calling all geeks—help !!!
I am a computer moron, and fully intend to stay that way. I know how to do everything I need to do with the internet, and don’t want to get lost learning new ways to “improve” what already works fine for me.
I use a legal version of XP, and Microsoft sends me periodic “upgrades”. I assume most of these are actually fixes which should have been unnecessary in the first place if the product I paid for had been made right…But how can I, a mere mortal, dare to defy God, er Bill Gates?
Now I’ve read that IE 7 will automatically rape my computer and force itself in without my consent. cite (warning: cite is a summary only, reading the whole article costs $ )
the same article states that a site callled http://tinyurl.com/13zyk has a free tool you can download that will let you “install XP security updates while skipping over IE7’s automatic install”
Questions:
1.–Is Microsoft really planning to install major new software on every PC in the world automatically? It must be a huge file, and it seems like it would create potential problems. This blogger says it took him over an hour to download.
2. should I download the “free tool” I mentioned above?
I have no desire or need to destroy my IE6 and replace it with a new version , which I don’t know how to use, and which is undoubtably dangerous—vulnerable to new viruses and hackers. Maybe, in another year or two, a simple user like me will be willing to switch–but only after Micro$oft has fixed the bugs which the geeks and hackers will discover
When there are updates available for your computer, a box will pop up and ask you if you want to download them. You can pick the ones you want to download. For the unselected ones, if you check the “Don’t ask me about these updates again” box, you won’t be asked again. After the files are downloaded, you will be asked if you want to install them.
I was asked once about IE7. I didn’t select it and I checked to option not to be asked again. I never was and IE6 is still on my machine (although I use Firefox).
Sorry, I left that part out. :o But leaving automatic updates turned on is like walking around with “Please rape me.” written on your forehead. I figured everybody knew that.
This is incorrect. While I agree some Microsoft products have been poorly designed, other companies products are also upgraded from time to time to fix problems which came up later. Firefox, for example.
The IE7 install file is 14.8MB, so unless you have really slow dial up, it should not take very long to download. I have been using it for a couple of weeks now, and aside from a few small things, I like it fine. No problems installling. Seems more stable than IE6. If this is rape, I’ll take more, please.
Except for the QuickBooks thing. I use escape to back out of windows. I used to be careful to not accidetally hit F1 and have to wait for the help menu to load, now I have to be REALLY careful or it causes even more problems.
I was a little suprised to see IE7 included in the critical updates category, but even if you overlook and accidentally select it, you will get a confirmation dialog, so you get a chance to bale out of installation.
Oddly, the dialog didn’t display properly on my machine.
Well… I installed it and it broke the file system on my (WinXP Pro) computer - apparently I don’t have a paging file now.
And it’s horrible - an eyesore, and incredibly slow - never mind - it gave me the nudge I needed to switch completely over to Firefox here at work (I’ve been using it exclusively at home for about six months).
Probably, of course, in some cases, those safeguards, cures, etc. may just be included in IE7 if they were about to release it anyways.
Eh, doesn’t matter to me either way, I use Firefox, which works for me 99% of the time, and the few times it doesn’t, IE works fine as a backup. As for Microsoft (or anyone else) releasing a product before it’s absolutley perfect, you have to consider that if after a few years, they’re STILL finding bugs, we’d likely still be using IE3 if we had to wait till they had a product be perfect before they would release it.
I just did some reading up on the problem I encountered (missing page file and missing/corrupt $mft after installing IE7 and it looks like a number of other people are experiencing the same problem.
I just discovered that system restore is not switched on on that machine either (can’t explain that one). Damn - it’s the machine I do all my software development at work. Everything critical is backed up, of course, but it’s going to be a massive pain in the arse if I have to restore everything from bare metal.
Bugger.
I can’t deselect it on my machine here at home (running XP Home) - the ‘don’t show this update’ checkbox is greyed out for IE7 (it’s there for the other updates, just not available for IE7.
I’ve been soul-searching lately on whether I should/could ever move to pure Linux - not a decision I would ever take lightly, since I’ve been quite loyal to, and dependent upon Microsoft so far, but I think today might actually mark a significant step away.
I haven’t tried IE7 (I am using Firefox), but you might want to read the Oct. 27 blog on this site: Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters: October 2006 Archives. This does not, of course, answer the question of automatic upgrades. Just one man’s opinion and a MS employee at that, but he says he used to use Firefox nonetheless and no longer does.
This is weird. I had to go into the office today and I fully expected my machine to be toast. It runs chkdsk on boot, then restarts into Windows and reports two things (in overlapping dialogs): there is no page file, and $mft is missing or corrupted. Then it boots into Windows just fine.
If the master file table is shagged, I would expect things not to work very well, but it all seems more or less OK. I’m wondering if the errors are just being misreported.
I can’t uninstall IE7 though; it’s not listed in the Add/Remove Programs thing and as I mentioned earlier, system restore seems to have been switched off somewhen (I was horrified and totally perplexed to discover this).
Well, it’s been a fun couple of hours putting my system back together; consisting of:
Booting into the recovery console to run chkdsk in it’s exhaustive mode.
Uninstalling IE7 - although there was nothing in the Add/Remove programs list (even when ‘include updates’ was checked), there turned out to be an uninstaller hidden away in the Windows folder (C:\WINDOWS\ie7\spuninst\spuninst.exe), and this appears to have worked.
Fixing my broken paging file by editing the registry (nobody should have to do this, ever) - the problem was caused by the presence of a ‘TempPageFile’ entry in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management, when there was also a valid PagingFiles entry.
So it’s all (I think) back to normal now. I’m totally done with IE now though - I don’t think there’s anything MS could do to restore my faith.
