Linux at Home - 3+ years now - The Log

Topics... Devices   Direct Connection   Dragon Drop   Favorites?   Firewall?   Instant Messenger   Internet Explorer?   MS is Tracking YOU   MS Inet Client   Outlook   Personal Web Server   Security   Sysoc File   Taskbar   Transfer Wizard   Web Pub Wizard   Works

I have a system running Windows XP.......
. . . . . . and I've been downloading patches to fix the flaws in the operating system ever since.

Previously, at home I used 98 and didn't upgrade due to less than favorable experiences with NT and 2000 at work.

XP is far from perfect and Microsoft support is non-existent if you are a home user.

I've been in the industry for 25 years. And it always amazed me how one of the worst put together operating systems could storm the market. Most of us techies knew that Windows had a lot of holes that we would never accept on the systems that were running our businesses. But the worst part is that Microsoft didn't see a benefit in fixing this stuff and the garbage propagated throughout Windows releases. Why upgrade when most of the holes in Win98 were still in NT, 2000, ME & XP? History shows that lawyers drove the market to MS. And even though IBM had OS/2, a far superior operating system, they pulled it because they didn't want to be in that market. Now hackers and malicious code writers are having a hayday using Windows against you making you buy and/or install more software and spyware.

It's no wonder I am running Linux at home. Every "fix" from Microsoft reads like an encyclopedia if you read the full technical details of all the bugs that each Microsoft "fix", fixes. It's mind-boggling. And when a "fix" bundle breaks my system and I have to use Windows Restore to back it off, it just wastes more of my time.

Windows Registry Artifact discovered 11/2004
Found a Windows thing that goes back to Win98. Upon startup, if there are any registry discrepancies Windows restores a backup and tries to run with that. Great idea for those who can actually find the registry and figure out how to mess it up. Not a practical thing for the average user though. The spyware and virus gurus have figured out how to use the automatic Windows Registry Restore to re-install their malicious code if you've tried to remove it yourself or used an anti-spyware program. Clever for them, pretty stupid of Microsoft. If you try to clean up the junk (and it can number in the hundreds) from your registry and make a boo boo, Microsoft puts it all back.

Windows XP Networking
Messed up in Win 2000. Messed up in NT. Messed up in XT. Thank God for System Restore in XP. At least when a W update breaks networking, I can back it out. If it wasn't for System Restore, I'd have no system at all.

Windows XP Service Pack 2 Update
Hold off on this if you can. It is a huge download, and a total piece of garbage. It will likely break many of your current apps and STILL is full of security holes. Plus, you get a few new ones. Such a bargain.

Windows XP July 2004 Updates
The report is out. The July update STILL fails to plug some of the security holes it reportedly was supposed to fix. It can also wreck your internet connections. Microsoft says to keep downloading and applying and hopefully, the problems will somehow get fixed, some day. But if your internet connection gets hosed, how are you going to download more patches? Worse yet, the fix got rolled into Service Pack 2. So if you use System Restore after Service Pack 2, it backs out the good stuff too.

Warning. If you use Windows Update you may want to hold off on the June 2004 (a.k.a. MS04-016 and MS04-017) updates. After applying these patches I ran into serious problems and networking programs quit working. I lost internet and VPN and who knows what else. I used my other PC to search for help on the Microsoft support websites and found nothing but dead links and frustration at the fact that Microsoft has made it virtually impossible to contact them and report problems unless you pay them.
Normally I wait as long as prudent before applying Microsoft patches because many of them in the past have had negative side effects. I should have waited longer this time as well. Thankfully, there was System Restore.

Click Here To Go To Resource Links

On a positive note. There have been a few improvements in XP. I do like the feature where like programs will stack on the same task on the task bar. Shutdown problems are fewer than they were in any previous release. Aesthetic appearance has improved. The ability to point to a directory containing images for use as a screen-saver was LONG overdue. IE 6 got rid of that stupid and annoying "hide my Favorites" feature that came with the Win2000 distribution. XP is at least better than Windows ME, 2000 or NT. But that isn't saying much.

