IT Queries: Computer problems answered

I use the Blind Carbon Copy in Yahoo web mail to send Word documents to around 30 addressees. One of the recipients receives the attachment as a .dat extension (in lieu of a .doc file) and cannot open it. If I send the attachment as a one off to that person it is received as a .doc file and can be opened without problem.

The recipient’s son suggests I use Plain Text in lieu of Rich Text. The only reason I use Rich Text is because Yahoo generally defaults to it. I wouldn’t have thought that Rich Text would be the cause.

The problem is Rich Text and it’s a long standing issue. Emails created in Rich Text store their formatting information in the DAT file. Most email readers will read the DAT file and apply the formatting to the mail message.

Some email programs can’t handle the Rich Text format so just show the raw text in the body and the DAT file as a separate attachment.

The recipient’s son is quite right, the only way to overcome this problem is to turn off Rich Text. We find HTML is the best way to format email messages and we’d also recommend sending Microsoft Word attachments as a PDF file to overcome similar problems with Word.

Hi,
I am running the latest version of Mozilla Firefox(it’s great). But after the latest update the toolbar link to Thunderbird (Email) has vanished.
Any thoughts about why and can it be reinstated?

It sounds like a recent upgrade has lost your email toolbar.

One of the features with Mozilla is the sheer number of add ins available for it. The add in you need is the Thunderbird Biff addin. There’s a lot of other addins you can install to make Firefox easier to use. We’d encourage exploring the packages available.

I have tried to uninstall Incredmail. It disappears for a few days and a message comes back complete incredimail installation, I then press ok. A message appears that an icon will be placed on your desktop to able you install the program at alater time.Could you please advise me how to remove this reminder, as it does not show that it is still installed on program list.

Incredimail can be a very irritating program to get rid of and this is one reason we don’t like it. The other is we find cute images and bouncing emoticons incredibly irritating in our emails.

The instructions posted at Incredimail’s website make it appear easy and we’d recommend following these instructions first.

If the icon still doesn’t go away, right click on the icon and select Properties. Click the Shortcut tab and look in the Target box. This will tell you the folder where the Incredmail installation files are on the computer.

Open My Computer go to the location and delete the folder listed in target box. Typically this is a folder called IMInstall. Then delete the desktop icon.

This should get rid of the problem. However it is possible you might get harmless but irritating error messages on starting.

If that’s the case, some registry editing is needed. We don’t recommend users making changes to the system files so we’d strongly recommend you seek the services of a qualified computer tech.

Hi! I am a senior, fairly new to the computer game, and purchased an ex-govt. pc equipped with msn email site, and was going well, then..started having trouble responding. I’ve taken it back, and back and now they have installed FIREFOX which i’m not happy with. How can I get MSN back. Further, the pc is not connecting wth printer. All quite boring and problematic, and wasting time!

Your experience is why we tend to steer people away from second hand computers. These problems are pretty typical of what we see when people buy old systems. We recommend buying a cheap new system rather than wasting time with second hand kit.

To get MSN back, it’s best to visit the MSN website and download the latest version. Make sure your computer meets the minimum system requirements for MSN Explorer on that page.

We’ve discussed a problem previously with MSN Explorer and Internet Explorer 7 which stops MSN responding, you can find the fix here.

I have a 802.11g network with my two grandchildren. (Windows XP Home) I keep getting the message System Error. “There is an IP address conflict with another system on the network”. This doesn’t appear to cause any problems, but please can you tell me how I can find out what the conflict is and how to correct it.

What’s happening is two computers have the same Internet Protocol (IP) address on your network. This can cause problems, but if you’re just surfing the net with these machines then you won’t notice them.

As part of your network you will have a router. Its the router’s job to give out addresses and for some reason one of the computers is holding onto it’s address and confusing the router.

The simplest way is to open the Control Panel on each computer and go to Network Connections. You will find all the different network connections listed, right click on the wireless connection and choose Repair. This will force the computer to get a new address from the router.

It is also possible one of the computers isn’t set up to get it’s address from the network. We’ll look at resolving that in another query.

When I try to open outlook express a box comes up which reads outlook express could not be started because MOSE.DLL could not be initialized

Are you sure the file is MOSE.DLL or MSOE.DLL?  We’ll work on the assumption it could be either.

The first step is to re-register these dll files.

Click Start, then Run and type regsvr32 msoe.dll.  Then click okay and a confirmation box should appear. Repeat this process for mose.dll.

Reboot your computer.

You might find the Outlook Express files are damaged. If this is the case, refer to our fixing Windows installation files tip.

