I have finally got XP with SP2 working as it should be, well, mostly. After much communication between me and the Microsoft help guy, which although although helpful, wasn't too useful, I have gotten rid of the two bugs mentioned in the earlier post (the Windows Explorer and System Restore bugs). After seeing that the Windows Explorer bug did not occur in Safe Mode, the MS help dude reccomended that i start in safe mode and then use the System Configuration Utility (Start > Run > type msconfig) to manually choose which processes to run on startup. He said to disable all the non-microsoft processes, do a restart, see if its fixed, and then go through the non-MS processes to determine which one is causing the problem.

After the first restart the bug still occured, so therefore it wasn't a third party process that was causing the bug. I then took some initiative and listed all the MS processes that started on a normal boot, but not in Safe Mode. After narrowing the offending process down using a binary search strategy (cutting the list in two, testing the first half - was fixed; cut in half again and test again, etc), i found that it was the Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services) that was causing BOTH the Windows Explorer bug and the System Restore one. Can you guess what the MS help dude said when i emailed of this find? Yes, remove IIS. It's good that i don't actually need to use IIS any more for uni. (IIS mainly provides that ability for your computer to funtion as a web-server etc.) I should email the guy back and ask what if i actually need to use IIS.

Another thing i did today on my computer was install Windows Media Player 10. It has a really snazzy new interface, but other than that, not much difference if you don't own an mp3 player that it can sync to. I own an iPod, and Apple's iTune software is more than adequate. I think M$ feels that its slipping beind in that market behind Apple, so its trying to unify the access of other company's MP3 players (such as iRiver etc) through its Windows Media Player to sort of create a united front against the market domination of Apple in that area.

Things are moving along with uni with the mid-semester exam for INFS3200 coming up in exactly one weeks time.

I've also got my draft exam timetable for the final exams at the end of the semester.

Currently it stands at:
- HIST2606 History of Warfare: 12/11 11:15am
- INFS3200 Advanced Database Systems: 13/11 11:15am
- COMP2505 Algorithms and Data Structures: 15/11 11:15am

It could be worse, but i think 3 exams in 4 days is pretty crappy timetable. (It has actually been worse: 2nd semester 2002 i had two exams on the first morning of the exam block, on the monday at 8am and 11:15am. That sucked serious portions, but i did really well on both those exams).

Today was also the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, which is a pretty important feast day. Not knowing what the history behind the feast was, i went to the Greek Orthodox Archiocese of America website which had a really good article explaining of the history, meaning, and even the service of the feast. It's so good that they have such a wonderful in-depth website that contains such a fantastic amount of information presented in a really well-designed site.