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Saturday, August 21, 2004

Show #67

I’m on vacation and this show was taped ahead of time.

I’ll be back live tomorrow, August 22. Call in then!

 toc | toc 

Today’s news items

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Noon-1p

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Crimmie in Sherman Oaks

She had a crash. Windows XP now seems to want her to reactivate itself, and tells her that she has 1 day left to activate.

Leo says you need to activate XP to be able to continue use of the OS beyond the trial period.

She lost her DVD player also when XP crashed and lost her DVD Player application that came with her PC. She was wondering if she could find out what it was.

Leo says to check out buying a DVD player program like PowerDVD, since it was probably a trial version that was bundled in with the PC anyway.

Susanne in Azusa

She wants to know everything there is to know about WebTV.

Leo explained that WebTV (now known as MSN TV) is a device that you can hook up to your TV to be able to get web access and email. This is great for people who want on the net without a PC; however, you have to pay $100 or so for the box and about $21.95 a month for access.

Sandy in Riverside

switched to Firefox and has a problem with AOL, lost her internet explorer and can’t use the links in IE anymore, only Firefox.

Leo says to launch IE before you use AOL - it will ask if it’s the default browser, and allow it to be the default browser. After you use AOL firefox will ask if it’s default and you can set it back. Another way is not to use the AOL browser at all and simply stick to Firefox, however any links you click inside AOL will not launch Firefox.

Leo also recommends giving AOL the boot, or if you can’t, move to a lower access plan - like the “Bring Your Own Access” plan, which is 9.95 a month instead of the 21.95 a month plan.

Steve in Victorville

Has Windows XP - sometimes when he boots up he gets a CD busy instead of an hourglass - it’s slowing the computer way down on start up.

Leo says that the CD drive most likely not working properly, either in hardware or software. He recommends to go to the system control panel and remove the CD drive from the list of devices, on the next boot the machine will redetect the CD drive and will probably fix the issue.

1–2p

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Brett in Brea

Brett has two series 2 TiVos and wants to know how to transfer shows between them, he does not have a network in his house. He has a Mac.

Leo says it’s hard to get video off of anything and you cant just hook these up to each other. However, if you have the TiVo home media option you can share video from machine to machine. Also there’s a new feature that is supposed to be coming out called TiVo−2-Go in time for Christmas. He recommends the DealDatabase forum for TiVo information on hacking your TiVo. You will need a PC to do most of the TiVo hacking, though. Get a friend who has a spare PC you can use to hack your drive and go from there.

Larry in Palmdale

Larry has a Sawtooth G4 400mhz Mac using OS 9.2, he wants to upgrade to OS X and is worried about his hardware not working.

Leo recommends LowEndMac and EveryMac - both have lots of information on upgrading to OS X and what issues (if any) you might have. The computer itself will have no issue with it… but some of Larry’s SCSI hardware may or may not work on OS X. Check those sites to see if your hardware is compatible - the drivers will probably be there.

Larry also wants to know what’s a good basic web page designing program for Mac.

Leo recommends Macromedia’s program Contribute - it’s $100 and is a very easy to use - it should give you a great start on your website.

Merk in Riverside

Merk thinks he has a RAM problem - his computer turns itself off randomly for no reason after booting. He has two displays.

Leo recommeds checking the display driver first. Also, try out a RAM testing program like GoldMemory. It could also be a power supply issue because of the dual video card setup. Try also monitoring the temperature of the system to see if that’s the issue as well.

Zkay recommends a program called Memtest86

Dan in Minnesota

Wants to have a picture browsing program on his website so people can view his pictures taken with his new Canon Digital Rebel.

Leo recommends Gallery or Coppermine - both are very easy to set up and use but you need a site that supports PHP, Perl, CGI, and MySQL. Leo uses Coppermine on his site.

Trevor Evans says: I recommend that he try out Google’s Picasa.

Andy in Rancho Santa Margarita

Having trouble with a virus - was able to clean it with McAfee. Every time he starts the computer a blank window starts up which used to contain this font that apparently had a virus. Internet Explorer now takes you to a search engine instead of the page he typed.

Leo thinks he has 108 SearchAssistant (a browser hijacker) - he says to use the Add/Remove entry in Windows, or if that does not work you may need to get a program to remove it - spyware utilities probably wont remove it because it’s a hijacker objects. Check out SpyWareInfo and look for a program called HijackThis! This will give you a great idea of what the problem is. Visit sysinfo.org to see what it is after using HijackThis. Visit the “Tips” section of this wiki to see more.

2–3p

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Jim in West LA

His clock in the lower right hand corner of Windows XP - he wants it to show the seconds on it and it doesn’t.

Leo says: There’s a great free program called TClock Light, it allows you to modify the Windows clock any way you wish, including adding the seconds. There are many others that do this, check out google for more.

Mike in LA

Bought Norton Internet Security 2004 - and wants to know whether even to install it since he knows alot of people say it’s bad.

Leo says RUN, not walk to the store and RETURN IT! Norton tried too hard to make this program good and it wrecks everything. Return it ASAP.

Leo recommends AVG for anti-virus instead and use a router to block traffic and act as your firewall. These two things alone do way more than internet security is even useful for. For even more check out Leo’s Must Have Security Software from his Tips section in this Wiki.

Caller also says his computer is slowing down even though it’s new. Leo recommends uninstalling some things to keep the system running smoothly.

I think you should use Sygate Personal Firewall, it doesnt use too much RAM and it can be downloaded from www.sygate.com.

Barry in Temeculah

Recently purchased a 40GB iRiver MP3 Player. Loves it. Needs to organize his MP3s somehow.

Dupefiles is a good application to look for duplicate filenames. It does CRC checking to see if two files are exact duplicates of one another. It costs $15 to buy but you can use the trial version. Leo recommends The Godfather for renaming and organizing MP3 files.

Dan recommends MP3 Tag&Rename as a great mp3 tagger/organizer/renamer. Dan’s friend also wrote a program that looks up a folder of MP3s and searches CDDB by the length to rename/tag the files to match an album, called Audiotagger.

Ray in Redlands

Has to take over webmaster duty for a company. Wants to know the best computer to manage and edit graphics on a webpage and stay mobile.

Leo says he maintains his site from a variety of computers. He doesn’t have a preference of the type of computer you’re using. Any computer will do.

Caller also wants to know a good learning resource.

Leo says he uses Dreamweaver and is happy with it - he recommends using books from Lynda.com to help with learning web design. He recommends web design usability books by Jacob Nielsen.

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