Windows Live Mail

[Iain]

I was stupid enough to instal Windows Live Mail on my Windows 7 Home
system and now cannot get totally rid of it.
In Resource Monitor I can see Hundreds of entries under svchost.exe
(secsvcs) reading the hard disc thousands of bytes per second. This
eats up a large chunk of memory and slows the computer to a crawl.
How can I rid myself of this awful program.

TIA
Iain

 

[Jeff Layman]

I was stupid enough to instal Windows Live Mail on my Windows 7 Home
system and now cannot get totally rid of it.
In Resource Monitor I can see Hundreds of entries under svchost.exe
(secsvcs) reading the hard disc thousands of bytes per second. This
eats up a large chunk of memory and slows the computer to a crawl.
How can I rid myself of this awful program.

You could always try Googling "uninstall windows live mail". It will
turn up many hits, including:
http://www.sevenforums.com/browsers-mail/48677-how-uninstall-windows-live-mail.html

 

[Philip Herlihy]

I was stupid enough to instal Windows Live Mail on my Windows 7 Home
system and now cannot get totally rid of it.
In Resource Monitor I can see Hundreds of entries under svchost.exe
(secsvcs) reading the hard disc thousands of bytes per second. This
eats up a large chunk of memory and slows the computer to a crawl.
How can I rid myself of this awful program.

TIA
Iain

I don't recognise the behaviour you describe, and I use Windows Live
Mail for RSS feeds (no longer for newsgroups since they dropped the
quoting convention). If you want to check what's actually doing all
this disk I/O you could play around with Process Monitor from
Sysinternals.com (Microsoft). Meanwhile, if you want to dump WLM I can
recommend Revo Uninstaller (free) for uninstalling things thoroughly -
I've seen thousands of files left behind by some supposedly uninstalled
software (antivirus suites are the worst for this).

 

[Nil]

How can I rid myself of this awful program.

It can be cleanly uninstalled from Control Panel. Why did you not try
that?

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I was stupid enough to instal Windows Live Mail on my Windows 7 Home
system and now cannot get totally rid of it.
In Resource Monitor I can see Hundreds of entries under svchost.exe
(secsvcs) reading the hard disc thousands of bytes per second. This
eats up a large chunk of memory and slows the computer to a crawl.
How can I rid myself of this awful program.

TIA
Iain

svchost is a piece of the operating system that runs many different
services for the OS, so if you want to get rid of that, *don't*!

 

[SC Tom]

svchost is a piece of the operating system that runs many different
services for the OS, so if you want to get rid of that, *don't*!

Aw, c'mon, Gene. Let him have some fun

Seriously, though, Gene is absolutely correct. You can't stop all the instances of svchost because of it's use in
numerous programs; that why you see several instances of it running at the same time (odds are that Windows won't allow
you to stop them any how). I would follow Phil's advice and track it with Process Monitor to see what the hog is.

As a note, I have 13 instances running on my Win7 laptop on a fresh boot up (no WLM running). My XP box has 5 with OE
running, and has been up half the day.

 

[choro]

Aw, c'mon, Gene. Let him have some fun

Seriously, though, Gene is absolutely correct. You can't stop all the
instances of svchost because of it's use in numerous programs; that why
you see several instances of it running at the same time (odds are that
Windows won't allow you to stop them any how). I would follow Phil's
advice and track it with Process Monitor to see what the hog is.

As a note, I have 13 instances running on my Win7 laptop on a fresh boot
up (no WLM running). My XP box has 5 with OE running, and has been up
half the day.

Oh, come on! Why can't he remove this svhost.exe. Too many .exe's in
Windows of any complexion anyway. One less wouldn't make much difference
one way or the other. ;-)

Just tried to rescue files on a friend's flash stick. Tried different
approaches using several rescue programs, all to no avail. In the end I
reformatted the flash stick hoping that that might reveal something. But
the flash stick was clean as a whistle.

How could this be, I asked myself. Either all the files were shredded, I
thought, OR the stick could have been inadvertently degaussed. But
surely he would have known about the stick being degaussed, I thought to
myself. After all, he *had* told me that he had attended courses on
computing as well as on electrical engineering.

Anyway, in the end I phoned him saying that his stick was OK, that there
was nothing wrong with it and that I had even tested it, but that it was
clean as a whistle.

Did you rest it on a strong magnet, I asked him. No, he said. Did you
put it near a strong magnet, I asked. No, he said. Well, I said, I can't
see how this could have happened unless the files were either shredded
or the stick itself was degaussed.

