My computer won't shut down!

Brook says: "My computer won't shut down; I have to use the power button. I'm running Windows XP. Please help!"

The Geek replies: Brook, there are many possible causes for your problem, but the most common one I see on computers like yours is a thing called the “nVidia Driver Helper” service. Neither I, nor my fellow Geeks, know exactly what it is supposed to do, but it sure can cause shutdown problems. And turning it off doesn't appear to hurt anything. Here's how to disable it:

Go to Start > Run and type services.msc. Locate the nVidia Driver Helper item and right click it. Select Properties. Set the startup value of the service to “Manual” or “Disabled”.

Your computer should shut down normally now.

Outlook saves images only as bitmaps (.bmp)

Q. When I save pictures received in email while using Outlook, they are always automatically saved as Bitmap files. I wish to save them as received, either JPG or Gif. This problem does not exist when I employ Outlook Express. I’m running Windows XP Home with SP2 and all updates are current. I have Microsoft Office 2003 Student & Teachers Edition installed. I have been unable to locate the setting(s) to enable pictures received in email using Outlook to be saved in JPG or GIF or the option to control what file type of they will be saved in.

A. The funny thing about Outlook is that it's not Outlook causing your problem, it's Internet Explorer. All of the picture and web display work for Outlook is done by IE, so it's there we have go.

According to Microsoft Knowledge Base article 810978 there are several things that could cause your problem, but let's address the most likely cause first: "a damaged program file...is downloaded to the Downloaded Program Files folder on your hard disk." Here's how to fix it:

1. Start Internet Explorer (if it is not already started).
2. Empty the contents of the Temporary Internet Files folder. To do so:
         a. On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
         b. Click the General tab.
         c. Under Temporary Internet files, click Delete Files.
         d. When you are prompted to delete all temporary Internet files, click OK.
3. In the Downloaded Program Files folder on your hard disk, remove the files that are listed as either Unknown or Damaged. To do so:
         a. On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
         b. Click the General tab.
         c. Under Temporary Internet files, click Settings.
         d. Click View Objects.
The list of program files that are downloaded to the SystemRoot\Downloaded Program Files folder on your hard disk appears in the Downloaded Program Files window.
         e. In the Status column, note the files that are listed as either Unknown or Damaged. Remove these files. To do so, right-click the file, and then click Remove.
         f. When you are prompted to confirm the removal, click Yes.
         g. Close the Downloaded Program Files window, and then click OK two times.

Christmas toys for geeks

Christmas is right around the corner and you're wondering just what kind of toy to buy for that special geek in your life. You DO have a special geek in your life, don't you? If you don't, SHAME on you! Find one, NOW! My dad always knew about the latest geek toys (even though we weren't called "geeks" back then). He was an intellectual, a chemist, interested in everything; he fit the definition of geek perfectly. One of the best geek toys he ever got for me was the DigiComp-1, the world's "first real operating digital computer in plastic." You can see a picture of DigiComp-1 here and a closeup picture here. I learned about computers from that toy; to this day, I can do "computer" math with 1's and 0's. Unfortunately, DigiComp is no longer available, but there are plenty of other geek toys out there. I have two favorites in the "stocking stuffer" category: Sonic Sound Sizzlers™ noise-making magnets; and, a "forever" flashlight.

The Sonic Sound Sizzlers™ is a pack of two two-inch long, cigar shaped magnets that make a perfectly cool buzzing noise that sounds something like zzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZT! Well, it's cool to geeks; it's positively irritating to almost everyone else, especially female spouses. To make the sound, you put the pods in the palm of your hand and hold them apart with your thumb. Then, you toss them straight up. As they come together and spin, they vibrate, making the sound. I've had my set since yesterday evening and I've already discovered at least four different "throwing" techniques to make different sounds. My favorite isn't a throw at all; rather, it's more of a roll in the palm. It makes a short high-ptiched burst that sounds like "jeep" (yes, just like the character of the same name in the old Popeye cartoons). I got mine at Dollar General for two bucks. If you don't have a Dollar General store where you are, you can find them online at ThinkGeek.com under the name Uber Orbs.

What self-respecting geek would be without a flashlight--or several--for looking into those dark corners of the gadgets he loves or navigating the treacherous twists, turns and tangles of video, audio, and computer cables? But flashlights use batteries and batteries eventually wear out. Not so with the "forever" flashlight: It never needs batteries, you just shake it up and down a few times and the built-in generator gives you enough juice to power the flashlight for a few minutes. There's even a crank-up model. You can find them easily enough, along with a description of what makes them tick, at ForeverFlashlights.com. You don't have to spend between $16.99 - $39.99, though; you can find a made-in-China knockoff at Walgreens for $5.99 or 2/$10. It's not listed in the online catalog, so you'll probably have to do some legwork.

