Windows Tips

Infopackets Reader Arlene M. asks, " For some reason, the little speaker icon is gone from my system tray. Do you know how I may get it back? " My Response: If you're talking about Windows XP, the volume control is available from the Control Panel ... under Sounds and Audio Devices; place a check-mark by the Place Volume in Task bar. If you don't have Win XP, you can try to reinstall your sound icon by going to Control Panel -> Add / Remove Programs, Windows Setup tab and then double click the Multimedia icon and place a checkmark on Volume Control. If it's already there, take the ... (view more)

It appears that the last issue of the newsletter sparked some real interest amongst many Infopackets Readers (RE: tracert.exe and ping.exe ). At this time, I would like to address the problem that Infopackets Reader Stephen C. wrote to me about not ... being able to access any MS DOS commands from the command prompt under Windows. He writes: " When I [attempt to] run [MS DOS commands, such as ping.exe or tracert.exe] under the command window, I get an error message which reads: 'ping' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Any ideas? I have ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader - J Lerch. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have an ethernet card (network card) and external Cisco modem installed on my old computer. I recently purchased a new computer, and would like to transfer my network card and modem to the new ... computer. Could you give instructions on how to do this? I would like to do this myself (this time) because the last time cost me almost $200 dollars! " My Response: Anything to do with networking a computer can be highly involved. I will outline the steps taken, but will not go into too much detail: Open your old computer. Take out your ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'George' writes: " Dear Dennis, I have Windows 98 installed on my machine. I have installed Internet Explorer 6.0 which also upgraded my Outlook Express to version 6.0. I still have some Outlook Express 5.5 emails that I would ... like to import to Outlook Express 6.0, but there is only a single option to import Outlook Express version 4.0 emails. How can I get my version 5.5 emails? By the way, I have learned many things from your newsletters -- thanks for that! " My Response: At first, I was under the impression that Outlook 5.5 emails were compatible with Outlook 6 ... (view more)

As some of you may know, I recently installed Windows XP on my system. So far, not so good. My computer system has one of those cutting-edge video cards (NVidia GeForce 400 MX w/ 64 meg) that allows me to output the video to my monitor and my big ... screen TV. I use my DVD drive (inside the computer) to play videos on my TV. Yeah, it's a pretty sweet setup. I have the latest NVidia drivers (30.82) for my video card (for Windows 2000 / XP). When the driver is installed, I get a message that "this video driver has not been certified by Microsoft ... blah blah" warning. Basically, this ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Wayne M. writes: " Dear Dennis, My question is regarding the two types of the Outlook program that come with Windows (Outlook and Outlook Express). Outlook Express comes with Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook comes with MS ... Office. What I would like to know is how can I make it so that I only have one on my system? It becomes very confusing with two of them. I have found that when installing MS Office, it asks to configure MS Outlook but does not transfer emails or address over from Outlook Express. I have to setup a computer for some friends who are very new to ... (view more)

Do you have any idea how to add a hard drive to your system? What about using an old hard drive as a backup unit? I get asked these sorts of questions a lot. It's definitely not a one-line answer -- this type of stuff is highly involved. First, you ... have to open up your computer and decide where to put the new hard drive. Next, you have to play with jumper settings (master/slave), hook it up to the main board, turn on the system, add the hard drive to the BIOS, restart, boot into DOS... following that, run FDISK and set up a Primary or Extended (Logical) drive unit, then format the drive and ... (view more)