Ask A Geek

Q: Spooling System App. On a network of 6 computers (all Microsoft 97 systems and Microsoft 03 Microsoft Office) and 1 printer (Panasonic DP-3000) is causing great problems. We are trying to print legal sized documents but the printer is not communicating with the server or computers. Letter sized documents are sending and printing, and the printer is set for legal sized documents. What can I do? Is there any hope?

Q: How do you get laptop wifi to share with PC?

Q: I would like to monitor the activities of another laptop connected to my wireless network. What product is available to do that without installing software on the computer I would like to monitor?

Q: I have multiple computers on my network running Windows XP that cannot load web pages tat the same time. The network has always worked fine but in the last few months web pages will not load on two computers at the same time.

Sometimes if you wait a few minutes the computer that wouldn’t load will load and other times you have to close the page on one computer and wait a few minutes before it will open on the computer that wouldn’t open it. I have checked normal stuff like the IP addresses, etc, to make sure they were not trying to share the same number but everything seems to be fine.

My iPhone will not load a page if a home computer is on the network but if I turn the wireless off on the phone the page will open up no problem.

Thanks much for any help anyone has to offer. This is a new one for me.

Q: I have a new EL1300G-01W E-Machine. There is no network sharing wizard. Can I do Internet sharing with 2 other home computers using an Ethernet cable? Do I need to purchase something?

Q: Can you tell me what the following error message means and how I would fix it:
Parser Error Message: An error occurred loading a configuration file: Failed to start monitoring changes to ‘\\\\nas1rv\\MOSS\\syllabus\\current\\cis’ because the network BIOS command limit has been reached. For more information on this error, please refer to Microsoft knowledge base article 810886. Hosting on a UNC share is not supported for the Windows XP Platform.

Q: My friend and I want to play FIFA 2007 with each other. The problem is we live 5km away from each other and FIFA only lets you play multiplayer mode over a local network. Not over the Internet. We both have a 2Mbps internet connection and we have been able to share our hard drives with each other but we need help setting it up so we can play FIFA.

A: You will need to setup a Virtual Private Network (VPN) so that your software, in this case FIFA, thinks you are on the same network. You can use Hamachi to create a virtual LAN that you and your friend can join. The software is 100% for non-commercial use.

Q: My wifi network stinks. I want to hard wire the two machines instead. They are 60 feet apart. Can I do it w/cards and cat5 wire? Do I need a cable modem for each machine? What software?

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Q: We have 1 network with 7 computers. Four of the computers are running point of sale software. Two computers are not and one computer is the host. All the computers are running a companies proprietary software.

The 4 point of sale PCs occasional slow down the proprietary software to the point the PC has to be rebooted. Once that is done all programs work fine for a few days and the process begins again. It occurs on all 4 PCs with the point of sale software but not simultaneously. What could be happening?