Ray Shaw's  Questions & Answers    -   page 23 4-7-08: Question: With all the firewalls available is the free Kerio still your suggestion for home use? I use it with the free Avira software. Answer: Frankly if you are using Windows XP SP2/3 or Windows Vista with standalone AV software their inbuilt and free firewall is adequate and probably easier to use for most people. Kerio is now owned by Sunbelt Software http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Home-Home-Office/Sunbelt-Personal-Firewall/ and is a very competent free firewall - of course its paid version offers more features. Kerio tends to ask a lot of questions that can make it daunting for beginners. Comodo http://www.comodo.com/ is another free firewall that is getting good reviews. However using it with a third party AV program can leave holes open that commercial "internet suites" will protect against. Whatever you do, you need to add anti-phishing, email scanning, anti malware and internet protection to your firewall and AV mix to be better protected. I have stopped using stand alone programs in favour of AVG Internet Suite www.avg.com.au which provides a more holistic approach and one point for all updates. Question: I was convinced to upgrade my computer security by signing up with BigPond Security. Virtually overnight my computer has gone from operating at a reasonably good pace to virtually stopping. e.g. up to 5 minutes to open IE, if it even opens at all.  Have I done the wrong thing by going this way or is there something that BigPond are not telling me? Answer: I have been critical of most ISP's monthly paid internet security offerings as I believe that programs like AVG's internet security suite offer better value, performance and protection. However the speed issue may be due to your old security programs not being removed fully or other Windows related issues. My advice is to check that your old programs have been disabled and fully removed. For example Norton and many other manufacturers have removal tools (check their web sites) that are required to completely remove their products - a simple uninstall wont do. Download Cleanup (XP and Vista compatible) free from www.stevengould.org and do a standard clean of the hard disk. Next run Regseeker (XP compatible only) free from www.hoverdesk.net to clean the registry. If this does not increase the speed then yes - try something else but remove the BigPond programs first. Question: What are DBX files and can I remove them as I have a small hard disk? Answer: DBX are Outlook Express mail folders and removing them will cause issues. You can compact them using OEs tools. If you are short of space use Cleanup (XP and Vista compatible) free from www.stevengould.org and do a standard clean of the hard disk. You can also search for duplicate files using the free double killer http://www.bigbangenterprises.de/en/doublekiller/ but never delete a file in the Windows directory as it may be required. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14-7-08: Question: My ASUS laptop shows a TV out error code FD41436 when I try to play a DVD. Answer: This message appears when copyrighted video movies are played on a PC or notebook where the TV-out port does not have Macrovision content protection enabled. It has happened to me on several XP devices and the cure is to download the latest video card driver from the manufacturer's web site. Once you locate the driver (in Downloads at www.asus.com.au) place it in a folder on your hard disk i.e. c:\downloads\asus\video (if it has been Zipped unzip it or if it is an .exe file double click on it first). Then go to the control panel, system and device manager. Select the video card entry and double click to bring up its properties and click on update driver pointing it to the downloaded file. If that does not work open the driver by right clicking anywhere on the desktop screen and select Properties and Display settings. Somewhere in there may be an option to disable the video out port. Question: I have a movie downloaded in AVI format and I want to save to disc using Windows Media Player but it won't let me. Answer: Nero 8 software (or other CD/DVD burning software you should have) should be used to create the copy disk. You may also want to download Media Player Classic free from http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_lite_codec_pack.htm that has more codecs to play more types of multi-media. Question: I have an XP computer and recently the option "view as a slideshow" won't come up when I insert a photo CD. It is O.K. with photos on the hard drive. Answer: It sounds like the Photo CD is trying to load a different viewing program (as it turns out an old version of Kodak Easy Share) than the one used on the hard disk (usually Microsoft Picture and Fax viewer). Remove all old picture viewing programs using Add/remove but back up pictures first just in case. Place the CD in the drive and use Windows Explorer to get to the directory where the photos are stored. Right click on one (jpg or bmp file type) and then select "open with" and use "Microsoft Picture and Fax viewer. Set this as the default (tick the box at the bottom of the window) and you should have all the features of this program. If that does not work you can always undo the "association" you made and try another program. Question: I recently compiled a slideshow with voice over into Windows Moviemaker (WMM) and then burnt it on to a DVD.  