Imagine being able to take your favourite web browser and email client (containing all your email settings and contacts) wherever you go, and being able to use these programs on any Windows computer. With the advent of portable applications this has become a reality! Portable applications are completely self-contained programs (i.e. they do not need to be installed on a computer) which can run directly from portable media, primarily USB thumb drives. PortableApps.com is a website dedicated to releasing high-quality portable versions of open source software. Portable applications available on the website include Firefox Portable, Thunderbird Portable, OpenOffice Portable, plus many more. Make sure you check out portableapps.com and start taking your programs with you! (more…)

As Windows starts an error appears saying: ‘The application has failed to start because MFC71U.DLL was not found. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem’. How can I stop this message from appearing? The computer is running Windows XP Service Pack 2. (more…)

I have two computers (a laptop and a desktop) connected to a network using an Ethernet 10/100 Mbits switch. An ADSL router is also connected to the switch, providing an internet connection for the networked computers. Both computers can successfully connect to the internet, but neither computer is able to see the other computer. Therefore, I am unable to share files or printers between the computers. Running the Windows Network Connection Wizard does not help fix the problem, and if I attempt to access the workgroup the following message appears: ‘Mshome is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. A list of servers for this workgroup is not currently available’. The laptop is running Windows XP Professional and the desktop is running Windows XP Home Edition. Both computers are running Norton Internet Security 2006. How can I get the computers to talk to each other? (more…)

Whenever I attempt to open Internet Explorer, the following message appears: ‘Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library. Runtime Error! Program: C:Program FilesInternet Exploreriexplore.exe. This application has requested the runtime to terminate in an unusual way. Please contact the application’s support team for more information’. So, I am unable to use Internet Explorer. I am getting by using Mozilla Firefox, but not having Internet Explorer makes WindowsUpdate problematic. In an attempt to fix the problem, I updated to Windows XP SP2 and Internet Explorer 7 but the problem remains. (more…)

If you are a Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/firefox ) or Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird ) user, you may not be aware there are hundreds of third-party add-ons you can download and install into these programs. These add-ons can extend Firefox and Thunderbird to provide new features or improvements to existing features. However, make sure you only download add-ons from sources you trust to avoid installing potentially malicious add-ons. One of the best places to get add-ons is from the Mozilla Add-ons Website: https://addons.mozilla.org .
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