I came here for the first time in December out of desperation :smileysurprised: for my Dell's BSODs that I got whenever trying to go to recovery console. After being advised to reformat and reinstall, something I DID NOT want to do, I sought other opinions elsewhere. In the process, I solved my problem--needed hard disk drivers on floppy. Hooray. :smileyvery-happy:
Nobody had to tell me to do that. I was relieved to have not had to erase everything and start over and I was feeling proud/smug :smileyindifferent: enough about figuring it out that I HAD to share. But I did feel an obligation to wrap up the thread I had started.
But it amazes me how many threads I follow, here and just about every other forum, just END. No solution mentioned. I guess after a time, a lot of people who had originally asked for help just say, "The heck with those guys. :smileymad:They don't know anything," and they simply drop it. But maybe a suggestion actually helps and the original poster just goes, "Hooray! I'm up again!" and doesn't bother coming back to share the news.
In December, I wrote, "Why Dell didn't think of the F6 floppy, I don't know.... Dell's lame advice to do monkey with BIOS was ... not any kind of solution. [...We're on our own for much of what we need help with.] ... I spent more time ... than I would have reformatting, but what a learning experience." And isn't that why we're all here?
So, a suggestion: On
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/ add a prominent link to a short document about forum etiquette, specifically and conspicuously addressing the original poster's obligation to either tell us he's leaving or to share the solution. Something like "failure to do so will result in karmaic blue screen errors for the rest of your life." :smileytongue: Also, telling the poster that such subject lines as "Help!" or "I hate -----!" are not likely to even be read by the majority of forum members, so be specific but brief. Maybe have a link to this document at the top of each forum's list.
Just my 2 cents for a Better Dell Experience for us all.:smileywink:
Dave Slomer
Instead of the Windows XP forum, this would be better placed on the Forum Improvement forum.
While you're ideas may be interesting, no one is going to follow them. Most posters ask the same questions that were asked mere minutes ago. The majority never say thank you either. That's just the way it is.
If it weren't for the $10 per post we get, I don't know if I'd bother... LOL
Most just want an answer and their gone. I managed a large Governement Network and Hardware Help desk, no one ever called to say the Network response time was great or that their PC is now working great. The only time we got calls were when someone had a problem or compalint. Just the nature of people. And as noted no one does a search to see if their question has been answered, they just post. The same way at our Help Desk, they would rather make a long distance call to the Help Desk than look in their highly documented procedure manual, or they would have the same problem they had last week but they will still call.
As far as reformat and reinstall, that does seem to be a crutch that many Help Desks use. I kept on my Help Desk techs to try and find out what was wrong and fix what was wrong, but with the complexity of Operating Systems and applications software, perseverence, if your lucky, will find the "needle in the haystack". But for most users, who are not technical, the practical path is to reformat and reinstall. And when doing remote troubleshooting, whether by phone or via a forum such as this, you have no idea what is really happening or what the user has done or installed, tweaked, etc. You are chasing too many unknowns. It's nice to fix something but in practical terms it isn't always feasable.
I agree with Rick, that you can't simply force people to hang around if they get fed up --- it's just not practical.
But I do agree with you, that the "overkill" advice to reformat and/or reinstall windows, is offered way-too-frequently. Many (most??) problems can be solved, with a bit a perseverance.
I spend most of my time in the virus/spyware forum, and also keep a close eye on the HiJackThis forum. In the latter, while unfortunately some people give up and 'drop' the thread out of "frustration", you'll also see some amazing cases of perseverance, that go on for weeks (if not months) with the thread growing to MANY pages. so, the system CAN work, for those that choose to pursue matters. (Unfortunately, HiJackThis advice is highly "personalized" to each person's system, and it's frequently the case that one cannot "generalize" and provide a "universal" solution/advice for others to follow).
Rick, you're 100% correct when you say "Most posters ask the same questions that were asked mere minutes ago." But when a person feels "victimized" and "frustrated", I think that's to be expected. As such, I think it's more polite (albeit clearly redundant) to respond to each person's inquiry with the care/consideration that it deserves, rather than belittling them by saying they should be able to search for the solution on their own.
