Hawk & Badger Railroad Forum

About 2 or 3 weeks ago I lost the hard drive on the new machine. The part of the drive that addresses where all the data is stored, quit on me. HP put in a new hard drive under warranty and loaded it. They also gave me the old drive since they could not access the old data. I had about 99% backed up on my external hard drive, so it wasn't a bug problem. I did loose work I did on a Slide Show presentation; But , the pictures were saved on a CD.

I am still loading some of my programs. My MSN ISP lost my password , locking me out.
I still had my old Icehouse account in force. Called my online help. (Philippines) It took them about 3 days to unlock and get me running again. During this time the machine ran 2 days unprotected and I ended up with 273 spy-ware accounts but no viruses were found. I had 3 RT3 site files called spyware, not sure from where. I dumped them all including all cookies.

Norton was giving me a problem since I had it shut down and it kept trying access the Internet, minimising the RT3 game. Since it would not completely uninstall, I downloaded a tool from Norton to remove the remains of Norton. Now with Norton gone and MSN automatic updates turned off, the only unwanted message I get is MSN telling me I have updates turned off. With Zone Alarm and AVG protection the machine flies even faster than it did when I bought it.

If you're talking about XP telling you that updates are turned off, you can turn that off in the Security Center. Just click on the link on the left that says 'Change the way Security Center alerts me' and remove the check marks.

Well, this is a continuation of my issues with Networking as mentioned in a posting above.

So I decided to go and get myself a laptop. Is an Acer TravelMate 7720-6486 with a 17” screen and a lot of other bells and whistles. Main reason for buying it is that I am going on holidays to Europe in April. Was contemplating to take my wife along but then I settled for the laptop. Not that I expect that I will not have any hassles with the computer either but at least it has an “off” switch.
Anyhow, with all the pictures I would like to show and new ones I intent to take it should make things a lot easier. But first I will have to get most of my pictures on the laptop and that where my ugly networking memories get all stirred up again.

To skip all the boring stuff, after hours of trying once more, I was still sitting there, now with three computers, without being able to share any files between them over the network. The frustrating thing was that after all my tries each of them was aware of all the other networked computers but it would not let me share anything between them.
I was supposed to talk to the administrator because I did not have the proper rights. You would think that if there is only one person logged in on a computer and he is the Administrator or has all the Administrator privileges it would tell you to talk to “Fredthegreat” as an example. But no it just gives you a vague message to talk to the Administrator. In any case the Administrator was me and I did not have a clue what they really wanted from me.

It was time again to check out the internet for some help. It is not easy to find a site that tells you not only what you have to do but also why you have to do it and why it is ok to do it. Once it is explained in a way that even I can understand it all started to make sense. What I am talking specifically about is that one HAS TO turn off the Firewalls in all computers and it is fairly safe to do so if one is behind a (cable) router like I am. One should never do that if the computer is connected directly to a Cable Modem, Phone or other service. Given that I had my systems all the time protected as tight as a drum it simply did not sit right with me to now have to open up my connection. Not until I was made aware of that the router is a barrier for incoming threats did I relinquish this control.

Now I said that it was fairly safe to network behind a Router but need to mention that you are not safe from information outgoing to the net from your computer as it might, as an example, if you are infected with a Trojan Horse and it is calling home. Most Firewalls (other than the one installed by Windows) will stop that threat and they can be had even for free. What I have done is install ZoneAlarm on my main computer only so far and shortly will have it on the other two computers also.

After a long and frustrating journey I am Networking and am a happy camper.

You mean for networking to work on the latest, greatest operating system you have to drop your trousers on all the networked machines every time you want to swap files?
That doesn't sound very safe, nor intelligent. You didn't have to do that with 98.

Hawk, perhaps someone else with more networking experience can explain why it is different on XP.
Furthermore, the firewall you need to disable is the one that comes with XP. If you have a different firewall you most likely will be ok since with those you might be able to assign individual rights. For instance you can specify which IP address is safe i.e. is your other networked computer.
Like I said I still use ZoneAlarm as a Firewall while I am networking.

Oh! OK! I guess I missed the part about using Micro$oft's firewall.

BTW! Thanks for the great pictures. They made great wallpapers.

You're doing it wrong. I still have Windows XP firewall enabled and I can share files amongst my four computers just fine. There is a file sharing wizard and a network setup wizard in XP you can run.

KevinL, you are most certainly right. I have done many things wrong on my computer.
Here however is one site of many suggesting a different approach of setting up networking. I guess there is simply no one solution that fits all. All I can say that after days trying and having wizards coming out of my yang yang I was ready for a different approach and it worked for me.

Hawk, you are welcome. Hope you will select all of them over a period of time.

I'm not sure, but I think even the XP firewall will allow individual permissions/exceptions.

JSS wrote:Hawk, you are welcome. Hope you will select all of them over a period of time.

I use WebShots and have it set up to change the wallpaper every hour.

Here at home we have 5 computers that can share files on the network, all of them are running XP home with the windows firewall and AVG anti-virus.

Wolverine@MSU, one would expect it can give individual permissions/exceptions. Until my first tries with networking, as reported in an earlier post, I used a different Firewall. I switched over to the windows firewall in order to simplify things – or so I thought. So I am not very familiar with it.

JoshM, this is just it. Windows seems to be full with instances that some things work with one but not another computer. Let me assure you it takes a lot before I give up trying to do something that I like to see done and I did give up the first time around. This after days of following the normal network setup instructions and getting worried of wearing out the computer on/off switches.
I have seen the advice to turn off the Windows Firewall at that time too but it sounded way to risky. Not until I informed myself better about its role did I feel comfortable with turning it off for installing the network.

All I can say is that the changes I did made it possible for me to network. To further substantiate my claim I can only say that there are many web sites out there suggesting the same procedure.

Right now I am about to start another battle. As of a few days ago I am not able to access the Windows Update site from my old computer. Not an issue with the other two and the update function used to work.

JSS wrote:.Right now I am about to start another battle. As of a few days ago I am not able to access the Windows Update site from my old computer. Not an issue with the other two and the update function used to work.

Did you inadvertently disable Windows Update in the Security Center instead of checking the box to notify you but not update automatically?
That would stop you from being able to update Windows.
Another place that you might have inadvertently turned it off is in Services.

Hawk, When over a year ago I made the decision to get a new computer I did so because the system at the time (now my "old" computer) did start behaving a bit flaky. What was happening was that certain things would not work anymore. It turned out that it was/is most likely related to some HD issues.
Now, like then, I found out that some files required for proper operation were ....damaged? In this case, for Windows Update, two of several required files are not doing their job. They are mshtms (entry point not found) and msjava (module not found). So it is reasonable to assume that with those files not doing their job Windows Update does not work. For now I will go with this theory and once I have more time I will get that resolved also.

Assuming you mean mshtml.dll, here's a link that might help.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917425

And here's one about msjava

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/java/default.mspx

The latest update from MS is so bugging they have removed it from thier download update area.

I haven't gone to Windows Update since Dec. of last year. The last time I went there it wanted to verify that my installation of Windows was genuine, for the 4th time.
If they can't keep up with that then I don't think I want any more updates from them.

Thanks Hawk. Will check that out once I have some time again (or when I want to punish myself again).

Hawk wrote:I haven't gone to Windows Update since Dec. of last year. The last time I went there it wanted to verify that my installation of Windows was genuine, for the 4th time.
If they can't keep up with that then I don't think I want any more updates from them.

The pirates keep finding new ways to disable WGA, so Microsoft has to keep updating it to defeat them.