Thursday, June 30, 2005

ErrorGuard

Yesterday, I saw a pop-up for a program. I clicked on the wrong spot of it and it opened a window asking me if I would like to download the program. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mess with something like that because it is usually spyware or adware. But since I am getting my harddrive reformatted, I decided to go ahead and see what it was. The ErrorGuard program downloaded onto my harddrive and then a scan of all my drives. It reported that I had over 200 errors. If I wanted the program to fix the errors, then I should pay them $29.99 and they would send me the activation key. Well, after my bad experience with Un-delete, I decided to pass.

However, I was curious if ErrorGuard was a worthwhile program. I did a Google search on ErrorGuard (no spaces) and ended up at CNet's forum. There was a long thread on it, and a lot of people had had disasterous consequences using it while other users were very happy with the program.

Some people reported losing all their files, crashing harddrives, and several had to reformat their drives. Some people were still trying to get the pop-ups off their system. One person mentioned that the uninstall program might be faulty, so I was leary of using it to get the program off my drive. The program did not appear in my Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel

So I deleted the folder in Program Files. As I continued reading the thread, I realized there were probably other remnants of the program in Windows. So I did more Google searches and found explanations of how to delete the ErrorGuard files from Windows Registry. I actually learned quite a lot from the experience. After I completed that, I did a complete system search for ErrorGuard and ErroGuard and the only thing left on my system were the shortcuts in the Start Up Menu and on the desktop.

Before I deleted the registry entries, I ran AdAware, and it didn't identify any of the elements of ErrorGuard. So I do not know if this program is useful or not. The domain name owner is shielded by Domains by Proxy, Inc. Also when I did Google searches, a lot of the paid ads on the right column were different domain names selling Error Guard. If you check out the owners of those domains, they are also registered to Domains by Proxy, Inc. There is an e-mail to support, but there is no other contact information on their website. There is no explanation how the program works. There is a FAQ, and some people on the CNet forum reported getting replies from the support e-mail.

Personally, I will never buy it.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Back Up Files

I have been procrastinating taking my computer into the repair shop. When I haven't taken it in by Tuesday, then I figure I should wait until the next week because they take 3 days to fix it, and then I won't have it for the weekend. Another reason, I tell myself, is that I need to back up everything. The E drive is a separate physical drive and shouldn't be distrubed, but what if it is? What if I lose all the data on that drive, too? So I have been busy making back-up CDs.

With my track record making CDs, though, I end up making one, ruining one, making one, and then ruining another. I don't know how I manage this record, but that's the way it's been going. I have found out that if I do anything other than making a CD, even playing solitaire, I end up with a bad CD. The first one I wrecked was because I tried to put too much on it. Oddly, the little scale at the bottom of the program did not indicate that I was trying to put too much on the CD. But when I set up the files the second time, the scale was full before I put everything back on it that I had tried to copy the first time.

The only thing I can figure went wrong is that I had added files and then deleted files several times, and somehow the program must have lost track of what I was actually putting on it.

Since it is Wednesday, the pressure is off because I probably won't take the computer in until Monday. Also my car is in the repair shop, and until I get it back, I don't have transportation. So I have been piddling around doing things like dishes and laundry instead of backing up my computer.

Monday I went to Office Max and bought some plastic pages that hold CDs that fit into a 3-ring binder. Then I picked up a couple of 3-ring binders. After I got them home, Keith told me that he had lots of old 3-ring binders that he was going to toss and that I should have told him before I bought new ones. I put all the plastic pages in the new binders and added a CD sleeve for each slot. Now I am all organized to make the back-ups. So I have 4 done so far. I wonder how many I will need to do a complete backup?

Today I asked Keith if he remembered to bring home binders for my next project, and he said, "No."

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Repair Appointment

Just now I called the computer store and set up an appointment to bring it in Monday.

Donna said she would run diagnostics on everything --for me to make a list of what I suspected is wrong and the symptoms.

My harddrive is back from the factory, the one that failed when all this started. So she is going to see if she can install that as a second back-up drive.

I went to the Tripp Lite website and one of their recommendations for my system is to buy a OMNI VS 1000VA 120V LINE-INT. The other two are OMNISMART1050 and the SMART700 but those two don't have UPS outlets.

Matt doesn't think I am overtaxing my video card, and that it might be the power supply. He asked what size it is in watts and how many components are running off it. He recommended using memtest86 to test the memory.

Matt also said, "The hard drive controller(IDE Controller) on your motherboard might be bad as well. It's very rare, but it does appear this is what happened to RivalPro's hardware during the last outtage."

I guess I am going to have to take the computer into the shop to have those things tested, the power supply and the IDE Controller.

Does a power outage damage the power supply? My power supply is less than 2 years old. How long are they suppose to last?

I also have my computer plugged into a BC Pro 600 UPS System.  Isn't that suppose to prevent outages from damaging anything? Do UPS systems get damaged? How can you tell?

Friday, June 17, 2005

Damaged Hardware

I asked Matt from Rival Pro Support Forums for his opinion.  He thought it sounded like damaged hardware caused by a lightning strike, a power outage or brown-out. He suggested that I have someone run a memory test.

When the problems started I checked out the memory myself, and everything came out okay. What else on the motherboard could cause it?

Is there a diagnoistic test that can be done on video cards?

Or is it possible that I am overtaxing the video card by expecting it to do more than it was designed to do? The only games I play on my computer are solitaire so I didn't get a powerful video card.

Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.40 GHz
Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
DirectX 9.0 or better

Nvidia Graphics card
Processor: GeForce FX5200
DAC Type: Integrated RAMDAC
Memory Size: 128 MB

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Problems

Ever since I had my new C drive installed and formatted twice, I have been having some quirky problems with it.

For instance, the escape key doesn't work at times. For instance, I open Notepad and then change my mind. I can't use the Escape key to shut it.

My right click won't work on the Start Menu, but it works everywhere else. In fact, when I created a Guest account, the right click worked on the Start Menu. The inconvenience of this is not being able to use the right-click menus or sort the links by name.

The past couple of days I have been having some major display problems that end up crashing the browser, and I have to reboot to regain use.

I tried using Photoshop, and it locked up the computer. When I watch a streaming video, it causes the system to become unstable sometimes, but not all the time.

Are all of this problems related somehow? Do you think I should have Windows reformatted again?

Twice I have updated my video drivers from Nvidia.

I have an intuition that this is a video problem. Does this sound like my video card is going bad? How would I be able to tell if that is the problem?