Sampson

Now you need to go into your System Manager to see if Windows is recognizing this drive. Right click on My computer, choose Properties, click on the Hardware tab, then click on the button that says Device Manager. Look at the entry that says CD/DVD rom drive and click on the "+". If there is an exclamation point, you already know something is amiss. If not, then it is seeing the drive, but the drivers may have become corrupted. You can try to update the drivers or remove the device and have windows walk you through reinstalling it. How does this happen? Sometimes when installing software viewers for DVD's (especially when the software is older) outmoded .dll's overwrite the proper Windows .dll's causing the drive not to function with your version of Windows.

You should be able to delete those files without hurting anything. If you are worried copy them to a floppy first. In addition your should also look for the following: iठ򨪮htm lovelettersec.txt lovelettersource.txt lovelettertutorial.txt worm1.txt worm2.txt Go to Start-Run- and type msconfig When it comes up check to see if there are any processes that are "Run" or opened in your Start folder or Win.ini, System.ini etc. Uncheck them or delete them I can see that the first file is not displaying as it might appear in Windows. It would look like io(with a line above the o).htm . If you find somthing similar with the extension .htm that is probably it. [Edited by Sampson on 2004-07-31 10:07:51]

You just need to associate the type of picture with a program that can view it. For example most pictures that have a .jpg or a .bmp can be viewed by IE. There are any number of programs that can view graphic files that are freeware that you can use - Irfanview or XnView. While installing them you will be asked what files you want to default to them, or you can use IE in the meantime.

You really need to give us some more specifics. Motherboard, CPU, amount of memory, size of hard drive and percentage of it is used, which Windows OS your are using, video card and drivers, Anti-virus program, etc.

Be sure that Windows Explorer is configured to show hidden files. That will eliminate one problem. Then. go into your system manager to see if XP is actually seeing the DVD drive. You didn't say if you had just installed this drive or if it suddenly quit and had been working. A little more info would help.

Try: BHODemon 2.0 http://www.definitivesolutions.com/bhodemon.htm Disable and delete the BHO's you find. The BHO's for Abobe Reader or certain taskbars like Google or Yahoo are fine. Others that you may find are attempts to hijack your computer.

You've asked several questions. So, I will take them in the order of importance. About security - You will do yourself the biggest favor in the world since you will be connected to a high speed modem if you will buy a router to interface between the modem and the PC. This means your modem should be connected to an ethernet interface. Your router will be more efficient than any software firewall. The reason - unless your PC sent out a packet and was expecting an answer all incoming packets are dropped at the router and never allowed to come in. With all of the infected PC's out there pinging like mad, software firewalls will drive you to drink telling you that such and such has pinged you and wants a particular response. Routers like linksys are so cheap and so effective. -If you plan to use a software firewall, the one you suggested is very good, but I would read some reviews. -Dell does not require you to use the software extras they put on a machine. If McAfee is on there, as long as you don't activate it, it won't be installed. Go to your Add/Remove Programs from Control Panel and it will show you what is installed on your computer. Personally, I don't recommend either McAfee or Norton's on home computers. Their installations embed components of their software so deeply into the system that you can never be sure you can get them out. They are overly proprietary and are most ofter the culprits as to why Windows Update won't update or Nvidia drivers fail. On business computers and networks, their professional products are great. Home computing is better served by some of the free software products like AVG or Anti-vir. -You will be surprised at how few updates you may need for your operating system when you do go to Windows update. You must use IE to get into windows update (or at least IE components integrated into the Windows OS). At this point there is no workaround. Other than that you should not use IE for browsing. Even programs that have built off of IE and have added multi-tabbed and software popup stoppers into them still use IE components. For the time being use Mozilla or Firefox. They too use IE components (you can't get around that fact) but they do not use ActiveX components and their way of storing cookies and "temp" files will not allow activation (at least not to this point. -One final thing. Install things one at a time. After installing new software, play with it until your are satisfied that things are working well. When you install multiple pieces of software you never can be sure which one is problematic. AND, with Dell machines, don't go installing the latest and greatest hardware and video drivers. Dell tweaks its machines. The drivers provided work with that machine and Dell presumes you are going to keep that configuration until you trade it in on your next Dell. Keep an eye on their tech downloads. If they recommend new drivers, you can download theirs. In theory you should be able to use the drivers given by a manufacturer since those peripherals are in your computer, but Dell does play with drivers to give their machines an edge. Hope this helps

