Windows Secrets Newsletter • Issue 88 • 2006-12-07 • Circulation: over 400,000

By Fred Langa Are you ready to trust products from the “new” AOL? I’m not. A careful reading of an AOL software license reveals all-too-familiar patterns that set off my alarm bells.

What’s in AOL’s Active Virus Shield

Reader Kevin Onken asked a pointed question about a seeming omission in our coverage of antivirus tools:

• “Fred Langa discussed AVG AntiVirus Free Edition in the last Windows Secrets Newsletter. I’ve recently discovered the free AOL Active Virus Shield, but I’ve never seen it mentioned anywhere beyond the usual review sites.
  
  “It has the award-winning, reliable protection of the Kaspersky Labs antivirus engine, it’s light-weight (consuming far fewer resources than other AV programs), it has a command-line interface for use by other programs, and it provides continual, free updates.
  
  “I’ve seen complaints about having to provide an e-mail address for a registration key, but with the plethora of free e-mail services, can one really consider that ‘private information?’ Why does AOL Active Virus Shield never merit a mention?”
  

Speaking strictly for myself, Kevin — but also speaking as someone who once ran a commercial forum on AOL and thus knew it inside and out — I’ve never been a fan of AOL’s software offerings. Historically, AOL software has been designed for utter novices who have very simple computer setups. AOL’s software could be the kiss of death on anything other than utterly-vanilla systems. For years, for example, I knew of no single piece of software that screwed up as many networking setups as did AOL’s.

And then there’s AOL’s marketing, ranging from carpet-bombing the planet with diskettes and CDs, to problems of not honoring user requests to discontinue the service, to last summer’s public posting of the search data of 658,000 AOL subscribers, to — well, you get the idea. To say I’m not a fan of AOL is a total understatement, and I’m not alone. Earlier this year, for example, PC World Magazine named AOL the #1 Worst Tech Product of All Time!

It’s true that AOL Active Virus Shield is not the same as the AOL software itself. But make no mistake, AOL Active Virus Shield is a marketing tool in the classic AOL tradition.


Figure 1. AOL’s antivirus tool is free, but read the fine print before you install it.

If you read through its license agreement, you’ll see that by using the tool, you automatically opt in to receive marketing e-mail from AOL and its business partners (i.e., advertisers). Yes, AOL also says, “You will be given the option in each marketing e-mail to opt-out of further marketing offers.” But you have to take on faith that its opt-out mechanism will work.

Even if the “new” AOL is totally on the up and up (and I truly hope it is), its long, checkered history makes me highly suspicious of anything they do and any promises they make. It will be a long, long time (if ever) before I trust AOL again.

If you feel differently, then by all means read the license terms, and if all sounds good to you, sign up. But remember that you can get the real, unaltered Kaspersky AV with a 30-day free trial. (The cost is only $50 a year if you keep it.) And, as I mentioned in the last issue, there also are good, free antivirus tools (such as AVG Anti Virus) that don’t cost a cent, and that come without any of AOL’s historical baggage. By all means, use AOL Active Virus Shield if you want to, but I won’t be joining you on that one!

Is it time to install .NET?

More and more software requires Microsoft’s .NET Framework. As a result, reader questions like Bob Wilson’s are becoming more common:

• “So far, I have avoided installing Microsoft’s .NET Framework, not seeing much use for more bloat and a bit concerned about adding another MS app to my system. It seems more and more things are requiring .NET.
  
  “On Brian’s recommendation, I was starting to install Shavlik’s NetCheck Protect and again found I needed .NET installed. I’d appreciate your comments on the up and/or down side of installing .NET (and which version).”

When the .NET Framework first came out, Microsoft aimed it almost exclusively at developers. As I reported in the LangaList on Oct. 20, 2005, Microsoft even went so far as to describe its main benefits as “Realize New Business Opportunities, Reduce Time-to-Market, Write Less Code….” With practically zero benefit to end users at the time, there was really no reason to install it.

It took a while for things to change. For example, in an even earlier issue on July 3, 2003, I compared a classic drive-imaging tool to its .NET version. The older version fit nicely on one floppy, but the .NET version (plus the mandatory .NET Framework) required 85MB of files.

