INDEX 2003 PC Doctor Columns
December 29, 2003, December 21, 2003, December 15, 2003, December 10, 2003, November 24, 2003, November 18, 2003
Dear PC Doctor:
We are suddenly having a problem with Internet Explorer on
our home computer. When we log on, the IE home page has set itself to a cheesy
search engine called Globe Finder. When we go in to Tools, Internet Options,
General to change our home page to what we want it to be, ex. Google, Google
will remain our home page for that session, but once we log in again, it has
reverted to Globe Finder.
Is this some sort of virus affecting our computer? I've never seen this happen
before. KR
Dear KR:
More than likely in my experiences, these symptoms are signs of pure random malicious programs that were installed on the computer. It’s the classic case of when you go to a website and a popup comes up and says "your computer is not optimized, or, your computer may be at risk to attack, click here to fix" and it installs programs that put popups on your computer. These messages sound like something good that you should respond to, but my advice is NOT to do this. Always click on the red X in the upper right hand corner of your window to close the popup boxes instead of answering the question inside the box if you have the option.
Now to your problem. There are some downloads you can do to fix it, however rather than potentially downloading some other problem let’s just edit the registry. Go to the Start button, click on ‘Run’ and in the box type regedit. A box will open up and in the left hand column find HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Click on the + (plus sign) to the left of that line. Follow the sequence I’m going to describe, continuing to click on the plus signs next to the word – Software / Microsoft / Internet Explorer / Main. Once you click on main, look over to the right hand side of the screen and scroll down until you find ‘Start page’. On that same line you should see the offending ‘Globe Finder’ web page that keeps insinuating itself into your browser. Double click on the words ‘start page’ and an edit string box will open and under ‘value data’ type in the name of the search engine or web page you want to open up when you open Internet Explorer (ex: http://www.athollibrary.org or http://www.google.com). Click OK and then close the window. Hopefully that should solve your problem. PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
What is that message I get when the computer has an error and then it asks me if I want to send it to Microsoft? I usually click yes, but wonder what it’s for? Do I need to do it? Marie
Dear Marie:
Supposedly this feature is to alert Microsoft when a program crashes so that theoretically they will use this report to fix the problem. I can only imagine how many zillion error messages Microsoft gets each day (if my computer is any indication) and find it hard to believe they actually take the time to read each one. But it’s up to you. I have error reporting turned off on my computer and I will share the ‘secret’ with you so you can turn it off too if you find it annoying.
Go to the start button, select control panel, and then double click on system. Alternatively you can access it by right clicking on the my computer icon on the desktop and choosing properties.
Once there, select the advanced tab and click on error reporting. You can either choose to ‘disable error reporting but notify me when critical errors occur’ or ‘enable error reporting’ and then chose the programs you wish. Click OK and close out of the boxes. PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
I have no clue what I was doing but all of a sudden my taskbar is on the right hand side of the screen instead of at the bottom. What did I do and can I put it back where it belongs? Todd
Dear Todd:
Moving it back is very easy. Just click on it with the left mouse button, hold the button down and drag it to wherever you want it to appear and let go of the mouse button. You can actually move the taskbar to either the top, left or right of the screen. We’re just used to seeing it on the bottom but it can reside anywhere. To stop that from happening again, just right click on it and choose ‘lock the toolbar’. PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
My wife has been complaining because I just got a new computer and I like to surf the net at night and the modem dialing is very loud. She goes to bed early and the noise disturbs her. Can I shut that sound off? Wanting Harmony
Dear Harmony:
Yes, you can create harmony with the wife so she can get a good night’s sleep. It’s too bad you don’t have DSL, cable or satellite, which would not only help you in this instance but would also give you lightning speed. But as those of us who live in the Athol Orange area know, these services are not available to everyone yet. But they’re coming! I have faith.
Anyways, to correct your problem, go to the Start button, click on ‘Control Panel’. When the box opens up, find and double click on ‘Phone and Modem Options’. Click the ‘Modems’ tab, look down near the bottom right and click on the ‘Properties’ button. Click on the ‘Modem’ tab and you will notice a slide under the heading ‘Speaker volume’. Just slide that bar to off, click OK, click OK again and then close the Control Panel. You should be in for a quiet night of surfing. PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
I’m interested in taking an online course but
I’m not quite sure how to go about it? Any suggestions?
April
Dear April:
It’s funny you ask that question because the Athol Library is going to offer a series of classes that address this very issue. So mark your calendar for February 24 from 10-12 a.m. or February 26 from 1-3 p.m. Call the library to sign up as we can only take ten people. If the demand is high, it will be offered again.
