Replies

Thanks guys! I have a new Samsung SSD that I’ll install and build a parallel but clean system on. I don’t see the 30 day activation to be a real problem. I should be able to do what I need to do in a week, tops. It is a pleasure to deal with good people like you. I haven’t consulted a BBS type system in a long, long time because I found that too many people who didn’t know what they were talking about felt compelled to respond to my inquiry. Not the case with Windows Secrets or the old, venerable Langa Letter of course.

Thanks Jim for the reply. I guess I was unclear in my initial message. I want to do exactly what you are suggesting; I don’t want to really duplicate the problem I already have. I have a brand new Samsung 250 GB SSD on my desk waiting for a new installation of Win 7 Pro. I just wondered about the wisdom of connecting it as a new partition on the problem machine and rebuilding a setup on it similar to the bad one I now have. It is just a matter of convenience to me. I could always install it in another computer and load it with the same applications I am running on the “sick” computer but that would be somewhat inconvenient having to deal with parallel machines.

I didn’t enter this conversation to convince you or anyone of anything. I simply said Microsoft has in my opinion made a total mess of the “Microsoft Account” program by not keeping a simple concept simple. Something they have gained fame for in many arenas. How hard should it be to have one account with one company to use all features of one basic product, namely Windows OS. You may choose to claim that the “live” elements are not part of the Windows OS but that is like saying IE is not part of Windows. It won’t fly.

In any case, since it seems that some of you want directions to the reference I made about a book chapter I suggest you use the following link:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-is-the-windows-live-essentials-pack-for-windo.html. That particular piece is written by Woody Leonhard who has also made many references to the subject in the paid version of the Windows Secrets newsletter. You can find further reading with an Amazon search if you choose to put a little effort into it.

You might also do a search on the following phrase or any simple variation, where you will find many people discussing their problems.
Google search on : “managing the microsoft live accounts”

If you are happy with it that’s great. I lived with it for a long time and simply got fed up with it. I began when I think they called it a “Passport.” Now it has become a social engineering mess. There are now chapters in books telling people how to maneuver through the accounts maze.

Gary, what you are seeing is a permissions issue I believe. I too own and manage a Google group and I know for sure that I can control how users view messages, e.g., by web interface or by email sent to them directly. I am not absolutely sure about posting but I think I can do the same thing there. Since you manage a group I suggest you look at the set up permissions available for a random member and see if you can see what might be happening to you on the other group. Probably the quickest fix would be to email the owner of the group that you are having problems with and just ask how he has your account configured.

I have been a Microsoft user since its inception and I normally don’t write comments that are just meant to be negative. I am making an exception here because I can think of nothing positive to say about signing up for a Microsoft Account. It is a garbled, confusing and confounding “mess.” They have renamed the “account” process so many times that you need a manual to help you find all the places you might have created an account. I had live mail with hotmail.com and it worked fine then they changed it to outlook.com. When I tried to delete the old hotmail account and get it off my PC it was like pulling teeth. I finally said to H___ with the whole thing and wiped it all off my computers. I will stick with Gmail where the whole thing is straightforward and comprehensible. Microsoft should stick to coding an leave the customer interface engineering to someone who knows what they are doing.

This is such an elementary check that I’m hesitant to mention as you may have already tried it. Disconnect the cable between the modem and the router and using a longer cable if necessary connect the primary computer directly to the modem. This is going to take away network connectivity to everything connected to the router as you can obviously see but if you now experience a failure in the connection to the primary PC you can rest assured that the problem is either the cable feed or the modem. I don’t know if they are compatible with your Time Warner cable connection or not but my guess is that they are, the Motorola Surfboard cable modems are great performers and can be had in the $50 to $60 range I believe. Good luck.

RAL77, You gave Gloria an excellent post of a solution in a clear and concise manner. I don’t usually involve myself in these discussions because I don’t have time to make numerous replies to evolving solutions but I do think you did a super job of answering a question without straying from the point Gloria began with as too many people seem to do. The only thing I might have added to your post was a suggestion to download ERUNT and back up the registry before altering it in any way. That simple and dependable registry backup program has attained best friend status with me on a couple of occasions when I accidentally bricked a computer. It’s simple to access via a Linux boot disk and command prompt and will restore the entire registry to its backed up state so that the dead computer can be started again. ERUNT was written by a fellow named Lars Hederer and you can find it easily via Bing or Google searches. Again, very slick reply that you made.

Gloria –

I’m far from qualifying for geekdom myself, wasn’t meaning to speak derogatorily in suggestion about “not mucking around with the registry”, just a good thing to mention in case someone isn’t aware of the possible consequences if things go wrong there.

Anyhow, identifying the key as a MacAffee key may help matters. I’m speculating here, but it wouldn’t surprise me if security applications might want to make some of their registry entries difficult to remove, just as a “self-defense” measure against malware etc. The suggestion that you mentioned you had received in your first post, regarding Sysinternals RegDelNull utility may indeed help, if MacAfee inserted a Null Character in that key, to fortify it against deletion by malware.

Since you’ve already downloaded RegDelNull you may as well give it a try and see if that is indeed the problem here. To run command line programs you use Cmd.exe. Cmd.exe has to be able to find RegDelNull to run it, so easiest thing to do is before running cmd.exe just copy your downloaded RegDelNull to your root directory (C:) so that you can easily tell cmd.exe that it’s located there (or just leave it wherever you downloaded it to, and use its full path on disk instead of “C:”).

