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Monday, April 2, 2001		Dr Tribune

Someone has told me that if we use UPS, then in the absence of electricity, the UPS gives back up to the laptop for about three hours and then the battery of laptop computer goes on to continuously charge the device for 3 to 6 hours. This point is of utmost importance to me because I belong to village where the power supply is erratic. Please suggest me the reality about laptop, battery, UPS and CVT. Also suggest me the laptop, which can give back up for much more time and the costs of the laptop computers along with configurations. Also let me know, whether there is any laptop (in India or abroad), for which, there is no need of telephone lines to use Internet connection and the cost of the same.

— Tejinder Singh Cheema

Dr Tribune: It’s true that the laptop consumes less power than a desktop and therefore the power backup in case of laptop would be higher in comparison to the regular desktop. But the time of backup will depend very much on the power settings of the laptop, however you can configure it to give you optimum power backup. As far as the specific hours of the power backup in case of a laptop is concerned it would depend on specific models. The normal battery backup of the laptops also varies from model to model and ranges between 1.5 hours and 6 hours. Regarding the details of the laptop, please contact your hardware vendor and check out the prices of ACI, ACER, Compaq, Toshiba, Dell, IBM laptops as these companies have a good range of laptops. Regarding you query for non-telephone based Internet connection, it is already in India and the popular modes are DSL and Internet through cable. But as of now it is limited to only select cities of India.

I have a HP 610 printer. My problem is that whenever I give print command, the printer picks up the paper and starts working. Midway, however, it stops and gives error: "LPT 1 - there is an error in printer." Though I have re-installed its driver, still its non-functional Can you please tell me the remedy?

— Ravipal Singh

Dr Tribune: First of all make sure that your printer (HP Deskjet 610) has been set as default in your printer set-up. As the second step run the self-test for the printer first. This test may also help you in solving your problem. If the problem still persists, then this problem could be identified with the CMOS settings. Thus to troubleshoot this problem, check the LPT1 settings in CMOS - if the printer port is not properly identified in CMOS, the printer may not function properly and you may receive errors when trying to print. Check your User’s Guide on how to enter CMOS. Once in the Set-up utility, locate the LPT1 settings. The address setting for the LPT1 port should be 3BCh or 378h depending on what kind of video card you have. The IRQ setting for the port should be 7 and LPT1 should be enabled in order for the printer to print correctly.

I am a student in GNE College, Ludhiana. I have a Vintron computer. My computer requirements are P III-700MHz, 10.2 GB HDD, 64 MB RAM 56 KBPS ambient ham, data fax voice internal modem and Windows ‘98 SE edition. My problem is despite the connection speed being good Web pages cannot be displayed. Also the download speed is poor. Can you solve my problem?

— Kanwarpreet Singh

Dr Tribune: There is a marked difference between the initial connection speed and the download speed of the Internet. Often people get good initial connectivity but fail to get download speed. As a solution to this problem, you may try another ISP as available bandwidth of various ISPs differ and may be that another ISP in your area may offer you better speed. Second, set the speed of the port to 1,15,200, i.e. the maximum in port speed setting in configuration of your modem settings. You may also use some tweaks and Internet speed boosters, which have been mentioned in the download section earlier time to time. Further, you can also check the your line physically and by the method of checking your line condition written in the issue dated October 2, 2000

I have an Intel Celeron 433, Intel 810 motherboard, 64 MB RAM, 8 GB Seagate HDD, LG 15" monitor, creative CD drive and Windows Me installed on my computer. My problem is that whenever I try to send e-mail using Outlook Express, it gives the message: "Host POP3 could not be found. Please verify that you have entered server name correctly." I have an e-mail account on Hotmail. Please try to solve my
problem.

— Sanjay Chowdhary

Dr Tribune: It appears that you have Norton Antivirus installed on your system. Normally, this error can be associated with Norton Antivirus. In some cases Norton AntiVirus may cause the mail server properties to be overwritten with an internal IP address number. Thus, which may give you this error message, which indicates that the mail server cannot be found. Now in order to troubleshoot this problem, go to Tools > Accounts> Properties and then click on servers. You will see that instead of default Hotmail address being in the incoming mail server field, a series of numbers have replaced the mail server address. Now rectify the mail server here by replacing it with http://services.msn.com/svcs/hotmail/httpmail.asp. This will solve your problem and your account would be restored.

I have Pentium I, 166 MHz, 32 MB RAM, 20GB HDD, 48 x Creative CD-ROM and TVSE 132-column Dot Matrix printer. I have the following problems:
1. Recently, I upgraded my hard disk from 8 GB to 20 GB. The BIOS auto-detection detected and confirmed 20 GB capacity. But when I ran FDisk to partition and format the disk it displayed 8 GB of hard disk capacity. It may kindly be noted that I checked the hard disk on Pentium -III system where it showed the capacity of 19,472 MB on running the same FDisk.
2. How is it possible to get a coloured background in the DOS prompt and on the Window ’98 start menu that is received by pressing the F8 key on booting the system?
3. Sometimes my printer stops in between the page and the lights start blinking quickly. After a while it resumes printing.

— Vikas Thapar

Dr Tribune: You must read your motherboard clearly. I think that you need to upgrade your BIOS and only then you would be able to use the new hard disk. You can get the new BIOS from the site of the hard disk manufacturer or use BIOS, which uses Interrupt 13 extensions and LBA mode. Using the upgraded BIOS will solve your problem. DOS prompt have several colour schemes, thus you may choose any colour scheme and it would be reflected when you open it. Regarding the stopping of printer for a while, you need not worry about it as it is normal and it is basically because of memory.

Whenever I download a file from the Internet it goes to the Eudora folder. When I click on the folder I end up with Eudora e-mail set up. How can I open these files and how can I prevent this happening in the future. This problem has suddenly cropped up and previously I had no such problem.

— Daljit Singh

Dr Tribune: This is not at all a problem. All you need to do is change the destination of the file, where it has to be changed. At present it appears that your destination directory is Eudora, that’s why all your downloaded files are getting saved there. You can change this directory, when the option for saving the files comes up.

I have an assembled P II processor, 64 MB RAM, 4 GB HDD, 48 x CD ROM drive with Win ’95 as operating system. I have the following problems:
Recently, I have noticed that whenever I try to install software from a CD (through the unzip process), I get a message "there is no free space in the temp directory> However, I have more than 1 GB space in my hard-disk. Please advise.

Whenever I switch on the computer and the desktop screen appears, I get a message: "Do you want to compress drive C." This message is from the compression agent. I have tried many things to no effect. Shall I delete the compression agent? If not what else should I do.
3. I am also an Internet user. Please tell me which of the software is recommended for my pc – Windows ’98 or Windows ’95. Is Windows 2000 appropriate?

— Varun Bhatia

Dr Tribune: The solution to your first problem lies in your second question. Since you have written that you get the message of compression at the time of opening your computer. So this could be because you have in past chosen to compress your hard disk. First uncompress your C drive, then try and install the programs. However, if after doing so, your problem is not solved and then it could be because the temp folder in your Windows directory has damaged or got corrupt. So, rename the present Temp folder by some other name and create a new folder in Windows directory by the name of Temp. This procedure will solve all your problems. Regarding the choice of operating system is concerned, I found Windows 2000 to be the best for Internet as well as other applications.

I want to give password in Windows so as to protect my privacy. How can I do this? Please suggest.

— Rahul Kumar

Dr Tribune: Please mention which operating system you are using as this is very important to answer your question.

I have Celeron 533 MHz computer with 810 motherboard, 128 MB RAM and 20GB hard disk. I have 56 Kbps D-Link Modem and VSNL connection and my OS is Windows Me. My problem is while I am using the Internet, my computer hangs in between but after a 8 to 10 seconds, it starts working again. This happens very frequently. I have tried to re-install Windows Me but the problem persists.

— Kuldip Chawla

Dr Tribune: Please run scan disk on your computer and then run Disk Defrag. If scan disk gives you some errors, then run it from the Dos mode. This will solve your problem.