Plain English Technical Advice

Raising the dead

Nick was consulting me on the purchase of a new lap-top when he mentioned that his old Dell machine had gone 'kaput' and would not boot-up at all—typically, no backups had been done so his live data was at serious risk.

My first thought was to attempt a start-up from a 'bootable' CD which would quickly determine whether the problem was with the hard-disk or some other component.

The F2 Key is typically used to enter the system setup area before the Windows operating system loads—this enables you to change the boot sequence though most recent PCs are already set up to load from a 'systems disk' (such as the Windows CD), if present.

If the hard disk is readable, it may be that the Windows system files are corrupt and can possibly be restored with a 'repair' installation—a full Windows installation will, in principle, overwrite everything on the disk.

If the disk is readable but not accessible with your PC, it should be possible to take it out and use it on another PC—lap-tops are a bit trickier than desk-tops for this as the disk bays and connections are not so 'standardised'.

If the disk is not readable, you are basically 'stuffed' but you will have learned a valuable lesson which is to perform regular backups in future.

In this case, I managed to boot-up using a Norton Ghost recovery disk which is typically used to restore from a backup though it has some additional utilities to perform various disk operations.

Nick's computer seemed to work OK, apart from the fact that the disk partition information had disappeared and the Windows operating system was not recognised—at this point, I was running the machine from a version of the DOS operating system contained on the Norton CD.   

The Norton software managed to recover a Dell DOS partition which had utility programs for testing the hardware, etc, though it appears that the utilities supplied with Ghost do not recover Windows partitions or any data that they might contain.

There is plenty of software about which claims to recover deleted partitions and files though most of it needs a live Windows system to operate in—DOH!!

Question—How is it possible to recover deleted files?

This is all a matter of what is meant by 'deleted'.

In a Windows system, the initial process of deleting a file simply moves it to the 'Recycle Bin' which is just a special Windows folder from which the file may be easily restored to it's original location.

When the file is actually deleted, by emptying the Recycle Bin or running the 'Disk Cleanup' routine, the data still remains in place though all references to it are removed from the disk 'Directory'.

The act of deleting files simply frees-up the disk space for future use and the data won't actually be deleted until other data is written over it—which might not happen for a long time if you have plenty of free disk space.

If the data still exists on the disk, it is entirely capable of being read.

The Solution

After a few internet searches, I came up with Active@ Boot Disk which comes in DOS and Windows versions—both versions create a bootable CD which runs either DOS or a 'lightweight' version of Windows Vista.

The Windows version can also create a bootable USB disk and has a more-comprehensive set of recovery tools.

In this instance, I chose the DOS version due to it's lower memory requirements—like many older PCs, Nick's was purchased with the minimum 256k memory then recommended to run Windows-XP.

Many of these 256k systems now struggle with running the much-updated Windows-XP.

In the event, the DOS version successfully recovered the C: partition and it's files—using one of the Norton Ghost utilities, I was able to drag the required data files to an external USB disk before attempting a full recovery of the system.

These data files were successfully transferred to Nick's new lap-top.

Recovery

Naturally, the lap-top still wouldn't boot-up from the hard-disk which would have been just too easy.

Neither was I able to perform a successful 'repair' installation which would have left all existing programs and data intact—in all versions of Windows, trying to repair a corrupted system is a rather 'hit and miss' process which often fails.

I was, however, able to perform a fresh Windows installation to produce a 'clean' PC which will be perfectly good for not-too-demanding applications such as email and simple internet browsing—any other previously-installed software which is still required will also need to be re-installed.

Fortunately, all of the required software 'drivers' to match the installed hardware were available on the Dell DOS partition previously recovered.

I did notice that the CD/DVD drive was behaving erratically, sometimes giving rise to the dreaded 'blue screen of death' —this may well have been the cause of the original problem and not a virus as we had suspected.

