Thursday, May 29, 2003

XP Prefetcher Follow-Up In response to the tip I offered in the March 13 Windows Client UPDATE about the XP Prefetcher, many readers sent me messages with the following information. The registry key EnablePrefetcher has four values: 0 no prefetch 1 prefetch applications only 2 prefetch boot only 3 prefetch both applications & boot Thanks to those readers who passed this information along. 3:52:33 PM    comment [] Woody's Windows XP - Digital Camera Blues: Man, oh man.   I just clicked the wrong button on my digital camera, and deleted all of the pictures. I thought I had selected just one file but my, ahem, nimble fingers were working in pre-programmed mode, far faster than my brain. The net result: an entire compact flash memory card wiped out. Yes, I've received about ten million spam messages telling me about products that undelete files on cameras. But I'd rather cut off an arm than reply to a piece of spam. So I hopped over to Google and searched. There are about a dozen big-name file undelete programs, all of which claim to restore deleted files on digital camera media. I downloaded a couple of demos, and they didn't work. I tried MediaRevival 1.0, a shareware program from Onlime Software (no, that isn't a typo). The trial version says it found 70 images from my camera... but it didn't show me any of them. Harumph. I'm supposed to believe that? Fast File Undelete/Recover (from DTI Data) found the camera but couldn't find the files. R-Undelete had the same problem. FileRestore from Winternals claims that it can do what I want, but it's expensive and there's no trial version, so I can't confirm if it works with my camera. Why should I shell out my hard-earned bucks on a product that might not work? A Solution Exists I finally found two products that work, but one is more than twice as expensive as the other. FileRecovery for Digital Media from LC Tech has a demo that showed me thumbnails of all the deleted pics on the camera, but wouldn't save any of them so I could check to see if the files were recovered correctly. Boo. The main screen has a, uh, cute animation on it that drove me up a wall. It's easy to use, and seems to get the job done... but who wants to spend $70 for a one-PC license, or $88 if you want one year of free upgrades? I only need to atone for my flighty fingers' sins. Don't want to pay off the national debt. For my money, I'll take File Rescue Plus from SoftwareShelf. Their demo runs a hefty 6 MB of download time, but that's what bandwidth is for, I guess. The File Rescue Plus demo successfully undeleted two files from the camera, and the undeleted files looked every bit as good as originals. So I ponied up my credit card and bought the Home Users Edition, for $29.95. It works like a champ. Highly recommended. 3:52:00 PM    comment [] Q. How can I uninstall the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine (JVM) from Windows XP? A. You might want to remove the Microsoft JVM, which Microsoft no longer supports, in favor of the more recent Sun Microsystems' JVM. To remove the Microsoft JVM, perform the following steps: 1. From the Start menu, select Run. 2. Enter the command RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection java.inf,UnInstall to start the uninstall process 3. Click Yes to the confirmation, then select Reboot. 4. After the machine restarts, delete the following items: - the %systemroot%java folder - java.pnf from the %systemroot%inf folder - jview.exe and wjview.exe from the %systemroot%system32 folder - the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftJava VM registry subkey - the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftInternet ExplorerAdvancedOptionsJAVA_VM registry subkey (to remove the Microsoft Internet Explorer--IE--options) Microsoft JVM is now removed. You can download Sun's newer JVM for Windows at http://java.sun.com/getjava/index.html 3:51:27 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Eric Hartwell. Last update: 6/5/2003; 8:07:54 AM.