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Now I remember what I don’t like about Apple and Macs

Apple products are beautiful and functional. Many people brag about their iPod or Mac’s stability, but there is a good reason that Macs are so stable. Apple is very restrictive as to what others are allowed to do with their systems.

For example, if you have a iPod, you can only use iTunes if you want to sync music to it. If you have another brand of media player, it will not work with iTunes.

Most standard hardware such as keyboards, mice and printers are compatable with both Macs and PCs, but when it comes to software, Apple has some very strict standards that developers must meet and money must exchange hands to apply for Apple approval.

Internet Explorer prints only HTML

Today I ran into a problem that I hadn’t seen before. A customer’s MSN and Internet Explorer browser (including MSN email and web mail) would only print the HTML coding of a web page or email.

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is the programming that is used to present web pages to us and the coding behind text color, bold, etc. in email. We had cleaned some spyware from this users computer earlier in the day, and even printed out some pictures, but a few hours later I received a call about this strange symptom. At first, I thought it was just a forwarded email gone awry, but after arriving on the scene and seeing that word processing documents, test pages, pictures, and spreadsheets all printed fine, the culprit was definitely in Internet Explorer 7.

How to Remove the Greeting Card Virus

Adam and I first mentioned this nasty little virus earlier this spring on our radio show. The email that spreads it poses as an electronic greeting card from your friend or relative. Because the email is so poorly constructed, is never from a known address, and the link it displays in the body of the message is a number (NEVER, EVER Click a link that is constructed of a number, ex: http://91.188.176.15/) we didn’t put much credence in how much damage it could do.

Busy weekend

My work week isn’t over. I have five computers/hard drives that I’m working on this weekend. My most exciting task is to setup an older XP HP machine with Ubuntu Linux. My customer had a huge XP problem and couldn’t use her restore CD’s to get it going. After some discussion of her options, costs, and time involved, she decided to give Ubuntu a try. This customer is retired, but is writing a book, uses a digital camera, is an AOL user, and emails a bunch. However, she loves here computer and has been using one for many years and has no qualms about trying something new.

How to use System Restore

system restoreI don't know how we missed posting this tip, but somehow we did so now I'm rectifying the situation.

One of the best features of Windows XP (and now Vista) is the ability to undo many problems that we may cause ourself or the system causes through updates or other unknown situations. It is called System Restore and it allows you to roll back your system to a previous time when all was blissful without losing any valuable data like email, pictures, and other documents.

Learn how to check your backups

I'm glad to see so many of my customers really starting to take backing up seriously. As we start storing more and more crucial or even irreplaceable data on our computers, it is absolutely imperative that you learn to backup your data properly. 

Once you start backing up, you may start to wonder, "Hmmm, does that disk really have the information that I need on it?" If you are backing up by simple using the Send To function or copying data straight to a flash drive or CD/DVD, then the easy way to check your backup is by double-clicking the drive in My Computer. This will open the drive and let you peer at its contents. If nothing shows up, then your backup method is failing, and you need to adjust. If the data is there, then pat yourself on the back and enjoy the feeling of seeing that your data is safely located on a disk other than your computer's hard drive.

Remember to feed your mouse

Interestingly, I received two phone calls and another email today all regarding the same subject. Upon starting their computers, these users could not move their cursor around the screen…despite repeated attempts. It turns out that in all three cases, they were using cordless mice. Cordless mice talk to the computer via radio waves to a receiver attached to the computer. Since they are cordless, they can't get power from the computer (like corded mice do) so they get power from batteries. Some mice use AAA batteries, others use AA. In all cases, these batteries need to be replaced from time-to-time.

Turning off system restore

There are two ways to turn off System Restore (probably more).

Way number 1:

1. Right Click on My Computer

2. Choose Properties from the menu

3. A window will come up

4. Choose the System Restore tab at the top

5. Check the box to turn off System Restore

6. Click Apply and OK

 

Way number 2:

1. Click on Start -> (All) Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore

2. Click on System Restore Settings link

3. Check the Turn off System Restore box

4. Click Apply and OK

Solution for computer that can’t change desktop wallpaper / background

This solution WILL fix your problem, but don’t run away afterwards and forget about us.

HelpMeRick.com contains hundreds of tips (and video tips) that YOU can use as a reference for yourself and
especially as a reference to send links to your friends/family so you don’t have to write out or explain the steps yourself!

Restore the Show Desktop icon

I have had at least three people ask me how to do this lately, so I thought I would throw it up on the web site for all of us to have as a reference:

1.    Click Start , click Run, type notepad, and then click OK.
2.    In Notepad, type the following text on individual lines:

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop

3.    Click File —> Save As from the menus
4.    In the Save In box, choose Desktop
5.    In the file name box type:   Show Desktop.scf
6.    Click Save