Following advice on the Dell support site, I removed and re-installed the DVD which then seemed to work perfectly

Without wishing to labour the point, this recovery could have been done in about 10 minutes, without external assistance, if there had been a recent full system backup such as those produced by Norton Ghost or similar. 

This should now be a useful back-up machine.

Point to ponder

if supposedly-deleted data can be recovered so easily, this clearly raises a security issue if your computer falls into the 'wrong hands' for any reason—I will be writing a separate article on that subject.

Active @ Boot Disk

Are you the only one out of step?

I must admit that I was 'a bit slow off the mark' back in May when I began to experience a series of broadband disconnections.

Because I have been generally happy with my broadband supplier (Plusnet) for several years, I was happy to report the problem and to let them get on with finding a solution.

Consequently, they ran various tests over several days and found no fault at all with any part of the system though they did discover that the problem had actually been occurring for some weeks—as my router, unlike some, spontaneously recovers from disconnections, I hadn't really noticed this until the service seriously deteriorated.

At this point, there was a heavy suggestion that the fault must be with my equipment or the telephone wiring and that a visit from BT would result in a large fee if this were found to be the case—since the BT engineering side became Openreach, the threat of swingeing fees seems to be a standard response to any fault report.

As the telephone line was working perfectly and I had already swapped the router and microfilter, I was not overly enthusiastic about a BT visit.

However, a BT engineer telephoned 'out of the blue' and happened to mention, in passing, that the telephone exchange was in the process being moved from Moorgate to Queen Victoria Street—other destinations, mentioned over several subsequent conversations, included Blackfriars and Farringdon.

Various engineers phoned or turned-up unannounced over the next few days with one offering the opinion that it would not be possible to get a broadband speed in excess of 1 mbps due to the routing of the service around 3 exchanges—the service provides, theoretically, up to 8 mbps though actual speed depends on line quality and distance from the exchange.

At this point, I was either using dial-up or getting about 128 kbps on broadband which is not much faster.

A quick check of the local community 'forum' revealed that a large number of local people were suffering the same problem, irrespective of the Internet Service Provider being used.

I also ran into my next door neighbour, an AOL user, who had endured several long 'try this and try that' sessions with the company's Indian call centre—he was quite surprised to hear that the most effective action was to 'do nothing' as the real cause of the problem was now becoming obvious, at least to the customers.

Happily, the broadband connection had now stabilised and I have been enjoying consistent speeds of about 5000-6500 mbps for a couple of months.

In my opinion, the lessons to be drawn here are:

1. Internet Service and Software Provider help-desks can be quite good at answering basic "how do I" queries but often have limited capacity or inclination to investigate issues with their own products.
   
   Often, they will work through the 'try this and try that' script until they reach the point of handing the problem back to you—'owning' the problem through to a solution is unusual.   
    
2. Whatever your problem, it is worth doing a few internet searches to see if anybody else has come up with a solution—this can save hours of 'trying this and trying that' which can itself generate more problems down-the-line.       

In this case, I could have saved myself a few days of argee-bargee if I had looked around, at an earlier stage, to see if others were suffering the same problem. 

Illegal Music Downloads

Illegal music downloads are a hot topic today with the news that the UK's six largest Internet Service Providers have teamed-up with the music industry to fight this dastardly practice—though the idea that the likes of Orange, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse would slow-down their broadband service as a sanction made me chuckle somewhat (would anybody notice?).

Apart from the legal and moral issues involved, illegal download sites are a major source of adware, spyware and the like which can soon bring your computer to a grinding halt.

This is particularly true of those services based on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks where the files are not coming from some sort of central database but from thousands of privately-owned PCs around the world—this provides very little control of the file quality or of any 'nasties' which might be transmitted with it.

I know a number of parents with teenage children who have paid-out more to have their PCs cleaned-up than it would have cost to buy the music from a legal source—though I believe that the 'culture' is now changing as people begin to realise that these sort of downloads are actually theft rather than 'a bit of a lark".

Also, when this activity started, there were no legal sources of music downloads but now there are a number including Itunes and the 'reformed' Napster.