If you have a specific course in mind, the college you are taking it with will normally send you directions as to how to access the course. You realize that there is a charge for taking an online college course and that fee is assessed by and paid to the college. It would be similar for courses that are offered by ‘online universities’. So contact the college you would be interested in taking a course from and see what they offer or attend the class at the library to find out more. PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
Sometimes when I’m looking at a website I’d like to send it to my friend, but every time I do I guess I type the address wrong because she says it doesn’t work although sometimes it does. Is there any easy way to do this? Sharon
Dear Sharon:
I find the easiest way to get the spelling, etc. right on the web address is to find the page you wish to send in Internet Explorer. Once you are there, highlight the address in the address box (it should be something like www.athollibrary.org), go up to ‘File’ and choose ‘Copy’ or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C. If you use Outlook Express, go to the ‘Create Mail’ button on the tool bar and hit the little down arrow on the right hand side. From the drop down menu, choose ‘Web page’. Your cursor will be in the box that opens up and all you have to do it hit the shortcut keys Ctrl+V to paste. Your website address should appear and you can click ‘OK’. The new message box will now ask for the person you would like to send it to, click send and off it goes. If you have spell check enabled, it may try to perform a spell check on the web page. I just click ‘cancel’ at which point it asks if I want to send it anyways although spell check was stopped and I click ‘yes’. Hey, if someone else’s web page has errors, I don’t need to spend time making corrections that won’t take anyways!
Try sending one to yourself so you can see how nice your page appears!
Now if your friend has limited mailbox space and it bounces back to you undeliverable, you can instead just use the same technique to copy the web address and then just create a new message and instead of clicking ‘Web page’, just put your cursor into the body of your message (as if you were going to go ahead and type a message) and then hit the shortcut keys Ctrl+V. This will paste the address only into the message and when your friend receives it, she can click on it and it will open up her browser and find that web site. Either way should work!
TIP OF THE WEEK
How many of you are looking for something on your computer and don’t remember where you put it or where it is located? Or you’re looking on the Internet at a website that has tons of pages and you want to search for one simple term. Well, try this useful key combination that allows you to do a quick, basic search in your document or webpage. Hit the Ctrl+F and a Find dialog box will open up. You simply type in the word or key term that you want to find and click the ‘Find Next’ button (or ‘More’ button in Word). This can be a real time saver and so easy to do!
Useless tip that someone might find wonderful. Did you know that you can force a win in the game of Freecell? Yup, it’s true. Just hit the keys Ctrl+Shift+F10 on the keyboard (together). A box will appear that offers you three buttons: Abort (to win), Retry (to lose) or Ignore (to cancel). Just hit ‘Abort’ and guess what? You win!
Dear PC Doctor:
Someone mentioned in conversation the other day that they have a boot disk for their computer. I felt too stupid to ask what that is. Can you tell me? Joe
Dear Joe:
A boot disk is a floppy diskette that you create as insurance against a computer breakdown when you don’t want to or can’t boot from the hard drive. If your computer won’t boot up properly, you can insert this floppy diskette into your A drive and since (in most cases) the operating system looks there first when starting up, it will perform the commands on that disk and get you running so that you can then investigate the problem. Sometimes people create an MS DOS boot disk because they want to run older games that can’t be run from newer versions of Windows.
There are many sites out there with instructions but one good one that lists step by step instructions for creating boot disks is http://www.computerhope.com/boot.htm which tells you how to make them for MS DOS, Windows 3.X, Windows 95, Windows 98 or ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP (I think that about covers it!). Instructions are also given for how to use this disk and links to other helpful information.
This site recommends that once you create your diskette, you write protect it to prevent computer viruses to be written to it. The reason being that the problem you are trying to correct may be a virus which would then infect your boot disk. To write protect it, just turn your floppy disk over and look in the upper left hand corner. You should see a little tab that you can slide up and down. Look closely next to it and you should see a picture of a locked lock and an open lock (get those glasses on!). Just slide the tab to the locked position. Voila! Now no one can write to it. Label it and remember to put it in a safe place. Write protecting can be used for any diskette that you don’t want to be written on or accidentally formatted. You can easily reverse this decision by sliding the tab back to the unlocked position if you later want to overwrite it. PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
One thing I notice is missing from my new XP computer is scandisk. Is that no longer needed? Ryan
Dear Ryan:
Actually they have changed the name to Checkdisk or chkdsk. To find it, click on ‘My Computer’, right click on which ever drive you want to scan (usually C) and select ‘Properties’. Click the ‘Tools’ tab and you will see ‘Error Checking’ and you will click the button there ‘Check Now’. You are then given the choice to ‘Automatically fix file system errors’ or ‘Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors’. You can check one or both and then click the ‘Start’ button. The system will now be checked for problems and then corrected.
