Monday, April 21, 2003		Dr Tribune

Q. I have Pentium III computer with 128 MB SDRAM, 20 GB hard disk and Windows 2000 as operating system. My problem is whenever I click on most of the links while browsing, Windows media player opens instead of the next link.

A. Simply right click on the link and then select the option ‘open link in new Window.’ This will open the link in browser. For a permanent solution, check out the properties of the browser and make sure you have not selected Windows Media player for handling links. Also define your browser for handling shortcuts.

Q. Please tell me the exact difference between uninstalling a program and deleting a program completely from the computer. I have P III, 1000 MHz, 810 E motherboard with 128 MB RAM and 20 GB hard disk. I recently defragged the computer and now have 60 per cent free space. But still my computer hangs while opening Word documents. I uninstalled all games on my PC but still the system is slow. I have not yet received any illegal operation message. My system is on networking with another computer of the same configuration. I used scandisk also and no errors were found. I am using VSNL connection for Outlook Express. Sometimes while starting a game "Need for Speed II", I get the message "your system is dangerously low on resources." I have Norton 2002 trial version installed.

A. When you install a program, it writes multiple files in different location. It creates own directories and writes some files in these folders. Then some system files are also written in the program files folder. There are some other critical files, which are required to load the application and these files are written at the root of Windows directory, which is also called registry entry. Now when you select to uninstall a program, the uninstaller removes all files systematically and at the same time restores the original Windows files, which this program might have replaced, thereby enabling complete removal of program and its contents from the system. Whereas in case of deleting a program, you simply delete the directory, where the program is loaded. This does not remove the system entry and shared files, which are a waste after the deletion of program. But they still occupy hard disk space. This is the basic difference between deletion and uninstallation.

Regarding your second query I would suggest you to reload Office suite on your system, as your system might be missing some critical office application file, which might be creating all this trouble. Regarding the speed of your system, check out the size of the registry of your system and try to trim it down using registry trimming software. Also make sure that you have not installed any old 16-bit program on your system, and if you had installed it before and then deleted it wrongly instead of uninstalling, then this might also be causing the trouble. Addressing these would also increase the speed of the system.

Q. I have Intel Pentium III, i440 BX running Windows 2000 operating system. When I receive the message, "It is now safe to turn off your computer" after I run shutdown and try to power off the computer, it restarts instead of actually powering off.

A. This problem occurs when there is a clash of driver or hardware with the shutdown files. In majority of cases that I have dealt so far facing this problem, the CD Writer was singled out as the troublemaker. By physically removing the CD Writer from your system, simply, then restarting, then shutting down the system and putting back the CD Writer solved the problem in many cases. However, before trying this option you can also load default settings in the BIOS feature setting, as it may also solve this problem, if the error is caused by some wrong power settings. Try this first and if the problem is not solved, work out the next solution.

Q. I have a PC with the following configuration:

1.Intel celeron processor.

2.700 MHz

3.96 MB RAM

4.Windows ’98

5.13.9 GB hard disk

6. 810 chipset motherboard

I recently purchased a CD of game — Virtual Tennis of Sega enterprises. When I try to run it the following message appears:

This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Details appears as:

VIRTUA_TENNIS_PC caused an invalid page fault in module DDRAW.DLL at 015f:baabf646.

Registers:

EAX=00000000 CS=015f EIP=baabf646 EFLGS=00010286

EBX=00000000 SS=0167 ESP=00f0f14c EBP=00f0f18c

ECX=c15dd690 DS=0167 ESI=00f0f224 FS=4637

EDX=00de0d94 ES=0167 EDI=00f0f234 GS=0000

Bytes at CS:EIP:

8b 40 04 8b 88 ac 03 00 00 89 0e 8b 88 b0 03 00

Stack dump:

00ce00c0 00ce00b0 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

00000000 00000000

Kindly solve this problem.

A. DDRAW means Direct Draw and is a part of DirectX and is used by games and multimedia applications to display 2D graphics. This problem normally occurs when the original DDRAW Windows file is replaced by the program file. Thus to solve this problem, locate the directory of this .dll file and replace it with the original file from your Windows CD. This will solve your problem.

Q. We have a PC with the following configurations:

1. Pentium III with Operating System Win 98

2. 63.0 MB RAM

3. CD ROM LTN 403

4. Generic NEC floppy disk

5. Keyboard of standard 101/102 key

6. Net Dragon 56 K voice modem

7. Compaq MV 540

8. PS/2 compatible mouse port

The problem is whenever we try to open the attachment of XLS. file more than once it hangs. Firstly, we changed RAM and after that the processor but nothing happened. We are continuously facing the same problem.

