Property ManagementThe Murphy"s Law of Loading New Programs
The next time you load software, maybe you"ll profit from my experience of
this past Friday night. Matter of fact, I hope you"ll print this out and save
it for when you something similar happens to you!
The large number of computer viruses floating around these days prompted me
to get McAfee Office, a software suite containing McAfee VirusScan and eight
other diagnostic and performance enhancing softwares. Friday night, I decided
to load the anti-virus software program and several others (First Aid 98, 2000
Toolbox and Uninstaller). I loaded all four programs at once....then the
trouble began.
(I probably got what I deserved, since I ignored Hainge"s Rule Of Computing
#12: Never load new software when facing a deadline. I have an important
project due, so I should have held off until after it was completed.
But....)
After loading the four programs, I had trouble accessing my computer. When
I was able to access it, it would freeze. When it was unfrozen, the Windows
main screen would appear, but the mouse had no effect. Strangest of all, at
one point everything on the screen started flashing whenever I moved the mouse.
Menus started popping up where I wasn"t even clicking. It was possessed!
I was finally able to correct the problem (I?ll tell you how in a minute),
but I wanted to share with you the lessons I learned from my 4-5 hour
experience recovering from near disaster. They are:
* When you buy a software suite of any kind, load only one program. Use it
for a day or so. If all is well, load the next program and repeat the
procedure. In my case, I loaded four programs at once, so it was difficult to
tell which program caused the problem. If you load just one program, your
techie or tech support for the product will have an easier time straightening
out the problem.
* Don"t load software on the weekends if the software company isn"t open on
the weekends. Naturally, the McAfee tech support was open only Monday through
Friday! Therefore, I couldn?t get to the tech support that could have provided
the fastest solution to my problem.
* In most cases, it pays to uninstall the old version of a program before
installing the new one, unless your new program is an "update" program. I had
an old version of McAfee on my computer, and confusion between it and the
newer version I was installing might have caused the problem. NOTE: If the
program you"re uninstalling has data or template files you want to save, save
them to another directory or to disk before uninstalling the program
* Keep this number handy: 800-936-5700. That"s the number for Microsoft"s
$35 per call "priority" support. Fortunately, I found the number recorded in
my database. The technician was wonderful, and she spent over an hour working
me through the problem. Well worth the $35, since it is 24 hour tech support,
7 days a week, excluding holidays.
* Keep this command in your database and written down in your "computer
book," a bound book that you can keep all technical data in: scanreg /restore.
This is the command that the tech support person had me use when my computer
was coming up but nothing would work. Here"s how you use it:
When you turn on your computer, hold down the Control key. This gets you to
the dos prompt (C: ). Then she had me type in scanreg /restore and hit Enter.
This brings up "registry list" for the past few dates you"ve used your
computer. I had one dated 4/17, one dated 4/16 and one dated 4/15. She had me
highlight the one for the date before the problems started (4/15) and press
enter. This started the computer using the registry file for the last time I
used the computer before problems developed. (The registry file is the file
that controls how the computer starts up.) She figured, correctly, that using
this file, the last one before the problems came up, we"d get the computer to
start as it did when everything worked. It did, and we were able to work on
and eventually solve the problem by uninstalling all the software I"d loaded
Friday night...whew!
The biggest lesson? Do regular backups of your complete hard drive in case
a botched install makes it impossible to get to your data. Matter-of-fact,
it"s been awhile since I"ve saved everything to my tape backup, so I"ll do that
tonight...
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