So, what IS the best glass cleaner?

Curiosity got the best of you, eh? I knew that blurb about washing windows all day to find the best cleaner would make you wonder. People hate cleaning windows and I think it's because you can never get them clean; that is, not if you use that stuff you buy at the store (begins with a W). It always leaves streaks, no matter what you do. That's because it has a wax in it that's supposed to make the windows sparkle, but really just forces you to wear your arms out trying to polish the glass. Forget that! I want to spray, spread, squeegee and be done with it.

The best window cleaner is 1/8 to 1/4 tsp. Dawn (regular) brand dish liquid per quart of water. Use the smaller amount for normal cleaning, the larger for tough, greasy or nicotine-stained windows. Believe me, it cuts through everything. It's all I use. And you've probably heard this before, but newspaper IS the best thing to use on windows. If you spray the cleaner on, use newspaper to spread it. Then squeegee and touch up by polishing with a dry sheet. You'll get some ink on your fingers, but you'll have sparkling clean glass.

Kool Tool: Clipmarks

In response to my article, "Don't bookmark it--Furl it!", Wally wrote to say I should try Clipmarks. So, I went to the site and watched the demo. Unlike Furl and Spurl, which store entire web pages that you have bookmarked, Clipmarks lets you select and save snippets of text, photos or other graphics off a web page; you clip and save just the stuff you want from any web page. I've been saving clips and quotes into notes for years, but it's cumbersome to manually copy-and-paste the stuff and I still have to either type in or copy-and-paste a link to the source. Clipmarks automatically stores the source URL with your clipping.

Like the other services, Clipmarks lets you add tags (keywords), comments and share your clipmarks with friends. Your clipmarks are private unless you choose to share them. There's a Public Clipmarks section where you can search and see what others are clipping and who the clippers are. You might soon find some of the stuff I'm clipping because I'm off to sign up. See ya on Clipmarks!...K

My emails are gone!

Q. Please help me! All of my emails are gone. My computer died. The computer guy replaced the power supply and that fixed it, but when I go into Outlook, all of my old emails are gone; all I can see are the emails that came in today. They were all there just a few minutes ago on the laptop I used to log into Outlook.

A. Ah! There's the problem. You can relax; your emails didn't disappear, they're just where you can't see them. The laptop you logged onto was set to use "Personal Folders" as the mail destination. When you logged into Outlook, all of your emails were downloaded into a special file on the laptop's hard drive. They are no longer on the server, so you can't see them. If you ever have to access your email from a machine other than your own, the safest way is to log into the Outlook Web Access; that way, all of your email stays on the server.

[I fixed her problem by logging onto the laptop and copying the emails from the Personal Folders back to the Mailbox on the server.]

For some excellent tips on Outlook, log into Outlook Daily Tips.

Don't bookmark it--Furl it!

I consider myself a fairly organized person. And I usually am, except for those times when I'm not, and I'm definitely not organized when it comes to keeping track of things I find on the web. Sure, I have URLs bookmarked in my browser, but I also have them scribbled on sticky notes, listed in "sites" files and stored in Palm Pilot memos. I email site links to my web mail accounts so I can get to them from anywhere. If I need a bookmark that's stored on my browser at work, but not on my home PC, or vice-versa, I'm out of luck. Oh, and did I mention all the URLs I have highlighted in various magazine articles, e-newsletters and e-mails that I've printed out?

It's a mess, completely disorganized and essentially useless. I have to look in so many places to find anything that by the time I've found it, I've forgotten why I wanted it. As a writer, when I need information, I need it now or the entire writing process grinds to a halt. This is not a good thing. But I think I found the answer: Today I stumbled across Furl.

"Furl is a free service that saves a personal copy of any page you find on the Web, and lets you find it again instantly by searching your archive of pages. It's your Personal Web... Each member gets a 5-gigabyte personal archive, large enough to store tens of thousands of pages... When you want to find something again, enter any word or phrase you remember from it... Even if a page has disappeared from the Web and other search engines, you'll still have a personal copy."

Yes, I know about del.icio.us, and spurl, and I'm sure there are others, but Furl caught my attention while I was surfing LookSmart's www.findarticles.com. I signed up and immediately became a Furl Freak. Now, I save everything I think I may ever need using the Furl It! button I installed on my browser toolbar.

Maybe I'll finally get organized...

Strange header & footer prints on every page

Q. I just started using a web based application to submit my payroll to our home office. Now, every time I print my emails from Outlook, "Payroll Statement" appears as a header and the date is printed as the footer on every page. I don't see anything in Word or Outlook that is causing this. What's going on?

