What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?
ANSWER: I don’t know, and I don’t care!
It’s been one of those days for me, when random thoughts come flooding in for no apparent reason.
Well, perhaps it’s all been triggered by my reading the following article:
Putting it off: some ideas about why we procrastinate
Go read it yourself – if you can be bothered. Else put it off until mañana.
And as we know from the famous Peggy Lee song of 1948, mañana is soon enough …
Of course, that’s just as absurd a statement as many others that are spouted out in the gun control debate.
Do guns become animate and start firing by themselves? Perhaps sensor-controlled ones would, but fortunately there aren’t many of those around, certainly not in movie theatres and schools, thank goodness. It’s what’s on the other end of the trigger finger that’s responsible, surely?
The above was prompted by reading Data suggest guns do in fact kill people in the online version of The Economist. This article concludes:
“It's really not terribly shocking that making it harder to get your hands on machines designed to kill people results in fewer people being killed. But we've worked very hard over the past few decades to convince ourselves otherwise.”
Go read the article and ponder the arguments for and against gun control.
During the last few days a Windows connectivity problem reared its ugly head. I used to get this from time to time with Windows 7, and now am suffering from it under Windows 8.
Every time that I resume from Sleep mode (which is several times per day) the wired Ethernet adapter would not reconnect and remained permanently offline in “Unidentified network” state, lasting for some minutes at least (I didn’t wait any longer, it should come online in 10 to 20 seconds at most).
While researching the above problem, thanks to trusty old Google search I stumbled upon what seems to be a solution for another painful that I described some months ago at Windows 8 will not save Network Discovery settings.
In summary, Windows Firewall went awry earlier this year, stopping LAN connections between this system and other Windows systems in my local area network. Since then, I’ve had to keep Windows Firewall turned off, and have experimented with several other firewalls which themselves caused a few problems: firstly being very intrusive (or “noisy”), plus making some other software quite difficult to keep running properly. Consequently for the last few weeks I’ve been running without a software firewall and being alert for intrusions (as well as some benefit from the Cable modem’s built-in hardware firewall).
My discovery today -- while doing a Google search for Windows 8 repair “Windows Firewall” (this time with searchword “repair” that I hadn’t used on previous occasions) – was an interesting-looking repair tool called reimage that claims to give excellent results. I installed and ran it, and after a couple of minutes of scanning it presented the following results (the final part of the scan results only):
When I clicked on the “START REPAIR” button it opened a browser window inviting me to subscribe:
Being tight for funds at the moment (undergoing some treatment for melanoma, too many decades in the strong Australian sunshine I suppose), I declined payment.
So I went looking for a similar but hopefully FREE repair tool and luckily found one, which I used with good results and so would recommend to you. It’s available from Tweaking.com who describe themselves as “a group of tech heads with system performance on their brains.”
See the overview of their software and specifically (for this discussion) go to Repair Windows Firewall . . .
This will repair the Windows Firewall. The firewall is built into the system rather deep. And when the firewall becomes corrupt it can still block out side connections from coming in. Even when turned off. Also when corrupt you are unable to add any exceptions to the firewall.
Built into Windows “rather deep” is an understatement! As you will see from my earlier post the underpinnings of Windows Firewall are totally obscure. Microsoft themselves don’t provide any readily-accessible documentation for understanding how it’s all supposed to work, and how to systematically go about fixing things when it all goes wrong.
Anyway, even though it’s only described as being “for Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 2008 & 7” I installed and ran Repair Windows Firewall under windows 8. A little over a minute later I got the final screen:
But did it really fix my Network Discovery problem, could I browse other Windows systems on the LAN and could they browse this Windows 8 system?
Some quick testing proved that the answer was Yes, Yes, Yes.
Look again at the second-last last screenshot at Windows 8 will not save Network Discovery settings . . .
![[image%255B60%255D.png]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoGAGOjY7oHT6nnHdBSPaSV6F0hbiLQzdzyX5_Ia84RXSeZy_19RwXdXTIUyN1yZdWcw5_KDZv9-tr6lsLIPCt4wDG79xhAH4vj32CrCeHTKUhiwPcZRQSTpbbuLIuwWrIhpyxLA_KyW0/s1600/image%25255B60%25255D.png)
Today, after running Repair Windows Firewall, I see:
Many, many, many, many, many thanks to Tweaking.com for this Network Discovery firewall-related problem resolution, and I’ll certainly be trying out some of your other repair tools.
