Storage

A Look at Foxit Reader | Foxit Reader Review

By terry Leave a Comment

Recently, one of my subscribers wanted to know about a free program to let him fill in PDF forms.

I made a quick check and realized that the free PDF reader Foxit Reader would do this. While Foxit Reader also has a Pro Pack available to add additional functions, the free version does almost everything that most users need.

More importantly, it does it without the baggage of Adobe Reader and its huge memory requirement, the huge delays in starting up (unless you let Adobe Reader preload and take up a bunch of your memory all the time, and its automatic updating, which caused me problems.

I’ve been using Foxit Reader for a couple years, off and on, but now it’s my main program for reading PDF files.

Before responding to the subscriber, I checked the Foxit website and found that I was using a version that was several iterations old. I had v2.0 installed, while the current version is v2.3. Needless to say, I downloaded Foxit Reader 2.3 and installed it. I also realized this was a good time to write about Foxit Reader.

Continue reading A Look at Foxit Reader | Foxit Reader Review

Filed Under: Free, Other, Software, Specials, Storage, System Control, Terry's Computer Tips, Usability, Vista, Windows XP

Why Back Up Your Computer?

By terry 1 Comment

As a long-time personal computer user, I learned the importance of backing up my data long, long ago.

There are just too many things that can go wrong when you’re working on your computer. Whether it is a hard drive that goes bad (or a floppy, in the old days), or a mental lapse on the part of the user, it is easy to lose the critical file on which you’re working. Or, maybe your computer has gotten infected with a virus or a rootkit, such that you decide that reinstalling Windows is the easiest thing to do.

How many times have you opened a file with the intent to make a new version of it, then edited it, and accidentally saved it again with the original name? I have, so I doubt that you’ve missed that thrill. Fortunately, I make daily backups of my data, so that I can recover from those brain failures.

Continue reading Why Back Up Your Computer?

Filed Under: Backup, Hard drive, HowTo, Storage, System Control, Terry's Computer Tips, Vista, Windows XP

Unable to Delete Email in Outlook Express

By terry Leave a Comment

Sherrill Kerbaugh wrote about a major problemm she and her husband were having on both of their computers:

Hi, Terry… We have a major problem…. My husband has been unable to delete daily e-mails for a few weeks now….we can’t figure out what in the world is wrong!?!?!?! Now, all of a sudden I can’t delete e-mails on my computer (same local area network and e-mail…Outlook Express)! HELP!!!!!!!!! Also, John can’t download or use Adobe Reader on his computer, but I can!?!?!?
We are going crazy here!

What are your thoughts? We just found your website this morning….hope you are our “computer angel”! : )
Thank you!

Continue reading Unable to Delete Email in Outlook Express

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Filed Under: Email, Outlook Express, PC Repairs, Software, Stability, Storage, System Control, Terry's Computer Tips, Usability, Windows Repair

Passwords, Password Lists and Keeping Passwords Secure

By terry Leave a Comment

I’m often asked about how I handle passwords for all the different sites that require passwords.

The questioner’s eyes get pretty big when I mention that I use random mixtures of letters and numbers for my passwords, and even bigger when I say that I use a different password on every site.

The immediate question is “How can you keep track of them all?”

The answer is one of the reasons that I use a PDA, a Personal Digital Assistant. In my case, it is the PalmOS v4 based Sony Clié SJ-33, which I’ve used for a couple years.

The program that lets me keep track of these is called Secret! (yes, there’s an exclamation mark as part of the name). Secret! has long been available for PalmOS. I didn’t realize it, but it is also available for Pocket PC handhelds, too. According to the publisher’s web site (http://linkesoft.com/secret/index.html), Secret! runs on all Pocket PC handhelds with Windows Mobile 2003, 2003 SE, and the current Windows Mobile 5.0.

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Filed Under: HowTo, Security, Software, Storage, Terry's Computer Tips, Wireless Security

Re-connecting after using Safely Remove Hardware

By terry Leave a Comment

Subscriber Peter Dunckelmann wrote recently to ask about disconnecting and reconnecting his external hard drive from Windows using the “Safely Remove Hardware” function. Although I wrote back to Peterseveral times, he’s got a Yahoo account, and Yahoo rejected my emails to him — it accepted some other emails I sent, so it just looks like Yahoo email is having some problems.

Hi Terry

When clicking the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the taskbar and removing a storage device, such as a USB external hard drive, but not unplugging the device, the icon of that particular device disappears from the desktop and seems inaccessible. The question is, how can I re-enable the removed but still plugged-in device? I am using WIN Vista Ultimate.

