Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
July 25, 2005

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Terry's Computer Tips newsletter - http://www.terryscomputertips.com
A computer tips newletter for users of PC's.

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Volume 1, Number 6 -- Monday, July 25, 2005

IN THIS ISSUE:
*  1. What Happened To That Web Site?
*  2. Uninstalling and Reinstalling Programs
*  3. Updates This Week:  Firefox v1.06, Microsoft AntiSpyware v1.0.615
*  4. Feedback?  Is there life out there?
*  5. Shareware/Freeware Pick of the Week
*  6. SETI@home
*  7. Just For Fun

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1.  What Happened To That Web Site? I know it's happened to me, and it's probably happened to you.  No, I'm not talking about forgetting a website's address or forgetting where your bookmark/favorite is. I'm talking about the site that had good information -- but the site is not there any more.

Sometimes, the site might be an online games site or such as that.  If you are looking for interactive content or downloads you would have found there, try Google -- www.google.com.  Remember the mantra "Google is our friend."

If you are looking for content, though, you have a real good opportunity to find a copy of the site on the Internet.  Not a pirated copy of the web site, but an archive.

Check out the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/) to find all kinds of data from the Internet's paast.

If you know the URL of the website you seek (you did find the bookmark, didn't you?), you can enter it in the site's "Wayback Machine" search box.  

The Wayback Machine will give you access to occasional snapshots of the site's content.  It does not key to each change of the content at a site;  it is just a snapshot at some point in time.  For some sites, it's every month.  For others, it is less frequent.

One of my reference sites for Windows XP services is/was called BlackViper.com.  It's not operational now and gives an "under construction" page.  The Wayback Machine still lets me access the content when I need or want to read something.

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2.  Uninstalling and Reinstalling Programs Every once in a while, we decide to uninstall a program because we don't need it any longer.  We go to Start / Control Panel / Add or Remove Programs.  After Windows shows the list of programs we can uninstall, we select the one and click on the Remove button.  Sometimes, we have to go to the Start Menu section for that program in order to find the uninstallation program.

The process is usually very easy.  Some programs, unfortunately, do not always clean up after themselves properly when they uninstall themselves.  

"When they uninstall themselves?"  Yes;  although you might believe that Windows is actually uninstalling a program when you use the Add/Remove Programs tool, all you are really doing is running the program's own uninstallation routine.  The programmer has to create the uninstallation program and register it with your copy of Windows for it to show up in that list.  

There are some third-party programs that are designed to monitor program installations so that they know what to "put back" if you use the third-party program to do uninstalls.  Norton CleanSweep is one that comes to mind.  You can buy it separately or as part of the Norton Systemworks package.

Sometimes, though, the uninstallation completes but leaves your computer disabled in some way.  Norton Antivirus 2002 was such a program -- on some computers, it would uninstall perfectly.  On others, it would not remove one of its settings in the Windows Registry.  I had NAV2002 uninstall perfectly on two computers and fail to remove a registry setting on two others.

Unfortunately, the setting told Windows not to get an IP address until one of the Norton programs was running -- a program that it had just removed.  [How did I find the answer?  Hint -- you've heard it before -- Google!]  The true fix was to edit the registry and take out that entry.

But, suppose I didn't have another computer so I could search the Internet and find the answer.  The temporary fix would be two-fold.  First, reboot, whether the computer thought it needed to or not.  Second, reinstall the program you just uninstalled.  In the case of the fumbling NAV2002 uninstall, reinstalling meant the file was there, I could get an IP address and all was well.  Temporarily, since my goal that time was to change to a different antivirus program.  I wonder how many people just reinstalled, saw it worked, and decided to renew their NAV subscription after all.

There were two important points I want to communicate with this example.  Those points do not include Norton as a problem in this regard - they fixed the later versions.

The first point is that, if you are going to uninstall and reinstall a program, reboot your computer after the uninstallation.  This was habit in the days of Windows 3.1, Win95, Win98 and WinMe because Windows forced you to reboot often. [The reason for those forced reboots was that Windows only read the Registry when it booted -- later changes to the Registry file on the disk were not used until the next boot.]  By rebooting, you clean up Windows' memory allocations and may prevent the program from failing to install properly. It only takes another minute or so and it is time well spent.

The second point is that computer problems after uninstalling a program can often be fixed, at least temporarily, by reinstalling the program you uninstalled.

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Continued in Part 2

Volume 1, Number 6 -- Monday, July 25, 2005
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Copyright © 2005 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.