system

Infopackets Reader Doug L. wrote in with another question: " Many thanks for your quick response to my concern about GuruNet. I checked out your suggestions and appreciate your advice. I'm straight now and I will again download GuruNet for my 3 ... school-age sons. I have another question, if you don't mind. My oldest son (even though I told him not to) installed Kazaa on our family computer and downloaded some music. The problem now is that ALTNET [a third-party advertising program] has been installed on my machine along with Kazaa. It seems to be controlling my system by automatically ... (view more)

It's been a rough couple of weeks: it seems like every time I try to take a step forward, I end up taking 3 steps backward. After I got home from visiting Frank in Toronto, my main computer (the one that I use to write the newsletters) kept crashing ... with repeated Blue Screens of Death (BSOD). The BSOD's gave me some clue as to why my system was crashing, as the .DLL file responsible for the crash appeared to be related to my video card driver. Strange, I thought. I didn't upgrade my video card driver recently, but opted to do so as I hadn't upgraded my driver in over a year. Video card ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Betsy S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am such a beginner on the computer, but enjoy reading your newsletters (even though some topics are way over my head)! I'm writing you today because I am concerned about some of the freeware ... programs that are mentioned -- not only in your newsletter -- but on other web sites, as well. I just read your article on " How to Visually trace down a Hacker ", and I was very interested in downloading VisualZone and trying it out on my machine. My question is: Don't hackers often use 'free' software to get into your computer? How can ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Gary G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just bought a new computer. I'd like to know of the best product to use in order to copy files from the old computer's hard drive to the new one, then possibly delete the files off the old ... computer. I have looked around but am not sure of what product to buy. Can you help? " My response: If you want to copy some files over to your new system, your best bet is to extract the hard drive out of the old system and attach it to the new system. Although this involves opening up your PC, this is a relatively simple task. Once the drives ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Frances D. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a problem getting my home page as well as other web pages to pull up. My email pulls up, and sends fine. Sometimes, when I access Internet explorer, it tries to connect, but then reports an ... error message. Other times it will slowly pull up and stop at the half way mark. It tells me it is connecting to site 127.0.0.1. What the heck is site 127.0.0.1? I have contacted my Internet Service Provider and they have told me a number of things to try, but nothing has worked. Is this my computer or is it an Internet problem? " My ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Ed M. writes: " Dear Dennis, I can't seem to run Disk Defrag, ScanDisk, or Norton Disk Doctor on my system because other programs are actively running in the background and keep interrupting the process. How can I find out what is ... running in the background and stop it? I have asked this question numerous times to Microsoft and they don't seem to know the answer. I have tried 'CTRL + ALT + DEL' on my keyboard to bring up the Windows Task Manager, I get a list of programs -- but I do not know which ones are safe to delete? Can you help? " My response: Many users ... (view more)

Does your computer seem slower than the first day you brought it home and plugged it in? Does it report strange error messages when launching program -- or worse yet, does it periodically display the infamous Blue Screen of Death? Typically, these ... symptoms are a result of a poorly configured or un-optimized System Registry . How the Windows Registry impacts system performance and stability Over time, programs are installed and uninstalled to Windows, and the Registry becomes bloated with incorrect and outdated information.(1) Many of the attributes contained in the Registry database point to ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Margie100' writes: "Dear Dennis, You've probably have answered this question a million times, but I am having trouble finding the right answer for me. I am running XP and lately this PC just freezes up when I open just about ... everything. Pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL usually fixes it but I know that this is a temporary fix and it usually locks up again shortly after that. I've scanned my system for viruses, cleaned my hard drive using the defrag utility, and use scandisk to check for file-system errors. I know from your newsletters that it may be possible that there is ... (view more)

Last Friday's article touched upon the importance of backing up an entire computer system (including Windows itself). As you may recall, disk imaging is mentioned frequently in this newsletter, as it is an important part of 'disaster recovery' ... planning. Over the weekend, I received a number of comments and questions from Readers: many of which referenced the fundamentals of disk imaging. Since the questions were similar in nature -- and because disk imaging is such an essential topic -- I have decided to repost an article which illustrates the basics of disk imaging versus 'regular file ... (view more)

What would you do if your hard drive crashed and the data it contained was not recoverable? Worse yet -- what would you do if the software you used to backup your drive refused to work unless you paid the company for another license? Yesterday, ... Pippie1969 sent me the following email: " ... [Continuing on with your discussion on PC Security ], I thought I would share with you the following story. A little while back, I purchased 2 identical 120 gigabyte Western Digital (WD) hard drives. In April, one of the drive's crashed (totally), and I was not able to recover *any* of the data on the ... (view more)