Articles in Category: Administration
Items related to Leo, Ask Leo! and overall website and related operations and administrivia.
Will you care if you lose your connectivity?
A social service organization I work with lost it’s connection to the internet. It was more critical to their operations than they realized.
Why am I not getting the upload speeds I expect?
There’s one big potential point of confusion here, so let’s take this opportunity to review upload and download speeds, what they really mean, and what you can do to maximize them.
Will receiving large attachments eat up all my disk space?
I love cute videos as much as the next guy, but sending them around as email attachments is just wrong. They take up way too much space, and take way too much time to download. In an ideal world, the videos would simply live on the web somewhere, and we’d just email each other a … Read more
Windows Automatic Update Stumbles
A recent update to Windows broke a few things. Should we panic?
What's a "single point of failure", and why do I need to know?
It’s actually a concept that I’ve become just a little too familiar with in recent months, in part due to an accident down the road, and in part due to some aging computer equipment. If you rely on your network or internet connection to run your business, then it’s important to be aware of what … Read more
Will MSN Hotmail tell me who logged into my account?
To be honest, I’m still fairly shocked at how often this question comes up. Apparently there’s a lot of account hacking going on, though poor password management is actually more likely. Regardless of exactly how, accounts are hacked into, and havoc often results. I’m not at all surprised that people want to track down the … Read more
Why does IE now require "http:" in the address bar?
To put it bluntly … Microsoft messed up. I’ve gotten a flurry of reports of this behavior … all starting on 4/15. Right after Windows automated update. Microsoft acknowledges that there’s an issue, and I believe that this is the issue causing your behaviour. It affects more than just IE – but also places some … Read more
Why are one manufacturer's processors faster than another – even at the same GHz?
To be totally honest, this is one of those areas that I actually spend very little time on. There are hardware geeks out there that will happy rant and rave at how one is better than the other. In fact, I kinda hope some of them will enlighten us with a comment on this article. … Read more
Why does the URL change when I go to some pages?
It’s on purpose. To be absolutely strict about it, there is no http://www.zone.com. Just like there’s no http://www.hotmailtips.com. But they both take you somewhere. On purpose.
Old Technology on the Road
A couple of tools I use to manage old technologies while traveling.
How do I sign into multiple MSN accounts in Messenger?
MSN Messenger doesn’t allow you to log into multiple accounts, but there are ways to get around this.
Is there an easy way to stop internet activity on a computer?
I have a few ideas, but to me none of them are really any more practical than turning off the modem. Let me throw those ideas out, and perhaps they’ll be appropriate for your situation, or perhaps a reader will suggest a more elegant solution.
What processes in windows task manager should I be wary of?
I don’t mean this to sound snippish or snide, but the only reasonable answer is really … All of them. Or perhaps put another way … All the ones you don’t recognize, and perhaps some of those that you do. And I know, that’s not really a reasonable answer at all. Let’s look at what … Read more
Can I get a virus or spyware from a free video download?
I’ve always assumed that the “connecting” message was just Windows Media Player using a generic term that could be used both in cases where it truly connects to remote, streaming video, as well as opening a local, downloaded free video file. In other words, I assumed it’s just “connecting” to the media, wherever it is. … Read more
How do I view full mail headers in Outlook?
Full email headers – the headers you normally don’t see – are well buried in Outlook. I’ll show you how to view them in Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird.
Email Encryption – Failure to Launch?
Why is email encryption not user-friendly in popular email clients, and who’s getting left behind because of it?
How Do I Send Encrypted Email?
Use GPG encryption for ultra-secure email communications that only the intended recipient can see.
How Can On-line Forum Members Realize It’s Me Using Two Different Accounts?
Discover how forum participants might identify you, even when you’re using different IDs.
What are those strange folders in my Temporary Internet Files?
First, let me put your mind at ease. There’s no problem. They’re definitely oddly named directories, but it’s just Internet Explorer being … well, being Internet Explorer. Here’s what’s going on …
How do I remove Windows XP SP2?
There are two ways to get Windows XP SP2. One of them can be removed, and the other cannot. I’ll bet you can see where this is headed, can’t you? And, as you’ll see in a moment, you really don’t want to remove it anyway.
How Do I Keep Attached Photos Out Of An Email’s Message Body?
You can’t prevent recipient’s image display, but you can fool it: Zip or rename to prevent them from automatically displaying.
Where are the ethics?
I whine a little about the lack of ethics in a large percentage of the questions I get.
Should I Leave AOL?
I actually can’t answer that last question – it’s a decision you’ll have to make for yourself. Some of it depends on your level of comfort with computers in general, since AOL remains relatively easy to use for the less computer literate. But apparently it’s also going to depend on your level of tolerance for … Read more
How do I uninstall Hotmail?
This actually illustrates a very surprising confusion I see regularly on Ask Leo!. Many people don’t realize that Hotmail, MSN Instant Messenger, and even MSN itself are all very different things. They use the terms for one when talking about the other, or use a generic term like “MSN” which could be many different things. … Read more
My cable modem has both a USB and an Ethernet port – can I connect two computers?
