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I am back in computer hell. Why do i do this to myself. I suppose I like the challenge of solving a puzzle and.or its my OCD. I cannot stop until things are FIXED and working.

A friend gave me a one month old Dell desktop so I decided to change computers. What I thought would be hard was in fact easy and the easy part was painful.
Was was easy was swapping new SATA drive with old one.
What was PAINFUL and beyond ridiculous was basic install in my “old” PC. BIOS would not recognize SATA drive and no power to DVD burner or IDE hard drive drive when I connected them to IDE cable.

I actually ended up working on it until 4 am .. and boy am I paying for it today. I went to sleep with problem still not solved. Swapped out Power supply- which I had convinced myself was the problem. I was rummaging around in garage at 2am looking for old power supply.At first I just had issues getting new SATA drive recognised and then gave up with that and just used an IDE drive. The things started getting flaky. No power for DVD drive. Switched to another drive, still an issue. Changed cables, Double checked cables.
Noticed I had power on my dvd rom when it was just power connected and not IDE ribbon cable connected. The same thing with HDD. As soon as I connected an IDE cable power was lost.
At point I lost all power to the board which turned out to be a cable I knocked out.
How did I know it was not a fried mother board? I pulled out everything .. everything.. CPU, RAM, video cards, etc. EVERYTHING and powered up and no problems getting to BIOS.
How I fixed problem of now power to dvd drive ? I reset the CMOS. Not a scary sounding as you might think.

How To Reset CMOS on Motherboard

Resetting the CMOS solved problem instantly. To reset CMOS or clear CMOS is fairly straightforward. Find your motherboard manual and look for CMOS jumper position on the motherboard. If you can;t find manual look for 3 little pins with a jumper on it near battery on your motherboard. You will have the jumper on ( most likely) pins 1 and 2. The jumper looks like the same one on dvd and cd rom when you set up to master/slave.
Make sure power is off and in fact I would unplug your power to PC connection. Discharge yourself by touching metal case.
With power OFF move jumper from first two pins to last 2 pins ( so from pins 1,2 to 2,3) . Wait about 15 seconds. Move it back. You are done!
Connect your hard drive or DVD drive to power and IDE cable and you should be back in business. Add peripherals one at a time.

After I successful installed my old Windows XP SATA drive with everything on it into new machine. Then after the horrible install one of my external drives failed. The one with all our family pictures on it. I am pretty upset and grasping at straws on recovery the data on it.

Tags: Computer and Hardware by Lisa Stewart
3 Comments »

You can actually do this without any 3rd party software. It is bit tricky but your can restore your Outlook express email relatively easily.

To Back Up Your Outlook Express Email

It is a good idea to backup your email- especially important ones- on an ongoing basis. If you think your hard drive is failing, you want to format your exisiting hard drive or you bought a new computer and want to move your email over there is a way to do it.

How to back-up Outlook Express Email

You will need to back up each individual file for your mailbox folders. The extension for the folders in dbx.
You will have a folder called Inbox.dbx, Sent.dbx and then for each of the folders you have set up. For example if you have set up forlders for “Family” you will have a database for that called Family.dbx.

Where to find Outlook Express Databases

These folder are pretty well hidden. If you are backing up and have access to your Outlook Express email you can find them by opening your email and in the Folder pane right click on the name of the folder. ( Any folder will do- they are all in the same place)
The files will be in :
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{Your Numbers Here}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\
If your email is not in admin or you have multiple users instead of Administrator use name of user.

If you go to Explorer you will see all the .dbx files for your folders. Copy /save/burn onto cd/dvd or put on thumb key the ones you want to keep. If you are wiping out your hard drive or hard drive failing do not store these files on the same drive.

Note: If you just save Inbox.dbx you will not save email that is in other folders- you must save individual .dbx files for each folder.

Restoring Your Outlook Express Email

You need to have access to your dbx files ( the database files for your email) To find see above or use the files you saved. If your drive has crashed it is possible to find.
I have used data recovery software successfully. The one I like is Recoversoft Data Rescue and also .

If you are using recovery software do a search for dbx extension files and/or look in directory for:
Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{Your Numbers Here}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\

If you have your files then here goes… This is tedious.

Install Outlook Express
Install outlook Express on your new computer or drive. If you reinstall into same drive, etc as OLD version you may over write your dbx files so make sure you have them saved.

