Tech Help Site

Phil writes:

I am having a problem when I open AVI files that I create from the video camera. When I select them I get a message that reads ‘ Dr Watson Postmorten Debugger ‘ you have a problem’. When I click the box to close it, it locks up the computer and I have to do a soft boot.
Sometimes it brings up the Microsoft error reporting message that you have a problem and closing you down. I click on don’t send message and I go back to the desk top.
I opened [Windows file folder for error message debugging]. There is a lot of files in the folder telling me what has been done.

I also am getting the Window Explorer message, when I click on a AVI file and when I click don’t send message it closes me back to the desk top.

Do you know what might be happening.

I know Phil does a lot of video editing and makes some great photo and video keepsakes for his family. Like most of us he has tried a few different programs and Windows being the complicated software that it is he has in the past had some trouble with file formats and such. So I was thinking that this might be another recurrence of your old problems.

But a little bit of research reveals some more info. Once again the sheer volume of help available from Google is mindboggling – you just have to know how to search.

I found this discussion thread at a forum called MovieCodec.com. The details here are exactly the problem Phil is having.

Windows has a default habit of offering you a preview of multimedia files when you are searching through Windows Explorer. You know how when you open My Videos or whatever and select a video and Windows wants to show you a little preview copy – that’s what I mean. Ok so what happens is Windows (well Windows Explorer actually) takes control of the file and then when you try to access it the file is ‘in use’ and Explorer locks up and requires a restart which a lot of the times will mean restarting your whole system. This lock up triggers the Windows error reporting messages and Dr Watson which is Windows debugging program.

What the linked info suggests doing is to de-register the Windows settings, specifically a DLL file, that do the preview function. By so doing it can avoid this lock up problem altogether

The easiest way is to run a command through the ‘Run’ setting or to save the settings as a Batch file. A batch file is just a plain text file but with the extension changed from txt to bat. Running a batch file is like double-clicking a program file – the simple code written in the file will run. For that reason some antivirus programs will rightly try to block batch files. More Info on Batch files  is available here at Wikipedia

To help out I have made the batch text files for you and you can download them below. There are 2 files – one turns the setting off as described and the other turns it back on.So if changing it didn’t help or you wanted to go back to having the preview you just run the On file.

WinShellMediaOff – turns OFF the Windows Shell Media Handling

WinShellMediaOn– turns ON the Windows Shell Media Handling

Click and save the file somewhere like your Desktop. Once saved right click and choose Rename and change the extension (the bit after the dot) from name.txt to name.bat. Then double click the bat file to run it. If you want to see the contents of these files just open the Text file and read before you change the names to bat or read the website.

So give this a go Phil – I reckon it will work and shouldn’t do any harm if not. Other people on the site say that downloading the newest DivX codec solved their problem.So if this fix doesn’t work that would be my next suggestion. The latest version is always available at DivX.com

Let us know how you go

This article at Atomic suggests that there will be more WGA fun coming to your Windows machine – particularly if you are running Windows XP Pro. If someone is running a pirated version of Windows then they deserve these problems I guess but usually these sort of initiatives stop some perfectly legal PCs working too. Time will tell whether this is as annoying as the last WGA patch.

Any bets on how long it takes the internet hackers to circumvent the patch? My bet is a reliable workaround widely available in less than a week. I don’t know why Microsoft don’t work harder on making the system better and cheaper rather than wasting their efforts trying to stop it being stolen.

FOR THOSE OF YOU who come online to escape the nagging wife, bad news is ahead – Microsoft is introducing what can only be described as ‘nagware’ in an attempt to stamp out piracy of its beloved operating system.
The new Windows Genuine notification software will aim to stop the stolen and pirated versions of software being circulated using new Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) which comes into effect this week.
The WGA notifications will be delivered via Windows Update and will default the users background to black if the copy is deemed counterfeit.
A spokeswoman for Microsoft said that, "the update simply reconfigures the notifications experience to mirror notifications in Windows Vista SP1."
This annoying piece of inspiration will make it easier for Microsoft to detect stolen and pirated software as well as fake product keys.
The spokeswoman continued to say that, "Microsoft is making these changes to simplify the installation process (making it easy for customers to stay up-to-date), to increase the effectiveness of these notifications, and to align experiences across Windows XP and Windows Vista." – hmmm.
The nagware will be aimed specifically at XP Professional users for now, as Microsoft believes this is the most pirated edition.
XP users who don’t have WGA notifications will be asked to accept an End User License Agreement which gives the users consent for the anti-piracy validation control to auto-update itself with fewer releases.
Microsoft thinks this irritant will take a couple of months to roll out – you have been warned.

