ActiveWin: Ask AW

Welcome to AskAW! This section of our web site lets you submit questions about any problems/queries that you may have about Windows. Be it from a little icon that annoys you to hardware freezing your PC, we will try and help you out. You can submit your questions by e-mailing us at askaw@activewin.com. You can browse through previous questions over at our Archive Page. Who knows what you might find.

Here are the answered questions for 10-12-2001

Question 142	Submitted by Louise
I installed Corel WordPerfect9 on a new computer with WinME as the operating system. When I go into the programs they work find, and I have no problem with WordPerfect or Quattro Pro. What I do have a problem with is Presentations. I can use the program without any problem but when I close out the program my desktop fades out and all the icons turn either pale blue or white. I do not get an error message, but have to restart my computer to bring my desktop back up to the original configuration. Have anyone heard about this problem and if so what can I do to solve the problem. Thanks
Solution 1	Answered by Charles Putnam
There are two possible solutions: 1. Definitely download all updates from Corel (I think they're up to service pack 8 on WP 9). 2. Also, make sure that you have the most current video card drivers.

Question 156	Submitted by ?
Your website appears to be a godsend. I have numerous Quicktime Mov files on my computer. They will not play the movies when I double click on them. In checking the .mov extension in the registry I note that there is an Edit Flag 01 00 00 00 related to the Open action. How can I modify or remove this edit flag so the movies will open and play. Also are you aware of any website that lists all of the registry edit flags and explains how to deal with them. Many thanks for your help!
Solution 1	Answered by Michael Kircus
Just go into Folder Options and reassociate .mov files with quicktime. Or just reinstall Quicktime. That should work.

Question 159	Submitted by Bob
what are some good utilities for removing system restore from me? thanks in advance
Solution 1	Answered by Michael Kircus
You can't remove System Restore from Me safely, just disable it. Under File System in the System Properties, under the advanced tab there is a checkbox that says "Disable System Restore." Check it. Reboot, and you are done.

Question 151	Submitted by ?
How do I set up Outlook Express so that when I open the window it automatically opens at full size (fills my screen) rather than minimized?
Solution 1	Answered by Michael Kircus
Right click the shortcut, select Maximized next to Run, and you should be off.

Question 149	Submitted by ?
Hi, Please explain to me what win32 is. Thank You
Solution 1	Answered by Michael Kircus
Win32 is basically a programming API for all 32 bit versions of Windows. It's what programmers use to create Windows applications, and anything that is for a Win32 platform is for any 32 bit Windows operating system.

Question 144	Submitted by Carl
Dear activewindows I have toshiba laptop computer.When i connect to the internet my browser Ie5 cannot open any web pages and i get the following message res://C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\SHDOCLC.DLL/dnserror . I am using windows 98 second edition. i would be grateful if you could help me with my problem.
Solution 1	Answered by Michael Kircus
Upgrade to the latest version, and reinstall your connection settings. Also reinstall your modem drivers if possible.

Question 140	Submitted by Len
I have two network cards in my Windows 2000 Professional PC. One card is connected to an ISDN network which is my company's internal network. I use this connection for internal email, and access to internal databases. This is a 128 KB connection. The second card is connected to a 1 MB DSL network. I want to use this connection for all my web surfing. All traffic seems to flow through the ISDN connection unless I manually disable it. I cannot find any information on how to explicitly use the DSL connection when using IE. I tried changing the connection order in the Network "Advanced Settings" section to make the DSL connection the higher priority, but this didn't work. Any ideas? Thanks
Solution 1	Answered by Michael Kircus
Use the Connections tab in Internet Options. Try using the Add New Connection Wizard to see if that works.

Question 136	Submitted by ?
With Internet Explorer 5 I was given the option of keeping my previous version, IE4. I frequently switch back and forth to see how a website will work differently from one to the other. Does Internet Explorer 6 give this same option? If so, will I be able to retain both IE4 & IE5?
Solution 1	Answered by Michael Kircus
Yes, you can still keep your previous version, so I would recommend upgrading. But it would be best to downgrade to IE4, then upgrade to IE6, because only one configuration is saved, and IE5 and IE6 are very similar.

Question 154	Submitted by Colleen
Hi, I uninstalled Office 2000 from my user's C: partition to free up some hard disk space and reinstalled Office 2000 on his D: partition. Office 2000 works fine but no space was freed up on his C: partition because the uninstall didn't seem to remove any files. How can I get rid of the files still on the C: drive? Thanks

Solution 1	Answered by Michael Kircus
Did you try reinstalling Office 2000? That can help sometimes.

Question 134	Submitted by Steve
Hi askaw! Is there a program in Win2k similar to msconfig in WinMe? I would love to do some cleanup! Thanks for your help!

Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
No but you can download and install some tweaking tools like X-Setup. Lets you do almost everything that Msconfig would.

Question 133	Submitted by Logan
Hello im running an hp pavilion 7940 with a 1ghz pentium 3, 128 megs of ram, 40 gig hard drive and 11 megs of integrated video ram. My question is since integrated graphics cards are built into the pc's main memory which makes them not ugradeable is it possible to completely remove all of the systems memory, reinstall new memory sticks without integrated graphics and then buy a better graphics card or could you even overide the computers integrated graphics and install a new card? i know i have the free pci or agp slots needed on my mother board but i dont know if the switch would work. any help is appreciable.
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
If you have a free AGP slot you just need to plugin in a better graphics card there and if needed disable your onboard display in BIOS (Some motherboards do it automatically some need to have it specified in BIOS...Display initdevice it is called I believe).

Question 132	Submitted by Gene
I recently upgraded from win98 to win 98se. now my 56k modem won't work. It is shown in my hardware as operating properly and is connected to com port 1, but when I try to dial a connection I get a dialup networking can not locate modem eror message. Any one have experience with this.
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
Just make sure the dial up connection is referencing the correct modem. If needed remove the modem from Control Panel>Modems and reinstall it and also delete the old dial up connection and Make a fresh one.

Question 129	Submitted by Robert
Is it possible to stop outlook XP from disappearing From the task bar when it is minimized?
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
It should be because on my PC it never disappears. I cannot find a way to make it disappear though.

Question 128	Submitted by ?
I have a question that I hope you can help me with, during start up I receive an error message ERROR: CANNOT CREATE DIRECTORY... WINDOWS COULD NOT UPGRADE THE FILE %1 FROM %2 WINDOWS COULD NOT UPGRADE ONE OR MORE SYSTEMS FILES BEFORE STARTING, WINDOWS MAY NOT START OR RUN PROPERLY IF WINDOWS FAILS TO START, RUN SET UP AGAIN. PUSH ANY KEY TO CONTINUE. so I push any key and it does start..but why do I received this message at start up?? it has only started doing it in the past couple of days (I think the kids hit something while shutting down) and how can I fix the problem??any info would be appreciated, thankyou for your time
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
Use the msconfig tool to see whats in your startup. You can disable this particular item from there. Its probably a registry error but you can correct things from here.

Question 126	Submitted by Dewey
My computer recently has become very unstable. I am running Win 2000 Professional and I am getting a blue screne of deeath saying it is dumping the memory. Also my computer just reboots at any time it wants to, along with freezing up while I play video games. I tried reinstalling Win 2000 Professional and my friend told me when it asks if you want to install, create a new partition, or delete old to delete the old NTSF. But It does not give me that option so I hit install. Well it set everything back to normal except it kept all my program folders, some still worked others didn't. My question is this: How do I do a complete reformat of my Hard Drive and get rid of everything on my computer. So I may do a completely fresh install of win 2000? I know I can't go into dos, because dos (command prompt) is just an emulator and you can't run commands like reformat or fdsik. Please help, I am desperate!
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
Change the boot device to CD in your BIOS. Then boot from the windows 2000 CD. Enter the recovery console and from there you can format C: If you want to format it as FAT32 you will have to specifically give the swich like format c: /fs:fat32 then reboot and let the CD run the setup program to have a fresh windows install. Then change the boot device back to hard disk.

Question 127	Submitted by ?
I left aol for earthlink. The problem that I'm having is that after making the transition, I can't connect to certain sites that were in my aol favorites (and others that I used to visit while a member).Whenever I try to reach these sites, I always receive the page cannot be displayed message". "Cannot find server" or "Dns Error" is also at the bottom of the page. Before switching isp's, I opened explorer 5.5 and used the cut and paste feature to transfer all of my web sites from the aol favorites to the explorer favorites. I did this with all except the three sites that I can't get to now. I was told by an earthlink tech that I needed to uninstall aol from my computer because this was the problem. I did so through the add and remove programs with no solution. After a considerable amount of time on the phone, earthlink couldn't help me and aol wouldn't help me. I took my computer to a tech I know and he deleted aol from the registry and for awhile I was able to reach these sites. After about two weeks I was not able to reach these sites and "The page cannot be displayed message" returned. I called earthlink an explained everything to them. Over the phone, the tech tried different things and check my settings. I was told that aol is taking over my computer again and he was stumped on what to do. Apparently it is not out of my computer because the icon still appears in the right upper corner of explorer. Because of this I'm limited to where I can go on the internet. I'm also discovering that sites I used to visit while with aol I can't access now that I'm no longer a member. What can I do to correct this besides formatting my hard drive. thanks
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
Why not try using a browser like Opera. Its fast and stable. See if it too is affected by the PCs behaviour. If yes, the prognosis is grave.

Question 125	Submitted by Smita
Hi, Recently I had to do a recovery on my hp pavilion 6630 model for Windows 98. After the recovery, my hard disk controller are taken as single fifo rather than dual fifo. Because of this, it is syaing that boht c: and D: drive are using msdos compability mode file system. I don't know how to correct this problem. Due to this my CD-ROM drive is also not showing up in window explorer. Can you please help me? Thanks
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
you mau need to install some of the drivers from your motherboard drivers cd to overcome this.

Question 123	Submitted by ?
Hello, I recently upgraded from IE 5.5 to IE 6, because of the ads in OE 5.5. So my question is, is there anyway to revert back to IE 5 or IE 5.5 w/ OE 5.0 from IE 6.0? short of a win98 reinstall that is? thanks in advance
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
Control panel > Add remove programs> Microsoft Internet explorer 6...Ask to revert to previous windows configuration.

Question 122	Submitted by ?
I'm trying to make a little movie using clips from AVI files and a song in .mp3 format. But when I created the movie and watched it in Windows Media Player, the video and audio don't play together. The file ends up being twice as long as it should be because it goes through the video clips first without the music, then plays the music without the video. How do I fix this?
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
You might need a more sophisticated tool like Adobe premiere or something less expensive to accomplish. Anything that supports multitrack editing.

Question 121	Submitted by Charles
hello I am a new computer user, i was trying to install a calorie counter from Rocketdownload.com, first the page told me to install microsoft virtual machine...i did . I then proceded to down load the calorie counter to F drive ,thinking that was all it would take , wrong, when i opened the set up from F drive I got the message, can not fine file ddlmsvbv60. I got nowhere. how do I get a ddl msvbvm60 file back on my computer?
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
msvbsm.dll I guess you need to install the MS visual basic 6 runtimes. Get them from the microsoft site. They have 2 versions SP3 and SP5. Preferably get the latter.

Question 120	Submitted by ?
Hi...I own an HP XE3 700 MHZ notebook with Windows 98SE pre-installed and performance is fairly good. Can i format and upgrade to WIN2K or is this going to make my life more difficult....? Thanks ;) Keep UP the GOOD WORK
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
why format? Can't you run the Win2000 setup as an upgrade? Also why do you want to upgrade. Win2000 will not be as flexible with you as Windows 98SE was. Also I would suggest just wait a few days and go for Windows XP.

Question 116	Submitted by Ken
Hello, I'm looking for information on a cretin program I think. I was trying to open a picture file, my computer opened a window that says. Program not found. It asks for , "srviewer.exe." to open a PDD file. How do I get a srviewer or what ever is needed to continue my project? Thanks for any help you can provide.
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
Instead of double clicking the file, start your image editor that you have installed and try to open the file from within it. If it opens, associate the files of this extension with this image editing program.

Question 111	Submitted by ?
My question is related to O.S. well i have win98 installed with other software i.e. MS office 2000, Games etc. on my hard disk. i have SiS display card & Opti sound card & its drivers installed on it. now the question is how to delete win98 only from the hard disk will this effect the other programs? & the other thing is while deleting win98 will the display drivers and sound card drivers will also be deleted? how to copy the drivers as i have no backup. please reply at your earliest as i realy need the solution
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
You want to DELETE Win98? And keep the rest of the software? How will the software run? Win98 is the Operating system that is needed to make the computer run. You cannot delete it, you can upgrade it.

Question 105	Submitted by Dave
Can you help ? When trying to open PDF files in acrobat reader 4.0, it displays the following: "ACRORD32 caused an invalid page fault in module MSVCRT.DLL" I have removed and reloaded acrobat 4.0 and windows 98, this did not cure problem. Thanks
.Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
Try extracting a fresh copy of msvcrt.dll from the win98 setup disk

Question 103	Submitted by ?
Hi, I am running Windows 2000 Professional, with IE5.5. However, IE5.5 only did a minimal install. Is there any way to select the components to install, e.g. Macromedia Flash, when installing IE5.5 on Win2000? Many thanks.
Solution 1	Answered by Mean Drake
On Win2k...NO.

Question 113	Submitted by ?
Is it possible to "convert" an english version of windows 2000 in order to make it use the interface in another language? Is there some file to download? Than you so much
Solution 1	Answered by Michael Kircus
You'd just have to buy the other language version of Windows. That's the way the system is set up.

Question 108	Submitted by ?
when I try to run scandisk in Win 98SE,it says shutdown all running programs. I can't see that I have any running on my computer at all. Please help
Solution 1	Answered by Michael Kircus
Boot into safe mode. When you start your computer, tap the F8 key until you get a boot menu. Select Safe Mode, then run ScanDisk when it finished loading.

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