A. Well, it took some digging on my part, but I solved it. Oddly enough, Outlook uses the Internet Explorer page setup when printing HTML mail. If you printed plain text email from Outlook, you probably would see a normal page. I bet your web based payroll application has inserted the header and footer into IE's Page Setup properties. To fix the problem, in IE, go to File-->Page Setup. In the dialog box, you'll see the Headers and Footers options in the middle. You can set these to just about anything you want, or leave them blank if you don't want any headers or footers to print. IE's Help is actually helpful on this subject. Go to Help-->Contents and Index then click the Search tab and enter the word "header" (without the quotes). Select "Change how a Web page looks when it prints" from the topics list.

Web pages load very slowly

Q. Some web pages I try to load are slow and give me a time out error. They used to load fine. I have moved the security settings to the lowest and to default. I'm running Windows 98 First Edition.

A. I suggest you upgrade your computer, since you're not even running Windows 98 Second Edition. That is probably the main problem. It's not your security settings; more likely it's a problem with cached files. In Win98, when your Temporary Internet Files folder gets full, your pages won't load properly. IE uses this folder as a cache to make pages load faster. In theory, most web pages don't change very often, so once it's downloaded and placed in cache, IE can simply compare the web page to the cached page and load whichever one is the newest. If the one in the cache is still current, IE loads that page. It's much faster than transferring everything over the Internet. This works fine except that Windows makes the default size of the folder 10% of your hard drive. This is way too much; you don't need more than 10MB.

To clean the excess files in IE, got to Tools-->Internet Options-->Delete Files. Then, go into the Settings and set "Check for newer versions of stored pages" to "Every visit to the page." Finally, set the "Temporary Internet files folder" setting to 10MB. Then, defrag your hard drive and you should be good to go...K

AOL has detected an error with your connection to the internet

Q. When connecting to AOL I get the following pop-up: "AOL HAS detected an error with your connection to the internet. Please exit the AOL software, restart your compuyer, and then sign on AOL again." Cannot connect to IE thru any links on AOL. Can receive and send emails."

A. Thanks for your question. I have not used AOL since 1995, though I have friends who still insist on using it. I have seen this problem before and it is related to the "AOL Adapter" that AOL uses to communicate with its services. It usually means that the AOL Adapter is not properly installed or has gotten corrupted. You may have tried to go into AOL System Information-->Utilities-->Uninstall AOL Adapter, but you get an error message:"The AOL Adapter is currently not installed." Fortunately, there is a fix. Go to http://www.dslreports.com/faq/8437 and follow the detailed instructions there. That should take care of your problem.

Sony's DRM rootkit exploited

It's outrageous that Sony hacked its customers' PCs with a rootkit, opening a back door for other hackers to commit their mayhem; in fact, it's almost criminal and I think someone, somewhere should pay dearly for the crime. The damage is done. The attacks are already starting. According to Sophos, Inc., an anti-virus company with U.S. headquarters in Lynnfield, Mass, some low-life Internet criminal is already spamming out a Trojan to exploit the vulnerability introduced by Sony's rootkit:

The Troj/Stinx-E Trojan horse appears to have been deliberately spammed out to email addresses, posing as a message from a British business magazine. Typical emails look as follows:

Subject: Photo Approval Deadline

Message body:
Hello,
Your photograph was forwarded to us as part of an article we are publishing for our December edition of Total Business Monthly. Can you check over the format and get back to us with your approval or any changes? If the picture is not to your liking then please send a preferred one. We have attached the photo with the article here.

Because of this mess--and because I value my privacy--I refuse to buy any Sony CDs, and I'll think twice about buying any other Sony products until they make up the damage they have done. The artists who have had their music released on the Sony BMG label should immediately sue and seek an injunction, unless they agree with Sony's approach, in which case the artists should be boycotted, too.

The Lazy Man's Way to System Security

A good many people have responed to my various articles on system security (see Eight Steps to System Security -- How to Protect Your Computer from Digital Diseases on the World Wide Web for the latest installment). Most of the feedback has been positive, but many of you wondered if there might be a simpler approach, some basic things you can do to protect yourself without too much hard work.

You're in luck. Call it the lazy man's way to system security; if you install protection against the the three biggest threats to your online security--infections by viruses, worms and Trojans, malicious software (spyware, adware, browser hijackers) and crackers who wish to secretly access and control your PC--you'll be protected from the worst of security problems. These are the bare security necessities: a good antivirus program; a good anti-malware program; and, a good software firewall. Simple, and highly effective for most users, as long as you stay away from questionable web sites. (You know the ones I mean!)

Before you ask, the answer is yes, you still need a software firewall, even if you already have a hardware firewall. Most hardware firewalls are configured to keep bad traffic from getting in, but will let most traffic from your network out. So, they don't keep those sneaky tracking programs from phoning home. A software firewall will at least give you some warning when a program is trying to access the Internet and you can decide whether to allow it. Besides, it gives you an extra layer of protection, just in case.

