Maura van der Linden – Blog

I’m ready to put my energy and talents to work for ME. With over 13 years of experience working for Microsoft, I really want to use all that knowledge and wisdom to educate and teach users that computers and software aren’t as mysterious as they are made out to be.

For the most part I’ve focused on writing for the industry as a part of my job but kept my passion for user education as a very un-paying hobby. But it’s time for a change!

If you are looking for professional and knowledgeable writing about technology and software that is easy to understand as well, feel free to contact me using my Contact Form on this site.

There’s a site/service called Grouply that is purported to help you manage all your Yahoo groups in a centralized place. Sounds good, right? Especially if you have a lot of group memberships.

But rumors abound about Grouply and how it operates. Some reports are that when you sign up for it, it changes all your membership emails to be username@grouply.com and then any mail in the groups you subscribe to are indexed and resourced by Grouply. This means that anyone else on those groups has, without their permission, had their assumed privacy removed.

Now, everyone should realize that there is no real privacy on the web. None. And the memory of the web is pretty darned infinite. But we’ll ignore the fact that illusions of privacy are just that.

But my most basic issue with Grouply is very simple – it requires you to disclose your Yahoo username and password to a third party service. At that point, you’ve lost all control. You have no idea what, how or when the third party will use that information. You certainly have no control over it.

So the basic security advice applies. Never give out your username and password.

So I’m now in possession of a Galaxy Black ASUS eee pc. This is a little baby notebook that’s solid state (no moving hard drive). It really is small enough to fit in my purse. The keys are about 3/4 normal size (as a guess) and we’ll see how well I do typing on them. It’s not a replacement for my laptop or desktop machines but rather something to carry around, make notes on and write quick tidbits on.

The first thing I found was that the WiFi doesn’t like the advanced encryption of my wireless network at home. It had no problem finding it, just could not get an IP. Oh well, I’m not willing to sacrifice my network security (nor reset all the machines) so I just won’t use that at home.

It boots really quickly and is running Xandros Linux. This gives it an almost Windows-like UI and it was easy to find applications like Open Office and such. After a quick tour of pushing buttons, I set is aside to charge while I read the information.

Hmm – I could install Windows XP on it, if so desired. I think for now I’ll stick with Xandros and see what happens.

The first real issues rears its head – I’m a dedicated Dvorak touch-typist. I don’t need the keyboard’s keycaps to be laid out in Dvorak but I want the keys mapped to a Dvorak layout. This is easy in Windows because I’ve done it so many times but it took me a small session with Google to find the command for Xandros. The command works but I’d have to enter it each time I start up the eee and that seems like a pita.

What would really be great is to have a shortcut to execute the command to set the keyboard map to US and one for Dvorak, then set the default to Dvorak.

Easier said than done. Guess I’ll poke at that later tonight and see if I can figure it all out.

When you install Vista on a computer that has a prior version of a Microsoft operating system on it, a lot of the information from the prior installation will be saved in a directory called Windows.old. If you have installed Vista multiple times, you may have more than one Windows.old directory.

Once your Vista install is up and seems stable, you may want to reclaim that space but will find you can’t merely delete the folder, even logged in as an administrator. There is a method provided to remove the directory but I didn’t know it until I stumbled upon it.

To remove the files from these old Windows installations, do the following.

1. Click on your Start button.
2. Click on Computer.
3. Right Click on your main hard disk.
4. Select Properties.
5. Click on the Disk Cleanup button.
6. Click on Files of all users in the popup.
7. Click on Continue.
8. Look through the list of file types and check the box next to Previous Windows Installation(s).
9. Click OK to perform the cleanup.

Hope this is helpful.

In my last post I spoke about how you can free up disk space if your Vista operating system appears to be consuming your hard drive space. As promised, here is some information on how change the disk space used.

One way to prevent that from happening is to turn off the automated creation of system restore points entirely but if you want to still have that fallback without all your drive space disappearing, there is a way to see how much space the system shadow copy is allowed to use and to change that limit.

This is a little more complicated because you have to use an elevated command window to do it. To open the elevated command window, do the following:

1. Click on your Start Button
2. Click on All Programs
3. Click on Accessories
4. Right click on Command Prompt
5. Click on Run As Administrator
6. Click on Continue to confirm

Once you have this command window open, you should check to see what your system is currently set to use for its shadow copy. To do that, you type the following, then press Return:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

This command will display information on each drive for which you have shadowstorage enabled. The last line in each set is the maximum size limit for the shadow storage. It’s typically set to be 10% of the total drive size but, in the case of a laptop I had running Windows Home Premium, it had that dreaded word – UNBOUNDED. Ack. Definitely something to change. If you have a very large drive, 10% of the entire drive may be a vast amount of overkill as well and you may want to reduce the max size.

