FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  415 (18/05/04)

Q
I am considering using a non-PC method of sending and receiving emails, like the Amstrad Emailer or Sky Navigator. Is it likely to reduce the risk of
virus?

Dany Waugh, via email

A

You’ll be totally immune because as far as I am aware no one has yet bothered to create a virus to infect these systems, as they would be unlikely to spread very far due to their small user bases, which I suspect takes all of the fun out of it.

Q

I am following with interest the "Build your own PC" articles. I have always wanted to build a PC, but I want it to be "rack mounted" so I can put on the wall. I want all of the cable connections at the front or at the end of the casing. Do you know of any manufacturers or suppliers where I can obtain such equipment?

Norman Burton, via email

A

Such cases are available – see http://www.bellcomputer.com/prod01.htm -- but they tend to be eye-wateringly expensive. The trouble is the layout of the standard PC case is determined by the need to have bulky components like the floppy and CD/DVD drives on the front panel, which makes it difficult to provide access to sockets mounted on the motherboard, or cards fitted to expansion slots that are designed to emerge through the back of the case. If you can compromise and keep the monitor, mains and communications ports on the back you can easily bring most of the other sockets around to the front using a ‘patch bay’, obtainable from most PC component suppliers for around £25 to £30. These fit into a standard 5.25-inch drive slot and provide extension sockets for the motherboard’s audio connections (microphone, speakers, line out), USB and FireWire sockets.

Q

My 3-year old PC has been playing up recently, with the signal to the monitor intermittently dropping out. It fixes itself when I drive the tower to the repair shop, where there is no fault found! The colours have also been intermittently turning bluer, with the red apparently dropping out. 

The Graphics card is built into the motherboard, so I simply purchased a PCI graphics card and installed it in a spare slot. The picture is now on full-time, but the blue tint remains. What could be the cause of my problems?

Stu Stirrat, via email

A

It sounds as though you have two separate faults. The first one with the video adaptor on the motherboard you have successfully fixed but the blue tint is almost certainly confined to the monitor, which explains why it didn’t show up when you took the PC in for repair. Some monitors have colour ‘temperature’ controls that allow you to make adjustment to colour balance; check the setup controls on the front of the monitor. Otherwise it may be more serious, such as premature tube ‘ageing’ or a fault in the monitor’s drive circuitry in which case it will probably be cheaper to buy a new one.   

Q

We have just bought a new Windows XP PC with Works 7; currently we are using Windows 95 and Word. Can we transfer the files to floppy disk and then the new PC, or is there another way, for example print the documents on the old PC then scan them into the new machine?

Chris Elevrson 

A

Printing and scanning is certainly a novel solution and yes, it would probably work, but would be incredibly laborious, as would transferring lots of Word documents on floppy disc. However, if you opt for this method ‘zip’ or compress the files first using a utility like WinZip (www.winzip.com), to squeeze as many documents as possible onto each disc.

The quickest way to move a lot of large files from one PC to another is to temporarily ‘slave’ the hard disc in the old machine in the new one but this isn’t for novices and entails some tinkering with your computer’s innards. If you don’t fancy that then you can transfer files using the Internet – send them to yourself as email attachments, providing there’s not too many of them and they’re not too large. Alternatively connect the two PCs together using Windows Direct Cable Connection (DCC). We looked at DCC and simple networking in Boot Camps 67 and 68, it’s quite an old article but the principles are still relevant and there’s a useful guide to DCC in Windows XP Help, just type ‘Direct Cable Connection’ in the Search box.

Q 

I've just installed a Belkin wireless network for my 2 laptops, and have connected my Lexmark printer with a cable to the Belkin ADSL hub/modem. Everything works really well, except that I get a spurious print file called "Downlevel Document" which prints a line or two of strange characters at the top of each page.  I now have to keep my printer switched off until I want to print something, then check for the rogue files and delete them before allowing my real file to print.  I have to do this because the bad file appears to be really large. What can I do?

Hassall Balshen, via email

A

There are several possibilities; one of your PCs may have been infected by the FunLove 4099 virus. There’s a full explanation and links to a removal tool in Microsoft Knowledgebase article 312015 and the quickest way to get to it is to type the KB number into Google, it should be somewhere in the first half dozen or so ‘hits’. This behaviour can also be caused by your virus scanner – try switching it off to see if the problem disappears – or a wrongly configured network printer, see KB article 137065