I was surprised by the question they didn't address was "did they even bother to send the formatted drives to a recovery service?"

Sure they got people in there from Microsoft and Dell, but how about Ontrack?

OK, WinXP client, Win2003 (I think - maybe 2000) server - is there a simple way to tell from the client machine if a file on the server is locked, and what type of locking it is? I mean, I know you do those things with API calls, but absent that, can you tell?

eta: I suppose attempting to rename a file would tell you if there's any sort of lock, right?

Does a $4,000 celebrity grill count as Technology? Sure, why not! [link]

Oh, that kind of grill.

Ha! The other kind would have been even funnier.

I totally thought mouth-grill too. And then was a little surprised a $4K one would be noteworthy. Oh, how sad.

sumi, from three days ago:

Okay, my computer just did this thing -- where it went to blue screen and told me that if it was the first time this happened I should restart, but if it had happened before I needed to do something. The message said something about a "device driver."

1. What is a device driver?

2. Messages from microsoft tell me how to get to the device driver but I have no idea how to figure out which thing is the one I need to do something about -- is there somewhere to go to figure that out?

I haven't loaded any new hardware and I think that the latest program I downloaded was an update of McAfee. I'm running Windows XP.

Did you ever get any of this answered? Have you had further problems along these lines?

1. A device driver is the little piece of software that tells XP how to make all your devices (basically, every individual hardware component of your computer) operate properly.

2. One way to check which device might be having problems is to right click on My Computer and select Properties. Once the Properties window is open, click on the Hardware tab. On that tab, click on the Device Manager button.

This will produce an expandable list of your devices (meaning they'll all have plus signs next to them, which will expand a detailed sublist if you were to click on any of those plus signs). If there is a problem with one of your device drivers, one of the expandable items will be expanded, and the problem device will be noted with a (I *think*) question mark. Either that or an exclamation point. I misremember.

If nothing is expanded, that is, if you just se a simple list of devices (computer, disk drives, display adapters, DVD/CD ROM drives, etc...), you probably don't have a driver problem.

That's the best way I know to check for driver problems.

Ah, thank you!

And, no, nobody else answered my question.

And no question marks -- excellent.

I just read the Alaskan problem

ummm, lets just say that this is a common problem in emergency services. That's why no one gets fired . It happens far more often than it should.

why it even happens in software companies - people who bread and butter depends on maintaining their intellectual property