To reset the size, from the elevated command window, you type the following and then press Return:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=c: /on=c: /maxsize=6GB

This sets 6GB as the max size for the shadow copy of my C: drive, stored on my C: drive. If you leave maxsize= blank, then the limit becomes unbounded.

One of my computers is running Vista Home Premium edition and has a 65GB main drive. Since it’s one I only do limited things on (like writing), I saw no need to upgrade the operating system but, earlier this week, I looked at the hard drive space and noticed that it had suddenly gone down from about 30GB free to 1.5GB free. All this without my installing much in the way of new software or storing huge archives of documents.

Like any other person, my response was “What the heck?!?” Well, my response might have been a little more colorful, but you get the idea. After the surprise wore off and the usual suspects had been cleared, I proceeded to hunt around for an answer.

It turns out that one of the ways Vista protects your data and system is to create system restore points – to be able to restore your system to a previously stable state. It also keeps shadowcopies of your documents, in case they become corrupted. Usually Vista installs with a maximum space set (default is 10% of the total disk space, I believe). When this space is exceeded, Vista will begin deleting the oldest restore points and shadow copies to make room for the new ones.

For some reason, on the system this was happening on, the maximum size was set to unbounded. It could use ALL the space.

To clean up the files (but keep the last system restore point), you can perform the following:

1. Click on your Start Button.
2. Click on Computer.
3. Right Click on your main drive.
4. Select Properties.
5. Click on the Disk Cleanup button.
6. Select Files from all users.
7. Click Continue to authorize.
8. Click the More Options tab.
9. Click the Clean Up button under System Restore and Shadow Copies section.
10. Click Delete to confirm.

There is a way to set the size limit of the Shadow Copies yourself but it’s more complex and easier to mess up than is probably appropriate for this blog. You’re welcome to contact me using the Contact Form if you need me to tell you how to do it.

I finally have Issue #4 of my Newsletter up, talking about Operating Systems.

Something is going on between the popular Yahoo Groups and Gmail.

I began noticing problems on 3/14 where my volume of email went way down very suddenly. Since I’m pretty much an email addict, I went to my Yahoo Groups page and checked my Email Preferences only to find that my gmail account that is used for most of my groups had been bouncing and automatically disabled by Yahoo. It noted over 300 emails were bounced.

I put it down to some odd circumstance, reactivated the account and went about my merry way. So far I’ve been forced to reactivate it at least once per day. This is really no fun.

But apparently I’m not the only one. This has been happening to quite a few people who use GMail to receive individual emails from their Yahoo Groups. The only information I’ve seen from Yahoo is that the issues is on GMail’s side but no details. I’ve not seen anything from Google at all.

So if you use GMail to receive mail from Yahoo Groups, you may want to check your account status.

I heard an interesting piece on the radio a few days ago that had to do with the risks of identity theft associated with using photocopiers. Basically, the report stated that if you use a fairly current photocopier to make copies of documents that contain personal information, you can be at risk of that information being used to steal your identity.

Is this a valid concern: Yes

The crux of the risk lies in the fact that many modern photocopiers (and multi-purpose machines) contain storage media like a hard drive on which document images are stored after the machine scans the document for reproduction. Because of this technology, if the documents are still on the copier’s storage media when the media is removed from the machine (for machines being scrapped, retired, even stolen), thieves may be able to print these stored documents and obtain that information.

Most copiers made in the last five years or so may contain their own storage media. According to the blurbs, the greatest risk may lie in business or retail copier locations where anyone who decides to go to the effort will have the largest probability of obtaining data that would be useful to them.

Some copier manufacturers are coming out with security fixes to write over data on the drive periodically but not all have done so and many people are not aware they exist.

My personal take on this is that there is, indeed, a risk but that it’s not something to fly off into a frenzy over. Consumers can reduce the risk by verifying that their copies are made where security fixes have been installed on the copiers or using a home scanner, copier or all-in-one machine that doesn’t retain data outside the user’s own control.

It’s another thing to be aware of in the all too trusting world.

Another interesting question from a friend – If you have a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and you realize your data should have it’s axes reversed (the data currently arranged vertically should be arranged horizontally), are you stuck retyping it or doing ugly cut & paste work for a long time?

Nope

The easiest way I’ve found to accomplish this switch is to make use of Excel’s own paste functionality.

You’ll note that your data is now on the opposite axis from its original position.