Q–I’m very puzzled by a condition that has occurred in my central processing unit since the installation of the Norton anti-virus program. The computer will start itself up at any given moment with no one around and continue to run; it will only stop when someone chooses to do so. The monitor is not affected. Is this problem fixable?
I have an eMachine with Windows 98.
Martha Rebarnick @telerama.com
A–Join a very large crowd of confused computer owners, Ms. R. E-mail from people with problems caused by loading Peter Norton’s purported problem-solving software all but pour in to this column. My guess is that you are running Norton System Works, and it is attempting to defragment your hard drive or do something else that you don’t know about.
For this writer’s dime, I’d uninstall Norton and go back to a happier world where nothing was broke until you decided to fix it. For that same writer’s dime, I’d urge you to opt instead for GoBack 2.0 from Adaptec, a far better approach to restoring lost files and fixing machines that go haywire. GoBack ($70) sets up a mirror image of your hard drive at various times in the past when the computer was working perfectly and lets you return to that past state if (and when) something goes wrong.
A far less robust module in Microsoft’s brand new operating system, Windows ME, also allows users to go back in time, but it only repairs selected key files and settings rather than doing a GoBack-type full restore. Both of them, however, are orders of magnitude better than Norton. You can find more about GoBack at www.adaptec.com and about Norton at www.symantec.com.
Q–I have NetZero for my Internet service provider, and it is set to start when I boot up my computer. What do I do to just start it from an icon on desktop, rather than having it start automatically?
More Top Picks Smart Speaker
Sel Colby @hotmail.com
A–In order to automatically run programs at boot-up, icons for the software in question get stored in a folder called (what else?) Startup, which is kept in the folder called Programs. It’s very easy to reach. Just right-click on the Start button at the bottom of your desktop and look for that Programs folder in the pane that opens up. Open Programs and scroll down to Startup. Open that folder and drag the icon for whatever software you don’t want to run on boot-up onto the desktop.
That done, you have killed both birds with a single stone. The program will no long start automatically, and you will have an icon waiting on the desktop to run it at will.
Q–My problem is when I print out a copy of my e-mail in Microsoft Outlook Express 5, the font size is 8. This is very small. I would like to go back to the original size 10, but I cannot find a way to change the size of the printout. The problem started when I downloaded the Outlook Express upgrade from the Microsoft site (www.microsoft.com/windows). How do I change the font size?
Peter King @san.rr.com
A–Your eyes will feel better and your printouts will be readable once again if you just make a couple of changes under the choice called Tools at the top of the Outlook Express display, Mr. K. Click on Tools and select the Options choice at the bottom of the pop-down menu.
Select the tab called Compose on the display that comes up next. There you will find Font Settings controls that will let you select a wide variety of sizes as well as typefaces and styles.
Q–A voice from antiquity: I have Windows 95, which came with Microsoft Works but not Microsoft Word. Very occasionally I would like to be able to make a disk with something on it in Word to send to a newspaper in northern Minnesota. Is there a way to change the file extension or some such to make this possible? I don’t want to buy the fairly expensive Word software.
Jan Kent @aol.com
A–Even way up there in the Land of Lakes, and other fine brands of butter, the natives have computers capable of reading documents in the plain vanilla format commonly called Text or by the acronym ASCII.
No matter how old or how new your computer and software may be, the word processing software will have a feature under the File menu at the top of the screen called Save As. So open your documents created and saved in the Works format called .wds or whatever. Then pick Save As and look for the format window in the dialog box that pops up. Scroll through the format choices and pick Text or ASCII. Then direct the save to A: for the floppy disk.
The resulting floppy files can be opened easily by anybody in the Windows or Macintosh worlds, anywhere from Mongolia to Minnesota, and it won’t cost you a nickel extra, Ms. K.
Q–I need to stop my computer from creating incorrect icons on my desktop. It’s really quite strange because my machine is saving Word files but assigning icons to them that go with Quicken. Every document in Word that I save to Desktop comes up with the Quicken icon. When I click on it, the correct document appears, but I really want the correct icon on the desktop with it. Can you help? By the way, this only happens with Word–not with my other software.
Eugenia Fawcett, Chicago
A–We’ll never know what sort of hiccup caused your computer to develop a split personality for Word files, Ms. F., but the fix for restoring those confused red and white Quicken icons to the staid Ws that signify Word files should be pretty easy.
The commands you need are part of the modules in Windows used to associate file types with the software that created them or that is needed to view them.
Open the My Computer icon and select the choice View from the top of the menu bar. Pick Folder Options at the very bottom of the display. In the next display pick the tab for File Types and scroll down in the box until you find the choice for Microsoft Word. Highlight that line and pick Edit from the display at the left. That brings up a menu with a choice for Change Icon. There you will find what you need.
———-
Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or via snail mail at the baiduhai, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through the column. Add your point of view at chicagotribune.com/go/askjim.