Monday, June 2, 2003		Dr Tribune

Q. I have a PC with the following configuration: P4, 1.7 GHz, 40 GB HDD, Mercury motherboard, LG Studioworks Monitor, A: is the floppy drive. C, D, E, F, G are the other partitions of the HDD. H is the CD ROM drive. CD ROM is of Sony, Win ‘98 OS. Last week, I loaded some software from a magazine CD. I didn’t like the software, so I deleted the software from add /remove programs. I had loaded the software on F:. But now F: being empty, it still shows the occupied space of 1.20 GB. Also my wallpapers do not change even after four hours as I have set the settings of the software, Webshots. I tried defrag but in vain. I also tried to run the Windows in safe mode, but it is not happening. Please help.

A. From the description of the problem, it appears the software you installed and later removed from your system has also deleted some common files, which might be causing this problem. The solution is to reinstall the Webshots program, which you might be using for your wallpapers. Reinstalling this program will restore the files, which were common to both applications and would thus set it right.

Q. I got Compaq 6201il system preloaded Mandrake 9.0 Linux. I want to install Win ‘98. I deleted primary partition and in the process got C: drive and Win ‘98 also got loaded but I cannot find my extended DOS partition. If I run Fdisk command and delete primary partition then it says, "Delete extended partition first." If I delete extended partition, it says delete logical drives first. There is no logic drive. Please guide me.

A From the description of your problem, it is clear that there is some fault in the process of creating partitions in the system. Following are the logical steps in formatting a hard disk. First create a Primary DOS partition and set it as active partition. In the second step create extended DOS partition and then you should create logical DOS drives. The logical could be as many you want and would be represented by D: E: F: etc. depending upon the number of partitions you choose to create. I think following these steps and setting your partitions correctly would solve your problem. However, I must warn you to take complete back up of your data, as any repartitioning or modifying partition would erase all your data.

Q.I have PC with the following configuration:

1.Processor P III, 933 MHz.

2.810E Motherboard with SIS 630 chipset.

3.20 GB H.D.D (Samsung).

4.128 MB RAM (64+64,two chips).

5.Vintron Keyboard.

6.Genius simple mouse.

7.ATX cabinet.

8.Samsung CD ROM.

9.1.44 FDD.

10.Monitor 15"Samsung.

11.Hard Disk is C:,D:,E:,F:

12.CD ROM IS G:

Whenever I open My Computer or work with any other application, few tiny dots, black in colour, appear on the different parts of the Explorer. When I minimise and again maximise the Explorer or the application I am working on, the dots disappears from that application or Explorer temporarily. Same thing happens with the desktop. Meanwhile, if I am working on some application and move to desktop, few dots, white in colour, appear on my desktop and when I right click, the mouse pointer refreshes the screen. These white dots disappear from the screen temporarily. To sort out this problem, I had reinstalled the VGA Drivers of the system but it did not solve the problem. Then I tried some software programs used for the purpose of video and VGA testing. It had solved my problem temporarily. I am unable to locate the cause for it. Is the problem related to software or hardware?

A. I think your computer is in the magnetic field of any electronic device, which is causing this trouble. You need to check out that device, which could even be high output speakers or even amplifier. There could be many such devices, which might cause this problem. I do not think that this is in any case the fault of your AGP/VGA driver. As another alternative, try degaussing your monitor. I could also solve your problem.

Q. The configuration of my computer is - X86-based PC, Intel processor @ 400 MHz, Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG, 2 hard disks- primary 40 GB (4 partitions as : 2, (Samsung) and secondary 4 GB(Seagate), 96 MB RAM, SiS 6326 Display card, Windows Me and Windows 2000 in C:. My problems are:

1) Whenever, I try to open a folder say ‘My Computer’ it takes much longer time to open. The message appears on status bar as: "load: com.ms.activeX.ActiveXComponent can’t be instantiated."

2.) When I switch off my monitor and then switch it on, the computer restarts instead of showing original screen as left. I have AT-type cabinet. Please tell how can I solve my problems?

A. In all probability your computer seems to be infected by a virus called mIRC/ Momma.565505. This virus has been reported to return the error message mentioned by you. Please kill this virus from your system to get rid of this problem. You can search the sites of Trend micro and Symantec for more details.

Regarding your second problem, it is due to the fact that either the load on the UPS is quite high, which cause the reboot of your system, when it draws power from it or the battery of the USP is weak, which is not able to generate enough current required by the monitor, when it starts initially. In both cases, the problem lies with the power source only. So for effective solution, check out your power source.

