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'Bout Computers Ask the FleetHave your own question for the Fleet? Click here to ask it. Question submitted by Brian UK:I have partitioned my HD into three parts - one has XP, one has Win 2000 Pro, and the third is empty - thus I can access XP & Win 2000 files from each other. I have used Service Pack 2 for XP. It went through the routine of installation but then the computer would not work at all. I used my XP disk to re-install under the Repair option. It went through that successfully until it found a programme (my TV) not recognised by M.Soft. Whilst offering a box to check, the computer locked up (effectively dead). After switching off power and starting again the message 'Setup being re-started' appears and it goes through the routine as above and stops dead at the TV programme. Where does XP store the setup information it has taken from the computer in the first instance, so that I can remove the offending programme in its entirety. It obviously has created a separate folder in which stores all the old information from XP/my computer, which it wants to put back in. I can only access the XP partition from my Win 2000 Pro one. Can you (& how do you) have two separate address books in Outlook Express 6. Answer from Hal Cardona: The problem is probably related to a piece of
Spyware called TV Media. See this article for some additional info. Question submitted by gadismanis1 @ yahoo.com: Suddenly I am not able to use any of the Microsoft Office Programs. Mainly I use MS Word and Excel. I start the program, and it DOES open. The simplest action causes the program to give me an application error, and I have no option but to close. I have tried uninstalling using Windows Add/Remove Programs utility AND also the ERASE2K.exe utility downloaded from the Microsoft website. I have reinstalled -- to no avail. The application errors persist. Could this be cause by a virus? I have no problems with any other programs. Any assistance would be appreciated. Answer from Dian Chapman: Although you can't rule out a virus
or worse ... if you're foolish enough to be online without valid
protection. But it's more likely that your temp files are piled up or
that you have some addin that is causing problem. Here are a couple
articles to check out for further info. Reply from gadismanis1 @ yahoo.com: Here's how I solved the problem. Not elegant, but -- at least we are functioning again. I made a disaster recovery set (let's call it #5) (made in CDWriter Plus) of my system with the malfunctioning MS Word and Excel programs. I then restored a disaster recovery set (let's call it #3) that I made of my system before the Microsoft Office problem started. Normally, if I used a disaster recovery set, I would reformat the hard drive FIRST to start clean. In this case, I did not reformat the hard drive first, and I found that the result gave me a mixture of set #5 and Set #3 programs. I did seem to lose a few minor programs (such as Window Media Player 9) but kept everything essential! And now MSWord and Excel are working correctly! I am very pleased! Question submitted by Diana: I have been banking with Citibank for years. As of last week I have not been able to sign in. I have contacted my bank they sent me to aol. Aol helped me to clear my temp files,etc. What could possibly be wrong? Answer from Cap'n Patt: What could possibly be wrong? AOL! Follow up from Linda Johnson: I believe what the Cap'n is trying to tell you is that many websites have compatibility issues with AOL's browser. You might try downloading a different browser or using Internet Explorer (which you already have because it comes with Windows) and see if you still have the problem ... if you don't, then it's definitely something wrong with AOL and you will have to call their tech support again and give them this information. Answer from Dian Chapman: You probably deleted your cookie and now must go
through the sign in process again. (I've also been banking with Citibank
for nearly 9 years ... since their process was dos dial-in only!) So
break out your bank card and go through the process of setting up your
account again since the cookie was probably deleted and now the login
doesn't recognize you. In the future, if you clear your temp files, do
not delete any cookies related to Citibank. Also, if you are using
online banking ... I SINCERELY hope you are wise enough to know that you
should have a firewall securely in place while online to ensure hackers
don't get access to your banking records. If someone did, they may have
changed your pass code! Make sure Citibank knows that you are NOT
currently accessing your account and any access to it via online at the
moment should be considered as fraudulent! Remember, NEVER give
your personal info out via ANY email URL links...even if they appear to
be from your bank. See this article for further advise on Identity
Theft. Question submitted by River Rat: After 1 year of having my computer, I recently had to re-install WINDOWS 2000 because of a Internet Explorer problem. What I have noticed differently now is that out of nowhere for no reason, my PC decides to shut everything down and reboot. What can I do to stop this? Answer from William Warren: Sounds like the sasser virus. Is it random or does
the system take like a minute or so and then goes into the reboot
process? If so, then look here: Reply from River Rat: thanks William, I will look into it.... Question submitted by louisa72: I put hotmail to open in outlook express and it takes so long to load, how can I separate hotmail to it's original place? Answer from Hal Cardona: Open OE, drop down tools and select Accounts, Mail tab. Highlight your hotmail account and select delete or remove. Reply from louisa72: Thanks Hal, so simple. I didn't want to delve into things I know nothing about. Thanks again. Question submitted by Art: Deleting Temp Files 101 was slick--worked just as you said, however after deleting the temps from the recycle bin Windows Me disc defagging won't progress past 4 percent then cycles back to zero. Could there be a connection? Answer from Linda Johnson: Hi Art. I doubt very seriously that
deleting the temp files from the Recycle Bin would have caused that.