It plays on my PC but not on a DVD player. Answer: WMM's file format .WMV is incompatible with domestic DVD players. If you want to use Movie Maker to create your compilations but play them on a DVD player you need to convert them to a recognised DVD format. There is a free wmv converter at http://www.stoik.com/products/svc/ and more free options at http://www.dirfile.com/freeware/wmv.htm. Ashampoo has a commercial (paid) program called Move, Shrink and Burn V3 that can do this. http://www2.ashampoo.com/webcache/html/1/product_2_0537__.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18-7-08: Question: I recently burned a movie from the hard drive on my PC to a DVD-RW disc but it doesn't work on my DVD player - works fine in the PC. Answer: This is a file format issue. DVD players usually supports playback of Video CDs (VCD) or Super Video CDs (SVCD), MP3 CD/DVD, files in other formats such as .AVI DivX and MPEG-4 and Picture/Photo CDs. It's a matter of burning the movie to a format that will play in your DVD. Some players don't like dual layer disks.  See the previous question for video file format converters. Question: When I exit Outlook Express I get a reminder to compact messages. When I try to do this I get an error message "Outlook Express is being used by another application" and I can not proceed. Also, if I try to delete a "Favourite" from my Internet Explorer 7 I am told "Cannot delete (file name) the directory or file cannot be created". Answer: This is a common problem but one that is hard to solve. It usually means that there is a deeper problem with your XP registry and the only long term cure may be to do a clean install of XP again. Try the following first. Shut down and restart. Open OE and go to File, Folders and select Compact All and run that. It won't stop the warning message in future (this is based on a counter that records how many times you close OE) but once compacted you may be able to run the file compactor again from the message. The second issue usually means that the Favorites folder is corrupted (more registry issues or it may just be one entry). Try exporting them all (Click on the Add Favorites button and select import/export and make a copy in another folder. Then close IE and delete all items in the Favorites folder under My Documents. Reboot then import the old file. Question: I am a computer dummy - how do I transfer photos from laptop (they come from my camera and are down - loaded by a program from Olympus) to a Flash Drive. Answer: On the notebook go to Start, All Programs, Accessories and double click on Windows Explorer (WE). This opens up WE - a program that allows you to find (search) and move (copy and paste) files and folders. The first step is to locate where the photos are. Use the Search facility in to look for *.jpg (assuming that your camera saves files as jpg files). They may be in C:\MyDocuments\My Pictures and stores in folders below that (usually by date order). Once you locate them you can Copy and entire folder or select single files (Press Control A to select all files in the folder and then press Control C). Then in WE's right hand window locate the flash drive (usually E or F removable drive). Click on this drive so it is highlighted. Press Shift Insert and all the photos will copy to the flash drive. You can avoid using the keyboard shortcuts by right clicking on the file/folder and selecting Copy instead. Ditto once you select the flash drive right click on it and select paste. Question: I have an XP SP2 PC. I purchased an external 3.5", USB, hard disk enclosure and a 160GB IDE hard drive. It will not show up in Windows Explorer. Answer: Most external USB enclosures will only format a FAT32 partition up to 32GB. They usually do not support formatting a disk in NTFS. Connect the disk directly to your motherboard and set it as a slave. The disk will be recognised by the BIOS and once you are in Windows go to Control Panel, Admin Tools, Computer Management, Storage and Disk Management. You will see Disk 0 - the original disk and this should show up as having data on it. Do not select this drive. Select Disk 1 and it should show up as empty. Go to Actions, All Tasks and if there is a partition on it delete it then remake the partition and format it under NTFS. Once that is done put it back into the enclosure and you should see the drive. Question: I have just taken delivery of a new Dell with Windows XP & Outlook Express 6 pre-loaded. Spell Check on OE has a French Dictionary only. Answer: It's a common problem when Office 2007 is loaded as well.Two choices. Use Outlook full version (if it came with Office 2007) or download a standalone English dictionary from http://www.justlocal.com.au/clients/oespellcheck/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to: HOME     Back to: Computers       Back to: Ray Shaw (22)       Forward to: Ray Shaw (24)