You will notice on that same box you can ‘Defragment’ the drive which we talked about in an earlier column and ‘Backup’ which allows you to back up whatever drive you select (not a bad idea!). PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
I’ve been teaching my grandmother how to use the computer and she just can’t seem to remember that you need to go to the Start menu to shutdown the computer off, so she just keeps hitting the off button. Do you have any suggestions? John
Dear John:
Well, it’s true if you really think about it – why do you hit Start to Stop? A burning question for another day!
One thing you could do to make it easier is to create a shortcut for her on the desktop that would shut the machine down when she clicks on it. To do this, right click on the Desktop and chose New and then Shortcut. A box will appear that says “Create Shortcut”. Here is what you want to type in the box:
SHUTDOWN –s –t 01
There are spaces before the minus signs and 01 are numbers zero and one. Click the NEXT button and another box will appear that will ask you to name the shortcut. You can call it whatever you want but “SHUT DOWN THE COMPUTER” would probably be helpful to your grandmother. Click Finish.
The icon will be on your desktop and frankly I thought it was kind of boring so I changed it on my computer. Just right click on the icon, select “Properties”, select the ‘Shortcut’ tab and look near the bottom for ‘Change Icon’. You will be given quite a few to choose from. Highlight the one you want, click OK and OK again. You should see your new icon.
Now your grandmother just has to double click
on that icon (or if she has trouble double-clicking right now, just right click
once and select ‘Open’) and her computer will shut down properly. Be patient
with her!
`
PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
I just bought a new computer, going from Windows 95 to XP and it looks like a Fisher Price kiddie screen. I hate it. How can I change it back to my beloved Windows desktop? Phil
Dear Phil:
People either seem to love it or hate it. Once you get used to it, it’s not so bad but I understand your frustration if you like the classic look of Windows in the earlier versions.
So don’t despair, you can change it somewhat. Some things won’t be exactly the same, but at least you can get the feel back of your older version. To do this, right click on the Desktop and select ‘Properties’. Click on the ‘Themes’ tab from the box that opens up. Under ‘Theme’, click on the down arrow and from the drop down menu, select ‘Windows Classic’. Click OK. Pretty soon a familiar screen will be greeting you. You can always change it back to XP by following the same procedure.
Now your icons will still be XP and to change those you need to go a little further. And unfortunately you have to change them one by one. As an example of how you would go about this, let’s take ‘Internet Explorer’ as our guinea pig.
Right click on the ‘Internet Explorer’ icon. Select ‘Create Shortcut’. A new icon will appear on the Desktop that says ‘Shortcut to Internet Explorer’. When you right click on this icon and select “Properties”, you can choose ‘Change icon’. Highlight (click) on the one you want and then click OK. Then just drag or right click and delete your old icon.
Now maybe you don’t even like the choices of icons you are offered. Just go to our old favorite search engine ‘Google’ and type in ‘icon’. One good site is http://www.iconarchive.com/ although there are many out there.
To save your icons, first you must create a folder to put them into or at least I recommend that. Right click on the Start button which opens up the explorer feature. Select ‘Explore’ and on the left hand side of the window that opens, find and click on ‘Local disk (C:)” Go up to the menu bar and select ‘File’, ‘New’ and ‘Folder’. Name your folder ‘Icon’ or whatever you choose. Then close the window by clicking the red x in the upper corner or going to ‘File’ and ‘Close’.
Back to your Google search. When you find an icon that you like, right click on the ‘.gif’ or ‘.ico’ file extension next to or below the icon you wish to download. Off the drop down menu, select ‘Save Target As” and when the ‘Save as’ window opens, choose the folder you want to save your icon to (remember the one you just created!). The path should be something like: c:\icons\
Now you can select from this folder when adding new icons to the desktop. PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
Sometimes I put a document on a CD and then when I try to open it up on another computer, it isn’t listed on there. But when I go back to my computer, it is there. It’s so frustrating, what am I doing wrong? Tom
Dear Tom:
My first thought is that when you eject the CD, you are not selecting the option to allow your CD to be read on any drive.
I’m also assuming that you are using the proper CDs – which are CDR or CDRW (for CD readable and CD rewritable) disks. These allow you to ‘burn’ information onto the CD and of course you have to have a CD burnable drive on your computer. There are CD drives that can only play prepackaged commercial CDs that contain music or software. They cannot be written to by your computer.
So make sure that your CD drive is in fact a burner and that the disks you want to write on are writable. The disks themselves will say either CDR or CDRW. Look at the outside of the CD drive on your computer and it should say ‘rewritable’ or ‘RW’.
