I am attempting to reformat a 250 GB external hard drive from NTFS to FAT32 which is the only compatible format for my HD Digital Set Top Box. Having been unable to format the drive through Windows I resorted to using the Command Prompt and typed the command: format K: /fs:fat32. It accepted the command and advised that I would lose all data, to which I agreed. It then went through the motions of 2%, 50%, 80% and after reaching 100% completed the following message appeared “The Volume is too big for FAT32”. I also tried the same procedure on a 120GB drive but received the same message. Can you help? (more…)

Each night my computer automatically turns on at midnight. I have looked through the BIOS but cannot find any timers or anything else that could cause this behaviour. The computer is running Windows XP Service Pack 3. (more…)

My Toshiba Satellite L300 caught a virus and refused to boot. It would only cycle into repair mode and would not even boot into Safe Mode. After three days I decided to complete a system restore, but while it was restoring there was some kind of power surge that stopped the computer. Now whenever the computer starts a message appears saying that there is a corrupt or missing file and it will not proceed past that point. There were no recovery CDs provided with the computer so I cannot figure out how to reinstall Windows. Can you assist? (more…)

My computer hard drive failed so I purchased a new drive and reinstalled Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2. When updating Windows following the installation the Service Pack 3 update was downloaded and installed. Now whenever Windows loads the following two messages appear: “Entry Point Not Found. The procedure entry point apsSearchInterface could not be located in the dynamic link library wlanapi.dll” and “Entry Point Not Found. The procedure entry point apsInitialize could not be located in the dynamic link library wlanapi.dll”. Clicking OK to close both messages makes them go away and everything works correctly, but it does worry me that these are appearing. From my research the messages seem related to the D-Link DWL-G510 wireless adapter which is installed on the computer, but I have not found a resolution for the problem. (more…)

Recently I downloaded a program and during the installation it recommended that I install a utility to scan the registry for errors. This registry scanning utility showed there are 420 registry errors: 339 were system related and 81 were user related. The next screen asked whether I would like to fix these errors, but I have always been very cautionary in my approach to doing anything with the computer registry. Can you tell me whether I should proceed with fixing the errors? (more…)