Q. I have an assembled P III, 866 MHz. I have a problem with WinZip. The WinZip I have installed is Winzip80. Actually it is creating a problem while extracting the file, that is when I want to zip the file but not while unzipping. It only zips the files, having smaller size, that is the size of the file less then 100 MB. But the files having size more than 100 MB are initially zipped but when the status bar is closer to the end it give the message for disk cleanup. It never shows this kind of message when I unzip any file of any size. When I clean the temporary files as well as the recycle bin, WinZip shows

ERROR: output file write failure -possible cause: disk full(c:\ windows\ temp/_Za57317). In the temp folder of Windows, this name doesn’t exist. As C: is loaded with Windows 98 Se, it is of capacity 3.89 GB and the free space in C: is 147 MB. Please help. I shall be thankful.

A. The problem mentioned is in fact due to low free hard disk space, which is giving you this error. The error message relating to disk clean and removing the temporary Internet files is the default message, which is returned by Windows to suggest you to create some hard disk space on your system. But since you already have a small capacity hard disk, and moreover the size of free space is also tiny, this is primarily the cause of the problem. Increase the hard disk space either by removing some installed programs or make smaller Zip files to avoid this problem.

Q. I have a PC with the configuration, Intel Celeron Processor, 733 MHz, 128 MB PC 133 SD RAM, 810 DTC Motherboard, 20 GB HDD, 1.44 MB FDD, 52X Max LG CD-ROM, Motorola SM 56 PCI Speakerphone Modem (Internal). I used Windows ‘’98 and Windows XP pro as OS. My problem is whenever I try to connect to the Internet, it doesn’t easily connect and lots of time and calls are wasted. Is there a problem in my modem or does it depend on server? Once connected it disconnects several times. Thus I can’t download anything. Please provide some remedy.

Recently I installed modem on Windows XP (Modem driver for Windows 2000). But it doesn’t work properly. No sound comes from modem and when I pick telephone receiver, I can listen dialing but nothing happen after this. Earlier it worked fine. I repartitioned HDD due to April 26 virus. Is the problem occurring after this repartition? I want to upgrade system RAM. Also tell me which type of RAM is suitable.

A. There could be many factors responsible for the problem mentioned by you. However, in your case most likely the fault seems to be lying at your end. Check out the telephone cables for its wear and tear, quality, cuts, loose joints, open joints etc. I guess your problem is primarily due to a fault in the line. Had there been a problem with the modem, you might not have been able to connect to the Internet. For an effective solution, try changing the telephone line with a good quality copper wire to the maximum possible extent. If you think your wire is error free, check out for proper earthing with the telephone exchange department. I hope these solutions would solve your problem.

Please check out whether you are using the correct driver for Windows XP. Since Motorola has not created a driver for Windows XP for its modem, so only some third party drivers are available. Please check out with your hardware dealer for the correct version of driver for Windows XP.

Q. I have a Vintron elixir @home 3000 computer, powered with Intel Pentium 3 processor 700 MHz, 64 MB SDRAM, 1 serial, 1 parallel & 1 Mouse Port,1.44MB FDD, AGP shared,15 GB ultra DMA HDD, 15" Vintron colour monitor, 50X CD ROM drive, 56 KBPS internal modem and Windows ‘98 as Operating System. I have partitioned my hard disk equally in C & D and have Norton anti-virus 2003 professional edition in C: drive. I don’t use my D: drive and have all major data on C: drive only. I have loaded two games namely - Need for speed 2 and Moto on C: My problem is I am unable to run disk defragmenter in C: up to its completion. I always run the disk defrag after running the scandisk in the DOS mode (Thorough mode) as advised by you as it is a faster way to do it. Scandisk takes nearly one hour but when I run the disk defrag after that, defrag is only 10 per cent complete even after running it continuously for 3 hours at a stretch whereas defrag of D: is completed in about 10 minutes. There is no wallpaper or screensaver applied. My second query is my computer often hangs while I am writing mail, chatting or playing the games installed. There is no movement of mouse. Keyboard also doesn’t work. There is also no effect of Ctrl + Alt + Del on it. But the cursor keeps on blinking or in the case of games, the lap clock keeps on running. So I have to restart it

A. Regarding your first problem, please disable the anti-virus program before running defrag as this could be the main cause of your problem as you have already disabled the screensaver. Also please take care to close all programs running in the system tray before attempting defrag. Regarding your second problem, please check whether your system fan and CPU fan is working properly and also make sure through scandisk that you do not have any bad sectors on your hard disk. However, if these solutions do not solve your problem, please write back specifically whether your systems hangs when you are connected to the Internet or it hangs in general. Also mention, does it hang in any computer application/ program or only in programs mentioned by you?