Meeting 24 Sep 2002


Today's meeting was attended by around 45 people. JimH took the chair
and I volunteered to collate the notes. Please post a follow up
message to me about any of the topics by Friday and I'll collate them
and post on the weekend.

1. Adaware - TrevorF
When running Adaware it always found the following two items which
seemd to me very much unwanted: Gator plugin, and Double click.
I used Adaware to remove them but they kept coming back. I finally
noticed that they both referred to drive F: which is a CD ROM reader
and in that drive is a game called Shangai 2nd edition.
The penny finally dropped and I've told AdAware to treat them as OK.

2. Clock / Fractal / Stuff demo - JohnS

3. No dial tone - BillP
When I tried to use internal modem on my new computer (after setting
up dial in etc I could not get past a "no dial tone" message.

The meeting made several suggestions - check country, run modem
diagnostic etc- I tried these all to no avail.

Gordan came over tuesday arvo and after a short while had a
look at the back of my computer. I had plugged phone line into the
network card(network not yet established). Plugged into modem and eh
presto-SUCCESS

Bill P

4. Withdrawn after item 5 onward were listed

5. Event log - more than meets the eye - Derek
Derek informed the meeting that by trial and error he had found that
the inability to run the Task Scheduler Service, and hence the Norton
AV Live Update, was linked to having disabled the Event Log to
overcome the veeery slow shutdown.

It appears the options are slow shutdown with Task Scheduler and Live
Update, or fast shutdown but DIY scheduling and updating.

6. My real baby - Chess

7.a. Drive rescue
   b. XP lite
   c. EZ anti virus - CharlieK
Charlie extolled the virtue of a program called Drive Rescue which
enabled him to extract data from a hard drive which had failed and
could not be read by windows Explorer (or indeed be recognised by
Windows).

1) Unfortunately Drive Rescue, while Freeware is no longer supported
by its author and appears difficult to find on the web.

Charlie will provide it on floppy to Allan Mikkelsen who will upload
it to the ftp server for members to download.

2)  Charlie also advised of a significant vulnerability for XP users
which is fixed by the major update SP1, however this may not be easily
available to all users so Gibson Research has included a patch just
for this flaw on their web site,  The address is
http://grc.com/xpdite/xpdite.htm

3)  Charlie had already posted details of his problem in downloading
updates for ez Anti Virus under windows XP.  Following feedback it
appeared that users using win 98 had no problems but all (both) XP
users had problems.  There was no solution forthcoming at the meeting,
but hold the presses!!!

Subsequent fiddling has shown that by entering "proxy.tip.net.au:8080"
in the proxy field of the Source Select frame provides the solution.
Works for me and also for the one other member who has XP.  The secret
was in providing the port id separated by a colon.

8. New PC with XP trouble with NVIDIA display driver - Barb

I have a new PC with Windows XP and it has been back to the supplier
three times since I bought it 6 weeks ago.  The problem seems to be
with the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440 video card or driver which causes it to
crash as often as once every ten minutes.  The advice I got was to
take it back to the shop and request a new and possibly different card
as there is a known problem with XP and NVIDIA.  As it is still under
warranty I will send it back and not attempt any of the other
suggestions such as a known patch.  I may have better news next
fortnight.
Barbara B

9. Virus ? - RodS

10. USB hubs - Chess

11. A weekend at the markets - BillP

12. XP task bar issue - RobC

13. An erratic clock - Elizabeth

From BobS
This wasn't on the agenda but I thought it might be OK to include it
in the minutes to raise a laugh,

"An airplane was about to crash; there were 5 passengers on board but
only 4 parachutes.

The first passenger, said "I'm Kobe Bryant, The best NBA Basketball
player, the Lakers need me, I can't afford to die." So he took the
first pack and left the plane.

The second passenger, Hillary Clinton, said, "I am the wife of the
former president of the United States, I am the most ambitious woman
in the world, I am also a New York Senator and a potential future
president."  She just took the second parachute and jumped out of
the plane.

The third passenger, George W Bush, said, "I'm President of the United
States of America, I have a great responsibility being the leader of a
superpower nation. And above all I'm the cleverest president
in American history, so America's people won't let me die". So he put
on the pack next to him and jumped out of the plane.

The fourth passenger, The Pope, says to the fifth passenger, a 10
year-old school boy, "I am old and  frail and I don't have many years
left, as a Christian I will sacrifice my life and let you have the
last parachute". The boy said, "It's OK, there's a parachute left for
you. America's cleverest president has taken my school backpack."
================

Regards, Trevor

-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*--*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*--*"*-

If you can't make someone happy, make them a chocolate fudge cake.

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