Create New Folders in Outlook Express
Create new folders with the same name as your old ones. You will have course you inbox.dbx and sent.dbx , etc folder recreated for you. You have to make new folders for folder you created eg. ” recipes” or “Family” , They have to be the EXACT same name as you old folder names and are case sensitive.

New Outlook Express Folder CANNOT Be Empty!

There has to be an email in each of the folders for the database to “exist”. If you copy over you old folder then they won’t replace then folders- a new copy will created. eg. you will have an inbox.dbx folder and and inbox1.dbx folder.

What I do is just copy the welcome email from Outlook express into every folder.

Copy Over Your Old DBX files
Now you can copy over your old dbx files. Highlight the folder you want to put into your new version of Outlook express and simply copy over the dbx folders in new you have saved somewhere. When asked if you want to replace then say yes.

Your Outlook Express Email Restored

Your email will now be restored! Check your individual folder and see. If you don’t see the email then make sure you have copied them over to the right spot.
If your emails are not there most likely problems is you have to put in the right spot ( it is confusing) OR you did not create a new folder with same name as old one / put an email int he folder and did not copy over.

Any question let me know and I will try to help.

Tags: Computer and Hardware by Lisa Stewart
13 Comments »

I recently cleaned a friends laptop. Her browser was opening up to suspicious and “adult” sites . I thought I would run a couple of spyware program and that would be the end of it. It wasn’t. It was a really tough case.

She also had a problem that I had seen before; any kind of java script was hijacked and instead of a Google AdSense Ad or other there was a flashing obnoxious ad demanding a virus scan of some sort. Do you have malware or spyware of some kind on your computer?

Symptoms That You Have Malware ( Trojan, Spyware, etc)

- browser is opening up on its own.
- Strange looking Ads that blink or ask you to do a virus check NOW.
- Home page in browser has changed and/or you can’t change your home page-
- When doing a search in Google or browser new browser open up using related terms and to a suspicious site.
- Popups asking you to do a virus or spyware scan
- Getting popups to anti-virus site with odd names- like PantiVirus or MacAfffe ( similar to real program but with misspellings)
- General performance problems like slow Internet, sluggish program, hard to load applications.
Adsense does not run any animated ads so if your AdSense ads are blinking or flashing or animated then you most likely have some kind of trojan or malware that has hijacked you java script.
- weird messages when you try and open your spyware removal applications or they won’t open at all.
- New and “interesting” sites in your Bookmarks and Favorites.

Example of How Spyware Gets Installed

Below is what a typical window that will install spyware :

In any case I spent a lot time trying to get rid of her malware. Not only was she getting weird popups and her browser opening spontaneously, but the Internet connection slowed to a halt. You could surf for about 2 minutes and then problem would be back. I ran just about everything I could think of and still couldn’t get rind of the problem. I ran multiple virus scans, Lavasoft’sAdaware, Trend Micro, about 4 different Trojan removal software, etc. and nothing worked.

Finally…. Getting Rid of Hard to Clean Malware

I was very close to calling it a day and reformatting her hard drive. I did some more searches and found a step by step method of getting rid of these nasty malware programs, on Major Geeks Forum. It tools some time but in about an hour her laptop was clean.

The procedure for getting rid of all the malware- a nasty trojan, was done using entirely free tools and the instruction were superb .They also had download links to for everything you need.

I cannot recommend this thread highly enough.

The application that did the trick on this computer and several other’s was little known malware seek and destroy application Malwarebytes It is also free.

I was operating Windows Xp but they had methods for most operating systems.
View the Major Geeks Malware Removal Instructions here
A word of caution- don’t skip around and jump ahead - stick to their instrcutions.

Tags: Computer and Hardware, Free Tools and Utilities by Lisa Stewart
11 Comments »

I have been using a retail version font manager program for some time. I am not sure how I did without out one for so long. I use a lot of fonts when doing any kind of digital designing.

I accidentally installed too many fonts and it has ground my some of my programs to a halt. OUtlook and Photoshop are a mess.
In trying to figure out ways to restore my original windows font folder I stumbled across a very good, free Font manager called Font Thing. It is easy to use and free.
It is an older program but does the job very well.

You can download The Font Thing here

Tags: Computer and Hardware, Free Tools and Utilities, Tuesday's Tool by Lisa Stewart
1 Comment »