If you decide to try this Repair Windows Firewall tool, of course it goes without saying (does it not) that you should take an appropriate backup first so that you can recover if Windows somehow gets messed up.
And life goes on for me . . . Now I only have to worry about the recent issue of Ethernet connectivity failure after resuming from Sleep mode.
Every now and again, perhaps a few times per month, I need to carry out some sort of computer management such as device or disk management.
The way that I usually initiate the process is to right-click the Computer icon on the windows desktop and select the Manage option from the context menu:
Following this, the Computer Management window appears and I get on with my job:
However during the last month something changed, and late last week I discovered that no amount of clicking on the Manage context menu item would cause the Computer Management window to launch. While it’s easy enough to use alternative ways of launching Device Management and Disk Management (or other such tasks), I was both puzzled and irritated that my favorite method had stopped working.
After a while it dawned on me that I had been in this quandary before, see my earlier post How to detect and disable faulty context menu items (shell extensions) in Windows
I can happily report that by using the “binary search” technique explained in that post it took me less than five minutes to determine that a newly-installed application called ExtremeCopy was the culprit:
As soon as I disabled the two shell extensions belonging to ExtremeCopy my problem went away. The developers of this copy utility at Easersoft need to review and correct their implementation of shell extensions (which I will point out to them).
The detection technique was very fast, the only delay was because it took a day or two for my previous experiences with all this it to bubble to the surface in my slow old brain!
NotesTracker is alive and well, and the guide for Version 5.3 Guide has been added to Docstoc.
View or download the guide at
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/159510147/NotesTracker-Guide-Version-53
The guide introduces NotesTracker, explaining what it is and how it can be of value to your organization by enhancing your IBM Notes and Domino applications.
Following that is a section that shows how to configure and administer NotesTracker in each application, and finally a section for Notes developers explaining the steps used to add NotesTracker to the design of the applications.
Hyperlinks in the table of contents make it easy to jump to the various sections and subsections.
What happened in Cyprus to bank depositors’ funds surely must have scared everyone a lot—except for the bankers themselves that is.
Those of us outside Cyprus would all have thought to ourselves “Thank goodness that can’t happen in my country” and gone on with our day-to-day existence.
But apparently that’s not the case already in some countries, and probably in more and more countries over time.
Read this scary article by Ellen Brown at the Web Of Debt website:
It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors
Apparently New Zealand plus probably other countries are planning something similar.
“Can the banks do that?” she asks (emphasis mine):
Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay. (See here and here.) But until now the bank has been obligated to pay the money back on demand in the form of cash. Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into “bank equity.” The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price? Most people keep a deposit account so they can have ready cash to pay the bills.
. . . If our IOUs are converted to bank stock, they will no longer be subject to insurance protection but will be “at risk” and vulnerable to being wiped out, just as the Lehman Brothers shareholders were in 2008.
To become even more scared, you only have to read an earlier post of hers:
A Safe and a Shotgun or Publicly-owned Banks? The Battle of Cyprus
This has got me pondering how to make my funds safer. Stuffed under the mattress, or buried in a biscuit tin under the lemon tree in the back yard?
NotesTracker is alive and well, and the guide for Version 5.3 Guide has been added to Scribd.
View or download the guide at
http://www.scribd.com/doc/148077501/NotesTracker-Version-5-3-Guide
The guide introduces NotesTracker, explaining what it is and how it can be of value to your organization by enhancing your IBM Notes and Domino applications.
Following that is a section that shows how to configure and administer NotesTracker in each application, and finally a section for Notes developers explaining the steps used to add NotesTracker to the design of the applications.
Hyperlinks in the table of contents make it easy to jump to the various sections and subsections.
I just stumbled upon a range of free widgets that should add value to your web sites, blogs and other online publications.
Because of the nature of the website (oilprice.com) the widgets are all related to energy, precious metals, and related financial matters.
