FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  481 (30/08/05)

Q

I am an expat living in Spain.  In the near future it may be necessary for me to come to England for a few weeks and I shall need to have Internet access on a daily basis, dialup would be fine.  There is, of course, a telephone line at my family home but how do I go about getting an ISP?  Here in Spain there is a free one that allows you to log onto the Internet at a local call rate, does something similar exist in the UK?  I really hope there is otherwise I am going to have serious problems running my business whilst away.

Lorraine Sandri, via email

A

Needless to say there’s no such thing as a free lunch and whilst there are several ISPs that do not charge a monthly subscription you will usually end up paying for it through higher call charges while you are on line, advertising, high support charges or a slow or unreliable service. Nevertheless there are some genuinely worthwhile deals to be found and there’s a useful comparison table of ‘free’ services at: www.dailyedeals.com/free_internet/access_uk.htm

Q

I am sending this e-mail via a friend because I have lost my Internet access. The main problem seems to centre on a message to the effect 'Failed to load the Internet Access wizard helper component'. I have re-booted and set up Windows 98SE several times and reset my dial up parameters. Suspecting the modem I have installed an external modem, which appears to function correctly, i.e. it connects but does not access the Internet and shows the 'Failed message'. I have also tried reconfiguring my web settings to the original without a result. Short of formatting my hard drive and starting again from scratch, I am out of ideas.

Les Bostock, via email

A

This often happens when re-installing Windows over an existing installation, doing so will also replace Internet Explorer with an old version -- the one on the CD -- and this results in a mixture of files, which causes both versions of IE to keel over. The solution is to install the latest version of IE, which will replace everything. However, this could be difficult, as you have no Internet connection. The trick is to install IE from a CD and you can often find it on ISP’s free installation discs.

Q

Friends of our have just had their first baby. The proud parents took photographs using a camera with conventional film. Unfortunately the film had not previously rewound correctly and all the phonographs were double exposed. Is there any way, possibly by scanning the photographs in and editing them so that the double exposures can be separated?

Angus Wheeler, Northallerton

A

Unfortunately not, the double-exposed pictures on the film are a single image and thus inseparable. However after scanning the print into your PC it may be possible to extract parts of one image that are uncorrupted or only lightly affected by the second picture. Any decent photo editing program, such as PaintShop Pro, Photoshop Elements etc., will let you do this using the selection tool. Simply define the area of the image that you want to capture, press Ctrl + C (or Copy) then press Ctrl + V (Paste) and save the selection as a new image. Any minor imperfections can then be touched up or edited out using tools like a ‘clone brush’, which copies colours and textures from unaffected parts of the picture.

Q

My monitor is to my left, my keyboard also points to the left and I find that if I change to upper case, the green indicator light on the right hand side of the keyboard does not always catch my eye, (I wear glasses) therefore when looking up at the monitor I find to my annoyance that I have typed a substantial amount in upper case. Is there any attachment or whatever that I could have fitted to the top left of the keyboard to alert me to the fact I have remained in upper case.

Tom Rhoden, via email

A

I am not aware of any add-on devices but there is a little software utility called SmartCaps that should solve your problems. This will let you modify the action of the Caps Lock key, so it cannot be activated accidentally. In addition it also generates an audible alert and two types of visual on-screen indicators, so you get plenty of warning when you are in caps mode. You can download a free 30-day trial version of the program from www.phoebusllc.com/sMaRTcaPs_Info.htm,

if you like what you see then registration and the upgrade to the fully functional version costs a modest $15.

Q

I have, at home, a small network of four computers, which is very useful in many ways. However I find that receiving emails becomes a problem, because, if OE is opened on one computer and the emails downloaded, those emails cannot subsequently be read or downloaded onto any of the other computers on the network. This leads to emails being spread across any of the computers around the house and emails being lost or unread or read by the wrong person. Do you know of any way around this without resorting to a webmail service?

Paul Nicholes, via email

A

I do and in OE on each machine go to Tools > Accounts, highlight the mail account, click Properties, select the Advanced tab and select 'Leave a copy of message on Server', and incoming messages will be available to all PCs on the network. However messages will gradually accumulate on the Server, so it is a good idea to nominate one PC as the main email store and keep the 'leave message...' option ticked, or remember to occasionally clear out the inbox on the Server.