ET Phone Home! After installing a REAL firewall I discovered something really weird. My firewall was being battered everytime I opened various Microshaft Windows programs. After further invesigation I discovered some interesting and alarming things. Microsoft has added a lot of crap that makes your programs run slower in an attempt to track everything you do. In many cases, whenever I opened a Microsoft program or directed a Microsoft program to open a file, the first thing the program did was check for an internet connection. If it found one, it immediately tried to open one of the 65,000 TCP/IP ports available and report to Microsoft what I was doing. The average user never sees this activity. I opened up a word processor to write a letter to my bank. It tried to notify Microsoft. I went to print the letter and it tried to notify Microsoft. I blocked that too. Using the Search function in Windows Explorer also tries to notify Microsoft. Apparently, whatever file you may be searching for on your PC, Microsoft wants to know about. No wonder it's so easy to experience a spyware epidemic on your PC, Microsoft invented it. Norton and McAfee and many other products written for Windows now do the same thing using the same Microsoft provided trojan spyware services.

In older versions of Windows, Microshaft used the Loadqm.exe program to launch the Qmgr service to report your PC activity and whatever to Microsoft via the web. It sucked up system resources and slowed your machine down. It takes a fairly technical person to disable it from invading your privacy. For those with DSL, it happily pumps info about you to Microsoft, without notice, every time you turned your computer on. It has gotten a lot sneakier in XP. And many of the hardware and software vendors have figured out how to use it too to collect data about you without your knowledge.

One day this tilde (~) showed up on my desktop. So I deleted it and scanned for viruses but nothing was found. Then suddenly it showed up again. After checking around I learned that this was a side effect of installing some Microsoft security patches. The patch creates a backup of your Outlook address book (a .wab file) every time it is updated into a file called "~". But something is flaky and it sticks it onto the Desktop. The virus writers love this file as it allows them to send their malicious code to everyone in your address book.

All have been moved and some regurgitated as something less useful. Other stuff has been hidden.

The new Web Publishing Wizard included in XP allows you to upload your files (they claim) to any hosting service you want. True, if "any service you want" is MSN (please have your credit card ready). With some distributions they have mustered up one or two other paying hosting services to be included. The standard MS Web Publishing Wizard now has been disabled to 99.999% of internet hosting providers. To use it now you must BUY the MS Frontpage package. You can buy a 3rd party FTP program or download shareware FTP software from somewhere else. Or you can configure an ftp connection but most people would find the process rather difficult.

Purchasing MS Frontpage for the Web Publishing Wizard alone is out of the question. Front Page has always been a lousy web development tool, generates a lot of dead code, imbeds meta data and links making your site reliant on Microshaft sites, adds tracking and cookies and doesn't follow *IETF/**W3C standards. Your webpages probably won't even work with any browser but newer versions of IE. One of Microshafts weakest links. Netscape's tools are even worse (no wonder they lost the browser war.) With this kind of competition it's no wonder the consumer got garbage.

(*IETF = Internet Engineering Task Force, **W3C = WWW Consortium)

For web publishing via FTP I downloaded the WS_FTP program from www.ipswitch.com and it worked well. Write to me if you need this function and want the details. But, no matter how well I used to think WS_FTP worked, I was utterly amazed when I switched to Linux and tried G-FTP. It blows every Windows based FTP product out of the water.

The Task Bar I like to stack my desktop launchpoints on the left side of the task bar. As distributed, the option to do that didn't at first appear to be there. Then I discovered that if you right click on it, you can actually enable that function. Some of the cascade options are kind of weird though and I don't like how some of them re-arrange your open windows. I like my windows right where I have them.

Favorites Removed from Start menu in XP. I liked that option. It was easy access to your Favorites and your browser launched if it wasn't already active. Very convenient. To re-add it go to Control Panel/ Appearance and Themes/ Task Bar and Start Menu/Start Menu/Customize/Advanced. From there you can select it to appear on the Start menu.

Favorites comes with a multitude of pre-populated entries. Some of these you do not delete because you think you might use them some day. So I add a few to existing folders and change the order to my preference. But the next time I check the folder, Microsoft has reorganized them and put MY favorites on the bottom. It's best to either create new folders or delete the entries one doesn't want or move them somewhere else.

Instant Messenger often comes as activated by default. After applying patches it may also get re-activated. If you don't use it, remove it. It is just another security risk that opens ports that hackers may be able to use to exploit or compromise your machine.

Personal Web Server is active by default on most machines. If you don't use it, remove it. This also is another security risk.

Transfer Wizard. This is supposed to aid you in moving your old files and settings from your previous computer.

This is an accident waiting to happen.

