Chairman’s Notes
Not much to say today
other than to apologise for the lack of a meeting and Newsletter
last month.
Removing Outlook Beeps
Outlook 2003 normally
emits a beep whenever a message arrives. To stop this open
Tools | options | Preferences Tab | Email Options button |
Advanced Email Options and uncheck “Play a sound” check
box. Glorious silence!
Downloading Adobe Reader
Sometimes the download
from the Adobe website fails top complete. The official
instruction is to repeat the download. When this fails
again there is an alternative solution that may work. The
Adobe Download Manager creates an entry for itself in the Start
Menu when it has a problem or you have to stop a download. Restart
the download from here. This prevents going through
unnecessary jobs and may complete when a reinstall will not.
See www.pcpro.co.uk/links/148qa1 for further information.
Windows Startup, what happens?
This is a brief synopsis
of the process.
Switch on – Power-on
self test (POST) runs. This is where the PC (and Bios) does
hardware tests for the presence of and correct functioning of
hardware such as memory, hard disk, video, keyboard and mouse.
Beep codes indicate failure of items, a single beep often means
all OK.
Initial Startup –
This is where boot order is checked and you hear the floppy drive
addressed and you may get “Non-system disk or disk error”
resulting in a quick panic until you realise you left a data disk
in the floppy drive. Alternatively a bootable CD in a drive
will give “Press any key to boot from CD…” The
order of access to drives is set in the Bios. If all is
well booting from hard drive is commenced by looking for the
Master Boot Record (MBR). If it is not found you will get
one of the following “Invalid partition table”, “Error
loading operating system”, “Missing operating system”,
“Boot: couiln’t find NTLDR” or “NTLDR is
missing”
Boot Loader – NTLDR
or NT loader loads the files from the boot partition, the file
system starts up Fat32 or NTFS, BOOT.INI is read as well as
NTDETECT.COM and ACPI data
(Advanced Configuration
and Power Interface).
The Kernel loads –
NTDETECT.COM checks the hardware and loads the Hardware
Abstraction Layer (HAL) and Windows Kernel (NTOSKERNEL.EXE) and
accesses the Windows Registry. In Safe Mode you can see all
these items on the screen as they load, in standard Windows they
load invisibly behind a blank screen or the Windows logo.
Log on – Control is
passed to Winlogon.exe and the Services subsystem and Local
Security Authority (LSA) where you get asked for your password
and group policies are loaded and any programs loaded at startup.
At this point you should be able to work with your PC
More Beeps
At the beginning of the
above topic we mentioned beep codes. Each PC manufacturer
uses either a bought in motherboard or a motherboard customised
to its own requirement, which comes with a BIOS chip that stores
defaults and essential information necessary to start the boot up
process. There are a limited range of Bios
manufacturers each with their own style and layout and range of
error beep codes. A list of beep codes can be found at www.computerhope.com/beep.htm. Print it now because unless you have access
to a second PC when you need it you will not be able to go and
look for it. For instance, it took a brand new PC out of
its box, plugged it in and switched on – nothing except a
screen saying no signal and a series of beeps, a single followed
by three and another three and a single repeated over and over.
Since it was a Fujitsu Siemens PC, another similar PC indicated
the Bios would be by
Internet Explorer 7
If you have automatic
updates turned on you will almost certainly have already
downloaded and installed Explorer 7. The consensus is that
although different, and requiring a little effort to learn, it is
a much better browser. It is less memory hungry, more
secure and ultimately easier to use. After a restart, the
first time you run IE7 it will take you to a setup page, do you
want to turn on the Automatic Phishing Filter? the answer is yes
if you want Microsoft to see all the sites you are browsing and
warn if they are known to be dodgy, no if you want privacy.
Do you want to pick a default search provider? probably no and
stay with your existing one. Leave ClearType turned on it is
best, try the ClearType tuner and see the advantages. Next
you need to customise your location, change it from US to
Thunderbird
There seems to be a
problem with version 1.5.0.9 of the email client. First the
address book throws up error messages, then spell check finds
that all normal words are spelt incorrectly despite using the UK
English dictionary, them email folders appear to be empty and
then you can’t send emails. I initially restored
things to sanity by restoring an old copy of the address book but
then deterioration set in again. I uninstalled and
installed v1.5.0.2, which I happened to have left in my Downloads
folder. This worked but the problem was that I forgot to
turn off automatic updates so I have been upgraded to v1.5.0.9
again so I will need to reinstall again soon.
Network Cables
Beware the homemade Cat5
network cable, incorrectly wired they can cause problems. Test
them pin-to-pin and they will be fine, use a cable tester or plug
them in and all appears OK. Even short lengths will work
fine. Cat5 cable has twisted pairs of wires and a pair must
be must be wired to the correct two pins. The pairs are 1+2
3+6 4+5 7+8, if not cross talk will prevent longer
lengths of cable working.
PC Tools Spyware Doctor
An innovation by PC Tools
is to include a Linux based virus/spyware removal tool in the
form of a bootable CD which will scan a Windows PC for threats
which can lie dormant when windows is running. Some threats
activate on boot up and hide themselves or sometimes even lie to
a search in order to protect themselves. When Windows is
not running they cannot hide and are therefore exposed to
cleaning. For more information go to www.pctools.com/aoss . If a valid SpywareDoctor installation is
found then any threats identified can be removed (or removal
attempted), SpywareDoctor should be run afterwards to complete
the removal.
WiMAX
WiMAX is a wide range
form of WiFi, more like the mobile phone system, so that you can
connect from anywhere (it could be a bit patchy in the
highlands). Unfortunately, although it is common in
Turn PCs off
It has been said that a
PC consumes 96% of its power usage when idling. So many PCs
are left on continuously so that they can be backed up or updated
overnight. Many more are left on because by default power
saving is not enabled when the PC is delivered. Sleep mode
saves a lot of power if it is enabled but Hibernate actually
shuts the power off completely after saving the system state to
the hard drive, when you restart the PC it returns to exactly how
you were when starting the hibernate, and does it a lot faster
than booting from scratch. Shut down properly occasionally
otherwise the PC does not get to do the housekeeping it should
do.