Thanking you in advance

Regards
Peter

The answer is relatively simple, but probably is not the one for which Peter was hoping…

Continue reading Re-connecting after using Safely Remove Hardware

Filed Under: Flash Drives, Hardware, HowTo, Stability, Storage, Terry's Computer Tips

Data Backup versus System Backup

By terry Leave a Comment

If you’ve been using computers for any length of time, you’ve had the problem.

Maybe you haven’t had a hard drive fail, yet, but you’ve managed to delete or overwrite one of your data files with a changed version — and immediately said “Oh, NO!”

Most people have the problem and have no way to recover a copy of their older version. But you can, if you make a habit of backing up your data.

Karen’s Replicator ( www.karenware.com ) is a great program that I use for making backup copies of my data files. With Replicator, I can schedule backups of any modified files as often as I like. I can back up to a different directory on my hard drive, to a different hard drive (internal or external) or even to a directory on a shared drive across my home network.

By scheduling a daily backup of my data files, I know that I’ll have “yesterday’s” version safely available if I manage to butcher my data file.

Replicator covers your files, but is not a solution for Windows itself — Windows has to be reinstalled, not just copied into place.

Fortunately, there’s another solution that is similar to the Restore CDs and Restore DVDs that come with many computers.

I use Acronis True Image (Acronis is the company; True Image is the program.) to make my own versions of Restore DVDs. Often, I don’t even burn them to DVD’s. I can more easily save the images to an External drive and be able to restore from the external drive.

Continue reading Data Backup versus System Backup

Filed Under: Backup, HowTo, PC Repairs, Software, Storage, Terry's Computer Tips

Picasa the Free Photo Editor and Organizer from Google

By terry Leave a Comment

The Picasa photo editor and organizer will surprise you with its unique interface and its amazing power. With Picasa, you can easily edit photos with basic fixes, as well as adding any of 12 lighting and color effects. You can organize your photos, write captions on them, and even order prints.

One way you can make more dramatic images, especially if you’re moving from a high-pixel photo to the much lower resolution of a web page, is to crop you photo to get only “the important stuff”. The reason I specify a high-resolution image for starting is that, if you want to print it later or expand it to be a Windows “desktop” background.

Picasa is extremely intuitive and, I found, a pleasure to use � especially when compared to most of the graphics editing progams available today.

Read more in my article Picasa � the Free Photo Editor and Organizer from Google and download the free Google Pack which includes Picasa from there.

Filed Under: Free, graphics, images, photos, Software, Storage, Terry's Computer Tips, Usability, Windows XP

Backing Up Your Firefox Bookmarks

By terry Leave a Comment

Firefox has a convenient function in its Bookmark Manager (Bookmarks / Bookmark Managerr). Once you’ve opened BookMark Manager, which opens in a new window, just click on File, Export and choose where to save the bookmarks file. By default, the file titled bookmarks.html.

Of course, if you ever need to restore the file � or to import it into a new Firefox installation � there is a similar Import function there.

That makes it easy to back up the Firefox bookmarks. It also makes it very easy to take a copy of them with you — on a floppy disk, a CDROM or a USB Flash Drive, or on any type of memory card (Compact Flash, Memory Stick, SD/MMC card, etc) if you have a card reader to take along.

I usually do it the hard way, though � just out of habit because early browsers didn’t export and import well. Plus, my way, I always have a backed up copy from my nightly backup across my network using Karen’s Replicator Firefox actually stores the bookmarks all in one file, which you can even open with your web browser. You might need to know that, if somehow Firefox becomes corrupted and you are unable to get it to start up or to export the bookmarks.

Filed Under: Backup, Firefox, Internet Access, Stability, Storage, Terry's Computer Tips, Web Browsers

Adding a SATA Hard Drive to Your System

By terry Leave a Comment

In order to use a hard drive with an existing Windows XP system, you have to prepare the hard drive before Windows XP can use it.

The good news is that you can do this in Windows XP while WinXP is running, and even while you are doing something else.

To do this, you want the Disk Management part of
Start, Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance, Administrative Tools, Computer Management , Storage, Disk Management (Local)

This will display the multiple hard drives (Disk 0, Disk 1, etc) and the partitions on them.

Right-click on the SATA drive and create the partition size you want and then format it (NTFS format, unless you have a particular reason that you want FAT32).

Filed Under: Hard drive, Hardware, SATA, Storage, Terry's Computer Tips, Windows XP