That was 60 times more code to do basically the same thing. It wasn’t 60 times better or 60 times faster or 60 times easier to use or 60 times less expensive. It was just 60 times fatter. That was nuts. The software publisher was using .NET just because it existed, not because it yielded any particular benefit.

But now, genuinely good .NET-based software has emerged. So the reasons for avoiding .NET have largely gone away. We’re now at a point where it’s becoming better to have it than not have it. (In fact, some core parts of Vista use .NET.) If you’ve been holding off, I’d say it’s time to go ahead and install the latest-available version, 2.0. It’s available on the Windows Update site.

What to do when missing NTLDR and Hal.dll

Talk about bad luck! Reader Fred Peatross has started running into two of the very worst kinds of XP boot errors:

• “One of my computers keeps getting the message ntldr missing corrupt file; hit any key. Recently, the message changed to a hal.dll file, either missing or corrupt.
  
  “I can always do a cold boot and go right back into Windows XP. Warm boot doesn’t get me into Windows, I get the missing or corrupt file prompt. I thought my hard drive might be going bad, so I purchased SpinRite. Ran SpinRite, and the HD had no errors and was fine. Is this going to come down to a reformatting of my HD?”
  

Intermittent problems can be among the hardest to troubleshoot. But the simplest thing to do to try to resolve this is to start with XP’s Rebuild command. The short form of the fix is as follows:

Step 1. Boot from your XP Setup CD and enter the Recovery Console
Step 2. Enter the command attrib -h -r -s c:boot.ini
Step 3. Delete the file (del c:boot.ini)
Step 4. Run bootcfg /rebuild
Step 5. Run fixboot

Those five steps can fix a number of thorny startup issues and may be all you need. But if the above is too telegraphic for you, you can read fully detailed instructions in my InformationWeek article, “XP’s Little-Known Rebuild Command.” Microsoft’s official instructions can be found in “Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console” and “Recovery Console Tools and Settings.”

If the Rebuild command doesn’t help, you may be able to solve the problem by attacking each error message separately. For example, Kelly Theriot’s excellent site has a very complete how-to on the Missing HAL.DLL problem. Also, Microsoft offers “How to troubleshoot the ‘NTLDR Is Missing…’ error message” and ” ‘NTLDR is missing’ error message when you install or upgrade Windows XP.”

Finally, if none of these software fixes work, or if the problem comes back, then indeed you may have a subtle hard-drive problem. It may be related to a marginal power supply, a heat issue, or simple old age (i.e., the drive’s actuators are wearing out and functioning erratically).

There’s no simple diagnostic for that, but making sure the software is OK is the first step to whittling down the variables you face.

Advice if you’re getting a new PC

Around this time of year, many of you will be getting new PCs. This gives you a perfect opportunity to set things up right from the start — and perhaps to prepare for Vista. Take this reader’s note as an example:

• “Fred, I could swear that you wrote an article that described how to set up a new computer. It talked about how to deal with the pre-installed software and I think creating a Windows CD from the hard drive. I just got a great deal at a Day-After-Thanksgiving-Day sale and I’ve been looking for that article ever since. Can you help?
  

You’re probably thinking of my InformationWeek article, “Make The Most Of That New PC.” This article, in turn, references many other “Setup Secrets” that may also be of use.

There are obvious, immediate benefits of getting your XP installation running as well as you can. It’s especially imperative to provide a solid, stable, glitch-free foundation if you’re planning to upgrade to Vista. In fact, your new PC may have come with a coupon for a free or reduced-cost upgrade to Vista.

Of course, the Vista upgrade issues apply not only to new PCs, but to millions of already in-use PCs. “Make The Most Of That New PC” also contains lots of information on perfecting any existing XP installation, even if it’s not new. The Windows Secrets Newsletter will have a ton of Vista-specific information for both upgraders and new installers in the coming months.

Fred Langa is the editor of Windows Secrets & LangaList. He edited the LangaList e-mail newsletter from 1997 to 2006, when it merged with Windows Secrets. Prior to that, he was editor of Byte Magazine and editorial director of CMP Media, overseeing Windows Magazine and others.