Over the past few months I have been attempting to defragment the hard drive within my computer, but the process stops without fully completing because “Some files on this volume could not be defragmented. Please check the defragmentation report for the list of these files”. Interestingly, when I view the defragmentation report the “Files which did not defragment” listing is empty. The same behaviour occurs when running the defragmenter in Safe Mode. Can you provide guidance on why the defragmenter is so stubborn and how this problem can be rectified? The computer is running Windows XP Service Pack 3. (more…)

Users of Windows XP may be aware that this operating system has built-in CD burning capabilities, but does not have the ability to burn DVDs or ISO files. Fortunately, there is a very good free utility available called CDBurnerXP which performs all these functions plus more. CDBurnerXP is available for free download from: cdburnerxp.se .

Several weeks ago when I started my computer a message appeared at the bottom of the screen claiming that someone was trying to access my computer to obtain my credit card details. This was followed by a pop-up window flooding the screen called Security Tool which said it could fix the problem, but only if I paid a fee by entering my credit card details. The only way to regain control over the computer was switching the power off at the power outlet. Now whenever I try to start the computer the following message appears “We apologise for the inconvenience but Windows did not start successfully. If your computer stopped responding revert to the last known good configuration that worked…” and several options are presented: Safe mode, Safe mode with command prompt, Safe mode with networking, Last known good configuration, and Start Windows normally. If I attempt to “Start Windows normally” (or wait 30 seconds, after which time the computer will attempt to Start Windows normally anyway) a message appears saying that “A problem has been detected and Windows shut down to prevent damage to your computer”. The computer automatically reboots after this message appears and then the cycle commences again. The end result is that I cannot use the computer at all. I would like to get this problem resolved as there is some important data on the hard drive that I would like to keep, although the majority of other data on the drive is not important and can be lost if necessary. The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

Readers of today’s column may notice that in the last question I mention a handy utility known as Darik’s Boot and Nuke. This is a very good utility for people who are disposing of a computer. Darik’s Boot and Nuke (more commonly known as DBAN) will wipe the contents of the hard drive and then write random data over the drive for a specified number of passes, thoroughly hindering the recovery of data off the drive. DBAN comes as an ISO which you can burn to a CD or DVD and then directly boot the computer from the CD/DVD to commence the wiping process. Be aware, this will completely wipe all data from the specified drive so make sure that you backup any data you wish to keep before running this utility! DBAN is available for free download from www.dban.org.

Using Mozilla Thunderbird I can send emails perfectly fine, but cannot download incoming messages. The Thunderbird window simply displays “Downloading message 1 of 13” in the status bar with the envelope status icons in the system tray indicating that email messages are downloading. This has been happening for quite a while and presents a problem, since I cannot receive any email messages. It is particularly inconvenient because I use the internet for online shopping and ordering. The computer is running Windows XP and my ISP is OptusNet. (more…)