

One huge problem is that, by design, Vista will not work properly with hardware that does not support Protected Media Path (PMP), an authentication scheme cooked up by Disney and 20th Century Fox to combat unauthorized copying. According to CNET News (

93.html ):

"As Microsoft readies the next version of its Windows operating system, called Vista, the software giant is building in unprecedented levels of safeguards against video piracy. For the first time, the Windows operating system will wall off some audio and video processes almost completely from users and outside programmers, in hopes of making them harder for hackers to reach. The company is establishing digital security checks that could even shut off a computer's connections to some monitors or televisions if antipiracy procedures that stop high-quality video copying aren't in place. In short, the company is bending over backward--and investing considerable technological resources--to make sure Hollywood studios are happy with the next version of Windows..."

Also see:

Analysis of Microsoft's Suicide Note

Microsoft?s Vista Problem

Why Microsoft must abandon Vista to save itself

Will Windows Upgrade Hand Power to Big Media?

Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system is a giant step backward for your freedoms.

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

Save XP Petition

--
Guy Macon

I don't "zip" much, but I have noticed that zipfiles show up displaying like directories.

Is that the problem to which you refer?

How do I deactivate the DLL?

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: "skypeanalog"  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

At the RUN prompt enter: regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll