Q. I get frequent questions from friends who are running software firewalls, such as ZoneAlarm – they get pop-ups saying that an application is trying to access the network, and they have no guidance as to whether to permit it or not. How do you determine if you should let it through? For example, today it came up with port 123 – what is that and how do you determine it. These products are advertized as being for consumer use, but how does a consumer determine whether to let it through? A. There are a couple of approaches. The first is that the program usually identifies which program is trying to access the internet. You can open up a browser window (while the pop-up is still active) and go to Google and do a search on the application. More often than not, if the application is evil (spyware, malware, etc.) it will show up as such within the first couple of hits. The second thing to look for is to know whether it is something that you as a user have launched. For example, if you are in the process of doing a software installation, it is common for the installer to try to connect to the vendor’s site to register the product. However, if you are just browsing the web and this happens, you probably want to decline. If it just mentions a port number, you can look it up on a list of ‘well known ports’ such as this: http://www.iana.org/assignments /port-numbers—in this case port 123 is the network timer server port. This is probably innocuous, however be aware that there is spyware, such as Precision Time (by Gator or GAIN or now, Claria – they keep changing names), that while it states it will keep your clock synchronized with an official time standard, also has some not-so-good hidden function-ality. By the way, if you want to keep your PCs clock synchronized, take a look at http://www.ntp-systems.com/symmtime.asp Q. If I have been hit by a worm, if I re-install the O/S, will that remove it? A. If you do a re-install, it will be gone until you connect to the Internet, at which time it is highly probable that you will get the worm again. The reason is that unless you install the service pack, the worm will exploit the same vulnerability that let it into your machine in the first place. Q. If I immediately reload saved data files after doing a clean install, can that install the worm? A. If the worm infected files on your saved data, then it will be back. Q. If I do a system restore from the DELL-provided CDs, will I be safe? A. If the DELL CD pre-dates the release of the security release that fixes the exploit that the worm uses, then no, you will not be safe. Q. What are .PF files? I have quite a large numbers of them. A. More than likely, these are ‘pre-fetch’ files. In Windows XP, Windows keeps track of programs that you run, and in an attempt to make things run/load faster, puts copies in a prefetch folder that it looks at during boot. The problem is that it isn’t real smart as to what to fetch into memory – it may bring in things that you really don’t want to run ever again. This page has a good discussion about it, as well as how to control it: http://tech.schiesty.org/old/2004/04/11/000043.php In general, when you are looking to find out what a file extension is, you can look at www.filext.com to see what applications make use of a file extension. There may be more than one, so you may have to look at several entries. Q. AutoCAD uses .SCR files, and .SCR is also used by screen savers. Is there any way to control the file associations so that I get the right one? A. You can get at it via Windows Explorer, TOOLS then FOLDER OPTIONS, then FILE TYPES. Once there, select the file from the list, and then EDIT the association. Alternate method – right click on a file of the type you are working with, and then in the menu, select OPEN WITH. You will get to essentially the same place, and you can then specify whether your application is to be the default application for that file type. If more than one application is associated with a file type, the right-click menu will list the several applications and you may select which one to use. Q. When I installed Mozilla on my machine, it changed the icon associated with .JPG files to the Mozilla icon. How do I get it so that it uses the PhotoShop icon? A. Method 1: Re-install PhotoShop and it should grab .JPGs. Method 2: Go into file associations (as above) and associate PhotoShop. Method 3: It is reported (but not verified) that the PowerToys package from Microsoft (an unsupported collection of utilities from Microsoft) has a mechanism within that will do this. There are different versions for different Windows releases (going back to Windows 95) - the easiest way to find the right one is to do a Google search on “Power Toys for Windows” and pick the appropriate one. Note: icons are cached, so you might have to force a rebuild of the icon cache. The simplest way to do this is to boot into Safe Mode, as that process forces a rebuild. Another nice set of free utilities that let you tweak your machine is Xteq Setup from http://www.xteq.com/ These let you get at things (in a user-friendly way) that are normally only available by editing the registry, they aren’t in control panel property pages. Q. If I typo a URL in my web browser, it takes me to a Lycos site on one machine, and to an MSN site on another machine. Both machines have IE 6. A. It may be related to the DNS servers that are associated with the machine. If they can’t find it, they may take you to an error page specified by the DNS server rather than one associated with your desktop. Q. I notice that now that I am running my dial-up connection with an ‘accelerator’ that the graphic quality has greatly deteriorated. What gives? A. The accelerator gets its speed boost by having a processor at the other end of your link (i.e. at your ISP site) perform compression on images. Image files have a palette within them that defines the colors in the image. The more detailed the image, the more colors in the palette. By reducing the number of distinct colors in the palette, there will be more adjacent pixels in the image that now have the same color, where before they were different. The internals of the file will now say, for example, “give me 300 dots of color 17”, which only takes 3 bytes of data in the file, where before it might have said “give me 50 dots of color 17, 20 of color 16, 35 of color 17, 40 of color 18, ….” which consumes 3 bytes for each color change. If enough colors are boiled down to one, the file will be greatly compressed in size and thus the size of the file that has to be transmitted through the dial-up connection will be reduced and the connection will appear to be faster. But as observed, this comes with a great loss in image quality. With most accelerators there is a way to force the image to be delivered unmodified – often by right-clicking it. Or, if it is a critical image, you could temporarily turn the accelerator off. You will find accelerators in many services – AOL, CompuServe, NetZero, Earthlink, etc. Q. I installed V2I by PowerQuest. I must have hit a configuration option that causes a pop-up every time I boot the machine. How do I get rid of the pop-up? A. No one in attendance had seen this happen – your best shot at it is to try the tech support at PowerQuest. Note that PowerQuest has since been purchased by Symantec, it is not known whether the PowerQuest support is now (not) provided by Symantec. Q. I am using PhotoShop Elements and a Canon digital camera. When I open an image by scanner, or load from the camera, or use Explorer and view the image, the colors look fine. But if I use PhotoShop Elements the colors are off. Any suggestions? A. Did Elements put you through a display calibration when you installed it? If not, see if you can find the calibration routine. Are there default color balance settings being applied by Elements? Take a look at this link: http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/ Image_Techniques/Color_Correction_Speed_01.htm to see if you are perhaps set wrong. Are there optional color palettes available in Elements? The web design SIG will be examining Elements at their meeting on July 20th, you might drop in on them to see if they have any suggestions. |
| 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. |
|