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Tuesday,
December 22, 1998
I have solved the CDSTARTE.EXE problem, and I suppose I have a kind of explanation.
It's pretty goofy, but I did learn something. Many of you sent mail, some of which hinted
that it was a Norton problem that might be solved by upgrading Norton Utilities; that
worked, but the interesting thing was that at the time I did not HAVE Norton Utilities on
the disk: its installation had failed. And that, it seems is the critical event involving
CDSTART.EXE. Meanwhile, see mail about sfc.exe and
another important if obscure Windows 98 utility.
Recall that the problem began with cross linked files. In an attempt to fix that I
tried t install Norton Utilities 3.0. That blew up: I was unable to install, and it caused
even more cross linked files. Apparently one of those cross links involved CDSTART.EXE,
which is a NORTON file, not a Microsoft file; but for reasons not clear to me, Windows 98
then believed that it needed a file it normally never sees in order to run CD's. Note that
this is NOT AUTOSTART, which is a Windows file. This is a Norton file.
I ended the cross linked files problem by running ScanDisk and when it found cross
linked files, most of which have to do with Java, I told it to kill them. One was a part
of the failed Norton installation, and it was after that I got the error message about
CDSTART.EXE missing.
Once I got ScanDisk to run properly I ran VOPT98. I prefer that to the Microsoft Disk
Optimizer because VOPT is much more careful to check for problems. It is also MUCH faster.
For more on VOPT see www.goldenbow.com. Then I installed Norton Utilities 3.0, which
worked all right, although I had to manually start up the setup program. When I did, Setup
reported that it failed to initialize properly and I might not be able to uninstall. Joy,
rapture; but it was a bit late to worry about it, so I let installation proceed, and it
worked. Then I let the automatic update do it's thing, which took over an hour at 28.8,
which was the fastest connection I could get. While it was doing that I wrote my
Intellectual Capital column.
The Norton update went smoothly, and once it was installed I let it do its thing. It
found a whole bunch of invalid shortcuts in C:/JOIZY/C/WINDOWS/DESKTOP/, which isn't
surprising since that's the backup to Roberta's Joizy. It proudly reported those as
serious errors to be fixed, which isn't too smart, but for the most part Norton Utilities
worked very well. I tried a number of tricky games and Scarlet seems both smooth and
stable. Now I'll disable the PS/2 mouse and go to USB again, and test that.
The original cross-linked files came from downloading a bunch of those "automatic
installation" files from Microsoft. That has made me very wary of doing that again.
Note that this "upgrade" was nearly the first thing we did after installing
Windows 98.
The most important outcome of this story was that I have been forced to learn more
about Windows 98, including the resource kit which I found among the files on the Windows
98 disk image in Windows/Options/CABS; but even more important about sfc.exe, which is a wonderful program. It's described
in detail in The
Windows 98 Bible (recommended), and it's really nifty. Every time I am ready to
condemn Microsoft I find some new obscure and all but undocumented feature that's very
neat…
Eagle One is running again, with a new AMD K6-2 3D Now! chip. I believe it is running
at 66/300, but I have run it at 100/300 and will again. I'll also try USB with it. Eagle
One is strictly a test machine, so it doesn't matter if I blow it up; one of my problems
with Scarlet was that she's destined to be Roberta's new system, and thus has to be
stable.
Yesterday I solved some scripting problems with Roberta's web site www.readingtlc.com
involving credit card transactions, and given an hour I now know how to set things up so
you can send me money by VISA or American Express. I'll have that implemented within a
week. Meanwhile, thanks to the flood of you who've subscribed recently.
I have been reading about the latest news on education in Kansas
City. This would be broad farce if it were not so tragic: first a mad Federal judge spent
over a billion dollars in educational frills and bussing trying to end racial imbalance,
with the result that the schools were less integrated than when he began. Then the voters
managed to get control of their schools, and wanting to do the right thing, invited the
education establishment educrats to set up a thoroughly modern school system, The result
was progressive education -- now called "outcomes based" -- which, while
excellent for self starters and children of the upper and middle classes who are
disciplined at home, is an absolute disaster for children without ingrained work habits.
The gap between black and white test scores -- the only measurable 'outcome' -- went from
very bad to plain ghastly. If there's anything more likely to keep the blacks in their
places, it's not educating their children, and every single study demonstrates that
unstructured progressive education widens the gaps between the bright and the average, and
even more between those with good study habits and discipline and those without.
Progressive education is a boon for the naturally talented, not good for the average, and
a full disaster for those belonw average. Last time I looked, fully half the children in
the US are below average except in Lake Woebegone.
Worst, though is reading: while about 25% of all kids of all races learn to read pretty
well on their own and another 25% or so will learn given almost any rational system of
instruction, fully half need structured and didactic instruction in the principles of
phonics; otherwise they never learn to read words they have not seen before, which is a
terrible handicap. Once again, a good home environment can make up for a lot of bad
schooling, and once again, children with good study habits and discipline may well do
better under progressive education methods than under traditional systems; but of course
one reason lower social classes are "lower" (in income, etc.) is the lack of
disciplined structure. (This is a statistical observation; I am aware that there are other
reasons, some quite tragic.)
The point of all this is that reading is a key skill in this society, and if you don't
learn to read by grade four you will probably have a fairly menial career -- and you
cannot rely on the schools to teach children to read by fourth grade. Roberta Pournelle
has worked most of her life trying to correct that. You can find out more at www.readingtlc.com, and you should. If you have the
slightest doubts about your children's reading ability - for instance, if your seven year
old cannot look at the words diethylchloride and Constantinople and Petersburg and
antidisestablishmentarianism and SAY them -- then they may be headed for a lifetime of
trouble. Fortunately, illiteracy is curable, and if caught before age 10 most of the
consequences can be avoided. Again see Roberta's page on
this: her program works.
GAK! We are still having power management problems with Scarlet. Windows 98 apparently
does not really understand very large disks. There is also the power management fiasco,
with nothing available as a fix at Microsoft. See Mail
for some details. A partial fix is that if you are using Norton to do disk work,
wiggle the curser every now and then. Perhaps an auto de fe for Ralph Nader would help as
well. Turning off the monitor is one thing; strangling the computer is another. Feh.
==
Jerry,
I just saw this on Slashdot, and I thought it made an interesting parallel to your
arguments about a disciplined, structured education. The gist of the article is that
college students should be taught Unix rather than Windows, because the discipline that
Unix requires (and encourages) will be far more generally useful than merely learning how
to push buttons on a "user friendly" interface.
See the article at: http://linuxtoday.net/stories/1846.html
--
Talin ( Talin@ACM.org)
Talin’s first law:
http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin "Computing power is infinitely wasteable."
Interesting. Thanks. I don't know if I agree or not. That was, after all, the rationale
for requiring serious scholars to learn Greek and Latin before they could be admitted to
university. But the ancient Greeks demanded you learn mathematics before studying rhetoric
and philosophy.
Understand, I have no quarrel with tracked education so long as the lower tracks are
given serious education; the argument for putting all in one track is that the upper
classes will insist on decent education for their children and the lower classes will
benefit. I am not sure it works that way, though. UNIX as Greek…
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