Hi. I moved from Optus broadband to Iprimus broadband. Every time I want to send an email on a site I still get the Optus verson of Outlook Express which of course doesn’t work.

How can I get the screen to go to Iprimus email, please?

I have tried looking up the instructions on the web, but I never seem to have the right boxes needed to activate things.

I am a novice in all this and would really appreciate your (very simple) instructions.

Kind regards.
Sylvia.

Hi Sylvia,

There’s a couple points here. First, across the top of your Outlook Express screen you’ll see the Optus name and possibly their logo. Ignore these as they are only for decoration and don’t affect your email.

To receive your email, you’ll need to change your mail server settings. A mail server is a like a post box. Your email gets delivered to that post box and Outlook Express collects the mail from there.

Currently Outlook Express is going to the old Optus mail box. You have to tell it where the new iPrimus mail box is.

This is something you’ll need to ask the ISP. From Primus’ website their settings are pop.iprimus.com.au for the incoming mail and smtp.iprimus.com.au for sending mail.

The Internet is a dangerous neighbourhood so your Internet Service Provider protects your mailbox with a lock and key, known as a username and password. You’ll need those to get the contents of your mailbox.

Finally, you need your email address. This the address people need to send you email. Just like your street address, no-one can send you mail if they don’t know your address.

Once you have those four settings, you’ll need to enter them into your Outlook Express.

Open Outlook Express, click the Tools menu and click Accounts and then click the Mail tab.

Under mail, highlight the account that’s currently there, this is the old Optus account and press the Remove button. This gets rid of the old account.

Next, click the Add button, click Mail and the setup wizard for a new email account will start.

The first question will be your Display Name. This is the name at will appear on your emails, this is NOT your email address. Use the name people know you by.

Click Next and you will be asked for your email address, make sure you enter this correctly or people will send replies to the wrong address.

After you click Next again, you’ll be asked for the mail server accounts; the account type is POP, the incoming mail server is pop.iprimus.com.au and the outgoing is smtp.iprimus.com.au.

Once again click Next and you’ll be asked for your username and password. Make sure your username is correct, for Iprimus it’s the email address but for other providers it might just be the part before the @ symbol.

Then click Finish.

That’s it, done! If you’ve made a mistake you’ll get an error message. We’ll look at what Outlook Express error messages mean in another ITQueries post.

A newsletter I subscribe to had an item regarding Broadband speeds. It recommended readers check their download speeds by going to “speedtest.net“

When on that site a link was shown to products which offered access to free applications that would clean your computer and make your computer run faster. Do you know of these applications and are they safe? The applications are listed on the right hand side of the Speedtest screen

Anthony

Hi Tony,

I had a look at that site too. It’s a terrific little setup.

That said, I wouldn’t trust any broadband accelerator with a bargepole. You can slightly improve the speed of your Internet connection with various tweaks and but the risks of messing something up are high. A lot of the paid for accelerators are snake oil and many of the free ones are spyware supported.

We’d recommend you give them a miss.

Recently my computer has started slowing to a halt after a few minutes use, when it does I press CTR-ALT-DEL and find my computer is using 100% of resources. What can I do?

This appears to be a problem with the Microsoft Update service. The immediate fix is to open Windows Update, go to the Change Settings links, scroll down and the option to Stop Using Microsoft Update is at the bottom.

If it continues, you can disable Automatic Updates in the Control Panel. Choose Turn off Automatic Updates. Microsoft have further instructions at their website.

It appears NVidia drivers can cause this problem as well as discussed in this thread on the Microsoft usenet groups. We’d suggest calling a computer technician before uninstalling IDE or RAID drivers as this can render your computer unusable.

Problems like this can take some time to troubleshoot, so it’s best to start with the simplest and obvious first.

Good luck.

Currently I can receive and post email however when opening internet explorer 7 I cannot display web pages unless I \”Pause\” Kaspersky.  Any suggestions appreciated

Regards,

Barry 

Hi Barry,

I assume by Kaspersky you mean Kaspersky Internet Security.

What’s happening is the firewall has blocked the program from accessing the net. If the firewall doesn’t trust the program then it won’t let connect. This is what a firewall is supposed to do and why a firewall is an important part of protecting your computer from malware.

Like all firewalls, you can manually change the settings, Kaspersky have the instructions at their website. When you click “add” to the trusted the file path should be %ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe. 

While IE7 is a good browser, we’d still suggest you use Opera or Firefox for day-to-day browsing and only use Internet Explorer for sites that won’t work with the other two.

Good luck