This article was written by Don VanSyckel, the club president, as a part of "The President's Pen". This article appeared in the September 2012 WYSIWYG newsletter.
Software Updates
by Don VanSyckel
I've been using Open Office for a while and heard that Libre Office was better in some aspects so I loaded it. Libre Office also worked well and I was pleased. Although Open Office did have a couple features that I could not find in Libre Office. This week I decided I would update everything so I checked the two office suites. I was already at Open Office 3.3 and up to date there. I had Libre Office 3.4 loaded and 3.6 is available on the web site so I downloaded the file and loaded the software. The load seemed to go OK but nothing in Libre Office would work. I tried uninstalling and re-installing. I tried uninstalling and installing 3.4 again. To my surprise this was now just as broken. I uninstalled 3.4. I had to go on to other things and soon discovered the PC was acting quite different. Things were slow to the point where some things timed out and difficult use.
Well now what to do? The software has been uninstalled and still something was wrong. I opened the Program Files directory and delete the remanants of the Libre Office Suite. Still not right. I opened the registry which I caution you not to do unless you are prepared for the conscequences, like rebuilding your PC. I removed items referring to Libre Office. Instead of the desired speeding up to normal, the PC slowed down even more to the point of being unusable.
I attempted to recover the windows installation and the MS software didn't cooperate at all. As a last resort I attempted to repair the Win XP installation. After quite a while the repair was done but during the installation several files were complained about. Then after completion the operation was the same. I suspect that the registry was damaged in a way that repair did not touch the problem. So as a last last resort I'm reinstalling windows from the ground up, reformat the disk and all that.
So now I've wasted two nights messing with this because I attempted to upgrade. The good news is this is one of the few problems I've had with upgrades. The bad news is I needed to be doing some other things the last two nights, including writing this column. Well our newsletter editor will get this column but it's late. On the other hand, I didn't know what to write about and this disaster supplied a topic.
Now here's a third night, after loading service pack 3 and hitting windows update there are over 100 updates that want to load. This is taking the rest of the third night.
I suggest people document the PC they're using. What I'm referring to is recodr the manufacturer and model number of each of the following:
Computer itself
Network card
Video card
Audio card
I list the network card first after the computer because many times if you can get the network working the other drivers can be found on the internet.
Better yet make sure you have a recovery disk to load if, when, disaster strikes.
End of Article