PCTips - Hardware Problems

Here are some of the more interesting Hardware problems that I have encountered:

PC keeps cutting-out

CD/DVD Stuck

Water and PCs don’t mix

Old PC and USB Modem

Broadband router not connecting to NTL

How to change the display language on Canon SmartBase MFP

Wireless USB Mouse

Printers

Bulging Capacitor Plague

Unmountable Boot Volume

Laptop Network Connection

Dead PC? Check the Modem!

Lightning

Have you used your printer recently?

Space - the Final Frontier

A Process of Elimination

Acer Laptop Hard Drive Full?

Move the My Documents Folder

Make Windows use another CD/DVD writer

DVD writer playing up

Skype Phone Sound Problems

Problems Writing files to CD/DVD

Windows can’t find Printer Drivers

AutoPlay doesn’t

Printer won’t work anymore

Disks Fail!

KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR

CD/DVD drive not recognised by Windows

Extra pages with every print

Cartridges for Dell Printer

New printer won’t work

Dead Laptop

A disk read error occurred

Cutting-out

I was called to a PC that kept cutting-out after a few minutes.

I suspected that the processor fan had failed, but as soon as I opened the side and switched on I could see that it was running fine.

But I could also see that the only ventilation holes in the case were a small group at the back and a larger group in the BOTTOM of the case. Of course, the PC was standing on the floor, the floor had just been re-carpeted, the PC feet were sinking into the carpet and the carpet was blocking the vent.

What on earth possessed the case designer to put the input vent in the bottom of the case I do not know.

My quick solution was to leave the side off the PC, having confirmed that there were no children or animals in the house. I suggested that the user should arrange to stand the PC on a couple of strips of wood to lift it out of the carpet and allow the air in. Then the side could go back on.

CD/DVD Stuck?

I thought everyone knew this, but apparently not.

Most PC CD/DVD drives have a little tiny hole in the front to release the drawer.

First unplug your PC.

Poke a thin metal rod (one of those big paperclips unfolded will do fine) straight into the hole until it presses against something that moves.

The CD drawer will be released and can be pulled out by hand.

You can then retrieve your CD/DVD and push the drawer gently back.

Water and PCs don’t mix!

I was called by a client with a 4 month old Dell laptop that I had originally supplied and setup for him.

He kept it in a cardboard box in a cupboard. On top of the cupboard was a vase of flowers. One day he got it out and found that water had dripped onto the box and into the laptop - which was completely dead.

How the water got out of the vase and dripped through we will never know. But there had been children visiting the house.......

The water had got into the battery charging circuit and blown it, as well as draining the battery.

An expensive accident.

Old PC and USB Modem

A client had an old (“Designed for Windows 95”) HP PC that she wanted to connect to the net.

Rather than take it apart I suggested an external USB modem (I just happened to have one) and the PC had a spare USB socket. (A printer was using the other one)

So I fixed it up, installed the drivers and away it went. But it kept dropping out a couple of seconds after connecting successfully.

In the end I installed an internal modem (that’s another story). When I got inside the PC I found that the power supply was only rated at 100 watts. So presumably that’s why the external modem kept going down - not enough power available to the USB line.

Moral - just because an old PC has got USB ports don’t assume that all USB devices will work with it - especially if they are USB powered.

Broadband router not connecting to NTL

I had to travel out of my area to a customer who had an NTL broadband connection. I don't see a lot of these because NTL broadband is not available in my home area.

He had bought and connected up a wireless router and couldn't get it to connect to the Internet - although when he reverted back to a direct connection between PC and modem everything was fine.

It turned out that his NTL modem was checking the MAC address of the device connected to it. When a router was connected instead of a PC it saw a different MAC address and didn't connect.

This is contrary to NTL's own web site, which states "You do not have to clone your MAC address with the ntl Broadband system", but agrees with Belkins web site (It was a Belkin Router).

So I had to find the MAC (physical) address of the PC (Windows XP: Start, Run, Cmd, ipconfig/all, Windows 9x: Start, Run, winipcfg), write it down carefully, then connect in the router and find the setting to "spoof" or "clone" the MAC address to be the same as the PC. Routers will differ, but they all should have this facility.

