Ask A Geek

Q: My old Emachines T2984 PSU crapped out and took the motherboard with it so I bought a Dell Optiplex GX620. What is the best way to transfer the data from the old EIDA hard drive to the new one in the Dell?

The Emachines had XP Home (cira ‘04) while the Dell has XP Pro (service pack 3). I also have a running Compaq S5100NX w/ CDR & DVD drives available. If I try to install the Emachines hard drive into the Compaq, what kind of conflicts will I be facing? I was hoping to transfer the data from the slave hard drive to the new Dell using a cable of some kind.

Q: I reinstalled my computer and moved some files onto my external hard drive. The files where encrypted with Windows XP encryption now can’t access them or change any settings to them. I think I might have the info I need but on a floppy disk and it’s in a sys format. I am still running Windows XP but it is a new install. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Q: I have Windows XP and I’m wondering how I could update to Windows 7 and if I need to do it via Windows Vista or not and if I need a particular processor.

Q: I have a blue screen w/error message computer shut down to save information, unbootable, new hardware installed 0X000000ED. I cannot start in safemode goes back to blue screen and does not reboot w/ XP installation disk.

Q: I have an Acer Power computer with Acer empowering technology framework running Windows XP Pro. When I start the computer up I get a message that says “Administrator has prohibited access to USB/1394 mass storage devices”. How do I fix this?

A: There have been many reports over the last few years of the “administrator has prohibited access to USB 1394 mass storage device” error message on Acer computers. It seems the problem is related to software called LanScope. There does not seem to be a logical way to access LanScope to actually unlock the drives so the only way to resolve this that we have been able to find is to uninstall Acer LanScope.

Read the rest of this entry »

Q: I have an Acer Power computer with Acer empowering technology framework running Windows XP Pro. When I start the computer up I get a message that says “Administrator has prohibited access to USB/1394 mass storage devices”. How do I fix this?

Q: I just hooked up an Acer 19″ monitor and CANNOT change the screen resolution to a higher setting to accommodate the larger screen…using Microsoft Window XP…tried all of the “help” tutorials….mouse refuses to move the slider from low to high resolution.

Q: I have a laptop that has safenet protected drive on it. This causes the first screen that I see on booting to be the safenet username/password input.

I know the username and password, but want to know if I would have any problems putting a new operating system on it.

I want install Windows XP on it.

Shall I just put the windows disc in?

Q: I was wondering if it would be possible to run total war empire with a computer with the following specs?

2Ghz Intel core 2 duo
RAM 2GB
graphic card : Nvidia Geforce 9400M
Windows XP

Q: I’ll be buying a new laptop soon. It’ll have Windows 7 I’m sure. I currently have Windows XP and never switched to Vista. Can I expect any challenges and if so what might they be and how might I minimize them?

When I do the transfer how should I go about transferring all of my programs, data, favorites, bookmarks, etc., onto the new computer?