IT Queries: Computer problems answered

Hi,

Can you please tell me to name of the programme that you can buy/download that is used to return digital dictation that you have accidently deleted from your computer.

Julie

Hi Julie,

Losing any file is a serious pain. The best free tool we’ve come across is Restoration.

When you’ve lost a file, the most important thing is to stop using that computer. The more you use the computer, the more likely you are to overwrite the deleted file.

We recommend you download the program to another computer, then copy the program to a USB drive or CD (Restoration will actually fit on a floppy disk which you can use if you have spare disks and both machines have floppy drives).

When you run it, choose the drive (usually c: drive) where the file was lost from, type part of the lost file’s name (leave blank if you don’t remember what it was called) and click Search Deleted Files.

The search might take some time, several hours if you’ve left the file name blank and it’s a big drive. Be patient and let it run.

Once its finished and the list of found files appears, highlight the file you want and click the Restore by copying button. You’ll be asked to save the file somewhere, make sure you choose a place and name you’ll remember.

Losing data is always a big worry and this is why we always recommend having a backup drive and good backup software.

I have Windows XP Professional with Windows Media Player version 11.0.5721.5230 and all the current updates. I am having trouble burning CDs…it may burn 2 out of 12 songs and then just says it can’t burn and finalises the CD so its wasted. It doesn’t do this all the time, just sometimes but I am wasting far too many CDs. I like making compilation CDs from my own collection and I am getting very frustrated. I have slowed the speed right down, tried different brands of CD. Is there another music program which would do this for me more consistently?

Burning CDs is a bit of a black art. There are a lot of variables and results can be unpredictable.

The first thing we do when confronted with a CD burning problem is to turn the burning speed down to the bare minimum.

In Windows Media Player 11 you can turn the burning speed down the following way, click the Tools menu, select Options then under the Burn tab change the burning speed to “slow”.

If this doesn’t work, we’d suggest getting another CD burning program such as Nero. You may find your computer has a copy of Nero Express or a similar program already on it as part of the package.

Just wondering what you think about registry cleaning software. Is it a good idea? I visited a comparison website at compareregistrycleaners.org and the test results for Max Registry cleaner shape up the best.

We’re a little wary of any registry cleaners. While the theory of deleting unnecessary registry entries is good, there’s a lot of scope for things to go horribly, horribly wrong.

In our view the risk of messing up the computer doesn’t justify the speed improvement most computers will see after running an effective registry cleaner.

If you do want to try a registry cleaner we’d suggest the venerable and free CleanReg from Armstong Systems. This will scan the registry and find redundant entries. It’s best to run it after uninstalling any unused programs as poor uninstall routines are the main cause of unnecessary registry keys.

Before running a registry cleaner, make sure you’ve created a restore point. This will save your system should the scanner delete a critical value.

Also note that we haven’t tested any registry cleaners on Windows Vista. We’d suggest not running any until there’s a better body of knowledge on how Vista behaves with these cleaners.

My operating system is Me and recently I have received the following error message. It is headed SNDSRVC.EXE – EMBEDDING and below this says, Sndsrvc has caused an error in Kernel32.DLL. Sndsrvc will now close. Another error message which has appeared on a couple of occasions is, Error Starting Program, followed by The IPHLPAPI.DLL cannot start. Check the file to determine the problem. I would be grateful for any advice.

The SNDSRVC.EXE service is part of the Norton Internet Security suite. If you have Norton we’d suggest uninstalling it first.

If you have uninstalled Norton then it’s possible some of the components are still present. You can remove them by downloading and running the Norton removal tool provided by Symantec. Be careful with this tool as it will disable products like PC Anywhere and Winfax.

It’s also possible you have a spyware infection. We’d suggest testing the machine for an infection. We’ve previously posted how to do this.

Finally, you might have to search the hard drive to find where this file is hiding. That will give clues on how to remove it.

Don’t forget to create restore points before carrying out each of these suggestions.

I have a Dell pc running xp pro. (well – it used to)
The pc while running was unplugged. Now I need to try a repair or reinstall XP.
With the xp disk in I am prompted for the rego number. It now refuses to accept that Rego Number for that disk.

The disk is in clean and in good condition and the relevant rego number (sticker) was attached to pc case for safe keeping. That bit worked out.

A little history
XP home use to exist on the machine but I formatted away in the XP Pro install.
Or did I ?.

Have you herd of this problem before?

The sticker on the computer refers to the original XP Home installation. So it’s not the right number. If you want to reinstall XP Professional, you’ll need the number from that disk.

Your problem with the “reinstall Windows” message is probably due to a damaged registry. This can be fixed by recovering the registry files from one of the system restore points. Microsoft have instructions on their website.

Keep in mind this is a complex task and we strongly recommend any work like this should be done by an experienced computer technician.

I’ve been asked to “zip” a file. How do I do this?

“Zipping” a file is where you make the file smaller through what’s called a “compression” tool. This takes out all the wasted space in a file and squeezes it into a smaller file. Sometimes you might want to use it to get around restrictions on certain types of file being sent.

The term “zipping” comes from the MS-DOS utility called Zip, which is now known as Winzip. Winzip is not the only file compression utility, other popular programs are Stuffit and WinRAR.

Both Windows and Mac OSX have built in zipping tools. To zip a Windows file, right click it and select “Send to:” and then Compressed (zipped) folder. The file will then be created with a .zip suffix.

On an Apple, hold the command key down and click the file, on the menu that appears click the Create Archive item.

Keep in mind some documents don’t compress well as some file formats don’t have a lot of spare space. Zipping an already compressed file will actually make it bigger.