Ray Shaw's  Questions  &  Answers  ---  Page 32 31-3-09: Question: I have a 3 year old Toshiba Satellite laptop with Windows XP PRO, Office 2003 and a few other programs.  In December 2007 the computer would not boot and showed the error NTDETECT FAILED.  As it was still under warranty I returned it to Harvey Norman.  They did not know what the problem was but said they would have to reload the operating system and that I would loose everything on the computer. Everything worked OK for a couple of months until the same thing happened again.  Back to Harvey Norman where they reloaded the operating system and it failed again in December 2008.  Answer: Get a new technician - NTDETECT Failed is quite easy to repair. Load the original XP CD and boot from it (your notebook has this option in the BIOS if it won't auto boot). Enter repair R mode The administrator password is blank by default, so unless you actually set one, just press Enter. At the Windows (DOS prompt) type in: COPY X:\i386\NTLDR C\: COPY X:\i386\NTDETECT.COM C:\ Where X is the drive letter for your CD/DVD drive. Remove the CD and type exit. Reboot your machine and 99 times out of 100 it fixed it. A corrupted NTDETECT is usually caused by either a flaky hard disk or memory. I would be asking HN to send it back to Toshiba for thorough testing before the warranty runs out - not let the juniors there play with it. Reader Comment: Re Firefox browser not displaying some web pages. There are two add-ons called IE Tab http://ietab.mozdev.org/ and IE View http://ieview.mozdev.org/ that enables you to use the embedded IE engine within Firefox. Question: I am disappointed with the Rudd Government's decision to censor all Internet users by applying 'Filters' to protect our children from harm. Will it slow down the internet and cause other problems? Can these filters be circumvented? Answer: This is a very topical and emotional issue. On one hand you have child protection people saying that we have to protect children and normal internet users from accidental exposure to such vile material. No parent would argue with that yet in my 15 years of surfing the net I have never been accidentally or otherwise exposed to such material. On the other hand filtering won't stop determined paedophiles accessing such material by using off shore proxy servers, encrypted email files, FTP sites or virtual private networks. The conspiracy theorists say that once filtering is in place it would not be hard for a future government to add other types of sites thus censoring our access to the internet (as has been done in China for example). Filtering is going to slow down the internet, it may cause some problems with some programs, it will be costly to implement and users, not the Government will pay the price. Personally I believe that it's a parent's job to monitor or censor their children's usage (and an opt-in filtering system might help there) and that the internet must remain a free and chaotic conduit for all things good and regrettably bad. Question: Every time I open MS Outlook 2007 on my Vista Home Premium PC a message comes up "A data file did not close properly…" It then checks the file and Outlook is fine. Answer: The is a common problem but not generally caused by Outlook which is just telling you that the program was not closed down properly and it is checking the data file for possible errors. The most common cause is that another program (and there are many) is connected to Outlook and stops it closing properly. The usual culprits are Skype (using Contacts - disable "Show Outlook Contacts"), iPhone/iTunes sync (again syncing contacts so remove them from Outlook Tools, Trust Centre, Add-ins), Google Desktop (remove it), Yahoo Toolbar (remove it) etc. Outlook should be shut down manually i.e. Select File, Close rather than shutting down Vista and allowing it to do the job. Question: You now appear to recommend using AVG 8 Internet Security Suite. Does that take the place of Spybot, Regseeker and Cleanup? Answer: AVG Internet Security Suite it is a more complete solution that reduces the possibility of "nasty things" slipping down the minute cracks between the standalone programs coverage. In my opinion using the suite gives you 99.9% security where using standalone free or paid programs only gives you 90%.  It does not replace the free hard disk Cleanup www.stevengould.org, which I run daily. Regseeker is a registry cleaner that only works on XP so you may want to try the free CCleaner from http://www.ccleaner.com/ - it does the job safely. Question: I use Win XP(SP3), Trend, Spybot and Outlook Express. For the last few months I have received spam from me as the sender. I am considering using Mailwasher in the fight against spam.                                                                                    