FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  508 11/04/06)

Q. I am of an age where the death notices are of as much interest to me as the newspaper Leader columns. My attempts to find out who has died in East Anglia are invariably frustrated by a message on my PC, which reads ‘ADODBRecorded error 800aObb9 Arguments are of the wrong type, are out of acceptable range or are in conflict with one another’. Any suggestions?

R E Underwood  

A. You will be relieved to know that it is not your fault and the message you are seeing is the result of an ASP (Active Server Page) scripting error. There’s nothing you can do about it at your end, apart from informing the Webmaster. Tell them what pages are affected, the browser you are using and point them in the direction of Microsoft Knowledgebase articles 197323 and 259388.

Q. I recently bought a wireless media player in order to send my music on PC external hard disk in my home office to my Hi-Fi in the sitting room. It was claimed to operate over 110 yards but in my house it struggled at 25 yards. The signal broke up when anyone moved around in the rooms between the transmitter and receiver. So I returned it. I am still looking for a solution.

I have seen Hi-Fi systems, which feature USB input for MP3 playback. Does this enable the connection of an external hard disk loaded with MP3 content? Is this therefore the answer or can you suggest some other solution?

Mac Cummings, Lullington

A. The stated range of wireless and cordless devices is invariably wildly over-optimistic and is often based on measurements taken in the open air. As soon as you put a few walls and floors between the transmitter and receiver -- as tends to happen in the real world -- the effective range falls off dramatically. If you divide the claimed range by a factor of three or four you won’t be far off and it’s often worse on cheaper products, where cost savings are made on the sensitivity and selectivity of the receiver and transmitter circuitry. 

The USB sockets fitted to Hi-Fi systems and audio devices vary in what they do or are capable of. Some will read data from some MP3 players, though it’s by no means clear from a cursory glance of the features and specs list if they have the necessary firmware for it be able to read from an external disc drive. Others use the USB port for connection to a PC, for file transfer or software updates, so I wouldn’t go down that that route without doing a lot of homework first.

I have two alternative suggestions. You could connect a PC to your Hi-Fi directly -- an old laptop would be ideal for this type of application, or you could set up a wireless network with your office PC using a Wi-FI enabled laptop connected to your hi-fi. The range of Wi-Fi indoors should be around 30 to 50 metres, if reception turns out to be a problem there is plenty of assistance in the form of range extenders, repeaters and high-gain antennas.

Q. I use the Internet and it is fine, I then try again later, and there’s nothing, but email sill works! Trying various things I have narrowed it down to Norton Internet Security 2006. With it switched off, both Firefox and Internet Explorer work fine; with it on there’s nothing, except email.

Tony Edwards

A. At least you know what’s causing the problem that’s half the battle, and you are not alone. I have found a fair few web references to users having configuration problems with NIS 2006 but most of them seem to be fairly easy to resolve. I suggest that you switch it off and visit the Symantec Support pages and click on the link for ‘Internet Connection issues’, select NIS 2006 from the list then work your way through the troubleshooting sections.

Q. I have used RegClean with Windows98/ME previously. I now have a laptop with Windows XP installed. Will it be OK to use RegClean or do I need an update, if so where from as I have been unable to locate one?
Bernard Brownsword, via email

A. RegClean is an ancient Microsoft utility, originally designed for Windows 95 and subsequently updated for Win 98 but it’s no longer supported and there is no version for XP. Although the Windows 9x and XP Registry’s are quite similar in structure I definitely wouldn’t try it, but it’s not a problem. There are plenty of alternatives, including my preferred Registry tool, Regseeker, which is compatible with Windows XP, it’s free, does a great job and safe to use with its built-in backup facility.

Q. If movies made using Windows Movie Maker 2 cannot be played on a regular DVD player then it is a useless piece of software. When are they going to fix this?

Rob Jones, via email

A. I think you are being a tad harsh since it didn’t cost you anything. Movie Maker 2, included with Windows XP is ideal for beginners and it actually does quite a fair job of editing video movies shot on analogue and digital camcorders, which can then be viewed on the PC, uploaded to the web or copied to CD. The fact that it doesn’t have a DVD burning facility seems quite sporting of Microsoft. If it were to include one then no doubt it would be accused of driving software companies out of business. However, that particular argument won’t hold up much longer as DVD burning support is going to be a feature in some versions of Windows Vista, now due to be launched in 2007. In the meantime there are plenty of third party DVD burning programs on the market that work happily with MM2, including several freeware and low cost shareware titles. It’s also worth noting that DVD-RW drives often come with a bundled DVD burning application. 

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© R. Maybury 2006, 2803