lately *crashing* Hard (as in the Hard-Right) on occasional URLs.

Noted when I did a Google on Visi-Calc: when I clicked on the (Google) heading: *crash* = to the power-off level. Being a glutton for punishment, went back. This time I clicked on the cached link. (NO jscript in either case, and I nuked the local caches on reboot).

Linked site worked fine.

Does this mean something? nothing? .. er suggest anything? HTF do ya diagnose this kind of arbitrary crap? At least in 'lectronics ya can spray a part to see if it's heat-sensitive. With 'Doze all ya can do is RRR over a day or so (yeah yeah and load th' snazzy new Linux distro)..




Ashton
..and all over my shiny new/used 19" Trinitron too :(

Because: they fucking-well can't upgrade their OWN STUFF from one fractional build to another! What toy OS does that remind you of?
OK since you've been bitten, played with several ways of how-Not-to upgrade Mozilla -- here are a few of the rubs:

I keep a lot of info in mail folders, for different reasons than usual correspondence. (Bookmarks too, but that's EZ - just save the 1.3 MB thing elsewhere and overwrite later. It's just HTML anyway).

I note that there are several generated files related to mail, in addition to the obvious folders. It's unclear how many these ancillary sorta-database files are generated from the mail folders, in course of collecting - and which are just helper files which can safely be replaced with the RC-2 versions. (One is a kind of history of all e-mail senders - which might or might not prove helpful after some crash).

Natch I have all folders [only!] backed-up on CD - monthly or more often.

Initially Moz 09.8 magically "converted" ALL my mail folders from NS 4.5 --> Mozilla format (whatever is different in the structure). This via mere install of 9.8 and its scanning the C drive, apparently.

9.9 didn't ask me (or I missed it) if I wanted it in its own NEW folder [I did!] and apparently modified Mozilla + sub folders under \\Program Files as well as the humongous collection of "User" crap under WIN\\Application Files. Then there's the &^%# address book .mab extent - which ALSO has a helper file or two!

SO I have a dilemma as to how much in the WIN\\Application Files folders I need save elsewhere and dare manually reload over whatever default RC2 decides to install (having found no previous Mozilla to copy from).

{sigh} -- the mere fact that these $&*@# interminable play-Upgrades cannot play nicely with each other IS A BIG DEAL. It's so Like Windoze itself -- a kind of dll-Hell in the above form. NOT to mention the reconfiguring of all the usual stuff which (at least) got carried over from 9.8 to 9.9.

Sorry about the rant, but.. I don't find this kind of CPA / MBA accounting crap anything like fun (Hey -- maybe in RC2, the cut & paste for bookmarks MIGHT-not merely delete the "cut" items - ya thunk?)

Apparently when you guys play with the nightly builds - you have ANOTHER mail client, save your bookmarks: and it's all very simple. Maybe that's the best argument for Eudora etc. But for me, til this albatross became apparent -- the Moz mail ap seemed just fine.
(For that matter, recreating my mail data ---> Linux! may force a change to Eudora or whatever has a common format between Windoze and its Linux port)

I downloaded RC2 anyway, but until I stumble onto something specific about both uninstalling the previous AND saving my mail folders: 9.9 is as locked-in as Billy's stuff. I'll check out the Moz site again and see if I'm the only user who gives a shit about saving mail for more than a couple weeks. Don't need the speciallized filtering, etc. of Eudora, as business parsing might require. But maybe that's the only way to either upgrade Mozilla OR get my mail over to Linux as & when.

Thanks for the tip though. It might work just fine -- from scratch. Maybe.

(Peter's right of course - Billy and all who sail in her: suck) Mozilla-for-Win is just another example: un-upgradeable without pain and stupid repetitive hand work.


Ashton

and yours wasn't the only rave review. But I'm aware that Windoze itself, depending on the build (and let alone any 98-lite er issues) - is irregularly irregular.

Trouble is.. the time wasted in psyching out each of the inevitable Windoze stupidities du jour, takes away from limited energy I'm willing to budget, getting a Linux distro + brain into an actually daily useful state. Triage time, I guess.

Dread installing W2K for a friend's need for a platform to run a necessary [?] graphics program; even more time-waste away from Linux! Hmmm maybe time to find a local Linux wiz, to see if her needs could be accommodated on a L-box assembled to her Rx. And Gimp? At least if it worked once, odds are pretty good it would continue. I could learn a bit watching, too.. Time to look.

Thanks for sympathy. I deem all comments here as 'no-fault'; not given up on Moz yet, soon's I grok the mail switch thingie :-)


Ashton
why can't a computer be more like a motorcycle than a petulant CPA?

Recall your comments when you were first getting used to it, also somewhere a fairly detailed roadtest. I got the impression that it was quite flexible - but that many of the options wouldn't apply to my rather simplistic aims (?)

But one can always turn-off (that which some poor soul spent weeks coding), I'm supposing. So you're right, time for me to check out the site, see if they can drop-in Mozilla-massaged e-mail as well as direct from NS.x.

I treat the Registry as the glass-fragile likely source of most Windoze pain though, and it seems that most uninstall aps provided, never do a full removal of the detritus - so I'll prolly try for the Moz RC2 install, just to see if my (now "test") Bad-URL can then be loaded.

