RE: The Patient Died
Bill, What happened to you is actually a fairly common occurrence. I have had it happen to me at least twice before. The problem was not with the installed software; it was the uninstall that did you in. For some reason the uninstall wizards fail to record the fact that certain files were present before the install and tag them as "shared files" (used by more than one program). Then when the install happens, these "shared files" are removed leaving the old programs inoperable. The trick is to reinstall your networking software to restore these key files. It would be nice if we lived in a world of perfect software that always worked as advertised, but alas, we don't. But just because we have had some initial problems, we may not want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Clearly we need more testing and some rigorous debugging before we are ready for prime time, but I think if we continue to pursue the goal we can reach our objective of getting our committee "on-li!
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ne all-the-time."
Sorry you had to be the first victim, but I don't think the patient actually died. You just lost the use of one of your faculties for a period of time (hopefully it will be a short time).
Thanx, Buzz
Everett O. (Buzz) Rigsbee
Boeing Information Services
PO Box 24346, M/S: 7M-FM
Seattle, WA 98124-0346
ph: (425) 865-2443, fx: (425) 865-6721
email: everett.o.rigsbee@boeing.com
> From: Bill Lidinsky[SMTP:lidinsky@hep.net]
> Sent: Monday, July 12, 1999 7:53 PM
> To: P802 SEC
> Subject: The Patient Died
> COMMENTS ON 802.11 WIRELESS LAN USED FOR P802 DURING THE JULY 1999 MEETING IN MONTREAL
> by Bill Lidinsky
> These comments are mine based upon the use of the 802.11 network and its related server during the Montreal meeting. The notebook that I am using is a IBM Thinkpad 600 running Windows95, SR2. I had a Bay Network PC card and Bay Stack software. There are two general problems: geographical coverage and operation with my machine. The latter has been a disaster for me.
> GEOGRAPHICAL
> From my perspective the coverage was fine early in the week. All the rooms that I was in were covered. But at the SEC meeting on Thursday night, I could not access the server. The BayStack software indicated that the link was not there.
> OPERATION OF MY COMPUTER
> There were several issues.
> The situation while I had the software and PCMCIA card as provide by Bay Networks installed was as follows:
> (1) Suspend/resume would not work reliably with the software. Even when the PC card was not installed suspend/resume did not work reliably. It sometimes worked and sometimes did not. It was inconsistent.
> (2) Hot starting the network PC card caused the network to become inoperative even though the connection was good. Messages said that the shares were not available. This was true even after I ran winipcfg and released/renewed.
> (3) Hot stopping similarly caused problems.
> (4) The only way that I found to make things work reliably was to shut down and restart.
> (5) While at 802 meetings I often login to my home institution in the evenings. Having to startup, change the Windows domain client to that of my home institution, and then shutdown and restart and then do it all again after I'm through logging into work was a pain.
> (6) During the Thursday evening SEC meeting, when the network was not available to me, operation of my whole computer was comprimised. So, using the Uninstall Shield provided with the Bay software I unistalled the software.
> In ControlPanel/Network/Configuration I Removed the adapter(s) and changed the Properties for the Client for Microsoft Windows Properties to my home institution domain. After uninstalling per (6) above, the situation was (and still is):
> (7) IP networking no longer works on my machine when I try to use it via my PCMCIA Ethernet card, either from home via my ISDN line or when at work directly connected to an Ethernet subnet. My Netscape browser doesn't work. My MSIE brwoser doesn't work. PING doesn't work. Traceroute doesn't work. TELNET doesn't work. My email doesn't work. In short:>
> ALL MY INTERNET CONNECTIVITY IS GONE!
> Yet my machine still functions well as a Windows domain client.>
> But when I connect via my modem, everything works. My Netscape browser works. My MSIE brwoser works. PING works. Traceroute works. My email works. TELNET works.
> I've confirmed that all my Internet addresses (e.g., IP, gateway, DNS servers, subnet mask) ARE CORRECT. I've also investigated the routing table. As far as I can tell, all seems OK. Using winipcfg, I've Released and Restored the DHCP configuration. No help!
> SUMMARY
> The net result is that my notebook computer is now broken.
> - I cannot use my machine when directly connected to Ethernet. It only works when I connect via a modem. Interestingly my machine does work as Windows Domain client no matter how I connect.
> - Suspend hangs my machine. I must manually turn off the machine with the on/off switch and then manually start it and go thru
> ScanDisk to get back to a partially working machine. In looking at processes, a process named Msgsrv32 is not responding.
> Killing this process does no good. The machine is still hung. Suspend invoked via Windows Start/Suspend or via a control key
> combination did the same thing.
> - Hibernate also hangs my machine is the same way as Suspend.
> I use the Internet ALL THE TIME. And I use Suspend and Hibernate with some regularity.
> A REQUEST
> I ask that someone from Bay Networks (NORTEL) who is knowledgeable on the problems described above contact me on or before Wednesday 14 July 1999 and provide consultation on fixing my machine. I really don't have the time to work the issue. My email is lidinsky@hep.net. My phone is 630-840-8067.
> FUTURE USE OF EXEC LAN
> I don't intend to use such a system again. I was a fool to let this happen to me this time. I'd be a bigger fool to do it again.
> The only network that I will use is one that provides networking via either my modem or Ethernet card. I do this regularly while on travel to other meetings. It works just fine. And there is no need to install anything on anyone's machine.
> SO, I WILL NOT ALLOW DEFECTIVE SOFTWARE TO BE INSTALLED ON MY MACHINE AGAIN! And someone saying that's good software won't do it for me. Connect to my machine - fine. Install software in my machine - NO WAY!
> I suggest that at future 802 SEC meetings Ethernet hubs be provided with an Ethernet strung around the tables. A wireless conections can be provided to connect to a server if that's easier. This way there is no need to fiddle with anyone's machine above possibly changing an IP address or two. No possibly dangerous software is put anywhere where it can mess you up.
> FINAL COMMENT
> Having identified several problems, I'd still like to congratulate Vic and the people and organizations with whom he worked. Nice try!
> The experiment was a success. It's too bad that the patient died.
> Bill
>