[GRLUG] grlug Digest, Vol 41, Issue 9

[peyeps at iserv.net]

"Notepad does not itself require network access.  It does, however, use
the Common Dialogs component of Windows, which get activated whenever you
browse to open a file in the vast majority of applications.  "

Which is probably where my problem resides.

"Long and short of it?  Without attaching a debugger, having debugging
symbols and looking at the call stack when the suspicious activity is
triggered, you can't tell if the activity is a misbehaving program or
shell extension."

Fun, fun.

"Sure.  A lot of crappy third-party software is like that.  I haven't
seen XP completely reject keyboard and mouse input as a result of
software getting pouty over network access, unless that software was
doing something incredibly stupid with libraries like DirectX.  XP,
for all its Microsoft heritage, doesn't come with any 1st-party
userland software I've seen do that."

Well something is keeping the Windows Task Manager from popping up with
alt-ctl-del when the screen blanks on me.

"I'm not saying it's a problem with the hardware itself, but that it
may be a problem with flaky drivers.  I've seen that happen more than
once.  Heck, ATI's 3D acceleration drivers have never been
particularly stable....

...Spend the time to get a permanent fix.  Update your drivers."

Forgive me for being paranoid.  If the update kills the video, I can roll
it back how?

"Identify and remove unnecessary shell extensions."

The un-necessary ones are which?

"Allow access to Windows Networking, or disable it entirely in Control
Panel."

There are a few times when I need to run Windows Networking, probably on
average two or three days a month.

"Run Windows Update to deal with other instability and security issues."

Remember IE8 and WGA were passed out as critical updates.

"Or switch away from Windows entirely."

Ah, the perfect world.

But to return to the initial subject, it is why I use Linux.  If I don't
absolutely need Windows for what I am doing, I have a much funner
partition to work with.  None of the frustrations listed above.  It just
works.