I just read this article at LifeHacker.com It’s about the myths around what works and what doesn’t  work when trying to speed up Windows. You should check it out

http://lifehacker.com/5033518/debunking-common-windows-performance-tweaking-myths

Windows XP and Vista do a fair job of self maintenance, etc. A lot of these techniques originated back in the Win 95 & 98 days when users could squeeze a little more performance out of Windows with a few behind the scenes tricks. They simply don’t work much anymore.

Now I don’t agree with everything in the article. Here’s my thoughts:

Disabling QoS to Free Up 20% of Bandwidth

Yep – this has little to no effect for most people. Your connection rarely runs at 100%

Clean, Defrag and Boost Your RAM With SnakeOil Memory Optimizer

I absolutely agree. In every case I have seen these programs used they have made the situation worse not better. I think they may have had a use back in Windows 95 but even by Windows 98 they were useless

Cleaning the Registry Improves Performance

I disagree with this one. I think a good registry cleaner can make a noticeable difference. Just make sure you use a reputable program that makes registry back-ups. For a free product I find CCleaner very good.

Disabling Services to Speed Up the Computer

I disagree. Some services can be disabled and DO make a difference. Some programs install their services that don’t offer much functionality and can be disabled. For example iTunes installs a number of services including 1 to check for software updates, 1 to launch iTunes when you plug in your iPod, 1 to communicate across a network with iPods and iPhones and others. You don’t need all these processes running in the background and if you have a lot of unnecessary ones it will slow you down. So check out your running processes and carefully and selectively disable the ones you don’t need.

Refer this site for detailed information on each service BlackViper.com

OK so now we know how NOT to speed up our PC. Tomorrow I will send you my suggestions on what you can do that WILL speed up your PC.

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas please email me or leave them in the comments.

Following is an article from WindowsSecrets.com regarding Win XP and how to keep using it for a while. Personally I like Vista and I won’t be going back to XP but then my laptop is new and fast and came with Vista pre-installed. Anyone who like me is buying a new PC or laptop should get a version of Vista on it and be good to go. But for your current machine I don’t recommend updating to Vista – stick with XP and follow these tips to keep it running sweetly.

In addition to these tips I recommend using a disk image program (like Acronis) which we have discussed previously and which Ian has demonstrated at our meetings. With Win XP SP3 out now it would be a good time to do a fresh install of Windows with an install of SP3 and then imaging it for archive purposes – you will never have to do a reinstall of Windows again!

When Windows XP was released, wireless routers were rare, few cell phones supported e-mail, and YouTube was just a gleam in some PayPal employees’ eyes.
But like a fabled perpetual motion machine, XP keeps on going and going — and if you follow some simple guidelines, the OS will keep running in top condition until Vista’s successor is ready in 2010.

XP is an operating system with serious legs

Microsoft may not have planned it this way, but XP could end up rivaling NT and 2000 as the version of Windows with the longest lifespan. According to recent news reports, Dell, Lenovo, and other computer manufacturers will continue to sell new PCs running Windows XP well past Microsoft’s June 30 cutoff date.

PC vendors will do so by invoking a downgrade plan that lets them ship a system with Windows XP installed as long as the customer is also paying for an upgrade to Vista Business or Ultimate editions, either of which is included in each box.

Of course, computer manufacturers aren’t the only ones looking for ways to extend XP’s usefulness. One pundit has predicted that Microsoft itself is going to fast-track Windows 7 to get customers to leapfrog over the unpopular Vista and go directly from XP to the next version. In fact, according to the technology site Ars Technica, one major American corporation, General Motors, is considering doing just that.

Eight simple rules for keeping XP rejuvenated

If you’re one of the many people who plan to stick with XP as long as possible, you need to take a few relatively painless steps to keep that aging OS perky. Here are my eight rules for extending XP’s usefulness to 2010 and beyond.

