COMPUTING: No bull - My blue screen of death in the afternoon

Houston Chronicle ^ | March 1, 2003 | DWIGHT SILVERMAN

[Cincinatus' Wife]

It sounds like he wants some help. I thought a FReeper might have the answer.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Give it last rites and a nice burial.

[Texas_Jarhead]

Roxio caused me some dang headaches. As Silverman learned never restore from too far back (unless you rarely make system changes). That said, I still think system restore is an excellent addition to WInXP.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I don't have any clue about this stuff. I'm still amazed computers work!

[stylin19a]

Not enough info. Was norton disabled when the Roxio programs were installed ?

Was the PC shut-down after the Roxio install ?

I first would have deleted the ShellIconCache file, then shutdown and do a cold start. The shelliconcache file gets rebuilt.

[js1138]

If you had a real copy of XP you could reinstall it, then reinstall the programs. The data and document files would be untouched. My sister's machine had hard disk errors that produced many of these symptoms.

[CyberCowboy777]

The c:\Scanreg /restore from "boot to command prompt" in Win98 is also great.

Saved a client's system more than once.

Your right though - any "go back" or "restore" should be used carefully. Do not go back to far - only as far as necessary.

[Texas_Jarhead]

A big ole Constitution party BUMP to ya. Don't run across others too often (even around here).

[Jhoffa_]

Roxio caused me some dang headaches.

I never did like it.

Dumping Nero for Roxio is like ditching Linda Vester for Madonna.

Some things just shouldn't be done.. and, as such deserve reprisal!

[Master of Orion]

For future reference you could use this handy program to run an unattended Restore Point Creation as a Scheduled Task.

I haven't tried it though, just found it.

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts_desc/xp_sysrestorepoint.htm

[First_Salute]

Roxio software is more sensitive to the quality of hardware connections. Marginal CD devices fail to meet the requirements.

First test is to disconnect the IDE or SCSI connector and then the power and any other connectors to the CD device.

Then try to start the PC.

IF it works, get a new Yamaha mechanism or some other which is likely to provide the kind of service which can keep up with the CD burning software.

[Lurkus Maximus]

Another tool to have in your toolbox is the System Recovery Console. You can run it from the CD by booting off the CD, select Repair, and then select recovery console. After you log on as administrator, you could have disabled all the services associated with Roxio. Roxio does some pretty nasty stuff with their drivers. Some of their filter drivers don't even uninstall completely, so installing it is a one way ticket. If you had disabled their services at least that may have cut the interference with some of the other programs.

Recovery console will also let you delete or rename files. Here again, you may have been able to rename or delete Roxio's drivers assuming you knew what their name was.

Of course hindsight is always easier than foresight.

Good luck on your reload!

[CyberCowboy777]

Howdy!

There are a few...somewhere!

[Nick Danger]

I make a disk image of my C: drive every week. I use DriveImage. Norton Ghost will do the same thing. No matter what goes wrong, I have a copy of the way the disk was no later than two weeks ago. If I have to, I can re-format the drive and put it back exactly as it was the last time it worked. Doing this has saved my butt a half-dozen times.

I also burn a copy just before doing an installation of anything hairy, like a new video or sound driver. If the new one hoses things up, I don't even uninstall it; I write over the whole partition with the disk copy. That way I'm sure it's gone, and I'm sure that everything else is back the way it was.

[HAL9000]

And please, no "you should have been using a Mac" e-mails.

It's too late now to say "you should have been using a Mac". It would have avoided the miserable experience he described, but that's water under the bridge now.

But if he wants to avoid those problems in the future, he should throw his low quality crap computer in the dumpster - and get a Mac.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Read some bad things about Roxio so I didn't install any of it when I put on my new Norton software. Nero's been good for me.

For Norton Anti Virus problems, don't do an unistall through the control panel or system but download the uninstallers from the Symantec website and use them before reinstall. Also he could have a virus made to corrupt his Norton that makes him think it's running when it isn't. I did. My Anti virus would fall off ( stop running after a few seconds ) and the "Live Update" would freeze up. The Symantec site also has something to download called "Smart Update" that runs different than the CD install. That found and deleted my virus. He may also have to go in and manually delete some Norton setting files that were created on install.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

10 to 1 this guy has the bios virus detection turned on.

My dislike for Norton goes back to Win 3.1, it's always caused more trouble than it ever fixes. (Any software that wants to be "king of the computer" clashes with me tho, cause that's my job.;-))

I've yet to see Roxio install and work without trashing things up. The best uninstall is not to install it in the first place.

That's 3 strikes right there, and I can tell he's a virus paranoid too.

[jammer]

You're right about Roxio. When Adaptec had Easy CD it worked great for me. I "upgraded" when Roxio took it and never could get it to work. Nero has worked for me on several types of drives, including those that Roxio used strictly for making coasters.

[Jhoffa_]

Nero has worked for me on several types of drives, including those that Roxio used strictly for making coasters.

Oh yeah.. Nero recognizes my drive's buffer under-run hardware. Haven't burned a bad disk yet.

Roxio and (to my surprise) Hotburn (By IOMega) were just wasteful in that regard. Just awful.

[drjoe]

And please, no "you should have been using a Mac" e-mails. Consider that a given.

Are you saying that you SHOULD have been using a Mac and that THAT was a given? Of course I agree with you and sympathize with you and would never be heard to say that, "you should have been using a Mac" LOL. However if you are saying that your NOT using a Mac is a given, then all I can say is SUCKA and, in the spirt of Christian charity, "You deserve what you get.", and, finally, enjoy the rest of your miserable computing career in thrall to Bill Gates and the Empire of Micro$loth. Flame on. I am heading for the storm cellar.