Monday, October 30, 2000		Dr Tribune

Dr Tribune: For fatal exception and other errors, please refer to the article on the page 1. Bad sectors can be caused due to many reasons. Some of these are physical damage, bad alignment and wear and tear of hard disk over a period of time. Bad sectors mean that there is a problem in the hard disk. Regarding your third query, Windows NT does support FAT 32 file system and so you can use both Windows 98 and Windows NT on your computer.

Dr Tribune: Your problem is only a matter of few settings. You may have configured your Internet dialler to dial after a specific interval of time or have asked the task scheduler to dial up your Internet after specific interval of time. Just disable either of these features that is enabled.

Dr Tribune: There are several reasons for a computer to slow down. The most common being installation of excessive drivers, fonts and games. I think you have installed too many games on PC. Try uninstalling some big shareware games. This should improve the performance of the PC. Secondly, you must always perform scandisk before defragging because if there are any problems on your hard disk, defragging will either work very slow or get terminated mid-way. Several other problems like cross linking of data and lost chain allocation are known to be associated with defragging. So, remember to use scandisk before performing defrag. It appears that there is nothing wrong with the motherboard or any other hardware component. It’s only a matter of computer management. The error in the Internet browser is a common error message and generally occurs if you try opening many sites at one time. If you get the error message even when you open a single site, then this problem needs to be addressed separately. However, I feel that after uninstalling some large shareware games from your system many of your problems would be resolved.

Dr Tribune: Using background wallpaper marginally affects the performance of a computer. But it does not have any bearing on the booting or the start up process. A very large file used as background will however affect performance, so avoid it. Very slow booting could result from many factors like wrong version of CD drivers, frequent installation and uninstallation of programmes, etc.

Dr Tribune: Yes, it is possible to configure Outlook Express to send and receive mail directly on launching. Click on Tools on the menu bar and this will open a drop down menu, where you will find Options at the end. Click on the Options and wait for window to open. Look at the second part of this window, which deals with send/receive messages. Check the second option, i.e. send and receive messages at start up. Click Apply and press OK. This will configure Outlook Express to send and receive e-mails at launching.

Dr Tribune: I think rather than looking at the performance level alone, you must take into account the price-to-performance level. Since Cyrix is the budget chip, you cannot expect it to beat the chip being offered by Intel. But certainly, given the comparative product, the performance of Cyrix is quite good. Moreover, the problems mentioned by you are really not with every chip. Though it might have happened with someone, yet that’s not in general. As per my knowledge there is nothing wrong with Cyrix 233 MHz processor. However, now you can even choose to have 500 MHz processor from Cyrix.

Dr Tribune: This type of problem, i.e. noise distortion, has been reported in some old versions of WinAmp. As a practical solution try and use some other player instead of the one you are using. There is no need to reinstall Windows as it will not help. There are many free players available on the Internet, which you can download and install on your system. If this problem persist, then you can clean your CD ROM drive with a CD cleaner.

Dr Tribune: Post dial terminal window pops up due to a setting. So, if you do not want it you can disable it. However, in your mail you have not written, which Windows version you are using .Enabling or disabling this setting is different for Windows ’95, ’98 and NT. I am suggesting you the method for Windows ’95. If you have Windows ’95 as your operating system, then your problem would be solved. Else for other operating systems you can try to solve your problem on these lines. Click My Computer> Dial up networking. This will open the dial up networking window on the computer. Now right click on the particular connection icon for which you want to disable the Post dial terminal window and click Properties. This will open another Window on computer screen. Now, click on Configure button near the bottom of the Window. This will open another window on computer screen. Click on Options tab, here you will find a section called Connection control. Uncheck the "bring up terminal window after dialling" and press OK. Now this will disable the Post dial terminal window.

Dr Tribune: MP3 is compressed music file, which is digitally encoded to maintain excellent quality of music by keeping its size small. Practically, you will not find any difference in the sound quality of both options. But the biggest advantage with MP3 files is that these files are free and can be easily downloaded from the Internet. And downloading, handling, playing and managing these files is extremely easy.

Dr Tribune: You have not mentioned the operating system you use. These things are possible in computers working on a LAN and also on Windows NT. However, if you wish to give a password for your personal computer, then it is advisable to give password protection at the time of booting rather than at the time of logging on to Windows. You can set up a password at the time of booting. All you need to do is press Del when your computer just finishes the memory test. This will open the system settings on the computer screen. Open BIOS feature set up. On the left side and near the bottom you will find Security option. Using the Page up/down key, set the security option to system. Now, come out of this Window and then exit the set up after saving the settings. This will boot your system and will ask you to enter your password, before the Windows could start loading. I hope this will solve your problem adequately.

Dr Tribune: You must once run Scandisk manually, before it loads Windows. You can do this by pressing F8 key immediately before the Windows starts loading or immediately after you see the configuration Window, which contains information about your computer like processor, speed, base memory and extended memory. This will give you six options. Choose the option "Command prompt only". On the DOS prompt change the directory to the one, which contains Scandisk file. Normally, default Windows directory, i.e. Windows, contains this file. Run Scandisk. Running Scandisk from the DOS prompt will solve the problem. Regarding the problem of running scandisk in Windows, the error message you get could be because of some programs running from your system tray. Close them first, before running scandisk.