Windows Weirdness

I don't know if this helps or not:

I quit using their software years ago. They refused to honour a rebate offer on one of their packages. It was something like forty dollars. A dozen emails to their head office did NOTHING.

I hate them.

mike

I dunno but if it's genetic then Symantec must be doing DNA scans of prospective programmers to ensure they have it because their products have become progressively more 'shit hole' for half a decade.

And their general 'fix' is uninstall and reinstall, except the uninstall rarely does so they then have to invent separate 'removal' tools which often require uninstalling all Symantec products and reinstalling.

I permanently solved the problem by skipping the reinstall step.

Don't check the second box. It'll take hours to do nothing. For the physical test, just run Everest free version, or smartmontools, which will read out the SMART statistics on the drive.

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Reply in group, but if emailing add one more
zero, and remove the last word.

Use chkdsk like he said, but without the 'detect bad sectors' option, and also use Everest free version or smartmontools. The drive detects bad sectors itself, and those tools display the SMART stats. Software like chkdsk can't even see the bad sectors unless there are so many that SMART can't reallocate them, in which case chkdsk can't do anything except take a very long time to scan it.

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Reply in group, but if emailing add one more
zero, and remove the last word.

Yep, I ponder if there's a need for any virus protection at all... I have a hardware firewall that passes "Shields Up" 100%. ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
Obama: A reincarnation of Nixon, narcissistically posing in
       politically-correct black-face, but with fewer scruples.

Most stuff written using Visual Basic has problems. No surprise there :-)

Also working in an M$ free zone.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

Tom, Thanks for your suggestions!

Check out...

I'm guessing -12V and -5V don't exist on my motherboard, so the monitor reads "float" ??

That 0.35V VBAT concerns me!

What should I be looking for in the Drive section? ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
Obama: A reincarnation of Nixon, narcissistically posing in
       politically-correct black-face, but with fewer scruples.

Why were you using NAV, Jim?

It's notorious for causing problems and has been for a LONG time.

I don't know, just idiocy :-(

Any way to uninstall this crap WITHOUT trashing my ancient, but reliable WinFax? ...Jim Thompson

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

| 1962 | Obama: A reincarnation of Nixon, narcissistically posing in politically-correct black-face, but with fewer scruples.

Further perusal suggest "VBAT" would be if this were a laptop with battery... other sections say "No Battery Installed". ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
Obama: A reincarnation of Nixon, narcissistically posing in
       politically-correct black-face, but with fewer scruples.

You are asking a world class, Usenet abusing idiot to provide a computer illiterate idiot with an answer about a POS thrash app.

Real good way to get back on the path of proper computing with a properly working machine... NOT!

Real Problem found... Thanks to Tom Del Rosso

Just quit again... reboot, Everest reports HOT CPU... looks like an intermittent fan :-( ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
Obama: A reincarnation of Nixon, narcissistically posing in
       politically-correct black-face, but with fewer scruples.

You're welcome.

Mine doesn't show those values at all. It must depend on the chipset.

Mine shows 3.12V so I think it's the watch battery.

Under storage / SMART.

Reallocated sector count Reallocated event count

see

especially the critical (red) parts.

Also, the Read Error Rate is an amalgam of the total reads and failed reads, so you have to split the number and turn it into a ratio. Where to divide the number depends on manufacturer!

--

Reply in group, but if emailing add one more
zero, and remove the last word.

Also, one of the first things to do is always to look at the event log.

--

Reply in group, but if emailing add one more
zero, and remove the last word.

Everything is "normal" or "always passing", so the drive looks AOK.

I'm seeing some speed fluctuation in the CPU fan, so I'll open 'er up this weekend and see what's there. This is on my "communications" machine... E-mail, Newsgroups and web surfing only. My PSpice machine is separate.

In all these years I can't recall replacing a watch battery. Anything touchy to watch out for? ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
Obama: A reincarnation of Nixon, narcissistically posing in
       politically-correct black-face, but with fewer scruples.

Recommendations for a replacement? Or is that sort of protection really necessary anymore? ...Jim Thompson

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

| 1962 | Obama: A reincarnation of Nixon, narcissistically posing in politically-correct black-face, but with fewer scruples.

Windows XP is highly updated, but still cannot carry the level of protection offered by the new OS authorings of Vista and Windows 7, so though it is pretty well protected, I would still not place any of my personal info on an XP box considering all the modern snooping methods in use these days.

We get bi-annual security briefings at work and they cover attacks on companies which have desirable information, as well as their employees' home machines, and they are far more sophisticated than one might think.

You should run known, free, proven non-invasive and non-resident system checking utilities, such as CCleaner and Windows Cleaner.

Regardless of what others say, Vista and Windows 7 are far superior, if not for any other reason than security.

I still find it amusing that you would find anything egregious boy says as being viable.

Microsoft Security Essentials seems relatively non-intrusive (free download from Microsoft).

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John Devereux

That depends on how old his hard drive is and which version of 'S.M.A.R.T.' it implements. In particular, whether it supports idle scanning of sectors.