Dennis Faas

Since November 2005, infopackets has opened its doors to volunteer authors to share their thoughts and ideas with our audience. The transition to a multi-authored web site has been both enlightening and challenging. On one side: infopackets now ... offers a variety of fresh and interesting discussions almost daily to its audience; on the other hand, acquiring and maintaining material on a regular basis has proven to be particularly difficult. Let me explain. Since our volunteer bloggers are not paid to submit articles, submissions have been (for the most part) sporadic. Further to that, my work ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Jennifer' writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently received an email from an unknown person via Yahoo. I think I understand how the email got to me but I'm not sure. Would the email headers help to tell me this? I'd really like to know ... how this person sent me the email. Can you help? " My response: To sum it up the answer briefly: email headers are often forged by spammers, so it's plausible that the email you received came from somewhere else (other than what is stated in the email header). Having said that, most big-name ISP (Internet Service Providers) have an onslaught of ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Sue' writes: " Dear Dennis, Sometimes I receive an email attachment from a friend, and I can't open it. For example: I recently tried to open a PowerPoint file and received an error message stating, 'This file does not have a ... program associated with it. Create an association in the Folder Options in Control Panel.' How do I go about doing that? I installed PowerPoint, hoping I would be able to view it that way, but was unsuccessful. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. " My response: If the attachment was indeed a PowerPoint file and you're absolutely ... (view more)

Recall -- Yesterday, Infopackets Reader 'Suzanne' asked if I knew of a freeware program that could record / export chat logs for AIM (AOL Instant Messenger): " Do you know of any way to save AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) chat history without copying ... text into another program like word? I personally don't like AIM all that much, but a lot of my friends use it. Every other chat program that I currently use (ICQ, MSN, etc.) have the 'save history' feature, but AIM apparently does not. " Since I don't use AIM, I asked Infopackets Readers for help. By far, the best response was sent in by Kathy S., ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Suzanne' writes: " Dear Dennis, Your newsletter is still the best one out there! I'm on your website so much that my boss mentioned it to me the other day. ;-) She told me that I'm not not allowed to visit your site anymore ... during business hours unless I'm on lunch. With that aside, I have a question. Do you know of any way to save AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) chat history without copying text into another program like word? I personally don't like AIM all that much, but a lot of my friends use it. Every other chat program that I currently use (ICQ, MSN, etc.) have a 'save ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Barry H. writes: " Dear Dennis, My camera will not download photos using Microsoft wizard or several photo suits. Oddly enough, the camera works great with other computers. My computer sees the camera as a mass storage device in ... Device Manager, but when I try to download or slideshow my photos, the camera locks up; the camera won't switch off and I have to remove the power source to get it to turn off. Oftentimes when I try to view a slideshow, I only get a partial download and the camera locks up. Can you help? " My response: It's quite possible that you either: a) your ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Richard M. writes: " Dear Dennis, My hard drive has been making strange noises for a time, and today, it finally failed. The drive will boot up only to a certain point and then stop altogether; I cannot access my desktop or ... anything else. I ran a Windows 98 startup floppy and managed to do a scandisk, but when it scans the hard drive for surface errors, it stops at 21% and the noise from hard drive starts up again; it won't allow any further scanning. I tried using a program designed to fix hard drive's called 'PC Beginner' and it failed as well. I was wondering if there ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Glen H. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am a bit concerned about the kind of marketing engaged in by some of the software developers that you recommend -- PC Tools, for example. 'Get a free scan,' they say. And so you do, and they find ... 150 problems on your machine. Then they say, 'Buy our software and fix these problems.' I really think that this is deceptive marketing. If the company wants to give a free scan and clean, I would have no argument with that, but this sort of marketing 'come on' leads one to think that the first scan was a sham -- and it may very well have been. The ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Ken H. writes: " Dear Dennis, In the device manager, all of my DVD and CD-ROM devices won't work. Device Manager states that 'a driver for this device was not required and has been disabled (Code 32)'. Question: how can I get ... these devices to work again? I have uninstalled them and restarted the computer to let it find new drivers but that didn't work. I have scanned my PC for viruses and am clean. I have also researched this topic in Google and found a post which states that this error message can appear if you have Roxio Easy CD Creator (which I do). The post suggested a ... (view more)