Once you have determined that your ducks (or disks/drives) are in order, get a new CD. Insert it into your CD drive and normally screens will pop up saying things like the CD is ready or some other instructions depending on the CD writing software you have installed. Many new computers come with Roxio or Direct CD. Just respond to the prompts and boxes that appear depending on how you want to use the CD. The CD must be formatted just as a floppy is. Then try saving your file to the CD. When you eject the disk, a screen should pop up with several choices, the one you want is to make the CD readable on any drive. This should format your CD to work in any other drive (RW or not). Good luck. PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
We have a computer that starts on its own! What gives? Confused
Dear Confused:
Without looking at it myself, the main thing that comes immediately to mind is that the connection either at the on/off button itself or at the motherboard is faulty. If you are brave enough to open the machine up and make sure those connections are in firmly, give it a go. If you notice they are frayed, they should be replaced. Good luck! PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor: (Winkeys)
I notice on my keyboard that there is a funny looking button by
the space bar. What is that for?
Ernie
Dear Ernie:
I assume that you mean the button with the wavy flag on it between the control (Ctrl) and the Alt key. This is the Windows logo courtesy of Microsoft (you may recognize it in color when your computer powers up). This special key is used in combination with other keys to perform various functions. An example is pressing this key (WINKEY) and the M key which will minimize all your open programs onto the task bar. There is a great webpage with all the WINKEYS along with other helpful keyboard shortcuts at http://www.computerhope.com/shortcut.htm#2 .
Keyboard shortcuts are great – in fact I use three just to get
this column to you! Once I create it in WORD, I use CTRL + A to select all the
questions and answers, CTRL + C to copy all the text, then I open my email and
use CTRL + V to paste it into the email message to send along to the Athol Daily
News. I could just attach it to the message but with viruses and such, it’s
just as easy to cut and paste it into the main body.
PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
When I go to the library and turn on the Internet, the first thing I see is the Athol Public Library website but when I go home it shows MSN. I visited my daughter out west and hers opens up to some newspaper she reads everyday. Why are they all different and I would like mine to open to the library website? Is that possible? Agnes
Dear Agnes:
It absolutely is and of course I would say the library is a good choice because it offers so many different search engines and directory options that you can jump off from. But of course you can set it to open to any website of your choice.
To do this, open your Internet Explorer and go up to the top menu bar. Click on ‘Tools’ and a drop down menu should appear. Chose ‘Internet Options’ and another box will open up. Under the ‘General’ tab, the first item should be ‘Home Page’ with the words ‘You can change which page to use for your home page’. In the box, delete whatever page is listed there and change it to the page you desire. You need to type the FULL web address so for the library’s page to appear, you will need to type http://www.athollibrary.org Then click ‘Apply’ and then ‘OK’.
When you hit the ‘Home’ button on the tool bar or exit Explorer and reenter, the library website should be the first thing you see. PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
I’m taking a vacation soon and wonder about the exchange rate. Is there any place on the Internet that I can check that out? Bill
Dear Bill:
Yes, go to www.xe.com and you will see a quick chart that lists the value of various currencies converted to other currencies. To figure an amount more or less than one dollar or other countries, scroll down to the ‘Quick Currency Converter’, type in the amount, select the ‘to’ and ‘from’ countries and click ‘convert’. It’s really a pretty neat site. PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
Sometimes when I insert a picture into my document I can’t get it to move or resize or the text appears below it when I want it to surround it. It’s very annoying so most of the time I end up not even putting graphics in when I really want to. Ed
Dear Ed:
If you are using WORD or Publisher, after you insert the picture, just click on the picture itself so that the formatting frame appears around it. Then go up to the menu bar and select ‘Format’, scroll down to ‘Picture’ and from the popup box select the ‘Layout’ tab. You will see several variations to chose from: in line with test, square, tight, behind text or in front of text. Just click on the box that best describes how you want the text to appear and click ‘OK’. An alternative method is to right click on the picture and from the drop down menu chose ‘Format Picture’. This will open the same box that you get from entering via the menu bar. PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
Whenever I try to go to this web site that my brother recommended, the page says “This page cannot be displayed”. What does that mean? Ann
Dear Ann:
Several things could be happening. The most common is that when either you or your brother copied the address down, it didn’t get written exactly correctly. Check again with him to see where he got it from and make sure it is right. Even a misplaced period or misspelled word (like colour instead of color) can throw the computer search totally off. Ask him if he is still able to access the site.
If you’re sure it’s right, the site may be discontinued or temporarily down for maintenance. In the latter case, just try again another day. If the site has ‘closed up shop’, there is no way to really tell unless you also have a phone number or email address to inquire of the company (if it is a company) whether they no longer have a website.
The only other thing I can think of is that if you are using a public computer, there may be blocking software on that computer that is blocking the site you are trying to PC Doctor