IT Queries: Computer problems answered

We are starting up a small business and are looking at purchasing a high end computer (and associated hardware and software) to edit and archive the company’s digital media resources: photographs, illustrations, videos etc.

We have a budget of $5000.

The $5,000 budget should pay for a good computer. Our sister site PC Rescue has details of what typical users should buy for home and small office use.

Given your requirements are somewhat higher than the typical user, you’ll want something more advanced. We’d suggest the following.

Hard drive: Given you’re dealing with graphics, you really want to have a bigger and faster hard drive. We’d suggest a 750Gb or higher 3.0Gb per second SATA drive.

Memory: With these applications, the more memory you can throw at it the better. Go for at least 4Gb.

Processor: You’ll need to consider a quad-core processor. Be a bit careful here as specifying something too high can blow your budget out. A 2.4GHz Intel Q6600 should be fine.

Video: Get at least a 512Mb video card with DVI out.

Sound card: For many applications built in sound cards are fine. If high quality sound is important then add something like a SoundBlaster Xtreme.

Warranty: Whatever you get, make sure you add a three years manufacturers warranty.

With a 22″ monitor you should easily squeeze in below $3,000 which should allow for a good quality A3 printer, backup hardware and Internet router.

Good luck with the new business.

I took my laptop and external hard drive to my local computer shop. I wanted them to transfer iTunes and My Photos onto the external hard drive to free up some space on my laptop’s hard drive. I also wanted the computer people to do a minor clean up so my laptop would run better.
The computer people erased both my laptop and my external hard drive. They did not back up my system as “there was no point as we were only working on the external hard drive”. They managed to find about half of my files but I had to rename them all and put them back into some type of order.
I am a school teacher and they erased years of my personal and professional life. They deleted student marks, uni work, past and current school programs etc. I am so angry and upset! They didn’t end up charging me but I’m still so frustrated with the company at fault.
Is there anything I can do:
1) To retrieve my lost information?
2) Is the company legally at fault?
Thank you for your time,
Frustrated & Angry

We’re not in a position to give legal advice so we really don’t know the answer for the second question. You need to talk to a lawyer or contact your local consumer advice service for some guidance 0n this.

To answer the first question, we like the Restoration utility.

Keep in mind with lost data is that every time you use the drive, the less likely it is that you’ll find the lost data.

So stop using the computer NOW!

The best way to recover data is to take the drive out of the computer and put it into another machine, then run the utilities and save recovered files to your external drive. You can also do it by booting from a boot disk and running some recovery utilities.

Generally it’s best to consult a professional. Recovering deleted data is a delicate operation which is best done by experienced technicians.

There are good businesses that specialize in data recovery but, quite rightly, their services are expensive and they don’t guarantee success. It may be possible to get the offending shop to pay at least part of the recovery costs.

Sadly, it may be that data is totally lost. That’s why we recommend backing up as much as possible.

I have the new version of Microsoft Office and people are telling me I can’t read what I send them.

Office 2007 has a range of new formats; Word 2007 saves documents in the docx format which is incompatible with the older doc formats.

The best solution when you are sharing files is to save files to the lowest level everyone can read. In Office 2007 you can set the file format by clicking the Office button (the big round button in the top left corner, click the Word Options button, click the Save tab.

Under Save Documents, click the drop-down arrow in the Save Files In This Format box and select Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc) the click OK.

Repeat this for Microsoft Excel.

One downside with this feature is that you will lose some Office 2007 features by saving to the 97-2003 format.

Office 2007 is going to become more common as will this problem. So we’d strongly recommend your friends and colleagues install the Office Compatibility Pack so they won’t get this problem in future.

I have run an antispyware and it has picked up: Trojan-Clicker hkey-current-user\\software\

\microsoft\\windows\\current version\\internet settings\\zonemap\\domains\\analcord.com
\\gooozle.bz/www
\\preferit-windows
Avast doesn’t pick these up.  What do you think

You almost certainly do have some sort of spyware infection and the spyware has changed settings in the Internet Explorer trusted sites zones. This allows the sites listed to get better access to your system.

