Windows Tips and Tricks

It is a very common practice among PC manufacturers to omit giving you any kind of disk for reinstalling the Windows operating system. Instead, they put the backup on a hidden restore partition on the hard drive. If the hard drive goes down, you are out of luck. I’ve written about how to create your own backup restore disk at the education site but some manufacturers will provide a disk if you ask.

Dell now has a Web page where you can request backup disks with the operating system and drivers for your Dell system.

(Found via The Blade )

For a while it looked like Congress was going to dither until the moratorium on taxes on Internet connections expired on November 1. However, despite the heavy lobbying against its renewal, both houses of Congress have now passed bills extending the tax moratorium. Ars Technica reports:

With the ban on taxing Internet connections set to expire at the end of October, both houses of Congress are taking action. Last night, the Senate passed a bill that would extend the 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act yet again, this time for seven years. A version of the legislation passed by the House earlier this week would only extend it for another four years.

The moratorium was originally enacted in 1998 and has since been extended twice, in 2001 and 2004. Under the law, local governments are prohibited from levying access taxes on Internet connections (purchases can be subject to applicable state taxes). The nine states that managed to enact ‘Net access taxes prior to the moratorium’s enactment in 1998 are exempt from the ban, and would continue to be under the just-passed legislation.

People may grouse all they want about Vista, but the Microsoft near-monopoly rolls on. Technical types and power users may talk about Linux or the Mac or keeping XP but when the average PC user buys a new computer, it comes with Vista. Go into a computer store and all you see are Vista systems. Whether Vista is good, bad, or indifferent is irrelevant. Microsoft’s lock on the PC may have loosened slightly but it’s still in a position that other companies can only dream of. Microsoft’s latest earnings report shows a healthy increase and over 88 million copies of Vista sold so far. And once SP1 arrives, many businesses are likely to adopt Vista.

The security hole in Adobe’s PDF reader mentioned earlier has been patched, at least for version 8 of the reader. Version 7 is still vulnerable. The patch can be obtained at this link. Russian hacker gangs are reported to be exploiting the security hole. According to Adobe, only users of Windows XP who have Internet Explorer 7 installed are at risk from such attacks.

Use Firefox as a browser and Foxit as a reader and you avoid this and other problems as well.

Macs have been relevant to Windows users ever since Apple switched to Intel chips. The newest Mac operating system called Leopard has native ability to dual-boot with Windows (you do have to purchase Windows separately) and several virtual machine approaches exist for running Windows on a Mac. In fact, for many reasons, Macs are attracting attention from present Windows users and two quite favorable reviews of Leopard have just come out at two big newspapers.

In the New York Times, David Pogue says:

Leopard is powerful, polished and carefully conceived. Happy surprises, and very few disappointments, lie around every corner. This Leopard has more than 300 new spots — and most of them are bright ones.

At the Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg heads his review with:

Leopard: Faster, Easier Than Vista
Upgrade of Apple’s OS Isn’t Revolutionary, But It Beats Microsoft’s

You are probably aware that advertising agencies and others like Google use what are called tracking cookies to create a record of what sites you visit. I have posted a number of times on the subject (search “cookies” to see more). Blocking tracking cookies is quite easy and most anti-spyware programs sniff them out and remove them. However, there is another type of tracking method that is far less familiar and is beginning to be used more. This method uses the ubiquitous Adobe/Macromedia Flash presentations to bypass the usual cookie blocking methods. I wrote an article about this method some time ago but the subject remains little noticed and I am revisiting it. I previously wrote (slightly updated):

To evade standard methods of cookie control, a method called persistent identification element (PIE) is being tried. The current version uses a feature of the Adobe/Macromedia Flash application called local Shared Objects. Use of Flash movies on Web pages is widespread and a very large majority of Web viewers have Flash players on their systems. Internet Explorer comes with a Flash ActiveX component and plug-ins are easily available for the other major browsers.Thus most Web viewers can be reached by this new method.

