FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  611 (06/05/08)

Q. Recently I have been encountering problems with the Audacity audio editing program. Recording starts OK but after about two minutes or so it starts to break up and stutter. The Task manager tells me that CPU utilisation is then 100% and I experience intermittent freezing. Examination of Processes shows MsMpEng.exe to be very busy. It also happens recording BBC streamed audio. Is there anything I can do? My machine is running Windows XP Home SP2 and has a 2.4 GHz Celeron processor and 512 MB of RAM.

Charles Seager

A. This is a fairly common problem. The file that is hogging your PC’s resources is a component of Windows Defender and it is responsible for periodically scanning your system for malware. Most of the time you won’t notice it but if it happens when you run a processor intensive application, like Audacity, things start to go wrong. You have several options: upgrading your RAM to 1 or 2Gb might help; you can reconfigure Windows Defender, or replace it with a less demanding malware cleaner.

To change WD’s behaviour go to Tools > Options and switch off automatic scanning, or change the schedule times, you may also find that a Quick Scan has less impact on other programs.

Q. When I try to use the System Restore facility on my Windows XP computer I receive a message telling me that the system cannot be restored. I am using Norton 360, which has a back-up facility, but it is not very convenient. Is there some way of solving this problem?

David W. Murray, Helsinki

A. I’m glad you mentioned that you are using Norton software because that is what is causing the problem. Most recent Norton security products interfere with System Restore; Symantec Support say’s it is meant to protect Norton files from being changed but stopping System Restore from working is just plain daft and puts the Windows System at risk. Uninstalling Norton and replacing it with less meddlesome software is one solution, and there are plenty of excellent free alternatives, like AVG, Avast! and AntiVir. See the Software page on the PCTopTips website (http://tinyurl.com/v3rz5) for links to the downloads. If you want to hang on to Norton then there is a workaround for temporarily switching it off, so you can use System Restore, which you will find at: http://tinyurl.com/qxf3v.

Q. I regularly run Disc Cleanup on my XP Pro computer and the initial scan takes forever whilst it scans ‘Compress old files’. Can I do anything about this and is it necessary?

Trevor Buckley, via email

A. It is not something to get obsessed about, running the Cleanup utility every two or three months is good housekeeping and worth doing but the effect it will have on your PC’s performance is marginal. In any event it runs in the background so there’s nothing to stop you getting on with something else, or making a cup of tea.

Q. I would be very grateful if you could recommend a freeware accelerator to speed up my Internet downloads.

Keith Bailey, via email

A. Sadly there’s no such thing. Your download speed is determined by the bandwidth of your Internet connection. If you have broadband then upgrade to a faster service, but reading between the lines I suspect that you may have a dial-up connection, in which case there’s not a lot you can do, except switch to broadband.

So-called ‘accelerator’ and ‘optimiser’ services can make web pages appear faster on a dial-up connection, but it’s nothing more than a conjuring trick. It relies on the service accessing pages on your behalf, compressing the data then forwarding it to your PC for decompression and display. It works quite well on web pages with mainly text and simple graphics but pictures tend to run through the system quite slowly, and there’s no significant benefit on streamed multimedia or downloads, where the data is already compressed.

Q. I am about to upgrade my computer. I need to send invoices by fax, which I currently print off from my Mac. I bought a Windows laptop and installed WinFax last year but the transmission time came nowhere a modern fax. Is there a PC or Mac available, which will fax a document in a reasonable time without printing a hard copy?

Alan McLellan, via email

A. Faxing from PCs (or Macs for that matter) has never been very satisfactory, though one or two now obsolete dial-up Fax-Modems and faxing software came close to matching dedicated fax machine speeds. The problem nowadays is that sending a fax from a PC to a fax machine via a broadband connection is impossible. Instead the fax has to go through a web-based forwarding service because fax machines rely on a direct machine-to-machine connection through an analogue phone line.

Changing your PC isn’t going to make any difference and I’m afraid to say that the writing is on the wall for faxing as fewer companies have them any more. A dedicated fax machine is still your best bet if you want to be assured of it getting through in a timely manner. Otherwise I suggest that you experiment with some of free and paid for PC-to-Fax and email-to-fax services (see http://www.savetz.com/fax/ for suggestions), or bow to the inevitable and start sending your invoices by email or as scanned attachments.

Q. Following the initial XP logo my system tells me that it is going to run 'chkdsk' on my F: drive. Once it has run XP loads up in the normal way. However, if I try to run 'Disk Defragmenter' it will not start and displays the message 'chkdsk is scheduled to run on this volume'. How can I turn this off?

Graham Trow, via email

A. A persistent chkdsk message at start-up is telling you that there is something seriously wrong with the filing system or physical structure of drive F:  Rather than ignoring it or trying to run defrag (which will not help), you should heed the warning, backup any data the drive (or partition) contains and replace it, before if fails.

If you have a computer problem write to: fff@telegraph.co.uk

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© R. Maybury 2008 1504