Q. (AskDacs@dacs.org) A long time ago, during a Random Access session it was advised to stay out of the Windows Registry. I recently had a corruption problem involving AOL and affecting other programs. I used XP’s System Restore and have been back in business since then. Does ‘keep out of the registry’ still hold? And what do you think of Microsoft’s Registry First Aid program, or other programs? A. First, System Restore (which first appeared in Windows Me) is an automated feature that replaces corrupted files and resets registry settings. It is not the same as REGEDIT, the manual utility in Windows that may be used to make changes to the registry. The advice was primarily to stay out of REGEDIT unless you knew what you were doing, as the Windows registry is essentially the central nervous system of Windows. No one at the general meeting was familiar with a Microsoft product named Registry First Aid, but a subsequent search on Google brought up the shareware “Registry First Aid” by Rose City Software http://www.wugnet.com/shareware/spow.asp?ID=463 that is selected by Microsoft and WUGNET as being a “best choice shareware pick of the week.” Members were familiar with the registry components in Norton’s System Works, V.Com Registry Check and JV16 Tower Tools. Q. I have an IBM NetVista machine running Windows XP Home - the screen saver works as desired, but the power saver settings don’t work — does anybody have suggestions? A. Some programs that run automatically or have timer settings may reset the system such that the power settings won’t have time to trigger. An example of this might be a mail program that looks to see if there is any mail every (say) 10 minutes. If the power saving settings are set for 15 minutes, the 10 minute cycle will always reset the power saving settings and they never get a chance to kick in. Mail is only one program that might to this—you may have other utilities that might trigger it, such as a background anti-virus or disk optimization utility. You also might look in the system’s BIOS and look to activate power savings there. Lastly, for a desktop system power saver settings don’t do much; for example, it is felt that there is more wear and tear on the disk drive by powering it down and then spinning it up to speed than just letting it spin at a continuous rate. Q. Is setting a password in the BIOS a good thing to do for security? I have a notebook machine with personal/confidential data on it. A. The BIOS password will make it a tad more difficult to get at things, but it is trivial to erase it—all it requires is the removal of the CMOS battery (not the same as the ‘power supply’ battery) and short a jumper to clear the BIOS, including the password. It would be much better to either encrypt the files or a folder or a disk partition using PGP or some other utility such as F-Secure’s File Crypto. Q. I have a flat panel LCD display which for some reason has a much brighter band around its outside edge. Has anybody seen this, and what might be the cause? A. After much speculation, we came up with a couple of possible things to look at. First, perhaps the horizontal width and vertical width adjustments were set just a tad too wide, with the result that the pixels around the extreme edge were getting doubled-up, and therefore being too bright. Try adjusting the width and height down just a bit. Another suggestion was to bring the machine up in ‘Safe Mode’ which will use a generic driver for your video adapter instead of a hardware specific one. If the generic driver doesn’t have a problem, then it is quite possible that there is a problem with the video driver for your adapter card. Note that Safe Mode will not give you any of the advanced features (such as acceleration or higher resolution) for the display, but it will isolate whether there is a problem with the driver. Of course, a call or e-mail to the manufacturer might uncover something as well. Q. My wife gets e-mails that have attachments that are images. For some, she double-clicks and can see the image, for others, she gets nothing. Any suggestions? A. First, are you absolutely certain that they are image files? The files might not have been included properly, this happens often if the message is a forward or CC. Another possibility is that it is a non-standard image— for example, AOL uses the .ART image type, which is AOL-proprietary. Lastly, Mac machines have two files per image - one is called a ‘resource’ that describes the file rather than being the file itself. This brings up a point—when you get an attachment, you want to make sure that you really see the full name of the file - the default in Windows is that you don’t see the extension. Some viruses masquerade by putting a bogus .JPG into the filename - for example, the file may look like “familyphoto.jpg” but actually be “familyphoto.jpg.exe.” If ‘view extensions is turned off, it will look like “familyphoto.jpg.” Most people are now savy enough to not click on a .EXE, but if it looks like a .JPG (but isn’t) they could be fooled. You set the ‘view extensions’ attribute in Windows Explorer, TOOLS, FOLDER OPTIONS ..., VIEW and clear the check mark on “Hide Extensions for Known File Types.” Another possibility is that the image file is not a .JPG, .BMP, or .GIF–some cameras store images with proprietary formats. If the sender just ‘renamed’ the file rather than saved the file via conversion to standard type, it won’t be viewable, any more than naming a cat ‘Rover’ makes it a dog. |
| 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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