From: mike 


I wonder if something in Vista notices that it cannot phone home, and
triggers a reduced functionality mode until it can phone home once again. 
Then certain applications, upon their startup, would check some internal
data value to see if they run in full or reduced mode.  This would prevent
each crippled application from having to know how to phone home.

The internal data value could be incremented the longer Vista is unable to
phone home.  Each application would have a threshold at which its reduced
functionality would kick in.

 /m


On Sat, 30 Dec 2006 22:49:10 -0500, "Geo."  wrote:

>No error message, I would click on it and get the spinning donut (what the
>hell is that supposed to be anyway, the hourglass signifies time but a
>spinning psychedelic donut?) then that would end and nothing would happen.
>No errors in event log, nothing. Same with right clicking on
>network/properties, spinning donut then nothing. I telneted to my router,
>removed the routes and within a couple minutes both worked again. No reboot,
>no nothing happened on the laptop.
>
>Prior to this I had tried rebooting several times, didn't help, but once I
>removed the null routes then it started working again.
>
>Geo.
>
>"Rich"  wrote in message news:45972cf9{at}w3.nls.net...
>   "Wasn't able to play spider solitaire" how?  What was the
error message?
>
>Rich
>
>  "Geo."  wrote in message
news:45971e6d{at}w3.nls.net...
>  So I had blocked vista from talking to MS for the past few days via a
>series
>  of null routes in my router. Today I wasn't able to play spider solitare,
>  removed the routes and a minute later solitare starts up no problem.
>
>  You know, I'm really starting to hate this dumb OS.
>
>  Geo.

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