Once I made the router MAC address look like the original PC, everything was fine.

You don't get that problem with ADSL broadband!

How to change the display language on Canon SmartBase MP360, MP370, MP390

Follow this procedure:

1.Press Additional function key.
2.Press OK/Set.
3.Press the arrow keys until you see "8.Display Language" on the display and press OK
4.Press the arrow keys to select your language and press OK.
5.Press Stop.

Wireless USB Mouse

A newish wireless mouse had stopped working. The user had taken it back to the shop who had tested it and found it worked OK.

The user took it back home but it still wouldn’t work so she called me.

I tested it with my laptop and it worked fine. But it didn’t work in her PC.

Having unplugged the mouse receiver to try in my laptop I noticed that she had it plugged into a USB hub. So I tried plugging it directly in to a USB socket on the PC - and it worked.

The fault with the USB hub was that its plug mounted transformer had not been plugged into the power socket properly. It was fouling the plug next to it. Plugging it into another socket solved the problem.

So the problem with the mouse was nothing to do with the mouse!

Printers

I’m always getting calls from people with printer problems.

I ask if their printer was working properly before the problem and if they have done anything that could have caused the problem.

If the problem can’t be solved by installing new ink cartridges (or putting back the old ones) then there’s very little hope.

If there’s nothing obviously wrong I have to tell them that there’s really not a lot I can do.

They can’t believe that printers are throwaway items - that no-one repairs them, that there are no spare parts available.

So - check the power, check the PC connection, check that the printer is installed on the PC and is the default printer. Try printing a test page. Change the cartridges. If you really don’t want to give up yet, try installing on another PC and doing the above again. THEN GIVE UP!

If you have a stock of ink cartridges check which printer models they are still used in and buy one of those. Some folk have two sets of cartridges, worth about £100, and only need to buy a new printer for £50 to be back in business for the next year. Those cartridges will be scrap if the new printer won’t take them.

And NEVER buy a secondhand printer - for obvious reasons!

Bulging Capacitor Plague

Is your PC behaving oddly? Does it sometimes fail to start or crash for no apparent reason? Keyboard suddenly doesn’t work, unstable screen image, error messages that seem to have no relevance?

These, and many other symptoms, can be caused by the gradual failure of capacitors on your motherboard.

This is one of the very few faults that you can actually SEE inside your PC. There’s no harm in looking - you don’t even have to touch anything to identify this problem.

Open up the side of your computer furthest away from most of the sockets. Look at the capacitors - they are the little tubes usually standing upright on the motherboard, with silver ends facing you. It’s those silver ends that you need to study - they usually have a cross or similar symbol etched into them. Look at each one in turn under a good light. You are looking for any with the ends bulging out or brown from leaking electrolyte. You can easily spot them as being different from the other unaffected ones.

Leaking and Bulging Capacitors

The brown topped one on the left is leaking electrolyte, the one to its right is bulging on top but the next two are OK. There’s another bad one on the right, second one down.

LaterCaps02

This is the same motherboard about a year later. The owner suffered the lockups and crashes until it finally failed completely!

Got a bad one (or more)? Tough luck! Well at least you now know what was causing all your problems.

But what to do? All the answers are expensive.

Don’t even think about replacing the capacitors yourself - the capacitors are soldered into a multilayer board that can be easily ruined by unsoldering and re-soldering umpteen capacitors (you better do them all, because the ones you don’t might fail next). And where can you get them from?

There are companies that will do the job for you, but they will probably charge much more than a new motherboard would cost.

So it’s buy a new motherboard then. If you can get one that will take your old processor and RAM. If not then you need to replace those as well. Oh and maybe a new copy of Windows because the copy that came with your PC is probably linked to your motherboard. (That’s why your PC was so cheap, because the manufacturer gets Windows at a fraction of the retail cost, but it is tied to the PC’s motherboard and is non-transferable.)

Looks like you might even have to consider a shiny new PC - it’s not going to cost much more than a motherboard and Windows and will have a better overall spec.

