Category: Technology

This is a follow-up to my previous post on music downloads.

Because my original music purchase was on a Tuesday, I was given a free download. I decided to get Petra’s Never Say Die and Washes Whiter Than. This was offered as two albums on one CD. I downloaded the songs and it looked like everything was there until I hit the play button. Oops! More malfunctions. Once again the song names did not match the tracks. This time however all the tracks were there, they were just labeled incorrectly. The song titles started with Never Say Die but the actual tracks started with Washes Whiter Than. At least they were in the correct order once you figured out what they had done.

I sent Connect another e-mail. Instead of promising to fix their mistakes they simply sent me a code to get yet another free download. I didn’t really want another download but I used it yesterday. I got a best of Jerry Reed mostly cause he’s a likeable guy and I like to collect humorous music like Ray Stevens, Gary S Paxton and Paul Shanklin. So now I Got the Gold Mine while Connect continues to give others the shaft.

Connect just impresses me as a lackadaisical subsidiary of a mega corporation. I expected more professionalism from Sony.

In summary, I have twelve of nineteen tracks from DeGarmo and Key Band’s No Turning Back, two albums (18 tracks) worth of Petra that are labeled incorrectly, twenty old songs from Jerry Reed and after a week my credit card still has not been charged.

I downloaded Microsoft’s “Windows Live Toolbar beta” last night. The toolbar does things that neither the Google or MSN toolbar will do plus, it works with Windows XP Professional x64. Yahoo! (This is a celebratory expression and not a reference to any Internet company utilizing this name )

The toolbar memorizes passwords on web pages, a common enough Windows feature that no other toolbars support on 64 bit systems. It also has an RSS reader, integrated desktop and web search, e-mail, anti Phishing Filter, improved pop-up blocker, and a new feature called ”Onfolio”.

Onfolio is a new tool for research. It looks like it will prove handy once you figure-out how it works. Microsoft summarizes this tool:

Onfolio is a tool for the serious online researcher. It provides a way to easily save, organize, and share all sorts of data you find on the Web, including links, entire Web pages, portions of pages, e-mails, and Microsoft Office documents.

The RSS Reader is simple to configure. Go to a web page with an RSS feed, right click RSS icon on the page and select Copy Shortcut, open Onfolio Deskbar, click on down arrow on rightside of Add, then click on Add Website Feed, and paste shortcut and click OK. If the program can read feed, it will be added to list in Onfolio Deskbar, if the program can’t read the feed, try another on the page and see if it works. On some sites I was able to use Atom feed but on others it would not work and I had to use RSS 2 .

The Form Fill feature needs to autodetect the fields for username and password. When you fill-in username and password and then hit Enter, a box will pop-up asking you if you want the program to memorize the logon information. Manually inserting them into the program did not work on the websites that I tried.

The toolbar is probably a way of letting us beta test some “bells and whistles” that come standard with Windows Vista. The documentation is limited but I recommend you give it a try.

Yeah! The site is up and running again.

Thanks to the support staff at pMachine http://www.pmachine.com/ I am now running their new version of the blogging software.

It was a combination of the 50-50 90 rule and my .htaccess file going belly-up.

For those that don’t know, the rule above states that for any fifty-fifty option, there is a ninety percent chance of choosing the wrong action. I had a choice of two files from which to pick to upgrade the site and per the above rule, I picked to wrong one.

I then updated my Black List (blocked IP and URL files) and in the process trashed my .htaccess config file. Last year in a three month period I had over one million hits on the site due to spammers. That is why I dumped the other blogging program and went with pMachine’s Express Engine.

Look at this support thread if you want to fix SQL Errors while upgrading Express Engine. http://www.pmachine.com/forums/viewthread/31768/

During my efforts to recover from my computer woes around the first of the year, I decided that I needed the ability to backup larger files than my DVD burner could copy onto a single disc. So I decided to price recorders that could support the dual layer, 8.5-gigabyte discs. After I started looking, I come across a DVD-R that has LightScribe written on the box. Curious I found their website http://www.lightscribe.com and took a look.

LightScribe is a technology that allows you to use your DVD burner to laser etch labels onto the discs that you make at home. This means no more paper labels or Sharpies are needed to know what’s on your disc. Use you label creation program that is bundled with your burner; simply create a label for your disc, and place disc into your burner upside-down and print. The labels are black writing etched into a gold foil label embedded in the DVD or CD. This technology is supported by Roxio Easy Media Creator and Nero software.

LightScribe requires special hardware, software and LightScribe enabled discs to operate. The DVD-R drive that I purchased was from the local Staples store for 79.95 plus tax. My LightScribe burner is made by I/O Magic and was bundled with Nero 6. As it turns out, the LightScribe drivers are embedded into the Nero software and cannot be installed separately. My Roxio software supports LightScribe but would not work until I had installed the Nero program that was bundled with the drive.

I have found that the LightScribe discs are made for CD’s and 8x (4.3 GB) DVDs. The best prices I have found thus far are at my local Wal-Mart.