Well, he then admitted, I think I put it in my pocket together with some
of those brown strip magnets that they use on notice boards, he said.
But those are quite weak magnets, he innocently added!!!

It sure takes all sorts!
-- choro

 

[SC Tom]

Oh, come on! Why can't he remove this svhost.exe. Too many .exe's in Windows of any complexion anyway. One less
wouldn't make much difference one way or the other. ;-)

Just tried to rescue files on a friend's flash stick. Tried different approaches using several rescue programs, all to
no avail. In the end I reformatted the flash stick hoping that that might reveal something. But the flash stick was
clean as a whistle.

How could this be, I asked myself. Either all the files were shredded, I thought, OR the stick could have been
inadvertently degaussed. But surely he would have known about the stick being degaussed, I thought to myself. After
all, he *had* told me that he had attended courses on computing as well as on electrical engineering.

Anyway, in the end I phoned him saying that his stick was OK, that there was nothing wrong with it and that I had even
tested it, but that it was clean as a whistle.

Did you rest it on a strong magnet, I asked him. No, he said. Did you put it near a strong magnet, I asked. No, he
said. Well, I said, I can't see how this could have happened unless the files were either shredded or the stick itself
was degaussed.

Well, he then admitted, I think I put it in my pocket together with some of those brown strip magnets that they use on
notice boards, he said. But those are quite weak magnets, he innocently added!!!

It sure takes all sorts!

Funny you should mention degaussing. A long time ago at work, we had some really nice HP or Digital (I don't recall for
certain) CAD workstations with high-end CRT monitors. One of the buttons on the front of it was a Degauss button. Some
of the work cubicles were back to back, and if engineer Bob degaussed his monitor, it would send color flashes across
engineer Fred's monitor on the other side of the wall. Well, engineer Fred had a serial port extension under the front
of his monitor that he kept his CAD key in (early version of MicroCADAM, IIRC), so to pay Bob back for interrupting his
work (nap time), he hit his degauss button 3 or 4 times in rapid succession. Later, when he tried to get into CAD, he
got a "No key found" error. He called me to fix it, and showed me the key was plugged in, but couldn't be read. Seems
the degaussing had corrupted the EEPROM enough that it couldn't be read any more. Luckily, as admin, I had the program
to reprogram it, so all ended well. But an email was sent out warning every one of the inherent dangers of keeping
anything electronic next to the monitors when degaussing. There was a story of a digital watch, but I never saw it, so I
can't confirm the truth of it.

 

[H-Man]

Did you rest it on a strong magnet, I asked him. No, he said. Did you
put it near a strong magnet, I asked. No, he said. Well, I said, I can't
see how this could have happened unless the files were either shredded
or the stick itself was degaussed.

Well, he then admitted, I think I put it in my pocket together with some
of those brown strip magnets that they use on notice boards, he said.
But those are quite weak magnets, he innocently added!!!

You can try, but I can't get a magnet of any strength I can find to affect
the contents of a flash drive, much less a fridge magnet. YMMV but I kinda
doubt you can erase a flash drive that way, except for maybe the most
extreme of conditions, and I still question that. Maybe with a EM pulse
from a nuclear explosion Hopefully we'll never have that tested.

Degaussing involves a reversing and diminishing magnetic field. You can
magnetize with a static or non-reversing field but that is not degaussing.
I get what you're saying, but the terminology is wrong. Degaussing is to
de-magnetize something (to a minimal state). One cannot do that with a
magnet in a pocket. Additionally as flash memory is not magnetic and has no
magnetic polarity, I see no way to demagnetize it.

 

[blank]

....
....

see how this could have happened unless the files were either shredded or
the stick itself was degaussed.

Well, he then admitted, I think I put it in my pocket together with some
of those brown strip magnets that they use on notice boards, he said. But
those are quite weak magnets, he innocently added!!! .....

It sure takes all sorts!
-- choro

Some years ago in Australia I was looking after a few sites running crude
systems, and of course I advised the users to keep backups. I failed
completely at one place to stop the staff from writing the backup identities
on the sleeve labels of 5.25" floppy discs using a sharp ball point pen,
which of course printed through to the floppy.

On another site, we needed the backup floppies and I asked where they were.
'Quite safe, right here under the telephone,' said the manager. There they
were. Only problem was that the telephone of those days (1980) in Australia
had at its base a powerful traditional style bell (large electromagnet with
an armature). I explained that if the bell rang only once it was bye bye to
the backups.

