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Saturday, November 6, 2004

Show #89

I’m flying to Ft. Lauderdale for Mac Mania III - a Geek Cruise with Steve Wozniak, David Pogue, and other luminaries. The next four shows were taped ahead of time, so don’t call in. And listen next week for interviews from the cruise.

 toc | toc 

Today’s news items

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Noon-1p

Jeanie in Arcadia bought a Windows 98 disc on eBay

Jeanie bought a Windows 98SE disc on eBay and after installation, the computer froze and now she is worried that the disc is not legitimate
Compare the disc to one you know is a manufactured disc, if it’s not you got ripped off and there could be malware or any number of things on the disc. If it was a manufactured disc and stamped with Microsoft’s hologram, the disc you purchased is probably safe. Mostly likely when you purchase a version of an operating system on eBay, it will be a OEM edition. These copies are often sold illegally, but you as the consumer are unlikely to be prosecuted. A home recorded version of Windows can be extremely dangerous, so don’t install those on your PC.

Steve in Glendora hissing noise

Steve records his favorite radio feeds of David Lawrence with Power Record by Blaze Audio and he hears a hissing noise
The audio source is important when trying to diagnose audio interference. The card itself could be the source of noise. You can also try removing cables to reduce RF interference. If it’s digital signals that you are recording, it could be occurring within the stream you are receiving. Changing the streaming rate could solve this problem.

Rick in Hacienda Heights moves address book to OS X

Rick is switching from OS 9 to OS X and is using an old address book, which address book should he use?
Apple’s address book is going to be more powerful and useful because it is built-in to the operating system. You can import your addresses into Excel then you can use a program like S-Book from Simpson Garfinkel or you could upgrade to Entourage.

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1–2p

Don in Murietta problems with LAN

Don is having problems with his network, he can’t communicate with the third computer and he has found a solution but the warning about changing the registry edit is scaring him
The registry keeps track of all the files and any changes that you make are instantaneous, so you could damage your computer. You can set a System Restore point and if you really damage the file, you can use a command line entry to recover the system by entering: scanreg /restore. Check Winguides.com for advice on modifying your system.

Marcello in Northridge Windows logo won’t go away

Marcello is using Windows XP Home and has changed the My Computer icon and recycle bin logos on his PC but upon starting up, he still gets the default logo
Delete your shell icon cache 32 found in your Systems 32 file to fix this problem or you can use TweakUI to do this.

Dan in Palmdale USB conflicts

Dan in Palmdale is having a problem when plugging in a thumb drive, it locks up the computer
First unplug all USB devices except your mouse. Use the Device Manager (right-click My Computer, select Manage, and click Device Manager) to remove all the USB devices one-by-one, then re-start the computer and plug in your USB accessories.

Steve in San Diego pictures loose quality

Steve saves pictures from the web and when he makes successive generations of the JPEG, he looses quality
Save these files in an uncompressed file format like a Bitmap file; your quality is lost each time it is compressed and by using this format you start without that loss that occurs initially.

Dan from Big Bear Lake wants something faster than dial-up

Dan from Big Bear Lake is considering T-Mobile GPS Edge, if he uses Bluetooth with his cell phone, will he have faster download speeds than dial-up?
Bluetooth will be the limiting factor, but it will be faster than dial-up.

Lorne from Van Nuys wants to know about routers

Loren made the switch to DSL and wants to know if a router is the same as a firewall
A router is a great investment, especially for DSL and broadband users. A router is a barrier to protect you from the outside world but doesn’t monitor the outbound traffic like a firewall does. Some of the more expensive routers do have built-in firewalls and these are mostly for the truly paranoid.

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2–3p

Milt in Cerritos wants a big hard drive for Windows 98

Milt wants to know what’s the largest hard drive he can use on Windows 98
You have to trick the BIOS to use the larger hard drives and you may have to purchase a new hard drive (IDE) controller. You will also probably need to flash your BIOS. And you’ll have to use the driver utility that comes with or is available for the hard drive you wish to install.

Dana in Nagura can’t backup files

Dana wants to copy his user files from Documents and Settings from his C drive to D drive as a backup and can’t because the NT user file is busy
Some files will always be busy and you won’t be able to copy those. Just select the top-level folders for backing up.

Kathy in Palmdale PC Owners Best Friend

Kathy has formatted and re-installed Windows XP on a friend’s computer and before she can get everything installed it’s getting infected, she is using the Windows 98 disc first, then installing XP
Always turn on the Windows firewall before you go online if you haven’t updated to SP2.
Don’t install Windows 98 on your next attempt just install XP. Get the SP 2 update from Microsoft using the link in the Tips section, install XP, and then install the update before you go online.

Robert in La Habra wants to know about Sony’s VX format

Robert wants to know about the Sony MPEG VX format, can he use iMovie or Final Cut Pro with this new format
Sony has yet to create a plug-in for this format, and you should consider this a reason not to purchase the camera. Propitiatory formats are always a reason to consider choosing another product.

Paul in Washington SP 2 installs no problem

Paul installed SP 2 with an install disc and online and hasn’t experienced any problems with either method, he removed spyware first.

Kathy in LA has MS blaster and more

Kathy wants to clean up her laptop and she tried to boot up with Norton Internet Security but couldn’t; then she used Trend Micro to cleanup the spyware removing all but few of her problems and she wants to know if she should try to use Norton to remove the last viruses remaining
Try AVG found in the Tips section for your antivirus protection and you can also find removal tools to remove the final stubborn viruses causing your problems.

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