FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  536 (24/10/06)

Q. Like Ian Marshall (F!F!F! 10/10/06) I also have a lot of 35 mm slides taken when the kids were young. Not wanting to spend any more money on another scanner (I already have a perfectly adequate Canon flatbed scanner) I looked at ways to get around this.

A lot depends on the required quality. Personally I was looking to achieve images that would allow me to make prints for family albums etc. Initially I projected the slides and photographed the projected image but then I found an easier way, For years I have been using a GAF Panavue 2 slide viewer to view my slides (still available in quality camera stores).

Simply insert the slide in the viewer, which activates the backlight, and then hold the lens of the camera right against the slide viewer lens. I use the Macro close-up setting with auto focus and flash turned off, to take the picture. The resulting image is very sharp but needs colour correction. I do this using Corel Photo Paint and ACDSee.

I've been working with 40-year old transparencies, the final result depends on their initial quality but it can be very good. I have also been able to make good quality prints by scanning B & W negatives using my Canon scanner. I just place the negative on the platen, cover it with a sheet of regular white print paper and place a fluorescent desk lamp about 12 inches above the sheet. The resulting JPEG file is then converted to a positive using the negative or invert command on my editing software. Hope this information is of some value.

Jim Elks, Brockville, Canada

A. A slightly unconventional approach for slide copying it clearly works for Jim, so thanks for those useful tips.

Q. I have recently built a DT Mk II ‘Vista ready’ PC and now I want to add another CD/DVD drive. I connect the new dive to the power supply and data ribbon cable used by the first drive but in My Computer, no CD or DVD drives appear. Only when I remove the second drive is the first drive recognised. Also, I want to set up a home wireless network. Could you please tell me whether the motherboard has a wireless network adaptor?

Cyril Baptist, via email

A. CD/DVD drives are usually set to ‘Master’ mode by default and this will make them both disappear. You need to set one of the drives to ‘Slave’ mode by moving a ‘jumper’ on the rear of the drive. The positions for the jumper are usually shown on a label, or stamped into the drive’s metal case. Sorry, the Asrock motherboard used for the DT Mk II doesn’t have any onboard wireless facilities though it does have a built-in LAN network adaptor

Q. For some time now I have been receiving junk mail in quantities of five or six items per day. Unable to bounce them back to sender, I simply deleted them without opening.   However, things have taken a new twist in that I am having loads of junk mail sent to me as undelivered items, purporting to come from my e-mail address.  How can I put a stop to this?

Elizabeth Gibson, via email

A. I wish I knew my own inbox is currently straining under the weight of several hundred ‘returned mail’ and ‘mailer daemon’ messages every day and it’s really starting to tick me off! There are several different mechanisms at work here but the first thing to say is that provided you’ve battened down the hatches and your PC’s anti-virus software and security measures are fully updated then it is highly unlikely that the messages are coming from your PC.

A fair chunk of it is simply spam and using the ‘Undelivered Mail’ headers is just another ruse by spammers to get you to read their message. Some of it is coming from infected PCs and when all or part of your email address appears in the To line then it’s probably coming from someone you know, with your name in their Address Book. It’s worth right-clicking on the message in the Inbox (don’t open it), select Properties then the Details tab and click the Message Source button. If you see a familiar name or email address you should warn the sender that their PC is infected. Otherwise your email address may have been harvested from a website, forum, blog etc. Once your address is in the hands of spammers there’s not much you can do, apart from change it.

If the problem gets too bad you can always switch ISPs, preferably one with more rigorous spam filtering. Alternatively install your own Spam filter and out old favourite Mailwasher continues to do a good job. It lets you review the contents of your inbox on the mailserver, so you can clear out all of the rubbish before you download the wanted messages onto your PC. 

Q. I have a few files that I cannot rename, delete and so on. All I get is ‘Read Only Files’. Can you help?

Irvine Young, via email

A. When files are copied to a CD or DVD they are automatically made Read Only, when you transfer them back to a PC the ‘attribute’ sticks. To remove it right-click on the file in Windows Explorer or My Computer, select Properties and on the General tab uncheck ‘Read Only’, click OK and it’s done. You can also do it to several files at once, by holding down the Ctrl key, highlight all of the files you want to change and follow the same procedure.

Q. Please can you tell me if it possible to transfer my old vinyl albums onto my PC hard drive?

Tim Jones, via email

A. It certainly is and we last looked at how to do it in 2003, in Boot Camps 276 and 277. The basic principles still hold true but there’s been a few developments since then so look out for an updated Boot Camp in the next few weeks.

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© R. Maybury 2006, 1710