Monday, May 5, 2003		Dr Tribune

Q. I have a PC, P-IV of Zenith please. Guide me for the following: If I download a short movie on PC from my digital handycam, with the help of which software can I fiddle with it? That is how to cut, edit and put music or special effects in the background. Is there any site or readymade software available for all this. Also tell me its approximate cost.

Vidyut, Chandigarh

A. If you are sure that the handycam is digital, then you can directly transfer your movie(s) to the PC using the firewire or infrared port. However, normally home handycams are analog, which use H8, Hi8 etc. system, the process of transferring the videos from handycam is little complicated. In this case, you would need a video capture card, a TV tuner card with video capture would also do, but a good quality card like MP20 of Pinnacle systems is more preferable. In case of analog cam, you can transfer the video using this card and using RCA/S-VIDEO cable. Prefer S-VIDEO cable to RCA as it gives better results. For editing movie, there are lots of free software or shareware available on the Net. For occasional use, you can use these software. But for professional use, you can use Pinnacle software.

Q. I have an assembled PC — P IV, 1.7 GHz with the following configuration:

1.Motherboard Intel 845 original (GLAD)

2.DDR RAM 128 MB.

3.Hard disk 40 GB Seagate Barracuda

4.Internal Modem-56kbps-Quantum (PCTEL chipset-QHM 2052).It shows as HSP 56 micro modem in computer.

5.ATX Cabinet.

6.Hard disk has two partitions of 20 GB each in drive C: & D:

Total used capacity in both these drives is 4 GB (Approximately)

7.Two operating systems-windows 2000 professional & Windows XP professional.

(Option is shown at the time of booting to select from these two windows.)

My problems are:

1.My C:, D: , & A: drives show the total capacity of 18.6 GB ,18.6 GB and 1.38 MB respectively, while their actual capacity is 20 GB, 20GB & 1.44 MB, respectively.

2.Previously there were Windows ’98 (SE) and Windows 2000 (Professional) on my computer. Option to select from these two Windows was shown at the time of booting. A few days ago, I loaded Widows XP on my computer. Now my computer shows only two options at the time of booting-Windows 2000 (Professional) & Windows XP (Professional). It does not show the option of Windows ’98 (SE), while all setup and program files of Windows ’98 (SE) are lying in the folder ‘Win-98 SE’. Actually I want to keep windows 98(SE) & Windows XP and delete Windows 2000 (professional). Is it possible now without formatting the hard disk?

A. Regarding the first query, I would like to mention that this does not represent a problem and is quite normal. Since, some amount of hard disk is being saved for writing system files like file system, partition table information etc., which is not available for user editing, therefore it shows hard disk space lesser than assigned. Thus the total capacity reflected is not wrong. Regarding your other problem, it is clear that you have two partitions on the hard disk and you had two operating system loaded on it. Now since on the partition, where Windows ’98 was loaded previously, you have loaded Windows XP now, so Windows ’98 is either upgraded to Windows XP or it is removed, because of which you are not able to see Windows ’98 in the booting option.

Q. I am having a PC with P III, 850 MHz, 128 MB RAM, Samsung 20 GB HDD@7200 rpm, Intel 810e motherboard and HP 640 c printer, and Win Me on C:\ and Win XP on D:. I am facing serious problem with my printer. These days, whenever I try to print something it doesn’t and if I print in Microsoft Word, it merely prints half a page. Then it pauses automatically. But it works fine at my friends’ computer. Recently, I scanned my system with Norton anti-virus that gave many viruses in C: but no viruses in D:. I had formatted my C: three times so that printer might work, but in vain. Secondly, I want to delete partitions and repartition them. Please tell me the method to do this and also tell me what is the optimised value for two drives, C:\ and D:\ . Can I make each one of them 10 GB?

A. If a virus is detected in your system, irrespective of any partition, be sure that unless you quarantine the whole hard disk, which includes all partitions, including those which are not affected, you cannot get rid of the virus from your system. When the system is affected by virus, it spreads fast, and copies itself to all partitions and on other computers on the network. So, if you quarantine only C: drives, chances are the virus exists in the system and is causing the nuisance. You must either get rid of the virus completely by clean booting your system with a most recent virus scanner or take out important data and reformat your hard disk. For reformatting and deleting the partition, you just need the Original Windows CD, which is already bootable or bootable floppy disk. You can format the hard disk using the command Format and (re)partition the hard disk using command FDisk. Regarding your second query, there is nothing like optimised value and any size, which suits the requirement is optimised. In general having equal partitions is a very common practice. However, I would suggest you to create three partitions of 10, 5, and 5 GB. Load your operating system on C: drive. Save a copy of important files and folders on D: and save all not so important files, like games, shareware, downloaded software and other dumps on E:

Q. I have an assembled computer with P III, 6 GB Seagate Hard drive, with 2 partitions, 450 MHz Motherboard, Rockwell Modem Win ‘98, Win 2000 Pro. and 64 MB RAM. My problem is my modem does not work on Windows 2000 Pro. What should I do? My second problem is that on Win ‘98, screen colours do not come. I installed the monitors’ installation disk but it had no effect. The display is at 640 x 480 pixels, which do not change, and there are only 16 colours. I have a Samsung Samtron 55E monitor. What could be the problem?