Rule 1: The latest ain’t always the greatest. As a rule, older operating systems were designed to work with older software. Unless you need some utterly indispensable feature found only in the latest Adobe Creative Suite or Microsoft Office 2007, stick to the preceding releases. Not only will the senior apps run faster, most of the kinks and bugs have already been worked out of them.

If your hardware and software work fine as is, don’t bother upgrading any drivers, either. At the same time, driver upgrades often smooth out minor problems that you’ve just grown used to.

One way to check for out-of-date device drivers is to use the online scanner from Driver Updates. (Note that using this service requires running an ActiveX component in Internet Explorer.)

MATT’S note – don’t join this paid site – it’s a rip off! Just use the information they provide to work out what drivers need replacing

Should you discover that one of your drivers is out of date, go to the manufacturer’s site to find and download the latest version available (but skip any beta releases). Remember to back up your system before installing the new driver in case it causes problems.

Rule 2: Make an exception for security. Set Rule 1 aside when it comes to your security software and services. Update your virus and spyware definitions frequently. Get the latest security updates for your browser and for QuickTime, Flash, and other media players as well. Some of the dangers of unpatched software are explained in the April 17 Top Story.

Rule 3: Stay young and beautiful. The last exception to Rule 1 is to make a cautious investment in a handful of utilities that improve and modernize XP. You’ll find a number of free and low-cost programs that approximate or even duplicate Vista’s best new features without having to invest in a whole new operating system.

For a guide to applications that give XP handy features of Vista’s Business edition, see my July 12, 2007, column. To read about ways to add features from Vista Enterprise or Ultimate editions to XP, check out my July 19, 2007, column.

Rule 4: Shop carefully for new hardware. If your XP system needs a processor, memory, or other hardware upgrade to keep it from bogging down on your applications, there is no reason why you can’t swap out an aging component or add some RAM.

However, since some new components are designed with Vista in mind, make sure the products you buy work as advertised under XP. Check the manufacturers’ site for XP driver downloads before you make your purchase, and look for online reviews that mention the products’ XP compatibility.

Rule 5: Don’t let startup stuff slow you down. It seems like every program you install these days wants to start along with Windows. These auto-start apps are usually represented by an icon in your system tray (the area near your clock). Even if your system has oodles of memory, these little doodads can slow you down without offering any real value.

An excellent tool for finding what gizmos are starting up each time you log into Windows is Autoruns, available from Microsoft (originally from Sysinternals). Simply uncheck the item to disable it from starting, or select an entry and delete it to effect a more permanent removal.
If you can’t figure out what a particular startup app does, right-click its entry in the Autoruns window and choose Search Online. This performs a Google search (rather than a Live search, which you might expect). Scour the results to find out whether the program has a legitimate reason for needing to run all the time.

If the Web search isn’t helpful in rooting out a program’s purpose, check the list of common startup applications maintained by Paul Collins to figure out what’s getting started with Windows.
Finally, the free version of WinPatrol can warn you whenever a program attempts to add an item to your startup list.

Clear the clutter from XP’s many cubbyholes

Rule 6: Save on disk space. A problem that plagues nearly all aging systems is the pack-rat syndrome. Just using a PC day to day causes an ever-increasing amount of data to be stored in ever-shrinking disk space. These tips will help you recover some of that precious drive capacity.

• Eliminate hibernation files. XP’s hibernation feature stores everything currently in RAM onto your hard disk, which allows you to return to your session more quickly after a period of inactivity. Unfortunately, hibernation needs about the same amount of disk space as your current amount of RAM (for example, 1GB of disk space if you have 1GB of RAM).
  If you don’t use XP’s hibernate feature very often, you can save the space occupied by the hiberfil.sys file: choose Start, Run; type powercfg.cpl; click the Hibernate tab; uncheck Enable hibernation; and click OK.
• Don’t let iTunes make you hear double. If you use Windows Media Player to rip CDs to your computer in the Windows Media Audio (.wma) format and then decide to give iTunes a try, beware! iTunes will convert those songs into its Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format, resulting in duplicate files for every song iTunes manages. To avoid that, use a single music format (such as .mp3) that all media players can handle.
• Store stuff online. Another way to save on disk space is to transfer files to an online storage service. You may already store your e-mail and photos online. Yahoo’s Flickr service lets you store as many photos as you like, but unless you upgrade to a paid account, you’ll never be able to see more than the last 100.
  Google’s Picasa Web albums provide 1GB of free storage. And if you’re willing to pay, you can get a whole lot more storage space than that.
  Of course, you don’t need to limit yourself to mail and photos. A number of sites offer free or low-cost online storage. For example, Mozy gives you 2GB of free storage through its MozyHome service. MozyPro accounts start at U.S. $4.50 per gigabyte per month.
  Many sites, including ElephantDrive, Omnidrive, and Box, provide only 1GB of free storage. Each service offers larger storage options at varying prices.
  Finally, IBackup has economy plans that charge only $1 per gigabyte per month (and less for annual rates). By comparison, the popular Data Deposit Box charges $2 monthly for each gigabyte you use.