A. This problem is neither related to RAM nor processor, all you need to do is rename the files after opening and saving it at different location. Also use the option of saving the file to a location instead of opening it from the source itself. As another solution upgrade your Antivirus system, because .XLS files are normally macro enabled, which your virus scanner might block, thereby causing this problem.

Q. I upgraded my PC having configuration Intel Celeron, 1.7 GHz processor, Intel D845, GLAD desktop board, 128 DD RAM. My PC runs slow. When I load Windows ’98 on PC, it did not work properly, sound, and graphics driver was not run. When I load Oracle 8i it was not loaded. Please tell me the solution for these problems.

A. Please elaborate your problem further mentioning what error messages you are getting. However from the face of it, it appears to me that your system is either not configured properly or there is some problem in optical media (CD R/RW/DVD etc)

Q. I have three PCs in my caf`E9: a Pentium 3, Celeron-750 and AMD-450

My problem is as follows: "Whenever I do some thing in any of the Windows and other applications e.g. Yahoo! massenger and Yahoo’s sites. My computer shows a message indicating an illegal operation has occurred and the program closes down. I face the problem especially with Yahoo! messenger and Yahoo! sites.

A. Upgrade the version of Yahoo! messenger you are using and also unload and then fresh reload the chat applet software, voice communication software, which is being used in voice chatting in Yahoo! etc. as this might be the source of problem mentioned by you.

Q. I have XP installed on my system. While working on some projects I came to know about problems of installing IIS/PWS on XP home/prof versions. I’m unable to install. Please help me how it can be installed on XP.

A. Please refer to the site, www.aspmessageboard.com/forum/iispws.asp, for FAQ on IIS/PWS servers. And also check out http://maximized.com/products/flashstats/docs/2-iis-win.htm for documentation on installing IIS/PWS. I hope this will provide you detailed answer to your query.

Q. My Compaq keeps hanging and I can’t reboot till about a day or so. The RAM is 128 MB. At first I thought it was an overheating problem. Then I added an extra case fan. It still hangs. I added a known good AMD Duron750 processor. Still the problem persists. I ran Win ’98 second edition fresh install but the problem was before and after the install. My floppy drive is weird though. I can copy a file but when I go to read it after a couple of times it gives me an error, "Can’t read from specified device." And then I take the same floppy and try to read it on my other PC and the same error remains. Then I have to reformat it to make the floppy useable again. And I can reformat from the troubled PC also. Any idea what’s the problem?

A. The problem in your case seems to be related with some bad sectors in your system, which keeps the system hanging. You need to run scandisk in thorough mode. If your system is not rebooting, it means that the system files have either become corrupt or there is hardware failure. Running scandisk and also surface scan is the most logical solution in your case, which can enlighten the further course of action. You can also boot from CD ROM drive, if floppy is giving you problems. Regarding, your floppy drive, it appears that your drive’s head is damaged and needs to be replaced. There does not seem to be any problem either with RAM or your system processor.

Q. I have Celeron, 1.7 GHz, 845e chipset mercury motherboard,128 MB DDR RAM, Seagate 40 GB, 52 CD ROM, Windows ME OS, Samtron 15’’ monitor and two partitions C: and D: both 20. My problem is when I shut down my computer again and start it the screen goes blank and the indicator of monitor starts blinking with a gap of one second. Then I have to switch it off from the UPS and have to start after 10-15 minutes. I shall be thankful if you solve my problem.

A. This problem has been reported in many 845e chipset mercury motherboards and in some cases it has been resolved by lowering down hardware acceleration. But this solution has not worked universally. You can try this solution and also tighten all cables attached at the back of your computer especially the monitor cable.

Q. I have an assembled PC with the following configurations as P III processor, Intel 810E chipset motherboard, 20GB HDD, 128 MB RAM and Windows ’98 on C: drive and Windows XP on D: drive, as OS. My HDD is partitioned into four parts:Nearly a month ago, I used a program partition manager, as I wanted to partition F: drive into two parts after formatting it. After using the program, I did something and instead of my F: drive about 2 GB of my C: drive was partitioned. But the new partition could not be viewed on My Computer. Also it took with it some important documents. I tried System Restore but to no avail. It gave the message "The computer cannot be restored to the specified date." Please let me know if it is possible to get back the lost space of the HDD? I will be thankful.

A. It is difficult to say whether you would be able to recover your lost data or not. Since system restore is not restoring, there are practically little options left and you may need the help of data recovery software/services to recover lost files.