IT Queries: Computer problems answered

I’ve set the Microsoft Office Journal function to record documents I’ve opened in word, excel etc.

It works fine for documents on the local computer c: drive, but since I upgraded to Office 2007 , it doesn’t record documents opened from network drives. 

With the release of Vista and the built in Windows Search, Microsoft decided to disable the Office Journaling function for networked documents, the idea being Vista would handle the issue.

While Microsoft Office journaling hasn’t been popular with users as it tends to slow machines down, the few people that do use it were deeply unhappy with Microsoft’s decision.

As a consequence, Microsoft have released a patch for this which can be requested from their knowledge base article, Description of the 2007 Office system hotfix package (Mso.msp): August 26, 2008.

Microsoft hotfixes are funny beasts, you have to submit a request for it and then you’ll be sent a link by email to the download address. When you recieve that, download the hotfix, install it and the network journaling will be back after a reboot.

Remember to back up your Outlook data  files before running this update as it can affect your system.

I am unable to open any blogspot sites, including the Blogger home page – I just get the standard “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” message. Typepad and other no blogger sites are working normally. Help! Thank you.

The problem is probably in your firewall settings so you’ll need to say which firewall you’re using. 

You may also want to check Blogger hasn’t inadvertently been added to Internet Explorer’s Restricted Sites list.

Click Tools, Options and select the Security tab.

Highlight Restricted Sites and then click the Sites button.

You’ll get a list of the sites currently restricted, scroll through the list and check Blogger isn’t on it. If it is, hightlight it and click Remove.

I’m trying to log into an overseas television network’s website. It contains a lot of colour and graphics and thus takes a while to fully load up.

Problem is I can’t seem to access this site at home. I can do so at Uni and my friends can successfully log into it. Could it be a problem with my ISP?

It could be in that your ISPs network isn’t set up as well as your university’s or your home connection has a problem. 

However it’s more likely that the overseas site is blocking foreign access due to licensing restriction and they don’t realise your uni address is an overseas connection.

Before complaining to your ISP you may want to ask some of your friends or relatives to try accessing the site to see if they have a similar problem.

If you are being blocked, you may want to explore using proxy servers to get around the problem.

I have purchased a new MacBook Pro. But my cousin has formatted it and installed only Vista on it. I want to reinstall Leopard OS along with Vista. I broke my original OS DVD I got with laptop, so i purchased a pirated one from Andheri Station. But this DVD doesnt not get recognised it Vista neither I am able to boot from it. I bought 2 more DVD from different vendor thinking there must be problem with DVD but I have same trouble with all DVD.

Can anybody suggest how should I install leopard on my MAC? is there a special way to do it?

The simplest way to do this is reload OS X and run Boot Camp to reinstall Vista.

To do this you’re going to have to buy a new copy of Leopard from your nearest Apple dealer and then run the Vista install program through Boot Camp. 

Remember to back up any important data before killing the Windows partition.

I am getting a message that McAfee service is ending in 7 days. I have a copy of my order number from December of 2008 which pays for a 3 year subscription.  Why am I getting this message?

The problem is in the McAfee system where your subscription hasn’t been registered properly.

Unfortunately you’re going to have to contact their support centre. The link itself is to the United States support site, to change it to your locale, click the United States – English title on the top right hand corner. This will give you the local site.

It’s probably going to be best to call them. When you do, have your records with you at all times and remember to keep notes while always being polite.

Good luck.

I read in one of your  advice pages that I should regularly check for updates with my Norton Symantec 360 and keep checking over and over until the system advises that it is up to date.

Each time I run the check through, it does in fact advise that the system is up to date but when I run it again it still manages to find more updates!

I have, this afternoon run it through at least 7-8 times and it still manages to find more updates! I did the same thing last week and gave up after about fifteen minutes because it was still producing more updates!  Am I THAT far out of date or what is going on?

I would appreciate your comment  - I am not a computer whiz but enjoy my computer and learn more everyday.

Great to hear you’re enjoying learning about getting more from your computer every day. It’s an area of great opportunity.

Unfortunately, you’ll need to keep running the updates until Norton 360 is happy there’s no more to download.

The problem is Norton 360 is a complex program that does many things, so one update leads to another and so on.

So keep doing it until Norton is happy that it is fully up to date.

I have a problem with spammers using my domain name to send out their spam. They must forge the “From” address so that the spam looks like it comes from my domain, when it could in fact be coming from any PC in the world. In many cases, the “From” address that the spammer uses isn’t quite right anyway, eg. instead of myname@mydomain.com.au, it might be gobbledigook@mydomain.com.au.

The problems are:

1) My domain sometimes gets blacklisted which makes it impossible for me to send my own email to my own customers

2) I get the occasional complaint from people who think I’ve actually sent them the spam

3) And most annoyingly, my inbox is frequently full of literally hundreds of  ”Postmaster” auto-responses, because many (possibly most) of the email addresses that the spammer sends to are not legitimate addresses, but because my domain is in the “From” or “Reply To” field,  I’m the bunny who ends up with all the automated “Your email could not be delivered” errors!

This seems to happen in waves – it won’t happen for ages, and then I will be bombarded for a couple of days by this nuisance.

Is there any way of preventing this from happening?

Spammers use a number of ways to avoid detection and one of them is to hijack someone else’s email address or domain as the return address. 

The frustrating thing is there’s little you can do about the problem and it is a really irritating problem that affects many people who own domains.

One thing you should check is how your website is hosted. Spam checkers shouldn’t disqualify your address because of this and it sounds like you are using shared hosting where the provider isn’t doing all they can to discourage spammers from using their service.

You may find changing hosting services will fix the blacklist problem

I use two User Accounts, one as a Computer Administrator and one as a Limited Account. Recently a ran the programme Easy Cleaner to do a Registry check on the Limited Account.

It came back with 581 entries to be considered for deletion. Not surprisingly, I could not remove those entries while in the Limited Account mode. I then changed that account to a Computer Administrator and ran Easy Cleaner again.

It then only found one possible entry for deletion. When I changed it back to a Limited Account and ran Easy Cleaner again, surprise surprise, 581 entries once again.

I find that a bit of a puzzle.

It’s a good question and not a puzzle at all.

The registry checker looks at your computer’s settings then checks the files referred to in the registry actually exist.

As a Limited User you can’t access critical system files so the registry checker reports errors as can’t find the files shown in the registry.

The is the reason we like Limited User mode for Windows users, it makes life harder for viruses and other malware.

Running the registry checker is good, but make sure you’ve made a backup before making changes to your registry as you can lock yourself out of your system if the program makes a mistake.

I get the following message frequently and don’t know what to do. The Op System is XP Pro.: -

Windows- Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low

Your system is low on virtual memory. Windows is increasing the size of your memory paging file. During this process, memory requests for some applications may be denied. For more information, see Help.

The problem is exactly what the error message says – your virtual memory settings are too low.

We’ve covered the virtual memory too low problem before. We’ d recommend you follow the instructions and set the memory to a minimum of one and a half times your physical ram and a maximum 4000Mb.