For Thursday, August 27, 1998 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 732 words

98 woes

I installed Windows 98. It reminds me of Bill Clinton. It's an energetic performer with plenty of faults. I expected both of them to be fast, multi-functional, and reliable. Two out of three isn't bad, I guess, but what's wrong with three? With countless years of evolution and quantum leaps in technology behind us, I'd expect us to be able to find one nearly perfect person worthy of being the president and one virtually flawless operating system to run 95-percent of our personal computers.

Here is what happened after installing Windows 98. First I noticed the sound quality out of my amplified speaker system dropped off. Musicians' voices faded. It was as if I'd lost one channel.

My selective chat system, ICQ, which was set to activate whenever I logged onto the Internet, suddenly could no longer detect itself . It now gives an error message and shuts down. I have to start it manually.

Icons began disappearing from my system tray (bottom right). My virus protection icon disappeared. So did the icons for my CD-R and Real Player. I had to reinstall the programs to get the icons back.

I use Eudora Pro 3 for email, which is immune to the long-name hyperlink bug that was detected this spring in Eudora 4, Outlook98, Outlook Express, and Netscape. Nevertheless, I downloaded the self-installing patch for my Microsoft programs. Suddenly clicking on hyperlinks in Eudora crashed my system so bad I had to cold boot. I tried to uninstall and reinstall Eudora, but no luck. I wrote to Eudora, but they never wrote back. I wrote to Microsoft. They told me to write to Eudora. I switched to Outlook Express for email.

The next day I clicked on Outlook Express to check my email, and it couldn't find itself. I watched the flashlight wave around and give up. I checked the Outlook Folder on my computer, and the executable file MSIMN.EXE was gone, vanished. I searched my whole system and the recycle bin. It was non-existent. I had to uninstall Outlook Express and reinstall it from my Win98 CD. Then it worked, but now I needed the patch again. I went to Microsoft's web page, but their records showed I'd already downloaded the patch and it wasn't available.

I own a program called Quick View Plus. It's an enhanced version of Quick View that comes with Windows. When I right click on a file, QVP lets me see the file without opening the program that made the file. It's real cool. The other day, after years of flawless service, it stopped working. I got the message "QVP timed out." I had to reboot to make it work again.

This one isn't exactly a Win98 problem, but it is a Microsoft problem. I own their program called FrontPage97. I use it to create and maintain all my web sites for my columns and school. It has a publishing wizard that uploads files to the Internet automatically. It worked swell. Then I bought Microsoft Publisher98, which also makes web pages and has a newer version of the publishing wizard. It worked swell. Then I turned on FrontPage97 to upload a column and got an error message "Cannot connect to Server." The new publishing wizard was incompatible with FP97. Email from Microsoft suggested I chose between programs. I had to uninstall the new Publisher wizard and reinstall the older FrontPage wizard. Now FP works, but Publisher98 will not upload files. I must do it manually.

The next day I turned on FrontPage97, which relies on auto-starting Personal Web Server software on my home computer. Instead of my familiar column history popping up, I got the message, "No Server Detected on Lord Buckley." Lord Buckley is my computer. I could not access any of my columns or my school work. I opened the Personal Server icon in Control Panel and clicked "Start," but it ignored me. Again and again I tried. It wouldn't start. A cold boot didn't work. Neither did waiting overnight. I had to reinstall the server software from my FrontPage CD.

It used to be when my screen went to sleep and blacked out after 15 minutes of inactivity, all I did was wiggle the mouse and it would come back on. Now, moving the mouse doesn't work. I must turn it off and back on again.

Gosh, I can't wait for Windows 2000 and the new election.

Last minute note: When Microsoft heard of my problems, they offered to send me a free copy of Frontpage98. That's cool.