Monday, September 8, 2003		Dr Tribune

Q. I am facing a problem. While connecting to the Internet, I get a message, "svchost.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program. A error log is being created." I work on Windows 2000 professional. When I get this problem, I can’t open the new page of the Internet explorer. Secondly, I am networked and have three computers. However, I can access the other two computers from one of those while this one computer cannot be accessed through the other two. Whenever I access this computer, a message appears asking me about password. But I never entered any password for that. The other computers are on Windows ’98 SE. Please solve my problem. I will be grateful to you.

A. Your PC is infected with SoBig worm. This is a deadly worm and merits immediate attention from your side. Download the tool to remove this virus from the Website of Symantec or McAfee and download it on a separate media. Now run this application and it would automatically kill the virus off your system. You would also need to check the virus on all your networked computers as this virus might have spread to other computers on the network. Regarding your next query, please check the sharing rights. You can set the rights to allow the user to access the files and folders to solve your problem.

Q. I have P IV, Intel 1.5 GHz processor, Zenith, 128 RAM DD RAM, Win Me OS, ATX cabinet and Intel 82845 G/GL graphics controller. My problem is that a few months ago, I loaded one 3D game on a computer. After playing game, whenever I used to quit game, the computer hanged and I had to press Alt+ Ctrl+ Del to revert to Windows. I have now deleted this game completely but now wallpapers and screensavers are not working well. The black-coloured wallpapers specially show white and other faded patches on the screen and other screensavers. Like dancing baby does not show any clear background. The same is true for other new wallpapers. A few months ago, there was a malicious script in computer in file explorer.exe that was removed by my vendor. I wish to point out that Norton anti-virus 2002 could not detect any virus. After that, the computer is behaving normally. Still, I want to know if virus is in computer and can it cause further damage as the file was closed and script stopped. What is the solution?

A. Regarding your first problem related to abnormal functioning of screensaver and wallpaper, the problem is clearly due to the game software you loaded on your computer. You have mentioned that you deleted the software from your system, if this means improper removal of software from your system, then you can blame this for your problem. In this case, you would need to reload the game and then uninstall properly but if it does not work then you may have to reinstall Windows again. However, you may not need to clean install after formatting, as simple reinstallation would solve your problem.

As far as malicious scripts are concerned, most probably this could be virus. But it may not necessarily be true as lots of programs uses scripts, which might have some entries, which unless other wise known would look like malicious scripts. The best way to be sure if your system is infected by virus or not is to Log on www.mcafee.com and opt for free online virus scan. This will tell you exactly about virus present in your system. As far as Norton anti-virus failing to clean the virus is concerned, there could be many reasons. Most probably it could be your system was already infected by virus, which disabled Norton. Or Norton might not have been updated.

Q. I have mainboard with model i810-IT8712 and modem SM56 Internal 56 K. I am using Win XP on D: and Win 98 on C: I have dial-up connection of BSNL and am suffering from the following problems:

1. On surfing Win XP, the message appeared regarding RPC service. It shows "RPC service terminated unexpectedly and will now restart your computer (60 seconds delay)."

2.When I connect to the Internet, Win ’98 doesn’t work, but gives better response on Win XP. I am using correct driver for Win ’98 but the problem exists even on reinstalling Windows ’98. What specific settings are required to give a better response? I’ve disabled modem compression but all in vain. Please help.

A. Your computer is suffering from Blaster worm. You should contact Symantec or McAfee Website and download the patch for removing this worm on a removable media. However, before this you would need to download a patch from Microsoft Website for covering the serious security hole.

Regarding your second query, you must first remove the modem from Control panel > Modem > Your modem and then install it afresh after rebooting your system. This will load the modem on correct port and with correct driver and settings. This will solve your problem. Disabling modem compression would not help but Internet performance can greatly improve by keeping the resources free and having a sufficiently large paging file. Also, having many memory resident program at a time also decelerates the Internet. I hope taking care of these points would help you in solving your problem.

Q I have a Celeron 466 MHz with 128 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD with Win ‘98 SE. I am facing the problem with my floppy drive. Whenever I want to run my floppy, it gives a message, ‘The disk in drive is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?’ This problem occurs every time I insert a floppy, whether new or the used one. Please solve my problem.

A. Please load the default fail safe settings in BIOS feature set up and your problem would be solved. To enter BIOS feature setup, hit Del immediately after the computer starts.

Q. I have a Pentium IV PC with Intel 845 GLLY motherboard and 256 MB RAM. I have a Sony joy-pad that works fine on other computers but is not even installed on my computer.

The joy-pad is added in the device manager. But it is not added to the game controllers in the Control Panel. Whenever I try to add it manually, a message appears that the gameport drivers are not configured properly. Please consult the device manager. My OS is Windows ’98. Please solve my problem.

A. The solution to your problem lies in your problem itself as you mentioned correctly that the driver for gameport are not installed correctly. All you would need to do is open device manager>right click on the gameport and then choose to reinstall drivers with the CD of motherboard / gaming device CD. Once the correct drivers are installed your problem would be solved.

Q. I have a branded computer with the following specifications: Pentium II Processor, Intel MMX (TN) Technology, 64 MB RAM, OS-Windows ’98. When I start the computer, it starts booting, the monitor (Siemens) signal light blinks but in a few seconds, it becomes dim and the monitor refuses to start. The monitor comes to life after four or five attempts. What is the problem? Kindly help.

A. Check out your computer cards fixed on the motherboard including RAM, VGA/AGP card, LAN card, modem card etc. Clean then with dry cloth and put them back in their place and this would solve your problem. This indicates hardware problem in either your AGP/VGA card or RAM.

Q. I have Pentium 4, 1.50 GHz processor, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB Samsung hard disk, Mercury Intel 845GL chipset motherboard, Windows XP as operating system. I am having problem in configuring Outlook Express 6.0. I have e-mail id at Hotmail but I don’t know whether my id supports POP3 or not. If my mail account supports POP3 what exactly do I have to fill in my incoming mail server and outgoing mail server fields? And in the account name and password field am I to fill the login name and password for the Hotmail account? Please help.

A. If you have a Hotmail account and wish to configure Outlook Express, then you need not fill incoming and outgoing mail server address as it will be filled automatically by default only. All hotmail accounts are supported by Outlook Express so your account too would support POP 3 in Outlook Express. As far as your query related to filling up the fields like display name, account name and password is concerned, you can choose any display name, but in account name you have to give your Hotmail e-mail address (if you have chosen to configure your Hotmail account in Outlook Express). This will help you solve your problem.