I am considering purchasing a new computer, and wish to transfer all my existing data to the new machine. In past responses, you have mentioned the only required equipment for such a transfer is a network card in each computer and a cross-over cable. Assuming I have this equipment, how should I go about transferring data across this connection between the computers? The current computer is running Windows XP Professional. (more…)

Taking screen shots (i.e. creating a graphic of the current contents of your screen) is a very useful feature. A commonly known but hidden feature in Windows XP is pressing the PrtScn key to capture the entire screen to the clipboard, allowing you to paste the screen shot into another program (such as Microsoft Word). If you wish to only capture a specific window, pressing ALT ? PrtScn will capture the currently active window to the clipboard. For those people using a Mac platform, there are similar hidden shortcuts for screen capturing. Pressing Command (Apple Key) ? Shift ? 3 will capture the entire screen and save to a file on the desktop, and pressing Command ? Shift ? 4 will turn the cursor into a crosshair allowing you to select the section of screen to capture to a file on the desktop. In addition to these shortcuts, you can also add the Control key to the beginning of the keystrokes (i.e. Control ? Command ? Shift ? 3 and Control ? Command ? Shift ? 4). This will capture the same screen area as the non-Control key version of the shortcut but, instead of saving the screen capture to a file, this will copy the capture to the clipboard, allowing the graphics to be pasted into another program. (more…)

After uninstalling Musicmatch Jukebox from the computer I cannot play any sound (except for sound files which were attached to emails). Upgrading Windows Media Player has not resolved the issue. When I attempt to play sound or music through Windows Media Player (be it a sound file or music CD) the progress bar moves like it is being played, but no sound is played from the computer. How can I get the sound back? The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

When starting Windows the blue screen of death appears with the following error, preventing the computer from loading correctly: ?0X0000008E (0XC0000005, 0X804EEF91, 0XF326A7DC, 0X00000000)?. The computer will boot correctly into Safe Mode, but upon investigation no System Restore points exist preventing the roll-back of the computer into a previous state. This error may be the result of a series of mistakes which I recently made on the computer. The problem started after I installed Norton Internet Security 2007 without removing the old internet security software. Following the installation of Norton Internet Security the computer restarted and booted normally to the Windows XP logon screen. However, when I attempted to logon as a user the blue screen appeared with a STOP message. I then started the computer in Safe Mode and used System Restore to restore the computer to the day earlier than the installation. The restore operation was successful, and Windows opened normally and everything worked correctly. However, when I started the computer the next day the same blue screen appeared again. I assumed the problem was caused by Norton Internet Security and contacted them for technical advice. I wonder whether this could have been caused when I attached a new portable hard drive to the USB port before starting the computer. Symantec advised me to perform a clean boot (i.e. start the computer with no non-essential processes and services) and then uninstall and reinstall their product. I made another mistake during the clean boot, as I misunderstood the directions where they asked me to hide all Microsoft programs from the Services tab before unticking the rest. I did not see the hide box and I thought that I had to untick all the Microsoft services, which I did. Upon restarting the computer the same error occurred again. Having restarted the computer the same stop error happened again. Then I started the computer in Safe Mode and used the Symantec instructions to re-enable the previous disabled services and restarted the computer. I was able to connect the portable hard drive and backup my files while working in Safe Mode. However, the blue screen still appears when starting the computer in Normal mode. Is there any way to fix this problem? (more…)

Changing from Office 2003 to Office 2007 is quite a steep learning curve, given the completely new interface in Office 2007. If you find yourself spending hours trying to locate particular commands in Office 2007 perhaps the Microsoft interactive guides and mapping workbooks will assist. These will help guide you through the new locations of commands in Office 2007, and also provide a list of all commands in Office 2003 with their location in Office 2007. These guides are available at: office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/HA102295841033.aspx . (more…)