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After upgrade to an SSD in an HP Pavilion desktop machine, we reinstalled Windows 7 from a retail DVD. The product key on the external sticker was different from that which Magical Jelly Bean found. We flipped a coin and went with the sticker. Brought everything up to date. Everything went fine for a few days, but then the “not valid” message started to pop up. We’re going to try MJB’s key next, but I’d love to know why HP doesn’t put the correct key on their sticker.

Even though my PC stands on a hardwood floor, it accumulates a lot of dust. I make it a point to vacuum and blow it out periodically, especially after doing it the first time and saw how bad it could get.

I’m a retired systems programmer and application programmer from way-back in IBM mainframe days.
Back then, Cobol and such were verb-oriented (Move X to Y, for example.)

In trying to teach myself VBA, I cant seem to get my head around object-orientation, which is a different
way of approaching things.

Can anyone recommend a good book or two for someone like myself, so that I can break through this
mental road-block?

Gosh, a doppelgänger. I spent 30 years writing mainframe systems code, lived in the Pittsford area, and have the same mental block with respect to object oriented programming. It’s been terribly frustrating to think I once knew just about everything there was to know about the room-sized system I worked with, and now haven’t the foggiest idea how any of my gadgets work or how to write even a small Excel macro. Thank you for opening our closet door — I’ll be following a lot of the tips given here.

Mikey

Note that there is no Insert unless you’re composing in HTML. If your default is to compse in simple Text mode, press Shift-Write instead of Write, to open a new message in HTML mode. Even in Text mode, of course, there’s nothing stopping you from simply writing out the link, e.g., “http://windowssecrets.com”.

I now have a cocktail CD of RKill, Malwarebytes, Spybot Search and Destroy and sometimes one or two other malware killers. I give that to the people, tell them how and in what order to run the cleanup and have seen it work 100% of the time.

Are there any licensing issues doing that, or are all of those ingredients in the cocktail freeware?

I hope, when you say “500Mbps powerline gear can comfortably deliver 40Mbps streaming 1080p video”, you really mean 40MBps… Also, are there any data showing how these things work when the house is running on emergency generator power?

My wife’s computer (Windows 7 Home Premium, WSE, Administrative user account) got infected with this on 4/5. I rebooted in Safe Mode, and ran a full WSE and McAfee scan. Neither found anything amiss. Eventually removed it manually by deleting suspicious folders in Program Data and similarly-named keys in several Run or RunOnce entries in the Registry. Demoted user to Standard to lessen chance of further problems.

Every once in a while I come across a PDF than hangs late in the “open” process. I have always been able to download it successfully using “save link as”. A possibly related issue: lately (since 3.6.12, maybe?) embedded YouTube links throw an error message, but I can always click on the “Open in YouTube” link and see the video.

StarLounger, indeed! Works as desired. I suspect there’s a lot of experience behind that “went for the easy answer” line, but after experimenting with INDIRECT and trying to understand the related Help file, it does in fact make sense.

Thanks much.

Yes, the target file is open; that requirement is kind-sorta documented in the description of INDIRECT. The problem appears to be that the second argument to VLOOKUP remains double-quoted when the whole function is evaluated; i.e., when you follow the evaluation sequence the last thing evaluated (that produces the error) is =VLOOKUP(a1,”a2″,a3,a4). The same error is given if you double-quote the second argument in the hand-entered function that works properly without the quotes.

Apparently “resolve address” means “find something that’s pretty close”. The address entered, “xy@blah” differed by one character from the “nxy@blah” which was in the address book (no .nick file). Unchecking the “resolve address” box disabled the feature/bug. Thanks for the guidance.

No, I did it the old-fashioned way: from the CD. I clean-installed Windows 2000 Pro, SP1, Office 2000 Premium (SR-1 integrated), and a bunch of other applications. The Office installation was 100% “Run all from local HDD” or whatever the phrase is, (other than Clippy, who was deleted) so there should be no need for any O2K source. Then I Sysprepped the whole thing and used Ghost to write the image to CD. On the boot of the image, Win2K entered the GUI setup phase and the final setup finished normally. Most other applications fired up as expected.