Thanks for the reminder. You've certainly had enough time to thrash it, probably more than I would. POP-3 is fine. Now if it can handle a 1.3M bookmark file ;-)



Ashton

'Cause I agree with it, too :-\ufffd

I admit that I prefer.. to sorta understand 'problems' - what caused them. (unless they are inside Windoze, natch - nobody can Do That, well - only a few who have spent 10,000 hours actually Interested in that mess) But sometimes just "making it go away" will do :-)

I'll assume that, if I install RC2 (it is now, and on my disk) into a new directory, that it will scan for the useful bits, like previous.js files, bookmarks, mail - and I don't have to worry pretty little head about the generated index files left behind. I grant that's a nice touch, especially when it found the NS 4.5 files, originally!

I've already redone SpinRite on the HD - 0 defects still, at most thorough bit-testing available; also the usual SysInfo look at system files, nuking of \\temp, caches and a general lookaround where "the former-IE" likes to hide things. Hell, even ran the primitive RegClean - which is said to recognize at least badly-mauled entries: it found nothing to 'remove'. I have the Norton SystemWorks CD (to get Ghost! and.. it was cheap) but don't want to install that mass of gewgaws if I can avoid, except to evade RRR. Some tests can be run from CD however, if I find a brain-damaged Windoze is the culprit.

Yes a sep. mail client seems wisest after the above. I'll need that (or likely want the flexibility) in order to move that-all to Linux, once I've gone further through enough of the crap which passes for "documentation" - to actually get around to loading that CD on a new bargain Pee Cee: and watch it decide where to put all that New stuff.

(If I can accomplish getting all the usual suspects working + OOffice! on my L. box, maybe I can justify the pain&suffering - for about 5 friends who need to be weaned from the constant hassle (sometimes mine) of keeping their Billy systems limping along. This prospect isn't Quite enough though, to make me very tolerant of the EGREGIOUS quality of the .docs = why I keep putting it all off..)


Thanks for the good advice,

Ashton

Disk has to be in sufficient repair (and config) so as to be accessible by DOS, and of course - BIOS initially! (then via the small multithreaded OS within SR). SR then checks memory with some difficult bit-patterns, checks HD controller and decides which ECC loops it can disable, whether there's an "engineering cylinder" etc. - can't recall if it looks at FAT lost, linked chains etc. (?) I think.. but not sure that, if there's a FAT anomaly, SR will send you out to repair that (via chkdsk or the others you mention).

I gather from much past lore that Win is particularly crash-prone on any cluster containing a flaky byte/block - which hadn't been marked Bad. In one case I verified this re a local install which was failing in bizarre ways. Had him run SR, which found a bad cluster or maybe a couple. Install proceeded OK afterwards. Not Proof of the posit, but close enough for me.

Yes, SR is mainly about massaging magnetic domains (and also recovering data from now-Bad places) via iteration and in a neat built-in utility which you can watch doing its recovery thing. In course though, it can find marginally-bad controllers or weird main memory (or HD cache mem maybe).

I haven't personally needed that "DynaStat" level of recovery but have a couple first-person hearsays about its utility - one HD brought very near a powerful electromagnet, for one. All the data restored - along with the lo-level and hi-level formats ie it would boot normally (so MBR too, if that Was damaged!)

My allegiance to it is in the fact of its literally rewriting ALL the magn. domains in each cylinder = a fresh lo-level "reformat" along with all the rest. This is the only *practical* lo-level rewrite I can imagine accomplishing re today's HD configurations, and the lack of tech info as would let you do it the hard way (which natch destroys all content).

As to the effectiveness of the magnetic domain "scrubbing" Steve claims - you'd have to read his blurbs and decide for self. I think SR's largest SYAs were in the era of linear head positioners which drifted or got sloppy, thus screwing up the S/N of the output signal. In 'voice-coil' head drives of today, feedback positioning centers the head on-track. But the magnetic domains are where the data lives - so SR ain't obsolescent even.

If Steve never writes anything else very clever, SR is his Pulitzer IMhO.


Ashton

You've said it best - I too do not trust Any ap to upgrade itself 'well' - or to actually remove all its traces in the abominable Registry.

In fact, had I practised what I preach to myself - I'd have gotten that Ghost image made at the first, and after each new (acceptable major addition) - restored to latest image, periodically. But as ~with the great sig of Someone:

I have not really tested this theory of beating Windoze by repetitive image reloads: only proven that it sounds Good to me :-\ufffd

Anyway I'll use the separate directories in succession, and try sneaking the disposable ones away as you suggest. It's still unclear which of the generated config. files Can be just dropped into a new build - nor is it clear how many of these are needed (won't just regenerate on boot). I'll keep checking the faqs to see if I'm the only one who asks such questions :(

{sheesh] - why don't they just tell us where to seed the new build and with what, minimum. A &*%#@ list would do.


Cheers,

Ashton

PS - thus far, M-Mail has given no nasty surprises. The bookmark 'editing' appears brain-dead tho; do a cut & paste via its own commands: might as well call the 'cut', delete. Ugly. Had to get some stuff back from a CD save. Undo no help.

Just today, responding to an e-mail with nested previous exchanges:

Twice when I tried to 'delete' some "blue-line extra space" for mere neatness: got a "performed an illegal operation" Moz crash. Twice in exactly the same place in a message "reply"ed to...

For completeness first time, it being 'Doze and all - even rebooted!
I guess this could be about as clear (as there is) a Moz problem more than 'Doze. A simple BS keystroke: reproducible crash.

First mail-related thingie :(
{sigh}



..perhaps the golden Years of the web (and All) are: the previous ones.
See nothin but Trouble ahead, with the intermixture of 'Security', Trustworthy Computing + Greed-at-an unprecedented new level.

It's just tooo Big, too much $momentum$---> for reason to enter into it next.