Ask A Geek

Q: What should I do when I get the error “Windows Detected A Hard Disk Problem”?

Q: How do you turn off the start in safe mode only tab in msconfig when Windows will not start up?

Q: How do I reformat my Dell computer?

A: Dell actually has a great support page that covers How To Restore or Reinstall Microsoft® Windows® on a Dell™ Computer. We suggest you follow their directions as they very good directions.

Q: Should I allow Microsoft Office 2007 to make changes to the win.ini file on my computer when it is being installed?

A: The win.ini file is used to store boot up information in older versions of Windows. Some applications also use it to store  application information as well. The reason for this is that the win.ini is the main configuration file used in Windows before the registry was created.

So it is safe to let Microsoft Office 2007 modify the win.ini file but I would suggest making a backup of it first. I am pretty sure any application that modifies the file will make a backup but it never hurts to make your own.

Q: My computer is about 5 years old. It has a 1.2GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, and a 38 GB hard drive that shows as half full. How do I improve its speed?

A: Everyone wants to tweak their computers to get the best speed out of them, especially computers that are a few years old. The biggest questions becomes, is the cost of upgrading and the improvement in speed worth the money or would the money be better spent on a new computer.

In your case, since you only have 512 MB of RAM, there is a chance that spending $30.00 or so to upgrade to 1 GB of RAM would improve your speed. It is hard to tell if it would improve it enough to make you happy though. I would opt for trying the RAM if I had a friend with some extra RAM lying around but I don’t think I would opt for the RAM option in your case if it cost money. The reason for this is that a 1.2 GHz processor is between 1/3 to 1/2 the speed of most the processors you will find in the $400.00 desktops that are flooding the market. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: I have a Acer Aspire 6920G Laptop. The problem is that when nothing is running my CPU Usage is 100%. When I unplug my charger and plug it back in it resets the CPU Usage for a while (100%-35%). I run around 38-50 processes. My Task manager says that none of them take more then 0-3 % of the I have no virus’s on my computer so says “AVG” as I run scans everyday.

Q: I am trying to figure out how to take a snapshot of a web page so that I can edit it in paint. I am using a PC.

Q: My computer at work will only open email attachments in the picture viewer no matter what type of document it is. How can I change this to open documents in the correct program?

A: In Windows XP or Vista I would suggest dragging an offending attachment to your desktop. Then right clicking on the file and select “Open With…“. A menu will then pop up allowing you to select the program you want to open the file with. There will also be a check box at the bottom of the window allowing you to “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file“. Once you select the correct program, check that checkbox and click OK and the file will open in the program you selected.

You should now be able to open this type of file in the program you selected right from your e-mail client.

Q: I built this computer about a year ago and I’ve seen the same blue screen error message for the passed year. I’ve done everything I could to my knowledge so now I am turning to a forum. My blue screens error messages include Bad_Pool_Header, IRQL_Less_or_Not Equal (or something), MEMORY_MANAGMENT, PAGEFAULT IN NON FAULT AREA (or something)

Specs
Nivida 780i Sl mobo
Nividia 9800 GTX SSC Edition
4GB G Skills Ram
e8500 wolfdale 3.16ghz cpu
Sata Seagate 230gb hd with 32mb front cache
Sata hp dvd 1070i cd/dvd rom
Zephyr 750w power supply
Xclio A380 Twin Engine Case

I’ve done memtest, windows mem test, defragment, disk clean up, registry cleaner, spyware removal, flashed bios, updated all drivers, chkdsk, started at windows xp, went to vista, now I’m at windows 7 64 bit build 7100. It was fine for a little while after the installation, then the blue screens of death (bsod) came back. So I flashed the bios to PO8 for the 780i. It was good for about 24 hours then they came back. I’ve already punched a hole through the metal netting thing on the front fan. Right now my fan isn’t spinning but it will when it wants to. In other words, what should I do before I push this junk out the window?

Q: Do Windows operating system computers run key loggers as part of the operating system for auto system recovery on windows 2000 and above operating systems? Sorry, i know that is long, but it was quoted to me like that.