packman

I'm contemplating new antispyware on my XP-based system. So, which of the following do you consider the best overall solution for longterm antispyware?: PC Tools 'Spyware Doctor' Spybot Search & Destroy Webroot Spy Sweeper 5 Windows Defender Anyone any idea how much the annual subs (in £ sterling) for Spyware Doctor and Webroot Sweeper are? I tried contacting the originators but they won't tell me. I don't mind buying a piece of software (given that it's reliable) but I baulk at paying out annual subscription fees. Spybot and Defender are both free but I've heard that Spybot is buggy (especially with IE7) and that Defender has only very limited capabilities.

Yup, I'm building a new Windows XP desktop machine, transferring across one or two bits of the hardware from the old (10 yrs vintage) machine. The mouse I use is essentially a USB wired mouse with a PS2 adaptor, so that at present it plugs into the reserved PS2 mouse port on the current (old) machine. The new PC will instead have a USB port on it for a mouse, so obviously I'll dispense with the adaptor and plug the mouse straight into that port. But what should the procedure be with this USB mouse when installing the XP operating system on a bare HDD and initial configuring Windows, on the new machine? Many USB devices I've used require that any associated software should be installed BEFORE then connecting the device. This mouse uses Microrosoft Intellipoint software (which I've found useful for tailoring the functioning of the mouse) and the original instructions for it that I still have indicate that this software should indeed be installed BEFORE connecting the mouse. But how can that be achievable when installing the operating system? Is this sort of requirement automatically suspended during the session of installing the OS? Or is there something in the System BIOS that I should temporarily change? Once I've installed XP and basically got things working, will it be okay to then load the Intellipoint software? Since you can't run the machine without a mouse attached, it'll therefore be a case of installing the Intellipoint software AFTER, rather than before, installing the mouse. That being so, is this likely to give rise to problems? Is there a specific technique for installing a USB mouse? I know some people prefer not to bother with Intellipoint software and instead just use the mouse in plain vanilla mode but, thus far, I've had no problem with Intellipoint and find bits of it useful.

Running WinXP 32-bit, I've avoided Internet Explorer 8 for various reasons for quite a long time but I might now give it a try. I see that it's available to download here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/internet-explorer/products/ie/home Does anyone know if when you click on the Download you're given an option to simply save the IE8 file on download for installation at your leisure, or whether it automatically both downloads and installs in one operation as per downloads from Windows Update? I want to avoid the latter of those two.

I've recently spent a week reinstalling my WinXP and my various apps and utilities. A long job and I don't wish to discuss why, as it's a long story. But having reached a few days ago a reasonably 'safe' state, I went to the Windows Update website to fetch a huge batch of updates to WinXP that I needed. By 'going to the WU website', I mean using the Windows Update option in the Start menu in WinXP. My preferences in this always are to have Automatic Windows Updates turned off in WinXP and therefore to always download manually using the Custom install, once at the WU website. This gives sensible control over what's downloaded and what's ultimately installed, something I've found especially useful over the years, as some Windows updates can have incompatibilities with machine hardware, whilst other updates may actually require manual changes to the Windows Registry. You wouldn't know about this with Automatic Updates on all the time. After looking at their various details elsewhere at the Microsoft site, I downloaded a reasonable batch and then left it at that for the moment. Then later, while bringing my antivirus app up to date, I inadvertently set Automatic Updates to on and, by some quirk, WU immediately decided to start downloading to me all the remaining WinXP updates. I managed to sensibly abort from the situation but it's left me with a considerable number of those WinXP updates stored somewhere on my hard drive, ready to install if I were now to select them at the WU website. This apparently is now Microsoft's way of reducing downloading/install times. Unfortunately, those WinXP updates that have now been downloaded are nearly all ones that I definitely don't wish to install and, frankly, it makes me nervous to have them there, unnecessarily, on my hard drive. WU still works as before, of course, with Automatic Updates off - if I go to WU and it scans my PC, it lists those that are now unfortunately on my hard drive ready to install in zero download time, as well as those that remain to be downloaded from WU itself in manual mode. So, the question is, 'Where on my hard drive am I likely to find those unwanted temporary updates?' Where are they cached? And if they can be located, will it be permissible to delete them or otherwise remove them, so as to force WU to, in effect, re-list them at WU as having still to be downloaded, if I want them? I've checked and they're not placed in either Add/Remove Programs or in the root of the Windows folder. Only actually installed ones go there. And I've looked elsewhere on my hard drive but found nothing resembling them. So, does anyone know exactly where they're cached and whether I'll be able to legitimately delete them without fouling up Windows? Addendum, about 20 hrs later: I've found where they're cached! They're at C:\WINDOWS\Software Distribution\Download\<alphanumeric>\update. They all appear to be encrypted or encoded in some way. There are sub-folders to each. I've no idea whether they can be legitimately deleted, though. Anyone know?

