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FAQS! FACTS! FAX! 562 (24/04/07)
Q. I have recently
purchased a new computer plus Microsoft
Office Home & Student 2007. I am currently running Outlook Express 6. The
spellchecker on the Office program will only correct spelling in French. I
am a Silver Surfer, could you help in this matter. (Please excuse any
spelling mistakes!).
Barbara
Pratley, via email
A.
This one caught me a bit by surprise and indeed there is a problem with Office
2007 zapping the language files Outlook Express used for spell checking, though
bizarrely not all of them and the French language file remains intact…
As you might expect
this has seriously ticked off a large number of Office 20007 users and Microsoft
now knows all about it, though it hasn’t given the problem much publicity and
users mostly find out about it by accident. Microsoft is apparently working on
a fix but for the moment their best advice is to download and install one of
the third-party spellcheckers for OE. You will find links to two of the better
ones (IE Spell and Spellchecker for OE) on the Software
links page of my PCTopTips website
Q. I was attempting to show someone the
easy way to send a picture from their XP PC using Windows Explorer to navigate
to the chosen picture and then use ‘Email this file’ in the File and Folder
Tasks panel. However there is no set of
task panels showing. Clicking on the Folders button brings the folder structure
into view (correctly) but when clicking the X at the top right hand corner, it
simply disappears instead of being replaced by the Task Panel. Is there some
way that she has inadvertently ‘switched off’ the feature or is XP corrupted?
Your help would be appreciated.
Derek Heath, via email
A.
This can be very annoying when it happens and as with so many Windows problems
unless you know the right form of words, you won’t find much assistance in
Help. Fortunately it’s very easy to put right, it sounds as though you've
switched to Classic Folders view. To get things back to the way they were open
Windows Explorer or My Computer go to Tools > Folder Options. Select the General
tab and under Tasks check the item 'Show common tasks in folders'. Click OK or
Apply and normal service will be resumed.
Q. My computer went down just as Windows
Vista came in. I had to buy a new computer and now I can't use Lotus Millennium
on it as I get an error message ‘unable to load ltdlgn03.dll’. I have some
important files in WordPro, how do I either get Lotus to work or get my files
converted to use in Word?
Margery Cook, via email
A.
The simplest solution would be to download a WordPro Viewer program. I suggest
Lotus KeyView, which is free and available from the Lotus website.
With this you can open WordPro files and then copy and paste them into a Word
document.
Q. Can you suggest freeware to remove the
‘iwantsearch’ search toolbar, which seems to take over from Google when searching
Ken Hirons, via email
A.
This is a nasty piece of adware that installs itself on your browser without so
much as a by your leave simply by visiting certain websites or during an
automatic update of third-party software. It embeds itself into the Windows
Registry and manual removal can be quite tricky unless you know what you are
doing. If you know your way around the Registry and feel confident of your
abilities there’s a complete set of instructions on the Symantec
website, though I must stress this is only for advanced users. The simpler
alternative is to download a removal too, which can be found at spywareremove.com
Q. I just got a new motherboard with a new
installation of Windows XP Pro, and now my trusty old Brother HL-820 mono laser
printer won't install, despite the printer being in the list within Win XP. I
have been using this printer with Windows XP Pro for years and can't understand
why the OS suddenly doesn't like it any more. Brother tell me that there are
many different versions of Win XP and that I'm just unlucky that my particular
one doesn't support it. Does this sound
right to you?
Allan Forsyth, via email
A.
My guess is your printer was weeded out of XP in the Service Pack 2 edition,
which was released at the end of 2005.
Unfortunately your
printer is getting on a bit – it was launched back in 1998 -- and I suspect
that you’ll receive little help from either Brother or Microsoft since it would
entail some effort on their part to write a new driver. I’m not very hopeful
but there are a couple of things you can try. First a real long-shot; see if
you can install the printer in Safe Mode (press F8 at start up). Otherwise try
downloading a new driver, I can’t find any for XP on the Brother website but
there’s a general purpose one on driverfiles.net,
which may be worth a try.
However, in the end I
think the only way you’ll be able to get your old printer going on your new
machine is to revert back to a pre SP2 edition of Windows XP Pro, then install
SP2 separately and my guess is (and it is only a guess) the earlier driver will
be preserved. This is almost certainly more trouble than it is worth, though,
and although your printer still has some life left in it, you are going to have
to bow to the inevitable and buy a new one. It’s not a very satisfactory
answer, I know, but look at it this way.
New mono lasers are cheap – probably a fraction of what you paid for
your one -- print quality and speed have improved and it will have more
facilities than your old model. If you do buy a new one make sure your old
machine goes for recycling – most local amenity tips have a place for them --
so at least it won’t end up in landfill
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© R. Maybury 2007 1004
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