Microsoft and --What Do You Want To Do Today

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim
  • Start date Start date
J

Jim

Jeez, I wanted to spend my day with the following:

1. LexMark Printer suddenly won't print. Download the latest drivers.
Install, and test. Test Page prints fine, but all other applications
won't print. Change the USB Port to the other USB port. Thanks for
Plug-And-Pray. Funny thing is, I have not installed anything new or
changed any configuration settings. Everytime I reboot my PC it tells
me it has found new Hardware, my LexMark Printer, and wants to install
the latest software, although it can't seem to find it.

2. GRC.com indicates I have open ports 1025 and 1026. Download the
fixes from Microsoft that are supposed to fix this problem. What
happened to the XP automatic Update feature that I subscribe to? 1st
attempt gives some obscure error message. Download Rollup 1 again and
it works, but these ports are still open... Thanks MS for this great
OS.

3. Checking the Properties on any folder takes 15-30 seconds, but
hey, I have nothing better to do than wait for these results. No
indication from the OS that anything is happening, but eventually the
properties do show up. We are talking about a 30gb hard drive on
FAT32. I can remember when the simple DIR command in DOS provided
these numbers instantly.

Conclusions: Give this PC and OS to someone who can appreciate it.
Make sure they understand, its come without support from me or
Microsoft.
 
how do you people get into this? i've had xp for years
now without any problems. ido updates weekly and
diskclean and defrag monthly and have never seen a virus
or spy. i practice safe hex and careful about sites
visited. loaded 3 different printers and all sorts of
gamepads joysticks and usb harddrives and usb jump
drives. all kinds of different hardware changes and
never seen what happens to you folks.
 
In addition to the practices you listed, users should also consider the
following:

1. Before installing XP onto an older system, run the XP compatibility test
to find out if the hardware, drivers, etc. will be adequate.
2. Although doing an upgrade from a previous OS usually works fine, to avoid
carrying over any problems from the previous OS, a re-format and clean
install is worth considering.
3. After installation, keep XP updated regularly.
4. Install an anti-virus program, run it regularly, and keep it updated. I
use AVG from Grisoft. It is free.
5. Install an anti-spyware program, run it regularly, and keep it updated. I
use Ad-Aware from Lavasoft. It is also free. Another good one is Spybot
Search and Destroy. Many people have found that using both Ad-Aware and
Spybot is a good idea, because what one of them doesn't catch, the other
will.
6. Do not use your real e-mail address in newsgroup posts. That just invites
spam. Instead, create a fake address for NGs.
7. Create a message rule that deletes from the server any incoming e-mail
that does NOT have your real e-mail address in the TO or CC line. This stops
many spammers.
 
And - although implied in the first reply, IMO the one
biggest thing after anti-virus software one can do is to
learn how to use a limited, non-administrative account
for day-to-day computer usage.
 
How fortunate you are... I didn't bother to mention that I can't run
Defrag from XP unless I am in safe mode. Allow 20 hours for my 30gb
drive. After its done, I'm not sure anything has really happened in
terms of performance... Check the Microsoft Knowledge base on this
issue, and you will find nothing of any value.

I am not talking about a custom PC, but rather, an off the shelf PC.
Nothing out of the norm here. I know how to rebuild an OS, but
perhaps XP is just for you Gaming Folks. My needs are much simplier:
Print a document from a networked compter (Won't work), look at the
total disk space for a particular folder (15-30 seconds), Keep my PC
up-to-date with Patches/Updates (keep getting --Download this latest
patch/Update) when in fact I download and install some of these
patches once a week.

I can come home from work, and spend the evening
updating/patching/enhancing my computer. There was a day when I could
come home and actually turn the computer on and do something
productive.
 
1. LexMark Printer suddenly won't print. Download the latest drivers.
Click to expand...

Since this isn't related in any way to security administration of a Windows
XP system, can I suggest that you try taking this to an appropriate
newsgroup, where there's a chance that someone can help you? Or did you
come here solely to complain?
2. GRC.com indicates I have open ports 1025 and 1026. Download the
fixes from Microsoft that are supposed to fix this problem. What
happened to the XP automatic Update feature that I subscribe to? 1st
attempt gives some obscure error message. Download Rollup 1 again and
it works, but these ports are still open... Thanks MS for this great
OS.
Click to expand...

Okay, so let's find out what's listening on those ports. Open up a command
prompt window (Start | All Programs | Accessories | Command Prompt), type in
and run the following command:

netstat -aon | findstr ":1025 :1026"

You'll get a listing back that looks something like this:

TCP 0.0.0.0:1025 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING 1056
TCP 0.0.0.0:1026 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING 1884
TCP [::]:1025 [::]:0 LISTENING 1056
TCP [::]:1026 [::]:0 LISTENING 1884

The last two lines are there because I've enabled IPv6 support, but if you
haven't done that on your machine, you won't have anything like those last
two lines. The final column lists the Process ID - in my case, 1056 and
1884.

So I hit Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up the Task Manager, and select the
"Processes" tab. One of the columns here is PID - Process ID. I match the
PID up to the image name to find out what program is running on that port,
and then I figure out if I need that port open by that service, and if I
need it open to the Internet.

I'm not quite sure what fixes you're referring to on this, because of course
ports 1025 and 1026 are simply two ephemeral ports assigned to the first app
to request them. What apps are using these ports on _your_ system?

As a matter of course, I'm going to suggest that you enable the ICF -
Internet Connection Firewall, because that will stop any ports from being
accessible to all and sundry.
3. Checking the Properties on any folder takes 15-30 seconds, but
Click to expand...

Again, wrong newsgroup.
Conclusions: Give this PC and OS to someone who can appreciate it.
Make sure they understand, its come without support from me or
Microsoft.
Click to expand...

There's plenty of support out there, from Microsoft, as well as from other
volunteers n newsgroups like this. But it doesn't help when you go asking
in entirely the wrong place, and using vague language so that we don't have
an idea of what you're actually complaining about. It also doesn't help
when your attitude is cruddy from the get-go.

Alun.
~~~~

[Please don't email posters, if a Usenet response is appropriate.]
 
I really think you haven't tried to solve the problems. You have had lots of
very helpful suggestions in this NG, yet all you do is continue to whine. I
am pretty sure that most, if not all, of your problems are due to things you
have done, or not done. Most consider XP the best OS out of Microsoft yet.
 
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