FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  321 (09/07/02)

Q

Each day, approximately 15 minutes after booting up my PC Dial-Up Connection appears and, unless I happen to be around to cancel it, connects me to the Internet.  On several recent occasions I have returned to my computer to find that, totally unaware, I have been on-line for several expensive hours.  My bank manager says I need help.

John Maddison,

A

This is probably a program or scheduling agent trying to automatically download updates or it might be the work of something nasty, like a virus. Either way you have to determine what it is so the next time it tries to dial up the Internet press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to bring up the Close Program dialogue box. This shows a list of all running programs, including, hopefully, the one that is trying to access the Internet without your permission; if you find anything you’re not familiar with or looks suspicious make a note of it, highlight the entry and click End Task. You could try running a check in Google (www.google.co.uk), if it’s legitimate you should be able to disable automatic updates from the program’s own setup or tools menus. Otherwise it’s likely that this program is loaded automatically with Windows and you should be able to disable it by going to Run on the Start menu and typing ‘msconfig’ (without the quotes). Select the Startup tab and look for the offending program or utility on the list. If you still can’t find it then it may well be a virus, in which case, assuming you have a virus scanner on your PC, make sure its signature library is up to date then run a full scan.

Q

My daughter was recently given a Photo CD, as a souvenir of her trip to Norway. Unfortunately the photographs on the CD are significantly larger (approximately 9 times) than the screen and we have been unable to view the whole picture at one time. Any ideas?

Ray Westlake, Lydney, Glocs.

A

Are you sure it’s a Photo CD; this format is mostly used by professional photographers nowadays? It’s far more likely that the pictures were shot on a digital camera and stored on the CD-R as JPEG files. If you haven’t got a photo viewer or editing program on your PC Windows will attempt to display the pictures using Internet Explorer (or Paint) neither of which has any scaling facilities, so they will be shown full size, i.e. large enough to fit on the side of a house… The solution is to install a picture viewer, try ACDsee, it can handle just about any picture file format, (including Photo CD *.pcd images) and it has a simple slideshow utility; a trial version can be downloaded from: www.acdsystems.com/English/index.htm

Q

My wife and I have recently discovered the stationery that one can use with Outlook Express version 6.  However we find the selection provided is very limited. We have received e-mails with many different designs including moving cartoons and pictures.  Is there any site from which one can download more stationery than that provided by OE6, including backgrounds, pictures and moving items?

Roger Hills

A

You’ll probably wish you hadn’t asked…The Internet is awash with websites offering OE stationery and background, begin your search at: www.daisybaxter.com/stationery_links.htm which has links to more than one hundred sites.

Q

Coming as I do to computing as a (very) senior citizen I find that Help in Windows ME answers all the questions except those I want to ask. Can you please assist me with the following? With great pains I typed a long document (thirteen A4 pages) on my Brother Word Processor when I was away from home. I saved this to disc, copied the disc and turned the copy into an ASCII file as per the instructions in the Brother handbook, which blithely says this should be useable on any PC but omits to say how and nor apparently does Windows ME. How can I get my PC to read this file so I can store it in My Documents?

Eric Beauchamp, Enfield, Middlesex.

A

Several things that could have gone wrong so the first thing to do is determine whether or not there are any readable files on the disc. Open Windows Explorer then select the 3.5-inch floppy and see if there are any files, if so click on them and if they are readable WordPad or your word processor should open them. If so you can reformat the text and save it in My Documents. If the floppy appears empty it may be damaged, or not formatted correctly for a PC, in which case right-click on the floppy disc icon in Windows Explorer, select Format and then go back to your Brother word processor and resave the files on the newly formatted disc.

Q

I occasionally receive a message "Your computer is dangerously low in resources" while browsing the Internet. Should this be cause for concern or can it be rectified? I am using Windows ME 1.2GHz AMD Athlon processor with 256Mb SDRAM memory, 40 GB HDD. I have used 8.47 GB and have 29.6 GB remaining. What resources does it mean?

Thomas Smith

A

The resources in question are an area of your computer’s RAM memory where details of what’s on the screen – the visual components in your applications, menus, dialogue boxes etc.,  -- are stored. When you open and close applications, and browser windows System Resources should be released but sometimes they’re not and it gets clogged – even though you may only have one or two applications open at the time, and you get the low resources message. To prevent a crash save data and close any running programs, you could also use Ctrl + Alt + Delete to shut down any applications running in the background but the only way to regain system resources is to reboot. To prevent it happening in future make a note of which programs are running, or ran prior to the error message as one or more of these may be suffering from a memory ‘leak’, and it might be worth checking the manufacturer’s web site to see if there’s a patch or update.