Tough choice.

There is a very interesting background to this problem - search for “bulging capacitors” or go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Unmountable Boot Volume

If Windows XP boots up into a “blue screen of death” with the above message displayed about 5 lines below the top of the screen it usually means that the file system on your boot disk is damaged.

The blue screen may only just flash up for a fraction of a second before the PC reboots. But you must have watched it closely to see the Unmountable Boot Volume message, that’s why you are reading this.

The problem may or may not be repairable. If the file system is damaged because of physical problems with the disk (bad sectors) then it may be beyond repair. But there’s no harm in trying.

To try to repair it you need to run chkdsk (a good old DOS utility which is still part of XP) but to do that you need to get into the Recovery Console:

1. Put a Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer. As the PC starts, press Del or F2 to enter the BIOS and make sure it is set to boot from CD before it boots from the hard drive Save the BIOS change and the PC will reboot, giving you the message “Press any key to boot from CD”. So press any key!

2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.

3. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select your faulty installation.

4. If prompted, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.

5.At the command prompt (usually c:\), type chkdsk /r (there is a single space before the /) and then press ENTER. Wait until chkdsk has done its work. You may have to wait for an hour or so.

6.When the command prompt comes back, type exit , and then press ENTER to restart your computer.

With luck you may have brought your system back from the dead. But if chkdsk didn’t report any disk errors you will be no wiser as to why it happened.

Laptop Network Connection

A customer asked what he needed to be able to occasionally connect his laptop to the Internet through the modem router that was connected to his desktop machine. (Neither router nor laptop had wireless)

In a hurry, I checked that there was a spare network connection on the router and also found a network socket on the side of his laptop. So I assumed that all he needed was a network cable and promised to drop one through his letterbox the next day. Which I did.

But the following day he called me back - the cable didn’t work. Mystified, I checked Device Manager (hold Windows key, hit Pause/Break, click Hardware, click Device Manager) - and found that there was no network adaptor shown in the list!

Yes, his laptop had a network socket but it was not connected to anything inside!

Before I offered him a PCMCIA network card I checked that Device Manager showed working PCMCIA adapters!

Dead PC? Check the Modem!

I had a fully working PC that needed a modem. By mistake I picked up and installed a faulty one.

You would normally just expect the modem not to work, but this one completely stopped the PC from booting up.

So if your PC dies, try taking out the modem (and any other PCI cards that it should work without). The fault might just be with one of the cards and not with the motherboard.

Lightning

You don’t have to suffer a direct hit for lightning to kill your PC. Just a nearby strike can do it.

The electrical surge from a nearby lightning strike can reach your PC in four ways - through the mains, through the internet connection, through a wired network and through the TV aerial (if you have a TV card).

It can wipe out any or all parts of your PC, particularly motherboards, modems and power supplies. Sometimes you could be better off scrapping the PC and buying a new one.

So if an electrical storm is brewing and you don’t need to use your PC, just pull out the connections to the outside world - power lead, internet connection, network cable and TV aerial. When it’s passed, you can put them back. Not much effort to avoid a disaster.

Of course, all of the above won’t help if the house is struck, but if that happens you will have more important things to worry about!

Have you used your printer recently?

We’re having a heatwave here at the moment - well it is mid summer, so what do you expect? (But this is England , so we don’t expect it!)

My mate just rang me to say that his printer isn’t printing black. My first response - run out of black ink. “Don’t think so”, he said, “the on screen meter shows half full, and I think that’s right”.

My second response - blocked print heads. He rang off to try the head cleaning procedure in the on screen console.

He rang me back half an hour later having run the cleaning cycle several times. It was a little better but still quite unusable.

He was not pleased when I told him that there was little hope of unblocking the heads - the hot weather and the fact that he had been on holiday for a fortnight had scuppered them.

His printer is (was) an Epson. The print heads are part of the printer in Epsons and Canons, but part of the cartridges in HPs and Lexmarks.

So with Epsons and Canons, when the heads are blocked you have to buy a new printer, but with HPs and Lexmarks you only have to buy new cartridges!

