[vox-tech] windows support, unfortunately

[Alex Mandel]

Peter Jay Salzman wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>At work I have to use WinXP, but all of my development is with open source
>tools like cygwin, miktex, etc., so I'm almost happy.
>
>This morning a bad thing happened.  Adobe Acrobat wanted to install an
>update 7.0.5 on my work computer, and stupidly, I allowed it.  It wanted to
>reboot to finish the upgrade, and again, I allowed it.
>
>Unfortunately, after the reboot, my system has become flakey.  Here are some
>manifestations:
>
>1. Some of the shortcuts in the start menu lost their bitmap and have become
>   the default Windows bitmap of an unregistered file.  Clicking on the
>   shortcut doesn't "do" anything.  When I view the properties of the
>   shortcut, the target type is "This is not a valid shortcut".  They have
>   an empty "target".
>
>   Only some of the shortcuts do this.  Additionally, I can't delete them.
>
>2. Wierd errors.  For example, when I try to install yahoo IM, it errors out
>   with "Could not load the DLL library C:\WINDOWS\USER32.DLL.  The
>   specified module could not be found."  I've verified that this library
>   exists in C:\windows\system32 but not c:\windows
>
>3. Other strangeness that feels like permissions problems.
>
>
>The reason why I'm posting to vox-tech is that one of the help desk guys
>noted that i have a lot of "illegal software".  this is the term he actually
>used; i'm not making that up.  he was referring to firefox, putty, miktex,
>gvim, cygwin, etc.  he said i have to uninstall the "illegal and unsupported
>software" to "fix the machine".
>
>I've got a better idea.  I'm going to try to fix whatever is wrong without
>uninstalling my "illegal" software.  Hence, the post to vox-tech.
>
>First, everything points to the Acrobat upgrade, since that is the only
>thing that occured in between the time the system was good and not good.
>But this hardly matters.
>
>Any ideas?  Many of the things seem to point towards permissions problems.
>The filesystem is NTFS.  Is there a notion of permissions and file ownership
>on NTFS?  If so, if I didn't have access to read a *.lnk file, would
>explorer tell me the "link is not valid" like I see in point #1 above?
>
>Many of the problems feel like permissions problems to me.  Could some kind
>of permission problem conceivably cause problem #2 above?
>
>I don't have the admin password for this computer, but I noticed a utility
>on the web that obtains the admin password on XP machines.  Actually
>*changing* the admin password is out of the question, for obvious reasons.
>
>Any help appreciated.  I got a good dressing down for installing Firefox,
>and I really do NOT want to call the help desk again.
>
>Thanks,
>Pete
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>vox-tech at lists.lugod.org
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>  
>
Do you have access to system restore (start->help look for it on the 
middle right side in smaller font), is it even turned on.
This is one of the good things they added in winxp too bad most people 
forget to turn it on.

Alex

PS: WinXP is the 1st win box I've managed to go longer than 1 year 
without reinstalling, but it's day is coming soon I'm just too lazy and 
dual booting put it off for another long while.