...And I'm happy for them.

On to the Questions...

The volume control on my Gateway computer is working, but I don't get the green scale on-screen when I press the volume up button on the keyboard.  I'm using Win 98 SE.

George

George,

The scale you see when adjusting the volume is provided by your multimedia keyboard driver, the same driver that allows the buttons on the keyboard to control the volume, to start and stop CD playback, etc.

• Click on  START  »  RUN  »  type in MSCONFIG  »  press ENTER.
• Click on the STARTUP tab, make sure the keyboard specialty driver is checked; on a Gateway, that's GWHOTKEY or GWKEYS — on another brand, it could be just about anything with the word KEY in it.
  • Or, look for a driver executable program with the same name as the name screened onto the keyboard.
    • If it's not there to be clicked on, plug in the Drivers CD that came with your computer or your multimedia keyboard, and reinstall the keyboard driver.

Can you give me step by step instructions on how to remove hidden McAfee files from my old Windows ME Laptop?

Ray

Ray,

After removing all things McAfee using  Control Panel  »  Add/Remove Programs, reboot the laptop.  Then, open  My Computer  »  C: Drive  »  Program Files, and delete the McAfee and Network Associates folders.  That's all there is to it.  And kudos on your wise decision to remove McAfee.

Dale

I found this file in my C drive:

When I tried to open the file, the following message appeared:

Should I delete this file, and its parent folder, or just let them stay there?

Roy

Roy,

The NCDTREE folder is created whenever you load any Norton product.  The error message is because when Dr Watson was installed during a Windows reload, it seized the DAT extension as a Dr Watson info file, but of course your Norton files AREN'T — this one is a Norton Anti-Virus virus definition file.  No, don't delete it until and unless you uninstall all Norton products from your computer.  ...Which would be an excellent idea, by the way.

And, no offense, but most folks, yourself included, don't know enough about computers in general to be looking at and deleting individual files in Windows Explorer — you could do some serious damage.  Leave that to me, or the guys at the TBCS clinic (the looking, not the damage).

Dale

In trying to 'organize' my FAVORITES, I inadvertently transferred a bunch of the folders into one of the other folders.  How do I pull the folders back out as individual folders into the Favorites column?  I'm using an older computer, running Win 98.

Ray

Ray,

As you may already know, I advocate holding on to your old computer as long as it continues to do for you everything you need it to do.  If all you do is surf the Web and read your email, Win98 is every bit as fast as Win XP, and lots faster than Windows Vista — Internet speed is determined primarily by the speed of your connection, not by your computer hardware or software.

Now, on to your question and my answer...

[ note: where I give a path to Favorites of  My Computer  »  C: drive  »  Windows  »  Favorites, I'm assuming yours is the only user account on this computer, and you've set up the computer accordingly.  If there's more than one account on the computer, or even if you just allowed for additional accounts when you set up Windows, you should substitute  My Computer  »  C: drive  »  Windows  »  Local Settings  »  Ray  »  Favorites ]

NOW on to the Q & A:  Immediately after making this sort of mistake, you can click on  Edit  »  Undo Move  in the Explorer menu.  If it's too late to do that now, and I suppose it is, do a  Find  »  Files or Folders  for all files named *.URL — look in the C: drive, not just in My Documents.  Any files found that aren't already in the C:\Windows\Favorites folder should be moved there (highlight all the files you want to move, right-click, then left-click Cut; navigate to C:\Windows\Favorites, right-click, and select Paste).

Dale

Dale,

I don't think I explained my problem to you properly.  What I need to do is remove six Favorite folders that should be listed separately, but are now located in an unrelated folder.  I suppose I could go and start from scratch, but it would be a lengthy process.

Also, after I get myself out of this mess, please tell me how to save these Favorites on my ZIP disc.

