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Sunday, March 13, 2005

Show #126

Today’s news items

It’s the fifth anniversary of the tech bust. The Nasdaq peaked at 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000. In the following weeks, shareholders began dumping tech stocks and didn’t stop for two years. Two trillion dollars of value was lost.

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle wants to start collecting taxes on digital music, videos and software. Legislature Republicans say they will block the proposal. The so-called iPod tax is already technically the law in many states, but it’s up to users to volunteer payment.

Apple has joined Dell, Disney, Sony and HP in the Blu-Ray camp. There are two competing standards for the upcoming High Definition DVD standard. Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema, Universal and Paramount have said they will adopt HD-DVD - Blue-Ray’s competition. Blu-Ray can fit more on a disc and that’s important to computer makers like Apple. I fell Bule-ray is already Dead, becucuase Nintendo and Microsoft will not supprot Sony, but unlike the VHS Vs BetaMax you can make an player that suports both types of HD Formaet disks.

Spywareblaster definitions have been updated as of 3/10.

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11a-Noon

Cole in Springfield - Windows install is screwed up

He installed XP with a bad memory stick and ever since Explorer and a freeware app have crashed consistently. First run the Windows System File Checker to see if you can repair any damaged system files. Re-boot to the Safe Mode command line and run sfc /scannow. If that doesn’t help you can try Windows XP repair mode, although I’ve never had that do anything but make my system unbootable. Make sure I have back-ups an reformat the drive; then re-install Windows XP, or if you have Nortal Gosth CD; If you made an disk of an good XP install with full SP2 good install and rebuild the system form there.

Chat room Moderator Derek from Halifax, NS

Using Skype - wow that sounds great!

He wanted to know a good backup battery power source for his iBook on long trips.
There are some backup batteries for laptops that fit under the PC itself, but most of these are for PC’s only, not macs. Alternatively, some mac accessory stores sell backup iBook and powerbook batteries, though these usually cost $100 or so.

Daniel in Reno (Spokavriel in the chat room) - how do I set up an FTP folder in XP

FTP Folders were added to Windows with IE 5 - you can still use them in XP.

Stephen in Ontario, Canada - Running Battlefield 1942 in Linux

He’s RHNet in the chat room. He is also calling using Skype but the SkypeOut version of Skype to call to a landline phone for 0.017 Eur/min ($0.02 US). Even though Wine claims it can run Battlefield under Linux I wouldn’t do it. Battlefield is a very demanding program. Just create a dual-boot Windows/Linux system. That way you can run Windows programs in Windows and Linux programs in Linux. Wine I find is ok for normal Windows programs on Liunx; for PC Games get one of these DISOcver Consloes, and for gaming get an X-BOX. Some DVD PC games have an linux version on the DVD, and sometimes to get the linux version you have to go to sites like this http://www.tuxgames.com.

RHNet:
I installed Fedora Core 3 On my main desktop, April 23 2005. I love it. I will try Battlefield in Wine, but I still have my XP partition.

 Noteworthy Event 3 Chatroom Callers in a Row :)

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Noon-1p

hour added by Paul in Del Rio TX

Ben in Watts, CA - iTunes (Radio Stations) and Windows XP

Try to access the station’s stream itself thru your browser. Some security software might be responsible for the blocking.

James in San Diego - Partitioning a hard drive

He has a 128 Gig hard drive. After reformatting he only gets 30 Gigs. He wants all 128 back not worrying about loss of data. Chances are you have a hidden partition. You’ll need to repartition your hard drive. Use your Windows XP install disk. As part of the setup Windows will tell you how your hard drives are set up. Be careful not to reinstall Windows or lose data:

1. Disconnect your hard drive you don’t want to lose data from
2. Insert your Windows XP setup disk
3. Restart your computer and use the setup process
4. Run the setup to delete all partitions
5. Make a new partition the maximum size of the drive

Paul in Del Rio TX Adds: You might also want to use your disk manager in Windows XP to find the lost disk space and run the same steps above. Be careful not to destroy your data on your primary drive.

Mike in Arcadia, CA – USB connection to cell phone

He wants to connect his laptop to the internet using his cell phone. It depends how you use the connection. Data connection is much better and a bit faster. Sprint or Verizon is pretty good using data connections. Generally your phone needs to be “web enabled”. Sometimes extra charges may apply. Check with your local carrier.

John in Roseby – DLL Errors with Norton

DLLHost.exe is having problems. You might have spyware or a virus. If Norton AV is not seeing a problem, go to SARC and get the stand alone removal tool for Nachia/Welchia, Blaster. Be sure to reboot into safe mode before you run them. Make sure to upgrade your AntiVirus and Spyware programs.

Doug in Glendale – Does he have to buy Spyware Software for better protection?

Uses Ad-Aware and keeps receiving 25 to 30 spybots every time he runs it. Does he have to buy the software for a better program? Leo says NO! What you’re worried about is called real time protection. He recommends downloading Microsoft’s Anti-spyware. Most importantly its free! Its best to have more than one running. If one doesn’t catch it, the other will. You might also want to check out Spybot.

Paul in Glendale – Windows XP is not starting up all the way

Paul was setting up Norton and it froze. He turned off the system as a last resort. Leo says you’ve done nothing wrong! These things happen. Try rebooting and use the F8 key then go into “safe mode.” You might be able to run the system checker or disk checker. As a last resort you might have to clean your hard drive. If you can get into safe mode, save whatever data that you can before you lose anything. Something else you can do is put in a second hard drive and save your important data there. They are very inexpensive.

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1–2p

Matthew in Sydney

A Skype call from Australia - sounds great!

David in Cincinatti - can’t get Vonage with 513 area code

It’s possible that all the 513 exchanges were claimed by local phone companies before Vonage came on the scene. In that case you’ll have to use another area code. I do not recommend VoIP for alarm systems: if your Internet access or power goes out, so does your protection.

He’s looking for an analog to digital video capture device - I recommend the Pinnacle Systems Movie Box DV. I’m going to review Turtle Beach’s USB 2 solution, the Video Advantage, but in general I think you get better results with Firewire or a PCI card from Hauppauge or ATI.

Colin in Ontario - Choosing a notebook computer

He’s looking for a laptop. Centrino is just a marketing designation for a laptop that has an Intel Pentium M processor, Intel chipset, and an Intel Wi-Fi card. I do think the Pentium M is an excellent mobile processor, but you don’t have to get the rest. Make sure to get internal Wi-Fi support, though. External antennas are a pain.

To print wirelessly you can get a Bluetooth to LPT converter, but I think if you’re using Wi-Fi anyway that’s a better way to print. Look for a wireless access point that has a built-in USB printer port.

PC Magazine liked the Dell D610 a lot. Sounds like a good buy.

Geo in Bellflower - Dumping the extra Windows installations

He has upgraded his Emachine to Windows 2000 (after some issues it’s working) - but he still has the old Windows 98 partition and a failed W2K install lying around. You can’t just delete the 98 partition; Windows 2K won’t boot without it. It’s easiest to reinstall W2K after deleting the other partitions, otherwise you can delete everything except the files in the root directory (particularly NTLOADER and BOOT.INI) and shrink the partition, but you’ll need that C: drive.

He’s also having problems with re-installing Netscape. Try uninstalling all the previous installs of Netscape.

Mark in Redondo Beach - recreating default power schemes in XP

After doing some research I’ve determined that there is no standard default power scheme, since OEM’s often customize these. However, Kelly’s Korner XP (a fabulous Windows XP tweak resource) has a generic set you can download from here as a Registry file. Download the file and double click it to install the power schemes in XP. You may want to tweak these a little in the Power Options control panel after you install them.

To use multiple files in Outlook just use the File→Open… command to open a separate .PST file. It will appear in the Outlook bar as a second set of Mail Folders, etc.

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