 

[choro]

Funny you should mention degaussing. A long time ago at work, we had
some really nice HP or Digital (I don't recall for certain) CAD
workstations with high-end CRT monitors. One of the buttons on the front
of it was a Degauss button. Some of the work cubicles were back to back,
and if engineer Bob degaussed his monitor, it would send color flashes
across engineer Fred's monitor on the other side of the wall. Well,
engineer Fred had a serial port extension under the front of his monitor
that he kept his CAD key in (early version of MicroCADAM, IIRC), so to
pay Bob back for interrupting his work (nap time), he hit his degauss
button 3 or 4 times in rapid succession. Later, when he tried to get
into CAD, he got a "No key found" error. He called me to fix it, and
showed me the key was plugged in, but couldn't be read. Seems the
degaussing had corrupted the EEPROM enough that it couldn't be read any
more. Luckily, as admin, I had the program to reprogram it, so all ended
well. But an email was sent out warning every one of the inherent
dangers of keeping anything electronic next to the monitors when
degaussing. There was a story of a digital watch, but I never saw it, so
I can't confirm the truth of it.

I knew about degaussing probably over half a century ago. IMB had ferric
oxide coated plastic rolls, much the same as the tape used in reel to
reel tape recorders but in the shape of a cylinder which were used over
two 1" rollers which a lever would move further apart from one another
thus providing a taut fit for the magnetic cylindrical belt which could
then be used much the same as a reel to reel machine. The fact that you
could move the head on the playback machine at will gave instant access
to any part of the recording which was a great plus point over reel to
reel tape recorders. The recording head moved helically much like on
some LP players with straight arms which gradually moved towards the
center of the LP being played.

I don't really know how widespread the use of these IBM machines were
but I would have thought they would have been in great demand by big
corporations for dictation purposes. In fact the playback machines were
specifically designed for such use as releasing the foot pedal stopped
the playback and the head moved back a couple of seconds or so for
continuity for the benefit of the typists. At the time I worked in a
news outfit. The job was demanding but interesting and the pay was good.
Though it meant goodbye to all the holidays I had enjoyed as a teacher.

These cylindrical magnetic rolls would every now and then be collected
by the engineers who would degauss them so they could be used again and
again. And the degaussing machine made a noise much like a gun being
fired when the button was pressed to instantly degauss the belts --
around 20 or more all within one another.

Before the advent of magnetic belts, they used plastic belts for this
purpose but of course these belts could only be used once and then had
to be discarded, unless of course they were kept for archiving purposes.
Earlier models of these machines used plastic belts cutting a groove in
the plastic belts much like machines on which sounds were recorded on
blank LPs. The machine literally cuts grooves in the blank plastic LP,
be the material used be a blank LP or a plastic belt. The manufacture of
LPs was a long process of making a negative of the original cut, then
making a metal negative to press the actual LPs. The quality of the
final LP naturally depended on how many pressings had been done using
the same metal negative.

Good old days! Or were they?!!!
-- choro

 

[choro]

You can try, but I can't get a magnet of any strength I can find to affect
the contents of a flash drive, much less a fridge magnet. YMMV but I kinda
doubt you can erase a flash drive that way, except for maybe the most
extreme of conditions, and I still question that. Maybe with a EM pulse
from a nuclear explosion Hopefully we'll never have that tested.

Degaussing involves a reversing and diminishing magnetic field. You can
magnetize with a static or non-reversing field but that is not degaussing.
I get what you're saying, but the terminology is wrong. Degaussing is to
de-magnetize something (to a minimal state). One cannot do that with a
magnet in a pocket. Additionally as flash memory is not magnetic and has no
magnetic polarity, I see no way to demagnetize it.

I am not going to argue with you but I know that you can mess up even a
hard drive with a magnet. And a pocketful of even weak magnets around a
flash drive can easily mess it up, I would have thought. Why don't you
put your idea to a real life test? I've got a nice strong magnet you can
rest on your hard drive and your USB stick/s!

I have just written about degaussing elsewhere on this very thread
actually. Just look a couple of lines above. But to be honest I'd be
very careful playing around with magnets next to HD drives and other SS
drives. Better safe than sorry. But if you are absolutely sure that a
strong magnetic field won't mess up your stick, why don't you put your
idea to the test?!
-- choro

 

[SC Tom]

I knew about degaussing probably over half a century ago. IMB had ferric oxide coated plastic rolls, much the same as
the tape used in reel to reel tape recorders but in the shape of a cylinder which were used over two 1" rollers which
a lever would move further apart from one another thus providing a taut fit for the magnetic cylindrical belt which
could then be used much the same as a reel to reel machine. The fact that you could move the head on the playback
machine at will gave instant access to any part of the recording which was a great plus point over reel to reel tape
recorders. The recording head moved helically much like on some LP players with straight arms which gradually moved
towards the center of the LP being played.

