Computer Help

[Mirymate]

Is there anyone on this board that's really good at running down software glitches in Window Vista, or knows of a reliable place to find some tech advice? (yes I know, Vista is a glitch unto itself, but the beggar could not choose in this case, so I'm trying to make it work.)

My desktop has been suffering from an odd confluence of maladies since this summer that I have not been able to make any headway on. (partially since one of the things is the Windows such will not initialize) I have no reason to believe they are related except that they all started the same day.

[NorthRaider]

Though I might not be of much help to you in this problem (me knowing diddly squat about computer anatomy and all), as a fellow Vista victim user for the past seven months I do offer you my emotional support and commiseration anyway.

Did you happen to install any new programs or open any email attachments or portable had drives that day? Or maybe it could have been one of those notorious Vista updates gumming up the works? If there's any other sort of help I can provide in my limited capacity, I'd love to try. That being said, so far I've managed to avoid any major screw-ups with some good old-fashioned Googling.

[Mirymate]

I wish it were that simple. I am afraid I am suffering from small fingers and random mouse clicking. Let me be clearer...

I booted up my desktop one morning this summer then went to another part of the house to do something, and left my office door open. When I returned sometime later I tried to check my email using outlook. I was told I did not have permission to open the file that contained the mail folders. In fact on further checking, I found I could not open any files in my named directory under Documents and Settings. That's because every file and directory had been globally changed to "read only" and the permissions to open them reset. How this happened I don't know. The computer is virus free, checked by website virus checkers, not by the internal system, as that's the first thing I thought of. But also there's no record in any anti-virus websites of a virus that changes file permissions in this way. I suspect my youngest may have slipped in and hit some magic random mouse clicking combination that caused the problem, but be frelled if I can figure it out. I have managed to restore 99% of everything to normal. But I am missing several key points.

1. Neither Microsoft Search of Microsoft Mail will initialize
2. The file containing my mail account information for Outlook 2003 has been corrupted, but I can not find it. (Not the folder information, just the mail account information) I have deleted every Microsoft outlook file I can find, and completely uninstalled the program, but upon reinstallation, the email account settings are still there, and still not working.
3. The programs associated with the scanner no longer recognize that it's attached. Vista can see it, perform diagnostics on it, even preview scan things. But my OCR and imaging programs can't find it. Uninstalling and reinstalling has not helped there either.

My efforts are largely hampered by my inability to get the search working again. Restoring to the restore points before the problem started has not had any noticeable effects. I was prepared to reformat, reload, and start over, but was warned that with Vista that might not get rid of all the hidden config files. (why, I don't know, but that's what I was told.) Just about ready to rip the whole blinkin' hard drive out and start over.

And of course Vista seems to be fighting me the whole way by just be Vista. Security over function and all that.

[NorthRaider]

Ooooh boy. Sorry to hear that Miry.

With regards to your Search problem, by any chance do you use ZoomBrowser EX on your computer? (Yeah I know. Sounds like a stretch. Dumb Vista.)

Anyway I found this thread while Googling some kind of solution for your Search problem, have you tried whatever's in it yet?

Not sure how to help on the Outlook or scanner problems though.

[TBT!]

I have actually stayed away from Vista because it seems like it's a lot of pain for very little gain! ( also at the moment I am running on older machines without huge amounts of memory)

Here's some things to consider

Ok my first instinct is to run something to check for malware... simple AV software will not always find things (I recommend "malware bytes antimalware").

Secondly it might be something as simple as you are logged in as another user? go back and log in as admin and see if you can' t change the file permissions etc.

In order to know more about the scanner make/model and can you tell us how it's attached? USB network etc?

I actually hate modern operating systems, they are too much smoke and mirrors, I was much happier back in the day when we had open system I could see exactly what was going on.

Not sure how helpful the above is but it's worth a try. Also whatever someone told you about not reformatting sounds worrying, the only way that Vista could be doing that is if it was using either a small extra partition or the slack space between partitions... I'm pretty sure a complete wipe and restore of selective files should be the quick answer if we cant work something out soon.

T.

p.s. just throwing some ideas out there, I suspect the person you really want to talk to is JL he's damn smart at this stuff!