dacs.doc electric

Random Access
September 2003

Bruce Preston, Moderator

 

Members who are unable to attend the General Meeting may submit questions to "askdacs@dacs.org" by the day prior to the meeting. We will attempt to get an answer for you. Please provide enough detail, as we will not be able to ask for additional information.

Q. (AskDacs) Outlook Express on my new Windows XP machine just plain won’t remember the password for my mail account. Is there a way to make it remember? I have done searches on the web, and they refer to corrupted mailboxes and the like, but my mailbox appears to be fine.

A. While no one at the meeting had a solution, we subsequently did find a promising page on the web: http://www.pchell.com/support/oepassword.shtml

Q. I have converted to DSL - self install kit. I get the three green lights on the modem, but I just don’t get a connection. I went to the SBC help desk and worked with them for an hour, but they just couldn’t get the connection to work.

A. If the DSL line is being shared by any other device, all other devices must have a ‘filter’ between them and the DSL line. Be sure to check fax devices, answering machines, caller id devices, the phone connection for an alarm system, and wall phones. The filter can be ‘shared’ - just make sure that no telephone device gets to the circuit without going through a filter, and that there is no filter between the DSL modem and the phone circuit. If there is only one PC connected to the DSL modem, then for SBC you also need their Enternet 300 PPPoE software. If you have a router/firewall between the PC(s) and the DSL modem then the router/firewall can have PPPoE activated within it, and you do not need (or want!) The Enternet 300 package on any PC.

Q. On the topic of router/firewalls, are the ones built-into DSL/Cable Modem router firewalls any good?

A. Yes, but make sure that you have a firewall in the device when you purchase it. For example, only one model of Linksys devices has a built-in firewall.

Q. I am looking at a digital camera, it says that it is 4.3 megapixel, but that it has a 2.3 interlaced CCD. Is it a 4.3?

A. No, not really. Some manufacturers are starting to play semantics games, just as they did with scanners, and ‘wattage’ on stereos, etc.

Q. I had a problem upgrading my notebook from XP Home to XP Pro - Dial-up networking disappeared, and isn’t visible in the ‘add network connection’.

A. If XP Home had the service pack installed, then the XP Pro upgrade doesn’t recognize that Dial-Up networking exists. It will come back if you now re-install the service pack.

Q. How good is the password protection in XP Pro? I am concerned about protecting data if the notebook machine is stolen.

A. It is only fair. If you really need to protect the data, it needs to be encrypted. There are several add-ons that work - PGP can encrypt e-mail or your disk. F-Secure’s File Crypto can also encrypt your disk. It is recommended that you not encrypt the entire disk - for example, don’t encrypt system folders. Instead, create a partition for data that is to be encrypted (it will look like another hard disk letter.)

Q. I have been getting a lot of e-mails from organizations that I have never heard of, messages get bounced back to me because they say I am not correctly configured or that I have a virus. My anti-virus is up-to-date. What’s going on?

A. You don’t have the virus. There are several viruses or internet worms in circulation that do bulk mailings from infected machines. They select an address from the infected machine’s address book, and use that address to forge the ‘From:’ on the message that is then sent to everyone else in the address book or inbox. What you are seeing is the result of a mailing from someone’s machine where your e-mail address happened to be the one that was selected.

Q. I downloaded McAfee 7.0 Antivirus and Firewall. Somehow it changed my local printer to a network printer. I don’t have a network, and now I can’t print.

A. We have never seen this. Go to McAfeeHelp.com and eventually you can get to a chat page where you can ‘talk’ to a live person. They should be able to help.

Q. I am thinking of getting a laptop - Dell has them for around $800. The new Centrino machines are not hitting the market - what do they have?

A. The Centrino is much faster internally (a 1.5GHz Centrino might perform equivalent to a 2.4GHz P4) and also use considerably less power - battery life is perhaps three times that of a current laptop machine, and they run much cooler. Other than whether it is a Centrino or not, be sure to look at other things, such as: Does it have a floppy drive, or is that an add-on? Does it have a parallel port, or is that only available via a docking station or port-replicator? Be aware that some devices, such as parallel port multi-function devices (printer/copier/fax etc.) will not work via a port replicator. The newer multi-function devices use USB interfaces and will be fine.


Bruce Preston is president of West Mountain Systems, a consultancy in Ridgefield, CT specializing in database applications. A DACS director, Bruce also leads the Access SIG. Members may send tech queries to Bruce at askdacs@dacs.org.

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