You’ll find them here:
Energy Widgets | Metal Widgets | Financial Widgets | News Widgets | Clocks Widgets
Here are a few of them in action…
Just back from checking that our pooch was comfortable on a clear. cool early Winter’s night here Down Under in Melbourne. He was okay, and seemed to appreciate the visit!
Back inside, I went to ABC Australia’s Catalyst science show’s website to catch up on their latest episode. You may recall that back in April I pointed out a story about dogs cute appearance probably being due to their facial musculature (see Cute Canines, Eyes That Engage You and watch the video).
Well, in this week’s new episode there’s another intriguing story, this one about dog empathy which the story describes as:
“. . . the naturally occurring subjective experience of similarity between the feelings expressed by self and others without losing sight of whose feelings belong to who. Translated, what that means is to have true empathy, you have to not only feel someone's pain, you have to know that the emotion belongs to them and not to yourself.”
Watch the video. What do you think?
I’m somewhat convinced. I do know that if I’m playing with my dog (and others before him), I only have to howl or yelp in a certain way – making the sort of sound you hear if you accidentally tread on the dog, or if the dog gets bitten in a dogfight – then consistently the dog will immediately stop whatever he’s doing and cuddle up close to to me as if to offer sympathy.
You only have to do a simple search or two and you’ll find much other material about the unique dog-human relationship.
As southern winter sets in here Down Under, I’m aware that for the previous two years I suffered a number of quite nasty attacks of what I called “the Flu” – But was it really influenza, or something else, and will I succumb again this year despite again getting jabbed with Flu vaccine?
Just-published this first week of June 2013 is a “Facts about Flu” series of articles in The Conversation that sheds light on this topic. There are insights and clarifications, as well as lots of shadowy and dark areas where our knowledge remains deficient.
This excellent series is as follows:
Part one: Of influenza, flu, potions and key opinion leaders
Part two: Influenza vaccine for 2013: who, what, why and when?
Part three: H1N1, H5N1, H7N9? What on earth does it all mean
Part four: The Tamiflu saga shows why all research data should be public
Part five: CSL’s flu vaccine leaves a hole in Australia’s pandemic plan
Part six: Should flu shots be mandatory for health-care workers?
Part seven: The Holy Grail of influenza research: a universal flu vaccine
Part eight: Is it really the flu? The other viruses making you ill in winter
Part nine: The heart of the matter: how effective is the flu jab really?
I just came across a site with outstanding interactive jigsaw puzzles, go to Jigsaw Explorer if such puzzles turn you on.
For example, this tower at Beget, Spain (with the option selected to remind you what the “box top” is for the puzzle):
Actually, rather than jigsaws my definite preference is for word puzzles, not only as a consumer but and in the past I’ve created some crosswords that were based around various themes in information technology.
Unfortunately they’re now offline after a redesign of the site where I created them, and the site owner isn’t interested in bringing them back to life.
I really should create some more of these interactive crosswords, this time on my own site so that nobody can take them offline. I used the highly recommended Crossword Forge to build them:
Crosswords take a long time to compile, especially when the choice of words is confined to a theme rather than the general language. Software like Crossword Forge significantly eases the burden.
My mother adored cats, and I was brought up with felines of all fur colors, temperaments ranging from cuddly to haughty, taking control as they do all over the house. But my wife hates cats, so it’s been dogs during my married life.
I’ve gotten to really like dogs, and I’m in good company. For example, British prime minister Winston Churchill in the movie The Gathering Storm is pictured one day sitting in the farm section of his country property pondering the animals around him. He comments to an approaching visitor:
“You know, a cat looks down upon a man, and a dog looks up to a man, but a pig will look a man in the eye and see his equal.”
I don’t know about pigs, the closest I’ve ever been to one is while eating ham or bacon. Can’t say that I’ve eaten cat or dog (knowingly at least, but then again I have been to parts of Asia).
The dogs that we’ve had have always been cute and devoted. What is it about dogs that makes them into “man’s best friend” as is generally accepted?
Of course, there’s the services they faithfully carry out for us: watchdogs, seeing-eye dogs, wartime duty, lifesaving, farm dogs effortlessly shepherding sheep, and much. much more.
But it was an episode of the outstanding Catalyst science program Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that put forward another fascinating insight. Catalyst features stories about dogs every now and again.