But the cartridges are more expensive because they have print heads in them.

You can’t win.

So - in normal conditions, make sure you print something at least once a week to keep your heads open. In hot dry conditions (rare in England) you probably need to use your printer every day. Especially if it is an Epson or a Canon!

Space - the Final Frontier

My customer's laptop had a 20GB hard drive but the manufacturer had partitioned it into 3 partitions - a C: drive of about 8GB, a D: drive of about 9GB and a small recovery partition that was hidden.

Having used the laptop in the normal way for a couple of years he was finding that he was running out of space on the C: drive. He only had about 4% free space when I got to him.

It's not easy to see what is using most space on a drive but a free program called SequoiaView makes it much easier. It is available from www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/ and is a 500KB download.

Although installing SequoiaView used a little more of his precious space it was worth it to identify the files and folders that were using the most space.

These are the easiest things to do to free up space:

1) Move the entire My Documents folder to another drive. You can do this so that Windows still knows where it is and treats it correctly. Right click on My Documents, left click on Properties and then left click on the Move button. Navigate to the other drive, left click Make New Folder, call it My Documents, left click OK, check that you've got it right then left click OK again. The files will be copied over to the other drive, but when you click on My Documents it will go to the right place.

2) Do a disk cleanup. See my tip Releasing Disk Space.

3) Reduce the maximum amount of space that System Restore can use. Again see my tip Releasing Disk Space.

4) Move all your Outlook Express folders to another Drive. Again you can do this so that Windows still knows where it is and treats it correctly.
Double left click My Computer,
Double left click the emptier drive
Right click in some empty space below the list of files and select New, then Folder and left click it.
A new folder called New Folder will appear at the bottom of the list of files. It will be highlighted so that you can change its name.
Change its name to Mail.
Open Outlook Express and left click Tools at the top of the window.
Left click Options... and then the Maintenance tab
Left click the Store Folder button and then Change...
Left click to select the Mail folder that you just created and left click OK, then the next OK and the next OK that tells you that your store location will not be changed until you shutdown and restart Outlook Express.

5) Use SequoiaView to identify files that you could move or delete. But do take care - if in doubt don't delete something just because it is big. Likely candidates are program downloads that are now installed on your PC so the download can now be deleted, all files in the Temp folder(s), all files ending in .tmp.

A Process of Elimination

My neighbour had a problem - his mouse wasn’t clicking and his keyboard wasn’t working at all.

I unplugged everything and took the base unit into my workshop to test. It worked perfectly with my mouse, keyboard etc.

So I assumed it must be a fault with his mouse and/or keyboard.

So I took it back to him with one of my mice and one of my keyboards, expecting it to work in his place. It didn’t.

So I unplugged his printer, scanner, speakers, internet connection, etc. so that only the mouse, keyboard and monitor were connected. Still the same.

So by process of elimination the fault with his mouse and keyboard was caused by his monitor. Presumably there was a short or break in the monitor cable that upset the PC but didn’t affect the monitor.

His PC is working again with one of my spare monitors. There just happened to be a skip in his drive for some building work. Guess where the old monitor is!

Acer Laptop Hard Drive Full?

Is your Acer laptop’s hard drive almost full?

This may not apply to all Acer laptops, but I am finding that the ones I have seen recently come with their hard drives partitioned into two roughly equal sized drives.

I think that Acer’s intention was that all programs should be installed to the first (c:) drive and all data should be kept on the second (d:) drive. But the users don’t realise this!

So if your c: drive is full, check to see if you have got an empty d: drive!

One user had resorted to uninstalling programs (Adobe Reader was one of them) in order to accommodate a growing music and video collection. But the other half of their hard drive was empty.

So if that is your situation, how do you utilize the d: drive and ease the strain on the c: drive?

Most people keep their data in the My Documents folder, or in folders within the My Documents folder, so the simplest way to free up space on the c: drive is to move the My Documents folder to the d: drive.

Move the My Documents Folder

A good way to free up space on the c: drive is to move the My Documents folder to another drive (if you have one).

Left click Start, right click My Documents, and then left click Properties.

Left click the Target tab.

In the Target folder location box, left click Move, then, in the Select a Destination box, navigate to the drive and folder in which you want to store your documents, and then left click OK and again.

(If you need to create a new folder, navigate to the drive/folder in which you want to put it and then left click Make New Folder. Overtype “New Folder” with your required name for the folder, and then left click OK and again.)

The Move Documents box will open - click Yes to move your documents to the new location, or click No to leave your documents in the original location.

If you have a lot of stuff in your My Documents folder then the move will take some time - make sure your laptop battery doesn’t run down in the middle!

Make Windows use another CD/DVD writer

“My DVD ROM drive failed, so I replaced it with a DVD writer. Now I have a CD writer and a DVD writer in the same PC but when I select ‘Copy to CD’ for files, Windows won’t allow me to use the DVD writer”.

The CD/DVD writing software included in Windows XP was supplied by Roxio and is deliberately very basic (they really want you to buy their commercial product). The software doesn’t allow you to choose which writer to use each time you want to write files, it only allows one drive to be set as the “Windows writing drive” at any one time.

But you can change the “Windows writing drive” at any time, even after selecting “Copy these files to CD” (but before actually starting the write, of course).

Left click Start, then My Computer.
Right click the drive that you want to write to and then left click Properties.
Left click the Recording tab and then left click to “Enable CD recording on this drive”
Left click OK and close My Computer

Whichever drive you select “Enable CD recording on this drive” for will become the “Windows writing drive” and that setting will be automatically disabled on all other writing drives in the PC.

You can see which is the enabled writing drive when you open the bubble that says that files are ready to be written to CD - it will tell you at the top of the Window and in the bottom left hand corner under Details.

DVD writer playing up

Now that DVD writers are only a few pounds dearer than CD writers, many people are replacing their failed CD writers (they don’t seem to last long) with DVD writers.

This is usually a pretty painless exercise, but the usual cause of any problems in older PCs is the IDE connecting cable. You need to connect a DVD writer (and fast DVD ROMs) with an 80 wire IDE cable, not the old style 40 wire cable.

This is because these optical drives operate at a much higher data transfer speed than CD drives and need to be connected like modern fast IDE hard disks.

Just out of interest, the only difference between 80 wire and 40 wire cables is that there is an extra earth wire beside each of the 40 data cables. The connectors still only have 40 pins. But the motherboard can detect which type of cable is connected and will set the speed appropriately.

DVD writers usually need to operate at the higher speed known as UDMA4. You can only do that with an 80 wire cable.

To check what speed your drive is set to:

Hold down the Windows key and hit Pause/Break
System Properties box will open
Left click Hardware tab, then Device Manager
Left click the plus sign beside IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Double left click either the Primary or Secondary IDE channel (depending on which one your DVD drive is connected to)
Left click Advanced Settings tab
Read the Current Transfer Mode for Device 0 (the master drive) and Device 1 (the slave drive)
Ultra DMA Mode 2 is the slow speed, Ultra DMA 4 is the high speed that you need for a DVD writer.

(Ultra DMA Mode 5 is even faster for hard disks only, PIO Mode is very slow - if you have that you need to change it to DMA - see http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm).

Skype Phone Sound Problems

Some users of Skype phones have had problems with either the normal PC sounds coming out of the phone or the phone sounds coming out of the PC speakers.

The settings should be as follows:

Open the Skype Program and left click Tools then Options... then Sound Devices in the left hand column.
Select USB Audio Device for Audio In, Audio Out and Ringing (do not select Windows default device)
You can also tick the Ring PC speaker check box if you like - this is a good backup to alert you if the main speakers are off or turned down.
Left click the Save button at the bottom.
Exit the Skype program.

Left click Start then Control Panel then Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices then Sound and Audio devices.
Left click the Audio tab and in the Sound playback section set the Default device to be your main soundcard (not USB Audio Device).
Left click OK
Close the Control Panel.

Now all PC audio and SKYPE rings should come from your PC speakers and the actual voice conversation should come from your phone handset.

