Do you have an old PC sitting around doing nothing? Why not turn the otherwise metal door-stop into a dedicated internet firewall’¦for free! SmoothWall is an open-source firewall based around Linux. In fact, SmoothWall is actually a cut-down Linux operating system for the sole purpose of providing an internet firewall. Installation is simple with users requiring no intimate knowledge of Linux. Give SmoothWall a try and protect you and your network from attack! SmoothWall is available for download from www.smoothwall.org. (more…)

Although I uninstalled a game using the uninstall utility located in the game’s program group on the Start menu, the uninstall link is still present in the ‘Add/Remove Programs’ control panel. When attempting to uninstall the game through ‘Add/Remove Programs’ the size of the game grew from 660 MB to well over 1.5 GB! There are no references to the game on the hard drive, so it must have been deleted from the disk but the reference in Add/Remove Programs was not removed. (more…)

Some time ago in one of your tips you mentioned the URL for free software to convert Word documents to Adobe PDF. Can you provide this information again? Also, Microsoft Outlook claims there is an unopened message but this ‘phantom’ message doesn’t seem to exist! The computer is running Windows 98 SE. (more…)

My computer, whether being used or not, apparently searches the DVD drive for something. It can be frequent or less frequent and I can’t narrow it down to a specific situation (e.g. a specific program being open) although I am suspicious about Windows Media Player. On each day there are about 50 entries in the Event Viewer, which read ’source: atapi, description, the device, DeviceIdeIdeport1 did not respond within the timeout period’. The error does not seem to be causing any evident problems, which is what has me worried! The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

After Windows has finished loading, the ‘Desktop Themes’ control panel window always opens. How can this be prevented? A second problem is the ‘Explorer has performed an illegal operation’ message which appears when I am on the internet. This generally appears if I have been connected to the internet for some time. The computer is running Windows 98. (more…)