For the past few months, I have been using www.we7.com which was launched in May 2007 by the musician Peter Gabriel and others.

The site has a huge and growing catalogue of music covering a number of genres including Pop, Classical, Jazz and Blues—in fact, I spotted several albums which I have on well-worn vinyl from before the days of CDs.

The charging model of WE7 is quite interesting in that you can either purchase the tracks (from Itunes) or you can download them for FREE with an advertisement tacked onto the beginning of the track.

At the moment, registered users can download up to 100 tracks per day and 500 per week which may change as the music industry assesses the value of advertising-based charging.

www.itunes.co.uk

www.napster.co.uk 

    

 

Outlook Rules OK

Although email is a phenomenally efficient means of communication, I often see the downside in the form of inboxes stuffed with hundreds of unattended messages.

For Microsoft Outlook users, there are a number of tools available to lighten the load by automating the process of organising your work.

Specifically, this article is an easy guide to organising your incoming messages into folders which will greatly simplify the work of dealing with them—you can file messages by the name of the originator, the subject area or any other convenient grouping that you might use with a physical filing cabinet.

Folders

The first step is to create a system of folders which should, ideally, be sub-folders of your Inbox.

You can also create sub-folders of the newly-created folders, if you wish.

You can place folders elsewhere in the Outlook file structure but (take my word for it) this is likely to cause problems if you ever need to transfer the data to a new computer using facilities like 'Windows Easy Transfer' or PC-Mover.

If you can't see the Folder List at this point, just check that your Navigation Pane is showing:

In Outlook 2003, from top menu, View / Navigation Pane (you should end-up with the last item ticked)

In Outlook 2007, from top menu, View / Navigation Pane / Normal (you should end-up with the last item ticked)

If you still can't see a folder list, click the 'Mail' or 'Folder List' button, if present.

In my opinion, most Microsoft software is a bit too configurable for it's own good and there is a drop-down menu for further configuration, if needed, at the bottom of the Navigation Pane.

1. On the displayed list of folders, place the cursor on the Inbox folder, right-click and select 'New Folder'
    
2. In the displayed dialogue box, type the name of the new folder, click 'OK' to complete
    
3. Repeat this process for each new folder you wish to create—if you want to create subfolders of folders that you have previously created, just start from the previously-created folder rather than the inbox

If you want to change the name of a folder, place the cursor on it, right-click and select 'Rename'—you can type in the new name directly.

If you do manage to place folders in the wrong part of the structure (easily done), you can relocate them by 'dragging and dropping' or you can delete them by right-clicking on the unwanted folder and selecting 'Delete'.

For those unfamiliar with 'drag and drop', you place the cursor on the folder or message to be moved, hold-down the left button (unless you have re-configured the mouse to work the other way round), move the cursor to the new location and release the button.

Outlook Rules

At this stage, you could simply 'drag and drop' the email messages, moving them from the inbox to the relevant folders.

However, it is much easier to automate this process and deal with the messages after they have been moved.

This is done by creating Outlook rules for the messages currently in the Inbox:

1. From the Inbox message list, place the cursor on an individual message, right-click and select 'Create Rule'
    
2. On the 'Create Rule' dialogue box, click on one or more of the first three boxes which define the basis on which the messages are filtered
    
   The first box will have picked-up the sender's identity as they have defined it in their email settings—easy to work with if it says, for example, 'Joe Bloggs' but less so if it says something like 'Admin'
   
   The second box will have captured the subject of the email—if, for example, the subject said "Good News from British Telecom", you could edit out the surplus words so that any emails with the words 'British Telecom' in the subject would be filtered
   
   Note that an email might be caught by more than one rule. 
   