Skipping the technical details, here is a brief idea of how the method works. When a Web page contains an ad in Flash format that is appropriately coded, a file can be placed on the viewer’s computer that functions much like a cookie. However, none of the present standard methods of cookie control will detect the file. This type of file has the extension SOL and can be located in a variety of places. In Windows XP they are usually in a sub-directory of

C:\Documents and Settings\{User name}\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player

You can find the tracking elements that are on your computer by searching *.SOL and you can then delete the files or you can use the command line to remove them. This will not prevent the planting of tracking elements on your computer in the future, however. Both the deletion of existing tracking elements and the prevention of any more can be accomplished at some little-known Adobe Web pages. Something called the Global Storage Settings Panel can be used to prevent future tracking. On that page you will find a settings manager that will change settings directly to the Flash player on your computer. It is shown in the figure below:

To prevent tracking elements from being placed on your computer by sites yet unvisited, you slide the bar all the way left and remove the check by “Allow third party Flash content…”

You can also remove existing tracking files and manage which sites are allowed. Across the top of the panel shown in the figure above is a row of icons. Clicking the one on far right opens the next figure shown below. The clicked icon is marked with red. This panel shows the stored tracking files that are already on your computer and gives you options for deleting them or configuring any sites that you wish to allow.

It’s possible that a bank or other institution may be using the Flash file as part of its security procedure. In that case, deleting the file will mean having to re-enter some information, which is similar to what happens when you delete a password cookie. The Adobe site gives you the option to allow specific sites while blocking others.

Today’s New York Times has an article about seniors learning to use computers. Prominent in the article is SeniorNet, an organization that I enjoy being affiliated with. Here’s an excerpt ftom the article:

SeniorNet, for one, has developed a curriculum and taken it national, operating more than 200 computer learning centers in 38 states. Older Adults Technology Services focuses on New York City, and it recently received a $500,000 grant from the City Council to expand its program.

Both groups try to put retirees in learning environments that are comfortable and familiar. In each program, retirees can learn at a relaxed pace, sometimes spending 8 or 10 weeks on word processing, search engines and other aspects of technology that younger people might take for granted.

Kristin Fabos, executive director of SeniorNet, said these hands-on experiences enabled retirees to overcome fears about technology and to use computers to communicate with friends and family members.

Dell pioneered the approach of selling configurable computer systems directly on the Internet without bothering with brick-and-mortar stores. This manufacture-to-order, low inventory, low overhead approach was a big factor in making Dell the leading seller of PCs. However, in recent years Dell has stumbled and it has begun sales in stores like Walmart and now in the big office supply chain Staples.

One consequence of Dell’s abandonment of the pure direct sale approach is the addition of state sales tax to the cost of a Dell computer. As long as Dell had no physical presence outside of Texas, the practical effect was that no one in other states paid sales tax. (Technically, you were probably subject to something called a “use tax” but that was widely ignored.) Where I live, the sales tax adds an extra 7% to the cost. And that removes one of the incentives for me to buy a Dell. Companies like HP that have always sold in local stores can’t be unhappy about the leveling of the playing field.

Steve Ballmer is running around talking about how Microsoft is going to be a major seller of advertising. Here’s what John Dvorak has to say about the idea:

Microsoft sees that Google is making a pot-load of money selling ads from search results and via other mechanisms. How hard can that be? So Ballmer is out tub-thumping for the notion that Microsoft will eventually generate half its income from selling ads. Is he nuts? That’s like General Motors deciding that it doesn’t want to buy ads to sell its cars—it will sell ads on its cars instead. Put an ad on a Cadillac! That’s just dopey—and particularly dopey for Microsoft, since Microsoft is a software company, not Vogue magazine.

For Microsoft, this is a potentially disastrous scenario: The company takes its eye off the operating system ball and goes into the flaky ad-sales business, buying up various companies and lording it over them since Microsoft engineers are the ones who know better. This is a formula for disaster.

Personally, I think that Microsoft should first do something about the advertising for its own products. Whoever thinks up the ad campaigns for Windows seems to think its customers are all moronic.

Periodically, I mention programs for recovering files that have been deleted and aren’t in the Recycle Bin. PC World has an article, How to Recover Almost Anything, that discusses methods for getting back lost, damaged or deleted files. One software program for undeleting that is mentioned is FreeUndelete.