SCOUG-HELP Mailing List Archives

Date:	Fri, 21 Dec 2001 22:30:15 PST7
From:	"J. R. Fox" <jr_fox@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing

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Fie upon you meddlesome tinkerers, you devotees of CHECKINI &
CLEANINI, forever chasing down trivial inefficiencies and
illusory "problems"!! (You know who you are.) I never even got
that far, and still you have led me down the primrose path to
desktop destruction. Let me explain.

I've had UNIMAINT for as long as I've been running OS/2. It is
the only one of these system repair thingies that I've used, and
even that sparingly. And I've (almost) never had a significant
problem. From conversations with other SCOUG members at
meetings, I know there are others whose experience has been quite
similar. Whatever the other repair util.s might be able to find
"wrong" under the hood, most of the time, it can't have been
terribly important.

I never noticed the "Do Agressive File Handles Repair" option
until now, after it was mentioned on the List. Perhaps this
option was introduced with the last UniMaint csd, which I only
recently applied. Well, I tried this, and it has seriously
compromised my desktop. (Guess they weren't kidding about it
being aggressive . . . . ) Most of the objects and folder
contents have seemingly lost their icons and won't open, beyond
an initial Properties screen. I've manually test-fixed a few of
these, by re-entering the Program Tab info. In some cases, the
icon is not actually "lost." In most of the ones inspected thus
far, the File Associations are not gone either. But some other
custom info may have been lost. Restoring each and every
affected object by hand looks like a most dreary prospect.

I'm theorizing that I inadvertently wiped out a ton of program
.INIs, and probably knocked a lot of important stuff out of the
Warp system .INIs. I think that UniMaint may have some shortcut
way of fixing this, in effect turning back the clock -- possibly
via Restore Desktop INIs in the Desktop menu -- but I don't want
to try it or even reboot before getting some guidance, for fear
of winding up someplace worse. I've never had to do this
before. Luckily, I made a Desktop backup (plus a Portable
Backup), just before embarking on this ill-advised venture.

If I can successfully get back to where I was, it will be *very
easy* to resist any further temptations to "fix" things.

Jordan

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