   The third box relates to where the message has been sent—for example, you might receive emails sent to bill@mydomain.com or accounts@mydomain.com so the message could be filtered on either of these
    
3. The next group of three boxes is about the action to be taken on the filtered email
   
   As this article is primarily about organising mail into folders, we would click on the 'Move Item to Folder' box and then browse for the relevant folder using the 'Select Folder' button
   
   You could actually create any new folders at this point but, to start with, it is easier to create the folders before creating the rules
   
   A number of additional filtering rules and actions are available by clicking the 'Advanced Options' button on the 'Create Rule' dialogue box
    
4. Returning to the 'Create Rule' dialogue box, click the OK button and accept the invitation (tick the box) to run the rule over the current folder—this will take the relevant action on any existing messages matching the rule
   
   Also, the rule will be applied to any new messages arriving in the Inbox

As these rules are put in place, all mail arriving at the inbox will be diverted to the relevant folders—any remaining messages may be discarded or additional rules created.

Outlook Express has a similar system for creating rules as does Windows Mail which replaces OE in Windows Vista.

Junk Mail

Outlook has a fairly efficient Junk email filter which moves any obvious rubbish to a 'Junk' folder though it doesn't catch everything and occasionally captures items which should be retained.

A quick glance through the message headings will identify which items should be discarded and you can create new rules for those which should not.

'Outlook Express' does not have a junk filter though 'Windows Mail' does.

Unread Mail      

Alongside each folder name, there is a number in brackets showing the number of 'unread' messages, which indicates which folders are in need of attention.

Somewhere near the bottom of the 'folders list', you will find a section called 'Search Folders'  which are not actual folders but provide an alternative view of messages contained in other folders.

One of these is called 'Unread Mail' and shows a complete list of unread mail irrespective of which folder it is in.

Back to that Outlook configuration stuff again—if 'Unread Mail' is not on your list of search folders, right-click on the words 'Search Folders', select 'New Search Folder' and then select 'Unread Mail' from the list.

Once the 'unread mail' folder appears in the 'Search Folders' list, you can right-click it and select 'Add to Favourites Folders' which will display it at the top of your folders list.

You can also display any other 'priority' folders in your Favourite Folders list.

Back to the Inbox

While you are sorting out your rules, it might speed-up your work to use the headings at the top of the email list.

For example, if you click on 'Received', the email will be listed in date order—one click will put it into ascending order and another will put it into descending order.

You can use the other column headings to group the emails by subject, sender or any other which is available.

Columns may may be added or removed from this email list by right-clicking the heading bar to see the full configuration options.—you can do the same in any other mail folder.

No MS-Office, No problem

A lot of PCs sold to the 'home' market come with Microsoft Works which includes various modules for word processing, spreadsheet and database applications.

While these are quite capable of handling basic office functions, they are not directly compatible with MS-Office which is rather more widely used, thereby causing some difficulty when people start passing documents around.

A related problem is that MS-Office itself comes in various 'packages' which may not include all of the available modules.

For example, the Microsoft Office 2007 'Basic' edition doesn't include Powerpoint, whereas the 'Home and Student' edition doesn't include Outlook.

Indeed, before purchasing a copy of MS-Office, it is well-worth consulting the Microsoft web site to see which modules are included in the various versions—2007 Microsoft Office Suites.

All is not lost, however, because Microsoft provide some free viewers and converters which enable users to share files with people who have different versions of MS-Office and those don't have it installed at all.

Microsoft Office File Converters and Viewers    

Internet Life—Pay-per-click Advertising

“I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I’m not sure which half..."

This old advertising cliché, usually attributed to Lord Leverhulme, illustrates the basic problem with advertising which usually involves a large outlay of cash to determine whether the advertising medium and campaign strategy are right for the particular product.

The beauty of ‘pay-per-click’ internet advertising is that costs are only incurred on a payment-by-results basis—the result, in this case, being a click-through to your web site where a more comprehensive ‘sales pitch’ can be presented.

Adwords is one of the pay-per-click products offered by Google whose various worldwide sites process around 37 billion searches per month (Source: www.comscore.com, August 2007).

Additionally, there is a large group of websites and other products, such as email programmes and blogs, that have partnered with Google to display Adwords ads.

