Ask DACS
November 2010

Moderated and reported by Jim Scheef

AskDACS is a Question and Answer session before the main presentation at the monthly General Meeting. We solicit questions from the floor and then answers from other audience members. My role as moderator is to try to guide the discussion to a likely solution to the problem.

Q from email – Rob Limbaugh received a question by email. In response, he reported that he uses a multi-function printer from Brother, the MFC-9840CDW which does color duplex printing and scanning along with more mundane print, copy, FAX features. The estimated street price on the Brother website is $700. Rob stated that toner usage (four toner cartridges) seemed reasonable but the cartridges cost $120 each color (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). It will both scan and print legal size.

Another member mentioned good results using a Kodak multi-function device that he believed is an ESP-9. Kodak printers are known for a slightly higher initial price but dramatically lower prices for ink cartridges.

Personally I have had a Brother MFC-7820N for several years of light use and just bought my second replacement toner cartridge. Based on my good results, I recommended a similar printer to a client for use in a small office and the printer was not up to the duty cycle of a small office environment. They replaced it with a Hewlett-Packard. However, in my “home office” my Brother multi-function device solders on. Remember, your mileage may differ.

Discussion then turned to duplex printing. My experience with printing the odd pages and then feeding the paper back in to print the even pages on the other side never quite works. Recovering from a jam that ruins a couple of the odd sheets is just too much trouble.

Q from email – I have a Dell machine with Win XP Pro and cannot log in as Administrator and Ctrl-D does nothing. I want to run the msconfig program to disable a program that runs when Windows starts, but when I run ‘msconfig’ I get a message that I need to log in with administrative privileges. Unfortunately the person who submitted the question was not at the meeting.

A – The first suggestion was to set/reset the password for the Administrator account to ensure that you have the correct password. I believe the reference to Ctrl-D should be Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Machines with Win XP normally start at the Welcome screen where you click on a user picture to log in. To get to the old style login screen requires pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete twice. Once the old style login appears, you can enter ‘administrator’ as the username plus the password to log on to the built-in Administrator account, provided that account has not been disabled. Some OEM Windows installations disable the Administrator account to prevent it becoming a base for malware.

Another suggestion is to find and right-click on the msconfig.exe and pick ‘Run as administrator’ from the context menu. After entering the administrator password, the executable will run with administrator privileges which should solve the problem.

Q – I need to send several large files totaling about 50MB by email. What is the best way to do this?

A – We had many suggestions:

1. First zip the files. This will compress the files and put them in a single “bucket”. On XP or newer, select all of the files and right-click on the selection; pick ‘Send to compressed file’ on the context menu. Some files compress better than others; a ten to one ration is common for text files. Pictures and programs will not compress much at all.
2. The website box.net is a file sharing site that is free up to a point. You create an account, upload your files and then give the other party access to those files. Several members commented that the site will soon no longer offer a free version. There are many, many other such services such as dropbox.com.
3. Another service aimed specifically to email is dropsend.com. The free version allows for five “sends” per month.
4. Keep in mind that many email services like Yahoo and Gmail allow for a total message size of 20-25MB. Check the provider’s website for the limits. On the other hand, some corporations impose much smaller limits. A total message size of 10MB is pretty safe. If you have a message in this size, just try sending it. The worst that can happen is you get an error message.

Many of the responses were unintelligible on the recording.

Q – A friend’s computer is insisting on installing the Roxio CD software when he starts Windows. Does anyone know why this is happening and how to stop it? He does not want Roxio.

A – The first suggestion was the Microsoft Windows Installer CleanUp utility. I found two Microsoft Knowledgebase articles about this utility, KB290301 and KB930301 along with many blog posts about the utility. This utility is designed to clean up failed installations (primarily Office 2003/2007/2010, but should help with any failed MSI-based install). Next, look for Roxio DLA (now called Roxio Burn) in the Add/Remove Programs list (Programs and Features in Vista and Win7). The Roxio install that is trying to run is likely an update to a Roxio product that came pre-installed on the computer. There is also a (small) chance that it is a rogue program that will install malware, but those are seldom so blatant.

Q – Is there any way to add a floppy drive to a laptop?

A – USB floppy drives are available. They plug in and don’t even require any drivers for XP and later. Look on EBay where they can be found for as little as $5 plus shipping. A member cautioned to look for a “tri-mode” drive to be sure that it will work with 720K floppy disks.

D – Further discussion revealed that the questioner already has an external floppy drive with an “unusual” connector. In the past, many laptops came with an external floppy drive with a proprietary connector. These older drives required installing a device driver for Windows (generally Windows 98) to recognize the drive. It is unlikely that such a drive can be used with a current computer.

External drives for 5-1/4” floppies are available (used). These were sold when the industry switched to 3.5” drives. Most of these connected to the parallel (printer) port on a desktop computer and required device driver software. Many of these drives date back to the days of DOS before Windows. I found a few such drives on EBay, but read the descriptions carefully as some are for other computers like the Apple II or even Commodore.

If you have a significant number of 5-1/4” floppies, I suggest finding an old desktop computer (perhaps in the back of your closet) and installing internal drives for both size floppies. Install Windows 98 and a network card and you will be able to read the old floppies and transfer the files to your current computer.

Q – Does anyone have experience with Microsoft Azure? Specifically with converting existing SQL Server databases of varying vintages to the Azure platform?

A – Azure is the new Microsoft solution for cloud computing. There really was no answer as no one in the room has direct experience. Several of us commiserated based on experience with past SQL Server upgrades that were generally made simpler by having all of the machines on one network. I’m sure there are whitepapers available on the subject.

Questions for the upcoming meeting can be emailed to askdacs@dacs.org.

Disclaimer: Ask DACS questions come from members by email or from the audience attending the general meeting. Answers are suggestions offered by meeting attendees and represent a consensus of those responding. DACS offers no warrantee as to the correctness of the answers and anyone following these suggestions or answers does so at their own risk. In other words, we could be totally wrong!