MATT’S NOTE – Box.net is great and free, has lots of features and is easy to use. Microsoft Live Skydrive is also good and offers a whooping 5Gb of free online storage

• Offload files to a new drive. Even if you’ve purchased a new hard drive to expand your storage space, you may still be running out of room on your Windows drive. Fortunately, you can move your virtual memory paging file, Internet Explorer cache files, My Documents, and other system files to another drive or partition. For step-by-step information, see my column from the Feb. 28 issue.

Rule 7: Keep it clean. It makes no sense to hang onto useless junk files that Windows uses for its own purposes. Fortunately, Windows’ own Disk Cleanup tool can clear out this system clutter. For details on how to customize Disk Cleanup for maximum efficiency, see Fred Langa’s Mar. 13 column in the paid portion of the newsletter.
Disk Cleanup also removes the outdated restore points created by System Restore that you no longer need. In the Disk Cleanup window, click the More Options tab. Under System Restore, click Clean up and confirm that you want to delete all but the current restore point.

Unfortunately, Disk Cleanup misses certain temp files. To make a little batch file that clears these folders, open Notepad and type the following:
del /s /q "C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Local Settings\Temp\*.*"
Replace yourname with the name of the account you’ve logged into and adjust the drive letter or path as needed. Save the file with a .cmd or .bat extension (for example, killtemp.bat) and put the file or a shortcut to it in your Startup group (Start, All Programs, Startup). This way, it will run each time you log in to your Windows account.

Rule 8. Do your chores. Joan Rivers described my attitude to PC maintenance when she said, "I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes, and six months later you have to start all over again."

Odious as PC housekeeping can be, get into the disk-maintenance habit: make backups, defrag your hard disks, and check them for errors. Fortunately, you can use XP’s Scheduled Tasks utility (Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks) to automate or partially automate these chores by setting the program to give you a gentle reminder.

Link to the original article at Windows Secrets

I have been keeping an eye on the reviews for AVG Antivirus 2008.

You will see in the past I have recommended AVG as a very good product available for free. The new version looks to be very good and includes:

• A refreshed user interface. This just means it looks nicer
• Link checker included
• Anti-Spyware included
• Improved scanning speed

Read the details below for more information. One of the things I really liked about AVG in the past was that it used so little system resources. This means on older/slower computers particularly those with low memory it still ran well and didn’t bog the PC down like, say, Norton would. I haven’t installed and run the new AVG myself so let’s hope this still holds true with the update.

So if like me your machine has started flashing the ads asking you to upgrade to (the paid version) of AVG 8 jump over to the website and download the new free version.

Download available here

 

Review from Makeuseof.com

It’s one of the mysteries of the internet that I have never been able to get my head around – why anyone would want to pay through the nose for anti-virus software when there are perfectly good free alternatives out there. For the past five years, I have been using AVG from Grisoft and I have always been amazed at how great it is. The other day, they rolled out their 2008 free version and it blew my socks right off.

To give you an indication right off the bat of how good it is, a friend of mine has Norton Anti-Virus (for which he pays for) and it failed to detect a virus. On my recommendation, he downloaded AVG Anti-Virus 2008 – and it detected the virus immediately. My friend is now so disgusted with Norton that he has uninstalled it from his computer and he can’t stop raving about AVG 2008.

AVG does everything that a virus checker normally does – real time virus checking to begin with. When a virus enters your computer, AVG immediately flashes a warning sign on your screen with the location of the virus and it asks you what you want it to do. Obviously you want the virus moved immediately to the secure virus vault and once you make that choice, AVG moves away to do it and you can then continue with what you were doing before *cough* looking at naughty websites *cough*.

