My system is a Pentium II 400 MHz, running Windows 2000. I prefer to do most work within a user account as opposed to the administrator account. When in the user account, but not the administrator account, I nearly always get weird effects within windows such as dialog boxes stretched up/down or side to side, text missing, all sorts of things. A restart will fix things for a while, but not for long. There are other weird effects which may, or may not, be related. One such effect is when using Eudora. When composing a new email I click the “New Message” icon and a blank email appears, then I type in an email address in the “To:” field. Being a reasonable touch typist I can type at a reasonable rate, but the characters appear on the screen about one character per second. The “wonky windows” problem does not occur when I am logged in as administrator, so recently I have only used the administrator account, specifically to overcome the problem. Can you help? (more…)

My computer is a Celeron laptop with 256Mb of memory running Windows XP Home Edition. Sometimes when going to a web page the following message appears: ‘Internet Explorer cannot display the page properly. You need to install Java [sometimes Microsoft] Virtual Machine. Do you want to install now?’. When I click YES the Windows Update site appears. After the site checks my configuration the message ‘Microsoft Virtual Machine not available for Windows XP’ appears. I have searched Microsoft Knowledge Base and found that unless a previous version of Microsoft Virtual Machine is already installed on a machine then Microsoft will not allow an update and that Windows XP does not come with Virtual Machine. Since internet banking is one of the sites not working, the lack of Virtual Machine is a problem. How can this problem be fixed? (more…)

After accidently disabling my graphics card there is only a blank screen when Windows XP loads. I tried to return the graphics card to its default settings in the BIOS however this did not work. Then I used a boot disk to make my system to work again. However, now when starting Windows an error message appears advising that Windows will be shutdown to protect my files. The technical information in the error message is ’stop: 0×0000007E (0xC0000005, 0×00000000, 0xF96B4934, 0xF96B4634)’. Can you help? (more…)

I run Windows XP Home Edition. After installing AOL Internet Services it has become apparent that the search companion in Windows XP does not work until I connect to AOL. Instead the message ‘A file required for Search Companion cannot be found. You may need to run setup’. Even if I run setup it still does not work. Any suggestions? (more…)

Is it safe to delete Windows XP Hotfix CSPI files which appear in ‘Currently installed programs’ under ‘Add or Remove Programs’ in the Control Panel? There are eight of these files listed. I presume these are automatic updates by Windows. I run Windows XP on a AMD Duron Processor 1.1 Ghz. Your advice would be appreciated. (more…)