Re: Off-Topic -- Apparently intractable problem FIXED!

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Bill Troop wrote:

> >A list member magically fixed this problem for me over the phone by
> >having me kill Normal.dot, the Word Templates folder.
>
> Great. I had a similar litany of problems on a computer
> I was supporting running Win98 and Word, but it
> ultimately turned out that the problem was bad memory.
> Ever since PCs lost the parity checking bit, memory
> problems have been more prevalent.

Not lost really. I've had ECC memory (stands for something like Error
Checking / Correcting, but I'm too lazy to look it up) in my computer
since it was built to my specifications in 1997. Changed to faster
versions of the same memory type through a couple of hardware upgrades,
and such memory is still available. It used to cost considerably more,
so not that many people bothered with it. RAM prices have cratered
overall, though, and the price premium is now fairly negligible. Check
out CRUCIAL.com, an online budget arm of Micron, one of the better
purveyors.

> For the support archives, I'd like to add a positive XP
> story. Recently, I installed a pro version of Easy
> CD 5. Avoid it like the plague! It destroyed the drivers
> for my CD-R drive. Now here's the good part. XP
> has a great feature, which you can disable if you're
> really self destructive, which simply lets you turn
> back the clock on the system. You can tell it to
> restore the system to where you were a few hours
> ago, or yesterday, or the day before, or last week,
> or last month, etc. etc. etc. This is a phenomenal
> feature for fixing sick systems. It does _not_ interfere
> with your data files. It really, really works, and for this
> feature alone, I would strongly recommend XP.

I think this feature might be a "lite" version of CONFIGSAFE, which MS
has licensed. It should be quite good, particularly if you are diligent
about taking the system "snapshots." However, as I indicated in a
recent message, it _is_ possible to incur such catastrophic damage (not
just to the Registry) from the changes an installation can make, that
not even this will save you.

Jordan