[GRLUG] grlug Digest, Vol 41, Issue 9

[Michael Mol]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 8:11 PM, <peyeps at iserv.net> wrote:
> "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've seen Explorer go non-responsive for several seconds in scenarios
where I believe it was waiting for a mutex or other process to
respond, but those always had a timeout associated with them, and I
don't recall the screen blanking at the same time.

There are additional debugging steps you can take, remote access and
administration features you can try, but I don't get the impression
that you'd want to bother.  And a better first step is to get
everything updated.

>
> "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?

If the update kills the video, you boot into Safe Mode, which uses
good ol' hardware-agnostic VESA, and get into Control Panel that way.

>
> "Identify and remove unnecessary shell extensions."
>
> The un-necessary ones are which?

Typically, anything you don't recognize as having installed explicitly
and purposefully.

>
> "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.

Anything stop you from disabling it when you don't need it?  You
should be able to disable "Client for Microsoft Networks" in the
adapter properties dialog.

>
> "Run Windows Update to deal with other instability and security issues."
>
> Remember IE8 and WGA were passed out as critical updates.

IE8 is honestly an improvement over IE7, and you can disable those
scary "check against a central server" features as part of the IE8
setup process. (And, yes, even I find those scary.)  Rather than use
IE8, I use a 3rd-party browser. (I've tried Firefox, Opera, Safari+W32
and Chrome, but I keep going back to Firefox.)

WGA is a necessary evil.  Put up with it, or don't use Windows on a
network at all.  Windows makes it very inconvenient to get updates
past a certain point without installing WGA--On a fresh install of
Windows SP2, you have to install WGA before they'll allow you to
update the Windows Update client, and you have to update the Windows
Update client before you can use Windows Update to get the latest and
greatest.  Patching manually is not worth the time for me, and I
wouldn't recommend it in the vast majority of cases.

>
> "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.

Then fix your Windows; It's capable of working, if you maintain it
like you would your Linux system, and don't arbitrarily restrict
things where you don't have a full understanding of their purpose.
What you're doing to your Windows installation is rather like deciding
to do all your own auto maintenance, but not changing the oil or
replacing old and degraded parts.  Throw in adding a turbo charger and
modded engine computer, and things start to break.

It's a car analogy, sure, but it's also more accurate than you
realize.  No software is perfect, but its iterative development tends
towards fixing and dealing with known bugs.  If you consider the
current state of software intended to interact with it, and consider
that more up-to-date software gets installed even as you don't update
the old stuff it interacts with, you can think of the older software
as degrading.  It doesn't behave to the specifications that the
software that interacts with it expects.  Things break.

When I say that workstation usability became fairly solid with XP, I
say that with the expectation that you maintain the operating system
with the same care you maintain your car.  If you don't maintain your
car, you shouldn't be surprised if it breaks down.  The same thing
applies to your operating system.

-- 
:wq