Advertisers have the option of running their ads on Google as well as this Google 'content' Network for no extra cost.

The idea is to create a series of small advertisements (as many as you like) of the type displayed down the right-hand side of every Google search results page—multiple advertisements are used in rotation.

You then ’bid’ on a number of keywords (as many as you like) setting the maximum amount that you are prepared to pay for a click-through.

The position of your advertisement, within the relevant search results, is determined by the ’bid’—a 10p-per-click bid will rank above a 5p-per-click bid (the actual charge is reduced to 1p above the next bidder on the list).

The precise rules on this bidding process have changed over the last couple of years but the fine detail is beyond the scope of this article.

There are a number of tools to assist with the appropriate pricing of keywords and with campaign management—costs can be controlled with a daily budget and campaigns may be paused or deleted at any time.

Several campaigns may be run simultaneously.

The advertising can also be targeted by country or by local area—payment is by direct debit from a credit card or (recently-added) a bank account.

In my experience, these campaigns can be quite cost-effective though depending very much upon the product—the point being that it costs very little to find out.

www.google.co.uk (UK Site)

www.google.com (US Site, may redirect to your local site)

www.google.fr (French Site)

Internet Life—Save your legs with Smartstamp

The Royal Mail Smartstamp service allows printing of postage directly from the PC to envelopes and labels, thereby eliminating the need for franking machines and paper stamps.

The business version of the service costs £49.99 per annum with postage being charged at normal rates—this is deducted from an on-line account which can be topped-up by credit card, etc, as required.

The Smartstamp software may be installed from a CD or downloaded from the Royal Mail web site.

There is now an entirely web-based version of the service aimed at the non-business user—this has no standing charge and the only differences, as far as I can see, are a slightly messier interface and the lack of some features such as the ability to add a logo or to 'mailmerge' using a contacts database.

The Royal Mail web site has some other useful facilities including a postcode finder and delivery tracking.

www.royalmail.com

Using a Search Engine

Search engines are the standard way of finding information on the internet with Google being the most popular by search volume—74% in the UK, 61.8% in the US and 82% in France (Source: www.comscore.com)

There are also a number of ‘niche’ search engines and directories catering for specialist areas such as science, aviation and medicine. 
    
Getting to the information sometimes involves a bit of ‘trial and error’ but becomes quick and easy with experience.

For example, if I were looking for information on the Composer and Conductor John Williams, I might proceed as follows:

I could start my Google search with the following term in the search box:

John Williams                                                                   Result: 28,100,000 hits

Essentially, the search will match on these two words found anywhere on the web site—both must be present but not necessarily together.

Actually, search engines have become rather more-sophisticated at judging what is required so this search, while producing a large number of results, would probably place those sites containing this exact phrase at the top of the list. 

Using "Quotes", I could refine the search to match the exact phrase rather than the individual words.

“John Williams”                                                               Result: 7,370,000 hits

Because the classical guitarist of the same name is rather better known, I could further refine with a mix of an exact phrase and individual words:

“John Williams” conductor                                               Result: 301,000 hits

To learn about work other than film scores so I could exclude some words with a 'minus' sign:

“John Williams” conductor –film                                      Result: 148,000 hits

This search focuses on Scottish and Welsh performances:

conductor Scotland OR Wales "John Williams" -film        Result: 23,500 hits

Because this person is well known, there are bound to be lots of hits but the point here is to illustrate the basic principles of refining searches.

Rather than messing with punctuation and logical expressions (AND/OR, etc) as I have done in this illustration, it is easier to click on the ‘Advanced Search’ link and generate the search statement by filling in a form which makes it very clear which words and phrases are being included or excluded.

Tips

1. Always think of your search terms as individual words rather than a question and make every word relevant—computers don't (yet) have 'understanding' in the human sense so you won't get very useful results from an expression like: "please tell me about people who breed labrador dogs in the South of France or the Northern part of Spain"
   
   The only relevant words here are breed, labrador, dogs, France, Spain and, possibly, South of France though I suspect that searching on that exact term would exclude a lot of relevant results.
   
