Number 220 - September 2001

Oops! & Access Denied! What To Do! -- A Fable
Name withheld to protect the guilty
Once upon a time, a web surfer came across a site he'd rather not admit to having visited. Later he noticed an unfamiliar icon in his Systray. Clicking it revealed that it was link to that website. "Oops!," he mumbled, "Let's get that out of there!"     He tried to delete the icon without success. He tried toUninstall it from the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs but could not find it in the list. After a difficult search he finally located the offending file on his hard drive (in two places). He successfully deleted one, but the other repeatedly came up with an "Access Denied" message and a hint that it was linked with something else. Pursuing the error messages using the Google.com search engine on the Internet he found solutions for use with Windows NT--one being "Restart your computer".	He went one better than that. He restarted the computer and went to the DOS prompt, maneuvered to the directory containing the offending file and entered: attrib -r filename.ext where filename.ext are the name and extension of the offending file. What the -r command does is set the file attribute to Read/Write as opposed to Read Only (+r). Setting the file attribute to R/W allowed the file to be deleted. Restartingthe computer might have set the attribute to R/W--using the attrib -r command certainly did.     The morals of this story? "Don't forget the usefulness of DOS commands" and, "If you want to avoid an unpleasant chore, be careful where you step!"     Morals of Name withheld? Get your first stone here! Anyone? To see related article in this issue click here.
Number 220 - September 2001