FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  484 (25/10/05)

Q

Is there a software program available that will convert a telephone number into a postal address?

Philip A. Habib, via email

A

This is called a ‘reverse search’ but it is not something BT Directory Enquiries or other UK based directory services will do as it has obvious privacy implications.

Q

My son wants a dot.com domain for Christmas in order to set up his own Internet radio station. I have found it difficult to find any information regarding setting up your own server at home and what software and facilities are required to give the appropriate bandwidth.

I have also read some articles from America regarding Royalty payments for songs played on Internet radio. The charges appeared to be far in excess to those paid by normal radio stations. What are the rules regarding Internet Radio and where can I find them as I don't believe my 11 year old son's pocket money will be able to stretch far enough to pay for the upkeep of Bono's new Maserati.

Ned Kelly, via email

A

Setting up a home server for an Internet radio service really isn’t a practical proposition. Even a fast broadband connection wouldn’t have sufficient bandwidth for more than a handful of connections and constantly streaming large volumes of audio data may well get you into trouble with your ISP. There are much easier ways to do it and I suggest a 24-hour web-based radio service like Live365 (http://www.live365.com/index.live). For a modest fee your son can compile his own personal playlists of tracks available from the site, or he can use his own material (from CDs he owns, music he or his friends have recorded and so on) and for a slightly higher fee he can hone his DJ skills and add his own voice track. The set-up program is very easy to use and the fee -- typically between $4 and $10 per month -- covers all royalty payments.

Q

I have recently upgraded my old Dell dimension, with a Pentium III processor, from Windows 98 to Windows XP. I am now faced with problems with the CPU capacity operating almost constantly at 100%, which obviously means the computer is running very slowly and we aren't getting the benefit of the speed of our broadband connection. 

I thought I must need to increase the memory of our computer, as it is 7 years old and have looked into memory upgrades.  I wanted to know what capacity I should be looking for to make the computer perky again.

Anna Coad, Hampshire

A

I doubt that it has anything to do with RAM memory, or lack of it, but for the record Windows XP needs around 512Mb for comfort though 1Gb is better and should be more than enough to cope with anything but the most demanding graphics-intensive applications (games, video editing and so on). You didn’t mention CPU speed but I wouldn’t recommend running Windows XP on anything less than a 1GHz processor.

Assuming that your machine meets these requirements the chances are there is something running in the background, a program or a ‘service’  that is swallowing up all of your processor’s capacity. The only way to find out what is responsible is by a process of elimination. I suggest that you run through the tweaks in Boot Camps 365 to 367 (XP Tuning Tips) and you should have it flying along in no time flat.  

Q

On shutting down my computer after going on the Internet I get the following message. ‘DDCMan.exe instruction at 0x774fdefb could not be read’. How can I stop this from constantly appearing?

Geoff F

A

The DDCMAN.exe file is part of an application that belongs to something called The Wild Tangent Game Channel.  Presumably this is something that you (or someone with access to the PC) have downloaded at some time in order to play games on the Internet. It’s not malware or spyware but you should remove it from your computer, as it seems to be corrupt. All you have to do is go to Add/Remove Programs I Control Panel and scroll down the list to Wild Tangent, there a link to more detailed uninstall instructions at:

www.kephyr.com/spywarescanner/library/

wildtangent/index.phtml.

Q

I have taken video sequences with my digital camcorder and wish to print still pictures of individual frames. The only program I have for video is the one that is contained within XP, Windows Movie Maker. I select the frame I want I then Print Screen and paste it into Paint, delete the superfluous parts leaving just the frame I want to print, but when I print all I get is a solid black rectangle. The really annoying part is that I have been successful before using this method but now it does not work.

Paul Bentley, via email

A

It’s difficult to say what is going on but it is possible that Paint is throwing a wobbly or there is a problem with one of the print components. You could check the settings in File > Page Setup; click the Printer button then Properties to make sure to make sure the printer page layout and paper type settings are all correct. One other thing you could try is copy and paste your image into an open Word document and print it from there.

If that works then uninstall from Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel (it’s listed under Windows Components > Accessories) then reinstall a fresh copy from your Windows CD. Otherwise I suggest that you use a more sophisticated image editing program, like PaintShop Pro or Adobe Elements, or if you prefer, there’s an excellent freeware (Open Source) program called The Gimp, which you will find at: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/ (Note you will have to download and install the GTK+2 Runtime Environment before installing The Gimp).

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© R. Maybury 2005, 1110