For years now, I've always used a cut-down version of Nero that I bought and put on my WinXP PC for writing CDs and DVDs. Alongside it, I've used InCD, the packetiser from Nero/Ahead that allows you to format/write/read re-writeable CDs and DVDs. But I realised a few days ago that WinXP itself has a CD/DVD-writer. (Crikey, all these years I never realised it was there!). I've explored it a little but, not unexpectedly, the features look a bit limited. Does anyone know if the WinXP writer is any good, when put to the ultimate test? Anyone ever used it? A number of questions come to mind, such as: 1) Is it multi-session, in that you're able to write some files and then, in a later completely different session, add some more files to the same disk? 2) Which formats does it use when writing music files? .cda? Or just .mp3? 3) Is it possible to insert a silent period of, say, 3 secs, between audio tracks? 4) Can re-writeable disks be used? 5) Does it include a means to erase and re-use re-writeable disks? 6) Does it handle DVDs in addition to CDs? I'm in a situation at the moment where I've just finished building a new PC, still using WinXP. I've installed most of my apps and utilities. My editions of Nero and InCD have yet to be installed, though. The question is: Do I now really need them? Can the built-in WinXP writer do the same job?

Anyone here a user of Microsoft Security Essentials? If so, can you tell me if:- 1) MSE can be temporarily turned off? 2) MSE can be run manually for getting the virus definition updates, ie. stop MSE from getting the updates automatically? 3) MSE can be run manually for system scans, ie. the automatic scan process be turned off? I've looked at the various videos about MSE on Microsoft's website but nothing is explained in this sort of detail.

Does applying periodic updates to Office 2003 Standard, either via the Windows Update website or the Office section of microsoft.com, change the style/appearance of Office 2003's constituent components (Outlook, Excel, Word, etc)? That's to say, other than the up[censored] applying security fixes and the occasional bug fix, does it also effectively migrate the 2003 edition toward the 2007 and later edition and therefore alter its user interface and its compatibility with other products? I'm about to install 2003 on a new machine and, although I intend adding the security updates for it, I'll prefer to keep the 2003 user interface and general appearance of it, together with its compatibility with most aspects of the later editions of Windows.

Thanks for that reassurance, Philipp. You make it sound as though the updates number only one or two but, at microsoft.com, I found a 'Service Pack 3 for Office 2003' and it's over 117MB, so I think SP3 is more than just a handful of bug fixes. I guess a lot of it is security fixes. Yeh, so the plan now is to use 'SP3 for Office 2003', then visit the WU website to get the very latest updates.

The new board has a PS2 connection for a PS2 keyboard. The other peripheral ports are all USB. The mouse I've been using and which I'll also transfer to the new machine is basically a USB mouse but at present I use it in a PS2 port via a little USB-to-PS2 adaptor. With the new board, I thought it'd be a good opportunity to dispense with the adaptor. I happened to find a motherboard that not only had the major features I wanted but also one PS2 port (for my PS2 keyboard). The only settings that refer to USB in the BIOS of the new board are the following:- USB Controller * Enable/Disable USB Legacy Function * Enable/Disable USB Storage Function * Enable/Disable Against the legacy function, the BIOS notes say "Allows USB keyboard to be used in MS-DOS".

