Minutes of the Meeting held 4 December 2001


 The meeting at the Canberra Irish Club was chaired by Jim Hume. Notes were
taken by Rod Blackburn. There was a good turn out and no members who had not
previously been to Coffee and Chat.

 1. a) JohnS told us that he had spent more than four hours trying to get a
Win2000 machine connected to TIP. The problem was very elusive, but
eventually
turned out to be a faulty cable between the modem and the telephone wall
socket (established by using the same cable to connect a known working
external modem). During the process he saw an apparent doubling of the
number of asterisks representing the password and other annoying glitches. A
member suggested that the asterisks are sometimes used by software as a
security measure. Due to the other annoying problems the machine was
returned
to the dealer for service under warranty. The dealer reported that he
restored
917 virus infected files on the machine, which may well have contributed to
the difficulties. (Moral - JS will now scan all machines prior to starting
work!)

The comment about viruses led to a very lively discussion on viruses, virus
protection and ways to deal with infected systems with particular reference
to the 'badtrans' virus that is prevalent right now. It is essential to run
competent virus protection software and to ensure that the most up to date
virus signatures are installed (must be more recent than Nov 20 to catch
'badtrans'). In some cases additional software to clean up systems may be
necessary and would then usually be available from  the web site of the
protection software manufacturer.

Other measures that can be taken are to use a piece of software like
'POPcorn'
that allows inspection of mail on the server and to check the Microsoft
Windows Update process for patches to Internet Explorer and security updates
in general. MobyJ also mentioned that Knowledge base item Q312461 discusses
significant related issues.

1. b) JohnS asked if anyone was knowledgeable about Norton Ghost. In
particular can it be used to transfer from disk to disk over a USB
connection. It was thought that a version can be loaded to a standalone
diskette that would enable data transfer via either a parallel port or a USB
connection.  Drive Copy was mentioned as a program that can do the same
thing. John proposed that C&C should purchase a copy of Ghost 2002. This was
supported. As an aside someone mentioned that a professional quoted $220 to
create a copy of a hard disk.

John has added: "After the meeting - Ted & I went to the Software Shop but
after some discussions with 'James' (a very helpful staff member) - decided
not to buy the software at this time. The objective had been to clone the C:
drive (Win 98 SE) from one oldish laptop to the C: drive on a brand new one
via USB, then update later to Win XP which came with the new machine. But
James pointed out (quite correctly) that all the hardware drivers and PnP
references would be to the old system. Windows would then (in theory) change
everything to the new hardware after a "dozen or so" reboots - but the new
system might not be too stable. We agreed it would probably be better to
"bite the bullet" and go for a clean install of XP and laboriously install
applications again. The software costs $149 Aus (- 5%), but James also noted
that they had several failures reported doing cloning over USB - perhaps
Symantic will bring out some patches."

2. a) TrevorF told us that he had caused IE to display its name as Internet
Exploder and that his machine (possibly Microsoft) had revenged itself by
causing his CDROM drive to explode. Consensus was that a 52X device, for
such was what this was, rotates remarkably fast and that any suspect disk
might thus lead to an explosion.

2. b) Trevor also had trouble with lost DLLs and with one called
shlw.api.dll (a suspicious name indeed). He carried out his favourite trick
to solve problems. Format C:!

3. Gloria reported that the small meeting room at the Irish Club had been
booked for Coffee&Chat 3 as from Jan 15 inclusive, the meetings to start at
1.30pm following the lunch after the regular meetings. Coffee&Chat 3 is
intended to be a relatively small group of those who feel less confident or
intimidated by the technicality of the main meetings, but with one or two
experienced helpers present.

4. JohnH described a situation where Scandisk and Defrag always hung at
27000 sectors of a particular drive. When this happens the system will not
warm boot. perhaps the most helpful suggestion was to use Google to search
on the key "Drive Fitness Test" and look for such associated with the
manufacturer of the drive.

5. a) Charles spoke of a Security Update for Windows Media Player failing to
install. The documentation referred to ME only. As he uses 98SE, was this
the problem? If M'soft offered the update it was probably correct, but no
other suggestions were forthcoming.

5. b) Charles also mentioned that his ISP had warned that a email containing
viruses had been sent to him. It emerged that several ISPs are doing this,
but AllanM said that his investigations into available tools for TIP had
found that they were either too expensive or, if cheap, not useful.

6. a) MikeD asked if anyone remembered a utility which displayed a
representative icon for each image in a folder. JohnS mentioned that ME does
this by default.

6. b) Mike remarked on the remarkable capabilities of MP3 to store large
volumes of useable sound as a lead in to a discussion of a TEAC multimedia
player advertised as playing MP3, but that he returned because it didn't.
Several people mentioned the XMS player available from Strathfield that
does. Newsgroups oz.dvd and oz.audiovisual.home.cinema are said to be useful
sources of information.

Mike later reported: "Yesterday I went to Strathfield with one of John
Armstrong's MP3 discs and tested it on an Omni 3102.  Played instantly no
problems.  A CD-RW copy of the MP3s also played no problems." And Emil
added: " The DVD player that I mentioned was Model 950, which was very
favourably reviewed by the Canberra Times on Monday 12 November. I think
that the current price is $369.

6. c) USB expansion cards are available at the markets for $30 and extension
cable for a further $9.

6. d) Mike mentioned that new versions of MyAlbum (V2.0) and LDS Viewer (V4)
are available and recommended.

7. a) TedMac told us that the promised strawberry plants would not be
available tillmid-January.

7. b) Some of the things he had found recently were: Reversi (a program
playing a board game, marketed at one time under the name Othello);
Noteworthy (a program that does interesting things with music) and an
education CDROM from New Zealand with many introductory courses on it.

8. There was a question about Bulletin Board CDROMs that the PCUG used to
produce. AllanM stated that the Internet was viewed as an overwhelmingly
superior resource.



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