Freeware Talk

John Corliss · Guest

A few years back, my friend (against my advice) bought an eMachines
D2586 computer because it seemed like a real good deal. The computer
came with HD image style restore CDs instead of discrete, installable
copies of setup files for the preinstalled software.

Then his computer suddenly quit working due to his power supply going
bad and hosing his motherboard. Apparently, this was a very,very common
thing with this particular power supply:

http://www.geek.com/forums/topic.php?id=33947&page

Although his system model number isn't listed there, it should have been.

Also:

http://www.computercraft.com/docs/emachinepowersupplies.shtml

So my friend had a local computer repair shop replace the MoBo with a
close approximation. He lucked out and they were able to get it working
again.

Then I decided to try to burn a DVD on his computer, backing up some of
his digital photos before they got lost. The preinstalled version of
Roxio EasyCD Creator wouldn't work. Period. Since the program was hosed,
I just uninstalled it.

Bad move.

Since then, I've gotten a copy of DeepBurner Free to work on the
computer but the interface is beyond what my friend and his wife are
willing to invest the time in figuring out. Because of this, I've been
looking for a suitable freeware replacement for ECDC.

Then it occurred to me yesterday to take his set of restore CDs home and
see if it was possible to extract a copy of EasyCD Creator from them. To
this end, ResHacker would be used to do the job.

I put one of the CDs in my drive and started RH. The one big file on the
CD didn't have an extension which the program can open, so I clicked on
"All Files". I found the huge image file and directed the program to
examine it.

*Bad move number 2.*

ResHacker immediately started copying something to my hard drive from
the CD and wouldn't stop. I couldn't shut the program off and it took
over my computer's resources almost totally. I tried stopping the
program using the Task Manager *FIVE TIMES* to no avail!

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME???"
"STOP!! STOP!! STOP!!"
"YOU DIRTY, ROTTEN (expletives deleted)"
"STOP!! STOP!!! STOPPPPPP!!!!!!"

Finally, in desperation I started the Task Manager again, right clicked
on "ResHacker" and changed the priority to "Realtime". Despite a dire
warning of impending system instability, this finally did the job and
shut the program down. However, my system at this point was not
responding fast enough so I decided to reboot. Thankfully, this worked
and after it started back up, things were running normally.

I was now left with the task of finding out what, if anything, ResHacker
had copied to my hard drive from the image file. That was not as easy as
I had hoped. Searching for all files created today turned up nothing
suspect. Same for all files modified today. Even cleaning out all my
System Restore points didn't do any good. I looked for a "hidden"
partition, but there was none to be found. Yet my hard drive magically
now has about 1 gb more on it. I've looked and looked and finally, just
gave up. I decided to cut my losses and figure the extra crap will just
disappear when I do my forthcoming reformat and reinstall of everything.
No big deal. I'm just glad that nothing got installed.

Curious about what kind of file the image was, I Googled for .ghs files
and discovered that eMachines had used Norton Ghost. Norton Ghost
supposedly will allow extraction of files from the image, but I don't
have a full copy of the program and can't find any freeware to do the
job either.

It doesn't matter though; I figure that even if it had been possible to
extract the files, there would have been no way to restore the multitude
of registry entries that ECDC creates during installation.

Let this be a lesson to any newb looking to buy a computer. One of the
very first questions you should ask the seller is what kind of discs are
included with the system. If the answer is "Restore CDs", steer clear of
that computer. Period.

After looking at all the freeware programs available, I've come to the
conclusion that although they're fine programs and work well, my
friend's wife (she's the one who needs a data CD burning program) simply
hasn't got the patience to learn any of them.

I tried to help them, but sometimes you just have to cut your losses.

--
John Corliss BS206. I use nFilter to block all crossposts and all Google
Groups posts because of Googlespam. No ad, cd, commercial, cripple,
demo, dotnet, nag, share, spy, time-limited, trial or web wares OR warez
for me, please.

Petersen, Vegard Krog · Guest

Me Here skrev:

Me Here · Guest

Petersen, Vegard Krog wrote:

John Corliss · Guest

Me Here wrote:

Yrrah · Guest

"Petersen, Vegard Krog" <vegard_krog_petersen@hotmail.com>:

Me Here · Guest

John Corliss wrote: