The AnswersThatWork Blog - February 2007 - Fun & Interesting ideas on computers, IT, Life, and other things, with a few interspersed technical tips (with RSS feed)

The AnswersThatWork Blog

Sunday, 18th February 2007

Happy Chinese New Year, and KillWind!

Today is the Chinese New Year – we are officially in the Year of the Pig (or Boar). According to the book right beside me, this is a year which engenders good will throughout. It is a good year for business (Yum, Yum!!), people and countries become more liberal, and conciliation is in the air (excellent, excellent – hint, hint, hint!). Happy New Year to you all !

Now, how about starting the year with a real joker from HP – Here is an email we received last night, word for word :

ODDITY : Today, for the first time, McAfee Scan "detected" a program of HP's that it called "Potentially Unwanted", titled "KillWind.exe" which is in the "C:\hp\bin" path. It is apparently a hidden program that was installed at the factory. I opened the properties dialog box, and on the "Version" tab, found this under "Comment:" : Does nothing in the least bit alarming or dangerous. When I highlighted the "Special Build Description" it read : Special build to assuage all those who lost sleep over the previous version comments. Funny, huh?

Again, I don't know what that program does, but I guess I will trust HP, since they're the ones who installed it, and I'm pretty sure they don't want to harm their creations!

Purchased PC in Sept of 2006. I use Microsoft Update service for both my O/S and MS Office XP Pro Suite w/Publisher, set to AutoUpdate monthly.

Again, thanks for being there, and explaining so many things about PCs!

Gee ! It's funny and ridiculous at the same time. Obviously some programmer at Hewlett Packard is having fun, and it is funny, if you are a colleague of that programmer, but to have something like that released onto thousands of PCs, particularly given the name of the program involved, is absolutely ridiculous, and there are a few people in HP Quality Control who need their heads slapped, slapped hard, slapped silly.

For the benefit of C, whose email it is above : KILLWIND.EXE is indeed a genuine HP program that is used by their software to stop specific background HP programs.

Still ........

—— (TUT) SpaceMan

Wednesday, 7th February 2007

Silly error messages

I was checking a client's laptop today to identify a specific problem. When I turned it on I got a black DOS screen with the following message "The last attempt to restart the system from it's previous location failed. Attempt to restart again" followed by these two options :

1) Delete restoration data and continue to menu.
2) Restart and try again.

I tried "Restart and try again". That did not work. I was back at the same screen again, so I tried "Delete restoration data and continue to menu". This time it booted up. I shut the laptop down and restarted it twice but could not recreate the problem.

I then checked the Microsoft website and found some references to Hibernation. Called the client – "Oh, Yes, I never shut Windows down – I always just close the lid and I've never understood why I get this message on boot-up!".

It may sound like the end-user was being stupid but how can you blame him when you get silly error messages that no-one can understand without some detailed research. With such an error message there is no way he would have known that he was putting his laptop into hibernation every time he shut the lid down.

If I had the time I would start a campaign to end all silly error messages.

—— (KW) Wiz Kid

Sunday, 4th February 2007

Bright orange corkscrews, floating ice islands, and 442 merry anglers !

The world is full of wonderful traditions. The world is full of hilarious stories. The world is full of nutters who take things too far.

Check this story out about 442 Russian anglers, women, and children who floated away on ice floes into the open sea and had to be rescued by the Russian Coastguard. Some of these ice floes can measure up to 15km by 4km (10 miles by 2.5 miles). Read till the end, it is hilarious.

Think this is only a one-off ?

Think again !

First, read here about this wonderful tradition – the ice fishermen, and.... the ice fishermen again.

Then, check the links below to see how man just never learns, particularly when an age-old tradition is taken up by enthusiastic city types who combine both inexperience and lack of respect for Mother Nature. Add a measure of total disregard for warnings from locals, and you have an amazing reoccurring disaster !

2001 (with pictures)

2004

—— (TUT) SpaceMan