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) My two-year-old laptop’s 40GB hard drive is approaching being full. I am otherwise happy with it. I contacted Toshiba, and they do offer a larger hard drive for this model. I have looked at the drive to see if I could delete some of them, and I can’t. I already have external hard drives that I use primarily for video applications. Could someone recommend a method for extending the laptop’s capacity, not just for data storage?
A. You could replace the internal hard disk with the larger one. You would have to use Ghost or Drive Image etc. to clone the drive onto the new drive. The new drive would have to be temporarily in an external drive case (USB) long enough to clone the drive. We are absolutely dumb-founded that you have 40GB of programs on that machine. We suspect that when you installed your video editing software that you put the stock clips, transitions, templates, etc. on the C: drive instead of overriding the default installation by telling it to put the support files on the external drive.
Q. In a previous Random Access a member reported problems with printing ZIP codes via an MS Word mail merge where the data was being fed from MS Excel. We have a follow up on it.
A. This is a known bug (http://support. microsoft.com/default. aspx?scid =kb;en-us;320473) in MS Word, and manifests itself in mail merges where the source is either MS Excel or MS Access. To fix it, you have to do several things: a) in TOOLS, OPTIONS, GENERAL—make sure that there is a check in the option “Confirm Conversion on Open”. b) When you get to “Confirm Data Source”, select “MS Excel Worksheets via DDE” or “MS Access via DDE”. Your data will then come in properly formatted.
Q. I am using Mozilla/Firefox as my browser. I went to upgrade my Norton Anti-Virus, and it insists that I be running MS Internet Explorer 5.5 or newer to do the update. I re-installed IE and got the update, but now I want Mozilla/Firefox as my browser?
A. In Mozilla/Firefox, go to TOOLS then OPTIONS and select the GENERAL page. There is a checkbox “Check to see if default browser when starting” as well as a “Check Now” button. Click it and you will be asked if it should be the default browser. Click YES and you are good until next time you change back to IE. By the way, you do not uninstall the browser (especially Internet Explorer, which is too tightly hooked into the operating system). Instead, just make the browser you want the default via the mechanism described. In Internet Explorer, the check box is in TOOLS then OPTIONS then PROGRAMS. You may also have to go to SET PROGRAM ACCESS DEFAULTS within Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs.
There followed a long discussion as to the merits of various add-on packages such as Norton System Works, and the problems they can cause if they get out of date, i.e. problems with installing if you have skipped a release, or uninstalling completely. The consensus was Norton’s Anti-Virus (and McAfee’s Anti-Virus) on their own are fine, but that if you run all of the other utilities, especially the system-tools type utilities on a marginal machine that they cause more problems with resource contention than any value that they might provide.
Q. Can a PC (or Mac) be set up to use the local mail client to work with Google’s G-Mail service?
A. Yes it can be done. G-Mail supports POP and SMTP, however a few parameters are not what you usually see with a standard ISP-based e-mail account. With a standard ISP-based e-mail account, they are often set up such that they will only accept mail from a circuit under their ownership. This is to prevent relaying of mail, a common abuse of mail systems by spammers. Since Google is not providing ISP service and thus doesn’t “own” the circuits used by a subscriber, they require some security parameters (and associated secure ports). This page at the Google site (example is for Mac, but it is very similar for PC) http://gmail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13275 shows how to set it up.
Q. My Outlook has separate lists for the Address Book and the Contacts. Can’t I consolidate them?
A. You should be able to do it via the IMPORT/EXPORT facility. You might have to do it via comma-separated-values, and then when you bring it in, use the field-mapping capability.
Q. Is anyone here using Firefox and not able to see things on eBay?
A. eBay’s Picture Services uses an Active-X control for uploading images if you want their ‘advanced’ image features such as slide show. You do not need to use eBay’s Picture Services to post auctions. The main problem with eBay’s Picture Services is that it locks up quietly if the user’s Temporary Internet Files has many files - it usually clears up if you clear your cache.
Q. I have a friend who has a problem with shared users on an AOL account. He signs off, then his wife tries to connect and it complains that he is still connected. Of course, when we called AOL for support it couldn’t be resolved because with a dial-up account we were “off” in order to use the phone to talk to AOL support.
A. The proper way to do it is to “Exit AOL” and then tell it to “Switch Users” rather than disconnect and reconnect.
Q. In my Outlook Express I get messages which include attachments. I can’t do anything with the attachment. The icon is grayed-out.
A. When an attachment comes in, it is not stored as a standalone file, it is stored within a single file known as the “inbox”. If the attachment is an executable or various other type of file that could be executed, then the security is blocking it from being opened directly. You will have to save the file to force it to be processed by your anti-virus software after which it can be run from the saved location.