Educating the poster that Search is available and could provide the answer allows them to use it in the future. If I tell them that Search is available, I also provide them with the answer. In over 20 years of helping people with computer problems, I've found that if you tell them how to find the answer (i.e. don't provide the link, provide the directions to get there), a good percentage of them actually learn from it and advance their computer knowledge, and sometimes even help others (witness those joining the forum, asking questions, then a few months later providing the answers). This was the approach over a quarter century ago in the Ann Arbor PC Users Group that I belonged to, where I asked questions like "how do you format a floppy"...
People will do what people will do; there is no changing human nature. I really do not agree with this comment, "(Unfortunately, HiJackThis advice is highly "personalized" to each person's system, and it's frequently the case that one cannot "generalize" and provide a "universal" solution/advice for others to follow)." You (ky331) and I, have seen enough HijackThis logs to discern patterns and I believe most responses are “boiler plates”. As Dennis Miller used to say “That’s just my opinion.”
I agree with Rick, that you can't simply force people to hang around if they get fed up --- it's just not practical.
But I do agree with you, that the "overkill" advice to reformat and/or reinstall windows, is offered way-too-frequently. Many (most??) problems can be solved, with a bit a perseverance.
I spend most of my time in the virus/spyware forum, and also keep a close eye on the HiJackThis forum. In the latter, while unfortunately some people give up and 'drop' the thread out of "frustration", you'll also see some amazing cases of perseverance, that go on for weeks (if not months) with the thread growing to MANY pages. so, the system CAN work, for those that choose to pursue matters. (Unfortunately, HiJackThis advice is highly "personalized" to each person's system, and it's frequently the case that one cannot "generalize" and provide a "universal" solution/advice for others to follow).
Rick, you're 100% correct when you say "Most posters ask the same questions that were asked mere minutes ago." But when a person feels "victimized" and "frustrated", I think that's to be expected. As such, I think it's more polite (albeit clearly redundant) to respond to each person's inquiry with the care/consideration that it deserves, rather than belittling them by saying they should be able to search for the solution on their own.
you're absolutely right in saying we've both seen enough HJT logs to "discern patterns"... for example, I can recognize about:blank infections from a mile away ;-) and in the cases i'm referring to, i know that about:buster and/or CWShredder will be
part of the solution. to that extent, replies may tend to be "boilerplate". but in general, simply advising a "victim" to run buster and/or shredder is not sufficient . most about:blank logs contains some really bad "meanies" in the 04 section, which tend to morph themselves and/or "create malware offspring" whenever the person reboots. the person has to be advised, individually, which entries are troublesome. i've watched (and sometimes been personally involved with) about:blank infections that went on for pages and pages. if there's a simple/general/universal solution to this common problem, I'd like to hear it from you.
in my opinion, the closest thing i've seen to a generalization to attack about:blank is RKinner's "reverse" approach, of telling his "clients" what's good, advising them to place these good items in the ignore list, and then, to run hjt to remove everything else that's left over. this will catch the morphing/propogating 04 entries. fascinating approach, that apparently only he uses. but even this requires someone to advise the "victim" the good items to keep via an ignore list.
EDIT/ Post script:
and about:blank is only one such example. A few weeks ago, one person made a plea for someone to post the "general" solution to NAIL.... but did we ever get a solution that works for everyone? And how about a universal solution to smitfraud.c ? or the Dr. Watson PostMortem Debugger problem (which is sometimes, but not always, CWS-related)? most of these can be recognized by "discernible patterns"... and each can be "conquered" via HJT... but offering general/universal solutions, I still believe, is another matter.
I guess you're paraphrasing the old saying: "Give a man a fish --- you've given him food for a day... but TEACH a man to fish, and you've provided him with food for a lifetime".
i think we need some of each, based on experience. give advice to newbies who seem totally lost, and teach the more-experienced users how to survive on their own in the jungle.
Hey, I hope nobody took me wrong--I wasn't criticizing any advice I got here or anywhere else [well, except for Dell, maybe]. I was just trying to say what I thought everybody who comes in search of help ought to do. The fact that "reformat" happened to be suggested in my thread was coincidental [or not, because of the frequency of that suggestion!].