Originally, I set up a parallel cable connection to connect the two systems. So far so good. Then I activate the transfer wizard and it doesn't accept this direct connection. It only allows a special serial port cable and serial connection. With all the port options available today on PC's, Microsoft has left a lot of them out. Other choices: Use 300 floppy disks or use (slow) modem connections to transfer email, settings or other data.
The wizard also offers you the choice of transferring everything under the sun (which may take you days and would be a dangerous thing to do) or to selectively go through thousands of files, file types and settings (many which the average customer wouldn't know from Jack i.e. How many people know that if they want to import their Oulook address book to their new computer they have to search their hard drive for .wab files and direct the import function to them?). This one is pretty scary. Your previous computers settings may have a whole new meaning in the XP world (or no meaning at all.) Your previous computer likely has hundreds of file associations which are not applicable or have no handler program or plug-in to deal with under XP on your new system. The Transfer Wizard is definitely not a tool for the faint-of-heart. I strongly advise against its usage. If you are not technical enough to feed and coax the lions back into their den, don't even think about releasing what Pharoah Microsoft unleashed at the Gates of this enhancement.

Outlook 5 and prior had a text file called README.TXT which contained the latest info for the version of Outlook on your machine. With XP you get Outlook version 6. The README.TXT file for version 6 only says that "it is now located in the Outlook window under 'Help'". So you go to 'Help' and select "Read Me" and it says the file is not here but is located in the Root directory of your install disk. Another big joke on the customer as most people buy a PC that is pre-loaded and only comes with an "image" disk in case your hard drive crashes and you must restore the base system. Why don't they just come out and say, "We've hidden it under a rock near three toadstools and a four leaf clover, good luck finding it?" The old README.TXT contained cautionary and warning info as well as fix lists. Stuff Microsoft no longer wants you to know. Hey, I'm not about to go to the store and pay $100 or $200 for a distro of W just to read it.

The Outlook Import Wizard lists a variety of mail files you may import into Outlook Express. You can import from version 6 (the current) or from version 4. So where is version 5 and 5.5? I guess if you ran Windows 98, 2000 or NT, you do not deserve to have this capability. You can also import from ancient versions of Eudora but nothing that came out in the last 5 years (you traitor you).

As it turns out, if you upload your Outlook 5.x files you can import them as version 6 files. It worked OK. If you have multiple identities (like for different family members), they will all be merged together. If you have a lot of email, you may run into another weird thing. Outlook creates multiple .dbx files. It imports them horribly. You may find holes or gaps when comparing the Inboxes, Outboxes etc. on your old machine. Outlook creates a number files with names like {80738641864186134863489614978164}. It's a good idea to identify and backup all these files in case the import has problems and you need to perform a manual import for Inboxes, Outboxes, Drafts etc on all *.dbx files.

Outlook Express 6 - Switching identities. I tried switching identities (because I have multiple email accounts) and it would allow me to select another identity but it wouldn't switch even after selecting it. I had to disable having a default identity because after having one set, it always goes to the default no matter what I select. It didn't do this in prior releases. So I now have no default identity and have to select an identity every time I start it. But when I go to switch identity, after I select and click OK I get a message about no default identity and it makes me select what I have already selected, AGAIN.

Weird. After months of living with the annoyance of having to keep re-selecting the identity until it switched, the bug went away. AFTER INSTALLING ANOTHER SERIES OF SECURITY PATCHES. But this just introduced ANOTHER MS problem of supreme stupidity. SMTP is totally jacked. If you switch identities, you can no longer send out emails. You get a 552 error (userid is not valid on server) and a code 0x800CCC79. You basically have to reboot your system to get the Outlook SMTP working again. Just another example of the crap you get with Micorsoft. No wonder people are jumping to Mozilla. Less problems and less security BS than the crap you buy from MS.

There is also another bug in Outlook when switching identities. Oftentimes, during the process, the Outlook window just disappears. It won't restart. It basically freezes up on a simple operation that previous versions of Outlook handled with no problem. Turns out that MS Windows still has some of the memory and stack problems it had in the 80's. To get around it one must Ctrl-Alt-Del and select all msimn.exe programs from the process list and terminate them. You may also have to choose the option to terminate all threads. You will get warnings that doing this might destabilize (i.e. crash) your system. Just accept it. If Windows wants to crash it will. But for the most part, this yanks it out of the system and you can once again restart Outlook without having to re-boot the PC. It usually comes back.

