Monday, June 25, 2001		Dr Tribune

Q. I have P III 700 MHz, 10 GB hard disk, 64 MB RAM, 52 X CD-ROM. I sometimes get the error message "your system is dangerously running in low resources." What does that mean? My computer hangs with almost all applications with error message "Kernel32 caused a general protection fault in module KRNL386.exe at 0001:000075a2." Usually when I try to close an application, I have to reboot it by switching off/on the main power supply. What is the solution?

A. Regarding your first problem, it could be associated with memory fragmentation problem. This problem sometimes comes up when you open too many memory resident programs at a time and run on your computer. However it can temporarily be fixed by a complete power-off shut down and then restarting of your computer. Regarding this problem, since you are already using 64 MB RAM, adding more RAM, which is a general solution to such kind of problem will not help much. However, you can try by increasing the paging file size. Best solution to this problem is to go for a hard boot (swiching off your system completely). Regarding your second problem, please send us information about your operating system, which is very essential to solve you problem.

Q. I have Pentium III, 64 MB RAM, 10 GB Hard Disk with four partitions and Win Me as the OS. The problem is whenever I try to defrag drive D, I get the message that ‘system can't read the drive, run the scan disk first.’ Though I get the "No errors found" ‘0 bytes in bad sector’ message on running the scandisk, still the defrag does not run. I have Winamp, Jetaudio and Anti-virus (Smartdog ) on drive D:

A. As we have mentioned many times in this column before, it is always a better idea to run scan disk first, before running defrag. If there are any problems on your hard disk, which may not necessarily be related to bad sectors alone, then defrag would stop. However, running scandisk can solve all such problems, which would facilitate running defrag on your computer. Even after running scandisk you continue to get this problem, then this could be associated with the anti-virus software installed on your system. Please either update the software or uninstall it first before running defrag. Also, please see that you have same type of formats on all your partitions. If it is FAT32 file system, then it should be on all partitions. However, if any of the partition is formatted as NTFS, then it cannot be accessed through FAT32 partition.

Q. Please tell me about how to defrag the computer and what are the benefits. I have Norton Anti-virus 2000 and want to update it. I visited the site but do not know how to update it.

A. The data in your hard disk is being written in various clusters and tracks. However, while writing the computer writes it at random. Whenever, this data is recalled the computer searches for various clusters situated on your hard disk and links arranges them to reproduce the desired information. Thus the more scattered the data on clusters, the more time it takes to read them. Now defrag is a process, which arranges all data in order, so that when an information is recalled, the computer does not have to search long and thus it speeds up the system. This utility is available under Start> Program>Accessories> System Utilities. All you need to do is click on it and select the drive you wish to defrag. Regarding the updation of Norton anti-virus, there is a utility called as live update, which comes as a package with the CD of Norton Anti Virus. Using this features all the new definitions and virus information could be updated regularly.

Q. My computer doesn’t have DSP group true speech Codec required for Yahoo! voice chat and I also don’t have Windows CD. Can I download it from the Internet? Please tell me the site please.

A. We would need to know more details about your hardware and software including your operating system in order to solve your problem. Please furnish the necessary details for helping us solve your problem.

Q. I am having HP Brio computer (P III, 800 Hz, 64 MB & Windows ’98 Operating System). Recently I used New User in the "Control Panel" to set a new user. I deleted this user from the user’s list, as I did not need it. After deleting this user, my Outlook Express and Rediffmail account are not saving the passwords i.e. now I have to retype my password each time I have to use the said accounts. Please let me know about retrieving the facility of saving the passwords.

A. Please try to log in your computer as administrator in order to solve your problem. Using the features of administrator, you can gain access to all passwords and thus can solve it.

Q. I have a problem in downloading things sometimes. For instance while downloading Bonzibuddy, I got a window that says, "Windows cannot find program. This program is needed for opening files of type URL Hyper text transfer protocol." I am unable to understand this. Please help.

A. The problem in your case could be caused because of the following reasons: The "URL: hypertext transfer protocol" file is no longer associated with Internet Explorer. Earlier you might have used another Internet browser as your default browser and then you uninstalled the same without setting Internet Explorer to check to see if it is the default browser program. Now in order to solve this problem, you must edit the "URL:hypertext transfer protocol" file association to associate this type of file with Internet Explorer. You can do this by double clicking My Computer. Now on the View menu, click Folder Options and then click the File Types tab, Now click URL:HyperText Transfer Protocol in the Registered File Types box, and then click Edit. In the next step, under the Actions box, click Open, and then click Edit. Then click Browse, navigate to the \ Program Files\ Internet Explorer folder and then click the Iexplore.exe file, click Open and then click OK. Now close all boxes and Windows.

Q. I have a computer with Pentium III. I use Internet Explorer as my browser. Earlier links while using the Internet were being opened in a separate window while clicking after pressing Shift key. But due to some problem it is not being opened in the separate window. I have checked Internet options but could not find where the fault lies. Kindly advise.

A. The solution to this problem lies in the Tools menu option of the Internet explorer. Under this option, choose the advanced tab and click on the restore defaults. This will solve all your problems. However, there is another solution to this problem. Whenever you wish to open the link in a new Window, just right click on it and from the drop down menu, choose the second option or the option to open the link in new window. This will open a new Window for the link.