I'm sure I've not always or even usually gone back to say, "Bye" to forums I've left. Heck, was a time I couldn't even figure out how to find my way back to a forum or newsgroup!! In fact, I left my own thread dangling that I recently started about Help not working much of anywhere. So apparently I don't even practice what I'm preaching, which was more of an ideal than an actual goal. [I do plan to fix my Help by reinstalling after repartitioning my drive with Partition Magic.]
But, geez, a simple thanks-for-nothing or thanks-that-worked just seems like so little to ask. Especially when IT WORKS! And since the default for "email me if someone replies" is YES, I'd think most people would get a message and think, "I oughta go back to the forum."
I do understand the frustration getting the best of all of us on both sides--looking for and hoping to provide help--especially when the looker has been on 5 forums before this with no help. But I don't think I've seen any of it from the helper in my several dozen visits to the Dell forums. And I haven't seen much elsewhere.
So I guess the forum help system works as good as human nature will let it no matter the rules. We're all different [lucky for the rest of y'all!!] and see things differently.
Maybe this should be a new thread starting right here...
What you are saying is no different than advising users of a third party products especially those not installed by Dell to first check the third party publisher's home site. It appears that those who post here, want their answers here.
You wrote, Am I right? Do I only rarely see suggestion to follow the procedure "How Do I Recover from a Corrupted Registry that Prevents the Microsoft® Windows® XP Operating System from Starting at http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kb/en/document?dn=1068335?
What I was trying to say, and I guess not too well, is search Microsoft forums for Microsoft problems, Adobe forums for Adobe problems, Symantec for Symantec/Norton problems etc etc. P.S. In many case Microsoft products should be treated as third-party products. P.P.S you are not wrong.
What you are saying is no different than advising users of a third party products especially those not installed by Dell to first check the third party publisher's home site. It appears that those who post here, want their answers here.
I may be missing your point about the 3rd party products. The URLs I gave are for Microsoft Windows, which Dell installs with its own little OEM add-ons that most users would probably be better off without, and Dell itself.
But my point was that registry errors causing BSODs at boot are sometimes fixable by using the windows\repair registry files and the procedure cited at the Dell URL I gave, yet it seems nobody ever suggests trying it. By the way, the Dell URL has essentially the same procedure as the preceding Microsoft URL [Microsoft's is more complete; Dell's looks friendlier], so, sure, send the user to the Dell URL, since, I agree, the user probably does want a "Dell solution" for his busted Dell system. I imagine Dell has its own versions of the other 2 URLs I gave. I just didn't look at solution as being Dell-preferred. If I'm the user, I want a fix more than anything and wouldn't care where it came from as long as it came.
If the user can get into Windows, wouldn't he try to restore to a prior restore point?
If he can't get into Windows, wouldn't he try last known good?
If last known good doesn't get him into Windows, then why use not the procedure?
It would be relatively easy to try it and to then undo if it didn't help [the procedure backs up the current registry hive files]. It looks a lot scarier than it is. When my daughter's Security hive file was blammed, I made several batch files to do all those long nasty copy commands and set environment variables, unhide stuff, change directory. But hers was too far gone to save. Couldn't get to recovery console because of the infamous administrator password bug.
You just keep trying in DOS and recovery console to manually go back to old restore points and hope for the best with not much to lose [while reformatting is what we're trying to avoid if we can, it's possibly the only way out; screwing up just escalates it!].
I've only been regular here for 2 weeks, so maybe I just haven't seen enough posts to realize that I'm wrong.
So anyway, to my questions "Am I right? Do I only rarely see suggestion to follow the procedure 'How Do I Recover from a Corrupted Registry...'?" the answers are NO and NO. At least I was right about "I've only been regular here for 2 weeks, so maybe I just haven't seen enough posts to realize that I'm wrong."
So now I wonder how often using KB
307545 or KK actually solve the user's problem. Any feel for that? I had a chance to solve my daughter's hive problem but I knew NOTHING at the time [was learning RC {recovery console} on the fly] and just made it worse by copying ONLY ONE hive file [I think it was SECURITY] instead of all 5. That caused the request for administrator password that ended all my effort. Her brother-in-law found the "boot to RC from 6 floppies" workaround, but even then, she was scruud.