Secondly, AVG also scans your incoming and outgoing emails if you download your emails to an offline client such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird. It quarantines and zaps suspicious attachments, especially if it has a file type “exe”.

So far, nothing to make you go “WOW!”. It’s all fairly standard stuff so far. So let’s see what Grisoft has done to the 2008 version that has impressed me personally :

First of all, they have radically re-designed the interface. The designers have really gone to work on it to make it aesthetically pleasing. I like companies that go that extra mile to make their products look nice.

Secondly, they have introduced some new features. I can now tell it to remove malicious tracking cookies from my computer. This was not available in its predecessor (at least not in the free version of AVG). What it also does is real-time monitoring of malicious tracking cookies whenever you visit a website. So when you visit a site and that site tries to put a bad cookie on your computer, AVG will instantly flash a warning sign on your screen asking you what you want to do. You are given the option of looking up the cookie in the online AVG database for more information before deciding whether to nuke the cookie or ignore it.

Also, when I make searches on Google, AVG tells me if the search results are safe to click on or if the pages have spyware in them.

The green arrow indicates a safe site (I presume a bad site is a red cross). My only complaint about this is that the checking process can take a while (thereby slowing down my searching) so I may eventually switch this feature off in the AVG options.

The next new feature is that you can control the speed of the virus checking process. You can choose between “slow scan”, “automatic scan” and “fast scan” :

But regardless of this feature, AVG 2008 overall is MUCH faster than its predecessor. You will notice a much improved scanning speed. It’s like the older AVG on steroids. I don’t know what the AVG engineers are feeding their virus scanner to make it go so fast but it must be good!

If you have the older AVG, I strongly recommend you upgrade (you will need to uninstall the older version of AVG first). If you don’t have AVG, I strongly recommend you uninstall whatever it is that you’re using and you start using AVG instead because this little beauty is the King of the Anti-Virus Jungle.

Grisoft Rolls Out 2008 Version of Free AVG Anti-Virus | MakeUseOf.com

I thought this was interesting with some useful suggestions. See my suggestions too – MATT

Most of you reading this have encountered people asking you to solve problems on their computers – more than once. You’re an expert in their eyes, and they want you to solve the problems they’re facing with their PCs. They might be your family members, your colleagues or whatever.

If you frequently encounter situations like this, you can arm yourself with the following tools and make things easy for yourself and others when you’re working on a problematic computer system. Feel free to suggest your favourite softwares in the comments section below.

Anti Spyware

You gotta have one. Install Spybot Search and Destroy and/or Ad Aware. Both do a good job, but the former is a bit slow when compared to Ad Aware.

Don’t forget Windows Defender from Microsoft. Free for XP and built in to Vista

Anti Virus

Avast! Free – That does a lot for being free, I should say. The On Access Scanner is the best part and you’ll have to leave it installed on the PC – the next time any of your closest ones click on a ‘Congratulations, you’ve won $$$’ banner, their PCs are protected for sure thanks to Avast’s on access realtime web traffic scanning.

Another good antivirus is AVG, does a lot of stuff, but still Avast! wins. You can read a comparison of AVG and Avast! here.

I have also read some good things about Avira Antivir free

Junk File Removers

You surely must have seen disks filled with nothing but junk. Sometimes they go up to a few GBs or more, and that’s the place where tools like these get handy.

CCleaner -That’s the best junk remover I’ve ever used. Has all that you might need in one place: a junk file cleaner, an uninstaller and also a registry cleaner. It’s more reliable than other such junk removers.

HijackThis – Scans the nook and corner and checks and reports to you. You can remove bad items from start up and take down other suspicious services. But beware – be sure of what you’re doing with this program.

I have a paid subscription to JV16 Powertools which is a good program but for free CCleaner is the go

PC Decrapifier

Rightly named, this tool removes the nuisances that come pre installed with your Windows PC. If anyone from your family has just got a new PC installed with Windows, you gotta run this program to cut the crap. Download it here.

If you buy a new PC like my Dell laptop they load it up with all sorts of custom applications. Some are useful but most are not. This program strips away all the excess rubbish and will usually make your new computer run faster as a result.

Partition Manager – GParted Live CD

Sure you’ve tried many partition managers else before, but I can’t resist myself by putting this up here. GParted is open source and is very very light. It can do copying, resizing, moving operations in around a dozen filesystems.