Ray

Ray,

I take it you can see the misplaced Favorites folders in Windows Explorer?  If so, just highlight them all, right-click any one of the highlighted icons, and select (left-click) CUT from the context menu.  Navigate to C:\Windows\Favorites.  In Favorites, right-click a blank section of the window, then select PASTE from the context menu.  Exit back to the desktop, then look at your Favorites on the StartUp menu.  The relocated folders should appear as subfolders (or submenus, if you prefer).

Next, to save them to your Zip disk:  Open  My Computer  »  C: drive  »  Windows  »  right-click the Favorites folder  »  left-click  Send To  »  Zip drive.

Dale

DaLe:

I restored my Favorites as you advised.  Thanks.

Now, I want to save these on a Zip disk, but the icon for Removable Disk [F:] does not appear in the window after I clicked SEND TO.  What is the procedure to add it?

Ray

Ray,

Double-click  My Computer.  Right-click the icon for the Zip drive.  Now navigate into the C:\Windows\SendTo folder, right-click a blank space, and select Create Shortcut(s) Here.  That should put a link to the Zip drive in your Send To menu.

Dale

I'm using Windows ME on an old Dell PC, and I want to upgrade Internet Explorer to the latest version.  I've downloaded the latest version, IE 6 SP1, but it won't load.  Gets about 1% done, and quits Setup, giving a warning that "some components failed to install".  I only use this PC for Internet and email, and I'm not ready to take on Windows Vista if I have to buy a new computer.  Help!

Rodney

Rodney,

I've seen this exact problem several times; Windows ME didn't always want to jump all the way from the IE 5 that came with it to IE 6 SP1.  Apparently, IE 5 has to be completely current on its updates to allow IE6 to install properly.  So, try this:  instead of trying to jump from IE5 to IE6 SP1 in one step, use Windows Update to go to the Web and get a list of all the pertinent updates.  Remove IE6 from the list, plus any references to IE or Outlook Express except the version right after the one that's currently on the Dell.  Install, reboot, and run Update again; again remove all but the very next IE/OE update, and keep all the security updates as well.  Repeat till there are no new IE 5 updates listed at the Windows Update site, THEN upgrade using the copy of IE 6 you had previously downloaded.

In other words, treat the machine like a child that's having trouble learning a complicated subject:  teach it in small pieces, building each time on what has just been learned.

And if you're not completely 'in love' with Internet Explorer, you should check out Mozilla Firefox 2.0.  It has tabbed browsing, and is much safer than IE6.  You can download it from  www.Mozilla.com; it's also on my free Utilities CD.

Dale

I'm having a problem with connecting to the Internet:  error message indicates no dial tone, do not hear any dialing.  I have tried "troubleshoot" in Device Manager; all seems to be in order.

I have another system, not networked, which gets a connection on the same line.  Basically, I disconnect one phone cord from the wall outlet and connect the other.

Device Manager indicates that there is a COM 1 and a COM 2.  Hardware profile for the modem indicates that it is on COM 3, but Device Manager doesn't show a COM 3 port.

Is there a way to re-assign the modem to COM 1 or COM 2?

Jerry

Jerry,

An internal 'software modem' will only show up in Device Manager as a modem, not as the Com: port it attaches to.

Could the phone cord have gotten pulled and put back in the wrong hole on the modem?  "No Dial Tone" usually means the modem is working fine, just not connected to the phone line.

This could also be a bad phone cord.  If you plug a phone into the other hole on the modem, does it work?  If so, would swapping the two cords on the modem make the modem start working?  Some modems care which hole is Line and which is Telephone, some don't.

The only other thing that can cause this problem is a blown 'line seize relay' driver transistor, meaning the modem will need to be replaced.  Check the paperwork that came with it — is it still under warranty?

Dale

Thanks, Dale, you were right, no problem with the modem.  I took the telephone line out of the hole which has the small telephone next to it, and plugged it into the other hole, the one with the word "Line" next to it (which I thought was the networking plug — my bad).

Jerry

First, I'd like to say goodbye to a friend, not exactly an old friend, but a friend I've known and trusted for the past seven or so years.   Ad-Aware Personal SE, the free anti-spyware client from Lavasoft, is no more.  Lavasoft has decided to stop updating the old version.  It will still run if you open it, but will be hopelessly out-of-date within a few weeks.

To replace Ad-Aware Personal SE, Lavasoft has cobbled together a lumbering monstrosity that (I swear) looks like it could have been written by Microsoft!  It's huge, nearly twice the size of the previous version.  It only runs on Windows 2000 or XP (and it can be made to run under Windows Vista, but what a hassle! ...besides, Windows Defender is already doing most of the same stuff, however poorly).  And it runs so terribly slowly that I can't imagine running it at any time other than bedtime.

Here's a very rough comparison:  I downloaded and installed the latest versions of Lavasoft Ad-Aware 2007 and Spybot Search & Destroy.  Both install in about the same time.  Spybot has several separate updates to download, so it takes nearly twice as long to update as Ad-Aware with its one large definition file.  Ad-Aware opens in just a few seconds after being called, compared to times between 1 and 2 minutes to get a splash screen from Spybot (I thought for a while that Spybot was broken, but am now convinced it just always opens slowly, on any computer, regardless of age or speed).  But then comes the real bottleneck:  Spybot says it will scan in around 17 minutes, and actually takes 19 to 21 minutes to scan the entire hard disk, including the registry and all running processes; Ad-Aware doesn't say how long it will take, and I've never managed to wait to see if it would actually finish — I tend to shut down any program that's still running an hour after I start the scan, and that's the level of performance I've seen from Ad-Aware.  Dreadful, if I must say.  And I must.

I've been advising all my clients for the past six or seven years to run Ad-Aware, then run Spybot; each would pick up something the other missed.  That's no longer the case.  I tried switching the order in which the programs were run; Spybot continued to find 1-3 problems that had been missed by Ad-Aware, but I don't remember the last time Ad-Aware caught something Spybot had missed.  And with the new shortcomings imposed by the 'upgrade' to AAW 2007, I don't see any reason to continue running both programs.

Please don't get me wrong, here:  Ad-Aware 2007 is a much better program than I could have written.  I don't code, period.  That having been said, I think the authors, or the folks signing their paychecks, made some bad decisions when they were designing the new version — I'd have stuck with the old version, making minor tweaks as needed, but keeping most of the speed.  As stated much earlier in this rant, this software looks like it was coded at Redmond:  "Now that most computers have all this extra RAM, let's use every last bit of it, and need even more for minimum acceptable performance."

My free Utilities CD no longer contains any version of Ad-Aware.  I don't recommend it; in fact, I recommend that anyone already using it should uninstall it, replacing it with Spybot Search & Destroy and WinPatrol.

Please check out the list of free programs I recommend at  www.ComputerRepairShop.biz/download.html.

(Again I feel compelled to point out:  I write my opinions, not those of TBCS or any other user group that might reprint this column; I write for free, and my pockets are always pretty much empty, so good luck trying to penalize me for speaking the truth as I see it — I'm just not worth suing.)

Icons, We Have Icons!

If you're using Windows 98 or Me, and you like to put icons on your desktop to streamline the process of Shutting Down, Restarting, or Logging Off, you've surely noticed the shortage of icons for these purposes.  No worry, just check out this page on my website:  www.ComputerRepairShop.biz/Archive/shortcuts.html.

There, you'll find shortcuts for the above functions, as well as icons 'borrowed' from Windows XP that will display in earlier versions of Windows.

My free Utilities CD is still available.  I'm trying to keep it current within a week or so, downloading the latest versions of all the security software I recommend just before burning each batch of CD's.  I'll deliver a copy or two for free in the Clearwater, Florida area, or I'll mail you a copy for $4 to cover postage, materials, and hassle.

Thanks.