Got the US maps for the TomTom GPS but they didn’t work on my Treo because my version of TomTom is version 5 and the maps would only work with version 6. I could have ‘upgraded’ with version 6 but who knows what wouldn’t have worked then.

With hindsight it might have been worth the risk of upgrading to version 6 as when in the US I ended up buying 3 or 4 maps, and these were just for Los Angeles. I couldn’t find a map with detail i.e. road names for Greater Los Angeles so you end end up with one for LA County, another for Orange County, another for Long Beach and yet another for the Santa Monica/Venice Beach/Malibu area.

If the A-Z company produced a map of LA with as much depth as their A-Z of London they’d make some money.

After yesterday finding out just how large my registry keys had got I ran a few registry checkers to see if they could get rid of any detritus. Ran at least 4 checkers and they all found a hundred or so issues which I let them fix. Odd how all of these registry checkers promise to remove unused keys etc yet all find different issues. The first checker finds 100 or so issues which I let it fix. Then I run a second checker, which also promises the same thing, and which I figure shouldn’t find any issues as the first checker has run and fixed every issue it could find, right? Wrong, the second checker finds another 100 or so issues which it fixes. Same for registry checkers 3 and 4.

There are some people who would actually try and convince you how the previous scenario is actually correct. They have a bit of a blind spot regarding software. If an application does something in a certain way then it must be correct and that it’s really a user misunderstanding problem.

I was having trouble with Nero on XP the other day so thought I’d try the DVD writing software on Vista. Loaded up the VOB file to write to the DVD and I got a run32.dll error message. Retried and got same message.

Run32.dll is a library file that allows a dll file to be run as an application, which I assume is loaded at Windows start.

Over a period of time my registry has obviously gotten very large as my XP PC takes forever to start.

A good way to find out how large the registry is is to print each of the registry keys out so that, via the printer icon, you can see the size of the spool file and also the number of pages to be printed. I also thought I’d check, once and once only, some of the values.

The first key I printed was HK_CURRENT_CONFIG which was only 8 pages with a file size of 145k. Next I tried to print the HK_CLASSES_ROOT key and the file size had got to 1.00 gig, a total of over 1 million pages, and it was still writing the print file before I cancelled it. Blooming miracle XP even starts.

Had a go at printing HK_CURRENT_USER and the file size was 149mb with a total of 6.711 pages. Tried HK_LOCAL_MACHINE and gave up as it was stuck reading the key and hadn’t even started writing the spool file after 5 minutes. This probably meant that it was going to be larger than the HK_CLASSES_ROOT key.

Lastly tried HK_USERS and this file was 174mb with 7,958 pages. So that wasn’t printed. So now I know how large most of the keys are but haven’t a clue how to get them to a more manageable size.

Tried to use Nero Vision to import a video file which I had copied to my hard drive. Gets to 81% and fails. Tried a 2nd time and fails at 81% again. Restarted Nero Vision and it hangs.

Inserted the Nero disk and let it repair the installation. Tried importing the same file and it failed at the 81% mark again. Tried importing from the mini DVD and it failed at about the 40% mark. No doubt I’m doing something wrong.

Quote of the day

‘After the last of the 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed’ De La Lastra’s Law