Don’t Do That!

Not all spyware and adware can be deleted by a single anti-spyware software and hence you should also install another good anti-spyware such as Microsoft AntiSpyware from www.microsoft.com, update its definition files and run a scan to minimize the chance of any spyware and adware surviving on your PC.

Help Blocker?
Q. I have Office 2003 installed. Under the Help menu, when I click on Microsoft Office Online for help, the Help window does not appear, and an information bar appears at the top of the window. I have Windows XP Professional SP2.
V Mahendra

This happens because of the pop-up blocking feature of the version of Internet Explorer 6 that comes with Service Pack 2. You could override the pop-up blocker: click on the link that opens the pop-up window, while keeping [Ctrl] pressed. To temporarily enable pop-up windows, click on the Information Bar at the top of the window, click “Temporarily Allow Pop-ups.” When you shut down the IE window, this temporary permission will be revoked, restoring the original pop-up blocking settings.

Temporarily turn off IE’s pop-up blocker

In the second method, you could permanently enable pop-up windows on the Microsoft Office Online Web site: click on the Information Bar, click on “Always Allow Pop-ups from This Site,” and when prompted with the message “Would you like to allow pop-ups from ‘office. microsoft.com’?” click Yes. This will permanently set the pop-up blocker to Off for this Web site.

If for some reason you wish to restore the original pop-up window settings for this Web site, open Internet Explorer. Click on the Tools menu, point to Pop-up Blocker, and click on Pop-up Blocker Settings. In the “Allowed Sites” list, click on office.microsoft.com, then click on Remove followed by Close.

The More, The Merrier
Q. I have an HP Pavilion w5130in PC with Intel GMA900 onboard graphics. I recently upgraded my PC to 512 MB of RAM. My onboard graphics is using 8 MB of memory, and I wish to upgrade its memory too. Is this possible?
Mithik Biswas

While it not possible to upgrade the memory of onboard graphics, it is certainly possible to increase the amount of shared memory that you can allocate to it. To do this, enter the BIOS and go to the Advanced Peripherals Setup, under which you will be able to find the option to increase the amount of onboard graphics shared memory.

Admin Autopatched!
Q. I have Windows XP Professional. I loaded AutoPatcher XP from your November 2005 DVD, and on the same day, I updated Windows via windowsupdate.com. The problem is that now, a Guest account login icon is available instead of the Administrator login, so I can’t log in as Administrator. The other account I have is a limited account, and is of no use-I can’t install software or make changes to my system settings.
Venkat

Your Guest account icon is now visible because your Guest account, which must have been disabled thus far, has been enabled. Even though you may not be able to view your Administrator account, you will still be able to log in to it by pressing the Ctrl-Alt-Delete key combination twice at the logon screen. Enter “administrator” as the username, and your administrator password. You may then change the type of the account you already have from Limited to Computer Administrator.

Update And Patch
Q. I have an Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, an Intel D915GVWB motherboard, 512 MB of RAM and an 80 GB SATA hard drive with Windows XP Pro SP2. Whenever I run games such as Age of Mythology, Age of Titans and such, the game crashes to the desktop after a while. I’m using the onboard graphics and sound.
V Phani Sekhar

Download and install the latest version of the graphics and sound drivers from Intel’s Web site. Also download the latest version of DirectX from  Microsoft’s Web site. And finally, download the latest patches for your games from their respective sites.

When an XP-based computer goes into Hibernate mode, it creates a file called hiberfil.sys in the root directory. The size of this file is, of course, equal to that of the system RAM, because XP stores the contents of the RAM in this file.

The Hibernate option gets disabled due to low disk space

In your case, because of the low disk space, there is not enough space to create this file, so the Hibernate feature is disabled. To re-enable it, free up enough space-512 MB in your case-on your C drive.

Startup In Slo-Mo
Q. Every time my PC boots, it takes around 30 to 40 seconds to detect the combo drive before proceeding. Then, when the XP welcome screen appears, it takes another 2 to 3 minutes to start Windows. The hard disk activity LED is on during all this time.
Priyesh Kanodia

The problem could just be caused by a loose data or power cable. Remove the cables and clean the contact areas using a brush. Do the same at the contact area of the hard drive and the combo drive. Then, run a thorough disk scan of your hard drive to verify if there are any cross-linked files, or if any bad sectors have developed.

To do this, open My Computer, right-click on each drive, select Properties, and click on the Tools tab. Under Error Checking, click on the Check Now button. In the Check Disk window that opens, select “Automatically fix file system errors” and “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors,” and start the disk checking process. If problems are found and fixed, you’re good to go.

Sounding Off
Q. My Samsung 40 GB 7200 rpm hard drive has recently started making weird sounds-they sound like “kit kit,” and the computer is not able to boot into Windows. I connected it to a friend’s PC: while his PC detected the hard drive, it could detect only two of the four partitions. Can NDD recover the data on the other two partitions?
Harish Negi

The kind of sound you’re talking about generally indicates that the media-the disk platter-has suffered physical damage. In your case, since at least some data is accessible, it seems the partition table of your drive has become corrupt. Many disk utilities such as Disk Scan and Norton Disk Doctor can attempt to repair such errors, but there is no guarantee that the data will be recovered. Hence, before running such utilities, it is better to run data recovery utilities such as OnTrack Easy Recovery Professional, or one of the utilities from R-Studio, to maximise the chances of recovering data.

If your data is recovered, back it up and then run the disk scanning utilities to repair the errors in the partition table. You should be able to use the drive. But even then, the sound from your drive is not something that can be ignored-you’ll likely need to replace it.

Nero Says Nyet
Q. I have an LG GCC-4240N DVD-Writer. My computer has Windows XP and Nero 6.3.1.15 installed. Whenever I begin writing a CD or DVD, after completing 2 to 3 per cent, Nero reports an “Invalid write state” error, and a coaster results.
Manikant Patel

There is not one definite reason due to which this error occurs, but you can try downloading and install the latest ASPI layer from Adaptec. Also try using a different brand of media. Look for and download the latest firmware for your drive off the Internet and upgrade to that version. If even that doesn’t help, your DVD-Writer has developed a hardware problem, and you’ll have to replace it.

Download The DLL
Q. I have Windows XP installed. When I try to install eDonkey, I get an error: “MSVCP71.DLL was not found.” What could be the problem?
Chirag Bhunatar

This could happen either if MSVCP71.DLL is missing, or if it got unregistered. Search for the file in the System32 directory. If you find it, go to Start > Run, type in “regsvr32 C:WindowsSystem32MSVCP71.dll”, and hit [Enter] (assuming that Windows is installed in C:Windows). This will register the file. If the file is missing, you can download a zipped version from www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcp71. Register the DLL as explained above.