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Houston We Have a
Problem… 012 25/11/06
Lost in the USA
Towards
the end of our American holiday we lost all of the photos from our Olympus
digital camera. We immediately removed the chip, is there any chance of
recovering them or are they lost in the digital wilderness?
Fred
M, by email
It
depends. If you have tried another memory card in your camera and it works
properly then there is a very fair chance that only the card’s filing system has
been corrupted and the image files it contains are still intact and can be
recovered. I suggest checking the card with a freeware program called Smart
Recovery. It works with all types of memory card and virtually all memory
card readers. If any of your photographs are still on the card and readable
they will be repaired and extracted to a folder on your PC. Another recovery
tool that I have found works with very seriously corrupted cards and image
files is Datarescue. This
is a shareware program costing $29 but there’s a free demo version that scans
the card and shows you what the full version can recover.
Seek and Hide
The
list of subjects I have searched for on Google has now grown too large and I
cannot find a way of deleting them either singly or all at once. Can you help?
Euan
Campbell by email
An
Internet Explorer feature called AutoComplete stores your search keywords typed
into Google. You cannot remove individual items but you can switch AutoComplete
off and clear the list by going to Tools
> Internet Options and select the Content tab. Click the AutoComplete
button and deselect Forms, and if you are concerned about privacy you might
also want to uncheck Web Addresses and User Names and Passwords as well.
Finally, click the ‘Clear Forms’ button to delete the list. Previously visited
websites are stored separately and you can control how long they are kept and
delete the list on the Internet Options General tab (click the Settings button
in IE7). Set ‘Days to keep…’ to 0 if you don’t want it to store addresses in
the future. To delete individual items in IE6 click the History icon on the
toolbar and right-click on the item you want to delete; in IE7 go to Tools >
Delete Browsing History. Finally if you have the Google Toolbar installed on
your browser you should know that this also stores search keywords To delete
them click on the Google icon and select Clear Search History on the drop-down
menu.
A Sight for Sore Eyes
After nine years have replaced my trusty but slow Sony
Vaio PCG 737 notebook with a new laptop, which cost me less than £500. Windows
XP is great as is broadband etc., but after only a few hours of use, my eyes
have become so sore that I am sending this to you via my old laptop. I had the
same problem when I bought a cheap flat screen television. After only 2 hours
my eyes were hurting and I suffered headaches. Luckily I was able to swap it
for a standard CRT model.
I fear that I will have to buy another laptop and I am prepared to pay a fair
bit more for it (I should have considered this first, but it never crossed my
mind) and I would really appreciate your views on the problem. Hugh Suter, by
email
Cost is a factor but the quality of laptop displays can be
subjective so it is vitally important to try before you buy. The often harsh
overhead lighting in a computer showroom is a good test for a screen’s
anti-glare properties. Reflections from lights and windows can be very annoying
and can contribute to user fatigue. In your case it may be worth experimenting
with an add-on anti-glare screen or your seating position.
Viewing comfort also depends on the way the display has
been set up, in particular screen resolution -- check that it has been
correctly set -- and of course contrast and brightness levels. Manufacturers
have been known to forget to enable Windows ‘Clear Type Fonts’. These are
optimised for LCD displays, making text clearer and easier on the eye by
smoothing out the jagged edges. Details of how to set up and configure Clear
Type fonts can be found at: http://www.pctoptips.co.uk/toptips/tt12display.html#SHARPER
Follow Up -- Tweak Comes Unstuck
I followed your recent
suggestion (Houston… 4/11/06) to install the Microsoft utility Tweak UI to skip
the Windows XP logon screen. Afterwards the system booted up directly with no
logon screen but the next time the screen was back and on checking Tweak UI the
‘Log on automatically’ box was unchecked. I tried again and the same thing
happened. Is this a fault or have I done something wrong?
Clive Harrow, by email
It’s not a fault and
several readers have reported similar problems with this tip. The trick is to
click the ‘Apply’ button before you click OK, and if you have never set a
password in XP you should still click the Password button, leave the boxes
blank, then click OK.
---end---
©
R. Maybury 2006 1311
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