FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  540 (21/11/06)

Q. Yesterday I downloaded Internet Explorer v7 and ever since then I get an error message at start up which says: 'Smart Bridge Alerts: Motive SB.exe - Entry Point not found…’ Everything works fine so it's not apparently causing any problems. Is this a real problem or should I just accept the error message each time?

Craig Rattigan, Huntingdon

A. The recent roll out of IE7 has caused surprisingly few problems but this particular one is quite common and it is due to a background ‘service called Motive Smartbridge. It is installed by a fair number of broadband setup programs and for some reason it conflicts with a Windows system file, which is updated by IE7. Smartbridge appears to have some function in error reporting but you can certainly live without it and the simplest thing to do is go to Find or Search on the Start menu and look for the file ‘psap’.dll’. You should find two instances of it, one in Windows\System32, which you should leave alone, and another, which will be in a folder called Smartbridge. This one you should right-click on and rename ‘psapiold.dll’. Click OK and reboot.

Q. I have a problem opening the first email in Outlook Express. It takes ages to display but the following ones open immediately. Why?

Stanley Field, via email

A. If Outlook Express is slow to open, you are using Windows 98 and you have recently installed or upgraded McAfee VirusScan then it could be due to a file called Imagehelp.dll, which McAfee has mistakenly deleted and needs to be replaced. You can do this by loading your Windows 98 installation CD, type ‘sfc.exe’ in Run on the Start menu, select the option ‘Extract a single file’ and follow the prompts.

Otherwise this can be due to too many emails clogging up your Inbox, 5000 or more messages will certainly slow it down, so start deleting or archiving and see if that makes a difference. One last thing to check and that’s to make sure that OE is opening on your Inbox and not the OE home page. Go to Tools > Options and on the General tab at the top make sure that ‘When starting, go directly to my inbox…’ is ticked.

Q.My old laptop keeps going into Safe Mode after running Scandisk I get a message saying: ‘Invalid VxD dynamic link call from VWIN32{01} +00000714’. Have you got any ideas how to rectify this annoying problem because I’m stuck!

John Meek, via email

A. It’s a Registry problem and the only thing you can do is try and restore a previous version. It’s not too difficult but things can go wrong so make sure you’ve backed up any irreplaceable files. From the Safe Mode menu select  ‘Safe Mode Command Prompt Only’. At the DOS prompt type ‘scanreg /restore’ (without the quotes) and press Enter. You should see a list of archived Registry files, choose one from before the problem started and press Enter and follow the prompts to restart your PC. Hopefully normal service will be resumed, though any programs installed after the date of the restored registry may need to be reinstalled.

Q. When it expired I deleted the trial version of Coral Paint Shop Pro that came with my Dell XP computer, but now Windows Installer appears asking for files ‘pspx.msi’ and says there is an ‘installation package error 1706’. How do I get rid of it?

Andy Robinson, via email

A. My guess is you didn’t remove Paint Shop Pro (PSP) using Windows Add/Remove Programs or the programs own uninstaller and bits of it have been left behind. Work your way through the suggestions in the Corel Support Knowledgebase article, ‘Completely Removing Paint Shop Pro’ which includes a link to a file deletion utility called Zapps and this should clear out the troublesome remnants. The link to the Corel article would take up half of this page so go to Corel Support.com and type ‘759193’ into the Search Text box.

Q. What hardware and software will I need to transfer home videos onto my PC so that I can edit them before transferring them onto DVDs that I can watch on TV? I want to have several video tapes on one DVD and then dispose of the video tapes I have Windows XP with 512Mb of memory. I would not keep the videos permanently on my PC after they have been transferred to DVDs.

Philip Evans, via email

A. You will see a lot of conflicting advice about this but for the best chance of success with the least number of crashed editing sessions and unwatchable discs your PC needs to have a 2GHz (or faster) processor and at least 1Gb of RAM. You will also need at least 40Gb of free hard disc space, though personally I prefer to have at least 100Gb on a separate ‘slave’ drive, which reduces the workload on your main drive and helps ensure a smooth transfer of data to the DVD during the critical ‘burning’ phase. Needless to say you will also need a DVD Writer driver and I recommend a multi-format type, which gives you the widest choice of blank media.

In order to connect your VCR or camcorder to your PC you will need an analogue or digital (FireWire) capture card or device, depending on whether you care copying tapes from an analogue VCR or camcorder, or digital camcorder. Finally you need a DVD authoring program and there are plenty to choose from but products from Pinnacle and Ulead stand out for ease of use, consistency and value for money. Incidentally, if you can wait a few weeks I’ll be looking at transferring video tape to DVD in a short series of Boot Camp articles.

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© R. Maybury 2006, 1411