That's reassuring, Phillipp. So, I can simply plug it into any USB port on the PC right from the start and can just leave it there. Right? And I don't need to set up anything in the BIOS for USB mouse, then? Presumably, I can then proceed with the Setup of WinXP? I thought that maybe you had to fiddle around with some legacy USB settings in the BIOS and then set them back the other way once the OS was installed. I take your point about the Intellipoint software, but there are one or two pointer speed/acceleration settings in it that I prefer. Trouble is, I've never used this mouse, or its predecessor, with just the standard Windows mouse driver, so I don't know exactly what the differences are between it and Intellipoint. I've looked on the Web to see if anyone's ever written up a comparison but have found nothing.

I'm currently planning the build of a new Windows PC, to replace my slow, 10-yr old machine. Pretty much all of the hardware will be different, so I'm going to have to install my WinXP SP2 (32-bit) and other software from scratch and then apply the appropriate updates again. I've hitherto been using Internet Explorer 7 as my browser and, although I know that IE8 is currently the latest version, I actually prefer IE7. Is there any way I can assure my ending up with IE7 when I download all the updates to WinXP from the Windows Update website, rather than IE7, as surely all I'll be offered by WU in the way of Internet Explorer will be IE8? I always do my updates from WU manually, BTW. Up[censored] XP with SP3 (which I have as an exe file) is one of the first things I'll do on the new machine, and that will get me to IE6. But how can I then just go to IE7, rather than IE8?

Many thanks, Philipp. Am glad to discover that, for once, there's a simple solution.

It was always my understanding (perhaps wrongly so) that the Euro symbol is typeable in Outlook Express by using the right-hand Alt key together with the 4 key. Currently, I have OE6 SP1 and, yes, the text window certainly produces the Euro symbol when those two keyboard keys are used. But the recipient gets instead a collection of random symbols. I've tested this out by sending messages to myself. Whilst the message is still in the Outbox, OE puts up a dialog box where it asks you if you want to send the message in Unicode or whether you just want to send it 'as is'. The message states that it cannot guarantee that the recipient will actually get a Euro symbol. I've tried both of those options but without success. Can someone tell me how to generate a bona fide Euro symbol in OE, therefore, that will still be a Euro symbol at the recipient's? I can't understand why it doesn't work on my machine, especially as I can recall especially requiring the Euro symbol in the Setup of WinXP, when first installing it.

Can anyone shed any light on the following: I've recently done a HD re-format and reinstall of my OS (Win2KSP3) and all my core software. The latter is something I've hitherto run successively, from beginning to end. I keep detailed records of how I re-format and reinstall everything, so one would think this exercise would go without problem. Not in this case. No, sir..eeee. Well, I installed all my core software again and that seemed to go fine. The last two programs to reinstall were Norton Internet Security/Norton Antivirus 2002 and Norton Ghost 2003, plus all the updates (using Symantec LiveUpdate which is built into them). My Internet access is only via a slow 56K dial-up, incidentally. Having reinstalled all the Norton updates again and logged on to the Windows Update site and downloaded most - but not all - of the now long list of Windows and critical updates, I'm experiencing the following three problems: 1. When I get Windows Updates (I do it in batches), they download fine but then some of the batches don't immediately install. Those familiar with WU will know that you get an onscreen caption which shows a Download progress bar and a separate Install progress bar. Instead of immediately installing, communication with the MS site continues and, after about three times as long as the whole process is supposed to take, the install finally completes. A 3MB batch, for example, can end up taking around 30 minutes to download and install, mainly because of its initial failure to install. In NIS, I notice that NIS has generated an access rule for every single Windows Update session I've now made (some 17). 2. Whenever I log on to the Symantec site for updates to either NIS/NAV or Ghost, an error message is flagged to me, saying that I've multiple instances of LiveUpdate and that this could imply a small security risk. There are, in fact, 8 slightly different instances, each using 127.0.0.1. It invites me to delete them but, when I do, all of them remain. LiveUpdates were initially not always (apparently) installing but now appear to work fine. I'm still worried about all those instances of LiveUpdate, though. You'd expect there to be, say, two but not eight. As I've left it, the error message gets flagged every time, still. 3. I can't install the driver for my Epson standalone scanner. I've never had this problem before, but now when I run the driver Setup from the Epson CD, the Setup hangs halfway through. Other peripherals still install okay, though. Surely, what I've observed in 1 isn't right, eh? Any theories as to the cause? Could it be a process in NIS (the firewall) that I've wrongly blocked? But why should it work on some batches of the Windows downloads and not on others? I agreed to the recommended firewall rules when first re-using NIS/NAV, they generating themselves automatically and appearing onscreen. 2 could conceivably be related to 1. On the other hand, 2 might not be a valid problem at all. Does it seem so? When responding to LiveUpdate about the multiple instances, there's an option to ignore them in future. The Epson driver problem's a complete mystery at present. That driver has hitherto always installed fine. It's a Perfection 3200 scanner, USB connection. If someone could provide some further insight into this, I'd be grateful.

