Internet Explorer Plug-ins

Yay for more ranting about issues! I just reformatted my laptop since it decided to not load explorer on start-up. However, when I went to start updating Windows Xp Professional I ran into a small error...or not so small error:0x8ddd0004. This error is actually a missing plug-in that IE uses to download Windows Updates and naturally without it a Windows PC cannot download updates.
Microsoft's fixes for it were a joke, I tried every single one and after I ran out started looking on the forums. As a last ditch effort I searched Microsoft's website for download muweb.dll and download MUWebControl Class plug-in. Surprisingly, neither search yielded any downloads for the said plug-in.
I went and searched IE plug-ins via their search option found in the manage add-ons window and still found nothing! Now I am getting a little angry as this really should be online to download for users that are in my predicament.
Finally, I get the bright idea to figure out where the plug-in is on my other computer and copy and paste it from the system32 folder on that computer to the same folder on my laptop and see if that solves the issue. Amazingly, it worked!
My issue now is, what would have happened if I did not have another computer to copy and paste the plug-in from? Or what if I could not figure out how to find the plug-in on my other computer? I would have been taking another hour to two just to format the thing again! Clearly, I did not want to have to do that again. The fix for that problem as a last fix should be a download of the MUWebControl Class plug-in, right? Obviously, Microsoft did not think that it was a good idea to direct users to this end since there was nothing in their help documentation. This disgusts me, period.

Mojave & Life Without Walls

Microsoft has had a lot of new ad campaigns coming out recently: The Mojave Experiment and their Life Without Walls campaign. As a user of Windows Operating Systems since Windows 95, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft games I can say that their claim to "life without walls" and how great "Mojave" (aka Vista) is does have some truth behind it. However, the only way that they can even make this claim is because Microsoft products hold the vast majority of the technology market. Other Operating Systems such as Mac OSX and Linux could have held that top spot had they advertised the way Microsoft did.
The Mojave experiment was meant to show that Vista is Great after it fell on its face initially. My issue is that Microsoft has a professional user sit down and "show" the operating system to the viewer, so this reviewer does not even get to try to use the machine themself!Also this machine is probably tricked out to the max and has hardware and the drivers for that hardware made specifically for Vista. Another thing that I have a problem with is that they never told users to bring along some of the peripherals that they frequently use with their computer like an ipod, mp3 player, camera, etc. to plug in and see if it works. What Microsoft also does not tell us is that often the user profiles on Vista machines will become corrupt and unusable even in SafeMode! Bye Bye music, homework, saved games, movies, tv series, etc. In my tech support job I see people bringing in machines on a regular basis with corrupt user profiles. What really floors me is that manufactures still think that they can let a computer running Vista gimp along with less than 2GB of RAM! that really is special! I know that when Vista computers have this RAM deficit they tend to take forever to open any program....even something simple like solitaire. I think these people are inept computer users to begin with. Furthermore, they then try to tell us in their new ad campaign that Microsoft is "life without walls".
"Life without Walls" is a great gimmick, too bad most of the WORLD uses Microsoft products, no wonder there are no walls. However, to a person that knows how to program they run into walls all of the time because if a program is broken and they know how to fix it they can't! This is because Microsoft's code is not Opensource like that of Linux. Their "life without walls" campaign is nothing more than a gimmick that they can play to because they own the market more or less. My question is why won't my old games work in windows when I turn on compatiblity mode? Instead I end up using DOSbox as I have some older games that I still find enjoyable to play because they are clever...sadly I don't have a computer with an OS older than Xp on it. The whole life without walls is looking like there are more and more walls going up the more that I think about it. Oh yes, yet another walls is when we try to go between Microsoft Office versions, I want to know why the converter for .docx documents to .doc is not a necessary Windows Update? Wouldn't it make sense then users don't have to go mucking around to find the converter when they discover that they need it...and some users don't even know that a converter exists! Yeah, Life without Walls my butt!
I can only hope that Windows 7 is better (v6.1)....

Best Buy!