I don't really know how widespread the use of these IBM machines were but I would have thought they would have been in
great demand by big corporations for dictation purposes. In fact the playback machines were specifically designed for
such use as releasing the foot pedal stopped the playback and the head moved back a couple of seconds or so for
continuity for the benefit of the typists. At the time I worked in a news outfit. The job was demanding but
interesting and the pay was good. Though it meant goodbye to all the holidays I had enjoyed as a teacher.

These cylindrical magnetic rolls would every now and then be collected by the engineers who would degauss them so they
could be used again and again. And the degaussing machine made a noise much like a gun being fired when the button was
pressed to instantly degauss the belts --
around 20 or more all within one another.

Before the advent of magnetic belts, they used plastic belts for this purpose but of course these belts could only be
used once and then had to be discarded, unless of course they were kept for archiving purposes. Earlier models of
these machines used plastic belts cutting a groove in the plastic belts much like machines on which sounds were
recorded on blank LPs. The machine literally cuts grooves in the blank plastic LP, be the material used be a blank LP
or a plastic belt. The manufacture of LPs was a long process of making a negative of the original cut, then making a
metal negative to press the actual LPs. The quality of the final LP naturally depended on how many pressings had been
done using the same metal negative.

Good old days! Or were they?!!!

There are some things about the "good ol' days" I'd like to see back, but. . .

When I was in the USAF in '66, I had a nice Sony reel-to-reel, but I was stationed at a small radar base, and when the
output of the search radar was at full, the heads would pick up this 1 second buzz as the microwaves passed over (and
through) the barracks. Even worse than that was that the heads needed degaussing on a regular basis. I had a small
handheld 110V degausser I used then. When I was working on TV's, I had a large degaussing coil of wire and core wrapped
in electrical tape. That thing had to be about 1-1/2 to 2 feet in diameter. What a fun toy Almost as much fun as a
large magnifying glass in the noonday sun

 

[choro]

...
...

Some years ago in Australia I was looking after a few sites running crude
systems, and of course I advised the users to keep backups. I failed
completely at one place to stop the staff from writing the backup identities
on the sleeve labels of 5.25" floppy discs using a sharp ball point pen,
which of course printed through to the floppy.

On another site, we needed the backup floppies and I asked where they were.
'Quite safe, right here under the telephone,' said the manager. There they
were. Only problem was that the telephone of those days (1980) in Australia
had at its base a powerful traditional style bell (large electromagnet with
an armature). I explained that if the bell rang only once it was bye bye to
the backups.

Oh, those 5.25" floppies! They were what gave the name to floppies. They
were really floppy, weren't they? It wasn't until *after* I handled
those that I realized why floppies were called floppies. The first
floppies I used were the stiffer (much stiffer!) 3.5" ones and I was
wondering why they had called them floppies.

BTW, did you hear about the one where a very elderly gentleman tries to
insert his floppy in the old desktop and his wife sternly tells him it
is not *that* floppy them mean?! ;-)

Mind you this is an old joke, as you can imagine!
-- choro

 

[choro]

There are some things about the "good ol' days" I'd like to see back,
but. . .

When I was in the USAF in '66, I had a nice Sony reel-to-reel, but I was
stationed at a small radar base, and when the output of the search radar
was at full, the heads would pick up this 1 second buzz as the
microwaves passed over (and through) the barracks. Even worse than that
was that the heads needed degaussing on a regular basis. I had a small
handheld 110V degausser I used then. When I was working on TV's, I had a
large degaussing coil of wire and core wrapped in electrical tape. That
thing had to be about 1-1/2 to 2 feet in diameter. What a fun toy
Almost as much fun as a large magnifying glass in the noonday sun

What did you get up to with the magnifying glass under the midday sun?

I remember those days well. At work we had 10" reel to reel machines,
several stacked up in a rack, recording stuff round the clock non-stop
more for archiving purposes than anything else. For normal work we used
the IMB magnetic belt recorders.