Problems Writing files to CD/DVD

Most people now take digital photos, store them on their PC, sort them, file them and give them descriptive labels. Then they try to burn them to CD/DVD as a backup or to distribute to friends and family.

But sometimes the burn will fail. Everyone initially blames the cheap discs that they are using. They try again. Same thing happens. Buy better discs. Same thing happens. Blame the CD/DVD writer. Maybe buy a new one?

But this may not be a hardware problem at all.....!

Most people realize that there are certain characters that they can’t use in file names because they have special uses in Windows. The well known ones are: < > : " / \ |

If you try to rename a file using any of those characters Windows will just not recognize the key press.

But CD/DVDs have to be written using a different standard to the Microsoft Windows file naming standard. The CD/DVD standard is called the “Joliet standard” and it is far more restrictive than the Windows standard.

I can’t go into all the details of the Joliet standard here, but the safest rule is not to use any punctuation marks, symbols or spaces in file names that are to be written to CD/DVD. And keep file names shorter than 64 characters.

If you want a space between words use the underscore “_” character (shifted hyphen) instead of the space. And never use the full stop, except to separate the file name from its suffix (filename.jpg for instance).

Trying to write files to CD/DVD with file names that the writing software doesn’t like will cause the whole burn to fail just when you think it is about to finish successfully - without explanation.

Some examples of file names that will probably cause CD/DVD writing problems (depending on which writing program you use), but are perfectly acceptable to Windows, are:

Fred @ the beach.jpg (@ sign)
Mary, Jo and Fred.jpg (comma)
Bikes etc. (and Fred).jpg (extra full stop)

So forget all the proper punctuation and grammar when you are naming files - this is computing, not the Queen’s English!

Windows can’t find Printer Drivers

Newer printers connect by USB and are “plug and play”. So you just plug them in and if the drivers are included in Windows they will be installed automatically.

But not all older USB connecting printers are “plug and play”. And when Windows tries to find the drivers through the “Add Hardware” wizard it may not find the drivers - even if you let it connect to the web to search.

But the drivers may be in the Windows driver files all along. Try using the “Add a printer” wizard in “Printers and Faxes”. Tell it that it’s a “Local printer attached to this computer” and untick “Automatically detect and install my Plug and Play printer”. Select the “Virtual printer port for USB” and then try to find your make and model of printer in the list. If you find it, select it and click Next. Follow the prompts and away you go!

AutoPlay doesn’t

Problems with AutoPlay not working or working wrongly are acknowledged by Microsoft to the extent that they have produced a special tool to sort it out.

The tool is AutoFix.exe and it is currently available from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/

This free tool can help diagnose and repair AutoPlay problems in Windows XP. It is only 77KB and doesn't require installation. Simply double-click the exe file, click a few buttons and you can repair your Windows XP AutoPlay problem.

If MS have moved it by the time that you read this, just search www.microsoft.com for autofix.exe. Or download a zipped copy from:
http://www.jsifaq.com/docs/files/78677/Autofix.zip

You can only download it from MS if you are running a genuine copy of Windows XP. But once you have got a copy of AutoFix.exe you can run it on any copy of Windows XP.

Printer won’t work anymore

Believe it or not, on my travels I have seen ALL of the following:

1. Not plugged in to the mains

2. Not switched on at the mains

3. Plugged in to extension lead, but extension lead not plugged in/switched on

4. Power lead not plugged into printer

5. Printer not switched on

All the above can be eliminated by checking for the LGL (Little Green Light) on the printer.

6. Printer cable (USB/Parallel) not plugged into printer/PC

7. Printer set to work offline ( go Start, (Settings), Control Panel, (Printers and Other Hardware), Printers and Faxes, double left click on your printers name, left click Printer and left click to remove the tick next to Use Printer Offline).

8. Paper blockage

9. Blocked print heads

10. Ink cartridges dried up

Disks Fail!

If I am asked to give just one tip it is “Backup regularly”.

