"Misleading" is the politest term I can think of to describe this . . .

For more years than I care to remember, I have been a user of the old "Norton File Manager" application in its various guises (e.g. it was packaged as part of Norton Navigator some years ago).  Back in the days of DOS I used XTREE a lot, and "NFM" seemed to be the logical progression from that.

Now, I have to admit, NFM's days are numbered as it doesn't work reliably under Windows7 - it keeps on crashing with "Smartheap" errors.  Upon look for an alternative I came across something called "WinNC" which purports to be a "Windows Norton Commander Clone".

There was a "try before you buy" download available so I thought I'd give it a go.

Frankly it's far more flashy and cumbersome than NFM ever was, but it seemed to work reasonably well, and eventually I felt tempted by the popup splash screen you get when you start the application :-

Consequently I decided to have a little look at the purchasing options, as just less than 20 Euros was quite tempting.

Upon following the link what I was presented with was this :-

. . .which got me somewhat annoyed!

Trying an alternative route and looking at the GB Pounds options produced this :-

. . . so I really don't think I'll bother, in fact I think I'll uninstall it and look for something else!

I understand perfectly (thinking of a famous quotation my Mark Twain) that taxes are unavoidable, but that isn't the point here.

Which as a shame really, because at the price quoted in the application splash screen I was sorely tempted.

Good News, Bad News

First the Good News.

I believe the PC which was whacked by a virus/trojan/bot last weekend, courtesy of a "driver site" is now back up and running having been seemingly "de-loused".

As it was still partially crippled, even after a Windows XP "repair" from the OEM CD, whilst I was driving up to the top of Scotland at the beginning of the last working week I figured that one way of dealing with the problem was to connect the affected PC's hard drive as an additional drive to a fully functioning PC, and to virus scan it from that PC.

This is what I did yesterday, and the virus scan found a few suspect files and zapped them.

Once the "cleansed" drive was reconnected to its proper PC and that was booted, it was immediately evident that the nasties had in fact been purged.

I then fixed the on board virus checker (this PC runs Microsoft Security Essentials) with a "hotfix" downloaded from Microsoft, and then let Windows Updater catch up with everything, including re-installing Service Pack 3.

I took the opportunity to vacuum out the PC, a Dell Dimension 3100, which always has been blissfully quiet and generally tidy up all the cabling associated with it, no trivial job I can assure you!

Anyhow, it all seems to be in reasonably fettle now, and I have once again started up my QRSS grabber, though I think I won't reinstate the Apache Web Server.

As part of the rescuing of the situation I moved all affected sites off site, and I will leave them there for the moment.

Now the Bad News.

On a whim, I extracted my TS-180S from the shed with a view to giving it a little exercise as it has been lying discarded for a few months.

To my horror upon firing it up I found I once again had a "dead" digital display.   The receiver is still working as it was when I put it to one side, but when last used it had a fully functioning display.   My favoured theory at the moment is that I disturbed some wiring when I tidied it all up before putting the covers on.  

Knowing the previous track record of this radio, that might be wishful thinking!

Bother ... !!

Virus (or Trojan?) Attack

I have to report that my main "Radio PC" is down having contracted something nasty yesterday.

Basically it all started when I discovered that the DVD/RW on my main PC seemed to be duff, and so I tried to burn a DVD on my Radio PC which is a Dell Dimension 3100 running Windows XP Home Edition.

That was a failure, as it appeared that the DVD/RW in the Dell was also u/s, and after doing some research on the web, I tried to download a new driver for it.

It seems that "driver sites" are now as bad as "keygen" sites used to be at harbouring nasty things, and to cut a long story short I very soon had a crippled PC, and still have.

First it was a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) with a number of "Stop Codes" which I was unable to find a satisfactory explanation for.

I then "repaired" the Windows installation from the OEM CD which got it going again, but as soon as I had it fired up I noticed that Microsoft Security Essentials appeared to have been "nobbled" in that the real time scanning couldn't be enabled, and examination with TCPView revealed dozens of TCP connections opening up, at which point I quickly removed the network connection from the PC.

As of now I haven't been able to find the root cause - a deep scan with Security Essentials, followed by SpyBot Search and Destroy revealed nothing, but there is definitely something nasty in there, and it will have to be complete purge, reformat and reinstall from scratch, I'm afraid.

Web sites being hosted on that PC have been found alternative accommodation, and I now need to think about what I must rescue in the way of data (My HRD logbook is in there for one thing) before I "slash and burn" and start again.

Doesn't it make you sick!

Yours, grumpily

Linux - R.I.P.

Here we go again, another anti-Linux rant ...

Well not _exactly_, but here is an illustration of how "naff" Linux is to a long-time Microsoft DOS/Windows user :-

When I set out to learn about Linux, I had two objectives. The first objective was to learn about Linux, obviously.

The second was to run a web server (ie host web sites on my own equipment in my own home).

Both of these objectives were achieved up to a point, but when it came to hosting web sites I also wanted to learn about the analysis of traffic associated with those sites.

To that end I installed "Webalizer" and that is where the problems with Linux really came to a head.

The darned program kept the access logs created by Apache so locked up that Webalizer was unable to access them. No matter what I tried the result was always the same.

For the sake of comparison I then decieded to load both Apache and Webalizer onto a Windows XP machine.

I got Apache up and running on the Windows machine in probably not much longer than half an hour (I was familiar with the way the Apache configuration files worked, so I wasn't exactly starting from scratch), and Webalizer was installed and activated in pretty much the same amount of time.

Webalizer on Windows is now happily producing the web stats I was trying to get from the Linux installation, all with about an hour's worth of effort.

Well at least I tried!

Linux seems to me to be a bit "exclusive", rather like a Golf Club.

Golf Clubs don't really like to see the "ordinary bloke on the street" cluttering up their courses and facilities, so they make membership difficult to achieve (by charging lots of money, or by imposing conditions on would-be members, etc etc) whilst pretending that membership is "open to all". The reality is different, it's a hobby for the "chosen few".

Am I referring to Golf Clubs or Linux in the last statment? I'll leave the reader of this to be the judge of that!