My point now is, "Why doesn't somebody using KB
307545 make it less painful by posting several separate batch files and instructions for conditionally using them?" It's a little overwhelming
to look at the length of that KB article and all the DOS/RC commands and then take the big step of not just beginning but seeing it through. And wondering how to undo it.
After messing up my daughter's pc
, I made my OWN set of 4 batch files with detailed but personal text "help" files, just in case I ever have to go through it myself again, but I'm too inexperienced with the problem to know if they're really any good and so they're certainly untested! And with very limited RC commands, it's hard to do much checking, so it's up to the user.
I guess one answer to that is, if you post it and a user uses it and comes out WORSE, well, even with big bold red caveats some users will blame the source
.
Message Edited by Dave Slomer on 08-09-200503:25 AM
Message Edited by Dave Slomer on 08-09-2005 03:30 AM
I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank you, for all your contributions to the Dell forums, as well as the superb web pages you run. In my opinion, you, more than anyone else, have made this a fantastic place to obtain good/valuable information. I have read many of your posts.... albeit, just an infinitesimal of the volumes you've posted... but I want you to know, I personally consider your word as being "gospel" here. Thanks again for everything you've done, and please, keep up the wonderful job!
I think the reason Dell always recommends a reformat is time and money. It's more time efficient to have the user start the process, the 'tech' ends the call, then calls back 40 minutes later (which they rarely do by the way if you've called them before). At that point, they can talk you through a reinstall. A few drivers and special stuff and your on your way. The newest way, allows for even more time efficiency by restoring the system partition from a hidden one. Now let's factor in the money. It's alot cheaper to have a 'standard' plan that can be followed in script form, than have hundreds of really trained and experienced technicians standing by to work a problem from the ground up. So we have more people doing less technical stuff but covering much more ground, and more cheaply.
It's like plastic. Why make things out of metal, when it can be made out of plastic, with a tremendous profit margin to boot ... :)
rickmktg
2 Intern
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11.9K Posts
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August 8th, 2005 20:00
fireberd
9 Legend
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33.4K Posts
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August 8th, 2005 21:00
Most just want an answer and their gone. I managed a large Governement Network and Hardware Help desk, no one ever called to say the Network response time was great or that their PC is now working great. The only time we got calls were when someone had a problem or compalint. Just the nature of people. And as noted no one does a search to see if their question has been answered, they just post. The same way at our Help Desk, they would rather make a long distance call to the Help Desk than look in their highly documented procedure manual, or they would have the same problem they had last week but they will still call.
As far as reformat and reinstall, that does seem to be a crutch that many Help Desks use. I kept on my Help Desk techs to try and find out what was wrong and fix what was wrong, but with the complexity of Operating Systems and applications software, perseverence, if your lucky, will find the "needle in the haystack". But for most users, who are not technical, the practical path is to reformat and reinstall. And when doing remote troubleshooting, whether by phone or via a forum such as this, you have no idea what is really happening or what the user has done or installed, tweaked, etc. You are chasing too many unknowns. It's nice to fix something but in practical terms it isn't always feasable.
rickmktg
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•
11.9K Posts
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August 8th, 2005 21:00
msgale
2 Intern
•
2.5K Posts
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August 8th, 2005 21:00
People will do what people will do; there is no changing human nature. I really do not agree with this comment, "(Unfortunately, HiJackThis advice is highly "personalized" to each person's system, and it's frequently the case that one cannot "generalize" and provide a "universal" solution/advice for others to follow)." You (ky331) and I, have seen enough HijackThis logs to discern patterns and I believe most responses are “boiler plates”. As Dennis Miller used to say “That’s just my opinion.”
ky331
3 Apprentice
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15.6K Posts
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August 8th, 2005 21:00
Dave,
I agree with Rick, that you can't simply force people to hang around if they get fed up --- it's just not practical.
But I do agree with you, that the "overkill" advice to reformat and/or reinstall windows, is offered way-too-frequently. Many (most??) problems can be solved, with a bit a perseverance.