You can us any background image that you want to create the label but remember that your end product will be in a single color so there are limits to your creativity.

After the label is created in your computer, place disc label side down into your burner. Close door and the go to print in you label program. You will then be able to select your burner as a print device. Select Best print quality and then print label. In about 25 minutes you will have a disc with a laser-etched label.

This is a system that works just like it is advertised. I recommend that you get LightScribe enabled burners for your next computer upgrade. Best of all, it works wonderfully on my 64 bit Windows XP system.

Occasionally. I have to be the first kid on the block with the new techie toy. In that spirit, I purchased the new Computer Associates eTrust Antivirus program, Release 8. I wanted a program that was certified to work with my 64-bit version of Windows XP.

Prior to installing, I uninstalled the eTrust version 7 that I was using for the past three weeks.

The installation went ok. I was prompted to agree to three different licenses and had to fill out a full-page registration form before I even got to the screen to select the product that I wanted to install.

When selecting the program to install, there is a one-sentence summary of each product choice; there are five or six from which to choose. I selected eTrust Antivirus Release 8. The next screen lets you choose Client, Server or Custom installation. I made my choice and then presses finish to install.

Partway through the installation, I got an error that the license would not register so I was being given a 30-day trial version of the program. After installation finished, the system prompted for a reboot.

After rebooting my computer, I tried to find where the license could be entered again to get the product registered. I could not find any screen to enter the information. There is a license button on one of the screens but it doesn’t work like you would expect. It doesn’t ask you to enter a registration number or verify the information that you had previously typed in case you typed one instead of I or zero instead of O or something lame like that; instead, it asks you for a path to the license file. I even tried cutting and pasting the license key code from the order confirmation e-mail that they sent me but it would not work.

The license button gave you a screen that had three buttons. A fill-in box next to the Browse button seemed the logical place to find a license file. Once you click on Browse you are presented with a search window similar to Word or Excel when you select File-Open. The choices for file type are the default *.* (the dreaded search wildcard), .gif or .htm.

What and where this mysterious license file is remained a mystery for several hours. It seems like this interface is intended for a client installation to find the license file of the server installation. (See number Five below for more info.)

There is no Help option. I looked because often licensing is buried in the Help-About button on the program.

After several hours of frustration on the CA website and uninstalling and reinstalling the program four more times, this is what I discovered.

First, all of the user name, address and other neat mandatory fields that you are prompted for in the installation, are not memorized by the setup program and must be reentered each time you run setup.

Second, there is no help option available from the setup menu.

Third, there is no help available for Release 8 at the CA website.

Fourth, HP and Microsoft have much better Knowledge Bases than Computer Associates. I even went through the registration at their website, for the third time in a month to try to login to some support options. CA does not seem to have integrated login data so I had to register once to download a trial copy, which I could never get to install. Then I had to enter all the same info to buy the program on their store website, and third, I had to register to get a look at portions of the support website.

Fifth, I did find out that there is a registration file in the Shared Components directory that this is an .xml file but it only shows enough information to see that I have a thirty day trial version currently installed.

Sixth, the licensing scheme and file locations have been completely revised for Release 8 when compared to Release 7.

In light of all that had happened, I sent an e-mail to CA in hopes of getting some help to get the program licensed properly. I may have to hack the xml file but I would like to get the program working properly.

***
Six Hours After My Original Post

Amazingly, when I got home today there were two e-mails waiting for me in response to my request for help, the e-mails were due to the fact that I was not there to answer the phone call from Computer Associates. That’s service!

Anyway here is the text of the e-mail.

This is with regards to your Licensing Issue# XXXXXX91.

I understand that you have installed the product on a 64 bit machine.

Kindly note that the agent will work fine on a 64 bit machine, however, kindly install the (ITM server) Console on a different machine which does not have a 64 bit processor.

The licenses will get updated only when a console machine connects to CA site and get it refreshed. Otherwise, the license.xml file will be holding the trial info only.

Hence, you can install the Console on a different machine and have the 64 bit machine as an agent. Kindly let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,
Cheryl
CA
License Support Representative

As Paul Harvey says, “and now the rest of the story.”

I took my handy eTrust R8 disk to my wife’s 32-bit Windows XP computer and started the install process again. I agreed to three licenses and filled-out the same full page form again, selected eTrust R8 and then surprise! There were four menu choices instead of the three that were on my 64-bit computer.

As instructed, I installed the ITM Server.

This was a good first step but is not the end of the computing adventures that I experienced.

When I rebooted the computer and tried to go into the ITM Server, I was prompted for a Username and Password. I figure no sweat, I will enter what? My registration stuff asked me to create a password but not a username. What now?

Thankfully there was a help button on this screen. After mousing around I found out that the eTrust ITM Console uses the default Administrator account of the computer as the Username and Password. This was simple enough, I entered the username and there was no password on the Administrator account on my wife’s XP machine so I just hit Enter and . . . nothing. Program error, I must enter a password. But there is no password! The only choice I had was to go to Users in the Control Panel and enter a password for the Administrator account on the XP machine.

