Recently I contacted the EasyMail help line, with a view to improving my despatch times for e-mails with attachments. I was instructed to go to the ‘Control Panel’ > ‘Network’ and to delete Client for Microsoft Networks, Microsoft Family Logon, Dial up Adaptor, TCP/IP and in Primary Network logon to select ‘Microsoft Family Logon’. These were subsequently re-installed, and everything in Easymail works OK. Now, when I ‘boot up’ I get the following error messages: (on a black and white screen): “Cannot find a device file that may be needed to run Windows or a Windows application: VREDIR.VXD and DFS.DXD Press any key to continue’. Following that instruction brings up a Windows Networking dialogue box: “Unable to load the dynamic link library: msnp32.dll. The system cannot find the file specified. Some or all of the following feature is not available: Micosoft Network.’
Clicking ‘OK’, completes the ‘boot up’ satisfactorily. No program or feature seems to be affected by the missing file, but it is a pain in the neck to complete the ‘boot up’ sequence. I am running Windows 98 Second Edition. Can you help? (more…)

When using Windows 98 I have set each window to be displayed as a web page. However, the back and forward navigation buttons on the toolbar have somehow been disabled (greyed out) but were previously active. How do I reactivate these buttons? (more…)

Recently I bought a laptop running a version of Windows (something more recent than Windows 98). I installed Microsoft Word 2000 on the computer and I have one major problem. As I type a document the flashing mark cursor (which indicates where you are on the page) skips back to a previous line which means I start typing in the middle of the document putting the whole thing out of order. It usually moves back about a sentence. As you can imagine this is very annoying. I think it may have something to do with the laptop as I’ve never experienced this problem before. Also, when I plug an external keyboard into the laptop there appears to be no problem. Any help would be much appreciated. (more…)

I am running Windows 2000 on a Pentium III 733 with 128 MB RAM. For the last two months on random occasions, the machine will suddenly blue screen and put up the following 4 line message. First line: ‘STOP 0×00000000a 0×00000002′. Second line: ‘IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL’ or ‘XMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED’. Third line: ‘Dumping physical memory to disk’. Fourth line: ‘Beginning dump of physical memory’. The last line is followed by a count down from 1 to 99 after which the machine restarts itself and all appears normal until the problem returns. I have not observed any pattern to this problem which happens when using a range of products. Hope you can explain what’s causing this problem and how it can be cured. (more…)

I have a 550 MHz Packard Bell 10GB computer running Windows 98, which was bought in December 1999. The hard drive was replaced in April this year due to a data ‘knot’ in programming and other apparent problems. Since then, and even with a new hard drive, I am encountering two recurring problems. Almost every time the computer is turned on there is a warning screen that the computer has encountered problems accessing the system registry. On clicking ‘OK’ the computer does its own thing then throws up a screen stating there is an ‘error in the system files and restored a recent backup’. When the computer automatically reboots, everything operates perfectly. Secondly, I am in the habit of defragmenting the hard drive on a weekly to fortnightly basis. For no apparent reason, over the past fortnight, the system freezes up every time I attempt a ‘defrag’. Do you think there may be a virus in the system - I am yet to run an on-line virus scan? Can you suggest any way of rectifying these problems, or do you suggest I reformat the C drive and start all over again? (more…)