Which is to blame?

[Uranium-235]

ok, I was scripting away, with winamp blaring, when suddenly, winamp went bzzzzzzzzzz

I restarted, and it said could not initiate VFAT. I wondered why, so I kicked a startup disk in, and I realized, alot of my directories were missing in the /windows directory!

One thing I noticed was alot of them were Mozilla cache and mozilla profiles I recently installed (Mozilla 1.4b)

I ran Dos Scandisk and it found ALOT of corrupt stuff, incluing almost every directory under /windows

I deltree'd the windows directory (luckly, along time ago I switched my desktop directory to a dir inside C:) - so my desktop is saved

I reinstalled 98 using setup /is (skip scandisk check)

and I tried to run windows scandisk, and it has trouble scanning past my file allocation table, apperently, my FAT (well part of it) is corrupt.

I can blame this on two things

1). Mozilla (noticing, alot of corrupt dirs in /windows were mozilla profiles and cache)

or

2). A few days ago I ran housecall online virus scan ( http://housecall.antivirus.com/housecall/start_corp.asp )

and when it was running, I accently hit back (mouse button #4) and I BSOD'd, and restarted

which one of those could it be? I'm voting for the online virus scan

now time to backup all my important stuff before i format

bhye

[GBRRICCI]

heh, that is confusing and i wouldnt know why it would do it, if it just messed up that one directory then it wouldnt of happened because of an outside force such as a magnet.


if your format doesnt help there is always 1 solution.......you could give it to me.


"sucks to your format" -lord of the flies
-rated gayest book ever by Mr. Davis's sophmore class of '05

[CiKoTiC]

Why are you using Mozilla?

[Uranium-235]

cause 1.4b is better then IE. it might eat up a bit more memory then I'm used to, but it's more secure, and supports http pipelining (I think IE6 does too).

It also correctly handles mime types and other stuff.

[Jason425]

i've tried to use mozilla.. but it's just not my cup of tea.

[Uranium-235]

why?

alot of people were complainig of some CSS stuff that IE had that mozilla didn't (such as coloring/font/styles in buttons and form fields). but that's all in 1.4 and more

[Jason425]

well like you said it takes up more memory.. and ie is secure enough, plus im more famliliar with ie.. there are no features of moz that make it worth while (that i've seen)

[james]

don't knock on mozilla!! or it might knock back :banghead: anyway getting back to topic , there's no way mozilla (or just about any normal program) to just cause your entire drive to get crapped like that. if it really is the allocation tables that's messed up, the OS is what generally handles writing those tables. how old is the harddrive? it might have crapped out on you.

back off topic: mozilla features that i could not live without: a secure mail client with expandable security (encryption, digi sigs, etc.); popupblocking; built in cookie manager; real security (if you watch bugtraq, you know how ridiculous ie security is, do you remember their mistake of SSL implementation HAH); portable profile (that way, I can allow my mozilla on my three boots (2kpro, xppro, and nix) share the same moz profile and have all of my email, bookmarks, cookies, addons, addressbook, etc. the same without having to deal with file transfers. I can even setup an sshfs on my laptop and access my mozprofile securely (128bit RSA encrypted), through most firewalls (only can be done with *nix as the client though), mouse gestures, configurability, tabbed browsing, truly secure password manager (unlike saving it in the registry like IE does, so that you lose all your passwords when your windows install corrupts), separate profiles for work, personal, and development. I could list more, but that's long enough.

[Jason425]

:sleep: most of those features aren't of high importance to me.. except maybe password stuff.. Speed, reliability and ease of use are what matters.. I didn't find those when i tried it, and none of you have talked about it. Therefore, I feel that it's safe to assume that they didn't incorporate any of those features in the latest version.. :mischief:

[Uranium-235]

the drive is about 3 years old

[james]

yeah, at 3 years, i wouldn't doubt your harddrive is dying.

well, i mean, it's hard to relay how much easier those features make life. it took me like a week to realize the power of tabbed browsing, but when i did, life just got to be SO MUCH easier. especially with forums. go through and middle click on everything i'm interested in reading and wait for it to load. flick of the thumb (i use a trackball) i just go through and reply to each thing and close it and go the next, moving my mouse almost none at all. i want to cry when i can't use them.

hmm, speed, reliability, and ease of use.. yeah, all that falls under moz (reliability especially, you don't have to worry about IE rendering code improperly and sustaining non-standard code across the internet) . ok ok. it does take up a sizable chunk of memory. but if that bothers you, go w/ firebird, which uses less than half the memory. oh, do you remember the 5 lines of code that were able to crash IE posted recently...yeah. 5 lines. not only that, but b/c it's so sillily built into the windows kernel/shell, when that crashes your browser (which is quite often when i'm forced use ie) you need to restart your computer (or it may happen for you), losing all of your other data. not a pretty sight.

*shrug* to each his own. i won't comment about moz any more in this thread (gosh, it's in the HARDWARE forum). If we want to start a browser war thread, we best move it to software :)

[CiKoTiC]

laptop and access my mozprofile securely (128bit RSA encrypted),

You work for the CIA or what?

[james]

ok, i WAS going to try to split this topic and move the software parts to the Software forum, but the interface doesn't allow (at least not that I can see), splitting individual posts into parts and pasting the different sections to where they belong.

i'd like to point you to the news article (http://techwarelabs.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=4037) about PNG and IE (http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1014236.html?tag=fd_lede1_hed) and further reasoning for why IE is evil (or at least stagnates innovation and progress)

[Garrette]

ok no big stor, im pretty sure it was # 2 the virus scan

[Uranium-235]

I just got Moz 1.5a. and it dosen't suck as much memory as 1.4.

:thumbsup: