Monday, June 10, 2002		Dr Tribune

Q I have an assembled PC: P-III, 40 GB hard disk, and 128 MB RAM. I am working in a regional English daily, where we use software to receive news and both serial communication ports are occupied in the process as they are connected to the decoder. We often want to use the same computer to connect to a modem and for other similar functions, but are unable to do so due to lack of additional ports. Is it possible to have some card that may be used to increase the number of ports?

—Neeraj Rohmetra, Jammu

A There are two good options available to you. 1) Install an external modem with a USB support, i.e., a USB external modem. Since all new computers have USB ports, you can utilise that for a modem. 2) You can buy an internal modem, which costs around Rs500 and can easily be installed on your system. Since the internal modems utilise the COM3 and COM4, which I am sure must be free in your case, they could well be utilised to install the modem.

Q I have a Celeron 466 MHz, CPU Intel 810chipset motherboard PC with 128 MB SD RAM, 52x Creative CD ROM and 1.44 FDD. There is a 20 GB hard disk with no partition and Windows 98 installed. Recently I have acquired a 40 GB hard disk with three partitions-D drive 14.9 GB, E and F drives 11.1 GB each-and installed Windows XP on drive D. I have been using the 20 GB hard disk and Windows 98 for the past three years. There is valuable data in My Documents and e-mail folders of Outlook Express 6 that I wish to transfer to the new drive in Windows XP and other software not compatible with Windows XP to drive E and F as I wish to format the old drive to remove the junk left behind by demo and trialware. My first problem: How to copy my e-mail from Windows 98 Outlook Express 6 on the old drive to the Windows XP Outlook Express 6 on the new 40 GB drive and My Documents without losing data. Second, please let me know if it is possible to put pictures through my Handycam to the computer and transfer and edit video files or stills from the video camera to software like PowerPoint for making presentations for medical conferences and meetings.

A For copying your e-mail from the Outlook Express in one computer to another computer all you need to do is select Tools > Options > Maintenance from the Outlook Express menu and click the Store Folder button. Here you will find a dialog with the name of the directory that has your mail files. Now if you look in that directory you will find files named after your mail folders and news groups and they all have a .DBX suffix. Outlook Express keeps all messages in these database files. You can copy these files and store them on a floppy or CD to transfer them to another computer having Outlook Express. To restore the stored files, simply copy it back to the directory. Alternatively, you can use Outlook Express's File > Import > Messages feature to import one or more of the backup folders. This way you can backup and restore your Outlook Express data. For copying My Documents files, simply copy the whole folder either on a floppy drive or on a CDR and copy it back to the desired partition. All files will thus be transferred. If you have both the hard drives connected, then you can also drag and drop the My Documents folder from your old drive to the new drive in the relevant partition. As for your second query, you can connect the Handycam to your computer and can use the still pictures as well as movies for whatever purpose. However, you would need a video capture card to connect the Handycam to the computer.

Q I have a Pentium 200 MHz machine with 32 MB EDO RAM, VGA card (sis6215 CPCI) with 1 MB VRAM, 2.1GB HDD, 14" colour monitor from DigiSync, Microtek. I've just added a Motorola internal modem (in PCI slot) 56.6 KBPS. There is a 32X CD-ROM drive from LG. The motherboard is i430TX3. I often face problems while handling heavy graphics packages as my system goes awfully slow in such situations. I have lost my manual of the motherboard. However, it seems that the motherboard has two SD RAM slots each of 32 MB capacity (not confirmed). I want my system to be capable of handling software like AutoCAD 2000 without hanging up.

A There could be many reasons for the problem, though that of RAM could be the main in this case. First of all you should make sure that there is no memory leak and you are not using any 16-bit programs on your system. Second, make sure you have sufficient hard disk space available. Then remove all useless memory resident programs, which include games involving heavy graphics. Then increase the swap file size or the paging file size. This should solve your problem. However, if it does not work, then you may need to add additional RAM. You can contact any hardware vendor for your motherboard's compatibility for SD RAM.

Q I have a system with Intel Celeron, 366 MHz, 80 MB RAM, 8.2 GB Quantum HDD, with 810 motherboard. My system hangs up and a blue screen appears with the following message: An exception OD has occurred at 280000:d and current application will be terminated. Restart your computer. You will lose any unsaved information. Press Alt+ Ctrl+ Del to restart your computer. Please tell me whether this problem is due to some misalignment in HDD or is it a motherboard problem?

A Please write back the exact error message for the solution of your problem. The exact message is very crucial as this is the only way to comprehend the problem. However, from the face of it, I don't think that this is a problem of the motherboard or the hard disk.

Q My system is affected with a virus named funlove.4099. I read a little about this virus in Log in… Tribune. How can I remove this virus? It slows down my system.

A You can remove this virus using any of the popular virus scanners like Norton Antivirus, McAfee AntiVirus, etc. You should first clean boot your system and then run the virus scanner to hunt down and kill the virus.

Q I have an assembled computer: PIII, 500 MHz processor, 13 GB HDD, 64 MB RAM, ASUS 810 motherboard with two operating systems-Win 98se & Win 2000pro. My problem is that when I click shutdown in Win 2000pro then it works well, but the shut down screen doesn't appear. Instead there is a cursor blinking in the top-left corner on the screen. Here I have to switch off my computer and when I switch on again, it doesn't show any message of improper shutdown.

A Normally this problem occurs when a device driver does not respond to the Windows command to shut down and it represents the error in the form of hanging up your system, giving you a black screen. To troubleshoot, use Task Manager to identify the cause of the shutdown behavior. Under this method manually close down all applications running using the task manager to hunt down the application causing the problem. If you have carried out some changes in the recent past, then you can also try undoing them. You can also use the safe mode to identify the cause of the shutdown behavior. Also make sure that the computer's complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) and basic input/output system (BIOS) settings are correct. You can load the default or fail-safe settings in the BIOS feature setup to troubleshoot any such problem.

Q My machine is P III with an Intel 866 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM, 810e motherboard (mercury), and Win 98 SE. I have certain problems:

1) The speed is not as fast as it should be and the booting time is too long. Is there any software available free on the Net that can help minimise the booting time?

2) What is a swap file? How we can increase the size of this file and how can we install or reinstall drivers on a computer.

A Regarding your first query, there could be several reasons for the slow speed. Some of the common ones are useless programs and trialware, high-end graphic games, fonts and other memory resident programs installed on your computer. In some cases the use of 16-bit applications also slows down the computer as it causes memory leak. Other reasons could be the presence of junk in your computer in the form of temporary files, temporary Internet files, cookies, memory cache, disk cache, history, etc. Clean up these things regularly to keep your system healthy. Also run Scandisk followed by Defrag often as it also keeps the system well tuned.

Regarding your next query, you should remove the unnecessary applications from the Startup folder and also remove antivirus software from your booting process, unless there is a major virus threat. This can improve the performance considerably by reducing the booting period. You should also trim your registry, using third-party good registry cleaner software.

As for your last query, swap files provide temporary memory to the processor and it comes into action when the actual RAM gets exhausted with temporary data stored by the processor. In this case the processor takes stores and retrieves the data from the swap file for quick reference.

Q I have a P III, 1.1GHz processor, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD with 4 partitions, 52X Mercury CD ROM, Micro ATX, socket 370 FR33 motherboard with via chipset,1.44 FDD, ATX cabinet and Windows ME on C drive and Windows XP on D. On pressing the reset button on the cabinet, the computer restarts but the OS doesn't boot, i.e., the dual boot screen doesn't appear. The system stops before the appearance of the dual boot screen with a cursor blinking. To start the system, I have to clear CMOS again with the help of jumper located on the motherboard. I have to repeat this procedure every time I press the reset button. Please give me a permanent solution to this problem.

A You must load the default settings or fail-safe default settings in the BIOS feature setup and also check the battery of CMOS. I think this will solve your problem. However, I recommend do not touch your motherboard very often as you may cause a bigger damage by frequently touching its components.