FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  404 (02/03/04)

Q

In a recent Boot Camp 'Top Tip' you mentioned something called 'contact creep' - I wonder if this could be the problem I've been having? Every so often the keyboard on my laptop starts malfunctioning. Sometimes one key stops working for a couple of minutes; sometimes half the keyboard packs up. Is there any way to stop it happening, and is there an easy means of sorting it out, other than sending my laptop off for repair?
Ross Kennedy, via email

A

Contact problems are high on the list of probabilities. The keyboards in most laptops are connected to the mainboard by a thin flat ribbon cable. The connectors used to retain the cable use a simple friction clamp and these work loose or maybe the cable wasn’t properly fitted in the first place and an intermittent contact has developed. If one of the keyboard’s contact lines becomes open circuit then a number of keys would become inactive. This may be something you can fix yourself. On many laptops the keyboard can be removed, to allow access to other components underneath, so look for a removable panel either side of the keyboard but don’t try forcing anything and if in doubt seek expert advice

Q

In Word the default setting for the address on envelopes is in the wrong place. Is it possible to alter the position setting, instead of having to change it every time in the Option box?

Trevor Lee, Rochester

A

The trick is to open a blank document then go to Envelopes and Labels on the Tools menu, make your changes to the position of the address on the Options tab then return to the Envelopes tab. Click Add to Document and go to Save As on the File menu, give it a name and in the Save As Type box change to Document Template. Your custom envelope template can be accessed by going to New on the File menu and it should be filed under the General tab. Double click to open then go to Envelopes and Labels and your preferences will be stored and ready to use.

Q

A well-known football pools company insist on sending me emails although I have put them onto the Outlook Express ‘blocked senders' list several times.  Have they found a way around this useful tool?  If I send a registered letter to their Company Secretary asking to be unsubscribed and saying they will be charged £5.00 for wasting my time for each offer that then comes, what are my chances of enforcing this in the County Court?

Ray Barry, via email

A

Very poor I should think. The Blocked Senders list can be defeated if the sender changes their email address, it’s far better to create a ‘Rule’ with multiple conditions and the easiest way to do that is open the offending email and on the Message menu click ‘Create Rule From Message’. In addition to the senders email address, which should already be selected, click ‘Where the subject line contains specific words’ and ‘Where the message body contains specific words’. Click the coloured and underlined words in the Rule Description box and Add the company’s name, and any other words that are specific to the organisation and appear in their emails, such as a postal or web address. 

Q

The ‘Print to File’ tick box on the standard Word Print menu intrigues me. I thought I might be able to send a large amount of printing to a file (or series of files) and then print them out later.  When I tried this I could not get the printer to recognise the files that had been created. Am I mistaken in thinking this should be possible, or does Print to File have other uses?
T M Jarvis, via email

A

Print to File is normally used in conjunction with a Postscript printer, or when preparing ‘pdf’ (portable document format) documents, see Boot Camp 292. The idea is that you can save a document with all of its formatting and layout as a print file, on a floppy etc, and print it out on another computer that has a higher quality printer, or take it to a print shop.

Q

I recently purchased a new PC with Windows XP Home. The computer works fine but some of my old programs don't run well because XP doesn't have a DOS background and the command prompt option within XP can only be resized to a small fraction of the screen. I am a radio amateur and a fair amount of software that I use is shareware and written in DOS for simplicity. I have considered dual booting and tried using the compatibility option and resolution controls within XP but I have had no success. Is there any way for me to run the programs in a similar fashion as I would in Windows 98 etc?
Jonathan Constable, via email

A

The short answer is no. As you pointed out DOS is no longer part of Windows but the main problem is that even if you boot your PC into a DOS prompt, using a Windows 9x start-up disc for example, you cannot access the disc drives as they are formatted using the NTFS system, which DOS cannot read. There are however a couple of workarounds. The first you’ve already hinted at and that’s to ‘dual’ boot’ by installing a second disc drive or create a separate partition formatted using FAT 32. The other possibility is to try a DOS ‘emulator’ program, like DOSbox. It’s freeware and ‘Open Source’ (it is being continually developed) and is available from:

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1