My Dell Laptop running Windows XP with Microsoft Office 2007 is encountering a few problems. First, I have connected my Nokia N76 mobile phone to the computer so I can coordinate my diary and contact information from Outlook. However, over time there are about 10 appointments which have lost association with Outlook. Every time I open Outlook reminders appear for these overdue appointments (which I have already dismissed on the N76) but when I click the “Dismiss” button a message appears saying “Cannot turn off the reminder. You may be reminded again. Cannot locate recurrence information for this appointment”. Second, every time I boot up the laptop an error message appears saying “You do not have access to make the required system configuration modifications. Please re-run this installation from an administrators account”. I have no idea why this appears, as I thought I was the computer administrator! Third, after updating to Windows XP Service Pack 3 something appears to have gone wrong and now the following messages keep appearing “AIRGCFC.exe - Entry Point not found. The procedure entry point apsGetInterfaceCount could not be located in the dynamic link library wlanapi.dll” and “WZCSL2DR.exe - Entry Point not found. The procedure entry point apsinitialize could not be located in the dynamic link library wlanapi.dll”. How can I stop these messages from appearing? Finally, could you explain to me the difference (if any) between a netbook computer and a laptop computer? I would like to buy a computer that is pretty light and easy to carry around when travelling in aircraft.

You certainly have quite a few questions, so let’s work through the questions sequentially.

Your first question concerns the pairing of your Nokia N76 mobile phone to Outlook 2007 allowing you to synchronise the calendar and other items (such as contacts) between Outlook and the mobile phone. I have never used Nokia software on a computer before, so I cannot really provide step-by-step instructions for fixing this problem. However, I can provide some generic advice from my experiences when other devices (such as PDAs) do not synchronise correctly with Outlook.

Generally once you have a synchronisation problem between a device and Outlook I have found it quite difficult to resolve the problem because you will start to get conflicts between the two versions of the calendars (i.e. the calendar on the device and the calendar in Outlook). Therefore, I always find it easiest to start afresh and completely break the connection between the device and Outlook and then setup the connection again from scratch. So, to commence I suggest that you break this synchronisation connection and uninstall the Nokia software from your computer. Once this has happened, you need to make sure your Outlook calendar is the most up-to-date copy as this will be used as the “master” calendar when we re-establish the synchronisation. So clean-up the Outlook calendar and remove any appointments which are not required, and insert any new appointments as required.

In your question you have mentioned that alerts are appearing saying “Cannot locate recurrence information for this appointment”. This can be solved by starting Outlook with a special command-line switch which will clean and regenerate all reminders. Close Outlook and then go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “Outlook /cleanreminders” (without the quotes, but mind the space between the “Outlook” and “/cleanreminders” parts of the command) and click OK. If you receive an error message then go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and click the “Browse” button. Navigate to the following path: C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12. At this location double-click the “Outlook.exe” file. The path to the Outlook file should now appear in the Run box. After the last quotation mark surrounding the path type a space and then add “/cleanreminders” (without the quotes) and click OK. Outlook should now start and clean all reminders, so you should no longer encounter errors regarding the reminders. You only need to do this procedure once and all your reminders will be cleaned – once this has happened you can just open Outlook using the normal method in the future.

Once you are satisfied with your Outlook calendar being pristine then you can now commence re-pairing your N76 phone with Outlook. Before starting this procedure I suggest that you visit the Nokia website and download the latest version of the Nokia software for your computer, in case this resolves any known issues with synchronisation (which may have caused the previous problems being experienced). This can be downloaded from www.nokia.com.au/get-support-and-software/download-software . At the time of writing, the latest version of Nokia PC Suite is version 7.1. Once downloaded and installed, setup the phone to synchronise with Outlook and hopefully all should be working properly.

Your second question concerns an error message when Windows is starting. The message indicates that something is attempting to modify the computer but does not have sufficient permissions. Before trying to grant the program or process permission we should determine exactly what it is attempting to do, since Windows may be quite right in denying access to protect the system (particularly if the program or process is attempting to do something malicious). To do this we will need to check which processes have been set to load on startup. Go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “msconfig” (without the quotes) and click OK. The System Configuration Utility window should appear. Click the “Startup” tab. This lists all processes which load on Windows startup. All the processes which are ticked indicate the process will load on startup, and those which are unticked will not load on startup. Write down the name of all the processes which are currently ticked (enabled). Once this is done, click the button “Disable all” to disable all processes from loading on startup and then click OK. Restart the computer.

Upon restarting no programs should load on startup and the error message should not appear. We are now going to re-enable the startup processes one-by-one. Return to the System Configuration Utility and enable one process from your written list. Click OK and then restart the computer. Check whether the error message appears. If not, repeat the procedure again. Keep repeating the procedure until the error message begins to appear on startup. At that point the most recently enabled process is causing the message. Once you know which process is causing the problem do some searching to determine its purpose. Should this be a legitimate process then you can safely re-enable that process and all other processes. However, should it be an illegitimate process (or one you do not need) then re-enable all the other processes but leave that one disabled.

Where the process is legitimate and you wish to allow it to complete the changes to the system we need to determine why it is being blocked. Assuming that you are using a Windows administrator account you are correct that you are the system administrator, so you should not be blocked. However, many other users have also reported similar errors and while I cannot find a definitive explanation as to why this occurs there is a fix. Be aware, this fix involves editing permissions in the Windows registry. This is much more dangerous than normal registry editing as you are modifying permissions in the registry. You should only undertake the following procedure at your own risk as if it goes wrong it could cause significant terminal problems for your installation of Windows. Assuming you would like to proceed, go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “regedt32” (without the quotes). In the Registry Editor window that appears, right-click on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry key (i.e. the thing which looks like a folder) and select “Permissions”. In the window that appears highlight “Administrators” and tick “Full Control”. Do this for “SYSTEM” as well. Once this has been done, click OK. Repeat this procedure for the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID registry key. Once you have finished close the Registry Editor then restart the computer and the problem should hopefully be resolved.

Your third question relates to a different pair of error messages which appear on Windows startup after installing Windows XP Service Pack 3. You will be glad to hear that other users have also experienced the same problem after upgrading to Service Pack 3 so you are not alone! The two files which are quoted in the error message relate to the drivers for a D-Link wireless adapter. As such, I assume that you have a D-Link wireless network card installed in your laptop. Fortunately the resolution for this issue is relatively straight-forward, and involves visiting the D-Link website (www.dlink.com.au) and downloading the latest drivers for the network card, as it has been reported these will solve the problem being experienced.

Regarding your final question about netbook computers versus laptop computers, a netbook computer is primarily designed for browsing the internet and answering email. As such, they are normally much less powerful than a fully-fledged laptop computer. That said, the advantage is they are often much smaller and consume less power giving better battery life. Additionally, some of the most recent netbook computers also include inbuilt 3G connectivity allowing internet access without the need for wireless network coverage or an external wireless broadband card. As such, they are quite suitable for people who are travelling. If you are considering purchasing a netbook as opposed to a laptop you need to think about the purpose of the computer. If you would only be using the netbook when travelling it may be a good choice. However, if you wanted to use the netbook as your primary computer, then it may lack the processing power and convenience (e.g. given the small size of netbook screens) that you would like if you used the computer for a long period of time. I suggest that you take a look at the various vendors to see what they are offering in the netbook line-ups. A good overview of netbook computers is available at Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook .