Windows Media Player has become a very feature rich application over the years, but unfortunately this means the program is quite resource intensive and, as some would argue, over-featured. Fortunately, a group of software developers have written a program called Media Player Classic which looks like Windows Media Player 6, but has many additional advanced features. Media Player Classic is also a standalone executable file, meaning there is no installation, making it a very lean program with a minimal footprint. Media Player Classic is open source and free to download from sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli . At the website click the ‘Download’ tab and then select the ‘Media Player Classic’ package. Download the latest version of MPC (version 6.4.9.0 at the time of writing) for Windows 2000/XP or Windows 98/Me. (more…)

My computer has been frequently freezing while on the internet. I have followed your usual advice about installing the latest Windows updates, checking for viruses and spyware, and defragmenting the drive, but the problem still continues. The freezes started after I installed some pre-paid dial-up internet software on the computer so I could use the machine while on holiday. The computer is running Ad-Aware, Spybot, and PC-Cillin Internet Security 2007 which have not detected any problems. The computer is a Pentium D 3.0 GHz with 1 GB RAM running Windows XP. (more…)

After pressing the Send button on an email, the message stays in the outbox and Outlook only sends the message after a few hours. The problem does not seem related to a loss of connectivity to the server, and is not related to add-ins (as suggested at the website www.slipstick.com/problems/outbox.htm) as there are no Outlook add-ins installed. Outlook has been operating correctly in the past, so could this problem be due to a faulty Outlook program? (more…)

A new feature of Word 2007 is the Mini Toolbar. This appears in response to selecting a text within a Word document, and allows quick access to common formatting commands which can be applied to the currently selected text. The Mini Toolbar initially appears very faintly, but grows in prominence when the mouse cursor is brought in close proximity to the toolbar area. While some may find this a useful feature, it can get in the way when attempting move around segments of text or access the right-click context menu for the text (e.g. to see spelling suggestions for misspelt words). Fortunately, the Mini Toolbar can be disabled. Click the Office menu button and select the ‘Word Options’ button at the bottom of the menu. In the window that appears, click ‘Popular’ in the left-hand column. Untick the option ‘Show Mini Toolbar on selection’ and click OK. The Mini Toolbar has now been disabled. (more…)

When running third-party disk diagnostic tools the following message appears: ‘D:_restore{83617877-D584-44D1-A853A8A07519} is corrupt and unreadable. Please run Chkdsk utility”. Running the Chkdsk utility on the D drive produces a message that Chkdsk cannot run on RAW data. How can I repair or remove the corrupt file? (more…)