Answer: It is called spoofing - and spammers use it to get past spam filters. No you did not send it and there is nothing you can do about it. Mailwasher Pro is still an old favourite and is does a good job in filtering, blocking and bouncing spam (no you can't bounce a spam from yourself). When your AV subscription runs out move to a fully integrated internet security suite like AVG - you won't regret it and Spybot will no longer be required. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14-4-09: Question: I have an old Sony 8mm tape Camcorder. I would like to copy the tapes to my new notebook. Answer: Belkin have a USB DVD creator cable for about $130 and it includes Ulead software to do what you need. http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=137940. Check first that the plugs fit your camcorder AV and Sound out. Question: Can you please tell me what will happen to QCTV 31 when the analogue signal is turned off? Answer: Unfortunately QCTV (Bris31) has not been allocated a channel in the digital spectrum but there is an ongoing campaign to achieve this outcome. I believe they will be able to continue broadcasting on analogue channel 31 for some time after the commercial stations cut over to purely digital. Any reader with political influence might like to contact them at www.qctv.com.au and lend their support to gaining a digital channel. Question: I read your recent answer regarding digital TV and the need to buy a digital set top box (STB). We have Foxtel (satellite), a HD ready TV and an analogue (not digital) DVD hard disk recorder. How do we get all this to work? Answer: DVB-T (digital TV in SD and HD) will come from your normal TV aerial cable and go into a set top box (STB) or you may be able to upgrade Foxtel to receive HD via that box. An STB usually has a few different outputs which will be used to connect to everything i.e. AV (usually a yellow RCA plug) and LR sound (usually red and white RCA plugs): S-Video (mini Din 4 pins for picture that also needs LR sound); Component video YPbPr using blue, green and red connectors; S/PDIF optical sound out (or another set of LR audio out); DVI and/or HDMI out; and often a VGA PC connector. Your TV should have an AV input; an S-Video input; a component video input and a HDMI input. Your recorder will have both inputs and outputs so it's the key to tying the system together. Connect your STB and your Foxtel to the AV or component recorder inputs. Connect your recorder output to the TV - simple as that. Alternatively look at buying an AV receiver (a few hundred dollars) and 5.1 speakers (another few hundred dollars) and then hook everything up to that. Brands such as Yamaha, Onkyo or Marantz are good - but take your TV and Recorder manual with you to show the sales person what you need. The TV is fine and will display good pictures - not true HD but close enough. The recorder could also be replaced with a single or dual digital tuners model (watch one, record another) instead of buying a STB - makes sense but wait until Freeview is launched properly as you will want to buy one that is fully Freeview compatible and uses the free TV guide for recording. Question: My XP computer suffered a time warp - it booted up and could not find any of my installed programs - it was as if it was new out of the box. The system time and date were right. I rebooted and thankfully all my programs where there. Answer: I have seen this before. I can't tell you what caused it but when booting the registry failed to load properly. It could be hardware, malware or virus related. If you have the time and inclination I would back everything up (raw data backup - not an image backup) and strip the whole PC down to parts, clean it, reassemble, clean format and reinstall all from scratch. In doing that it may reveal a hardware weakness that you can solve - at the very least it will be a nice clean, fresh PC free of any possibility of virus or malware. If you are not technically oriented it will cost between $400-500 for a reputable PC store to do this and you may want to update your CPU etc - better to reuse, recycle and repair than throw it away. Question: My notebook won't recognise DVR+R disks. Answer: Sometimes a firmware update to the DVD recorder or updating your burning software is required. It was a problem with earlier versions of Nero and Roxio. Your retailer should be able to help you with the firmware update. Question: How do I change disk partition sizes? Answer: If you are using XP you will need to use a program like Partition Magic and it is not for amateurs. If you are using Vista it can do it all fairly easily. See http://www.vistarewired.com/2007/02/16/how-to-resize-a-partition-in-windows-vista. One trick however, If you want to increase C: you need to first shrink D: then create a new drive using that space after D:, copy your data on D: to the new drive, delete D: then extend C: - the process is quite fast. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to: HOME   Back to: Computers   Back to: Ray Shaw (31)      Forward to: Ray Shaw (33)