Yes, it should connect right through without a problem. Power down the computer. Make your connections. The modem should have have four or five lights on the front. When you plug the power cable into the modem, two lights should come up - power and "cable/DSL". When the computer is powered up, a third light should come on showing the the modem is acknowledging the PC connection and finally a fourth light (usually blinking) will show that Data is being transmitted. Bring up your browser and your homepage should come up.

You have gone to a lot of trouble and been extraordinarily thorough, but you have a hard drive with either some physical defects or messed up sectors. Think about getting a new drive. This one is not going to survive. I know you want to recover what is on the old drive, but continuing to test it will probably make it less readable. If you get a new drive you could slave your old drive to it to see if you could at least find and read the data. Or you could try to Ghost the old drive to the new drive. If it is only some sectors that are problematic and Ghost does create an image to the new drive all the better.

There should be no problem with the modem. By now you have probably found that out. As to your XP machine, you don't say if the instability begins to become apparent when you are actively using your network. If that were the case, you should make sure that the two computers share the same workgroup or domain. When a computer crashes as yours seems to it is generally because of some peripheral - video card or hard disk. Video cards are the usual suspects because of driver issues. Hard disk also cause these kinds of things when one begins to develop bad sectors. Windows is constantly paging in the background; when it encounters an error, usually a write error, unexpected things happen.

What video card are you using Nvidia or ATI? What version of the software for the video card is installed? Did you install any software previous to the loss of your large screen usage?

Actually, many Bioses will let you set it to the default or factory status. What I believe the problem may be is that an improper inf file for the CD is defaulted in windows.

When your computer first boots you will be told how to get into the Bios - by hitting DEL or ESC or F4. When you see that hit the key a few times. Generally a menu comes up and generally the first highlighed item is where you will want to start your search. What you will be looking for is the boot sequence which instructs the Bios the order it is to choose the piece of hardware to start its bootup. Put your cursor over this item and use the PgUp and PgDn to change the values. What might be best is to choose the sequence A:, C:, then CD. To save your configuration generally you will press the F10 key. When it starts up it will go to A: first and if it finds nothing, it will then go to C: . If C: does not boot, at least you can put a formatted systems disk in A: the next go around to get the computer up. At that point, you could reinstall 98.

This problem comes up for the most part when there is either a hardware misconfigurement, an IRQ conflict, or the Bios does not support your hardware. Since this is Windows 98, turn on the machine and hold down the CTRL button to see if you can get into Safe Mode. If successful go to your system manager and see if your new burner is in conflict with another device. If not successful, attempt to go into your Bios and see if the burner is being recognized. Generally, burners like to be Masters with DMA enabled. Check your motherboard's website to determine if there is a Bios update that may recognize your new device that the old BIOS may not. You can always put back in your old burner and boot up. If successful, go into the System or Hardware Manager and delete the burner then power down (and ignore the prompt install new hardware), put in your new burner and try to boot up again.

Maybe something exists, but given that they are not very salesworthy in comparison to the cheapness of a wireless router, it is unlikely that you will find anything. You could do this pretty simply by getting a linksys wireless router. You really won't have much rewiring to do. Just plug your hub into one of the rear ports of the router and your network will work as before. Most of the wireless routers use ethernet not usb modems, and many usb modems can convert to ethernet, so plug the modem into the router in the WAN port. Stick the PCMCIA receiver into the Laptop; you're done. Why would you want to do it this way? More control. Through the router you can control the internal IP's to the various computers allowing access to the internet. But, more importantly, since you are broadcasting and receiving wirelessly, you will want to use encryption and you will most certainly want to lock down your ports because once you are on the air, your network is wide open for intrusion if you don't take the proper steps. Think about it.

This behavior can occur if the Deleted Items folder is damaged. Move all messages you want to keep out of the Deleted Items folder and into another mail folder. Close OE, then delete the file "Deleted Items.dbx" in your Identity's store folder. OE will create a new one when it is reopened. To find where your data files are stored, go to Tools>> Options>> Maintenance>> Store Folder and see where OE is keeping its data files. Note: Deleted Items.dbx is a hidden file on XP. In order to find this file you will need to be able to see hidden files. Go to Start>> My Computer>> Tools>> Folder Options>> View. Under the "Hidden files and folders" folder, click inside the "Show hidden files and folders" option.

Well, as I understand it, it is almost identical to the RC2 candidate that was put out about a month ago. But, you can install it directly without haveing to go through safe mode. So, yes, as far as I know this is the final 9.0c.

Most scanners don't use an ethernet connection. They usually interface through a serial port, printer port or USB. Generally, as with printers, you would attach it to one or the other of the computers, make the scanner shareable (might password protect it). Your router probably only has ethernet connections.

Direct 9.0c is now out. Try it instead: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai...;DisplayLang=en

Another thing you might think about doing is putting a linksys router between your DSL/Cable modem and your computer. While this router is supposed to be used for having multiple computers access the internet, they provide their own firewall. They are pretty inexpensive now, but they will stop all that pinging which are really only machines with worm infections looking for open ports. These pings can annoy to distraction. With your software firewall you will never really be able to stop these interruptions.

You might need to give the specifics of your configuration. For example, kslearning's difficulty was probably that the Burner was a slave. Most burners want to be configured as master.

Can you manuever to the directory through a Dos prompt? If so, did you remove the file attributions for it. Normally, the command to take out a directory is rd \. However, sometimes you can't remove the directory since there are files still in it, if it's behavior is like the old Dos directories. If you can get into the directory itself, delete those files first then get back into the directory in which the desired deletion directory resides and remove it (rd \directory name). Or see if you can rename the directory first (ren directory newdirectoryname)

This was suggested from another game board, and you may already have tried it, but: "1. Go to www.acclaim.com/games/constructor and download the European Constructor patch. 2. Install Constructor as usual. 3. Unzip the European Constructor patch and now you just follow the steps that are in the file README.TXT. NOTE: if you`re using MS XP, do not forget to run the compatibility mode for Win95 on the European Constructor Patch Setup. Also read: http://www.acclaim.com/support/games/constructor_PC.html http://www.acclaim.com/games/constructor/downloads.html\"

Here is a number of suggestions from some of the members here: jerry atrik find the file u want to delete and right click on it then properties, then the security tab on top. it shows a list of people and things with permissions remove them all. if a box pops up saying that inherited permissions rule then hit that advanced button and uncheck the inherited permissions. adamvjackson @Stake security (http://www.atstake.com) has a WFPdisable tool that (temporarily) disables Windows File Protection, for when you need to replace protected files. Possible software tools: Moveonboot (you target it for deletion, then when you reboot it is deleted: http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/moveonboot.html Said to be able to remove an active file - drdelete: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7374516~mode=flat~days=9999~start=20 Or, you can open a Dos Prompt. Then bring up the task manager (CTRL-SHIFT-ESC) click on explorer.exe and hit end task (which will make your desktop look wonkie), click back into the dos window and maneuver your way through the subdirectories (cd \ (your path to the subdirectory) stopping in the subdirectory in which this directory is found, then typing "attrib (directory name) -rsh) then del (directory you want to delete) To get out of the Dos Window, type exit. Once back at the desktop click on the start button, Run, type in explorer.exe or you can reboot) [Edited by Sampson on 2004-07-24 10:09:27]

Go to this page and see if their suggestions will help: http://66.79.189.75/games/pc_machines.shtml