Ultimate Boot CD – Recovery Tool

It’s the ultimate Swiss Army Knife that comes packed in with tools that do varied jobs like memory tests, hard disk diagnosis, partitioning, system benchmarking and lots more. Definitely a must have. Get it here.

UBCD for Windows

UBCD4Win is similar to the above mentioned software, but runs directly on Windows.

I have used UBCD before and I have found it to be easier to use than some of the Linux ‘Live’ CDs

DriverMax

DriverMax lets you copy your current hardware drivers and reinstall them later if you don’t have the setup files of each of your hardware drivers.

Quite useful, but the person on whose computer working on must already have a driver backup that’s been done using this software.

There are a number of similar programs and that’s because backing up your drivers is a good idea.

gOS

Ahh! You can ask why this is listed here, but what if you can’t get your PC’s OS to work? You want the internet to work and need something desperately done, but XP won’t start.

Not a problem if you have a Linux live CD in hand. Just pop the CD in, access the internet, send the email that you had to send or do whatever you wanted to get done. All without writing on to your hard disk and not damaging anything that’s already there.

I’m mentioning gOS here specifically because it has got quite good integration with Google services and pretty much works out of the box.

There are many other Live CDs available, you can check here for that. Make sure you download one and have it burnt on a disk for emergency uses.

Best Software Tools for the Family Tech Support Guy

For those (few) of us who are using Windows Vista (whatever version – Home Basic or Premium, Business or Ultimate) will find like I did that Service Pack 1 is available to download today via Windows Update.

With all the testing etc that has been done I feel confident in installing it today – it’s downloading right now. If you want to be more cautious you could wait a week or two just to see if any final problems come to light.

Windows Update is by far the fastest and easiest way to get it installed. The download will probably be <70mb this way. If you would like to download the stand-alone installer it is 435mb and it is available here. The standalone installer can be handy if you want to slipstream your install DVD with the SP1 updates.

For those still waiting for Windows XP SP3 to be finalised and released I expect this Vista release will clear the way for that to happen. There is no way that XP SP3 was going gold before Vista SP1 But it shouldn’t be long now.

Hi all – we have a question from Ian today

Hi Matt.
The other night you mentioned that some of the later models of Apple Mac’s can have installed on a separate petition, a Windows operating system. A friend of mine has just been given by his Son an Apple iMac. How do I find out whether or not this can have a Windows Operating System installed. If so I feel that I can assist him as this is the first PC that he has had.
Ian

Hi Ian
If it is a reasonably new iMac you will be OK.
To directly install windows on a dual-boot arrangement the processor in the Mac needs to be an Intel.
All Macs have had Intel, rather than the older Power PC or PPC chips for at least 2 years now I think. SO if it’s less than 2 years old he will probably be right.

Use the details at this page to tell him how to look up his system information
If he has an Intel CPU we are go

Apparently the dual install process is pretty easy. I have never done it but you use an official Apple product called ‘Boot Camp’ which guides you through the install process and tells you when to put in the Windows CD. Here is a couple of links with instructions on how. The first has links to Apple help too

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/04/boot-camp-tutorial-install-windows-xp.html
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_i_install_windows_xp_on_my_mac_using_boot_camp_1.html

It’s pretty amazing to think that Apple have an official way for you to install the competitors system. I wonder if Microsoft would ever work in reverse and help you to install Apple products, etc – No I don’t think so either

Notice I said directly above because it is possible to run windows in a "virtual environment" from within Mac OS X.

The two major competitors in the software area that support this are:

Parallels Desktop for Mac

VMware Fusion

But to be honest if the Mac isn’t new or fast enough to run Windows via install it probably isn’t fast enough to run it successfully virtualised either and you will only confuse the poor guy anyway.

If he has never used either computer system he will probably be happy with the Mac and OS X. Some people would be of the opinion that the Mac OS X is easier to use for a beginner and that given it’s stability, security from viruses and so on he is less likely to get himself into trouble. As Keith said in his presentation to us a couple of months ago his kids have yet to be able to really break their Mac but they were buggering Windows XP up every other week.

But if he is going to need a lot of help getting started then you will have difficulty helping him as you aren’t familiar with the Mac. Frankly neither am I – although I have bought one to tinker with. So I will have to leave it up to you what you advise him.