I’m a little suspicious about the threat of “serious harm” to your modem, and I actually expect the gateway address to be the same. But whether or not it should work, or whether or not you’re allowed to have two IP addresses … that’s up to your ISP.
Hamachi – a simple VPN
Connecting machine-to-machine securely, across the ‘net.
How can I tell what's taking up so much disk space?
Absolutely. In fact, slowly losing disk space is one of those things that’s not only annoying, but can often be a sign of a problem such as a virus or spyware. Fortunately there are free tools available to help figure it out.
Ask Dave Taylor – More free tech support online
Ask Dave Taylor is another resources for getting your technical questions answered online.
How fast can Microsoft fix a bug?
Was Microsoft’s WMF Exploit response fast enough?
Where can I get a PSP downgrade?
I’ll be honest – I know nothing about the Playstation Portable, aka PSP. I tend towards PC-based games, myself. So, I turned to my friend and colleague Dave Taylor, who runs the appropriately named Ask Dave Taylor tech support site. Here’s his answer:
The Internet Tourbus – A free weekly tech newsletter
The Internet Tourbus is another source of good up-to-date tech information and news.
How do I stop MSN Messenger from starting automatically and logging me in?
You’re not alone, I see this a lot. If you’re not careful, it’s very easy to accidentally give someone else access to your account if you use MSN Messenger a public computer or someone else’s computer. It require’s a little diligence on your part, or you’re going to get into trouble.
How should I reinstall Windows?
There are different ways to reinstall Windows. Which is appropriate depends on the problem you’re attempting to solve.
Podsafe for Peace – If Every Day Were Christmas
A musical interlude for the holidays – for a worthy cause.
How do I read a message that flies by too quickly on my screen?
It is frustrating, isn’t it? And to add insult to injury, there are even times where there just isn’t a way to pause or page the messages that are scrolling by. So what to do? I did stumble upon one trick that’s pretty cool … but it requires a little hardware, that you might already … Read more
Gibson Research – Security, Disk Maintenance and Other Useful Tools
Did you ever wonder how you’d know if your firewall is doing the job? (You are using a firewall, right? No? Go here. Now.) In most cases you wouldn’t know you didn’t until it was too late – after an infection or compromise of some sort. Steve Gibson’s an internet security guru, and his site … Read more
Is there a way to shutdown my headless Windows XP Pro machine remotely?
And as you’ve seen, when you use Remote Desktop to get to your machine, the “Turn Off Computer” item is missing from the Start menu. To be honest, I’m not really sure why Microsoft chose to do that, it is inconvenient. But we have ways.
Greylisting – Another tool in the war against spam
A client turned me on to a relatively new, and effective, anti-spam tool.
How can I identify this blank taskbar item?
Time consuming? Certainly. Risky? You bet. Done improperly, I believe you can render Windows unbootable. The result would replace a small problem with a huge one. The good news is that I don’t think we need to resort to anything like that at all. In fact, we’ll use one of my favorite free tools … … Read more
Is free software a viable alternative?
There’s tons of free and open-source software out there. Is any of it it any good?
How do I control which email accounts Outlook tries to download?
I have the exact same situation here. I have many “logical” email addresses that all forward to my “real” email account. The good news is that Outlook does have a way to control what accounts are checked, and when. It’s not obvious, and not terribly simple, but it is there. First let me explain the … Read more
How do I change the size of my email display text?
Naturally there are several places that control the look, style and size of items on your screen. And naturally, it’s difficult to find them all, and when you do, they often don’t control exactly, or only, what you want.
How do I install additional network protocols like IPX or Netbeui?
TCP/IP is the protocol of the internet (in fact, the I stands for Internet), so anything you do on the internet requires that you use TCP/IP. TCP/IP can be a little difficult to set up at times, though, because it requires things like routers and subnets and DNS … oh my! If all you want … Read more
When will we see true musical convergence?
It’s easy to listen to your music on an iPod or MP3 player. Elsewhere? Not so much.
Are cheap inkjet cartridges a good deal?
There are a couple of questions here: how much ink did your printer come with, and are cheap replacement inkjet cartridges a viable alternative to those sold by the original equipment manufacturer? The answers are “probably not much”, and “maybe”. Let me explain why, and what you need to look for…
"Cleaning Windows XP for Dummies"
This is a great step-by-step guide to not only “cleaning up” your Windows programs, data, and more, but more importantly keeping your system clean.
Use a Firewall
A firewall is a piece of software or hardware that sits between you computer and the internet, and only allows certain types of things to cross it. It’s about protecting you from them, where “them” is the malicious folk on the internet. A correctly configured firewall does not block your access out to the internet … Read more
Katrina – What can we do?
How can we use our technology to help the victims of hurricane Katrina?
Is advertising evil?
I’ve taken a little heat for hosting advertising – is it a necessary evil? Or just a reflection of how the market should work?
What is Software Escrow?
Getting someone to write software for you can result in a wonderful, custom solution to your problem. It can also incur a significant amount of risk if things go wrong. Software escrow is one way of protecting you in certain types of projects when certain things go wrong.
