Recently I experienced an issue with Office 2007 and sought the assistance of Microsoft Technical Support. In order to resolve the problem I needed to install the Technical Support Assistant on my computer, allowing the Microsoft technician to remotely control the computer. This all went well and the problem was found and fixed. The technician then asked me to remove the Technical Support Assistant software to secure the privacy of my computer. During this process the Outlook Express installation on my computer was upgraded from Outlook Express XP to Outlook Express 6. As a result, I lost all my valuable emails. I was assured by a computer expert in Canberra that they are not lost but can be recovered. Could you provide step-by-step instructions on how to recover these lost emails? The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

For those users running Mac OS X there is a little known, but very useful utility called the System Profiler. This will show you all kinds of information about the hardware and software on your Mac-based computer. The System Profiler is accessible by going to the “Go” menu in the Finder > “Utilities” and opening “System Profiler”. Alternatively, you can type “System Profiler” into Spotlight.

On occasion my computer crashes with a blue screen of death (BSOD) with a notice that it is creating a minidump. From my understanding these minidumps should tell me what is causing the BSOD. I have been able to find these minidumps alright but am having trouble reading the files as whenever I attempt to open the minidump file an “Access Denied” message appears. How can I open these files? The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

The Calculator in Windows 7 does not seem at first glance to really showcase anything different. However, there are plenty of new functions in this latest version of Calculator. In particular, in the “View” menu there are two new modes – programmer and statistics, offering new functions for these purposes. There are even custom operations you can perform, such as unit and date conversions (also available on the “View” menu).

After many years of reasonable performance our computer has significantly slowed-down. Removing cookies and other internet “build-up” using CC Cleaner, and the regular scan with Spybot to remove any adware or malware, has not made any difference. As I prefer not to reload Windows can you recommend a tool to optimise the performance of the computer? (more…)