Hour 1

Going up?

Things are looking up for a group of scientists from Seattle after winning $900,000 from NASA

The contest is intended to encourage development of a theory that originated in the 1960s and was popularized by Arthur C. Clarke’s 1979 novel “The Fountains of Paradise.”

Space elevators are envisioned as a way to reach space without the risk and expense of rockets.

Instead, electrically powered vehicles would run up and down a cable anchored to a ground structure and extending thousands of miles up to a mass in geosynchronous orbit — the kind of orbit communications satellites are placed in to stay over a fixed spot on the Earth.

Microsoft Office Flash Tutorials

If you have made the switch to Microsoft’s Office 2007 suite then you have already discovered the new ribbon interface.  Instead of having the 20 year old  “File drop down menu “ interface Microsoft is betting that new “Ribbon” interface will improve the application usage.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/HA102295841033.aspx

The Office 2007 ribbon user interface presents commands organized into a set of tabs. The tabs within the ribbon will change, depending on the actions you are performing.

Office 2007 Ribbon

I am not a heavy Excel or Power point user but I do use some Microsoft Word.  Once you get use to the ribbon, I am told, you will come to appreciate the intuitive use.  Unfortunately, like many of you, I have become accustomed to the old fashion drop down menus and find myself hunting for the function (I gave up in frustration trying to find the Undo command when I accidently deleted an entire paragraph).

Thank goodness Microsoft provides tools to ease our transition to the new Ribbon.

Simply launch the appropriate link, Word, Excel, or Power Point.  Your Web browser will load a Flash representation of the old fashion File-Drop down menu.  Simply use the menu to perform the command, as you remember it, and the utility will show you how to perform the same command using the new Office 2007 Ribbon.

Once you get the hang of the ribbons interface, it will only be a matter of time before you wonder how you ever struggled with the old fashion tool bar.

Network Problems and Wireless Networks

Everyone is going wireless or has a home network.  Are you considering it?  Learn more by accessing some of the sites listed below.

Home Networking - Here is a site that provides loads of Home Networking “How-to’s”.

How Stuff Works – Great site to find out how stuff works. Great for kids. Check out the Computer Stuff and Home Networking sections.

WindowsNetworking is a wonderful site one of our listeners turned us on to.  Great tutorials, articles, and how-to’s with excellent descriptions and graphics.

TechTutorials provides in-depth articles on all your Windows XP networking questions (even those you have not thought to ask). Excellent resource.

This is what  your IT department does when no one is looking! LOL  Everything USB you’ve ever wanted, from stink-busters to toasters that print the morning news on your breakfast.

Computer crashes happen to all of us and usually at the worst possible time.

You guessed it, my computer crashed and now I have to deal with picking up the pieces.  My job is to provide technical assistance and instill confidence into others whose computer have failed.  This isn’t suppose to happen to me.

Ironically, when this terrible event happened, I was attempting to recover someone else’s data from a failed laptop hard drive.  I plugged their 2 and a half inch hard drive into my Laptop computers trusty drive tray (like I have done dozens of times before).  I waited for Windows XP to automatically discover the new disk drive so that I could backup the data.  But their drive did not spin up and my computer hanged and became unresponsive.  Knowing that something went south with my computer, I reboot it.  Windows appeared to come up normally but I was unable to log into it with my user ID and password.

The portion of the Windows registry that stores user IDs and passwords was corrupted and I knew I was in deep doo-doo.

How am I going to fix my computer?  A corrupted registry is “Bad”.  I knew that my data was safe and that I could recover the data from the hard drive or from a backup.  What I wanted to avoid was some serious down time and the 4-6 hours to reload Windows, install all of the applications, and configure all of the email accounts, Printers, and utilities.

I tried all of the basics and they took about 15 minutes.

1. I tried to log in using the administrator account instead of my own.  It was corrupted as well.  So much for using the “System Restore” utility.
2. I tried to force Windows XP into “Safe Mode” and “Safe Mode Command Prompt” by pressing the F8 key when powering up the computer. This failed as well as I was still unable to log into the computer.
3. I tried to use the F8 key startup menu and selected to start the computer with the “Last known working configuration”.  Failed
4. I tried to use the Windows XP install CD and try to use the “Recovery Console” and perform a check-disk (CHKDSK) hoping a disk error could be discovered and repaired.  Nope.
5. I used my trusted bootable flash drive (bootable linux with a password cracker), and allow me to change the administrator password in the  hope that this would somehow fix the user-id.  Nope.

It was time for me to pull out the big guns.

The “Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows”.  www.ubcd4win.com by Benjamin Burrows.  The UBCD4win is a bootable CD that run WindowsPE (XP Post Environment) and is stuffed with useful utilities specifically selected to diagnose and test hardware, recover data, backup, scan for viruses-adware-spyware, and fix computers problems.

The utility I had specifically in mind was the Registry restore utility.  This would scan the C-Drive for the Windows XP registry files and for the “System Restore” files.  The utility then provides the ability to restore the Windows registry to a previous data and Time.  After booting my computer with Benjamin Burrows UBCD4win CD and running the registry restore utility, I was up and running inside another 10 minutes.

We interviewed Ben on the Internet Advisor last year and I can tell you that he has greatly improved the collection of utilities.  His web site provides the downloads and instructions so that you can create your own Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows.

Thanks Ben.