dontkeepit.gif Just a word of caution in conjunction with my previous description of the online backup service KeepIT.com I bought this service after a short test of their free 2gb offering, the price seemed fair and they offered unlimited storage space.  Things did not go smoothly though, at first their client software 1.0 was very poor, the client software seemed utterly unstable;
  • VERY slow (up to 10 minutes) when you tried to select what to backup. 
  • It was as good as impossible to tell what had been backuped (logging was very inadequate).
  • Client software would connect and disconnect from the server totally outside your control.
  • And the final nail in the coffin, when you need to restore you have ONE option – ALL or NOTHING, yes that is right you need to restore EVERYTHING it is not possible to just select the one file or files you need.
To top everything off a few extra actions was added to the story that forced me to discontinue my account; When I ordered the product I read the description on their website and downloaded and tested their product on my Win 2003 server, and everything seemed to be in order, however after returning from a weeks vacation in Milano I found that the backup job had stalled.  All attempts to get it back up and running failed, so at last I contacted their support mail.  The response was surprising, “our software do not support Windows 2003 server – have a nice day!” and then a link to a sub-page on their web site where this was stated.  Well what surprises me was that I never saw this while ordering and testing (we all know it is impossible to make the installer software not allowing installation on unsupported systems, sarcasm ;-)), so I can only come to the conclusion that this restriction was either added after I bought the product or very poorly described.  Anyhow the story ends somewhat satisfying, after a lot of writing back and forth KeepIT.com has agreed to return my payment and cancle my service. A final word of caution, and perhaps the most important; If you read the FAQ on KeepIT.com website (at least as it is today) you will find that if you loose your crypto key there is NO WAY of restoring your data, I found this very reassuring when I bought the product (as this meant my data was 100% private and secure).  However upon reading the “Terms of usage” VERY closely you will be surprised to find that not only do KeepIT.com have a ‘sparekey’ they also reserve the right to decrypt and examine your data without prior warning if they so see fit, unless you explicit request that they do not store a ‘sparekey’ (this if however NEVER an option during the orderprocess).  I find this option utterly disturbing. I suggest you take a look at www.idrive.com instead, this service is cheaper has better client software and seem to respect your privacy.  I will see if I cant make a short review / comparison later.

address2.jpg
Well it would seem that SP3 not only contains improvements for the XP os, there are also a few annoying tweaks 😐

One is the removal of the Address toolbar in the Taskbar, it would appear that MS has been forced to remove this due to legal requirements..  I do agree that MS need to be kept on a ‘short leach’, but damn its annoying when they remove features like that.

Well never fear there are a few workarounds to try before ripping all your hair out.

1. http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2587494&SiteID=17

2. http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2614948&SiteID=17

3. http://www.muvextoe.com/

I opt for trying the restoration of the browseui.dll file from a SP2 CD I386 directory (read 2 for more details), I have yet to try this but it seem plausible.

Another ‘feature’ is the “Mstsc” command where “/Console” has become “/Admin”, annoying like …. but better get use to it as its there to stay in both XP, Vista and 2008 (unknown if it will hit Win 2003 also at some time?).

After downgrading from Vista to XP SP3 (5503) I quickly ran into problems, Windows Update keept failing to install 5 patches, it worked to start with but after Office 2007 was added things somehow got messed up and new patches failed.

Quite annoying because Windows XP kept informing me that these updates was ready to be installed.

Anyhow, the solution was found here;
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943144

Solution1 worked for me..
Stop the WU service (net stop wuauserv) and then run this command (regsvr32 %windir%system32wups2.dll), restart WU service and the patches installed perfectly.

Heard about this problem before, but never experienced it before now… perhaps this 5503 build of SP3 is not as final as promised 😉   oh well, could not wait any longer, Vista was simply not good for 4 year old pc.  And yes, the XP installation seem to run quite a lot faster, nice..