I have a Hewlett Packard Vectra 5/133, with a Pentium 100 CPU, 810mb hard drive (with about 100mb free), running Windows 95 and Microsoft Office. I recently upgraded the RAM from 16mb to 64mb with chips from an unused PC I had purchased from my employer. I put the RAM (two 32mb chips) into the same slots from which I took the 16mb (two 8mb chips). Since installing the RAM, the computer has recurring memory problems, resulting in either the termination of the application or the Windows blue screen. Messages vary, but they generally refer to failures in Kernel or EMS386 or win386 files, each of which I understand are responsible for memory management. Now there is another message during the boot-up advising that Windows couldn’t find the XMS drivers, however I ran Memmaker afterwards and haven’t seen the message again. When I ran Memmaker I created some upper memory, but the problem persists. Other programs appear to run okay, apart
from one similar failure when running Word. Can you assist, either with advice on an adjustment, or where I could take the computer for economical repairs? (more…)

When I went into safe mode in Windows 95 to check on a modem problem, I was prompted with the following message: “The ODBC resource DLL C:/Windows/System/ODBCINT.DLL is a different version than the ODBC setup DLL C:/Windows/System/ODBCCP32.DLL. You need to reinstall the ODBC components to ensure proper operation”. Could you tell me what that means and how to correct it, if at all necessary? The system seems to run ok as it is. (more…)

I accidentally placed a faulty floppy disk in my disk drive and the metal cover which goes over the top of the disk came off in the drive. I can’t place any disks in the drive and it is getting very inconvenient. I have attempted to extract it myself but I think I am digging myself into an even bigger hole. What would be the best procedure to extract it from the drive? (more…)

I have a most annoying problem with Word 97. As I always want a backup, I check the ‘Always Create Backup Copy’ box in the ‘Saves’ menu. However at random intervals, sometimes after behaving itself for several weeks, the box is cleared and the ‘Allow Fast Saves’ box is checked. And certainly not by me. I could manually save the file every time before working on it but this should not be necessary, according to the menu. I’ve tried uninstalling Word then reinstalling the original Word 6 and applying the Word 97 upgrade, but no improvement. As a side issue, the upgrade CD seems to be the entire Word 97 (it doesn’t even ask for the original Word 6 floppy disk number). Is this normal? (more…)

When I try to drag and drop icons on the desktop or files/folders in Windows Explorer nothing happens. Clicking on the icon (or files/folders) shows that the file/folder is active (because it is highlighted) but the icon (or files/folders) will not show any sign of moving. About the same time, I have encountered another problem with the Explorer 5.01 browser. Previously, when holding down the shift key and clicking the left mouse button, a new window would open up to the link. Now an empty window opens up. The closest I came to finding a solution to this problem is a problem encountered with Norton Antivirus which sounded similar. However, I am only using VET and not Norton Antivirus. Everything else in Windows functions fine. I also checked in Safe Mode, and the drag problem still occurs there as well. I recently downloaded several software programs off the net to deal with registry problems, etc. So I wonder if something may have occurred when I used one of these programs. Otherwise I have been operating as usual. I am running Windows 95. (more…)