GE/M Support: Good morning and thank you for calling General Electric. This
is Bill. How may I help you?
Caller: Hi. I'm having trouble getting my toaster to toast bread evenly. I've
tried adjusting the heater element settings, but it keeps crashing.
GE/M: Do you know what version of Microsoft Toaster you're using?
Caller: How do I get that information?
GE/M: Hold down the right mouse button while turning the Bread Darkness knob
counterclockwise two whole turns. Look on the monitor. What's the version
number in the bottom left of the screen?
Caller: It says Version 3.1b47.
GE/M: Okay. I'd like you to do a clean reboot of your toaster. Hold the
Contrast and Darkness keys, and press the Bread Down lever. Then hold down the
mouse button until you get a screen that says "configuration options". What
happens?
Caller (after a pause): I have four things on the screen. Toaster.sys,
autoexec.blt, dblsided.sys, and toaster.ini. What are they?
GE/M: These are the files that your toaster uses to get its bread settings.
Try selecting toaster.ini.
Caller: How do I do that?
GE/M: It's simple. Use the mouse to point at the word, then press the Bread
Down lever.
Caller: Okay, I did it. Now what?
GE/M: Scroll down to line 411 of your toaster.ini with the darkness knob. It
may take a while, since it's a small knob. Let me know once you're there, and
then read the line to me.
Caller: It says "sides = 3".
GE/M: And the next line underneath says?
Caller: "Bagelconfig = on".
GE/M: There's your problem. It's obvious that your toaster's initialization
files have become corrupted. I'm sorry to say that this could be due to a
virus. Or possibly a fungus. Unfortunately, this happens sometimes with the
Toaster 3.1 versions. I'm going to have you reinstall your toaster driver
software, and this should clear the problem up.
Caller: How could a virus happen? I only use my toaster to toast bread. I
don't share recipes with it or anything.
GE/M: I can't say for sure it was a virus. But there are known problems with
Toaster 3.1, and just to stay on the safe side, I'll send you a patch bread
disk to update you to Toaster 4.0. Remember, viruses can even be spread in
shrinkwrapped loaves of bread. Some virus authors are quite ingenious. We
were talking just this morning about how they've figured out to infect our new
line of Windows Blenders! For now, I'll give you a workaround that you can put
into your autoexec.blt file that should let you avoid crashes until the patch
arrives. Do you have a pen handy?
Caller: Hold on while I get out my WinPDA... here it is. Okay, I'm ready.
GE/M: At the end of your autoexec.blt file, insert the following line: "Set
unrecoverable toaster error = off".
Caller: I wrote it down, but on my screen it says "OS/2" instead of "off"...
Hello? Hello?...
I awoke with a start, realizing it was only a horrible dream. I picked up the
copy of Byte magazine that had fallen onto my chest, stuck a marker in the page
that said "Microsoft's goal: Windows Everywhere", and put it away in order to
go to work.
I'm really looking forward to work today, we just got our first copy of the
Windows NT Advanced Server edition in yesterday, and I'm going to install it...