This is one reason we suggest running Firefox, Opera or Safari in preference to Internet Explorer.

You’ll need to give your computer a good scan for spyware, encourage your office or household not to use IE and educate users on what websites they should avoid.

Burning CD with Sonic software. I have a problem - two files (photos) have been burned on the one cd - there is still space on the cd.

When I try to view as a slide show, the cd stops after about 20 images. After a while, the screen will unfreeze and then I can get out of Sonic by using the symbols on the top right hand side of the screen. I cannot, using these symbols, tell the cd to pause, or go back or forward although all symbols appear on the screen after it unfreezes.

Prior to adding the second file, I could views all of the images from the first file. I have Windows XP - still very much learning when it comes to the photo side of things.

It sounds like there’s a problem with the either the CD or the Sonic Software.

The first thing to try is burning a fresh CD. If this works, then it’s likely the CD had some problems.

It’s also possible Sonic was struggling with rewriting the CD. This sort of problem is why we tend to steer people away from re-writing data onto CDs. We prefer to burn once and forget.

This is especially true if you are sending CDs to other people. Set the software to burn at the lowest possible speed and do not use R/W media. The simpler you can make it, the less likely it is that things will go wrong at the other end.

As far as photo management goes, we’re great fans of Google’s Picasa. Not only does this have a basic photo editing features but it also has a CD burning utility. It’s a free download from Google.

I cannot access administrator account. I think it got happened while i was playing with computer management.

Not having a Administrator account can cause all manner of problems with Windows. So you’ll need to get this back.

First check if the Administrator account still exists. To do this, click Start, Run and type  Control userpasswords2. This will get you into the User Accounts screen.

If Administrator exists there, click change password and that should reset it. You may have to re-enable the account.

The next step is to do a System Restore.  We have instructions on a previous post.

Should these not clear it then the Windows Vista Forums have a detailed post on how to fix the problem. The instructions are quite complex and involve some knowledge of using the Windows Registry.

If you don’t have this knowledge then we’d strongly suggest contacting your local computer tech.

I am having difficulty setting up my BR Broadband. Cut a long story short have been advised by the BT Technical Dept that my virus software is stopping the broadband from connecting. I have tried to delete the software. There were 3 files, 2 deleted but the last one will not delete. It comes up with a message saying “Delete Macafee Service Centre” but there is no file of that description.

This is a fairly typical problem with the big security software programs. They leave all sorts of components lying around and don’t do a good job of removing them.

Fortunately the bigger software developer have removal tools for their products. In this case McAfee have the McAfee Consumer Product Removal tool and have the instructions for its use at their website.

If the problem with the connection continues you may want to check for other firewall or security programs on your computer by looking in the Add/Remove Programs applet.

Please tell me how to set the classpath and all for running a java program. OS is Windows 2000.

The classpath should be set as part of your Java installation. It’s best to uninstall all the old Java installations , download the latest version and reinstall it.

If a program is asking for the classpath, then it may be a problem with the program and you should reinstall that.

In my CD drive one CD is broken inside and it is not coming out. CD drive is not opened. What do i want to do next?

Normally you’d eject a CD through using a straightened paperclip and pushing it into the tiny hole at the front of the CD drive.

While you should try this, it’s highly likely a broken CD has damaged the device as well.  So in this case, we’d suggest replacing the entire unit.

If it’s a desktop computer, then it’s a simple matter of swapping the old one out. For a laptop, you’ll need to contact the manufacturer and its very likely you’ll find the repair is expensive if you can do it all. In that case, you may want to consider an external drive.

When I boot my machine it starts check disk for drive d and the keyboard doesn’t work while checking the disk so I can’t cancel it.

The keyboard not working is fine. This is due to the BIOS not being set to detect your type of keyboard during startup.  It’s best to get a computer tech to look at this as it involves changing some very sensitive settings.

The chkdsk on startup is a much more serious problem. This usually indicates bad sectors on the hard drive. This will mean replacing the drive.

To check for the bad blocks, run Check Disk in the full /r mode. We have instructions on a previous page, just change the drive letter to d:.