IT Queries: Computer problems answered

My computer is keep on shutting down every 5 minutes. when I open my computer then after 5 minutes will automatically shutdown. What should I do? do I need to reformat? thanks.

It’s unlikely a reformat will help as this sounds like a hardware problem. The likely cause is your computer is overheating.

A good software package is SpeedFan. This will monitor your  system and tell you if it is overheating. If it is, then you’ll need to open the case and check all the internal fans are working and that dust isn’t clogging heat sinks. Some CPU heatsinks are notorious for collecting dust.

If it isn’t an overheating problem then it could be a driver or software problem. This requires checking in the Event Viewer to find the problem item. This will probably require the services of a specialist computer technician to diagnose.

Hi
I have Toshiba A100 with Dual Mode Pad. I have been using the touch pad as a mouse and sometimes it gets stuck in the 6 button mode and I’m unable to use the mouse. I can’t find any notes in the manual of how the dual pad switches between mouse touchpad and multi function and once it’s in this mode I have to turn off the computer in order to use the mouse again.

Needless to say I have no idea how to use the button functions.

Thank you in advance

Wendy

The dual mode touchpads are funny beasts designed to be both a mouse and a “launch and control center”. I can’t say the idea excites me.

The problem with these touchpads is they have a habit of switching modes when you least expect it. According to Synaptics FAQ on the product you can switch modes by tapping on the top right hand corner and you are probably doing that accidentally.

To turn the feature off, click the Start button and go to the Control Panel. Under the Hardware Settings heading, click Mouse Settings.

In the Mouse Settings, select the Device Settings tab and then Settings. Open the tapping tab then click the tap zones module and uncheck the Enable Tap Zones checkbox.

Hi everyone..I’m using Windows XP Home Edition and I don’t know whether I’ve already asked about this but a few days ago something happened!! let me see if I can explain ( novice that I am!)what’s going on..the size of my fonts became bigger and when I use IE to search, everything (including welcome screen info) becomes giants size. I’d like to restore my computer to an earlier date (like 2-3 weeks ago when I had no problems and a stress free user friendly operating system)..it must be something that I’m doing because this is the 3rd time this has happened..I’ve called out a tech two times at $100 a callout and it’s now becoming an expensive mess/hobby..can anyone help in simple language?.I hate being a computer dodo!…thanks Elly in Oz

It sounds like there’s a specific website you are going to that is causing this.

The first thing we’d suggest is to quit using Internet Explorer and switch to Firefox. You can still use Internet Explorer for sites that require it.

Should it continue to happen, there are two places where these settings can change. First is in the screen resolution. Click Start, Control Panel and Display.

In the Display settings, click the Advanced tab. Towards the bottom left hand corner is a slider marked Screen Resolution. If you move this to the right, it will make the screen and icons smaller.

Try experimenting with those resolutions to find the ones that are best for you. You’ll find many of them won’t suit your screen. If you don’t like them, just wait 15 seconds and it will go back to the previous settings.

It is possible your Windows schemes are being changed. To fix this, you open the Display settings as we described above and click on the Themes tab. In the themes box, click the drop down menu and select the Windows XP option. Click save and you’ll return to the Windows standard setup.

You may also want to check what your computer tech has been doing. They should have noted what they did on your job sheet or invoice. If they didn’t, call them and ask.

how do I transfer documents from floppy disc to computer file?

Floppy disks!?! Now that’s old stuff. I’ll assume what you mean is you have a floppy disk with data on it but no floppy drive on a newer computer.

The easiest thing to do is to buy an external USB floppy drive which are easily available for under $50. Simply plug it in. Modern Macs and PCs will automatically detect the drive when you connect it.

Once connected open the drive, which normally appears as the A: drive on a PC, and you can copy the disk onto your hard drive.

If you have a lot of information on floppies then we’d strongly recommend copying them onto flash or external hard drives. Floppy disks are prone to failing over time.

On Christmas Day my house nearly burnt down. The problem was that a can opener caught alight. Toxic soot went into everythink in the house including my computer.

I have been advised that this toxic smoke will shorten the life of the computer and will need to be replaced. The computor is a dell 3100/E310 amd all is covered by insurance.

Can the computer be cleaned or does it need to be replaced and i have also been advised that all electrical items like the TV and radios need to be replaced.

Sorry to hear about the fire. Our advice is that electrical equipment that has been damaged by water, smoke or power surges should be replaced. Even if they work for some time afterward, their life will be reduced.

Given everything is covered by insurance it would be best for you to make a claim for full replacement.

If you have valuable data on the hard drives a good computer tech should be able to recover it from the damaged hard drive.

I have a SCSI drive that wont boot to xp pro. Just keeps rebooting. Tried repair from install disc I get x00000024 STOP error. I have xp on other disc plug drive in and it will find it if I go to device manager but then chashes the system and reboots. So can\’t get to it as slave.
Have tried seatools no go, others too.

The  stop error indicates a problem with the hard disk drive, usually it means a damaged ntfs.sys file but can mean a corrupted file system.

Given you can’t access this drive as a slave, it almost certainly appears to be the latter.

The drive needs to be tested for physical errors and if it isn’t damaged then a reformat and reinstall. Of course you’ll need to get any data off the computer.

The best way to do this is to start your computer from a boot disk, either a Windows 2000, XP or Vista disk or a specialist disk like Bart PE or Knoppix. You will be asked to install the SCSI drivers. From there you should be able to access the drive and recover the information.

If you can’t, try using a different SCSI card to see if that resolves the problem. If not, then you will have to contact a professional data recovery company.

I think my hard drive is full, how do I check it?

To check how full your hard drive is, open My Computer and you’ll see a list of all your computer drives. Right-click the drive you want to check and go down the menu to properties.

Click Properties and you’ll get a graphical view of how full your drive is. Generally we like to have at least 20% or 5Gb free.

If it is full, it’s worthwhile running some cleanup tools on the computer. We’ve covered that in a previous post.

You may need a larger hard drive or to make some system changes to stop this happening again, if so call a computer tech to help you.

I cannot hear anything on my computer when looking at websites( youtube etc) I can hear things when using media player or itunes but nothing else. When I go to control panel and click on sounds and audio devices it says no audio device. It use to work normally but all of a sudden stopped. any ideas please??

We’ve covered missing sound devices in a previous post.

In your case, the situation’s slightly different. The sound device is obviously working but Windows isn’t recognising it as being the default setting.

To change this open the Control Panel by going into Start, Settings, Control Panel and clicking on Sound and Audio Devices.

In the Sound and Audio Devices properties click the Voice tab. In this tab you will the default devices, click the drop down box and change the device then click okay. If you have a number of devices you may have to experiment to find the correct one.

I have an problem that some of our PCs shut down while running a certain program. What is the reason behind this? I am working with window XP.

The problem is the program is crashing some of the computers and they are shutting down. Unlike earlier versions of Windows, Windows XP reboots rather than displays the dreaded Blue Screen of Death.

The clue to the problem is in the error message the Blue Screen gives you. Among other things, it will list the application and driver that triggered the problem. Microsoft have further information on deciphering BSOD messages.

In your case, given it happens on some machines and not others, it’s a safe guess that this problem is hardware related and is probably the graphics card. You may want to check the differences between the machines that don’t crash and those that do.

Troubleshooting these problems can be time consuming and complex. If you aren’t experienced in doing this then it’s best done by a