Whenever I go to play a sound file on my PC (a Compaq Deskpro) the sound only comes out of the speaker and not the headphones. When the headphones are plugged in I hear a click, followed by a soft “kshh” sound, but the music itself comes through the speaker. Incidentally, the volume dial under the CD-ROM seems to have no effect on the volume level; it seems that I can only control the volume through whatever software I’m using. (more…)

I installed Corel Draw onto my computer and it appears to have converted all of my JPEG (*.jpg) files into DIB files. As a result, none of my scanned documents and pictures that were saved in this manner can be opened anymore. When I attempt to open them, the error message appears that the computer ‘Cannot open xxx.jpg (or one of its components)’ and ‘xxx.jpg is not a Legitimate DIB file’. What is a DIB file and how can I transform such file back into a JPEG one file? Furthermore, the JPEG file icons now show a camera instead of a paint pot. Do you have any suggestions as to why this occurred and most importantly how I can fix it? I am running Windows 98 with Office 2000 Premium, a CanoScan FB 320P on a Pentium 166. (more…)

Everytime I open my computer and search around in C: drive for certain files I have downloaded I get the error ‘Explorer caused an invalid page fault in module PDM.DLL at 015f:4a01259d’. I click on the ok button then lose most of the icons in the system tray. This only occurred after the installation of Microsoft Visual Basic 6. I have reinstalled Windows 98 and Visual Basic 6 but that has not helped. I am running Pentium II 266 MMX, Windows 98, 64mb RAM, and a 3 gig HDD. Please help. (more…)

I administer a small network of computers in a local training centre. The network has internet access via an ADSL modem. Is there any way that I can stop people downloading EXE and ZIP files from the internet? The network is peer to peer with all computers running Windows NT 4 workstation. Thanks for your help. (more…)

I have a Samtron PC that operates on the Windows 98 system and would like to know what function key one uses to get the extended dash which is centred on a line. The dash is equivalent to two hyphens joined together and should be used in sentences as a spacer instead of using a hyphen; which is technically incorrect. Any ideas? Your help would be much appreciated. (more…)