Ask DACS
July 2009

Moderated and reported by Jim Scheef.

AskDACS is a Question and Answer session before the main presentation at the monthly General Meeting. We solicit questions from the floor and then answers from other audience members. My role as moderator is to try to guide the discussion to a likely solution to the problem.

This month was a special extended AskDACS session due to the last minute cancelation by our feature presenter. As a result, I’m adding a new paragraph marker “D” for discussion or digression to the regular “Q” and “A”.

D – We started with a discussion about Vista activation that began with my story about how the activation period for my Vista virtual machine (VM) installation had expired. I use instances of Windows running in Microsoft Virtual PC to allow testing websites using different versions of Internet Explorer. A new purpose for these VMs is demonstrating solutions to questions at AskDACS – hence the Vista and Windows 7 installations.

When preparing for the meeting, I tried to start the Vista VM and found that the activation period had expired. Unfortunately, when presented with a menu of options, I chose to enter a new key code and went looking for the installation DVD. When I could not find it and could not find a way back to that original menu, I ran out of time. Now as I write up the discussion, I tried the VM again and there was the same menu. This time I picked “Activate Windows now” and it did. We will now have a (rather slow) way to demonstrate Vista problems. As a user, I intend to skip Vista, the “DOS 4” of Windows. (If this reference makes you chuckle, let me know.)

D – A side discussion started when someone gasped at all the icons I have on my desktop. These are all “temporary” shortcuts to websites I want to revisit soon. A member commented that following the upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, all of his desktop icons disappeared. An extensive search failed to find these files anywhere on the hard drive, but following a reboot, they all miraculously returned. No one could explain this behavior.

Q – If I upgrade to Windows 7, will I need to replace all my software?

A – Despite all the discussion at the meeting, the real answer is that until the final version ships, no one will know what software will fail to run on Win7. Windows 7 has an XP Mode that is based on virtual machine technology. This is intended to allow older software to run on the new operating system. So as good as this sounds, a member pointed out that only the “better” versions of Win7 will include the XP mode. So, those users who will need it most, the ones who want to buy a low-end PC with the most basic version of Windows, will not have the option of XP compatibility. Once again, we will not know this for sure until the final version ships later this year. Consensus was that Office 2003 should work well on Win7 but the earlier the version, the less likely it is to run properly. (Older versions that are no longer supported on Microsoft Updates should be retired anyway due to the unpatched security vulnerabilities inherent in many older Microsoft applications that support VBA programming).

D – We then had a minor digression about the ribbon bar in Microsoft Office 2007 applications. Personally, I do not like the ribbon bar menus because I have not learned how to use them. If you do not have Office 2007 yet, I suggest that you try the OpenOffice.org suite of applications which has “normal” menus that approximate Microsoft Office. Version 3.1 was released recently and it will be fine for most people. Yes, there can be odd font substitutions when passing documents between Microsoft Office and Open Office. Stick to the normal Windows fonts like Arial and Times Roman and you will be fine. Naturally, if you use exotic fonts supplied with either suite, they will be missing in the other and thus the application must substitute what it has available.

Another option is ZoHo.com, a set of completely online Office-replacement applications. Most of the common applications are free to use and run in most any modern browser. ZoHo apps can now be used off-line via Google Gears.

Q – My antivirus program stopped working recently and now I can’t get to the Symantec website; what can I do? (The details of this question were not clear in the recording).

A – There are many trojans and other malware that disable anti-virus programs in their effort to remain undetected. The Conficker worm is an example. Blocking access to antivirus vendor websites is part of the plan. This is most often done thru changes to a file called “hosts” file that part of the TCP/IP configuration of most computers. Back in the infancy of the Internet, the hosts file is how friendly names like dacs.org were translated into IP addresses. This function is now handled by the domain name server (DNS). On Windows machines since NT, this file is located in SystemRoot\\system32\drivers\etc\ where “Systemroot” is the directory where Windows is located, normally C:\Windows. By convention since the beginning of time, the file has no extension.

Here is the hosts file on my laptop:

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com    # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com    # x client host
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.com

Everything after a pound sign on any line is a comment, so only the last two lines have any affect. The line “127.0.0.1 localhost” is the loopback entry that is needed for proper operation if TCP/IP is installed and there is no physical network connection. I added the line “127.0.0.1 doubleclick.com” to prevent any access from my computer to DoubleClick. I see a lot less advertising as a result; the trade-off is that a few web pages take a little longer to load. One member said that his hosts file has many hundreds of entries that prevent access to known bad sites. Malware may add a line like “127.0.0.0 symantec.com” to prevent access to the Symantec website. More malicious malware will replace the 127.0.0.0 with an actual IP address to redirect your computer to a site of their choosing where they can infect your machine with more bad stuff. The ability to modify this file is a very powerful tool to take control of your computer.