I then went back to the ITM Console and tried the Administrator account with my newly created password and like magic, I was able to login.

The console could see my computer had eTrust but there was nowhere that I could find to register the license which was the whole purpose of this exercise in the first place.

Based on my experiences the night before, I though why not just share the directory with the license in it and see what happens. I shared the SubscriptionLicense directory and then went to my 64-bit computer.

I opened the License Tab and browsed to the SubscriptionLicense directory on my wife’s computer and selected the License.xml file and my computer accepted the choice. Now I am running a fully licensed copy of ETrust Antivirus Release 8 for my 64-bit Windows XP system.

This is an update to my adventures with the 64-bit version of Windows XP Professional.

Finding a fully functional anti-virus program is still the biggest challenge. I had read that Computer Associates antivirus product would work on this version of XP; Not their EZ Trust version but their business product. However if you download the trial version it will not install but gives you an error that it is not for 64 bit systems. On the bright side at least it is aware that you have a 64-bit system. The trial version with gateway will partially install but does not appear to install the antivirus software proper just all the administrative bells and whistles for the gateway. However, I got a copy of the retail CD for eTrust and it did install. I then installed the upgrade that CA recommends. The program appears to be installed properly but I still want to check my Event Log just to make sure.

I did call Computer Associates yesterday and after some stumbling they said the retail CD should work on my computer. The CA Representative suggested that maybe I should wait for the new version that is certified to work on the 64-bit XP system. It will be out at the end of February or first part of March. So look for eTrust Antivirus version 8 towards the end of the first quarter.

While I was having all my adventures with anti-virus programs, all my e-mail was lost (i.e. deleted) by something. My Outlook pst file containing all my e-mails was gone yesterday when I tried to check my e-mail. My last backup was two weeks ago so I took out my backup CD and had to recreate my In Box less any messages received in the last two weeks.

Printing is the other persistent irritation with this OS. HP is still not making a drive for my HP PhotoSmart 100 printer. I went on their website and inquired what they would recommend as an upgrade to this perfectly fine printer and there is no 64-bit printer driver for the supposed replacement that they recommend on their website.

This reminds me of HP’s screw-ups when Windows 95 was released. HP wrote all their drivers to the wrong standard and none worked with Windows 95. After they fixed the drivers, HP retaliated by charging $30 for each driver that you downloaded from their website. After things calmed down, HP went back to free downloads.

Needless to say, Adobe Acrobat will not create PDF files in a 64-bit environment. Additionally, the workaround posted on Adobe’s website does not work. Adobe says that it should work with version 5, 6 or 7.

Roxio’s successor to Easy CD Creator is available at you local Costco and will run on Windows XP 64-bit and it even says so on the retail box.

Over the last ten days I have had a crash course in more frustrating aspects of computer hardware. On a stormy day just before Christmas my daughter’s computer quit working.

Since troubleshooting a computer is somewhat of a “plug and pray” proposition, I tried the usual things in the usual order. I tried a new hard rive, then a new RAM chip, then I transferred everything to a spare case with a different motherboard. The computer would still not operate. The only component that I had not replaced by this time was the CPU.

I decided to gut my own computer and give it to my daughter because many of her Christmas gifts required her to have a computer. I was able to backup most of her hard drive and transfer it to the new computer. She ended up with a net gain in her computing ability. She went from 256 MB of RAM to one GB, and from an 80 GB drive to 120 GB.

This left me in the need for another computer for myself. I went down to my local Fry’s Electronics to buy a CPU. Oops! They had only one 32 bit CPU in the whole store. So here I am with no computer and staring at the uncharted waters of 64 bit computing. I bought an AMD Athlon processor and motherboard and installed Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

This version of XP may look like the 32 bit version but it is a very different operating system under the hood. The first thing you will notice is that it will NOT run any 16 bit software or any software with a 16 installation program. This means all DOS and windows 3.x program will not run. Also many programs made for Windows 95 and 98 will not install.

Compatibility Issues
My program to print CD labels would not install, but I was able to get it working by copying the program from my old drive and then copying the .dll files into the programs directory.

My program to print checks which I use with Microsoft Money would not install at all.

Kodak Easy Share software would install but cannot connect to the camera. Only by using a preinstalled Wizard could I download the photos into my hard drive.

The biggest complaint that I have is that there is no anti-virus program on the market for this version of Windows unless you look at Enterprise Corporate anti-virus packages. Some brands will install but they will not give you real-time protection. This includes Computer Associates, Symantec, McAfee, Bit Defender, Panda, F-Secure and several others that I tried. This OS was officially released on April 30, 2005 but support by many vendors is spotty at best. So I am using a 30-day trial hoping that something will be available soon that I can purchase.

The only CD/DVD writing software that I have found that will work in this version of Windows XP is Nero version 7. The CD writing software that is part of XP will only write to CDs and not DVDs.

In my first few days with the 64 bit version of Windows XP, I would say that there is more of a learning curve than I had hoped to encounter. I will keep you updated as this adventure continues.