GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 15, 4-16-09

Thu Apr 16 22:44:37 EDT 2009

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Vol. 9, No. 15                           

4-16-09

1 Blue Screens and you    

2 Calm down!

3 Google bailout?, Time Warner smackdown, Twits, watch those credit card bills

4 Photo creativity             

5 WGA

If you're a Windows user you have likely been assailed by the dreaded Stop Error, usually referred to as the Blue Screen of Death.  The error indicates something went catastrophically wrong and Windows was stopped to prevent damage to the OS.

Unfortunately when these things pop up you can usually do noting short of powering the PC off hard and restarting.  If they come up during the Windows startup you may be seriously hosed.

The messages contain some valuable troubleshooting information that you should make a note of, although most of it is useful only to the engineer who actually wrote the affected code.

Sometimes it's difficult to actually see the messages, since the default setting in Windows XP is to restart immediately in case of a Stop Error.

I suggest to all users to check the setting for that and make certain it doesn't happen.  Right click On My Computer and click Properties, then click the Advanced tab.  Click the Settings button in the Startup and Recovery section and uncheck the box for Automatically restart down toward the bottom.  Don't make any other changes, just click OK and OK and restart the PC.

Good news, though.  If you get smacked with a BSoD before you've made that change you can still bypass the setting.  Turn the computer on cold and immediately start tapping F8 once or twice a second.  Keep doing that until you get the Start Menu, then arrow down to Disable automatic restart on system failure and hit Enter.

Now that you can see the blue screen, the most important pieces of information are the error code and the error text.

The code will be close to the bottom of the message and is in the format nXnnnnnnnn, where n represents an alphanumeric character.  An example is 0X0000007B.

The text error is in the format word_word_word, like IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

Once you have those things get thee to Google and search for one or both.  You may get suggestions all over the map but usually you can at least get a handle on where the error originates.  It could be buggy software, virus or spyware infection, Windows corruption or failing hardware but the majority of the time it's caused by shoddy drivers.

Your Google research likely won't lead to the exact cause but it will give you a starting point.  If you're lucky enough to actually get into Windows, even in Safe Mode with networking, you can use a much more powerful tool called WhoCrashed.  You can get the program here:

http://www.resplendence.com/downloads 

This program looks through the Crash Dumps (you'll notice the error screen verbiage mentioning dumping physical memory) and will often point out the exact file causing the error.

Google that file name if you can get it and you'll find out the source of the error.  Remove the program, driver or bad hardware and you've fixed the problem.  Now you can install the latest version of the software or driver or replace the hardware and you're good to go.

If this sounds too easy it likely it is.  If it sounds too complicated it likely is.  These are just some of the things you can try yourself before you ask for help but by no means should you do things you aren't comfortable with.

You'd be hard pressed to actually damage your PC but if you have important data, with no backups, tread carefully.  The last thing you want is to lose something priceless to you.

Next week we'll talk about other steps you can take to fix major problems, but things only get more complicated as we go.

Until then, backup your stuff ;)

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru at microdome.net

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

The slumping economy has broken Google's streak. For the first time
since it went public in 2004, revenue at the Internet search company
declined between two consecutive quarters as marketers reined in their
online advertising budgets:

http://tinyurl.com/d5kugy

After a public outcry and the attention of several members of
Congress, Time Warner Cable has stopped its trial of Internet data
caps, but not before making "metered billing" a tough sell for all
other American ISPs:

http://tinyurl.com/d95swu

Over the past few days, actor Ashton Kutcher has been racing CNN to be
the first Twitter user with a million followers.  And then, there was
still no cure for cancer:

http://tinyurl.com/dcrcj2

More personal data records were breached last year than the previous
four years combined, thanks to increased hacker activity rather than
insider threats:

http://tinyurl.com/dkulna

Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus at gmail.com 
www.mattstodayinhistory.com

Download of the Week

After a holiday, you probably find yourself with a lot of pictures of your kids and/or grandkids.  This week's program lets you create a collage from your digital pictures.  Shape Collage takes your digital photos and creates an artistic collage from them. Just drag a set of photos into the Shape Collage window and specify the shape of the collage that you want to make. Shape Collage is easy to use and the results are so cool that you'll probably get addicted to making lots of collages just to see how they turn out.  It's free and you can get it here: 

http://www.shapecollage.com/ 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com

Email Question of the Week

Q:  Greetings! I recently started getting a pop-up whenever I boot up my
computer asking me to download software to reduce software piracy by
confirming that the copy of Windows installed is legitimate. Since I
originally bought my computer directly from Dell 6 or 7 years ago with
the software "factory" installed, shouldn't they already know that it
is legitimate? My question is this a legitimate request from Microsoft
or some hacker trying to get me to download some bad stuff? Regards to
all. You are performing a GREAT service!!

A:  The pop-up are you getting is a legitimate, but annoying, one.  Go
ahead and complete the prompts to finish the install and have it go
away.  While it inconviences people like you and me who do run
legitimate copies of Windows at our homes or work, it's meant to lock
out people who are not running genuine copies of Windows.  The irony
of it all is that the people who would get affected by the lockouts
are also the ones who have ways to bypass it with dubious legality.

Hope this takes care of your concerns, and feel free to e-mail back if
you have any other questions.

Daniel A. Williams 
daniel at thepcgurus.com

Contact info and legal stuff

If you have tech support questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please submit them by visiting www.thepcgurus.com and click on the "Email the Team" icon. 

Copyright 2001-2009 The PC Gurus, all rights reserved.  Publication, rebroadcast or storage is prohibited without prior consent, however you may freely forward this publication to friends as long as A) it is forwarded in its entirety and B) no fee is charged.

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