I still highly recommend you read and apply my Eight Steps, but if you're feeling a bit lazy today, the three necessities will get you by.

Eight Steps to System Security -- How to Protect Your Computer from Digital Diseases on the World Wide Web

It isn't getting any better on The Wild, Wild Web, despite state and federal government attempts to outlaw spyware. Spyware and malware of all kinds are increasingly more stealthy and difficult to remove; spam is worse than ever despite CAN-SPAM; phishing attacks are harder to detect and more frequent. Just last week, I spent the better part of two days fighting fighting the latest outbreak of the Sober worm and cleaning up the aftermath for one of our clients. In its September 2005 issue, Consumer Reports says, "One Third Of Net Users Damaged By Malware."

In my job as a systems engineer for Connective Computing, Inc., I deal with the effects of one or more of these digital diseases nearly every day. My two previous releases of this article, Seven Steps to System Security - 2004 and Seven Steps to System Security - 2005, listed the field-proven steps I recommend to everyone I know. But those seven steps are no longer enough; computer users must learn to modify their behavior.

1. Repeat after me: I will NEVER, EVER click on any pop-up of any kind - NEVER, EVER. Not even on the "X" (it's usually safe, but why take the chance?). Use the key combination Alt-F4 instead; it safely closes the current window. In the slimy world of sleaze-ware, "No" means yes, "Cancel" means yes, "Close" means yes - ANY click on a button means yes. So many times users ask, "How did I get that? I clicked 'no' when it asked me!" Well, sorry, but you clicked. NEVER, EVER CLICK!
   
   
2. Although Internet Explorer has been made more secure than it was, it is still too closely tied to Windows and too big a target. Crackers are still writing malware that exploits IE security flaws. I recommend you use Firefox, Mozilla, or Opera to browse the Web. (You will still be forced to use IE to update your system, but that is the ONLY thing you should use it for.) Whatever browser you use, be sure you configure your preferences to block all unwanted pop-ups or install a pop-up killer like the Google Tool Bar. And while you're at it, re-read #1!
   
   
3. Patch your system, including service pack 2 on XP. I keep finding systems that are still running XP with service pack 1, probably because they turned off automatic updates. While some argue against it, I recommend you turn them on. And be sure to install any recommended security updates and patches for ALL software on your system, - especially Microsoft Office - not just Windows.
   
   
4. Run a properly-configured, proven firewall. Don't rely only on Windows' built-in firewall - it blocks inbound attacks only (see this article) and it has flaws of its own (see this article). It will not stop back door trojans, adware, spyware, and the like from "phoning home" with your sensitive information. (See this article for more info.) ZoneAlarm and others offer free, personal-use-only versions of their products.
   
   
5. Run a good anti-virus program. Choices abound. I use AntiVir Personal Edition (free); other good ones are Norton AntiVirus, Panda Software, and Grisoft's AVG (free).
   
   
6. Run multiple anti-spyware/anti-adware programs and keep them updated. I recommend: a. Spyware Blaster. This free program blocks adware and spyware from installing in the first place and is frequently updated; b. Ad-Aware. Scan weekly, more frequently if you are a heavy surfer; c. Spybot S&D. Run it on the same schedule as Ad-Aware; d. Microsoft AntiSpyware (Beta) is an excellent product. (See Flexbeta.net test results.) Microsoft intends to keep this program free to consumers. Configure it for real time protection and automatic updates. Go ahead and join the SpyNet spyware reporting community. One of the best commercial anti-spyware applications is Sunbelt Software's CounterSpy. It is a PC World Best Buy award winner.
   
   
7. Run a spam blocker to isolate junk e-mail. Most malware and all phishing attempts rely on spam. You want to isolate this stuff and delete it. NEVER, I repeat, NEVER, EVER click on a link in any e-mail you are not absolutely certain is legitimate. And to be as safe as possible, always type in the address of your bank, credit card companies, and any other site that you want to keep secure. (See #1 above and apply to principle to links, too!) One of the best programs is Open Field Software's ella for Spam Control. It uses wizards to "train" it to your personal specifications. It's free to use with Outlook, but you have to pay for the version that works with Outlook Express. My clients swear by it. Another good program is PC Tools' Spam Monitor.
   
   
8. On Windows XP, set up a restricted user account and use that for routine tasks. Only log on with administrative privileges when you need to install or configure software. This will prevent rogue programs from affecting your system - they won't be able to install. You can activate the "run as" feature so you can do administrative tasks while logged in as a restricted user. Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q294676 explains how to activate and use this feature in Win2K and XP.

While total immunity is impossible (new infections and variations on existing exploits appear daily), these eight steps will prevent, catch, or clean 98 percent of the junkware out there. As for the other two percent, or if you are already badly infected, you'll need to hire a geek like me.