The Wikipedia entry for the hosts file (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file) has a link to instructions on editing the hosts file on Vista machines. The “eye chart” test to see if you are infected with the Conficker worm is at: tinyurl.com/cp9ew5.

Q – I want to synchronize files between my home and office computers. How can I do this?

A – This started a discussion of almost as many alternatives as people in the room. Solutions included:

• Copy files to a USB memory “key fob” drive and carry that to and from work. Programs like Allway Sync (http://allwaysync.com/) can automate this process. The Microsoft tool called Windows Briefcase came with Windows starting with Win95. The Wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows) seems out of date but explains the basics.
• Open remote access to the home computer and use Remote Desktop or other remote control to copy files to/from the work computer.
• Upload files to a file storage website like dropio.com, Windows Live SkyDrive, box.net, freedrive.com, and many more. Some of these free sites have closed, like xdrive.com, so be wary. Search “free online file storage” and take your pick.
• For a totally automatic solution, install Unison on one computer that can be accessed from the Internet and run the sync from the other machine. This is a more sophisticated solution that is worth the effort only if there are a lot of files.
• There are a number of synchronization services available on the Internet that may or may not be workable in an office scenario. Windows Live Sync must be installed on both computers and there is a version for the Macintosh.
• Install the FTP (file transfer protocol) server service on one computer that is accessible from the Internet and use an FTP program like FileZilla (filezilla-project.org) which is an excellent open source FTP client. Again a more involved solution that has serious security implications.

D – I asked for members to relate their experiences using the Google Chrome browser. Those who said they have used it reported that it works as advertised. It has a very simple user interface where everything – websites, search criteria, etc., are all entered into the address bar. I use it very little, mainly because it is not compatible (so far) with RoboForm, the program I use to manage passwords.

D – This led to a serious digression into RoboForm (roboform.com), a shareware program from Siber Systems that “Remembers passwords so you don’t have to.” I store all my web passwords – well over 300 – in RoboForm which then automatically feeds them into the logon screen of the appropriate website on command. All of these passwords are stored encrypted and I need only remember the one password that unlocks RoboForm. I find this solution to be vastly more secure than using the same password everywhere as so many people do. When I create a new account on a website somewhere, I use Roboform to generate a secure password (12-character pseudo random string with varied case and numerals) which I paste into the website form. The length and content of the generated password is configurable to meet any criteria. As you enter a new password Roboform saves the user id and password in an encrypted file for that website. Siber Systems also has a file synchronization program called GoodSync (goodsync.com) that I use to keep all these passwords automatically up to date on my network.

Another feature I really like is that you can store personal information (also encrypted, of course) in RoboForm to automate filling out web forms. The software gives very good control over what is entered and warns when potentially critical information is entered. The “pro” version of RoboForm costs $30 and removes the 10-password limit of the trial ware. There are versions for any recent version of Internet Explorer or Firefox and derivatives, and a portable or “to go” version that runs off a USB or flash drive. Versions for several mobile platforms (smartphones, PDAs) are “display only” but make the data 

Q – I use Google Mail and have been notified several times that I am running out of space but each time they seem to increase the limit. Now I’m nearing eight gigabytes and have received an email that I have ½ a gigabyte left and they have a “special offer”. Has anyone else noticed this or received similar messages?

A – The GMail webpage (gmail.com) shows that GMail offers “Over 7349.805949 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.” It appears that no one in the audience that evening would admit to having saved that much email and that GMail presently has no arbitrary storage limit. This area has become quite competitive as Hotmail used to have a limit of 200MB but now offers 5GB to a free account (I was wrong about this at the meeting). I have a Yahoo Mail Plus account ($20 per year) and was told some time back that Plus accounts had “unlimited” storage. This would be competitive with Hotmail and GMail.

Q – Google offers beta search engines from time to time. How can I find out about these and use them if warranted?

A – The consensus was that the beta search engines are targeted to specific areas. By searching in Google Labs (googlelabs.com) I found eleven projects related to search, but no special search engines.

A member related his experience searching for an article in an Icelandic magazine whose name requires special characters. No amount of searching could find the magazine’s website. When a friend sent him the name of the author spelled using the Icelandic characters, Google found the website immediately.

Disclaimer: Ask DACS questions come from members by email or from the audience attending the general meeting. Answers are suggestions offered by meeting attendees and represent a consensus of those responding. DACS offers no warrantee as to the correctness of the answers and anyone following these suggestions or answers does so at their own risk. In other words, we could be totally wrong!