I have had a lot of dealings with Best Buy in my short 21 years of life on this planet. Some good experiences and others...not so good. I remember a time of sunshine and flowers when my parents bought their first computer: Windows 95 by PackardBell. No matter how many problems we had with that computer Best Buy would fix it time and again with great results. More recently, there was the tale of the Hp Pavilion that many of you may have read about, this time it is the motherboard's video chip going bad. The first call was to 1-888-Bestbuy I got this guy that could hardly understand Midwestern English as it sounded like he was overseas. Long story short I had to explain to him what an artifact is when it appears on a computer screen. Clearly, this guys was not trained properly to troubleshoot. After I finally got him to understand that I need a new motherboard because the video chip is dying then we moved on to changing the address my computer is at since I used their service when I was living somewhere else. I do not think that the guy I talked to knew what it meant when I said, "I need to change my address." He said that he has updated it to what I told him...obviously he didn't because the motherboard ended up listed to head to my old address. I learned this when that tech that was supposed to come out to replace it called and he was in the city that I used to live in. He straightened out where the motherboard was supposed to go and I verified it with a phone number that he gave me for the company that a different tech would come out from to install the motherboard. Long story short I should not have had to wait 3 weeks to get a new motherboard installed, it should have only been two. Never again will I buy on-site service contracts from Best Buy....or even their in-store contract as I have had more joyous issues with that.
My printer (now three years old and being replaced) never auto-feed the paper into itself properly...ever. I had a service contract for that so I took it back to Best Buy twice and both times the tech would put ONE sheet of paper in and say it was fine...who the hell only prints one page?!?!?!?! I tried to get him to put like 5 sheets in and he was like if it does one it'll do more and was extremely dismissive. So, I gave up and brought it back another time, same story. After this I gave up at that store. The bottom line is that their phone service sucks and stores are either hit or miss because I know of at least one store that actually has very good service. Just seeing the mismanagement at different levels turns me off from this chain. I will probably try again in a couple years to see how things are until then, newegg.com is my tech store :D

Hp is the new devil

As of today I have decided that Hp is the new devil. This stems from my experiences with their printers and general technical support for their computers. For printers we'll just say that the auto-feed is a joke and I now need to hand-feed the paper to my printer to get it to print most of the time. My desktop an Hp Pavilion a1020n has seen better days, especially because the plastic power button broke and apparently the only way that Hp will help me is by selling me a $23.00 front panel for my computer when there is about a $.50 part that is removable that needs to be replaced. Take a look at these pictures:

The top picture is of the front panel of my computer with the missing power button, as you can see from the hole in the front of the case where the button should be. Hp does not replace those buttons even though it is a known problem, instead they want to waste my money and have me pay $23.00 for a new front panel. This panel is the front of the case. Below is a picture of the part that they should replace. It would cost more to ship it than it is worth! I am just appalled that Hp knows that this is a problem and that they have not even tried to help their customers, but have left them hanging out to dry!


I guess that the moral of the story is to not buy anything from Hp for at least 5 years, maybe the problem will be fixed with their crappy customer service.

Lenovo R61e Saga

All I have to say is Wow Lenovo. I just got this laptop off of newegg.com and after the initial set up I was running off of battery power and playing a little game to see how much it taxes the system. The game went fine, but then after I closed out of that I was at my desktop and opened the taskmanager and clicked around a bit. Suddenly, my screen was squashed across the top of the screen and the main screen area was either red, blue, pink, etc. and the only way to get it to go back to desktop was to right click at the top of the screen. I restarted and opened the task manager and it did it yet again, so now I'm getting a little upset. This laptop wasn't even a day old and giving me issues. So, here I sit trying to figure out what I'm going to do...I get the the brilliant idea to download the updates through ThinkPad's ThinkVantage software system updater. After downloading a graphics and battery manager update I reboot thinking it'll be fine, I now have a new problem: the Windows Xp Welcome screen is pixelated and it blue-screens out. I restore it to before I installed those updates and then I find that the system download manager no longer works. At this point I chuck it in its box and don't touch it until I wake up the next morning where I try to figure out a way to update it to no avail. I go to work and then as soon as I get home I call Lenovo and get a great tech support guy based in Atlanta, GA. He told me to download the updates directly from IBM, not Lenovo, and now I don't get the crazy screen and the system update manager works!! This was quite the saga with a new laptop and I am still deciding if I want to send it back for a replacement or just keep it, if it last a week with me trying to make it go graphically crazy and it doesn't then I'll keep it and see where it takes me. This is a Buyer Beware in terms of R61e Lenovo laptops.