For example, there’s this story about dogs’ eyes:
It was thought, that like humans, all dogs have the same eye structure and see the world the same way. But Australian researchers have discovered that dogs had a completely different retina. Amazingly, it means different dogs see the world completely differently.
All very interesting, but it doesn’t answer my question of why, of all domestic animals, dogs seem so cute and appealing (compared with cats, especially).
It seems that there could be a good scientific reason for this. There’s now a plausible theory that it all has to do with dogs’ eyebrows.
Watch the video, and read the transcript.
Are you convinced?
I’ve just been was using the Windows 8 registry editor (regedit.exe) in an attempt to remove the remnants of an application that wouldn’t uninstall cleanly.
Even with my shiny new 8-core processor, twin fast Intel SSDs in RAID configuration plus 32 GB of RAM (rarely is even a quarter of this RAM used), there were periods of up to a minute when the registry editor was scanning for a search string.
During this boring period it simply displayed the following bland, deadly boring [Windows 8 flat, colorless, unappealing] dialog box:
I wonder why on earth some of Microsoft’s developers seem so short-sighted and not to think about the user’s experience. . . . Searching the registry for what, fellas?
In this case, if it was me writing the registry editor then the above dialog would for sure have looked something like this quick mock-up:
It ain’t rocket science!
Ho hum, more security weakness issues have just been discovered in the desktop Java Runtime Environment (JRE).
See for example Yet another Reflection API flaw affecting Oracle's Java SE …
“The new flaw was verified to affect all versions of Java SE 7 (including the recently released 1.7.0_21-b11). It can be used to achieve a complete Java security sandbox bypass on a target system. Successful exploitation in a web browser scenario requires proper user interaction (a user needs to accept the risk of executing a potentially malicious Java application when a security warning window is displayed).
What's interesting is that the new issue is present not only in JRE Plugin / JDK software, but also the recently announced Server JRE as well.”
Wow, a chink in the armor of Java servers. That should raise a few eyebrows!
Back to desktop Java, however. I’ve been assiduously trying to keep my desktop JRE up to date, and it’s annoying that you have to go to the trouble of navigating to the Control Panel of Windows and then and click on Java (when Java for one of several reasons has not automatically presented the Update dialog in a timely manner).
Actually, it’s more than just annoying: I’d call it a significant shortcoming in the Java security maintenance regime, enabling Java updates to fall way behind if you’re not careful. I reckon that Oracle should improve the ‘reliable timeliness” of this entire process.
Well now, a month or two ago I was puzzled by not finding the Update tab to be present in the Java Control Panel, which I expected to look like the following:
A few months I lost some valuable time hunting around to find why this tab does not always appear. Take a look at What is Java Auto Update? How do I change notify settings? Notice that you have to read this page very carefully and about half way down the page you come across the clincher:
Why is the Update tab missing from the Java Control Panel?
Java Auto Update is currently not available for 64-bit versions of Java. 64-bit versions of Java do not include the Update tab in the Java Control Panel.
This is rather slack behavior by Oracle.
It seems that when I got my new desktop system (in late 2012) I slipped up and indeed did have the 64-bit version installed when, like the vast bulk of users, I only needed the 32-bit version. So I dutifully hunted for, downloaded and installed the latest 32-bit JRE version and left it at that.
Last week, after reading about the latest pile of Java exploits, I decided that it was time to update Java again. However I kept getting the following dialog box:
Why no Update tab? I pondered this for a while and after checking Programs and Features realized that, as noted in bold font on the above image, I still had 64-bit JRE installed (as well as the 32-bit JRE).
After uninstalling the 64-bit JRE the Update tab re-appeared, meaning that Oracle needs to update that statement at What is Java Auto Update? How do I change notify settings? to mention that the mere presence of the 64-bit JRE suppresses the Update tab even if you do have the 32-bit JRE installed.
Trivial? . . . Possibly, but I’d say still worth being described so that other people might save some time and frustration.
I’m totally enjoying being a pedantic old grump. It’s one of the privileges of getting on in years, one of the joys of dotage.
At out home we’ve been really enjoying having the Optus Cable service for more than a decade now, and for the past year or two their highest offering of 100 Mbps download speeds (as well as a 1 terabyte download quota). I measure the cable speeds every day, and even though HFC is a shared service my tests show that it only drops as low as 30-40 Mbps on weekends and other similar busy times.
