IT Werkz Sometimes

I noticed that some contacts had disappeared from Outlook, not the end of the world as I have them backed up to a CSV file, via exporting them from Outlook and for a secondary backup imported them into both Hotmail and Gmail.

With hindsight that sentence was easy to write but at one point I had forgotten that I’d backed them up so well and was trying to figure out any other way of getting back the lost contacts. I have a feeling a Facebook application has got something to do with the missing contacts as I had a Facebook Male and Female Contact folders in Outlook and some of the missing, but not all of the missing, contacts were in there. One way I thought about was to import them from the outlook.pst file which was used by Outlook on my old XP PC. I ran Outlook on XP and there were all of the missing contacts. Now the problem was how to get them from there to the Vista PC. Easy, use the shared drives via networking which I knew worked. Wrong. Something recently has changed on one of the two PC’s, though dunno what.

Why is PC networking such a pain in the neck. I’ve been networking PC’s for about 15 years and it still manages to throw me into a loop every now and again. Neither PC could see the other PC. I noticed that the old domain name on the XP PC was set to MSHOME and the network name on the Vista PC was Network so I changed them both to NETWORK and rebooted them both, to no avail. Switched off the forewall on both PC’s, but no luck. The networking road goes on forever.

Installed some Facebook thing the other day and I can’t even remember whether it’s a plug-in for FB, an iPhone app or an app for Windows/Outlook, but the net effect is that all of my addresses on the iPhone are duplicated. Terrific.

I also noticed that Outlook actually had no addresses in Contacts, but that there were contact folders for Facebook male friends, Facebook female friends and, I think, Facebook all friends. In those folders were Facebook contacts that were of the relevant sex. I assume the app has a look at the profile of the FB user and checks the sex field where the sex has been entered. Anyway I did something with Outlook Contacts and they reappeared like magic (But what did you do? Ed). Now I have this tedious duplicates addresses issue on the iPhone. I better uninstall something but heaven knows what.

I’m going to see if I can download a demo version of Novell’s Zenworks to see if I can get my ahead around how that works. Also need to get a new version of Auction Sentry and a demo version of QueueExplorer.

Later: I downloaded Auction Sentry with no problem and also QueueExplorer, which I fired up but of course there were no queues lurking about so that got a bit upset. I had a look at Zenworks, and my oh my, that is a big download. Also doesn’t look very easy to setup so I stalled on that.

I’ve been updating my resume, because it’s been a bit of a disaster area for a couple of years, and now it’s starting to look ok. Not so much a resume as full-on advert.

When importing I get a file permission error. This is all bound up in the Vista User Access Control software, which reads like a royal pain in the butt. Did some research to see how to switch it off and there are three ways, of which I tried two, but I was still getting the file permissions problem. UAC, when switched on, allows the user to control what is run rather than Windows. I suppose the idea is that when you have accidentally downloaded a virus with UAC switched on it will ask you whether you want it to run.

A lot of the advice I read about UAC stressed how useful it is to the user as YOU control what is run, therefore by implication, it is your problem if you allow the wrong application to run. How convenient for Microsoft, they no longer have responsibility. If you have UAC switched on and run the wrong app then it is your fault. And if you have UAC switched off then it is also your fault as YOU have removed a security feature, that being YOU deciding what to run.

So what are they saying here? If UAC is switched off and Vista is allowed to run stuff then because it can’t tell the difference between good and bad it runs everything come what may. Hmmmm…sounds like Vista’s got a whopping great whole in it to me.

In the meantime I get the chance to investigate every nook and cranny of Vista whilst trying to import an Outlook .pst file.

Quote of the day

‘I am not young enough to know everything’ Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)