Chris (and all),
Judging by the WHOA in your e-mail, you must think I'm nuts. I'm not -- the
ICQ I tried to download crashed my particular set-up and damaged the
operating system beyond restoration. I shared my experience so that perhaps
someone with a similar situation (older Windows NT on a laptop) would
benefit. That's all.
The decision to purchase a new hard drive was my decision based on the
damage assessment I made.
Downloading the beta version of ICQ caused some serious damage to my system.
It installs itself as part of the start-up process, which eroded all my
laptop's working memory and slowed the computer to a grind. The ICQ
uninstall program would not recognize my Administrator privileges, and
refused to let me uninstall it, because I am no longer connected to the
original network. When I tried to uninstall it through Windows' Control
Panel, registry problems (a bad dll, courtesy of ICQ) corrupted
system32.exe, a vital file. That, in turn, corrupted my dial-up networking
program.
The problem was not due to Microsoft software. The error message from ICQ
indicated one of its own dll files could not be found -- but ICQ would not
let me reinstall or uninstall, and I couldn't get out to the Internet to try
to find a solution from ICQ directly.
In short, the version of ICQ I tried to download wouldn't let me run my
system properly, it wouldn't let me uninstall it, and it crashed the Windows
system when I tried to uninstall it manually.
During the process, I was working with a reboot time of over an hour per
shutdown. I tried everything. I managed to get to DOS and copy a lot of
saved files to disc. In this particular case, Microsoft's operating system
actually allowed me to retrieve files even though the Windows program was
crippled and couldn't even run its own Explorer program.
I bought the new hard drive because the ONLY way I could fix the laptop
would be to format the computer and reinstall Windows NT. The laptop was a
"gift" from a former company, which has since switched to Novell. The
company gave us the old computers that were discontinued. I checked with
the system administrator there, who said it could take weeks to locate the
original discs or perhaps they were lost for good. I could not wait. My
client version was licensed to me, but the company's network no longer
supported it, so I could not reload the network and dial-up settings from
the client disc I had.
My option was to purchase a new copy of Windows 98 or Windows NT because
2000 is not compatible with my laptop (and Windows 2000 and NT are NOT
similar, my NT system predates Windows 2000 by at least three or four
years).
Instead of shelling out $200 for new software for an old machine, I decided
to invest $450 in a new machine that did more. So, the problem could have
been repaired, but at a rather large cost.
Sorry to get so technical, but I still maintain the Beware! warning.
Regards,
Harper Lou
