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Sunday, June 6, 2004

Show #46

Megan Morrone, another Screen Savers alumna, joins us all day today.

Do you lose your Wi-Fi connection randomly on Windows XP? Wired News says there’s a problem with Zero Config in XP. Microsoft says they haven’t seen any data to confirm that. Hmmm.

Billy Bob teeth can be purchased from Fake Teeth.com.

 toc | toc 

Noon-1p

Michelle in Huntington Beach

can only start in Safe Mode. It started when she used her system restore discs to reinstall the system. Safe Mode is a special mode of Windows that loads the minimum software and drivers - just enough to start up. If you can only boot in Safe Mode, it’s usually because you have a bad driver which is crashing the system when it loads. In this case, it sounds like the system restore discs were damaged. I’d try again.

Jeff in Manhattan Beach

has an IE problem. He wants it to open a new window every time he opens it. That’s the normal behavior, but for some reason his IE does not and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s a popup blocker at work?

Jeff Adams writes with a possible solution. He says the same thing was happening to him.

Steve in Woodland Hills

is using Windows 98SE he installed 640MB RAM but ran into problems. That’s because 95/98/Me has a bug that causes problems when you go over 512MB of RAM. Microsoft has the fix at here.

Jared in Columbus OH

is going on a trip. He wanted to know which I like better, the Canon Powershot S500 or the Sony DSC-W1. Read the reviews at DPReview (Sony / Canon). They really like the Sony - and I have to say the Zeiss lenses Sony has been

1–2p

Larry in South Dakota

wants to know how to tell if a dynamic web page is up to date. If it’s pulling information from a database every time the page is displayed then it depends on how often the database is updated. The only way to tell is to ask the webmaster.

If you design a page you don’t want to be cached you can use the following meta tags:

 <meta http-equiv=“Content-Type” content=“text/html; charset=iso-8859–1″>
 <meta http-equiv=“Pragma” content=“no-cache”>
 <meta http-equiv=“Last-Modified” content=“0″>
 <meta http-equiv=“Cache-Control” content=“no-cache, must-revalidate”>

Barbara in Lancaster

is INFESTED with Spyware! Use these free programs to zap spyware:

• SpyBot S&D
• AdAware

Then read up on spyware on SpywareInfo.

Susan in Sherman Oaks

needs to access her computer remotely. Try Apple Remote Desktop or Timbuktu.

Steve in San Jose

wants to know if those programs that purport to speed up broadband connections 250% work. No they don’t.

Ken in Pasadena

had a problem during the installation of AVG Anti-Virus and now his modem and sound card won’t work. The installation clobbered the driver sub-system. To repair it use the System File Checker (Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];253571 removed this in Me but put it back in XP) by clicking Start→Run… and typing sfc /scannow. Since Ken is using Me he may have to do an “install in place,” which simply means re-installing Windows on top of the existing install. It won’t harm anything and should replace any damaged or missing system files. If it doesn’t work, he’s facing a complete reinstall. This might be a good time to upgrade to XP.

2–3p

Mike in Arizona

is ready to get a new TV. He wanted an HDTV primer.

Tim in Los Angeles

wants to watch TV on his Mac. There are several devices that can do this. Try the Formac Studio TVR or El Gato’s EyeTV. If you want to put HDTV on your Macintosh Cinema Display try a little Black Magic.

Marin in Huntington Beach

wants to know how to get rid of spyware if Spybot and AdAware don’t do the trick. If you can figure out the name of the offending program do a Google search for it - you’re sure to find someone who has figured out how to get rid of the infection by hand.

Todd in Santa Barbara

wants digital speakers. These are speakers that connect to the USB port of your computer - not your sound card. They do the same thing: convert the digital bits into analog sound, but they do it outside the computer enclosure. The theory is they’re quieter because they’re not influenced by electronic noise inside the computer. Klipsch, Logitech

Joanne in Long Beach

wanted to know about Averatec notebooks. I don’t have any experience with them, but an off-brand name like that isn’t necessarily bad since there are only a few notebook manufacturers anyway. I would check the warranty and make sure the company will be around for the life of the computer. She also wanted to know if I recommended the Pentium M over the Mobile Athlon. I do. The Pentium M gets much better battery life.

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