I'm getting some strange answers as to the total size of the various dbx folders in my Outlook Express application in Windows XP. I'm trying to do a backup of my pared-down e-mail folders and have started by doing a search (Run/Search Files & Folders) on the XP partition for all dbx folders. Windows finds and displays the results and all of the expected dbx folders are there, but when I look at the sizes of the Inbox.dbx and Sent Items.dbx folders, I'm getting figures of 9MB and 13MB. Yet, when I look in OE itself, each message is typically 10KB and the totals for those two folders are more like 110KB and 150KB. I'm trying to back up all the e-mail folders to a USB flash drive of just 64MB maximum capacity and those crazy figures in the megabytes range mean that the flash drive runs out of space. I'm using OE6.00.2900.5512, incidentally, under XP SP3. Has anyone else met this problem? No matter how I look at the Properties of my dbx folders, I'm seeing erroneous megabyte figures. Or am I missing a trick somewhere?

I run a single XP machine, so normally My Network Places doesn't contain anything except the Microsoft top-level folder icons. But a moment ago, I happened to look in My Network Places and found a 4KB folder entitled "assets on www.cesa.org.uk". Doing a google, I discovered that cesa is the "catering equipment suppliers association" (I'm talking UK, here). Well, what the heck's that doing there!? I can only summise that an html e-mail that I had recently from a catering suppliers to whom I'd made a brief e-mail enquiry some weeks ago has placed this folder there. I've found that I can delete the folder to the Recycle Bin from the top-level set of folders in My Network Places but it still leaves a non-deletable copy folder in the Web Client Network folder. My antivirus client doesn't look for anything in those sets of folders (it tells me), so it's obviously missed seeing it. Anyone know how I can completely remove it from My Network Places? A Registry hack, perhaps? Looking at the logs in my software firewall, I see that my software firewall has recently blocked three outgoing attempts to connect with www.cesa.org.uk.

I'm planning to replace my current, partitioned 80GB ATA100 hard drive with a 250GB ATA100 hard drive that I'll similarly partition. As before, it'll have both Win2K and WinXP put on it, in a multiboot arrangement. I need to use bigger partitions now, as I've practically run out of real estate on one of the partitions on the 80GB drive and don't have spare capacity anywhere else on it. When I finally boot up into WinXP with the new, bigger drive, will I get a warning to re-activate Windows and therefore have to go online and re-register XP? It's the full retail version of XP that I'm using and, as I understand it, the Licence allows me to use my copy of XP on one further machine, which is assumed to be an upgrade machine. In this case, of course, it's the same machine. But I guess that, with the way that Microsoft interrogates the PC, it'll obviously find a different hard drive to the one I had before and will wrongly conclude that this is a second machine.

OS is WinXP Home. How should the temporary files found at <Root folder>\Documents & Settings\<My Name>\Local Settings\Temp be managed? The subfolder of this is Temporary Internet Files and these are all cookies that I'd like to retain. However, the files in the main Temp folder appear to be mainly xml's, log's, and tmp's. Can all these in the Temp folder (other than the Internet cookies) be safely deleted by manual means, or is it best to leave them alone?