So it performs as promised, good work Optus. However I’d prefer it if they offered upload speeds higher than the nominal 2 Mbps (never better than about 1.5 Mbps in practice). The DOCSIS 3.0 standard does support faster speeds, though our National Broadband Network (NBN) being rolled out nation wide I don’t reckon that Optus will ever offer such higher HFC speeds.
So to get even better speeds I’m very much looking forward to the NBN. Unfortunately it’s a huge project expected to take the best part of a decade to roll out, and it was greatly hampered during the first year or two by the “moving target” syndrome (unexpected changes in regulations about the number of Points of Presence, drawn-out negotiations with Telstra, and so on).
I like just about everything that the NBNCo has done so far (and sincerely hope that the 2013 Australian federal election coming in mid-September don’t’ see a change of government and a much inferior NBN result from the new government’s limited vision).
However THERE’’S ONE THING THAT THE NBN DOES ALL THE TIME THAT I DON’T APPRECIATE AT ALL and it’s my pet hate. Their chief spokesperson, CEO Mike Quigley, uses the term “premise” far too much when he should actually be referring to “premises” – and irritatingly keeps on doing so!
Unfortunately it seems to be spreading throughout NBNCo like an infectious disease (perhaps they’re afraid to correct the boss).
Here’s the latest example, from several days ago, A Report to the Australian Parliamentary Joint Committee on the NBN.
Just one example, a chart showing an estimated price on each “premise” passed. Dollars per “premise” – how slack:
The Australian federal opposition party hasn’t yet picked up on this litany of misused terminology, they would surely use it as another way to criticize NBNCo if they did, wouldn’t they?
Many software applications that execute in Windows 8 (and earlier Windows versions) come with so-called Windows shell extensions.
These are intended to provide extra application functionality and convenience and they usually do a good job, but like any other software they can go wrong and cause complete or partial application failure -- with considerable bother and even havoc in some cases.
This is a longish blog post, necessitated by the complexity of the way that shell extensions work. They are so tightly interwoven into the parent applications that it can be very difficult to identify, isolate and resolve problems with them.
Hence I’ve gone to the trouble to explain it carefully and in some detail. I hope it will save you wasted time and ease your frustration if you happen to become a victim!
As the name extension implies, these code elements provide extra functionality to File Explorer (you’ll know it as Windows Explorer in earlier versions of Windows) and other parts of Windows.
As MSDN puts it: “The Windows UI provides users with access to a wide variety of objects necessary for running applications and managing the operating system. The most numerous and familiar of these objects are the folders and files that reside on computer disk drives. There are also a number of virtual objects that allow the user to perform tasks such as sending files to remote printers or accessing the Recycle Bin.”
Shell extension handlers are developed by Microsoft as part of Windows itself, but also by many third-party developers ranging from big software corporations right down to solo developers. (There’s a vast number of the latter in the Windows community, many of whom provide retail or freeware products of very high quality).
The type of extension handler that I’m focusing on in this post is Shortcut menu handlers which these days are more commonly referred to as Context menu handlers.
A context menu -- or shortcut menu -- appears when you right click on an object in File Explorer or other contexts such as dialog boxes. For example, in File Explorer to edit the hosts file I might do the following (with the pointer showing where I performed the right click mouse operation):
Context menus are extremely useful, and it’s not long after installing Windows and your favorite third-part software products that there will be quite an assortment of context menu handlers present in your Windows system, all waiting to do your bidding. A typical example:
All right, all right, everybody knows that. Let’s move on to the real point of this blog post.
Last October (2012) I took delivery of what might well be my last ever Windows desktop system. For my prime development system I switched from a quite adequate 4-core machine running Windows 7 64-bit (with a healthy 8 GB of RAM and several terabytes of SSDs plus more terabytes of spinning disks) to an even zippier 8-core machine (with 32 GB of RAM, twin faster SSDs in RAID mode plus even more terabytes of spinning disks), also running 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate.
