Windows Tips

Here's one for the "Did You Know" (or care) file: Canadians pay extra for their rewritable CDs with the understanding that the end use will be justified. This means that for every CD-R sold, a small levy of twenty-one cents is forwarded to the ... Canadian music industry. According to source, a recent survey of Canadians showed that my countrymen (and women) on average support the tax and the silent understanding of what the end result might be. But, not everyone does. Many voices within the Canadian music industry see the tax as a sort-of license to "ill" (thank you, Beastie Boys...who are not ... (view more)

Besides the popular (and increasingly defunct) peer-to-peer music downloading programs like Kazaa and Napster, perhaps now the most widely-known file transfer system is BitTorrent. The distribution protocol originally designed by Bram Cohen was ... created for the purpose of providing huge amounts of data without incurring ridiculous costs to local bandwidth. Want clarity on that? Check out wikiPedia.org for the whole sha-bang on BitTorrent and why it's primarily used for illegal downloading. (Source: wikipedia.org ) With all of that said, new measures are becoming available for Internet Service ... (view more)

I don't know if I'd ever mentioned this here, but I have a job online answering email support questions for a large community website. My cohorts and I have a set of standard answers for the most commonly asked questions. We have a web page where we ... keep a copy of these so that we can paste them into emails while we answer users questions. The problem: I had been thinking that there must be an easier way to quickly paste in answers rather than going to the support page constantly and browsing through it for the right answer to place in the emails. The solution: When it comes to doing things ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Debbie' writes: " Dear Dennis, Thanks so much for your articles -- they can be very helpful! I've got a question: every time I right click to email a picture from the My Pictures folder, it goes to Microsoft Outlook (which comes ... with MS office). The problem is that I use Outlook Express primarily as my email client. This is a new computer and I don't know how to set things up properly: POP3 and HTML, etc. It's all so confusing. By the way, when it takes me to Microsoft Outlook, there is no send button so I can't even use it. I think I need to set up a profile. At any rate ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Harold D. writes: " Dear Dennis, On a new computer or when the operating system is first installed, there is a box that pops up in Internet Explorer that asks if I want to Remember my Login and Passwords on a web site. There is ... also an option you can select that says something to the effect of, 'Don't ask to save anymore passwords," and if you select that option, that box will never appear again.' My question is: how do I turn that feature back on? I have searched everything I can think of on the net and cannot find an answer to this problem. Any help would be greatly ... (view more)

Recently, Kaspersky Labs detected a new form of spam email which contains an attachment of a password-stealing Trojan horse. The attached malware, which is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's consent, is ... called "Trojan-PSW.Win32.Sinowal.u" (herein referred to as "PSW"). (Source: viruslist.com ) Senior research engineers at Kaspersky Lab refer to PSW as being "the next-generation Trojan." The variant is part of the "Sinowal" family of password stealing Trojans, which is designed to steal usernames and passwords entered ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Les M. writes: " Dear Dennis, In December 2003, I purchased a copy of Windows XP Home Edition as part of an upgrade to my PC (main board, processor, RAM, etc), from a local dealer in the UK. This software cost me over $100.00 US ... dollars. During the subsequent time, I have on several occasions had to format my hard drive and reload Windows, due to otherwise insoluble problems. As you probably already know, every time a fresh copy of Windows XP is reloaded, you are required to activate it online within 30 days. Two or three days ago, I switched on my PC as usual and waited ( ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Ali H. writes: " Dear Infopackets Team, I've somehow managed to lock myself out of my Windows XP machine as my passwords no longer work (for both my user account and the administrator user). Is there any way I can login to Windows ... without having to reinstall or format my laptop? All my important documents are in my laptop. Please help! " Doug's Response: Actually, this isn't hard to get cleared up. First, you should try booting into Safe Mode. Doing so will let you into the system without having to enter a password. To do so: Turn on the machine. Press F8 repeatedly on the ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Richard D. writes: " Dear Dennis, Can you please tell me if it is possible to disable the Windows Page File [also known as virtual memory or swap file]? I have an especially large amount of RAM inside my PC and as far as I'm ... concerned, I don't need the Windows Page File because I doubt I'd ever run out of available RAM. I've read a number of conflicting reports on the Internet that suggest it is possible to disable the Windows Swap File and that in doing so, my PC performance will be improved. However, I've also read that disabling virtual memory would be dangerous. What do ... (view more)

Microsoft's Office and Word contain a critical security hole that has already been exploited by hackers. According to Panda Software Labs, 1Table.A arrives as seemingly harmless Word document, but unlocks a backdoor Trojan that allows a hacker to ... run code on a victim's computer. Microsoft has released little to no information about the vulnerability affecting Office 2002/2003/XP and Word 2002/2003, but is already under pressure to fix the hole, as hacker attacks are surfacing via the dropper Trojan 1Table.A. If a user runs 1Table.A, it exploits this security problem to release a backdoor ... (view more)