Does anyone here know precisely what sort of information's contained in the VIRTPART.DAT file of Symantec's Ghost application? I'm trying to figure out why my Ghost imaging app will no longer run, having just put in a newer and bigger main hard drive. I've upgraded hard drives in the presence of Ghost before and had no problem, but this time Ghost doesn't seem to recognise the new drive. Only my destination drive (an ext drive) comes up in the PC-DOS dialog. I've of course made sure that both Windows itself and the Windows environment of Ghost have recognised the new drive. I've heard it said that you can delete VIRTPART.DAT, contained in the root partition of the drive, if you wish and that it'd be reformed when you next boot but I'm wary of trying that, as if it contains references to all my partition images now stored on the ext drive, I clearly wouldn't want those wiped out. Please don't give the obvious advice, like 'ditch Ghost and get something better'. I'm looking for someone with some real knowledge of Ghost. I can't afford to lose my whole library of partition images made over some years with Ghost. I think the problem is that Ghost is still thinking that the new drive has partition sizes that were the old sizes. In other words, whatever it's referencing for its information, it's thinking that the old drive is still present. The version of Ghost is the 2003 version. Symantec have long since stopped support for it.

From further tests I've tried, it appears that although Ghost's Windows environment correctly recognises the new drive and its partitions, the special DOS environment of Ghost, in which partition imaging, drive cloing and recovery are performed, does not. It recognises my USB-connected drive still, to which I normally image, but it can no longer find the new main disc. As I see it, this points to a partition table problem - an MBR problem. When I cloned from my old 80GB drive to the new 250GB drive, everything copied across fine (it seemed), but when you really think about it, there's every reason for a problem ensuing, because I've presumably ended up with the partition table for the old 80GB drive on the 250GB drive. Is that crazy, or not? It looks to me that the MBR needs reinitialising, somehow. Would that be fixmbr? Use Recovery Console, maybe? Any suggestions? BTW, I tried the renaming of the virtual partition (VP). I then ran a Ghost utility to recreate a VP, which it did. But as far as I could tell, it was identical to the first VP file. No change in the problem. Re Acronis True Image (ATI), I've been reasonably impressed with the reviews on ATI, over these last few years, but I did note some while ago that, with ATI, you can't do backup images of individual partitions, you can only back up (clone) a complete drive. That being so, ATI's not for me. Provided the OS is at least WinXP or Win2K SP3, there's no hard disc size limitation in Ghost 2003. The manual for it states that quite categorically. The breakpoint is usually 138GB. None of my new partitions are that big, anyway.

I recently downloaded and installed SP3, the latest service pack for Windows XP, doing it from the Windows Update website. Whilst many XP users have consequently encountered a whole host of problems (as can be seen on the various Microsoft newsgroups and tech forums), in my case everything appeared to go smoothly and my machine has functioned okay since. However, I've noticed that my XP partition size - the used size, that is - has now increased by some 800MB - 1GB. Has anyone else with a successful SP3 installation noticed this? In other words, go to WinXP's Disk Management and look at the Properties of that partition or drive. In my case, it was supposed to be an Express installation but it still took about 30 mins to do - incredibly slow. And yes, I had acted on Microsoft's advisory notes prior to doing the update! At worst, the download itself would be no more than about 350MB (that's the Full version, and the Express is supposed to be only about 70MB), so where has all this extra data/software come from? I've tried asking Microsoft UK but they're completely clueless. One theory I've had is that it's due to the update making a copy of my WinXP with SP2, so that you can, if you wish, revert to that but, quantity-wise, that doesn't seem to fit. This extra software seems to sit in the area of the hard drive where the partition table resides and consequently isn't viewable as one or more folders. If my theory described above is correct and that the extra data/software is Microsoft's attempt at including an image of WinXP SP2 in the same partition as the working partition (maybe in cab files?), then why oh why didn't they warn us? Personally, I don't need to waste good hard drive real estate like that, as I've a separate application with which to perform partition imaging. So, who else has noticed this huge increase in used space on the partition? Anyone?