This was a few weeks prior to the release of Windows 8 Pro. Once it was released, I tested Windows 8 Pro extensively in a virtual machine environment -- especially getting back some favorite Windows features that Microsoft removed such as the Start Button (via Classic Shell, which I had long been using on Windows 7) and desktop gadgets (via a hack, the 8GadgetPack). I mention this here only because Windows 8 Pro was my final destination.
All went well for a month or two, and then I started having unusual problems with Windows Explorer on the new Windows 7 machine (but not on the old one).
I happen to be an extremely heavy user of context menus, and sometimes in Windows Explorer -- but not every time -- when I invoked a context menu (similar to the example above) there would be a pause lasting a few seconds followed by the following error dialog (1): 
(Click on the various images to view enlargements)
Upon clicking the Cancel button, the following dialog (2) appears:
THE QUESTION:
What could be causing such errors? A little research at the Microsoft support website plus other Windows specialist sites indicated that this sort of thing is likely to be caused by a faulty Windows shell context menu handler.
The question that I was faced with – exactly as you will be in similar circumstances -- is which of many installed software products (ranging from complex suites to tiny single-purpose utilities) have context menu handlers? And then, of course, how do you determine which specific piece of software is causing the current fault?
A SOLUTION:
The universal answer to this seems to be to go to Nir Sofer’s excellent freeware product site. For today’s exercise, download and install the ShellExView utility which enables you to display details of all the shell extensions installed on your computer, and to easily disable or enable each individual shell extension.
TIP - While at the site, you might consider downloading Nir’s entire suite of utilities in a neat package called NirLauncher, a package of more than 150 portable freeware utilities for Windows. The NirLauncher package includes a “variety of tools that you may need for your daily computer use, including utilities to recover lost passwords, to monitor your network, to view and extract cookies, cache, and other information stored by your Web browser, to search files in your system, and more.”
THE BASIC PRINCIPLE:
Identifying and adopting a systematic, consistent debugging approach for the more esoteric parts of Windows can be very difficult.
In this case, by disabling shell extensions one at a time, you should be able to determine whether or not it’s the one causing the problem. But this is easier said than done.
Firstly, you’ll find that your system has dozens and dozens of shell extensions installed. Therefore disabling, testing, then [if not faulty] re-enabling them one at a time is a slow and elaborate process.
Secondly, it’s not always easy to recognize and reproduce the conditions that cause the error. For example, while this context menu error was repeatedly occurring on my new Windows 7 machine, it never did arise on the old Windows 7 system. Despite my best attempts to keep the apps on the two systems in synchronization, apparently the new system had some differently installed and/or configured applications.
It happened that this problem was not at the top of my priorities as the end 2012 approached, so I let it slip as summer vacation time arrived here Down Under.
In no time it was January 2013, and I was planning to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 Pro before the end of January (being a miser, I wanted to do this before the expiry of Microsoft’s generous $14.99 upgrade price offer). The in-place upgrade to Windows 8 went surprisingly smoothly. I only had to reinstall a couple of products to make them work properly again, and most products worked without a hitch. (I only had to chase down a single device driver update, for an external hard disk docking station that had stopped running at USB 3.0 speeds, and to reinstall a couple of programs after which they worked fine.)
So now I had Windows 8 Pro running pretty well (using my four monitors in non-touchscreen mode, operating 99 percent like Windows 7 did prior to the upgrade, is exactly how I wanted). I get all the benefits of the many under-the-cover enhancements in Windows 8 while happily avoiding the “Modern UI” (a.k.a. “Metro”) like the plague. (It has no relevance at all for the way I work. Whenever I purchase a Windows 8 Pro tablet then, and only then, will I be content to make use of this new tiled interface. But that’s another story.)
But guess what? Whenever I right-click on a folder in the left navigator column of File Explorer, I discover that Explorer always freezes for a few seconds and then closes unceremoniously, without displaying the indicative error dialog that I mentioned above (the earlier screenshot “Windows Explorer has stopped working”) . . . No error message at all, zilch, nada – I really appreciate that, Microsoft!
Luckily, if you call it that, I had been experiencing the Explorer freeze-ups with Windows 7. So I surmised -- quite rightly as it transpired -- that this was likely to be that same context menu bug. I should point out here that without the prior experience under Windows 7 I would have been totally I the dark, without any clue about what was happening under Windows 8 and why. For some reason the Microsoft developers worsened the situation by neglecting context menu error trapping code when developing Windows 8 File Explorer.