Printers, scanners, digital cameras, games and software. For hardware, have the disks handy in case you need to reinstall any drivers. If they don't specifically list XP, you can usually download the latest from the hardware maker's website. For software, some may not reinstall because the software doesn't recognize your processor. In the old days, programmers often added a processor check (such as 386, 486 P1, P2 etc) to the install programs or even the application. Thus when a new processor came out, the software wouldn't re-install or run because it couldn't determine the CPU type. If this happens you may need to contact the vendor. If you are lucky, you will get a zap or a patch and special instructions. But most likely, you are going to get told to go and buy the product again. After all, all this was laid out in that 5 million word document put together by 300 lawyers that you clicked, "I ACCEPT" to.

Drag and Drop file copies and transfers. One more bug noted in XP. Sometimes, while using the drag and drop feature, it goes into a loop. It will create the sub-directory, copy the files, then create another sub-directory in that sub-directory, copy the files and keep doing that until: a)you cancel it, or b) it exhausts your hard drive space. Either way, you will have to clean up the mess and manually delete all the extraneous files and folders(directories) it created. Not a fun one. If you use this feature and it appears to be taking a long time, KILL IT. Survey the damage and clean it up.

Security April 2003 - It seems that the multitude of security patches and critical updates being released never ceases. How many bugs have they yet to find? If XP was really an improvement and a quality product this shouldn't be happening. Sometimes it is better to wait a while before applying a fix from Microsoft as a few of these have resulted in serious performance degredation or the fix created even more bugs. Another clear indication that Microshaft does an extremely poor job of testing it's own products.

Built in Fire-wall? XP now claims to have a built in fire-wall. In actuality, it does about as much as running a program called HomelandSecurity.

Can you configure it? NO
Can you block ports that are known intrusion points? NO
Does it warn you of suspicious incoming port requests? NO
Does it warn you if a program on your machine is making a port request? NO
Does it block anything? NO
Does it protect you? NOT ONE BIT

Ran another fire-wall program along side of the XP fire-wall and found that the XP fire-wall does nothing.

I had the opportunity to test this further. I use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) client for work. It will absolutely NOT work with any Firewall enabled. It has its own firewall. With the XP firewall enabled, it detects NO firewall on the system and executes. The XP firewall is not detected because it is NOT a firewall at all. It's like this. The security software you buy for machine has to have certain access to system internals to do its job. A good security program will warn you that another program is using those secured services during install as well as later. McAfee won't. Norton won't. MS surely won't. The standing: Nothing detects MS as a funtioning firewall. McAfee and Norton may detect each other but do not detect MS. The VPN detects everything except MS. VPN was pretty thorough. The only conclusion is that MS doesn't have a clue about designing a secure system or providing a working firewall. Guess they will have to buy or takeover some innovative companies in the future when they need some brains.

Direct Connections Another area of concern but not new with XP: You choose to do a "Direct Connection" to transfer your files from one PC to the other. You can do this through the printer ports with cable. It is extremely slow. The Connection wizard only works if the "Host" is the newer operating system and the "Guest" is the older operating system. Next you have to enable file sharing on the "Host" system and give the "Guest" update or write access in order for it to create files as you upload them. In most computer security systems either "read" or "write" access automatically grants "execute" access which means not only can the "Guest" upload, create or peruse files and programs, the "Guest" can also run them. ALWAYS remember to disable File Sharing before going online. Hackers on the interent randomly poll IP addresses looking for File Sharing enabled machines and could potentially upload, download or install things on your PC while you are surfing the internet. If they can get to the password file(s) (*.pwd - no big secret there) it could really be a problem. During my last PC upgrade I forgot to turn file sharing off and sure enough, I had anonymous hackers homing in on my system almost immediately. Fortunately I detected it early and forced the session closed. Windows rebelled a little bit at the request to disconnect while "users are connected and active".

Moral of the Story: The fastest and safest way to get files to your new system is to burn backups on CD-RWs. This is always a good idea. Or try one of those new memory sticks or "jump-drives".

System Restore and the Microshaft Client At least this works and I've needed it on several occasions. I use it when Microsoft's latest patch wrecks my operating system. And I use it when the Microsoft Client for internet connections goes haywire. I still haven't figured out why this happens. I go to dial in to the internet, I hear the phone dial, I hear the server trying to negotiate a handshake, then the MS client hangs. Next it redials without checking for a dial-tone. Reboot does not fix it. So I use System Restore and restore back a day and it then works.

Update 2006. System Restore has been trashed. If SP2 jacked your machine, you are stuck with it and the damage it created. System Restore now only works when Microshaft wants it to which is never. If you have restore points you have saved to save your bacon when Windows Updates wreak havoc, System Restore goes through the motions but fails to remove the damage done.