I’ve spent the past few days trying to fix a friends Dell computer. It kept booting into safe mode and would boot the XP OS. After not finding a solution, I did a re-install of XP. That all went fine and after it was up and running again I ran a scan disk to make sure there were no problems with the hard drive. After a few hours that test failed and crash while checking the “free disk space”. Ok, great, now it appears the hard drive has problems…

I booted into the Dell diagnostic screen (F12) and ran some tests, sure enough the drive failed. So knowing that the Dell machines warranty was up, I opened the pc and took out the hard drive. The hard drive is a Maxtor drive and according to Maxtor, the drive comes with a 3 year warranty. Great, I’ll just send it off and get a new one… WRONG. Maxtor only gives a warranty on their drives if purchased separate of a computer system! What a bunch of crap. So now, I call Dell…

After being on hold for about 10 minutes I finally got through to Tech support and after some discussion he found out for me that since the drive came with the pc, the drive carries the same warranty as the pc, only one year! What the heck, the manufacture has a 3 year warranty on it, but now because it came in a Dell, it only has a year! Who writes these policies anyway? It makes no sense what so ever, other than Maxtor doesn’t want to deal with supporting their drives and has unloaded that support off onto Dell. In the past I’ve had hard drives fail (Western Digital), and I just sent them back and they sent me a new one… Where is the support here Maxtor!

Anyway, the guy from Dell was helpful in getting me to “debug” the hard drive to totally wipe it clean. He says that now if I go and re-install XP, the formatting process should flag any bad areas of the hard drive so the OS does not try and use that area, thus causing crashes. Well see, I’m 48% into the format process and it is 9:55AM. I’ll update my blog during the process to let you know how I make out.

NOTE: If the install fails and the computer crashes again, then my friend is out of luck and will have to get a new hard drive.

Everyone who reads my posts and knows me, knows how much I prefer and recommend “FireFox” over Internet Explorer. Well it appears, I’m not the only one!

Read Here

Recently I was helping a client clear out some old computers and they asked what they could do with them? I didn’t really have an answer as computer recycling doesn’t seem to be as popular as our regular recycling programs. We should get on the RRFB about this.

In the metro area there is a non-profit called “reBOOT Nova Scotia”. They are part of reBOOT Canada and are located at 386 Windmill Rd here in Dartmouth. They operate out of “LakeCity Enterprises”.

So if you have old computer hardware you should probably bring it to them. They’ll try first to refurbish the machine and donate it to a school or other needy organization. If it can’t be given a second life, they’ll strip it down and make sure it is disposed of properly.

You can contact them at admin@lakecityemployment.com

Click here to read more on the issue of computer waste…

Steve Gibson, security expert of GRC.com, talks about browser security.

Why is Internet Explorer so insecure? What can you do to secure it? And why is it so hard to make a secure browser? Steve talks about security policy vs. browser flaws, how he uses IE safely, and why Java and Javascript are inherently more secure than ActiveScript and ActiveX.

Have a listen, read on-line, or view PDF…

Taken from http://why.openoffice.org/

Is your office software legal? According to figures published by Microsoft, 35% of the software in the world is thought to be counterfeit or otherwise illegal.

After years of unofficially tolerating piracy as a means of securing market share, Microsoft is now going on the offensive to make sure copies of its software are legitimate.

* It has just bought a software company specialising in detecting what software is installed on PCs.
* It is now using the internet to put piracy detection software into copies of MS-Office on people’s PCs.
* around the world, the Business Software Alliance is setting up schemes to prosecute offenders - for example, in the UK it is offering large cash rewards to anyone who informs against organisations.
* Microsoft’s licence agreements are complicated - it’s easy to break them by mistake.

If you have a copy of MS-Office at work, at school, at home - are you sure where it came from?

Fortunately, there is a completely legal and free alternative. OpenOffice.org 2 is a fully-featured office suite, similar in functionality to MS-Office. OpenOffice.org 2 does everything you need: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and much more. It can even use MS-Office format files (.doc, .xls, .ppt), so you don’t need to re-type your work. What’s more, it does things MS-Office does not, such as create pdf files to give to other people.

If you can use MS-Office, you can use OpenOffice.org 2. Studies have shown it is ten times cheaper to move to OpenOffice.org 2 than it is to upgrade to MS-Office 2007.

A poll has indicated 86% of users would prefer to try OpenOffice.org 2 rather than buy MS-Office 2007.

So what are you waiting for? It costs nothing to try. If you like it, OpenOffice.org 2 costs nothing to use for as long as you like, wherever you like. Peace of mind at no cost.

Open Office Brochure