Most PC mags have a 'Holy mother of God, my life is toast because my router's rooted, help me [magazine name], you're my only hope!' letters section. Ours is different because we go beyond driver re-installs and 'try a different PCI slot'. And we've got Dan. Plus, we've got the truly rocking new Logitech MX-500 wondermouse for best i/o each month. Suck on that [insert magazine name].
IOOTM: Files? Uh, hello? Files?
I: A while ago I decided to use WinXP Pro's fancy Encrypted File System (EFS). I figured my files were important enough to not be viewed by anyone else in the world (password lists, pr0n, the usual stuff). Anyway, a while after this I decided to dual boot with Win2000 Server to help with my studies at TAFE. Anyway, long story short, the dual-boot part of the drive corrupted for some reason, and I was left with no other option but to format the whole drive. I wasn't too worried, because my encrypted files were kept on another drive, so I figured I was safe to proceed.
Once XP was reinstalled I went back to my encrypted files only to find out that I no longer had access rights to them. I reinstalled with the exact same settings as the previous installation, but apparently that didn't matter, because XP has built-in features that make every installation different from the last.
Is there a way for me to decrypt these files, without asking the Pentagon for help?
Dutch
O: You're boned.
If you've got a backup of the administrator account's private key then you can recover the files (see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q255742& ), but it doesn't sound as if you have. Encryption is meant to stop people who don't have the right certificates from accessing the files. You should have backed up the recovery agent certificate and/or the personal user certificate after you encrypted the files.
As you've noticed, every WinXP install has a different Security Identifier (SID), and generates new certificates. Otherwise anybody could crack EFS encryption by simply reinstalling Windows, so they were the Administrator of the new install.
EFS, when used by individuals who haven't made sure they know what they're doing, is recognised as being a guarantee that sooner or later those individuals are going to lose their files. One phrase used to describe EFS in this situation is 'delayed Recycle Bin'.
WTF is JPE?
I: When I right click 'Save Picture As...' in Internet Explorer (IE6 on WinXP), it always defaults to saving JPG files with a JPE extension. I know that JPE and JPG files are the same, but I'd rather have the JPG extension; some programs only look for files that match '*.jpg'. Can this be fixed?
Morris Umali
O: This is fixable, by editing the registry.
Run Regedit (Start -> Run -> type 'regedit') and click your way through to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/MIME/Database/Content Type/image/jpeg. The value of the 'Extension' key in the right hand Regedit pane is, I think you'll find, '.jpe'. If you double click it and change it to '.jpg', IE should start saving files with the right extension again. No rebooting required.
Note that the save dialogue may not show any extension on the filename any more, but the 'Save as type:' drop-down will be set to 'JPEG (*.jpg)', and the actual saved filename should be correct.
Dragging me down
I: Hi, I'm a hardcore gamer with hardly any money. I've a Celeron 600@855MHz with a big Global Win WBK-38 keeping it cool. I also have an ASUS GeForce2 MX 32MB, overclocked: 166@170MHz/205@210MHz, and 384MB of RAM. All this rests on an ASUS CUV4X motherboard and I am planning to get an ASUS Geforce4 Ti4200 128MB Deluxe. It has a core speed of 260MHz and a memory speed of 275MHz -- with 3.3ns DDR, this makes it the fastest Ti4200 out there, in my opinion. My question is: will this GeForce4 and my Celeron 855MHz give me a big boost? I know the Ti4200 will help a lot, but people say that my CPU will drag my video card down and will not work at it's maximum potential. They say I will need at least an Athlon XP 2000+ to see the card really perform. I want to know is this true?
Tom DeViL
O: In answer to your question, it's not really accurate to say that a slow-ish CPU will 'drag down' a fast graphics card. Basically, the way it works is that the CPU determines the fastest frame rate you're going to be able to manage with any graphics card, and the graphics card determines the fastest frame rate you can manage at a given resolution with any CPU. This isn't exactly the deal, thanks to the expanded hardware rendering capabilities of modern 3D cards, which can take some load off the CPU, but it still really much holds.
So let's say you're playing some game on your 855MHz Celeron with its GeForce2 MX, and you notice that the maximum frame rate you get, even if you wind the resolution down to something stupid like 320x240, is 50 frames per second. If you wind the resolution up to 1280x960, on the other hand, your frame rate drops to 25 frames per second.
Upgrading your GeForce2 MX to a GeForce4 Ti won't make much difference to the ceiling frame rate at low resolutions, if it makes any difference at all. But now 1280 by 960 will still be at the ceiling frame rate -- the CPU won't have to wait for the graphics card at higher resolutions any more. In fact, the Ti4200 will probably even give you 50fps at 1280x960, or higher, with FSAA turned on.
Mounting Rainier
I: After reading in the September edition of Atomic magazine about the ASUS CRW-4816A, I wanted one. Can other non-Mount-Rainier-supported CD burners or CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs read Mount Rainier formatted discs? Does the ASUS burner format CD-R and CD-RW disks in the Mount Rainier format? Is data written to CD-RW discs in general of lower quality than data on CD-Rs?
Glenn Mitchell
O: The Mount Rainier standard, for people who came in late, is an updated and streamlined form of packet writing for CD-RW. It aims to make CD-RWs work as much like ordinary read-write media as possible. Packet writing software already lets you drag-and-drop files onto CD-RW (and CD-R) discs in an intuitive fashion, but Mount Rainier doesn't make you spend time pre-formatting discs, has better defect management (so discs that are going flaky can still be safely used) and is supposed to come built into operating systems some time 'Real Soon Now'.
To create Mount Rainier discs, you need a drive that supports the new standard, like the CRW-4816A. You can read the resulting discs in any drive that supports CD-RWs, but the official Mount Rainier FAQ (at www.mt-rainier.org/) says you'll need a 'defect re-mapping driver' installed to do it, which means third-party software, at the moment. The bundled software that comes with Mount Rainier capable drives should take care of the problem for the OSes it supports; other third party software, like Software Architects' (www.softarch.com/) SAI, comes with read utilities that make Mount Rainier discs legible with any Universal Disk Format (UDF) compatible drive and Windows version. That means you'll be OK with that software, any somewhat current drive, and any somewhat recent version of Windows.
None of this is terribly important, as without native OS support for Mount Rainier, it really doesn't do much that regular packet writing software doesn't. By the time OSes have Mount Rainier support built-in, they'll no doubt have defect re-mapping drivers built-in as well.
The archival qualities of CD-RW are hard to determine, but they don&qu
Issue: 133 | February, 2012