When files are in the Recycle Bin, they are not used, so removing them
from there shouldn't make your computer act any differently than it did
when they were there. Are you sure you could do the defrag while they
were still in the Recycle Bin? Anyway, generally, when defrag
won't run, it's because something is running in the background. In
Windows ME defrag will not run if anything else is running. Also, if
there are any errors (even minor ones) on your drive, defrag won't run,
so be sure to run a FULL scandisk before you defrag. To be sure nothing
is running in the background, you either need to hit ctrl+alt+del before
you defrag and turn off everything except explorer and systray (if they
are there). Make sure nothing else is running. Or, if this doesn't work,
try running defrag in safe mode (that usually works). Or, you can
download a program called Power Defrag which should work. Basically what
it does is turn everything off for you, before it runs. It used to be
free, but now it costs $29.95, but there is a free 30 day trial version,
if you want to try it out. You can download that here: Question submitted by Joe in Tasmania: One of the Members of our Senior Group has asked me this question, and I don't know the answer -:))
I think that his question would apply to any program and I would like to know the solution for future reference. Regards Answer from Linda Johnson: Hi Joe. When you go to the Ask the
Fleet page, it says "Before you submit your question, SEARCH to see if
it has already been addressed." and "SEARCH" is a clickable link which
takes you here: Reply from Joe in Tasmania: Hello Linda, Thank you for your reply, prior to asking the question I had done that many searches that I had given up and didn't do as I should have, just laziness I guess. I will go and have a look at the link that you have provided. Many thanks. Question submitted by Harry: I use Outlook for my e-mails but when a friend sent me an .exe program I couldn't download it, Outlook told me it had blocked it. I know the reason for this but is there a way I can override this command in some circumstances. I don't want to leave it open to attack but at times I would like to be able to download .exe programs.I've looked in options and security settings but can't find what I want. Answer from Linda Johnson: Hi Harry ... Outlook offers no way to
do this itself, but there is a great little free (tho he requests a
well-deserved donation) third-party add-in that I use, called Attachment
Options, that allows me to decide what files I want to be allowed to
receive .... it simply adds a tab to Outlook's Tools>Options that lets
me pick and choose ... I think you will like it ... you can download it
here: Reply from Harry: Thanks I've downloaded it Question submitted by Harry: A small problem; I belong to a
writers group and we send stories around by mail. Now they would like to
go to e-mail and I'm all for it but our president only has an I-Mac. Can
we still do this as she would need to be Answer from Hal Cardona: Can it be done? Yes. Office docs are
cross platform compatible. The issues you will most likely face are: Answer from Dian Chapman: Sure she can, Harry! Email can be
sent from any computer to any computer ... no matter what the platform.
The computer just needs its own Internet connection and an email client
(program) that allows them to get attachments. In the Mac world,
the equivalent to Outlook would be Entourage. And here's the MS MVP
support site for Entourage: Reply from Harry: G'day, I don't know if I took the time to thank you for all your help if I didn't please accept my apologies. I belong to several newsletters, I subscribe to three magazines and over the years I have often sent in queries. I've had three replies. Now I find you on the web and have sent in three queries and received three replies all with what I wanted. You're on the top of my favourites list and I will be passing the word around. Once more I thank you. Harry Question submitted by EDH: I have Adobe Acrobat 6.0 installed and whenever I try to download anything using it a window appears called Window Installer and than I get a window after this one closes called Microsoft Window Journal Viewer. After this one loads I than can go into Acrobat to see the file I wanted. Is there anyway to avoid all these windows and go right into the file ? Thanks Answer from Hal Cardona: This is what MS has to say about
this: Question submitted by dan: i bought a floor display computer at circuit city. its regestered to the company. do i need to register to my name? if so how. thanks. windows xp home Answer from Linda Johnson: You need to adjust this in your Windows Registry. Go to your Start button, then click on Run ... type Regedit and click OK. In the left pane, use the plus signs to expand the folders until you get to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion Then click on the yellow folder beside CurrentVersion to display its contents in the right pane .... scroll down til you see RegisteredOwner and double click on that. In that box, put your name in the Value Data box and click OK.. Also notice above RegisteredOwner, you see RegisteredOrganization ... if the company name shows there, double click it and remove that from the Value Data box. Question submitted by Josetta: In James La Borde's article on Access Reports (Presentation is Everything), , he says "Next we come to the Style Page. There are six default styles and you can create custom styles of your own." How is this done? For example, I would like all my reports to have our company logo, company name, client name, etc. If I could build my own style to be used in the wizard, this would be wonderful. I can't seem to find anywhere how to do this. Thank you for your help. Answer from Dian Chapman: When you create a report in Access using the Wizard, at the end you'll remember you're ask what STYLE report you want to use. You can choose any one, but let's assume you choose Soft Gray, which has a gray banner. Your report is fine, but your company's corporate color is blue, so you'd like all future reports to have the gray banner swapped out to blue. Rather than doing that each time, you'd like to adjust the Soft Gray style and create a new style called Corporate Blue. You can choose to create a new style from scratch or use a previous one ... similar to how you can modify forms in Outlook and such. So here we have our report ... in Soft Gray. Time to modify. Open the report and move into design mode by either clicking View > Design View or just clicking on the icon. The report moves into design mode and you now can see the backend of the design layout. Click on Format > AutoFormat to bring up the various design style wizard panel again. But notice there are more buttons from which to choose...one being Customize. Choose the option to Create a new design based on the present report (top choice). You'll be asked to give a name for this new style ... I'll enter Corporate Blue. When you click Ok, you'll now have the new corp blue style selected. Return to the design area by closing this dialog. Now click on the title and change the gray shading to blue. (And make any other customization adjustments you need.) Then click Format > AutoFormat again and Customize again. You'll now notice that the second option offers to Update the Corporate Blue style with the changes you've made to the formatting in this report. Selection that and click ok. You'll now see that you have a new style called Corporate Blue that shows your new blue banner ... and any other changes you made to the formatting. If you run through the wizard again, you'll now see that you have added a new style from which to choose. Whenever you need company reports with the corporate colors, just use your new Corporate Blue style. Granted, there is probably some faster/easier way to update the new version versus going back into that dialog and updating it ... but seeing as this is the first time I've ever done this ... this is just the way I figured it out. Hope that helps. Question submitted by rich from lake worth: i am sometimes having trouble setting columns widths in tables. as i understand the process, first, i select a particular column. then i hit table properties, columns, preferred width. i'll enter .75" for example, but the system refuses to take my preference and leaves it the way it is. even dragging with the mouse doesn't help. this doesn't happen all the time which makes it even more frustrating. also, i used to be able to set columns in inches and row heights in points. now as i understand it both dimensions have to be either in inches or points - i can't mix them. is there any way to overcome this? tnx Answer from Dian Chapman: The first thing to try is to click Table > Properties > Options and make sure that Auto Resizing to Content is not checked. If you have text in the cells and attempt to change the col size, the table can FIGHT you for rights to do it their way. However, it could also be that you have hard coded the sizes of some cols and/or set other properties that mean that what you are asking to do is going against the other settings. And that is hard to pin point without being able to digging around myself. So hopefully, this should do the trick as it's the most common issue and other issues require a little more fussing. Hope this helps Question submitted by Ed in Columbus OH: I share a RoadRunner cable modem connection via a LinkSys router, and everything works fine. My question is: how can I share files between the two computer? Right now I use a sneaker net by copying files from one into a little flash drive, then going to the other machine and copying the files FROM the flash drive. There has to be an easier way to accomplish this.Thanks for a terrific forum for technical assistance. Answer from William Warren: Use the home networking wizard in XP to do this. Make sure you set both computers to the same workgroup. Then share out the drives or folders you want to share. The wizard should handle this. Question submitted by Wes: My computer is running Windows XP on a local
network. The computer came with Office 2003 installed. Having office
program compatibility Answer from Dian Chapman: Hi Wes ... The problem is due to corruption in
your Normal.dot (master templates) file. See this knowledgebase article
for details: It's frustrating and I've been there. Usually, I close Word and clear my temp files and the problem clears up. However, sometimes I have to bite the bullet and create a new Normal.dot file. Here are some additional articles that should provide further insight. Maintaining Your Computer And since you are creating forms, I'd strongly
suggest you check out my many free forms tutorials here:
http://www.mousetrax.com/techpage.html#autoforms. Question submitted by Dj-kaks: my problem is ,when i start my computer it shows after booting the system that there are some Bad sectors (Clusters) however i have done surface scan but it shows again (it has in C drive 10 bad sectors and drive D: 7 bad sectors ) please tell me about that ,is there any command to remove ,fix or repair the Bad sector, however I've formatted both drives. pleas sir help me what should i do ? Answer from William Warren: If a drive has that many bad sectors, I would backup your data, buy another drive and install windows on it. Or buy another drive. Put it as the primary master (make your old drive primary slave) and install windows on the new drive. Either way I would replace that drive ASAP. Reply from Dj-kaks: i first thanx to you for your reply and suggestion . if according to you, i buy another drive .. put it as the primary master and make my old drive primary slave) and install windows on the new drive, but is that true? the bad sector will come in new (Hard Drive) From the old (Hard Drive),like a Virus. Sir, why and how these bad sectors comes in Hard drive? pleas reply. Thanking you Answer from Hal Cardona: The bad sector is a physical error on the hard drive and will not be passed to the new hard drive. Reply from Dj-kaks: Thanx for reply, sir if you dont mind can you tel me in detail that why this bad sector comes in hard drive, as you have told me bad sector is a physical error but sir ,how this error comes in drive , because of, (hard drive is become old, wrong software, moving of hard drive etc) pleas sir tel me. Answer from Ray Blake: http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/hdd/errorsBadSectors-c.html Dontcha love Google? Question submitted by Frustrated Gamer: I am an avid gamer .. I have been being disconnected from all servers (which have never been an issue). I was told to run a "tracert" to the IP address which I did, but the response information returned is all astericks and "request timed out" ... What does this mean? How and where do I go/do to correct it? Answer from Linda Johnson: Hi Gamer. Since the tracert shows that you "timed out", this means it's probably a problem with the route between your ISP's server and the game server. I would contact your ISP and see if they can connect to the game server ... very often they are not aware of servers they cannot reach until one of their customers lets them know. Do you have the same problem when you ping the site? If you want more info on tracert and ping, read this ABC article ... it may help you understand how this works. Good luck. Reply from Frustrated Gamer: Thanks! I've been hammering on my ISP and they have admitted that they are having latency issues on their tower. Which started last week (as did my problem). They believe this is the issue and hope to have it cleared within a few days ... The *ISP* were able to ping and tracert the same site with success ... So it showed it was something between me and their tower ... We will see what happens!!! Fingers crossed! Thanks for you help and guidance .. A great site and you will be recommended and used. Question submitted by ginala: My pc was completely uninstalled, Windows everything, down to bare bones ... But now Microsoft Word is gone. Do i have to buy it or is there a way to download it free. It came already installed on my Dell when i bought it. Thank you. Answer from Linda Johnson: Hi ginala. If you got the PC from Dell with Word installed on it, then you must have gotten some CDs with the PC. If so, that's where Word is ... you will have to look thru them to find it. If not, then yes, you will have to buy it again since there is nowhere you can download Word for free, at least not legally. You may want to call Dell and ask them which CD includes Word. Good luck. Question submitted by bella from ohio: Can two different people in different states have the same isp addy? Answer from William Warren: Technically, yes it is possible ... but it should not be (if both users are on the same isp). If an isp allows two users to have the same e-mail address that isp has issues. I would change isps immediately as this is a serious network administrative lapse. Answer from Dian Chapman: Hi Belle ... An ISP is simply your Internet Service Provider. So sure, anyone can run through an 800 number and be using the same company. So I'll ASSUME that what you mean is can they have the same IP address. No ... not at the same time. Your Internet Protocol address is a distinct number that you are allocated when you enter the Internet. However, when you disconnect, that number will free up for someone else to grab. So they could have the same number after you. But you cannot both be online, simultaneously, with the same IP address. If it appears that two people ARE running off the same IP address, it means that they are running through a Proxy that is kind of hiding their real address and giving them a covering one. But if you were to dig deeper through the Proxy, you would discover two unique IPs beneath. Hope that helps...
Thanks to all who submitted questions this
month. If you submitted a question and did not get an answer, and the
problem still persists, try going
here and submitting it again. Just remember that we cannot
guarantee that we will answer every question, though I think the Fleet did a
bang-up job this month! Thanks to all of the Fleet for your expert
advice and your valuable time :-) |
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