ALL hard disks WILL FAIL eventually - but you cannot say when. Sometimes they will give warning that they are going to fail and give you time to backup your stuff. SOMETIMES THEY WILL GIVE NO WARNING AT ALL.

Just imagine that, as you are reading this, your computer crashes. When you try to restart you find that the computer no longer recognises your hard disk. Are you smug in the knowledge that all your pictures, music, documents, secrets, plans, etc. are all backed up?

Put a backup regime in place NOW. I have seen so many cases of people who have lost all their treasured memories because they couldn’t be bothered (or didn’t know how) to back them up.

KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR

If your PC crashes with this error it indicates a hardware fault with either the RAM or the hard drive.

Download and run the Windows Memory Diagnostic (see this tip) to check the RAM.

If the RAM passes muster then you need to do a thorough scan of the hard drive.

Before you start this ensure that you have everything backed up - this is a “Kill or Cure” solution!

From an Administrator account you need to run chkdsk (Check Disk) in a more thorough way than it runs after a crash.

Left click Start then Run... and then in the Open: box type “cmd” (without the speech marks) and left click OK.

In the “dos box” that opens type “chkdsk /f /r” (without the speech marks) and hit Enter.

(The /f parameter tells it to fix any errors that it finds and the /r parameter tells it to locate bad sectors and recover readable information.)

You will be told that the disk is locked and asked if it can perform the task at the next restart. Type “y” and hit Enter.

Close down and restart the computer. chkdsk will start checking. This will take some time!

Hopefully the check will finish, say that it has found and repaired some errors and you will have solved your problem.

But possibly the check will freeze or crash and when eventually you try to restart you may not have a working hard disk. Well I did warn you! But at least you have proved that the hard drive was so badly damaged that it couldn’t have survived much longer. You have just given it that final push!

CD/DVD drive not recognised by Windows

If your BIOS detects your CD/DVD drive(s) when booting up, but it/they does not appear in Windows Explorer (and hence cannot be used), then some Registry keys may be corrupted.

This problem is usually associated with the installing or unistalling of disc burning software (Roxio?).

The solution requires a Registry edit, so the usual warnings apply:
You can only edit the Registry from an Administrator account.
If you are not confident to edit the Registry then don’t.
Make a backup copy of the Registry before you start.
PCTips will not be held responsible for any damage that you cause by editing the Registry.

Start, Run..., type regedit, OK

Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\
SYSTEM\
CurrentControlSet\
Control\
Class\
{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

In the right hand side of the window, right click LowerFilters, left click Delete and then left click Yes to “Are you sure you want to delete this value?”.

Do the same for UpperFilters.

Close the Registry Editor.

Restart Windows.

Windows will recreate the deleted Registry entries correctly (hopefully) and your drives should be recognised again.

In a few cases this may solve the disappearing drive problem but stop your burning software working. If so, uninstall and reinstall the software concerned.

Extra pages with every print

“My printer insists on producing a printout on a separate page giving details of the file that has been printed on every page that I print- thus doubling up my paper usage, etc. I have tried all the printer commands but cant find how to stop it. Any ideas?”

I think that the extra page you are printing is called a "Separator Page". This is used in offices that have one printer serving several computers.

Microsoft say: "Separator pages are used at the beginning of each document to make it easy to find a document among others at the printer." (No doubt written in the days before we were trying to save the rain forests!)

The Windows separator page can be switched on and off as follows:

Left click through: Start, Control Panel, Printers and Other Hardware, View installed printers or fax printers
Right click on your printer's name and then left click Properties
Left click the Advanced tab and then left click the Separator Page... button at the bottom right
The Separator page: box should be cleared to prevent it printing (or else you can select an appropriate .sep file using the Browse button).
OK out of the boxes.

But YOUR separator page might not be the Windows one, it is probably created by Word.

Word can be set to print out a document's properties on a separate page with each document. (I don't really know why anyone should want this, but it's there.) (Versions of Word before Word XP/2002 do not have this feature.)

Open Word and left click File at the top, then left click Page Setup...

Left click the Paper tab and then left click on the Print Options button.

This will bring up a dialog box containing check boxes for a variety of printing options.

