Q. (AskDacs@dacs.org) I have just gotten a 160GB external hard drive, and want to know if I should partition it, and if so, into what partitions. I currently have a 40GB and an 80GB internal drive and they are getting full. I use the system for video editing. A. If your operating system supports it (and since you’ve already got a 40GB and 80GB drive it is safe to assume that it will,) go with a single partition that fills the drive. You will pay a small penalty by having large allocation units (which affects the actual amount of disk space used by a small file) but with video editing you are not concerned with small files. Q. It appears that my machine has the Blaster worm. I don’t open attachments that come in my mail, how did it get in? A. Internet worms can get into a machine via a network connection to a machine that has an ‘open share’. It doesn’t require e-mail, all you have to do is be connected to the internet with unrestricted access permissions to your drive. Q. (Follow-up) But I don’t have a broadband connection - I’m on dial-up. A. Even so, you have a connection while on dial-up. It just took a few additional seconds for it to get in. The Blaster worm was discovered August 11, 2003 - so any up-to-date anti-virus or security release should have blocked it. To protect your system you must keep your anti-virus signature files up-to-date, and keep up with the Microsoft Critical Updates. For many ‘exploits’ the security update is released prior to there being something that makes use of the exploit. Q. The Internet Explorer that is on my new Windows XP desktop machine, even though it is version 6, behaves differently than the Internet Explorer 6 on my Windows XP notebook machine. I am having problems with Java applets, specifically installing an IBM Terminal Services application. A. As a result of the settlement between Microsoft and Sun (the developer/licensor of Java) the newer releases of XP are shipped with Sun’s Java Virtual Machine (JVM). That you are having a problem would seem to indicate a compatability problem between IBM’s software and the JVM. Just guessing - IBM may have made use of a ‘Microsoft extension’ - which is what caused Sun to sue Microsoft due to licensing violation. You will need to contact IBM to get a compliant release of the Terminal Services application. Q. I can not receive Microsoft Access database files as attachments in e-mails from a business partner. What is happening and how do I resolve it? A. It depends upon the level of Microsoft Office and Outlook (or Outlook Express) that you are running. In an attempt to control viruses that spread via VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) the mail products are now clamping down on attachments that might have evil code within them. Microsoft Office products (Excel, Word, Visio, Access, etc.) all support embedded VBA. Depending upon your release, you may either tell it to not block attachments, or have your partner change the extension from .MDB to .MDX prior to sending it, or perhaps the best mechanism would be to have your business partner put the database file in a .ZIP file and send it. A benefit of this is that the file size will often be greatly reduced. Q. I have a new machine and there is a commercial site that does not provide the full page when I browse to it. I get the “red-X” for page components, including the menu bar on the left and various images on the main page frame. On other machines the pages are delivered properly. A. We examined the page during the RA session and had no problem. Examining the page source revealed that there is Java script and/or Java applets. It is possible that your machine is blocking scripts due to the level of its security settings. In IE, take a look at TOOLS, INTERNET OPTIONS, and select the ADVANCED tab. There are check boxes that control what is permitted. A second possibility is related to one of the previous questions - you may have an incompatible JVM. Java and Javascript (two separate things) may be used to generate references to objects to be put on a page - if that mechanism breaks then you will get an unresolved URL - the ‘pizza box’ red-X. Q. I am getting a lot of “unable to deliver message” e-mails from mail servers. I did not send these messages, and they are addressed to people that I have never heard of. I am also getting messages from people I never heard of complaining that I am spamming them. What is happening here? Do I have a virus or a worm? My security updates and anti-virus software is up-to-date. A. You are seeing a side effect of a mass-mailing worm that has infected someone else’s machine. These worms connect to your TCP/IP protocol stack and install a mail sending engine on the compromised machine, and then make use of the local address book, inbox, and temporary Internet files to provide targets for further infection. For e-mail distributed viruses and worms, they select an arbitrary address from the local machine, and use it to forge the “FROM:”. So some machine that has your address in it (because they received an e-mail that you sent) has been compromised and is spamming the world and lying about who is doing it. What can you do about it? Not much. If you are able to view the headers of the original bounced messages, you should be able to see the common source which would tell you what ISP is providing communications services to the compromised machine. If you find it, you can send a complaint to the ISP and they might shutdown the connection to that machine. However a search on Google revealed over 14,000 hits on forged addresses. The pragmatic approach is to delete the messages and wait for the compromised machine to be plugged. Q. I have an early edition of [Windows] XP Home on my machine. I am having problems writing to the CD via burner software. My machine has something called Direct-CD on it. When the machine boots I get a message that says that Direct-CD has been stopped. A. Direct-CD is part of the Adaptec EZ-CD Creator (which Adaptec sold to spun-off Roxio) that lets you use a rewriteable CD as if it were a floppy drive. It requires that you format the media, a process that takes about 45 minutes. It has been dropped from subsequent releases as it was (ahem) problematic. If you don’t use Direct-CD then you really want to uninstall it - just deleting it from your start up folder is not enough because it has components (device drivers) that it installs and need to be removed. You need to do a proper uninstall via Add/Remove Programs. Note that Direct-CD is not required for the normal burning process. Nero has a similar program (called In-CD). With the price of CD-Rs essentially free if you watch for rebates, there really isn’t much reason to be using CD-RW media. |
| Bruce Preston is president of West Mountain Systems, a consultancy in Ridgefield, CT specializing in database applications. A DACS director, Bruce also leads the Access SIG. Members may send tech queries to Bruce at askdacs@dacs.org. |
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