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Instant Replay: December 2000

Bruce Preston, Moderator

Q. Has anyone here used a refill kit for Inkjet type printers? A. Yes, with mixed results. Most reported that black refills seemed to work just fine, but many reported problems refilling color cartridges. One noted that he had better results when he refilled the cartridges in-place— perhaps because it didn’t disturb the seals between the cartridge and the print head, or get ink onto the electrical contacts. The most common comment was that it often created a mess. Note: undiluted liquid bleach can be used to get the ink off of your hands—you will just smell like your local swimming pool for a day or two. One individual reported that he was satisfied with an exchange service that refills the cartridges for you. A common concern was contamination, as even minute contamination can plug a jet. Q. Is anyone here using the Direct PC satellite internet access service? A. Yes. It works as advertised. In addition, within a few weeks it is expected to be high speed upload as well, and will no longer have a time differential, where throughput and charges vary depending upon the time of day. It is expected to be $39.95 per month for unlimited service. Q. Do you still need a south view? And how clear must your horizon be? A. Yes. If you have an unobstructed view of the sun at 4:00 PM you are good. Q. Usually, when I boot, CompuServe takes off immediately and tries to connect. How can I stop this? A. There are several places where an autostart application can reside, in addition to the obvious Start Menu/Programs/Start Up folder. Our guess is that it is starting some sort of “Instant Messenger” application. Option 1: Take a look in the registry, using REGEDIT, at the keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Run, and HKEY_ LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \RunServices and see what is being started. Option 2: Call CompuServe and complain. Q. I have a similar problem: I have situations where the system starts Dial_Up networking without being asked, often several minutes after the system was started. What could that be? A. Several applications have a “check for recent updates” feature—Quicken, QuickBooks, and various Norton AntiVirus etc. applications come to mind. Check their configurations. Q. Has anyone used the free internet service available from Costco? I tried to install it —the install failed, but not until after it had removed the dialer for my regular ISP. Anyone have similar problems? A. No, several others had installed it. They all reported that they answered each question presented and let the installation run to completion. Q. Can I move clients’ data from Mac_In_Tax to TurboTax? A. There is a .TXF interchange format supported by many tax programs. In addition, a search at www.google.com on “import MacInTax” or “export MacInTax” let to this link: www.ehow.com/eHow/eHow/0,1053,15863,FF.html?src=bre4 which might shed some light on your problem. Q. Does anyone know about the “It Takes Guts to Say Jesus” virus? I just got a warning about it. A. Any time you get an e-mail warning you about a new virus, before you forward it to everyone you know, check it out at any of several sites such as www.cert.org/other_ sources/viruses.html to confirm that it is a virus and not a hoax. Almost invariably, when you get a message describing a virus that references companies (but not people at companies) and advises that you drop everything and alert everyone you know, it is a hoax. Such is the case for the “It Takes Guts to Say Jesus” virus— it is a hoax. There is a paper at the referenced web site that tells you what to look for in an e-mail warning that tips off that it is a hoax. Q. My computer at work has two hard drives. The first, which is the boot drive, is comparatively small. I now install applications on the second drive. I removed Acrobat Reader 3 from the C and then installed Acrobat Reader 4 on the D. However, when I click on a PDF file, it tells me that it can’t find Acrobat Reader, even though I know that it is installed on D:. A. The file association for PDF files is still pointing to your old installation. It has to be fixed. File associations are found in Windows Explorer, View, Folder Options, (or Tools, Folder Options) and select File Types. You will get a list of file types, and their associated applications. How you change it varies depending upon whether you are running Windows 9x or NT or 2000, but essentially you want to find the OPEN entry, where you will probably see that the path to Acrobat Reader is incorrect. Carefully edit it and save it. Q. I have two drives and want to implement RAID Level 0, stripping. I have a hardware RAID controller. How do I turn it on? A. Backup everything, as you can’t activate it with data present. The two drives must be identical for hardware RAID, you can’t just use identical partitions. Once you turn on the RAID, you can then copy the data to the disk—the hardware will put it on the drives and do the redundancy for you. Q. I installed an application, and everything worked fine. I decided to remove it, and it doesn’t appear in the Add/Remove Programs wizard. How do I get rid of it? A. Programs aren’t required to put an entry into the registry that guides the Add/Remove Programs wizard. It is recommended practice, but not a requirement. If an application doesn’t need to add components to the WINDOWS\SYSTEM or WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 folders, then it is probably safe to remove it from the application and/or Program Files folder. Some applications will have an UNINSTALL utility in their folder in the START/PROGRAMS menu. See if it is there. If not, you will also have to go to the WINDOWS\START MENU\ PROGRAMFILES\ {application name} folder and remove the shortcuts there—they are how the START button entries are implemented.