   I would be inclined to go with a search on labrador dog breeders France OR Spain in the first instance
    
2. If you actually know the address of the site you are looking for, go to it directly by typing the address into the browser address box rather than firing-up Google, Yahoo or whatever and searching for it, as quite a lot of people seem to do.
   
   While this does actually work in many cases, search engines don't have details of every single web site and, even if a web site is specifically submitted to them, it may take a few weeks to appear in the listings.
   
   A search on the address is sometimes useful to see which other web sites refer to the one that you are interested in. 

www.google.co.uk

www.google.fr

www.google.com (US Site, may redirect to your local site)

www.yahoo.com

Internet Life—Directory Enquiries

Can you believe that people still pay British Telecom over 50p for Directory Enquiries when more-comprehensive information, including the full address, is available free from one of their web sites—there is a limit of 50 searches a day which should be more than sufficient for most users

www.thephonebook.bt.com

Sending large files

The easiest way to transmit files over the Internet is to send them as email attachments.

In Outlook 2003, for example, create a new message and click Insert / File from the top menu, select the file(s) you require and click the 'Insert' button.

In Outlook 2007, select Insert from the top menu, click the 'Attach File' icon, select the file(s) you require and click the 'Insert' button (that's called, 'change for the sake of change'). 

Most email clients have a similar function.

The major difficulty with this approach is that most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) impose a limit on the total message size which may be as low as 1 megabyte though a figure of around 5 megabytes seems more typical these days.

Sadly, there is no consistency among ISPs on this issue and a given email account will sometimes be able to send a larger message than it can receive, or vice-versa.

A related problem is that certain types of attachment may be intercepted by the ISP, local network server or email client.

For example, .exe files are usually intercepted for security reasons and media files are often blocked as inappropriate for business users.

Sometimes, a failure warning will be issued and sometimes not.

An easy solution to this problem is provided by Winzip Courier whose simple interface allows you to upload files to temporary web space where it may be downloaded by the recipients who are automatically sent the relevant link.

The FREE version of the service allows you to send single files (which may comprise multiple files zipped-up) with a maximum size of 100 megabytes and a total upload limit of 1 gigabyte per month.

There are various paid versions of the service with much higher limits.

At the time of writing (July 2008), Winzip are offering a FREE 2-week trial of the paid services.

I find the free version more than adequate for my needs and, although I could operate a similar system using my own web space, it is just easier to use Winzip Courier who look after all of the 'housekeeping'.

Upgrading to Office 2007

Upgrading software to a later version is never an entirely straightforward process and a few glitches can usually be expected.

For example, when I upgraded from Office 97 to Office XP several years ago, I immediately noticed that the heading fonts on my Company Stationery templates had changed in appearance—the font names hadn't actually changed but the appearance of those fonts had.

Fortunately, a bit of 'trial and error' (mainly error) soon found some fonts which looked acceptably-similar to the originals.

Another issue is that the software provider will often 'upgrade' the underlying file structure which renders any new documents unreadable by earlier versions of the application—some sort of one-time conversion is usually available but that tends to render existing documents incompatible with the version of the application that created them.

This particular problem occurs with Office 2007 where the file formats for Word, Excel and Powerpoint have changed—Outlook files are, thankfully, compatible with the previous version (Office 2003) which is still used by many people who see no pressing reason to upgrade until they purchase a new computer.

If an Office 2007 user wants to send files to users of earlier versions, there are two main strategies for dealing with the issue:

1. The document may be saved in a format compatible with earlier versions—in Word, for example, you can 'Save As' using the option 'Word 97-2003 document' which will, of course, drop any features specifically associated with versions after Word 97
    
2. The Office 2003 or Office XP user can download and install a Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack using this link—in principle, this software allows Office 2007 files to be opened and edited using the aforementioned earlier Office versions