I even remember the blue plastic belts in which the IBM machines cut a
groove to record the sound. But that was well before 1966 that you
mention. I must be the doyen around here! ;-)

My personal tape machine was a Philips machine but I wished I had bought
the Grundig even though at the time the Grundig cost 25% more which
meant it would have cost me two months' pay. It was big money to buy
such stuff in those days. Unlike today, electronic stuff cost a bomb then.

Hey, it wasn't so long ago when, in the UK at least, a laptop with a
color screen cost a hefty £400 more than one with a B&W screen. Can't
remember the exchange rate at the time but £400 then was probably the
equivalent of US$800 or more!

And those big Sony or Akai reel to reels cost a fortune in the 60s. I
wonder what happened to the British Ferrograph company. They also used
to make professional type tape recorders.
-- choro

 

[Char Jackson]

Oh, those 5.25" floppies! They were what gave the name to floppies. They
were really floppy, weren't they? It wasn't until *after* I handled
those that I realized why floppies were called floppies. The first
floppies I used were the stiffer (much stiffer!) 3.5" ones and I was
wondering why they had called them floppies.

I thought the 'floppy' name was first given to the 8" diskettes. It
was later that the 5.25" floppies came along, followed of course by
the less floppy 3.5" type.

 

[choro]

You can try, but I can't get a magnet of any strength I can find to affect
the contents of a flash drive, much less a fridge magnet. YMMV but I kinda
doubt you can erase a flash drive that way, except for maybe the most
extreme of conditions, and I still question that. Maybe with a EM pulse
from a nuclear explosion Hopefully we'll never have that tested.

Degaussing involves a reversing and diminishing magnetic field. You can
magnetize with a static or non-reversing field but that is not degaussing.
I get what you're saying, but the terminology is wrong. Degaussing is to
de-magnetize something (to a minimal state). One cannot do that with a
magnet in a pocket. Additionally as flash memory is not magnetic and has no
magnetic polarity, I see no way to demagnetize it.

I am not going to argue with you but I know that you can mess up even a
hard drive with a magnet. And a pocketful of even weak magnets around a
flash drive can easily mess it up, I would have thought. Why don't you
put your idea to a real life test? I've got a nice strong magnet you can
rest on your hard drive and your USB stick/s!

I have just written about degaussing elsewhere on this NG.
-- choro

 

[choro]

I thought the 'floppy' name was first given to the 8" diskettes. It
was later that the 5.25" floppies came along, followed of course by
the less floppy 3.5" type.

Sorry but this is the first time I hear of the 8" diskettes.

When I bought my first laptop, it used 3.5" floppies and I remember
wondering why they had named them floppies as they were not particularly
flooppy. It was later that I bought an old IBM PC which used 5.25"
floppies that I realized how floppy those floppies were.

As for the 8" floppies those must have been before my time. My time on
computers, that is!

Must look it up.
-- choro

 

[Wolf K]

They were encased in a relatively stiff plastic case, but the disk
inside was made very thin polyester coated with magnetic medium on both
sides. This was floppy.

Sorry but this is the first time I hear of the 8" diskettes.

I remember them. In fact, I remember punched paper tape, and punched
cards, and "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate."

When I bought my first laptop, it used 3.5" floppies and I remember
wondering why they had named them floppies as they were not particularly
flooppy. It was later that I bought an old IBM PC which used 5.25"
floppies that I realized how floppy those floppies were.

As for the 8" floppies those must have been before my time. My time on
computers, that is!

Must look it up.
-- choro

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk

A hard disk is made of aluminum, hence it can take much higher
rotational speed, and wobbles much less, so tracks can be much closer
together. But the technology is still that of the floppy disk:
Information is stored in magnetic domains of opposite polarity strung
along a track. Technical tweaks have increased storage density and
read/write speeds, but there is no essential difference between the
floppy disk and the hard disk.

Have fun!
Wolf K.

PS: the loss. of cultural memory affects not only technologies, but more
seriously changes the way people understand, and therefore participate
in, the political process. Listen to your elders: they can recall what
democracy was like in the days when people thought of public service as
an honourable calling and engagement in politics at every level as not
only a duty but a privilege. - WEK

 

[Char Jackson]

Sorry but this is the first time I hear of the 8" diskettes.

When I bought my first laptop, it used 3.5" floppies and I remember
wondering why they had named them floppies as they were not particularly
flooppy. It was later that I bought an old IBM PC which used 5.25"
floppies that I realized how floppy those floppies were.

As for the 8" floppies those must have been before my time. My time on
computers, that is!

Must look it up.

Couple of pics here, diskettes and drives.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk>