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Should I Shut Down My PC At Night?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Reader Jason writes: Is it better to leave a computer on all the time or shut it off when you done? If I leave it on, what settings (like hibernate) should I use?

Years ago the conventional wisdom was that leaving your computer on all the time would allow it to last longer before a crash. The culprit: Your hard drive. Frequent starts and stops would cause your hard drive mechanism to wear out much faster than if the drive never spun down. An old saying (possibly apocryphal) was that stopping and restarting a hard drive was the same as eight hours of regular running time.

I talked to the good folks at Seagate to find out if things had changed. According to the company, starting and stopping is not a huge problem with drives any more, and they can be safely shut off and on in order to save power. According to Seagate, you can expect a drive to last for three to five years of running time before dying, though obviously many drives last longer.

What's the big factor that causes drives to die early? Heat, says Seagate. Ensuring your computer stays cool through the proper use of fans is far and away the best thing you can do to keep your drive healthy. I'd imagine that shutting it down when not in use will only help. Naturally, shutting down your computer will also conserve electricity, so unless there's a compelling reason to leave it on (as with a server), you should probably shut down at night.

So, how should you shut down properly? It's completely up to you, really. If you do a full "Shut Down" (or "Turn Off Computer") your computer will be completely off, using no power at all. "Hibernate" and "Standby" are lower-power states that allow you to resume quickly into the Windows desktop. Standby simply powers down hardware components like the hard drive, monitor, and peripherals, but continues to provide power to RAM, so everything you were doing stays active. Hibernate is closer to a shut down: It saves an exact image of your Windows desktop, then powers the PC down. When you awaken from hibernation, everything is back where you last had it. Personally I'm not a big fan of hibernate, because if I'm going to shut Windows down completely I like to reload everything fresh into RAM, which helps system stability. I tend to use both standby (for shorter times away from my PC) and shut down (for more than a few hours of downtime) instead.

Pinpoint The Source Of Your Computer Problem

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:14:00 +0000

As time goes on, PCs continue to increase in complexity and our reliance upon them continues to grow. More often than not, both increases are perfectly complementary, as millions of people across the globe turn their computers on each day to use them for research, leisure, entertainment, or learning. But that paired reliance us relying on your PCs and our PCs relying on us for maintenance isn’t always a happy fairy tale; sometimes the experience breeds frustration, especially when the PC just doesn’t work, and we don’t know why.

Thankfully, however, troubleshooting a PC is largely an exercise in the process of elimination; following a standardized procedure with the right tools can go a long way toward diagnosing your computer’s ailment and getting you back on the right track. Knowing what is broken is the cornerstone of knowing how to fix it, so read on to become a pro at investigating your problem and discovering that crucial cornerstone.

Before You Dive In
Although it’s tempting to start troubleshooting your PC as soon as it displays symptoms, you’ll save yourself a potential headache if you back up your digital valuables first assuming that your PC’s problem doesn’t prevent you from doing so). Sure, the average software conflict, driver reinstallation, or loose monitor cord isn’t much of a threat to your files, but we’ve seen seemingly small problems turn into PC-crippling disasters before. If you’re in the “better safe than sorry” camp, jot down a quick list of the files you want to protect: documents, music or video files, emails, and maybe that list of Internet Explorer Favorites you’ve built up over the years (in Internet Explorer, click File, Import And Export to start the wizard that lets you back up Favorites). Move them to removable media or (if you don’t suspect that your PC has a virus) to another PC on your network. Now you can tackle your PC’s problem without worrying about losing your data.

Hardware Or Software?
It’s not always easy to determine whether your hardware or software is to blame, but it’s a good place to start troubleshooting:

If you’re fairly confident that the problem is one or the other, you’ve eliminated several troubleshooting steps.

Ruling out causes is the best path to troubleshooting success. Look for common hardware symptoms. Hardware problems, such as damaged components or loose cables, generally cause obvious, dramatic problems. For example, if your computer won’t power on at all, you’re looking at a hardware problem, rather than software. You should also suspect a hardware problem if your computer powers on, but no images appear on your monitor. If you can’t access any software (even the BIOS [Basic Input/Output System]), you’re not looking at a software issue. Of course, not all hardware issues display such obvious symptoms, and some hardware problems exhibit symptoms similar to those caused by software problems. For example, if your PC runs slowly, it may have too many unnecessary programs running at once or a virus or adware may be crippling your system; obviously, these are software problems. On the other hand, these same symptoms can be caused by an overheated processor, something that’s just as obviously a hardware issue. Look for common software symptoms. Whereas hardware problems often reduce your computer to an oversized paperweight, software issues are often more subtle, and usually let you access most parts of your computer. A conflict between two programs, for example, may prevent you from accessing certain applications, but may not crash Windows itself.

In many cases, the software that’s experiencing trouble will display an error message. Unfortunately, many error messages don’t offer much immediate help: The message will likely display a cryptic warning or a bunch of numbers and letters that don’t mean anything to anyone other than a programmer. Unless you receive an error message saying that hardware is to blame, the error message is a good indicator that you’re facing a software problem. If your problem doesn’t prevent you from accessing the Internet, try looking up the error message at Smart Computing’s Tech Support Center. The site offers an online database of error messages for hundreds of programs, including the Windows OS (operating system). To learn more about an error message, visit www.smartcomputing.com/techsupport and then click Browse Error Messages Alphabetically or Search By Error Message Text. If you choose the Search feature, enter the text of the error message word-for-word to get the best results. Each error message in the database includes an explanation of the message’s meaning and at least one potential solution. Consider recent events. If you call a tech support service, one of the first questions the tech will ask is, “What were the last things you did before the problem occurred?” Remembering any actions you’ve taken over the past few days may help you narrow down the problem. If you moved your computer to a different room and now find that it won’t power on, for example, you should kick off the troubleshooting by identifying the components that may have changed during the move. Check the wall outlet to make sure it is functioning properly, and check the power cord to make sure it is plugged firmly into the outlet and the PC’s PSU (power supply unit). (Don’t forget that transporting a computer any significant distance can result in video cards and other devices vibrating loose.)

This approach will also help you determine whether you have a software problem. If you installed a new program last night and now your Desktop doesn’t display the family photo you were using as a Desktop background, you’re probably not facing a hardware issue. The longer you own a PC, the more often you’ll find that the simplest explanation for the problem is often the right one.

Find The Source Of The Problem
Once you know (or think you know) whether you’re dealing with a hardware or software problem, you can really dig into the next question: Which hardware component or program is the source of the trouble? If you can answer this question, you won’t have any trouble finding an article in this issue that addresses your problem. Here are some tips for narrowing the troubleshooting field. Hardware problems. Once you suspect a hardware problem, list the components (internal or external) that might be the cause of the problem and then check each component, one at a time. In some cases, this may mean checking external and internal hardware. For example, if your print documents don’t reach the printer or you see error messages that say your printer isn’t connected to the computer, you’ll want to check the USB cable that runs from your computer to the printer to make sure neither of the connections is loose. You’ll also want to be sure that your computer’s

USB port is functioning. (You can test this by plugging another USB device, such as a USB flash drive, mouse, or external hard drive into that port.) In some cases, you may suspect that an internal component is damaged, but not be in a position to confirm the defect. If you think that your computer’s lost network connection is due to a damaged or incorrectly configured Ethernet NIC (Network Interface Card), you probably don’t have an extra Ethernet card that you can swap out. This is where the Device Manager, a built-in Windows tool, can help you identify problems without opening your PC or bumming spare parts from your friends. To open the Device Manager, right click the My Computer icon on the Desktop, and then click Properties. When the System Properties window appears, select the Hardware tab and then click the Device Manager button. The Device Manager displays a list of your PC’s components by category, such as Disk Drives (hard drives), Processors, DVD/CD-ROM Drive, and Display Adapters. By default, the list shows only the component categories, rather than the components themselves. If you want to see the names of your specific CD-RW and DVD-RW drives, for example, you’ll need to click the plus (+) sign next to DVD/CD-ROM Drives. The list will then expand to reveal all of the components in that category. The exception to this rule, however, is the component that is damaged. If Windows knows your NIC isn’t working, it will automatically expand the Network Adapters category to display any networking components in your PC. You’ll see a red X next to the damaged NIC. To learn more about the NIC’s problem, right click it and then select Properties. The General tab of the NIC’s Properties window includes a Device Status section that offers a brief explanation of the problem. You can also pinpoint certain problems, such as excessive heat, by checking the PC’s BIOS. All PCs have a BIOS, which is a very basic operating system that allows your system’s components to communicate. Most BIOSes have a PC Health or Status page that lists system fan speeds and system and processor temperatures.

Things To Check First
Although a list of things to check won’t catch every PC problem you encounter, you’ll be surprised at how often the simple steps below can lead to troubleshooting success. Whether you’re kicking off a troubleshooting session or at your wits’ end after hours of fruitless research, here are some good tips to try.

Is the PC’s power supply switch turned on? Some PCs have a power switch at the back. Make sure it hasn’t been switched off.
Are all cables connected? Loose connections regularly cause headaches. Remove and reconnect each plug firmly, even if you’re sure it’s connected.
Are all peripherals turned on? Make sure a powered-off print server isn’t preventing your printer from working.
Does the Device Manager display any problems? Check this tool for red Xs, which indicate a malfunctioning or disabled device.
Is there a new driver? Updated drivers often fix hardware problems. If you can’t find new drivers (check the manufacturer’s Web site), try reinstalling your existing driver.
Have you installed software updates? Software publishers sometimes release patches via their Web sites. Also, check to see if your software recently installed updates automatically. In rare cases, a software update may introduce problems.

Software problems. If you’re fairly certain you’re facing a software problem, but you haven’t been able to identify the offending program, your best bet may be to use Windows XP’s System Restore. This feature is especially useful if you’ve installed multiple programs recently. System Restore reverts your computer to the condition it was in few days or even a few weeks ago, without destroying any of the documents, emails, music, or video files you’ve created. Thanks to System Restore, any programs you installed after the Restore Point (the date in the past to which you restore Windows) won’t appear on your PC. Once you complete the restore, you can reinstall the applications one at a time and check your PC for problems after each installation. System Restore is enabled by default in Windows XP, which means that System Restore has already created Restore Points automatically, even if you’ve never used the System Restore feature before. To access System Restore, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and System Restore. Once you click the Restore My Computer To An Earlier Time radio button and click Next, System Restore will display a small calendar with several of the dates in bold. All bold dates have at least one Restore Point. (Note that Windows refers to automatically created Restore Points as System Checkpoints; you can create your own labels for Restore Points that you create yourself.) Select the Restore Point and then follow System Restore’s instructions to restore your system to this earlier date. Finally, make sure your PC is operating without trouble. If it is, you’ve narrowed the problem to one of the programs that System Restore just uninstalled (or to another program on your PC that conflicted with one of these programs). Now you’re ready to hunt for the problem program.

Troubleshooting 101
As we mentioned earlier, troubleshooting is largely a matter of eliminating parts or programs that are working until you find the part that causes the problem. Consider this scenario: You pressed your PC’s power button this morning only to find that it didn’t start. The PC worked just fine last night, and you haven’t recently performed any maintenance on the system’s interior. If you start by making sure your PC truly isn’t powered on, you’ll save yourself several troubleshooting steps. Check the monitor’s light: Is the monitor on? If not, you’ll want to check its power cords. Once the monitor is on, take a second look at your PC. Do any lights appear when you try to power on the system? If you see lights, or if you can see or hear running fans at the back of the computer, the system doesn’t have a power problem. Instead, the PC may be having trouble sending an image to your monitor, which could indicate a problem with your motherboard, video card, or memory. If the PC doesn’t power on at all, check the power cord and the surge protector. Many surge protectors have switches that let you kill power to any of the devices that plug into them: Check to make sure your pet didn’t accidentally trip that switch. Next, check the wall outlet by plugging a different device into the socket your PC’s power cord occupied. If you’re certain that power is flowing to the PC, you’ve ruled out the most basic problems and can focus on more advanced troubleshooting tips, such as those discussed in “What To Do When: Your PC Won’t Start”

When All Else Fails
If you exhaust this issue’s troubleshooting tips without finding a solution, it’s time to turn to the Web or to contact tech support. You’ll find a searchable database of thousands of articles at Smart Computing’s online Tech Support Center. If you call your PC manufacturer’s tech support line, be sure to have some basic information about your system handy, including the model number and serial number. Many PCs display the model name and number on the front panel, whereas the serial number often resides on a side panel or the back of the computer.

Software To The Rescue
Whether you’re planning to download drivers for a device or simply want to search for information about it online, you’ll need its model number. In many cases, you can find this info via the Device Manager, but if you’re looking for your motherboard’s model number or the name of the motherboard’s chipset, you’ll probably need to download a third-party system information program, such as CPUID’s free PC Wizard 2006 (www.cpuid.com). Such programs scan your system and then display model numbers, chipset names, and other info.

Basic Troubleshooting SOFTWARE Email

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 17:32:00 +0000

Email has become as much a part of everyday life as cell phones, Google, and Paris Hilton news. There are a wealth of options for those who want to swap messages with friends, family, and colleagues email applications range from free, open-source options to simple Web-based types, such as Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail, to the most ubiquitous of all applications, Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, or OE, (www.microsoft.com). Like any software, email programs have their glitches in terms of message handling, security, storage space, and general operations. Fortunately, they also tend to be fairly straightforward applications, which can make troubleshooting easier. Working Status The first step in identifying potential problems is to understand the version of the email program you are using and how it operates normally. For the purposes of this article, we’ll be using Outlook Express. To identify the specifications of Outlook Express on a system, navigate to the Help drop-down menu and click About Microsoft Outlook Express. A pop-up box will come up with the version of the application. (In our case, we’re using Outlook Express 6.) Normal operation of any email program, including Outlook Express, is fairly straightforward: Emails can be written in a message field and sent without difficulty or received in a timely fashion and formatted in such a way that reading it all is just a matter of scrolling down the page. More high-level functionality includes making sure an address book is working or that identity protections are in place, but again, problems in those spheres will result in an error message. In other words, no OE system messages tends to mean that all is well. Problem set although it would be nice to zip through life with no error messages ever, Outlook Express is an application and, like any piece of software, can have difficulty in combining with specific system settings or in transferring or storing data. Here are some common problems in OE and how to get rid of them quickly.

Message Handling
Problem: Server error messages come up when I send and receive mail.
Solution: There are a number of messages that might crop up related to the server while it is trying to deliver or send mail. These might include: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it. The server could not be found. There are several areas to check when the server is involved, with the first being firewalls. Often, firewalls are configured to restrict the type of network traffic that it considers suspicious or to only allow certain applications to send information over the network. If using a firewall from McAfee or Symantec, you’ll have to check the application permissions. For example, with McAfee, that would involve right-clicking the McAfee icon, navigating to Personal Firewall, and then clicking Internet Applications. What will appear is a Permissions list of the applications that are allowed to access the Internet. If Outlook Express is not checked for approval, select it and then restart the computer. (NOTE: Keep in mind that with some troubleshooting fixes, it might be necessary to temporarily turn off security features on the system. If this is the case, be sure to put security measures back into place or restart the computer, so it can boot up with the proper security settings after mending the problem.)

Another common error message is: Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection. Possible causes for this include server problems, network problems, or a long period of inactivity. What might be happening is that server is timing out before messages can be sent. Basically, the connection opens for a certain amount of time, but the server isn’t leaving the window open long enough. To fix the problem, go to the Tools menu in OE and click Accounts and then the Mail tab to view the list of accounts. Highlight the POP3 account in question and click the Advanced tab to view your current settings. Microsoft recommends gradually increasing the timeout setting using the slider until you find the right setting for your machine.

Problem: You receive an error when opening messages or sending to people in your address book.
Solution: When there is a problem in message handling that isn’t server related, error messages may include: There was an error opening this message. The Address Book failed to load. Outlook Express is incorrectly configured, please re-install. Some of the recipients for this message are not valid. Please verify the names. If the message in question contains an attachment, the first step would be to ask the sender to retry without the attachment. The system, and particularly the firewall, could be blocking the message because it finds it suspicious. With all three error messages, a fix might be to remove and reinstall Outlook Express. If using Windows XP Home, click Start and Run. In the text box, type appwiz.cpl and click OK, which will cause a screen to appear with Add Or Remove Programs. Navigate to Add/Remove Windows Components. In the list that appears, click to clear the Outlook Express checkbox and click Next. Outlook Express will be removed. Run through the same process to add it back in: Go to Start, Run, type appwiz.cpl, and instead of removing Outlook Express, check the box, click Next, and it will be added back in. Once the installation is done, click Finish. This will reinstall the application using default settings and hopefully reset the application and its components. (NOTE: Don’t attempt to remove Outlook Express from a computer running Microsoft Windows Server 2003, which relies on the email application to run properly. For example, automated messages meant for managing the server could be stop-ped if Outlook Express is reinstalled.)

Problem: An attachment you received has been blocked.
Solution: If the sender attempts to resend a previously blocked message without the attachment, and it gets through fine, the difficulty might be that Outlook Express is blocking the attachment. To get it through, go to Tools in the OE menu bar and select Options. In the Options window, select the Security tab and uncheck the option for Do Not Allow Attachments To Be Saved Or Opened That Could Potentially Be A Virus and click OK. Before doing this, make sure that virus protection is in place, however. After you receive the attachment, change your settings back to ensure no unwelcome attachments make it through. In a workplace, changing attachment security settings is not possible because Microsoft administrators consider some file types to be too dangerous to let onto a system. These might include file extensions such as .EXE, .CMD, and .MSP.

Problem: The messages in my Inbox aren’t in the order I want them.
Solution: Outlook Express gives you the option to select how you would like to arrange the messages within your folders. To change the arrangement of your messages, click Tools and Sort By. In the resulting drop-down menu you can choose to arrange your messages by Priority, Attachment, Flag, From, Subject, or Received. At the bottom of the drop-down menu, you can also select Sort Ascending or Sort Descending for each of the categories. So, for example, if you want your messages to display with the most recent messages at the top of your Inbox, click Tools, Sort By, and Received and select the Sort Descending option. This menu can also be helpful if you want to find a specific email or group of emails. You an easily select the criteria you’re looking for, such as From or Subject, to find the email in question and then change your settings back to what you prefer as the default once you’ve identified the email you need. Storage Challenges.

Problem: You receive a message notifying you that your storage limit has been reached.
Solution: Many email programs are building more storage into the system for users, but large attachments, such as photos and video, can still bring a mailbox to its limit. After receiving a message about storage limitations, the easiest tactic is to do some digital housecleaning. Delete some messages, focusing specifically on those that have attachments. Another option is to download attachments to the hard drive, so you can delete the email. To do this, select the message with the attachment, go to the File menu, and select Save Attachments. If the email has more than one attachment, you will have the option to save just one of or all of the attachments. Once that option is chosen, you can save the attachment anywhere, such as on a CD or to the Desktop. General Operations.

Problem: My file is too large to be sent over email.
Solution: With the growth of video content, PowerPoint files, and other media-rich applications, it’s increasingly common that large files present a challenge for email users. Whereas photos and images can be sent separately, something such as a PowerPoint presentation can’t be broken down into components. Fortunately, with compression software, it doesn’t have to be. One particularly popular option is WinZip, made by Corel. The latest version, 11.0, can be purchased online for $29.95 and has a number of intuitive features. To “stuff” a file and make it smaller for emailing, open the WinZip application, and a screen will appear with options that include New, Wizard, Add, and Extract. The easiest way to Zip a file is to using the WinZip Wizard. When you open WinZip, the Wizard may open automatically. If not, click the Wizard button and select Create A New Zip File when you’re asked What Do You Want To Do?. Click Next and follow the instructions to create your new Zip file. After you’ve saved the file to a folder of your choice, you can attach it to an email as you would any other file and send. Other choices for compression include PKZIP, StuffIt Standard, and ZipGenius (free).

Problem: Web links don’t work from inside an email message.
Solution: Problems with Web links can occasionally be an issue with the type of browser being used, but more often it’s associated to the way the email program interacts with the browser. One solution might be to download the latest version of your preferred browser, whether it’s Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, or any of the other browser options. Some users don’t keep their browsers up-to-date, and settings that are revamped in Outlook Express can conflict with older versions. Because OE is a Microsoft product, it might be prudent to utilize the company’s newly refreshed IE 7 browser, which you can download at www.microsoft.com/windows/ie. The Web site will guide you through the downloading process. After the installation, make sure that IE is the default browser so that when Web links appear in an email, it will use IE to open them. To do that, select Control Panel from the Start menu, double click Internet Options, and click the Programs tab. In the Default Web Browser section, make sure the Tell Me If Internet Explorer Is Not The Default Web Browser box is checked and click OK. The next time IE is opened, it will ask to be the default browser. Click Yes. Sources Of Help For many general questions, including those related to security, storage, or message routing, answers may be found by accessing OE’s Help function, which can be accessed by pressing F1 or by clicking Contents And Index in the Help menu. You can access Help files by using the Content, Index, and Search tabs. The Contents tab is organized by subject, and the Index tab contains an alphabetical list of subjects. If you are unsure where to start, use the Search SOFTWARE Email If you use Internet Explorer as your browser, setting it as your default browser in Internet Properties will help to ensure that links within your emails will open properly. Reference Series / Fix Your Own PC 155 tab to help you narrow down topics that might be helpful. Another choice if problems keep occurring with Outlook Express is to consider buying repair and recovery utilities, available though the Microsoft site and developed by companies such as ScanDBX (www.scandbx.com), DataNumen (www.datanumen.com), Recovery ToolBox (www.oemailre covery.com), and Accurate Solution (www.accuratesolution.net). The ScanDBX tool, for example, is designed to repair damaged OE files and installations, while DataNumen’s Advanced Outlook Express Repair is geared toward file recovery.

Web Mail In addition to Outlook Express, many users opt to have Web-based accounts as well, either as a supplement to OE, or as their sole email. Providers such as Hotmail or Yahoo! sometimes act as a “junk mailbox” for users who want to limit the amount of spam and e-newsletters that are delivered to their primary accounts. Much more simplified than a fullfeatured application such as Outlook Express, Web mail tends to be fairly stripped down and straightforward. Users can employ tools to limit junk mail, set a different reply-to address for messages, create custom filters that send incoming messages to specific folders, and get alerts on a mobile device whenever there’s a new message. For Hotmail, settings can be tweaked, and troubleshooting can be done by selecting Options from the upper-right corner of the Web page. That will bring up a page with a number of features to access, and the one usually most helpful when there are email difficulties is Mail Display Settings, located under the Mail tab.

Another helpful section can be accessed through the Help link in the lower-right corner of the screen. Click Common Problems With POP Accounts to access subsequent screens to help you identify what the difficulty might be, such as trying to access an MSN email account from behind a corporate firewall. Yahoo! is currently testing a beta version of its forthcoming Webmail, which looks more like Outlook Express than previous iterations. In terms of its current mail application, however, it resembles Hotmail, including having its Options link at the top-right corner of the page. But Yahoo! trumps its online competitor in terms of having more complete troubleshooting information in its Help section, including the opportunity to contact customer care directly. Other email programs, such as Google’s Gmail (www.gmail.com) and Apple’s Mac Mail (www.apple.com), also put their troubleshooting tips into a section called Help and give tips on creating different mail settings as well as fixing any problems that crop up. In general, whether using Outlook Express, a subscription service such as Mac Mail, an account from a local ISP such as Comcast (www.comcast.com), or just a vanilla Web-based app such as Yahoo!, email can be a boon for communication, and in some ways, it doesn’t matter which software you pick.

After all, a message is the same whether sent through Hotmail or Outlook Express. But tapping into the troubleshooting power folded into every application will definitely make sure those messages don’t get lost in the digital ether.

Basic Troubleshooting SOFTWARE Firewalls

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 17:25:00 +0000

Keeping safe online can be explained in two easy steps: Keep the bad stuff out and the good stuff in. Firewalls can do both, which makes them a vital piece of software in today’s age of hack attacks, adware, and spyware of every kind. A firewall is like a moat around your computer. It screens inbound and outbound traffic to determine if it should pass, keeping malicious code such as virus attacks from getting into your system and keeping private data from getting out when keylogging programs and other nasty codes try to steal it. Windows XP (Service Pack 2) comes with a built-in firewall called the Windows Firewall. But many notebooks and desktops come preloaded with third-party software from Symantec (www.symantec.com), McAfee (www.mcafee.com), CA (www.ca .com), Zone Labs (www.zonelabs .com), and others. To see which firewall you have (or whether you have one at all), click Start and All Programs and look for the vendor’s name.

When the firewall stops working, so does your Internet connection or even your whole computer. But there are ways to fix it, and most of them are simple. Who’s At Fault? First things first. Before you get started, you need to know what’s truly causing your problem. Is it your firewall? Your ISP (Internet service provider)? Your phone line? The best way to determine if your firewall is playing tricks on you is to turn it off and see if your problem persists. If the problem disappears, you know what the culprit is. If the problem persists, remember that many things can prevent you from viewing a Web site, sending or receiving email, using a chat program, streaming a movie, or sending photos to Flickr (www.flickr.com) or My- Space (www.myspace.com), all of which are tasks governed by firewalls because they involve the transmission of data over the Internet. For instance, if you can’t view a Web site, the problem could be the settings in your Web browser or a problem on the Web site itself. Some Web sites use ActiveX and JavaScript types of code that give a Web page advanced features but also give hackers a way to exploit your computer which your browser may block for safety. (To check your security settings in Internet Explorer, including your ActiveX and JavaScript settings, click Tools, Internet Options, and Security.) The Nitty Gritty If you think your firewall is at fault, try the steps below to fix the most common problems. If you don’t find what you need, try your software’s users guide, Web site, or support line, since most firewall problems are well-known to the companies that make them.

Problem: I can’t send or receive data on my computer.
Solution: A firewall keeps the bad stuff out and the good stuff in, but sometimes it can keep programs you need from sending and receiving the data they need to function. In that case, the program is said to be “blocked.” Often you’ll see a pop-up window explaining this and prompting you to unblock the program or continue to block it. For instance, if Windows Firewall has blocked a program, it will show you a message reading, “To help protect your computer, Windows Firewall has blocked some features of this program.” The message has three buttons: Keep Blocking, Unblock, and Ask Me Later. If you know and trust the program that’s trying to send or receive data, just click the Unblock button, and the problem is solved. (NOTE: The Windows Firewall only blocks incoming data. Only third-party firewalls, such as the firewall in Symantec’s Norton Internet Security or McAfee’s Internet Security Suite, will block data from leaving your computer as well as invading it.)

Problem: I need to unblock a program, but I’m not prompted to do so.
Solution: Most firewalls will show you an alert when a program tries to send or receive data over the Internet, prompting you to block the program, unblock it, or defer your decision. If you don’t see an alert, you’ll have to unblock the program directly. The procedure varies slightly from program to program, but it’s largely the same. For instance, to unblock a program using the firewall in Norton Internet Security, look for the Norton icon in the System Tray (the set of icons in the bottom-right corner of your screen, next to the clock). The icon, which differs slightly from version to version, looks like a globe combined with a grid. When you’ve found the icon, double-click it to open the Norton control panel. Next, click Personal Firewall and then Configure. Click the Programs tab. In the Manual Program Control section, Click Add and then browse to the program you’d like to add. (Most programs can be found in C:\Program Files, the default location for Windows software.) From there, just follow the prompts to return to the Desktop and reboot your system.

Problem: I can’t print to a networked printer or access documents on another computer.
Solution: Sometimes your firewall will keep you from using a network resource, such as a printer or a document store, on your small or home office network. If your company gave you the computer and the IT department installed your network and firewall, it’s best to let someone from your company resolve this problem. You’re not passing the buck; you’re just being careful because you might change a setting that unwittingly opens your corporate network to attack. If you’re using your own network and have more leeway to alter your software’s settings, you can fix the problem fairly quickly. If you’re using the built-in Windows Firewall, which is the software most likely to block a printer or file share, open the Windows Security Center by clicking Start and Run and typing Wscui.cpl in the Open box. Then click OK. In the Windows Security Center window, click the Windows Firewall link at the bottom, choose the Exceptions tab, and select the File and Printer Sharing option from the Programs And Services list. Click OK and close the Security Center window and reboot your computer. This will give you access to shares that were blocked, but there’s a catch: Using the File And Printer Sharing exception on any computer that’s directly connected to the Internet can give hackers access to the shared documents on your network. To guard against this, you can double-click the File And Printer Sharing option in the Programs And Services menu and click the Change Scope button in the Edit a Service dialog box. In the Change Scope dialog box, make sure that My network (subnet) only is checked and follow the prompts to return to the Desktop and reboot your system. But even that can expose you to unneeded risk. A far better way to fix the problem is to use a third-party firewall that will give you full access to your network, without exposing your machine to the dangers of the wild, wild Web. By Microsoft’s own admission, the Windows Firewall is not designed to give you full protection, merely to add a basic layer of defense to Windows.

Problem: I can’t turn my firewall on.
Solution: Two things will keep you from using your firewall: The first is a faulty installation, which you can often fix quickly. The second is more worrisome. Spyware and other malware can turn off or completely kill your firewall as part of its plan to hijack your system. If you think your firewall did not install properly, uninstall and reinstall it using the directions that came in your software’s users guide (or see the problem below on uninstalling your firewall). On the other hand, if your firewall installed correctly and worked fine until you clicked a suspicious Web site or opened a specious email, use a spyware/adware detector to clean your system. Norton, McAfee, Zone Labs, and LavaSoft (www.lavasoftusa.com) all make well known programs that can remove most but not all malware from your system. You can also contact your firewall vendor to see if it offers a fix. For instance, McAfee’s firewalls can be attacked by spyware that very subtly edits the Windows Registry to disable it. (The Registry is a master database of program settings in nearly all versions of Windows.) It alters the following Registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ Winlogon\Notify\Sens- Logn to read as follows: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ Winlogon_disable\Notify\ SensLogn In the second key, there’s an extra word (“disable”). Rather than fix it yourself, it’s better to contact your support team because even the smallest change to the Registry can result in disastrous effects. Once you’ve run a spyware tool or a utility from your firewall vendor, you may have to reinstall your firewall because malware can leave it so damaged that you need a fresh copy. If the problem still persists after all these steps, contact your firewall vendor again to seek help.

Problem: My firewall turned off Internet Connection Sharing.
Solution: ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) is a Microsoft program that lets you share one Internet connection among many computers. Some firewalls turn it off when they install, along with connection sharing programs from any vendor. One solution is to repeat the ICS setup. But first check with your firewall vendor; some make tools you can download to reestablish your ICS connection quickly. You can download the tools from the vendors’ Web sites. Also be careful about the effects ICS can have on your firewall. Some vendors note that you can install their firewall on the ICS gateway (that is, the computer that’s directly connected to the Internet) and guard all computers that share its connection from malicious inbound traffic. But if you want to guard against outbound traffic, you’ll have to install the firewall on every ICS computer you want to protect.

Problem: I can’t uninstall my firewall.
Solution: Firewalls can be hard to uninstall. Spyware, adware, and hack attacks can try to alter or remove your firewall from your system, so firewall vendors make the programs stick to it. The best way to remove a firewall is to use the Add Or Remove Programs feature in the Windows Control Panel because it triggers the firewall’s builtin removal process. If the Add Or Remove Programs feature doesn’t work, consult your users guide or vendor’s Web site to see if there are different ways to remove the software. For instance, you can remove certain McAfee programs, including the McAfee Personal Firewall Plus, with a program called the McAfee Removal Tool that you can download from www.mcafee.com.

Problem: I have two firewalls running at once.
Solution: By all means, turn one off. Using more than one firewall does not make your system any safer. It just makes it harder to manage inbound and outbound traffic by setting rules, policies, and exceptions because you now have twice as much work. Most experts suggest you use a third-party product over WinXP’s built-in firewall because the Windows version only protects against malicious inbound traffic. If you’ve unknowingly installed a piece of spyware that begins to send your personal data over the Internet, Windows Firewall has no way of protecting against it. (The firewall in Windows Vista does protect against malicious outbound traffic, but users have to configure the protection themselves because it’s turned off by default.)

Problem: I can’t configure my firewall. All the options and advanced settings are grayed out.
Solution: This is an occasional problem with the Windows Firewall. It means that you’re not logged on to your system as an administrator and don’t have the right permissions to alter sensitive system settings. To fix the problem, log off and then log back on as an administrator. If you’re using a corporate desktop or notebook, your account may not have administrator’s rights, and you’ll have to ask your IT department to do the work for you. (It’s possible your IT group did this to keep you from changing your settings and leaving a hole in the network.) If you can’t alter the advanced settings of firewalls from Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro (www.trendmicro.com), Zone Labs, and others, you should run antispyware and antiadware programs on your system to ensure a hack attack is not the root of your problem.

Problem: I can’t connect to my office VPN.
Solution: A virtual private network lets you send encrypted information through the Internet to your office computers, keeping it safe even though it moves through a highly public set of networks. On occasion, your firewall will conflict with your VPN software, leaving you without a connection to the office. If this happens, contact your help desk or IT department and notify them of the problem. If you alter your firewall or VPN settings, you could unknowingly open a hole in your corporate network.

Problem: I keep losing my Internet connection.
Solution: If you can’t keep a connection, check your modem, phone line, or any software that governs your connection. But there’s a chance your firewall is the nosy culprit. Some ISPs save money by disconnecting idle users to keep them from chewing up modems and bandwidth. To determine if a user is idle, the ISP sends a heartbeat message a small packet of data to test your connection to your machine. Some firewalls anti block heartbeats because they tend to use protocols that hackers also exploit. Zone Labs is one such firewall, but you can instruct it to permit heartbeats. If and when your ISP cuts your connection, open the Zone Labs Log Viewer by clicking the Alerts & Logs button in the Zone Labs interface. Then peruse the list to find the disconnection alert and note the Source DNS in the Entry Detail field. (DNS stands for Domain Name System, the method computers use to translate domains or Web site names into a set of numbers, and vice versa. Once you’ve found the DNS information a series of four numbers separated by dots add it to Zone Labs’ Trusted Zone. If you can’t find the DNS number you need, call your ISP to ask for the DNS number of the server that sends out heartbeats. Tell them why you need it, too, since it’s not every day that someone asks them for private network data. If you keep your firewall in good working order, you can trust it to keep you safe from the threats that mar an otherwise wonderful Web.

What To Do When . . .Your System Restore Won’t Work

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:22:00 +0000

You’ve just installed new software on your system, but after the requisite reboot, the PC fails to work properly. Slowed performance or an improperly working application leads you to use the Windows XP System Restore utility, but it fails to work. What do you do? Error messages related to System Restore contain a description of the problem along with suggestions for resolving the problem. While System Restore should not be your only method of backup, you can try some simple solutions when System Restore fails to work properly.

Where To Start
The first thing to do is verify the System Restore service is actually running. You can do this two ways: through the Computer Management dialog window or through a command line interface. To access the Computer Management dialog window, go to Start and Run, and in the Open box, type comp mgmt.msc or go to Control Panel and Administrative Tools, and click Computer Management. Once you’re in the Computer Management window, expand Services and Applications in the left-hand pane and click Services. All services locally running on the system will appear in the right-hand pane. System Restore Service should have a Status of Started and a Startup Type as Automatic. If it is not running, highlight the service and right-click to open a menu that will let you Start or Restart the service, as well as access the System Restore Service Properties dialog box to verify that the service is set to automatically start. This dialog box also offers general information about the Service name (srservice), its executable path, and Service status. Under the Log On tab, check to make certain the System Restore service is enabled for the specific hardware profile. For example, when laptops are docked, the service may be automatically disabled. The System Restore service may also only be accessible by an administrator, leaving the local user unable to restore previous backup points. In this case, log out of the Windows profile and log back in as a local administrator before proceeding. You can quickly verify the System Restore service status through a command prompt window. Go to Start and Run, and in the Open box, type command. At the prompt, type Net Start. A list of Windows Services that have been started will scroll through the display. This method only verifies that the service has been started and offers no additional information.

Troubleshooting
One of the most common problems is insufficient drive space. A minimum of 200MB on the drive the service is running is required for System Restore to properly operate. Once you free up the required space, which you can do by using the Disk Cleanup tool or by manually deleting needless files, folders, or programs from the drive, System Restore should function again. Insufficient drive space can cause a second, more serious problem with System Restore. When drive space reaches 50MB on the drive that the service is running, System Restore will be suspended across the entire system, meaning that no Restore Points will be created from there on out. So even when you free 200MB to allow the System Restore service to engage, there may be missing restore points due to the service shutting down. To avoid this problem, especially on smaller drives that do not require backup, you can turn off System Restore for that particular drive. You can do this by accessing System Restore through the System Properties dialog box. Go to Control Panel, double-click the System icon, and choose the System Restore Tab. Then select the appropriate drive, click Settings, and in the box that pops up, click the checkbox for Turn off System Restore on this drive. If the System Restore service is automatically running and drive space isn’t the issue, try installing an older restore point. Sometimes this is where users also run into challenges. If the System Restore disk space usage for a certain drive is set too low in the System Restore tab under System Properties, the number of restore points may be significantly reduced, leaving few restore point options. Unfortunately, older restore points are not always available. System Restore uses a First In, First Out process for decreasing the size of the data store to 75% of the total size when the data store reaches 90% of its total allotment either by default or that set by the user. This deletion is automatic regardless of the amount of total disk space available. Restore points have a life span of 90 days, so if the restore point is past this mark, it will be automatically deleted and thus unavailable.

Bare Bones Boot
If you have been unable to successfully install a restore point operating in a normal Windows environment, reboot the machine into Safe Mode by holding down F8 during the initial boot sequence until the Windows Advanced Options Menu appears. Choose the first option: Safe Mode. Upon logging in, Windows offers you the immediate option of restoring the machine to a previous state using System Restore by simply clicking No. By choosing this option, System Restore automatically opens. You can also run System Restore from a command prompt. In the same way you booted into Safe Mode, access the Windows Advanced Options

Menu and choose the third option:
Safe Mode with Command Prompt. With this option, instead of offering immediate System Restore, a command line interface window opens. At the command prompt, type %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe to manually launch System Restore.

Blank Calendar
If you see that the restore point calendar on the left side of the Select A Restore Point window is blank, there could be a problem requiring adjustments to the Registry. This may be due to the file association for HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) component (.htc) files missing from the Registry. (NOTE: Making changes to the system using the Registry Editor may cause errors that render the operating system unstable.) To check the Registry, go to Start and Run, and type regedit. Locate the keys below by finding the first category and subsequent categories by expanding the appropriate folders. The following keys should be present in the Registry for the System Restore Calendar to be properly populated with valid restore point configuration. If one of the Registry keys is not present, you will need to create a new key. To create a new key in the Registry, first open the Registry editor by going to Start and Run, and type regedit in the Open box. Locate the corresponding keys in the directory tree in the left pane of the Registry editor and add the following values. To add keys, highlight the working directory in the tree to which you want to add a key and select Edit, New, and Key. To add a new Value name, highlight the key, and in the right pane, right click to obtain the New menu and choose String Value. Right-click the String Value and rename to the corresponding key information below. Right-click the renamed String Value and choose Modify to edit the Value data to correspond to the key information below.

Do this for all keys listed.
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htc
Value name: Content Type
Value data: text/x-component
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\.htc
Value name: Content Type
Value data: text/x-component
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\text/x-component
Value name: CLSID
Value data: {3050f4f8-98b5-11cfbb82-00aa00bdce0b}
Create a second entry with the following values:
Value name: Extension
Value data: .htc
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{3050f4f8-98b5-11cf-bb82-00aa00bdce0b}
Value name =“Microsoft Html Component”
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{3050f4f8-98b5-11cf-bb82-00aa00bdce0b}\InProcServer32
Value name: Default
Value data: “C:\Windows\System32\Mshtml.dll”
Create a second entry with the following values:
Value name: “ThreadingModel” Value data: “Apartment” If this procedure results in returning the Restore Points to the Calendar and you use the System Restore tool, the earlier configuration may not have the necessary Registry entries needed to populate the Calendar. Check to be certain the Registry Keys are present, and if not, repeat the Registry edits and create a new restore point by going to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and System Restore. Choose Create a restore point and click Next. In the next window, enter a description for the restore point and click Create. If the System Restore continues to fail, check the Event Viewer System Log, which records all system errors. Go to Control Panel, choose Administrative Tools, and double-click Event Viewer. Click System in the left-hand panel to display the log on the right. Sort the list by clicking the Source tab, and look for entries with sr or srservice. Double-click each entry to view the Event Properties for a detailed description of the error.

What To Do When . . .You Can’t Burn A CD/DVD

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:40:00 +0000

For the most part, DVD-R/RW (recordable/rewriteable) and CD-R/RW drives work as advertised, giving us a convenient, affordable way to make archival copies of software, media files, and the like and to create our own multimedia masterpieces. Yet sometimes the burning process (that of writing data to a CD or DVD) stops midway, with some enigmatic message appearing on our screens; or the results won’t play properly; or the drive itself is no longer recognized by Windows. It’s enough to make one yearn for the days of audio cassettes and VHS tapes. The copies you made were always a degraded image of the original, but barring mechanical failure in the media, they worked.

The good news is that there are logical reasons for these problems, and we’ll cover several of them here. We’ll also try to give you the most likely and least expensive solutions, so you don’t blow your bankroll on a state-of-the-art combo drive only to discover that it, too, refuses to copy your entire collection of home movies.

Problem: I got a real deal on 300 blank CD-Rs from an off-brand manufacturer. But I’ve found that only five of the first 15 I tried actually worked; the rest were rejected by my CD burner.
Solution: We all like bargains, but the reason many off-brand CDs are such a great deal is that their manufacturers have less-than-exacting standards where quality control is concerned. This even applies to some name-brand discs, which are simply rebranded, priced-up versions of off-brand CDs. We’ve had very good luck with Verbatim and Maxell. They’re not the least expensive CDs around, but when you factor in frequent duds lost to bad manufacturing that show up on some other labels, they’re more cost-effective. So before you decide your software or CD player is bad, go out and buy some really good media. You’ve saved some real money if that solves your problem.

Problem: I’m trying to make an exact copy of a CD in my collection, but I keep getting an error message that the remaining tracks on my original won’t fit on my copy. This is despite the fact that the media are of identical length.
Solution: You’re probably experiencing a buffer underrun. This occurs when a CD copy is “closed” to any further burning before it has truly been filled.

Low memory’s usually the culprit:
You have too little available by the time you reach point X on your CD copy, so burning terminates as though you’ve reached the end of the disc. The best way to combat this is to provide more memory, and you can do that by closing all windows and memory-resident applications (screensavers, virus checkers, emulators, etc.) that you normally use while engaged in the burning process. Whatever you do, avoid running memory-intensive background processes such as defragmenting your hard drive while burning we all love to multitask, but this is the worst time for it. Slowing the burn speed might help, too. The faster you burn, the more intensive the process. Note, too, that the maximum burn speed for your CD/DVD drive may not be the best for your entire system. A very fast drive in a (relatively) underpowered CPU with low memory isn’t going to be live up to its potential. Finally, you may be experiencing a buffer underrun if you’re employing some forms of data compression on the source drive. This slows down access time, since the data has to be decompressed before it can be transferred to your writer.

Problem: I’m trying to burn a disc, but my CD drive isn’t coming up as an available source or destination.
Solution: Windows isn’t recognizing your CD-ROM drive. The most likely cause is an outdated driver. On a Windows XP system, right-click My Computer, then click System Properties. Click the Hardware tab in the System Properties dialog box and then click the Device Manager button. Click the plus (+) sign next to DVD/CDROM Drives, double-click the drive you want to check, and then click the Driver tab in the resulting dialog box. Under Driver Date, you should see the issue date of that driver. Go to the manufacturer’s Web site and check to see if an update is available. If one is, create a System Restore point (if you’re using System Restore), install the newer driver, and then reboot.

Problem: My PC is equipped with a CD/DVD combo drive. Recently, I’ve been unable to play or burn DVDs on it, although I can still use it to burn CDs.
Solution: If you can’t use both CDs and DVDs, a number of possibilities present themselves. The most likely is unfortunately the most unpleasant to consider: combo drives typically use a dual-laser setup; so if DVDs fail but CDs can still be used, it’s very likely a case of the DVD laser giving up the ghost.

Problem: The sound of my burned CD copy is very distorted.
Solution: This could be due to several possible issues. First, have you checked to make sure that the source disc is still in good shape? Contrary to manufacturer claims in the early years of CD technology, CD surfaces can deteriorate over time. Second, are those source files of decent quality? There are MP3 files available with a bit rate as low as 32Kbps (kilobits per second; although 80 or 96Kbps is more common). You can fit a lot of material on a disc using such a low bit rate, but the audio quality will suffer. For good, relatively distortion-free transfers, 128Kbps is a good minimum bit rate. Finally, is your system capable of handling the write speed you’ve chosen? Just because the CD-ROM drive comes with a very high setting doesn’t mean your computer can automatically handle that. Try authoring discs at a lower write setting and see if that lessens or eliminates the distortion.

Problem: I’ve been burning CDRWs lately because I like being able to reformat them and overwrite the old contents. But I now find that the music compilation discs I’ve made and updated over time won’t play on all my gear, and a couple of my CDRWs won’t even play in players that previously worked fine.
Solution: Yes, rewriteable CDs are great when you want to keep just a few discs around. You can theoretically replace their contents as often as you wish, as opposed to CD-Rs, which only let you write to them once. But there are a couple of drawbacks to CD-RWs.

First, older readers may not recognize them, and that seems to be in part what you’ve discovered.

Second, some have raised concerns that the material that makes up some CDRWs’ data layer can too easily go bad and become unreadable, though when this happens it usually occurs after a couple of years, not weeks or months. So CD-RWs are a good, economical bet if you don’t plan to use them for archival purposes and if you only want to play them on equipment purchased in the last couple of years. CD-R media, on the other hand, has been touted as having a life expectancy of 50 years barring manufacturing defects, scratches, high heat, and/or humidity. In any event, we recommend that you play it safe; if you want to keep a CD forever, make a fresh backup copy every few years.

Problem: I just got the latest version of a great burner software package I’ve used in the past. Suddenly, I’m getting tons of errors while making copies.
Solution: Unfortunately, new applications aren’t always released in a “ready for prime time” condition. Some require one or more software patches, or updates, to bring them up to speed. Some media-authoring programs are particularly notorious for this. The only real solution is to put aside that latest major release for several months, which may mean uninstalling the software and reinstalling the previous version. If the problems you’re having go away, you’ll know what’s to blame. In any case, when you install new software, always check the publisher’s site for the most recent updates.

Problem: I burned a CD on my computer, but it won’t play in my car stereo or the CD player in my home entertainment center.
Solution: There are several possibilities here. The most likely is that you didn’t finalize (or close) the burning session when you finished writing to it. If you haven’t finalized it, it can only be read by the burner you used to make it. (By the way, you’ll want to leave an uncompleted disc open, as that will let you add to it at a future time. Once a read-only disc is finalized, you can’t amend its contents.)

Second, are you trying to play a copy of a commercially recorded, store-purchased CD? Because some players won’t accept this. Check your player’s manual to find out. Third, are you using an audio format that your players are compatible with? CD-ROM drives are unusually broad in terms of what formats they’ll accept and reproduce, but you’ll need to check your manuals to be sure. Fourth, try burning another copy using higher-quality media. That might make a considerable difference. Fifth, make sure you transferred the disc from the computer to other players in a manner that prevented it from acquiring dust or scratches. Either imperfection can and will prevent a proper read.

Problem: My CD-ROM drive reads commercial software and music CDs, but if I load a CD I’ve made just a few weeks ago, the drive won’t recognize it and acts as though no CD is there.
Solution: Reboot your PC and then try loading other CDs you’ve made and successfully run before. If your drive fails to recognize the others, as well, your drive itself may be on its last legs. Typically, when the drive laser begins to weaken, it begins to have trouble reading CD-RWs and later CD-Rs. At some point, even commercial software and music CDs will go unrecognized. Fortunately, CD drives are very inexpensive these days, and replacing one yourself is relatively easy.

Most CD burning programs let you select the bit rate (measured in kilobits per second) you want your audio files to use.

Problem: I tried to burn a CD today, but my drive wouldn’t open.
Solution: The most likely explanation is that your drive is stuck in an attempt to read a damaged or unreadable disc. Power down your system, then gently probe the small hole just below the tray (often on the right side) with a straight, sturdy piece of wire, such as a straightened paper clip. This should trigger the drive door’s opening mechanism, and you’ll be able to slowly pull it the rest of the way open. Remove the disc, close the drive, and start up your system. If this problem persists, you may need to look at replacing the drive.

Problem: My DVDs are taking longer and longer to burn. I didn’t notice it at first, but where I used to burn one in fewer than 10 minutes, the process now takes 30 minutes or more.
Solution: DVD burning uses a lot of hard drive space, so that’s the first place to look. Do you defragment your drive often? A surprisingly large number of people go for months without defragmenting their hard drive, and it makes caching torturously slow. Another problem is the accumulation of junk files on your hard drive. A good hard drive utility package such as Iolo System Mechanic Professional (www.iolo.com) or Vcom System Suite (www.v-com.com) contains tools that defragment and also let you examine user-defined junk files for potential deletion. If these are done regularly, DVD burning should show a significant increase in speed. As a side effect, you should see an improvement in speed to many of your other applications, as well.

What To Do When . . .Your PC Shuts Down Slowly Or Won’t Shut Down At All

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:10:00 +0000

It seems to happen at the worst time: You’re in a hurry and when you shut down your computer, you get an hourglass that spins and a computer that fails to shut down quickly or at all. This has happened to many other people. And while you could simply pull the plug on your PC or hit its power switch, you may know from previous experience that failing to properly shut down a PC results in an extended boot process. That’s because improperly shutting down your computer forces Windows to check your system’s hard drive for data errors. Shutdown issues are among the common types of problems you’ll encounter with Windows. Read on for some simple steps you can take to make shutdown a faster process.

Basic Troubleshooting & Maintenance
Sometimes the simplest thing at the root of a slow shutdown is the most overlooked. Proper maintenance is essential to good hard drive function. All versions of Windows 98 and later have a built-in drive Cleanup Utility. Cleaning your drive not only helps you liberate some extra hard drive space, but it can also help improve overall operating system performance including system shutdown. To access the Cleanup Utility, open the Start menu; select Programs (All Programs in Windows XP), Accessories, and System Tools; and click Disk Cleanup. Another maintenance task is the regular defragmenting of the hard drive. If you have a heavily fragmented hard drive, the OS has to search the drive for all the pieces of scattered data. The longer your OS has to search, the slower all functions become. To defragment your system, navigate to System

Tools and click Disk Defragmenter.
Although many PCs on the market these days have just about all the peripherals you would want, some systems also offer an abundance of USB ports for connecting additional hardware. If you suspect that a recently added USB device is causing a slow shutdown, it’s possible the added peripheral doesn’t support the Selective Suspend power management feature. To correct this, try disabling the Power Management option for your USB hub. Right-click My Computer and select Properties. Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button. Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers, right-click USB Root Hub, and select Properties. Next, click the Power Management tab, clear the Allow The Computer To Turn Off This Device To Save Power checkbox, and click OK.

When Your System Hangs
One of the most commonly encountered Windows problems is when you shut down your computer and the process takes an excessive amount of time to complete. The OS is made up of a collection of small programs; therefore your computer must end each program individually during shutdown. Any anomaly in just one of these smaller programs can prolong shutdown or cause the process to fail.

Delays follow a new installation. If you experience shutdown delays and you installed new apps recently, you’ll want to determine if the new programs are the cause. Try uninstalling the programs starting with the last one first. In Windows, the last program you install will appear at the end of your Start menu list of applications. That is, unless you sorted this list by name. Then you’ll need to do a little searching. When uninstalling a program, you can use the application’s built-in uninstall feature (located in its folder entry in the Start menu) or the Add Or Remove Programs utility (click Start, select Control Panel, and double-click Add Or Remove Programs). After removing the program in question, restart your machine and attempt the shutdown again. If your PC shuts down properly, you’ll know the application was the cause. One note: Before you remove the suspected application, you may want to check the manufacturer’s.

Web site for patches and/or updates that may be available for you to download and make the program operate correctly. Trouble stems from an update. When you initiate the Windows shutdown procedure from the Start menu, Windows may prompt you for some type of user input when an app crashes or fails to respond. When this happens, Windows halts the shutdown process until you permit Windows to stop the nonresponsive application. Fortunately, there is a temporary workaround for this situation. By making a simple adjustment to Windows’ Registry, you can instruct WinXP to automatically close pesky crashed applications.

Before tweaking the Registry, you should back up your system in case you need to return it to a previous setting. For specific instructions on backing up the Registry, visit the Microsoft Help And Support article at support.microsoft.com/kb/322756. After you create the backup, open the Start menu, click Run, type regedit in the Open field, and click OK. In Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROLPANEL\DESKTOP. Double-click AutoEndTasks in the right panel, type a 1 in the Value Data field, and click OK. Close Registry Editor and restart your machine. Now when you shut down your computer, WinXP can close any applications that hang, and it will do so without any further input from you during the process.

If you experience shutdown problems after installing updates, new drivers, or software, you can usually return your PC to its preupdate condition using System Restore. Open the Start menu; select All Programs, Accessories, and System tools and then click System Restore. By default, WinXP enables System Restore on all your computer’s hard drives provided you have enough hard drive space (about 200MB). After rolling back to a restore point, start up and shut down your PC once or twice to confirm the slow shutdown problem is resolved. It’s important to note that System Restore isn’t a substitute for uninstalling a program. Therefore, you will need to remove the offending application as we previously mentioned. System issues occur after adding new a profile. You recently added a new profile on your computer for a family member and now your system hangs at logoff or when you shut down the system. The biggest reason for this problem is Windows is unable to unload a user profile because system processes and/or apps occasionally maintain connections to Registry keys in the user profile even after the user logs off. Microsoft’s Download Center (www.microsoft.com/downloads) provides User Profile Hive Cleanup Service, a free utility that cleans user profiles. The utility is available for registered Windows users, and it is specifically engineered to make certain that user sessions are completely terminated when a user logs off.

Slow shutdown occures after enabling the Clear Page file On System Shutdown option. Although it is true that clearing the page file on system shutdown will delete all data stored there so others can’t retrieve it, doing this does substantially increase shutdown time. The page file works as virtual memory (storage) in WinXP and can, on occasion, grow to mammoth proportions. Because some third party applications could use the page file to temporarily store sensitive information in virtual memory, some people prefer to set their machines to clear the page file at shutdown. If you think your system is running slow because you enabled the Clear Page file option, you can tweak the Registry and make things run quicker. Back up your system first. Then open the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\SESSIONMANAGER\MEMORYMANAGEMENT. Double-click Clear Page File At Shutdown in the right panel and set the Value Data field to 0.

System Delays & Increased Internet Activity
Despite our best efforts, viruses and spyware sometimes take refuge in our PCs causing systems to shut down slowly or worse, not at all. If you suspect your system has a virus, make sure you update your virus signatures and run a complete scan on your machine. Antivirus alone is not enough these days, so good spyware prevention software is a must. Microsoft’s WindowsDefender (free; www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx) scans your system to ferret out spyware that could be slowing down your PC.

Take Action
Although some people have learned to live with their computers’ slow shutdown times, that doesn’t need to be the case. Proactive intervention will certainly speed up a computer’s shutdown process, and it may eliminate most of the common problems altogether.

What To Do When . . .Your PC Internet Connection Is Slow

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:44:00 +0000

One of the more frustrating aspects of computer usage in the Internet era are the times when your PC slows to a crawl for no apparent reason. Suddenly it seems as if the bits are passing through molasses as they travel from the Internet to your living room. The good news is that there are solutions to nearly every common Internet problem. While the problems vary depending on how you connect to the Internet, there are troubleshooting tactics and system tweaks you can use to optimize performance. And if all else fails, there are ways to make life more bearable on a slow Internet connection, using add-on tools that can speed up browsing and downloading under such conditions.

Generic Problems
The first things to examine whenever system performance slows to a crawl are the tasks, or processes, your PC is running. No matter how fast of a CPU you have, running too many apps at once can slow everything down. Check running applications. Use the Windows Task Manager to check on hidden apps that could be starving your browser of precious time. Right click the Taskbar, select Task Manager, and click the Processes tab. You’ll see a list of every process (Windows calls them Images) running on your PC; you can sort the list by name, amount of CPU time, or memory usage. If you sort by CPU time and notice a couple programs trying to grab all the CPU, it’s a clue something has gone awry. If you identify an unknown program hogging all the CPU, you can stop it by right-clicking the name and selecting End Process. But be careful: accidentally killing a valid Windows process may cause other problems, requiring a reboot to fix. Check the drivers. You also may be overloading the network pipe. For example, if you’re using a dial-up connection, you likely won’t be able to watch the latest YouTube video while downloading email. When you notice performance deterioration, make sure your system has the latest network and modem drivers. These are often automatically updated by Microsoft Update (see www.microsoft.com/athome/security/update/msupdate_keep_current.mspx), but if you know your modem or network card model, it doesn’t hurt to check the manufacturer’s Web support site for updates.

Physical Network Problems & Troubleshooting Tips
Dial-up connections use the same basic technology: a modem connected to a phone line. But there are a number of broadband technologies (DSL [Digital Subscriber Line], cable TV, and fixed wireless), each with its own causes of performance degradation. Start any diagnosis of suspected network problems by getting quantitative data. There are a number of Web sites for performance testing; one of the best is at www.speedtest.net. It presents users with a world map of various test points relative to your location (which it does a good job of deducing from your Internet address), providing a convenient way to check speed against a number of servers. Speedtest.net remembers your PC from session to session, recording all your tests to a database to allow comparisons of results over time. Try testing at different times over several days. If you see results coming in below the rated speed of your service, it’s time to investigate. Depending on your specific connection type, there are a number of quick things to check when troubleshooting degraded Internet performance. Dial-up. A slow connection is often caused by a poor phone circuit. For example, dialing in from a new house in the suburbs, with new wiring all the way to the phone central office, will likely approach the theoretical maximum of 56Kbps (kilobits per second), while connections from older homes or rural areas may be lucky to reach 28.8Kbps. If your dial-up connection is slow, start by redialing or changing your access number. Persistently poor connections may be due to bad home wiring or too many line splitters between the wall jack and your PC. Make sure wiring is as short as possible. Broadband DSL. DSL circuits are dedicated to your location, so you should get the full-advertised bandwidth.

However, they require special line filters if a phone is used on the same line. If your connection is slow, isolate wiring problems by unplugging all phones and fax machines, connecting your DSL modem to the wall socket, and retesting your connection. If the speed improves, you may have a bad line filter or too many splitters on the same line. Put your DSL modem on a dedicated phone line, if possible. Broadband cable. Cable TV circuits are shared with other homes in your neighborhood perhaps as many as 50 so download rates vary and are usually slower during prime time. Signal problems on cable circuits should be visible on your television, particularly on local channels (e.g. 2 to 12), and generally require a service call to correct. If your television signal looks good, try checking the speed at off-peak hours to see if your neighbors are hogging bandwidth. Wireless. Fixed wireless uses a portion of the broadcast spectrum to transmit to a stationary receiver. Signal strength can affect download speed and depends on placement of the receiver in relation to the antenna. Try moving the receiver to different locations. If the best location isn’t close to your PC, many wireless companies offer modules that can route the connection to other locations over electrical wiring. If none of these do-it-yourself solutions works, call your service provider to see if it can isolate the problem.Home Network Changes
Beyond your ISP (Internet service provider), Internet connection slowdown can also result from problems on your home network. If you don’t share your Internet connection (most dial-up users), you can skip this section. Wireless technology, also known as Wi-Fi, operates on a portion of the radio spectrum also used by many cordless phones and microwave ovens.

Within this spectrum, Wi-Fi routers run on one of 11 channels. If you live in close quarters such as an apartment building, a neighbor’s router could be configured to run on the same channel as yours, causing interference. If you notice a slowdown, use your router’s Web configuration page to try a different channel; your PC will automatically find the new channel. Cordless 2.4GHz phones operate over the same frequencies as Wi-Fi, so you’ll likely notice a slowdown or lost connection when the phone is in use. Either position the phone base station and wireless router as far from each other as possible or get a phone that runs on the 900MHz or 5.8GHz band. To get a detailed look at what is going on in the Wi-Fi ether, MetaGeek has a great gadget called Wi-Spy (www.metageek.net). It’s a USB key with sophisticated software that analyzes and graphically charts interference, quickly identifying any problems.

Occasionally the default network settings from your ISP can cause a slowdown. All Internet applications use DNS (domain name system) servers to look up the Web addresses of sites you access. When a broadband router connects to the ISP, it picks up addresses for the DNS servers and passes these along to your PC. If these servers are slow, changing to an OpenDNS server can alleviate the bottleneck. Details on how to start using OpenDNS are available at www.opendns.com/start. If all else fails, reboot your modem and router. This ensures the router picks up the latest configurations and can often clear up problems.

Browser Configuration Changes
Tweaking some browser settings can also help improve Internet connection performance. The simplest change is to increase the size of your Internet cache, or Temporary Internet Files in Internet Explorer parlance. Your browser keeps copies of pages you visit, including the graphical content, in the cache. When you revisit a page that has been cached, your browser looks for elements that haven’t changed since your last visit and uses the local copies instead of redownloading. Given the enormity of today’s hard drives, most browsers have conservative defaults for cache size, usually less than 50MB. Bumping this up to 100 to 250MB can help. In Internet Explorer, select Tools, Internet Options and click the General tab. Under Temporary Internet Files, click the Settings button. Enter a new amount of disk space used for the cache. If you’re on a very slow link, you can also to have the browser block most bandwidth hogs, including images, Java applets, and ads. Firefox offers the most flexibility in controlling what is displayed, with settings contained on the Options:Content tab. Internet Explorer can be configured by selecting Tools, Internet Options, clicking the Advanced tab, and scrolling down to the Java and Multimedia sections where you can check or uncheck a series of boxes to control whether various multimedia elements display. Unwanted pop-up windows are another source of frustration on slow links. Internet Explorer 7 comes with a pop-up blocker add-on. Firefox also comes with a free add-on, Adblock Plus. Adblock and other Firefox addons are available by selecting the Addons menu and clicking the Get Extensions button.

System Configuration Changes
Windows has a number of network parameters defined in the system Registry. The default values provide good performance, but they are not always optimal. While modifying the Registry is not for the faint of heart, Cable Nut (www.cablenut.com) provides a simple interface for changing the relevant parameters. Cable Nut includes a number of preset configurations for various connection types and can back up and restore previous Registry settings, should you need to back out of any changes.

Tools
A number of ISPs and third party products attempt to accelerate dial-up connections by using compression on different downloaded elements such as text and graphics. With these high-speed, dial-up services, the ISP runs an acceleration server that acts as an intermediary between your PC and Web servers.

The acceleration server uses its broadband connection to fetch and cache pages you request and then compresses the data before sending it to your PC, where it is decompressed by a small client program running on your PC. While many data types used on the Internet are already highly compressed, much is not. Depending on the page, these accelerated services often load more than three times faster than an unaccelerated dial-up account. If your ISP doesn’t offer high-speed service, several third parties provide equivalent functionality usable with any account (see the sidebars on this page for lists of ISPs and software). Be aware that most of the client only products, such as Accelerate (accelerate.webroot-software-inc.qarchive.org) or Net Accelerator (www.programurl.com/net-accelerator.htm), really just automate the tweaking of Windows network settings, similar to what CableNut allows you to do by hand, offering little extra value. Another way to increase your online efficiency is by using offline reading tools. You can configure email clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird to download all new mail and disconnect, letting you read and reply to mail offline. Both IE7 and Firefox offer RSS (Really Simple Syndication) news-reading add-ons that can download content from your favorite blogs or other RSS-aware sites for later perusal, similar in function to a number of third-party readers such as Newz Crawler (www.newzcrawler.com) or Feed-Demon (www.newsgator.com/NGOLProduct.aspx?ProdId=FeedDemon). Firefox and IE6 also have a “work offline” mode (available from the File menu) that allows you to browse previously visited pages; however, this feature has been eliminated in IE7 in preference of the more powerful RSS subscriptions that automatically download new content without having to manually access the site.

Intermittent Internet connection problems are an unpleasant reality, but there are a number of techniques and tools you can use to solve most basic problems and fine-tune your connection. For those stuck with slow dial-up links, high-speed services are available that provide noticeable improvement, although they still fall short of even the slowest broadband service. Use of offline reading software, coupled with simple changes in usage habits, can also greatly reduce the frustration of working with a slow connection.

What To Do When . . .Your PC Runs Slowly Or Erratically

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:13:00 +0000

So, your computer is acting strangely. Is it running slowly? Does it clip along normally one moment, only to grind to a halt minutes later? You better be ready to roll up your sleeves to tackle this one yourself, because this is the sort of problem that a computer repair person or phone support techie rarely solves. These folks will usually fix what’s obviously broken and move on, but much of the time, a slow or erratic system is suffering from something that isn’t obviously or completely broken. Your computer’s only in good enough shape to “mostly” work most of the time. Ultimately, although it seems like just about anything could slow a PC or prompt weird behavior, there are several things that tend to be the root of these problems. Even if you can’t completely solve the problem, you can frequently narrow the problem down so that someone else can attempt to solve it.

Sudden Problem Or Long-standing Issue?
If you suddenly notice your PC acting up, consider if you’ve made any recent changes. Have you installed any new hardware or software lately? Does your PC’s bizarre behavior happen to coincide with the new addition? If so, then the new stuff becomes your prime suspect, and following these tips could help you crack the case. New software is likely to slow a system down if it has some sort of “always-on” component, such as a background virus checker or a scheduler, but even software which lacks such a feature can occasionally cause problems. Try uninstalling the new software with its uninstaller first. You can also uninstall by using Add Or Remove Programs in the Control Panel. (Click Start, Control Panel, and double-click Add Or Remove Programs.) Once you’ve removed the software, reboot and see if your computer is still running slowly.

New hardware can also slow down a system, especially if you’re using an older driver. Ironically, if you’ve followed the hardware’s installation documentation to the letter, then you probably used the drivers/software that the manufacturer included on the installation disc, and those drivers could be old. First, try downloading and installing the most recent versions of drivers and any bundled software from the manufacturer’s Web site. These updates often fix bugs or glitches that can affect system performance. If the slowness remains, remove the new hardware; if it was an upgrade to existing hardware, reinstall the old hardware. If your system returns to normal, then the new hardware is either faulty or not completely compatible with your PC. Consider using an alternative product from another vendor.

Double-Check The Hardware: The Basics
Although system slowdowns tend to be software-related, there’s no point in chasing down an elusive software problem unless you know your hardware is working properly. The main components to check are the CPU, RAM, and hard drive. There are many diagnostic programs out there, but perhaps the simplest way to go is to the Ultimate Boot CD, which is available as a free download from www.ultimatebootcd.com. If you choose to download the application and burn it to a disc, your burning software must be able to burn ISO (International Organization for Standardization) image files. If you don’t have the necessary software, the Web site maintains a list of people who can create and mail you a physical copy, usually for a nominal fee. When you have the CD, start your computer with the disc in your CDROM drive. After the program loads, start with a CPU test and let it run for at least 30 minutes. Then, start a RAM test and let it run overnight. (Memtest86+ is a good one.) If your computer passes these tests, run a hard drive check. The Ultimate Boot CD also contains the latest utilities from different hard drive manufacturers. Run the utility that matches your drive and let it run through both the quick test and the thorough test, which take approximately 20 minutes and several hours, respectively, to complete. Some computers also come with a “diagnostic partition,” which you can access by pressing a certain key at boot-up. Your manual should provide more explicit information, but if you look quickly as your computer is in the first few seconds of its boot sequence, you should see a message on the bottom of your screen that may read something like “Press F8 For Boot Menu” or “Press F10 For Diagnostics.” If you see this, press the key as directed and select the choice that seems to be diagnostic software. Odds are that these diagnostic tools are geared specifically for your hardware (rather than the generic utilities found on The Ultimate Boot CD) and can ferret out any hardware troubles.

Double-Check The Hardware: System Cooling
It goes without saying that your PC’s internal components generate heat, but have you considered what would happen to your PC if your CPU overheated? Those clever engineers at Intel and AMD have, and most (though not all) modern CPUs will automatically throttle back when their built-in thermistors (which are transistor-sized thermometers) detect when a system is overheating. After a few minutes (or even seconds) of operating at a lower speed to reduce the CPU temperature, the CPU throttles up to full speed again. This scenario should never happen in a computer that’s functioning properly. But if the CPU cooling fan or one of the case fans stop spinning (or spin at a reduced rate) or a CPU heatsink clogs with dust, this is exactly what can happen. Although the CPU is only protecting itself from burning out, from a user’s point of view, the computer starts a cycle of acting normally and then slowing down.

Opening your PC and cleaning out all the dust is a task you should probably do at least once a year. So if your PC is acting oddly, cleaning it should be high on your list. While you’re in there, clean the CPU heatsink with a can of compressed air or a small brush. (You may need to remove a plastic or metal shroud that directs airflow to the CPU.) If the fans are covered with gunk, hold the blades in place to keep the fan from spinning if you use the compressed air to blow them clean. After you’ve cleaned it out, turn the computer on while it’s still open and check that all the fans start spinning. If there’s any fan that refuses to spin or sounds rough or gravelly, it may need replacing. If you aren’t sure if a fan is running as fast as it’s supposed to, then you should also check the processor’s temperature while Windows is running to ensure it isn’t overheating. This task is easily accomplished with free software, such as SpeedFan. To download SpeedFan, open a Web browser with an active Internet connection and go to www.almico.com/speedfan.php. Click Download and SpeedFan 4.31. Choose where you’d like to download the installer file and double-click the installer file’s icon once it has fully downloaded. The installation wizard will guide you through the process; open SpeedFan when you have installed it. SpeedFan’s Reading tab should display your CPU’s current temperature. Be sure to check your CPU’s temperature during idle and after you’ve placed it under load. (Playing a demanding 3D video game is a good way to do this.) Although CPU manufacturers list the maximum recommended temperatures for their CPUs, as a general rule of thumb, any CPU temp higher than 64 degrees Celsius is cause for concern. You should look into replacing a malfunctioning fan, installing a better heatsink/fan combination if your stock fan is working fine, or look for some other cooling problem. If your CPU temperatures are lower than its maximum rating, then overheating isn’t causing your system’s slowdowns.

Clear Out The Software Nasties
After you’ve verified there aren’t any hardware problems or corrected any problems you did find, focus on software. And whenever you deal with software problems and weird slowdowns, computer viruses and spyware should immediately come to mind. Fortunately, there are a lot of automated tools to help clear out this pesky malware. Viruses are constantly evolving, so there’s a good chance your antivirus program isn’t catching everything if you haven’t updated your antivirus definitions in a little while. Therefore, start by updating your antivirus software and doing a full scan. If you’ve let your antivirus subscription lapse and don’t want to pay for a renewal, consider using a free tool such as AVG Free (free.grisoft.com) or AOL’s Active Virus Shield (www.activevirusshield.com), which features the excellent Kaspersky antivirus engine. If your updated antivirus program detects and cleans anything, be sure to reboot a few times and repeat the scan; stubborn viruses may find a way to evade just one cleaning. If repeated cleanings won’t take care of a virus, it may have weaved itself into Windows and become impossible to clean with Windows running. In these cases, your best bet is to either transfer the hard drive to a second computer for scanning or use a self-booting CD with antivirus tools, the Ultimate Boot CD. Just remember, like any antivirus application, the Ultimate Boot CD’s included antivirus software will eventually become outdated, requiring you to manually download an updated version. Spyware can also slow things down when it kicks into gear and starts doing its job. You should obviously remove spyware along with any viruses you might find. Two free scanners, Ad-Aware SE (www.lavasoftusa.com) and Spybot Search & Destroy (www.safernetworking.org) do a pretty good job of clearing out most basic spyware, while Webroot’s Spy Sweeper (www.webroot.com/consumer/products/spysweeper) does an excellent job of clearing stubborn spyware infestations.

Identify & Solve Core Windows Problems
All versions of Windows have many programs running in the background, including drivers, services, and other applications. Occasionally, one or more of these programs begins having trouble and makes your whole system start acting oddly. Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to see if any of these core applications are having problems and to take corrective action. Start by running the Event Viewer, which you can access by right-clicking the My Computer icon and clicking Manage from the pop-up menu. Then expand the Event Viewer icon in the tree on the left-side pane, revealing the Application, Security, and System logs. If you’re interested, Microsoft explains the purpose of these logs at support.microsoft.com/kb/308427, but, put simply, each log lists application, security, and system messages and warnings. You should look for warnings and errors that tend to frequently recur. Double-click an entry in the right-side pane to view the full message.

For example, if you saw the same hard disk page file error again and again, it may be time to update your motherboard’s drivers or run a diagnostic scan on the motherboard, hard drive controller, or hard drive. If you saw a driver that was unable to start repeatedly, consider looking for an updated driver or determine if the hardware that the driver controls is malfunctioning. If an antivirus updater constantly causes error messages, you should fix or replace your antivirus software. And if the exact nature of the error isn’t clear from the message, entering the message into an Internet search engine may yield solutions that have worked for other folks.

Eliminating Rogue Programs
If your PC is still acting slow or erratically, focus on software running in the background that’s commandeering too many resources. Even though most of this software is working exactly as intended, uninstalling or reconfiguring it may speed up your slow moving system. First, display the Windows Task Manager, which will launch when you press CTRL SHIFT ESC, and click the Processes tab. Then click the CPU column header twice to sort the list of background processes with the highest CPU utilization at the top. Take a few minutes to look over the column as it updates, noting what programs occasionally jump to the top of the list. You can leave this window open while you use other programs, allowing you see which programs are consuming the most of your system resources as you normally use your PC. In fact, if you only occasionally see a dramatic slowdown, you should keep this window open until the slowdown occurs and note the processes that jump to the top of the list.
After initially booting your computer, System Idle Process should consistently be 95 or higher, which basically means 95% of your system’s resources should be available. If it isn’t, then one or more other programs are consuming excess resources and are probably contributing to the slowdown. These programs should appear just underneath System Idle Process. Ideally, the programs will be obvious, such as WINWORD.EXE (Microsoft Word) or ipodservice.exe (Apple iTunes). For dealing with mysteriously named programs, Microsoft’s Process Explorer (www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx) does a good job of tracing a background program to its base application. If shutting down any of these programs restores your system to full speed, then you’ve found your problem. You may need to manually do this for multiple programs. If you’ve traced a slowdown to a busy background program and its parent application, you need to either replace it or make it play nice. First, open the program and try to find any settings to reduce CPU priority. We also suggest disabling any functions you don’t need or use. Alternatively, there may be a more efficient application that does essentially the same thing as your troublesome program. Try replacing one program with another (for example, using Zone Alarm Firewall instead of Norton Internet Security) to see if it’s less of a burden.

Lighten The Background Process Load
Once you’ve cleared away the gross offenders of CPU power consumption, the last thing to do is review all of the programs that automatically launch when Windows starts up and determine if any are unnecessary. The Task Manager lists how many processes are running at the bottom left corner of its window; if you have more than 50, you probably have more running than you really need. We cover this topic in detail in “Your PC Starts Slowly” (see page 56), but in a nutshell, run msconfig. Click Start and Run and type msconfig in the empty field. Click OK. When msconfig starts, click the Startup tab. The resulting list shows all your startup programs, and removing the checkmark next to an entry prevents it from starting alongside Windows.

Before using this method to force programs not to start during Windows’ startup, try disabling any auto-start functionality directly from within the program itself. The Payoff: Speed & Stability Hopefully, you’ll find that after you run through all these steps, your system feels far more sprightly and isn’t prone to weird pauses. And without the hiccups and delays, your overall computing experience should be that much better.

What To Do When . . .Your PC Starts Slowly

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:55:00 +0000

PCs that boot slowly are among the most common complaints users have, but there’s slow and then there’s slow. A computer that needs a minute between pressing the power button and letting you start a program is perfectly normal, even if those 60 seconds may feel like an eternity. A computer that takes a little longer may be suffering from a minor problem (or might just be an older machine), but a computer that takes four or five minutes (or more!) to get rolling is almost certainly suffering from one or more problems that need your attention. Most slow-boot problems have to do with software; specifically, there’s too much software running automatically when Windows boots, but this shouldn’t be the first thing you attempt to tackle. You should check hardware problems first. Follow that by checking for spyware and viruses, because these issues can undermine even the most thorough, intricate software cleaning job. And if you notice your boot process suddenly taking longer after recently adding new hardware or software, you may have already determind the root of your startup problem. Finally, although there may indeed be a smoking gun a large, single problem causing the delay long boots are frequently a result of many small delays and inefficiencies added together. Booting a computer requires dozens of sequential steps, so it’s certainly possible to save 60 seconds by eliminating 10 six-second delays.

Basic Hardware Checks
It isn’t uncommon for a computer to slow as one or more of its components starts to fail, and a slow boot may just be the only noticeable symptom. Fortunately, performing tests and checking the obvious is fairly easy. First, take a deep breath, open up the computer (assuming it isn’t a laptop), and turn it on. Check that all the fans are spinning. Some fans are temperature-sensitive and won’t speed up (or even start spinning) until things are warm, so consider leaving it running this way for a little while. Make a note of any fans that seem dead; have a professional replace them or, if you know what you’re doing, replace them yourself. Next, turn the PC off and take a good look at the CPU’s heatsink. (You may have to remove a plastic shroud that surrounds the CPU.) If it’s covered with dust and grime, clean it with a can of compressed air (readily available at most electronics stores) or a small brush. This ensures the CPU is cooling itself properly, because most modern CPUs throttle back to a lower clock speed if they’re overheating. And a lower clock speed can contribute to a slower boot process.

A marginally working CPU, hard drive, or memory module can also slow the boot process down, especially when the failing component still “sort of works.” For example, a failing hard drive might finally work after 10 attempts at reading from it, and Windows may retry using that failing hard drive many times before giving up. Fortunately, we recommend a free bootable CD called the Ultimate Boot CD, which you can download from www.ultimatebootcd.com. It has dozens of generic tests for your CPU and memory and includes all the major hard drive manufacturers’ hardware tests. And because it’s a bootable CD, you don’t need to load Windows (and, after all, loading Windows is really the problem in the first place) to run the disc’s tests. You can run through all the CPU tests in a few minutes, but let one of the memory checkers run overnight. The hard drive tests will only need a few minutes to do a quick check, but if you can spare another night, opt for running a deep test for better results. If your hardware checks out, you can move on.

BIOS Tweaks
When you fire up your PC, its BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) leaps into action, initializing hardware, testing RAM and other hardware, and looking for a bootable device. You can alter the tasks it performs by accessing your system’s BIOS setup. Immediately after you turn on your computer, take a close look at the screen for a message such as “Press F2 To Access BIOS Setup” or similar language and press that key. Your PC’s/motherboard’s users manual should also identify the appropriate keystroke. With luck, it may even describe some BIOS options. If your goal is to eliminate as many small delays as possible, then there are a few changes you can make to your BIOS. First, look for an option called Quick Boot and enable it; this eliminates some of the system tests during the boot. This feature’s name may vary on a different BIOS, but you should generally enable any option that appears to accelerate your boot speed. Next, move to the Hard Drive Detection (sometimes called IDE Detection) screens, and switch the IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) positions you know to be empty from Auto to None in other words, if you don’t have a Primary Slave IDE drive, set Primary Slave to None. You can identify an IDE drive by the flat, wide cable that connects the drive to the motherboard, but when you start making changes to your BIOS, always be certain you understand exactly what you’re changing. And if your system only uses SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drives, then set all the IDE positions to None. Finally, if you never boot from a floppy diskette drive, CD/DVD ROM drive, USB device, or network connection, set the hard drive as your first boot device. This prevents your PC from checking for bootable media elsewhere every time.

Clearing Bad Parasitic Software
After you’ve eliminated any hardware issues and streamlined your BIOS, it’s time to deal with the bad software: viruses and spyware. If your computer boots slowly but works reasonably well once it completely boots, any malware that’s snuck into your system is probably a minor infestation, which means it’s probably one you can clear with automated tools. If you have antivirus software installed, it’s time to update your definitions and run a full scan. And if your commercial antivirus subscription (for example, Norton AntiVirus) has expired, either renew your subscription or uninstall what you have and install a free antivirus product, such as AVG Anti-Virus Free (free.grisoft.com) or AOL’s Active Virus Shield (www.activevirusshield.com). Because viruses evolve rapidly, it’s critically important to use an antivirus product with current definitions. Don’t bother with out-of-date antivirus software. Spyware can also bog down your boot, so you should clear that, too. Like antivirus software, antispyware products need current definitions to do an effective job, so update what you have before running a full system scan. If you don’t have any antispyware tools and don’t think you have a serious spyware problem, then try a couple of free programs to be safe. Most of the free scanners don’t have always-on components, and different scanners tend to focus on different types of threats; you can usually install a few and let them scan without worrying that one program will interfere with another. Two that work well together are Ad-Aware SE (www.lavasoftusa.com) and Spybot Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org). Perform each application’s antispyware scan individually instead of running them simultaneously.

Clearing “Good” Parasitic Software
It should come as no surprise that software often installs itself to automatically run every time Windows starts, but the sheer volume of this particular software that’s running on your system may shock you when you count it all up. Limiting your software that starts on boot to just the programs, utilities, and drivers you always need can dramatically reduce boot times. There are two challenges to face here. The first is finding a list of programs that start automatically, and the second is to know which programs you can safely disable at boot time. Fortunately, there’s a handy tool that’s built into every version of Windows (except Windows 2000) that shows you almost all your auto-start programs: msconfig. To run it, click Start and Run. Type msconfig and click OK. Next, click the Startup tab to see the auto-start list; a check mark next to an application means that it’s starting every boot, while an empty checkbox means the program is disabled. If you have Win2000 or want a more advanced tool, then try using AutoRuns for Windows (www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/Autoruns.mspx). Just extract the ZIP file you download and double-click Autoruns.exe to run it. Like Msconfig, each checked entry is set to run automatically at startup, and unchecking a program disables it at startup. (You’ll still be able to use program but will have to manually start it each time.) AutoRuns is more thorough in ferreting out auto-start programs, so its list is much longer than Msconfig’s and broken down into different autostart methods. To whittle that list and focus on third-party software, click Options, Hide Microsoft Entries, and the Refresh button. Regardless of which utility you choose, you shouldn’t just uncheck everything in the list. (Although interestingly, WinXP will run just fine and quite fast with everything disabled in the Msconfig Startup tab). Instead, you need to figure out what each item is and decide if it’s something that you really need to run every time Windows starts. For example, many peripherals, such as PDAs and game controllers, have supporting programs that start automatically every time (you can usually see their icons in the System Tray), but how often do you really HotSync your Treo or play a game? If you don’t frequently use the peripherals that require these support applications, consider disabling them at startup. When you plan to actually use the device, manually run the program instead. For example, only run the Palm HotSync Manager when you actually need to HotSync your PDA. You should only disable programs that you can properly identify; determining which programs you can disable occasionally requires some sleuthing. For example, you can track down an oddly named program, such as P17Helper, by doing an Internet keyword search. In this particular case, P17Helper is an ASIO (audio stream input output) driver for a Sound Blaster card, which allows for high-speed digital audio recording. If you never record digital audio, you should consider disabling it. Many Web sites that identify startup programs also state if you can safely disable the programs.Deciding what to disable can be tricky if you can’t find guidance online, but there are useful guidelines the adventurous can follow. If you disable a program related to hardware, reboot and see if the hardware still works. If it doesn’t, re-enable the program. Ditto for software application helpers make sure the main application they help still runs after you restart. Many programs, such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, and Real Player, preload some parts of an application into your system’s memory under the assumption that the associated applications will start a few seconds faster when you actually run them. You can safely disable these preloaders, but the trade-off is that your application might take a few extra seconds to load. Some applications install their own schedulers or version checkers, which is something you can usually do manually. Don’t forget to check for updates yourself if you disable these programs at startup. Ideally, when you identify a startup program you want to disable, you should disable it from within the program itself. If there’s no such option, simply uncheck its entry in Msconfig or AutoRuns.

The Payoff
By carefully pruning your autostart programs, optimizing the BIOS, and eliminating hidden malware, you should be able to reduce your boot time from three or four minutes to less than a minute. Over the course of a year of daily startups, that can really add up.

What To Do When . . .You Accidentally Delete Something

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:36:00 +0000

At some point in your computing life, you will lose data, whether it’s due to something as serious as a system crash or something less drastic but equally as frustrating, such as accidentally deleting a file. While the sting of losing a coveted photo, spreadsheet, or audio file definitely smarts, it may ease your pain knowing there’s a good chance of getting your data back if you act quickly and logically. For this article we’re assuming you’ve accidentally deleted or misplaced a file, folder, icon, or similar data and a backup copy isn’t available. Data lost to such problems as malfunctioning hardware/software or Windows related errors often require more time-consuming and complicated solutions uninstalling/reinstalling Windows, using Windows’ Repair or Recovery Console utilities, replacing a hard drive, and more than those we’ll discuss here, which are generally easier to execute but potentially as effective. First, though, it will help to know what you’re dealing with when you lose data, accidentally or otherwise.

Where Deleted Files Go
Many users assume once a letter, photo, song, or other file is deleted that it’s gone for good, but this isn’t the case. Deleting a file essentially only erases the bookmark that Windows uses to retrieve the file. What deleting a file really tells Windows is that you no longer wish to reserve hard drive space for the file. Thus, the file remains on your drive until Windows writes over it with new data. Until then, there’s a chance of retrieving your accidentally deleted data. Initially, the best thing you can do is actually nothing, as any new data you save to your hard drive could write over the file you want to retrieve. Also, running a disk defragmenter could wreak havoc on your deleted file. If you’ve scheduled Windows’ Disk Defragmenter to run automatically, disable the option (click Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks) until you retrieve the data. Ultimately, getting your file back may mean using an undelete program. At worst, a data recovery service can retrieve data from even a presumed dead hard drive, but typically at a stiff price (more on these options later).
Search For Your Files
Often, just searching for a file can tell you if you really deleted it or accidentally saved it to another location. First, check the list of recently accessed programs and files Windows XP keeps at the left of the Start menu. Windows programs such as Word and Excel also keep a list of recently opened files specific to that program on the File menu. Clicking the File menu in Word, for example, shows you four recently accessed Word documents and their locations. Another option is Windows’ Search tool (click Start, Search). In the Search Results dialogue box under the Search Companion pane are options to search for Pictures, Music, Or Video; Documents (Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Etc.); All Files And Folders; and Computers And People. Try clicking All Files And Folders and entering appropriate text in the All Or Part Of The File Name and A Word Or Phrase In The File text fields. Next, click My Computer from the Look In drop-down menu and click Search. Your results will display to the right. If Search doesn’t find what you’re after, try using a wildcard (*) character and the document’s file extension, such as *.doc or *.xls. Search also has such advanced search options as Search Hidden Files And Folders and searching by file size, last modified date, and other criteria.

Check The Recycle Bin
If Search proves fruitless, check that Windows isn’t holding the file in the Recycle Bin (double-click the Recycle Bin Desktop icon). Most files you manually delete remain in the Recycle Bin, taking up hard drive space until you empty the bin (click File and Empty Recycle Bin). By default, the Recycle Bin uses 10% of your hard drive’s capacity (change this by right-clicking Recycle Bin, clicking Properties, and adjusting the Maximum Size Of Recycle Bin slider.) When the capacity is full, Windows drops off older files as new ones are added. If you have a large-capacity hard drive, your files can remain in the bin for a long time. If your file is in the Recycle Bin, highlight it, click File, and click Restore to retrieve it.

Use System Restore
System Restore is Windows’ utility that can roll your system’s settings back to a previous date, or Restore Point. System Restore doesn’t alter files you’ve recently created, such as email and Word docs. Using a Restore Point will remove any Windows updates or program-specific upgrades (particularly virus and spyware definitions) you installed after the Restore Point’s date. You’ll need to reinstall these after the restoration. To use System Restore, click Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore, and follow the steps given.

Use Undelete Software
If your file is still missing, it’s time to consider using an undelete program, which will scan your hard drive for data that’s still active but that Windows doesn’t recognize. Note, however, that an undelete program may only retrieve portions of a file due to several reasons, including how Windows stores data. Rather than save a file in one location on a hard drive, Windows chops the file into smaller chunks, or clusters, that it fits into spaces on the drive as they become available. These spaces usually aren’t next to one another, and as new data is saved to a drive, it can write over various portions of the file. Although undelete programs range in price and difficulty of use, most can also scan removable storage devices and include a search tool and helpful filters for narrowing down searches. Many free undelete apps are available, but most will only display the files they can retrieve until you pay the program’s full version to retrieve them. When looking at undelete apps, consider one that you can download to and run from a removable storage, such as a CD/DVD, floppy diskette, or USB keydrive, as, again, installing an app to your hard drive could write over the files you want to retrieve. Additionally, although programs differ in how they search for retrievable data, most offer quick and deep scanning options and filters for searches and viewing results. This last point is important, as typically a program will return hundreds to thousands of files that may date back years. Finally, look for an app that rates the chances of retrieving files, such as PC Tool’s File Recover does using Poor (partially recoverable) or Excellent (fully recoverable) qualifiers.

For this article we used various demo, free trial, and final versions of PC Tools’ File Recover ($29.95; www.pctools.com), WinRecovery Software’s WinUndelete ($49.95; www.winundelete.com), OfficeRecovery’s Free Undelete (free; www.officerecovery.com), Executive Software’s Undelete 5.0 Home ($29.95; www.executive.com), and R-tools Technology’s RUndelete ($54.99; www.r-undelete.com). Other apps include Que-Tek Consulting’s File Scavenger 3 ($49; www.quetek.com), Active@Data Recovery’s Active@File Recovery ($29.95; www.file-recovery.net), and Stompsoft’s Recover Lost Data ($39.99; www.stompsoft.com). Wellknown manufacturers such as Symantec (Norton SystemWorks Standard, $69.95; Save & Restore, $49.99; Norton Ghost 10, $69.99; www .symantec.com) and McAfee (Internet Security Suite, $49.99; www.mcafee.com) also offer recovery tools.

Use A Data Recovery Service
Depending on how valuable your lost data is, a data recovery service is an excellent option. The bad news is that such services are typically time-consuming and expensive, ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Typically, after evaluating the drive, the service will provide a cost estimate for getting your data back. Further, you may get multiple estimates based on different factors that may influence the ability to get back your data, such as if the hard drive is physically damaged. Before choosing a service, ask what data you can expect it to retrieve, including the specific data you want back. Check if the company performs retrievals in its offices, onsite, or offers software you can operate yourself at home. Most importantly, make certain the company adequately answers all privacy-related questions, as the service will have access to all the data on your hard drive, including personal information. Two data recovery services include DriveSavers (www.drivesavers.com) and Ontrack Data Recovery (www.ontrack.com/services). Overall, some preparation is often the best solution for getting accidentally deleted data back. This means routinely backing up important files and having an undelete program on hand so you can immediately search for the file after you realize it’s gone. Additionally, many Windows programs have auto-save and backup features, such as Word’s Always Create Backup Copy setting (Click Tools and Options and click the Save tab).

What To Do When . . .You Can’t Delete Something

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:25:00 +0000

Deleting something is usually one of the easiest computing tasks to accomplish. So much so that OS (operating system) developers such as Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) have added safeguards to their products to make sure trigger happy users think twice before deleting the wrong file and doing irreparable harm to their data or systems. But there are times when the simple act of deleting something can go awry. The causes are many, from the simple to the exotic, but they all have one thing in common: They can be extremely vexing and frustrating when you just want to, well, throw out the digital trash.

Working Status
Deleting a file is usually quite simple. The application that you’re working in may provide you with a warning before you delete a file, asking you to confirm that you indeed want to delete the file before proceeding. Once confirmation is given, that’s all it takes. Windows versions since Windows 95 all feature the Recycle Bin, the trash can icon on your Desktop that temporarily stores deleted files. The Recycle Bin is there in case you have second thoughts and decide you need a deleted file after all and is just an area on your hard disk set aside to temporarily hold files marked for deletion. Files stored in the Recycle Bin may last for a while, depending on the size of the Bin. (By default, Windows makes the Recycle Bin 10% of whatever the hard disk capacity is.) But be aware that the Recycle Bin doesn’t exist in certain situations. For example, if you delete a file stored in a thumb drive, there won’t be any Recycle Bin to bail you out if you change your mind. Ditto for network drives, which usually don’t have a Recycle Bin either; usually, a file stored in a network drive is immediately deleted. But, since network drives are frequently backed up by businesses, there may be a copy of the file that you can retrieve from backup media if you accidentally delete something you needed after all.

Try, Try Again
You try to delete a file, but you receive a warning telling you the file can’t be deleted. When this occurs, the first step is to determine whether the file is in use by a program. For example, if you attempt to delete a file that is open in Microsoft Word, switch to Word and then close the file within Word. Once you close the file in Word, you should be able to delete it with no problem. In most cases, Windows XP tells you the application that is using the file in question, so it’s pretty simple to close the file and then delete it. You can also get a clue as to the application that is using the file by the file’s icon or the extension. For example, if a file extension is .PDF (Portable Document Format), you know this is an Adobe Acrobat (www.adobe.com) file that is viewed using Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader. Sometimes, even closing an application using a file isn’t enough. This can happen because an application does not play nice and refuses to let go of the file even though the application is closed. In some cases, an application may appear closed (you exited the application), but it is still running in the background. For example, some applications don’t close all the way when you exit but continue to run in the background. These apps may appear as a small icon on your System Tray (the area in Windows on the lower-right portion of the screen where you may see a number of small icons). If you suspect this is the problem, simply locate the application’s icon in the System Tray and close the application. For most programs, right-clicking the System Tray icon will launch a small menu that contains an Exit or Close command. Click the appropriate command and then delete the file. If the application using the file you want to delete is closed, there is no System Tray icon, and you still can’t delete the file, you may be grappling with a poorly programmed app that refuses to release a file even after you exit the application in the normal way. To close this type of stubborn program, press CTRL-ALT-DELETE to launch the Windows Task Manager. Click the Processes tab and look through the list of programs and processes running in your system. Unfortunately, the contents of this list are usually program names ending in .EXE or file names ending in .DLL, so things may appear a bit cryptic. Usually, the name of the program executable file for an application matches the name of the application: For example, Excel’s program executable file is Excel.exe. Scan the list, find your application’s executable file, and click the End Process button to close it. If the name of the application’s program executable file is not obvious, browse to the program folder that contains the application’s program files. To do this, double-click My Computer, Local Disk (C:), and the Program Files folder. Scroll through the list of folders until you locate the folder containing the program in question and then double click it to open it. Look for file names ending with .EXE; one of those will be the app’s main program executable, which you can then close using the Windows Task Manager’s Processes tab If all else fails, the inability to delete a file may be an indicator of file system corruption. This means the area of the hard drive where the file is stored is corrupted. This could be due to a software or hardware issue. For example, if an area of your hard drive is physically damaged, strange behavior can occur. To have Windows find and correct file system errors, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Disk Defragmenter. Click the Analyze button in the Disk Defragmenter window. Windows will look for file system errors and correct anything it finds, if possible. Now try to delete. If you still can’t delete the file after trying this software fix, there may be serious errors with your hard disk signaling an impending hard drive failure. And that is a real problem requiring swift action. Back up your important files and replace the hard disk as soon as possible.

Video File Issues
It is possible that you may receive an Access Denied or Windows Can’t Delete The File Because It’s In Use error message while trying to delete a file ending in the .AVI (Audio Video Interleave) file extension. This problem can occur because WinXP creates thumbnails for video files (such as AVI files) that show the first frame of the video. This makes it easy for users to see what video content a file contains without having to open it. To provide this functionality, WinXP uses a file called the Shell Media Extension (Shmedia.dll). This feature usually works perfectly, but whenever a video file is corrupted or not playing nice with Shmedia.dll, the system “locks” the file and doesn’t release it, even after you reboot. To solve this problem, you can do one of two things. First, you can open up a command line by clicking Start and Run and typing cmd in the text box. At the command prompt, type CD drive where file is stored:\folder where file is stored and press ENTER. For example, if the file is kept in a folder called Video in your C: drive, type CD C:\Video to open the folder. Type dir at the command prompt to see the list of files contained in the folder and then type DEL file name (where file name is the name of the file you want to delete) to delete the file. If the name of the folder is greater than six characters, you must shorten it by entering ~1 after the first six characters. For example, if the name of the folder you are trying to get to is called Program Files, to open the folder from a command prompt you must type CD C:\progra~1 to open the folder. That’s because the command prompt environment can’t handle long file names. The second approach requires modifying your Windows Registry. (NOTE: Making changes to the system using the Registry Editor may cause errors that render the operating system unstable. You should always create a backup before editing the Registry.) To do this, click Start and Run and then type regedit in the text box. With Registry Editor open, locate the following key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler\{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE
6850DC73E}. Click the key in the right-hand panel of the Registry Editor to highlight it, right-click the key, and select Delete from the context menu. You’ll give up the thumbnail previews of video files feature, but you’ll now be able to delete the offending AVI file.

For Your Own Protection
You keep deleting a file in one of your Windows system folders, but whenever you open the folder that contained the file, the file is there again. What’s going on? To prevent users from accidentally destroying their Windows installations, Win2000/XP contains a feature which is enabled by default called Windows File Protection. (The feature is called System File Protection in WinMe.) If you delete a file that Windows deems important, that file is automatically restored to its proper location from a cache of critical files that Windows keeps on your hard drive. If you’re trying to delete a file located in any of the Windows system folders, chances are you won’t be able to do it unless you disable Windows File Protection. And disabling Windows File Protection, while straightforward, requires some editing of a DLL file using a hex editor. Unless you have a really good reason to do this, you’re better off leaving Windows File Protection alone. It’s there for your protection. Only technically savvy users who are very experienced at tweaking and customizing their systems should attempt to remove Windows File Protection and delete files stored in the Windows system folders.

What To Do When . . .You Can’t Install Something

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:32:00 +0000

It all seemed like such a good idea at the time. You picked up the newest, coolest video-editing suite this afternoon and spent the whole drive home thinking of how your video creations were going to put Martin Scorsese to shame. However, every time you tried to install the software, your computer coughed up some new and exotic error that gave you no idea as to what the actual problem was. While the causes of install errors are many and varied, we’ve got you covered with some of the most common ones and how to go about fixing them.

Insufficient Resources
There’s one error that you may be able to circumvent before even buying the software. Too often, you can trace installation problems back to insufficient system resources. Most software manufacturers list the system requirements for their products right on the software packaging itself, but that helpful information really means nothing if you don’t know what you’re looking at or what resources your system has.

Let’s take a look at your system’s resources.
In Windows XP, simply click Start, then Control Panel, then double click System. In the window that pops up, click the System tab. Under the System heading, you’ll find your current operating system, as well as the Service Pack that’s currently installed. In the lower-right quadrant of this window, you’ll find information on your processor speed and available memory. Take note of all of this information; if your system’s specifications don’t match or exceed the requirements listed by the manufacturer, then the software won’t properly function on your computer.

Some software packages will also have specific requirements for your video card, as well. While still in the System Properties window, you can check these by clicking the Hardware tab and then clicking the Device Manager button. To see what kind of video card your system has, click the plus (+) symbol next to the Display Adapters icon. (You can also find this information by double-clicking the Display icon in the Control Panel and then clicking the Settings tab; the video card should be listed under the Display: heading about halfway down.) One final note about system requirements: Manufacturers will often list minimum system requirements as well as recommended ones. Though the software may work with the minimum requirements, it’s probably a good idea to make sure that your system has the recommended ones because the programs you install will generally run a lot smoother and crash less if your system doesn’t have to use every bit of its resources just to load them.

Do You Have Permission?
Another common problem users run into when installing new software, especially on newer machines, stems heavily from something called user permissions. Machines running Windows NT/2000/XP are all configured with an Administrator login, which is usually included so that normal users can’t access certain parts of the computer. You’ll know you have a problem with user permissions when your error message includes the words “Please contact your system administrator.” Of course, you probably don’t have a system administrator. You’re probably running the computer at home, not at an office. So why is your computer asking you to contact someone who probably doesn’t exist? User privileges are sometimes tricky to negotiate, but the first step is to make sure that you’re logged into your computer under the machine’s Administrator account. To do this, click the Start button in the lower left-hand corner of the screen and then click Log Off USERNAME. When the system comes back up, choose the Administrator profile and then type in your password, which should have been set up at the time Windows was installed or set up on the computer. After you’ve logged in as an Administrator, try to install the program again. You shouldn’t see any more error messages asking you to contact anyone.

Old News
Installation problems don’t always crop up while you’re installing that brand-spankin’ new piece of software. Every once in a while, a program you’ve used with delight for years will give you a fresh error that’s related to installation. The problem here is that many types of software cannot install properly if there is an older version of the same software already present on the computer. Though this error can be frustrating, it’s fortunately rather easy to fix. Click Start, then Settings, then Control Panel. Double-click the Add or Remove Programs icon.

A list of the software that is currently installed on the machine should appear. Scroll down through the list until you find a match for the software you’re trying to install (for example, if you’re trying to install the newest Adobe Flash Player, check the list for any mention of that name). When you do find a match, click the software name and then click the Change/Remove button. Your computer will uninstall the old version of the software. Sometimes, Windows will require you to restart your computer to complete the process. Once the computer is finished rebooting, log in as an Administrator and then try installing the software again.

If It Isn’t The Software
So far, we’ve mainly covered software installation problems, but another set of errors can cause just as much frustration for the average home user. Instead of purchasing the newest, coolest video-editing suite, you’ve instead just purchased some new hardware, in the form of a DVD-R drive for your machine. You followed the instruction sheet to the letter, but when you turn your computer on, the new component still won’t work. What gives? There are many reasons why a newly installed piece of hardware might not work, but we’ll cover three of them in general here.

The first reason should look rather familiar, as it’s also a common cause of software installation problems: system requirements. Check in the hardware’s packaging, and make sure your machine meets or exceeds the manufacturer’s requirements for the new part to operate. If your system requirements are in order, make sure that your machine has the correct drivers installed to run the new piece of hardware. These will usually come in the box with the new hardware, most often on a CD. Run this CD to install the proper set of drivers for the new hardware. Also, the hardware manufacturer’s

Web site may also have the driver for the hardware available for download. Now that the drivers are installed in your well-above-specs system, everything should work as advertised. If it doesn’t, however, you may want to check for a device conflict. This error occurs when more than one device is trying to use the same resource or set of resources on your computer. To see if this is the case, open the Device Manager as described above and then check the list for any piece of hardware that registers a device conflict (there will usually be a red exclamation mark in a yellow circle next to the names of such devices). Check with the hardware manufacturer on how to resolve these errors.

What To Do When . . .You’re Having Audio Problems

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:10:00 +0000

As computers and notebooks evolve into multimedia playback centers, reliable, quality sound becomes ever more important. Alas, many problems with your computer’s audio can arise at any moment. Audio troubles can originate from hardware and software sources, and you can even track these issues back into your computer’s most basic operating code, the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). If your computer’s audio doesn’t sound quite right or isn’t making any sounds at all, try walking through these audio troubleshooting basics.

When Silence Is Not Golden
The most common audio frustration seems to be not being able to get any audio at all. Unfortunately, there are many sources of this problem, from the embarrassingly obvious to the most technically daunting. First, check your hardware: Make sure that you’ve correctly connected the speakers to the audio outputs of the computer and that you properly power up the entire set. Most external PC speakers require their own power source that you need to plug in and turn on. After power outages, for instance, when you turn your computer back on, your speakers may not power back up unless you do so manually. Also, make sure that you turn the speaker volume back up to audible levels. These may seem like painfully obvious solutions, but in our experiences we can trace back many “no sound” problems to the simplest oversights. Next, check to make sure that Windows recognizes your audio hardware. Click the Start menu, select Settings, and click Control Panel. In the Control Panel window, double-click the System icon. In the System Properties window, click the Hardware tab and then under Device Manager, click the Device Manager button. This window shows an outline of your hardware and the software drivers that make them work properly with Windows. Double-click Sound, Video And Game Controllers to check to make sure none of your audio devices has a red X on it. If you see a red X, this means that your computer recognizes the audio hardware, but the drivers are not properly installed. In this case, you’ll need to reinstall your audio controller drivers. To do this, please see “Basic Troubleshooting: Audio Cards”.

If all of the hardware is operating correctly and you still can’t hear anything, then you need to check the volume settings in Windows XP. First, open up Windows Media Player (or a music player of your choice) and start playing a song so you have a constant audio stream for testing. Click the Start menu, select Settings, and then click Control Panel. In the Control Panel window, double-click Sounds And Audio Devices. In the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties window under Device Volume, look to see if there’s a check mark in the Mute box; if there is, click the box to uncheck it. In this same area, move the Device Volume setting to High. If this doesn’t work, then click the Advanced button in this area. In the Play Control window, you’ll see different sliders that control the various channels of your audio. The Play Control slider (far left) is for overall output level, but other sliders regulate the output for specific audio types. Most of your Windows sound effects and media playback come through the Wave channel, and some CDs play through the CD Player channel. Make sure there are not check marks in these channels’ Mute boxes and set the sliders to about 70% (a line or two away from the top). If this doesn’t work, you will have to make sure that the PC knows you have speakers connected. In the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties window, click the Advanced button in the Speaker Settings box. In the Speaker tab, if the Speaker Setup field says No Speakers, then your PC may not be driving any sound to the output channels. Click the dropdown arrow to select the setup that matches your speaker configuration and then click OK.

Can You Hear Me Now?
Getting a microphone to work properly on a PC can be a daunting task in itself. For starters, the microphone signal may be coming into your PC across one of several channels. To ensure that all of them are open, go back into the Sound And Audio Devices Properties menu via the Control Panel (see directions above). Click the Volume tab and the Advanced button in the Device Volume area. In the Play Control window, click the Options menu and make sure Advanced Controls has a check mark next to it so that you can see all of the available channels. With the same Options menu open, click Properties. In the Properties window under Adjust Volume For, select Recording. Under Show The Following Volume Controls, put check marks in all of the available boxes and click OK. You should now see all of the possible recording channels from your hardware. It’s most likely that the microphone or headset is using the Microphone or Line-In channel, so make sure the volume levels on each of these is at 70%. Again, in the Play Control Window click Options, Properties, and this time select Playback and place check marks in all of the boxes under Show The Following Volume Controls. Click OK to see the full range of playback channels available to you. Be sure to set the volume levels for all channels at about 70%. In some configurations you may have trouble recording from a microphone or using a headset for voice chatting if the Line-In or Microphone channels are set to Mute. If they are, simply uncheck the Mute boxes in each of these channels and test the audio recording again. The most effective way to set your audio input is through the well hidden Sound Hardware Test Wizard in WinXP. First, connect your microphone or headset to your line-in or microphone input on your PC. Go into the Sound And Audio Properties window and click the Voice tab. Under Voice Recording, click the Test Hardware button, and Windows will start a wizard that helps troubleshoot voice input channel problems and then sets the right levels for acceptable playback.

Isn’t This Supposed To Be A CD Player?
Yes, your PC is supposed to play CDs at least as well as most dedicated CD players, but it doesn’t always work out that way. If you want your music CDs to start right away and use the media player software of your choice, then double-click the My Computer icon on your Desktop. Right-click your optical disc drive and select Properties from the drop-down menu. In the drive’s window, click the AutoPlay tab and the drop-down menu arrow to choose Music CD. Under Actions, click the Select An Action To Perform radio button. The list below will show you all the possible actions Windows can perform whenever you put in a CD. Highlight your choice and click OK to activate it. If your CD is already playing but you don’t hear any sound, then open the Sounds And Audio Device Properties window from the Control Panel. Click the Advanced button under Device Volume and check to make sure that CD Player volume slider is set to 70% and that the Mute box does not have a check in it. Another final fix to try on an older computer is to see if the CD drive itself has a volume knob below the disc tray. If it does, turn the volume up to just below maximum and see if that brings your CD sound back.

I Have 5.1 Speakers & 2.1 Sound
Just because you have a fancy surround sound speaker kit doesn’t mean that your Windows computer knows how to use all six channels. Very often, software upgrades and audio settings from other programs will reset your audio output for standard two- or three-speaker arrangements even if you have full surround sound. If you aren’t getting audio from all of the speakers attached to your computer, then go into the Sound And Audio Devices Properties window (see above for directions). Click the Volume tab and the Advanced button under Speaker Settings. In the Speakers tab, under Speaker Setup, click the drop-down menu to select the appropriate speaker setup. Surround sound games and DVDs will only take advantage of all of your speakers if the basic speaker setup is correct in this window. Keep in mind that only some audio sources will take advantage of all six speakers in a 5.1 audio setup. In many cases, MP3 music and basic sound effects will only play back in stereo (two speakers) unless you’ve specifically instructed your audio hardware to “expand” all audio to your full four- or five-speaker set. To expand all audio, you must find your audio hardware’s control software. (Please see “Basic Troubleshooting: Audio Cards” for more information.)

The Twisted Chain Of Audio Settings
In many PCs, two sources control your audio input/output: WinXP and software associated with an audio add-on card or the built-in audio chipset for your motherboard. This can make the process of troubleshooting audio problems frustrating because your settings may be proper in the WinXP control boxes, yet the audio hardware’s drivers and software may be overriding the system settings. Most of the tips in this article deal with WinXP settings because the software for your audio hardware is particular to that hardware. As a general rule, however, you should locate that software. If it is an add-in card, one of the most likely manufacturers is Creative Labs, so look for that listing in Programs (Click Start and select Programs from the menu). If your audio functions come straight from your motherboard, then you may be looking for control software from Realtek, Nvidia, ESS, C-Media, AD SoundMAX, or Via/IC Ensemble, to name some of the most likely providers.

Weird Noises In The Attic
The source of audio distortion can be just as elusive as “no sound” problems. Again, the first response is to check the hardware. If your audio comes through an add-in card, you may be suffering interference from the many radio-emitting parts within a computer. For instance, if you hear chirping or buzzing when your hard drive is active, then your audio card may be picking up “noise” inside the computer case. One common cure is to move the audio card into the slot furthest from the hard drive and from any network interface card. Before moving the card, uninstall the audio drivers so you can reinstall them fresh after moving the audio card. (Please see “Basic Troubleshooting: Audio Cards” on how to do this.)

No Fun
Some of the most vexing audio problems arise when playing computer games, DVD movies, or MP3 audio files. Audio and video often interact with one another, and each can undermine the other’s performance. Entertainment software that uses 3D graphics or 5.1 audio tends to push your system to its limits and expose underlying weaknesses that can affect sound quality. For instance, video performance in 3D games can affect the audio, and you may get audio pauses or “hiccups” in the audio tracks during game play. In this case, your first line of defense is to address the video. Try to update the drivers for your graphics card because the card processes the images and sends that information across the motherboard, which can impact the audio track, as well. Of course, update your sound card or audio chipset drivers, too. (Please see “Basic Troubleshooting: Graphics Cards” for more information.) Audio “burps” may also come from a setting buried deep within your Sound And Audio Devices Properties window. Access those controls through the Control Panel (see previous directions) and click the Audio Tab. Under Sound Playback, click the Advanced button. The Advanced Audio Properties window controls the quality and range of audio features Windows uses. If you’re experiencing persistent audio distortion in games or even in music, click the Performance tab in this window and move the Hardware Acceleration slider to one notch below the Full setting. This disables some of the most advanced audio features and may produce cleaner multimedia sound. Click OK to activate the setting. In games or other multimedia such as DVD and MP3 playback, audio burps can also come from a badly fragmented hard drive. Over time, pieces of saved files are stored in different places on your hard drive, which makes your computer strain harder when accessing data and interrupts the audio flow. If your audio problems occur when you can see the hard drive access light flicker on your PC or hear the drive loading data, then you may need to defragment the drive. Double-click My Computer, right-click the drive letter where your computer stores Windows (usually the C: drive), and select Properties from the drop-down menu. Click the Tools tab and under Defragmentation, click the Defragment Now button. The process could take up to an hour or more to complete, but it creates a cleaner pathway for your data, including audio files.

Hiss
The interior of a computer can produce electrical “noise” that results in background hissing through your speakers or headphones. The first cure is letting your speaker system do the amplification rather than your audio card or motherboard. As in the examples above, go into the Sounds And Audio Properties window via the Control Panel. Click the Volume tab and the Advanced button under Device Volume. In the Play Control window, set all of the volume sliders to 70% or 80% and leave them there. Setting your computer’s output volume to the max tends to overdrive the onboard amplifier, which generally isn’t as efficient as the amplifier in your external speakers. From now on, if you rely on your speakers to control volume, you should get a cleaner sound. If the hissing or buzzing persists, then you are probably experiencing interference from one of the multiple audio channels going into and out of the computer. The Line-In channel is the most likely suspect when it comes to a constant hissing. In the same Play Control window as above, click the Mute box under the Line-In column to block any audio input coming from that channel. Of course, if you use that audio input for a microphone or some other external audio input, then you will need to un-Mute the channel whenever you need to use the external device. The other culprit may be your Microphone channel. Again, in the Play Control window, look for the Microphone channel. If it doesn’t show up, click the Options menu and select Properties from the drop-down menu. Under Show The Following Volume Controls, place a check mark in the Microphone box and click OK. You should now see the Microphone box. Place a check mark in its Mute box to silence any background noise that may be coming from that channel. In fact, you can keep your audio clean by muting any input or output channel that you don’t need. In the end, if you’re having computer audio problems, the general rule is don’t set anything to the max. Also, be sure to always check for obvious solutions to your problems (be sure speaker cables are connected correctly) and then move on to the less obvious.

What To Do When . . .You’re Having Video Problems

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:51:00 +0000

It’s not uncommon to feel completely in the dark when your computer’s video or display seems to be acting up. Often, video problems prevent you from following the normal troubleshooting routines and lack error messages that hint at the real problem. The following are some common problems you may encounter and solutions to help you back into the light.

If Your Monitor Is Blank . . .
Check the computer. The first step is to make sure your computer is connected to a working outlet. Press the power button. Commonly, you can determine if the computer is running by listening for fan noise and looking for lit LEDs (light-emitting diodes) on the front of the PC. Sometimes you’ll hear a beep from the internal speaker as the computer boots. If your PC won’t boot, then refer to “Your PC Won’t Start”. Check the monitor. If your monitor is blank, make sure its power cable is connected to a working outlet and fully inserted into the monitor itself. Also make sure the video cable is connected to the appropriate VGA (Video Graphics Array) or DVI (Digital Visual Interface) port on the graphics card or motherboard. Tighten the screws on the video cable connector to make sure you’re getting the best connection possible. Inspect both cables for exposed wires and kinks. If these exist, or if the video cable connector has some bent pins, you may need to replace the cable or monitor. Press the power button on the monitor. If you see a light, then you know the monitor is receiving power. If your monitor has physical brightness and contrast knobs or buttons on the unit, try adjusting these to make sure they were not accidentally turned to low or high. If all else fails and you have a spare monitor handy, try plugging it into your computer. If the alternate monitor works, then you’ll need to troubleshoot the former monitor itself. For more information on specifically troubleshooting monitors, refer to “Basic Troubleshooting: Screens & Monitors” on page 100. If both monitors fail to display video, then you may need to dig a bit deeper.

Check the graphics card.
Your graphics adapter is responsible for everything that you see, so video problems commonly relate to graphics adapter issues. PCs typically come with one of two types of graphics adapters: the standalone variety, called graphics cards, or the built-in variety, which we’ll refer to as graphics adapters. Built-in graphics adapters are actually a component of the motherboard, so refer to “Basic Troubleshooting: Motherboards” for more information. To inspect a standalone graphics card, shut down the computer and open the case. While the computer is still plugged in and before touching any internal components, touch a metal part of the case to discharge static electricity. Next, unplug the power cable, unplug the video cable, and examine the graphics card. If it looks like it is not fully inserted, or if the card is dusty or difficult to fully inspect, then you’ll have to remove the power supply connectors (if applicable); unscrew the rear bracket screw; and unlatch the card by sliding, pushing, or pulling the latch that holds the card into the slot (usually found on AGP [Accelerated Graphics Port] and PCI [Peripheral Component Interconnect] Express slots). You may need to bend a tab to free the card from the slot. Gently ease the card out of the slot. Now inspect the card for obvious problems, wipe away dust with a clean, dry cloth, and also wipe the slot on the motherboard. Reinsert the graphics card, making sure the metal contacts on the graphics card are aligned with the slot. Screw the bracket into place, slide the latch on the port (if applicable), and reconnect the power connectors (if applicable).

Connect the video cable to the back of the card and replace the case cover. Restart the computer. If you have another graphics card, try installing it in the current graphics card’s place. If this doesn’t solve the problem, you may need to troubleshoot your graphics card. Refer to “Basic Troubleshooting: Graphics Cards” Check other internal components. Sometimes, components besides the monitor and graphics card can cause video problems. One common culprit is RAM. If the RAM modules in your system are improperly seated or have failed, your display won’t initialize and your computer will fail to boot. Shut down your computer, open the case, touch a metal part of the case to dissipate static electricity, and unplug the computer. The RAM modules are commonly located to the right of the processor. To remove the modules, press the clips at either end of each module down. The module should pop out of the slot. Examine the modules for visible damage, remove dust with a clean, dry cloth, and reinsert them if they appear undamaged. Make sure the modules are oriented in the slot correctly (the slots are keyed to prevent improper orientation) and then press the modules firmly into the slots and allow the clips to snap into place. Close the case, plug in the PC, and restart it. If the problem persists, you may need to troubleshoot your RAM. Refer to “Basic Troubleshooting: RAM”. If you’ve attempted all the above but still don’t see anything on the display, any number of your PC’s components may be causing your computer to fail to boot. Turn to the PC Components section of this issue to begin troubleshooting other possibilities, such as your PC’s ports (see “Basic Troubleshooting: Ports”), power supply (see “Basic Troubleshooting: Power Supplies”), or processor (see “Basic Troubleshooting: Processors”) Clear the CMOS. The CMOS (complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor) keeps track of your computer’s internal clock and basic system settings. If the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) settings have been improperly configured and your computer won’t boot, then you may need to clear the CMOS memory and restore your PC to its factory default settings. Don’t attempt to clear the CMOS unless you feel comfortable doing so.

This procedure involves opening your case, so exercise caution. Shut the computer down, open the case, discharge static electricity as described above, and unplug the computer. Next, locate the button battery that powers the CMOS. This battery is like a smooth nickel. Near this battery you’ll find the CMOS jumper, which consists of three jumpers, or pins, on the motherboard. To clear the CMOS, remove the jumper cap and move it so that it caps the middle pin and the pin that was previously exposed. Leave the cap here for approximately 10 seconds. Next, move the jumper cap back to its original position. It’s very important that you return the jumper cap to its original position, otherwise the computer won’t boot. Now that the CMOS has been cleared, close the case, plug in the PC, and restart. You may need to press a key while the computer boots to acknowledge that the settings have been reset to the factory defaults.

Windows Won’t Boot

Use the last known good configuration. Sometimes, after installing a graphics card driver, you’ll be unable to boot into Windows. Restart your computer and, as the computer boots, repeatedly press the F8 key until you see the Windows Advanced Options Menu. Use the arrow key to highlight the Last Known Good Configuration option and then press ENTER. Use a system restore point. Restart your computer and, as the computer boots, repeatedly press the F8 key until you see the Windows Advanced Options Menu. Use the arrow key to highlight the Safe Mode option and then press ENTER. Log on to your computer as you normally would. Before you see the Windows Desktop, you’ll see the Windows Is Running In Safe Mode pop-up. Click No. In the System Restore dialog box, make sure the Restore My Computer To An Earlier Time radio button is enabled and click Next. Select a Restore Point from the calendar on the left, particularly one that was saved prior to when you first encountered the problem, and then click Next. Click Next to restore your computer.

Trouble With New Video Cards
Reboot your computer. If you recently installed a new video card and driver, then your computer will rely on the generic VGA driver until you reboot the system. To start using your new card to its full potential, reboot the system. Uninstall the current graphics card driver and install an updated driver. If you didn’t uninstall the previous driver, then your system probably opted to use the generic VGA driver when it determined that the current graphics card wasn’t designed to run with the installed driver. Even if you installed the graphics driver from the disc that accompanied your new graphics card, it may not have been the most up-to date version available. Any time you upgrade hardware, it’s a good idea to download the latest driver from the manufacturer’s Web site (if you haven’t already done so) and save it to your Desktop. Top graphics card manufacturers Nvidia (www.nvidia.com) and ATI (ati.amd.com) make finding the right graphics card driver easy. From Nvidia’s site, click the Download Drivers link at the top of the page and follow the onscreen instructions for downloading the appropriate driver. From ATI’s site, click the Drivers & Software icon, click Find A Driver, and then click the appropriate options to download the latest driver for your video card. Next, uninstall the existing driver, as well as any related graphics configuration software, using the Add Or Remove Programs utility. In WinXP, click Start and Control Panel and then click (double-click in Classic View) Add Or Remove Programs. If you’re using Win98/2000, click Start, Settings, Control Panel and then double-click the Add Or Remove Programs icon. Scan the Currently Installed Programs list for the graphics card’s manufacturer and then click the Remove or Change /Remove button on all items that pertain to the graphics card. Restart the computer and double click the executable files for the new graphics card drivers you previously downloaded. Follow the on-screen instructions to install the driver and restart the computer. Check the BIOS. Sometimes, improper BIOS settings can result in a conflict between AGP and PCI graphics cards. To make sure your BIOS is properly configured, restart your PC and immediately begin pressing the designated key that grants you access to the BIOS. This key varies from system to system, so check your computer or motherboard manual for information about which key to press.

You may also see instructions for accessing the BIOS appear on-screen as the computer boots. Some common keys are DELETE, ESC, F1, or F2. If you’re required to press a function key, make sure you don’t have F-LOCK enabled on your keyboard. Press the key repeatedly until you enter the BIOS. Changing BIOS settings can cause your computer to fail to boot, so exercise caution. If you’re using an AGP or PCI graphics card, make sure the BIOS is configured to initialize the display with whichever type of card you use. Some older PCs are set by default to recognize PCI graphics cards before AGP graphics cards. Examine the BIOS menus for an option that lets you change this to the appropriate setting for your graphics card. Individual menu and options names vary greatly by PC, so consult the documentation that came with your computer or motherboard. Once you’ve changed the settings, press the Save And Exit key, typically F10. If at any point you made a change to the BIOS that you want to undo, you can reset the BIOS by pressing the designated Load Defaults key. The Save And Exit and Load Defaults keys usually appear on the main BIOS options screen. Roll back your driver. Sometimes, installing an updated graphics driver will actually cause more problems than it solves. Although this is a rare occurrence, it may force you to use an older graphics driver until a fixed one becomes available. To perform this step, you’ll need to be able to access your Windows Desktop. Click Start, right-click My Computer, click Manage, click Device Manager from the left pane of the Computer Management window, and then click the plus (+) symbol in front of Display Adapters in the right pane. Right-click the graphics adapter, click Properties, click the Driver tab, and then click the Roll Back Driver button. Click Yes to continue on the Are You Sure You Would Like To Roll Back To The Previous Driver window. If at one time you installed an older driver, the Roll Back procedure will restore it as the main graphics adapter driver. If not, Roll Back will remove the current driver and begin using the generic VGA driver. Click Close to complete the process. Click OK in the System Properties dialog box and then close the Device Manager window.

The Desktop Doesn’t Look Right
Adjust the display settings. If you can see your Windows Desktop when you boot the PC, then open the display properties and adjust the settings. Right-click anywhere on the Desktop, click Properties, and click the Settings tab. Here you’ll find the Display, Screen Resolution, and Color Quality settings. If your computer is configured to use multiple monitors, make sure you select the appropriate one from the Display drop box. Adjust the Screen Resolution and Color Quality settings to the highest settings that your monitor supports. You may need to consult the documentation or manufacturer’s Web site to determine these settings for your monitor. Click Apply and then click Yes if the Desktop looks satisfactory. If the icons and text appear too small, move the Screen Resolution slider to the left one increment, click Apply, and then click Yes if you prefer the new setting. If not, click No, and move the slider an additional increment. Continue this trial and error process until you find a setting that works. Common resolutions supported by most 17-inch or larger monitors include 800 x 600, 1,024 x 768, and 1,280 x 1,024. Occasionally, the Screen Resolutions on the Display Properties box don’t match those supported by your monitor. If you choose a setting that isn’t supported, and the monitor goes blank, wait 14 seconds to allow the system to reset your monitor to the previous setting. Often the monitor will display a message such as No Connection, No Input, or No Signal during this short interval. Typically, you’ll want to set the Color Quality to the highest available setting, which is usually Highest (32-bit). Some software applications require lower Color Quality settings, so if you see errors pertaining to Color Quality when running a given application, adjust the setting accordingly.

What To Do When . . .You Can’t Open Email Attachments

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:51:00 +0000

Maybe you’re expecting a photo of your newest grandbaby, waiting for a cute forward from a friend, or looking for an important business contract. Regardless of the contents, when an email message arrives, you want to open it. Unfortunately, that’s not always easy; attachments that accompany many emails can be difficult to open. To help, we’ve rounded up some tips and tricks to assist you in opening troublesome email attachments.

Safe & Saved
Because email attachments can contain viruses and other harmful files, the software installed on our computers often tries to protect us from attachments. In doing so, this software prevents us from opening those attachments, even if the attachment and email is legitimate. There are ways around this, but it’s best to proceed with caution. Because of the damage viruses can cause, it’s always a good idea to make sure that the attachment you are trying to open is legitimate and safe before opening it. Although most trustworthy antivirus programs scan your email and attachments, it never hurts to save an attachment to your hard drive and let the antivirus program scan it there. Never assume that an attachment is safe until it has been scanned; even friends may unknowingly send you an infected file. Use your email program to save the attachment to a location on your hard drive. Then, open your antivirus program and scan the file you just saved. If it’s too late, and you suspect you may have opened an infected attachment, see “What To Do When...Your PC Has A Virus” Some files are difficult to open as an attachment. In this case, you’ll want to save the file to your hard drive and open it from there. If you still have difficulties opening the file, right-click it and choose Properties. On the General tab, look for an option to Unblock the file. If available, click the checkbox next to Unblock and then click OK. Now, try to open the file again. Rather than trying to open a saved attachment directly, you may also try loading the program first, then clicking File and Open. Some users prefer this method to other methods of opening files. Use the method you feel most comfortable with.

An Overzealous Antivirus
Although we highly recommend having an antivirus program installed, updated, and running on your computer, especially when using email, some antivirus programs will stop you from opening certain types of attachments. When you can’t open a legitimate file, check your antivirus’ security settings. You may have to go as far as disabling the program temporarily. When you’re finished viewing the attachment, make sure you re-enable the antivirus program and restore any security settings you may have changed. For more information on working with antivirus programs.

Email Settings
Some email programs, such as Outlook Express, block potentially unsafe attachments. To open attachments that are blocked by Outlook Express, you’ll need to change your security settings. In Outlook Express, click Tools, Options, and navigate to the Security tab. Uncheck the box next to Do Not Allow Attachments To Be Saved Or Opened That Could Potentially Be A Virus. Click Apply and OK, then try to open the attachment again. After viewing the attachment, close it, and then re-apply the security setting in Outlook Express for best protection.

The Right Software
Sometimes, the lack of a software program stops your computer from opening an email attachment. When your email program can’t find an appropriate application to use in opening the attachment, you may get an error similar to the following: This File Does Not Have A Program Associated With It For Performing This Action. If this happens, you may also see the Open With dialog box that lets you choose a program from a list. If your computer has a program you know will open the file, select it from the list, and click OK. Assuming the file is compatible with the program you chose, the attachment should open successfully. If you’re unable to find a compatible program from the Open With dialog box, click the link for If The Program You Want Is Not In The List Or On Your Computer, You Can Look For The Appropriate Program On The Web to find a suitable program. For example, if someone sends you an image file in .EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) format, and your computer doesn’t have a program that will read EPS files, you won’t be able to open the attachment. In this case, you have two options: you can ask the sender to resend the document in a different format that is compatible with the programs on your computer, or you can install software that will read the file in its current format. Using the aforementioned link to search for a program that will open EPS files, we found a couple of applications that will let us view the file, including IrfanView (free; www.irfanview.com). If you don’t know if your computer has the required software to open the attached file, look for the file’s extension, denoted by a period and three or four letters that follow the file name. A file’s extension will tell you what type of file you’re dealing with. You can then check to see if your computer has a program associated with that file type by clicking Start, My Computer, Tools, and Folder Options. Look for the file’s extension in the File Types tab. If you find the file format you’re trying to open in the list, but the program associated with that file type is incorrect or different from what you would prefer, click the Change button to select a different program to use in opening all files with that extension.

Missing Messages
Some ISPs (Internet service providers) limit the size of emails you can receive. If you’re expecting an email with a large attachment from someone and never receive the message, check with your ISP to see if it limits the size of messages you can receive. If your friend sent an email with a 5MB attachment, but your ISP limits email sizes to 2MB, you may never receive the message. Some ISPs will send a message to the sender to let him know that you never received his message. This isn’t always the case, though, and some messages are lost forever.

Ask For Help
When you’re unsure as to why your computer won’t open a particular attachment file, ask the sender of the message what program she used to create and view the file. If you have the same program, double-check to make sure it’s the most recent version and the program functions without errors. Occasionally, files can become corrupted during the transport process. If you receive an attachment in a format your computer can read, but the file won’t open, ask the sender to resend it.

Be Persistent
Email attachments aren’t always easy to open. Because email attachments come in many different formats and sizes, no single solution will open every attachment. With a little persistence and these tips, you should be able to open the majority of email attachments.

What To Do When . . .You Can’t Send Or Receive Email

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:02:00 +0000

Sending and receiving email is one of the fundamental expectations of any connected PC. It should be as easy to do as turning on your computer but sometimes it isn’t. Simple as it seems, emailing is actually a complicated procedure that has many possible points of error. When your email client starts delivering arcane error codes, a simple process gets complicated quickly. For these troubleshooting situations, we will be using the most common email client, Microsoft’s Office Outlook 2003. Many of the principles and fundamental fixes for these programs work similarly in other clients such as Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Eudora.

Email Just Won’t Start
You can’t get your mail if you double-click your Outlook icon and nothing happens. The most common cause of this problem is that Outlook didn’t close properly or entirely the last time you used it. A piece of the program may still be in your computer’s memory, so Windows may believe the program is already running. To fix this, just wait; Windows XP often cleans its own memory of remnant program code on its own, but this can take a while. Another fix is to reboot your PC, which restarts Windows with a clean memory slate. The shortcut fix to this problem is to end the Outlook “process” that’s still operating in the background. Press CTRL-ALT-DELETE to bring up the Windows Security window and click the Task Manager button. In the Task Manager, click the Applications tab and look to see if Outlook is listed under the Task column. If it’s listed and the status is “Running,” this means the program is active but for some reason it isn’t visible to you. Click your email program to highlight it and click the Switch To button to see if that opens the program. If that doesn’t work or if the program isn’t visible in the Applications tab, click the Processes tab and look for Outlook.exe, which should be listed under the Image Name column. Click your email program and then click the End Process button. A Task Manager Warning box will warn you that you’ll lose any unsaved data if you click the Yes button. Click the Yes button to end the process and then close the Task Manager window. There are times when Task Manager will list Outlook. exe several times; eliminate all of these listings in order to clear your PC’s memory. You should be able to open Outlook now.

Email Is Not Talking
One of the most common error messages you may get from the Outlook email client is Outlook Is Unable To Connect To Your Incoming POP3 E-mail Server. The first thing to do in this instance is to check your Internet connection. Open a Web browser window and try to navigate to a Web site. If the browser also is unable to connect to the Internet, then your problem is with your network connection or the connection to your ISP (Internet service provider), not with your email client. We won’t get into general troubleshooting of a bad network connection here, but you should first check your network cables, any router you may have, and your cable or DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) modem to make sure that they are plugged in and connected properly. Before tinkering with your email client settings, you should also check your security software and firewall settings. It is possible that one of these programs is interfering with how your email client communicates with the Internet. Every security program works differently, but to check if this is the trouble, try temporarily disabling your firewall or security protection. Security suites such as Norton and McAfee have quick disable buttons, which will come up if you right-click their icons in the System Tray or click the first window of the program. If you do this and your email client works properly, then the issue involves your security suite and you need to consult its documentation for the fix.

Send & Receive Errors
If you succeed in isolating the problem in your email client, then you need to check out its configuration settings. In Outlook, click the Tools menu and E-mail Accounts to open up the E-mail Account wizard. Under E-mail, click View Or Change Existing E-mail Accounts and click the Next button. In the E-mail Accounts window under Name, click to highlight your default email account and then click the Change button, which brings you to the email program’s settings screen. In Outlook you need to confirm that the client is reaching out to the correct server addresses at your ISP. Every ISP will be different, so you need to get the right email setup instructions from your provider. In most cases, however, your Incoming Mail Server (POP3) listing should read something like mail.yourISPname.com and your Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) should look something like smtp.yourISP name.com. Your ISP may have changed these settings because of an email client upgrade or a system change, so be sure to double-check them. If the settings look correct and the program still isn’t sending or receiving email, try deleting the Incoming Mail Server (POP3) and Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) entries and retyping the correct addresses. Another possibility is that your ISP’s email server isn’t responding because it needs you to use SPA (Secure Password Authentication). If there isn’t a check mark in the Log On Using Secure Password Authentication (SPA) box, check it and then click Next and Finish. In other cases, you may get error messages from the server such as, SSL Negotiation Failed. In that case, uncheck the Log On Using Secure Password Authentication (SPA) box because the servers are incompatible with it.

The Settings Are Correct
If you’re certain your email client is properly configured and network and Internet connections are working properly, but your Send/Receive process still fails, then try rebuilding your email account. Sometimes you have to delete and re-establish your email settings for them to work properly. First, make sure you have all of the necessary information for your account and ISP: username, password, outgoing/incoming server names, and any other settings the ISP requires. In Outlook, click Tools and E-mail Accounts to open up the E-mail Account wizard. Under E-mail, click View Or Change Existing E-mail Accounts and click the Next button. Highlight your default email account and click the Remove button. (This will not delete your old email messages.) Next, click the Add button. Most user email accounts use a POP3 email server (unless your ISP tells you otherwise), so select the POP3 radio button and click Next. In the next window, fill in your User Information (name and email address) and Logon Information (the username for the account and the password). On the right side of the window, fill in the Server Information we outlined earlier (incoming mail is mail.yourISP name.com and outgoing mail is smtp.yourISPname.com). In Outlook you can test your settings by clicking the Test Account Settings button. The next screen tests all of your settings and reports where exactly the problem may be. If Outlook can’t find the network connection, then the problem lies with the ISP. If it can’t find the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) or POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) server, then the outgoing or incoming mail servers are probably mislabeled. Once your settings pass all of the tests, click Next and Finish to return to the client. If your account settings are working properly, you should receive a test message in your Inbox from Outlook the next time you click Send/Receive.

But I Put In My Password!
A common email frustration occurs when your client repeatedly asks you to enter your password and fails to make contact with the server. In many cases you already have your password embedded in the program’s configuration but the password window keeps popping up. In our experience, this has usually indicated a temporary problem with our ISP’s email servers and not a problem with our local email client. To fix this problem, close out of Outlook and try again later. If the problem persists, then use the steps we outlined earlier to search the client’s configuration settings and check to see that it still has your password entered properly. Otherwise, email or call your ISP to inquire about the status of its email servers.

Bad Host
Some email messages you try to send will return an error message indicating Host Unknown. Usually, it is most likely that the recipient’s email address is incomplete or wrong. If you’re certain the address is correct, then the message means there is a problem with the recipient’s email server. Later, try resending the email again.

Is It Better To Give Than To Receive?
Sending email often is more error prone than the retrieval process. You may get error messages from your email client that it Cannot Contact The SMTP Server or that The Server Connection Timed Out when trying to send a message. Sometimes, the client will alert you that it was trying to contact the outgoing server for one minute and asks whether it should continue. In some cases, this message is a result of your email client losing contact with the correct outgoing port on your computer or the SMTP server. The most common fix for this is to close down and restart your email client. The program may issue an alert and ask whether to send the unsent messages before shutting down; tell it not to send anything and close the client. Wait about 30 seconds to let any remnants of the program clear out of the memory and then restart and send the message again.

Shrink Your File
Your email may “time out” or return an error message from the server related to “attachment size.” Many ISPs put an upper limit on the file size you can attach to an outgoing message: sometimes 2MB, 3MB, or more. A large attachment can also produce an error message because the upload takes so long that the client drops the connection. To determine whether the attachment is the cause, try sending the same message after removing the attachment. You can also use Window XP’s native file compression program to stuff the file into a smaller package. To do this, right-click the file you want to attach to your email, select Send To from the dropdown menu, and click Compressed (Zipped) Folder. This process creates a new ZIP file that should be smaller and easier to send. Another workaround for sending huge attachments is to use a Web-based email service such as Google’s Gmail, MSN’s Hotmail, or Yahoo! Mail. Sign up for an account with these free services and you can send enormous file attachments that would otherwise choke your POP3 account.

Am I A Spammer?
When you send a single email to a large list of people, your ISP may return an error message such as The Message Could Not Be Sent Because One Of The Recipients Was Rejected By The Server. In order to block spammers, most ISPs limit the number of people to whom you can send the same message to usually between 25 and 50 recipients. With mass mailings, try sending multiple instances of the same message to only 20 recipients at a time. You can solve many of the most common email problems with one of the fixes we discussed in this section. However, you will need to keep in mind that the background processes for email can involve complex exchanges between your PC and the servers at your ISP. When all else fails, you may want to call your ISP’s tech support.

What To Do When . . .You Can’t Access A WLAN

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:57:00 +0000

Having a wireless connection to access your home network or a public network at an airport or other hotspot is a wondrous capability. Not being able to get your wireless connection up and running, or having your functioning network suddenly stop working, can be a thunderous inconvenience. The complex workings of WLAN (wireless local-area network) connections sometimes break. But there are some basic fixes you can try to get your network humming again. For the purposes of this article, we’re assuming you have Windows XP on your computer. We will walk you through steps to solve the three basic wireless connection problems you may experience: no connectivity, chronic dropped connections, and slow speeds.

No Connectivity
Connectivity problems can afflict your computer when you’re first installing your network. They can also occur after your network has been running perfectly for months and you’ve long forgotten how to access the network interface on both your remote PC and your wireless router. Perhaps it wasn’t even you who set up the network, further adding to the challenge of solving the problem. In most cases, you’ll begin your troubleshooting efforts by checking the configuration on your remote PC. Note that it is the frustrating nature of wireless connections that any one of the suggestions below or a combination of them may work, or not. In many cases, there is no definite “this solution fixes that problem,” only a series of “things to try.” You have to keep trying fixes until the network works. Open Network Connections by clicking Start, My Network Places, and View Network Connections. In the right pane in the window that opens you’ll see a list of all the possible ways you can connect to the network and the Internet based on the networking hardware your system is currently set up to work with. Our computer, for example, shows four types of connections: a dialup connection via modem, a 1394 FireWire connection, a 10/100BaseT Ethernet LAN connection, and a wireless 802.11g radio connection. The Status column shows whether the connection is enabled or disabled. If it’s disabled, it will say so in the Status column. If it is enabled, the status will be Connected, Not Connected, or Disconnected. When the system is working, the status of your connection of choice will be Connected. Unfortunately, just because it says it’s connected doesn’t mean you’ll actually have network access. If your Wireless Network Connection status is Disabled, you or another user (say, a co-worker if you’re using a laptop that co-workers share) has manually disabled it. To enable the connection, right-click Wireless Network Connection in the Name column and select Enable. The menu will close and a status box will show that “Enabling” is in progress. In a few seconds the status of the device should change to Connected, Not Connected, or Disconnected and the status box should disappear. If the status has changed to Connected, try opening your browser. You should be connected and running. If the status changes to Disconnected, right-click Wireless Network Connection again and choose Connect. In a moment or two the status should change to Connected. If it does, try accessing a Web site with your browser. Under most circumstances you should be on the ’Net. If there’s still no Internet connectivity, you’ll have to dig deeper. If the status is Not Connected, the problem may be as simple as the wireless radio being off. Check the physical switch (if there is one) on your notebook or type the appropriate key combination (for example, FN-F2) for turning on the radio. The status should change to Connected. If it does, open your browser. You should be connected and online. If, when checking the radio, you find that it’s already on, right-click Wireless Network Connection and choose View Available Wireless Networks. A new window, Wireless Network Connection, opens. This window offers a list of all the available wireless networks within range and prompts you to Choose A Wireless Network from the list and click Connect. You should recognize which network is yours. If the window doesn’t indicate any network as connected, you should first try your own network. If your network is not listed, the trouble could be that your router or modem is not working properly. Check them to make sure that all the indicator lights are on as they should be. If necessary, check the manuals for those devices to get them in working order. If your network is on the list, double click it. A status box will appears showing the attempt to connect. After a few seconds the network chosen will give the message, “Acquiring Network Address.” If everything goes well, a Connected message will appear. Open your browser and you should have access to the Web. If both the Wireless Network Connection and Network Connection windows show your network as Connected but you still can’t access the network or the Internet, your problems run deeper. The list of available networks will indicate which networks are secured and which ones are open. If you can’t get online using your own network, you can try connecting to one of the other open networks. Try to only connect to networks you know, however, because connecting to unknown and/or unsecure networks can open your computer to potential security hazards. In the list of networks, double click the open network with the best connection (that is, the one with the most green bars). A status box shows that your computer is attempting to log onto the chosen network. This attempt can take some time, so be patient. When the connection completes, try accessing the Internet. If you are successful, you know that the problem with your network is probably at the router, not the remote PC. If the attempt fails, the problem could be with your PC or with the network you tried to access. If there are other open networks available, try accessing them. If you can’t log on to any, the problem is likely the configuration of your remote computer. If your Wireless Network Connection reads Connected and the available network list also shows it as Connected, the problem could be with your broadband modem or your router’s connection to it. If the modem’s indicator lights all read OK, try replacing the cable between the router and the modem and try connecting. If you still have no Internet access, you’ll have to dig deeper into the Windows Network Connections interface. To go to the next level of troubleshooting, right-click Wireless Network Connection in the Network Connections window and select Properties. In the Wireless Network Connection Properties dialog box the General tab displays a list of items your wireless connection uses. In fact, depending on what’s listed and checked, your system may not be using all of the services, and one or two could be causing your headaches.

On our computer the items listed include Client For Microsoft Networks and File And Printer Sharing For Microsoft Networks. Both of these services can be disabled, and in simple wireless networks where you mainly just want to share an Internet connection these services should be disabled. If they are listed and active in your network and you’re sure you don’t need them, uncheck them. Another item that you can uncheck, if listed, is Client Service For Netware. There can be other unnecessary items in this list to uncheck. The three basic services you want to have active at all times are QoS Packet Scheduler, Network Monitor Driver, and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) or Microsoft TCP/IP Version 6 (both may be listed; keep only one active).

Click the Wireless Networks tab to get a list of available networks. You should see an antenna symbol next to the network name. If you see a red X, the configuration has problems. In this event check the router for possible problems and/or try moving the remote PC closer to the router. Click your network and click the Properties button under the network list. The resulting dialog box will show the encryption standard in use and include a box in which you can enter your WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) key. Windows can occasionally lose this key. Try typing in your WEP key. While you’re here, click the Authentication tab and make sure that authentication for the network is enabled. In most cases it should be, and when used it must be activated on the router, too. Check the router configuration to be sure. Click OK to close each of the open dialog boxes. Chronic Dropped Connections Everyone who’s ever used a radio has experienced periods of static, white noise, and, depending on the location, other stations coming through on the current frequency. Common (802.11b/g, but not 802.11a) wireless networks use the 2.4GHz band of radio frequency, as do many other radio-wave producing devices, including wireless phones, microwaves, various household wireless devices, and some toys. If your work area is several rooms away from the router or on a different floor, wave interference can disrupt the signal enough to keep it from passing cleanly through walls and floor.

There are a few things you can do to improve reception and keep the signal clear. The easiest, but not necessarily the most convenient, thing to do is to shorten the distance between the router and the receiver. You can, for instance, move the computer to a spot near the router. This is easily done if your receiver is in a laptop, but although your signal may improve your computer may no longer be in an environment conducive to getting your work done efficiently. The next best thing to moving the computer is moving the source of the signal. Moving the router or installing an access point or range extender can move the wireless signal’s origination point to a direct line of sight to the receiver and dramatically shorten the distance the signal has to travel to reach the receiver. This requires an additional outlay of money (although neither piece of equipment is very expensive, and well worth the cost if they fix the problem) and some additional wiring (which is what wireless networks are supposed to help you avoid). You can get wireless range extenders or signal boosters, but you need to power these devices. So wherever you place them you’ll need an outlet nearby. Before you invest in additional equipment, check that the channel in your router’s setup utility is set for automatically finding the clearest channel. If the channel is assigned, the default channel is usually channel 11, and that channel often ends up being the most heavily trafficked. There should be a radio button or other selection method to choose the automatic channel selection option. Choose that and be sure to apply the change or click OK if your router software requires it. Then close the setup utility and try your connection again. If you want an assigned channel, try one that’s used less frequently than channel 11. Channels 1, 6, and 11 are normally used for public 802.11b WLANs and by many home networks. Optimally you want your channel to be as far away as possible from the others. If there are only a few other competing networks, try channel 1; the logic here is based on the probability that the others are set to the default channel 11. One of the utilities built into Windows, WZC (Wireless Zero Configuration), is smart enough to recognize when the access point you’re using may not be pumping out the strongest signal within range of your computer. Its job is to switch your laptop to the available access point with the same SSID (service set identifier) issuing the strongest available signal, all without any user intervention. That’s a great idea when all the access points are hooked into the same network. If, however, the new access point is on a different network, which in the case of a home network it will be, your connection to the network with the weaker access point gets broken. For a home network, all it takes is for your neighbor to have an access point in range to prompt the WZC to attempt to switch you to the access point with the strongest signal. This cuts you off from your own network and connects you to your neighbor’s. You can disable this service, but your best bet is to simply reassign your network a unique SSID, which is recommended in any case. You might also encounter a problem after installing WinXP Service Pack 2 or a Windows Update, in which your connection hangs when acquiring a network address or your connection becomes limited or nonexistent even if your radio is on. Microsoft offers a patch to fix these problems. It’s called the Update For Windows XP Service Pack 2 (KB884020) and is available for free from its download center. To find the patch visit www.microsoft.com/downloads, enter 884020 in the search box, and click Go. If none of the above suggestions fix your WLAN’s chronically dropped connections, try resetting the router, which will restore all its settings to the factory defaults. You’ll then have to set up the network as if it were new, including choosing a personal SSID, WEP encryption key, and other settings. Be sure you are familiar with all the terms and functions and closely follow the steps in the router’s documentation if you try this tactic. Resetting the router means that you also have to put the required settings in place in Windows, too, as we’ve seen throughout this article.

The Wireless Network Connection window offers a list of available wireless networks within range and prompts you to Choose A Wireless Network from the list.

Slow Speeds
Speed is a relative issue. In WLANs your actual wireless transmission speed rarely reaches the rated speed. Even so, when your wireless network has been tooling along at speed X and it suddenly slows to speed Y, you’ll find you’re waiting for Web pages to load and files to download longer than before. At that point it doesn’t matter what speed X is; you’re at speed Y and not happy. Unfortunately, if you’re getting the signal but the signal is not strong or clear, it’s more likely about airwaves than about anything else. If all has been well and now isn’t, the most probable cause is signal interference. There are some questions you can ask yourself to help determine possible problems and solutions. Have you moved the position of your remote PC? If you’re working on a laptop, are you in your usual workspace or have you set up in a different location? If you’ve moved, try going to your regular location and see if things are back to normal. If you are in your normal spot and you’ve notice the slowdown for a while, check the list of available networks in your area. If there are some new ones, they may be causing interference. Try not broadcasting your SSID. (You set this in your router’s interface.) Have you bought any new radio wave emitting devices recently? They may be wreaking havoc on your signal. Have you bought any new heavy pieces of furniture that happen now to be standing between the receiver and the router? Have you spoken with your neighbors? Perhaps one of them has a new wireless phone. Try changing channels on your router as described above. If that doesn’t work, try talking your neighbor into exchanging the phone for a router friendly one. Move the router and receiver close together.

Further Support
With most WLAN problems have to do with settings rather than equipment. If the solutions in this article don’t fix your WLAN problems, use a computer with working Internet access to visit Smart Computing’s Tech Support Center. Go to www.smartcomputing.com, click the Tech Support Center link, and under the Basic Troubleshooting Articles heading click the View ALL Basic Troubleshooting Articles link. You’ll find further information under the Networking Wired & Wireless heading.

What To Do When . . .Your LAN Isn’t Working

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:50:00 +0000

If you asked somebody how to successfully do a jigsaw puzzle, they’d probably tell you match whatever you can, and good luck. Think that’s a good analogy to troubleshooting LANs (local-area networks)? We’d need to throw in half a dozen or more puzzles, together. The field is filled with software and hardware designed to build and maintain networks, similar in generalities but often very unalike in detail. This makes offering problem solving adice that’s applicable to all LANs very challenging. But there are some difficulties that repeat between networks, and some conditions that hold true for all because they involve Windows XP or good basic maintenance practices. So while we can’t guarantee that this article will make your network problem free, we think it provides a good chance of fixing things before you get into the rocket science of unique network complexities.

Problem: I’ve got a wireless network, and my connection is spotty at best.
Solution: Wireless connections can be tricky. Sometimes they can work over relatively long distances but fail across the room. If your clients are within signal range of your router, begin by looking for other electronic devices that can generate electronic interference. Microwaves are frequent culprits; others are additional wireless units, such as wireless speakers, Bluetooth devices, and cordless phones. Even wireless mice, garage door remotes, and brick walls have been known to cause problems. In short, overlook nothing and test everything if your wireless LAN experiences periodic performance drops. Found the problem? Just because interference is present, that doesn’t mean it’s omnipresent. Try moving your router. Raise it several feet, or put it in an area away from other electronic gear. Even a difference of a few inches may make the difference between a good, solid connection and a poor, spotty one. Or lacking that, try moving your wireless clients away from interference causing devices. Another solution is to upgrade the antenna on your router, or add a range extender. Some antennas are removable, and you can purchase more powerful models.

Problem: We had a brief blackout, and I had to reset my main computer. When it came back up, though, I was unable to access the Web, and my personal LAN can’t, either.
Solution: It sounds as though your computer has temporarily lost its IP (Internet Protocol) address and can’t identify itself to your ISP (Internet service provider). Several conditions can cause this problem. The first thing to try is a normal Windows reboot, as the OS (operating system) doesn’t respond well to sudden interruptions in service and may not have come back correctly. Shut down your PC and manually turn off your cable/DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) modem and router. Wait about a minute, then start up your computer and turn those devices back on. Wait a couple minutes and see if the restart was sufficient to reset your IP address. If not, click Start and Run, then type ipconfig/ release in the Open field of the Run dialog box and press ENTER or click OK. This sends a request to your provider’s DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server to blank or unconfigure your IP address. Wait a few seconds and then click Start and Run again, only this time type ipconfig/renew and click OK. The DHCP server will now attempt to establish a new IP address for your computer. You may need to reboot at the end of this process, but either way you should once more be able to communicate with your provider.

Problem: My networked computers have suddenly stopped communicating with one another. Are there any possibilities I can look into before getting help from someone more technically savvy than myself?
Solution: Sometimes the most straight forward solution is the right one, and because it’s so obvious it goes overlooked. So start by doing the obvious: Check the cables that connect your router or hub with your PCs. While unconnected cables should show up in your Network Communications window or as a faulty device in your Device Manager, a partially seated or damaged cable may not. Don’t just check visually. Make sure the cables are well-seated by hand. If you feel a lot of give, the plug or its corresponding port may be poorly secured. Try reconnecting to a different port, then try using a different network cable. Make sure that all devices are properly powered up. It’s not unheard of for power cords to come loose as a result of movement or the addition or subtraction of other power cords to or from an outlet, or perhaps someone “borrowed” the power outlet your small network depends upon. If this reveals nothing, check out the status of all your devices’ LEDs. Green is usually good, but orange, red, or anything that flickers between orange or red and another color isn’t.

Problem: I’m trying to print a document from a computer on my network other than the one it’s connected to and it won’t work. Everything else works fine.
Solution: This sounds like an issue with a Windows networking component called File And Printer Sharing For Microsoft Networks. Is it installed and enabled? Some people deliberately leave it disabled because of fears that it permits breaches to security. This is inaccurate, because you’d have to fulfill a number of other important conditions to leave your computer open to general access. Make sure that the files you want to print can be shared; use Windows Explorer to locate them, then right click each one and select Properties in the pop-up menu that appears. In each file’s Properties dialog box, click the Sharing tab and make sure the Local Sharing And Security option isn’t checked. Instead, select the Network Sharing And Security checkbox. Finally, note at the bottom of the Sharing tab whether your firewall is configured to permit network sharing of that file or folder. Windows Firewall has an option to disallow this because it assumes you might be accessing your computer at times in less secure locations, such as airports, offices, and cars. If you’re using a third-party firewall, you’ll want to make sure it’s set to allow network sharing, as well. Also note that some files and folders, such as program files and Windows system folders, cannot be shared.

Problem: One of the computers on my network repeatedly gets the message “The list of servers for this workgroup is not currently available” when I attempt to open its Network Neighborhood window.
Solution: It sounds like your Computer Browser service is disabled. Click Start, right-click My Computer, then click Manage in the context menu. In the Computer Management window that appears, click the plus sign (+) next to Services And Applications in the left panel, and then double-click Services. Scan the list of services in the right panel to find Computer Browser. If it lists Stopped in the status field, double-click the Computer Browser entry and click the Start button in the Service Status portion of the General tab in the dialog box that appears. You’ll also want to make sure Automatic is selected in the Startup Type drop-down menu and click OK. Some users who want more memory for applications disable these types of services because they tie up system memory whether they’re currently in use or not. If you share the system in question with other users, you might want to see if one of them has stored a profile that automatically disables Computer Browser upon startup. Click Start, Shut Down, and Restart, then watch to see if Windows offers you a choice of user profiles instead of simply starting up.

Problem: When I try renewing a DHCP lease it fails. I get this message: “An error occurred while renewing interface [NAME]. The system cannot find the file specified.”
Solution: This can happen when the DHCP Client service has been stopped and your IP address is showing up as 0.0.0.0. To fix this, click Start and right-click My Computer, then click Manage. In the Computer Management window, click the plus sign next to Services And Applications in the left panel, then double-click Services. Double click DHCP Client in the right panel, then click the Start button in the General tab if the Service Status shows that it’s Stopped. Next, make sure Automatic is selected in the Startup Type drop-down menu rather than Manual or Disabled, and click OK.

Problem: How can I tell if my network card is working properly, or was installed correctly?
Solution: The easiest way is to use the PING (Packet Internet Groper) utility. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, and Command Prompt. Then in the Command Prompt window that appears, type ping 127.0.0.1 and press ENTER. The numbers 127.0.0.1 constitute the standard IP address for producing a loopback network connection (though you can substitute ping localhost, as well). It should produce a listing of several lines as replies, along with a few concluding lines of statistics. If you receive a message that transmission failed or an error occurred, you probably have network card problems.

Problem: I’ve tried using PING, but nothing happens at all.
Solution: Sounds like you don’t have your TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) installed. These protocols facilitate network and Internet communication, so you’ll need to install them. Click Start and Control Panel, then double-click Network Connections. Right-click the connection to your network and click Properties, then check the list of items in the This Connection Uses The Following Items field for an Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) entry. If it’s not there, click the Install button below, then double-click Protocol. Now find TCP/IP (may appear as Microsoft TCP/IP version 6) in the Network Protocol field of the Select Network Protocol dialog, click to select it, and click OK. If after installing TCP/IP you’re still not getting a response from PING, check your physical connections (make sure your network cable plugs are properly seated in their ports) and then check to see if you have a firewall running that isn’t allowing your system to access the Web. Many firewalls can be configured to refuse access without inquiring of the user whether they desire it. If that’s the case, scan the program’s interface or check its Help files for the menus and commands you can use to configure your firewall to allow outbound access. (These vary from program to program.)
Problem: I can PING a computer by using its IP address. But if I use its name, I get the following message: “Ping request could not find host [NAME]. Please check the name and try again.”
Solution: This is probably a case of not having enabled NetBIOS Over TCP/IP. As a result, your client only makes sense of IP addresses, and doesn’t know what to make of names given to computers. To fix this, click Start and Control Panel, then double-click Network Connections. Right-click your local area network connection listing and click Properties in the pop-up menu, then double-click the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) entry in the list of items installed for your connection on the General tab. Click the Advanced button in the resulting dialog’s General tab, click the WINS tab in the next dialog, and if the Disable NetBIOS Over TCP/IP radio button is selected near the bottom of the tab, select instead the Enable NetBIOS Over TCP/IP option. Click the OK button on each of the three dialog boxes to close them. Problem: I can PING computer B from computer A on my LAN, but not the other way around. Solution: The most usual cause of this is a firewall that’s incorrectly configured. Check computer A’s firewall and see if it’s set to allow access to computer B.

Problem: I can use my network to directly browse Web pages, but when I run a program that goes out to the Web, instead, such as Windows Media Player, Norton Internet Security’s LiveUpdate, and so on, Windows prompts me to create an Internet connection.
Solution: This can occur if you use WinXP’s New Connection Wizard to create a broadband connection. The problem is that the Wizard doesn’t enable proxy automatic detection for broadband connections requiring authentication. To solve this, launch Internet Explorer, click the Tools menu and Internet Options, and click the Connections tab in the Internet Options dialog box. Click your broadband connection’s listing in the Dial-Up And Virtual Private Network Settings field, then click the Settings button to the right and select the Automatically Detect Settings checkbox under Automatic Configuration. Click OK to close both dialogs, and you should be in business.

Problem: I connect to a networked PC using my WinXP Remote Desktop Connection, then try to copy and paste data from one system to another. Either it doesn’t work or I get a message stating, “Cannot copy file: Cannot read from the source file or disk.”
Solution: This can occur if drive redirection isn’t enabled. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, Communications, and Remote Desktop Connection. Click the Options button at the bottom of the dialog that appears, then click the Local Resources tab. Click to select the Disk Drives checkbox in the Local Devices portion of the tab, then click Connect.

What To Do When . . .Your PC Has A Virus

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:35:00 +0000

Whether you suspect that a virus is causing your PC to behave oddly or your antivirus software finds a bug lurking on your computer, it’s hard to think about anything else until you’ve removed the virus. Because your computer isn’t healthy, your valuable documents, music and video files, and email are at risk. In theory, removing a virus should be easy: Run your antivirus software’s virus scanner until it locates the bug and then zap it. Although antivirus programs can indeed catch and kill many of the viruses that find their way to your PC from the Web, there are plenty of elusive bugs that can evade your antivirus software for one reason or another. We’ll show you how to use two popular antivirus applications to catch and kill viruses, and we’ll also provide tips for removing the bugs that refuse to budge.

Step 1:
Back Up, Back Up, Back Up If your PC has any files you don’t want to lose, resist the temptation to hunt for that virus right away.
Although your antivirus software may be able to remove the problem without disturbing your OS (operating system), you can’t predict the sorts of trouble you may run into. This is an especially important step if you haven’t yet installed antivirus software. Although most program installations go smoothly, we’ve experienced more than our fair share of software and hardware installations that crippled our test PCs’ operating systems. Back up your files to a CD, DVD, or other removable media not to another PC. Some viruses infect documents and other popular file types, which means that your own files may carry the virus to the removable media. You’ll need to scan your backup media with an antivirus program before you return the files to your computer or move them to another PC.

Step 2:
Update Your Virus Definitions Antivirus software publishers create massive databases of virus definitions that help your software identify the bugs.
Because malicious users regularly create new viruses (and publishers regularly create new virus definitions to catch them), your antivirus software is out of date as soon as you install it. You’ll need to download the latest definitions from the software publisher before you run your antivirus scan otherwise, the program may miss a new virus. Many antivirus applications include a 12-month subscription to the publisher’s antivirus definitions; if your subscription has expired, the software may instruct you to pay for a new subscription. McAfee Virus Scan Plus. Virus Scan updates definitions automatically, but you can check to make sure you have the latest updates. The McAfee Security Center, which is the software’s main window, lets you know whether your system’s virus definitions and other components are up-to-date. To download virus definitions and any other updates, click the Update button. A small icon that has an arrow will appear in the System Tray while McAfee searches for updates. The process won’t take long (about 15 seconds, in our experience) over a broadband connection. Once the definition update completes, you are ready to scan your computer for viruses. Symantec Norton Anti Virus 2007. Norton automatically updates its definitions, as well. If your virus definitions are out of date, The Norton Protection Center will display a red X next to Protection Updates (which includes the virus definitions). To download the Protection Updates, click Run Live Update in the Quick Tasks menu on the left side of the Norton Protection Center. When the Live Update tool opens, click the Next button and then wait for the tool to check Symantec’s servers. The tool will display all of the components it can update, including your virus definitions. When you click Next again, the tool will automatically download and install all of the definitions. Once you click the Finish button, Norton Anti Virus may restart your computer. You are now ready to scan your computer for viruses

Step 3:
Scan Your Computer When you run a virus scan, your antivirus software scours your computer in search of files that match its virus definitions.
You don’t need to sit by your computer as it scans: It will identify viruses and display a report once it completes the scan. McAfee Virus Scan Plus. To scan your computer for viruses, click the Scan link, which appears on the left side of the Security Center (if you’re-using Security Center’s Advanced interface, the Scan link is under Home). Once the Scan page opens, you can configure your scan. Check the My Computer box in the Locations To Scan area if you want to ensure that the entire system, including any removable media in your optical and floppy drives, is included in the scan. The Options section lets you fine tune the scan. If you want to run a full-system scan, check all of the boxes in this section. However, if you’re searching only for viruses, uncheck the Scan And Remove Tracking Cookies box. Once you’ve configured the scan options, click Scan Now. You can work on other programs while your virus scan runs in the background. Simply click the Minimize icon in the upper right corner of the window. If you need to devote your PC’s resources to a particularly resource intensive application, click the scan’s Pause button. Click the Resume button to start the scan where it stopped. Symantec Norton Anti Virus 2007. Norton Antivirus offers two types of scans: a Quick Scan, which checks commonly infected files, and Full System Scan, which offers a thorough scan of your entire PC. To run a Quick Scan, click the Scan Now link, which appears under Quick Tasks in the Norton Protection Center. To run a Full System Scan, click the Norton Anti Virus tab (next to the Protection Center tab) and then click Tasks & Scans. Next, click Run A Scan and then click Run Full System Scan. Scan times vary from one PC to the next the scan may finish in a minute, or it may take several minutes. If you want to work while the scan runs in the background, click the Minimize icon at the top of the scan window. When the Perform Background Scan? Window appears, check the Do Not Ask Me Again box and then click the Yes button. Now you can minimize the scan at any time and focus on your other tasks while the scan runs. The scan’s window will pop up again when the scan completes. The Results Summary page appears in the scan’s window when the scan finishes. If the scan finds viruses, you’ll see a number in the pink Total Items That Require Attention bar. Click the Attention Required tab at the top of the window. You’re ready to remove the virus.

Step 4:
Remove The Virus Today’s software makes removing most threats a breeze.
Many applications can automatically remove minor threats or suggest removal actions. McAfee Virus Scan Plus. Once the virus scan completes, an alert will appear and the Security Center will display basic information about the threats the scan found and actions it took. To view the individual threats and specify actions, click View Details. This page names each threat, displays its category (such as Potentially Unwanted Program) and displays the file path so you can see where the threat sat on your computer. Virus Scan Plus can automatically fix some problems (including unwanted tracking cookies), but if you want to take a particular action, you can use the I Want To section. Virus Scan automatically removes some unwanted threats. Rather than deleting these files, it moves them to the Quarantined Programs And Tracking Cookies section. To view the files and delete them (or restore them, if you decided you want certain cookies, for example), click the Advanced Menu link at the bottom of the Security Center and then click the Restore button. You can now view information about quarantined items without harming your PC. Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2007. The Attention Required tab in the scan’s Results Summary window lists each threat (including nonvirus threats, such as cookies) and suggests an action in the Action column. You can use the drop-down menu to select an action (such as Fix, Ignore, or Exclude), or you can leave the suggested action in place. When you’re ready to remove the threats, click the Apply Actions button. In some cases, Norton Anti Virus may not be able to automatically fix the problems it finds. If it finds virus infections in system files, for example, it may recommend that you use your OS installation CD to replace a damaged file. You’ll find information about the problem in the Attention Required tab. If you think that a particular file is infected, but Norton doesn’t flag it as suspicious, you can move it to the Quarantine, which is a protected environment that won’t let the file do any further damage. Click the Norton Anti Virus tab and then click Tasks & Scans. Click Manage Quarantined Items and click Go To Quarantine. When the Security History: Quarantine window appears, you can click Add Item To Quarantine to use the Manual Quarantine tool, which lets you browse for the suspicious file.

Online Resources
Don’t panic if you think you have a virus but don’t already have antivirus software. Some antivirus software publishers offer free online scanning tools that can search your computer in minutes. McAfee, for example, offers McAfee FreeScan (us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp) and Symantec also has a Spyware & Viruses scan (www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/support/index_virus.jsp). You can also use these tools if you think your existing antivirus software hasn’t caught a virus on your PC. Some lesser-known publishers also offer online scanners. If you choose to use a scanner you don’t recognize, search the Web for other users’ opinions. Malicious users can create legitimate looking security programs that “find” phantom viruses and ask you to pay for the software to remove it. Once you know the name of your PC’s virus, you can search for information about removing it. Some software publishers offer special, downloadable tools for nasty viruses In some cases, you’ll need to install a full antivirus program to destroy the virus.

Viruses vs. Adware & Spyware
Many antivirus applications don’t search for adware and spyware. If you’ve run antivirus scanners without any luck, the program that’s causing your computer to behave oddly may fall into the adware or spyware category. Several security publishers offer free antispyware/ adware programs such as Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware SE Personal (www.lavasoftusa.com) and Grisoft’s AVG Anti-Virus Free (free.grisoft.com).

When All Else Fails
If your antivirus and other apps fail to remove your PC of its malady, it may be time to wipe the system clean and reinstall your OS. Be sure that once your fresh OS is installed, you update Windows completely and install your antivirus software before you reintroduce your backed up files to your PC. After all, they may still carry viruses.

What To Do When . . .You’re Pestered By Pop-up Ads

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:27:00 +0000

Pop-up ads are intrusive, bothersome, and annoying. Given that many pop-up ads contain scams, it’s no wonder we don’t like these unfriendly windows. Whether your computer displays large quantities of pop-up ads incessantly or you see one pop-up ad while browsing the Web, all of us want to eliminate pop-ups so we can use our computer in peace. Fortunately, you can remove and prevent pop-ups. Let’s explore some of the things we can do to eliminate and guard from popup ads. If you’ve ever tried to close persistent pop-up ads, you know it can be a futile effort. Instead of clicking the red X located in the upper-right corner of most windows, press ALT and F4 on your keyboard to close a pop-up ad. Alternatively, you can use the Windows Task Manager to close pop-up ads, but be careful not to close critical Windows processes or legitimate applications that are currently in use.

Play I Spy
Many persistent pop-up ads are the result of spyware or adware on your computer In addition to displaying pop-up ads, these malicious programs can wreak havoc on your machine. They can slow down your computer, change your home page settings, and report activity from your computer, including username and password information, to the writers of the spyware or adware. Spyware and adware are serious threats to your computer and to your personal identity. To check your computer for spyware or adware, download and install an antispyware program. There are a number of free antispyware programs, including Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition (www.lavasoftusa.com) and Javacool’s Spyware-Blaster (www.javacoolsoftware.com). You may also want to install an antispyware program that can guard your computer from spyware before it is downloaded to your system, such as Spybot - Search & Destroy (free; www.safer-networking.org) or CounterSpy ($19.95; www.sunbelt software.com). Unlike antivirus programs, you can have more than one antispyware program installed on your computer at the same time. Although it doesn’t hurt to have more than one antispyware program, there’s no reason to go overboard and install countless antispyware programs, either. Before running a scan using your antispyware program, update the program with the latest malware definitions. Most antispyware programs will examine all running processes on your computer. If you’re curious as to what programs and processes are running on your computer, use the Windows Task Manager to find out. Open the Windows Task Manager in Windows XP by right-clicking the Taskbar and then selecting Task Manager. The Applications tab will list all running programs. On the Processes tab, you’ll see all of the processes running on your computer. Because many of these processes have vague names, do not end a process unless you’re sure you know what it does. Stay Healthy In addition to adware and spyware protection, you’ll need an antivirus program that will check to see if there are any viruses, worms, or Trojan horses on your computer. Viruses, worms, or Trojan horses can cause popup ads and can prevent your system from functioning. Just as a cold can pass from one member of your family to another, a virus can transfer from your computer to other computers on the network or to your friends via email or IM (instant messaging) programs. Pop-up ads caused by viruses can be more harmful than other pop-up ads because of a virus’ ability to spread and cause additional damage. If you don’t already have one, install a reliable antivirus program, such as Norton AntiVirus 2007 ($39.99; www.symantec.com), McAfee VirusScan Plus ($39.99; us.mcafee.com), or AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition (free; www3.grisoft.com). In addition to virus protection, McAfee VirusScan Plus includes firewall and antispyware protection. In order to be effective, you must update an antivirus program on a regular basis. Because most antivirus programs conflict with one another, never install more than one antivirus program at a given time. If you choose to switch from one antivirus program to another, first uninstall the existing program and then install the new program.

A Toolbar With Protection
Another way to shield from pop-ups is to install a toolbar that has built in pop-up protection. The Google Toolbar (free; toolbar.google.com) and the Yahoo! Toolbar (free; toolbar.yahoo.com) have built-in pop-up blockers. These toolbars will automatically block pop-ups. When necessary, you can allow individual sites to display pop-ups. This allows you to see pop-ups when necessary, and avoid them otherwise.

Built-in Protection.
Many Web browsers now protect against pop-up ads. The Microsoft pop-up blocker for Internet Explorer comes with Windows XP Service Pack 2. Microsoft claims the Internet Explorer Pop-up Blocker is smart enough to know not to block pop-up windows that you have opened intentionally by clicking a link. For example, if you are on a shopping site and click a link to open a pop-up window containing your receipt, the pop-up window will open because you opened it on purpose. When Internet Explorer blocks a pop-up ad, you’ll see a notification in the Information Bar located below the Address Bar. If you want to allow a pop-up for a particular site, you can click the Information Bar and choose whether to allow pop-ups from that site on a temporary or permanent basis. You can also access other settings for the pop-up blocker through this Information Bar.

Stop Immediate Loading
Some spyware and virus programs will run automatically when you boot your computer. In addition to antispyware and antivirus programs, advanced users may want to look at the number of programs that start up automatically when you boot your computer. Click Start and then select Run. In the Run dialog box, type msconfig and click the OK button. The System Configuration Utility will appear. You can prevent certain programs from starting up automatically using the Startup tab. When you’re finished making changes, click Apply and then click Close. Next, close any other open programs and files. When the System Configuration dialog box appears and asks you to restart the computer, click the Restart button

Add-ons Can Cause Problems
Add-ons are special programs that work inside of Internet Explorer and other browsers. Add-ons can include search toolbars, games, and programs that let you view Web sites offline. However, add-ons can also invade your privacy, especially when spyware or adware installs them without your knowledge or permission. The Internet Explorer Add-on Manager lists all add-ons installed on your computer that are used by Internet Explorer. You can use the Internet Explorer Add-on Manager to enable or disable each add-on individually To access the Internet Explorer Add-on Manager in Internet Explorer 7, click Tools, Manage Addons and then select Enable Or Disable Add-ons. If you want to disable an add-on, click to select it and then click the radio button next to Disable in the Settings area of the Manage Add-ons window. When you’re finished changing the add-on settings, click OK. You may need to restart Internet Explorer in order for the changes to take effect

Pop-up Free
Although everyone is likely to see a pop-up ad from time to time, pop-up ads should not overrun your computer. By removing adware, spyware, viruses, and other malicious software from your machine, you can decrease the amount of pop-up ads you see. With fewer popups, you can use your computer and surf the Web without interruption.

What To Do When . . .Your Browser Has Been Hijacked

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:57:00 +0000

You open up your Web browser, just like any other day, but something’s not right. The page that always loads when the browser starts is different. There are shortcuts in your Favorites folder that you can’t recall putting there, and other abnormal things happen when you browse. Worst of all, even though you manually switch everything back to the original settings, the changes don’t stick. Or maybe the options to revert to the old settings aren’t even there at all. Your browser has been hijacked, and although most hijackers are not interested in destroying files or doing the malicious things associated with other attacks, such as that of viruses, a hijacked browser is still a major problem that must be handled immediately. Hijackers are designed to redirect your Web browser to Web sites of the hijacker’s choosing to direct more traffic to specific sites so that they can generate more advertising revenue.Hijack Basics Browsers may be hijacked in a number of ways. The most basic attack is triggered when you view a Web page and code within that page (or code that is automatically downloaded when the page is viewed) uses a security loophole to change your default home page, default search page, and browser settings. It doesn’t do anything other than that, meaning you can fix the problem by changing those entries back to their original settings (which we’ll discuss later). Many hijackers rely on users installing software, either inadvertently or on purpose, that gives them broader access to the system. Some of these hijackers prevent you from changing your home page or search engine back to what you want by completely disabling those settings in Internet Explorer. Others do even worse things, for instance, causing pop-up advertisements to appear even when you aren’t browsing the Web.

An Ounce Of Prevention
One of the easiest ways to practically eliminate the potential for being hijacked is to switch from Internet Explorer to an alternative Web browser such as Firefox 2 (free; www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox) or Opera 9 (free; www.opera.com). Hijackers focus their efforts on IE because so many people use it, and programs designed to exploit flaws in IE won’t work when applied to other browsers. Firefox and Opera continue to gain in popularity, and this may increase to a point where those browsers become targets, as well. But for now, if you currently use IE, switching over to a different browser comes with immense security benefits. If you use IE, make sure to keep it as up-to-date as possible because Microsoft constantly identifies and fixes security holes. To do so, open IE, expand the Tools menu, and click Windows Update. Click either Express or Custom (or update the Windows Update software, if necessary) and install all of the patches that are available for Internet Explorer. No matter what Web browser you use, it is extremely important to install multiple antispyware applications on your computer and regularly update them. These programs scan for current problems, and many of them also lock down the computer so hijackers can’t easily use the most common routes of entry. You can use as many antispyware applications on the same computer that you want to (unlike antivirus software, where you must stick to a single program). We recommend Windows Defender (free; www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx), Spybot Search & Destroy (free; www.safernetworking.org), Ad-Aware (free; www.lavasoftusa.com), and SpywareBlaster (free; www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html). Update these programs at least once per month if they don’t come with the ability to do so automatically. Also, we recommend downloading and running BugOff (free; www.spywareinfo.com), which fixes a lot of exploits commonly used by hijackers.

BugOff is trickier to use than the other programs mentioned because you must enable or disable entries manually and doing so can have impact on programs you actually want to use. When running BugOff, the goal is to click Disable for as many entries as possible but check the Side Effects text closely to make sure doing so won’t interfere with your applications. For example, disabling the Microsoft.XMLHTTP Object closes a hole that a hijacker can use, but it also prevents Windows Update and Gmail from working properly, so leaving it enabled is probably worth the risk. Clicking the Disable button instantly makes the change, so simply close the program when you are finished. Finally, always be on your guard when browsing or clicking links in emails or other documents that open Web pages in your browser.The worst hijackers gain access to the computer because people unknowingly install them on their computers by clicking a button or link in a pop-up window that appears while browsing or by installing downloaded software that lets the hijacker get a piggyback ride onto the hard drive. Don’t blindly click links included in emails and never click anywhere in a pop-up advertisement (you can press CTRL-W to close an IE window without having to click to close it). Also, be on the lookout for pop-ups that look like alerts from Windows but are actually disguises designed to get you to click a button, inadvertently giving your permission to download whatever the hijacker wants to install.

A Pound Of Cure
Heading off the hijackers doesn’t take a lot of work, but you have real problems if the browser has already been infiltrated. Before getting into specific fixes, it is important to note that the steps provided in this article apply to the latest version of Internet Explorer 7. If you use an earlier version of IE, you should upgrade to the latest version or use an alternative browser for security reasons. If you’re lucky and the hijacker simply changed your IE settings without installing any other software on your computer, you can easily revert to the settings you want to use. To establish the default home page, open IE, navigate to the page you want to use for a home page, expand the Tools menu, click Internet Options, and select the General tab. Click Use Current, and the page you navigated to becomes the default home page, or you can enter it manually (such as entering www.google.com if you want to use Google as your home page). Click Apply when you’re finished. Click the Settings button in the Search section to re-establish your default search settings. Click to highlight the incorrect search entry, click Remove, and then highlight the entry you want to use and click Set Default. Click OK. If the search service you want to use doesn’t appear on the list, click Find More Providers, click the entry for the service you want to add, follow any prompts that are provided (if any), and the service should now be available when you establish default settings. There is also a Create Your Own option on this page that lets you add any search service that isn’t represented on Microsoft’s master list. If you think your browser has been hijacked, checking to see if the culprit is the oft-used CoolWebSearch hijacker or one of its myriad offshoots should be your first priority. These hijackers are designed to drive Web traffic to www.coolwebsearch.com (don’t type that address into your Web browser!) or other advertising sites. They accomplish this using many means, ranging from making the computer think that popular sites such as Yahoo! Search don’t exist (and instead redirecting you to an ad site) to making IE think that restricted Web sites should be trusted. Fortunately, there is a free tool called CWShredder that will detect and remove all known versions of this annoying hijacker. To use the tool, download it from www.intermute.com/products/spysubtract.html, double-click the file’s icon, and click I Agree. Click Check For Update, click Fix, and then click OK to scan the computer for the CoolWebSearch software and eradicate it if it is discovered. Sometimes hijack attempts aren’t reversed this easily, and you’ll need specialized tools and a lot of help to complete the job. The best tool by far is HijackThis (free; www.tomcoyote.org/hjt), which thoroughly scans the computer to find everything that is taking advantage of a known security loophole in Internet Explorer and Windows. HijackThis is an extremely powerful tool, which is its biggest drawback. Scans return information on legitimate programs, as well as hijackers, and there’s no way for a novice to know what to fix and what to leave alone. Fortunately, there are loads of experts ready to offer free help, day or night, at the TomCoyote.com Web forums. If you’ve just performed a spyware scan using any antispyware tool, reboot the computer before using HijackThis. To download the software, go to the aforementioned Web site and click the HijackThis download button. The software is stored in a compressed ZIP file, so you’ll need to use a utility such as IZArc (free; www.izarc.org) or the built-in ZIP utility included with Windows Me/XP to extract it. Once the HighjackThis.exe file is moved from the ZIP archive to the Desktop (or any other folder you like), double-click HighjackThis.exe and click Do A System Scan And Save A Log File. Wait for the scan to complete, and a new file should appear on the Desktop (or in the folder where you ran Hijack This) that is labeled Hijackthis.log.

This is the magic data you need to get help at the forums. To use the forums, go to www.tomcoyote.org and click the Forums link near the top of the page. Look for a Register link in the Welcome screen, click it, and sign up for a free user account (you can’t post about your problem unless you register) Be sure to enter a valid email address when signing up because a confirmation email is sent to make sure your registration is legitimate. When the email arrives, open it, click the activation link, and sign in using the information you entered during the registration process. Scroll down to the Computer Help section and click the HijackThis Logs And Spyware/ Malware Removal link. Be sure to read the Welcome New Members post in the Important Topics section before proceeding. To post your specific log, click the New Topic button. Enter a brief description of your problem in the Topic Title box and then provide more detailed information in the white text box. You now need to copy and paste the contents of the log file you just generated, so double-click it (it should open in Notepad), open the Edit menu, click Select All, open the Edit menu again, and click Copy. Switch back to your forum post, click in the white text box where you want the log file to be inserted, open the Edit menu, and click Paste. Click Post New Topic when you are finished. Be extremely patient and courteous when waiting for a response. The forums are run by volunteer experts and are extremely busy, and it may take days for them to get back to you, so check the forums every so often to see if your topic has any new posts. When you do get a response, follow the Instructions the expert provides to the letter, and they’ll let you know if they need any additional Information or logs to get to the bottom of the problem. Once you know what to disable, fixing things using HijackThis is very easy. Run the program, perform another scan, and select the checkboxes next to any entries you want to remove. Click Fix Checked, click Yes to delete the items, and then click Yes again to reboot the computer and see if the problem is fixed. If it isn’t, you can always head back to the forums.

Bottom Line
Avoiding a hijacked browser is not impossible if you take preventative steps and use caution while browsing the Web. The bottom line is that you don’t want to let your browser be hijacked, and if it does happen, you want to fix the problem as soon as possible.

What To Do When . . .You Can’t Get Online

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:59:00 +0000

Getting online is fast becoming the main reason people use computers these days. Sure, we still do our taxes, write letters to loved ones in Microsoft Word, and play computer games occasionally Still, perhaps the most interesting activity on a PC is browsing the Web, finding unusual news stories, chatting over instant messaging, or just checking our email. Perhaps that’s what makes a dead connection so frustrating. You double-click your browser’s icon on your Desktop, wait a few seconds, and nothing. For some unknown reason, you can’t tap into your favorite shopping Web site or search Google.com. What do you do when you can’t get online? Often, the easiest fix involves rebooting your hardware. You may also have to reboot your PC. Resetting these hardware devices works in many cases because in most cases the Internet connection has a conflict on your network or with your PC, and resetting your equipment can resolve these issues. Of course, this solution doesn’t always work. In this problem-solving guide, we’ll cover some of the common problems that prevent you from getting online, including how to reset hardware. Most of these instructions apply to Windows XP, but the concept can apply broadly to Macs and will work with most makes and models of modems and routers, such as those from Belkin, Netgear, and Linksys.

Hardware Trouble
If a problem with your system’s hardware prevents you from accessing the Internet, rebooting hardware will reset the device and may correct any problems. Modem and router fixes. Whether you have a cable or DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) modem or a home router, you’ll want to unplug the power cable, wait at least 15 seconds or up to a minute, and then reinsert the cable. The device will refresh itself and the IP (Internet Protocol) address (a unique number the device uses for the Internet) will reset. An IP address is almost like a home mailing address or telephone number; the hardware might get occasionally confused about which address to use. Some hardware, such as the Belkin Pre-N Wireless Router, requires that you leave the device unplugged for as much as a minute for the refresh. If you are having trouble accessing the Internet and you recently configured your home router, you may need to perform a hard reset, which returns the router back to its factory default state. For many models, this means unplugging the power cable from the router, holding down the reset button (located on the back of the router), and plugging in the power cable as you hold down and release the reset button. Consult your router manual for the specific steps because some routers require that you press the reset button for a few seconds to perform a reset. Also, some cable modems, such as those made by Belkin, come with a button on the modem that disables Internet access; make sure that button is not activated so you can get online. If you tried resetting your hardware and the device is still not working, you may need to call technical support and send the unit in for repairs. It’s a good idea to inquire about warranties (many routers have a two- or three-year warranty) or repair costs, especially because you may be able to spend less on a new model than to pay for shipping and repair. Cable issues. Another common reason you may not be able to make an Internet connection is because your network cable is unplugged or it isn’t firmly seated in the LAN (localarea network) port. Check the back of your desktop or the LAN port on your laptop and make sure the cable is connected. On most computers, if the network cable is inserted correctly, you will see a green light indicating an active connection. After you confirm the cable is secure and that you have an active connection, try your browser again.

Often, the easiest fix involves rebooting your hardware.

Issues Specific To The Internet
If your troubles stem from the Internet or specific Web sites, read on for possible explanations and fixes that will have you surfing again in no time. Unavailable Web site. Occasionally, you may be unable to access a Website that you visited previously without any troubles. This can happen if the Website’s ISP (Internet service provider) temporarily disabled the site, if the administrator failed to renew the Web registry data, or if too many people try accessing the site at the same time. Often when a site you access is unavailable, you will receive the “HTTP 404 Not Found” error message.

One way to know if a site is temporarily down is to check another commercial site to see if your Internet connection is active. If you can access some sites but not one particular site, you may simply need to try accessing the site at a later time. You can also try deleting your Internet temporary files. To do this in Internet Explorer 7, for instance, open the Tools menu and select Internet Options. Next, click the Delete button under the Browsing History section and click Delete All. When you delete these temporary files, IE can access Websites instead of using possibly outdated local files on your computer for a particular site. Contact your ISP. If you checked the common causes of Internet connection problems, such as a loose network cable or a disabled LAN card, consider contacting your ISP for technical support and ask about possible outages. Some ISPs experience occasional problems in certain areas. In fact, when you call for technical support, you may hear a recording that will list the affected cities and estimate timeframes for when the ISP will have the problem resolved. If there is a connection problem between your modem and the ISP, your provider may need to send out a technician to inspect the line. Before you request a technician, be sure to turn off the modem and wait a few minutes to refresh the settings and then turn the modem on again to see if you still experience problems. Also, try rebooting your computer and router (if you are using one). Trouble with IE and Firefox. If you experience frequent system crashes while surfing the Internet using IE or Mozilla Firefox, it is possible that the person responsible for designing the site didn’t use the correct coding when building the site. This also may be the cause if you only see a few graphics load, before your browser closes suddenly or displays an error message. The solution: Either avoid the site or try using a different browser. If you are using IE, for example, try downloading and running Firefox instead. A second common reason for crashes has to do with Windows XP. If other programs you use, such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop, also tend to crash, you may have spyware or a virus loaded on your PC. It is also possible that your system has become unstable due to corrupted files or memory problems. If programs you use frequently tend to crash just as often as a Web browser, consider rebuilding the system by reinstalling WinXP or upgrading to Windows Vista. If your troubles are primarily with your browser crashing, you may need to reinstall IE. (You can download IE from Microsoft [www.microsoft.com/windows/ie] and download Firefox from Mozilla [www.mozilla.com].)

If you see “HTTP 404” in your browser, it’s likely a sign that your computer can’t connect to a specific Web site because the site is temporarily unavailable.

Web site comes up blank. When you visit a Web site that appears to be working but only shows minimal text and no graphics, it’s possible that the entire site runs as a pop-up. If your browser automatically blocks pop-ups, then you won’t see the Website. To disable pop-ups in Internet Explorer, just type the URL, hold down the CTRL and ALT keys, and press ENTER. For Firefox, type the URL, hold down CTRL and press ENTER. Holding down the CTRL key will temporarily disable pop-up blocking. Of course, you can disable pop-up blocking for most Web sites (which will also display banner ads) permanently. In IE 7, open the Tools menu, select Internet Options, and click the Privacy tab. Under Pop-up Blocker, click Settings and change the Filter Level to Low. Then click OK twice. In Firefox, go to the Tools menu, select Options, and click the Content tab. Deselect the Block Popup Windows checkbox and click OK Now, all pop-ups will appear for most sites. A site takes an inordinate amount of time to display. If you get online and the Internet is running slow, your surfing experience might not be enjoyable. Sometimes all the connections, cables, and hardware work properly, but there are other reasons for the slowdown. One reason may be that you are accessing a popular Web site that may be experiencing high traffic at the time you visit. Another cause for a slower Internet could be because many people in your neighborhood are accessing the Internet at the same time. A cable modem, for example, will run slower if numerous visitors connect at the same time.

To resolve these issues, you can choose to access popular Web sites or browse the Web at different times of the day (such as late at night) or call your ISP and request a faster throughput speed. If you upgrade from 3Mbps (megabits per second) to 5Mbps, you’ll notice that even popular sites load faster. Using a Web accelerator can also help. Google offers a free Web accelerator at webaccelerator.google.com. However, accelerators are known to cause problems with some Web sites and can actually cause slowdowns. You can easily check the speed of your connection by visiting a site such as www.testmy.net. Click the Download Test link to perform the test. A plug-in is necessary. Some sites won’t load because they use a plugin, such as Adobe Flash or Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format), or because they require ActiveX (a Microsoft add-on for applicationrich Web sites). Often the best solution for loading plug-ins is to just let your browser download the plug-in and follow the on-screen prompts. For example, Firefox will prompt you to download Adobe Flash when it visits a site that uses Flash. You can also install plug-ins manually. For example, if you visit Adobe.com, you will see a link for Flash.

Other Adjustments
If you ruled out hardware issues and still have problems connecting to the Internet, don’t despair. There are a few more things you can check. Check firewall settings. A firewall is useful for making sure a virus or a spyware client doesn’t invade your computer while you’re online. However, sometimes a firewall can also prevent you from accessing the Internet. A firewall blocks Internet ports that control the flow of information from your PC to the Internet. Some firewalls might be too aggressive in blocking ports, especially if you decide to use a file-transfer program or swap photos over an instant messaging client. In WinXP, a common firewall problem is that the system is configured to not allow firewall exceptions. To change this, right-click the Local Area Connection icon in the System Tray and select Change Windows Firewall Settings. Deselect the Don’t Allow Exceptions checkbox and click OK. Try accessing the Web again. If you use a different firewall, such as Zone Alarm or the Symantec Internet Security Suite 2007, consult the manual for advanced firewall options that might block unknown sites. Check the IP address. It is possible that your computer is set to use a static IP address. For example, if you bought a Web cam that runs on a wireless or wired network, the setup may have instructed you to configure a static IP address Most computers are configured to use a dynamic IP address, but a static IP forms a direct connection between your PC and another device for installation purposes. To see whether your system is using a static or dynamic IP address, begin by opening the Control Panel and doubleclicking Network Connections. Next, right-click Local Area Connection and click Status. In the resulting dialog box, double-click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), select the Obtain An IP Address Automatically Radio button, and click OK. Click OK again and then reboot your PC. Your computer LAN adapter is disabled. A common issue that prevents some people from connecting to the Internet is a disabled LAN. In some instances, if you or another user decided to use a wireless connection, someone may have disabled the LAN card. Another reason your LAN card may be disabled is because your laptop may be configured to save power by disabling devices that use extra power. To enable the LAN card, open the Control Panel, double-click Network Connections, right-click Local Area Connection, and select Enable. If the card fails to enable, there may be a physical problem with the card or the network cable may be disconnected. Check the cable connection. If you continue to have trouble with your LAN card, contact technical support. The wireless connection on your laptop is not configured properly. You may have trouble connecting to the Internet because your system isn’t connected wirelessly to a router. In this situation, your laptop connects to the router, which itself connects to a cable or DSL modem and then connects to the Internet. So, if your laptop can’t make the connection, the Internet will be unavailable to you. Often, a wireless connection configured incorrectly is the cause of this type of problem. For example, you may be connecting to the wrong SSID (Service Set Identifier; the wireless network name that the router uses) or attempting to connect to an 802.11g network with an 802.11b client adapter. The solutions: Connect to a wireless router that provides Internet access or configure the router to allow clients to connect over 802.11b. Router configuration is an advanced process but usually involves enabling or disabling options. You can access your router by typing its IP address into Internet Explorer. To find the router’s IP address, consult the router’s manual.

Often the best solution for loading plug-ins is to just let your browser download the plug-in and follow the on-screen prompts.

Get Back Online
For many of us, getting online is something we do every day without any trouble. When problems do arise, such as a loose cable or a Web site that is temporarily unavailable, the fix is usually quick and solves the problem completely. Some pesky problems do persist, but you can resolve those issues with a repair or by replacing the device. And then it’s back to Web surfing, instant messaging, and all the other activities we rely on during our online escapades.

What To Do When. . .Your Printer Won’t Print

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:34:00 +0000

Today’s printers are wonderful devices. They’re inexpensive, easy to install and use, and can produce pages and even color prints that faithfully reproduce the originals. Nevertheless, when they do fail, deciphering the problem can be frustrating. Fortunately, a host of basic troubleshooting routines can help you resolve 95% of all printing issues. The solutions in this article are generic to all types of printers running Windows XP Home, and with a few minor modifications, many of these solutions will work with other versions of Windows, as well.

A Failure To Communicate
If your document will not print or the printed page contains garbage characters, such as symbols and meaningless text, the problem may be that the PC and printer are not communicating efficiently or at all. A few basic steps can resolve a surprising number of printing problems and help to define others. (NOTE: Throughout this article, “open the Print display” means to open the document you want to print and press CTRL-P, or you can open the File menu and select Print.) First, ensure the printer is turned on and securely connected to the PC. Check the lights and displays on the printer to ensure it is in an online (connected and ready) state. Some printers have an indicator light; others have a text display. If necessary, check your documentation to see how your printer signals you. If it is not ready or online, look for hints as to the problem, which may be a paper jam, an out-of-paper, or low-ink condition. If nothing appears to be wrong with the paper or ink, turn the printer off, wait a few seconds, and turn it back on. If you are printing from a removable medium, such as a Zip or USB drive or a CD or DVD, copy the file to your hard drive. Make sure you have enough free drive space (three to five times the size of the file) for Windows to spool (process to the hard drive) the document and then attempt to reprint it. If your printer’s connection runs through a specialized connector, such as a USB hub, disconnect the printer, connect it directly to your PC, and attempt to reprint the document. If this resolves the problem, you may need to replace the hub, or your printer may not be able to operate through one.

Print A Test Page
Open the Start menu and select Printers And Faxes. Locate your printer’s icon and double-click it. In the resulting display (print queue window), look for your document in the list. See if there are other jobs ahead of the job you are printing. If so, select Cancel All Documents from the Printer menu and try to print the job again. If there are no jobs ahead of the one in question, check the status. If it is Paused, click the listing, and from the Document menu, select Resume. If you do not see your document listed in the print queue, print it again. Watch your printer for changes in status lights (flashing is common) or the message display, nothing changes or messages you see. If you see changes in the printer’s status lights or message indicator, it generally means Windows is communicating with the printer. If Windows issues an error message (other than the standard “This Document Failed To Print” balloon) when you print, write it down and skip to the Error Messages section of this article. If there is no error message but the document does not print, check the status in the print queue window again. If there is no status, or it shows as Spooling or Printing, the file may be very complex and may need more time to process, so wait a few more minutes before you cancel the job. If the status is Error – Printing, the document has failed to print. Select the job in the print queue window and select Cancel from the Document menu. Check your printer’s documentation to identify and resolve problems signaled by the lights or messages you recorded, such as a paper jam, an out-of-paper, or ink condition or some other printer-based problem. If you see no printer status changes or error messages and the document does not print, cancel the print job, right-click your printer’s icon, and select Properties. On the General tab, click Print Test Page. Test Pages check the ability of the printer to reproduce basic text and graphics and provide information on the printer’s driver (a program that acts as a translator between the PC and the printer).

Test Page Won’t Print
If a test page will not print, the PC and printer are not communicating. First, check the printer’s documentation for instructions on printing a self-test page. If this will not print, the problem lies with the printer and you should contact the manufacturer. If the selftest page prints, you have a problem with the PC or its connections. Open Printers And Faxes, right-click your printer’s icon, and select Properties. Click the Ports tab and look for your printer. Parallel printers (which have a large connector about 2 inches wide) should be set to LPT1. USB printers (which have a small connector about half an inch wide) should be set to a USB port. Change the port settings if necessary. If you have a USB printer and cannot change it from LPT1 (common with printers offering both parallel and USB connections), delete and reinstall the printer (as described beginning with the second paragraph of the Printer Is Not Available section below). When Windows recommends a port to use, select USB. If USB is not an option, connect the printer through another USB port on your PC and/or replace the printer’s USB cable. If that doesn’t work and you know the USB ports on your PC are good, contact the printer’s manufacturer for assistance. You can also install the printer via the parallel cable if your PC has a matching port. If port settings are correct but the printer still can’t print, contact the printer’s manufacturer for the latest driver and then return to the Printers And Faxes window. Right-click your printer’s icon and select Properties from the drop-down menu. Select the Advanced tab and click the New Driver button. Follow the prompts to update the printer driver. If this does not work, your port may be corrupt. Return to the Ports display, select the port, click Delete Port, and then restart Windows. The system should detect the printer and reinstall the port. If it does not, your PC may be damaged and you should contact the manufacturer for further assistance. If Windows detects the port but still cannot print, delete and reinstall the printer.

Test Pages Print, But Not Documents
If you can print a test page, the PC and your printer are communicating and the problem lies with the program or your file. Open the Print display and make sure you chose the right printer (refer to The Printer Is Not Available section in this article for instructions). Make sure the Print To File checkbox is not selected. With the settings correct, create and attempt to print a simple document one page, no or very simple graphics, only system (native to Windows) fonts such as Times Roman or Arial. If it prints, the original document is likely either too complex or contains corrupt data. Open Printers And Faxes and right-click the icon for your printer. Click the Advanced tab and change the spool settings to Spool Print Documents So Program Finishes Printing Faster and, under that setting, select Start Printing After Last Page Is Spooled. If this doesn’t work, change the spool setting to Print Directly To The Printer. (Also, try closing other open programs before you Sending a test page to the printer will determine whether the printer and PC are communicating effectively. If your printer is not associated with the correct port or the port is not selected, you will not be able to print.

Experiment with these settings to see if any spool setting works. If adjusting the spool settings doesn’t help, reprint the original document one page at a time to see if a particular page is causing problems. Once you isolate the problematic page, or if the document is only one page or still won’t print at all, examine your fonts and graphics. TrueType fonts are the most universally accepted fonts; check the font menu in your program to see if the fonts you are using are TrueType. To do so, open the Format menu and select Font. If there is no indication, note the fonts used in the document and check the Fonts folder (X:\Windows\Fonts, with X being the drive on which you installed Windows). TrueType fonts are noted in parentheses after the font name. Exchange non-TrueType fonts for TrueType and try to print again. Also, Font Explorer, a free utility available at www.karenware.com, can tell you which specific fonts your printer supports. If you are using TrueType fonts (or no fonts), your graphics may be too complex or corrupt. If you reduced a large graphic after you placed it in the file, reduce it to the correct size in a graphics-editing program and then reimport it. If no particular graphic seems suspect, delete and reimport all graphics in the document and reprint. If none of these solutions helps and you have a program that creates Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) files, save the file as a PDF and try printing that.

Document Prints, But Not As Expected
If your document does print, but the quality or colors are off or the text and graphics are improperly positioned on the page, it may be a problem with your printer. However, first check the printer settings in Windows. From the program in which you are trying to print, open the Print display and click Properties. Note that if you want to change these settings on a global rather than a document level, open Printers And Faxes, right-click your printer’s icon, and select Printing Preferences. (NOTE: The following options listed may vary depending on printer type.) For problems with color or print quality, click the Paper/Quality tab and make sure the color setting is correct. Use the dropdown menu to ensure the media type is correct. Click the Advanced tab. Look for choices relating to print quality (choose High Quality or Fine if print quality is poor), font substitution (don’t allow substitution with device fonts if text is not printing in the right typeface), and other options. Your printer’s manual may help you sort through these options. If your pages are printing but appear cut off, click the Layout tab and check the paper orientation. You also may have created a page larger than your printer can reproduce. In the main Print display, under Zoom, set Scale To Paper Size to match the size of your printer sheet. If the settings are correct, check your printer to see if it needs maintenance. You may need to replace exhausted print cartridges, clean or align the printer heads, and perform other tasks. (Refer to your printer’s documentation for help with this.) If your printer offers the option to print a test page from the controls on the printer, do so and check the color quality and alignment. Finally, using low-quality paper can reduce print quality. Use high-quality printing paper, not copy paper.

The Printer Is Not Available
Open the Print display, and if your printer does not appear in the Name field, click the drop-down arrow to the right. Look for it there. Another program may have installed a printer driver that moved your The Fonts folder in Windows XP Home will show you whether the fonts in your document are TrueType (highly compatible) fonts or some other type of fonts. The Advanced printing settings in Printers And Faxes may help you eliminate a plethora of color and print quality problems. printer down the list. If you see it, select it. If you do not see your printer listed, it may not be installed properly or you may have accidentally deleted it. Open the Printers And Faxes window. If you see your printer listed, right-click its icon and select Delete. Select Server Properties from the File menu, click the Drivers tab, and select your printer. Click Remove and confirm your decision (this forces Windows to extract a clean driver file). Shut down Windows and turn off the printer. Make sure your printer and PC are securely connected and then turn the printer back on and wait until it indicates a state of readiness. Restart Windows. Windows should locate and install the printer automatically. If not, check with the printer’s manufacturer for updated installation or driver files. If there is an updated executable (containing the .EXE file extension) installation program, download it to your PC, click the Start menu, select Run, and navigate to the file to install it. If not, check the printer’s documentation to see if there are special installation instructions (if so, follow them). Otherwise, return to the Printers And Faxes window and click Add Printer (under Printer Tasks in the left pane). Follow the instructions to add the printer, allowing Windows to detect the printer automatically. Provide either the updated driver files or the files you originally installed if Windows prompts you to do so. After installation, locate the printer in the Printers And Faxes window, right-click it, and select Set As Default Printer. Your printer should now appear in all Print dialog boxes and function correctly.

Error Messages
Printing error messages fall into two categories: generic and model-specific. If you do not see your error message listed here, it is likely specific to your printer. Query the Microsoft Knowledge Base (support.microsoft.com) using the exact error message as your search string, or contact the printer’s manufacturer for further assistance. Generic printing messages in WinXP Home are fairly unusual, but you may encounter the ones listed below. Device Is Not Ready. This message indicates that Windows does not recognize the printer as being ready to accept data. Check the printer power and cable and make sure it is turned on and online. If you are using a network printer, make sure the network is up and you have the appropriate print permissions .(NOTE: There are other, similar variants to this message, as well.) Incompatible Print Driver. You’ll see this error if you upgrade to WinXP and the existing printer driver is not compatible. Contact the manufacturer for an updated driver, delete the printer as described above, reinstall it, and then provide the new driver during installation. Out Of Resources. This message indicates you have insufficient memory or hard drive space. Close programs, free some drive space, and try to print again.

Final Thoughts
The suggestions we have offered here should resolve 95% of printer woes. If not, try using the printer with another PC. If it doesn’t work, contact the printer’s manufacturer for further assistance. If it does work, then consider reinstalling Windows. If you think your problem may be specifically related to inkjet printers, laser printers, or MFDs (multifunction devices), other articles in this issue may help, as well.

What To Do When . . .Your PC Won’t Start

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:18:00 +0000

We build our lives on expectations. When we flip on a light switch, we expect the room to get bright. When we turn the key in the ignition, we expect the motor will roar to life. When we press the power button on a computer, we expect that the operating system will appear on-screen. And when the expected does not happen, we . . . well, some of us freeze, some of us panic, and some of us gather our wits and prepare to fix the problem. The first step in restoring an expectation is to figure out specifically what went wrong. It’s not enough to say the lights won’t work or the car won’t start or the computer is on the blink. We have to determine whether a light bulb has burned out or a fuse is blown, whether we’re out of gas or the battery is dead, whether a cord is unplugged or the hard drive has crashed. Fortunately, making this kind of determination is rather simple, even when it involves a PC. Finding the specific cause of a failed boot involves some detective work. Take note of everything that happens during the failed boot from the moment you press the power button to the moment the boot routine grinds to a sudden halt. Write these details, including the full text of any error messages you see, on a piece of paper so that you can refer to them later.

No Power At All

As grave as this may seem at first blush, a computer that refuses to start isn’t usually all that serious. Often times, something outside the computer itself is to blame for a powerless computer. Power cord. A loose power cord is usually the problem that prevents your computer from starting. Check each end of the cord to make sure it’s firmly in place. Also be sure to check the cables that run to your monitor. Power supply switch. See if your computer’s power supply has an on/off switch that lets you kill power to the PC without removing the cable. This button, located on the back of your computer, can get accidentally bumped. Surge protectors, outlets, and fuses. Make sure the surge protector is firmly plugged into the wall outlet and that the power button on the surge protector is in the on position. If that checks out, see if the devices plugged into other outlets on the power strip are functioning. If not, the surge protector might be to blame. Another likely culprit is a faulty wall outlet. Plug your computer directly into the outlet, sans surge protector. Ensure that the GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) hasn’t been tripped. If your PC still won’t turn on, plug something else, such as a lamp, into the socket to see if it works. Finally, check your fuse box or circuit breaker to make sure there isn’t a blown fuse or tripped circuit. There are also a number of factors inside the computer that could prevent it from starting. Motherboards and power supplies. Most motherboards have a tiny light on them that lights up when the power supply is connected, even if the PC is off. If this LED (light-emitting diode) is lit, your PC is getting power, and your problem lies elsewhere. Power supplies can sometimes go bad, and if you’ve followed our troubleshooting steps to this point, you may have a dead PSU (power supply unit). To figure out whether this is the case, use a power supply tester. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions to check the well-being of your PSU. Power button cables. If you’ve recently
performed any repairs to your system, it’s quite possible that you accidentally pulled the power button cable free from the motherboard. If you spot an unplugged cable, check your motherboard for labels that indicate the prongs that support the power switch. In the event there are no such labels, check your motherboard’s users manual (which are usually
available online).

Error Messages Prior
To Windows Dealing with a PC that seems to be starting up but stops and coughs up an error message before it can load Windows is one of the more frustrating situations a computer user can experience. Fortunately, these messages do have a rhyme and reason. Often (but not always), they indicate a minor problem. Easy fixes. If an error message offers Last Known Good Configuration or Safe Mode, the error has something to do with Windows’ startup. Selecting the former option can solve a world of unknown ills. The latter is a good choice if you’ve recently added new hardware. Make sure there isn’t any removable media, including floppy diskettes, CDs, and thumb drives, in any drive. If you see an error message regarding keyboards, it’s most likely the cable has come loose. Barring that, make sure none of the keys are stuck and that all of the pins in the connectors are straight. If it’s still malfunctioning, try a new keyboard most models are quite inexpensive. Memory and parity errors. These error messages indicate problems with your PC’s memory modules. Remove memory modules and carefully reseat them in another slot. If the computer restarts properly, the slot is likely to blame; if it doesn’t, it’s likely the memory itself is the problem. Unexpected Interrupt In Protected Mode. This is indicative of an incompatible change to your BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). Enter your BIOS setup menu and look for an option to reset the BIOS to its defaults. NTLDR missing. NTLDR (think NT Loader) is the first file that executes during the boot process; it can get moved, accidentally deleted, or corrupted. Restore NTLDR from the Windows XP Setup CD via the Recovery Console. At the command prompt, type cd .. and press ENTER. Enter the letter of your CD-ROM drive (probably D:, unless you have multiple drives) and press ENTER. Type cd i386 and press ENTER. Type copy ntldr c: and press ENTER. Type copy ntdetect.com c: and press ENTER. (Ntdetect.com is another boot file that, when missing, can generate the NTLDR error.) After the copy process completes, type Exit and press ENTER. Your computer will restart.

A Beeping Computer
Should something go wrong during the boot process that prevents the computer from even sending data to the monitor or starting the computer, you need some way to identify the problem. When something goes wrong that causes the BIOS to be unable to start the computer properly, it uses specific patterns of beeps to give you clues to what the underlying problem is. New hardware. It’s easy to accidentally bump something while working inside a computer. Retrace your steps and ensure everything is firmly in place. Reboot your computer. If the beeping continues, remove the new hardware and see if the beeping goes away. Beep codes. There aren’t any standard beep patterns. To make sense of the beeps, you first need to identify your BIOS. The documentation for your motherboard likely contains this information. With this data in hand, search online for the meanings behind the beeps. Many sites offer such information. Defective components. If your problem persists, it’s time to look at replacing the troublesome component. If your beep codes indicate that the RAM is failing, you might need to first figure out which module in particular is the problem, because most computers have more than one memory module installed. Depending on how old the computer is, you should be able to take out the memory modules one at a time and reboot the computer to see if the problem goes away; doing so will identify the problematic stick of RAM. If your video card is the problem, swap it out with a new one and see if the problem continues. Make sure that the video card you choose to troubleshoot or replace yours with is compatible with your motherboard and your operating system otherwise, you will only create new problems. For troubleshooting purposes, it is helpful to have another computer you can borrow parts from. It is best to work through the troubleshooting and be fairly confident of your diagnosis before you run down to the local computer retailer and start buying replacements. If the new parts don’t fix the problem, you may be stuck with parts you can’t return.

Error Messages After Windows Starts
When Windows launches but won’t go any further without locking up or spewing forth error messages, check out the following options. Windows utilities. Repeatedly press F8 (check your PC’s documentation for another option if this key doesn’t work) during startup to launch the Windows Advanced Options menu. Select Enable Boot Logging. When Windows starts, go to C:\WINDOWS, open Ntbtlog.txt, and browse for error messages. Work from Safe Mode to repair any errors you find. Safe Mode. Select Safe Mode from the Windows Advanced Options menu. Safe Mode loads Windows with a minimal set of drives and processes for more effective troubleshooting. Perform some basic system maintenance, such as an antivirus scan and Chkdsk. Reboot your computer. If this fails to solve the problem, go back to Safe Mode and use Add/Remove Programs to uninstall anything you recently added to your system. Also try a System Restore, which will roll the OS (operating system) back to its state at an earlier date. Go to Start, All Programs, and Accessories. Select System Restore from the System tools submenu and follow the prompts. Last Known Good Configuration. If you can’t perform a System Restore from Safe Mode, select Last Known Good Configuration from the Advanced Options menu. Last Known Good Configuration rolls back your Registry and device drivers to the last setting under which your computer shut down successfully. Windows CD. Use your Windows installation disc or system recovery CD. Insert the disc and boot up. You need to press any key in order to boot from the disc. If not, you’ll have to enter the BIOS and set your optical drive as the primary boot option. After setting the optical drive as the primary boot drive, restart your system and try booting into Windows. There’s a difference between a true Windows OS disc and the image restoration discs many manufacturers ship with PCs. If you only have the latter, the following tips may not work. Windows’ repair option attempts to re-create the Registry and restore settings without removing or altering user data. When a repair is available and works as planned, it’s a great way to get a troubled system running again without starting from scratch.Boot into your Windows installation disc or system recovery CD. When prompted to choose between setting up Windows, accessing the Recovery Console, or quitting Setup, press ENTER to enter Windows Setup. Press F8 to accept Microsoft’s license agreements and then press R to Repair the selected Windows installation when prompted.Recovery console. If you have any way to back up your data, do so. Boot from your Windows installation CD (a manufacturer’s restoration CD won’t work). Press R from the Welcome screen. Select your Windows installation if prompted and enter your administrator password.At the command line, delete your existing Registry files by typing delete c:\windows\system32\config\system. Repeat four times, substituting software, sam, security, and default for system, each in turn. Now copy pristine versions of those files by entering copy c:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config\system. Repeat four times replacing system in both portions of the command with the words software, sam, security, and default. Type exit, press ENTER, and reboot.

A Continually Restarting PC
The continuous reboot problem can have a variety of causes, including faulty or unseated memory modules; out-of-date, corrupt, or missing drivers; software conflicts; overheating components; virus or malware; bad software; or bad hardware. Hardware. Your computer may immediately fail to boot if one of your memory modules is unseated. The memory modules are long, narrow sticks that attach to the motherboard located near the processor and have clips at either end. If one or both of the clips is not closed or laying flat against the edges of the module, press down on the edge of the nearest to the clip. You may have to remove the memory module and reseat it. Restart the computer. Your computer may also immediately reboot if another piece of hardware fails, has a loose connection, or becomes disconnected. Check that power plugs from your power supply are connected to the appropriate components and that those connections are secure. Listen for your hard drive to start spinning. If it is silent, then it may be faulty or disconnected from the motherboard. Also, be sure the fans on your motherboard or graphics card start spinning. If any component seems unresponsive, replace it.

BIOS. If the settings in the BIOS have changed or become unstable, you may need to reset the settings to get your system to boot again. Restart your computer and access the BIOS setup utility. When you have access to the BIOS setup utility, you should see options to Load Defaults, Load Optimized Defaults, Load Fail-Safe Defaults, or something similar. First, try loading the Optimized Defaults. If your computer still fails, re-enter the BIOS and load the Fail-Safe Defaults. If you don’t have a choice, simply load the default settings as described in your computer or motherboard manual. Confirm your choice and allow the system to reboot. You may have to select the Save And Exit option to restart your system. Sometimes, your computer won’t even let you access the BIOS. In these instances, you may have to reset the BIOS using a more hands-on approach The CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) memory retains your computer’s BIOS settings but can be reset by moving a jumper on a three-pin header on the motherboard and then moving it back to its original position after a short wait. You’ll have to consult your computer or motherboard manual for specific instructions on how to perform this operation. Restart the computer. Restarting sans error message. If your system is infected with a virus or malware or experiencing system-crippling errors, you may never see error messages that can provide clues as to why your computer continuously reboots. Windows is set to reboot when it encounters a critical error. Disabling this can let you view error messages and on-screen prompts. To change the setting in WinXP, boot into Safe Mode and access the Control Panel. If you’re using Win2000/XP with the Control Panel displayed in Classic View, simply double-click the System icon. If you’re a WinXP user viewing the Control Panel in Category View, click Performance And Maintenance and click System from the bottom of the dialog box. Click the Advanced tab and then click the Settings button from the Startup And Recovery section of the System Properties dialog box. Next, deselect the checkbox in front of Automatically Restart in the System Failure portion of the dialog box. Click OK and click OK again. Close the Control Panel and restart the computer. Now, when your system encounters an error, it will remain on-screen.

The Path To PC Well-being
Whatever the circumstances surrounding a particular boot failure, the important thing is to address the issue immediately. Follow the steps we’ve described here, refer to the product documentation that came with your computer, and contact the computer manufacturer’s support resources for step-by-step guidance in resolving the problem. And take heart: You will get your PC up and running again.