You should have a copy of cmd.exe located in C:WindowsSystem32 (if not there, do a windows search for its location on disk). Right-click cmd.exe and choose “Run As Administrator”. Enter your admin password and a little mostly blank window will pop up. You need to tell cmd.exe (1)the path to the program you want it to run, (2)the registry key to search in, and (3)any additional parameters you want RegDelNull to implement. So if you’ve moved RegDelNull to location C: and you wanted it to search in registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE you would type, for example
C:regdelnull hklm -s
Then hit [Enter].

The -s parameter tells regdelnull to additionally search all subkeys of HKLM, recursively.

RegDelNull will then search that registry key (and all it’s subkeys) and return a list of any keys it has found that have Null characters embedded within them, and ask you whether you want to delete any of those. If it lists your MacAfee key there, you’re in luck – delete it and that should be that. When you’re done using cmd.exe, just type “exit” (and hit [Enter] to properly close it.

Good luck, and let us know if that worked for you…

It’s ironic that Woody was in the pulpit on the same day that Fred has to tell someone how to fix a registry error:D. When read Woody’s discussion of registry cleaners I did so with an open mind. On the one hand he is totally on target when he says that some of those apps are both worthless and dangerous in the wrong hands; specifically those who believe all the sales pitch that accompanies these items and at the same time have no concept of the registry’s construction and operation. On the other hand, like the person with the Java problem I have in my many years of experience come across problems in that same vein. I have had several apps that couldn’t be installed without a deep inspection of the registry and subsequent cleaning of keys. I have also had problems where a program apparently uninstalled itself successfully but upon attempting to install a newer version ran into the problem where installation could not proceed until, you guessed it, I cleaned the leftovers from the registry after much searching to find them. As Woody said, the registry is a large database similar to ones many of us have used in our work. One thing I remember from those days was that no database failed to perform better after a packing session. I see the judicious use of a good registry cleaner as nothing more than a parallel to that operation. Of course there is one big difference in the two aforementioned operations, the first operation, if it failed couldn’t brick the OS where the second one involving the registry could be fatal if one were careless enough to run the cleaner without a backup. Maybe I’m a fool for using a registry cleaner but I’m a careful fool and “knock on wood” I have never been bit by the one and only one I trust and use (jV16).

I might have missed something so if I did please accept my apology. I didn’t notice anywhere that the thread initiator said anything about his version on Windows 7. I did see a wide range of answers regarding how much RAM was needed for good performance under a reasonable load of applications running concurrently. If he is running a 64 bit version of Win. 7 then it is highly advisable that he install 4 or more gigs of RAM. If he is running a 32 bit version he can slide by on 2 gigs but 3 should yield improvements any more than 3 is a total waste of money because of addressing limits of the 32 bit OS. I find it incredible that anyone would waste their money on a first class OS like Win. 7 of any flavor and attempt to get by with 1 gig of RAM. That’s kind of like buying a 16 cylinder Jaguar and disabling 15 cylinders. Tinto Tech’s last statement regarding letting Win. 7 manage itself is a good one but cleanup of useless files is one task that it doesn’t perform automatically to my knowledge. I personally don’t run CCleaner more than about once a month but I do believe that running it occasionally prevents the unseen buildup of unnecessary system garbage that can slow down the system’s operation. How much it slows operation is debatable but I’m a neat freak when it comes to keeping things streamlined on my computer. It’s also worth mentioning that garbage removal does not create as much of a disk fragmentation problem as it did on pre Win. 7 systems. That’s because Win. 7 automatically defrags the disk on a weekly frequency.

Sorry Zig, but I run a Windows 7 64 bit desktop unit and it most certainly does require a push of the power button to bring it out of deep sleep. Key presses and mouse movement have no effect on a sleep scenario.

Any password cracker or similar program that accesses data in certain registry locations is going to cause a good AV application to throw up warnings. Same is true of just about any network sniffer programs. Don’t be alarmed, everything is simply operating as designed.

I have used Roboform Pro for years and have seen nothing better suited to my needs. Not only is it secure but it saves me huge amounts of time in keeping up with more than 100 passwords. That said I still do use the “Remember my password” feature in Fire Fox for websites I visit that require passwords but contain no critical personal information about me.

The winner of the popularity contest concerning a best replacement for Outlook Express should boil down simply to personal preferences. I used Outlook 2003 but refused to pay $90 for the 2007 and 2010 versions so I started trying everything out there. I liked Gmail as a simple aggregator of all my POP accounts but as an email client it purely sucks. It is clunky, slow and in general a pain to use for mail composition. I tried Eudora, Thunderbird and several others and only found one that was pretty good; it was called emClient or something similar and seemed to be designed with the intent of cloning Outlook. For personal reasons I just went back to Outlook 2003 and found that it sufficed for me. Then just recently I decided to take a look at Windows Live Hotmail and was pleasantly surprised with its ease of use. I now use it to aggregate all my several POP accounts under one parent application. I was able to send mail from each address to its own parent folder and I get desktop notification of all incoming mail without being signed into Outlook. I have never been a fan of Hotmail until now but I have to say I do like it. I now plan to pare back use of Gmail if not to remove it altogether.

I don’t like Windows Live, the less I can have Microsoft programs poking around in my computer, the better I like it. I just strictly use gmail. I have no need to install another program on my computer just to read and send email. I have enough programs already, plus I don’t like the idea of downloading emails to my computer to read them. Gmail is very good at moving other email accounts to it (I have a Comcast email account and have everything that does there moved to Gmail). Web based email is the way to go IMO, it does everything an installed program will do without having to sit on the hard drive.

I usually don’t respond to messages of this type but I do feel compelled to ask why in the world you are involved in a thread on a “Windows” Secrets message board. Are you just looking for an audience for your badmouth comments on the most popular OS on the planet? For that matter why are you subscribed to Windows Secrets?