Windows XP has a feature that highlights newly installed applications on the Start menu. However, I don’t really find this feature very useful as I will generally know what program I just installed. It can also be problematic when Windows does not immediately de-highlight the entry. You can disable the highlighting feature by right-clicking on the ‘Start’ button and selecting ‘Properties’. In the window that appears, click the ‘Start menu’ tab then the ‘Customize’ button. In the next window click the ‘Advanced’ tab and untick ‘Highlight newly installed programs’. Click OK. Click OK. (more…)

Recently you wrote an article on how to backup Outlook Express emails. With Windows XP I can follow all the steps up to the Identities folder. However, the Microsoft folder does not lead to Outlook Express. Likewise, the procedure doesn’t work with Outlook Express on Windows 98. On another matter, I recently purchased a new computer with DVD burner. The machine came with Sonic MyDVD 5.3 LE and Record Now 7.1 LE. However, using the LE software you cannot burn DVDs to be played on an external DVD player. For this feature, the full version has to be bought. Is there any way around this issue? (more…)

A message appears that LSA Shell (Export Version) has encountered a error. Then the computer shuts down with the following message: ‘NT AUTHORITYSYSTEM. C:WindowsSystem32lsass.exe. Status Code - 1073741819′. A second problem is a box on the screen which wants to connect to various websites. Pressing cancel closes the box, but then another appears. The computer is running Windows XP (more…)

After 10 - 20 minutes of playing Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne the graphic card shuts down and produces the following message: ‘VPU Recover was unable to fully recover from a hardware deadlock and has switched to software rendering. To restore hardware rendering, you must restart your computer’. After this message, the computer is very slow. Reinstalling the graphics card driver and installing the latest driver does not fix the problem. The computer is a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz with 512 MB RAM and a Powercolor Radeon 9600XT 128 MB (DDR) graphics card. The operating system is Windows XP Professional. (more…)

All the settings under my Windows XP user profile recently reverted to the default values (i.e. desktop picture, regional settings, etc’¦). I can change most of these settings, however when attempting to change the Regional Settings from US to Australian the change is not saved. I have also lost my Outlook Express 6 user ID, containing all my email messages and the address book. The problem may have coincided with installing a game for my son (Counter Strike Condition Zero) whilst under his user ID, but I couldn’t be sure. Can you help? (more…)