A. Regarding your first problem, you must first uninstall the modem from the device manager in Windows 2000, if you have installed it previously. Then restart your system. The Windows will automatically detect and install the modem. However, if it does not install, then you should detect the modem from add/remove hardware option in the control panel using the disk provided with the modem and install it afresh on the system.

Regarding your second problem, there is nothing wrong with your monitor, but you need to configure the display driver. From the description of your problem, it is amply clear that the problem is with the display driver. All you need is right click on the desktop and open properties. Now, from the display properties, choose settings and then choose advance and then under adapter, change the adapter with the one you have and use the floppy/CD provided with your hardware. I am sure this will solve the problem.

Q. I have Celeron PC with Windows Me loaded over Win ‘98. Usually when I start replying in Hotmail following error comes:

lexplore has caused an error

MSHTMLED.DLL

lexplore will now close My PC then stops working further. When I click close, my a/c closes & I have to open afresh. Please suggest a remedy

Gurinder, Patiala

A. Regarding the solution of your problem, use either of the following methods:

Wait until the entire Web page has loaded and the Rich Text Format check box has become enabled before you start to compose a message. Or use Microsoft Outlook Express to gain access to the Hotmail account. These solutions will solve your problem.

Q. I am having a Zenith P4 1.5 GHz with 40 GB HDD (7200 RPM) and 128 DDR-RAM and I use Windows XP Professional OS.

My problem is that the system runs slow. I have removed all visual/graphical effects but this also did not help much. I tried removing extra data from the hard disk but this also did not help even when all drives contained more than 70 per cent free space. I have installed the latest device drivers. I run scandisk and defrag weekly. I tried Windows ‘98 but then too the system worked slow. When I installed Red Hat Linux 7.3, the system ran even slower and most of the times, the Windows did not open in Linux.

Please advise me what should I do as even the system vendor could not solve my problem.

A. Check the size of your registry. If this is large, then also the system will slow down. You should also keep the paging file size substantially higher for better performance. Also check out if the CPU cooler fan’s RPM is correct. If it is slower, then the CPU will remain overheated and this in turn will slow down the PC. There could be some faults in the motherboard also, which could also slow down the PC. If you are sure you have done all possible things in the software (settings) part, get your system scanned thoroughly for hardware failures.

Q. I want to access my home PC through mobileline rather than landline. My vendor says it is not possible in case of home PC but is possible in laptops. Please tell me if it is possible. If yes, what kind of hardware do I need for that and also what will be the cost.

A. It is very much possible to use the mobile phone to connect to the Internet. All you need is data cable for mobile to PC. These cables range between Rs.100 and Rs. 600 depending on the company, model and the handset you use. However, you will also need to check out with your mobile service provider for availability of these services in your city. These are available in cities like Delhi as the GSM system here is on GPRS, for which a GPRS-enabled handset is required. Even if the GSM service provider is not on GPRS, you can still connect to the Net though at a slow speed of 9600 bps. So first check out with the GSM operator for the kind of services available.

Q. I have an assembled PC with the configuration:

P IV, 1.7 GHz, 845GLLY motherboard, 40 GB hard disk (Samsung), 256 RAM, Windows ME as OP, 17" LG monitor.

1. I want to run a game named WWF. The problem is before I run this game a window named CVGS tester (connectix virual game station) pops up. When I run this program a message appears, "CVGS requires a Pentium class or higher processor with MMX." Why is this message appearing? I am unable to run this game.

2. Why does boot failure occur and what is the main criterion behind this.

3. The third problem is when I scandisk in thorough mode it takes 7-8 hours to complete 80-85 per cent. Then it goes enormously slow and after that I have to cancel scandisk. What could be the problem? My hard disk is divided into 3 partitions: C: 20 GB — 4 GB used

D: 10 GB — 4 GB used

E: 10 GB — 5 GB used

I tried it by closing all running programs by using Alt+ Ctrl + Del combination but all in vain.

A. Regarding your first query, it is normal to get such types of messages, as they are a part of the software to test the hardware before loading the software. This is not a problem and only a test to make sure that the system is ready enough to proceed further with the software installation. So do not worry about this message and go ahead with it and install the software. Regarding your second query, there could be ‘n’ number of reasons for disk boot failure, which range from corruption of system files, disk boot virus, copying of wrong system files in the root to problems in boot.ini etc. And it is normal for through scandisk to take long time, but the delay mentioned is high in any case. Scandisk the system in normal mode first and then run defrag. After running defrag, restart and run the scandisk in through mode. Try closing all running applications and then run scandisk. I hope this will solve your problem.