I'm in touch with an IT spe[censored]t in Canada who installs his and other XPs with service pack via the 'streamlined' method. He tells me that he's now done this with SP3 without any problems, so I guess that either Microsoft's published advice is/was ambiguous, or it was plain wrong. However, bear in mind that, apart from early editions, XP itself usually comes with SP2 integrated. Thus, if you then add SP3 in the streamlined method, you're effectively adhering to Microsoft's recommendation. I still cannot account for the extra 800MB - 1GB of partition now used. SP3 itself would be considerably less than that. XP + SP2 would be a fair bit more (unless perhaps in cab files). It'd be nice if Microsoft would tell us all but, as ever, getting them to come clean is like trying to get blood out of a stone.

I think you'll find that, with SP3, it'll be much more difficult to slipstream it, as it's a specific requirement that SP3 be installed on top of SP2. As it happens, my primary reason for complaining and wanting to swap experience with others is that I HAVE indeed almost run out of partition space, so much so that I've now had to order a new and bigger hard drive. What I so dislike is that, although Microsoft said in their pre-SP3 articles that users would be able to later uninstall it if necssary and get back to WinXP SP2, they gave no indication of what this would involve and, indeed, no choice in it. I doubt very much that, if the Full version SP3 is used and you prepare a slipstream CD, the result will be any different (except perhaps for possibly failing, due to non-adherence to Microsoft's intention that you install over SP2). What is your experience with SP3, Dosfreak? Have you tried installing it yet? BTW, users of Symantec apps should check with the Symantec website about a serious malfunction that can occur if you install SP3. Symantec have devised a fix that needs installing before SP3.

Myke, It was quite some time ago now when I first instaaled XP but, at the time, I took a very good look at the EULA Licence Agreeement when going through the Setup for the installation. It was definitely couched as to give the impression that the copy of XP could be used on a second, ALTERNATIVE machine. In other words, if the user wished to later upgrade his/her machine by upgrading its components or by the user buying a completely new machine without OS, that would be permitted. But, yes, I agree that normally a single-user licence is a single-user licence. Period. What that EULA didn't say, though - and this is really what I'm getting at - is whether in any of the permitted scenarios, Microsoft would still require the OS to be activated again.

Anyone know the details of how MS Word makes backups of Word files, under WinXP? Something's gone wrong with my MS Word. It's MS Office 2000 and, over the years, I've had precious few problems with the MS Word component. It's got all the service packs and other fixes applied. Suddenly, today, as I opened MS Word (after having just booted my machine), it came up with an error message, saying that a part of Word had become corrupted as it was opening and it asked if it should attempt a recovery. Foolishly, I declined the offer and just shut down Word at that point. As a consequence of this, I lost one or two important document files. Fortunately, I'd previously put copies elsewhere on my PC and was able to copy those back into Word. As far as I can tell so far, Word seems to be working okay still but I'm noticing that it appears to no longer make a backup version of each new file in My Documents. It successfully saves the new files but simply doesn't also save a backup version. Hitherto, I've not really bothered that much about Word making these backups. They get allotted, automatically, the extension wbk. Can someone with some knowledge in that area tell me how and when Word makes these wbk backups? In Word, I've got the Save options in the Save tab of Tools/Options correctly set up, namely "Always create backup copy" and "Allow background saves". I was wondering whether Word perhaps creates each backup only 24 hrs later or something. I've certainly run some quick tests, to see if it makes a backup file simply on a new opening of Word, or after a reboot, regardless of date, but no joy. Note that this is Word as in Office 2000. There's a Detect & Repair function available in Word but when I've started to run that, it wants to copy SR1 files off the original Office installation CD. Well, that would probably make matters worse, as the SR1 on that CD was superseded at a later date by sr1a and SP3, which were updates to Office 2000 and which I downloaded and installed. It might be that something relatively simple in Word has got reset and a repair, as such, isn't needed. There's no description available in Office 2000 of how the backup files are generated, because backing these up only became a feature under WinXP, which of course came along several years later. Can anyone advise me on this?