Good luck with it

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G’day all. Ross and I agree that Thursday night was a really good Mullies meeting for those who braved the cold windy night! Note from Ross:

Hi Matt
thanks for the help and for bringing along your laptops…great stuff.
I was wondering do you still have the article on how to repair XP without having to lose all the info on your hard drive?
I think it was on one of those newsletters that you get?
Can you help, thanks.
What shall we do next month, someone suggested SL ?
Oh and your Mulligroup email address is not working?
Regards Ross Johnson

To answer the questions in reverse, yes the old email address for the group changed slightly when the website address changed. The details were sent through but for those who missed it the new address is:

mulligrubs@miltonulladulla.com

You should receive an email of this post from the above address and now the website is all set up it shouldn’t change again. Please update your address book and if necessary add the address to you ‘whitelist’ so it doesn’t get blocked as spam. Remember if you ever want to subscribe to our emails, change your email address or unsubscribe then please just send a note to the same address.

What does everyone think about a topic for next month’s discussion? Ross suggests a discussion of Second Life game. Does anyone have any other ideas, suggestions or requests?

I am an early apology for next month’s meeting as I will be on stage at "The Entertainers" that night. If you have never been to Entertainers before do yourself a favour. It’s a great live show with a 2 course dinner for less than $40 with all proceeds going to charity – not much wrong with that.

OK now on to Ross’s question – yes we have discussed a few ways of repairing Windows XP. All the questions and stuff we write is posted to the website which is at:

http://www.mulligrubs.miltonulladulla.com

There are 2 ways to find information on our website.

Website search

I use Blogger to host our page and Blogger is owned by Google. So it is no surprise that the default Blogger page includes an integrated search component. The search box is in the banner at the top of the page – refer the picture below. Type something in the search box and you can quickly see if we have discussed it before.

So for example if we type in Ross’s query "repair XP" and this page comes up.

If we look down the list we can see that back in November 2006 we posted some details about Four ways to repair Windows XP. One of the ways referred to here in the article is the The No-Reformat, Nondestructive Total-Rebuild Option which is probably what Ross is after.

The other thing you may have noticed is the "Topic Index" on our Blog page (refer the picture above again). Recently I have been using Blogger’s ability to ‘tag’ each post with topics or details of what it is about. Blogger tallies all these up and keeps the Topic Index. As I have only been doing this for a few months it doesn’t link to all the posts but I hope to go back and tag the older posts too. So if you would like to catch up on any particular topic just click on the topic in the list and away you go.

Last but not least there is a Blog Archive link at the bottom of the page that lists all the posts by the month. So if you want to search by date this is your best bet. It’s really amazing how easy all of this stuff is. I just write the details and send it to Blogger and the rest takes care of itself.

So please take the time to look back on where we have been. We have already touched on a lot of worthwhile information. And remember this is a group effort -  I will gladly post anyone else’s writing -  and Ross and I will and all our members will try to answer any question or help with any problem you may have. So send ‘em in!

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Following on from our previous article about Photo Story

Refer the previous post/article here: How to create a multimedia photo movie

Hi Matt

Have just received your email with regard to Photo story 3 for windows.
I was very interested in it.  Would I have to download previous  No 1 or 2 to be able to use this program to its full  potential?

Thanks for the question Joy

This is version 3 – obviously there was originally a version 1 & 2. You do not need an earlier version to download and install version 3 and use it’s full features

And of course it is completely free – Thanks Microsoft!

The program will work very well without any other paid software. You do not need to pay for the DVD burning plug-in referred to in the article ($20US for the plug-in – you can get Nero for that!). Most CD/DVD burning programs will burn the discs – there are free ones like DeepBurner if you don’t have Nero/Roxio or similar

The link to the download site in the original email/article does not work – it’s out of date
Here are a couple of links that do work:
Microsoft Link
Download.com
If you go to the MS link you will need to prove you have a valid copy of Windows XP to download the grogram but not at Download.com

The program is just over 5mb in size so even on dial-up it won’t take that long to download. Note this program is only for Windows XP
If you have Win 95/98/ME – sorry
If you have Vista then Windows Movie Maker incorporates all the functions of Photo Story

Last but not least check out this site www.windowsphotostory.com 
It has lots of detailed step by step guides on how to use Photo Story
I’d forgotten but I used this when I made my project and it is really well made and helpful

Good luck with the Movie Making!

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