Clete’s Blog

Recently, I have experienced some strange problems with my programs that reside on my NTFS partition (Windows Vista is in ‘charge’ of this partition). It all started when I tried to install Vista SP1 Release Candidate a few months back. The installer would would say “!!! 0xcc2321 WINMAIL.EXE !!!” or something like that. I had no clue what this was referring to. Luckily, I had just created a full system backup a few hours prior to this error. I restored my full backup and I decided to wait for the final release of Service Pack 1. So, I chalked one up to Microsoft’s expert programming.

Well, when Vista SP1 was released, I installed it and received the exact same error (some months later). So, I searched high and low on the internet and finally I found an answer. It so happens that all of my problems stemmed from the fact that Winmail.exe was not properly indexed by the NTFS partition. It turns out that a lot of other people had this problem with various files that were corrupt or not properly indexed by the NTFS partition. Why couldn’t Microsoft program a simple check into the Service Pack 1 installer instead of hanging every system with a single corrupt file? They should know that their file system always breaks itself. At any rate, I ran a chkdsk off of my Vista install disc.

Oddly enough, I still received the error. Another 3 chkdsks later and chkdsk was still reporting that it was fixing the same files over and over again! What happened here? Is my hard drive going bad? I haven’t noticed any of the typical signs of hard drive failure… I eventually just deleted winmail.exe and a couple of other files that were corrupt (9 out of 11 were in that same folder and the other 2 belonged to Windows Media Player). It turns out that this solved all of my problems. Strange. Service Pack 1 just copied the files off of its stores of files and everything worked fine.

A few days after that, Microsoft Office started to crash a lot, especially when I closed it. It would crash after the main window has closed, so I would never lose any work and I didn’t have time to bother checking into it. I eventually received a dialog box from “Microsoft Office Diagnostics” telling me that Word and Powerpoint have crashed frequently (OneNote never crashes). It asked me to check for errors with my installation, so I did. Nothing turned up. I suppose I’ll have to eventually give in and reinstall Office.

Two days ago, I shut my computer down properly. I started it back up and I received a plethora of error messages coming from acrobat.exe. Then randomly, Adobe Acrobat installer would start, shoot out errors, then kill itself, and finally restart itself again. It went into a never-ending loop of trying to repair Acrobat. Ugh. Here we go again. So at the next opportunity I had, I grabbed my Vista install disc and ran a chkdsk. It turns out that 81, yes, eighty-one files in the Adobe Creative Suite 3 folder were corrupt. This time, chkdsk corrected all of my problems and things are running smoothly again.

Does NTFS hate my folders? I use Photoshop CS3 daily and I always shut it down correctly. In fact, it has never crashed on me. Not once. I had an odd problem once Photoshop was repaired, however. Photoshop was stuck on the hand tool… permanently. No matter what I did, Photoshop would simply not change to any tool but the hand tool. Finally, I found a blog through Google that told me to go to “Edit -> Preferences -> General -> Reset All Warning Dialogs.” Sounds like an odd thing to do to fix a problem that has nothing to do with dialogs, but it worked. Strange…

I wonder what’s going on…

Firefox 3 has been in the making for a while now. I have been using beta 4 (Windows). There are a lot of nice changes in Firefox 3. First of all, it’s memory footprint is actually smaller than that of Firefox 2.x (in my experience). It is also slightly faster at rendering pages, especially pages that use heavy JavaScript, which is the norm today.

The next thing that I noticed after opening Firefox 3 was the reformed address bar. When you start typing in an address (or tags, which I will cover later), it acts as a keyworded search rather than a simple address bar. Many people dislike this feature. I had to adjust to it and I am still unsure whether I like it or not. Below is an example of this keyword search. (Click to enlarge)

Firefox has finally added in tags for bookmarks. It seems that “tagging” is the “thing to do” today. Slashdot and Engadget recently added tags and it seems like everyone else is beginning to implement some sort of tagging system. Firefox now allows you to tag your bookmarks so that when you type in key words in the address bar, your tagged bookmarks are easier to find. (Click to enlarge)

Firefox has also made a change that I have been wanting for years. Now, you can close the download window without canceling downloads. They simply download in the background, as long as Firefox is kept open. A status message is displayed in the bottom taskbar of Firefox, telling the user how many downloads are active and an estimate of how long it will take for all of them to complete. (Click to enlarge)

The last major change that I have noticed in Firefox 3 is that it now allows you to save your tabs, so that when you open Firefox again, it restores all of the pages that you had open. This is also a much-wanted feature of mine. (Click to enlarge)

In summary, Firefox 3 has progressed a long ways. I have not noticed any major bugs in the beta version. I do not feel that Firefox 3 has added much bloat at all. All of the features that I have seen enhance the user experience.

Looking forward to Firefox 3 Beta 5.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 has progressed farther in complying with CSS and HTML standards. This is evident by its Acid 3 test results. Acid 3 is a test that tests for HTML and CSS compliance. For reference, the Acid 3 test page in Internet Explorer 7 is completely unreadable. There are 5-6 lines of text directly on top of each other.

At any rate, I have tried out the nightly build that will become Firefox 3 Beta 5 within a day or two (so it’s basically Beta 4.95) and it gets a 71/100 (Click to enlarge):

I have one last thing to add. The new betas of Opera and of Safari now display the Acid 3 test 100% correctly. Firefox is now playing catch-up.

Yesterday, I and many other people who have Apple products on their Windows installations (iTunes or QuickTime) received an “Apple Updates” popup. This is typical for me and I regularly install updates to iTunes + QuickTime. However, this update advocates to me that I should install Safari. It appears that Apple is now pushing its products Microsoft style. About a month ago, Microsoft sneaked its Silverlight package into Windows Updates. Microsoft has had a notorious reputation for forcing users to update. This is how it started with Microsoft. Is Apple beginning to go down the same path?Click to enlarge (full screenshot shows that I do not have Safari installed):

For those who are interested, I have my school schedule set up for the Fall 2008 semester, which begins in August.

Schedule (PDF)

After about a week of production, I have Clete Blackwell Photo up and running! I will be storing my work on there from now on. Go and check it out!

Comments and suggestions are highly appreciated! I am still learning new techniques, so please, any comment is a good comment!

How many five-year olds can you take on in a fight?

I can take on thirty. That was one odd quiz…
30

I have purchased cleteblackwellphoto.com. Expect to see an announcement in the next week or two about my upcoming website. Obviously, it will be my photography gallery.