THE RECOMMENDED METHOD TO USE SHELLEXVIEW:
So, how should you go about using ShellExView to resolve your difficulties? While some other people have discussed the use of ShellExView, generally they’ve omitted usage details (see this case).
When I ran ShellExView on my Windows 8 system I got the following listing. Note that it’s best to sort the entries by vendor name (Company), and I’ve highlighted the Microsoft section in yellow. This is the start of the list (T represents “Top”):
After scrolling down a long way in ShellExView, here are the last few Microsoft entries and the remainder of the non-Microsoft entries (B represents “Bottom”):
It’s a reasonable assumption that it is highly unlikely that the faulty shell extension will be contributed by Microsoft, so let’s ignore the central yellow section of the list.
Adopt a binary search type of approach. Firstly, select all of the entries bottom entries (B) and disable them via the context menu of ShellExView (click “Disable Selected Items” or press the F7 key).
Now focus on the section of the list (T). Disable each of them one at a time, and see if the fault that you’re testing remains or not (in my case, see if Windows File Explorer crashes silently).
As mentioned earlier, this sort of testing can be a laborious process. So if the top section (T) contains too many entries, consider using the binary search approach on it by disabling half of these and checking the other half one at a time.
If none of the top entries seem to be causing the problem, re-enable them and move down to the bottom section (B) of ShellExView, where you carry out the same binary search approach:
It was here that I discovered that when I disabled the Spybot-S&D Explorer Integration the problem went away. Relief at last, like as if I’d stopped hitting myself on the head with a hammer!
The final task was, naturally, to double-check that this is the only disabled shell extension and that all the others were enabled.
So there you are, job done: a methodology for you to follow when you’re faced with this sort of problem. I hope that it’s one you can use effectively, and avoid losing as many hours as I did when solving this issue.
And of course, some faulty shell extension code that Safer-Networking Ltd has to fix in Spybot - Search & Destroy.
UPDATE (25 April 2013):
Their support team just advised me that this is a known problem with Search & Destroy version 2, here is their forum post about it:
You do not need to uninstall Spybot 2, you can simply disable the feature that is causing the issue. Please run the Start Center, switch to advanced mode and start Settings.
Now open the tab "System Integration“. Here you can uninstall "Windows Explorer integration“. Click "Apply“ and "OK“ afterwards. Settings can also be launched via SDTray (the small Spybot 2 icon beside your systems clock in the taskbar).
Making use of ShellExView was the only way that I eventually determined what the cause of the problem was. Because of the nature of this crash I didn’t have a clue that it was a Spybot issue, so didn’t ever even think to check on this particular support forum.
It can be extremely difficult to find things on Skype’s website. It might have improved somewhat since the Microsoft acquisition, there still are some quite poor usability matters on the site.
PROBLEM BACKGROUND:
What drove me to try using the Live Chat service offered by Skype to its Skype Premium subscribers? Well, it was Windows Update when it recently prompted me to upgrade Skype (to version 6.3, from version 5.11 which was working perfectly). I’m running Windows 8 Pro, which might or might not be relevant, but following this Skype upgrade every time that Skype began its login process Windows became totally useless. The Windows hourglass stayed on permanently, I couldn’t even do the usual thing of launching Task Manager to kill the errant Skype process. Windows 8 had effectively become unusable. My only option was to press the computer’s reset button and a restart of Windows.
(An aside: I couldn’t even open msconfig to configure booting into Safe Mode, the miserably dopey new method needed to activate Safe Mode foist upon us by Microsoft. See here for some articles about this change in Windows 8.)
I was now stuck. Skype was always attempting a login very soon after each reboot, each time causing Windows to lock up completely. But fortunately I got out of this loop by the skin of my teeth, managing after a number of attempts to open Programs and Features quickly enough after a reboot to be able to uninstall Skype 6.3 before it locked up the system.
Phew! No need to do a complete restore of Windows from backup, which seemed to be the only other option. After this lucky escape, I decided to try using Skype’s “live chat” function – available only to subscribers to the Skype Premium service -- to obtain technical support for this Windows 8 lockup problem. Then I discovered that getting to use Live Chat is a problem in itself.
I wasn’t alone in this, others had encountered the same problem. See their forlorn attempts such as here (“Premium provides Chat service, but I cannot find the link to Chat service. Can someone help?”) and here. The latter has the sort of plain guidance that really ought to be on the main Skype Premium page rather than hidden away in the depths of the community forum.
There is no obvious, easy-to-notice direct link to Live Chat. You can only make your way to it in a round-about non-unintuitive way. (Another website navigation design FAIL for Skype, I’ve discussed others previously.)
In the meantime, to help others here’s my illustrated summary of the pathway.
STEP 1
Log in to your Skype Premium account and go to the Skype support area at https://support.skype.com/
This page certainly should have an immediately apparent link and/or button labeled “Live Chat for Skype Premium subscribers” or similar wording.
STEP 2
Ask a pertinent question about your current problem. My question was “Windows 8 freezes after upgrade to Skype 6.3” (click the images for an enlargement):
STEP 3
Investigate the possible solutions provided. If these don’t resolve your problem, then click on the Get more help link in the right-hand column:
Possible solution(s) for your problem get listed at the bottom of the web page:
STEP 5
At last we arrive at the spot where we can invoke Skype Premium’s live chat service, so click the “Start a chat” button:
STEP 6
Wait a while for the Live Chat session to start (in a new browser window or tab).
Choose a general topic (in the left dropdown list) and a specific problem type (in the right dropdown list), the click the START CHAT button in the left bottom corner:
And after a short wait away you go! (This service for Skype Premium subscribers is stated to be available 24/7.)
And now I’m going to commence a second chat to discuss my disconcerting Windows 8 total lockup problems. I’m interested to find out how Skype will be able to solve this, since Windows 8 becomes completely unusable when Skype 6.3 attempts to sign in, meaning that it becomes completely impossible for me to carry out any of the Windows actions that they’ve so far suggested.
… And it’s really nice to use this Live Chat service, taking minutes rather than days (or even weeks) to get support from Skype! So this service is great, but it’s unfortunate how difficult it can be for a user to discover how to get to it.
The new suggestion is to try installing a version of Skype earlier than 6.3 (such as 6.2 or even 6.1) – which I might try, at my leisure.
An irksome issue is that Windows Update keeps on prompting me to upgrade Skype (currently meaning an upgrade to version 6.3 with all that this implies for me). Even though I’ve turned off automatic updates inside Skype itself, Windows Update is ignoring this setting and keeps prompting for the upgrade.
After I upgraded from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 8 Pro (both 64-bit), I found that one of the few programs that had some issues – minor ones -- was IBM Notes 8.5.3 so I had to carry out a reinstallation.
As before, I selected the time-saving option to launch the Notes pre-loader;
This had never caused me any problems before, but after the reinstallation I now always get an annoying dialog box following Windows boot-up:
If I click the OK button the dialog reappears immediately, so I have to open Windows Task manager and kill the Notes pre-loader service task:
I’ve tried repairing and also uninstalling then reinstalling Notes, and even without selecting to install this option can’t get rid of this annoyance.
Does anybody out there know what I should do? I didn’t ever have the problem with Windows 7, so could it be due to my using Windows 8? … Any ideas appreciated!
To be honest I misspelled "’Telewonk’ deliberately, in order to go easy on some peoples’ sensibilities. Replace the letter “o” in this with the first letter in the alphabet to get my true intent!
This question was raised in my noggin upon reading the Network World article: Is Yahoo's telework ban shortsighted or savvy? Data says both (there's plenty of research to support telecommuting advocates and naysayers alike).
I found it a very interesting article indeed, as I’m confident you will. There are thought-provoking arguments put forward on both sides.
These days my home and my office are the same, so you could say that I;m in a constant state of teleworking, It’s a lifestyle choice, and a stage of life choice. I’m my own employer, and even for me there are pros and cons.
The IBM that I worked for, over decades starting 1970, I’m sure uses a large degree of teleworking. I wonder what current IBM employees (and IBM management, right to the top) think of their current work patterns.
What do all of you out there think of the way you work, is it effective or just a “wonk”?
