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Infopackets Reader Ken A. writes: " Dear Dennis, Whenever I try to run Scandisk (and Defrag), Scandisk gets 2/3 through the operation and reports an error message which reads: 'Not enough memory to continue. Close all programs to try again.' Even ... with all programs closed down still cannot run Scandisk. I have Windows 98SE (second edition). I hope you can help! PS: Love all newsletters -- they're great! " My response: Microsoft Knowledge Base article # 229154 states that this error may occur if your hard drive's cluster size is less than 8k. To correct this error, you will need to ... (view more)

Last Friday's article touched upon the importance of backing up an entire computer system (including Windows itself). As you may recall, disk imaging is mentioned frequently in this newsletter, as it is an important part of 'disaster recovery' ... planning. Over the weekend, I received a number of comments and questions from Readers: many of which referenced the fundamentals of disk imaging. Since the questions were similar in nature -- and because disk imaging is such an essential topic -- I have decided to repost an article which illustrates the basics of disk imaging versus 'regular file ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Russell F. writes: " Hi Dennis! I have two questions that I'm hoping you can help me with. First: I do not have Internet Explorer set as my default web browser, yet any link I click outside of Internet Explorer always launch in ... IE. How can I get the default changed to Mozilla Firefox? And, secondly: about two weeks ago all the links in Internet Explorer quit working. I looked everywhere, but could not find an answer. Can you help? " Side note: Mozilla Firefox is a new streamlined web browser which features tabbed browsing, a built in PopUp blocker, and a google ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Judy P. writes: " I have been having problems loading Simply Accounting 2004 onto my computer. Apparently I need a patch to install it on my machine -- unfortunately, the patch produces a strange error message when I try to run ... it. It states: ' Setup could not Complete. Setup cannot be completed because an error was encountered during setup. Please contact your software vendor for more information. ' Any ideas? " My response: I have a number of theories. Ensure that you have downloaded the correct patch. Disable any download accelerators (if you have any installed ... (view more)

Last newsletter, Infopackets Reader Brad B. asked if there was a way to import and print a list of filenames contained in a folder using an MS DOS command. Since then, I have received a number of comments from Readers with alternative solutions. ... Infopackets Reader Sam T. writes: " In your newsletter dated Feb 4, 2004, a reader (Brad B.) was looking for a program that would print the contents of a directory. There is a fabulous freebie program that does the job and it runs in Windows instead of a command line interface. The program name is called LS - File List Generator and I have found ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Brad B. writes: " Dear Dennis, I would like to create a text document which contains a list of my files in a directory. I asked a techie friend of mine how to do it, and he told me to open up an MS DOS Window and use the command: ... 'dir *.* > list.txt' I did that but my file names aren't showing up in full. Can you help?" Side note: MS DOS is the predecessor to Windows. The MS DOS prompt provides an optional way to access or modify files through a command line interface. An MS DOS command prompt can be opened by clicking Start -> Programs -> MSDOS, or if ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Captain HRY' asks, " I would like to send files over the Internet to my son. Any ideas how I can go about doing this? " My response: There are a number of ways to send files to someone over the 'net. The easiest way to send a ... small file is by email attachment or through an Instant Messenger [chat] program. I use both MSN Messenger and ICQ and happen to know that MSN will only allow 1 file transfer at a time. On the other hand, ICQ can send multiple files, providing that the files reside in the same folder on your hard drive. If you're looking to share large files ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Pigginbabe' writes: " Hi, I really like your newsletter and it has really helped me a lot when I sometimes have problems. Question: A while ago, my hard drive went on me and I lost emails that I wanted to keep. Is there any way ... of getting these back? " My response: If the hard drive is completely toast (I.E.: if it won't power up / detect during boot up), then you won't be able to retrieve any data unless you mailed the drive away to a data-recovery company -- which is probably very expensive. However, if the drive still detects under BIOS and still appears under ... (view more)

I received a fascinating question the other day from Infopackets Reader John B. He writes: " Dear Dennis, I just read about a new privacy program which is able to hides files inside jpeg image files. My question is: If I downloaded a jpeg file from ... the Internet, can it have a virus hidden inside? The reason why I ask is because I found a jpeg image file in my temporary Internet file folder. When I tried to open it, I was told that the file .exe could not be located. I immediately deleted the jpeg and am worried that my PC is now infected. What do you think? " My response: What you ... (view more)

Is your computer safe from the dangers of file-sharing? I know mine isn't. Just this past Monday, I received a message stating that the file I received (through Kazaa) was infected with malicious code that could harm my computer. I was lucky that my ... anti-virus program caught the malevolent program from infecting my machine, otherwise I would have launched the file completely blind that my actions may have corrupted my entire hard drive. Indeed, a scary thought. At this point, I paused for a moment and thought to myself, "Could there be other nasty software lurking on my computer that may ... (view more)