In the middle part of that dialog box is a section labelled Include with document.
Within that is a Document properties check box.
Left click to remove the tick from that check box.

OK out of the boxes.

Word should now stop printing the separator page containing the document properties.

Cartridges for Dell Printer

I have Dell 720 Printer, which is the basic one bought with my 2 year old Dell Dimension 5000 Computer and admittedly pretty crappy, but it does a job.

The Dell replacement Ink Cartridges are very expensive, but I have had nothing but problems over the years with the cheaper refilled cartridges that one can buy from spurious suppliers both online and in office supply shops.

These latter cartridges invariably seem to cause problems, stop printing when they are only half empty and are generally a waste of time. For once I have to admit that the manufacturer's (Dell's) blurb about using the original components is probably correct in the end. Whilst the spurious suppliers do refund you the money this is more hassle than its worth in the end.

Your print cartridge problem is really down to your choice of printer. There are just not a lot of them about! Although Dell are the biggest PC manufacturer in the world they didn't really enter the printer market in a big way until a couple of years ago. Prior to that they sold rebadged Lexmark printers but didn't push them very hard.

The printer market has always been dominated by HP, Epson, Canon and Lexmark, with Dell trailing behind.

So the refillers and compatible manufacturers have concentrated on the big boys and not really done much work on Dell cartridges.

Every printer manufacturer tries to produce cartridges that work well but are difficult to copy or refill because they sell the printers at a loss and make their money on cartridges.

So the “re-manufacturers” concentrate on cloning the most used and popular cartridges and don’t put a lot of development effort into the less used cartridges.

Everyone wants the easy money!

My experience of compatible and refilled cartridges has always been very good - but I've never had a Dell printer!

And I don't print very much at all - I keep it electronic and view it on screen!

New printer won’t work

I have just purchased a Lexmark Z640 printer. When I try to install it I get a message saying that the data is invalid. I have contacted Lexmark and they say my USB ports need updating on my system, well how do you do that? As I am no computer genius, have you heard of this before or do you have any idea how I can sort this problem?

In the olden days of Windows 98 when USB was introduced it was relatively slow - but quite fast enough for printers, keyboards, mice, etc.

After a couple of years a faster (40 times) USB was introduced called USB 2.0. The older slower version is now called USB 1.1. The plugs and sockets are exactly the same, and all devices made for USB 1.1 will work in USB 2.0 sockets.

Initially most devices made for USB 2.0 speeds would still work in USB 1.1 sockets, (but slower). Most printers were like that.

But there are more and more devices nowadays that are made for USB 2.0 and will not work at USB 1.1 speed. This seems to be what is happening with your new printer. (The technical spec says " USB Compatible with USB 2.0 Specification ").

It is possible to buy a PCI card that fits inside your PC and gives you several new USB 2.0 ports at the back. PC World sell one - (LINK-IT - USB 2.0 - 5 PORT PCI CARD) for £14.99 (July 2007) (but it only works with Windows 2000, ME and XP).

If you are confident to open up your PC and fit a new card then it is reasonably simple to do.

The alternative is to take your new printer back and change it for a model that will work with USB 1.1 - check the small print on the box.

Dead Laptop

My customer had been using her laptop in the morning but when she came to use it again in the afternoon it wouldn’t boot up.

When I got there I pressed the on/off button and it lit up, but wouldn’t proceed to boot.

This laptop was permanently plugged into the mains but I quickly discovered that the plug in the back of the laptop must have worked loose, but not fallen out. The morning’s session had used most of the battery life. The laptop had then been hibernated, during which the battery had completely drained. Hence it wouldn’t boot.

I pushed the power connector in properly and away it went. A very embarrassed customer!

A disk read error occurred

“Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart” - but you do that and just keep getting the same message.

This message means that the file system on the hard drive is corrupted. You can try running chkdsk /r on the drive, but I have never yet found that to solve the problem.

Don’t automatically assume that you need to replace the hard drive, first try reformatting the disk and reinstalling Windows. Do a “full” format, not a quick format.

If that doesn’t work then you do need a new drive.


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