I spend most of my time in the virus/spyware forum, and also keep a close eye on the HiJackThis forum. In the latter, while unfortunately some people give up and 'drop' the thread out of "frustration", you'll also see some amazing cases of perseverance, that go on for weeks (if not months) with the thread growing to MANY pages. so, the system CAN work, for those that choose to pursue matters. (Unfortunately, HiJackThis advice is highly "personalized" to each person's system, and it's frequently the case that one cannot "generalize" and provide a "universal" solution/advice for others to follow).
Rick, you're 100% correct when you say "Most posters ask the same questions that were asked mere minutes ago." But when a person feels "victimized" and "frustrated", I think that's to be expected. As such, I think it's more polite (albeit clearly redundant) to respond to each person's inquiry with the care/consideration that it deserves, rather than belittling them by saying they should be able to search for the solution on their own.
ky331
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15.6K Posts
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August 8th, 2005 21:00
Message Edited by ky331 on 08-08-2005 08:55 PM
ky331
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15.6K Posts
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August 8th, 2005 22:00
Dave Slomer
78 Posts
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August 8th, 2005 23:00
Hey, I hope nobody took me wrong--I wasn't criticizing any advice I got here or anywhere else [well, except for Dell, maybe]. I was just trying to say what I thought everybody who comes in search of help ought to do. The fact that "reformat" happened to be suggested in my thread was coincidental [or not, because of the frequency of that suggestion!].
I'm sure I've not always or even usually gone back to say, "Bye" to forums I've left. Heck, was a time I couldn't even figure out how to find my way back to a forum or newsgroup!! In fact, I left my own thread dangling that I recently started about Help not working much of anywhere. So apparently I don't even practice what I'm preaching, which was more of an ideal than an actual goal. [I do plan to fix my Help by reinstalling after repartitioning my drive with Partition Magic.]
msgale
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August 9th, 2005 00:00
Denny Denham
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August 9th, 2005 01:00
You wrote, Am I right? Do I only rarely see suggestion to follow the procedure "How Do I Recover from a Corrupted Registry that Prevents the Microsoft® Windows® XP Operating System from Starting at http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kb/en/document?dn=1068335?
I have rarely suggested that page because it was predated by over a year by http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307545 and http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_sys32.htm. I have posted one or both of those links nearly 50 times. The number would be higher except that I don't post the links if someone else already has.
Message Edited by Denny Denham on 08-08-2005 09:48 PM
msgale
2 Intern
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2.5K Posts
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August 9th, 2005 01:00
Message Edited by msgale on 08-08-2005 11:34 PM
Dave Slomer
78 Posts
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August 9th, 2005 01:00
Dave Slomer
78 Posts
0
August 9th, 2005 07:00
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kb/en/document?dn=1068335?
I have rarely suggested that page because it was predated by over a year by http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307545 and http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_sys32.htm. I have posted one or both of those links nearly 50 times.
Message Edited by Dave Slomer on 08-09-200503:25 AM
Message Edited by Dave Slomer on 08-09-2005 03:30 AM
ky331
3 Apprentice
•
15.6K Posts
0
August 9th, 2005 11:00
Denny,
I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank you, for all your contributions to the Dell forums, as well as the superb web pages you run. In my opinion, you, more than anyone else, have made this a fantastic place to obtain good/valuable information. I have read many of your posts.... albeit, just an infinitesimal of the volumes you've posted... but I want you to know, I personally consider your word as being "gospel" here. Thanks again for everything you've done, and please, keep up the wonderful job!
Message Edited by ky331 on 08-09-2005 09:04 AM
Midnight Star
4.8K Posts
0
August 18th, 2005 01:00
I think the reason Dell always recommends a reformat is time and money. It's more time efficient to have the user start the process, the 'tech' ends the call, then calls back 40 minutes later (which they rarely do by the way if you've called them before). At that point, they can talk you through a reinstall. A few drivers and special stuff and your on your way. The newest way, allows for even more time efficiency by restoring the system partition from a hidden one. Now let's factor in the money. It's alot cheaper to have a 'standard' plan that can be followed in script form, than have hundreds of really trained and experienced technicians standing by to work a problem from the ground up. So we have more people doing less technical stuff but covering much more ground, and more cheaply.
It's like plastic. Why make things out of metal, when it can be made out of plastic, with a tremendous profit margin to boot ... :)
=====
Mike.