Well, nice job, Yahoo folks! I just wasted over an hour trying to post a new entry to my Yahoo blog, only to find out that every time I try to post anything, all I get is an Error 999 and my entry is wiped out. Can't save drafts either. I use Firefox 4.0 on an older Windows XP SP3 laptop. Anyway, I can get in here, so all is well in my little corner of the blogosphere.
Don't get me started about Firefox version upgrades! Every time they have one, I end up recreating entire Profiles for Limited User Accounts in Windows XP SP3. There has got to be a bug in there somewhere! And to add insult to injury, FEBE doesn't work for backup or restoration under Firefox 4. (I know I can back up the Profile Folders in their entirety, but when I restored these Folders, I got Firefox interface rendering issues which could not be resolved.) None of the short url lengtheners works in FF4 either, as yet. And they wrecked the rendering of Favicons in the Bookmarks drop-down list. If you were a Conspiracy Theorist, you'd think they did some of these things on purpose, to enhance advertising revenues. In any event, Mozilla's newest offering is definitely not ready for public consumption under Windows XP at this time.
I haven't posted here in a long time because no major events gave me material which could not be reduced to Comments or entries in the Windows Secrets Lounge (www.windowssecrets.com, then proceed to the Lounge tab, and get a feee account there to participate).
I have gotten a new Toshiba Satellite laptop with a pre-Sandy Bridge Core-i5 processor and NVidia graphics. That Windows 7 home Premium 64-bit laptop runs circles around this old WinBook laptop, even after a complete driver overhaul. (Long story, beginning with a Microsoft Update which tried to mess with the System kernel -- Windows XP Pro 32-bit OEM Windows on a manufacturer branded motherboard. Stop me if you've heard this one before.) Anyway, I am well outfitted for some time into the future. Windows 7 SP1 is out, so driver and BIOS updates will be in order for the Toshiba in the near future.
Just briefly, the WinBook issue is a rather rare one in Windows XP SP3 patching, but it does occur on some older laptops. OEM Windows System Files and older drivers can make patching risky (as in Blue Screen of Death or total loss of video), so Microsoft is right not to let some of its patches change these files. But to reoffer the patch endlessly without any pop-up or other notification about the reason for the failure, and to offer only the advice to update your Intel Graphics Drivers, is an insult and an outrage. In other words, pretty much standard stuff from MS Updates tech support for home users.
The solution (from Microsoft Social Answers) comes in two parts. First, go to the Intel web site and run the Intel Javascript applet which analyzes your system and finds the latest available Intel drivers for your Intel chipset. I got six updates, four of which related directly to the Microsoft issue. While I use DriverMax for driver backup archives and restorations if anything goes wrong, I cannot recommend using their driver updating service based on my recent experience. They offered wrong drivers for all of the Intel hardware in my WinBook. The Mouse was Microsoft, but they offered a Logitech Mouseware PS/2 driver instead of an Intellipoint USB Optical Driver. And so on. I only accepted the DriverMax offering for the FaxModem, and reluctantly, as no one else has a driver for this old on-board device. And I never use it anyway. I also updated my USB Interface Drivers.
With up to date drivers, I still got the patch reoffered. Microsoft Social gave the answer -- the patch installs only if the installer does not detect OEM Windows. I had the same problem once or twice in the past, and now I know why this happens. This time, the Stand-Alone version of the installer can be run in Windows Safe Mode, with a switch for "overwrite OEM" files. Again, I said this before -- it is risky to overwrite OEM Windows System Files with MS generic versions. But I did it, and the patch is no longer being reoffered, and Belarc Advisor and Secunia PSI-2 both say the patch is not missing. So I guess this worked.
I did have to uninstall and reinstall MSE and Comodo security products, but that is relatively straightforward. And leave Comodo in Safe Computer Mode for awhile until things calm down a bit. Smart Defrag found an unreadable file, so I had to wait an hour while CheckDisk /-r slogged away. And it did find one -- just one -- orphaned file fragment which it repaired. This wipes out all System Restore points, which I wish I had known before making my system backup. So I finished defragmenting and made an Acronis Backup of the new configuration. And that's where this old laptop stands now.
Now let's see whether this blog will post this entry. Betcha it will -- and it did, flawlessly. Just like I expect from a Google App. Take that, Yahoo!
