Making Computers Behave

By far the best solution for spam that I have found is using SpamBayes along with Outlook. It works as a plug in. I have found that the best settings are 80% for Certain Spam and 30% for Possible Spam. Also, setting the timer delays to 0.5 seconds seems to work well.

The only negative thing is that the mail notification icon and sound still play when all you got was spam. But they are already working on fixing this problem.

A problem with Outlook is that there is no way to view the actual message source code as received by the server (unlike in Outlook Express, ironically). One neat side effect of having SpamBayes installed is that you can click "Show spam clues for current message" and get the actual message source code.

Every time the computer started up, an error message titled "EPSON PrinterPort" gave the message "At least one service or driver failed during system startup. Use Event Viewer to examine the event log for details." Looking in the System event log gave the following message titled "Eplpdx02": "The parameter is incorrect". As descriptive as that is, here is a combination of what I found elsewhere online to fix the problem. This might be too many steps, but it worked for me.

1. Open the Printers and Faxes folder
2. Right click on any printer and choose properties
3. Click the Ports tab and remember which port is checked for this printer
4. Scroll through the list of ports until you find the ones titled EPSON something or other
5. If none of these EPSON ports are used (none have a printer listed in the Printer column), then just click each one and choose Delete Port
6. If one of these EPSON ports is used, then the attached printer needs to be moved to another port, probably LPT or USB, depending on how it is connected to the computer. This is done by opening the properties for the associated printer and checking a different box for the port. (I didn't have this situation)
7. After deleting all the EPSON ports, recheck the box you memorized in step 3, then click ok
   
8. Click Start -> All Programs -> EPSON Printer -> Uninstall EPSON Printer Port (or something similar)
9. Rebooting will no longer give the error message
   

Every time the computer was shutting down, there was a delay waiting for hpcmpmgr to stop running. Apparently this is a problem with Windows XP Service Pack 2 which somehow breaks this program that just checks for updates from HP periodically. The fix is easy to find by searching HP's website for "hpcmpmgr" and leads you to a download page for a program hpcmpmgrFix.exe that fixes the problem.

Recently, I've had to install Windows XP Service Pack 2 on computers that had errors connecting to Windows Update. Sometimes the only way to fix the Automatic Updates part of Windows XP is to uninstall the service pack and reinstall it. The problem is that after uninstalling, you still cannot get to the Windows Update website (some undocumented error message, for example). Buried deep within Microsoft's website, is a link to download Service Pack 2 in a way that avoids the Windows Update website. Here, is the link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=049C9DBE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en
This page was found by searching the Microsoft site for "service pack 2" and then following links for "IT Professionals" to deploy to multiple computers.

Even though the linked page has a bold uppercase line telling you not to install it on single computers, I've done this and it worked. This line is likely there because the download is large to include every possible file your computer could need, even for features you don't have, just so that it will work for everyone. Microsoft probably just doesn't want everyone using up too much bandwidth from their website. Sometimes this is the only way that works.

Today I fixed up a computer that had a ton of different little problems. Among them was the problem involving an error message that started with:

Windows could not load the installer for Display.

Once, I saw it with the word "Monitor" instead of "Display". This error came about when installing some windows updates, but was also seen when doing other things such as viewing the advanced properties in the Display control panels Settings tab. After looking around at various newsgroups, I found the following solution (though I forget where):

1. Uninstall Windows XP Service Pack 2
2. Reinstall the display drivers off the manufacturer's website (this case was Toshiba)
3. Reinstall Windows XP Service Pack 2

Note that one of the problems seemed to come up when installing the display driver that was located through the Windows Update website. Thus, it is important to install the version from the computer manufacturer's website.

This took a long time, especially because the computer was slow, but also because uninstalling, downloading, and reinstalling the service pack are very time consuming tasks.