Monday, December 3, 2001		Dr Tribune

Q. I have an assembled PC with configurations as P III processor, Intel 810E Chipset Motherboard, 20 GB HDD, 128 MB RAM and Windows Me as my OS. I have Norton anti-virus 2000 installed. My HDD is partitioned into four parts and the problems are listed under:

1) Whenever I rename the C: drive, I get a message, ‘Virus like activity - the application C:\ Windows\ Explorer.EXE is attempting write to the boot record of drive C:

[Stop] [Exclude] [Continue]. When I select stop, it gives the message, "Cannot Rename to [____]. Access is denied." I have checked my system for virus a number of times, but to no avail.

2) My second problem is that when I run scandisk on drive C:, it displays the message saying "ScanDisk was unable to write a log file . Drive C: is either invalid, or does not have enough available space. Free space on drive C: or click on the advanced button and then specify No Log." I have half of my C: drive free.

Please let me know the possible way to rectify these problems. 

Deepinder Singh, Patiala

A. From the description of your problem, it appears that you want to add a label to your drive and instead of that you are trying to rename it. Renaming the drive sometime may create problems because if the boot record of the drive is changed, then the computer may run as desired. In this case, it may not recognise many of your installed program. So, basically, the error you are getting only reflects the operational error and does not mean that there is necessarily a virus. If you wish to rename your hard disk, try adding a label to it. You can add the label by double clicking on My Computer icon, then right clicking on the drive for which you want to add a label. Now click on the properties and then in the box adjoining label, write the name you want. Now on clicking apply and then OK, you will find the name of the drive changed as per Label. Your second problem is also associated with the first problem. First of all reboot your system and hit Del at the startup. Now auto detect the hard disk and load system defaults. Close the BIOS features setup window and start the Windows in safe mode. Now Run scandisk in thorough mode. This will solve your problem.

Q. I have a Compaq Presario, 5000 series model consisting of Pentium III, 667 MHz 810 chipset, 64 MB RAM, 15 GB HDD, 48X CD ROM and Windows ’98 as operating system. My problem is that after my Windows starts fully, my HDD still keeps on working and does not stop. It stops after running some programs and restarts after two minutes.

A. It is a normal scene in the computers that the programs that reside in your startup directory are loaded automatically, once the Windows is loaded. Therefore in your case also these programs are being loaded automatically, after the windows get loaded. This basically does not represent a problem. If you do not wish these programs to load automatically, then you should either remove them from the start up directory or disable them from within the various options of the specific programs. Regarding the problem of rebooting after two minutes, please clarify that does it happen only once or it keeps on happening after every two minutes. However, it may also be due to some program, which you might have installed on your PC, and which might be causing the Windows to reboot every now and then. The reasons for this kind of problem could be many including the conflict of some programs, and incompatibility of some recently installed programs with the specific version of Windows. For example, if a program is not compatible with Windows 2000, then it will not let the operating system to load smoothly and close the system. So, please pinpoint your problem for the specific solution of this problem.

Q. I have a P III, 800 MHz PC with Win Me and 128 MB RAM. I have a problem regarding my Win media player. Whenever I try to watch any movie on it, it gives error but works properly on others PC. Secondly, recently I reinstalled Windows but my speed has gone down considerably. Please tell me some solution.

A. Please mention the exact error message that you get on running Windows Media player for the specific solution of your problem. Generally speaking, this error could be due to some essential hardware drivers that are not working in your system. Kindly check the device manager tab in the System icon in the Control panel for the proper functioning of all your devices and drivers. If a component does not work properly, then you will come to know about it from the device manager and can reinstall the component again with the latest version of driver. Regarding the problem of slowing down of your system, please clean up your system of all junk files by running disk cleanup. Then run scandisk in thorough mode followed by disk defrag.

Q. I own a PC with configuration Celeron 366, 4 GB HDD, 64 MB RAM, 1.44 MB FDD, 48x creative CD drive and Win ‘98 OS. Sir, I am facing the following problems:
1. The speed of my system has been decreased and the quality of the picture has also being decreased?

2. Can we clear the cache memory? 3. Since past few days, my system is facing some problem in booting and it is also seen that there are 5 autoexe.bat files, namely autoexe.bat, autoexe.bat001, autoexe.bat002, autoexe.bat003, autoexe.bat004. So kindly tell me the solution to these problems.

A. Regarding slowing down, there could be numerous reasons responsible for it. The most common reasons are the presence of memory-based game using heavy graphics, which consume a lot of precious hardware resources. So, if you have a lot of games installed on your PC, then this could be one of the reasons for slowing down of your PC. Other possible reasons could be installation of fonts, drivers and other memory based shareware programs on your PC. If this is the case in your PC then kindly remove some of these programs, games, drivers and fonts etc. for some improvement in the performance of your PC. Secondly, try cleaning up the hard disk with disk clean up and then run scan disk followed by Disk Defrag. This will further boost the performance of your PC. The next solution for boosting the performance of the PC lies in your second question. You should regularly clear the memory and disk cache for overall better performance of your PC. Though the memory and disk cache helps in Web surfing but it cost a lot in terms of overall system performance. As another possible solution try increasing the size of the paging file, as this will also boost the performance of your PC. Regarding your third question, these Autoexec.* files do not represent any problem. It merely shows that your original Autoexec.bat files has been renamed and rewritten many times. This normally happens in case of installation of certain programs that also needs modification in the autoexec.bat files. These files save your original Autoexec.bat file with any of these extensions like .00, .002 etc and save the modified file as the Autoexec.bat file.

Q. I have Windows Me installed on my system whose configuration is AMD Athlon, 750 MHZ Processor, 30 GB HDD, VIA AK74-SC Motherboard, ACER 16X DVD and 40X CD ROM and pixel view AGP. I have an Office XP CD (without any scratch). When I run the CD for set up, it gives an Error, "2355 set up cannot access a file cabinet" in between. I have checked the Website for this error. They have given the solutions for it but still it doesn’t work. Please help me out in installing Office XP professional with front page.

A. The error message mentioned represents the corrupt cabinet and will hamper the installation of Office XP on your PC. As a possible solution to this problem, first of all clean boot your PC with either a bootable CD-ROM or bootable floppy and then try installing Office XP on your system. Make sure that you are installing the correct version of the Windows Installer on the Office XP CD ROM. As another possible solution to your problems, turn off any anti-virus program that might be running on your system before you proceed with the installation of the Office XP. Though you have mentioned that CD ROM is scratch less, but nevertheless, you should still clean it for any possibility of dust before attempting to install Office XP. However, if the problem still persist, then you can create a dump of the contents of the CD ROM on your hard disk and try installing the Office XP from there. Hope this solves your problem.